re: On this day in 1866, Ulysses S. Grant became the first 4-star general in U.S. Army history

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Lee was an idiot. He had a huge advantage from a military POV and couldn't leverage it. Thankfully

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Do tell about his huge advantages, very curious.

US Grant, the man who changed the Confederate flag from stars and bars to all white.

Thank you.

The hero worship of lee is mind boggling to me.

Dude was an idiot.

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Dude was an idiot.

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I wouldn't go that far. In fact...I wouldn't go near that far. I have criticized Robert E. Lee for his lack of big picture thinking, but the man certainly wasn't an idiot. He was schooled in the ways of Napoleonic warfare and that schooling taught him that the advantage lay with the force that attacks first. Every general officer in the Civil War who attended West Point was taught that line of thinking. Offensive warfare was the name of the game. The problem with this line of thinking, however, is that the technology had outgrown the tactics of the period. By the spring of 1864, you began to see trench warfare become more and more of a thing, until the lines began to resemble World War I battlefields by the time armies arrive at Petersburg in June of that year.

Should Lee have been aggressive as he was? In hindsight, I think it's difficult to argue otherwise. He bled his army dry with his aggressive tactics and ended up having very little in the tank when the final showdown began against Grant in May 1864. But the man had some brilliant victories which, if he had the reserves to follow up with, could have turned the war around heavily in his favor. The lack of reserves really cost him at Second Manassas and at Chancellorsville. Had he had additional troops to follow up Longstreet's assault on the plains before Bull Run, or additional troops behind Jackson's initial flank attack in the Wilderness around Chancellorsville, it's very likely the war could have gone much differently.

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Calling him an idiot is internet hyperbole, but seriously, frick him.

He had a path to victory and chose the wrong path.

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I honestly don't know if he wanted the path to victory. He was always torn on state rights and the conservation of the union through Constitutional means.

I agree with you here. I felt like he was conflicted. But the south had major advantages. Labor alone would have made trench warfare problematic for union troops. They were not built or trained for gorilla and siege warfare.

Glory, Glory Hallelujah indeed.

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Thank you.

The hero worship of lee is mind boggling to me.

Dude was an idiot.

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Damn.
Don't tell all the military leaders, strategists, and historians throughout the ages that say otherwise.

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Imagine what Robert E Lee could have done with Grants resources and manpower.

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We'd probably be reunited by a German.

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Today I learned 150 years is known as "throughout the ages".

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No defined time of an 'age'.
But have it your way...

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Don't tell all the military leaders, strategists, and historians throughout the last 159 years that say otherwise.

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Is that better for you, pumpkin?