Quotes About General Lee

One young man, upon taking the loyalty oath, was upbraided by his patriotic Southern father: "You have disgraced the family!" The son noted that General Lee advised him to do it. "Oh," the father sighed, "that alters the case. Whatever General Lee says is all right.

Finally, it should be obvious to anyone who has read this far that Last Chance for Victory is a critical examination of General Lee and Southern leadership during the campaign. Therefore, it does not examine equally the role played by General Meade and his top subordinates; that task we leave to others.

Malvern Hill was clearly a battle General Lee did not intend to be fought the way it was fought, and it demonstrated once again his lack of effective control over his lieutenants

General Lee ruled it out, not only because he was General Lee but also because he had never seen this war as the kind of struggle that could go on that way. He understood the cause he served with complete clarity. His South had meant neither revolution nor rebellion; it simply desired to detach itself and live in its own chosen part of an unchanging past, and Mr. Davis had defined it perfectly when he said that all his people wanted was to be let alone.

Under standing orders from General Lee, the Army of Northern Virginia enslaved any and all black persons it could seize—in Virginia, Maryland, even Pennsylvania during the Gettysburg Campaign. It made no distinctions between those who had escaped during the war, those born free, or those freed before the war under the laws of Southern states. If they were black, the men in gray took them as property.

General Grant had no fixed plan of campaign beyond the general idea to avoid the strong defensive line occupied by General Lee behind Mine Run, and find a way to draw him out to open battle.