So Robert E Lee has fallen out of favor and the battle of Gettysburg was a beautiful thing

[Ping Tung]

10. Beautiful? Says the Bone Spur General who dodged all that "beauty".

It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it. Robert E. Lee

The Confederacy was losing the war despite the victories at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. Vicksburg was about to fall (and did the day after Gettysburg). There were food riots in Richmond because the government was near broke and inflation had made Confederate money worthless.

After Vicksburg and Gettysburg and the tightening noose of the blockade U.S. Grant took over the Union armies. He and Lincoln knew how to use them to not just defeat the Confederacy but crush it with the available brute force.