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Shi Huangdi
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Pittsburgh, PA
Apr 1999
time: 00:25
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http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/boo...e.ap/index.html
quote:
MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. (AP) -- Ask most schoolchildren and they will tell you that Robert E. Lee was a military genius while Ulysses S. Grant was a butcher who simply used the North's advantage in men and material to bludgeon the Confederates into submission.
Not so, says historian Gordon Rhea, who has spent almost two decades researching and writing about the 1864 Overland Campaign in Virginia.
"There has been a shift in Grant's reputation in the past few years," Rhea says. "I think he has been painted into a corner of being a butcher, when in fact he was extremely thoughtful, very innovative and every bit the match of Lee."
Rhea, also an attorney who splits his time between South Carolina and St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, has written four volumes of a projected five-book series on the pivotal Civil War campaign in which the two generals faced each other.
He started writing the series in 1986. The latest volume, "Cold Harbor: Grant and Lee May 26-June 3, 1864," was published in the fall by the Louisiana State University Press.
The Overland Campaign was a string of battles, lasting 46 days, from the Wilderness until the armies got to Petersburg where began what would become a 10-month siege.
School kids also might tell you the turning point of the war was Gettysburg. Again, not so, says Rhea. Although Union troops turned back the Southern invasion at Gettysburg, both armies had largely retooled by early 1864, Rhea says. The difference then was that Grant had come East to face Lee after his victories in the West.
"The turning point of the entire Civil War would be when Grant took command. He had a completely different way of doing things," said Rhea, who holds a master's degree in history from Harvard University.
'A master of maneuver'
Robert E. Lee
In the war's early years, armies fought, disengaged for weeks or months, then fought again. Grant kept fighting, even after some battles other generals would consider defeats.
"He realized you had to attack the Confederates and keep fighting so they can't refit and organize," says Rhea.
Grant also coordinated attacks in the East and West so the Confederates couldn't shift men between the two theaters. And he realized the object was not to conquer the South but to defeat Lee's army.
Much of Grant's reputation as a butcher stems from Cold Harbor, where Union troops repeatedly charged in unsuccessful attempts to dislodge heavily entrenched Confederates.
"The traditional picture is that he was a man who always made head-on attacks and didn't care how many men he lost," Rhea says. "He was actually a master of maneuver. He never made attacks unless he felt he had a reasonable chance of succeeding."
At Cold Harbor, Union forces were just seven miles from Richmond and Grant sensed Lee's army was quite weak. "There's a river behind Lee's army, so Grant realizes if he can break Lee at this point, that's the end of it," Rhea says.
The attack itself was handled by Grant's subordinate, Gen. George Meade, who won at Gettysburg but "botched" Cold Harbor. "Only about half the Union army moved forward. There was virtually no communication between units, and the ground was not reconnoitered," Rhea says.
The better general?
He said myths have grown up about the battle that don't bear close scrutiny. "One was that Grant launched a big attack, and in the first 10 minutes or 15 minutes or seven minutes, depending on what you read, he lost 7,000 men, 10,000 men -- I've seen 15,000 men."
Battlefield reports from the National Archives and Library of Congress show Grant lost at most 3,500 soldiers. "Lee was losing almost double that number in some of his big assaults at Gettysburg or Chancellorsville," Rhea says.
Lee lost more troops than any other general in the war and "if a general could be called a butcher, Lee is probably more of a butcher than Grant," says Rhea. "Because history has treated him (Lee) so kindly and because he got such good publicity from Southern writers just after the war, which glorified his image, he is never looked at that way."
Grant was considered a hero during the campaign, but his reputation, even as a general, suffered from his time as president, which is usually considered "pretty much a disaster," Rhea says.
In all, Grant and Lee were very similar generals. "They were both very aggressive. They both liked to maneuver, and each of them would do things that would leave more traditional generals aghast," Rhea says.
So was Grant the better general?
"Grant won," Rhea says. "If you're going to look at results, yes, definitely." |
Discuss.
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Tuberski
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ACK!!! PTHBBPPPTTT!!!!
Feb 2002
time: 23:25
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quote:
Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
quote:
Battlefield reports from the National Archives and Library of Congress show Grant lost at most 3,500 soldiers. "Lee was losing almost double that number in some of his big assaults at Gettysburg or Chancellorsville," Rhea says.
Lee lost more troops than any other general in the war and "if a general could be called a butcher, Lee is probably more of a butcher than Grant," says Rhea. "Because history has treated him (Lee) so kindly and because he got such good publicity from Southern writers just after the war, which glorified his image, he is never looked at that way." |
I hope anti-Grantians like MtG see this quote  . |
Oh, he'll spin it some way, something like, Lee was in the field longer than Grant was.
Crap, now he doesn't have to, I just did.
ACK!
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MichaeltheGreat
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Apolyton Grand Executioner
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mooning the house that Ruth built.
Oct 1999
time: 21:25
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quote:
Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
I think we can now clearly see Grant as the best general of the civil war. Now we can relegate Lee to the history books as a butcher and a loser. |
If that's what you need to get you through the night baby, have at it.
