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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: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday June 12 2017, @12:59AM (9 children)
Lee probably wasn't the best general in the war, and probably not the best general in the South. But that's completely different from saying "he wasn't very good at his job." He was a competent general and particularly had success in the first years of the war. I think we need only reflect on one simple fact: at the beginning, the North thought the war would be over in a matter of months. Instead, it lasted 4 years. It really wasn't until at least mid-1864 that Lee's defense finally started to falter irrevocably.
So, Lee held his own in the most prominent theatre of war against the North for roughly 3 years. Granted, there was a lot of incompetence from Union generals too, but I think we have to hold Lee to the same standards as the rest of the generals in the war, and he was at least above average -- so it's hard to say "he wasn't very good at his job."
It's not Lee's fault that he got appropriated as savior by the Lost Cause lunatics decades after his death. But that posthumous reputation is no reason to tip the scales in the other direction and try to claim he was incompetent. Also, as I noted in a previous post [soylentnews.org], he was admired even by his Union colleagues after the war, some of whom even argued he deserved a statue in his honor. Not for his strategic ability, though -- I think that was always a relatively small element of the "Lost Cause" mythology about Lee.
P.S. I'm not a Southerner, and I definitely don't subscribe to the Lost Cause apologetics. Lee is, however, an interesting and somewhat unique case historically for various reasons.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday June 12 2017, @01:05AM (1 child)
One last note -- what IF the headline is true? Doesn't that actually ADD to "Lost Cause" propaganda? ("Despite being overmatched and having an incompetent commander, we fought on despite the odds...") Saying Lee had flaws as a tactician is fine. Claiming he was incompetent just makes him into a sort of martyr. Should we now be grateful that Lee betrayed the Union and brought his incompetence to the leadership of the South, so they didn't end up with a better general who would have prolonged the war even more??
It's just a very odd argument all around.
(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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @03:51AM
Yeah, but let's remember also the huge symbolism that Arlington National Cemetery is... it was Robt E Lee's estate before the Civil War..
(Score: 2) by tekk on Monday June 12 2017, @05:40AM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday June 12 2017, @04:37PM
I don't disagree with a lot of what you said, though I don't claim to be a military historian, so I'm not really going to weigh in on the details.
My objection was primarily with the overall tone of the article (specifically its headline and conclusion). Yes, a lot of the concerns about strategy in the body of the article are broadly legitimate. But the main point of the article overall doesn't seem to be debating nuances of campaign strategy: it wants to portray Lee as "not very good at his job" and therefore not deserving of the monuments in his name (see conclusion of TFA). That element of the argument is definitely overstated, given how many less competent and less prominent soldiers from the Civil War have been memorialized on both sides.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 12 2017, @06:25AM (3 children)
Let me add a little to your perspective.
The Grand Old Army, that is the Union Army, was infested with incompetent officers who were appointed for political reasons, and due to family connections, when the war began. Incompetent fools were dismissed and replaced repeatedly for the first couple years of the war. One after another, generals took command of various parts of the army, only to disgrace themselves. This kept happening, until Grant came along. Even then, Grant wasn't a very spectacular general. Grant and Sherman were the winning combination. I must point out that by himself, Sherman wasn't all that very spectacular. It was the combination of the two generals that won the Civil War for the Union.
If, and when, one truly understands how truly incompetent all of the preceding Union generals were, then a case might actually be made that Lee was less competent than we have always believed. If Lee were as good as his most zealous supporters claim, he should have kicked the Union's ass soundly within the first two years.
But, like yourself, I have little but contempt for this attempt to belittle him. Lee was a damned good military leader.
Bottom line, for me, is that Lee was a great man, and a great officer. He was great enough that his enemy officers showed him great respect when he was finally defeated.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @11:02AM (1 child)
Well, you got 2 of the words right.
G.A.R. == Grand Army of the Republic
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 12 2017, @11:33AM
http://www.genealogytoday.com/columns/ruby/040218.html [genealogytoday.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Army_of_the_Republic [wikipedia.org]
"The "Grand Army of the Republic" (GAR) was a fraternal organization composed of veterans of the Union Army"
Please don't confuse a fraternity with the old Regular Army.
This article, written in 1865, refers to the Grand Old Army - or more specifically, to the Grand Old Army of the Potomac. http://www.nytimes.com/1865/04/08/news/the-grand-old-army-of-the-potomac.html [nytimes.com]
Another reference to Grand Old Army here - http://uptownhistory.compassrose.org/2007/12/grand-old-army-of-republic-graceland.html [compassrose.org]
There doesn't seem to be a lot on the Grand Old Army on the internet, and I'm not about to start chasing down references in dead tree books for you. You may take my word, or not, that career officers in the Regular Army referred to their army as such. The NYT article cited above should convince you that the civilian population knew and understood the term.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @10:46PM
This right here. He held his own very well and gave more than he got against an in all ways superior force that was being woefully mismanaged. The problem the Lincoln administration had was the Army he inherited was a political thing not a fighting force. That took time to fix. Ironically, Lee was one of the ones who shaped his very own adversaries. So the 'less competent' is not without merit. Also at the time being a general usually meant you had money and power and land and a good amount of political connections. It was a cush job meant to bring prestige. Lee took it a bit more serious than that. It is somewhat different now. A lesson we learned the hard way in the civil war.
History is written by the victors. For example England considers Washington to be one of their great enemies. They hold him in high regard even though they were defeated by him and his cadre.