Grant Grant v Lee

[Saphroneth]

But the methods used are nothing like what industrial warfare would involve. Industrial warfare means using machines as a substitute for men; riverine supply lines are as old as warfare, and while railed supply certainly enabled the campaigns around Chattanooga and Atlanta it did so in both directions (as it enabled both armies to be supplied) so you can hardly argue based on that that Grant is the one who's doing the industrial warfare.

Meanwhile, what you'd expect to see if Grant were fighting industrial warfare in the east is for
EITHER
Railway enabled operational movements on a large scale (i.e. shifting weight from around Rapidan to around Fredericksburg)
OR
Heavy use of artillery to break up enemy defensive lines and positions

Instead, what we see is that Grant's attacks are all fundamentally about accumulating and spending men, and he does so on scales which are actually smaller than the greatest battles of the Napoleonic wars to boot. Six hundred thousand men fought at the Battle of the Nations, and that's twice the size of the entire Overland Campaign...

 

[wausaubob]

Most American readers think the industrialists took over the war effort in the second half of 1863. There were reasons the railroad companies, Carnegie's bridging company, the major locomotive manufacturers, Western Union, and the Chicago meat packing industry experienced explosive growth from 1863 until 1890.

 

[wausaubob]

But the methods used are nothing like what industrial warfare would involve. Industrial warfare means using machines as a substitute for men; riverine supply lines are as old as warfare, and while railed supply certainly enabled the campaigns around Chattanooga and Atlanta it did so in both directions (as it enabled both armies to be supplied) so you can hardly argue based on that that Grant is the one who's doing the industrial warfare.

Meanwhile, what you'd expect to see if Grant were fighting industrial warfare in the east is for
EITHER
Railway enabled operational movements on a large scale (i.e. shifting weight from around Rapidan to around Fredericksburg)
OR
Heavy use of artillery to break up enemy defensive lines and positions

Instead, what we see is that Grant's attacks are all fundamentally about accumulating and spending men, and he does so on scales which are actually smaller than the greatest battles of the Napoleonic wars to boot. Six hundred thousand men fought at the Battle of the Nations, and that's twice the size of the entire Overland Campaign...

Fun comment, but it seems neither Grant, nor Sherman, nor even Sheridan were that interested in killing the Confederates who they hoped one day would be returned to their loyal allegiance to the US. They were committed instead to reducing the entire Confederate population, and the armies too, to a state of starvation.
Truly, Grant abandoned shelling the Confederates into oblivion. Even during the Confederate retreat from Petersburg, Grant admitted he saw no purpose in turning the artillery loose on masses of retreating men. The war proceeded as if Grant was less concerned about body counts than he was on the number of soldiers who had given up and surrendered. William Sherman too, was always playing the Georgian population, because he knew there was dissent about secession right from the start.

 

[Saphroneth]

Fun comment, but it seems neither Grant, nor Sherman, nor even Sheridan were that interested in killing the Confederates who they hoped one day would be returned to their loyal allegiance to the US. They were committed instead to reducing the entire Confederate population, and the armies too, to a state of starvation.
Truly, Grant abandoned shelling the Confederates into oblivion. Even during the Confederate retreat from Petersburg, Grant admitted he saw no purpose in turning the artillery loose on masses of retreating men. The war proceeded as if Grant was less concerned about body counts than he was on the number of soldiers who had given up and surrendered. William Sherman too, was always playing the Georgian population, because he knew there was dissent about secession right from the start.

But the problem is that there's then nothing to point at where Grant shows "industrialized" warfare - even when it would be more beneficial. The proper use of regular approaches with heavy rifled siege guns (a genuine Union industrial advantage, after all) would have ended Petersburg quicker and more surely, and neutralized the main Confederate industrial centre, but Grant doesn't do that.

 

[wausaubob]

But the problem is that there's then nothing to point at where Grant shows "industrialized" warfare - even when it would be more beneficial. The proper use of regular approaches with heavy rifled siege guns (a genuine Union industrial advantage, after all) would have ended Petersburg quicker and more surely, and neutralized the main Confederate industrial centre, but Grant doesn't do that.

