The best analysis I ever read of Lee was that he would use a strategy that won once until it failed, then pick another strategy and use it until it failed, and the only reason the Union didn't catch on sooner was internal pissing matches.
Replies
That, and idiots like Hooker, who thought marching thousands of men at entrenched Confederate soldiers on the heights overlooking a river crossing was a good idea Lee looks good only in comparison with capering, gibbering meatheads like McClellan
aug 29, 2025, 8:04 pm • 3 1 • view
Unfortunately the Union Army had a lot of those guys and they all had to get fired before the competent leaders could take the wheel.
aug 29, 2025, 8:04 pm • 3 0 • view
In my teens I got a hold of the Army of the Potomac series of books, and just couldn't wrap my mind around the stunning incompetence of Union leadership until Grant & Sherman Then I started reading about WWI and Gen. Haig in Passchendaele www.nam.ac.uk/explore/batt...
aug 29, 2025, 8:09 pm • 5 1 • view
I did an essay on Paschendale in high school. I recall only that the casualties per foot to gained space were very upsetting.
aug 29, 2025, 8:18 pm • 3 1 • view
I remember seeing a grainy B&W movie of Brits climbing out of mud pits and scrambling forward in this awful hellscape, as the narrator intoned, "If all the men who died in this little valley tried to stand up, there would not be room for them" made an impression
aug 29, 2025, 8:25 pm • 4 1 • view
That's a wonderful approach for playcalling in sports. Spam a play to keep scoring until the defense adjusts, then try another one. It is immensely less useful in war when failure means losing a lot of men and resources
aug 29, 2025, 8:13 pm • 15 1 • view
Tells you what Lee didn't give much of a shit about huh.
aug 29, 2025, 8:13 pm • 14 0 • view
Which further highlights his incompetence given that he had less resources than the North to begin with. Willing to sacrifice men and resources if you have an overwhelming advantage in both and could live with the human cost is one thing. But when you're clearly at a deficit is sheer stupidity.
aug 29, 2025, 8:18 pm • 12 2 • view
But Joseph Johnston is conversely not held up as the Confederacy's greatest general for his preserving his troops. I don't see many people take a consistent approach to it.
aug 30, 2025, 2:15 am • 1 0 • view
Johnston was arguably one of the few Confederates who grasped that the Union had a pretty much endless supply of troops due to immigration and the South did not.
aug 30, 2025, 2:22 pm • 0 0 • view
Did that benefit the fronts he oversaw much?
aug 31, 2025, 1:30 am • 0 0 • view
Not sure if that should be the only or major qualification for being considered a great general for that period.
aug 30, 2025, 2:54 am • 0 0 • view