re: #44 HappyWarrior

I think the war turns out differently if he has an equal peer in those early 1861-62 battles. McClellan was on paper brilliant but IMO too timid a general and oto sympathetic to the CSA.

Yes, would have turned out differently, but there’s an argument to make that it would have actually been worse. The war ends in 1862, then there’s no Emancipation Proclamation because there’s no Battle of Antietam. Without that, and Sherman’s March to the Sea, devastating the Southern economy and bringing the war home to the Confederacy, then there’s no utter defeat but instead a negotiated one that likely would have meant the Union accepting some form of slavery to bring the war to an end and the South back into the fold.

Of course, both things are moot because it took time for the Union to get to the sort of war footing necessary to confront the Confederacy (which had been gearing up for years prior) on equal footing. Even good generals fail when they lack the resources to win battles. Erwin Rommel is recognized as one of the finest icons in armored warfare, yet he lost the African Campaign because the Reich lacked the means to keep him supplied with men and materiel in the amounts he needed to match the Allied forces.