Maybe all that is so Pam. All I can go on is what THEY themselves thought. Lee seemed to think so and so many others before him.

I think it possible 100,000 hard fighting blacks may have made up for the loss of Stonewall, may have changed the course of Little Round Top, and may have so changed events at Shiloh that Grant would have lost his army, his job, and Lincoln. My speculation is not what triggered the congressional debate however. The matter is only about what Lee himself saw as important, not me, and what his congress chose to do on Lee's urgent request. Lee was there on the scene I was not.