Was Lee one of great generals of history?

Was Lee one of great generals of history?
He literally had nothing going for him (besides perhaps the incompetence of some opponents), and he had a very good run.
His forces were inferior in all aspects. His country was far weaker in all aspects.
Yet he managed a string of victories and prolonged the war substantially.
If Lee accepted the leadership of Federal army, rebellion would be squashed in 1862.

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Lee was a good tactician, but not a good strategists. He could win all the battles he want, but if he can't win the war they were for nothing. This is why Grant was better than him and won the war.

I should've specified, I'm talking about Lee as a leader in operational and tactical sense, not strategic sense.

But anyway, what were Lee's strategic failings?
Gettysburg Campaign?

Then its not really a question. Lee tactics post-civil war have been influential in the military, being studied by U.S officers and foreigners like Trotsky. Lee was regarded highly for his tactics, but as for ending the war early. Maybe? Depending on who takes the stage for the confederacy and this leads to all sorts of shennigans for alt. History.

Lee fighting for the confederacy is one of the reasons the war didn't drag on longer as he told his men to fuck off with fighting and just accept the Union. He was a classy officer who bought into the State first meme.

Well my question was should Lee be regarded as one of great military leaders of history.

Yes if it will make you toothless hicks feel better that a guy who wanted nothing with the rebellion and actually stated it multiple times was a great general and was on your side, as it makes you less toothless hicks somehow then fine, you can consider him whatrver the fuck you want.

Yes, 2nd tier general behind leaders like Napoleon. To take the offensive and win vs superior technology and manpower like he did was extremely impressive.

very good defensive general, obviously not caesar tier or anything but quite good, certainly in the top 100 all time

Objectively he was a great tactician

>t. assblasted antifa fag

why does lee get the rommell treatment so much?

"The results of Lee's faulty decisions were catastrophic. His army suffered 209,000 casualties- 55,000 more than Grant and more than any other Civil War general. Although Lee's army inflicted 240,000 casualties on its opponents (ratio 1:1.15), 117,000 of those occurred in 1864 and 1865, when Lee was on the defensive and Grant engaged in deliberate war of adhesion (achieving attrition and exhaustion) against the army Lee had fatally depleted in 1862 and 1863. Astoundingly (in light of his reputation), Lee's percentage of killed and wounded suffered by his troops were worse than those of his fellow Confederate commanders." By comparison, "For the entire war, Grant's soldiers incurred about 154,000 casualties (killed, wounded, missing, captured) while imposing about 191,000 casualties on their foes" (ratio of 1:1.26)
"Had Lee not squandered the Confederacy's limited resources on offensives during the three preceding years, the Confederacy's 1864 opportunity for victory might have been realized. It was Lee's strategies and tactics that dissipated irreplaceable manpower- even in his victories. His army lost at Malvern Hill, Antietam, and Gettysburg. His army took unnecessarily large losses in those defeats, as well as throughout the entire Seven Days Battles."
"Throughout the Seven Days Battles, Lee's strategy and tactics were extremely aggressive. His strategy was totally offensive. Incredibly, Lee watched thousands of his best troops be slaughtered while charging usually fortified Union positions but did not seem to realize the foolhardiness of such tactics. Lee's Seven Days battle plans were overly complex; he frequently issued vague and discretionary orders to his generals, and then he failed to to supervise their execution through adequate on-the-field command and control."

Good defensive general.

Southerns needed an idol to point to and say "we weren't completely buttblasted".

People worship the wrong Virginian.

One of the problems with Lee was he pushed his men too hard and relied on others too much, and because of this his genius/autistic plans never came into fruition. He was an amazing surveyor, engineer, tactician, etc, but since having to take on an army normal twice the size it simply was not enough to get the job done.

To be fair, the Union Army was seemingly poised to overrun Richmond prior to the Seven Days and Lee had taken command of the army only weeks earlier. He may have felt that he was backed into a corner and the only possible hope was to hit McClellan hard and fast. And it almost paid off even more than it did at the time. McClellan's Army were themselves backed into a corner on the banks of the James for several days. Had the ANV managed to achieve breakthroughs at Glendale and Malvern Hill, they could've laid siege to the Union Army and cut it to pieces.

Who's the second guy?

