Part Four: Was Robert. E. Lee a Good General? | BEHIND THE BASTARDS

[@sadlytemporary4143]

Robert E Lee's lurid description of Traveler is not much more extreme than your average horse enthusiast would come up with, honestly. Horse people... they're different. In their brains.

[@MrGksarathy]

Just ask Burdimuhamedov.

[@HasekDaScudaDoodle]

Ask Jon Oliver or Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow about horses. Apparently horse love not that uncommon and weird

[@TheRunningLeopard]

As someone who plays a "horse girl" elf in a dnd game, that is so true. I have seen some wild stuff when looking up inspiration.

[@brotlowskyrgseg1018]

But how do you know those people are not also fucking their horses?

[@embrikchloraker8186]

Hey, it's Vaush!

[@Rundstedt1]

_"Considering the relation of master and slave, controlled by humane laws and influenced by Christianity and an enlightened public sentiment, as the best that can exist between the white and black races while intermingled as at present in this country, I would deprecate any sudden disturbance of that relation unless it be necessary to avert a greater calamity to both."_ - RE Lee, January 11, 1865, to Andrew Hunter So even as the Confederacy fell apart around him and he's trapped at Petersburg with Sherman coming up from the Carolina's after having Marched to the Sea, he's still trying to save slavery!

[@damintten]

Ya lee loved the idea of being in the right and that he was fallowing gods law. Even as everything was crashing down around him and everything pointed to him being on the wrong side of society I e history... To bad he was given a nice post after the war and his name has been turned into greatness. How can anyone idealize such a monster? even growing up in Michigan history class taught us lee was one of the greatest gen in history. Strange society we live in.

[@fredericksmith7942]

“Don’t give Black people rights. This should be a time of healing not politics. :( :( :(“ -Robert E. Lee, 1868.

[@origami_dream]

"Our thoughts and prayers are with them, though. Now if only these *radicals* would stop trying to shrilly politicize these trying times."

[@wcs792]

THOUGHTS. AND. PRAYERS. ONLY.

[@thelastholdout]

I'm so, so happy to see some love for Grant here. In fact I would love a full set of episodes like this going over Grant's life, because dude was a titan and like the total opposite of Robert E. Lee in every way possible. Except for horses. Grant loved horses more than he liked people, and there are several really wholesome anecdotes about his treatment of and love for horses. I will say that there is a surprising omission here, though I acknowledge it's probably cut for time: Gettysburg was not the *first* time Lee had gone on the offensive in the North. He'd previously tried to invade the North and gotten his ass kicked by MCCLELLAN of all fucking people at Antietam. Basically, both times Lee tried to take the fight to the Union, he lost and had to go slinking back to the South. And when he finally encountered a general who wouldn't just retreat North after every battle, win or lose (in the form of Grant) it was only a matter of time until Lee was forced to surrender. Another amusing bit about Lee and a perfect example of his racism was at the surrender at Appomattox. One of Grant's aides and the one who presented Lee with the surrender documents, Ely S. Parker happened to be Native American. Lee mistook him for a mixed race person of African descent and bristled at what he thought was a deliberate insult by Grant, until he realized that Parker was a Native American instead. He then relaxed and the tension subsided. Dude was so fucking racist that he considered having to accept surrender documents from a black man to be the ultimate insult.

[@Colonel_Bat_Guano]

Bro stop, Grant stole the Black Hills from the Lakota. All presidents are bastards

[@andrewwestfall65]

I gained a lot more respect for my high school history teacher when I learn about the Civil War. He actually addressed the Lost Cause myths in class, and was knowledgeable enough of the battles and tactics that he was able to explain the strengths of Lee and other Southern commanders, but also the weaknesses and why they ultimately lost. His interpretation was that, while they did use clever tactics to win battles, they were more willing to sacrifice men to win pointless battles instead of focusing on the greater war around it.

[@perryekimae]

52:00 And then Mead said, "It's over Robert. I have the high ground!"

[@fredericksmith7942]

It’s funny because Lee then proceeded to immediately Anikan Skywalksr himself.

[@dragonsword7370]

​@@fredericksmith7942I'm picturing BOTH Kenobi and Skywalker wearing Lee and Grant's beards now. Still replaying Mustafar, but with beards both. It's funny.

[@Greybeardstavern]

To win a war…“You all can’t be a brawler. You gotta’ have a book nerd.” ❤ A truer statement on war has never been uttered! 😁🙏📿

[@skug9bob]

The Confederacy's strategy, initially, wasn't all that defensive. They had ambitions to grab the border states and much of the west, and in 1862 invaded New Mexico territory (Hi there, fellow New Mexicans!) with ambitions to push on all the way to California. A defensive strategy was the result of failure. I think this should be acknowledged, because Neo-Confederates often talk as if the Confederacy was just fighting to keep the US out of the states which actually voted to secede: they wanted to carve off as much as the US as possible, no matter what the majority of the population of the disputed states wanted. (And they had frankly absurd plans to expand slavery south into Latin America and the Caribbean: see, Golden Circle.)

[@freddysw]

I always find the Golden Circle as one of alt-history dumbest ideas, Britain and France would never allow the Confederacy to dominate central and South America

[@bfish89ryuhayabusa]

Huh, I wonder if the New Mexico invasion is why Clay Allison eventually moved there.

[@FlameDarkfire]

It was all about greed. Wealth in that time was still largely dependent on extraction from land, so more land meant more wealth. Keeping a low cost labor force in the form of chattel slavery meant that new plantations were essentially free money. So the confederate goal was the continued expansion of slave territory for more and bigger plantations. Even without the upset of Lincoln’s victory in the presidential race, conflict was inevitable as the slave states ran out of new land to claim.

