"“What If” Grant Had Shared Stonewall Jackson’s Fate" Topic

… During Grant's Own Risky Nighttime Ride During the Appomattox Campaign?

""I, for one, began to grow suspicious." Fearing treachery, "I cocked my pistol, and rode close behind him." So wrote Lt. Col. Horace Porter, aide to Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, about his fear that Grant was being led into a fatal trap by a Confederate uniform-wearing "scout" during a daring nighttime ride skirting Confederate lines during the Appomattox Campaign.[1]

Grant had chosen to put himself in this tense and dangerous situation on the night of April 5, 1865. Why? Because two of Grant's top generals disagreed over how to bring Robert E. Lee and his fleeing army to bay, and the stakes were worth the risk to Grant's life.

In organizing the pursuit of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia after its abandonment (on the night of April 2-3) of the Richmond-Petersburg lines, Grant had ordered a two-prong effort. The southern-most part was Maj. Gen. E.O.C. Ord's Army of the James, supported by Maj. Gen. John G. Parke's IX Corps, which followed the South Side Railroad. Between that force and the Appomattox River, Maj. Gen. George Meade, Army of the Potomac commander, led the II, V, and VI Corps of that army, preceded by Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan's two cavalry divisions. Grant initially accompanied Ord's column…"

link

Armand

By that point in the war the die was cast – nothing could have prevented a Union victory

On the other hand, at Shiloh Grant was riding to the front on the first day when a Confederate bullet hit his sword scabbard and was deflected by an iron fitting. If it had been two inches either way it may well have severed an artery – and Grant's death at Shiloh would have been a big big loss to the Union

Frederick +1

+2 for Frederick. I always thought Bruce Canton's "what if" for the War of Secession's Centennial was interesting in that he included Grant and Sherman's deaths were essential for a Southern victory.