Makes for a Helluva Statue Though

He's been venerated for a long time now but was Robert E. Lee actually a good general?

Lee, they wrote, mishandled overall strategy of the war. Outmanned, Lee should have taken a more defensive posture, drawing the North into difficult Southern terrain. Instead, he was constantly on the offensive, which resulted in heavy casualties and broken spirits.

“All the Confederacy needed was a stalemate, which would confirm its existence as a separate country,” Bonekemper wrote. “The burden was on the North to defeat the Confederacy and compel the return of the eleven wayward states to the Union.”

Historian James McPherson put it this way: “The South could ‘win’ the war by not losing.” However, “the North could win only by winning.”