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In the June 1969 issue of Civil War History — Volume 5, Number 2, pages 116-132 — a renowned Southern historian attacked the legacy of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
"No single war figure stands in greater need of reevaluation than Lee," wrote Thomas L. Connelly, the late University of South Carolina professor. "One ponders whether the South may not have fared better had it possessed no Robert E. Lee."
Connelly's essay was among the first academic musket shots fired on Lee's standing as an outmatched but not outwitted military genius presiding over a Lost Cause — a reputation celebrated in fawning biographies and monuments like the one removed Friday in New Orleans.
Was General Lee overrated? Get your armchair historian on...
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The Truth About Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee: He Wasn’t Very Good at His Job
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Remember Darwin; building a better mousetrap merely results in smarter mice.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jmorris on Monday June 12 2017, @01:11AM (4 children)
Actually I'd argue that general histories focus far too much on wars, battles and generals. Military historians should study those things. Everyone else should be taught the issues that brought on the war, who won and what changes came about as a result. And most history should be like that, less focused on Great Men and the implication that we are all playing some Cosmic game of Civilization where the States and the Great Leaders guide everything and focus more on the social, political, religious and geographic and technological stories and how they influenced each other.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @03:33AM (1 child)
I'm not sure. That sounds awfully like political correctness to me. Did your account get hacked?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 12 2017, @12:04PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @05:19AM
James Burke [google.com] should have been writing those History books.
Howard Zinn [google.com] is another guy who -did- write History books--and didn't just repeat the White-people-are-awesome myths.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday June 12 2017, @12:44PM
The current SJW crop of academic historians hates that. Not solely because they're men although that probably helps. Your paragraph is pretty much mainstream university historian thought.
Originally the great man style came from good old Plutarch who used it as a convenient compare and contrast topic, and trying to teach little kids on the theory that its easier to get kids to remember at least a little about some dude than about vast themes of changing conditions or whatever. Also its kind of a residual shared common astrological history so your average idiot knew what it meant to cross the rubicon like Julius Caesar so you can bring history alive via analogy. Also "great man theory" was supposed to be inspirational back before being anti-white and anti-male became part of the religious doctrine of the progressive.
As with most things the greek moderation strategy is best. You're ignorant if you don't know about Admiral Nelson, but you're also ignorant if all you know is a bunch of dead dudes names and battle locations. You're wrong if you've only read Plutarch AND you're wrong if you've only read the good (aka non-great man theory) parts of Gibbon.
Admittedly another aspect is keeping the money rolling. You can't make money in 2017 as an academic off great man theory reading of Plutarch because everything that can be said about those great men was said already over the last 2000 years, but a treatise on the hand waving importance of the trade in silk or whatever is the kind of thing you can make money off in 2017. So naturally the academic faculty is disinterested in replacing themselves with a nice translation from the classic languages department so they rant about how awful it is and how important alternatives to the great man theory are.