Grant Brass Napoleon Award Ulysses S. Grant's persistent negative press

It seems that Grant is supposed to be personally responsible for trends and complex situations with many moving parts.

"Grant the prewar failure" has become a persistent cliché, repeated by nearly everyone. He would not have been the only family man forced to humble himself after the Panic of 1857 and the vagaries of falling crop prices. There would have been others like him. Sherman comes to mind, as the bank he directed folded due to the same national financial crisis. I think there were quite a few people who had to scramble.

Mooching and basements: Lincoln seems to have been a rarity in being a truly self made man who had no help at all from family members. Most people had to use the connections they had, especially in tough times. I haven't searched the Lee forum, but I'd be surprised if there was as much discussion of his mooching in the prewar years when he was in charge of executing his late father in law's will and tried to postpone freeing the slaves. He had plenty of family help, as did Sherman. Grant was hardly unique.

When it comes to horrific casualties, it always strikes me as absurd to label Grant as a butcher and give everyone else a pass. Was Grant sending troops to attack a pacifist Lee's defenseless army, while Lincoln urged him to stop? Hardly. He had his part in the carnage but by no means acted alone. I don't think the others are regularly described as butchers.

He was hardly the only President to fail Native Americans, and I'd like to see the defense of the presidents who came before him in the long tragedy of their losses.

Tenacity was his outstanding character trait. Unfortunately his detractors are equally tenacious.
 
When it comes to horrific casualties, it always strikes me as absurd to label Grant as a butcher and give everyone else a pass. Was Grant sending troops to attack a pacifist Lee's defenseless army, while Lincoln urged him to stop? Hardly. He had his part in the carnage but by no means acted alone. I don't think the others are regularly described as butchers.

Always missing from that particular discussion is the sheer amount of context that the General-in-Chief had to deal with during that period. From needing to make use of his best troops before their 3-year enlistments expired and the upcoming election forcing more hasty movements and decisions to produce quick victories rather than a more methodical approach (a big part of the reason why I think his proposed North Carolina campaign was really struck down), the fact that the AoP wasn't used to such rapid and aggressive movements and was slow to respond to the new demands, the total lack of success from the AoP's supporting armies in the Shenandoah and at Bermuda Hundred putting yet more pressure on the AoP to deliver some kind of results to make up for it, and of course the fact that he had to keep Lee under pressure in the hope that those supporting armies would eventually achieve a breakthrough. The Overland Campaign was "butchery", as modern war typically is, but the idea that Grant was the one somehow botching everything and that simply a different, more "competent" General-in-Chief could have carried out that same campaign much better with all of those constraints still in place is a total myth. The "buck" may have stopped with him (and Lincoln) in the public mind during that period, but when analyzing it from a historical perspective there were a great many factors at play.
 
How is it not genuine history? Most presidential historians put Grant in the worst 10 we have had......Its odd some Civil War historians tend to disagree..….as he wasnt president during the civil war. When your ranked in bottom 10 of a field of over 40, thats generally not considered "better then most"

Reckon presidential and civil war historians are both historians......just as a proctologist and a cardiologist are both doctors.....still take the word of the cardiologist for my heart though. Both technically could offer a medical opinion, one has tended to focus on what's relevant to that focus though
Grant was a failure at everything he tried in life except soldiering it seems.
And unfortunately, he will be remembered even for his every action on the battlefield (Grant the Butcherer, excessive drinking, etc.)
That's kinda the way it is with every well known historical figure.
 
Grant was a failure at everything he tried in life except soldiering it seems.
And unfortunately, he will be remembered even for his every action on the battlefield (Grant the Butcherer, excessive drinking, etc.)
That's kinda the way it is with every well known historical figure.
I'm interested in this post because it seems to be a common impression that Grant was a failure at everything except soldiering, and in that context we have him categorized as a 'butcher', 'drunk', etc. There seems to be very little leeway to regard Grant in a positive light according to popular notions, and that is in spite of his positive results in helping to save the Union. Lincoln's untimely death may have contributed to his near mythical status in the circumstances, whereas Grant was in part left to help pick up the pieces. This was never going to be an easy task. I often wonder if we add context to these things whether it can make a difference as to how we view them.
 
it seems to be a common impression that Grant was a failure at everything except soldiering, and in that context we have him categorized as a 'butcher', 'drunk', etc.

Although more recent scholarship has tried to provide a more balanced, objective view of Grant, not only of his military career, but of
his presidency.
 
Was a Grant a failure? He graduated from West Point, despite arriving with minimal formal education. He served successfully in Mexico. He married the woman he loved and had a healthy family. He made the rank of Captain before resigning. Between 1854-1860 he made a unsuccessful transition to civilian life, while the northern states were going through a financial crisis.
But he negotiated with his father for a place in the family business, a humiliation of sorts, but it also got his family out of St. Louis.
This dude rocketed from colonel to Major General of Volunteers, in about 9 months. In another 17 months he made Major General in the Regular Army.
At that point he should just asked for a Washington post and said the heck with the war.
 
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But he was good at war. And after the Civil War, the French left Mexico rather than call his bluff. Smart, because I doubt he was bluffing.
Easier to fight the French when the Mexicans are still resisting, than after the Mexicans have been conquered.
The English first granted dominion status to Canada and about the same time expanded the suffrage, rather than see more of their working class depart for New York and Montreal.
He kept his promise to contract the currency and move toward gold/paper money parity. The 15th Amendment got ratified. He didn't let Seward steal the English arbitration from him, and got the English to announce a settlement right before the 1872 election.
He lost his money to a Ponzi scheme, but his friends bailed him out and Congress voted his wife a pension when Grant was dying.
He took a world tour at the height of US popularity, and lived in New York during one of the most exciting times of New York growth.
He wanted that national railroad completed, and he did not care about the corruption as long as the money stayed in the US. And it got finished.
 
