Lee had every reason to believe that he would prevail, considering his list of previous successes. I wonder if he gave the Yankees any credit for staying the course. I mean, there were instances where the Y's skedaddled obviously, but in the final analysis, the North bulled their necks in and took what they needed to take to get the job done. Just like we did at Ploesti.

That good old rebel song gloating about 300,000 Yankees stiff in southern dust wasn't just propaganda.

But in the final analysis, even Lee himself admitted it was a numbers game and the South was the underdog from the get, superb generalship and individual zeal notwithstanding.

Reminds me of Yamamoto's famous guarantee of victories for 18 months. Well, Bobby Lee and his merry men took it farther down the pike, but they went the same way in the end.

I do think there was a fatal flaw at play here, one that Shakespeare would call hubris, on the part of Lee and his men.

Numbers defeated our traditional enemies back then, and also during WW2. But those same numbers will kill us if we go against Red (and yes, it's still red) China...given our current policy.

We'll all go down together, descendanets of the blue and the gray, swinging "Louisville Sluggers" made in China.