What do you think would happen if Robert E. Lee had accepted command of the Union forces in 1861?
What do you think would happen if Robert E. Lee had accepted command of the Union forces in 1861?
I think that he would only have done so IF Virginia had not seceded. Yes, he was not a fan of slavery. But he had a loyalty to his State that took precedence.
What could have happened for him to let this loyalty take a back seat to some other consideration?
Could Virginia have acted in some way for him to not want to support it? Could Virginia´s state government or the Confederate government have done something to thoroughly alienate him?
Could something have happened to convince him that his loyalty to Virginia demanded that he help bring it back into the Union?
There could have been circumstance leading to where no Southerner would have spoken to him.
True, but then he would have simply sat on the sidelines and not joined the fighting at all. Unless you want to completely change the kind of man Robert E. Lee was, there is no conceivable scenario in which Lee would lead troops against Virginia. None whatsoever.
You might as well speak of Winston Churchill deciding to side with the Irish or Indian nationalists against the British Empire.
That's exactly what's told in Turtledove's excellent short story Lee at the Alamo. Read it!Would Col Lee US Army & model officer of proven fortitude & dicipline have handed over the Federal property to a local miltia? Possiblly not. It might have ended there with the Texans retiring to the local saloons to plan their next move. Or it might have come to gunfire. In that case Lee as a Federal Army officer commanding resistance to secessionists would have had near zero chance of any Confederate or state commission as a officer.
That's exactly what's told in Turtledove's excellent short story Lee at the Alamo. Read it!
What do you think would happen if Robert E. Lee had accepted command of the Union forces in 1861?
True, but then he would have simply sat on the sidelines and not joined the fighting at all. Unless you want to completely change the kind of man Robert E. Lee was, there is no conceivable scenario in which Lee would lead troops against Virginia. None whatsoever.
You might as well speak of Winston Churchill deciding to side with the Irish or Indian nationalists against the British Empire.