Robert E. Lee

The Author Replies to Rebuttal

by David W. Tschanz, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

At the conclusion of the film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, director John Ford has one the characters, say, after the hero is exposed as more mythical than genuine, "Print the legend, not the fact." Mr. Kaliher obviously subscribes to this theory and will go to any length to maintain his beliefs.

The central premise of his argument is that Robert E. Lee, and other Confederate generals faced a situation in which they were "forced to attack" and that the "South never had the luxury of waiting."

Having said this, Mr. Kaliher offers no evidence of any sort to demonstrate or support his position. He naively concludes that since the Confederacy would never have the 3:1 odds necessary to attack they had to launch offensives in order to even the odds. Even though the tactical advantage was to the defender throughout the war (as evidenced at Petersburg, Fredericksburg and Cold Harbor), Southern generals were "forced to attack?" Why? On this point Mr. Kaliher remains silent.

LTMM clearly states the reasons why this romantic and illusory belief is not factually correct. Inertia was on the side of the South, to win they merely had to hold out as long as possible. The Union, on the other hand, had to attack -- against fortified positions, entrenched troops and eventually conquer the South -- something contemporary British and other European military observers did not believe was possible for the North to do. As Lee demonstrated brilliantly at Petersburg, an intelligent tactician could make a larger attacking force pay in blood for every inch it gained. Curiously, and obviously lost, on Mr. Kaliher, is the fact that the closest the North came to quitting the war was when the Southern armies of Lee and Johnston held out against superior forces at Petersburg and Atlanta.

Further lost on Mr. Kaliher is that the inevitable defeat of the South, and the certainty of Lincoln's reelection came about when the Johnston was replaced by the offensive hungry John Bell Hood. In a short time, after wasting his troops in fruitless assaults against entrenched Union positions, Hood lost Atlanta, his job and Sherman started his march to the sea. Johnston, hastily recalled, was forced to try and stop this advance with only a portion of the men he had at the time Hood took over. Hood's performance was a miniature version of what Lee did to the Army of Northern Virginia.

Mr. Kaliher goes on to complain that the only way to criticize Lee (or any other general) is to offer realistic solutions and alternatives to the decision they made. Apparently he never read the section arguing that Lee erred by not using a grand defensive strategy similar to that employed by George Washington, who faced similar circumstances. Washington chose not to waste his troops and won independence for his "rebels."

Mr. Kaliher's naiveté with regard to the history, and the historiography, of the Civil War is also evident. The true history of the Civil War he argues at several points, predates 1960, when the historians were closer to the event and therefore capable of making more "correct judgments." The version prefers is the romantic one of a "Lost Cause" where Union troops were always well-fed, well-equipped, backed by a mighty industrial machine capable of sweeping aside all opposition, while Southern troops were always the opposite.

The brilliance of Southern generals and the superiority of these troops fits in the picture Hollywood portrayed, and popular histories accepted. Unfortunately this view means that we are expected to believe that the Confederacy was headed by men who knew that they were incapable of winning, so they decided on a collective act of suicide. Mr. Kaliher bemoans the disparity between the Union & Confederacy, but fails to identify a single pre-1865 instance where a Confederate army was unable to conduct operations because of a materiel shortage. He ignores the fact that in most battles both sides were more or less matched with equal weapons and equal numbers. He overlooks the genuine miracle of the agrarian South developing an adequate industrial base with which to equip its armies.

What was real, as Mr. Kaliher well knows, was the manpower disparity between the two sides. The North could constantly resupply and replace its manpower losses, the Confederacy could not. When a resource is in short supply, it needs to be husbanded, not wasted on fruitless assaults. Mr. Kaliher ignores this and maintains that the romance of his youth is the "real" history. Unfortunately for Mr. Kaliher, it is one more illusion.

The truth of the matter is that the historiography of the Civil War has gone through a number of revisions, reinterpretations and reassessments since the last gun was fired. The romantic image that Mr. Kaliher is enamored with is neither the oldest, nor the most correct, nor as "pure" as he believes. In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War the view of Lee's brilliance and the "Lost Cause" was rare outside of the occupied former Confederacy, which had suffered a shock to its collective psyche, and was casting about for explanations of its defeat. Instead, as the official history of the war stated, Southern competency was not a given, and the attitude of the majority of historians of the era is summed up in its official title The War of the Rebellion.

