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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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Life is not for everyone.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday June 12 2017, @01:18AM
From the summary:
This isn't a new argument at all. The "new historian" is actually dead, and the article from the summary was published nearly 50 years ago. What's "new" is: (1) for some reason a reporter (not a historian) at the Washington Post wants to take a bunch of academic literature that has (justifiably in many cases) noted some flaws Lee had and instead reinterpret them as meaning that Lee was incompetent ("not very good at his job"), and (2) we're trying to get people to take down Confederate monuments at the moment, and Robert E. Lee has a LOT of them.