Maybe he did not want to end the war that way? Instead the US industrial advantage was used at Mobile Bay, and then again at Fort Fisher. Both involved much less loss of life than big land battles. Sheridan also, was less concerned about killing Early's soldiers then he was about retaining control of the lower Shenandoah Valley and destroying everything close to a road in the upper valley.

 

[wausaubob]

From the Lieber code, and its precept was never far from the US conduct of the war:

 

[Pete Longstreet]

I'm not sure you can necessarily credit Grant's aggression as having turned the trick in the war, because most of what Grant does that makes progress is not pushing but flanking - he could have done without many of the battles. (Wilderness is necessary to get over the Rapidan, but all the battles after that are of questionable necessity at best, and Grant's aggression post-Wilderness sees the ratio of damage he's doing get worse and worse until by July Lee can actually detach a large enough force to threaten Washington and Grant is incapable of taking advantage of the opportunity).

What really wrecks Lee's army is not the fighting of the summer but the siege of Petersburg in the rest of the year, and that didn't require aggression so much as an unwillingness to give up.

Who would you consider aggressive as far as generals... McClellan?? Grant was what would be considered in a fight... the "aggressor", he was pushing the pace. Like I wrote previously "his ability to hold firm and push forward while his men around him are being killed."

It was Grant's continuous left flank maneuvers in an attempt to get around Lee's right, which is a good example of his willingness to keep the pressure on. I would classify Grant's flanking maneuvers as being on the offensive, persistent, and aggressive in nature.

What wrecked Lee's army was the fact it sustained heavy losses trying to combat Grant's aggressiveness, and not having the men in the rank and file to offset the casualties.

You referenced "flanking" as opposed to "pushing". I think your trying to split hairs. By Grant "flanking", he certainly was pushing and forcing Lee to lose ground. Lee was being pushed into surrender... not matter which way you dissect it.

 

[Saphroneth]

Who would you consider aggressive as far as generals... McClellan?? Grant was what would be considered in a fight... the "aggressor", he was pushing the pace. Like I wrote previously "his ability to hold firm and push forward while his men around him are being killed."

It was Grant's continuous left flank maneuvers in an attempt to get around Lee's right, which is a good example of his willingness to keep the pressure on. I would classify Grant's flanking maneuvers as being on the offensive, persistent, and aggressive in nature.

What wrecked Lee's army was the fact it sustained heavy losses trying to combat Grant's aggressiveness, and not having the men in the rank and file to offset the casualties.

You referenced "flanking" as opposed to "pushing". I think your trying to split hairs. By Grant "flanking", he certainly was pushing and forcing Lee to lose ground. Lee was being pushed into surrender... not matter which way you dissect it.

It's not a question of whether Grant was aggressive (he was) - it's a question of whether his aggression was misguided.

Grant's attacks at Spotsylvania and at the North Anna, at Cold Harbor and Second Petersburg, inflicted on his army 48,000 casualties and on Lee's army 26,000. By the end of this process, Grant's attacks had also bled the aggressive spirit out of his army, and the result is that even if an opportunity for a decisive action did come up Grant couldn't actually take advantage of it - despite having had 200,000 men pass through his army, Grant's force was weak enough that when Lee (whose total army size was down to 60,000) detached an entire corps to attack Washington Grant could not take advantage of it.

If you take the battles of the Overland, and you give Lee back all the men who he lost from Spotsylvania to Second Petersburg (another 26,000 men), and you put all the men who Grant historically lost from Spotsylvania to Second Petersburg at Washington to defend it, what you have is a situation where Grant still has an army that reaches Petersburg at about the strength that reached it historically. And you have a situation where Lee still can't threaten Washington.


From Spotsylvania onwards, what Grant is doing is trading two of his men for one of Lee's men. He has two men for every one of Lee's men (something no other Union general ever had), so in a very broad sense he isn't actually losing the attritional contest, but he's also shattering the offensive morale of his own army - by Cold Harbor the men have decided that their generals are incompetent and many of them aren't even bothering to try attacking properly. The army has been "used up" and it will take months to rebuild.
Basically, Grant was given advantages no other Union general ever had, and what resulted was an incredibly bloody series of battles in central Virginia and no decisive result that year. The decisive result had to wait until nine months of siege had elapsed (something else no other Union general ever got a chance to conduct).



