Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth
From my reading Lee's strategic decision to invade the North in the first place, and tactics at Gettysburg, do not hold up well to scrutiny. Longstreet knew better, but Lee valued Longstreet much less than he had Stonewall Jackson.
|
It was the same gamble Washington made; he can't hold them off forever, the other side has almost unlimited resources. His only path to victory was taking Washington, or getting Europe to back them and provide resources.
The narrative of Gettysburg today is largely writ by Longstreet's memoirs, who Lee never criticized for his almost outright insubordination and screwing up the timing of what was supposed to be, in Lee's plan, a multi-pronged action with a lot more than Pickett's division going up alone in a scene of astounding courage and little chance of survival. Longstreet is one of the great generals in American history himself outside of this, there can be a long debate about whether Lee's battle plan was a good idea or not, but Longstreet's disbelief in it (at best, there's a reasoned argument that he straight up ruined it by delaying for hours for seemingly no actual reason) ensured the failure. My personal opinion is that his army of 1862 may well have triumphed over Meade, but his reconstituted 1863 army with a lot of new leaders that were above their talent level as senior staff kept going, was not capable of the precision they had demonstrated before. Lee's 1862 campaigns are some of the best fought in military history, after that it's the impressive northern invasion ending in a wrong decision that lost the only chance the South really had. If he had not done rolled those dice, the South wasn't likely to ever have a better chance at DC or foreign backing than they did then. After Gettysburg it's the long and slow inevitable failure. Lee's generalship is hard to get an honest assessment of these days; the competing traditions of his near-hagiographic reputation after the war and the modern absolute hatred of him as a devil of history because he does not fit our politics of the present.
Washington and Lee both had to really roll the dice. Washington won. Lee lost. Both are among the most interesting of Americans, and hard to penetrate the surviving numerous records they left behind to really 'know'. They had a lot more in common than their familial relations and similar military positions.
I really need a good Longstreet CDV; and some of Washington's excellent commanders don't have very many card options, like Nathaniel Greene. Historic Autographs put out a really cool set entirely dedicated to Washington recently I picked up and really had fun with.