WI: No Gettysburg

What if Lee does not engage the North in Gettysburg, instead opting to penetrate deeper into the North? How long until he eiather out-runs his supplies or is caught? How does this affect the North? The South?
 

Redhand

Banned
I don't think it was willingly that he engaged there. There are some stories that they were after a shoe factory in town to requisition and it caused a general engagement because of a lack of discipline from advance units.

But the truth is that if they did not engage at Gettysburg, it is possible with the pace that the Union Army was moving that his forces would have been caught and engaged piecemeal somewhere on the road from Chambersburg towards the bridge all the way up at Harrisburg due to the negligence of the Confederate cavalry in the campaign.

This could have gone very badly for Lee. I think that his skill would allow him to extricate his army, but if he doesn't engage at Gettysburg, and manage to get pretty damn lucky knocking out two Union Corps merely because of the order of march that sent a massive amount of troops onto the Union flank by chance, his army could be in serious trouble, especially if the force does not consolidate quickly enough.
 

jahenders

Banned
Gingrich and Forstchen explore a variation of this in their Gettysburg series. Basically, as the forces start to appear on both sides, Longstreet convinces Lee NOT to fight there, but instead to move between the assembling Union forces and Washington. As they lay it out, this essentially forces Meade to attack Lee on ground of his (Lee's choosing). As you can imagine, the result is quite different. Their other books in the series then lay out events after that.

I don't think it was willingly that he engaged there. There are some stories that they were after a shoe factory in town to requisition and it caused a general engagement because of a lack of discipline from advance units.

But the truth is that if they did not engage at Gettysburg, it is possible with the pace that the Union Army was moving that his forces would have been caught and engaged piecemeal somewhere on the road from Chambersburg towards the bridge all the way up at Harrisburg due to the negligence of the Confederate cavalry in the campaign.

This could have gone very badly for Lee. I think that his skill would allow him to extricate his army, but if he doesn't engage at Gettysburg, and manage to get pretty damn lucky knocking out two Union Corps merely because of the order of march that sent a massive amount of troops onto the Union flank by chance, his army could be in serious trouble, especially if the force does not consolidate quickly enough.
 
Most likely Lee would have gone after Camp Curtin. Curtin was a major facility for troops coming from the Midwestand would have been a tempting target.
 
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