re: Today marks 161 years since Robert E. Lee's surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox...

People overrate Lee because they confuse winning early fights with being a top tier genius. He looked good partly because he had weaker, disorganized opponents at times, not because he was untouchable.
Hall of Fame status? No. He was competent, but a lot of his reputation is just mythology and uneven conditions getting mistaken for brilliance.

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His decision to charge at Gettysburg against all his generals advice was head scratching though, and arguably lost the south the war.

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There were several issues at play there.

1) It's probable Lee had an MI in the period leading up to Gettysburg. During the battle he suffered from bouts of angina, extreme fatigue, and severe diarrhea, and was not himself,

2) Against explicit orders, JEB Stuart lost touch with the main force as he went on a foraging/supply run. His late arrival gave Lee extremely limited field assessment, poor intel and basically lost the battle). Had Stuart been on hand initially, Lee would have had forces on Little Round Top Day 1, the Union positions on Cemetery Ridge would have been untenable, and the affair would have ended quickly. Lee's official written comment was "The Army was much embarrassed by the absence of the cavalry."

3) The frontal assault (Pickett's charge was not doomed by strategy. The preceding artillery assault on the Union center, the largest in history to that point, should have been devastating, but the gunpowder used was more potent than what the artillery had been accustomed, and the Confederate cannons overshot union lines. Union commanders recognized what was happening, and ordered their largely unscathed center to cease return fire as if they'd been torn up by the barrage.

4) The South had a chance to win the war in 1861 after the First Battle of Bull Run had they pursued retreating Union forces into Washington DC. After that, the war was virtually unwinnable. Even by the Second Battle of Bull Run, Wash DC was impregnable. Perhaps one could argue that Union losses in the North at Gettysburg or elsewhere would have led to McClellan's election over Lincoln in 1864. But even with a Gettysburg win, devastating CSA defeats later in the campaign were inevitable in 1863. The North simply had too many resources.

Grant was a victim of revisionist history. Prior to the turn of the 20th century, Grant was considered the benchmark of generals not just here , but abroad as well. Southern historians had gotten a lot of good press and it was helped along by a pretty savvy PR campaign by the Daughters of the Confederacy , to name one of a few.

But consider. In US history, he still is the only general to have 3 whole armies surrender to him. His overall win record. And if you take and place Cold Harbor as only part of a campaign, the Overland Campaign, you are talking about an undefeated record. Something that neither Napoleon or Alexander the Great could say and they were objectively impressive. I put Grant, first among American generals and Patton second and really, it's not even close among the two, and George Patton was damned impressive.

Grant took out Ft Donelson
Won at Shiloh
Won at Vicksburg which included taking out an army at Jackson
Went to Chattanooga and KICKED an army off a mountain ( that alone is impressive)
Goes East

Pretty much wins the Overland campaign because Lee cannot stop him or force him to withdraw.

Wins at Petersburg

He turns Lee into the pursued and does not allow him any rest.