re: 155 years ago today: Ulysses S. Grant secured Chattanooga

quote:

---

I cannot recommend strongly enough Chernow’s biography of US Grant.

---

Just put it in my Amazon cart. Thanks baw

I been there.

quote:

---

However, to call his tactics anything more than “passable” would be an outright lie. Grant won all three of the battles mentioned through gut and overwhelming numbers.

---

Yeah...this is a myth that needs to be put down. To call Grant's tactics "passable" would be an outright lie because they were more than passable. They were solid. Tactically, Grant is severely underrated. Grant was constantly on the attack and, despite this, his armies suffered a lower casualty rate for the entire war than Lee's (11% vs. 13%).

In the Civil War, the strategic defensive was the preferred option because to attack often meant courting defeat. The defender always had the advantage. In fact, the vast majority of Lee's victories came on the defensive. Lee launched three strategic offensives during the Civil War (Maryland, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg) and two of them ended in failure. Grant launched multiple strategic offensives during the war and all of them ended with total victory and the complete surrender of the opposing army.

Now you bring up tactics and how they weren't even passable. I'm sorry...but a poor tactician doesn't fight and win five straight battles over a two week period. That's what Grant did as he closed on Vicksburg. He routed Johnston's army out of Mississippi, then turned on Pemberton's army and pushed it into Vicksburg's defenses before laying siege to it. The whole campaign cost him less than 10,000 men and he captured an entire army for his troubles.

Then he goes to Chattanooga to a dark and bleak situation. The 45,000 Confederates of Braxton Bragg have the 50,000ish troops under Rosecrans besieged around the city. Grant comes in, takes command, immediately breaks the siege, and then attacks a comparable force entrenched on high ground.....and completely routs them from the field. A poor tactician doesn't win that battle, even if he does outnumber his opponent.

quote:

---

Treasonous terrorists at that.

And don’t forget that during the war, they invaded the free state of Pennsylvania and seized free black American citizens, many of whom had been born free and never been southern slaves, and conscripted them into slavery. When black Union soldiers were captured or surrendered, they murdered them.

---

Absolutely. The revisionist "historians" of today who still insist that chattel slavery had nothing to do with the American Civil War are just lying through their teeth. All one needs to do is read the statements of secession promulgated by the legislatures of the seceding southern states to know that the main reason they seceded was to defend the institution of slavery. Those who say the South was "defending its way of life" forget to say that the Southern "way of life" at the time was based on the institution of slavery. The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 was totally unacceptable to the southern slave states who later made up the Confederacy as they saw the Republican Party as an existential threat to chattel slavery. Although Abraham Lincoln and most of the Republicans at the time were not abolitionists, they were free-soilers who opposed the expansion of slavery into the then extensive western territories. This was absolute anathema to pro-slavery southerners, because they felt that slavery needed to expand in order to survive. They saw the writing on the wall - as more free states were admitted into the Union, that meant they would lose the numbers in terms of electoral politics. Again, anyone who tries to say that the American Civil War "had nothing to do with slavery" are simply lying to promote the myth of the "Lost Cause."

quote:

---

Funny how this thread is a controversial topic on this site

---

I agree. But it shouldn't be.

quote:

---

Grant was constantly on the attack and, despite this, his armies suffered a lower casualty rate for the entire war than Lee's (11% vs. 13%).

---

Grant was constantly outnumbering his opponents 1.5-2:1, as opposed to Lee who often had those numbers flipped. Tell me, were you ever in a playground fight as a kid? All of us were constantly going at it over one thing or another when I was little and if there’s one thing I always noticed it’s that the side that was outnumbered got knicked up worse than the others. Unless, of course, they were the hands-down better fighters. Then they might force a draw, at least.

You mean to tell me that Grant losing nearly the same percentage of troops with overwhelming force is an achievement? It’s an embarrassment. And besides, we all know the only reason you use percentages is because if we went off of straight casualty ratios he would look like a butcher of his own men. A nearly 2:1 ratio of his casualties to Lee’s in the Overland Campaign. What a joke.

But hey, at least he was smart enough to know a basic tactic that even the dumbest playground bully has always grasped: the side with the most usually wins.

quote:

---

the strategic defensive was the preferred option because to attack often meant courting defeat. The defender always had the advantage. In fact, the vast majority of Lee's victories came on the defensive. Lee launched three strategic offensives during the Civil War (Maryland, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg) and two of them ended in failure.

---

You confuse strategy and tactics in this example. An army can launch a strategic offensive and yet still wage tactically defensive battles. It’s all about being the one to choose the site of the battle. Antietam was a defensive battle for Lee as well (which was a tactical draw, not a defeat), and Gettysburg was Lee’s greatest mistake.

But you see, that’s the difference between you and I: I can admit that Lee was not infallible. That he made mistakes. You, however, let your blatant fanboy’ism cloud your views of Grant. He and the North as a whole were far superior at strategy and logistics. Their armies rarely wanted for supplies and or deviated from their main plan of victory. The South often was running on half-rations and is well-documented in its terrible foreign attempts to enlist British or French intervention.

BUT. The South had the undoubted tactical gold-standard of the war in Lee, Jackson, Forrest, and Longstreet. It’s the only reason why the war lasted as long as it did. Several European powers even sent observers for the conflict, and all came back with the same unbiased conclusion.

I agree with your post, however the point still stands that Grant never displayed real tactical brilliance. Of course he didn’t need to, as you said. But just because he won with logistics and strategy does not mean he could have also won with tactics if required.

McClellan is also the one I always think of when trying to provide a comparison as to why Grant was superior to his predecessors.

The Union forever!

quote:

---

I cannot recommend strongly enough Chernow’s biography of US Grant

---

Same here. It's really well done.