Posted on 06/22/2018 11:46:12 AM PDT by DIRTYSECRET
That was according to my 8th grade history teacher-retired military. The only one who came close was MacArthur. That brings up the politics of the left. If it is true that Lee was a great General isn't it at least worth acknowledging? This tearing down of statues should stop. Educated persons should acknowledge the truth. It's the left that's the intelligent ones as they would have us believe. I see no conservatives standing up for this truth. The Senate GOP candidate in Virginia should start an 'intellectual' conversation on Lee and let the left react. Don't wait for a baiting reporter to to knee-jerk him into a quick response that they can interpret their own way.
Rhode Island’s own Nathaniel Greene....and, of course, Stone wall Jackson!
“It is all my fault” - Gen Robert E Lee, upon being notified by Major Pickett that he “had no more men.”
“Joining the military was the worst decision of my life” - Gen Robert E Lee
It appears that Gen Lee’s own opinion of his prowess was somewhat more circumspect. The deaths of his own (and likely, the Union’s men) weighed heavily on his soul in his last years. He threw in his lot with the rebels and fought in a cause that was evil and unconstitutional. A half a million men (and who knows how many civilians) died as a direct result - and his prowess as a general prolonged the suffering. He was in the end, a tragic figure, but deserves no sympathy for his role in the Civil War.
Lincoln, OTOH, had done NOTHING (other than win the election of 1860) that would justify Southern secession. In fact, HE WASN’T EVENT PRESIDENT YET WHEN IT OCCURED!! (He took his oath in March 1861, months after the Southern states voted to secede.
He had no choice but to fight to save the Union against the Secessionists. To do anything else would have been an abrogation of his OATH of office.
Agree 100%.
Stuart could have flanked Little Round Top; it probably would have been over.
So many of the Civil War battles turned on the simplest of contingencies.
Had Lee won at Gettysburg he would still have been hundreds of miles inside Union territory, with tens of thousands of wounded to care for, no supply line to the Confederacy, and most of his ammunition used up. He would not have gone after Washington or Baltimore or Philadelphia. He would have gone home. He had no choice.
Why not George Washington as greatest General?
I vote Bedford Forrest, Patton on a horse.
“...but Grant was America’s greatest General.
What cemented Grant’s greatness was his overall strategy during the Overland Campaign. He engaged what was the South’s greatest asset, the ANV, and battered it ‘til it was pinned up against the James River. His continual outflanking of Lee was the key. Grant’s army was in turn battered by the ANV - but he was able to replace those losses. Lee couldn’t.
Stuart tried on the third day. Custer blocked him.
PING for later
It was a sad, costly time of our history. And... a huge number of deaths were the direct result of Grant's complete disregard for casualties in his strategy of 'human waves' against fortified positions.
THIS.
Grant was a butcher of his own men.
What is overlooked is the fact that when Stuart took off on his ride Lee retained half his cavalry with him. If it did a poor job of screening the ANV then it's because Lee didn't deploy it effectively.
“...He had no choice...”
He was headed for DC two years earlier when McLellan (may he burn in military hell) stopped him at Antietam. He escaped back across the Potomac and was going back.
Had he won Gettysburg, I think he would have found a way to continue.
Sorry, but you only have logic on your side.
Grant and Lee commanded armies for about the same amount of time - Grant actually commanded for several months longer. Yet it was Lee's Army of Northern Virginia which suffered the greater total casualties in raw numbers than armies commanded by Grant. So if Grant was a butcher then was Lee a greater one?
The guy who commanded the losing side at Gettysburg?
Not hardly...
The top five have to be Jackson, Lee, Patton, Pershing, and Washington, in alphabetical order; I wouldn't want to try to decide their order of merit. Grant, Harrison, MacArthur, Schwarzkopf, and Sherman would round out the top ten. (Tecumseh would be there, if he had been on our side in 1812.)
None of you understand what family means.
You’ve probably got your mom or dad in a nursing home and told yourself you can’t take care of them so it’s ok. They’ll get better treatment there anyway...Right?
Well there was a time when the idea of shooting down your children, brothers, cousins, uncles, and best friends and neighbors was a bit much...you might say it was unimaginable.
So all of the people that thought that is exactly what LEE should have done tells me that even in the conservative movement there are idiots who have no moral code, no love of kin, and no sense of place. AND I PROMISE YOU THAT NONE OF WERE BORN AND RAISED IN THE SOUTH.
So keep embarrassing yourself by saying the men who WERE CONSCRIPTED BY THEIR LEGAL GOVERNMENT......MARCHED OFF TO FIGHT....AND GAVE IT ALL for their families and kin are somehow not worthy of respect.
Y’all must be trolls or idgits of the first degree.
Not one of ours. He fought for the insurrectionists.
At least among the top three.
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