re: The Ultimate Civil War Debate: Ulysses S. Grant or Robert E. Lee?

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Grant was a drunkard
Lee bested him at West Point
Lee was the Union's first choice

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Grant won the war

When someone asks why you Yankees do not belong in the SEC, I can use you as an example. Thanks.

That's retarded

Fun history fact


Before the surrender at Appomattox, did you know Lee and Grant had previously met briefly 20 years prior when they were both young officers during the Mexican-American War?

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Grant had so much respect for Lee that simply meeting him face-to-face in such a moment left the Union general nervous. As they sat in the silent and still parlor of Wilmer McLean’s home, Grant tried to break the ice by mentioning their previous service – on the same side – in Mexico. To Grant’s surprise, Lee remembered him well:

"We soon fell into a conversation about old army times. He remarked that he remembered me very well in the old army; and I told him that as a matter of course I remembered him perfectly, but from the difference in our rank and years (there being about sixteen years’ difference in our ages), I had thought it very likely that I had not attracted his attention sufficiently to be remembered by him after such a long interval. Our conversation grew so pleasant that I almost forgot the object of our meeting.”

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LINK

Is there any doubt?

Ask Ulysses S. Grant. He knew Lee was the superior general.

Even Grant would have admitted Lee was better. I don't think this is really a debate.

I'll start this post with a disclaimer: this is a more interesting question than many people believe and frankly I would love the opportunity to discuss here with fellow history buffs. Frankly I have no interest in interacting with people who for some reason always turn CW discussion into a political debate. I'm interested in sharing my opinion and hearing yours, not so much changing minds. And hopefully I can learn something along the way. I love history but I'm not an expert in it. Anyway, here it goes:

To start, I believe something that - if true - is perhaps more interesting than the Civil War itself, and that is that the CW is the only conflict in history that was not written by the victors (the North) but instead by the losers (the South) And this fact has led to some mainstream "facts" about the CW that are less facts and more stories/excuses passed around and retold by Southerners (of which I am one) to console themselves.

First and foremost, we should dispel - or at least tamper down - this idea that the outcome of the CW was always inevitable and that this was some David vs. Goliath fight. If anything, when you add up the comparative advantages, the South was probably more likely to win. Sure, we all know the advantages of the North (infrastructure, manufacturing capability, money, manpower), but we ignore the significant advantages of the South: the incredibly enviable position of getting to be both the aggressor and defender, much higher espirit des corps, clear objective with multiple paths to victory, and a significant amount of military knowledge, material, and capability from top to bottom. In fact, the South during the Civil War might be the best equipped, best prepared, best positioned force to lose a civil/revoluitionary war in recorded history. Think about it, in most revolutions the odds of the leading party losing goes down the longer the war goes on. Grant took over at a time when the data shows the North is fricked. But he flipped the narrative on its head and used a tactic typically reserved for the rebellious party ("you don't have the beat them, you only have to outlast them") to strip away the biggest advantage of the South (morale, conviction) while playing into the biggest advantage of the North (greater number of men, material, money, etc...). Genius but not nearly as obvious or easy as it sounds in hindsight.

So this is why I make what I think is a strong argument for Grant being the better General than Lee: in any conflict, both sides have certain advantages and should try to fight on those terms in which they they have the advantage. The winner is typically the one that is more successful in imposing their own advantages while neutralizing the opponent's. And quite simply, Grant bested Lee on that matter. If a primary advantage of the South was its morale, resourcefulness, and knowledge of terrain, well then Grant neutralized by realizing that it's better for the North to fight battles and press on even when neither side was "ready." He recognized that he could win by making sure neither side could "refuel" he would win because Lee was going to run out of gas first. It sounds simple in retrospect, but that was more than guts - that was being able to see the big picture and successfully implementing the winning strategy and knowing it will work even when it does not seem to be working.

I will go even further with an analogy that I make a lot: Grant v. Lee is somewhat akin to Brady v. Manning. If you go by measurable and in-game stats, there is no argument. But if you go by outcome, then again it is also no argument; it's just that you flipped people. U.S. Grant was not the best "in-game" tactician, but he had that quality that is overlooked too often in all spheres (especially business) that is difficult/impossible to measure but trumps perfection in all measurable facets.

Lee. Had he had the resources Grant and the North had Lee would have won.

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held on long enough for England and/or France to join in

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It was never gonna happen. If they didn't break the blockades early in the war when it might have mattered they weren't coming in late against what their observers were reporting as a near invincible north.

Boh overrated. Lee was a Napoleonic general at the dawn of modern industrial warfare. Grant had a poor grasp of tactics, but he understood logistics and attrition.

I'm not sure you even have a simple grasp of anything about these generals. Lee used his past as an engineer to great effect during the war. Just the trench works around Petersburg is evidence of that. And that's just one example. Hardly "Napoleonic".

And Grant's almost bloodless campaign of maneuver out west to bottle up Vicksburg was brilliant. Grant's reputation as a bloodthirsty general that wasted his men's lives was fostered by his political enemies.