GDG- Re: Grant vs. Lee

[Biggsk at aol.com]

Mike asks:

>>>>Does anyone think if Grant would have been at 1st  Manassass that the 
outcome would have been different?  What if Lee and  Jackson were in the west 
from the beginning facing Grant & Sherman  ?>>>



Mike,
 
Grant was too far down the chain of command to have been able to lead the  
Union Army at First Manassas.  He owed his brigadier general's commission  to 
the aid of Congressman Elihu Washburn, and over the objections of Gen. Henry  
Halleck I might add.  Halleck, instead, wanted Gen. Charles Smith to lead  his 
field forces out west in 1861.  Grant was quite taken aback when he got  the 
job as he idolized Smith - he and Sherman were both students of Smith's at  West 
Point.
 
Grant lost his first battle at Belmont in November, 1861, being driven from  
the field by the Confederates who received reinforcements to do so.  Lee  lost 
his first battles as well in Western VA.
 
Sherman was at First Manassas by the way, leading a brigade in Tyler's  
Division. 
 
Had Lee and Jackson been out West it probably would not have been until  1862 
and they would have faced Grant, Buell, Pope and Thomas and later  Rosecrans. 
 As to how well they would do with the strategy of fixed  fortifications to 
hold the rivers against a powerful Union river fleet, who can  tell.  It was a 
completely different type of war our west.
 
I do know one thing - when the vaunted ANV troops did come west for  
Chickamauga, other than Kershaw's Brigade, they did not do too well against the  tough 
western boys from the North.  After one of Hood's attacks against the  
Federal lines on the second day of the fighting (Chickamauga was really a three  day 
battle), as they fell back, they passed a brigade of the AOT who then took  
verbal shots at their eastern brethren saying things like, "these Yankees  are 
a lot tougher than what you boys have been facing in the East!"
 
That might tell us what it could have been had Virginia's gentry come west  
to face farm boys from the wilds of Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota as well as  
Illinois, Indiana and Ohio who were not at all impressed by their class system  
or tales of Ivanhoe.
 
Greg Biggs