WI: Rober E Lee captured.

As i understand it, during the Wilderness Campaign, Hancock's corps almost annihilated A. P. Hill's corp, and in doing so almost came close to capturing Lee, until a Texas brigade came forth and changed the course of the Battle by shielding Lee and reinforcing the beleaguered confederate corps.
But, if Hancock pushed harder, could he have captured General Lee? So, my question is what happens now? In the north itself it would be a significant blow against Peace Democrats and pacifists alike. Confederate strategy after Lee's capture and how long do they last?

Elsewise...is there another way to capture Lee during that war, and perhaps knock him out?
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
If Lee is captured on the morning of the second day of the Battle of the Wilderness, command would fall to Longstreet (whose wounded IOTL would therefore be butterflied away). The end result of the battle might actually be marginally better for the Confederates, because I would expect Longstreet to undertake the successful counter attack by his corps (command of which, I believe, would fall to Joseph Kershaw), but I highly doubt Longstreet would have committed Lee's blunder of launching the futile frontal attack on the Union position on Brock Road. So the Battle of the Wilderness would have ended as a Confederate tactical victory won at a cost of two thousand or so fewer casualties than IOTL.

The question in the following days is whether Davis would want Longstreet to stay in command or would order General Beauregard, close at hand, to ride north and take command. In either case, though, I would expect the AoNV to do rather worse for the rest of the Overland Campaign than it did IOTL, for neither general had Lee's ability to discern the intentions of the enemy or to inspire the men, and Lee's loss would have been a shattering blow to the morale of the AoNV.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Wasn't Longstreet wounded?

That was later. If Lee was captured at the moment you describe (during the collapse of Hill's corps), then Longstreet would have to take command before he was wounded IOTL. Consequently, he would be in a different place doing different things than was the case IOTL and he would avoid the wounding.

Classic butterfly.
 
Lee captured obviously causes more problems. I could guess there may be massive desertion from the confederates alone, plus the war-morale boost in the North, they might send in more troops, or they may not. But would the war be over by Christmas, as some were considering/believing?

Earlier capture of Richmond even?
 
Kershaw is only a brigadier general, so it would go to his other division commander by default- although Longstreet might try to override that, and might even be able to do so in the short run.

And what is Longstreet doing instead of the Brock Road assault? The Wilderness makes a mess of fancy maneuvering.

Can't see Davis appointing Beauregard, and sending in more troops - from where, pray tell? There aren't a lot of Union troops to send beyond what Grant moved OTL (in the East, that is - and the West has other problems).
 
Davis wouldn't do something stupid and put Bragg in command, would he? I mean, that would be interesting in the East. Bragg vs Grant. Even if Longstreet is snr corps commander, Davis might want his own man there, and knowing Bragg, he just might screw things up even more.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
And what is Longstreet doing instead of the Brock Road assault? The Wilderness makes a mess of fancy maneuvering.

Probably just trying to restore some sense of order to the Confederate lines, which were in total chaos. Conceivably he might had gone over to check on Ewell when he got the chance, seen the opportunity for the flank attack that Gordon had been pushing for all day, and ordered Ewell to proceed with it. Had it gone in a few hours earlier than IOTL, it could have caused considerably more trouble.

But I rather think that events on the Confederate left would have gone more or less as they did IOTL.

Can't see Davis appointing Beauregard

Me either, really. He is the nearest available full general, but Davis hates him only slightly less than he hates Johnston.

Davis wouldn't do something stupid and put Bragg in command, would he?

Nobody with an ounce of common sense would have done any such thing. Therefore, Davis might well have done it.
 
In either case, though, I would expect the AoNV to do rather worse for the rest of the Overland Campaign than it did IOTL, for neither general had Lee's ability to discern the intentions of the enemy or to inspire the men, and Lee's loss would have been a shattering blow to the morale of the AoNV.

Nobody matched Lee on inspiring the men, but where did he distinguish himself on discerning enemy intentions? For example, Burnside stole a march on Lee and if he'd had the pontoons or been willing to cross the fords would have been in Fredricksburg before Lee knew Burnside was moving.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Nobody matched Lee on inspiring the men, but where did he distinguish himself on discerning enemy intentions? For example, Burnside stole a march on Lee and if he'd had the pontoons or been willing to cross the fords would have been in Fredricksburg before Lee knew Burnside was moving.

During the Overland Campaign, Lee pretty much nailed what Grant was going to do every time, with the single and disastrous exception of Grant's movement to the south side of the James River.
 
During the Overland Campaign, Lee pretty much nailed what Grant was going to do every time, with the single and disastrous exception of Grant's movement to the south side of the James River.

Sorry but no.

