Trump: 'Robert E. Lee was a great general'

[Recursion]

134. I might add a slightly different view of that

Lincoln put politically connected and incompetent generals in command of the Army of the Potomac because he had to put them somewhere, and he knew that theater was not going to be decisive. He also put politically connected incompetent generals in the Trans-Mississippi theater, for largely the same reasons.

The Army of the Tennessee got the best generals and the most free hand because Lincoln knew that would be decisive. Within the first year, Kentucky was kept out of the war, Tennessee was knocked out of it (people forget TN was accepted back into the union during the war), Florida was largely out, and Northern Virginia and West Virginia were under Federal control. A year later, Mississippi was out of the war and Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas were cut off from the rest of the Confederacy. Even if Lee had secured a victory somewhere north of the Potomac, whom would he be representing at the negotiating table? A rump CSA of AL, GA, SC, NC, and part of VA?