Lots of fun reading to be found HERE!

He showed great leadership and fortitude as a general.

He was not well-suited to leadership in the civilian government, but he was personally honest and upright.

Grant wasn't a strategic genius and none of his campaigns showed any remarkable generalship on his part. He made some colossal blunders along the way--see Cold Harbor.

But what made him successful was he understood wars of attrition. The North had huge reserves of manpower and material. The South did not. As long as Grant could keep the pressure on the rebel military and force them into battle, he was winning the war no matter the casualties or who "won" the battle.

The guy he eventually replaced, McClellan, did not understand this and was too cautious to employ the necessary strategy. A more aggressive McClellan could have ended the war much sooner.

I can't remember exactly, but I think so.

"General, if you are not using my army may I have it back please."

He was what Stonewall Jackson would have been to the South had he survived. Alternate timeline: May 3, 1863: Jackson, after a narrow escape from friendly fire, is sent west to relieve the siege of Vicksburg. What a campaign that would have been.

As for Grant as President, his biggest failing was loyalty to friends whose characters he misjudged. He appointed them to patronage positions, and many of them stole everything that wasn't nailed down.

As to Jackson, I wonder how he would have done outside of Virginia. There he was a master of the geography. He would always find a shortcut no one else thought of. His death was probably marked the end for the confederacy.

The one confederate general who I think was grossly underappreciated was Joseph Johnston. He understood the South's limitations and always avoid combat unless he had a least some advantage. He could have kept the confederacy going for a few more years, so thank goodness the confederate leaders wanted "fighting" generals like Hood.

Grant's campaigns in the West were especially impressive.

On the one hand, you say Grant was "not a strategic genius." Then you say "but what made him successful was he understood wars of attrition." That is a contradiction. Perhaps you conflate tactics and strategy.

There was no such thing as "a more aggressive McClellan." McClellan was a pompous fool who took credit for others' deeds and was disloyal to President Lincoln. Grant saved the day.

He deserves credit for building the army that Grant used to defeat Lee. He was not a good operational commander, and Lee knew McClellan's tendencies so well as to almost be able to read his mind. Disloyalty is a judgement call. Some would argue Lincoln unduly tried to micromanage the Army of the Potomac, bypassing McClellan. He did run for president in 1864, without resigning his commission, but he was following a precedent set by Winfield Scott.

There is no contradiction that Grant wasn't a strategic genius but that he did understand wars of attrition. A lot of people understood it including Lincoln. That wasn't genius.

And of course there was no more aggressive McClellan. He was what he was.

The confederacy's back was broken at Gettysburg. That happened BEFORE Grant took command. Meade was the general in charge there. So, no, Grant didn't save the day.

would have gotten it done.

If Grant had been the commander at Gettysburg, the war would have ended that week. Meade let the enemy get away. Thanks to that blunder, the South saved and recovered its combat power. It's simplistic to say "the confederacy's back was broken at Gettysburg."

Grant kicked ass in the West and did the same as Union commander. Deal with it.

"if Grant had been commander at Gettyburg...". He wasn't. He was commander at Cold Harbor--how'd that turn out?

As for the West. Grant wasn't too impressive at Shiloh. His army was caught with its paints down and had it not been for Gen. Buell, the confederates would have won the battle. Grant did a very good job a Vicksburg, which was probably his best generalship of the war. Even then, several of his tactics proved failures. Fortunately he had such large man and material advantages that he got several tries at taking the city.

A couple of things could have gone differently and Lee would have had the victory and Gettysburg, but it wouldn't have mattered strategically. Caveat, unless Gettysburg caused a political panic of some kind. IIRC one of Lee's goals was to raid Harrisburg. A Confederate army running amuck in the PA countryside would have caused a great deal of consternation at the highest levels. It could have looked like a whole new war, even while the overall strategic situation was becoming more favorable to the Union.

If it had turned into another "Bull Run", it definitely would have. Imagine if McClellan had won that election.

I still believe Gettysburg spelled the end for the confederacy, no matter what happened in the west. The Army of Northern Virginia was spent. They didn't have any manpower reserves to call up. It was simply a matter of time until Virginia and Richmond fell. There was no other meaningful force in the southeast to defend the secessionist states.

