Posted on 07/01/2012 8:50:22 AM PDT by C19fan
It doesn’t take long to walk the Malvern Hill battlefield. Less than an hour. And there is not much to see. There are a few cannons at the top of the hill, where they were on July 1, 1862, firing remorselessly into the lines of assaulting Confederate infantry that never came close to reaching them and took appalling casualties in the effort. Alongside a trail that meanders through the mature hardwood trees at the base of the hill, there are some shallow depressions in the ground that a plaque describes as hasty graves where some of the Confederate dead had been buried. There is one structure at the top of the hill that looks, more or less, the way it did on the day of the battle. Some split rail fences for verisimilitude. And that is about it.
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
I think I disagree with that articles premise. The CSA was surely about to lose all in the eastern theater and in the course of a single week it was ready to make an offensive into Maryland.
Interesting to imagine what would have happened had Grant, or Sherman or Thomas been the Union commander.
Very difficult to see any of them behaving the way McClellan did. When struck, each of them rolled with the punch and hit back, hard.
I find it difficult to believe that the war would have ended had the CSA lost Richmond. It just wasn’t crucial to the war effort and I suspect the government would have fled and the war gone on. The South had to be convinced it was whipped, and losing a battle or a capital would not have done that.
I wonder how yankees of today feel about “winning”. “It’s a fine mess you’ve gotten us into, Ollie.” :-)
Interesting question.
It is, however, faced with the problem of all counter-factual speculations.
Is there any particular reason to believe things would not have turned out even worse had the CSA won its independence?
We know what happened when the Union won, so we assume none of the bad things would have happened if the other option had occurred.
“Interesting question.
It is, however, faced with the problem of all counter-factual speculations.
Is there any particular reason to believe things would not have turned out even worse had the CSA won its independence?
We know what happened when the Union won, so we assume none of the bad things would have happened if the other option had occurred.”
Of course, you are correct. No one knows or can never know the answer to that. I just thought that I would throw it out there for speculation. :-)
I’ll give you a speculation.
The CSA wins, but only at the end of a long and bloody war. Multiple wars follow, over control of the west, CSA resentment of USA encouragement of fugitive slaves, the usual trade disputes, etc.
These wars merge into the greater wars of the 20th century, and we get to fight battles of WWI and WWII on American soil.
Possibly without a united America to come to its rescue, Europe falls to a ultra-nationalist and/or racist Germany. Possibly one of the American states allies itself with them.
Oh, joy.
I think the only obviously true statement you can make about what would have happened is that the world of 2012 would be a very different place had the CSA won its independence. Maybe better, maybe worse. And people would sit around posting speculations about how much better the world would be had the USA remained united in the 1860s.
McClellan was a coward.
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