re: The Top 10 Greatest Generals of All-Time - According to Mathematics

You should read Rebel Yell. It’s a great look at him. He was a damn stickler at VMI.

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"Captured" has always been included in casualty counts, genius. He took an entire army off of the Confederate order of battle. 30,000 men the Confederacy would never be able to use again at a time when their lack of manpower was beginning to show in the conflict.

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The difference in the Rebel armies in the west and the East was night and day. After Shiloh the South really didn’t very little with what they had available. Their forces were scattered, their leadership ineffective and they really had no chance after Shiloh.
Grant was far superior.

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Robert E. Lee, is so far below him on the list that he actually has a negative score.

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Lee was a good general but I wouldn't truly think he should be on this list. The one major war he had the reigns on he lost. It would have been interesting to see what he did if he had command of the CSA at the beginning of the war. I think his defensive tactics were overall pretty elite, can't say the same for his offensive, and there were other areas of weakness also with Lee.

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Lee didn’t lose the war. He wasn’t Jeff Davis.

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Well ultimately Davis was the one in charge so you're correct. I think Lee gets much undeserved bashing on here, and at the same time, maybe too much praise by us southerners. People like a good David vs Goliath story and Lee was the underdog who in reality put up a pretty good fight with what he had. But he doesn't deserve to be on this list is mostly what I"m saying.

No Genghis Khan?

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Although his performance on the battlefield is clearly much better than those of his contemporaries, it should be noted that his Civil War arch-rival, Robert E. Lee, is so far below him on the list that he actually has a negative score.

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Lol and after reading all these stupid arse OT "history" threads you would think REL would be #1

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So you have no real criteria or method, just your feelings.


The OP list follows a certain criteria and method and that is the list that arose.

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Yes I threw together a casual list on a casual thread on the OT where everyone is debating the list through their own reasoning's. If you want to be all scientific and create your own model for calculating the best generals to rebuke my post go ahead. Otherwise you can kindly frick off

Where could I find that information? I know the final weeks of the war, Union soldiers were being slaughtered.

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Where could I find that information?

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The late Edward H. Bonekemper III published a study entitled Grant and Lee: Victorious American and Vanquished Virginian back in 2012 with these statistics. I can quote you the figures from his book. On page 395 he cites James McPherson, the leading historian on the subject of this generation, by quoting the following: "For the war as a whole, Lee's army had a higher casualty rate than the armies commanded by Grant. The romantic glorification of the Army of Northern Virginia by generations of Lost Cause writers has obscured this truth."

From 1862-1865, Bonekemper writes, Lee's army suffered 209,000 combined casualties while Grant's suffered a combined 153,642 casualties. While Lee inflicted 55,000 casualties on Grant's army (43% of his total force) in the Overland Campaign of 1864, he did so while on the defensive and lost over 30,000 (47% of his force) of his own soldiers in the process. So while Lee inflicted more casualties on Grant, Grant took out a more sizable chunk of Lee's army in the process.