[@jas1007]

Many decades ago a read a weird book titled "Lincoln's Dreams". The title was misleading as Lincoln had nothing to do with the actual story. It was about a woman who had dreams of Robert E. Lee's memories, and it turned out that she was a reincarnation of Lee and her boyfriend was a reincarnation of Traveller. The implications of that make more sense to me now. I'll have to dig the book out; its probably packed with more lost cause bs than I remember, escecially if the publisher knew that "Lincoln's Dreams" would sell better than "Lee's Dreams."

[@Batgirl219]

Wut

[@pedrosaraiva]

dude thats crazy

[@runawaysparklers622]

Did you ever find it?

[@jas1007]

@@runawaysparklers622 No, my copy is in a box in storage right now. But the book does have a wikipedia page, confirming that it existed. The cover art is...something else.

[@fordprefect8406]

I wanted to talk about a bit player from last episode, George Thomas "The Rock of Chickamauga" a Virginian general who stayed with the Union in the Civil War, was probably the best field commander of the Civil War. Not to say he was the best at grand strategy, we have no evidence he would've been and honestly I think it's hard to contest Grant wasn't the best at that, but he was a very good field commander who made an amazing rear guard action at Chickamauga (hence the nickname) and The Battle Above the Clouds. He is probably a very good example of what someone like Lee would've been like had he chosen to stay with the Union or had chosen to yield to someone who understood grand strategy. Lee and Thomas served together in Texas as well, consider that.

[@dragonsword7370]

I started hearing about that battle and general after following a comedian who lived in that area. Corey Forrester. Well had some funny standup about the Civil War.

[@efronlicht1043]

Thomas was a great general whose tenacity, caution, and probidy enabled Grant's strategy and Sherman's daring. It took all three - Thomas just got the least glorious role.

[@matthewlawton9241]

The way Prop giggles when ya'll said "Oh and they all had measles" had me cracking up. XD XD

[@trifontrifonov4297]

There is a great KZbin history channel, Atun-Shei Films that goes into much more details about the Lost Cause myth and the ins and outs of the Civil War. He does it in a rather entertaining way as an argument between two soldiers one Yankee and one "Good" Old Boi. The thing is he is very open about the fact that he used to be a Lost Cause believer in his youth, so while the South soldier is a caricature, he is still willing to at least entertain their point of view and belief, right before hitting it with the harsh light of reality. His stuff is really good and covers wide range of topics.

[@Colonel_Bat_Guano]

One thing that's always bothered me about his channel is he never seems to mention the hypocrisy and racism of the north. Imo the biggest revision in regards to the civil war was that the north was full of abolitionists.

[@Burningsok5]

​@@Colonel_Bat_Guano Oh he does actually. In one of his checkmate Lincolnite episodes he fully agrees with his character Johnny Reb that the north was also racist as fuck. He also made light that there were slaves in the north even.

[@marocat4749]

He also talks abou ma boi john brown.

[@MaterialMenteNo]

@@Colonel_Bat_Guano he did, multiple times and on multiple topics.

[@JackgarPrime]

Yeah, the people who tend to be best at debunking a group belief are people who used to be part of that group. You know what the arguments are and where they come from.

[@ThermiteThonk]

I'm glad we've figured out who's Vaush's Great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was

[@matrasman]

He wants to BE the Traveller

[@tora0neko]

I'm especially glad for that one dude that comments on every episode about how he's a vaushite

[@ryno4ever433]

@tora0neko We out here. I hope southern Vaush never comes back again.

[@Jerthanis]

Washington College renamed itself Washington and Lee College after he died, and if it makes you feel any better, his office is currently occupied by a black woman administrator. The staff voted recently 80% in favor of changing the name, but got overruled by the board of trustees. His legacy of failure and ignominy is beginning to take hold and will only accelerate in the years to come.

[@PMickeyDee]

Okay, my head canon for Joline has always been a desperate love triangle from days past when you couldn't actually acknowledge it.

[@franzfanz]

I saw someone wearing a confederate cap today. That might not be weird in some parts of the world, but I'm in New Zealand, and the person wearing it was Māori.

[@BOOOOOOOONE]

Some people simply don't know shit about history, hear the word "rebel," and that's all it takes for them to become enamoured with the symbol. I used to have a patch with the stars and bars on my jacket when I was a kid because I was really into pantera. Not American so I had zero context. Granted, that was 20 fuckin years and you'd have to have your head shoulder-deep in your ass to not know what it means these days.

[@katarjin]

@@BOOOOOOOONE For the longest time I didn't think Pantera was a ...problem until I saw that video of Phil Anselmo screaming white power and doing a nazi salute..sure that was 2016 and he "apologized" but some shit needs a longer cooldown before I give them another chance.

[@f1mbultyr]

@@BOOOOOOOONE When I was a teenager in the nineties here in Germany, many left-wingers and punks were wearing confederate flag patches because all we knew it as was the "rebel flag". We didn't know anything about American history.

[@TheDarthbinky]

I've seen trucks festooned with confederate battle flags in my home state of... Maine. That's right... Maine. Maine. The state that is famous for blueberries, potatoes, lobsters, and holding the Union left flank at Gettysburg.

[@chimsuaumo]

I saw a house in Bruges with a big confederate flag waving in the back garden. Weirdest place I ever saw one.

[@geordiejones5618]

Much like Hannibal against Rome, I think at best Lee could have forced a stalemate, but to think the Union wouldn't try to assassinate him or just wait until he can't command anymore to reignite the conflict is just ignoring geopolitical precedent. Lee "winning" buys the Confederacy some time, but he couldn't have ended the naval blockade. Historians have rightfully pointed out that for most of the war, the Union was not fighting a total war strategy, unlike the Confederacy who had to throw everything into the war effort. If the Union went total war because they lacked other options, the South would have been trying to recuperate 100 years after they lose. It would have been on the scale and horror of the Punic Wars but with industrial tools and weapons. We're talking like a quarter century effort to take back the South bit by bit. Sherman's campaign would have turned into the norm. Union literally could have scorch earth half the South and slowly starved them out. There is NO scenario where Lee can inflict enough casualties to end the blockade in a quick enough time to salvage their economy. The Confederate Constitution was mostly ignored and overridden because to have abided by it would have meant they lost the war by 1863.