The dominant view, by those closest to the event, is that the Confederates were little more than traitorous rebels. Their military accomplishment a "campaign filled with glorious victories that resulted in total defeat." By Mr. Kaliher's account we should stop here. Any later interpretations are suspect. But with the end of Reconstruction, a new interpretation began to predominate. Southern political leadership was the root cause of the Southern defeat, not the Southern general or soldier, who in the new view were the bravest, most competent and hardiest men to ever wear a military uniform. A generation later, during the Romantic Era, Lee, together with his horse Traveler, was enshrined in the pantheon of heroes, taking his place beside Washington, the ax and the cherry tree. Quickly tossed aside were the scathing criticisms of Lee penned by James B. Longstreet, Edward Porter Alexander, Phil Sheridan and William T. Sherman. Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens went from adequate leaders to bumblers who frittered any hope of a Southern victory. Since the 1920s historians have tended to mute both views and fashioned a more balanced account that looked at the record, not illusion .

Another problem with Mr. Kaliher's attempt to defend Lee is that he does not distinguish between tactics -- which is the handling of troops in a battle, and strategy, which is how the war will be conducted. His defense of Lee's strategy, includes Johnson's actions at Shiloh and Lee's "splitting his army into three." These involve tactical, not strategic choices. LTMM does not assess Lee's tactical decisions, which were more often right than wrong, but his strategic conduct of the war. To argue that Lee's tactics justify his strategy is much like saying a surgeon's skill at amputation is more important than whether the leg needed to be amputated. One is led to suspect that Mr. Kaliher does not care, or does not know, the distinction between the two.

Mr. Kaliher also dislikes statistics. Arguing that they do not tell the whole picture of Lee's leadership, he recounts the battle of Shiloh put forth in his primary reference -- Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia. The imagery he offers is typically romantic -- exhausted, desperate troops against long odds. But Mr. Kaliher neither explains why he chose Shiloh, which is not listed or identified as a Southern offensive, nor what this has to do with Robert E. Lee's generalship. Lee was, of course, nowhere near the place.

Unfortunately, Mr. Kaliher's idea of scholarship, as shown here and again below, is to reach for the nearest volume of his picture book encyclopedia. Mr. Kaliher also takes exception to the references used in the article. He maintains that a deep conspiracy has been underway since the 1950s to rewrite the history of the Civil War and restate it to make the South look bad for political reasons. Mr. Kaliher obviously thinks "real" history stopped somewhere during Eisenhower's last term.

Expressing surprise that my earliest source is dated 1958, he goes on to state "Sherlock Holmes is not needed to determine that a new view of history is not being presented but a concious [sic] effort is being made to alter truth." Mr. Kaliher offers nothing to support this contention. And in making it he again demonstrates his ignorance. I followed the usual convention of listing the books by the date they were published, not the date they were written. General Fuller's Grant and Lee was written in 1923. Edward Porter Alexander was Chief of Ordnance for the Confederacy's Army of Northern Virginia, his book written in 1868. It is he who described Lee's conduct of the war as one "filled with glorious victories that resulted in total defeat." General Alexander, in command of Lee's artillery, was also a bitter critic of his offensive strategy. Presumably he is expert enough for Mr. Kaliher -- who claims that an accurate interpretation is best obtained from the person closest in time to the event.

Mr. Kaliher's ad hominem attacks on this author simply serve to identify the level of desperation reached when cherished myths are shown to be little more than illusions. The purpose of criticism is raise the level of discourse. Mr. Kaliher chooses to drag the debate into the gutter. Rather than arguing the points, he concerns himself with conspiracies and speculations. Rather than doing his homework, he jumps to conclusions about references. Rather than argue the points, he discusses Lee's strategy based on a battle Lee was not even present at because it was the nearest volume of his picture book encyclopedia. Rather than argue the point he attacks the author, and avoids the issues with a smoke screen of personal invective. All to preserve a cherished myth. Unfortunately Mr. Kaliher's blind acceptance of this myth keeps him from appreciating the actual positive qualities of Robert E. Lee.

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© Copyright 1994 by David W. Tschanz.
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