Robert E Lee is a massively overrated general

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

So where is the love for “Stonewall” Jackson among Southerners? I never hear about the idolization of him or his exploits even though he was a better general than Robert E. Lee

He never had the status of Lee but it is there. For instance there is a line in the movie Patton, where he says, "A few weeks ago, they said I was best General since Stonewall Jackson"...


The thing about Jackson is that he was zealous to the point of being reckless and while that served a purpose and won many battles, it is also what got him killed.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

He is not overrated at all.

Of course, you say this, why do you and Yellowhammer, love the Confederacy


Of couse, he’s overrated, he lost the war despite being “one of the best generals at the time”, but it became clear that Grant and McClellan (pre-1864), should have that honor

Winfield Scott was the best American general of those times.

That works, thiugh you could make a case for Taylor or Kearny

I would agree with Taylor.  It also should be noted since this is lost with the current narrative about the nature of the Mexican-American War, that at the time Mexico was not seen as being weak military and they did have numerical advantage in many of the early battles that Taylor ended up winning.

[PSOL]

So where is the love for “Stonewall” Jackson among Southerners? I never hear about the idolization of him or his exploits even though he was a better general than Robert E. Lee

He never had the status of Lee but it is there. For instance there is a line in the movie Patton, where he says, "A few weeks ago, they said I was best General since Stonewall Jackson"...


The thing about Jackson is that he was zealous to the point of being reckless and while that served a purpose and won many battles, it is also what got him killed.

That sounds like someone who should be idolized though, someone who produced results to the death unlike the bumped up corporal that is Loser Lee. The Southern Confederacy Defense Force propaganda department really is crummy.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

So where is the love for “Stonewall” Jackson among Southerners? I never hear about the idolization of him or his exploits even though he was a better general than Robert E. Lee

He never had the status of Lee but it is there. For instance there is a line in the movie Patton, where he says, "A few weeks ago, they said I was best General since Stonewall Jackson"...


The thing about Jackson is that he was zealous to the point of being reckless and while that served a purpose and won many battles, it is also what got him killed.

That sounds like someone who should be idolized though, someone who produced results to the death unlike the bumped up corporal that is Loser Lee. The Southern Confederacy Defense Force propaganda department really is crummy.

What does that mean? Lee was never a Corporal to my knowledge, he went to West Point and was a Lt. Colonel at the start of the war.

Most all of the Civil War Generals were low level officers in the tiny pre-war army.

[PragmaticPopulist]

A good chunk of Lee's success was attributable to generals from the union being incompetent. Like at the Battle of Antietam, Lee was heavily outnumbered, but still suffered fewer casualties than the union.

[Ye We Can]

The best general of the war was unquestionably Ulysses S Grant

[Some of My Best Friends Are Gay]

Mega FF - one of the greatest men in American history.

I almost hope there's a second civil war just so we can whoop the racist hicks' asses all over again.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The thing you have to remember is that Lee was idealized and idolized by his men as early as 1863 and thus by the end of the war, it would have been impossible for Jackson or anyone to supplant him as the "father figure" of the South. Jackson was dead, and Jefferson Davis was a despised coward who tried to sneak away dressed as a woman.  Lee had led the Army through thick and thin and kept a certain degree of respect, even in his surrender that the others had lost or never had to begin with.

Lee was also perfect not just for the Lost Cause south, but for the Union Preservation and nationwide "reconciliation" schools of thought as well. For the north, Lee could be presented as this honorable and dignified Southern General who fought the war as hard as he could, but when it was over, realized it and surrendered. He thus served the North's purpose for almost as much as the lost cause, first in discouraging insurgencies from cropping up in the East like they had in MO and KS and the West generally and then in working restore the unity of the Republic.

You thus see people paying homage to Lee's generalship for decades, FDR praising him in the 1930's, Ike praising him in the 1950's and so on.

Two years ago I saw a lecture on end of the war and its legacy by Gary Gallagher, long a featured presence in most of the Civil War documentaries I grew up with. He broke down the legacy into four basic schools:

Emancipation - War fought to Liberate the Slaves
Union - War fought and won to preserve the Union
Reconciliation - Pointless War between Brothers, Never Should have Happened in the First Place
Lost Cause - South was Right, but was overwhelmed by technology and numbers.

