Grant showed during his Vicksburg campaign that he was capable of adroit troop handling and manuever warfare. I sometimes wonder if he was just a bit overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the war in Virginia - he was never quite so skilled after coming east.
I’m going to take this one on, and while I may be a bit rough in handling it, I want to emphasize it’s because I find this view close to personally offensive. I’m not yelling at you, but rather at generations of bad scholarship - and quite often outright lying scholarship, along with Lee-worship.
This is flat nonsense, and it’s not at all backed up by even the slightest historical fact. In addition to Bonekemper’s numerical analysis, there’s the fact that Grant consistently (and often successfully) engaged in a war of manuever in the East.
The idea that Grant was a “meatgrinder” or that he waged a “war of attrition” is absolute bullshit. And bullshit composed of complete ignorance of the situation and resources that Grant had available, as well as ignoring the very southern commander which it then lionizes by implication.
Here’s the scoop. From the start, Grant worked by getting the drop of Lee (which he did repeatedly). His goal from start to finish was to either find an advantageous position fm which to cut Lee off and effectively end the war, or to put himself into a position from which he coudl threaten Richmond, force Lee to defend it - and thereby cut Lee off and end the war. Unless you just ignore his actual movements, there’s no possible way to conclude he intended or waged a war of attrition.
Unfortunately, at every single turn, he was hampered by bad subordinate generalship. Every single direct report failed him, a list including Meade, Burnside, “Black Dave” Hunter, and more. This turned a crushing offensive designed to pull Lee in three directions and slice him up the middle into a complete fiasco. It’s no surprise that within months, every single one of them was replaced, except for Meade was effectively reduced to an aide-de-camp.
Worse yet, his officers were more or less made of FAIL. During the battle of the wildenerness, two of his corp commanders decided that, no, they wouldn’t push but a few yards ahead and claim the edge of the forest, giving them a wide angle of fire. No, they would hunker down in the brush. Nonetheless, the Army of the Potomac had enough bulk to overwhelm the enemy if they would use it, and his commanders didn’t. That’s probably what set Grant to decide to start giving orders himself and no go through Meade.
Note that Grant, post-battle, did not attack Lee. He manuevered around him. It was Lee who forced almost every engagement of the campaign, and if Grant did it was because he felt compelled to make an attempt to break Lee’s lines and push him out of a defensive position where he blocked grant’s manuevers. It was Lee who worked (very hard) to create those casualties, not Grant.
Grant’s clinching manuever of war is a case in poiint for the entire campaign. He pulled his army out, crossed the James, and was at Petersburg before Lee even realized he was gone. Lee, the man who had gotten the drop on four previous Union generals and smacked them around like schoolgirls, was pansed like a little bitch in front of everyone, and didn’t even notice till the next day. Grant schooled him like Pippy goddamn Longstocking.
And do you know what happened? Well, Warren (I believe; don’t quote me on that) got to Petersburg, outnumbered the enemy ten to one, and had the run of the complete defensive works. So, naturally, he ordered an all-out assault to control the city, cut off Richmond, and end the war.
Well, no, of course not. He sat down and sucked his thumb despite having everything needed to make an attack. It was, after al, getting dark, so why not completely forego all advantage? Well, of course Lee finally woke up and rushed everything right the hell NOW into Petersburg, and by the time Grant heard that his lead elements had stopped for tea, the war was destined to go on for months more. And then of course his army basically screwed up every attack he tried to create, including when some sappers basically blew Lee’s lines a giant rape-hole.
Now, I don’t claim Grant never made mistakes. He tried everything he possibly could, and that meant taking risks - which sometimes backfired. He made unsuccessful attacks, and some he was downright ashamed of. But that’s that breaks. No Civil War general had unbroken success, because it wasn’t possible. They operated in a time when military intelligence generally meant some half-drunk officer saw something, wildly exaggerated it, and then it got mangled going up the chain of command. But his entire career was about finding a way to keep everyody else off balance, hitting people before they expected or where they couldn’t expect it, and then pushing them into a corner.
