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w.i.General Grant killed

claybaskit

Harry Turtledove wannabe
Gone Fishing
Can the North defeat the confederacy if Grant is killed?
by the way I think it is possible.
 
When are you thinking of having him killed would be the most important question.

Grant was not the essential man of the war but the wrong death at the wrong time opens the inevitable possibility of "the bottom coming out of the tub" and the Copperheads winning in 1862 or 1864 as a result.
 
For example if Grant is killed at say Belmont, I think the war sees some more deaths but eventually the right men will rise to high posts.

If Grant is killed before the Cracker Line Plan can be launched to save the Army of the Cumberland in Chattanooga and Thomas has to abandon the city, that means 1864's Western Campaign is a battle to get Back to that city rather then Atlanta and if Sherman takes the city back there's a good chance it wont have the same political impact as Atlanta and McClellan or a Copperhead could win the election in November.
 
Grant dying at a random point in time is bad but not catastrophic, mainly because the outcome of the war in the west was fairly overdetermined - would you lose Grant's strategic nous, yes, but barring some unlikely personnel decisions (Lincoln decides that Halleck and Pope have to do everything now) there is still more than enough talent to go around. Takes a bit longer but the trajectory of the war is broadly the same.

Grant dying at a specific point in time, however, could be catastrophic. Japhy points out Chattanooga, correctly, the other option that springs to mind (this feels cliche, but I can't actually think of anyone that's done it) is the Union truly rolling snake eyes at Shiloh and Grant dying shortly before his army gets shattered against the riverbank by A. S. "Large Adult Son" Johnston. Not probable, but if you stick to the probable the South is going to lose.
 
For example if Grant is killed at say Belmont, I think the war sees some more deaths but eventually the right men will rise to high posts.

If Grant is killed before the Cracker Line Plan can be launched to save the Army of the Cumberland in Chattanooga and Thomas has to abandon the city

You know, this does make me wonder-given that Grant and Thomas had a bad relationship, does this mean Thomas rises higher if Grant dies?
 
You know, this does make me wonder-given that Grant and Thomas had a bad relationship, does this mean Thomas rises higher if Grant dies?
There were only two General Officers Ranks during the war besides Grant's Lt. Generalship, so broadly no since he made it to Major General.

Theoretically if (1) He was actually willing to assume command of the Army of the Cumberland/Ohio at any of the points where he refused to IOTL and then (2) Won smashing victories and (2a) Secured East Tennessee earlier then IOTL and (2b) managed to win whatever effort would be made to stop him securing Chattanooga and (3) this outshown whatever was going on with whatever Army formations are working in the Mississippi River then he *might* make the top job. But once he was sent to the "second" Army of the West the chances to rise to the top were vastly limited.
 
Though theoretically if the Army of the Tennessee is wiped out at Shiloh its possible that Thomas becomes commander of some new force (Army of the Mississippi most likely) that becomes the replacement force in the Mississippi component of the Western Theater. Though John Pope is more likely to get that/be willing to assume the command.
 
Yea, I guess that goes to the point-there are other capable officers in the West who can broadly speaking do the kind of work Grant did.
 
Yea, I guess that goes to the point-there are other capable officers in the West who can broadly speaking do the kind of work Grant did.
Well I'm not sure I would call Pope capable. But there are very few cases in the war where Generals in one Army were dispatched to assume Command of Others. Pope went east to assume command of a new military formation in an effort to turn McClellan into a desk general and Grant both at Chattanooga and in the Overland/Petersburg campaigns was assigned more overarching commands then the Armies themselves.
 
Though theoretically if the Army of the Tennessee is wiped out at Shiloh its possible that Thomas becomes commander of some new force (Army of the Mississippi most likely) that becomes the replacement force in the Mississippi component of the Western Theater. Though John Pope is more likely to get that/be willing to assume the command.

The Army of the Tennessee getting wiped out at Shiloh is likely to trigger Anglo-French intervention.
 
No, not really. The only likely intervention is that of the French, and even a disaster at Shiloh isn't going to save New Orleans at the end of the month and close that option.

The height of the Intervention Crisis was late 1862, before the Battle of Antietam and thus long after New Orleans fell. Efforts in Britain still continued until the Roebuck Motion of 1863 failed around the time of Gettysburg, while Blue and Gray Diplomacy by Howard Jones shows the French continued to look at such seriously until late 1863. Jones specifically notes at at the time of Shiloh, the French were preparing to extend an offer to mediate and that the aftermath of the Confederate setback at New Orleans actually increased Anglo-French interest in mediation:

Jones.PNG
 
I'd have to actually see Jones' sources on that because he's profoundly out of step with other studies on the subject. Manson and Slidell were not particularly welcome nor successful in their lobbying efforts. Efforts continuing does not mean that likelihood was increasing or even remaining steady. And frankly the idea that Union victories increased Anglo-French intervention chances is laughable. Especially considering that the Capture of New Orleans did start seeing cotton arriving back onto the world market.
 
