re: 158 years ago this evening, Stonewall Jackson was shot by his own men...

My thoughts exactly. We are still paying for what Booth did today.

For instance, had Lincoln been able to reconcile the nation, would there ever have been a Ku Klux Klan? Would the carpetbaggers have been allowed to run wild in the South and conditions be to the point to cause their creation?

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It was not an established goal of the battle to exploit a victory and then capture Washington. It was not even considered prior to the fight. The people on both sides were rank amateurs with the exception of those who had fought in the Mexican War.

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And that was the main downfall of the Confederate high command in the early days of the war. Jackson's entire experence in war up until that point had been in the Mexican-American war during the seige of Vera Cruz and the subsiquint march on Mexico City, which was entirely offesive in nature. His highest success came when he took out a whole line of Mexican artilery with esencially one artilery piece of his own, to keep the Americans moving forward to Mexico City. So the objective of Stonewall Jackson's entire military career up until the First Battle of Manassus was moving forward even if he had always been an artillary officer and not a calvary man.

Go see how Germany was doing at the end of WWI under a blockade, starving population and troops, and imploding economy.

This. The North had a real navy and they used it. One of the most underexamined aspects of the Civil War was the use of naval assets whether it be the Union gunboats on the rivers or the regular navy ships enforcing blockades or in the case of Farragut at NOLA and later Mobile straight up invasion and landing of troops. Plus the North was able to effectively go after blockade runners even far away from North American shores

That alone was huge. Southern exports could not get out or were seized and foreign commercial interests were not interested in challenging warships and their governments, particularly Britain were not going to affect a confrontation on behalf of a slave owning society. Seeing as how they had abolished slavery officially less than 30 years before.

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McClellan was a helluva administration and logistics man.

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It has been said many times he was the individual who created the Army of the Potomac. An exceptional leader for the right task. But he was timid and indecisive in battle.

Starvation and food shortages was something that endemic all over the South towards the end the war as well.

Playing the what if game with the Peninsula Campaign.

The Pinkerton’s were spot on with their intelligence that the confederates could put 60,000 in the field but somehow that information was tripled to 180,000.

I’ve often wondered what outcome would’ve occurred if Mac didn’t withdraw from Richmond.

A Union force from the North would’ve marched south all but unopposed to Hanover County if not Henrico County.