Lee almost took it too, he didn’t want to secede but he felt like he was betraying his fellow statesmen in Virginia. People forget that before the civil war people didn’t think of themselves as Americans, they thought of themselves as citizens of whatever state they were from.
From what I’ve read, before the War people said “…the United States are…” and after they changed it to “…the United States IS…”
Also, I like the stories that the British had agents who privately encouraged the South to fight the North in order to keep America weak. Putin didn’t invent anything new
On the contrary, I think your comment is a bit of a stretch in the other direction. Leaving variances in talent among individuals aside, the officers on both sides were broadly comparable because they had all gone through the same West Point training and were colleagues in the same chain of command, with the same strategy and doctrine, until the Southern ones turned traitor.
I haven’t seen that part disputed? To my knowledge there was a very good reason Lee was the superintendent at the US Military Academy and was even offered a Union command before Virginia seceded, and this pattern holds with his underlings too. A lot of Confederate victories were beating odd against bigger Union armies.
I understood that pro-union misinformation and propaganda and poor understanding of history is orders of magnitude less harmful than pro-confederate, but it still bothers me. Lee was an incredible general. Jackson, Longstreet, even Early were excellent tacticians. The union could not field anyone who was a match for them until Grant and Sherman.
“Best generals available” might be a bit of a stretch. That’s a bit of the Lost Cause mythology still wrattling about the internet.
https://history.info/did-you-know/general-lee-offered-command-union-army/
Lincoln offered Lee command of the Union Army.
Lee almost took it too, he didn’t want to secede but he felt like he was betraying his fellow statesmen in Virginia. People forget that before the civil war people didn’t think of themselves as Americans, they thought of themselves as citizens of whatever state they were from.
From what I’ve read, before the War people said “…the United States are…” and after they changed it to “…the United States IS…”
Also, I like the stories that the British had agents who privately encouraged the South to fight the North in order to keep America weak. Putin didn’t invent anything new
From what you’ve read in… the script of National Treasure?
On the contrary, I think your comment is a bit of a stretch in the other direction. Leaving variances in talent among individuals aside, the officers on both sides were broadly comparable because they had all gone through the same West Point training and were colleagues in the same chain of command, with the same strategy and doctrine, until the Southern ones turned traitor.
I haven’t seen that part disputed? To my knowledge there was a very good reason Lee was the superintendent at the US Military Academy and was even offered a Union command before Virginia seceded, and this pattern holds with his underlings too. A lot of Confederate victories were beating odd against bigger Union armies.
When the upper threshold for greatness available to you is a 3/10, a 2.5 looks pretty good.
I understood that pro-union misinformation and propaganda and poor understanding of history is orders of magnitude less harmful than pro-confederate, but it still bothers me. Lee was an incredible general. Jackson, Longstreet, even Early were excellent tacticians. The union could not field anyone who was a match for them until Grant and Sherman.
I love “wrattling”. kind of a wrestling-meets-defective-machinery.
Wasn’t their general first helping to lead the Union army before Virginia turned against the Union and he turned with them?
Lee was offered comman of the union army by Lincoln.
That part of the mythos is fairly accurate.
Well it doesn’t help it any that “lost cause” is 100% what some of our elected officials are spouting currently
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy#:~:text=The Lost Cause of the,and not centered on slavery.