Kent Masterson Brown

[cash]

Today in his Sacred Trust lecture at Gettysburg, Kent Masterson Brown made what I thought was an extraordinary statement. He said that Robert E. Lee in fact micromanaged his subordinates.

Do you all think R. E. Lee micromanaged his subordinates?

 

[prroh]

Today in his Sacred Trust lecture at Gettysburg, Kent Masterson Brown made what I thought was an extraordinary statement. He said that Robert E. Lee in fact micromanaged his subordinates.

Do you all think R. E. Lee micromanaged his subordinates?

He certainly did to McLaws on July 2nd undermining Longstreet's authority in the process.

 

[Rob9641]

Good question. His reputation is that he left his corps commanders a lot of discretion after giving them a somewhat general notion of what he wanted them to do, but I have no idea what the interaction reallly was behind the scenes. When Marse Robert said, "if practicable," did he really mean "do it"? At Gettysburg, Ewell gets a lot of heat for not interpreting it that way.

And what is an army commander SUPPOSED to do? Does he not have his own discretion to micromanage or not, as the particular circumstances dictate? In truly desperate situations - like Antietam, for instance - you'd expect the highest level of hands-on management from the head man, wouldn't you?