The dominant focus in the North, especially after the collapse of reconstruction was Union Preservation and after the soldiers that fought in the war died off, Reconciliation became the dominant view. This meant that between the South's Lost Cause, and the North's embrace of Reconciliation as opposed to Union Preservation, you see Lee's status reach its peak in the early to mid 20th century with bipartisan praise being heaped on him. The rise of the New Deal Coalition and the decline of Yankee Republicanism demographically in the early 20th century is a big cause for this shift as much as the death of the war veterans themselves.

Only beginning in the 1970s did you get a shift back away from this "Stupid useless War/South was Right but lost to numbers" mentality nationwide, leading to where we are now. Lost Cause is almost completely rejected, Reconciliation seems like unnecessary appeasement and Union preservation is firmly couched in the need for the ending of slavery. It is from this perspective that people to today look on the cult of Robert E Lee with bewilderment and disgust.





 

[ProudModerate2]

- Pickett Charge Happened under his watch

Not only was it under his (Lee's) watch, but it was completely Lee's decision (his strategic plan) to concentrate forces in the center ("Pickett's Charge") on the third-day of battle.
Gen Longstreet objected to the plan, and tried to convince Lee to alter or cancel it.
But Lee did not budge, and instead, Confederate troops were basically slaughtered as they marched though open field (before even reaching Union lines).
A huge failure and huge loss of troops and moral, for the Army of Northern Virginia.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The best general of the war was unquestionably Ulysses S Grant

Grant, Sherman, Sheridan and Thomas were the four that finally ended the war.


I do have a bit of an axe to grind with Grant, Sherman and Sheridan for collectively destroying Warren's career and ensuring that he was not given justice until after he was dead, which was the first time in 20 plus years that the Army or Presidency was not under the control of one of those three people.

Warren saved the AOP at Gettysburg by directing troops to Little Round Top.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

- Pickett Charge Happened under his watch

Not only was it under his (Lee's) watch, but it was completely Lee's decision (his strategic plan) to concentrate forces in the center ("Pickett's Charge") on the third-day of battle.
Gen Longstreet objected to the plan, and tried to convince Lee to alter or cancel it.
But Lee did not budge, and instead, Confederate troops were basically slaughtered as they marched though open field (before even reaching Union lines).
A huge failure and huge loss of troops and moral, for the Army of Northern Virginia.

Longstreet really gets mauled after the war, especially by big time Lost Cause types like Early and others for his actions and for dragging his feet at the battle. Part of this is to shift blame from Lee and counter what Lee himself had said of the battle, "it's all my fault" basically and also because of the fact that Longstreet became a Republican after the war and was friends with Grant.

Longstreet did not want to fight at Gettysburg at all and wanted to stay on the defensive. He wanted to move South and East and try to cut the Union off from Washington. Once Lee rejected that, he wanted to go around the Hills and take them from the rear, which Lee rejected as well and then when Hood pursued the same thing with Longstreet, Longstreet had to reject it in turn because Lee had.

It also should be pointed out that Longstreet was always regarded by Lee as being more reliable than Jackson and at several times, Longstreet had to bail Jackson out.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

So where is the love for “Stonewall” Jackson among Southerners? I never hear about the idolization of him or his exploits even though he was a better general than Robert E. Lee

Pretty sure he’s respected, though not deified. I believe it was Patton who told Ike something to the tune of “when we finally getwartime commands, you’ll be Robert E. Lee and I’ll be Stonewall Jackson.”

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

So where is the love for “Stonewall” Jackson among Southerners? I never hear about the idolization of him or his exploits even though he was a better general than Robert E. Lee

Pretty sure he’s respected, though not deified. I believe it was Patton who told Ike something to the tune of “when we finally getwartime commands, you’ll be Robert E. Lee and I’ll be Stonewall Jackson.”

He wasn't wrong either.

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

Robert E. Lee was captured... I thought Donald Trump doesn't like people who were captured?

Lee wasn't captured; he voluntarily surrendered, and went home from Appomattox.

Jefferson Davis, on the other hand, WAS captured.

[The Dowager Mod]

Ulysses S. Grant was born on this day in 1822.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Of course he is. He was the natural choice to become the mythologized personification of wounded Southern pride, they had to make him out to be a demigod.

