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I'm not sure precisely what divergence would be needed to achieve this. Essentially I'm wondering-as a hypothetical-what a General less prone to caution than George McClellan might have made out of Lee's Lost orders. Given the limitations inherent in logistics-how much worse a defeat could the Army of Northern Virginia have suffered during the Maryland campaign after the Union Army received the orders.

Unfortunately-I don't know how to effectively replace George McClellan in time for such a response without sounding arbitrary-and obviously the divergence has to remove him from the picture somehow-because you can't change who and what McClellan was. Let's say-for some reason-some manner of fatal accident befalls him in early September 1862-or at least an accident that effectively removes him from command-or he is otherwise not in command when the Lost Orders are lost.

Someone else takes command of the Army of the Potomac who is at least marginally more aggressive than McClellan was.

Lee's orders are still lost-and delivered to this hypothetical replacement for McClellan.

Given logistics-how quickly could the Army of the Potomac make use of what they had discovered-and how much damage could they reasonably inflict upon the Army of Northern Virginia as a consequence? How large of a disaster could be caused by Union Discovery of the Lost Orders? If logistically there was no way for a faster response to occur-what is the worst plausible outcome of Antietam for Lee?

Again I realize that I'm probably straining plausibility a bit in removing McClellan and still allowing the Lost Orders to be discovered-but I'm unsure how else to create the precondition here of the most aggressive response to the Lost Orders that was logistically feasible for the Union Army to undertake.
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