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Date Posted: 13:01:12 10/31/05 Mon
Author: Sunshine
Subject: Lee vs Grant
In reply to: Sophist 's message, "Grant was the better general." on 08:57:38 10/31/05 Mon

His tactical victories were more a result of incompetent opponents than his own brilliance.
Whenever a numerically inferior force defeats the superior force one could reasonably argue that the commander of the larger force was incompetent. What is left out of this analysis is that knowing your enemy is important. The US army in 1860 was a pretty insular group. Almost all the generals were from West Point and they knew each other intimately. Lee’s abilities to divine the psyche of his opponent and construct a plan based on that knowledge was decisive, especially in the early years of the war.
Lee was in a difficult position: he could not afford to decisively lose a single battle. His problems at Gettysburg were a combination of lack of intelligence of the enemies disposition (due in no small part by J. E. B. Stuarts uncharacteristic blunders) and his need to win a big victory. Lee’s only long term hope was to create a political crisis in the North and hope for a negotiated settlement. He knew the long term prospects for the Confederacy were poor and that the only way to win was to make the war so unpopular in the north that the political will to continue would no longer exist.

The outstanding American general of the war was Grant.
As to whether Grant was superior to Lee, it is hard to compare as they had different resources which called for different approaches. Grant was better than previous northern generals because he would fight. He recognized that a battle of attrition guaranteed northern victory. He had an overwhelming superiority in industrial strength and manpower. All he had to do was to prosecute the war unremittingly and he would eventually win. I think he showed real brilliance in the Vicksburg campaign but I would not characterize much his Virginia campaign as particularly skillful (see Cold Harbor for example). He was brilliant in that he understood what he had and what he needed to do to win and pursued the course with vigor. One of the tests of a good general/coach etc is whether he can take his forces and wip yours and then turn around and take your forces and wip his. I think, and this is obviously impossible to prove, that Grant would have faired poorly with Lee’s forces while Lee would have prevailed if he had Grant’s forces.

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