- Location
- Albany, NY
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Whats an AH website without someone like me tossing up multiple American Civil War What Ifs?
So, in 1864 the Union had finally the means, and the leadership to pull off a coordinated offensive against the Confederacy. The Grant-Sherman plan sought to overwhelm the Confederate forces and to negate their advantage of interior lines by launching their campaigns simultaneously. George Meade the commander of the Army of the Potomac which had General Grant's staff attached to it would begin the overland campaign on the same day that William T. Sherman with the Military Division (Army Group) of the Mississippi began its offensive towards Atlanta. And while this strategy would bring about violence and bloodshed in a condensed timeframe not seen previously in the war, it did see by years end, the fall of Atlanta, Sherman's March to the Sea, and Richmond and its critical rail link at Petersburg under siege. In addition though, there were other smaller campaigns in this plan. Nathaniel Banks was was ordered to move on Mobile until his command was waylayed by the politically necessary Red River Campaign (Federal deployments towards Texas required due to the French intervention in Mexico) and the defeat that followed. Franz Seigel was to move from Harper's Ferry down the Shenandoah Valley on the Virginia-West Virginia borderlands. Federal Forces in Arkansas, Kansas and Missouri moved south. Forces in Tennessee and North Mississippi tightened the noose around Nathan Bedford Forrest. And for the context of this story there was one more, an effort to land a small Army behind Richmond at Bermuda Hundred commanded by Major General Benjamin Butler.
Butler, for those who don't know is the poster child for the problems with Political Generals. In 1860 he had made a name for himself as a Pro-Southern Democrat who voted ballot after ballot at the Party's Presidential Convention for Jefferson Davis. In 1861 he had used his connections to New England Banks to leap to the top of the list to command Massachusetts forces bound for Washington at the start of the war. As such he became the first Union Hero of the War after Major Anderson. It was his men who had to fight though the mobs of Baltimore and his men who were some of the first forces to arrive at the Federal Capital when it was under the threat of invasion. He would be one of the first men Lincoln promoted to Major General of Volunteers (And by 1864 the only one still around, making a problem for commanders due to his Seniority, being second only to Grant technically speaking). As such he was sent to the Yorktown Peninsula to command Federal Forces there at Fortress Monroe. He would there invent the concept of Contraband, ensuring for the Union a manpower pool of escaped slaves and starting things off at the Beginning of the End for Slavery, and show his military incompetence by losing the battle at Big Bethel. He would be rotated to become the Union Army commander who occupied New Orleans and between his supposedly disrespectful actions there, and his transformation into a Radical Republican opponent of Slavery earned the disgust of the South who called for his hanging if ever captured. In 1863 he would return to the Virginia Coast commanding the garrisons that now stretched from Fortress Monroe down to most of the ports of North Carolina and the Outer Banks. His reputation in the mind of the Rebels would be damaged even more as he used the position to raise six regiments from Confederate POWs and sent them to the Western Frontier to free up troops there for service against the Confederacy.
Thus bringing us to 1864. Butler's district command was, under the orders of condensation turned into the Army of the James, as the Corps that had been trying to take Charleston South Carolina, free units from the coastal garrisons and a major increase by nearly a corps of USCT regiments and ordered to head up their namesake river to take City Point and Bermuda Hundred, a pair of small peninsulas at the point where the James shrinks into an actual river instead of a broad salt water bay. City Point would go on to become the headquarters of the vast siege of Petersburg and Richmond but Bermuda Hundred, between the Appomattox and the James Rivers was critical. Centrally located between Petersburg and Richmond, it could be used as a launching pad for taking either city and more importantly for severing the railroad that connected the two, and thus connected the Confederate Capital and Robert E. Lee's forces to the rest of the Confederacy. In opposition to this were a few disgraced or disliked Confederate Officers (Braxton Bragg in Richmond doubling as a Staff Officer and partly as a garrison commander, P.G.T. Beauregard with a few scattered regiments to his south at Petersburg, George Pickett under Beauregard, and D.H. Hill, recently relieved as a spare man on on the scene.) And very few men, with most of the available men in North Carolina.