Since you mention it, yes, McClellan is an example of managed aggression. He doesn't attack in bad situations, but manoeuvres aggressively to turn his enemy out of defensive positions (or, where that's not possible, builds up overwhelming artillery concentrations to destroy their defensive emplacements) - and Grant's manoeuvres do just the same, it's just that beforehand he suffers thousands of casualties trying to punch straight through Lee.

 

[Saphroneth]

There's something else to think about, actually, which is - why is Grant's army so small by the time it crosses the James?

The size of the force which Grant set in motion was huge. In regulation PFD terms, 200,000 men passed through his army north of the James, and of those no more than about 5,000 mustered out - a number easily matched by the men south of the James, either reinforcements sent to the Bermuda Hundred or in the rump of Butler's force there. The listed combat casualties for the Overland come to about 55,000, and yet it's pretty clear that Grant had less than 145,000 men by the time he began the siege of Petersburg... or if he did, then with Early's corps detached to threaten Washington Grant would have had more than a 3:1 manpower superiority over Lee.

There's a lot of men missing, from sickness and desertion, and I think we need to consider the possibility that many of the men absent were driven absent by the stress of the campaign. At the very least the 55,000 man casualty figure should be considered minimal.

 

[67th Tigers]

It's certainly correct that Grant believed he needed another of Lee's corps to leave to enable him to make an offensive. There were rumours that Longstreet was also heading north (true, but in reality only one division was sent because of Butler's aggression), and Grant considered he could attack 5-6 divisions.

The strength of the force facing Lee over the whole war (excluding the Washington garrison) was (data from the monthly summaries in the Medical and Surgical History):

When the Federal army was separated, such as the two different main armies in Summer 1862 plus Burnside, they are conflated. Red is the % of the whole US force. Arguably, the Federal low ebb of August 1864 has the eastern field armies at their strength in June '62 (before the recruiting offices reopened) and is roughly what Meade had in H2 of 1863.

 

[wausaubob]

So Grant is still a barbarian, 157 years later. But by August of 1864 he seemed to not be out of options.
His naval allies conquered Mobile Bay. His forces settled onto the Weldon RR, and Hill's counterattack was not heavy enough to drive him off. By the end of August, the barbarian's associate had battered Hood's army into immobility and it just barely escaped by leaving its railroad cars and most of its artillery behind. And by then, the aristocrat Lee had to leave a force in the upper Shenandoah Valley, and Sheridan simply swamped that force in General Sheridan's first major independent action commanding infantry and cavalry.
Not to surprisingly, Grant's third offensive, in 1865 was very similar to his second offensive, and it ended the war. Always fun though, to read anti-Grant diatribes which ignore anything that doesn't fit the narrative.
Thus it appears that General Lee's defense, like A.S. Johnston's counter attack at Shiloh, left several other positions under manned, and the co-ordinated continental wide US offensive took advantage of the opportunities this presented.

 

[DanSBHawk]

So Grant is still a barbarian, 157 years later.

I think you've hit on the reason that some of our European friends admire the more elite aristocratic generals like Lee and McClellan. They are more the European type.

Grant was quintessentially American.

 

[CowCavalry]

Grant once said: "The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike at him as hard as you can and as often as you can, and keep moving on."

"Get there firstest with the mostest"?

 

[CowCavalry]

I think the best way of putting it is that Grant was - as I've said - a competent commander. He wasn't anything transformative in operational terms, but he got over the Rappahanock (a major acheivement) and his efforts sufficiently revived the offensive spirit of the Army of the Potomac to carry it south to Cold Harbor; his flaw is that he sent forward too many attacks against strong Confederate positions.

Tread carefully, Lee is not the only "Marble Man" of the ACW, he just happens to be the one that it is fashionable to tear down these days.

