re: #178 HappyWarrior

He wasn’t a bad general but Lee is overrated. A beneficiary of bad opponents imo. When he started facing better opposing leadership, the Army of Northern Virginia started falling apart. He wasn’t horrible but the Lee Mythos came about from defeating McCllellan, Hooker, & Burnside.

I realize re-fighting the Civil War is generally a lost cause*, but I’d disagree that Lee is particularly “overrated”. Considering that he had to fight most of his campaigns with notable disadvantages in manpower and materiel, he did pretty well with what he had to work with. And (maybe just IMO), the Army of Northern Virginia never really did “fall apart”: it had to be beaten down and ground to bits the hard way. I’d agree, though, that the “Mythos” bit is pretty overdone: but I think modern scholarship (as with Grant) is more objective that it was, say, before the 1950s.

*pun intended

ADD: cf. DD’s #181