Bigger Than History
Lee and Grant in Context
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Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant are simultaneously two of the most studied, revered, emulated, ignored and thoroughly misunderstood characters in the great drama of the American Civil War. The Civil War "industry" in the United States has published many books and articles about both men, most of them penned by insular, self-referential, and, sometimes, self-reverential authors. Dispassionate American history scholars have conducted very little critical analysis of either leader—based on battlefield events—such that their conclusions would be acceptable to all factions of Civil War scholarship. Time someone fixed that.
American Civil War Studies in the Context of History
Ever since the guns finally fell silent, and the last Confederates surrendered or simply went home, the causes and effects of the 1861-65 conflict—or even what to call the bloodletting—have been subjects of acrimonious debate in some circles. Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, shortly after Appomattox, has sparked even more controversy. Finally, the excesses and abuses of Reconstruction, plus the competing demands for reconciliation and punishment, tore at the fabric of American society already rent by civil strife and social upheaval. Just imagine how these combined influences affected the narratives of history that followed.
Over the course of the next generation, there was a flurry of memoir-writing, editorializing, campaign speeches and sermons about the war. Participants got center stage in the dramas that followed, but two voices were conspicuously silent in these early years: those of the highest officers. Neither Lee nor Grant said a great deal about their experiences immediately after the war. Lee stayed silent, probably because his hero George Washington had also abstained. Grant did so because he had no desire to capitalize on his wartime success. Whatever their motivations, the absence of their contribution to the narrative was the root of the problem that would later color the history of the war.
Lost Cause Mythology and Controlling the Narrative
After the war was over and he had signed his parole, Lee didn’t make a big deal about his wartime reputation. In fact, when he assumed the presidency of Washington University in 1866, he was openly adamant about wanting nothing to do with the narrative being woven about his service.
Into this vacuum strode Jubal Early, who had been a corps commander under Lee. Soon after Lee’s death in 1871, Early and his fellow veterans outlined the framework of what is now called the Lost Cause by its adherents, and Lost Cause Mythology (LSM) by its skeptics. This narrative was (and still is) the lens through which the entire conflict was to be viewed first by Southern writers and gradually by nearly everyone. This narrative drove scholars and other blowhards to speak only evidence that supported the Lost Cause narrative.
The Lost Cause narrative started with the idea that the war happened because the Confederacy wanted to be separate from the Union, and that slavery was slowly dying. Proper Lost Cause narratives always link these two “truths.” The Lost Cause also holds that it was the right of the states to secede if they were so inclined as simply and easily as if a part of a country was leaving a gentlemen’s club. In this light, LCM sees the entire conflict as the defense of The South, states’ rights, and Southern society. This reasoning pervades even the origins of the conflict, because it contends that Fort Sumter reverted to South Carolina’s ownership when she seceded. LCM also holds that the North won the war by sheer numbers, not because the North outfought South in the field. All the South’s soldiers were better, man for man, and her leaders superior to their blue-suited vermin/mercenaries in all ways that mattered. There were just too many Yankees with too many guns.
A final tenet of LCM is that Robert Edward Lee of Virginia was a superior being, not even human, who never uttered a wrong word, did anything incorrectly, or had an impure or un-Lee thought, the sine qua non of soldiering. In LCM he is homo Lee, the evolutionary stage beyond mere men (if evolution is to be believed at all), a supreme Lee-being surrounded by lesser mortals with failings, and lacking his untarnished brilliance. In this view, Lee never lost a battle—his subordinates did. Lee, himself, was perfect; unmatched, unbeatable. All his victories were his and his alone. Defeats of his armies were the fault of underlings. Lee’s blemishes are undoubtedly visible, but to LCM, these blemishes are merely incorrect interpretations of the record. These alleged mistakes are not Lee’s, but those of the incompetent or disloyal (or both) subordinates, the hangers-on to Lee’s glory. Even Lee’s detractors speak of him as a genius. This image of Lee has caused some commentators to remark about “Marble Man” Lee, a blemish-free icon too big to be flesh and blood, and who must either be of ether, or of stone. Coupled with the rest of LCM, that viewpoint becomes immutable. No flaw—even if admitted as such—can overwhelm the other parts of the whole, and to dismantle the logic of one portion, the entire concept of the image must come apart. Patient and meticulous scholarship has followed, some brilliant and some not.
And the Southern cause was just as noble forty years after the war, even in Rhode Island:
C. S. A. 1861-1865 To the Starry Cross of the SOUTH.
When first this warlike Banner was unfurl'd
A noble cause was born into the World;
No purer Flag hath e'er defy'd the Wind
Proclaiming high the Rights of Human kind.
