Grant Who Was a Better General: Grant or Rosecrans?

Who was a better general: Grant or Rosecrans?

  • Ulysses S. Grant

    Votes: 59 95.2%
  • William S. Rosecrans

    Votes: 3 4.8%

  • Total voters
    62
Ulysses S. Grant.

The man was reposnsible for getting the Union Army in the West moving and getting them to acheive notable victories (Grant or not) such as Padacuah, Fort Henry/Donelson, Pea Ridge, Shiloh, Corinth, Perryville, Stones River, Vicksburg, Chattanoga/Missionary Ridge, Atlanta, Franklin, and Nashville his actions also brought attention to William Tecumseh Sherman and Phil Sheridan who would go on to deliver decisive blows in 1864. I'd say that without Ulysses S. Grant it's unlikely much of the Western Theater would ever occur as Henry W. Halleck and Don Carlos Buell (who were in charge) were squabbling with one another over who should get credit of the Tennessee/Cumberland River invasions plus neither could mount a full-fledged attack upon western Confederate territory going even as far as to send letters to Abraham Lincoln explaining why they couldn't invade even George H. Thomas (a Virginia Southern Unionist general who was underrated like Patrick Cleburne IMO) could move his troops no further after Mill Springs due to weather and a lack of food plus he wasn't going to accept any promotions unlike Grant.
 
The Leggett citation is a general defense of USG in which he says “ the infamous falsehoods .... originated just after the battle of Shiloh...” This was before Rosecrans arrived in northern Mississippi. Evidently the bad press about USG predates his interaction with Rosecrans. Leggett implicates Rosecrans “ in the party “to ruin Genl Grant” but doesn’t offer specific evidence. He later says Rosecrans “must be at least privy”” to the whole devilish scheme.” So he appears unsure of actual Rosecrans’ role -if any - in defamation of USG.
Leggett presents no specifics. He doesn’t mention Bickham. The letter is written to Rawlins so it can be interpreted as a venting inter familia during a cloudy period for USG.

Poor handling of the evidence again. Not only does the letter specifically identify Bickham, as I showed above in the continuation of the letter, but he says in the first quoted section that he is referring to a reviving of attacks on Grant that began after Shiloh. He's saying Bickham is doing it and Rosecrans at least knows he is doing it if not the directing force behind it.
 
Once again two key points:

The first appearance of reports of Grant being drunk appeared in the Cincinnati Commercial on September 29 in an article written by soldier William Stewart. This was six days after Stewart had written a letter to his parents in which he said Grant was “dead drunk.”
The drunkenness story began in print with a soldier.

The second point is that generals did have reporters who presented them in a favorable light. Conversely other reporters would paint those generals in a harsh light. Joseph Medill of the Chicago Tribune admitted that he held off “properly criticizing his [Grant’s] military blunders.” Otherwise Grant would have stunk “in the nostrils of the public like an old fish...”
It wasn't just about the newspaper rumors of Grant being drunk. It was also about Rosecrans/Bickham writing slanted accounts of battles attempting to inflate Rosecrans in the press at the expense of Grant and the rest of the army.

While it may have been common for certain newspapers and certain reporters throughout the country to be sympathetic to some generals, it was not common for a general to have a toady reporter on his staff cranking out insubordinate, slanted propaganda.
 
Rosecrans seems to be inferior to Grant as a General as well as a leader from the majority of posts on this thread. I have decided to study for myself and learn more about Rosecrans and his actions and decisions in the army.
Regards
David
 
I really have nothing against Rosecrans but think Grant was better. Both generals had to play the hands they were dealt. Grant was good at doing whatever it took to win. In general, Grant used his subordinates well most of the time to achieve his goals. Grant was good at keeping his seniors happy without letting them greatly interfere with his operations. This may sound like a small thing, but how many Union generals could handle the president and the brass in Washington without letting it effect their operations? Grant made great use of naval power to help win the war.
 
Rosecrans seems to be inferior to Grant as a General as well as a leader from the majority of posts on this thread. I have decided to study for myself and learn more about Rosecrans and his actions and decisions in the army.
Regards
David
You should read for yourself. Read broadly and deeply (which isn’t always so easy) Read Victors in Blue for a very readable book by a major CW scholar, Albert Castel, which questions some of ghe accepted conclusions about Union generals.
 
