What are Confederates proud of?

If Lee had disable the main northern field army and then taken or threaten any of the major cities of the North it might very well had mean that England and the other European powers would have recognize the South and pressure the North into ending the war, less alone ending the popular Northern support for the war.

He came damn near being able to do so.

As it was when the newspapers printed out the list of the Northern dead and wounded from Gettysburg it kicked off the New York City draft riot that to this day was the largest riots in the nation history.

Lee did not disable the main Federal field army in either 1862 or 1863, and in both cases was lucky to get away with what was left of his own army in tact. In neither case did he threaten any major city in the United States. You're babbling your typical, ignorance-based bullshit.

No he did not disable the Northern field army but it was a close run thing indeed and he did get the bulk of his troops out of the North.

The Northern generalship was so bad that he was not press in his retreat.

In any case, without having his battle orders fall into Northern hands or having his cavalry commander going off on a side trip thereby blinding him to the Northern troops movements the outcome would have very likely to not have been good for the North.

Once more it was a close run thing indeed.

No, it was never close. Once again, it does not matter how bad the opposition is, that's no proof of genius, or even virtue on his part. Losing his operational orders was evidence of what a shitty staff he had--and given that he made his name as a staff officer to Winfield Scott, that's inexcusable. The inability to command obedience in your subordinate officers is no evidence of command genius. It is bullshit to suggest that Stuart's presence would have given Lee the opportunity to have crushed Meade's army.

It was never close. All you've got is if, if, if . . . if frogs had wings, they might not bump their asses when they hop. You've got nothing. And you know nothing--i'll waste no more time on you.

In a word: barbecue. It is a little-known fact that president Lincoln was going to force North Carolina under the Freedom-of-Information Act to disclose the recipe for its secret BBQ sauce. "From my cold, dead hands", replied North Carolina. It wasn't going to give up its most valuable state secret without a fight. The other Southern States declared secession in solidarity, afraid that their BBQ recipes would be next if this became a precedent. The Yankees, jealous of the South's delicious BBQ, pushed for disclosure. And thus, the War of Northern Aggression began.

You are amusing trying to attack one of the greatest General in the last five hundred years or so.

A man who was thought so highly of at even at the beginning of the conflict that he could had have command of the Northern armies.

A man who skills kept the war going for years longer then the south could had otherwise done.

One of the greatest general? He lost his most important war. Nuff said.

Lucky for the North Lee didn't command their armies.

Either way, Lee was a loser.

How about the second-greatest general of the 1860s (tops)? After all, General Grant kicked his ass, and it's a good thing too.

With overwhelming more troops and others forces Grant surely did but I do not think Grant would had have a prayer of doing so if they had been on more equal footing.

When you can go into a battle and lose more troops then your opponent have at the beginning of the battle and still have more men then your opponent have it kind of hard to lose unless you are completely incompetent.

No other general, in my opinion, could had kept the war going as long as he did given the population and overall war making imbalance between the North and South.

Do you consider it a good thing to keep a war going and get people killed at the rate of 10,000 per month? Wouldn't a genuinely good general have realized that his position was untenable and sought a timely peace instead?

I think it a shame that Lee did not take command of the Northern Army and ended the war in a must shorter time frame and at a far less cost in lives, however that does not change the fact that Lee was a great General who with a must inferior resources did a wonderful job of fighting the civil war on the Southern side.

You do know that Lee was operating under the same system of government that Grant was where the decision on war and peace was at the level of the elected commander and chief IE in the case of the south that would had been Jefferson Davis

Yeah, continuing the lost of life unnecessarily.

There was more then once. in the course of the war, where there was a good chance that the North would decided not to pay the price for a complete victory and reach a settlement with the South.

An to hope for that the North have to believe that the south would fight to the bitter end.

From the beginning the south knew if the north was willing to spend the lives and treasures to win no matter what that they would win.

Lee make the price very high indeed for the North to conquered the south and by doing so gave the south it best hope for independent if not on the battlefield then at the peace table.

Is there any evidence that Lee impressed upon Davis that the war was unwinnable? (That's a genuine question, I don't know what the answer is.) It falls squarely within the responsibilty of a top-ranking general to tell political leaders the truth about the military situation.

The war was about saving the country and the by product was to end slavery.

Never argue with a fool; onlookers may not be able to tell the difference. —Mark Twain

Setanta and I have had our differences, but he does know a lot about History. BillRM has problems spelling the word.

From a purely military viewpoint the war was never winnable for the south from the beginning if the North had the willpower to go the limit.

That was never the question the question was could the south made the price beyond the willingness of the north to paid.

Hell if England had been willing to throw it checkbook completely open the colonies could never had militarily won the revolutionary war.

