Grant Grant was a "Get it Done General"

1842

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This is a great painting by Alfred Boisseau (1823 - 1901)

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Grant was a "get it done general". From my studies I have concluded that because he had a much larger army and was willing to sacrifice a lot of his soldiers, he could push on through and win battles that other generals could not. If I had been a General at the time I would have been less aggressive to save the lives of my troopers and probably lost the war for the Union. I often think of the lost sons and daughters in battle and the families that suffered.
 
What about Confederate sons lost by General Lee?

Thank you for pointing that out. I meant "I often think of the lost sons and daughters in battle and the families that suffered", to include the young men and women of the south.
 
This is a great painting by Alfred Boisseau (1823 - 1901)

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Grant "was a get it done general". From my studies I have concluded that because he had a much larger army and was willing to sacrifice a lot of his soldiers, he could push on through and win battles that other generals could not. If I had been a General at the time I would have been less aggressive to save the lives of my troopers and probably lost the war for the Union. I often think of the lost sons and daughters in battle and the families that suffered.

Joe Johnston carefully conserved his men in the Army of Tenneesee, but they got used up by Hood at Franklin. Men are a resource to be used just like rifles and powder. If you fail to use them then you lose the war.
 
McClellan tried not to sacrifice his men and he was not winning! Grant had a great sword in his hand - he used it. The exception that proves the rule is Sherman. He was not willing to use up his men, which resulted in a rather spotty win record, but he used them in a novel way that won just as well. Grant didn't have that unique situation.
 
The downside of fighting a guy like Lee, instead of one like Johnston or Hood - whether Hood was a bad general or not, facing his attacks was easier than making attacks on him.
 
Grant's losses in the West were quite reasonable especially given the results obtained.

His situation in the Overland Campaign was a special situation. The Union had to demonstrate that it had made convincing progress to victory before the November election.

Unlike his predecessors Grant had a nationwide approach. He planned a five pronged offensive. Unfortunately, he got saddled with Banks who failed miserably in the Red River campaign. Grant wanted Mobile as the target instead. He was saddled with Butler who got himself penned in the Bermuda Hundred. The Shenandoah prong failed as was the pattern. That left Sherman's drive on Atlanta and Grant vs Lee. The failure of the others put far more pressure on Sherman and Grant.

Remember no Union commander had sustained a campaign against Lee after the first encounter. I would submit that virtually all of us would have abandoned the campaign against Lee after the Wilderness. We would have probably lost the war too and wasted every life lost up to that point and sentenced millions to a life of slavery.

Lee never launched another general offensive battle after the Wilderness and resorted to trenches instead. Grant failed twice in assaults on entrenchments but managed to pin Lee at Petersburg. Circumstances handed Sherman victory at Atlanta with Hood's changes in tactics. Lee sent Early on a hook through the valley at Washington. Grant had the chance to counter with Sheridan. Victories came and Lincoln was reelected.

Also think about the casualties. The war lasted 4 years. There were 600,000 dead. For every combat fatality, there were two from disease. That meant every year of the war produced 100,000 dead even if you did not fight! The reality was that civil war armies kind of melted away. You might as well use them and at least stand a chance of accomplishing something. Winning the war in one year, limited the losses to disease. I do not hear anyone talk about the losses of 300,000 men to disease from 1861-1863. War produces its own mad mathematics.
 
Those are very good points, @PatW. In essence, the argument is similar to that for using the atomic bomb in 1945. To not use it would have cost hundreds of thousands of US casualties in an assault on the Japanese mainland. There is of course the difference that the actual lives lost to the bombs were those of the enemy population, but the point remains. You do what is necessary to (a) win and (b) minimize your own losses. But it's (a) that comes first.

This prompts me to share a thought that may be rubbish but that's been nagging at me for some time. Grant told Lincoln that he proposed to "fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer". I suspect that, like myself, other people may subconsciously think of a horizontal line - a front-line that evokes our images of the WW1 and Napoleonic hammerings.

But Grant surely was speaking of a vertical line running south. His army will not fight, retreat, recover and then move forward again. There's something that (I think) Lincoln wrote earlier in the war in which he too refers to "this line" in complaining that the general of the moment doesn't understand adhering to it (the strategic line). Wish I could find that.

Anyway, of course Grant's losses would be "higher" than those of his predecessors. Some of those fought only one or two battles - and then retreated to recover. There were immense gaps between major battles. Grant's concept in the Overland campaign was to flank Lee out, moving south continually, and fight however many battles were necessary to put himself in position to win the war. He was the first AotP workman who actually used the tools he was given without being concerned not to dull the edge of the chisel or the teeth of the saw.

The attrition of Petersburg is not to be seen simply as some kind of inevitable weakness of Grant, "the Butcher" and his plan - it was a failure of material (the Union officers tasked to take the city early on) and the success of Southern forces who stymied the advance (Beauregard, Lee). His "line" was good.
 
Grant's losses in the West were quite reasonable especially given the results obtained.

His situation in the Overland Campaign was a special situation. The Union had to demonstrate that it had made convincing progress to victory before the November election.