 

[Saphroneth]

I think you've hit on the reason that some of our European friends admire the more elite aristocratic generals like Lee and McClellan. They are more the European type.

Grant was quintessentially American.

Eh?

I mean, some generals focus more on the manoeuvrist style of things than others, but I've got no quarrel with someone who fights a war intended to be victorious by attrition so long as the attrition is actually in a way which grinds down his enemy more than his own army. If however it's a case of "Manoeuvrist = European" and "Attritionist = American" then that says very unfortunate things about the "American" style - things which I don't think are true.


To be clear about this, Grant does conduct manoeuvrist and attritionist warfare, and I can understand his internal reasoning behind his massive attacks on enemy positions - it's based on his experience in the West, especially at Fort Donelson and Shiloh, where the Confederates at Fort Donelson (who are dug in) precipitately surrendered without his having to actually attack their main line of resistance and the Union troops at Shiloh (who aren't dug in) hold out just fine (or at least don't break against what Grant saw as significantly superior odds); the result of this is that for Grant entrenchment becomes a sign of a wavering force which is going to collapse if pushed.
What that means is that when Lee entrenches in front of him Grant thinks it's "worth a try" to make an attack (as, after all, his enemy is apparently shaky, and if he can break Lee in the field even once he's basically won the campaign). However, where this falls down is that Grant's judgement on the matter is incorrect (or at least if his judgement is correct and the chance is worthwhile it repeatedly does not come up) and the consequence of this is that Grant badly bloodies his army.

Then he conducts the turning movement which actually gets around the position.


Now, sometimes Grant's attacks do hit enemy vulnerabilities, like the withdrawn artillery at Spotsylvania, but the problem is that this is basically a matter of chance - he did not detect that the enemy had withdrawn their artillery and launch the attack, instead he just launched the attack.




You could portray this as a clash of two different military ideologies, but the problem with that is that to simplify it down you end up with Grant's military ideology being "war is very simple, you go at the enemy and you hit them very hard" and Lee's one involves actual sophistication - operational finesse to outflank and manoeuvre while on the offensive and block while on the defensive, entrenchment and inviting costly enemy attacks, and attacks en echelon or conducting a manoeuvre around the flank to get into the enemy's rear. What you then have is that Lee's the one who is actually militarily capable, and Grant's primary advantage is superior numbers.



I should make clear here that there is nothing wrong (per se) with winning because you have superior numbers. Winning because you have superior numbers is still winning. But even a moderate advantage in numbers can be decisive in a manoeuvre campaign because it can create multiple axes of threat that disperse the enemy, and Grant doesn't really do this.

 

[wausaubob]

The posts confirm my appraisal. In the US, Grant was considered a westerner and a hayseed, but not by those who knew him well. In the Napoleonic era, he would never have been accepted in the French alliance, and was nothing like a Russian aristocrat. He would have been considered Prussian or Polish, by both sides. In the Roman era, he would have been considered a half Romanized German.

 

[wausaubob]

I think it was @Rhea Cole that noted the General Lee would have fit in well with the Roman Senatorial class. If he would have made different choices, Lee could have become President instead of Grant.

 

[Rhea Cole]

I think it was @Rhea Cole that noted the General Lee would have fit in well with the Roman Senatorial class. If he would have made different choices, Lee could have become President instead of Grant.

That begs an interesting speculation. If the SC hotheads had not seceded, who would have followed Lincoln in office?

 

[wausaubob]

That begs an interesting speculation. If the SC hotheads had not seceded, who would have followed Lincoln in office?

Lee needed some type of military conflict to further elevate his status. Thus without secession, the next Republican in line would have been Seward. President Lincoln could moved into some other role.

 

[Rhea Cole]

Lee needed some type of military conflict to further elevate his status. Thus without secession, the next Republican in line would have been Seward. President Lincoln could moved into some other role.

That is an interesting thought. There was a BBQ for 300 people at the eternal spring a few blocks from our house for Bell. A part of me wishes John Bell of Tennessee could have had a go at the office. By 1880, clinging to chattel slavery would have been risible... who knows what that would have looked like.