There is normally more ways to win a conflict then the battlefield.

Footnote the north Vietnamese never won a major battle against the US yet they won the war.

There's no doubt in my mind that the best, most modern American general officer during that war was George Henry Thomas. He was from Virginia, and h remained loyal to his oath and served the United States. On the southern side, i'd rate Joseph Eggleston Johnston as the most skillful, and the most realistic. He saved the confederacy from the incompetence and despair of Beauregard during the first battle of Manassas. Again and again, he successfully retreated in the face of superior force, the most difficult task a commander can undertake. But, in the eyes of the southern hotheads, that was his great fault. They wanted their troops to savagely attack the invaders relentlessly, which is why they came to love Lee. I suspect that Johnston soon realized the ware was "un-winnable," and that that governed his behavior. Lee replaced him in 1862 when he was wounded in battle, and immediately launched his almost suicidal series of attacks which became know as the Seven Days. The southern public was delirious.

After Bragg was all but crushed in the triple battle of Lookout Mountain/Tunnel Hill/Missionary Ridge (November, 1863), Johnston was sent to extricate the remnant of the Army of the Tennessee. (At Missionary Ridge, the first Federal officer to the summit was "the boy colonel," Arthur MacArthur; his son, Douglas MacArthur, would also have an illustrious military career.) He (Johnston) then fell back on Atlanta, fighting stubbornly and well, in, once again, the most difficult of situations. His men complained that they had to take the harness from dead horses before they were allowed to fall back. At Atlanta, the demands of an unsatisfied and bloodthirsty public lead to him being replaced by John Bell Hood, who attacked relentlessly and badly. Most of the more than 30,000 southern casualties were squandered by Hood. Hood then fell back on Milledgeville, which was then the capital of Georgia, not Atlanta. Sherman, whose task it had been to destroy Hood's army, after failing to trap him there, turned to the southeast and began his march to the sea. Grant wrote orders for him which justified his decision after the fact. (It was understandable--at a time when the army thought of Grant as an incompetent drunkard, and Sherman as mentally unstable, the two men stood by one another.)

Hood then moved west and began marching back to Tennessee, snapping up small garrisons and taking in "volunteers," raising his forces to about 40,000. George H. Thomas, whose men had overrun Missionary Ridge, making the march on Atlanta possible, had had his best troops taken away from him for Sherman's army, and was stripped of his horses and mules--his transport. He now faced an invading army with little more than he had had when he returned to Nashville. He was able, however, to build up an army with drafts of troops from all over the western theater, and commandeered every horse and mule he could lay his hands on. Hood obliged with one more fit of suicidal attacks on the field works of Gen. Schofield, Thomas' subordinate, at Columbia, Tennessee. He then marched on Nashville, making a rather paltry attempt to besiege the city. Grant wanted Thomas to attack immediately, but Thomas proceeded in his typically ponderous and methodical manner, and Grant had actually ordered the relief of Thomas, but the battle was under way before John Logan could comply with the order. Thomas had waited out a typical mid-South storm of freezing rain, and on December 15, launched his attack, having by then assembled more than 50,000 troops. As was the case with all of Thomas' actions, after meticulous preparation, his troops were relentless. (Grant hated him, i suspect because he consistently made Grant look like a fool.) In a running battle which lasted for almost two weeks, and with "cavalry" divisions formed by the simple expedient of mounting infantry on the horses and mules he had scraped up, his forces drove Hoods army out of their entrenchments, and back to the Tennessee river, where, on December 28, in Alabama, the last attack was made. Hood had managed to escape, but his army was scattered and, in Alabama, his pontoon train was captured, meaning that he could not cross major rivers as a coherent force. He had lost all of his artillery and more than a third of his force. Effectively, the Army of the Tennessee ceased to exist. Thomas had accomplished what Sherman had not, and the task that Sherman had abandoned--but you would not have wanted to point that out to Grant.

Some of the survivors of Hoods army made their way over the mountains, and joined the scratch force the Joe Johnston was assembling to face Sherman. In March, 1865, Johnston fought Sherman at Bentonville, North Carolina, badly outnumbered. He lost between 2500 and 3000 men, mostly the survivors of the Army of the Tennessee, who did actually know how to fight. In the night, Johnston, as ever, successfully retreated with the survivors and marched to the Durham, North Carolina area. Learning of Lee's surrender, he surrendered to Sherman on April 26, 1865.

Any suggestion that southern officers (apart from Thomas, who fought for the United States) showed military brilliance would be laughable, were it not for the sea of blood which had been spilled. The only other southerner who consistently showed a high degree of competence was Joe Johnston, and i truly believe that by the middle of 1862, he knew the war was lost.