If Lee was so great and Grant was just throwing lives away, why did Lee attempt exactly what Grant did TWICE and got his ass kicked TWICE by Generals who ACTUALLY lucked into winning, or were overall worse???
Grant did exactly what Lee tried to do and he only needed to do it ONCE to win the war, and that wasn’t even his best campaign of the war.
by _Boodstain_
22 Comments
Lee was a great tactician but a poor strategist as his aggressiveness waste lives and resources. While General Joseph E. Johnston realise the Confederacy lack of resources and men and his cautiousness might be the best strategy for the Confederacy but Jefferson Davis rejected Johnston strategy and prefer Lee reckless aggressiveness.
I’ve read a Chinese analysis on a forum once, and I’m going to steal his summary of Lee.
“If Moltke during the Franco-Prussian War resembled a long-prepared veteran surgeon performing a swift, precise, and almost painless operation with a delicate scalpel on the foolish Napoleon III, then Grant was more like a rugged orthopedic surgeon, covered in blood and wielding a giant bone saw as he hacked relentlessly at the Confederacy.
Robert E. Lee seemed like a man whose left hand still clung to the surgeon’s scalpel of the Napoleonic era, while his right awkwardly gestured with a great machete that no longer existed, wandering between the classical and the modern. His masterful use of Napoleonic tactics forced Union generals toward modernization, yet as he grew older, he himself became lost and trapped within the vague and illusory cause of the Confederacy.”
Source:
[https://www.zhihu.com/question/422904552/answer/1507969448](https://www.zhihu.com/question/422904552/answer/1507969448)
Jeff Davis should have done the right thing from the start and brought Braxton Bragg east. The war would have been over in weeks.
The best Confederate general was Bragg, on account of his efforts to end the war a year earlier than it would have without him.
Not to defend Lee, but “wasting time and material on offensives” is just kind of the price of doing offensives? I mean it usually looks a lot better if they succeed at making some sort of strategic gain, but yes you can’t make offensives into foreign territory without spending lives, materiel and time.
This is Reddit so I’ll take my downvotes. What Lee fought for was abhorrent and should be condemned to the eternal pages of damnation. But he was a brilliant tactician and leader of men. It’s possible for both things to be true. He absolutely made mistakes, but the war dies in its infancy without him.
Grant, brilliant in his own way does not succeed without the North. Lee absolutely conquers without the shackles of the south.
First: “greatest” is a subjective assessment, that is more about emotional connection than it is about any objective criteria. My wife thinks Doritos are the greatest snack food, and I think she’s clearly insane, and we’re both right. If people want to think Lee was the greatest, they’re free to that opinion even if we both think they’re wrong.
Second: if you look at objective criteria, Lee was a superb engineer, logistician, artillerist, leader of men, decision-maker, planner, and manager of the relationship between army and civilian government. He did more with less than almost anyone else, he kept a vastly superior force out of the Upper South for 2-3 years longer than probably should have been the case, and he was personally adored by virtually everyone who fought under him.
But he was only an ok tactician and strategist, he managed his cavalry poorly and was overly tolerant of Stuart’s indulgences, and his health issues increasingly degraded his abilities as the war dragged on.
There is more to generalship than fighting on a battlefield, and he excelled at almost all of those additional areas. Enough that his only better than average battlefield skills didn’t prove a major liability, which is why he continued in the role until the war’s end. He may not have won the war in the east, but he did as good a job in not losing it for a long time as could be expected.
Never mind he spoke almost exclusively in Southern Gentlemen. I couldn’t imagine already being an incompetent general dealing with getting my ass beat to hear my great leader start talking to me in allegories and insinuations.
Ulysses S. Grant… nuff said.
So… we all watched Checkmate, Lincolnites, then?
If Lee was so bad and all the other Generals better, why did the western and Deep South (GA, Tenn, Carolinas, etc) all fall to pieces much faster than the Virginia theatre where Lee commanded?
Vicksburg fell and the confederacy effectively cut in two in 1863. Sherman marched to Atlanta and then to the sea in 1864 while Lee was still stonewalling Grant at Petersburg.
The only good thing is one of his mutual ancestors descendants was Sir Christopher Lee who got to kill actual NAZIS in WW2
Not a Civil War era person but I’ll give my two cents here:
Defense buys you time, but time isn’t making South better bc South can’t replace losses easily while the North can. This means unless you want a painful grind to see which sides morale breaks first you’ll need to attack. If I was in South’s position I’d definitely attack a major city or location of strategic importance. DC fits both bills and it is uncomfortably close to Confederate lines.
Look, I am no Leaboo, but who exactly are these “best generals” of the Confederacy in high enough positions to lead armies that Lee was supposedly picked over?
I wish he was because it would make the defeat even more embarrassing
Fun fact:
Robert E. Lee married Mary Anna Randolph Custis, the great-granddaughter of Martha Washington, which made George Washington his step-great-grandfather-in-law.
You know, your first point is already void since it’s widely accepted that Lee outgeneralled McClellan. It’s also widely accepted at least outside of here that Lee and Grant were both better than the other at certain aspects. For example, Lee was the better commander in a battle of maneuver, but Grant was better at Trench warfare. Also, how miss informed are you? Lee was already an established military figure before the Civil War.
If you compare the 1846 Atlanta campaign and the 1846 Virginia campaign, the balance of forces was somewhat more favourable to the Confederacy in the West (slightly under to 2:1 USA to CSA) than in the east (over 2:1 USA to CSA). And yet the the CSA did better in the the East than in the West (lasted a year longer). Unless it’s your contention that Grant was so much worse than Sherman, it would seem that Lee’s generalship was the deciding factor in prolonging the war in that theater.
Look Lee sucked
But the argument that the South should have instead done a Russian style defensive only war making the north bleed to invade and retake them, makes a ton of sense until you consider exactly what type of economy the south is.
The south is a plantation slave economy. Every mile the north takes is a mile further that the slave owners love control over their slave population and non slave owning white population. It weakens their internal stability over an insecure system. Combined with uprisings from slaves that were happening and the taking of New Orleans. The south was fucked. They had to go on the offensive unless they wanted to abandon a slave oligopoly
“If Lee was so good, why didn’t the confederacy win?”
I get that it’s important to counter lost cause revisionism but this is literally stupid
Everyone says Lee wasted men and materiel, name who was the best general then? Make a decision and defend it instead you nit picker. I will say Lee wasted men the best because no one else could keep the Army of Northern Virginia in the field as well for as long.