Grant and Lee on Generalship

The question as framed is almost silly, but it does get a properly ginned up answer.

And yes, he had a profound strategic sense and made his opponents play to his tune over and over.  He was actually a great ngeneral whose so called mistakes halped.  No one ever thought of attrition as a tactic before this, but he had the numbers and if germaine he used them.

His real genius was sending Sherman into Georgia to completly break the morale of the population to say nothing about making the cockpit about richmond all or nothing.  A retreating confederate army literally had nowhere to go, which is why they delayed as long as they did.

attrition is not inconclusive if your enemy cannot get replacements.  It just takes a nasty spell and time because you still must avoid headon clashes that chew up your men far too fast.

If Ulysses S Grant was a poor general, how did he win so many battles against Robert E. Lee during the American Civil War?

Eric Farmer ·

Bachelor's in History (college major), University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (Expected 2024)8mo

quora.com

If Ulysses S Grant was a poor general, how did he win so many battles against Robert E. Lee during the American Civil War?

I would first say that you have been woefully misinformed by anyone that suggests that Ulysses S. Grant was a poor general.

The man was, at least in my estimation, nothing less than the best strategist and logistician of the American Civil War.

General Lee, by contrast, was one of the best tacticians of the war. Many of his victories and much of his success was against a force with superior manpower and supplies, Bobby Lee made many commanders look impotent when they were not necessarily so.

When Grant took over the Union forces in the Eastern Theater, Lee had successfully defeated most Union commanders decisively, with the notable exception of General George Meade, who had managed to defeat Lee at Gettysburg but was unable to score other, more decisive victories. Really, once Meade was appointed as the head of the Army of the Potomac, Lee’s chances of winning the war dwindled from an already precarious position.

Once Grant was appointed to lead the overall Union forces, and bring Lee to heel, Lee’s chances of winning the war dwindled to an impossibility. Grant was far from inept as a tactician in his own right, and so Lee was unable to use superior tactics that had previously won him battles such as the Battle of Chancellorsville, in which Lee defeated an army over twice the Army of Northern Virginia’s size. However, Grant also had something that Lee clearly showed that he did not, an excellent grasp of the strategic situation. Grant was able to turn even the inconclusive battles with the Army of Northern Virginia into strategic victories, let alone the tactical victories. Nowhere was this more on display than in General Grant’s Overland Campaign, in which battles such as the Battle of the Wilderness, Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, and the Battle of North Anna were all inconclusive battles that served the Union’s overall strategic aims.

And that was the great strength of Grant’s approach to war as opposed to Lee’s. Lee’s approach to war was Napoleonic, romantic, searching for that one big battle to end the conflict. Grant’s approach was modern, pragmatic, orchestrating an event or series of events that, even if he was not able to score a decisive victory, at least he was able to turn it into something he could use. Lee knew how to gain a victory, but not how to use one. Grant knew how to gain a victory, and how to use it.

Or, another way to put it. Lee could do more with less, but Grant could simply do more.