Grant Not impressed with Grants performance

Without the Navy and it's gunboats and Transports, Grant would have been starved out at Shiloh, a reverse of Vicksburg, and not heard from again.

Without the Navy there would have been no Henry, Donelson, or Shiloh as we know them. Grant would have had to take a very different approach to the forts and would have not had his army at Shiloh in the first place because without a navy Pittsburg Landing was just a random spot on the river of no particular value except watering horses.

Without the Navy Grant could not have done what he did at Vicksburg yet how many other generals would have come up with his strategy of going below Vicksburg to get at the city and had the courage and determination to undertake the operation?
 
Good thing he was smart enough to use them and plan for their participation. A great general uses all his resources wisely, and that's what Grant did.
Why didn't he then -post Vicksburg -use his genius to demand the War department send troops to Chattanooga? If that had been done before Chickamsuga the war probably would have ended earlier and less death and suffering would have been the result. Instead a trip to New Orleans seemed more important for USG.
 
Why didn't he then -post Vicksburg -use his genius to demand the War department send troops to Chattanooga? If that had been done before Chickamsuga the war probably would have ended earlier and less death and suffering would have been the result. Instead a trip to New Orleans seemed more important for USG.

That question reveals massive ignorance of Grant's position at the time.
 
What about them? They should be treated like any other source and corroborated. They shouldn't be taken at face value any more than anyone else's memoirs.
As Frank Varney has shown in his book Grant's Memoirs are often accepted without criticism but often are the only source cited for statements regarding USG. Our understanding of USG is disproportionately shaped by the Memoirs.
 
I didn't get that from Watkins. I think that Watkins being more favorable toward Johnston because Johnston showed empathy for the men. Bragg was portrayed to be overbearing, asked for everything, but gave nothing.

Differences in personality played a part, sure.

However, Johnston earned a lot of favor with the troops by undoing the organizational changes that Bragg had made after Chickamauga - he restored Cheatham's Tennessee division, something that would have been really popular with a Tennessean like Watkins, whose brigade had been assigned from the popular Cheatham to the martinet (and pro-Bragg) W.H.T.Walker's division in Bragg's effort to break up opposition to him. Most of the Tennesseans were really glad to be back with Cheatham. That said, despite what it commonly said, there were enlisted men (and officers) who supported and even liked Bragg, especially in Withers's/Hindman's division (men who had served under him since the beginning of the war).
 
That question reveals massive ignorance of Grant's position at the time.
You cited JB Gordon earlier. You might want to look at his comments on the failure of the Union to reinforce Rosecrans before Chickamauga. You might also find his evaluation of Rosecrans of interest.
 
They are an excellent source for Grant's opinion.
Opinion from a perspective of twenty years is something different from what actually happened. The issue isn't that memoirs are self serving but that Grants Memoirs are often the only source used in a discussion of his military career.
 
In a thread about Grant, yes. You want to talk about your hero, start a new thread.
So your idea of historic investigation and discussion is to keep narrowly in one lane? To not be curious about other participants that were affected by the original topic? Is Grant an island who had no interaction and influence on other generals and their campaigns?
 
So primary sources and eyewitness accounts are to be disregarded when they go against one's opinion? That seems like the end of history and the beginning of propaganda.
Charles Dana was a primary source, with first-hand eyewitness accounts of the war in the west. Some writers now go out of their way to disregard his accounts.
 
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