I'm sure he had his shortcomings as a war leader, or any kind of leader. He was quite competent as a cabinet officer and senator, but I think historians have made the case that he wasn't capable of standing up to Lincoln. Too bad. We lost -- we all did -- and liberal-arts-college and Ivy League snots won.
It could be that he was:
The great conflict between labor and capital, under free competition, has ever been how the earnings of labor shall be divided between them. In new and sparsely settled countries, where land is cheap, and food is easily produced, and education and intelligence approximate equality, labor can successfully struggle in this warfare with capital. But this is an exceptional and temporary condition of society. In the Old World this state of things has long since passed away and the conflict with the lower grades of labor has long since ceased. There the competition of unskilled labor which first succumbs to capital, is reduced to a point, scarcely adequate to the continuance of the race. The rate of increase is scarcely one per cent. per annum, and even at that rate, population, until recently, was considered a curse; in short, capital has become master of labor with all the benefits, without the natural burdens of the relation. Source
He was also pretty clearly a racist by today's standards. Even by the standards of his own day, he was quite extreme.
Too bad. We lost -- we all did -- and liberal-arts-college and Ivy League snots won.
As opposed to the Chapel Hill, Washington and Lee, and Sewanee snots?
So you are admitting that ivy league professors like Chamberlain kicked the insurrection general’s hindquarters?
Southern valor, as recorded by history, consisted in part of their care to falsify the casualty records.