There are plenty of historians with different analyses, and looking at one specific campaign late in the war when the two generals had very different levels of capability over which they had no control is a bit silly.
The only way you could make a comparison at that time is if you had some magical ability to reverse roles and compare the results each commander got with the same resources and strategic issues.
By definition, if you are outnumbered (as at Chacellorsville, for one example) and you then go on the offensive and drive the enemy off the battlefield, you are going to incur higher casualties. When the alternative is a high cost attack, or a retreat into an inevitably fatal siege, any general worth his salt will attack. The question is would Grant, faced with Lee's sitation and resources at Chancellorsville, have exceeded Lee's performance?
Given that Grant never functioned under real adversity in terms of manpower, material, indirect support, or being absolutely tied to defending specific ground, there is no basis for comparison to Lee's performance under those conditions.
Rhea's "military" "analysis" (giving him those terms generously) about who was a "butcher" is laughably simplistic. Absolute casualties incurred, or the rate at which casualties are incurred, is totally irrelevant. Grant wasn't a "butcher" for pressing attacks in the face of the enemy - he was a butcher for maintaining the army in contact under weather conditions where it could not engage the enemy, and could not maintain adequate living conditions in the field - leaving men by the tens of thousands to die of exposure and disease in non-combat deaths, when there was no possibility of fighting, and an abundance of supply and support.
As for casualty rates and "butchery" = casualty rates have to be evaluated in terms of the strategic importance of the objective being held or assaulted, the availability of alternative objectives which were as strategically valid, and the availability of alternative means to hold or secure those objectives.
Burnside had a choince going up against the stone wall at Fredericksburg. Lee had no choice in holding the sunken road at Sharpsburg at all costs. Was Hancock a butcher for ordering a futile charge by a small outnumbered regiment against a numerically and qualitatively superior force, knowing that regiment was certain to take nearly 100% casualties? (the 1st Minnesota battalion against Barksdale's brigade) Hell no, he did what was required by the circumstances with the resources at hand in the only way it could have been done under the conditions which existed on the field.
People can argue against Pickett's charge, but regardless of whether one thinks it necessary or not, it still put enough of a sting on Meade that he was lackadaisical in pursuing the ANV when it could have and should have been trapped against floodwaters of the Potomac and destroyed.
So we've got a historian with a contrarian point of view (helps sell books). 
Lawrence - Sherman was too damn slow against Johnston, who wasn't intending to win, only fight delaying actions against an enemy more than twice his strength. Had Hood not been installed to replace Johnston and ordered to attack, Sherman would have still been outside Atlanta on the Yankee election day, and would be relegated by history to the same general category as Meade, McClellan and Rosecrans.
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David Floyd
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The bottom of a large bottle of beer
Jan 1970
time: 05:25
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quote:
When was the last time you found a general commanding a platoon? |
OK, smartass, how about a brigade against an army? Both are generally commanded by generals, yet the brigade is not going to defeat the army - it can run away, but it isn't going to win on the basis of superior leadership alone.
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David Floyd
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The bottom of a large bottle of beer
Jan 1970
time: 05:25
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quote:
Lee had his chances to go up against some of the dumbest generals in American history and still couldn't put together a victory. |
The problem was one of logistics, industry, that sort of thing - you touched on that in the sentence preceding that one. Are you telling me that if the South had as much industrial power as the North, and the same access to hard currency, the world trade market, munitions, food, etc., that they would have still lost?
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Shi Huangdi
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Pittsburgh, PA
Apr 1999
time: 00:25
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quote:
Originally posted by David Floyd
The problem was one of logistics, industry, that sort of thing - you touched on that in the sentence preceding that one. Are you telling me that if the South had as much industrial power as the North, and the same access to hard currency, the world trade market, munitions, food, etc., that they would have still lost? |
Those things are all disadvantages that Lee faced, but he was still able to field an army so it wasn't like a brigade against an entire army. But Lee faced advantages too in that he had an excellent cast of subordinate generals and for the early part of the war faced very incompetent US Generals. All Lee was able to make of that advantage was delaying the war and defending the South until the North finally got some decent generals.
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TCO
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Richmond, VA
Jan 1970
time: 00:25
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Floyd likes slave-owning. It's part of his libertarian code that you're allowed to own other people.
Last edited by TCO on 09-01-2003 at 21:11
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Andrew1999
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quote:
Originally posted by Shi Huangdi In any case, Grant is rightly remembered as an American hero for defeating the Slaveocracy of the South, Lee is rightly remembered as a villain because of his defense of the Southern Slavocracy. |
Except, of course, in the Southern Slaveocracy itself, where they still celebrate Robert E. Lee Day instead of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I remember last year the editorial pages in my local rag were evenly split between praising Lee as the greatest person who ever lived, and calling for John Walker Lindh to be drawn and quartered. You would think they would treat all the traitors consistently.
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09-01-2003 09:37
but he felt that that was the only way to break the spirit of the south. and it looked like it worked, althought Im not ready to say weather it was morally justified or not.
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