I'd have to actually see Jones' sources on that because he's profoundly out of step with other studies on the subject. Manson and Slidell were not particularly welcome nor successful in their lobbying efforts. Efforts continuing does not mean that likelihood was increasing or even remaining steady. And frankly the idea that Union victories INCREASED Anglo-French intervention chances is laughable. Especially considering that the Capture of New Orleans DID start seeing cotton arriving back onto the world market.

The full cite for the book is Blue and Gray Diplomacy: A History of Union and Confederate Foreign Relations, and it's published through University of North Carolina Press. In terms of being out of step, it largely matches all other sources I have seen, such as Major Problems in American Foreign Relations, Volume I: To 1920 by Dennis Merrill. As for why New Orleans increased support for intervention, Jones explains such quite well in my estimation; basically the Union failed to translate that into decisive military success or even re-open the Cotton trade, which convinced London and Paris that continuing the Civil War was a folly that would only drag down both the North and the South (and the Anglo-French economies with them!).
 
The full cite for the book is Blue and Gray Diplomacy: A History of Union and Confederate Foreign Relations, and it's published through University of North Carolina Press. In terms of being out of step, it largely matches all other sources I have seen, such as Major Problems in American Foreign Relations, Volume I: To 1920 by Dennis Merrill. As for why New Orleans increased support for intervention, Jones explains such quite well in my estimation; basically the Union failed to translate that into decisive military success or even re-open the Cotton trade, which convinced London and Paris that continuing the Civil War was a folly that would only drag down both the North and the South (and the Anglo-French economies with them!).

The problem is that the part in bold simply isn't true.
 
Bu the Civil War didn't end in 1862 nor did Cotton exports to Europe appreciably increase in the aftermath?
A decisive military victory doesn't have to end the war right away. As an example, the Battle of Vicksburg and the capture of Atlanta were decisive victories for the Union, but the Civil War didn't end in 1863 or 1864.
 
A decisive military victory doesn't have to end the war right away. As an example, the Battle of Vicksburg and the capture of Atlanta were decisive victories for the Union, but the Civil War didn't end in 1863 or 1864.
It also did see the slow, but steady growth of the cotton market yet again towards Europe.
 
The Army of the Tennessee getting wiped out at Shiloh is likely to trigger Anglo-French intervention.
Not really, no - by that point, anti-slavery sentiments was largely ingrained in the British psyche that it would just be not on, and France would not be so stupid as to risk disaster for itself (though Napoléon III did try, with horrendous consequences, in Mexico). Furthermore, both countries were by and large at least nominally and discreetly pro-Union (even when officially neutral in the conflict), which frustrated the Confederacy. So an Anglo-French intervention on behalf of the Confederacy just simply would not work.
 
A decisive military victory doesn't have to end the war right away. As an example, the Battle of Vicksburg and the capture of Atlanta were decisive victories for the Union, but the Civil War didn't end in 1863 or 1864.

A decisive military victory is seen in terms of either ending the war or suitably altering the terms of it to favor one side, which New Orleans didn't. French officials-ironically with the support of Seward-visited Richmond in the aftermath of it (The Mercer Mission, which was almost a joint Franco-Russian one) and came away convinced the Confederates were not nearly defeated as the Union was claiming. Ultimately, events proved them right; McClellan metaphorically got his teeth kicked in soon after as did Pope. By August, the Confederates would even be invading Kentucky and by October were poised to burn Cincinnati, in Ohio. While the French couldn't have predicted how well the rest of 1862 would go for the CSA, they did realize how strong they remained and how casualties were likely to go up; the British, although they did not participate in said mission, were of the same opinion as the first Parliamentary debates on recognition began in the Summer of 1862, Post-New Orleans.

Not really, no - by that point, anti-slavery sentiments was largely ingrained in the British psyche that it would just be not on, and France would not be so stupid as to risk disaster for itself (though Napoléon III did try, with horrendous consequences, in Mexico). Furthermore, both countries were by and large at least nominally and discreetly pro-Union (even when officially neutral in the conflict), which frustrated the Confederacy. So an Anglo-French intervention on behalf of the Confederacy just simply would not work.

Anti-Slavery sentiment in both nations has been seriously over-stated, particularly concerning the UK, but the general trend of scholarship has been to refute that since roughly the 1960s. To quote Jones again, from his Chapter Requiem for Napoleon—and Intervention -

Yet Kenner’s secret mission was anything but secret. Reports about it appeared in the Richmond Enquirer and Sentinel in late December 1864. Seward notified the Union embassy in London of the mission on January 10, and the news appeared in the Paris press on March 2. Kenner had left Richmond in disguise on January 18, 1865, lamenting that he would have had a better chance in early 1863, when both England and France were well aware of the Confederacy’s diminishing resources and the battles at Gettysburg and Vicksburg had not yet occurred. “I would have succeeded” in securing a £15 million loan when “slavery was the bone of contention.”​
Now, neither Napoleon nor Palmerston showed interest in the proposal. To Kenner and Mason, the emperor explained that he refused to move without England and that he “had never taken [slavery] into consideration” regarding recognition. On March 14, 1865, Mason met with Palmerston for more than an hour at Cambridge House, where the prime minister also rejected the plan, insisting that slavery was not the obstacle to intervention; the Confederacy had not proven its independence on the battlefield. The Richmond Dispatch glumly noted, “No one would receive us as a gift." The responses should not have surprised the Confederacy. Napoleon’s reply contained nothing different from his initial determination to follow the British lead. Palmerston’s argument against recognition correlated with his long conversation with De Leon in the summer of 1862. On neither side of the English Channel did slavery emerge as the critical consideration.​

