Remembering Robert E. Lee

Canda Free Press ^ | January 16, 2010 | Calvin E. Johnson, Jr.

[STONEWALLS]

“I get the general impression that Lee maybe was not the best Confederate military strategist/tactician...”

...some historians believe that Lee should have paid more attention to Corps commander Dutch Longstreet....Longstreet believed in seizing the best ground possible and letting the North beat itself to death with frontal assaults...like what happened at Petersburg and again at Cold Harbour.

Stonewalls...g-grandson of the last surviving member of I Company 23rd South Carolina Infantry.

[Tallguy]

If Culps Hill falls, the climactic battle gets refought further South, IMHO. Probably in Maryland. We might be talking about the Battle of Frederick, for instance.

Strategically the game was up when the Union Cavalry managed to pierce the screening forces & tell Joe Hooker that Lee was on the move northward. Hooker put the AoP on the road before he was replaced by Meade.

Had the AoP moved in its usual ponderous way, Lee would have been terrorizing the Pennsylvania countryside for a few weeks. I’m certain that Harrisburg & York would have been taken & the rail lines to the Ohio Valley would have been well & truly destroyed.

[Psalm 144]

We would most likely still be living with the negative consequence of such a war today.

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After the war, at the end of his life, Lee regretted capitulation, and wished he had resorted to the sort of warfare which secured our freedom from Great Britain.

[Tallguy]

After the war, at the end of his life, Lee regretted capitulation, and wished he had resorted to the sort of warfare which secured our freedom from Great Britain.

That would be News to all the Civil War historians that laud Lee for NOT undertaking a guerrilla war after the fall of Richmond-Petersburg.

[Psalm 144]

That would be News to all the Civil War historians that laud Lee for NOT undertaking a guerrilla war after the fall of Richmond-Petersburg.
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Lee attended a meeting of ex-Confederates in 1870, during which he expressed regrets about his surrender at Appomattox Court House, given the effects of Republican Reconstruction policy on the South. Speaking to former Confederate Governor of Texas Fletcher Stockdale, he said:

“Governor, if I had foreseen the use those people [Yankees] designed to make of their victory, there would have been no surrender at Appomattox Courthouse; no sir, not by me. Had I foreseen these results of subjugation, I would have preferred to die at Appomattox with my brave men, my sword in my right hand.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Lee#cite_note-53

[Tallguy]

Thanks for the cite. You can be sure that I will look it up. The American Civil War is still very relevant today yet it is surrounded by myth & half-truth. It’s important to be able to draw the correct conclusions.

[vimto]

From the UK: this picture is one of the best portraits ever.

Stunning in almost every way.

[Psalm 144]

I used to have a biography of Lee which IIRC was entitled: “Lee, Man of Marble”. Despite the title it was a positive book, which only brushed on his war record but really focused on his life after the war, including the call to Washington to face charges of treason and possible hanging, which was brought to a sharp halt by Chief Justice Taney and a solid core of Union generals.

Lee did not live long after the Civil War, but his life was nevertheless quite eventful and constructive post-war.

I wish I could remember the author’s name but I do not.