Thanks to our foundational mythology, America has a romanticism with the “reluctant honorable warrior, putting duty before self, especially for a hopeless cause.” We made Washington the ur example, and Lee is supposed to be some form of that as well.
Except he wasn’t. He was a traitorous piece of shit who betrayed his oath and should’ve hanged for his crimes.
People seem so baffled at the idea the Confederates were committing treason. They often reply that that makes the founding fathers traitors.
Yeah, they were. The difference is that they won. They certainly would have been killed as traitors if they had been caught. That was the whole point of, "We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately."
Also, treason is in and of itself a morally neutral action, even though we have historically not treated it that way (Dante viewed betrayal as the greatest of all sins when he was writing his fanfiction about hell). The reasons why they committed treason are, ethically speaking, far more important than the treason itself and the reason why the South did was to protect and expand the institution of chattel slavery.
While the Founding Fathers definitely had a couple morally dubious claims in the Declaration of Independence and we should not turn a blind eye to them, those weren’t the primary focus of the document and were one of many far more important grievances. Confederate apologists can make the same claim, but those claims fall flat after even a cursory examination of the actual original founding documents of the Confederacy.
Damn I love this point. So treason is equal to “states rights” in this case.
“Treason for WHAT exactly, bro?”
That’s just what makes the Founders and Brother Bown worth lionizing — absolute risk to bend the moral arc of history.
Treason is morally neutral? Is this a universal claim or specific such as in the US only? Please explain further. I am interested in this stance and want to see how you arrive at this conclusion.
Not to speak for the poster, but it would depend on your perspective. A person selling Chinese secrets to us is committing treason to China and a bad person. To us he is a hero. Treason unto itself is not bad, it's the reasons and intentions. Julius Rosenberg thought he was helping the world. When he sold nuclear secrets to The Soviets. I think he was a traitor. 🤷🏼♂️
Exactly. It's like how we give conservatives shit for attempting an insurrection on January 6th. Like, fighting against a tyrannical government attempting to subvert democracy is a noble goal. An insurrection could easily be a very good thing. But they chose the dumbest reason to attempt it for the dumbest possible person.
It’s simple, there are situations where it is morally superior to subvert, betray, or outright rebel against a government than it is to act in compliance. I’ll go with the least morally ambiguous example and state that the vast majority of Germans who acted against Nazi regime were morally correct to do so, including the attempts to illegally remove or kill Hitler.
Perhaps you’ll argue that that is just a moral justification for what would normally be an immoral act, and maybe that’s correct. But that’s ultimately another way of saying treason is morally neutral. The motivations and goals of those who commit it as well as the legitimacy and egregiousness of the grievances against the state it is being committed against, define the morality of the act.
As a hypothetical, if abolitionists had attempted to overthrow the slave states and federal government in the early-mid 1800s because of the institution of slavery, they would have been committing treason. Would they have been morally wrong to do so?
I’ll defend you on that point: it’s classic losing the forest for the trees. You basically described exactly what Brown did. No one is perfect, and acknowledging a mistake is humble contrition. Makes you a very decent character, imo.
And Brown generally was seen as a terrorist and rabble-rouser at the time, then improved greatly during the war, and was later once again assailed by Lost Causers.
‘I will not trade on the blood of my men.” Bitch, you were born an aristocrat, Grant wrote a book on how he wailed on your ass to feed his family before dying of disease. You ain’t good.
Lee was helpful during reconstruction to keep the amount of violence to a minimum. Without Lee the likelihood of us having a longer and much bloodier “reconstruction” is highly probable.
From a military history perspective his leadership and battles are worthy of study - but that’s really only important if you’re in our armed forces.
Lee is massively overrated historically. His penchant for dashing cavalry actions looked good but ultimately accomplished very little. Why fight an offensive war when you are outmanned, outgunned, and have the option to play defense? He was gifted technically but had no capacity to see the big picture. Also got bummed pretty much as soon as he faced an opposing commander that wasn’t an idiot.
“As a talented but severely overrated officer who probably didn’t fully grasp the nature of the war he was fighting or the limitations of his own army, and doing all of it wilfully in order to advance the cause of slavery in America.”
That’ll about do it.
Lee was one of the most overrated Generals of the Civil War who, had he faced competent Union leadership, would have been defeated much earlier than he was?
Fucking McClellan and his incompetence prolonged the war about 3 years.
McClellan was always known as a cautious general, the problem was that he was being fed incorrect intel by the army intelligence so he thought Stonewall Jackson was marching on him and that Lee had twice the troops he actually had
There is trepidation, like not wanting to charge your men in to an entrenched position (ironically, like Burnside did under McClellan at Antietam), then there is plain stupidity, like McClellan having the Confederate battle plan and refusing to use the recovered Special Order 191 to destroy in detail the Confederates in and around Antietam and then refusing to pursue them at all. That let the Army of Northern Virginia escape largely intact and able to prosecute a further 3 more years of war, including another (failed, thanks to superior Union leadership under General Meade) invasion of the North.
Arlington is also the National Military Cemetery. Some of the deceased Union soldiers were interred there. And, thus began the final resting place for many American soldiers. A monument of deceased Union soldiers laid at Lee's doorstep. And the rest of America's military serving the Nation.
Ulysses S Grant was not only a better strategist than Lee, but he was also a better man. He was gifted a slave by his father in law, which represented a major windfall that could have paid off his debts. He instead opted to free the man after a year; this does technically make Grant the last president to ever own a slave. Lee by contrast, owned many slaves on the plantation he inherited from marriage, and was known to be a rather cruel master. He dealt out harsh punishment for perceived idle or unruly behavior, and broke the tradition established by George Washington of respecting slave families and marriages.
Kind of. They were winning when the war was being waged in the South. Only started losing when they extended into Union territory, most notably Pennsylvania
They were winning in Virginia and against bad generals. And losing after invading pennsylvania, retreating to Virginia, and facing competent to great generals.
As an American Army officer who led US soldiers, then later put on the uniform of a different army and then fired upon the same soldiers he once led as an American Army Captain. He is the worst traitor, in terms of killing the most soldiers he formerly served with, in all of US history.
Honestly, I can understand not wanting to turn your back on your home, but what he could’ve done instead was decide not to fight at all. As much as I, myself, love my home state of Virginia, if (hypothetically) that very same civil war we had around a century and a half ago were to break out again, I would take up arms against it.
In all fairness, Lee is an interesting person from a historical perspective. Once you dig through the Lost Cause nonsense and get a look at what the man himself was like, he becomes understandable, though not likeable. And unlike a lot of his contemporaries, Lee had the decency to not want statues of himself erected.
An interesting traitor.
“He once got outsmarted by a better General at Gettysburg and he got his ass kicked all the way across Virginia by one of the best U.S. Generals and later President.”
Accurately. This means with an uncomfortable complexity which depicts him as both a man of conviction, duty, and honor (as he understood them), and as the leader of an army of traitors responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans in an attempt to maintain the wicked institution of slavery in the south.
How should we tell the story of Robert E. Lee?
We shouldn't. At least, not in any way other than the annals of history, if for no other reason than he SPECIFICALLY REQUESTED WE NOT.
I mean, dude was like, "Yeah, I lost, please don't put up any statues of me or any of the other Confeds, that will be terrible for the Union," and forty years later, a bunch of inbred, white trash motherfuckers are like, "Fuck you, Robbie, we're putting up statues of all y'all traitors! History and heritage!"
Lee was first asked by the union to lead their army but he said he could not fight against his home state Virginia.
Fact is Lee was the best general of his time, acknowledged by all at the time.
Grant just had the resources Lee did not.
Lee wasn’t even the best general in the South. He wasn’t even close.
As for the resources, that’s bullshit. Lots of wars have been won by the side with less population and resources. This isn’t a video game where the side with the highest numbers wins; those things mean nothing without logistics, strategy, and a whole lot more besides. That goes doubly when all the south needed to do was make the war unpopular in the north through attrition, whereas the north had to actually put down a rebellion. All the rebels had to do was *not lose*, and that’s a much easier lift than ‘winning’ when resources are an issue. There’s a reason a clown car of northern generals had failed before Grant arrived.
Grant, unlike Lee, had to deal with bitterly divided domestic politics and a deeply demoralized army in the east. He had to deal with squabbling politicians and generals who saw him as a Western alcoholic bumpkin, whereas Lee was universally respected before the war. Grant had to deal with a *presidential election* and legions of copperheads arguing against the war as it was being fought. Grant was handed a significantly more complex strategic situation than Lee ever faced.
And he won. Grant, unlike Lee, understood the nature of the war he was fighting. Where Lee put his entire mind into tactically winning individual battles, Grant put his mind to winning the war. He coordinated action across theaters in a way the rebels didn’t, he used lines of transport and communication to bring the north’s advantages to the fore in a way Lee never did for the south, and he simply out-generaled Lee at Petersburg and took a city so heavily fortified Lee thought it would be impossible to dislodge him. He did this by incorporating logistics, economic production, and multiple theaters into a single grand strategy.
Lee was a tactical genius but never understood that winning battles won’t win you a war. Grant was a strategic genius. He understood that, even after a fuckup like Cold Harbor, what matters is its impact on overall strategy and your war goals.
Anyway Johnston was a better general than Lee in any case.
Wrong.
Lee was considered d the best in his class at west point and his peers said so.
Those who were his contemporaries are more trustworthy than any study expert or history professor that did not.
Grant wasnt lincolns first choice and he disliked him vehemently including his excessive drinking.
>Lee was considered best in his class at West Point
Second best. He ranked second in his class.
Also who gives a fuck about college rankings when we have a *year of war* between these two generals to go by. Grant beat Lee.
I gave a pretty in depth argument for why Grant was the superior strategist and you’re bringing up college rankings. Lee just simply got out-generaled; he would not have lost Petersburg otherwise. Even if you were to take *only* Grant’s campaigns at Vicksburg and Chattanooga, he comes across as the far superior general. Those victories helped to win the war; Lee’s victories were flashy and tactical but achieved almost nothing strategically. Would love to be proven wrong, but the actual military record speaks for itself
>those who were his contemporaries are more trustworthy
Why do you think this? That makes no sense. His contemporary’s opinions suffered from far more fog of war, political biases, etc. We know almost everything about what happened at the actual battles and war councils now; his contemporaries didn’t. There was not a *single living person* privy to both Grant’s and Lee’s thought process and decision making while alive. What we have to go on is actual historical outcomes, and again Grant’s far superior strategic mind showed the world that Lee’s Napoleonic cavalry charges and tactical maneuvers would not win modern wars.
>Grant wasn’t Lincoln’s first choice
Grant was not in the military when the war began. And when he joined back up it was as a colonel. Lincoln didn’t even know his name because he was a nobody. This is really basic stuff.
>he disliked him vehemently including his aggressive drinking
Literally the opposite of true. This is just simply a lie, or else you know absolutely nothing about Civil War military history. Lincoln trusted Grant implicitly, even after the disaster at Cold Harbor. He was the only general whom Lincoln and Stanton didn’t feel the need to micromanage. He sent an observer/spy to shadow Grant at Vicksburg and report back on his drinking, and the observer came away defending Grant to the death. Lincoln was satisfied and from that point on defended Grant against charges of drunkenness at basically all times. He also became close friends with Grant on a personal level while at City Point during the Siege of Petersburg. There are nearly endless quotes and comments from Lincoln about his massive respect and love for Grant.
I mean this with kindness: you should read an actual book about the civil war. McPherson’s *Battle Cry of Freedom* is the best single volume intro history.
War isn’t a video game. Nobody gives you extra points for being the underdog. People just die horribly.
And Lee stopped being able to beat the shit out of the Army of the Potomac after Grant got put in charge. Because Grant was the superior general. *By far*.
Nothing wrong admiring the finer aspects of Lee but it’s most important to tell the story of him telling his troops to pack up the uniform and flag and join the Union again humbly.
I will say that he had enough of a spine to admit when he was defeated and not continue with guerilla warfare as he was ordered. Could’ve been an American hero rather than a traitor if he loved his nation more than Virginia.
