And yet he didn’t. Strategic victory, yes, but Lee withdrew in good order even though he had divided his troops into theee groups and McClellan outnumbered them.
Well, eventually the US was going to get a general that understood that their advantage was exactly that, overwhelming odds on every front. It was true before, but no one in charge actually embraced it.
Grant was the first one who realized that as long as he didn’t make any colossal mistakes and covered and supplied his advance, he could do what he wanted militarily, since he had the forces to do so. He also was the highest ranking general on the US side to realize that this was the only way to win. He realized at Shiloh that completely ending the rebellion’s ability to fight was the only end to the war. Everyone else seems to have believed in the idea of a decisive battle that would crush the other side’s will. He understood that was nonsense in this war.
I’m sure that decisive battles decided some wars, but I can’t think of one in the 20th century. Grant was probably the first in command to really realize that those were the stakes in the kind of war he was involved in. It wasn’t quite the era of total war, but it was verging on it.
What was the significance of Shiloh for Grant’s thinking?
'[Sherman] came on Grant, at last, at midnight or later, standing under the tree in the heavy rain, hat slouched down over his face, coat-collar up around his ears, a dimly-glowing lantern in his hand, cigar clenched between his teeth. Sherman looked at him; then, “moved,” as he put it later, “by some wise and sudden instinct” not to talk about retreat, he said: “Well, Grant, we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we?”
Grant said “Yes,” and his cigar glowed in the darkness as he gave a quick, hard puff at it, “Yes. Lick 'em tomorrow, though.”’
That’s Bruce Catton’s version; there are variations. I don’t know if there is really a “strategic thinking” answer to your question–perhaps others can give a better answer–but the anecdote if true shows Grant to be the opposite of McClellan–a general determined to give battle with the forces he has in the face of the enemy he can see.
I think two things. The first is the one that every Civil War scholar would tell you, that Grant realized that the war wouldn’t be won by a single set-piece battle and would have to be something akin to a ‘total war.’
I also think (and these are just my thoughts) and this might have been more important, he realized that his boss Lincoln didn’t give a fig about dead bodies or winning battles. Lincoln wanted pure, naked aggression from his generals regardless of cost. If Grant could keep his job after the debacle at Shiloh primarily due to the fact that he was hyper-aggressive at Ft. Henry and Donelson and pushed back against cautious strategies, I think he realized that as long as you were moving, you could do no wrong and that was the ticket to advancement. The Vicksburg and Overland Campaigns both echoed that essential strategy. Attack, it fails. Go somewhere else and attack again. If that fails, move on to the next attack until eventually you wear them down and break through. It was a strategy that Lincoln loved: attack, fail, attack again, repeat until you bottle them up and starve them out.
It would be difficult to disagree more. Lincoln did appreciate, especially later in the war, that there was considerable skill involved in successfully running campaigns.
It’s not so much that he wanted “pure, naked aggression” but some type of aggression, period, which was often sorely lacking.
And he did care deeply both about winning battles and about the dead bodies (there are several volumes of personal writings that demonstrate both).
This really feeds into the narrative that Grant wasn’t a creative or innovative general and simply sent wave after wave after wave of soldiers to fight until his opposition crumbled, which wasn’t true. Not at all true.
Yes, he had a material advantage in troops. No, he didn’t simply send them into a wood chipper until it clogged. He used them as intelligently as he could, given the constraints he was working under.
Both the Vicksburg and Overland campaigns showed he understood the concept, now almost taken for granted but not so well appreciated at the time, that ongoing maneuver and logistics are critical to an army. Better than the majority of the generals up to that point. Especially in the Overland, where several of the worse engagements occurred not because Grant didn’t care where they happened and simply sent troops in but because his new armies about Washington did not maneuver to better positions as quickly as he wanted and was accustomed to seeing in the West. Those troops weren’t used to it.
This is amply demonstrated by his subordinate generals like Sheridan who was particularly noted for moving his cavalry about all over the place (sometimes a bit too much actually). Sheridan was able to selectively hit critical logistical targets and take engagements at times and places of his choosing. Likewise, Sherman with his army took Grant’s concepts further and figured out how to sustain and extend an advance deep into enemy territory, partly by working out how to live off the land and also by having trained engineers who could repair rail and telegraph lines almost as fast as the Confederates could damage them.
If anything, take the word of Confederate generals on the matter. Several had words of praise for him (and other Union generals) and Grant’s funeral featured several Confederate generals as pallbearers.
Shiloh was the bloodiest battle in American history until that point and had no effect on either sides willingness to keep fighting the war. This meant that the idea of one decisive battle ending the war was highly unlikely.
I don’t think I implied that he wasted men needlessly. He just didn’t particularly worry about high casualties. He knew his job was to be aggressive and execute an aggressive strategy regardless of tactical defeats. Look at the Overland Campaign. Did he actually win a single battle (other than the Cavalry skirmishes)? Maybe Bethesda Church, but it was as strategically inconclusive as every other battle. His strength was pursuing the strategy into the ground and when you failed, reevaluate and continue the overall strategy. Obviously he wasn’t just a butcher or he would have marched straight in to Richmond and not given a rip about the dead bodies. He knew when he was at a tactical advantage and when he wasn’t. When he wasn’t, he packed up and moved on to the next battle.
I actually just read Grant’s autobiography, edited by one Samuel Clemens. He outlined his campaign, a coordinated effort with Sheridan and Sherman to complete the destruction of South’s ability to wage war. With regards to the Wilderness and Cold Harbor battles specifically, and the steep cost, he states that he believed if the war went another year, the Union would have to give up and settle for negotiated peace. That’s Grant talking. He wanted it done then.
Pretty much. It was actually a pretty simple, but effective plan. He launched forces to attack every vulnerable point in the Confederacy, including several attacks in northern Virginia. Unfortunately, all his support forces hilariously failed through hilariously inept generalship. This is actually one of the things which makes Grant so impressive - he succeeded by constantly updating his campaign. He only needed Sherman to succeed, and that he could on. (Sherman, for his part, spent 1864 planning and executing a brilliantly-organized series of flanking manuevers backed by top-notch logistics. Farragut and several other commands assisted by cutting off key points as well.)
Furthermore, another thing you’ll notice about his Virginia campaign was that, after Wilderness Lee was unable to to take any strategic momentum and spent the rest of the war desperately responding to Grant. And every attack Grant ordered through the end of the war resulted in a win-now-or-lose-forever choice on the Confederates, who had astounding luck… until Grant finally cycled out virtually the entire Union command in the East and put competent men in charge. By then, despite the unecessary failures, the Army of Northern Virginia was stuck around Petersburg and defeat became inevitable.
I would be inclined to disagree somewhat with the premise of the OP. It’s an unfortunate fact that less attention has usually been given to action in the Western Theater, even though the losses there were comparable to (or exceeded) those in the Eastern Theater. It’s certainly not the case that all decisive action took place in VA, MD, and PA. (Previous posters have rightly pointed this out.)
I’d suggest that the Union had quite a few competent generals throughout the war; it’s just that they weren’t facing the competent Confederate generals in the East. Once Grant, Sherman, Thomas, and the others were freed from action in the West, they were able to turn to the Eastern Theater and make some progress.
I realize this is a gross over-simplification of a complex situation, but I believe it to be a much better explanation than some others that have been offered.
I don’t think there’s been much mention of Hancock in this thread, who might have been the general most responsible for the Union victory at Gettysburg.