Thanks for a very informative post. I agree with nearly all of it.
My question has to do with the Democrat "Peace Party."
You say that McClellan would never agree to southern secession, and yet, to my knowledge, there was no SOUTHERN "peace party." No one in the South was going to agree to union, with or without slavery, short of military defeat.
So who was McClellan going to negotiate with?
Remember, Lee's goal was to win enough battles so the North would give up the fight and negotiate a peace which would recognize the South's independence.
If Lee had won at Gettysburg (which is what this discussion is all about), then he would be one step closer to his goal, and McClellan one step closer to the Presidency, seems to me.
The Confederate Congress did not, as yet, have parties.
However, there were prominent Southern politicians, like Robert Toombs of Georgia and Zebulon Vance of North Carolina who had begun to seriously rethink the wisdom of secession - and these men had a growing following as conscription and requisition became more onerous. There was organized revolt against the Confederacy surreptitiously in western North Carolina and openly in eastern Tennessee and northern Mississippi and Alabama.
David Downing wrote a well-reviewed book entitled A South Divided about the networks of Southern Unionists and advocates of reunion throughout the Confederacy.
Had McClellan won the 1864 election while the inexorable mathematics of the conflict proceeded, there would have been plenty of Southern Congressmen willing to say openly: "We could never have peace with that abolitionist blackguard Lincoln, but McClellan is a sensible man who will guarantee us our property."
In today's Lost Causer's retrospect Jefferson Davis was the tragic hero of the Southern people - but if you read the newspaper editorials of the South at the time, a much different picture is presented.
Remember, Lee's goal was to win enough battles so the North would give up the fight and negotiate a peace which would recognize the South's independence.
Indeed. But each victory was extremely costly, and Lee made his future plans on the assumption that he would eventually be reinforced by troops from the Confederate west.
If Lee had won at Gettysburg (which is what this discussion is all about), then he would be one step closer to his goal
If he had won early on the second day, that would have been one thing. Had Pickett's Charge succeeded (and it could have despite Foote's claims), Lee would have been burdened with about 15,000 prisoners, sustained 5,000 more casualties, and been unable to follow up immediately on his victory. It would have been of enormous symbolic importance to the Confederacy, but not a killing blow for the Union.
And, of course, the surrender of Vicksburg meant that Lee had lost all hope of reinforcement from the west.
Vicksburg meant that Lee was on his own for good or ill.
I also believe that the Emancipation Proclamation ended all hope for foreign intervention.
Probably the same commission that Lincoln met with in Hampton Roads in January 1865.