[DoodleDawg]

It is the head to head Grant-Lee Overland Campaign I refer to whereupon Grant (as a butcher) simply drove his men in a battle of attrition at Lee - regardless of casualties - knowing Lee could ill afford major losses. Grant had almost twice the casualties of Lee at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania... and (basis some reports) 7,000 casualties in twenty minutes at Cold Harbor.

Let me ask you this. If the situation was reversed, do you think that Lee would have hesitated for a moment to use the same tactics Grant did if he thought they would bring victory?

[Lagmeister]

Lee, like Jackson, was a risk taker. Lee's assault at the Union center in Gettysburg was no 'attrition' attack but a calculated risk that it was soft.

Basis Lee's piety versus Grant's hard drinking (costing him rank in 1854), I would say a pure war of bloody attrition was not something Lee would do.

His campaign into PA was to get a decisive victory - getting France to recognize the South - and end the war.

[DiogenesLamp]

If the situation were reversed, Lee wouldn’t have been invading another country.