re: Born on this day 202 years ago…

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The others tried to get cute with tactics where they got schooled by Lee and Stonewall.

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Oh, yeah. They got very cute with their tactics. McClellan loved to retreat after winning tactical victories against Lee just outside of Richmond. Very cute and very original. Pope loved to get cute with his tactics by ignoring virtually every report from his corps commanders that Lee and Longstreet had arrived in force on his left flank. Burnside was probably the cutest of all. Rather than rethinking his strategy and finding another place to cross the Rappahannock, he decided to get cute with Lee, cross right in front of him, and then march his army across swaths of open ground into entrenched Confederate positions located on high ground. Super cute that was. And then Hooker got cute by abandoning the initiative and giving it to Lee before retreating from the field against the advice of all of his subordinates despite the fact that less than half of the army had been engaged in combat.