Max Sinister said:
Even if they avoid Gettysburg or a similar battle in the east, there's still the problem that Vicksburg very probably will fall soon, and then, the CSA are cut in two. And then? They could try to prolong the war, but the unavoidable end will come.
The loss of Vicksburg was certainly a severe blow to the Confederacy, but it was not fatal. The vast majority of the Confederacy's population, resources, and industry were located east of the Mississippi River, and the separation of the east from the Trans-Mississippi West did not greatly influence the outcome of the war in the East. The earlier losses of New Orleans, Memphis and Nashville, with the associated industrial base found in those cities, was a much more severe loss than Vicksburg turned out to be.
The Mists of Time said:
Stonewall Jackson surviving and continuing to fight and continuing to give the South his leadership and views on stratagy might have allowed the South to extend the Civil War somewhat longer, but it would not have changed the outcome of the Civil War.
Among the factors that allowed the North to win the Civil War were,
1. The Union had a much greater industrial capacity than the Confederacy, giving the North the ability to continue producing weapons of war and the ability to fight.
2. The Union had a much larger population and could provide more manpower for the war.
3. The Union's leading generals, Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan chose to follow a stratagy of total modern warfare.
Stonewall Jackson surviving wouldn't have changed factors like that which allowed the North to win and thus wouldn't have changed the outcome of the Civil War, the Union would still have won.
All that would be true if it was necessary for the Confederacy to militarily defeat the Union to win the war. But it wasn't. As with the Vietnamese Communists in the 1960s and 1970s, and the American Revolutionaries in the 1770s, the Confederacy could win POLITICALLY even if it lost most of the time militarily. The key juncture was the 1864 election. If Lincoln had been defeated by McClellan, it is likely that a majority of Peace Democrats would have been elected to Congress at the same time. Even if McClellan was of a mind to continue the war, the Congressional majority would most likely have forced a negotiated peace. And the only basis for a negotiated peace would have been Confederate independence.
Jackson could very well have influenced events had he been around during the 1864 Virginia campaign. As mentioned in a previous post, Lee's plan at the North Anna might very well have been carried out, and the destruction or near-destruction of the Army of the Potomac which might have resulted could have been enough to cause Lincoln to lose the election.
MerryPrankster said:
Actually, the wound was so bad that Jackson's arm had to be amputated. It got infected later and he died.
Even if he survived, how much use would he be in the field? When Lee heard about the wound (this was before the infection set in), he said that Jackson lost his left arm, but Lee had lost his right.
Of course, one could still command one-armed, but one's fighting ability would be impaired, and Jackson liked to lead from the front.
The POD as stated is that Jackson's wound is minor...he is just grazed and doesn't lose his arm. So all this is irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
But even if he did lose his arm, and survived, there is no reason why it would affect his ability to command. He did not, actually, lead from the front. He was one of the Confederacy's more modern commanders in that sense, in that he realized that his place was in the rear, directing operations, not in the front leading the charge.