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Didn't Lee get within striking distance of DC in real life? See the second two maps here: https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/battles-us-civil-wa

Didn't Lee get within striking distance of DC in real life? See the second two maps here: https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/battles-us-civil-war/ https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/battles-us... IIRC, there was a point at which everyone in DC was gloomy because they thought it would be captured.

bee_rider 3y ago
DC is just some town, right? The industrial base was in the Northeast mostly, IIRC. NYC alone appears to have had a population around 1/4 of the entire Confederacy’s non-enslaved population. Quite a few guns were made in Springfield, MA. Capturing DC would just be the start of things.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
  Well DC is where the people leading the war effort were, so it had the potential to be very disruptive / demoralizing. Is the Union going to pause their war effort in order to elect a new set of representatives and a new president? I don't know though. Maybe there was a plan to evacuate the capital which would've worked if push came to shove.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    More specifically, if it demoralizes the leadership (Lincoln, and Congress), then they could surrender. Any Union generals still fighting after that are war criminals and the Union's leadership is obligated to stop them and put them on trial. Or leadership could remain defiant, and they're little more than hostages. Disruptive to the war effort, but hardly the end of things.
    - denton-scratch 3y ago
      Going on fighting after your leaders have surrendered isn't a war-crime. It might be an ordinary crime, depending on what the law says.
      - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
        Pretending to surrender, then not surrendering very much is a war crime. So the leadership gets to decide whether to be war criminals, or to go prosecute those who refuse as ordinary (or extraordinary?) criminals.
        denton-scratch 3y ago
        > Pretending to surrender, then not surrendering very much is a war crime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_(military)#False_surrender https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_(military)#False_sur... The very notion of a "war crime" only arrived in the 20thC. More generally (as Wikipedia notes) the act amounts to perfidy, which isn't a crime anywhere I know about.
        NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
        I don't know the etymology of the term, but claiming that the idea itself didn't exist until the 20th is absurd. I see no point in arguing with you anymore. So that you can feel better, you're 100% absolutely right, and you won this argument with me and all future arguments because of your plainly superior intellect and bright, friendly personality. Game over. Goodbye.
hef19898 3y ago
Getting within striking distance of something, and actually striking, let alone successfully, are two very different things so.
pdonis 3y ago
> Didn't Lee get within striking distance of DC in real life? Yes, twice, after the first and second battles of Bull Run. There was also a cavalry raid by Early that crossed the Potomac upstream from DC and came down towards it from the northwest. Probably not a true threat to DC since Early didn't have enough troops, but it certainly threw a scare into the people there.

bee_rider 3y ago

DC is just some town, right? The industrial base was in the Northeast mostly, IIRC. NYC alone appears to have had a population around 1/4 of the entire Confederacy’s non-enslaved population. Quite a few guns were made in Springfield, MA. Capturing DC would just be the start of things.

0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
Well DC is where the people leading the war effort were, so it had the potential to be very disruptive / demoralizing. Is the Union going to pause their war effort in order to elect a new set of representatives and a new president? I don't know though. Maybe there was a plan to evacuate the capital which would've worked if push came to shove.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  More specifically, if it demoralizes the leadership (Lincoln, and Congress), then they could surrender. Any Union generals still fighting after that are war criminals and the Union's leadership is obligated to stop them and put them on trial. Or leadership could remain defiant, and they're little more than hostages. Disruptive to the war effort, but hardly the end of things.
  - denton-scratch 3y ago
    Going on fighting after your leaders have surrendered isn't a war-crime. It might be an ordinary crime, depending on what the law says.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
      Pretending to surrender, then not surrendering very much is a war crime. So the leadership gets to decide whether to be war criminals, or to go prosecute those who refuse as ordinary (or extraordinary?) criminals.
      - denton-scratch 3y ago
        > Pretending to surrender, then not surrendering very much is a war crime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_(military)#False_surrender https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_(military)#False_sur... The very notion of a "war crime" only arrived in the 20thC. More generally (as Wikipedia notes) the act amounts to perfidy, which isn't a crime anywhere I know about.
        NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
        I don't know the etymology of the term, but claiming that the idea itself didn't exist until the 20th is absurd. I see no point in arguing with you anymore. So that you can feel better, you're 100% absolutely right, and you won this argument with me and all future arguments because of your plainly superior intellect and bright, friendly personality. Game over. Goodbye.

hef19898 3y ago

Getting within striking distance of something, and actually striking, let alone successfully, are two very different things so.

pdonis 3y ago

> Didn't Lee get within striking distance of DC in real life? Yes, twice, after the first and second battles of Bull Run. There was also a cavalry raid by Early that crossed the Potomac upstream from DC and came down towards it from the northwest. Probably not a true threat to DC since Early didn't have enough troops, but it certainly threw a scare into the people there.