Lee's Dispatches #267836

The passage of years and the death of his comrades-in-arms have increased rather than diminished the fame of General Robert E. Lee as a military commander. Detractors and panegyrists alike are dead. The careless overstatements of partisans have given place to the cool analysis of impartial investigators; rigid comparisons of his strategy and tactics with those of other great captains have assured him a place higher than if somewhat different from that assigned him by his contemporaries.<br><br>The publication and study of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies have unquestionably been the chief reasons for this more general recognition of Lee's military genius. Prior to the appearance of the Records, his fame rested on the unreliable testimony of such foreign critics as the Comte dc Paris and upon the more friendly, though scarcely more accurate statements of lieutenants who wrote largely from memory and inevitably fell into errors more or less serious. Put with the completion of the Records, Lee's campaigns have been scrutinized in the calm light of indisputable evidence. Documents unknown have been located, reports and correspondence that his early biographers scarcely thought to exist have been given to the world.