Lee's aggressiveness at Chancellorsville created an overconfidence—both in himself and his army—that directly caused the disastrous frontal assault at Gettysburg. Lee admitted he asked too much of his infantry. A straight line runs from May 3, 1863 to July 3, 1863.

(02:42:35) And they realized that that was, they believed, making it more likely that their whole war effort would be successful. There are only a few times during the war where you get a scene like you got on May 3rd, where this whole army sees the old man ride into their midst, basically, and just has this ... I think they decided at that point, the soldiers, that he was always gonna win, and Lee looked at them and thought, "They can do

(02:42:58) whatever I ask them to do." I think if you wanna understand Gettysburg, if you wanna understand Pickett's Charge, you need to look back to May 3rd at Chancellorsville, when Lee just decided that his infantry could do anything he wanted them to do. - But also from the infantry perspective, they believed in the- - You asked me earlier about what did the soldiers' letters say. The letters from

(02:43:18) Lee's army, they absolutely didn't even contemplate losing to the Army of the Potomac. I mean, they just didn't think- They didn't think they would lose to it - What do you attribute that to? Is that, does it, Robert E. Lee, to him? - It's to Lee and the fact that they won these victories under Lee, and that they took these chances, and everybody tried. And they always knew that they were outnumbered, and yet

(02:43:39) they were still winning. The closest the numbers had ever been at the seven days when the armies were about the same size, but after that, Lee is always at a significant disadvantage in numbers, and yet he seems to be victorious. - So Lee's aggressiveness, like you've mentioned, produced also staggering casualties. - Staggering casualties. He lost 13,000 men here, and Hooker about 17,500. A much higher proportion of Lee's army than Hooker lost in his army. But this should've been