Posted on 03/09/2020 3:54:38 AM PDT by Bull Snipe
President Abraham Lincoln promotes Major General Ulysses S. Grant to the rank of Lieutenant General. As such, Grant will command the 860,000 men of the Union Army.
“This man fights!”
“Find out what he drinks and send a case to my other Generals”
Throwing idiots and money at the problem: a Federal Government tradition!
bump
It is a nice thought, but he didn’t fight over the same piece of land a second time.
Never stepping back unlike his predecessors changed the war in the East imo.
Grant and Sherman knew what modern war was all about.
What could the South have actually done to the North had the North taken a purely defensive position?
I don’t like what Sherman did.
I don’t personally like what I know about Grant.
“Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command, and try to think what we are going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do.”
Believe Grant made that comment during the Battle of the Wilderness.
Probably not much. But the North had to be on the offensive.
The objective was to force the Confederate States back in the Union. To do that, they had to destroy the Confederate armies and conquer Confederate territory. A purely defensive strategy would pretty much allowed the Confederacy to win their goal, independence.
Historians today recognize Gettysburg as the turning point. Back then, it was seen as just another major battle.
While your statement is generally accurate, in Grant’s case, he was weirdly effective. Especially with Sherman’s boys “making Georgia howl” at the same time.
CC
Thuis sayeth old-ager: “What could the South have actually done to the North had the North taken a purely defensive position?
I don’t like what Sherman did.
I don’t personally like what I know about Grant.”
Antietam 1862 (Sharpsburg MD)
Gettysburg 1863 (PA)
Monocacy 1864 (MD)
Have a nice day!
More than cavalry. Early approached Washington D.C. with an army of nearly 10,000 men.
While Gettysburg was the largest battle of the war. It’s main accomplishment was break the offensive power of the Army of Northern Virginia. Lee lost about one third of his army as casualties. For the rest of the War, the ANV was pretty much limited to going wherever the Army of the Potomac wanted to go.
Whether it was the turning point of the war is debatable. Some think McClellan’s drawn battle at Antietam had more impact on the outcome of the war than Gettysburg. The reason is that it was just enough of a win for Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. That event made European intervention, on the side of the Confederacy, very unlikely. Without direct European intervention, the prospect of the Confederacy winning the war declined drastically.
So the Confederacy got it's butt kicked by idiots? Not much to be proud if, is it?
Interestingly, the high losses at Antietam were what prompted Lee to invade western and southern Pennsylvania the following year as he knew the south couldn't win a protracted peace. June 1863 was an interesting month in western and southern Pennsylvania history. Lee's army burned military targets such as the steel works outside of Pittsburgh, but generally behaved in civil fashion otherwise. There is one episode where he sent a cavalry unit commander back to a storekeeper to apologize and pay for headgear they had rather forcibly "traded" to acquire. Quite the contrast to Sherman's army's behavior on their march from Atlanta to Savannah.
“Lee’s army burned military targets such as the steel works outside of Pittsburgh”
Pittsburg is 195 miles from Gettysburg. It is on the West side of the Appalachian Mountains, Gettysburg is on the East side. Doubt Lee sent raiding parties that far away from his army.
Don’t take my word for it, you can look it up. Thaddeus Stevens steel mills were southeast of Pittsburgh.
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