Maybe not.
Posted on 07/14/2018 2:04:41 PM PDT by donaldo
Grant.s Overland Campaign
“If Lee had accepted Lincoln’s appointment to lead the Union’s armies the War probably would not have lasted a year.”
There wasn’t much chance of that. Lee made it clear that whichever way Virginia went, he would go. That and it took the Federals a couple of years before they had an Army capable of offensive action and a Navy capable of maintaining a strategic blockade. Lee, for all his tactical brilliance, could have done little to remedy those shortcomings. But then the war would have been fought primarily in the Carolinas, I suppose.
“Additionally Grants siege of Petersburg, while not entirely planned that way pinned down troops that could have confronted Sherman’s March to the sea.”
Grant’s plan was to get between Lee’s army and Richmond and in so doing, compel Lee to attack Grant on terms favorable to Grant. The defender almost always ‘won’ the engagement during the civil war. This is why the US Civil War is sometimes referred to as a dress rehearsal for The Great War (WW1).
Lee would have had to make a major blunder for that to have happened. Yet Grant knew he had to make the effort, and settled for pinning Lee’s forces in the trenches around Richmond & Petersburg. Grant’s biggest fear was that Lee would decide that Richmond couldn’t be defended and so give him the slip. Hence the frantic pursuit of Lee towards Appomattox Court House once the lines at Petersburg collapsed.
Grant could not get N B Forrest.
Read it, good writing.
In Longstreet’s memoirs he talks about a plan he had in the spring of 1863. The reason he wasn’t at Chancellorsville was he had taken two divisions south by rail to forage the areas of coast under Federal control. At the time Grant had Vicksburg under siege, and Gen. Joe Johnston was trying to gather men at Corinth to break it, but only had about 30,000 men, not enough to break through Grant’s double sided siege works. Gen. Bragg had another 50,000 facing the Union Army of the Cumberland with 60,000 near Chattanooga. His idea was to take advantage of railroad and interior lines of communication to take his corps to Atlanta by rail within a couple of weeks. At the same time troops would be pulled from coastal garrisons, and Johnston would also move to join with Bragg’s army. The combined force would smash the Army of the Cumberland, then move north through Kentucky into Ohio. Grant would have no choice but to abandon Vicksburg and move north. Longstreet said by July 1st he could have 150,000 troops on the banks of the Ohio River. Now that would be an interesting “what if?”.
As it turned out by the time he got back Lee had already received approval for his invasion of Pennsylvania so he never presented the plan. A smaller version was adopted later when his corps was sent south resulting in the Confederate victory at Chickamauga.
And the slaves would not have been freed.
Thanks.
I intend to buy Chernow’s bio. To date the best I’ve read is the one by Jean Edward Smith. There’s a major reassessment of Grant going on and deservedly so. That includes his presidential years as well.
Smith agrees with David Herbert Donald, who called Grant the most underrated American in history.
Grant was a master strategist. Before him the Union forces were like a balky mule team, no two pulling together. After he became General of the armies that changed. From that time all armies were to move in concert toward a common center - Lee’s army of Northern Virginia. Grant to Meade: “Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also.” In effect, Sherman’s march was attacking Lee’s rear. And never forget that there was a crucial election in 1864. Had Grant failed it was likely that the Democrat candidate McClellan would have won and there would have been a negotiated peace. Sherman’s taking of Atlanta was also crucial.
Being a Southerner I was taught to denigrate Grant. But after extensive reading I reached the inescapable conclusion that Grant is one of the greatest captains in history. Don’t get me wrong, I revere Lee and my ancestors but they were wrong.
And don’t buy into that old canard about Grant being a mere butcher who won because of overwhelming numbers alone. That’s nonsense. Previous Union generals had the same advantage as Grant yet they lost and turned tail. One of the most portentous days in American history was the day Grant turned south after that epic battle in the Wilderness. There was to be no turning back.
Sure he sustained heavy casualties. But that’s to be expected when you’re on offense and attacking entrenched positions. Same for Lee. He suffered tremendous casualties at Malvern Hill, Antietam, and Gettysburg. James M. McPherson:
Even in the fighting from the Wilderness to Petersburg during the Spring of 1863...Grant’s casualties were proportionately no higher than Lee’s even though Grant was fighting on the offensive and Lee’s soldiers stood mainly on the defensive behind elaborate entrenchments. Lee had lost as many men in Pickett’s assault at Gettysburg (and proportionately four times as many) as Grant did in the equally ill-fated June 3 assault at Cold Harbor.”
Again, don’t get me wrong. I honor the memory of Lee and Grant, and I’m not for removing all those statues either. It smacks of generational chauvinism in the words of William Manchester. Peter Capstick was right - “History is the often unpleasant record of the way things actually were, not the way they should have been.” Just so.
“And Grant’s successes as President after the war was nothing to write home about.”
That said, he did get elected President.
