12 Days to Victory... What if?

5fish

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Following the attack on Ft. Sumter, Washington, DC. was open to being conquered by the Confederate rebels. Over the next 12 days, the Confederate rebels could have for the most part just waltz into our nation's capital without much resistance to stop them... Why did Davis not attack the Capital?

I will let Amazon set up the what if...

On April 14, 1861, following the surrender of Fort Sumter, Washington was "put into the condition of a siege," declared Abraham Lincoln. Located sixty miles south of the Mason-Dixon Line, the nation's capital was surrounded by the slave states of Maryland and Virginia. With no fortifications and only a handful of trained soldiers, Washington was an ideal target for the Confederacy. The South echoed with cries of "On to Washington!" and Jefferson Davis's wife sent out cards inviting her friends to a reception at the White House on May 1.

Lincoln issued an emergency proclamation on April 15, calling for 75,000 troops to suppress the rebellion and protect the capital. One question now transfixed the nation: Whose forces would reach Washington first: Northern defenders or Southern attackers?

For 12 days, the city's fate hung in the balance. Washington was entirely isolated from the North--without trains, telegraph, or mail. Sandbags were stacked around major landmarks, and the unfinished Capitol was transformed into a barracks, with volunteer troops camping out in the House and Senate chambers. Meanwhile, Maryland secessionists blocked the passage of Union reinforcements trying to reach Washington, and a rumored force of 20,000 Confederate soldiers lay in wait just across the Potomac River.

Drawing on firsthand accounts, The Siege of Washington tells this story from the perspective of leading officials, residents trapped inside the city, Confederates plotting to seize it, and Union troops racing to save it, capturing with brilliance and immediacy the precarious first days of the Civil War.

The Siege of Washington: The Twelve Days That Shook the Union

A Timeline

April 14, 1861
The Union flag is lowered over Fort Sumter in surrender. In Washington, President Lincoln drafts an emergency proclamation calling for 75,000 Union volunteer troops to suppress the rebellion and defend the capital. Lincoln tells his cabinet, “If I were Beauregard, I would take Washington.”
April 15 Lincoln formally issues his emergency proclamation. Americans in both the North and South are transfixed by a single question: Who will reach the capital first? Confederate attackers? Or Union defenders?

April 16 As militiamen begin to mobilize across the North, General Winfield Scott has only 900 U.S. Army troops and 600 District Militia under his command to defend Washington.

April 17
Virginia votes to secede from Union. South Carolina Governor Pickens writes to Jefferson Davis that the “true course is to take Washington city immediately.”

April 18
The First Pennsylvania Volunteers arrive in Washington—without weapons—and are quartered in the empty Capitol building. The danger is so extreme that emergency volunteer troops are stationed in the East Room of the White House. An assault on the city is expected that night.

April 19
The Sixth Massachusetts are attacked in a bloody riot in Baltimore as they change trains on their way to Washington. Baltimore leaders bar further Union troops from passing through the city, imperiling the arrival of reinforcements for days.


April 20
Baltimore secessionists rip up rail lines to Washington. Meanwhile, the Eighth Massachusetts and Seventh New York regiments are stalled in Philadelphia as their leaders debate the best route to the capital. One prominent Virginian telegraphs the Confederate secretary of war: “Lincoln is in a trap.”

April 21
Panic seizes Washington, particularly among free blacks, who fear that they will be re‐enslaved if the South takes the capital. Thousands of people flee.


April 22
Washington is entirely cut off by rail and telegraph. Food supplies dwindle. According to journalist Henry Villard, it seemed “as though the government of a great nation had been suddenly removed to an island in mid ocean in a state of entire isolation.”

April 23
Secessionist forces in Maryland plot an attack on Union troops moving toward Washington. The Baltimore Sun reports that “armed men [are] stationed everywhere, determined to give the Northern troops a fight in their march to the capital.”

April 24
The Seventh New York and Eighth Massachusetts set out on an epic march from Annapolis to rescue Washington.

April 25
The Seventh New York arrives in Washington and stages a spontaneous parade down Pennsylvania Avenue amid cheering residents and ringing church bells. Washingtonians exclaim their joy that the “Capitol of the Nation is Safe!”

Historians have long been perplexed over why the South didn't attack Washington, D.C., in the early days of the Civil War.


What if Davis had given the order to attack our capital? What would have been the aftermath of such a feat?

Beauregard would be famous not only for firing the first shots of the war but for capturing Washington D.C. Its true Davis and the Confederacy had a 12-day window where they could have easily captured our nation's capital and won the war?

Here is a book about those 12 days in April 1861...
 

5fish

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Here the 7th New York Regiment that saved Washington, the only problem the print is from 1852...its bio... https://www.sethkaller.com/item/471...ton-Square,-With-NYU-in-the-Background&from=7

During the Civil War, the 7th was one of the first units to respond to President Lincoln’s call for volunteers on April 19, 1861, occupying Arlington Heights, Virginia to help protect the capital from possible attack by the Confederate Army during the first months of the war. In July of 1863, the 7th was ordered back to New York to respond to the Draft Riots and was on duty under General John A. Dix in New York City from July 16–20.

After the war, a new armory, designed by Sanford White, was constructed for the unit in 1877. The 7th Regiment Armory still stands on Park Avenue between 66th and 67th streets in the heart of Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
 

Jim Klag

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You should read about the efforts of Colonel Charles P. Stone who organized 30 companies of militia in DC during your timeline. He also prevented rebels from organizing militia at the same time. It's a good thriller. Better than any what-if because it's true.
 

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5fish

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Here is a another book about about that period ... I heard a the author on NPR ....

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Wehrkraftzersetzer

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he was an idiot listening to idots

just march an untrrind CS army into Washington DC and have them stay around WAR over
 

Jim Klag

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Getting an untrained rebel army would not have been a simple matter. All the US troops had to do was block or destroy a few bridges. Does anybody think a raw, untrained rebel army could have mounted a contested river crossing of the Potomac? Where would they get boats?
 

5fish

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If the Confederates could be organize the attack on Ft. Sumter, they were organized enough to march on Washington D.C.. I like to point out that there are many places to cross the Potomac river.
 

Jim Klag

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If the Confederates could be organize the attack on Ft. Sumter, they were organized enough to march on Washington D.C.. I like to point out that there are many places to cross the Potomac river.
Standing around a bunch of cannon in Charleston harbor is not the same as an opposed river crossing. If you remember the bombardment of Fort Sumter, less than a quarter of the rebel shots hit their targets. As far as the Potomac goes, if I remember correctly, the fords are well west of DC in what is now West Virginia. And guess what - everybody knew where the fords were and it doesn't take a whole army to guard a ford.
 

rittmeister

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Standing around a bunch of cannon in Charleston harbor is not the same as an opposed river crossing. If you remember the bombardment of Fort Sumter, less than a quarter of the rebel shots hit their targets. As far as the Potomac goes, if I remember correctly, the fords are well west of DC in what is now West Virginia. And guess what - everybody knew where the fords were and it doesn't take a whole army to guard a ford.
still their best chance of winning - not even trying it was madness
 

Jim Klag

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still their best chance of winning - not even trying it was madness
True. Not the last big mistake they made. Although attacking Washington that early would put the lie to Davis' statement, "All we want is to be left alone."
 
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