If you don't like the end of slavery, and blacks voting, or think that unassimulated Indians, who did not vote and did not pay taxes, should control vast areas of the west, I can understand your unhappiness.
If you think that we should have fought a Vietnam like war in Mexico, against the Mexicans, in favor of the French, its clear you disagree with what Grant did.
Foreign powers no longer bothered the US after Grant's generalship and Presidency. Instead the US went fishing around for a war with the remnants of the Spanish empire, and got entangled in the Great Power struggle of Europe.
 
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The real Ulysses confronted the ogre of unfair criticism, evaded the siren song of narcissism, and gave up the Calypso dream of boozy retirement, and strove to create a free and united US, until the final dragon of financial corruption whipped him. Epic in any telling.
He seems to have strung the Scythian bow of unity and shot straight through the 11 axe heads of the Confederacy. But he did not slaughter the southern Acheans, he let them live to grouse about his victories.
 
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I tend to think that overall Grant gets as much (unjustified) positive press as (unjustified) negative press. These things don't cancel out, of course.

I think it's facile to simply accuse Grant of being "a butcher" without providing an alternative, though as it happens I do think an alternative existed and that it's a pattern of Grant's generalship to underrate entrenchment (it shows up at Shiloh, Vicksburg and in the Overland). But I don't think that means Grant didn't care for the lives of his men, as is usually meant by the "butcher" allegation.
I also think it's facile to claim only Grant could have won the war; the Confederacy was always fighting a poor man's war and if it didn't win quickly it was going to be crushed by weight of economic power and manpower. But if Grant had been a worse general then he could have ended up presiding over a collapse of Union morale, so not just anyone could have won the war.

Lee outfought Grant given their relative resources, but Grant didn't need to be better than Lee and he wasn't enough worse for it to matter.
 
If you don't like the end of slavery, and blacks voting, or think that unassimulated Indians, who did not vote and did not pay taxes, should control vast areas of the west, I can understand your unhappiness.
See, to me there are two things there which are good and one thing which is really not.

The Indians were, after all, there first - it was their land before Europeans arrived, and on at least one occasion they got promised that European settlement would go no further west than a line (which was then promptly violated).
The reason why I'm pointing this out is that I think it significantly hurts your case to include it!
 
I think this hits the nail on the head.
Well, someone could like the idea of the Indians keeping their sovereign territory.

Of course, it's silly to roll all criticism of Grant into neo-Confederatism - one could quite easily say he should have won the war quicker and with less bloodshed, and more importantly it's an argument intended to shut down criticism instead of answering it properly.

I certainly agree that some people dislike Grant because he was the one who led the Union to victory. But one would hardly say thay any criticism of Bernard Montgomery (or indeed Stalin!) was just because the person liked Nazism; the argument should be considered but not used as a substitute for proper analysis of the criticism.
 
See, to me there are two things there which are good and one thing which is really not.

The Indians were, after all, there first - it was their land before Europeans arrived, and on at least one occasion they got promised that European settlement would go no further west than a line (which was then promptly violated).
The reason why I'm pointing this out is that I think it significantly hurts your case to include it!
The problem was that the Indian tribes were suffering tremendous losses to disease. The unmitigated racial violence visited on them by white settlers only made the situation worse. Some type of separation system was required and Congress was too cheap to create an army capable of protecting such a system. There American population was expanding at an incredible rate and there was not time for a better, more colonial solution. But better solutions were available. They would cost more.
 
The problem was that the Indian tribes were suffering tremendous losses to disease. The unmitigated racial violence visited on them by white settlers only made the situation worse. Some type of separation system was required and Congress was too cheap to create an army capable of protecting such a system. There American population was expanding at an incredible rate and there was not time for a better, more colonial solution. But better solutions were available. They would cost more.
I don't want to get too side tracked here, but I just thought I'd highlight that the solution you're proposing to racial violence by settlers against the native Indian population is to dispossess the Indians of their land, and you were comparing opposition to that to opposition to universal male suffrage.
 
Well, someone could like the idea of the Indians keeping their sovereign territory.

Of course, it's silly to roll all criticism of Grant into neo-Confederatism - one could quite easily say he should have won the war quicker and with less bloodshed, and more importantly it's an argument intended to shut down criticism instead of answering it properly.

I certainly agree that some people dislike Grant because he was the one who led the Union to victory. But one would hardly say thay any criticism of Bernard Montgomery (or indeed Stalin!) was just because the person liked Nazism; the argument should be considered but not used as a substitute for proper analysis of the criticism.
There were technical solutions available to the US, given its superiority in artillery. The geometry of bombardment and infiltration could have been worked out. But Grant was not interested. He was building smaller and more mobile forces because he intended to destroy the Confederate subsistence economy.
 
I don't want to get too side tracked here, but I just thought I'd highlight that the solution you're proposing to racial violence by settlers against the native Indian population is to dispossess the Indians of their land, and you were comparing opposition to that to opposition to universal male suffrage.
My idea is that a stronger army could have kept the settlers out of the reservations. There was room for some larger game enclaves, if the settlers could have been satisfied. But there would have to have been some type of joint training and joint units. Some Indian units with white advisors did exist, so they were closer than thought.
 
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