[@danielmac9498]

This was a hard one for me to listen to. Delayed it for a while because I knew it would be hard. I was raised in the south. My mother is still a registered daughter of the confederacy. I have had to confront many of the things I was raised to believe. It doesn't all rip off at once like a band aid. Its slow. "Oh, black people are just like us." "Oh, I gotta stop saying cotton pickin" "Oh, the civil war really was about slaves" "Oh, General Lee fucking sucked." Man, I remember reading a story in school about the surrender. It was from the perspective of Union soldiers standing guard outside the where the surrender was signed. And the lower enlisted Saluted "general" Lee, and general lee supposedly returned the salute. The conclusion of the Union Soldiers was, "Wow, what a great guy, even in defeat, moments after surrendering the confederacy, he still has the honor to return a salute to a few regular joe union soldiers." Fuck man, the propaganda ran deep with me. Thank you for making this. I'm on a journey that wont end, and you helped.

[@jamespocelinko104]

"Lee wasn't beaten. He was out-generaled." -Atun-Shei Films, Checkmate Lincolnites

[@FTZPLTC]

My favourite metric for the Confederacy is that it lasted about as long as Sliders.

[@AmericasComic]

Yeah, when I order sliders at Applebee's they go fast for me as well.

[@avvyrude7603]

Appreciate the shout out to the boring administrative work that goes into prosecuting a war. Tactics win battles, logistics wins wars.

[@jeepspeedracer]

Oh man, I watched galaxy quest TODAY and remembered how I discovered that detail when watching it as a kid shortly after it came out.

[@fett01]

I always liked Grant. I got the feeling when I was educated that while everyone was focusing on the Eastern theater with all the big famous battles, Grant was in the midsouth wrecking stuff, doing the actual work of winning the war

[@Colonel_Bat_Guano]

Yea and then he went on to ethnically cleanse the Lakota from the black hills

[@brassen]

faster than the USA vetoing any motion against Israel

[@jonathondoetsch9652]

Now THAT is impressive

[@hopefullynotbutprobably6643]

That’s because most UN motions against Israel are incredibly biased. Like the latest motion the US vetoed called for a ceasefire in Gaza because it didn’t call for the release of the hostages. Releasing the hostages should be a top priority.

[@USSLIBERTYREMEMBERER]

@@hopefullynotbutprobably6643We don’t care, hasbarist

[@rmkensington]

Let's place where the real blame lies, Hamas attacking in October and refusing the many ceasefire agreements.

[@jonathondoetsch9652]

@@rmkensington this is a lie

[@mayhembody83]

Robert left out the best part of Lee's conversation with Gen. John Imboden where Lee blames everyone but himself for the failure of Pickett's Charge: "General, I never saw troops behave more magnificently than Pickett's division of Virginians did to-day in their grand charge upon the enemy. And if they had been supported, as they were to have been-but, for some reason not yet fully explained to me, they were not-we would have held the position they so gloriously won at such a fearful loss of noble lives, and the day would have been ours."

[@Pretermit_Sound]

If they had listened to Longstreet, it might have had a different outcome. He knew they were on a suicide mission 😬

[@emexdizzy]

Robert E. Lee's description of his horse brings a new meaning to "Fifty Shade's of Grey". If you get it, you get it.

[@ellaser93]

52:12 "You don't want to attack an enemy that has the high ground." General Philip Sheridan at Missionary Ridge: "Hold my whiskey!"

[@corinnapetry65]

This show is immensely good.

[@bassface1018]

You don't want to attack the high ground, just ask Anakin Skywalker!

[@THEHAR0LD]

I'm no fan of the death penalty, but... they hanged John Brown for "treason" but didn't hang the confederate traitors? Also, the way Lee's "grace in the face of defeat" was described reminds me of how we in Australia learn about Gallipoli, with one important exception: we don't talk about how Churchill was magnanimous in his fuck up. We learn about how the soldiers (aka poor men and victims of a draft) had to deal with Winston's massive logistical blunder and face certain doom with bravery. Personally I never liked this framing. I get the need to heroise people that got put through the meat grinder like that, but I personally think there isn't enough historical blame put on Churchill (and it's not even the worst thing he did, as this mass death was an accident.)

[@OsirisLord]

Because the arc of this nation's institutions always bend towards the oppressor.

[@Spencerdoken]

Wild to me that Lee was using the same "acknowledging the existence of racism is the real racism" bull that modern conservatives are.

[@VioletSadi]

@6:04 I would go further: I headcanon that the singer of jolene is a lesbian who has found her one exception in the man she's singing about (you don't know what he means to me.... I could never love again) and she fears losing her honest beard to her deeper love, Jolene

[@vfanon]

Now THAT'S a proper tragedy, I love it. Never heard the song though

[@jorymo4964]

Actually, I found some of Traveller's tweets from 2014 saying he _definitely_ knew what he was fighting for

[@nicolasnamed]

😂😂😂

[@michaelmcintyre4690]

“Where’s the banners?” And thus Prop makes clear his position on the Bill vs. Wilt debate.

[@MrRjh63]

Lee the great general whose response to Vicksburg calling for help and relief from the siege was to instead go on the offensive in the wrong direction.

