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.
It’s very difficult to compare different generals from different eras who operated in very different circumstances. That said, if Lee was not THE best he was certainly one of the best. What he accomplished with an army that was always significantly smaller, less well armed and vastly less well supplied was remarkable. He won battle after battle which, on paper his army should have had no realistic chance of victory in.
Very good discussion gents. Many could say that he was great but there are others to consider when it comes to ‘greatest’. I think we need another “Viet Nam was a noble cause” speech in regards to Lee. Which politician will stand up to political correctness? Lee’s 160th birthday is in 2019 I believe.
George Washington, then U.S. Grant. Washington accomplished more with less than just about any general in history against the global superpower of the day. Grant won every battle and accomplished every strategic objective, whether outnumbered or not. He understood how technology was changing modern warfare and adapted. As for the south, I think Longstreet was their best general. He was cut from the same cloth as Grant, IMHO.
Lee failed twice to invade the north, and ultimately lost. As for MacArthur he was methodical, but made two colossal errors that cost the lives of many troops. First he allowed the Air Force to be destroyed lined up on the ground at Clark Field eight hours after Pearl Harbor. Second he ignored the overwhelming evidence that China had infiltrated a half million troops into North Korea including captured Chinese soldiers, because he held the Chinese in contempt as soldiers. He also allowed them to not build proper defensive positions in case they needed to retreat, unlike the Marines who build firebases along the way. The result was the destruction of his 10th Corps (that he named after Ceasar’s 10th legion). Those two blunders bring him down though he was still a great general.
Agreed.
I think Jackson was the brains of Lee’s operation.
People don’t realize that the United States was a much different place back then. The states and the people granted power to the federal government, not the other way around. In essence, each state was a separate country and their first loyalty was to their state.
Another thing lost in the shuffle is the fact that states voluntarily entered the union. Why can’t they just as voluntarily secede from it? Otherwise involuntarily forcing a state to remain in the union against its will is a form of slavery itself.
It’s also my understanding that:
-The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court at the time rendered an opinion stating that very thing, that states can just as voluntarily secede from the union as they can join the union, and Lincoln threatened to imprison him.
-Lincoln also imprisoned 20,000 newspaper reporters and editors during the war, for writing stories he didn’t like.
-Lincoln also imprisoned the entire Maryland legislature during the war because he feared they’d vote to secede.
-Lincoln’s much heralded Emancipation Proclamation only freed the slaves in the Confederacy, an area he didn’t control. The northern slaves weren’t freed until the end of the war. His Emancipation Proclamation was only an effort to create a slave revolt in the Confederacy.
-Lincoln is on record repeatedly calling for all the slaves to be rounded up and returned to Africa.
-Before the war, the states had the powers the Constitution prescribed. Lincoln ended that, creating the foundation for the federal behemoth that we now have.
-His original war aim was to preserve the union. He eventually changed the war aim to free the slaves, and at that point he had wholesale desertions from his army.
MacArthur was a Republican who quarreled with Truman so historians will never give him any credit.
Philippines in 41'-42' he was saddled with the incompetent Brereton in command of his Air Forces who when ordered to disperse the B-17's instead kept most of them at Clark so he could party with their officers and hit on their wives.
The New Guinea campaign was actually a masterpiece. He never lost an amphibious assault at a time when that was a synonym for epic disaster.
Then there was Inchon.
Defending your homeland from an attack by a powerful slave owning nation like the USA is not evil. It is the most honorable thing you can do.
And the US Constitution said nothing on the subject. The Declaration of Independence (which is the mother of the US Constitution) says all that needs to be said on the subject.
Irrelevant to my point entirely. I conceded to Lee’s losses before Grant-Lee went head to head (read my post). My point remains entirely: Grant entered the Overland Campaign with around a 160 thousand men to Lee’s 65 thousand. Grant chose to drive, throw, push and (at times) recklessly waist his men against Lee because Lee would run out of men a lot quicker than he would.
To quote the general himself, "If it's right at the top, it's right at the bottom."
Inchon was brilliant, but it was negated by his stubborn refusal to accept the reality presented to him by his intelligence officers that a half million Chinese were surrounding our troops.
There were even some Southerners that stayed loyal to the Union. One of the great Union generals, George Henry Thomas was a Virginian. But by and large, it was split between North and South. A lot of people in the South decided “Lincoln is not my President!” Where have we heard that before?
Basis Lee's piety versus Grant's hard drinking (costing him rank in 1854), I would say a pure war of bloody attrition was not something Lee would do.
His campaign into PA was to get a decisive victory - getting France to recognize the South - and end the war.
The slaves at Arlington were not Lee’s. They belonged the his father law, George Washington Parke Custis. He died in 1857. Lee was appointed executor of the Custis will. Lee was required to free the Custis slaves within 5 years of Custis’s death or whenever the estates bills and legacies had been paid off. Lee freed the last remaining Custis slaves in Dec.1862.
“Grant chose to drive, throw, push and (at times) recklessly waist his men against Lee because Lee would run out of men a lot quicker than he would.”
Within six weeks of the start of the Overland Campaign, Grant had Lee’s army penned up in the works around Petersburg. Yes he lost a large number of men, but victory never comes cheaply.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Almond
The China intervention was a screw up by Almond dispersing X Corp.
And as the General on the ground he was telling MacArthur in Tokyo not to worry about the Chinese.
Interesting point I discovered a month or so ago. Lee was stationed in Texas, but somehow he was in Washington DC to be offered command of the Army on April 17th. The surrender of Sumter took place April 13th.
Why was Lee in Washington? Did they send him orders to come back to Washington just so they could hand him command of the army, and if they did, does this not imply that they had made up their mind to be at war with the South prior to April 12?
In that era, one did not simply get word to someone in Texas and have them back in Washington DC in Four days. It took much longer than that.
It implies fore knowledge of war, and who would have that more so than the man with the power and intent of starting it?
Probably because the North was much more urbanized, and many of its people had become completely detached from the land on which they lived.
If you look at a list of the 50 largest cities of the U.S. in 1860, you'll find the following in Confederate states:
#6 -- New Orleans, LA
#22 -- Charleston, SC
#25 -- Richmond, VA
#27 -- Mobile, AL
#38 -- Memphis, TN
#41 -- Savannah, GA
#50 -- Petersburg, VA
That's it. The South was largely agrarian, and I suspect that tends to make people much more connected to the place where they live.
Well, of course, that’s true, West Virginia being the prime example. It just shows you how this tore up the country and, obviously, the wounds are not healed yet - at least, not here on FR! Lee certainly mulled over taking charge of the Union forces before he decided he couldn’t fight his “own country.” So he had some internal conflicts originally. What a nightmare it was...
from 1862 till the end of the war, the 2nd larges city in the Confederacy was wherever the Army of the Potomac was camped.
High tariffs had nothing to do with the South wanting to leave the union according to Northern Historians. (see tag line). The South did not launch a large and bloody rebellion. They wanted to leave and were attacked to prevent them from going.
Which is what Tory Loyalists said of George Washington until their side lost and they left for Canada.
Yes, he did exactly the right thing at the right time, leading the 20th Maine in (what I thought it was remembered as) the “swinging gate” maneuver.
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