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Sooooo....Lee was an enslaver and led a rebellion against the government that was by any measure treasonous. This is like saying "I'm not a racist, but you have to admire the organizational skills of lynch mobs."
And a "great general?" Welll....let's look at that /1
And a "great general?" Welll....let's look at that /1
2/ Lee's military reputation has always been sterling; he had good PR both during & after the CW. Compared to his Union counterparts before Grant came east in 1864, he was certainly better. But being better than McClellan is like being less dead than a corpse. Good job, I guess?
3/ Historians, military and otherwise, have argued-and will continue to do so-about Lee's generalship. But it's worth thinking about tactics v. strategy. In other words, what's the larger goal (strategy), and what things will you do to get there (tactics)?
4/ Lee's strategy (as was the case with the CSA in general) was to hold off the N long enough to get foreign recognition, to fight a Fabian war of attrition to take advantage of what they saw as Lincoln's political precarity and their (overestimation) of N support.
5/ Part of Lee's tactics, then, involved invading Union territory. First in 1862 in the Anteitam campaign, then the next year with Gettysburg. Both invasions failed. Lee's retreats were masterful, but his defeats were *huge* politically for Lincoln and the Union war effort
6/ What was the result of Anteitam, for example? A preliminary emancipation proclamation which galvanized the Union war effort and also made it well-nigh impossible for Britain to recognize the Confederacy. So Lee's tactical defeat led to the evisceration of CSA strategic goals.
7/ As for Gettysburg, whatever Lee's thought process was for Pickett's Charge, its failure was a crushing blow. As many historians have argued, right before Pickett's Charge was "the high-water mark of the Confederacy." After...well, you know.
8/ Sure, Lee was able to win significant battles at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and in the Spring of 1864, fight Grant to at least a draw. And his men were remarkably loyal to him, and many revered him as a leader. But don't let that obscure the following realities:
9/ Lee's reputation as a general benefitted enormously from being across the battlefield from inept and incompetent Union commanders like McClellan, Pope, and Hooker. When he faced better generals, he got his hat handed to him.
10/ And, again, it's worth emphasizing what the Cult of Bob-Ed Lee is really doing here. It's a somewhat sanitized way to claim a slaveholder's rebellion was somehow a noble cause, to elide the brutal features of slavery that even Lee himself embodied.
11/ TL; DR: Lee was overrated, and gets a lot of his shine because of:
1. Bad Union generalship
2. Excellent PR/image-molding
3. He's a plausibly genteel symbol for racists to signal their values without being gauche.
1. Bad Union generalship
2. Excellent PR/image-molding
3. He's a plausibly genteel symbol for racists to signal their values without being gauche.
