Grant

by Ron Chernow

He saw the Wilderness as the opening act in a long drama.

He would now initiate a new style of warfare, an uninterrupted stream of battles such as the war had never seen.

General Gordon boasted that there was “no doubt but that Grant is retreating.” “You are mistaken,” Lee corrected him, “quite mistaken. Grant is not retreating; he is not a retreating man.”

Endowed with eerie intuition, Lee had accurately forecast Grant’s next move to his generals: “Grant is not going to retreat. He will move his army to Spotsylvania.”

a shell “passed 3 inches from his ear.” Without missing a beat, Grant told his new aide, Captain Peter Hudson, “Hudson, get that shell. Let’s see what kind of ammunition they are using.”

It was Grant’s eternal assumption that when his adversary strengthened one part of his line, he weakened another.

Grant had long been frustrated by standard tactical manuals, translated from the French and poorly suited to wooded terrain. Now Colonel Emory Upton of New York, a West Point graduate and iconoclastic student of military lore, devised an ingenious solution.

He took twelve regiments, arranged them into four lines,

when the first line reached the Confederate defenses, it split left and right, opening a path for the second line to rush in and take up the assault; this line, in turn, splayed left and right, creating an opening for the third and fourth in succession.

he made Upton a brevet brigadier general

“He gave us the first really American system of tactics,

immortal line that would be emblazoned in the press and trail him forever: “[I] propose to fight it out on this line if it takes me all summer.”

Hancock was “the beau ideal of a soldier, blue-eyed, fair-haired Saxon,

Hancock’s renown had been enhanced by beating back Pickett’s Charge from behind Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg.

Grant ordered Hancock and Burnside at 4 a.m. to lead “a prompt and vigorous attack.”

Hancock captured four thousand prisoners plus thirty cannon.

Lee was every bit as stubborn as Grant.

Lee made five attempts to regain the front line he had lost and each time was flung back by Hancock’s gallant determination.

zigzagging trenches formed a sharp angle known in historical annals as the Bloody Angle.

One Louisiana soldier voiced a dispiriting thought that began to sink in across the South: “We have met a man this time who either does not know when he is whipped, or who cares not if he loses his whole Army,

As Heth noted, Grant “was wearing us out and starving us out. He hammered at us continually. He knew we couldn’t replace our men and that he could.”

But en route to Atlanta, Sherman ousted Johnston from Dalton, Georgia;

If he was still beguiled by the notion of luring Lee to fight in the open, on the morning of May 18 Lee did not oblige, staying put behind his defenses as Grant attacked.

Lincoln was agitated by the lengthy lists of dead soldiers.

Grant perceived opportunity where others saw blind terror, instructing Porter to “ride to the point of attack

Confederate troops were driven back in what proved Lee’s last offensive attack; henceforth he would exploit the advantages of fixed defensive positions.

For Grant, the important thing was the constant, inexorable push southward.

“Grant had this army as firmly in hand as ever he had that of the Southwest. He has effected this simply by the exercise of tact and good taste.”

Meade sounded a still more cynical note about Grant: “I think Grant has had his eyes opened and is willing to admit now that Virginia and Lee’s army is not Tennessee and Bragg’s army.”

Cold Harbor became a byword for senseless slaughter, a club with which Grant was beaten by opponents.

After Cold Harbor, Grant could never cast off the butcher epithet,

General Montgomery Meigs proposed the creation of a national military cemetery, surrounding the former Lee mansion at Arlington,

Republicans—now called the National Union Party

Grant had driven Lee into a box from which he could not escape easily as he defended Richmond and Petersburg.

If he could seize the vital railroad junction of Petersburg, twenty miles below Richmond, he could sever southern railroads that sustained Lee’s army.

Lee was completely fooled by the exodus and thunderstruck to discover that Grant’s entire army of 115,000 men had vanished in the night.

Lee still had no idea Grant’s army had slipped across the James in an operation so stupendous even one Confederate general dubbed it “the most brilliant stroke in all the campaigns of the war.”

Grant had lifted his morale and Lincoln enjoyed repeating his parting words: “You will never hear of me farther from Richmond than [I am] now, till I have taken it . . . It may take a long summer day, but I will go in.”96

two principal Confederate armies under Lee in Virginia and Johnston in Georgia.

George Templeton Strong

Jubal Early,

the two-faced Halleck was quick to distance himself from Grant if things went wrong and equally quick to grab credit if things prospered.

Early’s raiders penetrated western Maryland, spreading terror as they ripped up railroad tracks, torched mills and workshops, and sent local residents fleeing toward Washington and Baltimore.

Lincoln expressed annoyance that Wright didn’t pursue the retreating rebels, saying sardonically the general feared “he might come across the rebels and catch some of them.”

Grant followed Sherman with admiration, later contending that his campaign toward Atlanta had been “managed with the most consummate skill, the enemy being flanked out of one position after another all the way there.”

Sheridan had a pugnacity that refused to quit,

Sheridan was blunt and hard-drinking and almost foamed at the mouth when angry.

Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan exhibited a combative spirit that would ultimately lead to victory.

Grant lived up to his image by exhibiting perfect sangfroid amid the mayhem.

Confederate war secretary James Seddon,