Free Republic
Browse · Search
Smoky Backroom
Topics · Post Article

To: FrankWild

Nonsense. Lee gets far too much credit for whipping the succession of mediocre/poor generals the Union threw at him the first two years of the war. Lee couldn't whip Meade at Gettysburg and made a spectacularly idiotic mistake known as Pickett's Charge. Lee couldn't whip Grant either even though Grant tried to help him out by sending human wave assalts into sure destruction at the Wilderness and Cold Harbor. The thing that made Grant different from previously unsuccessful Union generals is he wouldn't quit.


104 posted on 07/19/2004 7:15:38 AM PDT by Neville72
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 95 | View Replies ]


To: Neville72
Lee gets far too much credit for whipping the succession of mediocre/poor generals the Union threw at him the first two years of the war.

Lee was one of the last, and one of the greatest, of the post-Napoleanic/pre-modern generals. However, Grant and Sherman were the first of a new breed-the modern general. To them, war was not based on major battles, but rather an ongoing campaign used to grind down the enemey and destroy his will and ability to fight.

Lee never quite grasped that. If he had, he would have dug his army into a defense posture and worn the Union down until support for the war collapsed in the North.

218 posted on 07/19/2004 11:19:17 AM PDT by Modernman ("I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members" -Groucho Marx)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 104 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Smoky Backroom
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson