What if? Leonidas Polk dies in 1861.
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  What if? Leonidas Polk dies in 1861.
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Author Topic: What if? Leonidas Polk dies in 1861.  (Read 788 times)
Rooney
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« on: August 30, 2015, 02:56:27 PM »

Leonidas Polk, "The Fighting Bishop", was a close friend of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Davis commissioned Polk as a major general and Polk went on to offer mixed services in the Western Theater of teh American Civil War. Famously, Polk ordered the Confederate invasion of Kentucky with the taking of Columbus, Kentucky. This is largely believed to be one of the several factors which kept Kentucky in the Union and prevented the Confederacy from attaining the loyalty of Kentucky and taking control over parts of the Ohio River.

This leads to the question: what if Polk died in 1861? What if while testing a rifle before the Kentucky invasion of 1861 the rifle exploded in Polk's hands and he was killed. What effect would this death have had on the Civil War in the west? Would Braxton Bragg have had better control over the Army of Tennessee or would Albert Sydney Johnston have benefited from Polk not being at Shiloh? Would Patrick Cleburne have risen to the heights he deserved in the Army of Tennessee if Polk's anti-Bragg cabal not sucked him into its sphere?

What do you think would have happened had Leonidas Polk, a favorite of the soldiers but a thorn in the side of his superiors, had died in 1861? What effect would this have had on the Confederate effort in the Western Theater of the war?
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #1 on: August 30, 2015, 10:39:57 PM »

Where you been Rooney, this board isn't the same without you. Smiley

Kentucky was not a critical as say Maryland, so even if it had officially seceded, the union would have just occupied it.

As for battles, it might have had effects on the margins, but I don't know to what extent Polk impacted the results at Shiloh. The biggest setback for the Confederacy in that battle was Albert Sidney Johnston getting killed.
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