The Union had quite a few dud generals, but Grant was not one of them. He was a bold commander and even better long-range strategic thinker. Grant’s successful campaigns in Vicksburg and Tennessee gained Lincoln’s attention resulting in his placement as Supreme Commander of the Union forces.
The Virginia campaign was bloody because... The Virginia campaign was bloody. It was a war. People died. Sad but inevitable.
By that point, the Civil War was strategically lost from the South’s perspective. The campaign was Robert E. Lee’s last stand and he refused multiple requests to surrender before he finally gave in, in the hopes of improving his negotiating position, a common rationale by defeated nations which in the end only prolongs needless suffering.
By the end of the Civil War, Grant was hailed as a hero by all patriotic Americans, on par with nobody since George Washington.
This was a great read. Honestly I put it down after the Civil War but I do want to read about Grant’s presidency.
As for the other complaints about Lincoln, Sherman, etc... don’t have time to address them all now, but I’ll just say if these conservative Civil War revisionist critics would just take some time to focus their fire on the Southern instigators of the war every now and then, that’d be great.
