Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885) was born in Ohio, entered the Civil War from Illinois, and spent his last years in New York. He served two terms as 18th President of the U. S. Grant completed his memoirs only a week before his death from throat cancer.
Robert E. Lee (1807-1870) was the son of Virginia’s Revolutionary War hero, “Lighthorse Harry” Lee. Following a distinguished army career, Lee became president of impoverished Washington College (now Washington and Lee University).
This short, unimpressive looking general succeeded where others had failed because he had the willingness to give an order and the strength to see it carried out. He did not use the lightning tactics of Napoleon or Lee. Yet he had the determination and stubbornness to keep plodding after the enemy. He was thus a soldier of the mold of Frederick the Great and the Duke of Wellington. Perhaps Lincoln best summed up Grant when he answered criticisms of the general with the observation: “I can’t spare this man. He fights.”
Robert E. Lee has two historical handicaps: 1) he fought against the Union; and 2) he is the only American general who ever lost a war. Yet practically everyone who studies the life of this devoted Virginian soon agrees with Sir Winston Churchill, who termed Lee “one of the noblest Americans who ever lived, and one of the greatest captains known to the annals of war.”
Lee is most remembered for an almost flawless character. He did not believe in slavery, but his heart and birthright were in Virginia. Therefore, he turned down command of all U. S. forces in 1861 and offered his services to his native state. As an army commander Lee usually displayed great boldness in action, an ingenious capacity for choosing the right field positions, and an uncanny ability to anticipate his opponent’s next move. With faith in his own judgment and in the fighting quality of his army, Lee would then devise his strategy. Confederate politics forced Lee to fight for the most part on the defensive, and many writers attribute the Southern nation’s long life to Lee’s genius in combating an enemy that sometimes greatly outnumbered him.
Lee’s chief weaknesses as a general were his depthless humility and courtesy. Too often he entrusted to his principal lieutenants decisions he himself should have made. He seemed always to assume that everyone around him would strive for victory as earnestly and as completely as he did. Much of this devotion to principle did rub off on his army. One of Lee’s sharpest critics eventually admitted: “Few generals have been able to animate an army as [Lee’s] self-sacrificing idealism animated the Army of Northern Virginia.... What this bootless, ragged, half-starved army accomplished is one of the miracles of history.”
SUGGESTED READINGS
Catton, Bruce, Grant Moves South (1960). Chambers, Lenoir, Stonewall Jackson (2 vols., 1960). Cleaves, Freeman, Meade of Gettysburg (1960). ____, Rock of Chickamauga: The Life of General George H. Thomas (1948). Dodd, William E., Jefferson Davis (1907). Dyer, John P., The Gallant Hood (1950). Freeman, Douglas S., R. E. Lee: A Biography (4 vols., 1934-35; 1 vol. ed., 1961). Fuller, John F. C., The Generalship of Ulysses S. Grant (1929, 1958). Govan, Gilbert E., and Livingood, J. W., A Different Valor: The Story of General Joseph E. Johnston, C.S.A. (1956). Hassler, Warren W., Jr., George B. McClellan: Shield of the Union (1957). Henry, Robert S., “First with the Most” Forrest (1944). Horn, Stanley F., ed., The Robert E. Lee Reader (1949). Hyman, Harold M., and Thomas, B. P., Stanton: The Life and Times of Lincoln’s Secretary of War (1962). Lamers, William M., The Edge of Glory: A Biography of General William S. Rosecrans (1961). Lewis, Lloyd, Captain Sam Grant (1950). ____, Sherman, Fighting Prophet (1932). McElroy, Robert, Jefferson Davis: The Unreal and the Real (2 vols., 1937). Maurice, Frederick, Robert E. Lee, the Soldier (1925). Nicolay, John G., and Hay, John, Abraham Lincoln: A History (10 vols., 1914). Sandburg, Carl, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (2 vols., 1926). ____, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (4 vols., 1939). Sanger, Donald B., and Hay, T. R., James Longstreet (1952). Strode, Hudson, Life of Jefferson Davis (2 vols., 1958-59). Thomas, Benjamin P., Abraham Lincoln (1952). Thomason, John W., Jr., Jeb Stuart (1930). Vandiver, Frank E., Mighty Stonewall (1957). Wiley, Bell I., The Road to Appomattox (1956). Williams, T. Harry, Lincoln and His General (1952). ____, P. G. T. Beauregard: Napoleon in Gray (1955).