I really have nothing against Rosecrans but think Grant was better. Both generals had to play the hands they were dealt. Grant was good at doing whatever it took to win. In general, Grant used his subordinates well most of the time to achieve his goals. Grant was good at keeping his seniors happy without letting them greatly interfere with his operations. This may sound like a small thing, but how many Union generals could handle the president and the brass in Washington without letting it effect their operations? Grant made great use of naval power to help win the war.
I suppose if I were to say what was the predominate reason why Rosecrans ( and others) fell despite performing reasonably well and others survived despite their performances I’d say politics - specifically presidential politics (who would succeed Limcoln.) it’s not a pretty story and it’s not emphasized much today but it’s not a new story. In fact politics as a factor in the War was much discussed during and in the decades after the War.
 
I suppose if I were to say what was the predominate reason why Rosecrans ( and others) fell despite performing reasonably well and others survived despite their performances I’d say politics ...

It is my view that Rosecrans fits better into the second category. Despite lackluster performance in Northern Mississippi he was promoted to command the Army of the Cumberland and despite the loss at Chickamauga and acting 'like a duck hit on the head', Lincoln wanted to keep him around so when Grant chose otherwise, Lincoln found a new spot (Missouri) for Rosecrans.
 
Did General Rosecrans ever catch and corner the opponents he was pursuing? Or was his pursuit always too late, and too slow? Was he always able to maneuver an opponent out of position, but never quite catch his opponent?
Seems to me that at Corinth, Stones River, and Chickamuaga, the Confederates attacked Rosecrans' army. The consequent risk of giving the opponent the initiative was demonstrated at Chickamuaga. Eventually there is going to be an error in the defensive dispositions, especially if those dispositions are hastily composed.
 
In that era there was a very large physical component to warfare. The commanders had to move quickly, with minimal baggage. They had to be comfortable with the hardships of campaigning and be ready to ask and even demand, that the soldiers be ready to march and march significant distances.
Campaigning was made much easier if someone thought ahead of rations, forage, and water sources.
 
Lawyers want to argue about oral and written statements. There were several United States generals who could always defend what they did as militarily correct, no matter what the net result. So the lawyerly game of defending this person or that person can go on forever. The real battles were determined by logistics, geography and skill in combined arms operations.
 
Really stellar posting, folks -- it renews my faith in this site to see Source rather than Opinion making the points.

Who-ever said sources weren't opinionated in the first place Bee , Lets be fair here everyone thought Richard III was a murderous horrid hunchback or course the source was Shakespeare .

It took over 500 years before some documents found in York that Historians had never seen to understand that Richard III was highly thought of by the common folk.

In the 19 Century the Victorian attitudes was at its peak it was an era when honour and character was all that mattered and any hint of besmirching that character would be paid back two fold.

In essence the amount of *****ing that went on in correspondence's , Letters , Newspapers at the time doesn't give one a whole lot of faith in sources.

Having said that Historians have to work with something otherwise it would just be personal opinion.
 
"It may be, that the sin is only at the door of the Cincinnati Commercial Correspondent 'W.D.B.' (Wm D. Bickham, late clerk of the Ohio Senate and one of the Satelites [sic] of old Ben. Stanton, Lt Gov. of Ohio, and Gen Grant's bitterest enemy.)
.
William Bickham bio...

When the Civil War broke out, William spent two years as a war correspondent on the front, sending his dispatches back to the Commercial. He was first assigned to General William Rosecrans’ army, where he was a volunteer aide-de-camp with the rank of captain.[3] He also spent several months with General George McClellan’s army, before being transferred back to Rosecrans. He was present at the Battle of Stones River, and Rosecrans’ praise for his actions there earned him the rank of major.[4]

While William was reporting from the field, matters on the home front in southwest Ohio were heating up. On May 5, 1863, General Ambrose Burnside arrested congressman and Dayton resident Clement Vallandingham on charges of sedition.

Vallandingham was one of the most vocal leaders of the Copperheads, a group of Democrats who opposed the war. In response to his arrest, a Copperhead mob burned down the Republican, pro-Union Dayton Journal newspaper office.

