re: The Top 10 Greatest Generals of All-Time (according to Moneyball math)

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I simply suggest it wasn’t just a matter of “Grant was that dang good” as much as “Grant darn sure knew how to use the tools he was working with.”

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But that's what makes him that much better than the almost dozen before him and his opponents.


That's part of being a great general

Forrest

Grant’s work in Vicksburg was impressive.

Lee bled Grant’s forces against all odds until Lee ended up trapped at Petersburg.

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Grant had an army 2.2 times bigger than his foe, and he had an industrialized nation against a hodge-podge force made up of farming communities and he struggled to gain victory

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Well...for one, your first argument is fairly inaccurate. Grant's armies in the west were virtually always of comparable size to his opponent's force. The only time this wasn't true was at Fort Donelson. Sure...he outnumbered Lee by almost 2-1 odds in 1864, but more than half of the force that made up the Army of the Potomac were green troops who had never seen combat, while Lee's army of 65,000 men were made up entirely of battle-hardened veterans. Plus Lee had all the built in advantages of friendly territory, the entrenched defensive, and solid interior lines.

In two months, Grant did what no other Union commander before him could do. He pushed Lee out of his primary defensive position, removed Lee's ability to launch one of his famed counter-attacks as Lee was almost always having to beat back strong Union attacks, thereby completely seizing the initiative from the Gray Fox. Then, in a matter of just six weeks, Grant had Lee besieged south of the James River with few options of escape or retreat. Once the Siege of Petersburg began in June 1864, the only chance Lee and the Confederacy had of gaining a favorable peace rested on McClellan defeating Lincoln in his bid for re-election.

In short, if the 1864 Overland Campaign was a game of chess, Grant put Lee in check fairly quickly (the campaign began on May 4, the Siege of Petersburg began on June 15). All Lee could do was hold out and hope the game ended before he was put in checkmate.

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Always been a fan of Sherman.

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Sherman equals war criminal.
War Crimes Against Southern Civilians-Walter Brian Cisco

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"Of all the enormities committed by Americans in the nineteenth century--including slavery and the Indian wars--the worst was the invasion of the South, which destroyed some twenty billion dollars of private and public property and resulted in the deaths of some two million people, most of whom were civilians--both white and black." --David Aiken, editor of A City Laid Waste:
The Capture, Sack, and Destruction of the City of Columbia

Finally, here is the first book-length survey of the Union's "hard war" against the people of the Confederacy--one that included the shelling and burning of cities, systematic destruction of entire districts, mass arrests, forced expulsions, wholesale plundering, and murder.

In a series of compelling chapters, Cisco chronicles the St. Louis massacre, where Federal authorities proceeded to impose a reign of terror and dictatorship in Missouri. He tells of the events leading to, and the suffering caused by, the Federal decree that forced twenty thousand Missouri civilians into exile.

The arrests of civilians, the suppression of civil liberties, theft, and murder to "restore the union" in Tennessee are also examined.

Women and children were robbed, brutalized, and left homeless in Sherman's infamous raid through Georgia.

In South Carolina, homes, farms, churches, and whole towns disappeared in flames. Civilians received no mercy at the hands of the Union invaders.

Thoroughly researched from sources including letters, diaries, and newspaper accounts of the time, Walter Brian Cisco's exhaustive book notably pays careful attention to the suffering of African-American victims of Federal brutality, revealing that wherever Federal troops encountered Southern blacks, whether free or slave, they were robbed, brutalized, belittled, kidnapped, threatened, tortured, and sometimes raped or killed by their blue-clad "liberators."

Apologists for Lincoln's hard war continue to downplay the suffering endured and the damage done, blame the victims, or call some of the above incidents "accidents" or "mistakes." Many also cling to the Lincolnian myth that only by the most horrendous of wars could the slaves be freed, ignoring the fact that the rest of the Western world managed to bring an end to the institution without bloodshed.

This book serves to set the record straight and to show that the war on Southern civilians was not justified, despite the convictions by many that such a war was necessary to save the union.

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"Despite the spinning of romantic historians, hard evidence indicates that the invasion of the South is the American enormity." --David Aiken, editor of A City Laid Waste: The Capture, Sack, and Destruction of the City of Columbia

"Millions of Americans devoutly believe that Abraham Lincoln's war 'to preserve the union and free the slaves' was a righteous mission that forms the high point of our country's history. Mr. Cisco, concisely and without emotion, portrays the extent to which that war was waged with gratuitous brutality, persecution, terror, destruction, and murder against the civilian population of the South--free and slave, black and white, rich and poor. And he leaves no doubt that these war crimes were not incidental and accidental but were deliberate, pervasive, and sanctioned at the highest level with malice aforethought.

"Americans who read War Crimes Against Southern Civilians will have a more sober and true, and less self-righteous, understanding of our country." --Clyde N. Wilson, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History, University of South Carolina

"At last the South is recovering sufficiently from intellectual imperialism for her real scholars and intellectuals to mount a countercharge. Academic history has for many years been written from the standpoint of the war's victors, both in the North and South, but that stranglehold is finally ending. Cisco's volume is yet another volley in that war for truth. Every seeker of the real story behind the sanitised myths of American history should read this book." --James Everett Kibler, author of Memory's Keep and Our Fathers' Fields

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I cannot believe we're into page 6 on this thread and this hasn't been posted yet.

Also, in related news...

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10. Alexander the Great, Macedonia


If he’s not top 3, list is shi

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If he isn’t one, list is shite.

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01. Napoleon Bonaparte, France

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Probably won battles in more different ways than any other general. Alexander comes close and may surpass him but records aren't completely accurate.

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02. Julius Caesar, Rome

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Has the most impressive victory, with the double siege of Alesia.

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10. Alexander the Great, Macedonia

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Was the most creative and nuanced, which may give him the title.

Moshe Dayan