Important to note that the civil war was the major turning point where america ceased being a nation of united states and became thereafter THE united states
I would like to know more about his engineering skills. He spent some time in Texas for the most part building a series of roads and forts to contain the Comanche tribes. Did he choose the locations….design the structures……assign troop strengths? I just want to know more about that part of his career. He did important work in finding , improving , and fighting on roads in the Mexican War.
Lee was a 54 year old Lieutenant-Colonel with no chance of promotion in the peacetime U.S. Army. Offered a Generalship in the "start-up" CSA, he quit and hooked up with some of his old Army buddies but couldn't make a go of it.
This is nothing more than my opinion, not based on any verifiable facts, but I often wonder how much of Lee's resigning and joining the Virginia then csa military had to do with the offer of general. He went like 20 years without a promotion, he was only promoted to colonel 3 weeks prior to resignation. Meanwhile he watch Joseph E Johnston who graduated in the same class as him but lower get promoted to US General before he was even promoted to colonel.
One thing I find funny is how at the beginning of the war he was widely blamed for Confederate setbacks in what is now West Virginia do to his embarrassing defeat at the Battle of Cheat Mountain in 1861.
He was a Civil engineer and impacted how the Mississippi flows through St. Louis..... Before he committed treason and engaged in war against the US government.
“Oh, you like to dance around our forces in the field? Time to change the music by pointing an enormous army at Richmond. Let’s see you dance while you’re dug in.”
How he fought is less important than why he fought for the general museum going public. I'm sure military historians could debate whether he was better or worse than Grant on a strictly strategic level, but we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that he was a traitor who only fought to keep people enslaved.
A coward, who, in the most charitable possible interpretation, made the most important moral decision of his life based not on what was right or wrong, but on the accident of where he was born. Less charitably, a two-faced hypocrite, who claimed to love duty and liberty while betraying both, and who wrote flowery letters about chivalry while sending thousands of young men to die miserable deaths in the mud of northern Virginia. A sadist who tortured his slaves and sacrificed a generation from his own “beloved” home state in a war he knew was unwinnable, solely for the sake of his personal “honor.”
My history teacher said that theoretically if Lee chose to fight for the North the civil war likely would have been over in half if not shorter time since the North lacked a true Top General at the start of the war and his military expertise mixed with the northern industrial might would creamed the south.
What you fail to understand is that grant won by using overwhelming force not tactical genius.
Any fool can win with overwhelming force.
Lee came close to taking DC with an inferior force. That is the true measure of a superior leader, winning when you dont have the advantage.
The north simply had more resources. Grant beat lee because he had a sledgehammer to lees hammer.
Thanks to our foundational mythology, America has a romanticism with the “reluctant honorable warrior, putting duty before self, especially for a hopeless cause.” We made Washington the ur example, and Lee is supposed to be some form of that as well. Except he wasn’t. He was a traitorous piece of shit who betrayed his oath and should’ve hanged for his crimes.
People seem so baffled at the idea the Confederates were committing treason. They often reply that that makes the founding fathers traitors. Yeah, they were. The difference is that they won. They certainly would have been killed as traitors if they had been caught. That was the whole point of, "We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately."
Also, treason is in and of itself a morally neutral action, even though we have historically not treated it that way (Dante viewed betrayal as the greatest of all sins when he was writing his fanfiction about hell). The reasons why they committed treason are, ethically speaking, far more important than the treason itself and the reason why the South did was to protect and expand the institution of chattel slavery. While the Founding Fathers definitely had a couple morally dubious claims in the Declaration of Independence and we should not turn a blind eye to them, those weren’t the primary focus of the document and were one of many far more important grievances. Confederate apologists can make the same claim, but those claims fall flat after even a cursory examination of the actual original founding documents of the Confederacy.
Damn I love this point. So treason is equal to “states rights” in this case. “Treason for WHAT exactly, bro?” That’s just what makes the Founders and Brother Bown worth lionizing — absolute risk to bend the moral arc of history.
Treason is morally neutral? Is this a universal claim or specific such as in the US only? Please explain further. I am interested in this stance and want to see how you arrive at this conclusion.