A group of pro-Union Daytonians formed a committee to restore the Journal and sought help from Cincinnati Commercial editor Halstead in finding a new editor for the Journal. Halstead recommended William D. Bickham. The committee offered Bickham the job, and he accepted, moving his family to Dayton

https://lisarickey.wordpress.com/2012/06/19/bio-sketch-william-d-bickham/
 
As @5fish notes, a large part of Rosecrans' job was to show people in Ohio that the Cumberland army was making progress.
He accomplished that. With the election of governor coming up on October 13, 1863, he probably should have been expecting a counter attack.
A few more fortified positions around Chattanooga, even if they were chosen by George Thomas, would have been prudent.
Grant had no hesitation in using Thomas' geographical knowledge and Thomas' general plan. Rosecrans could have protected himself had he done the same thing.
Grant became famous, so comparing Rosecrans to Grant makes Rosecrans more relevant. In fact Rosecrans lost his command to President Lincoln and Sec'y of War Stanton. As soon as the election was over and the Republicans had won, Rosecrans had served his purpose.
Its not a coincidence that Granger, Garfield and Dana, all turned on Rosecrans and made him the fall guy for Chickamauga. Three important commentators turning on the commander indicates that they knew the administration had lost patience with General Rosecrans.
And the final comment is that the administration wanted Thomas to command the Cumberland Army. The options given to Grant were written in a way that Thomas was not going to have an option to decline command in October 1863.
Woods and Sheridan did not lose their jobs by being caught up in the retreat from Chickamauga. Sheridan got a promotion a few months later. That is additional evidence that there were political issues related to General Rosecrans which made his hold on the Cumberland Army tenuous.
 
Having said that Historians have to work with something otherwise it would just be personal opinion.

Well....this was my point, exactly. Providing sources gives us something to examine, debate. I think of historical discussion as being similar to trying a case in court; a person is not convicted on finger pointing, alone - there must be evidence.
 
I sometimes think in a general sense of the Army of the Cumberland as the Ohio Army and the Army of the Tennessee as the Illinois Army. A very general sense.

That matches their origins.

The Army of the Cumberland originated as McClellan's enlarged Department of Ohio which faced Kentucky, West Va and East Tennessee. The Army of the Tennessee originated as Fremont's Department of the West facing Missouri etc, and Illinois was transferred in on 31st July '61.
 
I wonder why these two generals should necessarily be compared. That being said, while Rosecrans is forever tarnished by his defeat and actions at Chickamauga, of the two, Grant took defeats in stride and had the ability to recover and move on starting at Belmont and Shiloh and extending to the Overland Campaign. Or maybe Grant was also just more lucky.
 
The battle of the sources, as if we are a bunch of kids on social media trying to decide who is the coolest kid in school. :dance:
I think if it was a courtroom, the court would be instructing the advocates that the court wanted to know about the two commanders: what force was allocated to each, how much time was allowed to each, how much did it cost to support that force, what were the combat and non-combat casualties, and how did the chief executive rate the strategic and political results of each campaign. Since General Halleck and Sec'y Stanton compiled and determined that information, it is their testimony that matters most. Since President Lincoln was the person judging the political results, his real or implied testimony rating the results would have great weight.
Be that as it may, most judges are going to announce that the court wants to hear expert testimony from historians and military men, who have proven to be credible in the past.
Further, the view that history is a supervisory appeal to the decisions made about General Nos. 1-14 at the time of the Civil War, and that history gets to reverse the decisions of the President and of the voters, lacks common sense.
The historian can give a good argument that the decision of the past was incorrect, if he or she so chooses. But in my view, the historian might serve a more useful purpose in explaining what happened, rather than attempting to over rule or reverse those decisions.
 
The entire effort to use Grant in comparison to Rosecrans distracts us from considering why Halleck and Lincoln allowed the war effort to stall, or slide into secondary operations that gave little support to General Rosecrans' campaign in Tennessee.
It was the ability of the Confederacy to shift troops on its interior lines that endangered Rosecrans' army. It was this ability that Grant was determined to thwart when the administration placed him in overall command.
 
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