re: Donald Trump: Robert E. Lee was a great General, Lincoln had a phobia he couldn't beat Lee

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This is all factually correct, Lee kept crushing every general Lincoln illegally sent south till Grant.

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Lee turned invader and spurred on the single bloodiest day in American history at Antietam all because his Op orders were found wrapped in tobacco left behind in a field. He was fought to a draw that Lincoln called a win and changed the complexion of the war making it about slavery by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation.

Lee invaded again and bled the Army of Northern Virginia white at Gettysburg because the legendary J.E.B. Stuart sought to embellish his previously untarnished reputation and Lee stubbornly refused to listen to his able subordinate James Longstreet who advised him to reposition his Army on more favorable ground between Meade's Army of the Potomac and Washington.

Whether Lee was tired and sick of the slaughter or was just obstinate doesn't matter. In hindsight it was poor generalship on his part at Gettysburg and worse politics by Confederate civilian leaders for invading in the first place.

The invasions compromised the South's pristine claims as the offended and invaded party, resulted in irreplaceable losses and led to the extended horror of a seemingly endless succession of Federal flanking engagements, Cold Harbor being probably the worst of them.

Lee was an honorable man swept up in events vexing to the soul of any man. His lieutenants contributed greatly to his reputation as a great general as much as did the inferiority of the succession of Federal generals facing him prior to Antietam. That said McClellan fought Lee to a draw at Antietam and Meade whipped him at Gettysburg, not Grant.

During the closing months of the war, Grant (and his subordinates) had industrial might and bottomless replacements to fight a gruesome war of attrition. As Lincoln said, Grant knew the arithmetic. Arithmetic Lincoln knew as well and approved.

The only thing I admire Grant for is his deathbed completion of his memoir to care for his family upon his death.

I hardly think of Lincoln at all.
In his mind he needed to be a
demi-dictator to hold the Republic together and became one. Whatever his intentions on post war conciliation, the monstrous anti-Constitutional federal bureaucracy strangling our liberties is in some measure Lincoln's legacy.