When asked what would have happened had Pickett's Charge succeeded:

"Lee would have ridden up to the crest of Cemetery Ridge late on the blistering afternoon of July 3, passing through the human wreckage of the Rebel brigades that had made the great charge that broke the Yankee line. At the crest he would have been greeted by a few hundred of his victorious and wildly cheering soldiers standing amid the captured Federal cannon, waving their red battleflags in triumph. Off to the front and to his left and right, Lee would have observed scores of Union regiments, their sturdy ranks unbroken, calmly pulling back to the east to take up a strong position on the next line of hills or behind the next creek.

Even as he savored his most recent tactical triumph, Lee would have realized that his was a pyrrhic victory. He had lost more than a third of his army in the three days of fighting as Gettysburg, his men had begun to run short of ammunition, the food that they could collect from the surrounding farms would soon be exhausted, and he had no secure, dependable supply line to his base in Virginia. In addition, his army was burdened with several thousand prisoners and some twelve thousand wounded men. Once these facts sank in, Lee would have known that he had to get his battered troops back to Virginia."

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But, suppose that Lee had listened to Longstreet and made a flanking move instead of a direct attack. Or that Buford's cavalry hadn't been able to delay the confederate advance. The confederates would have taken all the strategic high ground instead of having to attack it. Things could have been very different. Lee made several lethal blunders.

It would seem that the vast majority of general officers in the Army of Northern Virginia chose Gettysburg to have one or more "off days". If the AoNV chose to make a flanking move or beat the AoP to the Gettysburg hills, Meade's Pipe Creek Circular would have become operative and the battle just moved to another place.

The only successful pursuits of a defeated army came at Appomattox and after Nashville. In all other cases, the victorious army was as devastated by the victory as the defeated army was devastated by the defeat.

Grant rose from the rank of Colonel in 1862 to a Lieutenant General in late 1864. Only Ike's rise to high command was more dramatic. Grant personally received the surrender of three Confederate armies. Not a bad record for a man that wasn't a strategic genius or a remarkable general. Grant victories include, Forts Henry and Donalson, Shiloh, Vicksburg, Chattanooga. Appomattox. Within 6 weeks of the beginning of the "Overland" campaign he had Lee's Army of Northern Virginia penned into Petersburg works.
Where it would wither on the vine. Whether Grant was a strategic genius or a remarkable general matters not. Victory in war is the only thing that counts, and Grant delivered victories for the Union cause.

He unlike a lot of other Union generals kept the pressure on. He had the manpower and material advantage and used it. That was his greatest trait. And like you said, he won a lot of battles because of it.

That's where he won the war, really: Mississippi and Tennessee.

Last edited Mon Aug 10, 2015, 12:49 PM - Edit history (1)

to agree on Christa McAuliffe.

At least if anybody knew who she was.

Who pushed to launch when Morton Thiokol was screaming about the temperature? I remain convinced it had something to do with Reagan wanting to be able to talk about her being in orbit during his SOTU speech.

Today in history: Grant expels all Jews from Kentucky, Tennessee, & Mississippi

the middle of the Civil War, General Grant expelled all Jewish persons out the area controlled by his armies. It is a near-forgotten episode, in part because of President Lincoln’s remarkable decision to overturn his most popular general in the middle of the war.

SC_-_General_Grant_(6641396869)In 1862, Grant’s armies controlled territory that included portions of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi. As commander over this “department,” Grant was responsible for governing his territory. This included tight regulation of cotton sales, as limited supply had led to speculation and black markets.

While the practice was widespread, anti-Semitism led Grant and others to place blame on Jews. Grant described “the Israelites” as “an intolerable nuisance.”

As part of regulating the cotton trade, the Treasury Department required merchants to have trade permits. Grant’s father arrived from Missouri in November 1862 with some merchants seeking permits. When Grant realized that his father’s colleagues were Jews, Grant ordered travel restrictions for Jews and a ban on their involvement in the trade of cotton. In December, Grant went even further. He issued his infamous Order No. 11 stated:

Actually, I do appreciate the OP, because I love historical debate and believe we should always be working to place our current situation in an historical context (which gets constantly updated).

