That's not what I said at all. Washington's major contribution was avoiding battles. It was the victory of Benedict Arnold, later the American Vlasov, which secured the USA the French alliance that won them the war.
And you're right, but this requires a general a *lot* better than Lee winning a battle in the North, Lee was stomped by one of the worst Union generals of the war in his first engagement and got an even bloodier nose from Meade in the second. This neglects that by 1864 the Union's held parts of the South since the earliest days of the war and that by 1864 the slave system the South began the war for would be dead regardless of victory or defeat.
If Grant is dead, the Union's defeated because he was perhaps the greatest general of the war bar none. His two epic fuck-ups at Cold Harbor and Shiloh....one was a defeat in the pure sense, the other was actually a Union victory on the second day and a major embarrassment for the Confederacy. Where Jackson varied between competent (Valley) and completely incompetent (Seven Days'). The reality also is that the Union had several very good generals killed on the battlefield like the Confederacy did (Reynolds, McPherson) but that did not disrupt the Union military.
That it did the Confederate one was a sign of why the South lost: it didn't have a system that could survive the loss of individuals, where the one individual for the North whose death would have cost them the war won the war in the theater Confederate leaders neglected until it was too late.
And as far as First Bull Run was concerned, the Confederate army was as disorganized in victory as the Northern one was by defeat.
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And you're right, but this requires a general a *lot* better than Lee winning a battle in the North, Lee was stomped by one of the worst Union generals of the war in his first engagement and got an even bloodier nose from Meade in the second. This neglects that by 1864 the Union's held parts of the South since the earliest days of the war and that by 1864 the slave system the South began the war for would be dead regardless of victory or defeat.
If Grant is dead, the Union's defeated because he was perhaps the greatest general of the war bar none. His two epic fuck-ups at Cold Harbor and Shiloh....one was a defeat in the pure sense, the other was actually a Union victory on the second day and a major embarrassment for the Confederacy. Where Jackson varied between competent (Valley) and completely incompetent (Seven Days'). The reality also is that the Union had several very good generals killed on the battlefield like the Confederacy did (Reynolds, McPherson) but that did not disrupt the Union military.
That it did the Confederate one was a sign of why the South lost: it didn't have a system that could survive the loss of individuals, where the one individual for the North whose death would have cost them the war won the war in the theater Confederate leaders neglected until it was too late.
And as far as First Bull Run was concerned, the Confederate army was as disorganized in victory as the Northern one was by defeat.