May 7-8: Lee has no idea Grant plans to move the whole army south out of the Wilderness. He does believe something of a southward oblique shift may happen, so he orders Anderson (commanding 1st corps) to move his men southward a bit to counter. Anderson gets confused about the orders, and doesn't see a good place to bivouac for the night, so he keeps his men marching far beyond what Lee intended, and by accident they near Spotsylvania Court House just in time to help out Stuart against Sheridan. Lee gets the inside line at Spotsylvania by pure luck.

May 10: Upton's attack on Ewell is a complete surprise. Lee is currently to the west of the Po River planning an attack against Hancock's exposed corps, planning to use 2-3 divisions in a pincer movement. Without his guidance Upton's attack succeeds and breaks open the Confederate line for over an hour, but it goes unexploited.

May 11-12: Lee thinks Grant will move around his right again, so he removes all of the artillery from the Mule Shoe salient. Without this force backing Ewell's corps, the attack of the 2nd and 6th corps completely shatter Ewell's men and Spotsylvania comes within a hairsbreadth of Confederate disaster.

May 14: Grant tries to locally outflank Lee at Spotsylvania, and moves the 5th and 6th corps to attack Lee's right flank. It doesn't work because the night march involved turns into a huge tangle, but Lee doesn't shift right to counter for a full 2 days.

May 18: Now Grant tries to outflank Lee locally on the left, by sending the 2nd and 6th corps back over the Bloody Angle and assault Lee's new line. This time the artillery is in place and Ewell smashes the attack, but the actual assault is a complete surprise - Lee thinks Grant will move south again.

May 20-21: Lee thinks Grant will outflank him via Telegraph Road, so he sends Ewell's corps to Stannard's Mill at the Matta (?) River, an ideal blocking position. Instead, Grant sends Hancock far down the Mattaponi River, and he gets over 10 miles beyond Ewell's flank and in an ideal position to crush his corps with Warren's help from the north. It fails because of arriving Confederate reinforcements (Pickett's men) being in the right place by sheer luck, and Hancock being a bit more cautious than usual.

May 23-24: Lee thinks Grant is far behind him in the race to the North Anna River, so he gives his army a day of rest. Instead, Hancock crosses the river at Telegraph Road and Warren crosses at Jerico Mills, and skirmishes at both locations fail to dislodge them. Lee makes it work with his inverted V defense at Ox Ford.

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I forget the details for the Cold Harbor phase of operations, but I think Lee makes another one or two comparable lapses of judgement.

Lee's strength in the Overland Campaign (as first judged by Gordon C. Rhea, and I support this view) had nothing to do with predicting what Grant would do - because he completely failed at this.

Lee's strength was making the best of bad situations, which he did with amazing regularity. He made several mistakes, but he fixed them quickly, and Grant failed to exploit them because he was getting used to working with the Army of the Potomac. And on more than one occasion Grant chose not to attack the Confederates because he was sure Lee would have set up entrenchments to block such an assault, as Lee surely should have, when in fact Lee had no idea Grant was even contemplating such an attack and his line there was weak or non-existent. The Overland Campaign was a game of bluff and counter-bluff.
 
This was the major that started Up With the Star on its road to a relatively rapid disintegration of the Confederacy. A fair-sized chunk of the ANV escaped total annihilation (because realistically no scenario in the ACW will allow armies to do that to each other short of a very long bleeding process) and occupying a larger portion of Virginia caused enough problems that the war in the East dragged on for months afterward, though large-scale fighting was over in the East after that point.
 
During the Overland Campaign, Lee pretty much nailed what Grant was going to do every time, with the single and disastrous exception of Grant's movement to the south side of the James River.

False. Grant surprised Lee on the first day of the Wilderness by jumping Lee before he was ready to start the battle. I doubt Lee ever predicted any Yankees would nearly split his army in two, as on the second day of the Wilderness. If Lee expected the Bloody Angle to happen he should have been shot in the back of the head and dumped in an anonymous grave (speaking from the very personal perspective of my ancestors starting their combat experience in that hellhole). Lee tried at least once to tactically entrap Grant, and they failed. Generally generals who seek to entrap others do not expect their traps to fail.
 
This was the major that started Up With the Star on its road to a relatively rapid disintegration of the Confederacy. A fair-sized chunk of the ANV escaped total annihilation (because realistically no scenario in the ACW will allow armies to do that to each other short of a very long bleeding process) and occupying a larger portion of Virginia caused enough problems that the war in the East dragged on for months afterward, though large-scale fighting was over in the East after that point.
Yeah, i was reading your TL last night when this occured to me.
 
Yeah, i was reading your TL last night when this occured to me.

It's worth noting that capturing Lee and Richmond would be a two-edged sword in a sense in a relatively late scenario: Virginia, even without West Virginia, would require a lot of troops just for garrison-occupation duty. Not enough of a bite to counterbalance the effects on the Confederacy of losing its capital and its most significant industrial area, but it'd still matter.
 
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