Of the greatest military leaders in western history, an outsized portion fought in the US Civil War (see list below). The United and Confederate States were both industrial societies equally matched in the training and equipment of their soldiers. They fought the last war to feature set-piece battles using rigid formations between large field armies. The cost of a tactical miscalculation was higher than in any other war in history due to these circumstances. Each side was required to search its officer corps quickly to find the most highly skilled strategists it possessed, replacing its top generals until it settled on capable leaders. This is most evident in Lincoln's search for a man to lead the eastern theater. Grant was a minor general at first. Lee commanded the Army of Northern Virginia from the beginning, which was a stroke of extreme fortune for the Confederates. Not only was Lee a highly skilled field tactician, but he was also an inspirational leader who struck courage into the hearts of his men, like Napoleon and Caesar but unlike Grant.

The greatest western military field tacticians of all time, in order, accounting for social leadership ability
1. Napoleon
2. Alexander
3. Hannibal
4. Lee
5. Grant
6. Scipio Africanus
7. Caesar
8. Sherman
9. Rommel
10. Charlemagne

>Bonekemper

Nope. Unless every battle was Fredericksburg the Confederacy was inevitably going to lose a war of attrition with the Union. The best chance the Confederacy had of winning was to convince the Northerners that the war wasn't worth fighting and that was never going to happen if they kept making progress (Bonekemper doesn't really acknowledge they could have lost Richmond in 1862 if not for the Seven Days) and convincing Britain and France that they were an independent nation. Lee, at least temporarily, was able to convince people of this, and while he likely flew too close to the sun, a major victory on Union ground could have twisted their arms enough to turn the populace against the war effort. It may have been a longshot, but it makes more sense than Bonekemper's vague notion of a "tie" (as though a referee was just going to blow the whistle at some point).

George H. Thomas, native Virginian that decided to stand by the Union. Thought as the third best Union general by many and destroyed Hood's army in 1864.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Henry_Thomas

>Grant, Lee and Sherman in the same list as Nappy, Alexander and Hannibal
Americanism is basically a mental disorder at this point.

At least he didn't bring up Patton

Haha Jesus Christ please think before posting dumb shit
>Lee in front of Caeser
>The same Caeser whose name LITERALLY became the word for "king" or "emperor" or "leader" in multiple languages

Why put Sherman so high? He was basically a failure at tactics and lost many major engagements unless he was literally against women and children.

>The United and Confederate States were both industrial societies equally matched in the training and equipment of their soldiers.
The state of New York had the same industrial output as the whole of CSA. It was only until the 1880s that Birmingham was a industrial city to speak of.

CSA squandered what little resources in equipment and manpower they had by constantly attacking. They could have not-lost by going for the defensive.

Yes, he was a great leader of men but there is little record of his success against a comparable force in instances where his persona alone wasn't the difference between victory and defeat. His victories were based on inspiring his troops to fight harder than the enemy. My list is based primarily on skills as a field tactician, which is why he ranks seventh.

Hard to say, he was never involved in any major wars.

>The greatest western military field tacticians of all time, in order, accounting for social leadership ability
>1. Napoleon
>2. Alexander
>3. Hannibal
>4. Lee
>5. Grant
>6. Scipio Africanus
>7. Caesar
>8. Sherman
>9. Rommel
>10. Charlemagne


Bro....I'm all bout 'Merica as well, but come on..why do you lie to yourself this way?

Most of his strategic "failures" resulted form confederate constraints on him

>bought into the State first meme.
>bought in
Lol, he came from the families that wrote the constitution, the gentry of Maryland and Virginia. That was the common view among them. And among the New Englanders, who tried to secede during 1812

>rommel over manstein and rokkosovkey
>scipio africanus over caesar

>hought as the third best Union general
Is that supposed to mean anything? lol

He won nearly all his battles without wasting his nation's entire manpower pool unlike nearly all Southern generals.

>He won nearly all his battles without wasting his nation's entire manpower pool u
Probably because his enemy was outnumbered, outproduced, and all alone. Even the union generals I admire, like Sherman, I suspect would be considered nobodies in any other situation.

...

Nah, most Southern generals were just bad in comparison to their Union counterparts.

Were they really? I'd have to study the war more, but I don't think the North could have won a fair fight.