Talk:Camp Hill

I've long been saying that I don't buy the TL-191 POD because McClellan made so little use of the Lost Orders that the advantage their recovery gave him was all but completely cancelled out while he dithered and allowed Lee's scattered divisions to advance unopposed. So Lee would not have been able to advance farther north than Sharpsburg if McClellan had never had them.

Now earlier tonight I heard a historian speak. From the way he described it, Lee wouldn't have wanted to go beyond Sharpsburg if he'd wanted to. Unlike the Gettysburg campaign, by which point even the most optimistic Confederates knew that Washington's fortifications were far, far beyond anything the Army of Northern Virginia could even think about cracking, the objective of the Maryland campaign was at least to threaten Washington, even if only as a bluff to encourage certain developments to break the Rebs' way elsewhere. Sharpsburg was always Lee's target for the first stage of the campaign because it allowed him to control. . . some railroad or other. So if McClellan did give Lee the chance to march deeper into loyal territory, it sounds like Lee would have passed. Turtle Fan 04:19, February 7, 2012 (UTC)