The Army of the James took Bermuda Hundred the same day that Grant began the Battle of the Wilderness. The next day the first Federal troops engaged a scratch force of Confederate Militia near the railroad. This is when things fell apart. Butler's Corps commanders hated each other, and him. He was not by nature a decisive man, or able to bring his Corps, Division and Brigade commanders to heel. Time was wasted. Grant had given him the freedom to choose his target based on where the opposition was stronger. But instead of granting Butler freedom it made him slower. As time passed, George Pickett assumed command of the forces opposite Butler, Beauregard, Bragg and Hill worked to rush more forces on the scene. As Grant was defeated at the Wilderness but moved forward towards Spotsylvania, the Army of the James floundered in reconnaissances and skrimishes. In the end the Confederates not only secured the railway but forced Butler to dig in, which they did in turn, bringing about the famed quote by Grant that defined the whole enterprise "the position was like a bottle and that Butler's line of entrenchments across the neck represented the cork; that the enemy had built an equally strong line immediately in front of him across the neck; and it was therefore as if Butler was in a bottle. He was perfectly safe against an attack; but, as Barnard expressed it, the enemy had corked the bottle and with a small force could hold the cork in its place." Eventually the corked Army of the James would be reorganized, with men used at Petersburg in new positions as an augment for the larger Army of the Potomac and Butler would go on to command the military disaster that was the first assault on Fort Fisher, ending his military career and sending him back to Congress, where he would become a major player in the fight for Civil Rights before becoming a proto-Populist in the Greenback Party.
Now, had decisive action been taken, Richmond had no more then a Brigade of troops at it. Richmond was down to the City Militia of Old men and young boys. The Garrison slightly up the James River at Drewey's Bluff included nearly all of the Confederate Marine Corps but amounted to no more then 500 men commanded by Robert E. Lee's brother (A CS Navy officer). There would be about 15,000 men up from North Carolina in the next few days. Against this, Butler had under his command 33,000 men. The next nearest Confederate Force was the Army of Northern Virginia's Cavalry Corps under Jeb Stuart, trapped in a running death battle with Philip Sheridan and the Army of the Potomac's Cavalry Force (This is when Stuart was killed at Yellow Tavern) an operation that put 10,000 Union Cavalrymen against 5,000 Confederate mounted troops nearly as close to the defenses of the Confederate Capital, a clear advantage for the Union.
Considering the quality of the men, and the opposition they face, there can be, with proper leadership a good effort by the Army of the James to take the Confederate Capital or to cut if off. In either event, by the time that Petersburg or Richmond could be taken, Lee will have to be pinned down in the prototypical Trench Warfare at Spotsylvania, and furthermore will no longer have connections outside of Virginia, he can have the food supplies of the Shenandoah as long as that valley is held, which at the time was up in the air and would be for another week until the Battle of New Market. But the remaining North Carolina ports was critical for getting supplies from the blockade runners that kept his army equipped, and the gunpowder works in Georgia that allowed his men to keep shooting.
Lee is thus put in an incredibly dangerous position, with a major army locked up next to him, with a lack of resupply, boxed in by another army, and having to run a gauntlet to get supplies. Retaking Richmond would be difficult if the Army of the James has garrisoned it. in the event the AoJ had gone for Petersburg retaking it with the Army of Northern Virginia would precipitate either a siege of Richmond or the abandonment thereof. In either case the goal that Grant would spend a year fighting for comes to ahead within weeks of the start of his offensive.
While a specific POD remains up in the air for this, I am interested in people's thoughts about what directions they feel would make the most sense, and what the reactions of Grant and Lee would be. Furthermore, if people have thoughts about what occurs if the war in Virginia is decided in the spring of 1864, in regards to the remainder of the war, and in the aftermath.
