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Marse Robert and the Fevers: A Note on the General as Strategist and on Medical Ideas as a Factor in Civil War Decision Making RichardM. McMurry In 1969 Thomas Lawrence Connelly launched an effort to reevaluate Robert E. Lee, his record as a field commander, and his role as a Confederate strategist. His objective was to depict Lee "as he actually was."Over the past two decades Connelly—sometimes joined by other historians—has pursued what he has called "the real Lee," expanding his study to include not only the general himself but also an investigation of his image in American society and letters.1 So far as historians of the Civil War are concerned, the most important part ofConnelly's reexamination ofLee has been that which focused on the general's role as a Confederate military strategist. In the first year of the war Lee successively commanded the Virginia State Army, Confederate troops in western Virginia, and Rebel forces along the South Atlantic 1 Connelly, "Robert E. Lee and the Western Confederacy: A Criticism of Lee's Strategic Ability," Civil War History 15(June 1969): 1 16-32; "The Image and the General: Robert E. Lee in American Historiography," ibid. Civil War History 19( March 1973):50-64; The Marble Man: Robert E. Lee and His Image in American Society (New York: Knopf, 1977); (with Archer Jones), The Politics ofCommand: Factions and Ideas in Confederate Strategy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 3 1-48; and (with Barbara L. Bellows), Godand General Longstreet: The Lost Cause and the Southern Mind (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1982), 73- 106. For some general critiques of Connelly's thesis about Lee (neither of which mentions the general's idea that is the subject of this paper) see Albert Castel, "The Historian and the General: Thomas L. Connelly versus Robert E. Lee," Civil War History 16( March 1970):50-63; and Richard M. McMurry, Two Great Rebel Armies: An Essay in Confederate Military History (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1989), 140-55. Civil War History, Vol. XXXV, No. 3, * 1989 by the Kent State University Press 198CIVIL WAR HISTORY Coast before he was appointed military adviser to Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Forthe last three years ofthe conflict Lee led the principal Rebel army in the eastern theater of the war. Connelly believes that, from 1862 to 1865, while commanding one Southern field army, Lee also acted as an adviser to Davis. The president frequently consulted Lee about general strategy and about particular military matters that arose in different parts of the Confederacy. Lee's advice, Connelly asserts, was consistent. He always urged the government to take troops from otherareas and send them to reinforce his own army in Virginia so that it could take the offensive against the Union Army of the Potomac. The Old Dominion, Lee maintained, was the main seat of war and the place where the Federals would make their greatest effort. On those rare occasions when Lee rose above a narrow focus on his native state to discuss possible operations forthe armies stationed in areas outside Virginia , he gave impractical, ifnot foolish, advice because he was ignorant of regions beyond the borders of the Old Dominion. Lee, for example, asserted on several occasions that what he sometimes called "the season"— hot, muggy summer weather with its attendant diseases—would make it impossible for Northern troops, or white men in general, to carry on military operations in the Deep South during the June-September period. Because he held this belief, Lee was able to argue that it was not necessary to send reinforcements from his army to the Deep South in the spring or summer because the Yankees would soon be forced by Nature herselfto suspend military operations there. Even worse, Lee maintained, there was a real likelihood that any Confederate reinforcements sent from the Upper South to those regions would themselves fall victim to the unhealthful summer climate of the lower Mississippi Valley or the southern coast. Lee's views about the deleterious Deep South summer climate emerged most conspicuously in the spring 1863 debate over strategy. A large Federal army was beseiging Vicksburg, Mississippi, and...

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