[@jessaminehaak8253]

So Robert is saying that Lee ran afoul of the Peter Principle? (promoted beyond the limits of competence lmfao) Someone inform Scott Adams! Also I'm going to be honest I think most Starcraft players could out-general Lee based on these descriptions XD

[@Asko83]

Peter Principle is a thing for reason. One British officer was said to have been the finest major in the army (or of the century, I forget) an OK colonel, but the worst general alive in his time. Granted that he was getting older and slower as he went up the ranks. The main causes for this are the unwilligness to demote people back to their level of competence and especially for the Confederates: the lack of any better choices. They had whom they had and were trying to build an army with the only officers available being by design, the kinds of men who betray their country and oath.

[@Mextazectaces]

Robert E. Lee: Proto-Brony

[@josephwurzer4366]

Very good. If you distill the info on history this is spot on!

[@captainoftheneverdie21]

Ah, it has arrived in all its glory

[@LorenzoGonzalesBrady]

Incredible series.

[@3dartxsi]

The anecdote about the hen i find is really telling. During the Overland Campaign, Grant got thousands of his men killed and it is one of the things that helps create the image of Grant as a "butcher." However, history records that Grant wept bitterly as a result of the death toll. Say what you will about Grant, as he was hardly a perfect man or a saint, but he wasnt spending the afternath of a bloody battle worrying about his per chicken.

[@renwhit100]

glad to know that our guy robert has correct opinions about the song jolene

[@wcs792]

I don't even know if it's so much "it's not fair that we have to do fieldwork" so much as "Oh, my God, working the fields in the American Southeast sucks so impossibly hard, it's so fucking hot and humid here all the time, that we've built this whole insane system around not having to do it ourselves"

[@LTrotsky21stCentury]

I have always found Lee to be a mediocre general at best. Serious reading of the history shows poor command and control, bad communications, poor reconnaissance - all the various functions which make a good general show Lee to be wanting, in some cases catastrophically. His attributed "victories" at Seven Pines, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville were due to the adversary being *even worse* in these categories. Everyone is familiar with Pickett's Charge, and how idiotic that manuever seemed after the fact. But there are far more examples of Lee's deficiencies: One of my favorites is the maneuver by Grant which resulted in the near capture of Petersburg and the fixture of Lee's army there for the rest of the war. Lee was captured almost entirely unawares by this maneuver not only because of his bad communications protocols, poor reconnaissance and intelligence, but also because of his belief that the Union Army was simply incapable of such maneuvers (i.e. hubris). I've personally tallied the casualty percentages for most of the battles involving the Army of Northern Virginia, as part of my own study of Lee's generalship. In only a few limited instances did Lee suffer a lower proportion of casualties than his opponent. That is to say, he continually lost about as much of his own men as his adversary did. This fact of proportional losses is NOT true for generals like Napoleon or Hannibal, or Caesar in most of their battles. With any set of objective measures of generalship, Lee is solidly mediocre. He can be given some credit for being willing to take some tactical risks at times, which sometimes resulted in an impressive "victory" (in the sense that the enemy retreated, but not in the sense of proportion of loss) -- such as at Chancellorsville. This willingness also resulted in catastrophe, such as at Gettysburg. He should also get some credit for keeping an army in being when in some other cases it might have disintegrated. But these identifiable strengths are NOT enough on their own to put Lee in the category of "great" General.

[@marocat4749]

There is also the zhao general in warrent state area that was the worst obstacle for chin again and again loosing and in the way, that its on record they had him killed by his own paranoid king via sprreading gossip. Now that is a great feat of a general to not be able be defeated in a battle that you have to resort to court intruige. Yeah great general should be something impressive , not average. Hanibal, napoleon, ceasar, i think the one who resisted ceasar that much in britannia, bodoaca the warrior girlboss. oda nobunaga and him as weird but brillians man, .. thats impressive.

[@LTrotsky21stCentury]

@@marocat4749 Boudicca wasn't born until about 90 years after Julius Caesar died. If you are going to make public comments do a bare minimum of research beforehand.

[@TheDarthbinky]

Atun-Shei did a pretty good video about the myth of the superiority of Confed commanders, with a focus on Lee. He brings up some of the points you bring up here, especially that Lee's losses tended to be proportionally larger than his opponents. As far as I'm concerned, the only time Lee really showed he had a grasp of then-modern warfare was when he finally started using defensive strategy and trench warfare during the Wilderness campaign. And that came too late to make a difference. Otherwise he clung to the obsolete belief that a Napoleonic "one glorious battle" would win the war - which was obsolete in Napoleon's time, as the Russian and Peninsular campaigns proved.

[@LTrotsky21stCentury]

@@TheDarthbinky Yup. I'm familiar with A-S, but didn't catch his Lee video. I'll check it out. I 100% support sober historical analysis - the Lee myth is one of my pet peeves. I think most of the Confederate generals were of the napoleonic tilt - that is, most of them failed to understand the nature of long wars and materiel preponderance. One could make a case that if Lee had been more like Grant, or Mosby (guerilla), he probably would have been unpopular and fired. In sum, I don't the the culture of the South at the time could have accepted a war of attrition conceptually. It was just too alien to their identity.

[@ZBott]

I stopped everything and looked up that flag. Holy hell, that was a tip worth the price of admission.

[@zachthompson9976]

As someone who lives in a small town in Ohio, these people don't realize they live in the north, i desperately wish i could get everyone around me to listen to this podcast 😭 misinformation and conspiracy theories have rotted the brains of a solid 80% of the people around me. Its so sad and frustrating, no matter what i try i cant get most to see sense. They just explain everything away with insane conspiracy theories. I have genuinely lost all hope for humanity 😢 Edit: typo

[@TelenTerror]

"Ohio: Like if the concept of Nothing could be racist!"

[@lukelee7967]

I know that the idea of Grant being a drunk is not true. But I love that scene in the Whitest Kids U Know movie The Civil War On Drugs when a drunk off his ass Grant knocks out Lee with one punch. Plus right before it somebody tells someone else "Don't kill them, just hit them in the head with your guns". Which I find funny AF, because that could totally kill somebody.

