Grant or Lee?

Grant or Lee?

  • Grant

    Votes: 39 45.9%
  • Lee

    Votes: 46 54.1%

  • Total voters
    85
Generally speaking, defensive engagements are easier to fight and offensive actions take higher casualties. I don't think its a coincidence that when Lee was on his strongest offensive action (Gettysburg) that he had his most significant failing.
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Generally speaking, these comments are true. Lee was obviously forced on the defensive in the 2 year end-game with Grant, but his defense was anything but passive and fixed. He kept Grant up at night right until the end. Nor was he ineffective on the offense. I agree that Gettysburg was the singular failure of his career, but even an analysis of that leads to some controversy. He didn't lose it by himself, or by not trying; but even after the epic failure of Pickett's charge the Confederate army walked away with 3,000 less casualties than the larger Union army suffered on the defensive. I guess you know where my vote lies.
 
Do Grant or Lee rank alongside Napoleon? Or is that a whole new league here?
different dudes doing different things with different stuff at different times
 
I posted on topic.

No, I mean the rest of the thread. Virtually every post made by Dachs in this thread has been about how your statement is unequivocally untrue, and that Lee was more of Butcher than Grant ever was.
 
Yeah but what about all the other posts and evidence that say he wasn't - or is everything Dachs says so unequivocally true you can ignore everything else ?
 
I agree that Gettysburg was the singular failure of his career

What about that part where he was in charge of the defense of Virginia, which ended with unconditional surrender?

Yeah but what about all the other posts and evidence that say he wasn't - or is everything Dachs says so unequivocally true you can ignore everything else ?

May as well be, since nobody is posting any sort of facts or logical observations to the contrary.
 
Spoiler Robert E. Lee Facts :
When Virginia declared its secession from the Union in April 1861, Lee chose to follow his home state, despite his personal desire for the Union to stay intact and despite the fact that President Abraham Lincoln had offered Lee command of the Union Army. During the Civil War, Lee originally served as a senior military advisor to President Jefferson Davis. He soon emerged as a shrewd tactician and battlefield commander, winning numerous battles against larger Union armies. His abilities as a tactician have been praised by many military historians.

Spoiler Ulysses S. Grant facts :
After the American Civil War began in April 1861, he joined the Union war effort, taking charge of training new regiments and then engaging the Confederacy near Cairo, Illinois. In 1862, he fought a series of major battles and captured a Confederate army, earning a reputation as an aggressive general who seized control of most of Kentucky and Tennessee at the Battle of Shiloh. In July 1863, after a long, complex campaign, he defeated five Confederate armies and seized Vicksburg. This famous victory gave the Union control of the Mississippi River, split the Confederacy, and opened the way for more Union victories and conquests. After another victory at the Battle of Chattanooga in late 1863, President Abraham Lincoln promoted him to the rank of lieutenant general and gave him charge of all of the Union Armies. As Commanding General of the United States Army from 1864 to 1865, Grant confronted Robert E. Lee in a series of very high casualty battles known as the Overland Campaign that ended in a stalemate siege at Petersburg. During the siege, Grant coordinated a series of devastating campaigns launched by William Tecumseh Sherman, Philip Sheridan, and George Thomas. Finally breaking through Lee's trenches at Petersburg, the Union Army captured Richmond, the Confederate capital, in April 1865. Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox. Soon after, the Confederacy collapsed and the Civil War ended. Although comrades of defeated Confederate commander Robert E. Lee denounced Grant in the 1870s as a ruthless butcher who won by brute force, most historians have hailed his military genius.


Spoiler Overland Campaign :
Spoiler General Lee :
Starting Numbers: 64,000
Casualties: 32,000

Spoiler General Grant :
Starting numbers: 118,700
Casualties: 55,000

I say that also by a factor of numbers, that General Lee was a better general.
Spoiler Other Stuff :
The massive casualties sustained in the campaign were damaging to the Northern war effort. The price of gold almost doubled and Abraham Lincoln's prospects for reelection were put into jeopardy. It was only the later successes at Mobile Bay, the Shenandoah Valley, and Sherman's capture of Atlanta, that turned Northern morale and the political situation around. Grant's reputation also suffered. The knowledge that he could more easily afford to replace his losses of men and equipment than Lee may have influenced Grant's strategy. However, historians do not agree that Grant deliberately engaged in numerous attacks merely to defeat Lee solely through attrition, without regard for the losses to his army, needlessly throwing lives away in fruitless frontal assaults to bludgeon Lee. The overall strategy of the Overland Campaign depended on using Grant's numerical superiority to allow progressive shifts to the left by "spare" Union corps while Confederate forces were relatively pinned in their positions by the remaining Union forces. Such a strategy could not succeed without the continuing threat of defeat by direct assault in each of the positions assumed by Lee's army. The strategy failed in that Lee, possessing shorter lines of march (being nearer to Richmond, which was also his base), was able to prevent Grant's forces getting between Lee and Richmond, but was effective in allowing Grant to draw progressively closer to Richmond up to the battle at Cold Harbor. There, with the barrier of the James River and estuary to his left, Grant did not have the room necessary to continue such movements. He had to choose one among three possibilities: attack, shift to the right and thus back toward Washington, or cross the James to get at Lee's supply lines. He attempted the first, then did the third, as the second was unacceptable.
 
We've already discussed the matter of casualty counts to death. Please read the rest of the thread.
 
It's not a fact to the contrary, we've already dissected that claim. You can add something new if you would like, though please actually read the thread this time so you know if it actually is new.
 
If Grant and Lee started the overland campaign with the same number of soldiers, same equipment, and no reinforcements, would Grant still have won?

I think not.

You are basically stating((according from what I understand from how you're acting)), that better weapons and larger numbers do not affect the outcome of a battle/war/campaign when one side has to manually load bullets while the other side has clips.
The larger numbers would give the larger force an immense advantage because they could simply move around the smaller force and destroy it.
Because of this advantage that the Union had considering numbers and weaponry, I do not believe Grant to be the better general.
 
If Grant and Lee started the overland campaign with the same number of soldiers, same equipment, and no reinforcements, would Grant still have won?

I think not.

Are we also assuming in this fantasy-land that offensive operations incur the exact amount of resources as defensive operations, that the terrain is a perfect equilateral chess board, that their staffs and officers are equally as effective, et al.? If you are, then I hope you have some hardcore simulation data to back that up. If you're not, then arbitrarily changing factors until eventually Grant is at a heavier disadvantage than he originally was is a futile endeavor.
 
You are basically stating((according from what I understand from how you're acting)), that better weapons and larger numbers do not affect the outcome of a battle/war/campaign when one side has to manually load bullets while the other side has clips.

When did anybody claim this?

Your only arguments are that Lee is a better general because (a) the Confederacy was at certain disadvantages, to which I counter that the Union had quite a few disadvantages as well; and that (b) Grant incurred more casualties in his operations, even though the same can be said of Lee both circumstantially and by percentage, as well as the fact that suffering more casualties doesn't necessitate that you've authored a worse operation.

Are you really so adamant about not reading the thread? Try it. You might be surprised.
 
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