WI: What if Robert E. Lee Stays Entirely Neutral in the Civil War?

frustrated progressive

Would Stonewall Jackson's career have likely been altered significantly?
Either pushed too high into a position where his field aptitude is wasted, or pushed out by superiors infuriated by his esoteric style? Of course, odds are that he would have avoided that friendly fire incident, considering how unlikely it was by itself.
 
StephenColbert27

StephenColbert27

Banned
frustrated progressive said:
Would Stonewall Jackson's career have likely been altered significantly?
Either pushed too high into a position where his field aptitude is wasted, or pushed out by superiors infuriated by his esoteric style? Of course, odds are that he would have avoided that friendly fire incident, considering how unlikely it was by itself.
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Eh, that friendly fire incident was more or less his own fault. He went in front of his own lines after dark without telling anyone where he was going. The pickets had no way to know who he was when he came back. This is a symptom of the fact that Stonewall was too secretive for his own good.
 

Nytram01

StephenColbert27 said:
Hmm. I guess the first question is who replaces Joe Johnston as head of the ANV once he gets wounded? There aren't that many names who stand out at this point of the war, and most who did were still embroiled in the Corinth campaign following Shiloh.
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The Peninsula Campaign would have evolved differently without Lee, because the reason the Confederate Army converged on Yorktown was because of Lee.

In the April high command conferance to decide what strategy to employ to counter the threat of McClellan on the James Peninsula, Joe Johnston had argued that all troops on the Peninsula and at Norfolk should be ordered back to Richmond where they would link up with his army and reinforcements from the Carolina's and Georgia at which point they would be able to meet their enemy on equal or near equal terms, perhaps being able to engineer local superiority, and defeat them in detail.

Lee, on the other hand, argued that the longer the Confederates kept the Federals away from Richmond the more time would be available to train new recruits, manufacture or procure weapons and ammunition, and to concentrate forces around the capital, and therefore the better strategy was to conduct a stage-by-stage withdrawal from Yorktown designed to delay the Federal advance to buy that time then counter-attack from a strengthend position near Richmond.

Without Lee there's no guarentee Seven Pines/Fair Oak's would even happen let alone that Johnston would be wounded and circumstances the same for some other replacement - admittedly the chances of Joe Johnston getting badly wounded and forcefully removed from command are still pretty good (because he was a notorious bullet magnet who Winfield Scott once memorably described as having a knack for "getting himself shot in every major engagement") but that doesn't necessarilly mean it'll happen.
 

SwampTiger

Banned
Stonewall Jackson's wounding was similar to the death of Phil Kearney, a senior officer going where he shouldn't have.

Bragg would have been a disaster in Virginia.

If Lee is not available leave command with Magruder, or give it to Longstreet. Jefferson did not trust Beauregard.
 
BELFAST

BELFAST

frustrated progressive said:
What if Robert E. Lee decided that his loyalties to the United States and the state of Virginia were both binding, and that his only way to fulfill both was to become utterly neutral, resigning from the US Army while not accepting a state or confederate commission, and going to a foreign country to fully extricate himself from the situation. What would the Civil War have been like if Lee’s influence was entirely removed?
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Retires on health ground and stay home to manage the Arlington estate would be how I would keep him neutral.
 
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