re: tGOAT American General U.S. Grant's memorial officially restored on the National Mall

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the generals the South had were the only reason the war lasted 4 years.

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I would argue it was the generals the North had that were the only reason the war lasted four years. McClellan had the war won and Richmond within his grasp as early as June 1862. Even with the aggression Lee showed during the Battle of the Seven Days, McClellan only lost one battle throughout the entirety of his Peninsula Campaign. Lee was defeated or checked in all but one engagement, yet McClellan still retreated from Richmond.

It was the incompetence of Union leadership in Virginia that allowed Lee to establish momentum in the first place. If McClellan isn't as slow or as cautious as he ended up being, the war is over in 1862, Grant's victories at Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, and Shiloh are just footnotes, and we never read about Robert E. Lee in our textbooks.

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Lee was pretty much considered the greatest general in the day. IMO, if Lee sides with the north the war last a few months. I agree there was a lot of screwups by the north initially.

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A lot myths about Lee. His decisions in the War of the Rebellion should balance out any greatness he had before the War of the Rebellion.

Lee's reputation was enhanced by Southern Historians; many of them at Ivy League schools. Other white Southern professors at places like North Carolina and Virginia added to the myth of Lee as a great general during the Civil War.

His enhanced reputation can be traced to the 1890s when confederate statues starting going up all over the South after the Redeemers got to power and white Southerners crushed the populist movements of the 1890s and the Spanish-American War made patriotism popular in the South again.

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I just think with 2:1 numbers, huge artillery, along with navy, he finally accomplished with what would have been expected.

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A navy that he didn't have at the beginning of the campaign, and didn't get until April? I honestly don't think you know the details all that well. In January, Grant was in no position to make any move on Vicksburg. It took him months of work to get in position to even assault Vicksburg, because again, the Confederates held key positions that cut off numerous lines of assault. Admiral Porter had to send ironclads and barges through Vicksburg on the Mississippi from the Yazoo in the North to where Grant's forces had accumulated in the south, while the rest of Grant's forces continued to work on outflanking the Confederates, as well as dealing with small Confederate raids.

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don’t look at Vicksburg as some mastermind by Grant, I already understand and know the details of your previous post, like I said.

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It honestly doesn't seem like you do.

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He did do what was expected, I have and always will say that.

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Taking an entrenched city with protection from the bluffs is not an easy feat, nor was it expected. Lincoln put a lot of weight on Vicksburg because it would split the Confederates. That you say the South didn't want to protect Vicksburg isn't supported by the first-person sources, like Pemberton's letters.

The mastery of the Vicksburg Campaign is that Grant bypassed key Confederate positions, which Pemberton himself admitted "completely changed the character of defense." To say that it was expected is just not an accurate reflection of the documentation.

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I will just always feel Lee did more with less.

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Well we aren't talking about Lee. Again, the fact that Grant consistently lost so few of his forces in battles where he was the assaulting army against defensive armies who held entrenched positions should do away with notions that Grant had some sort of built-in advantage by virtue of being with the Union. He did more with the Union army than pretty much every other Union general, as he understood more quickly that the new nature of war, something I contend Lee never understood. Not only that, in a direct comparison, Grant lost 60,000 fewer men than Lee, again as the assaulting army, and Grant never did anything as foolish as Lee's frontal assaults at Seven Days', Chancellorsville or Gettysburg.

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Lee was pretty much considered the greatest general in the day.

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He was considered a great general but not the greatest. Grant was hailed as the general of the war until his reputation was besmirched in the 1880s and 1890s by Lost Cause historians. It wasn't until Bruce Catton started writing about the war in the 1950s for the centennial celebration that Grant started receiving his due again.

Lee's reputation was enhanced after the war by failed Union military leaders who were trying to justify the mistakes they made against him in the moment.

"It wasn't that I was incompetent, it was just that Lee was so freaking good!"

I will repeat, however, that Lee was a good general. His victories at Second Manassas and at Chancellorsville speak for themselves. But even his two greatest victories required his opponent to either a) be an absolute dumb arse or b) lose his nerve.

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navy that he didn't have at the beginning of the campaign, and didn't get until April? I honestly don't think you know the details all

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The navy was instrumental in helping siege Vicksburg I don’t know why you’d discount that. I have a good knowledge of Vicksburg, just b/c we disagree doesn’t mean I don’t. I’ll admit, I’m not running to other websites looking at links and I’m basing off memory. I also haven’t read up on Vicksburg in months. But I have a good knowledge of the Civil War, the fact that I can sit here and argue (much longer than I initially meant to or thought I would as I got stuff to do btw) barbershop style. I might forget some numbers here and there but I know the Vicksburg campaign. My comment was, the long post you sent earlier, I was already aware of. I’m not disagreeing with everything ya’ll said btw, you’re acting like I am.

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The navy was instrumental in helping siege Vicksburg I don’t know why you’d discount that.

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You didn't even read what I wrote.

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I’ll admit, I’m not running to other websites looking at links and I’m basing off memory.

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I am too, except for some of Pemberton's quotes.

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I’m not disagreeing with everything ya’ll said btw, you’re acting like I am.

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I'm disagreeing vehemently with the notion that Grant's victory at Vicksburg was expected. It certainly wasn't.

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I'm disagreeing vehemently with the notion that Grant's victory at Vicksburg was expected. It certainly wasn't.

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The other southern generals pretty much felt Vicksburg was a lost cause. Yes, imo, with what Grant had at Vicksburg, I’d expect him to have been able to take it.

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The other southern generals pretty much felt Vicksburg was a lost cause.

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Only after Grant had successfully enveloped it, thus closing it off from the outside world.

Before Grant's army successfully got across the river and before his army captured Jackson, there were few on either side of the Potomac who believed Grant would capture Vicksburg.

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straight up don't believe that the Confederate generals would concede that the last major Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi was a lost cause. I need some documentation on that.

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Johnston who was often praised by Grant felt Vicksburg was worthless. Jefferson Davis however did not feel that way. All my documentation that I’ve read from is in books. I hate to be that guy, but I’m not googling all that shite or look through 400 page books to take pictures of and figure out how to post on here.

I’m not ignoring anything, he had plenty of time, plenty of resources. I agree Vicksburg was fortified. In the end Vicksburg soldiers were simply starved out. I agree the logistics were still tough to implement for Grant, but in the end, he starved them out.

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. All my documentation that I’ve read from is in books. I hate to be that guy, but I’m not googling all that shite or look through 400 page books to take pictures of and figure out how to post on here.

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Providing the name of the book would suffice. It's not that hard. I remember pretty much everything I read. I'll take that notion about what other Confederate generals thought with a grain of salt, since what they thought was irrelevant to the relevant geopolitics at hand.

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I’m not ignoring anything, he had plenty of time, plenty of resources. I agree Vicksburg was fortified. In the end Vicksburg soldiers were simply starved out. I agree the logistics were still tough to implement for Grant, but in the end, he starved them out.

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My god, you are obtuse. It's like you don't care what your own words mean. If you want to whitewash how complicated that operation was to organize, be my guest. But please don't say it was expected. It was not. It was a major feat of organizational skill for Grant to even be able to siege Vicksburg in the first place. Why you seem to want to hand wave all that away is beyond logic.