The End of the Civil War in Virginia
Posted in History by Mackubin T. Owens
The penultimate essay in my Civil War campaigns series has now been posted
here. It covers the siege of Petersburg, operations in the Shenandoah Valley, and the race west after Richmond and Petersburg fell.
The final essay covers Sherman's march to the sea after Atlanta, Hood's failed attempt to get Sherman to follow him west after Atlanta by threatening Nashville, and Sherman's final campaign in the Carolinas.
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You didn't give YOUR judgment of Lee as a general. I'm inclined to think there's a lot of truth to what the critics you cite say.
Actually, I have given my opinion of Lee in a number of earlier essays, which is that I believe that Connelly and Nolan are wrong. Lee provided the Confederacy with its best chance for victory, and it is astounding how close he came. The fact is that Lee fought on the defensive as often as other Confederate generals did. And the fact is that when other Confederate generals fought on the defensive, they often lost.
The Confederacy lacked the strategic depth to employ a "Fabian" strategy of retreat, trading space for time, especially after early Union victories in the West. By the beginning of 1863, the trans-Mississippi was strategically irrelevant to the Confederacy.