The Road to Appomattox, April, 1865: An Analysis of General Grant Closing Out the Confederacy

  On April 9, 1865, General  Ulysses S Grant closed out the Confederacy.

General Ulysses Grant is the best writer among the Civil War Generals;  his book, PERSONAL MEMOIRS OF ULYSSES S. GRANT is a masterpiece.

He won a brutal campaign of attrition to end the American Civil War with a Union victory.The first battle of the campaign of attrition was the Battle of the Wilderness, in the dense thickets known as the Wilderness of Spotsylvania. Grant hurled the Union Army of the Potomac into tangled woods, against Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia,  to bloody results. The Army of the Potomac lost 17% of its troop strength in one battle. So many Union soldiers were casualties that, for the first time in American history, rumors had it that the Federal Government fudged the casualty lists downward, to assuage the public dismay.

Grant was a drunk; he qualified his drunkenness by stating that he never drank when his wife was near or when he was on active duty. Hence, General Grant  was a selective drunk.

He was an acknowledged failure before he became a General in the Federal Army; he was arguably a failure after he was no longer a General.

As a junior officer in the Mexican-American War, he seemingly was non-descript; when he met Lee at Appomattox to accept the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, he noted that he had met Lee in Mexico. Lee did not remember him.

He was Napoleonic in his Generalship; against lesser opponents  in the West he was wonderful, rarely making a mistake, outsmarting them, and out-generaling them. When he came East and fought a better general, Lee; Grant  was Napoleon meeting Kutuzov or Wellington, a general without imagination, merely following the old mantra of keep throwing bodies at bullets to see what happens.

Mary Todd Lincoln, “Crazy” Mary Todd Lincoln loathed him and considered him a butcher; which is why she denied her son's request to fight in the closing last battles.

He loved trench warfare, and excelled at it.

He was outstanding on Civil Rights, and kept faith with Black Union soldiers and veterans until the day he died.

As President, he ran a notoriously corrupt administration.

He was bankrupt before he became a General, and bankrupt after he was President; only Mark Twain saved his family from destitution by advancing him a royal sum for his Memoirs; which he finished mere days before dying of throat cancer.

Discounting Napoleon, the closest General in history to match up to Grant was German/Prussian General Erich Ludendorff, who was very  successful  at his war’s lesser front, and therefore was brought to higher command to win World War I for Imperial Germany. Ludendorff’s solution was a war of attrition, hurl German boys against French and British bullets until the German boys won. Ludendorff lost when the Americans showed up, more bullets than German boys could accommodate.

Grant was brought in from a lesser front, to the more important front to win the Civil War by engaging in a war of attrition, hurl Billy Yanks against the bullets of Johnny Rebs.   Grant would have also eventually lost but he had an ace in the hole, General William Tecumseh Sherman. At Lee’s rear, Sherman, with the Army of the Ohio,  was Marching to the Sea, making South Carolina “howl”, and tramping through North Carolina. It was only a matter of time before Sherman would have driven up on Lee from behind, finishing the war, later rather than sooner.

Grant had the following outstanding qualities.

He had an eye for talent. He was never jealous of his subordinates, and promoted great generals to serve under him. When he attacked Lee, he commanded three extraordinary generals: Meade, Winfield Scott Hancock “the Superb”, and Phil Sheridan.

In the West, before he took over the fight against Lee, he promoted and commanded Sherman, George Thomas and James McPherson. Grant had such a good eye for talent that he brought Sherman out of an insane asylum to serve under him.

Grant's support of Sherman led to one of the great quotes in American History, from General Sherman: "Grant stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk, and now we stand by each other.”'

Grant's finest moment was when he accepted Lee’s surrender.

“Dressed in an immaculate uniform, Lee waited for Grant to arrive. Grant… arrived at the Appomattox courthouse in a mud-spattered uniform—a government-issue flannel shirt with trousers tucked into muddy boots, no sidearms, and with only his tarnished shoulder straps showing his rank. It was the first time the two men had seen each other face-to-face in almost two decades. Suddenly overcome with sadness, Grant found it hard to get to the point of the meeting and instead the two generals briefly discussed their only previous encounter, during the Mexican-American War.(Grant remembered Lee, Lee did not remember Grant).

 “The terms were as generous as Lee could hope for; his men would not be imprisoned or prosecuted for treason. In addition to his terms, Grant also allowed the defeated men to take home their horses and mules to carry out the spring planting and provided Lee with a supply of food rations for his starving army; Lee said it would have a very happy effect among the men and do much toward reconciling the country. The terms of the surrender were recorded in a document hand written by Grant's adjutant Ely Parker, a Native-American of the Seneca tribe, and completed around 4 p.m., April 9. Lee, upon discovering Parker to be a Seneca remarked "It is good to have one real American here." Parker replied, "Sir, we are all Americans."

Grant may have been a drunk, a bankrupt, an enabler of corruption, a butcher as a general, but at the ending of the most Homeric war in History, he was the most magnanimous victor Providence could have provided.

Providence was pro-American then.

General Grant

Grant as a West Point Cadet