[@MelvinWillikers]

"blub ergh gurgle gurgle... pftssss... glub." final words of Robert E. Lee.

[@lukemccann8930]

You know literally every nerd listening to this immediately pictured Meade shouting down to Lee like Obi Wan, "It's over Lee! I have the high ground!"

[@richardarriaga6271]

26:55 For a moment, I thought BtB was sponsored by the Sackler family

[@Akmt96]

After all these episodes, its funny that his story just fizzles out. He was a terrible human and a slaver, and an unremarkable leader. Join the club Bob.

[@DistantAutumnPresentWinter]

I'm not saying that Lee is anywhere near the same league, but what this is really reminding me of is Hannibal vs Rome. Just on a surface level, Hannibal was a brilliant field commander working with a much more constrained manpower base on his end, fighting an enemy who could more than afford to keep throwing bodies into the grinder, who brought his army to the very steps of the enemy capitol, but who ultimately failed to grasp that the enemy center of gravity wasn't their army, but the willingness of their people to continue fighting.

[@jessepaiz6356]

The difference is that no one pretends that Scipo Africanus was a drunken moron and a butcher who couldn't actually general. For a long period of time, the consensus was that Grant and Sherman were mediocre generals who only won because they threw men at the problem and because of "Yankee tyranny". This was the standard taught in schools for about 100 years. What the Lost Cause people don't understand is by making the Union oit to be a bunch of idiots, they make their side look worse. For Lee to be at the level of a Hannibal, Grant and Sherman would be at the level of the Roman high command Hannibal faced. The question the Lost Cause people have to answer is if these guys were so incompetent isn't it an indictment on Lee that he didn't win.

[@gaiusjuliuspleaser]

One of his underlings reportedly told Hannibal something along the lines of "You know how to achieve victory, but not how to use it."

[@AmericanArchon]

1:14:00 Eerie how familiar this kind of rhetoric against "laws in favor of the (black population)" sounds in modern conservative arguments.

[@Alex-od7nl]

No one ever talks about Grant's early days in the western theater of the Civil War. He and Sherman had limited resources and terrible top-brass management. And yet they still pulled off the strategically significant splitting of the South.

[@Domesthenes]

I would say that Hannibal falls into the classic tactics vs strategy issue. Dude could win a battle. You give him an army and he will win. But he couldn't capitalize on those victories and didn't have the forward thinking needed to adjust his strategy. This is why Fabian's tactics were so devastating, because Hannibal couldn't deal with them.

[@SteveIon35]

50 shades of neigh 😂

[@ajtroyer76]

Another example of a person getting promoted a step beyond their level of competence...

[@LSChimera]

I wanna hear an episode on Grant now. A half-bastard episode

[@Shadowman4710]

Grant could be a bastard when he wanted to. Granted, this comes from a William S. Rosecrans fan.

[@digbyskellington]

Radio War Nerd has an excellent multi-part series which makes a compelling case that McClellan absolutely WAS a traitor to the Union, along with most of the West Point brains-trust that commanded the early (losing) part of the war. Their goal was to avoid defeating and crushing the South - which they absolutely had the manpower and industrial capacity to do - and rather fight their 'Southern brothers' to a stalemate, at which point Lincoln would be forced to the negotiating table and would have to make major concessions to the secessionists. McClellan and the other original generals of the Union army were bone-deep racists from slave-owning families, and their own writings from the time make it clear that they wanted the Southern political cause to prevail.

[@ilessthan3bees]

Fine... I'll subscribe to hood politics for part five. My podcast list is now more than half cool zone / BTB guests.

[@oceandark3044]

We missed the most important reason not to attack the high ground in a war like this. The fact is, the enemy can see you and can shoot you unless you are behind very tall cover. You cannot shoot back, because they could literally be behind cover by laying down. And the Confederate artillery did just that, trying to lob shells at the Union artillery and mostly overshooting them.

[@FlameDarkfire]

41:56 I think we still need to work on dispelling this myth that muskets were inaccurate. You could hit a man sized target from a fair longer distance than anyone seems to think. The point of linear warfare in the long 18th and 19th centuries was to amass a weight of fire despite the slowness of the weapons. They were still single shot and took a significant time to reload. Muskets in the American war of independence could be shot two or three times a minute depending on the skill and coolness of the soldier. You needed 100 of these guys to fire off a significant volume of shots that it might damage the enemy army. This didn’t change in the Civil War, though we began to see repeaters and revolvers which could dramatically increase a single soldier’s ability to put lead downrange. But linear warfare was about the slowness of weapons, not the inaccuracy.

[@briansmith7458]

It should be noted that the South often marched shoe less.

[@cactusshadow9840]

I was emotionally invested in Lee in the past. I didn't know anything about historical facts. I am not a historian. research is a difficult skill. slavery is an abomination to inclusive society!

[@richardarriaga6271]

McClellan in western Virginia to Lee: Do not cite the deep magic to me, I was there when it was written

[@jewsco]

Lee like every general even up to WW1 believed in the myth of the attacking offensive army wins. They were still fighting the Napoleononic way even though technology had advanced and weaponry was much more deadly. It took till the heavy losses of WW1 for this mentality to change.

[@rorysyers8457]

Picket never forgave Lee for getting his men killed at Picket's Charge. When Lee told Picket to rally his division a pissed off Picket told Lee "General, I have no division." I bet that when Lee told everyone "It's all my fault" I bet Picket was thinking "Yeah, It was your fault asshole".

[@ivanterrible7362]

Part 4 spoilers: No.

[@MaterialMenteNo]

Wait, Traveller is the name of the horse? I though a horse traveller was something like a squire. Wow.

[@theimmortalkingofbingo7137]

I didn't know that Robert E. Lee was the original Mister Hands.

