Grant wasn't the best general of the Civil War, that was Robert E Lee

>Grant wasn't the best general of the Civil War, that was Robert E Lee

People still actually say and believe this nonsense

he's retarded and so are most murriclap niggerwar generals, except maybe Stonewall. Grant & Co. came at a time where victory was automatic due to gigantic numbers advantage. Put them in charge early war and they would've probably shit the bed and got canned like everyone else before them. No wonder Meade was the only """""good"""" Yankee general who didn't get canned because he fought like a pussy because the politicans were shitting themselves at the thought of another defeat.

>not sherman

>You will immediately cease and not continue to access the site if you are under the age of 18.

Time to go, kiddo.

Not a general but what about Mosby?

It's because northerners don't really think about the Civil War all that often nor constantly produce works jerking off their military, while among southerners you'd think the Civil War happened in the 1970s. Southern generals get glorified and romanticized a lot more as a result; there aren't swarms of people deifying Grant or Sherman like there are Lee and Jackson.

Source: am Texan who now lives in New England

Trips don't lie.

That isn't a photo of Sherman.

arguably Lee was the better battlefield commander despite some flaws but Grant was the better overall strategist and by that I mean he was a strategic zerg rusher

Lee won a shitton of battles but went full retard and invaded the North with a vastly inferior force which resulted in bloodbaths like Antietam and Gettysburg which the Union could easily recover from but the South couldn't.

Grant knew that he could lose troops and still win as long as he kept the pressure on Lee's dwindling forces even if he lost more men that didn't matter as long as Lee couldn't breath or get fresh troops

Reminds me of Russia v Germany in WWII but on a vastly smaller scale

>went full retard and invaded the North
And at the exact same time that Grant and Friends were invading the south - not aiming for the capital, a political target, but for infrastructure, strategic targets.
>t. First at Vicksburg

Sherman was lucky, not great, he extended his supply lines so far into enemy territory had the Confederates still had the manpower by that point, he would've gotten his shit kicked in by a simple flanking maneuver.
Lee I think is only really considered great because his tactics were new at the time, and he worked with what he had.

exactly

>k-12 school only teaches about eastern theater where South wins a lot of battles for first half then can't keep up the numbers and eventually surrenders
>doesn't teach western theater where Union basically curbstomped the Confederates throughout the entire war
>Fort Donelson/Fort Henry, Island 9, Vicksburg, New Orleans, Chattanooga,
>South literally only wins one battle (Chickamauga) then proceeds to butcher any gains that could be made from it
>Sherman's happy time march through the south

fun shit

>Reminds me of Russia v Germany in WWII but on a vastly smaller scale

Except the South didn't blow their goodwill as liberators by indiscriminately butchering Northern men, women, and children to fulfill some autistic racist dogma. Thankfully, Nathan Bedford Forrest (the /pol/lack, not the actual NBF) was not in command of the Confederate invasion force in Pennsylvania. Nor did the Confederacy invade the United States with intent to conquer it. Their goal was to force the Union Army to withdraw back into the North, kick their ass, and then promptly pull out as soon as Lincoln had agreed to a peace deal that guaranteed Confederate independence. Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union on the other hand was entirely fueled by a desire for conquest, with the longterm goal of exterminating the Slavic peoples, demographically replacing them with Germans, and incorporating the territory into the Reich. The when the Nazis invaded Russia, they intended to stay there, come Hell or high-water.

>inb4 muh proslavery dogma reply

Southerners (and most Northerners) were solid racists back then don't get me wrong. But even they had their limits. The most ardently proslavery Southerner was still ideologically influenced by the ideals of the American Revolution and the egalitarian principals it was founded on (even if that egalitarianism took incredibly bizarre and self-serving forms such as the belief that slavery was beneficial for blacks). Nazi Germany on the other hand had literally no depth of cruelty it wasn't willing to sink to to achieve its goals. In part because the Nazi ideology explicitly rejects egalitarianism and embraces the idea of eternal struggle.

TL;DR the Eastern Front and the American Civil War really aren't that comparable

>have far superior forces and infrastructure
>spam soldiers until you win
>le genius face

>Sherman's happy time march through the south
This is my new name for it.

>he was l-lucky
>he just used the resources at his disposal
>>Sherman's happy time march through the south
someone post the song.

The South was a mistake

> Sherman was lucky, not great, he extended his supply lines so far into enemy territory had the Confederates still had the manpower by that point, he would've gotten his shit kicked in by a simple flanking maneuver.

Learn why Sherman is considered the first modern general.

