You're silly, if you think Grant was anything but average, in a group of horrible below average peers. The only thing that could make Grant look good, or gives the appearance of competence in the "operational art" is that most all his peers on the Union side were much worse.
Please don't use Vicksburg as an example, it was a seige of overwhelming superior land and naval forces at the disposal of someone who could apply basic principles of warefare.
So you need to hit the history books other than those unfortunate books read in our elementry and high schools.
You mean other than the fact that he beat every Southern general sent against him? If Grant was that bad then what does it say about his opponents?
There are many differents kinds of military generalship. While Grant may not have been a "great field commander," he was rare among the military talents of the day in several ways: 1) he won battlefield victories, something most of his Federal colleagues couldn't or wouldn't do; 2) he had a good strategic sense, in his plan to invade the south by using the Tennessee River as a "logistical highway;" 3) he had a knack for picking good corps and division commanders and promting men of talent (e.g., Sherman, Sheridan) and getting rid of those without it (e.g., McClernand); 4) like Lord Montgomery of Alamein, Grant was not imaginative or dramatically innovative on the battlefield -- he was simply bulldog tenacious. After accidentally colliding with Lee's army in The Wilderness, in forty days he drove the Confederates into box perimeter around Richmond from which they could not break out. When they finally did in April 1865, the war was quickly forced to conclusion; 5) most importantly, Grant had the confidence of his Commander-in-Chief, President Lincoln and in our system, the military is always subordinate to civilian authority. All other Federal commanders were found wanting in some key respect -- Grant carried out the policy directives of his superiors and did it without incessant demands for more men and material (which he got, in any event).
Grant's reputation as a butcher is undeserved. No Civil War general was able to solve the tactical problem presented by the rifled musket, which made traditional Napoleonic battlefield tactics obsolete. Indeed, this problem was not really solved finally until after the bloodbaths of The Great War, with the advent of the tank, which returned mobility to battlefield action. Until then, defense, trench warfare, and high body counts dominated the tactical playing field. One cannot denigrate Grant as a butcher without also doing the same to Lee, whose aggressive and inexhaustable use of irreplacable southern manpower was often commented upon by many Confederate civilians. Only after the war, as part of the rise of the Myth of the Lost Cause, was Lee elevated to secular military sainthood.
Grant was a good general because he accomplished his military aims. You can criticize a much of his performance, but he understood the stakes and dimensions of the War and was unwilling to adopt a tentative, hesitant tactical approach. His doctrine of "pursue the enemy army, wherever he goes" was the key to finally defeating the Army of Northern Virginia.
Grant's activities before the siege set in were definitely of a very high order of skill and success. He won five battles in 17 days: Port Gibson (May 1st), Raymond (May 12th), capture of Jackson, Mississippi (May 14th), Champion's Hill (May 16th), and Big Black River Bridge (May 17th).
In all these battles he applied maneuver warfare techniques to confuse and defeat his opponents. His force was numerically inferior to the aggregate force of CSA troops in the area. He defeated them by turns. Even crossing the Misssissippi river demonstrated a maneuver warfare technique and a willingness to take a calculated risk (are you hearing this Monty?).
There was a time during the Overland campaign where Grant's skill stole a march on Lee and would have allowed him to get into Petersburg virtually unopposed, but his subordinate leaders flubbed it.
Walt