[@FlameDarkfire]

46:55 that’s not even how you win according to Sun Tzu!

[@plateoshrimp9685]

This episode busted Lee's myth just like Lee busted in his horse.

[@waltchristien]

Anytime someone brings up the lost cause myth I point out Vietnam under general Giap won their war against the French and U.S. and that by their own argument General Giap is a better general than Lee

[@waltchristien]

Wrote this two minutes before they bring up Vietnam themselves

[@josch5071]

Well, I mean...yes

[@user-rx2ur5el9p]

The fact that Lee loved slavery so much that he was willing to kill his own family members to preserve it is terrifying.

[@thomaskalinowski8851]

If New Jersey had seceded from the Union, McClellan would absolutely have fought for the Confederacy. Probably the greatest regret of his life is that he had to fight against the Confederates.

[@kirbyinhalesjotaro4471]

Why was two minutes at the start of this video dedicated to his Robert E. Weewee?

[@Ruteekatreya]

"It's not that they don't have materiele," said right after saying "He runs out of shells" is kinda magical, to be real. My core problem with this is the seeming lack of awareness of how you're _also_ playing into the lost cause while tut tutting over how materiele didn't matter to this war, honestly. There are two types of lost cause narratives that are in common use; there's the side that fundamentally holds the war was unfair, because the mean old north had all the advantages. I actually do agree with this side; it was an unfair war. There is no reality in which a bunch of planter aristocrats work to defend slavery and have the upper hand. Sorry, not sorry, aristocrats. The institutions they sought to defend fundamentally weakened them. PArt of the "UNFAIR" side is, in fact, the population advantage, and an additional stressor I'm surprised you didn't touch on, was that the south had to waste more of that manpower on garrisons off the front line. The threat of another John Brown was very real to them, because slavery is a horrible institution and a bane on humanity. Again, I agree with this narrative; it could be no other way for planter aristocrats in the 1860s. Especially not planter aristocrats who spurned substantial advancements, and who's concept of diplomacy was to yell at people and insist they needed you. Of course it's unfair; and good. It's actually kinda nice when people's bastardry directly punishes them when they start a war. THe other side of the lost cause narrative I've taken to calling the milsim idiot side of it. These are the fools who think that with enough foreknowledge, the war could totally have been won. Just bring enough facts from the future and do things differently and the war could totally have been won. I'm... not going to say you're exactly doing that, but I don't think you're completely avoiding it either (And it's to some extent unavoidable while discussing lee's failures as a general, I don't fault you for this). Like, yeah, if Lee invents the concept of trench warfare, maybe he wins, but that's a monstrously more expensive (in materiele) method of waging war so maybe he can't support that even when he can support the style they are fighting in. It's also worth pointing out that public support doesn't necessarily collapse just because of deaths. Hell, trench warfare is, somewhat famously, used in a war 60 years down the line, and it does not generally end without conquest for the participants. (then used again 100 years down the line, and who knows what happens here). But inventing trench warfare as a ~singular genius~ (Which Lee isn't) is probably harder than winning a war as it's generally fought in the era it's fought in. And hell, if we're talking public support, the planter class largely overvalue glory; a defensive posture may well have cost Lee his public support.. You can't really avoid strengthening the milsim idiot or 'unfair war' sides with reality. Because the reality is it was a bad idea of a war that was almost certainly going to end poorly for the fools who started it, and the fools who started it do in fact make significant errors. Fundamentally, it's a hard war to win. Which is good, given that it's how america ended up substantially limiting its use of slavery. And honestly, relatively small problem aside the series was a lot of fun, thanks for making it.

[@ethantaylor9613]

It’s kind of fascinating how effective the confederacy could have been, if they had done World War I type stuff sooner. That would require fighting the war like soldiers, though, not like puffed up knights.

[@jasonsmith373]

You're welcome.

[@dragonsword7370]

I'd never heard about Lee and his, um, obsession with his horse. But now that I know what that flag looks like... 😮

[@bengreen171]

Great video - but I'm not entirely convinced. At Gettysburg you say Meade 'got behind lee, cutting his supply lines'. But the whole campaign was Meade chasing Lee. He was, in effect, always behind Lee. The real issue here is that Lee wasn't actually accomplishing anything by charging into Pennsylvania. I think I remember something about Gettysburg being a minor centre of industry - nothing more significant than the shoe factory there that the Confederate troops gleefully plundered. It wasn't a direct strike on Washington or any other major city, so lacked any strategic decisiveness that could have really hurt the Union. You made a very fair point that Lee's incursions into the north were never going to accomplish anything, given their lack of significant target - and yeah, in contrast Grant realised how to subdue the south by taking out the symbolic and material centres of the confederacy like Richmond and other important cities. But I'm just not sure what Lee was supposed to do. He lacked the manpower to lay siege to Washington. I don't think there was the will among southerners to maintain such a lengthy process. Right from the start the Confederate army had trouble keeping its men in the field - soldiers would just go home after a time. And the problem with bleeding the Union armies, is that the only way to do it was by letting them invade the south. That's like showing your neck to a vampire and hoping he'll tire himself out sucking your blood. Yeah. There's a very good argument to be made that Lee was fighting an obsolete style of war. But I think you can level that charge at most men of his day. And I think that the Confederates wanted him to fight that way. He attempted to resign after Gettysburg, and Davis wouldn't let him. Maybe the biggest argument against him might be that he does seem to have been a very egotistical man, and maybe that's why he insisted on conducting grand battles instead of dividing his forces up into small groups that could harry the Union like a swarm of mosquitoes. Maybe he didn't like the idea of not being the centre of attention - he needed to be where the action was and that style of guerrilla warfare would not allow that possibility. It seems to me that, if you want to fight a particular style of battle, Lee is your man. But he was totally unsuited for 'modern' war. And a massive douche, to boot.

