The Civil War

Dad……… yer killin’ me with this "Grant the butcher" versus "Marble Man Lee" scenario.

Ever since the end of the Civil War the Southern cause apologists – including Freeman, incidentally –promulgated the myth that US Grant was simply a bull in a China shop, winning with superior manpower and equipment who simply rolled over Robert E. Lee by virtue of material superiority.

There was a logic to Grant. Did you know that in his Vicksburg and Chattanooga campaigns he suffered proportionally fewer casualties than Lee did at Gettysburg? When a war of maneuver was called for he excelled, such as the Vicksburg campaign (which was near genius on the order of Winfield Scott's invasion of Mexico in 1848). He bagged two Confederate armies in 1862 within a month of each other, suffering minimal casualties.

But when he faced Lee and the Army of North Virginia he had few options. The Confederacy seemed to believe that their center of gravity was Richmond, but Grant realized that the rebel center of gravity was the Army of Northern Virginia itself. His goal was to capture or destroy that army, not Richmond. Because of the geography of Northern Virginia with its east/west rivers and mountains he had few options to outmaneuver or encircle, and Lee to his credit astutely prevented him from doing so. So Grant had little choice other than simply to grind and bang heads with the Army of Northern Virginia. In that era the assaulting troops always suffered more casualties than the defenders, just as in World War I. It was inevitable.

I will grant that Robert E. Lee was a superb general and man -I admire him greatly - but he met at least his match with Ulysses Grant. Grant knew how to switch from one method of warfare to another with the goal of winning and that is what he did. He weren’t no “butcher”…………………………………….Luca

Luca knows of what he speaks, since we was actually present with Lee and Grant.

p.s. We have a Robert E. Lee Elementary School here in Long Beach; surprised it hasn't been re-named by now.

Do you guys have a link or reference that gives a reader's digest version comparing the 2 generals?

My bro in law is a west point grad, and I think he's pretty well versed in military tactics from generals going back to civil war days. I know he is with the WWII generals.

Well, perhaps you could have won that campaign but I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have. Neither could Generals McClellan, Pope, Burnside, Hooker or Meade. The first four locked horns with the Army of Northern Virginia, sustained casualties and retreated back over the Potomac. Grant was the only one who knew victory depended on forcing the issue
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It was Grant’s job to win the war. Lincoln didn’t tell him how to do it, he just told him to get it done. It’s not like his first choice was to grind it out. When he first crossed the Potomac he wanted to get through the Wilderness as quickly as possible and avoid hand to hand fighting in that jungle, but Lee deliberately attacked him in there (so as to negate the Union advantage in artillery) and it was a vicious slug fest. Because that’s what Lee wanted.



Grant later executed a brilliant move when he flanked Lee after Cold Harbor and, as I recall, built a pontoon bridge something like a mile long (over some river that nobody even considered possible) and beat Lee to Petersburg. Grant was not initially on-site at Petersburg because he was organizing the movement of the rest of the Army of the Potomac, but if those initial units had attacked they they would have taken an undefended Petersburg, and that would likely have ended the war in 1864. Lee was fooled but that inexcusable hesitation gave him the opportunity to recover quickly enough to force Grant into a siege at Petersburg involving trench warfare, anticipating World War I. If the entire 1864 – 1865 campaign was a bloody grind, it’s because that is what Robert E. Lee forced Grant into. Had Lee acquiesced and tried to fight a campaign of maneuver with Grant he would almost certainly still have lost.


You cannot fault or minimize Grant's performance because he fought the only kind of campaign that could end the war. His methods and  outcome in no way indicate that Lee was a superior strategist or tactician............................Luca

I hope you're not equating the Army of Northern Virginia that fought McClellan, Pope, Burnside, Hooker and Meade with the half-dead zombies that confronted Grant in '64 and '65.

My brother in law gave me this book, that I've since loaned out. I don't recall Hatch being mentioned.

books.google.com/books/about/The_Generals.html?id=MbxvDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button

Watching the movie, Gettysburg, I became interested in Col. Joshua Chamberlain. On a friends recommendation, I then read Valors Measure, by Thomas Oliver.

A volunteer from Maine, this history professor felt he had to join the fight. His career was impressive and the book included his impressions of several of the generals you have been talking about.