Oh, come off it. Bee was good, there's no question about it, but the 'greatest in the history of the world'? Please. I know Southrons like to look to him as a leading figure, and I get that his post-war military and political career gave them someone to rally behind after the failure of the Confederacy. But, it still gets eye-rollingly bad sometimes.
But, I'll bite - without Bee the war probably ends a bit sooner; he definitely played some masterful games during the last phase of the war that slowed Grant and Sherman's offenses. What's interesting, of course, will be after the war. Bee was one of the few Confederate military figures to rejoin the Union army afterwards (and, he was accepted due to the glowing words he received from Grant. Those two had a 19th century bromance going on by the end). The fact that he came out against slavery as hard as he did, and seemed to do so with real conviction, certainly helped his position.
His modernization of the US army and his alliance with Mahan certainly had some major impacts on the United States which helped it win during the Third Anglo-American War.
Still, I just can't get behind the "greatest of all time" nonsense.
