History Debate: Ulysses S. Grant vs. Robert E. Lee

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Was Ulysses S. Grant a butcher? Was Robert E. Lee the Civil War’s best general? The answer to both questions is a resounding no.

The respective casualty figures of these two generals contradict the myth about who, if either, was a butcher. For the entire war, Grant incurred about 154,000 casualties (killed, wounded, missing, captured) while imposing about 191,000 casualties on his foes. Lee suffered about 209,000 casualties while imposing about 240,000 casualties on his opponents.

Lee, who should have been fighting defensively and preserving his precious manpower, instead exceeded Grant’s understandable aggressiveness and incurred 55,000 more casualties than Grant.

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Grant, a national general, was the most successful Union or Confederate general of the war. He drove the Confederates from the Mississippi Valley, the primary western theater of the war, through a series of brilliant battles and campaigns — from the early capture of Forts Henry and Donelson through the unparalleled Vicksburg campaign.

Then it took him a mere month to save a Union army trapped in Chattanooga and drive the Rebels there back into Georgia — with a giant assist from Lee (more on that later).

Finally, Grant was brought to the East to face Lee’s army, which he defeated within a year to effectively bring the war to a close.

Although Lee has been praised for his offensives against the Union Army of the Potomac, he was carrying out an aggressive strategy with aggressive tactics that were inconsistent with what should have been a Confederate grand defensive strategy.

The Union, not the Confederacy, had the burden of winning the war, and the South, outnumbered about 4-to-1 in white men of fighting age, had a severe manpower shortage.

Nevertheless, Lee acted as though he were a Union general and attacked again and again as though his side had the burden of winning and also had an unlimited supply of soldiers.

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By the end of 1862, therefore, both Lee and Grant had won significant victories, but the results of those victories were quite different. Grant’s victories greatly expanded Union control in western Kentucky and Tennessee, as well as northern Mississippi. Grant’s successes had been achieved with a little over 20,000 casualties while he imposed more than 35,000 casualties on his opponents.

Meanwhile, Lee’s victories had foiled Union strategic offensives, but his embarrassing Maryland campaign had lost the possibility of European intervention and nearly cost Lee his army.

Lee’s constant demand for reinforcements and his 50,000 casualties, incurred during the Maryland campaign, had drained other areas of the South of many of their soldiers. That drainage made Grant’s and other western generals’ jobs easier.

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