America's Greatest 19th Century Presidents (33 page)

Grant’s Tomb in New York City

Chapter 9: Grant’s Legacy

Grant’s Place in Military History

Immediately after Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox, the job of assessment began.  Lives lost, men captured, money spent, property destroyed and seized all had to be tallied to know just how
badly
the South had lost and how
effectively
the North had won. Based on these accomplishments, Grant certainly stood out among his peers in the Union and is generally considered at least on equal footing with General Lee. While many aspects of the Civil War are still fiercely debated today, there is no question that Grant was the most instrumental leader in subduing the rebellion.

According to the official tally, the armies under Grant’s immediate command in Virginia had captured 75,000 prisoners and 689 cannons, while the armies under his general command in April and May of 1865 had captured 147,000 prisoners and 997 cannon, making a total of 222,000 prisoners and 1,686 cannons seized.  Given these accomplishments, he was recognized as one of the most aggressive fighters on the list of the world’s most famous soldiers. 

For his powers of inventiveness, rather than simple adaptation, Grant has invited comparison to other great commanders in history. Many were quick to acknowledge that Grant had abandoned most every known European battle strategy and adopted a more “open order” of battle, making bigger use of skirmish lines, employing cavalry largely as mounted infantry, and cultivating the individuality of the soldier rather than making him just a cog in an unthinking war machine. 

Along with General Sherman, Grant is widely recognized as one of the men most responsible for the policy of total war, which used complete social mobilization and viewed anything that could help the enemy as a legitimate target of military value. While people still continue to debate the morality of total war, nobody questions its effectiveness, and the total war policies employed by Grant and Sherman would be put to use in subsequent conflicts across the world.

From a basic military standpoint, Grant insisted on coordination between his armies, and actively tried to prevent corps and armies from conducting actions independent of a comprehensive battle strategy.  And the results, from forcing the surrender of Fort Donelson to the surrender of Lee at Appomattox, proved his methods valid.

But even so, in the years immediately after the war, it was Lee, the man he’d defeated, who became the national symbol revered for his outstanding character and military prowess. It was Lee who the ordinary American citizen turned to to make moral sense of the war, and it was Lee who became the image of American tenacity in the face of adversity. This was no doubt in part to some of the suspicions and controversies surrounding Grant, from high casualty lists to suspected alcoholism.

Within a decade of Grant’s death, historians began to analyze how to balance and reconcile Grant’s accomplishments and misdeeds.  Many agreed that the war, whether intended or not, had brought the nation into the modern age; an age where Grant represented the rise of the pragmatic business order.  Grant was the impatient “hammerer” of Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, and then Richmond; the man anxious to crush the archaic Southern order and get on with the task of building the U. S. industrial state; the ever-practical man who believed that what lay behind a person mattered nothing in comparison to what lay ahead of him. Who better to represent a constant eye to the future than Grant, who had been rendered severely depressed by all his past failures?

In his
Memoirs
, General Sherman wrote, “When [Grant’s] military history is analyzed after the lapse of years, it will show even more clearly than now that during these [his final battles], as well as his previous campaigns, he was the steadfast center about and on which everything else turned.”
[16]
  And even one of his most capable opponents, Lee’s “Old War Horse” General Longstreet, later said, “As the world continues to look at and study the grand combinations and strategy of General Grant, the higher will be his reward as a soldier.”
[17]

Today, history views Grant as a man who was calm amid excitement, sure in judgment, clear in foresight, patient under trials, and never disheartened by defeats or unduly elated by successes.  He possessed a natural facility for resourcefulness and the ability to adapt the means at hand to the accomplishment of the desired end; an ability that never failed him.  His unparalleled sense of self-reliance and self-confidence enabled him to instantly make decisions of critical importance while assuming the gravest of responsibilities. All of these traits were attributed to his military life, with few considering his time as President at all.)

Coming to this very conclusion nearly a century and a half ago, General Horace Porter wrote, “While his achievements in actual battle eclipse by their brilliancy the strategy and grand tactics employed in his campaigns, the skill and boldness exhibited in moving large armies into position should enable him to as much credit as the qualities he displayed in the immediate presence of the enemy.  With him, the formidable game of war was in the hands of a master.”
[18]
 

Many others, both then and now, have come to agree.

Bibliography

Connelly, Thomas L.
The Marble Man: Robert E. Lee and His Image in American Society
. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977.

Fellman, Michael.
The Making of Robert E. Lee
. New York: Random House, 2000.

Grant, U. S. (John. Y. Simon, editor).
Ulysses S. Grant: Memoirs and Selected Letters
. The Library of America, 1984.

Hesseltine, William B.
Ulysses S. Grant, Politician
.  Dodd, 1935.

Horn, Stanley F. (editor).
The Robert E. Lee Reader
. New York: Konecky & Konecky, 1949.

PBS, American Experience, “Timeline: Ulysses S. Grant”: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/timeline/grant-timeline/3/

Porter, Horace. 
Campaigning With Grant
. New York: University Press, 1961.

University of Oklahoma, Law Site, “Inaugural Address of President Ulysses S. Grant”: http://www.law.ou.edu/ushistory/usgrant1.shtml

Ward, Geoffry C.
The Civil War: An Illustrated History
. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1990.

Wright, Mike.
What They Didn’t Teach You About the Civil War
. Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1998.

[1]
              http://www.blackpast.org/?q=primary/declaration-independence-and-debate-over-slavery

[2]
              Oates, Stephen B. 
With Malice Toward None: A Life of Abraham Lincoln. 
Page 56.

[3]
              Oates, Steph B. 
With Malice Toward None. 
Page 115.

[4]
              “Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address.” 
Presidents: Every Question Answered. 
Page 322.

[5]
              Grant, U. S. (John. Y. Simon, editor).
Ulysses S. Grant: Memoirs and Selected Letters. 
Page 27.

[6]
              Grant, U. S. (John. Y. Simon, editor).
Ulysses S. Grant: Memoirs and Selected Letters. 
Page 21.

[7]
              Wright, Mike.
What They Didn’t Teach You About the Civil War
.  Page 264.

[8]
              Wright, Mike.
What They Didn’t Teach You About the Civil War
.  Pages 264-265.

[9]
              Grant, U. S. (John. Y. Simon, editor).
Ulysses S. Grant: Memoirs and Selected Letters
. Page 208.

[10]
              Fellman, Michael.
The Making of Robert E. Lee
.  Page 167.

[11]
              Horn, Stanley F. (editor).
The Robert E. Lee Reader
.   Page 436.   

[12]
              Porter, Horace. 
Campaigning With Grant
. Pages 14--15.

[13]
              University of Oklahoma Law Site, “Inaugural Address of President Ulysses S. Grant.”

[14]
             
PBS, American Experience
, “Timeline: Ulysses S. Grant.”

[15]
                Porter, Horace. 
Campaigning With Grant
.  Page 241.  

[16]
              Porter, Horace. 
Campaigning With Grant
.  Page 515. 

[17]
              Porter, Horace. 
Campaigning With Grant
.  Page 516. 

[18]
              Porter, Horace. 
Campaigning With Grant
.  Page 516.