[@TheDarthbinky]

"There's a very good argument to be made that Lee was fighting an obsolete style of war. But I think you can level that charge at most men of his day." Yes. Absolutely they were. As far as battlefield command goes, the overwhelming majority were garbage, still fighting war the way they had in the 1840s against Mexican conscript armies that generally didn't want to fight them. They knew from the bloodbath in Crimea in the 1850s that their tactics were outdated in an era of accurate rifles and artillery.

[@bengreen171]

@@TheDarthbinky ah - I wondered what happened to your comment - I tried replying to your earlier version. I know nothing about the Mexican War - but the point about it involving a 'peasant army' is perhaps relevant. I think there's a couple of things to remember here. Firstly - we're looking with hindsight with a modern concept of the value of life, and the idea of how to conduct a war with the minimum loss to your own side (in fact so much so that we've kinda resorted to sending drones to kill people, which is a whole other side of brutality). War was a different matter back then, and dying gloriously in battle was somewhat of an aspiration - better than dying of dysentery anyway. There are many war journals of the time that show a real naive view of what they were getting themselves into, and all of them loving the idea of popping a few of hte enemy. fun times. Secondly, in some ways, this was two peasant armies facing off against each other - volunteer civilians with little or no training. It took time for both armies to accept the reality of war. So yeah - I kinda agree that most Civil War generals were garbage. I just don't see that we can blame them for it and say they were bad generals because they had a particular attitude to death we would find gross today. I'm still not totally convinced Lee was as pony as this video makes out - though some very fair points were raised. I think he was very skilled at manouvring his army to hit the enemy to best effect. But perhaps you need more than that to call him 'great'. He had some good commanders doing the nitty gritty, and troops that were willing to throw their lives away for him, so any 'greatness' he's bestowed with was earned by the help of others.

[@TheDarthbinky]

I felt my original response came across harsher than I intended, so I deleted it, thought about it, and started over. We're all friends here and it was not my intention to act like a dick. "I know nothing about the Mexican War" That's the thing - all these high ranking officers in the ACW cut their teeth in Mexico in the 1840s (or at the very least, they were trained by the guys who did). It's key to understanding their leadership during the ACW. Additionally, as I noted above, the Crimean War happened, and thanks to telegraphs and early photography, everyone was aware of what happened. Military commanders, including American ones, closely studied that war and knew what worked and what didn't. So they knew going into the ACW that their old Napoleonic style warfare wasn't going to work anymore, at least not without being unnecessarily bloody. "but the point about it involving a 'peasant army' is perhaps relevant.: It is, and that point got lost in the editing process. Mexico in the 1840s was a chaotic mess. There were deep political divisions, regional issues (eg people in Zacatecas didn't really give a shit what was happening in Coahuila, and vice versa; and the Yucatan tried to secede... again...), and Santa Anna had taken advantage of the instability to become dictator again. So when the Americans showed up in 1846, the US Army was more or less a professional army, and the Mexican army was largely conscripts, mostly peasants unwillingly drafted to fight a war they had no interest in fighting. The officers were a trained, professional corps on par with the American ones, but the soldiers were not. So low morale and desertion were serious problems that plagued the Mexican forces for the duration of the war. At the battle of Buena Vista, Santa Anna's army was three times the size of Taylor's force - but thanks to starvation, desertion, poor morale, and rumors of a rebellion in Mexico City, Santa Anna declared that he won the battle and his army withdrew, thus leaving the puzzled Americans to control the battlefield and claim victory too. "Firstly - we're looking with hindsight with a modern concept of the value of life," I understand what you're saying but that's not really the issue. The issue is manpower. Sure, officers may not have cared all that much about the lives of their soldiers (I don't really agree but let's just assume it's true for sake of argument)… but they did care about having enough men to fight. Losing 1/5 of your men in a single battle, with diminished ability to replace them, is not a winning strategy, and this has been known since at least the time of Pyrrhus. Lee clung to the idea of the "one glorious victory" to utterly defeat his enemy like Frederick the Great or Napoleon, and that wasn't feasible anymore (and it wasn't really even feasible during Napoleon's time, as the Russians can attest). "There are many war journals of the time that show a real naive view of what they were getting themselves into" True but the generals knew what they were getting into. They had served in Mexico and studied Crimea. They knew. They didn't adapt. And a lot of men died for it. " think he was very skilled at manouvring his army to hit the enemy to best effect" He got lucky that the Union commanders arrayed against him were also morons (or unwilling to utterly crush him, as some believe). He was also more of a good organizer, as the podcast mentions. He was pretty talented at that and I'll concede credit for that. But he was shit as a battlefield commander, indecisive and unimaginative, and his armies did well despite him, not because of him. And yeah, as you go on to say, his subordinates were often more competent. JEB Stuart in particular was great at scouting for Lee - until his cavalry ran off and left Lee behind to get beaten at Gettysburg. As this podcast points out, Longstreet was the only one who was like "yo, Pickett's Charge is a shit idea" and he was right. The only time Lee really exhibited any real understanding of then-modern warfare was during the Wilderness Campaign when he actually used the defensive tactics and trenchworks that he should've been using since the beginning. And even that came way too late, because he still lost that campaign and wound up limping around Virginia until he got cornered at Appomattox.

