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re: 155 years ago today: Ulysses S. Grant secured Chattanooga
Posted on 11/26/18 at 12:09 am to ExtraGravy
Posted on 11/26/18 at 12:09 am to ExtraGravy
The war was fought in the East and won in the West. Grant made total victory possible with his victories at Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga. He is one of the best commanders our military has ever seen and is severely underrated.
Posted on 11/26/18 at 12:15 am to ExtraGravy
quote:
I cannot recommend strongly enough Chernow’s biography of US Grant.
Just put it in my Amazon cart. Thanks baw
![](https://images.tigerdroppings.com/Images/Icons/Iconcheers.gif)
Posted on 11/26/18 at 2:33 am to RollTide1987
quote:
The war was fought in the East and won in the West. Grant made total victory possible with his victories at Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga.
Could not agree more. These blows (along with the oft forgotten Farragut and his navy) crippled the South’s ability to amass real, large-scale resistance outside of Virginia, whose days were then numbered. Beating Lee was almost a formality at that point. I suppose it served to finish breaking the fighting spirit and stow all thoughts of guerrila resistance.
quote:
He is one of the best commanders our military has ever seen and is severely underrated.
I disagree with this wholeheartedly, though. Grant understood the war and general strategy quite well, as someone else said. He also recognized the tools that were at his disposal and used them in a competent enough way (as opposed to all of his predecessors).
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. Not once in any of his major campaigns did he face unfavorable odds in army size. In fact his one battle that started off marginally evenly matched (Shiloh) he was patently losing until reinforcements showed up to give him the overwhelming advantage again.
He quite simply knew that he could afford to bleed more than the Confederates could.
Look back through his battles. The three you mentioned. The Overland Campaign. Shiloh. He used the same tactics we now shred the generals of WWI for using: sending waves of men into withering gunfire and counting on numbers and valor to carry the day.
He didn’t have a Chancellorsville, a Valley Campaign, a crossing of the Delaware, a Battle of Cowpens, or heck even Patton’s armored warfare brilliance.
A man with all the tactical genius of a sledgehammer cannot be counted amongst the greats of our nation’s history.
This post was edited on 11/26/18 at 3:08 am
Posted on 11/26/18 at 5:39 am to ExtraGravy
quote:
I cannot recommend strongly enough Chernow’s biography of US Grant. I
Will check this out. Thanks.
Posted on 11/26/18 at 8:54 am to Decisions
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.
Posted on 11/26/18 at 12:09 pm to CaptainBrannigan
quote:
Ulysses S. Grant
Great American. He deserves statues, not that loser Lee.
This^^^^^
Edwin M. Stanton was right...the leaders of the rebellion were traitors to the Union who put the nation through shear Hell for four years. If anything, these traitors to the Union deserved to be hanged, not venerated like so many today still insist on doing.
Posted on 11/26/18 at 12:28 pm to ExtraGravy
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."
Posted on 11/26/18 at 12:38 pm to TigersFan64
Funny how this thread is a controversial topic on this site
Posted on 11/26/18 at 12:54 pm to 1BamaRTR
quote:
Funny how this thread is a controversial topic on this site
I agree. But it shouldn't be.
Posted on 11/26/18 at 1:26 pm to RollTide1987
quote:
The war was fought in the East and won in the West.
Absolutely. It was the western Union armies under Grant and Sherman that would systematically invade and capture the Confederate states one by one before finally coming to a stop in North Carolina.
The Confederate military leadership in the western theater was a joke. The best general they had was Albert Sidney Johnston, and he was killed right at the beginning at Shiloh.
This post was edited on 11/26/18 at 1:28 pm
Posted on 11/26/18 at 1:35 pm to RollTide1987
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.
This post was edited on 11/26/18 at 2:20 pm
Posted on 11/26/18 at 1:52 pm to Decisions
quote:
He quite simply knew that he could afford to bleed more than the Confederates could.
It's more than that. Grant knew that the Confederacy couldn't win a certain type of war.
He based he entire war effort around creating a war based in resources, both human, natural and manufacturing. The South couldn't win that war.
Doing anything else would have risked loss. Trying to display tactical genius would have handed the South an opportunity that his actual strategy took from them.
He made the correct choices for a guaranteed victory. That's something guys like McClellan never understood.
Posted on 11/26/18 at 2:26 pm to Rep520
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.
McClellan is also the one I always think of when trying to provide a comparison as to why Grant was superior to his predecessors.
This post was edited on 11/26/18 at 2:31 pm
Posted on 11/26/18 at 2:59 pm to Decisions
quote:
Look back through his battles. The three you mentioned. The Overland Campaign. Shiloh. He used the same tactics we now shred the generals of WWI for using: sending waves of men into withering gunfire and counting on numbers and valor to carry the day.
Many European military types during WWI cited the things they learned by observing the Civil War in the US
Grant used his overwhelming advantages in resources an manpower available especially in the West where the Confederates did not have as big a population of soldiers. Truth be told the Lost Cause was a Foolish Cause. Think about it.
1) The Union in the Spring of 1862 was able to land 60'000 men into the heart of the Confederacy at Shiloh
2) Occupation of Tennessee and control of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers by early 1862
3) Farragut takes New Orleans in April of 1862
4) The confederacy had a huge fifth column in their rear, mainly the slaves
If I were advising Jefferson Davis or Robt E. Lee, I would have advocated sending a delegation to Washington in the Fall of 1862 to beg for forgiveness and avoid needless death and destruction
Posted on 11/26/18 at 3:04 pm to Decisions
quote:
Decisions
Anyone that says Grant won mostly because he had the greater numbers, doesn't have a clue.
This post was edited on 11/26/18 at 3:06 pm
Posted on 11/26/18 at 3:14 pm to ExtraGravy
quote:
I cannot recommend strongly enough Chernow’s biography of US Grant
Same here. It's really well done.
This post was edited on 11/26/18 at 3:14 pm
Posted on 11/26/18 at 4:01 pm to KiwiHead
quote:
Grant used his overwhelming advantages in resources an manpower available especially in the West where the Confederates did not have as big a population of soldiers. Truth be told the Lost Cause was a Foolish Cause. Think about it.
1) The Union in the Spring of 1862 was able to land 60'000 men into the heart of the Confederacy at Shiloh
2) Occupation of Tennessee and control of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers by early 1862
3) Farragut takes New Orleans in April of 1862
I already granted several posts ago that the war was won in the west. The Western Confederate leadership was a complete joke (with the exception of Forrest) and Northern logistical and strategic brilliance truly shone out there.
quote:
Many European military types during WWI cited the things they learned by observing the Civil War in the US
They learned the value of combined arms, railroads and waterways in troop movements, and how indispensable industry would be.
They DID NOT learn from Pickett’s Charge, Grant’s frontal assault on Cold Harbor, Antietam, or how the war had evolved by Petersburg.
This post was edited on 11/26/18 at 8:14 pm
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