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Brev. Brig. Gen'l
- Joined
- Feb 20, 2005
- Location
- Right here.
Learn it.
Plus the size of the battles that involved Grant in 1862/3 were much smaller then those in the East. Ft. Donelson, Champion's Hill versus Seven Days and Gettysburg.Good video, I enjoyed it. Not really sure what "myth" was dispelled by it, though. That Lee had private feelings that he subjugated to his public persona is really not surprising. He did the right thing and I think most of us know that.
One thing that continues to bother me, though. Gary Gallagher and others jump to casualty figures between Lee and Grant and insist on invoking percentages of their respective armies lost.
Fine, but that is a way of circumventing the reality of the butcher's bill that Grant paid. His Army of the Potomac lost more dead and wounded chasing Lee's Army of Northern Virginia than the latter lost. I'll have to dig up the numbers (if anyone else has them, please post), so historians spinning percentages, nature of wounds, etc., is really an attempt to re-write this thing, if you ask me.
It was murderous as all get-up, but attempting to portray Grant as the kid-gloved general to Lee's Boogeyman is just wrong. That's not what happened.
Plus the size of the battles that involved Grant in 1862/3 were much smaller then those in the East. Ft. Donelson, Champion's Hill versus Seven Days and Gettysburg.
Like most of the readers here, I already have pretty much memorized the army strengths and casualties in all of the engagements you mention, at least within a 5% margin of error. But thanks anyway.
You are hypersensitive about Grant. I wasn't knocking him. But the plain fact is that the armies in the east were generally larger than those in the west. So, when they collided , the raw numbers of casualties were generally fewer.
Gallagher always says "Grant didn't get bloody until he came east and faced Lee. ". That is largely true, but why was Lee bloody? Well, when you take over command with 90,000 Federals within 10 miles of your capital, you have to do something to make them leave. When you have Union armies of between 60,000 and 120,000 bearing down on Richmond every four months, and you have to guard the capital, you are going to get bloody.
Between June 1862 and June 1863, With the exceptions of Malvern Hill and deciding to fight at Antietam, I am not sure what Lee could have done anything different to achieve the successes he did.