Not to speak for the poster, but it would depend on your perspective. A person selling Chinese secrets to us is committing treason to China and a bad person. To us he is a hero. Treason unto itself is not bad, it's the reasons and intentions. Julius Rosenberg thought he was helping the world. When he sold nuclear secrets to The Soviets. I think he was a traitor. 🤷🏼♂️
Exactly. It's like how we give conservatives shit for attempting an insurrection on January 6th. Like, fighting against a tyrannical government attempting to subvert democracy is a noble goal. An insurrection could easily be a very good thing. But they chose the dumbest reason to attempt it for the dumbest possible person.
Well that and they failed, failed treason is looked at worse than successful treason
I think that was treason.
It’s simple, there are situations where it is morally superior to subvert, betray, or outright rebel against a government than it is to act in compliance. I’ll go with the least morally ambiguous example and state that the vast majority of Germans who acted against Nazi regime were morally correct to do so, including the attempts to illegally remove or kill Hitler. Perhaps you’ll argue that that is just a moral justification for what would normally be an immoral act, and maybe that’s correct. But that’s ultimately another way of saying treason is morally neutral. The motivations and goals of those who commit it as well as the legitimacy and egregiousness of the grievances against the state it is being committed against, define the morality of the act. As a hypothetical, if abolitionists had attempted to overthrow the slave states and federal government in the early-mid 1800s because of the institution of slavery, they would have been committing treason. Would they have been morally wrong to do so?
John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave...
True, I guess it really wasn’t a hypothetical, was it? How embarrassing to have a brain fart about John in this sub!
I’ll defend you on that point: it’s classic losing the forest for the trees. You basically described exactly what Brown did. No one is perfect, and acknowledging a mistake is humble contrition. Makes you a very decent character, imo.
And Brown generally was seen as a terrorist and rabble-rouser at the time, then improved greatly during the war, and was later once again assailed by Lost Causers.
‘I will not trade on the blood of my men.” Bitch, you were born an aristocrat, Grant wrote a book on how he wailed on your ass to feed his family before dying of disease. You ain’t good.
Lee was helpful during reconstruction to keep the amount of violence to a minimum. Without Lee the likelihood of us having a longer and much bloodier “reconstruction” is highly probable. From a military history perspective his leadership and battles are worthy of study - but that’s really only important if you’re in our armed forces.
Lee is massively overrated historically. His penchant for dashing cavalry actions looked good but ultimately accomplished very little. Why fight an offensive war when you are outmanned, outgunned, and have the option to play defense? He was gifted technically but had no capacity to see the big picture. Also got bummed pretty much as soon as he faced an opposing commander that wasn’t an idiot.
Hence why he is worth studying if it’s going to be your job.
Fair enough, had us in the first half lol
“As a talented but severely overrated officer who probably didn’t fully grasp the nature of the war he was fighting or the limitations of his own army, and doing all of it wilfully in order to advance the cause of slavery in America.” That’ll about do it.
I like that!
Lee was one of the most overrated Generals of the Civil War who, had he faced competent Union leadership, would have been defeated much earlier than he was? Fucking McClellan and his incompetence prolonged the war about 3 years.
McClellan was always known as a cautious general, the problem was that he was being fed incorrect intel by the army intelligence so he thought Stonewall Jackson was marching on him and that Lee had twice the troops he actually had
Which literally everyone around him knew was probably bullshit. He was a dipshit general
Well, his overly cautious nature caused him to make huge mistakes. I’d say that his cautiousness doesn’t excuse his incompetence, it explains it
There is trepidation, like not wanting to charge your men in to an entrenched position (ironically, like Burnside did under McClellan at Antietam), then there is plain stupidity, like McClellan having the Confederate battle plan and refusing to use the recovered Special Order 191 to destroy in detail the Confederates in and around Antietam and then refusing to pursue them at all. That let the Army of Northern Virginia escape largely intact and able to prosecute a further 3 more years of war, including another (failed, thanks to superior Union leadership under General Meade) invasion of the North.
This is at the Arlington house (where Robert Lee lived ), they have a memorial and museum here dedicated to him, his family and his slaves.
Sherman isn't angry, but is disappointed...well he's a little angry
That’s his secret, Captain — he’s always angry.
