- Joined
- Apr 4, 2017
- Location
- Denver, CO
There only about 650 West Point graduates available to the US during the Civil War. They all knew much more about how an army worked and how soldiers had to be led than any civilian.
https://www.clevelandcivilwarroundtable.com/west-point-in-the-civil-war/
Many of them were too young to hold responsible positions and some of them were too old to be active in the field.
Men about the age of Grant and Sherman, and maybe McClellan, were probably going to dominate the US effort.
Grant probably had the stronger marriage of the three mentioned so far. Sherman and his wife disagreed about religion, which was important to Ellen Sherman, and I think McClellan's wife entertained some doubts about General McClellan's emotional ability to deal with stress.
Regardless of that, Grant had participated in the Mexico City campaign during the US/Mexican war. That was not a large operation, only about 12,000 men at the start. Thus the number of junior officers who emerged from the war with a positive record was again a restricted class.
The army was greatly reduced after the end of the US/Mexican war, but Grant stayed in the army.
https://history.army.mil/html/books/075/75-1/CMH_Pub_75-1.pdf
Eventually he was sent to California, and he also was stationed on the Columbia River for a time.
In the small US army of the time, he made captain. Its hard to find out how many captains the army had at that time, but I think one source asserted it was about 50 at that rank.
So regardless of his personal characteristics, he was in a small group that had been maintained by Winfield Scott.
So he really did not come from no where. If the Civil War was to involve serious warfare, Grant's odds of rising to the top were favorable.
The fact that he was an insatiable consumer of newspapers, and a superb horseman were also advantages.
Oh, and he drank a lot of whiskey while in California. The nation as a whole was on a beer, wine and whiskey binge, and I think it would be hard to find an army officer in California in that era, that was not a heavy drinker.
v
https://www.clevelandcivilwarroundtable.com/west-point-in-the-civil-war/
Many of them were too young to hold responsible positions and some of them were too old to be active in the field.
Men about the age of Grant and Sherman, and maybe McClellan, were probably going to dominate the US effort.
Grant probably had the stronger marriage of the three mentioned so far. Sherman and his wife disagreed about religion, which was important to Ellen Sherman, and I think McClellan's wife entertained some doubts about General McClellan's emotional ability to deal with stress.
Regardless of that, Grant had participated in the Mexico City campaign during the US/Mexican war. That was not a large operation, only about 12,000 men at the start. Thus the number of junior officers who emerged from the war with a positive record was again a restricted class.
The army was greatly reduced after the end of the US/Mexican war, but Grant stayed in the army.
https://history.army.mil/html/books/075/75-1/CMH_Pub_75-1.pdf
Eventually he was sent to California, and he also was stationed on the Columbia River for a time.
In the small US army of the time, he made captain. Its hard to find out how many captains the army had at that time, but I think one source asserted it was about 50 at that rank.
So regardless of his personal characteristics, he was in a small group that had been maintained by Winfield Scott.
So he really did not come from no where. If the Civil War was to involve serious warfare, Grant's odds of rising to the top were favorable.
The fact that he was an insatiable consumer of newspapers, and a superb horseman were also advantages.
Oh, and he drank a lot of whiskey while in California. The nation as a whole was on a beer, wine and whiskey binge, and I think it would be hard to find an army officer in California in that era, that was not a heavy drinker.
v