The cruel YANKEE, midst ignoble Fight,
Stood aw'd, or fled in Panick at the Sight;
And though the South by Treachery's o'erthrown,
The Mem'ry of past Valour ne'er is gone:
Midst Ruin vast, and overwhelming Loss,
All Southrons true revere the STARRY CROSS!
H. P. Lovecraft. (1902)
Civil War Inc.
In part because of LCM, Americans have insulated their Civil War studies and scholarship from the historical mainstream. Books and articles that begin before the Civil War and continue beyond Reconstruction (1877) are few; publications that begin in 1861 and end in 1865 are legion. General works that treat specialist topics including field engineering, women’s rights, artillery tactics, growth of government or the evolutions of infantry usually treat the Civil War as a separate subject. Military histories usually include the Civil War as separate chapters. It is almost as if the Civil War is a black hole into which everything enters, but very little exits.
While there are a few generalists, most historians working in the Civil War specialize, and they do so often in ways scholars in other areas might find bizarre. There is one scholar who has made his entire, considerable reputation on a single brigade; there are others who only work on cavalry, or politics, or units of one state…or even single individuals.
The feel and content of Civil War literature differs from other histories. Even magazine articles have brief biographies of the opposing officers that include boyhood homes, schooling and state affiliation in April 1861. In contrast, it would be difficult to find any articles on Guadalcanal that have equivalent biographical sketches of Alexander Vandergrift or of Tanaka Minoru, or of the commanders in any other conflict…except the American Civil War.
The publishing industry that supports Civil War scholarship is also often quite separate. There is a magazine devoted only to the battle of Gettysburg. There are more books published on Gettysburg in the average year than there are on the Spanish-American War in the average decade. The industry publishes at least one new book on a Civil War general every quarter. Readers snap up memoirs and letter collections of Civil War soldiers and civilians as soon as they appear, treating them on faith alone as resolute as if etched in stone by a Divine hand.
The Anti-Grant Cabal and Maintaining an Image
Grant has enjoyed/suffered a bipolar reputation similar to that of Lee: commentators on his life and career either love him or hate him. This is because, like Lee, after a turbulent internal conflict, people only shine the spotlight on the idolized or criticized.
But for Grant, there have been additional reasons. To LCM and in many other theories of the Civil War, Grant won not because he was a better general, but because he is emblematic of LCM’s second favorite theme (first being St Robert Lee): Grant had all the men and material he needed to defeat the Confederacy and then some. But Grant wasn’t as profligate with the lives of his soldiers as Lee, who got a higher percentage of his own people killed than did Grant. As the late Mark McFeely pointed out, Grant got the punch line of the sick joke of war: men die. Lee never got that point. Grant's chief sin has been the one that Southern (and a few Northern) writers cannot possibly forgive, forget or overlook: he accepted the surrender of Robert E. Lee at Appomattox. Some commentators will categorically state that Grant was an inferior general to Lee, citing a count of battles won or the general demeanor of the two officers, disregarding all the other evidence. In some circles, it is irrelevant that the surrender took place in Wilmer MacLean’s parlor. Lee was simply better than Grant, period.
A favorite fallback for Grant’s detractors has been his reputed affinity for liquor, whether justified, accurate, or made from whole cloth. He suffered all his life from migraine headaches that may have been aggravated by malaria (then sometimes called ague), which can bring on mental confusion and lack of coordination. Never in his life did he weigh over 140 pounds and he stood barely five feet five inches tall. The only analgesics of his day were alcohol and laudanum (a tincture of alcohol and opiates). If he needed pain relief, it wouldn’t take much to get him intoxicated, and a malaria attack could look like intoxication. How often he got drunk during the war is unclear, but it is also beside the point. Grant’s reputation for drunkenness was and is easy to use against him, misapplied or not. In an era when the inability to hold one's liquor was a social sin, this has been hard to shake. Grant’s enemies and detractors have accused him of being drunk whenever something didn’t go right, such as Shiloh, the failed first assault on Vicksburg, and the disastrous assault on Cold Harbor.
Lee, the Patrician Opportunist
Before Ft. Sumter, Lee had been a regular Army officer, an engineer officer with a brilliant reputation but very little experience leading men in battle. As Virginia seceded in 1861, he tendered his resignation and went home. He refused Winfield Scott’s offer of a command of undetermined size (not the whole army) in the rapidly expanding Army, likely because he knew that promotion opportunities were going to be few for Southern-born officers in a Northern army during a war that was not expected to last more than a few months. Instead, he offered his services to his home state of Virginia, knowing his opportunities for advancement would be better in that smaller force in a brief war, if there was war at all.