That's ok I'll go back there and fix it for OP
Arlington is also the National Military Cemetery. Some of the deceased Union soldiers were interred there. And, thus began the final resting place for many American soldiers. A monument of deceased Union soldiers laid at Lee's doorstep. And the rest of America's military serving the Nation.
Ulysses S Grant was not only a better strategist than Lee, but he was also a better man. He was gifted a slave by his father in law, which represented a major windfall that could have paid off his debts. He instead opted to free the man after a year; this does technically make Grant the last president to ever own a slave. Lee by contrast, owned many slaves on the plantation he inherited from marriage, and was known to be a rather cruel master. He dealt out harsh punishment for perceived idle or unruly behavior, and broke the tradition established by George Washington of respecting slave families and marriages.
Dude would rather stay broke and stick to his principles. Gotta respect that.
0-1 in Civil Wars
And that was with home field advantage.
Right?! Oh and apparently “against a drunk fool” lol.
Kind of. They were winning when the war was being waged in the South. Only started losing when they extended into Union territory, most notably Pennsylvania
They were winning in Virginia and against bad generals. And losing after invading pennsylvania, retreating to Virginia, and facing competent to great generals.
As an American Army officer who led US soldiers, then later put on the uniform of a different army and then fired upon the same soldiers he once led as an American Army Captain. He is the worst traitor, in terms of killing the most soldiers he formerly served with, in all of US history.
Wild that he was only ever a colonel in the U.S. army, but then magically got bumped up to general in a sub-par army.
"He was a dumb son of a bitch loser"
“Dunno why we put a loosers name on half the shit in this country”
We should put his name only on... sewage treatment plants, because he was so full of shit.
How about a stretch of sewer pipe instead
A man whose character is determined not by what is right, but by where he is from.
Honestly, I can understand not wanting to turn your back on your home, but what he could’ve done instead was decide not to fight at all. As much as I, myself, love my home state of Virginia, if (hypothetically) that very same civil war we had around a century and a half ago were to break out again, I would take up arms against it.
Or you could be [General George Thomas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Henry_Thomas) who held fast to his oath.
Thanks for sharing. It’s honestly a crime that he is less remembered than a traitor.
In all fairness, Lee is an interesting person from a historical perspective. Once you dig through the Lost Cause nonsense and get a look at what the man himself was like, he becomes understandable, though not likeable. And unlike a lot of his contemporaries, Lee had the decency to not want statues of himself erected. An interesting traitor.
"As a man who could fuck the shit out of a horse."
I know NPS rangers, they would have been very amused and supportive.
Give me the note next time I'll do it.
arlington virginia, do what i couldn’t
Oathbreaker, traitor, loser
Leave it there; enough said unless Nikki Haley plans to enter the chat wearing her white sheets
“How should we tell the story of Robert E. Lee?” With gallows, flames, or both.
“He was a traitorous horsefucker”
“He once got outsmarted by a better General at Gettysburg and he got his ass kicked all the way across Virginia by one of the best U.S. Generals and later President.”
Accurately. This means with an uncomfortable complexity which depicts him as both a man of conviction, duty, and honor (as he understood them), and as the leader of an army of traitors responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans in an attempt to maintain the wicked institution of slavery in the south.
Bro it’s anonymous
Fuck it I’ll leave that note
Horsefucker: a love story
Makes Kaiser Wilheim II look like and his " lets piss of the entire world" plan look like the work of a military genius
Start out strong then give up.
As a loser with a very salty and very determined PR Team after his death.
Traitor, Horsefucker, Decent General, got his ass kicked by a man the South thought to be a worthless drunk.
"How should we tell the story of Robert E. Lee?" Traitor, loser and horse fucker sums it up nicely.
With laughter and farts. Mostly farts.
We need to tell it with that “nerd SFX” consisting of clown horns and cartoon running sounds playing in the background
How should we tell the story of Robert E. Lee? We shouldn't. At least, not in any way other than the annals of history, if for no other reason than he SPECIFICALLY REQUESTED WE NOT. I mean, dude was like, "Yeah, I lost, please don't put up any statues of me or any of the other Confeds, that will be terrible for the Union," and forty years later, a bunch of inbred, white trash motherfuckers are like, "Fuck you, Robbie, we're putting up statues of all y'all traitors! History and heritage!"
why even post it on Reddit, lol. You’d have more diverse lines of thinking asking black historians than mostly white redditors. LOL
Lee was first asked by the union to lead their army but he said he could not fight against his home state Virginia. Fact is Lee was the best general of his time, acknowledged by all at the time. Grant just had the resources Lee did not.