Sherman conducted his march to the sea after the siege of Atlanta destroyed the confederate field army opposing him. After Hood lost his army, the only force opposing Sherman's army were guerilla raids on his supply lines. While these raids did not pose a threat militarily, posting garrisons along an extended supply line would sap his manpower, slow down the pace of advance, and allow Hood more time to regroup.

It's under these conditions that Sherman decided he could do without his supply lines. Nothing about the march was lucky, because Sherman had access to Georgia's harvest data from the decade before, and chose deliberately to march his army through the counties with the highest food production. The army was deliberately split and marched along separate paths because opposition was light, and to ensure enough forage was available. Sherman did what Lee should have done during the Gettysburg campaign.

>It's under these conditions that Sherman decided he could do without his supply lines. Nothing about the march was lucky, because Sherman had access to Georgia's harvest data from the decade before, and chose deliberately to march his army through the counties with the highest food production

This was made possible by the fact that record keeping and communications were starting to get really good by the time of the ACW. It wouldn't have been possible to wage a campaign like this in George Washington's day when record keeping wasn't as extensive and fewer people were literate (not to mention the lack of railroads, telegraphs, and steam power).

>Southern generals get glorified and romanticized a lot more as a result; there aren't swarms of people deifying Grant or Sherman like there are Lee and Jackson.

It's only Confederate generals from the Eastern Theater that get romanticized. Nobody cares about Western generals because the Confederates lost almost every battle of importance out there--there's not a lot to be proud of. You don't see a lot of high schools named after Braxton Bragg.

After Sherman's initial experience in the war commanding a brigade at Bull Run, he was eager to be transferred to the West where he believed the real interesting war was going to happen, as opposed to the bland, one-dimensional Virginia Theater (capture Richmond capture Richmond capture Richmond capture Richmond)

Grant was quite critical of Lee in his memoirs, which were written in the 1880s just as the Lost Cause movement was ramping up and a cult being erected around Lee. I think Grant was not impressed with the Lee worship and wanted to deflate it. In his memoirs, he claimed that Lee, in his 50s during the war, was too old to be an effective field commander and that he also wasn't impressed by his dedication to fighting for Virginia, because as he pointed out, George Thomas and Winfield Scott were Virginians who stayed loyal to the Union.

McClellan's original plan involved creeping down the Southern coastline and taking cities in a series of amphibious assaults. He conceived of this idea as a way of minimizing battlefield casualties, which he hated. Clever plan, but in the end he didn't see the bigger picture that merely holding onto enemy territory wasn't enough to win, he had to destroy the South's armies and their ability to wage war.

>McClellan's original plan involved creeping down the Southern coastline and taking cities in a series of amphibious assaults
>tfw born in the wrong timeline where Unionist marines didn't storm Southern cities by sea

Seething

The Roanoke Island Expedition in early 1862 was part of this larger strategy, plus one of the few times Burnside was on the winning side of a battle (not like the Confederate opposition in NC was that formidable).

>Lee won a shitton of battles but went full retard and invaded the North with a vastly inferior force which resulted in bloodbaths like Antietam and Gettysburg which the Union could easily recover from but the South couldn't.
The other problem is that it's obviously easier to win with home field advantage. The Army of the Potomac went up into Pennsylvania feeling confident that they would win a battle on friendly territory.

>Learn why Sherman is considered the first modern general.

Also not forgetting that Grant conceived of the modern idea of waging a continuous campaign lasting months, unlike the tradition of fighting a decisive battle in 1-2 days that had existed since antiquity. This presaged the wars of the 20th century where a battle would be fought over weeks or months instead of a day.

Well there is Fort Bragg, which is pretty nice as far as military bases go.

Also there's a grand total of 1 James Longstreet highschool and 2 statues of James Longstreet. Bit of a shame for the best corps commander of the war who also fought extensively on the Eastern Theater.

Longstreet was disowned by Lost Causers for being a Republican/buddy of Grant postwar.

He sounds jealous.

On the tactical level Lee was better but grant was best on the strategic level. His ability to examine the whole picture of the war instead of narrowly focusing on battles is why he's better.

Sherman hated casualties as well; the horrible carnage at Shiloh had a deep effect on him and he resolved to avoid frontal assaults as much as possible.

Bragg was another guy who like McClellan was a capable strategist, not a good tactical or battlefield commander. The guy's planning was alright, but once he got into a battle, he seemed to have no idea what to do other than launch costly frontal assaults.

> Also not forgetting that Grant conceived of the modern idea of waging a continuous campaign lasting months

I don't think that's really new. The Waterloo campaign lasted for a month, and involved continuous combat throughout. You can say that the Overland campaign is different because Waterloo was won/lost within the first 4 days, and the next 2 weeks were cleanup, while Overland consisted of battle after battle without a decisive victory.

