Grant

by Ron Chernow

Lee assumed full responsibility for his baffling failure at Gettysburg,

Lincoln had never set eyes on Grant,

Ambrose Burnside captured Knoxville, and William Rosecrans took Chattanooga

Chickamauga Creek, near Chattanooga, in northwestern Georgia.

the quietly determined General George H. Thomas and his men refused to buckle under Confederate assault. For his bravery Thomas chalked up legendary status as “the Rock of Chickamauga.”

After numerous mistakes in selecting generals, Lincoln and Stanton had weeded out the weak reeds and began to assemble the team that would win the war.

Whatever his earlier fondness for Rosecrans, Grant grew withering in his contempt for him, telling Halleck a year later that any general “will be better than Rosecrans” and advising Dana that Rosecrans should be shipped off to “the northern frontier with the duty of detecting & exposing rebel conspiracies in Canada.”

Grant’s initial encounter with the Rock of Chickamauga was frosty.

he behaved civilly to everyone, never snubbing those of lesser rank.

Chattanooga stood at the northern end of a valley bounded by Missionary Ridge, a steep slope that rose as high as 400 feet, to the east, and Lookout Mountain to the southwest, which soared 1,400 feet above the valley floor. With both heights manned by Confederates, Union troops were bottled up down below without ammunition for a single day’s fighting.

a plan to seize control of the serpentine Tennessee River at a point north of Lookout Mountain. Supplies would be taken by a direct wagon road to a spot known as Brown’s Ferry,

Grant believed the war hinged on saving Chattanooga—“the vital point of the rebellion”—as it had on Vicksburg before.

Rawlins, under the guise of watching over Grant, seemed to be scrutinizing himself as well.

the hard-drinking Hooker, whose louche headquarters were called “a combination of barroom and brothel,” stood poles apart from the prudish Grant.

Grant admitted that he regarded the egomaniacal Hooker as “a dangerous man.

Grant always considered the pageantry of the Chattanooga fight beyond anything he had experienced,

Phil Sheridan, who flapped his hat in the air and brandished his sword. “Forward, boys, forward!”

At the mountain peak, it was young Arthur MacArthur Jr. of Wisconsin—father of World War II general Douglas MacArthur—who drove in the first regimental flag.

He always considered Shiloh and Missionary Ridge his two most satisfying battles.

Dana, who described the storming of the ridge as “one of the greatest miracles in military history.”

Bragg forwarded his resignation to Richmond, the Confederate government hastened to accept it.

His great strength was that he thought in terms of sequence of battles.

One reason Lincoln resisted any impulse to elevate Grant was the sudden chatter about Grant as a presidential candidate—perhaps

Grant relocated his headquarters to Nashville,

Grant devoted his attention to mapping out future campaigns against Atlanta, Montgomery, and Mobile as his thoughts bent decidedly toward the eastern seaboard, the core of Confederate industrial strength.

When brought a request for a major expenditure, Grant approved it with startling speed. Rusling asked Grant if he was sure he was correct. “No, I am not,” Grant shot back, “but in war anything is better than indecision. We must decide. If I am wrong we shall soon find it out, and can do the other thing. But not to decide wastes both time and money and may ruin everything.”

they often attended a small Methodist church together.

“Sometimes I can drink freely without any unpleasant effect; at others I could not take even a single glass of wine.” Schofield, impressed, thought, “A strong man indeed, who could thus know and govern his own weakness!”

Another persuasive argument for tapping Grant as lieutenant general was that it would topple Halleck, who was loathed by the more radical Republicans in Congress.

Everyone knew the sacred nature of the lieutenant general title, indelibly associated with George Washington.

He had mastered the art of not grasping for power, but letting it come to him unbidden.

Grant was small and self-contained, as taciturn as Lincoln was talkative.

Meade later became notorious among the press corps when he seized a reporter who had criticized him, hung a scurrilous sign around his neck that said “Libeler of the Press,” placed him backward on a mule, and ran him out of camp.

his failure to pursue Lee after Gettysburg revealed that Meade was not a bold, enterprising leader in the mold of either Grant or Lee.

the talented commanders who would be instrumental in winning the war: Sherman, McPherson, Sheridan, Rawlins, Dodge, and Logan.

the operation that would win Sherman lasting fame, his march on Atlanta.

When a group of ladies asked whether he would take Richmond, Julia replied, “Yes, before he gets through. Mr. Grant always was a very obstinate man.”

Grant was profoundly influenced by Lincoln, who buttressed his idealism

The only evidence you have that he’s in any place is that he makes things git! Wherever he is, things move!

Lincoln had developed operating theories that dovetailed perfectly with Grant’s views: that the Union army should destroy Confederate armies, not take cities or territory; that it should exploit its massive resources by simultaneous attacks against the enemy across many fronts; that military decisions were inseparable from political goals; and that only one final, savage, protracted burst of fighting could end the conflict.

Adopting a modern style of combat, Grant would speed up the war’s tempo, following up on victories and creating a sense of unending activity.

when Walt Whitman visited Culpeper, he found it “one of the pleasantest towns in Virginia,”

“He habitually wears an expression as if he had determined to drive his head through a brick wall, and was about to do it.”

“he ate less than any man in the army; sometimes the amount of food taken did not seem enough to keep a bird alive.”

The caricature of Lee as elegant and faultless whereas Grant was a clumsy butcher misses the point that Grant had much the harder task: he had to whittle down the Confederate army and smash it irrevocably, whereas Lee needed only to inflict massive pain on the northern army and stay alive to fight another day.

Washburne “said that Napoleon often indulged in only four hours of sleep, and still preserved all the vigor of his mental faculties.” Grant, who needed seven hours, sounded dubious. “Well, I, for one, never believed those stories. If the truth were known, I have no doubt it would be found that he made up for his short sleep at night by taking naps during the day.”

Immediately south of the Rapidan lay a bleak, uninhabited region of dense vegetation known as the Wilderness,

At the battle of Chancellorsville a year earlier, Lee had trounced Hooker in this perilous region, mastering its mystifying terrain.

Striking first, setting the pace, shaping the contours of battle—these were priorities dear to Grant’s heart.

Stanton would christen the Wilderness “the bloodiest swath ever made on this globe.”