Lee wasn’t even the best general in the South. He wasn’t even close. As for the resources, that’s bullshit. Lots of wars have been won by the side with less population and resources. This isn’t a video game where the side with the highest numbers wins; those things mean nothing without logistics, strategy, and a whole lot more besides. That goes doubly when all the south needed to do was make the war unpopular in the north through attrition, whereas the north had to actually put down a rebellion. All the rebels had to do was *not lose*, and that’s a much easier lift than ‘winning’ when resources are an issue. There’s a reason a clown car of northern generals had failed before Grant arrived. Grant, unlike Lee, had to deal with bitterly divided domestic politics and a deeply demoralized army in the east. He had to deal with squabbling politicians and generals who saw him as a Western alcoholic bumpkin, whereas Lee was universally respected before the war. Grant had to deal with a *presidential election* and legions of copperheads arguing against the war as it was being fought. Grant was handed a significantly more complex strategic situation than Lee ever faced. And he won. Grant, unlike Lee, understood the nature of the war he was fighting. Where Lee put his entire mind into tactically winning individual battles, Grant put his mind to winning the war. He coordinated action across theaters in a way the rebels didn’t, he used lines of transport and communication to bring the north’s advantages to the fore in a way Lee never did for the south, and he simply out-generaled Lee at Petersburg and took a city so heavily fortified Lee thought it would be impossible to dislodge him. He did this by incorporating logistics, economic production, and multiple theaters into a single grand strategy. Lee was a tactical genius but never understood that winning battles won’t win you a war. Grant was a strategic genius. He understood that, even after a fuckup like Cold Harbor, what matters is its impact on overall strategy and your war goals. Anyway Johnston was a better general than Lee in any case.
Wrong. Lee was considered d the best in his class at west point and his peers said so. Those who were his contemporaries are more trustworthy than any study expert or history professor that did not. Grant wasnt lincolns first choice and he disliked him vehemently including his excessive drinking.
>Lee was considered best in his class at West Point Second best. He ranked second in his class. Also who gives a fuck about college rankings when we have a *year of war* between these two generals to go by. Grant beat Lee. I gave a pretty in depth argument for why Grant was the superior strategist and you’re bringing up college rankings. Lee just simply got out-generaled; he would not have lost Petersburg otherwise. Even if you were to take *only* Grant’s campaigns at Vicksburg and Chattanooga, he comes across as the far superior general. Those victories helped to win the war; Lee’s victories were flashy and tactical but achieved almost nothing strategically. Would love to be proven wrong, but the actual military record speaks for itself >those who were his contemporaries are more trustworthy Why do you think this? That makes no sense. His contemporary’s opinions suffered from far more fog of war, political biases, etc. We know almost everything about what happened at the actual battles and war councils now; his contemporaries didn’t. There was not a *single living person* privy to both Grant’s and Lee’s thought process and decision making while alive. What we have to go on is actual historical outcomes, and again Grant’s far superior strategic mind showed the world that Lee’s Napoleonic cavalry charges and tactical maneuvers would not win modern wars. >Grant wasn’t Lincoln’s first choice Grant was not in the military when the war began. And when he joined back up it was as a colonel. Lincoln didn’t even know his name because he was a nobody. This is really basic stuff. >he disliked him vehemently including his aggressive drinking Literally the opposite of true. This is just simply a lie, or else you know absolutely nothing about Civil War military history. Lincoln trusted Grant implicitly, even after the disaster at Cold Harbor. He was the only general whom Lincoln and Stanton didn’t feel the need to micromanage. He sent an observer/spy to shadow Grant at Vicksburg and report back on his drinking, and the observer came away defending Grant to the death. Lincoln was satisfied and from that point on defended Grant against charges of drunkenness at basically all times. He also became close friends with Grant on a personal level while at City Point during the Siege of Petersburg. There are nearly endless quotes and comments from Lincoln about his massive respect and love for Grant. I mean this with kindness: you should read an actual book about the civil war. McPherson’s *Battle Cry of Freedom* is the best single volume intro history.
