From the insurgents' point of view
I suppose I shouldn't really be surprised that someone who wrote a course called Robert E. Lee and His High Command comes from the school of history that regards great men as the drivers of history, but this set of lectures from The Teaching Company was pretty tilted in that respect. The underlying theme of the lectures was that it was attrition of skilled leadership as much as anything else that doomed the South: he seems to regard Lee's ability to work with inferior subordinates as one of his great strengths and harps on about the lack of choices Lee had after Stonewall Jackson's death and after A. P. Hill and Richard Ewell seemed to fizzle.
Two things I noticed while reading: at one point, the lecturer mentions something about how there were 65K soldiers and 10K tail - isn't that a really large ratio? Also, those 19th century folk were given to a lot of hyperbole, weren't they? The lecturer cited Wellington's description of Winfield Scott as "the greatest soldier of the age" to give him cred when he in turn describes REL as a most promising officer. Which came only days after I read that Nelson described our Navy's work with the Barbary pirates as "the most bold and daring act of the age."
In some ways, the last lecture was the most interesting, bc he talks about "The Lost Cause" school of historical writing, which he describes as an attempt by white Southerners after the war to justify their loss by downplaying slavery as the cause and upplaying the socio-economic advantages the North had. Which might have more cred if it weren't for the fact that this is what he did the whole course.
So, yeah, I learned a little about 16-odd Confederate generals, without actually learning much about the battles themselves, thanks to the way the lectures were laid out. I still don't know why Joss Whedon threw in the Jubal Early references in the last ep of Firefly though. A friend of mine mentioned that Jubal Early is her fave Confed general; I was going to use that for a humpday poll, but decided I didn't want to know how many people would pick Lee bc he's the only one they've heard of. If you have a good reason, post a comment about who your fave Confederate general is. Mine is Edward Porter Alexander bc he was teh smart. (Incidentally, he is apparently the one who recommended to Lee at Appomattox that they become insurgents, which I find a fascinating thing to consider.) And I guess if I want to learn about the battles, I'll have to take dangerboy's advice and drive down to Virginia sometime.
Two things I noticed while reading: at one point, the lecturer mentions something about how there were 65K soldiers and 10K tail - isn't that a really large ratio? Also, those 19th century folk were given to a lot of hyperbole, weren't they? The lecturer cited Wellington's description of Winfield Scott as "the greatest soldier of the age" to give him cred when he in turn describes REL as a most promising officer. Which came only days after I read that Nelson described our Navy's work with the Barbary pirates as "the most bold and daring act of the age."
In some ways, the last lecture was the most interesting, bc he talks about "The Lost Cause" school of historical writing, which he describes as an attempt by white Southerners after the war to justify their loss by downplaying slavery as the cause and upplaying the socio-economic advantages the North had. Which might have more cred if it weren't for the fact that this is what he did the whole course.
So, yeah, I learned a little about 16-odd Confederate generals, without actually learning much about the battles themselves, thanks to the way the lectures were laid out. I still don't know why Joss Whedon threw in the Jubal Early references in the last ep of Firefly though. A friend of mine mentioned that Jubal Early is her fave Confed general; I was going to use that for a humpday poll, but decided I didn't want to know how many people would pick Lee bc he's the only one they've heard of. If you have a good reason, post a comment about who your fave Confederate general is. Mine is Edward Porter Alexander bc he was teh smart. (Incidentally, he is apparently the one who recommended to Lee at Appomattox that they become insurgents, which I find a fascinating thing to consider.) And I guess if I want to learn about the battles, I'll have to take dangerboy's advice and drive down to Virginia sometime.