ABSTRACT
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. Lee always urged the government to take troops from other areas 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. Lee's views about the deleterious Deep South summer climate emerged most conspicuously in the spring 1863 debate over strategy. Lee's ideas about the Deep South climate and its possible effect on health and military operations were, in fact, shared by many men—both North and South—in the 1860s. Lee's ideas about the dangers to the health of troops stationed along the coast were widely shared by many Confederates.
