A new take on a guy named Grant
Grant's military record has also been reexamined--and found to be quite distinguished. Many historians now believe that Grant's single-minded focus on Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was the war's deciding factor. Grant's strategy can be summarized in an order he gave Gen. George Meade: "Lee's army will be your objective point. Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also." This focus on chasing down enemy forces rather than simply gaining territory has become a tenet of modern warfare. "American military tradition stems from Grant: Bring together large numbers of forces and focus them at a critical point to destroy the enemy army," says Josiah Bunting III, the former superintendent of the Virginia Military Institute, whose Ulysses S. Grant will be published in September. A recent case in point, says Bunting: military leaders' decision to have U.S. troops bypass many Iraqi cities last year and march straight toward the bulk of Saddam Hussein's loyalists in Baghdad.
New research also shows that Grant did not needlessly sacrifice troops. He avoided a costly, frontal assault on the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, Miss., for instance, by sending Union troops down the Mississippi River and attacking from the east. In his recent book A Victor, Not a Butcher: Ulysses S. Grant's Overlooked Military Genius , Edward Bonekemper, a lecturer at Muhlenberg College, analyzed Civil War casualty statistics and found that during the course of the war 15 percent of Grant's men were killed or wounded. By contrast, Lee lost 20 percent. "It was Lee who was unnecessarily aggressive and devastated his own army," says Bonekemper.
Now, revisionists like Bonekemper and Bunting believe it is long past time for Grant to take his rightful place in the American pantheon. "Americans have always loved a modest, genuine, relatively inarticulate hero--a Gary Cooper, a Lou Gehrig. That's Grant," says Bunting. Faults notwithstanding, "he is exemplary of the American character."
Ulysses S. Grant: Arms and the man
1822: Born on April 27 in Point Pleasant, Ohio.
1843 : Graduates West Point, 21st in a class of 39.
1861 : Civil War begins. Grant appointed to command volunteer regiment, then promoted to brigadier general.
1862: After a series of successful but bloody battles in the Tennessee River Valley, Lincoln tells critics calling for Grant's removal: "I can't spare this man--he fights."
1864: Appointed general in chief of the armies of the United States, Grant begins his long drive south, taking terrible losses--in one two-day engagement, he loses 18,000 men.
1865: Accepts Lee's surrender at Appomattox.
1868: Upon winning the Republican nomination for president, Grant writes: "Let us have peace." It becomes the party's slogan.
1869 -1877: Serves as the 18th U.S. president.
1876: After years of scandal involving several members of his cabinet, Grant addresses Congress one last time: "Mistakes have been made, as all can see and I admit," he says. "But I leave comparisons to history, claiming only that I have acted in every instance from a conscientious desire to do what was right."
1885 : Dies on July 23 in Mount McGregor, N.Y.
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