Rather than society being uniformly in favor of the Union, it was actually more divided with the labor classes being Pro-Confederate:

During the American Civil War, Great Britain contemplated courses of action they could take to influence the war, whether for economic reasons or diplomatic. British public opinion on what actions to take were divided (Campbell). There were a multitude of pro-Confederate groups due to the similarities the Confederates had with British society. The aristocrats and the working class of British society supported The Confederacy. However, there were also many pro Northern groups. The support for The Union in Great Britain came from the radical lower class, anti-slavery groups, as well as industrial workers. Despite the majority of British citizens taking sides, a minority chose to remain neutral because they distrusted, disliked, or just simply wished for Great Britain to stay out of other country’s domestic affairs.​
We also see this in response to the Emancipation Proclamation by the British Press. To quote Jones again:

News of the Emancipation Proclamation infuriated the British and the French. From Washington, Stuart indignantly informed Russell that Lincoln had enacted an antislavery decree in areas where the Union had no “de facto jurisdiction.” The purpose of the measure was to “render intervention impossible.” It bore no “pretext of humanity” and was “cold, vindictive, and entirely political.” The president sought only to offer “direct encouragement to servile Insurrections.” His action had angered Confederate lawmakers who mouthed “threats of raising the Black Flag and other measures of retaliation.” Bring in the French guillotine, declared a northern governor. If Lincoln and his Republican Party remained in control, Stuart warned, “we may see reenacted some of the worst excesses of the French Revolution.” Hammond joined Cobden in fearing the worst. To block the Confederacy’s quest for nationhood, Cobden moaned, the Union would “half ruin itself in the process of wholly ruining the South.” The use of blacks in the war effort would cause “one of the most bloody and horrible episodes in history.” The French concurred, complaining to London that the danger of a slave rebellion provided another reason for a joint intervention to end the war. A few days later, Stuart wrote Russell with no hint of dissatisfaction that Lincoln’s Proclamation seemed to be causing many in the Union armies and the Border States to desert to the Confederacy.​
The British press launched a blistering attack on the decree. The Times bitterly ridiculed Lincoln for considering himself “a sort of moral American Pope.” Taking advantage of the war, he sought to stir up a slave uprising during which the blacks would “murder the families of their masters” while they were away at war. “Where he has no power Mr. Lincoln will set the negroes free; where he retains power he will consider them as slaves.” His seemingly moral pronouncement was “more like a Chinaman beating his two swords together to frighten his enemy than like an earnest man pressing on his cause.” Though it supported the Union, the Spectator of London found the Proclamation exasperating. “The principle is not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States.” London’s Bee-Hive, sympathetic to the Confederacy until the paper changed editors in January 1863, accused Lincoln of refusing to take action against slavery in the Border States in which he had authority and attempting to end the institution in the Confederacy where he did not. The Times bitterly asked whether “the reign of the last president [was] to go out amid horrible massacres of white women and children, to be followed by the extermination of the black race in the South? Is Lincoln yet a name not known to us as it will be known to posterity, and is it ultimately to be classed among that catalogue of monsters, the wholesale assassins and butchers of their kind?” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine renounced the Proclamation as “monstrous, reckless, devilish.” To defeat the Confederacy, the Union “would league itself with Beelzebub, and seek to make a hell of half a continent.”​

Finally:

Within a couple of weeks, the news of Antietam reached England, where the ministry initially believed the premature accounts of Confederate victory and resumed its interest in a mediation to stop the blood fest. The Earl of Shaftesbury, Lady Palmerston’s son-in-law and of considerable influence in ministerial circles, had visited Paris a few days before the battlefield news had reached the Continent and, according to Slidell, assured French officials of imminent British intervention. From the outbreak of the war, Shaftesbury told Slidell, he had supported the South’s struggle for independence against the Union’s quest for empire. He had been nearly alone in that stand, for his associates had defined the issue as slavery versus freedom. But British public opinion had undergone a revolution in feeling. Lincoln’s recent speech to the black delegation from New York and his published letter on slavery to Horace Greeley had alienated those English people calling for abolition. They now believed it more beneficial to black liberation if the Confederacy became independent.
I know I'm quoting a lot from Jones, but that's just because that is what is handy to me. Support for Secession: Lancashire and the American Civil War by Mary Ellison is another good read on the subject, and demonstrates there was broad Pro-Confederate sympathy in the contemporary British society, especially among the Mill Workers and the like that are often claimed to have been Pro-Union. Case in point by Ellison is that, in 1864, Seward was presented with a petition signed by 350,000 British workers calling for the end of the conflict and the independence of the Confederacy. Other sources available are The Roebuck Motion and the Issue of British Recognition of the Confederate States of America by Lindsay Braun as well as Pro-Confederate Sympathy in the British Parliament by Davis D. Joyce.
 
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