THE CIVIL WAR: THE TRUE STORY BOOK 1

Lee's Brilliance and Sherman's Folly

Lee's Brilliance and Sherman's Folly

By Aaron Gleason on Dec 6, 2019

Bevin Alexander's "How Great Generals Win" was an intellectual watershed in my life. By applying the wisdom of Sun Tzu to famous Generals throughout history Alexander makes clear that battlefield wisdom is based in practical reason not passion. War is a contest of mind not muscle. His list of who counts as a truly great General is both iconic and at the same time iconoclastic, bolstering the reputation of universally acknowledged geniuses like Scipio Africanus and Napoleon but also busting many myths along the way.

Sadly one of those busted myths was the greatest symbol of southern resistance next to the Bonnie Blue flag itself. Alexander completely changed my perspective on General Robert E. Lee, and it was not a favorable change. For years afterwards I was fond of shocking folks by saying that I thought Lee was a terrible general. It's amazing how many outside of the south buy into Lee's mythology, at least the martial aspect. A mythology that I came to believe was entirely a sham.

My reasoning for Lee's inferiority was simple and straightforward. One of the greatest war fallacies is a frontal assault on a defensive position. Lee did this all the time. He was reckless in battle failing time and again to show that better part of valor: discretion. Under normal conditions this would have been devastating to any army but ultimately Lee's brutal offensive methodology lost the war to the tyrant who need not always be named. For Lee skeptics (of which there are many varieties) his ultimate folly of course comes at Gettysburg when he ordered almost a dozen brigades to march a mile under fire against a defensive position. From this perspective it's simple arithmetic that dooms his legacy. The soldiers of the Tyrant suffered relatively normal casualties in the engagement, about 1/10. But tragically when all was said and done almost half of the men Lee sent out that day were killed or wounded.

Just to be clear that's about 10% casualties to 50%, aka utter devastation. And famously Longstreet was against it. Some even blame Longstreet's hesitancy and failure to execute on that fateful day with the tragic defeat. But it was a plan conceived in folly, no matter the execution it was doomed to fail. The miracle is that the Tyrant's lines were broken at all that day.  The infamous Bloody Angle is one of the most amazing feats of daring in United States martial history. Those lines should not have broken, and it was only because true Patriots of the Old Dominion marched upon it that they were...however briefly.

The Gettysburg film captures the tragedy of Lee's folly perfectly when Martin Sheen confronts a confounded Picket (brilliantly played by Stephen Lang) who is wandering alone making his way off the battlefield. With great concern Lee says to Pickett "General, you must look to your division." Then with unbearable shock and sadness Pickett responds "General Lee... I have no division."

I have NO division.

Total devastation.

Great Generals do not attack defensive positions with frontal assaults. It is folly. And so for years I thought that Lee was a fool. A total failure as a general and solely responsible for the Tyrant's victory over Dixie.

When I watched Gettysburg as a child it was hard not to be swept up in the tragic romance of the whole thing. After all Lincoln's War is the closest thing America has to an Iliad. It wasn't really until I read Bevin Alexander that I understood just how devastating war was because most generals are truly awful. The NeoCon indoctrination program teaches us that wars are glorious and inevitable. This is especially true of Lincoln's War. The Myth of the Righteous Cause is always draped in eschatological patriotism. But the wisdom of Sun Tzu washes away all the romance of war focusing on the truly essential and for a long time General Lee had been washed away for me as well in the ice cold waters of rational sobriety. The man so many Americans revered for his martial prowess had become my ultimate symbol of a false idol...maybe not as ultimate as the Tyrant himself but close. How could Lee have been so foolish? And not just at Gettysburg. He repeatedly made this same mistake throughout the war. Did he not realize that rifling had made the weapons both sides used twice as deadly? The horrific casualty ratios became an unforgivable blemish on his myth.