So, in 1864 the Union had finally the means, and the leadership to pull off a coordinated offensive against the Confederacy. The Grant-Sherman plan sought to overwhelm the Confederate forces and to negate their advantage of interior lines by launching their campaigns simultaneously. George Meade the commander of the Army of the Potomac which had General Grant's staff attached to it would begin the overland campaign on the same day that William T. Sherman with the Military Division (Army Group) of the Mississippi began its offensive towards Atlanta. And while this strategy would bring about violence and bloodshed in a condensed timeframe not seen previously in the war, it did see by years end, the fall of Atlanta, Sherman's March to the Sea, and Richmond and its critical rail link at Petersburg under siege. In addition though, there were other smaller campaigns in this plan. Nathaniel Banks was was ordered to move on Mobile until his command was waylayed by the politically necessary Red River Campaign (Federal deployments towards Texas required due to the French intervention in Mexico) and the defeat that followed. Franz Seigel was to move from Harper's Ferry down the Shenandoah Valley on the Virginia-West Virginia borderlands. Federal Forces in Arkansas, Kansas and Missouri moved south. Forces in Tennessee and North Mississippi tightened the noose around Nathan Bedford Forrest. And for the context of this story there was one more, an effort to land a small Army behind Richmond at Bermuda Hundred commanded by Major General Benjamin Butler.
Butler, for those who don't know is the poster child for the problems with Political Generals. In 1860 he had made a name for himself as a Pro-Southern Democrat who voted ballot after ballot at the Party's Presidential Convention for Jefferson Davis. In 1861 he had used his connections to New England Banks to leap to the top of the list to command Massachusetts forces bound for Washington at the start of the war. As such he became the first Union Hero of the War after Major Anderson. It was his men who had to fight though the mobs of Baltimore and his men who were some of the first forces to arrive at the Federal Capital when it was under the threat of invasion. He would be one of the first men Lincoln promoted to Major General of Volunteers (And by 1864 the only one still around, making a problem for commanders due to his Seniority, being second only to Grant technically speaking). As such he was sent to the Yorktown Peninsula to command Federal Forces there at Fortress Monroe. He would there invent the concept of Contraband, ensuring for the Union a manpower pool of escaped slaves and starting things off at the Beginning of the End for Slavery, and show his military incompetence by losing the battle at Big Bethel. He would be rotated to become the Union Army commander who occupied New Orleans and between his supposedly disrespectful actions there, and his transformation into a Radical Republican opponent of Slavery earned the disgust of the South who called for his hanging if ever captured. In 1863 he would return to the Virginia Coast commanding the garrisons that now stretched from Fortress Monroe down to most of the ports of North Carolina and the Outer Banks. His reputation in the mind of the Rebels would be damaged even more as he used the position to raise six regiments from Confederate POWs and sent them to the Western Frontier to free up troops there for service against the Confederacy.
Thus bringing us to 1864. Butler's district command was, under the orders of condensation turned into the Army of the James, as the Corps that had been trying to take Charleston South Carolina, free units from the coastal garrisons and a major increase by nearly a corps of USCT regiments and ordered to head up their namesake river to take City Point and Bermuda Hundred, a pair of small peninsulas at the point where the James shrinks into an actual river instead of a broad salt water bay. City Point would go on to become the headquarters of the vast siege of Petersburg and Richmond but Bermuda Hundred, between the Appomattox and the James Rivers was critical. Centrally located between Petersburg and Richmond, it could be used as a launching pad for taking either city and more importantly for severing the railroad that connected the two, and thus connected the Confederate Capital and Robert E. Lee's forces to the rest of the Confederacy. In opposition to this were a few disgraced or disliked Confederate Officers (Braxton Bragg in Richmond doubling as a Staff Officer and partly as a garrison commander, P.G.T. Beauregard with a few scattered regiments to his south at Petersburg, George Pickett under Beauregard, and D.H. Hill, recently relieved as a spare man on on the scene.) And very few men, with most of the available men in North Carolina.