Nor do I dismiss Lee. He knew what he was doing, and he knew that bloody casualties would be the only way to push the Lincoln administration out of office - that it might help Peace Democrats win the election. So, faced without the option of defense, he atacked like he always did. And contrary to popular belief, he wasn’t that good on the attack. He was able to mercilessly take advantage of any weakness, yes, but he also created his own biggest humiliations, as well as completely wrecking his own army three separate times (in Seven Days, Antietam and Gettysburg). In all three, he also put himself in a position of extreme vulnerability and only got away with it because McClellan, and briefly Meade, were too timid to retaliate. He understood that would not work with Grant, and either by choice or desperation turned to bloodbaths as his only option. He wisely caused them when he knew he could have the advantage and his beneficial kill ratio.
huff huff
Sorry. I get kinda emotional over that one. It’s one of my biggest pet peeves.
No, it was awesome. I love that that came out in a thread I started.
Not entirely, though. it called for 85,000 troops to take the Mississippi River.
Well, I think you’re too harsh on Meade (who I regard as a good general) but I agree with you on Grant. Grant was as good as any of the generals he ever fought against (yes, including Lee). And once the Union had combined a top-notch general like Grant with their superior resources, the Confederates’ days were numbered.
One of my favorite anecdotes from the war was when Grant had come east and taken command. In one of his first campaigns in the east, all his subordinates were talking about all of the ways that Lee might surprise them and defeat them. And Grant said that the days of the Union Army worrying about what Lee might do to them were over and from now on it would be Lee who would be worrying about what the Union Army was going to do to him.
Evidently the troops had developed a healthy fear and loathing of openly advancing on prepared positions. It was a frequent complaint that the sight of a furrow in a field would make any advance come to a halt.
It’s true, I was hard on Meade above. I don’t mean to dismiss him. He was competent and capable, although that simply wasn’t enough to win the war. He did let some absolute killer opportunities pass him by, but I can’t really blame him for not being able to push his generals more, since nobody was ever able to get them to use their heads in the first place.
True. Reading about the Civil War time and again make me think, “If you don’t fight when you have the advantage, you will be forced to fight when you don’t.” To me, this was McClellan’s greatest failure: while he could train his troops in discipline and the use of arms, he also taught them to be afraid. He taught them to hesitate and fret and worry, and hunker down when danger threatened, to avoid any risk.
So as much as get irritated by the sheer failure going on, I do remind myself the eastern officer corp were schooled in that method of war time and again. The western officer corp was composed of men with a lot less to lose, and with somewhat less attention from Washington could act more gung-ho.
The weapons used during the American Civil War favored defense over offense. The strategy that was usually the best was to get to the battlefield first, occupy high ground, dig fortifications, and hope the enemy attacked. McClellan may have taken this strategy to the extreme, but Lee usually made it work. The notable exception was the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg when Lee ordered Picket’s Charge.
I think Meade ended up at the right level - running an army and fighting the battles, while Grant ran the army as a whole and handled strategy. Meade didn’t get in over his head and Grant didn’t get bogged down in the details of the battlefield.
Actually… he partly got removed from that. IIRC, post Battle of the Wilderness, Grant started giving orders directly and Meade became something of his aide. It’s a little hard to pin down exactly what Meade did, because he still held his rank and also gave orders. Evidently the two found they wcould work together quite well.
I understand. But an overview of Grant’s conduct during the Vicksburg campaign, and then during the Overland campaign, will still leave the latter looking less impressive. He made far more frontal assaults and suffered far greater casualties, even proportionately, in 1864-65 than he did in 1863.
Were there alternatives? He was up against the South’s very best, in an area they knew perfectly, which was also extremely rough and closed-in terrain.
And here’s another piece of the puzzle: during the time that Grant was there, the cavalry situation finally reversed. Union cavalry had been able to stand up to the Confederates once or twice, but it was only after they went south that they finally were really running things professionally and smartly. Civil War cavalry often fails to get attention, but the side which had the better arm had better intelligence and his their movements better.
Well, that’s just the question.
The issue I raise was that there was an alternative - not to engage in offensive campaigning there.
The issue is not whether Grant’s generalship lacked. Let’s say for the sake of argument we all agree that Grant did the best possible job with the subordinates he had. Was it really necessary to engage in battle where he did? Knowing, as you say, that “He was up against the South’s very best, in an area they knew perfectly, which was also extremely rough and closed-in terrain”?
The alternative to an offensive campaign against the Army of Northern Virginia in the spring of 1864 was to simply hole up someplace around Fredericksburg and let Bobby Lee go off where ever he wanted. That had not worked out to well in the previous years.