In either case, I think Sherman conducted the Atlanta campaign better than Grant did the Overland campaign, through rougher terrain and without as much of a starting numerical advantage. Sherman maneuvered his army much better, continuously turning Johnston's flank and forcing him backwards without having to make assaults on prepared positions.

The invasion of Kentucky was a strategically successful operation even if the climactic battle at Perryville was an anticlimax. Bragg managed to relieve the burden on Tennessee and Mississippi farmers during harvest season, looted plenty of supplies and fodder, and set back the Union plans to take Chattanooga by an entire year. He also did it with fewer casualties than Lee took invading Maryland.

>In either case, I think Sherman conducted the Atlanta campaign better than Grant did the Overland campaign, through rougher terrain and without as much of a starting numerical advantage.

In term of the numbers, the Atlanta Campaign from May to August 1864 cost Sherman 30,000 men while Grant lost 60,000 in just May-June. Although Grant's numerical advantage over Lee was bigger, Sherman had several important advantages in that the Army of Tennessee had a lot of handicaps versus the ANV (poorer equipment, poorer organization, worse generals). Sherman didn't have as many conscripts or bounty men as the AOP, or as many regiments whose enlistment terms were expiring. His soldiers also were used to winning and weren't afraid of the Confederates like how Lee had an almost mystical spell over the AOP.

Anyway, quite a few of Sherman's troops were also getting Spencer repeating rifles by 1864 (these were rarer in the AOP) and I think by that point, they just had too much firepower for the Confederates to handle.

Grant's Tomb, formally known as General Grant National Memorial, is the final resting place of Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885), the 18th President of the United States, and his wife, Julia Dent Grant (1826–1902). Completed in 1897, the tomb is located in Riverside Park in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan in New York City, across Riverside Drive from the monumental Riverside Church. It was placed under the management of the National Park Service in 1958.

LET US HAVE PEACE

Lee was a master of exploiting his opponents weaknesses
Grant's "weakness" was his determination

In my opinion Lee's only option was to wear down Grant's forces by a guerilla war as he forced his way towards Richmon.
Instead Lee thought he could destroy Grant's forces in one big battle, even tough Grant was well too experienced to do that and was an expert in maneuver from his time in the Western Theater, thereby moving his forces around Lee every time the ANoV tried to force a large confrontation

>On the tactical level Lee was better
Then again, this was still debatable since he had a habit of launching frontal assaults (Malvern Hill, Gettysburg, etc) that killed irreplaceable soldiers and didn't accomplish anything.

You just straight up lied. Sherman never destroyed the Army of Tennessee, it retreated and survive longer than the Army of Northern Virginia did. On top of that before Hood took command Johnston was doing pretty decently against Sherman, he was not winning, but he was not getting his ass kicked like Hood was going to. Also Lee did not have the will to do that kind of campaign. The Gettysburg campaign was to make the Union fight on it's own land and take the burden off of Southern farmers. He knew he could not wage a long campaign and was unwilling to live off the land like Sherman did, you can say he SHOULD have done this but Lee was not the type of man who was going to.

I have no problem saying Sherman was a decent general, he was, I also do not think the man was a war criminal as many Dixiefags think he is, however, unlike Shermancunts, I realize that Lee was going to surrender in 1865 with or without Sherman and that Sherman really just fucked up the South only for it to be back in the Union less than a year later and just make animosity between the states he ravaged and the North worse after the war, this combined with Lincolns assassination was a recipe for disaster. But I liken his march to the sea to the dropping of the Atomic bombs, whether you morally agree with what he did, or even whether you agree or disagree that what he did was even needed in hindsight, at the time he viewed it as the fastest way to end the war with the least suffering. Another thing Shermancunts seem to forget, he was doing it to end the war with the least amount of suffering, funny how they constantly say they wish they could have been in Sherman's army killing Southerners. Same thing with Lee, Dixiefags tend to forget he was one of the biggest proponents of reintegrating after the war ended. And the same with Forrest, he was the leader of the KKK But he resigned and spoke about race reconciliation. If Grant, Sherman, Lee and Forrest were alive, they would be ashamed.

Too many generals had been raised on Napoleonic tactics, and unfortunately a lot of what they learned wasn't applicable by the time of the ACW. Robert E. Lee graduated West Point in 1828. He couldn't have learned about the strategic use of railroads in warfare since the first ones were just getting built as he was graduating. The saying goes that most of what you learned in college is obsolete five years after you graduated.

