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In reply to the discussion: WTF... Trump Says Confederate General Robert E. Lee 'Would Have Won Except for Gettysburg' [View all]Wounded Bear
(58,645 posts)He was a great counter puncher, and a good tactician, but with one exception any time he tried to take the strategic initiative, it bombed on him. He gets credit for being audacious, but he inevitably won more often because of ineptitude and indecision from the Union generals, who were usually picked for political reasons, not for their abilities.
Most of Lee's "brilliant" moves were made out of desperation, from being outmaneuvered strategically and having to make desperate decisions to rectify situations. His best offensive campaign, in the Seven Days Battles, was capped by a disastrous and costly frontal assault at Malvern Hill, which wouldn't have been quite so damning if he hadn't repeated the mistake at Gettysburg with Pickett's Charge, that glorious excercise in futility that is marked for some reason as the high water mark of the Confederacy. What it marked was the final death knell of Napoleonic tactics in an era of rifled muskets and massed artillery.
Lee? Character issues aside, he is rather overrated IMHO.