West Point graduate and career United States Army officer Barnard Bee commanded one of the Confederate brigades at the July 1861 battle at Manassas. A South Carolinian by birth, Bee—like many Southern officers of the period—was torn between his oaths to defend the Constitution and his loyalty to his home state when Southern states seceded to form the Confederacy in 1860 and 1861. In March 1861, Bee resigned his commission in the U.S. Army and returned to South Carolina. He was named Brigadier General in the Confederate Army in June.

Bee commanded one of four brigades in the Army of the Shenandoah at the July 1861 battle at Manassas, Virginia. He is perhaps best remembered for giving Confederate General Thomas Jackson his enduring nickname; in the thick of battle, Bee referred to Jackson standing fast like a “stone wall.” (Precisely what Bee meant by the remark has never been clear. Many believe it was meant as a tribute to Jackson’s stubborn defense as Bee attempted to inspire his own brigade: “There stands Jackson like a stone wall! Rally behind the Virginians!” At least one observer, however, interpreted it as a frustrated response to Jackson’s refusal to move forward and aid Bee’s own attack: “There is Jackson standing like a damned stone wall.”) A bullet struck and killed Bee shortly after his remark; he was never able to clarify its meaning. The first battle at Manassas would be the only major engagement for the Confederate Army of the Shenandoah; its constituent units were reorganized into new commands soon afterwards.

It is impossible to determine exactly what would have become of Bee or his military career had he not been killed. Such questions belongs to a category historians refer to as counterfactual, since they deal with a possible world for which, by definition, no factual or documentary evidence exists. (Though counterfactuals cannot, by their nature, have answers that are precise or correct, historians often employ such “what if?” questions to test ideas about cause and effect regarding events in the existing historical record.)

In Bee’s case, there are a number of plausible commands he might have assumed. An officer with both professional training and military experience in an army short of both assets (particularly at the outset of the war), it is not unlikely that he would have continued to rise through the ranks had he lived. The fortunes of the other brigade commanders in the Army of the Shenandoah are instructive in this case. (Two of that Army’s four brigade commanders survived its first and only large engagement: Bee and Colonel Francis Bartow both died at First Manassas.)

Both of the surviving brigade commanders eventually rose to high command within the Confederate Army. Thomas Jackson, rechristened “Stonewall” after Manassas, ultimately commanded his own corps and became Robert E. Lee’s most trusted lieutenant before being mortally wounded at the 1863 battle at Chancellorsville. Kirby Smith was promoted to Major General and then to Lieutenant General; he commanded a division in the Army of Northern Virginia before assuming command of the Army of East Tennessee in February 1862. From 1863 until the end of the war, he commanded the Confederacy’s Trans-Mississippi Department as a Lieutenant General.

Given Bee’s background and the paths of his counterparts in the Army of the Shenandoah, it is plausible to imagine him rising to command his own corps in the east like Jackson, or being transferred west to assume a command there, like Smith. The four regiments that comprised Bee’s Third Brigade at Manassas continued to fight together during the 1862 Seven Days campaign as part of Joseph Johnston’s Army of Northern Virginia; it is similarly reasonable to imagine that Bee would have remained in command of that unit until being promoted to command his own division in the Army of Northern Virginia.

By their nature, counterfactual questions depend a great deal on contingency: much of what might have happened to Bee had he survived turns on a cascade of events that are impossible to know (does the Union turn back the first Confederate invasion at Antietam in this alternate past? Does Stonewall Jackson survive the battle at Chancellorsville? Could Bee himself have been killed during the Seven Days, before rising to higher command?) Given those constraints, it is impossible to pinpoint exactly how Bee’s career would have played out had he survived First Manassas; nevertheless, the exercise is instructive in demonstrating how small the pool of experienced officers was early in the Civil War and how dependent many of the battles were on exactly this kind of chance and contingency.