Another reason, among so many others, why I revere the memory of U. S. Grant:
“In War: Resolution,
In Defeat: Defiance,
In Victory: Magnanimity
In Peace: Good Will.”
Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War
I wonder if Churchill had Lee’s surrender to Grant in mind when he wrote the lines above. For no one could have been more magnanimous to a fallen foe than Grant was to Lee at Appomattox.
Grant wrote the following into the terms of surrender: “This done, each officer and man will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by United States authority so long as they observe their paroles and the laws where they reside.”
Now strictly speaking, Lee and the rebels were guilty of treason. But Grant’s final sentence quoted above, in the words of biographer Jean Edward Smith, “written on his own initiative, effectively pardoned all who surrendered. It was a general amnesty, which, he hoped would free the country from reprisals and vengeance.” Just so. Smith: “With those words Grant pardoned the Army of Northern Virginia and undercut the vengeance festering in Union circles to hang the Confederate leaders for treason. In the bitter days of reprisal following Lincoln’s assassination it was Grant’s word alone that stood between Lee and the gallows. And if General Lee could not be hanged, no one could be.”
Interesting to note that in May of 1865 a federal grand jury in Norfolk indicted Lee for treason. Concerned, Lee contacted Grant. Grant immediately took the case to President Johnson who insisted that Lee be tried. Grant would have none of it and threatened to resign. Johnson: “When can these men be tried?” Grant: “Never, unless they violate their paroles.” Johnson relented knowing his administration would be helpless without Grant’s support. According to Jean Edward Smith, “On June 20, Attorney General James Speed instructed the United States attorney in Norfolk to drop the proceedings. Grant thereupon wrote Lee, assuring him there would be no prosecution.” *
* Grant to Lee, June 20, 1865, 15 The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant 210-211, John Y. Simon, ed. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967).
This was Grant at his magnanimous best. The man didn’t have a vindictive bone in his body. In this he was precisely like Lincoln. Smith: “Grant hated vindictiveness. He had known humiliation before the war and would not inflict it upon others.” And after Lee left the McLean house following the surrender Grant halted the firing of victory salutes by his army. He simply couldn’t abide what he viewed as a wanton humiliation of Lee and his army.
When Grant died his funeral was a testament to national reconciliation. Smith: “Major General Winfield Scott Hancock, accompanied by former Confederate generals John B. Gordon and Fitzhugh Lee [nephew of Robert E. Lee], led a parade of 60,000 mourners up Broadway to Riverside Park. The New York Times reported a record one and a half million spectators lined the route as veterans of the Stonewall Brigade marched in somber unison with the Grand Army of the Republic. At Grant’s request, the pallbearers included an equal number of Southern and Union generals. Sherman and Sheridan marched alongside Joseph E. Johnston and Simon Bolivar Buckner in a final tribute to their fallen comrade.”
Grant’s masterpiece was the Vicksburg campaign. It really is vastly underestimated in the historiography.
Lee’s critical mistake was going north to Gettysburg instead of standing on the defensive in Virginia and sending Longstreet West to help Johnson stop Grant. By July 4th 1863 the war was lost for the Confederacy.
It would have taken longer to free the slaves no doubt but it would have eventually happened. A pre-feudal economic system in a industrializing world is doomed.
No one could get the “Wizard of the Saddle.” He deviled the Union forces in the West but only represented an annoyance without strategic importance.
You can’t win an industrial war with a pre-industrial economy.
Agreed, and a commendable achievement that was. But he was in over his head.
“You people of the South don’t know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don’t know what you’re talking about. War is a terrible thing! You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it… Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth — right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see in the end that you will surely fail.” General William T. Sherman.
“Just finished Shelby Foote’s three volume History of the Civil War”
He was featured prominently in Ken Burn’s Cival War Series. He was outstanding.
Maybe not.
I agree about Vicksburg. In conception Grant basically stood alone. Even Sherman didn’t think it would work. But it did.
Examining a map of the nation, Lincoln made a wide sweeping gesture with his hand then placed his finger on the map and said, “See what a lot of land these fellows hold, of which Vicksburg is the key. The war can never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket.” It was the president’s contention that, “We can take all the northern ports of the Confederacy, and they can defy us from Vicksburg. It means hog and hominy without limit, fresh troops from all the states of the far South, and a cotton country where they can raise the staple without interference.” Lincoln assured his listeners that, “I am acquainted with that region and know what I am talking about, and, as valuable as New Orleans will be to us, Vicksburg will be more so.”
Upon receipt of Grant’s message, Lincoln sighed, “Thank God,” and declared “The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea.”
Good to see you, Michael. Hope the temps alleviate for you in the desert.
I completely agree with your assessment and respect for Grant. It is telling that Grant’s Presidential Library is in Mississippi.
http://www.usgrantlibrary.org
I think Grant had tremendous respect, not just for Lee, but for Southeners in general.
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