Grant’s strategy, and the only legitimate and war winning strategy, was to close with the Army of Northern Virginia, grapple with them and not let go. That had been tried before but by generals who were less stout of hearted more intent on throwing a single knock-out punch. A year before Grant’s Overland Campaign, Joe Hooker had taken the Army of the Potomac into the same map quadrant, fought with Lee, suffered casualties and tactical disruptions similar to Grant’s at the Wilderness. Yet Hooker pulled back to lick his wounds, giving Lee the opportunity to launch his great raid into Pennsylvania. Grant pushed on with the result that over the following month Lee was forced again and again to fall back, take a defensive posture and let Grant deprive him of any chance to take the offensive.
It was the war winning approach that prevented Lee from diverting resources to deal with Sherman who was busy in Georgia tearing the heart out of the Southern Confederacy, or help when Hood destroyed the Confederate Army of the Tennessee at Franklin and Nashville.
Remember it was the inertia of the Army of the Potomac following Gettysburg that allowed Lee to send Longstreet and a fair portion of his army corps to Tennessee where they were pretty well decisive at the Battle of Chickamauga. Grant’s tactic of “following Lee to death” stopped that from happening again as well a handcuffing Lee in Virginia..
I sense an excluded middle here.
Surely there exists something between ‘doing nothing and allowing Lee to do whatever he wished’ and ‘engaging in an all-out offensive aimed at the enemy’s strongest point’.
Well, yeah. You could have an all-out attack at some other point, which Lee would simply have moved to defend. Look, there’s really no half-measures in war (that’s what got the Amy of the Potomac where it had been). They don’t turn out well. And you seem to forget that Lee was not just sitting around. If Grant wouldn’t attack him, he would go attack Grant. Which he did repeatedly.
Indeed about half of the battles in the Overland Campaign were started by Lee. In the Wilderness, Grant was hardly engaging in an “all-out offensive aimed at the enemy’s strongest point.” He was simply advancing into an unfortified area in Confederate territory. Any pressure on Lee was likely to result in pretty horrific casualties. Lee had to respond to any enemy advance. And the armies had gotten way too good at killing each other at that point. All half measures were likely to accomplish is to allow Lee to win these engagements. Then the Union still has the casualties but doesn’t win and get Richmond in a head lock.
And while there were frontal assaults (Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor in particular), most of them were launched with good reasons to believe they might succeed. But most of the campaign was driven by maneuver and attempts to flank, rather than direct frontal assault.
What was the alternative? No offensive lets Lee or part of his army hare off and thump on on of the other Union armies. A weak or limited offensive gets mauled to no good end. The Union wasn’t going to win without beating Lee. And that meant going after him with every thing Grant had. Anything less was likely to result in an even worse outcome for the Union.
Grant said that McClellan was the great mystery to him, that he could never figure out what made him tick.
As others have said, he was very successful before the war in railroads and was thought of as a bright young general. So he was always afraid of failing where Grant and Sherman had failed and knew it wasn’t going to kill them.
Contemporaries noted how much “Little Mac” was loved by his men. People in the 19th century were very romantic and McClellan gave them this. As one example, Robert E Lee’s wife had health problems and was once forced to remain at home while Union troops occupied the
land she lived on. McClellan saw to it that her home was protected against vandals and arranged for her to be escorted to rejoin Lee. His men LOVED him for this…the chivalrous night.
Plus he wasn’t regarded as a pariah. The Democrats thought highly enough to make him their Presidential nominee in 1864. I don’t know anyone has accurate enough polling information but it is possible that if the election was held in May 1864 before Sherman took Atlanta, Farragut took Mobile Bay and Grant was fighting Lee strongly “I propose to fight it out along this line if it takes all summer”, McClellan would have won.
Some historians have noted that he arrived in Washington after he won some minor battles
in western Virginia and was greeted with the sight of the demoralized Union army after First Bull Run. This left a bad impression in him that his army was never far from being a demoralized rabble.
In 1864 after the pro-war Democrats had split to join with the Union ticket, the remaining “Copperhead” Democrats were running on a single issue: opposing continuing the war. McClellan was the perfect choice for candidate because as a war “hero” now out of favor with the eeevil Black Republican administration, he could speak out in favor of abandoning the war without looking unpatriotic.
Things did indeed look grim for the administration. At one point Lincoln flatly told his cabinet that they had to decide what they should attempt to accomplish in the few months remaining to them before the elections.
And given that a vote for the Democrats was effectively a vote to abandon the war and that troops in the Union army were actually free to vote, it stands forever to Lincoln’s credit that he didn’t try to use the war as an excuse to postpone the election.