Feliz Navidad!
One side or the other enlists "savage" Native American auxilliaries and sends them out to raid the other side's lines of communication?
The LOCs of pro-Confederate Indian allies were too distant. Too many Confederate settlements in the way. Such people would never grant support/right of passage, nor could you expect so undisiplined a force as Stand Watie's men were, to behave themselves in SW pro-Confederate Missouri, which they would have to pass through to get to the pro-Union (and relatively teeming numbers of) peoples of Kansas and the rest of Missouri.
As to Indians in other regions? The Indians of Texas frex were pro-Union if they were anything, and by the end of the war had conducted one of the most successful campaigns against the White Man in North American history, pushing the Confederates all the way back to their pre-1850 borders. But when the Union Army arrived after the CSA's surrender...
I don't really see any scenario in which that is realistic. A Confederate army could only move in Northern territory by living off the land, as Lee did in Pennsylvania for a few weeks. But a siege would take time, and a stationary army would quickly exhaust the supplies in the vicinity. Moreover, Union forces would quickly be assembled to form a relief force to lift the siege.
Lee had
plenty of supplies and forage to hold out against the Union for a very long time. His problem was ammunition, too big a system of supply trains to defend, and the weather (had he tried to stay). Also, there IS no city in the area of his operations that would qualify as a city of any real strategic or political significance. Washington is invulnerable and too well-supplied. Baltimore is too distant and exposes Lee to attack from north, south, and rear. Harrisburg is too well defended (tactically), and on the wrong side of a too deep and getting deeper (due to flooding) Susquehanna River.
Let's say the siege lasted for two months. Could the city being sieged actually survive? Unless the Union freed it, though...
All three of the cities I listed above have free and open supply lines/LOCs that Lee cannot attack.
There are a lot of things that were close calls or just luck that could be reasonably changed that would make a difference to the CSA's chances.
-Have Grant get killed when his horse falls on him before Shiloh
-Have Sherman get killed at Shiloh (he nearly did OTL)
Wouldn't BOTH happening be the equivalent of Lee AND Jackson being killed at Antietam? Union-screw
With that you could eliminate one or two of the USA's best Generals. I think Sherman would be the worst loss personally. I think Sherman was a better General than Grant.
Sherman was the more MODERN general, and IMO the only general other than Grant himself who could command army
groups as opposed to merely armies. But Grant was still the better combat commander.
-Have Lee's "Lost Order:" not get lost. There is no reason to think that Lee would not outmaneuver and defeat McClellan again. Even a small victory would be politically harmful to Lincoln especially in the 1862 midterms.
Meh. McClellan was too good at "not losing" for Lee to genuinely defeat him in terms of destroying large segments of the Union Army of the Potomac. I suppose the closest that Lee's statement about McClellan being the best opponent he ever faced was true in that in facing Mac Lee would NEVER be in the position of getting what he wanted: Crushing the Yankees for good.
OTOH, McClellan could be counted on to retreat in the face of an enemy who outnumbered him 2:1

Whether such costless "defeats" would count against Lincoln is hard to say. Abe could always count on Grant (and even sometimes Rosecrans!) for good news.
-Have the Trent Affair end up worse. Perhaps the Trent is actually hit by the Union vessel that stops it. Dead British sailors on an unarmed vessel would demand a harsh response from Great Britain.
IDK about this. It's hard to imagine. If blood is shed, there could very easily be a far different public reaction to Wilkes' actions than OTL. There was the Chesapeake Affair where even the Admiralty at the height of the Napoleonic Wars admitted wrong-doing, paid compensation, and cashiered the two officers responsible [1]. So Wilkes might very well ITTL find himself not the hero, but the publicly condemned.
1] The British captain and his superior who authorized him to open fire to enforce anti-desertion laws, even firing on neutral foreign warships.
-Have Farragut fail to get into New Orleans. That one may be borderline ASB, but if the CSA gets an ironclad ready before the battle who knows?!?
IDK about the ASB nature of taking New Orleans. It would depend on many factors:
a) Is the city still undefended? If it is defended, then Shiloh doesn't happen, or if it does it isn't the first day overrun it was OTL. Or maybe A.S. Johnston waits to re-inforce, in which case he's attacking two armies, not just one. Shiloh becomes not a joint slaughter, but rather a massacre for the rebels, leaving the Deep South prostrate.
b) If New Orleans' defenses are as OTL, you'd need to change the weather, to prevent the unusually high water levels, that allowed Farragut to directly train his guns down every street in the city.
c) Farragut IS getting past the forts
d) having a Confederate ironclad mission-capable with a fully operational and reliable engine THIS early in the war on the Mississippi IS ASB.
I am sure that there are many other close calls that could go the other way to make the war last longer, or have the CSA gain their independence, which most likely ends badly for a lot of people.
Badly for everyone but planters...
Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays, pick your preference!
Tank Commander
Tank Commander, yet another soldier in the war on Christmas