Lee’s first combat command was in West Virginia in 1861, where George B. McClellan outmaneuvered him. Early in 1862, he assumed command of the Army of Northern Virginia, embattled at the outskirts of Richmond, where he outmaneuvered McClellan’s huge and ungainly force, sacrificing many thousands at Malvern Hill while the Union army changed its base. For the next three years, he commanded the ANV, winning most of his battles when Thomas Jackson was his principal subordinate. After Jackson’s death in May 1863, there were few victories in the Eastern Theater.
In 1864, Lee and his army got trapped against Richmond as the remaining Federal forces fragmented the Confederacy, annihilating their industrial capacity and capturing their seaports at the same time. Early in 1865, Lee became commander-in-chief of all Southern land forces, by then somewhat fewer than those commanded by McClellan in the Peninsula in 1862, and three times fewer than his opponents.
After being outmaneuvered in April 1865, Lee abandoned Richmond and moved west, hoping to reach a supply train so he could feed the troops. The Federals got in front of him and, realizing the hopelessness of his situation, he surrendered his army. Lee died in 1871, only six years after the war ended. He left no memoirs, no large compilation of papers or letters, and said practically nothing about the war after Appomattox.
American Civil War scholarship accepts very little of the above description. Many historians (and non-scholars) allege that Scott or Lincoln offered Lee command of THE Union Army, an assertion contrary to the evidence. It’s also highly unlikely, considering his home state was seceding. The conventional view is that Lee could not fight against his home state, but the “stainless” Lee had no problem fighting against the country that gave him his training and his career.
Most scholars and a few others refuse to accept the idea that Lee was “pinned against Richmond” in 1864, refuting that claim by simply saying that he was defending the capital and could have moved at any time if ordered to or saw fit to do otherwise. It is further asserted that Lee detached his cavalry to fight in the Valley of the Shenandoah, which he would not have done if he were truly concerned about his military situation around Richmond.
But Lee didn’t dare move the army without jeopardizing his lines of supply and losing his best defensive position at Petersburg. This is a very good definition of “pinned down,” and dictionaries seem to agree. Lee detached Early’s cavalry corps to the Shenandoah because that was the grain bin of the Confederacy, and its loss would have been—and was—a disaster. There are other objections to this view, but nearly all depend on “honor” concepts and the familiar “everyone knows” rhetoric, careful hair-splitting definitions of “winning,” and on counting totals of “battles” (regardless of size or import) and men lost. Defenders of Lee also rely on the peerless thoughts and actions of the “fine Southern gentleman,” an attribute given by his hagiographers, eschewing any discussions of key terrain lost, opportunities squandered and precious and irreplaceable resources destroyed.
Grant the Hardscrabble Loyalist
Grant had left the Army under a cloud in 1854, and afterwards tried many other occupations notable only for failure. At the beginning of the war, he was trying to make a living by clerking in his father’s store. Grant offered his services to Illinois when the war began and finally got command of a regiment. He would have been more than happy to spend the war there, considering his nerves, or the lack of them. Grant was the senior officer when his regiment and two others forayed into Missouri. Thereafter, by Grant’s own account, he showed no nerves at all.
From his first moves down the Tennessee River to Appomattox Court House, Grant rarely took a step back, never asked for more resources, and took every stated objective…eventually. In March 1862, he cleared most of Middle Tennessee of Confederate troops by taking Forts Henry and Donelson. Badly surprised at Shiloh that April in a bloody fight, a combination of Confederate ineptitude/confusion and Yankee determination helped save his position, but cost him his job. When Henry Halleck moved up to replace McClellan as General-in-Chief later that year, Grant regained command of the troops in western Tennessee by seniority. For the next year, he planned and campaigned to capture Vicksburg, which finally fell in July 1863. After salvaging Chattanooga in November 1863, Congress promoted him to Lieutenant General in March 1864, the first to wear the rank since Washington.
Choosing to command the army from the field with the Army of the Potomac, Grant directed the dismemberment of the Confederacy. Knowing that Lee’s reputation as a fighting general was the Confederacy’s best asset, Grant contrived to hold him and his army against the Confederate capitol as a backstop strategy if he could not defeat him in the field. Lee proved a worthwhile opponent, but could not foil Grant’s plans. For nine months, the two armies laid siege to each other around Richmond, during which four Union armies and the Navy destroyed the rest of the Confederacy’s ability to wage war. In March 1865, Grant’s penultimate offensive cut Richmond’s last rail line to anywhere, and Lee just had to move or starve. Grant ran Lee down just to the west after a nine-day pursuit.
