W.T. Sherman on R.E. Lee and U.S. Grant

In 1887 William Tecumseh Sherman published an article in a British magazine responding to an earlier piece in which a British officer held up Robert E. Lee as a military paragon, equal to George Washington as a soldier and a man. Sherman begged to differ. Excerpts:

Lee's sphere of action was, however, local. He never rose to the grand problem which involved a continent and future generations. His Virginia was to him the world. Though familiar with the geography of the interior of this great continent, he stood like a stone wall to defend Virginia against the “Huns and Goths” of the North, and he did it like a valiant knight as he was. He stood at the front porch battling with the flames whilst the kitchen and house were burning, sure in the end to consume the whole. Only twice, at Antietam and Gettysburg, did he venture outside on the “offensive defensive.” In the first instance he knew personally his antagonist, and that a large fraction of his force would be held in reserve; in the last he assumed the bold “offensive,” was badly beaten by Meade, and forced to retreat back to Virginia. As an aggressive soldier Lee was not a success, and in war that is the true and proper test. In defending Virginia and Richmond he did all a man could, but to him Virginia seemed the “Confederacy,” and he stayed there whilst the Northern armies at the West were gaining the Mississippi, the Tennessee, the Cumberland, Georgia, South and North Carolina, yea, the Roanoke, after which his military acumen taught him that further tarrying in Richmond was absolute suicide. . . .

U.S. Grant, by contrast

moved in co-operation with the gun-boat fleet up the Tennessee to Fort Henry, which was captured; to Fort Donelson, where a fortified place with its entire garrison of 17,000 men surrendered without conditions; then on to Shiloh, where one of the bloodiest and most successful battles of the war was fought, which first convinced our Southern brethren, who had been taught that one Southern man was equal to five Yankees, that man to man was all they wanted—then Vicksburg, Chattanooga, everywhere victorious, everywhere successful, fulfilling the wise conclusion of Mr. Lincoln that he wanted “military success.” Then he was called for the first time in his life to Washington to command an army of perfect strangers, under new conditions, and in a strange country. Casting his thoughts over a continent, giving minute instructions for several distinct armies from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, himself assuming the hardest share, he began a campaign equal in strategy, in logistics, and in tactics to any of Napoleon, and grander than any ever contemplated by England. His personal action in crossing the Rapidan in the face of Lee’s army, fighting him in the Wilderness, “forward by the left flank,” to Spottsylvania, to Richmond, and Petersburg, was the sublimity of heroism. Of course, he had a superiority of numbers and resources, but nothing like the disproportion stated by General Wolseley. At Vicksburg he began in May, 1863, the movement with less numbers than Pemberton surrendered to him along with Vicksburg in July. At Chattanooga he attacked his enemy in the strongest position possible; so strong, indeed, that Bragg, a most thorough and intelligent soldier, regarded it as unassailable, and had detached Longstreet’s corps to Knoxville, of which mistake Grant took prompt advantage, and I never heard before that Bragg thought the pursuit after his defeat was not quick and good enough to suit him; and, finally, when Lee was forced to flee from his intrenchments at Richmond and Petersburg by Sheridan’s bold and skillful action at Five Forks, I believe it is conceded that the pursuit by Sheridan and Grant was so rapid that Lee was compelled to surrender his whole army. Grant’s “strategy” embraced a continent, Lee’s a small State; Grant’s “logistics” were to supply and transport armies thousands of miles, where Lee was limited to hundreds. Grant had to conquer natural obstacles as well as hostile armies, and a hostile people; his “tactics” were to fight wherever and whenever he could capture or cripple his adversary and his resources; and when Lee laid down his arms and surrendered, Grant, by the stroke of his pen, on the instant gave him and his men terms so liberal as to disarm all criticism. Between these two men as generals I will not institute a comparison, for the mere statement of the case establishes a contrast.

Civil War buffs have a habit of thinking locally, of focusing on battles and skirmishes. But the Union won the war because of a grand strategy that Grant helped to formulate and put into action.