[@bengreen171]

@@TheDarthbinky I don't think I can disagree with most of what you said here. I've had a look at a few little articles about American observers in Crimea (including a suspicious site that may or may not be a Russian propaganda site - lol) and found some interesting things. Well - one interesting thing really. One of the members of the American commission observing the war was George McClellon - yeah - that George McClellan. He seems to have had some insightful things to say about the war and it's intriguing to think how his experience there shaped his attitude in the Civil War. No wonder he was reluctant to go out and 'get stuck in'. It does kinda seem like he didn't experience much actual fighting though - he seems to have been impressed with the use of earthworks around Sevastopol when touring the defences in the aftermath of the siege. Maybe I need a deeper dive but he seems to have missed all the major battles and had to rely on reports to form his opinions about the ideal way of warfare. It did get me wondering though - and the thing that stuck out for me was the infamous Charge of the Light Brigade. It occurred to me that that kind of cavalry action - a real throwback to the Napoleonic age - is something we just don't see in the Civil War, where cavalry doctrine seems to have undergone a real transformation. It kinda seems obvious to us today - maybe don't charge over miles of open ground being enfiladed by artillery, and maybe that's the big takeaway regarding battlefield tactics learned by the Americans. To clarify what I said about the value of life. I didn't mean to say that generals didn't care about the lives of their men, just that it was an accepted inevitability that a lot of people were going to die in any given battle, and I don't think we can judge a mid 19th century general on those grounds (Patton, I'm looking at you). I take your point about needing to preserve manpower to sustain strategic goals - a luxury the Union could afford way more than the Rebels. Let's not forget that Grant's 'new model of warfare' (which seems to have been the way McClellan was thinking about war after his experience in the Crimea, ironically) was incredibly brutal when it comes to casualty rates. I've never done a detailed examination of the battles Lee fought - the closest I've come to it is watching a very good series on Gettysburg by AtunShei. Not an academic appraisal maybe, but I think it offers a pretty well sourced look - so I'll take your word for it that Lee lacked imagination and tactical abilities, and we can agree on his logistical abilities. Maybe we might have to give him some credit for picking his commanders, I dunno. I'm happy to call him 'not the worst - not the greatest, probabaly a bit sh1t'. cheers man. It's been fun thinking about stuff I haven't thought about seriously in many a year.

[@bengreen171]

@@TheDarthbinky oh - ps - no worries about 'acting like a dick', I hadn't got that vibe at all. To be honest, I've been worried about accidentally coming across as a lost causer, so I hope you didn't think that of me.

[@JesseMaurais]

Pointing out that the union had a stronger industrial base than the confederacy seems to me like a poor way to make the lost cause argument in any case. You know who else had a much weaker industrial base? Vietnam.

[@joelopez7459]

As they say in soccer, you "park the bus" and play for a draw.

[@khornatekrieger3023]

53:10 Prop being like, "lemme finish this cigar first," reminds me so much of a few incidents in my own service where, yeah, you'd watch a formation making its way to you and I've done the math like, yeah I got time to finish this cigarette first. They're huffing and puffing up the hill and I've got a fresh boost of nicotine ready to go. The opposite end too, which sucks so much.

[@dobie90]

My mannibal, Hannibal. I didn't think a podcast that led with horsefucking would improve as the ep went on, but

[@fenrirunshackled4319]

Counterpoint: If lee had gone the way of mr hands the confederacy might have found a more compotent general and prolonged the war

[@northman017]

7:00 ish- YES. Part of why Union General McClelland is considered such a shit General, is that he did care for, and was very reluctant to send men to their deaths needlessly.

[@VooshSpokesman]

Love from a ColdCuts and Vaush fan!

[@burnedbread4691]

You excited for the horse love and p*dophilia? Lee was also known for both like Vaush!

[@nicolasnamed]

@VooshSpokesman Hey brother, how are you handling the recent situation? I definitely don't believe the outrageous accusations but I'm also really upset that Vaush has more or less thrown away his career. You're stronger than I am to keep defending him.

[@VooshSpokesman]

@@nicolasnamed Thrown away his career? He's made 2 responses to it

[@theeuda]

This epp part four of Robert Lee is not showing up on Spotify. Did you piss off Joe Rogan so he is sniping your content there?

[@redjirachi1]

Stay tuned for another episode of "Why Karma Doesn't Exist"

[@Neuttah]

Mostly inconsequential Rommel nit: There's a decent chance he was in over his head with his command in Africa as well, and failed to appreciate the constraints of his situation.

[@thekiwibird37]

I'm not even five minutes in and this man is NEVER beating the horse plugging allegations imo. You could say he took a page in the newspaper avowing that he did not frequently make love to this horse and I would believe it as nothing more than cover. That horse was his only worldly comfort after that incident where he whipped his slaves and that time he abandoned his family for slavery rights.

[@johnl5350]

If they were static and didn't have good Intel to maneuver to where the Union armies were, they'd have likely just lost their cities while the confederates sat in a trench in virginia

[@johnl5350]

Point being, the geography of western Europe is what made trenches so bad, that and machine guns and artillery. The Eastern front in WW1 didn't bog down into trench warfare

[@davidheitzenrater9027]

Tying back to last episode where he turned down the job of being the top general for the North and his mediocre field command and pretty good organizational skills... If he'd stayed loyal to the North he just would have been a worse McClellan, and been replaced for his incompetence by Lincoln the same way.

[@majestical15]

52:00 *Nothing's happening. Nothing's happening. Something about a map. Nothing's happening. It's over. Alot of people in the audience look pissed.*

[@cerebralisk]

Meegs just one of the all time haters you love to see it.

[@andrewscarpati9665]

You should have a flashing 'Prop alert' to quietly tell him he's made his point 16x over and can move on, so the episode DOESN'T have multiple 5 minute diversions of him repeating himself.

[@jamesphelps1958]

Please! Its like listening to a lecture from my grandfather making the same obvious point over and over again, except my grandfather knows about the Punic wars.

[@vfanon]

He's a good commander, just not good at commanding people!

[@markifi]

what happened to the Rajat Khare Appin hack-for-hire "Blackwater of hacking" episodes?

[@Dave-te5bs]

He was selfish. His army lost men and supplies and he forced them to invade the north again?! He wanted to reach DC but he killed his own men.