Robert E. Lee was a better general than Ulysses Grant
In the early days of the Civil War, the Army of Northern Virginia developed a reputation of invincibility as it, under the command of Robert E. Lee, soundly defeated one Union commander after another. The Union held the advantages of superior numbers, equipment, and supply, yet were left licking their wounds on battlefields in Virginia and Maryland.
Lee had held the reputation of the nation’s foremost soldier prior to the war and had been offered the command of the Union armies by Lincoln before Virginia seceded, only to turn the president down and choose to serve his native Virginia. His reputation as a superior general survives today, in both North and South.
In truth, Lee usually faced commanders who were inferior tacticians and leaders of men, both facts Lee knew of before the war, having trained with many of them. Another truth is that following the death of Stonewall Jackson following the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863, Lee never won another major engagement. He invaded Pennsylvania, was soundly defeated at Gettysburg, and forced to the defensive for the rest of the war, achieved one or two minor victories but was never again able to thwart his enemy from achieving his goal. It was then that the myth of the Lost Cause was born.
Grant has ever since been unfavorably compared to Lee as a butcher who achieved his ultimate goal because he didn’t care about the numbers of casualties he suffered. In fact, Lee, while struggling to block Grant’s drive towards Richmond and the destruction of the Confederacy, routinely suffered casualties which taken as a percentage were as high or higher than his opponent – a trait he had exhibited in some earlier battles as well.
In truth Lee, faced with a military task similar to Washington’s nearly a century earlier, failed completely. Lee became nearly sanctified due to his honorable defeat, but not by all. George Pickett, a fellow Virginian who commanded a division under Lee at Gettysburg, would later say of the Confederate hero with great disdain, “…That old man destroyed my division.”