You might not think that the father of our country had any detractors, but he did, especially in the wake of so many military setbacks—not only in New York, but later in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Starting with the Battle of Long Island in August 1776, British General William Howe drove the Continental Army back to Brooklyn Heights. Though told by Congress to hold the city, Washington decided he had to abandon New York. He then lost at Harlem Heights, suffered defeat at White Plains, lost Fort Washington along with 3,000 prisoners, and shortly after evacuated Fort Lee.

Luckily, Howe’s attention to Fort Washington gave the Continental Army a chance to escape across the Hudson and into New Jersey. But Washington’s struggles continued. At the end of 1776, General Charles Lee lost 4000 Americans covering Washington’s retreat through New Jersey. In December Congress abandoned Philadelphia for Baltimore. Fortune favored Washington again when Howe went into winter quarters. His army capitalized, striking hard on Christmas night, crossing the Delaware River, raiding Trenton and capturing 1000 Hessians along with arms and ammunition. In January, Washington’s men defeated British reinforcements at Princeton before escaping to Morristown, NJ.

Though Washington and his army showed pluck and resilience, such triumphs were pretty rare. His army was again defeated at Brandywine in September 1777 and later that month, General Howe occupied Philadelphia. In early October, Washington lost at Germantown. By contrast, just a few weeks later, General Horatio Gates shocked the world by defeating General Burgoyne at Saratoga on the Hudson River. With Gates’s star on the ascent, some wondered whether Washington was the right man to fill the role of Commander-in-Chief. Though no formal steps ever took place, by the end of 1777 there was a “whispering campaign” underway to have Washington removed —a movement that historian Joseph Ellis suggests was probably “simmering beneath the surface ever since the debacle at Fort Washington.”

One of the central figures in the matter was Brigadier General Thomas Conway, an ambitious Irishman who left the French Army to join the Continental Army, making the anti-Washington movement commonly referred to as the “Conway Cabal.” Conway actively lobbied Congress for a promotion that Washington virulently opposed in a letter to fellow Virginian and Congressman Richard Henry Lee. When Conway caught wind of this slight, he dashed off some pointed criticisms of Washington to Gates. Conway’s dislike for Washington attracted a loose “coterie of grumblers,” including Gates himself, Brigadier General Thomas Mifflin, General Charles Lee, and Congressional figures such as John Adams, Samuel Adams, Benjamin Rush, and Richard Henry Lee.

A gossip network through private correspondence might have remained the extent of the “coterie of grumblers'” influence, except that Washington, ever sensitive to the sanctity of his reputation, had his own network of loyal informants who had a keen ear for loose talk. Washington supporter General William Alexander reported that Gates’s aide General James Wilkinson, had drunkenly divulged the contents of anti-Washington correspondence between Conway and Gates, including this remark by Conway: “Heaven has been determined to save your Country; or a weak General and bad Counselors would have ruined it." When Washington penned a terse note to Gates, he openly challenged him by sending a copy of his correspondence to Congress. This skillful tactic deferred the matter to his civilian masters, while placing the matter in the public sphere, where direct criticism of Washington was still almost sacrilegious.

Washington survived the challenge to his leadership, and some of his most ardent supporters, such as Major General Nathanael Greene, the Marquis de Lafayette, and Alexander Hamilton, went on to distinguish themselves throughout the war. Washington’s two most prominent critics fared less well. Though Conway eventually got his promotion and subsequent assignment as Inspector General, Washington marginalized him when he reported for duty at Valley Forge. Later, a number of general officers petitioned Congress, protesting Conway’s promotion. Conway was further discredited after a fellow officer questioned his courage at Germantown. After challenging his accuser to a duel, Conway was shot in the mouth. Thinking he was dying, Conway wrote a letter of apology to General Washington, but he survived his wounds and eventually returned to France. Gates was never able to hold on to the stature he gained at Saratoga, and in 1780 found himself fleeing with his militia at the Battle of Camden, SC in 1780.