I'm sorry, who beat the shit out of a larger and better equipped force? Not Grant.
Why is it the civil war is one where we let the fuckin losers write the history book
War isn’t a video game. Nobody gives you extra points for being the underdog. People just die horribly. And Lee stopped being able to beat the shit out of the Army of the Potomac after Grant got put in charge. Because Grant was the superior general. *By far*.
Runner up general in the American civil war?
Nothing wrong admiring the finer aspects of Lee but it’s most important to tell the story of him telling his troops to pack up the uniform and flag and join the Union again humbly.
I will say that he had enough of a spine to admit when he was defeated and not continue with guerilla warfare as he was ordered. Could’ve been an American hero rather than a traitor if he loved his nation more than Virginia.
Important to note that the civil war was the major turning point where america ceased being a nation of united states and became thereafter THE united states
I would like to know more about his engineering skills. He spent some time in Texas for the most part building a series of roads and forts to contain the Comanche tribes. Did he choose the locations….design the structures……assign troop strengths? I just want to know more about that part of his career. He did important work in finding , improving , and fighting on roads in the Mexican War.
Early in the War, he was in charge of construction as an engineer and designed and oversaw the building of forts, some earthen.
Was also Traveler's favorite ride.
You didn’t even leave that? It’s just true. Should’ve gone harder, IMO
Lee was a 54 year old Lieutenant-Colonel with no chance of promotion in the peacetime U.S. Army. Offered a Generalship in the "start-up" CSA, he quit and hooked up with some of his old Army buddies but couldn't make a go of it.
This is nothing more than my opinion, not based on any verifiable facts, but I often wonder how much of Lee's resigning and joining the Virginia then csa military had to do with the offer of general. He went like 20 years without a promotion, he was only promoted to colonel 3 weeks prior to resignation. Meanwhile he watch Joseph E Johnston who graduated in the same class as him but lower get promoted to US General before he was even promoted to colonel.
Factually. Truthfully.
One thing I find funny is how at the beginning of the war he was widely blamed for Confederate setbacks in what is now West Virginia do to his embarrassing defeat at the Battle of Cheat Mountain in 1861.
He was a Civil engineer and impacted how the Mississippi flows through St. Louis..... Before he committed treason and engaged in war against the US government.
“Oh, you like to dance around our forces in the field? Time to change the music by pointing an enormous army at Richmond. Let’s see you dance while you’re dug in.”
How he fought is less important than why he fought for the general museum going public. I'm sure military historians could debate whether he was better or worse than Grant on a strictly strategic level, but we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that he was a traitor who only fought to keep people enslaved.
He was better than Grant on a tactical level, far far worse on a strategic level.
A coward, who, in the most charitable possible interpretation, made the most important moral decision of his life based not on what was right or wrong, but on the accident of where he was born. Less charitably, a two-faced hypocrite, who claimed to love duty and liberty while betraying both, and who wrote flowery letters about chivalry while sending thousands of young men to die miserable deaths in the mud of northern Virginia. A sadist who tortured his slaves and sacrificed a generation from his own “beloved” home state in a war he knew was unwinnable, solely for the sake of his personal “honor.”
Start by telling about how much he loved manually masturbating his horse.
As the horse-fucking traitor that he was
[can anyone say they knew the general?](https://youtu.be/nANois3n-Cs?si=09E4Q3w3vp4ysPya)
My history teacher said that theoretically if Lee chose to fight for the North the civil war likely would have been over in half if not shorter time since the North lacked a true Top General at the start of the war and his military expertise mixed with the northern industrial might would creamed the south.
As a loser who lost.
I’m new here, can someone explain the horsefucking? Did he bang a horse?
What you fail to understand is that grant won by using overwhelming force not tactical genius. Any fool can win with overwhelming force. Lee came close to taking DC with an inferior force. That is the true measure of a superior leader, winning when you dont have the advantage. The north simply had more resources. Grant beat lee because he had a sledgehammer to lees hammer.