Can you list his mistakes?
Just in the section on the battle of Shiloh, Chernow recirculates the falsehood that William T. Sherman commanded two divisions (his own and John A. McClernand’s); he has Grant expecting Lew Wallace to have marched at up to six miles per hour on April 6
th over a partially mud-filled route; he has Grant thinking that Wallace was insubordinate and believing that Wallace had planned to get in the Confederate rear (that was only Wallace’s thought upon the arrival of Grant’s aide, not his plan); and he has Grant ordering Wallace to Pittsburg Landing, which contradicts a mountain of evidence that Wallace was ordered to the right of the army. The whole chapter ignores Grant’s lack of intelligence-gathering and his almost complete lack of preparations. Chernow writes how “Perhaps no other Union general at this stage of the war would have dared such a counteroffensive” on April 7
th. Yet Buell counterattacked that day, and Chernow contradicts himself by stating that Grant couldn’t order Buell and the Army of the Ohio, meaning that Buell must have “dared such a counteroffensive.” Chernow insults every other Union general by intimating that they would not have counterattacked, despite the 20,000 soldiers who had just arrived doubling the effective Union force.
Furthermore, Chernow has trouble with the basic military facts and concepts. He writes that losses for the two opponents at Shiloh totaled 24,000 killed or wounded (but almost 4,000 of these were actually missing or captured), and then he goes on to contend that this dwarfed those at the Battle of Waterloo, where the participants really suffered twice as many casualties or more. He finishes this section with a misreading of Grant’s
Memoirs by stating that “Grant believed Corinth could have been taken two days after Shiloh.” Grant had actually written that, “For myself I am satisfied that Corinth could have been captured in a two days’ campaign commenced promptly on the arrival of reinforcements after the battle of Shiloh.” The book is rife with similar errors.
In an example of terrible scholarship, Chernow’s first full paragraph on Page 323, describing the November 25, 1863 assault by General George H. Thomas’ troops on Missionary Ridge, includes four quotations. Instead, each of the four pertains to a completely different action:
- Chernow has Grant mentioning how the “troops moved under fire with all the precision of veterans on parade,” citing PUSG 9:434, but this reference is dated November 23 (even in Chernow’s endnotes) and concerns the capture of Orchard Knob by the Army of the Cumberland on the 23rd, making it impossible to have anything to do with the assault on Missionary Ridge two days later.
- Chernow then writes that, “Many Confederate defenders stood in poor condition, one observer describing them as ‘rough and ragged men with no vestige of a uniform,’” citing Page 563 of Amanda Foreman’s A World on Fire, where it’s clear that this also concerns the capture of Orchard Knob on November 23rd.
- Chernow next quotes Grant’s description as to how the “assaulting column advanced to the very rifle pits of the enemy and held their position firmly without wavering,” citing PUSG 9:561. But this concerned Sherman’s attack with the Army of the Tennessee against Tunnel Hill earlier on November 25, 1863, so the quote does not refer in any way to Thomas’ attack a mile or two south.
- The last utterly impossible quote in this paragraph, “‘He seems perfectly cool,’ wrote William Wrenshall Smith, ‘and one could be with him for hours, and not know that any great movements were going on,’” cites Smith’s “Holocaust Holiday” article, in which his diary entry is dated November 23, 1863. This again concerns the capture of Orchard Knob.
Four major errors concerning four consecutive quotations in one paragraph!
Among his misquotes, Chernow has William F. Smith calling George G. Meade a helpless child and opium eater. It was Benjamin Butler to whom Smith referred. Sheridan seemed like “a hound in the leash,” not a “hound in the lash.” Misreading another document, the author wrote how, as Grant’s “cavalcade approached Chattanooga, torrential rains left the beleaguered party ‘dark, wet and hungry,’ as Dr. Kittoe told Julia Grant.” No, Kittoe wrote, “a little after dark wet and hungry just as we got into Chattanooga the Generals horse fell.” Saying that rainfall left the General’s entourage “dark” doesn’t even make sense. And Chernow makes Roscoe Conkling the speaker and not the object of James Blaine’s “… supereminent, overpowering, turkey-gobbler strut.”
One could go on and on with such mistakes and special pleading.