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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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(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday June 12 2017, @09:16AM
Lee was exactly the sort of general the South wanted. The whole Southern Gentleman propaganda pushed for an aggressive style of war. They wanted not just to win the war, but to win it in a very manly way with glorious victory after glorious victory. Stupid, but then, it was stupid to have started the war at all. General Joe Johnston was opposed to this, and has been vilified endlessly for being overcautious. They replaced him with Hood, one of the most extremely aggressive commanders they had, thus doubling down on their basic strategy. It was a spectacular failure. Hood killed off most of his army in reckless assaults, first at Atlanta, then in his decision to march back into Tennessee and try to regain Nashville, besieging a superior force that sallied forth in a massive attack and destroyed what remained of his army.
Johnston was right. The best hope the South had was to drag the war out as long as possible. Maybe Lee could have persuaded the South to run the war more conservatively, but it just wasn't in the cards. Lee achieved his stature with a combination of derring-do, battlefield genius, and a generous helping of enemy incompetence; he would never have reached such heights had he tried a less aggressive strategy.