JEFFERSON DAVIS: A flawed man, with a sharp temper, but determined, brave and compassionate. Sided with the emancipators in the CS congress.

ROBERT E. LEE: The most brilliant commander on both sides, a humanist, a loving husband and father, and a life long opponent of slavery, Lee almost accomplished the impossible-win the war.

NATHAN BEDFORD FORREST-Uneducated, semi-literate, but extremely intelligent, Forrest was easily the best cavalry commander in the entire war, perhaps in the entire century. Though possessed of repulsive views on slavery - at least as far as he founded the KKK - he was objectively, a "great" man.

THOMAS J. JACKSON-Stonewall. Lee's close friend and compatriot, and completely brilliant in war. Sadly killed, mortally wounded by accident, by his own men, at Chancellorsville, shortly after his finest hour.

JAMES LONGSTREET-The Old Warhorse. A dependable, brave and trustworthy subordinate of Lee, he commanded the I Corps from Second Manassas to Appomattox, and before that, had commanded at First Manassas and the Richmond Campaign. Very nearly took the Round Tops.

PATRICK CLEBURNE-The Fighting Irishman. Killed at Franklin, he was the best commander in the central theatre for the south. Brave, skilled and loved by his men, he won the battle of Chickamauga, with Longstreet's help, for his superiors.

JOHN PEMBERTON-Included not so much for massive achievement, though he was certainly a good commander and good man, but more for his conduct as Vicksburg. A New Yorker gone south on matters of conscience, he constantly risked his life to save his men's.

PIERRE G.T. BEAUREGARD-The Old Creole. Flamboyant, bombastic, and argumentative, Beauregard would perhaps have been second only to Lee in renown, if he hadn't argued with Davis and politicked.

I'll add John Breckenridge and Albert S. Johnston another time.

Yea, the confederacy had a superior army leader-wise in my opinion.  

Ya; at medium levels, they certainly had the upper hand. At army commander level, apart form Lee, well...Albert Sidney johnston was killed in his first battle of the war, Beauregard never got a real chance to command an army in its prime, Bragg and Johnston had strategic problems, etc. Whereas the Union had McPherson, Sherman, Sheridan, Meade and Grant.

except for maybe the fact that he grudgingly accepted and performed the basic roles of his job.

Well, if the basic roles of the job included very nearly creating a new nation, throwing all his considerable energies into it, and afterwards, eventually, calling for reconciliation, then no, he was no hero.