re: Ulysses S Grant is the Undisputed GOAT US General

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His doctrine of 'continuous contact' with Lee during the Overland Campaign wasn't done out of disregard for human life, but rather from looking at Lee's earlier successes and realizing that he had to dictate the terms of the engagement to Lee, rather than react pensively as the Union did in earlier engagements of the war, as the best way to win the war.

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This.

Grant's strategy during the Overland Campaign often gets overlooked and mocked, but he did something no other commander before him was able to do - keep Lee away from the initiative. Lee absolutely loved the strategy of an offensive defensive. In that he would let his opponent come to him, wait for a moment to open up, and then strike where and when his opponent least expected it.

Grant successfully prevented that favorite tactic of Lee's by attacking early and often, never giving Lee a chance to recover enough to launch an attack of his own. Lee's counterattack against Hancock's positions along the Brock Road in the Wilderness was the only assault he launched against the Union army during the whole of the Overland Campaign. Which is remarkable when you think about how much Lee loved to attack.

In little more than six weeks, Grant had destroyed half of Lee's army, maneuvered it to a position below the James River, and had laid siege to it at Petersburg. The war was pretty much over at that point. Lee had lost his greatest strength (his mobility) and Grant had pinned him down at a place that Lee could not afford to abandon. From June 1864 and onward it became a question of time.

Grant does not give Lee any time to plan in the Overland, he keeps his army in the field and keeps shifting his forces to Lee's left flank constantly. You could batter him, but he just kept coming. Until he basically forces Lee into Petersburg. Once Lee is forced into a purely defensive seige position, it's over and really it should have been over by Christmas 1864.

Grant has Lee pinned by this time. He has overwhelming manpower, he has supply lines that are virtually unmolested.His men are well fed and provisioned. Lee is not and he his bleeding manpower.

You can say " but if Lee had this, or if Lee had done that, or if Jackson wasn't shot at Chancellorsville, etc the South could have won." Well he/they didn't and if they had, it probably would have been worse for the Confederacy. Destruction of infrastructure, A slave population to deal with that would have no doubt risen up against their masters and then out west you would have run into competition for territory from the Union, that was left relatively unscathed in infrastructure and manpower....population was still growing, expansion is still going on and you have Union states on the Pacific.

I suspect Van Dornan was not the only Civil War general with "zipper problems"

One massive problem Lee had was he HAD to defend Richmond. He was tethered to it and everyone knew it.

He was a bad general. He lost battles at Pea Ridge and Prairie Grove when he had the numbers advantage.

Then he lost at the second battle of Corinth and was relieved of his command.

US? Robert e lee... world history? Napoleon

Born in Auckland. American father. Kiwi mum.Came to the States as a kid in 1974. Dad's family is from New Orleans and grew up there.

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Grant and Sherman

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Ohioans.