Pretty much. Jefferson Davis is even more of an embarrassment, so they couldn't use him.

[ProudModerate2]

Of course he is. He was the natural choice to become the mythologized personification of wounded Southern pride, they had to make him out to be a demigod.

Pretty much. Jefferson Davis is even more of an embarrassment, so they couldn't use him.

But let's remember .... the South also erected Jefferson Davis statues.
The Honor-Of-Filth for the South, just didn't involve their generals, but the very top policy makers of those who wanted to keep slavery alive.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Of course he is. He was the natural choice to become the mythologized personification of wounded Southern pride, they had to make him out to be a demigod.

Pretty much. Jefferson Davis is even more of an embarrassment, so they couldn't use him.

But let's remember .... the South also erected Jefferson Davis statues.
The Honor-Of-Filth for the South, just didn't involve their generals, but the very top policy makers of those who wanted to keep slavery alive.

True, but Davis is by far less mainstream than Lee is when it comes to Confederate "heroes."

[ProudModerate2]

Of course he is. He was the natural choice to become the mythologized personification of wounded Southern pride, they had to make him out to be a demigod.

Pretty much. Jefferson Davis is even more of an embarrassment, so they couldn't use him.

But let's remember .... the South also erected Jefferson Davis statues.
The Honor-Of-Filth for the South, just didn't involve their generals, but the very top policy makers of those who wanted to keep slavery alive.

True, but Davis is by far less mainstream than Lee is when it comes to Confederate "heroes."

Agree.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Of course he is. He was the natural choice to become the mythologized personification of wounded Southern pride, they had to make him out to be a demigod.

Pretty much. Jefferson Davis is even more of an embarrassment, so they couldn't use him.

And Davis embodied the political cause of the Confederacy, which even during the heyday of Reconciliation history was much harder to cast in a heroic light: Northerners could accept Lee as a great general who opposed disunion but supported his state when fighting broke out, and called for both sides to set aside their differences and rebuild when it was over; but Davis was another matter. On top of that, deifying Lee meant shifting the blame for losing the war to Davis' shoulders, so Southerners didn't much care for him either.

[Senator Incitatus]

Lee is credited by the "tallest dwarf" syndrome, but in this case he was the most admirable traitor (maybe next to Jeff Davis). Still a traitor.

Rommel is another example as is, sadly, George Washington (in terms of military ability).

[lfromnj]

Lee is credited by the "tallest dwarf" syndrome, but in this case he was the most admirable traitor (maybe next to Jeff Davis). Still a traitor.

Rommel is another example as is, sadly, George Washington (in terms of military ability).

Wouldn't the most admirable traitor be someone like Longstreet or Mahone?

[OSR stands with Israel]

Lee is credited by the "tallest dwarf" syndrome, but in this case he was the most admirable traitor (maybe next to Jeff Davis). Still a traitor.

Rommel is another example as is, sadly, George Washington (in terms of military ability).

Wouldn't the most admirable traitor be someone like Longstreet or Mahone?

This is what Lee wiki page says about him:

By this time, Lee had assumed supreme command of the remaining Southern armies; other Confederate forces swiftly capitulated after his surrender. Lee rejected the proposal of a sustained insurgency against the Union and called for reconciliation between the two sides.

Lee accepted "the extinction of slavery" provided for by the Thirteenth Amendment,

Lee opposed the construction of public memorials to Confederate rebellion on the grounds that they would prevent the healing of wounds inflicted during the war

He is still obviously a traitor and obviously Massive HP but he unlike most of the Confederate leadership probably didnt join their cause due to the desire of preserving the evil institution of slavery.

[Senator Incitatus]

Lee is credited by the "tallest dwarf" syndrome, but in this case he was the most admirable traitor (maybe next to Jeff Davis). Still a traitor.

Rommel is another example as is, sadly, George Washington (in terms of military ability).

Wouldn't the most admirable traitor be someone like Longstreet or Mahone?

No, because they need to be someone that traitors can still admire.

[ProudModerate2]

Lee is credited by the "tallest dwarf" syndrome, but in this case he was the most admirable traitor (maybe next to Jeff Davis). Still a traitor.

Rommel is another example as is, sadly, George Washington (in terms of military ability).

I would be interested if you could expand on your position/opinion on this, in regards to Rommel ("in terms of military ability").