Unlike his predecessors Grant had a nationwide approach. He planned a five pronged offensive. Unfortunately, he got saddled with Banks who failed miserably in the Red River campaign. Grant wanted Mobile as the target instead. He was saddled with Butler who got himself penned in the Bermuda Hundred. The Shenandoah prong failed as was the pattern. That left Sherman's drive on Atlanta and Grant vs Lee. The failure of the others put far more pressure on Sherman and Grant.

Remember no Union commander had sustained a campaign against Lee after the first encounter. I would submit that virtually all of us would have abandoned the campaign against Lee after the Wilderness. We would have probably lost the war too and wasted every life lost up to that point and sentenced millions to a life of slavery.

Lee never launched another general offensive battle after the Wilderness and resorted to trenches instead. Grant failed twice in assaults on entrenchments but managed to pin Lee at Petersburg. Circumstances handed Sherman victory at Atlanta with Hood's changes in tactics. Lee sent Early on a hook through the valley at Washington. Grant had the chance to counter with Sheridan. Victories came and Lincoln was reelected.

Also think about the casualties. The war lasted 4 years. There were 600,000 dead. For every combat fatality, there were two from disease. That meant every year of the war produced 100,000 dead even if you did not fight! The reality was that civil war armies kind of melted away. You might as well use them and at least stand a chance of accomplishing something. Winning the war in one year, limited the losses to disease. I do not hear anyone talk about the losses of 300,000 men to disease from 1861-1863. War produces its own mad mathematics.

I like your statement "War produces its own mad mathematics". You might want to post a thread based on your last paragraph. Important subject. Thank you.
 
After the battle of the Wilderness, the Army of the Potomac half expected to withdraw northward as its previous commanders had ordered time and again. To their surprise and satisfaction however, Grant ordered the army southward, towards Spotsylvania Courthouse to carry out the next phase of his famous Overland campaign. The point here being is that Grant's high casualty rate was not a function of a reckless use of troops as cannon fodder (the one glaring exception being Cold Harbor), but of his determined effort to pursue the Confederate enemy continuously and without let up. By that stage of the war (1864), the casualty rate among attacking troops was driven even higher by the widespread use of defensive entrenchments. The fact remains that Grant's strategy to destroy the Army of Northern Virginia was ultimately successful, despite its length (from May 5, 1864 to April 9, 1865).
 
When all else fails, and war commences, the primary point is to win it. Lincoln, Grant, Lee, etal, knew that. Davis, unfortunately, did not.

Davis frittered away precious resources defending this and that location hoping that the Federals would toss in the towel. That isn't the way wars are won.
 
jackt62 in post 13 has an important point. Other Union generals would give up and retreat when beaten, while Grant would make a sidestep and keep on moving toward his target (Richmond at the end of the war). Yes, he had plenty of men and plenty of casualties (Lee had more casualties - there is a thread somewhere citing a source for that but it was a couple years ago), but he did what he had to do to win the war. Lee also did what he had to do to win the war - it just didn't work when he had to fight Grant.
 
Grant undoubtedly has lost prestige, owing to his failure to accomplish more, but as I know it has not been in his power to do so, I cannot approve of unmerited censure, any more than I approved of the fulsome praise showered on him before the campaign commenced. It is clear that Fortune attends him in this campaign. Even his frequent tendency to stagger to his left has served him well, as Lee, being a gentleman, has not yet determined this to be a permanency of Grant’s locomotion. He is forced to maintain a watch also upon our right flank, not crediting that a lurch in that direction is as little likely as Senator Chandler embracing me in the second parlor at Willard’s.

That first sentence is genuine Meade, January 1865. The next parts are meant to be humorous. (Secret Letters of Meade etc).
 
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When all else fails, and war commences, the primary point is to win it. Lincoln, Grant, Lee, etal, knew that. Davis, unfortunately, did not.

Davis frittered away precious resources defending this and that location hoping that the Federals would toss in the towel. That isn't the way wars are won.

Yes, Davis was in a difficult position because each of the southern states objected to any national defense that would have left their own states undefended or lightly defended. So Davis had to resort to the so called "cordon" policy in which the Confederacy attempted to defend its long borders, both landward and seaward. General Lee's brilliance was to propose and gain approval to execute his "offensive-defensive" strategy, which relied on bold strikes against specific northern objectives, with the goal of sowing discord in the north and the possibility of obtaining a negotiated peace settlement.
 
Yes, Davis was in a difficult position because each of the southern states objected to any national defense that would have left their own states undefended or lightly defended. So Davis had to resort to the so called "cordon" policy in which the Confederacy attempted to defend its long borders, both landward and seaward. General Lee's brilliance was to propose and gain approval to execute his "offensive-defensive" strategy, which relied on bold strikes against specific northern objectives, with the goal of sowing discord in the north and the possibility of obtaining a negotiated peace settlement.

It's difficult for any nation invovled in war to just write off portions of its territory. Wars often end with the belligerents retaining lands occupied during hostilities. The Civil War had an added complication, the prospect of Unionist governments being formed in occupied states under Lincoln's 10% plan, which could lead to the occupied portions of those states being permanently lost. Even if the Union gave up on conquering the entire Confederacy, the Confederates had little prospect of expelling them from say Tennessee or southern Louisiana.

Tennessee was an odd case; the Union occupied the central and western regions where secessionist sentiment was strongest, while largely Unionist East Tennessee remained in Confederate hands for much of the war.
 
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