>Another thing Shermancunts seem to forget, he was doing it to end the war with the least amount of suffering, funny how they constantly say they wish they could have been in Sherman's army killing Southerners. Same thing with Lee, Dixiefags tend to forget he was one of the biggest proponents of reintegrating after the war ended.
The other point mentioned earlier that Sherman had been so traumatized by Shiloh that he always tried to minimize battlefield casualties.

I mean a big reason the Confederates won First Manassas was because of them using railroads.

>You just straight up lied. Sherman never destroyed the Army of Tennessee, it retreated and survive longer than the Army of Northern Virginia did. On top of that before Hood took command Johnston was doing pretty decently against Sherman, he was not winning, but he was not getting his ass kicked like Hood was going to.

After the Battle of Franklin, it was said that Hood did what the Union generals never managed, destroy the Army of Tennessee.

Grant was a good Union general but a terrible Confederate one. That's how I look at it.

For comparison, there were some really insane people in the North like Thaddeus Stevens who wanted to raze the South to the ground ala Carthage.

All the same, the guy seemed to have no real plan in battles except frontal assaults, and considering he was an artilleryman, he really never made use of the AOT's guns in any significant engagement.

Bragg had the problems of being an unlikable extreme martinet and having his generals always plotting against him. He was unfortunately one of those generals who thought his soldiers were pawns on a chessboard instead of living, breathing human beings who needed to eat, rest, etc. This wasn't at all like in the ANV with the soldiers' undying love for Robert E. Lee.

During the siege of Chattanooga, Bragg forbade the soldiers from playing music in camp because it would damage morale, and although they were literally starving, they were banned from hunting the abundant game in the woods nearby because it was against army regulations to discharge a firearm without being ordered to do so. It was said that the AOT soldiers were reduced to following behind army mules and horses to scoop up seeds and corn husks dropped in their excrement.

After Johnson replaced Bragg, he "did what Bragg had never allowed any mortal man to do, which was have a furlough".

did bragg have autism?

After the retreat from Missionary Ridge, he ordered the army supply depots burned to keep them from falling into the hands of the Union army. There was an abundance of good food in them which went up in smoke. It was said that the starving Confederate soldiers had to walk by the burning storehouses and smell the cooking meat in them.

The AOT's two principle corps commanders, Leonidas Polk and William Hardee, were both trying to undermine Bragg every chance they got, and Polk was a horribly incompetent general (although loved by the troops) who got away with it until Sherman's gunners (literally) blew his body apart because he was a buddy of Jefferson Davis.

As for Hardee, eh, he wrote a famous tactical manual before the war, but he doesn't seem to have done anything in the war itself that was all that remarkable.

>he was one of those who treated his soldiers as pawns
best type of general (granted he's not a brainlet like most civil war generals)

In regard to the Confederate manpower pool being smaller, this was also true of the officer corps, and the Confederates had more of their best generals killed/wounded than the Union army. Jackson, Longstreet, Stuart, Johnson, Hood, Ewell, Robert Rodes, Patrick Cleburne, A.P. Hill (although he was killed in the last week of the war when it didn't really matter anymore). All of these guys were killed or else suffered wounds that removed them from action for extended periods of time.

In the first year of the war, the Union had five generals capable of army command: Grant, McClellan, Buell, Rosecrans, and Canby. The Confederates had about four: Albert Sidney Johnson, Beauregard, Lee, and Joe Johnson.

By 1864, Union generals capable of army command included Grant, Sherman, Thomas, Canby, Ord, Schofield, and Sheridan. Confederate generals capable of army command in 1864 were Johnson, Lee, and Kirby-Smith. So you can see how much smaller their pool was.

A really skilled person learns, innovates, and improves. A mediocre person never learns anything beyond what he was taught in college, and there are a lot of these people in any profession.

Other than fighting Indians, the only experience with war most of them had was in Mexico, which was still Napoleonic-style warfare with smoothbore muskets and line infantry.

Edward Porter Alexander, Lee's chief of ordnance, wrote that "Nowhere in organization or equipment or munitions was the Western army even in as good condition as the Army of Northern Virginia. Between a third and half the infantry were still armed with the smoothbore musket, caliber .69. The artillery was not organized into battalions, and its ammunition was inferior."

There was definite evolution in battlefield tactics during the ACW, for one thing the classic linear infantry formation with soldiers standing or kneeling shoulder-to-shoulder and firing volleys had disappeared. It made a few appearances, for example at Groveton, but was mostly obsolete.

Always nice to meet fellow Watkinsfags

you're an insult to human intelligence

>have literal chimps leading your armies
>win
quantity>quality: the war
Were Johnson and Jackson the only good generals in that shitshow of a war?