Part of that update is applying the concept of intersectionality to historical figures as well. They were imperfect beings like us with multiple identities and levels of privileges and biases. It's the boundaries they pushed within their historical context that are interesting to me.

to President Lincoln, condemning Grant's order as an “enormous outrage on all laws and humanity, ... the grossest violation of the Constitution and our rights as good citizens under it.” Jewish leaders organized protest rallies in St. Louis, Louisville and Cincinnati, and telegrams reached the White House from the Jewish communities of Chicago, New York and Philadelphia. Cesar Kaskel arrived in Washington on Jan. 3, 1863 ... There he .. went with a Cincinnati congressman, John A. Gurley, directly to the White House. Lincoln received them promptly and studied Kaskel's copies of General Order No. 11 and the specific order expelling Kaskel from Paducah. The President told Halleck to have Grant revoke General Order No. 11 ... Grant revoked the order three days later ...
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/grant.html

... for the rest of his life, Grant was ashamed of having attempted to evict “Jews as a class” for offenses most of them had never committed. “What his wife, Julia, called ‘that obnoxious order’ continued to haunt Grant up to his death” ... “The sense that in expelling them he had failed to live up to his own high standards of behavior, and to the Constitution that he had sworn to uphold, gnawed at him. He apologized for the order publicly and repented of it privately” ... Grant’s order got a good deal of attention in the 1868 presidential campaign — the first time a “Jewish issue” played a role in presidential politics. Grant didn’t deny that General Orders No. 11 had grossly violated core American values. “I do not sustain that order,” he wrote humbly. “It would never have been issued if it had not been telegraphed the moment it was penned, and without reflection.” But it was as president that the full extent of Grant’s regret became clear. He opposed a movement to make the United States an explicitly Christian state through a constitutional amendment designating Jesus as “ruler among the nations.” He named more Jews to government office than any of his predecessors ...
Ulysses S. Grant’s greatest regret
His anti-Semitic order haunted — and drove — him
By Jeff Jacoby
GLOBE COLUMNIST DECEMBER 05, 2012
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2012/12/05/jacoby/YEQhAs7UWrOfXirKcs3DvJ/story.html

When General Grant Expelled the Jews
By Jonathan D. Sarna
Schocken/Nextbook, 224 pages, $24.95
... Brandeis professor Jonathan Sarna digs far deeper than the expulsion itself, to examine the incident’s wider contemporary context and later consequences ... When the general ran for president in 1868, his Democratic opponents sought to gain Jewish support by recalling the expulsion order. This forced Grant and his advisers to seek to convince Jews that the order did not reflect the candidate’s actual opinion of them — although, living years before our culture of profuse apology for real or imagined slights, Grant never quite made an official mea culpa ... Once elected, Grant appointed more Jews to office than any previous president — including a consul in Romania to protect the Jews there; spoke out against anti-Semitism, and firmly supported church-state separation. Grant was also the first president to attend a synagogue dedication, that of Washington’s Adas Israel in 1876, symbolically proclaiming, in Sarna’s words, “that Judaism was a coequal religion in the United States.” Far from marking an upsurge in anti-Jewish sentiment, Grant’s presidential years, from 1869 through 1877, marked what Sarna calls “a brief ‘golden age’” in American Jewish history ...
Grant's Anti-Semitism—And Tolerance
Lawrence Grossman
March 28, 2012
http://forward.com/culture/153426/grants-anti-semitism-and-tolerance/

Since routinely here anyone who drinks even to 1/4 the level Grant did (despite many revisionist attempts at whitewashing and the real intermittent nature of his drunkenness, it is documented that he was completely inebriated during several key points in Civil War campaigns) is universally condemned as a hopeless alcoholic incapable of functioning responsibly and effectively.

you providing us with links to the documentation that Grant was completely inebriated during several Key points in Civil War campaigns.

He turned the war into a war of attrition. It wasn't pretty, it was very bloody, but it worked.