Civil War History - "What if..." DiscussionsWhat if they had attacked instead of digging in...? What if he was in charge of the army instead...? Did you ever have a "What if..." question, and you weren't sure where to post it? Here's the place to ask these speculative questions!
No denying McCulloch had some admirable attributes as a Ranger etc. but , and this is just me again I feel his conduct and his ongoing feud with Price who at one point was his Commander and his conduct after Wilsons Creek / Oak Hills hurt more than helped his cause in the Trans-Miss and led to the appointment of Earl Van Dorn as Department Commander, which further hurt the CS aspirations.
What the CS needed at this point in time when bringing Missouri into the CS was a great possibilty was a commander with a force of personality who could command and control the likes of Price, McCulloch ,Pike etc.
Without such a commander nothing is going to happen.
The South had her share of .....questionable general officers too. My thought is that good old general McCulloch was out of his depth in command. Good tactician. Good battlefield commander. Able to lead men into battle and react in the fog of war, but as a military stratigist, he left something to be desired.
It's as plain as the nose on my face. If the CSA re-enforces Lexington, and deploys a strong military presence north of the river, between the Missouri and the Mississippi Rivers. St. Louis capituates. The city was already hotly devided on the issue. 1/3 Union vs. 1/3 Neutral vs. 1/3 Seccessh. Kentucky would've followed suit and all them Yankee boys would've had to go home.
and Kansas would've turned out a whole lot differently borderruffian!
Last edited by Ozark Iron John; 08-18-2007 at 06:32 PM.
Had McCulloch reinforced Price or better yet recognized that Ol'Pap was the Major General and he the Brigader and left the whole regular vs state troop issue alone .....
and followed Price from Wilsons creek He wouldn't have needed to reinforce he'd have been there.
OK, let's say that pans out and all them Arkansans are waterin' themselves up streamin Jackson County. Them border ruffians in the west have got an arse whoopin' a comin', but I reckon old Pap would've went straight for the jugler first. He'd a marched them boys right up to the Hannibal-St. Joesph Railroad and trailered 'em east pretty darn quickly tearin' up track all the way or at least Makin' Macon City, Missouri a .... ghost town.
and then launchin' rafts full of explosives down stream in the dark of night.
I'm sorry for the size of that picture, but that's the Harper's Weekly depicting exactly what I suggest.
BOOM! Ba-Da BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
It wouldn't take long and St. Louis would captiulate and Kentucky be right there with 'em.
This "what if" has merit boys. What say unionblue? What say ole? What say you Johann_steele?
Are you all sure you want to have Ami pull the plug on me?
Cry Baby Whiners!
Last edited by Ozark Iron John; 08-18-2007 at 08:44 PM.
I suggest to you that if Gen. Ben McCulloch of Arkansas CSA had re-enfored old Pap and his Missouri State Guard boys on the Missouiri River at Lexington, Missouri, the whole war would've ended in 1861. St. Louis would've gone with the Confederacy and Kentucky would've followed suit quickly.
Lincoln woiuld've sued for peace with the two big rivers (Ohio and Missouri) bein' the restored boarder between North and South, Free and Slave.
That's a pretty big assumption. The loss of Missouri to the union would not automaticaly make ALL the citizens confederates. You still would have the same make up of units and manpower going north and south. Maybe a little more to the south than what they had but not a large enough amount to make a difference. I'm not sure why you think Kentucky would follow, but if it did, same thing. You had some north, some south, the numbers of soldiers given would not have changed much.
What you are suggesting is that KY and MO become like LA was, a militarily occupied zone, and while that is feesible, what you have now is 2 more states in the confederacy they need to hold on to without a major boost in manpower to do it with. They were hard enough pressed as it was.
So what happens... you stall Grant a bit, takes him a bit longer to get to the meat of the confederacy and down the ole Mississip, since he has 2 more states to worry about. So you got what, one more year of war? Lincoln would not sue for peace without an imminate threat to DC, especially not that early in the war. MO and KY going to the Confederacy just doesn't put that much of a danger on it.
It all comes down to manpower, something the rebs just didn't have. Whatever states they held after the initial secession would make little difference in that, by that poit anybody in northern or border states that wanted to fight for the rebs had already left. So they lose a year later, with a few thousand more dead gallant souls on each side.
__________________ "In mortal combat, a man may and will become so infuriated by the din and dangers of a bloody fight that his heart will turn to stone and his every de sire [be] for blood."
John Hadley, 7th Indiana after the battle at Port Republic
What you are suggesting is that KY and MO become like LA was, a militarily occupied zone, and while that is feesible, what you have now is 2 more states in the confederacy they need to hold on to without a major boost in manpower to do it with.
Alrighty then.. confusion cleared up. I am easily confused, especially about an area of the war I don't know much about. (the west ) I guess I'll just have to stay out of this one on account of lack of knowledge...
/salute
__________________ "In mortal combat, a man may and will become so infuriated by the din and dangers of a bloody fight that his heart will turn to stone and his every de sire [be] for blood."
John Hadley, 7th Indiana after the battle at Port Republic
Meriwether Jeff Thompson (1826-1876) was a brigadier general in the Missouri State Guard during the American Civil War. He served in the Confederate Army as a cavalry commander, and had the unusual distinction of having a ship in the Confederate Navy named for him.
It was all the Dutch could do to stay out of Jeff Thompson's way. If old Pap was pushin' down on 'em from Lexington and Hannibal, St. Louis would capitulate. It wouldn't have been long before Kentucky sided with the Confederacy and that my friends would've been the signal to Lincoln and his cronies to sue for peace. I believe they would've offered the terms I presented earlier. Re-established North - South / Free - Slave boarder as the Ohio River in the east and Missouiri River in the west.
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) I guess I'll just have to stay out of this one on account of lack of knowledge...
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