The Republican Party drafted Grant in 1868 and won the election as President, and reelection in 1872. History knows his administration primarily for graft, but also for settling the Alabama claims with Great Britain, which may have avoided another war. A series of poor investments after he left office left him penniless. He wrote magazine articles to pay the bills, but he died in 1882 a pauper, leaving a barely finished manuscript of his memoirs, which are still in print.
Regardless of these verifiable facts, common accounts of his drinking and bad judgment, combined with the scandals that rocked his Presidency, leave Grant with a reputation as a bad president and a drunk whose army was so big that it didn’t matter how plastered he was. This version of Grant leaves the LCM intact, the peerless Lee untarnished, and the popular history of the Civil War wrapped in fable.
The Unfinished Conflict
The difference between the two commanders wasn’t just blue or gray: it was also industrial versus agrarian. Lee cared deeply for his troops, but thought more of them than he did either his cause or his country. Grant also cared for his men, but believed them to be expendable in the republic's service. Lee was a charismatic leader of men; Grant was an unassuming manager. Lee was of the shanty nobility of the Old South; Grant was among the middle-class capitalists of the Middle West. It is regrettable that few scholars make these distinctions because they are more important to history than the myth-making that pervades both sides. Both were competent and deadly at what they did, but given the resources of the time, Grant’s style was simply more successful.
The Lee/Grant issue is emblematic of the conflict’s unfinished nature—an uneasy, underpinning nature as old as the republic itself—that finally turned violent in 1861, and ended its conventional military phase in 1865. It is difficult to refer to this period as THE American Civil War because there have been so many of them.
The Americas have been in a state of continuing civil war since Columbus first landed, and arguably since the first people came to this hemisphere. Sectional and factional issues have been dividing Anglo/American society since the Wars of the Roses and the English Civil War, even as the Americans fought wars of independence and expansion, outlasted the Indians and fought attackers from Europe and Asia. The civil rights movements, the Progressive movements, the rise of the trade unions, women’s suffrage and even Prohibition have all been part of a society long at war with itself.
Yet, the American Experiment endures; a constitutional republic with a democratically founded political system that nosily yet eventually overcomes its factionalism and sectionalism when required to survive. But the 1861-65 part of its history is a long-running game of one-upmanship. Several history scholars have privately intimated to this scrivener that Civil War studies in the US, because of their extreme insularity from more mainstream disciplines, have very little to do with American history, and even less with military history.
Whether the Lee/Grant controversy is ever resolved or not, its very existence colors the history of the middle 19th Century in America, and will for the foreseeable future because it suits the sectionalist narrative first popularized immediately after the war, and it suits the chronic “us versus them” social sectionalism that divides America even today. But these two men have such huge reputations and so many legends around them, they have indeed become bigger than the history that made them.
Sergeant’s Business and Other Stories
“Sergeant’s Business” is the first, titular story in this collection. The last, “Maclean House,” uses two of the same characters. The first takes place at Shiloh; the last, Appomattox.
In between there’s stories from prehistory to yesterday, mostly to do with extreme heroism and cleaning up after it. Available from your favorite bookseller or from me if you want an autograph.
Coming Up…
Second Phase Offensive Reconsidered
Falklands 1914: The Zenith of the Battlecruiser
And Finally...
On 30 November:
1835: Samuel Clemens is born in Florida, Missouri. Better known by his pen name, Mark Twain, he was raised in Hannibal, Missouri, worked as a typographer and a riverboat pilot, and served in an irregular Confederate unit for about two weeks. But above all, he was what William Faulkner called “the father of American Literature.” Ernest Hemmingway once claimed that all American literature came out of Huck Fin.
1939: USSR invades Finland; the “Winter War” begins. Another strategic miscalculation on the behalf of Russian leadership, Stalin believed the conflict would be a mere march to Helsinki and, distracted by the Germans, no one would intervene. He was wrong on both counts, as the war was a bloody slog that lasted three months and drew the ire of Britain and France, supporting Finland. The Treaty of Moscow in March 1940 ended the fighting, granting the Soviets access to Petsamo’s rich nickel deposits.
And today is NATIONAL MASON JAR DAY, commemorating the invention of the Mason Jar in 1858. Intended to put up food for long-term storage, Mason jars are now used to store anything that will fit in them, and to serve anything that can be poured out of them.