Robert E. Lee as a Military Commander

Robert E. Lee as a Military Commander

  • Great Military Commander

    Votes: 51 24.1%
  • Good Military Commander

    Votes: 133 62.7%
  • Average Military Commander

    Votes: 23 10.8%
  • Poor Military Commander

    Votes: 4 1.9%
  • Horrible Military Commander

    Votes: 1 0.5%

  • Total voters
    212

Anaxagoras

Banned
Lee was a good theater commander, but he never saw the big picture.

This is an important point. In one letter to Davis, Lee urged that Bragg should bring his entire army to Virginia to reinforce the Army of Northern Virginia "after leaving sufficient garrisons". This statement has always struck me as incredibly naïve and indicative of the fact that Lee never grasped the grand strategic picture of the war.
 
Lee's command at Gettysburg has always struck me (no expert) as bizarre.

Not merely by assuming the tactical offensive against an opponent holding good ground, with internal lines of communication, and a much greater density of men and guns - but doing so by a series of echeloned attacks that he really seems to have thought his C3 was up to managing properly.

Pickett's charge: did he really think that could succeed? Part of the qualities of a really good commander is a sense of the possible - what your forces can realistically do, against the best appreciations of what the enemy has. He fails absolutely on this, in my view.
 
Lee's command at Gettysburg has always struck me (no expert) as bizarre.

Not merely by assuming the tactical offensive against an opponent holding good ground, with internal lines of communication, and a much greater density of men and guns - but doing so by a series of echeloned attacks that he really seems to have thought his C3 was up to managing properly.

"After Chancellorsville, Lee had come to believe that he was invincible, and that his boys were invincible"-Shelby Foote

Pickett's charge: did he really think that could succeed? Part of the qualities of a really good commander is a sense of the possible - what your forces can realistically do, against the best appreciations of what the enemy has. He fails absolutely on this, in my view.

He was counting on Stuart to "effect a breakthrough in the Union rear/center". As if exhausted horseflesh could be pushed as easily as exhausted troopers.

Its worse that that. He wrote (paraphrasing) that there was nothing more powerful (and destructive to enemy morale) than the sight of a large force of infantry charging the enemy in full battle array.

In short, Pickett's Charge.

Problem: He wrote this ONE FULL YEAR AFTER GETTYSBURG!!:eek::mad:
 
Indeed. IMO Pickett's Charge must be regarded as one of the most outrageous follies in warfare, so much lost for literally no gain at all, and that with an army (AoNV) that would always be inferior in numbers. Thats one of the Truths of the ACW in a nutshell, for all the incompetency and failure of the early _1860-62 Union Gen'ls, the AoTP and by extension, the Union had the men to replace, the Confederacy most surely did not :cool:
 
"After Chancellorsville, Lee had come to believe that he was invincible, and that his boys were invincible"-Shelby Foote



He was counting on Stuart to "effect a breakthrough in the Union rear/center". As if exhausted horseflesh could be pushed as easily as exhausted troopers.

Its worse that that. He wrote (paraphrasing) that there was nothing more powerful (and destructive to enemy morale) than the sight of a large force of infantry charging the enemy in full battle array.

In short, Pickett's Charge.

Problem: He wrote this ONE FULL YEAR AFTER GETTYSBURG!!:eek::mad:

In short he thought the Union Army would break at the mere sound of his approach and was shocked that they didn't. :rolleyes:
 
In short he thought the Union Army would break at the mere sound of his approach and was shocked that they didn't. :rolleyes:

Hello: They were defending their own home soil. That seemed to go completely over Lee's head. When told of Meade's appointment, he took that as a sign that as a new commander he would be cautious, and that such a fact would give Lee the chance to get more aggressive.

It never occurred to him that caution can make a man unwilling to risk defeat or give ground.

I don't like to use a fictional source, but Shaara's work "The Killer Angels" is positively filled with references by Confederate commanders at all levels (except Longstreet) overconfidently predicting the timing of "when the Yankees run away".:rolleyes:
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Malvern Hill...

Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Malvern Hill...

All lessons in the power of the defense in an era of rifled small arms and field artillery.

Two of these things are not like the other.

Best,
 
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