The Army of the James took Bermuda Hundred the same day that Grant began the Battle of the Wilderness. The next day the first Federal troops engaged a scratch force of Confederate Militia near the railroad. This is when things fell apart. Butler's Corps commanders hated each other, and him. He was not by nature a decisive man, or able to bring his Corps, Division and Brigade commanders to heel. Time was wasted. Grant had given him the freedom to choose his target based on where the opposition was stronger. But instead of granting Butler freedom it made him slower. As time passed, George Pickett assumed command of the forces opposite Butler, Beauregard, Bragg and Hill worked to rush more forces on the scene. As Grant was defeated at the Wilderness but moved forward towards Spotsylvania, the Army of the James floundered in reconnaissances and skrimishes. In the end the Confederates not only secured the railway but forced Butler to dig in, which they did in turn, bringing about the famed quote by Grant that defined the whole enterprise "the position was like a bottle and that Butler's line of entrenchments across the neck represented the cork; that the enemy had built an equally strong line immediately in front of him across the neck; and it was therefore as if Butler was in a bottle. He was perfectly safe against an attack; but, as Barnard expressed it, the enemy had corked the bottle and with a small force could hold the cork in its place." Eventually the corked Army of the James would be reorganized, with men used at Petersburg in new positions as an augment for the larger Army of the Potomac and Butler would go on to command the military disaster that was the first assault on Fort Fisher, ending his military career and sending him back to Congress, where he would become a major player in the fight for Civil Rights before becoming a proto-Populist in the Greenback Party.
Now, had decisive action been taken, Richmond had no more then a Brigade of troops at it. Richmond was down to the City Militia of Old men and young boys. The Garrison slightly up the James River at Drewey's Bluff included nearly all of the Confederate Marine Corps but amounted to no more then 500 men commanded by Robert E. Lee's brother (A CS Navy officer). There would be about 15,000 men up from North Carolina in the next few days. Against this, Butler had under his command 33,000 men. The next nearest Confederate Force was the Army of Northern Virginia's Cavalry Corps under Jeb Stuart, trapped in a running death battle with Philip Sheridan and the Army of the Potomac's Cavalry Force (This is when Stuart was killed at Yellow Tavern) an operation that put 10,000 Union Cavalrymen against 5,000 Confederate mounted troops nearly as close to the defenses of the Confederate Capital, a clear advantage for the Union.
Considering the quality of the men, and the opposition they face, there can be, with proper leadership a good effort by the Army of the James to take the Confederate Capital or to cut if off. In either event, by the time that Petersburg or Richmond could be taken, Lee will have to be pinned down in the prototypical Trench Warfare at Spotsylvania, and furthermore will no longer have connections outside of Virginia, he can have the food supplies of the Shenandoah as long as that valley is held, which at the time was up in the air and would be for another week until the Battle of New Market. But the remaining North Carolina ports was critical for getting supplies from the blockade runners that kept his army equipped, and the gunpowder works in Georgia that allowed his men to keep shooting.
Lee is thus put in an incredibly dangerous position, with a major army locked up next to him, with a lack of resupply, boxed in by another army, and having to run a gauntlet to get supplies. Retaking Richmond would be difficult if the Army of the James has garrisoned it. in the event the AoJ had gone for Petersburg retaking it with the Army of Northern Virginia would precipitate either a siege of Richmond or the abandonment thereof. In either case the goal that Grant would spend a year fighting for comes to ahead within weeks of the start of his offensive.
While a specific POD remains up in the air for this, I am interested in people's thoughts about what directions they feel would make the most sense, and what the reactions of Grant and Lee would be. Furthermore, if people have thoughts about what occurs if the war in Virginia is decided in the spring of 1864, in regards to the remainder of the war, and in the aftermath.