Grant, The Army and The World
The Imprint of US Grant’s Generalship on Military Affairs
Like if you want using the keys below; only I can see who you are.
Ulysses Grant developed a way of war that has affected nearly every major conflict, every major military organization operating since 1865, in every hemisphere, and in all environments. Grant was the first of the war managers, marking the final departure from the empire-at-arms, from-the-front-leading hero symbolic of the Napoleonic style, and leading to the civilization-at-arms style of warfare that we see today. It was his leadership style, attention to logistics (both offensive and defensive), and single-minded aggressiveness that enabled the harnessing of the industrial output of an entire nation into a conquering machine.
Grant embodied several key leadership characteristics in his Civil War career. Among them were clarity of mission, attention to logistics preparation, subordination to higher authority (or influence) for the greater good, willingness to pursue the offensive relentlessly, desire to achieve the unconditional military surrender of his opponents, and willingness to attack the enemy’s logistics infrastructure.
Clarity of Mission
When the war broke out, Grant left Paducah, Illinois to join the volunteers gathering in Springfield, writing that he felt an obligation to offer his services to the Union in whatever capacity it saw fit. Grant was a soldier, he said, and as such would use his training to fight in the armies of the nation that trained him. He saw slavery as a great evil, and that the conflict should be a springboard to stop its spread. He felt that the rebellion would be relatively short-lived, and the Union restored after a few decisive actions.
Shiloh changed that thinking. Nearly 24,000 casualties in two days over a small trading post on the Tennessee River seemed all out of proportion to him. He believed that if the rebellion was driven by the South’s “peculiar institution,” only destroying the “peculiar institution” could crush it.
A hundred and thirty years later, Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army invaded and occupied Kuwait, violating not only the relative peace of the region but also the spirit of the UN Charter. As the United States prepared to respond to the invasion, the specter of Vietnam loomed from the not-too-distant past, its 20-year slog marred by an ill-defined mission and unclear objectives. Early on, the mission for the US-led UN coalition was clear: eject Iraq from Kuwait. Even after completely crushing the Iraqi forces and opening the road to Baghdad, the mission, for good or ill, remained unchanged. Even after publicly stating that the Coalition forces should march on Baghdad, Norman Schwarzkopf, the senior commander, faced the threat of termination. This was not a time for mission creep. In the long road to redemption for the perceived fiasco of Vietnam, American ground forces (which were by far the predominant in the theater) could not allow confusion of the initial mission.
Logistics Preparation
In the war with Mexico, Grant was a supply officer, ensuring that his regiment had the wherewithal to do what it was supposed to do. Though this meant that he spent a great deal of time “in the rear with the gear,” it also gave him a different perspective than many of his peers who yearned for and often got front-line combat commands.
Late in 1862, Grant looked at the Vicksburg problem with a much different perspective than his contemporaries, or even his superiors. He knew that marching overland towards Vicksburg would be an abysmal failure, simply because there was no realistic way to supply the forces by road. Plus, area railroads were scarce and vulnerable to cavalry raids. That left the rivers. With Vicksburg placed in an odd bend in the Mississippi, Grant appreciated that to use the mighty river effectively to supply his army he would have to get below Vicksburg, which also would have the benefit of making it possible to cut off Vicksburg from the rest of the Confederacy. With a single strategic maneuver, Grant was able not only to see what others failed to appreciate, but to capitalize on that appreciation.
But he also knew that a simple landing stage would not be enough to keep the troops supplied, for the steamboats that could simply beach and unload couldn’t handle large or very heavy cargo, such as siege artillery and its ammunition or hospital wagons. He needed a port, and that compelled him to look for a port large enough to supply a three-corps army, which drove his planning to Grand Gulf.
Thirty years after Appomattox, another supply problem loomed, and this was further away. The war with Spain had just broken out, and American planners were trying to figure out how to supply the army corps that they planned to put ashore in Cuba.
Like Grant before them, they realized that supplying the troops across the beach was impractical, and a port capable of handling heavy ships was required. This drove the land and naval effort toward Daiquiri on Cuba’s southern shore, a two-day march from the fleet anchorage for the Spanish Caribbean squadron at Santiago de Cuba. Once again, the obvious solution to the problem of logistics answered itself of necessity.
In the European theater of WWII, Allied planners became practically obsessed with logistics, and how they could land a force sufficient to defeat the Axis powers and keep it supplied entirely by water. In fact, no one had ever done this before in industrial-age warfare, but two successful models offered guidance: Vicksburg and Cuba.
In both cases, logistics had been a paramount concern, but only Cuba had obvious parallels of an amphibious invasion. But both Vicksburg and Cuba similarly relied on naval transport to secure the much needed ports, thereafter depending on preparation and Providence to carry the ground troops to victory. However, Providence had a great deal of help from another Grant-like direction: firepower and audacity. For the Allies, the capacity of the Anglo-Americans aided this to manufacture useful quantities of almost anything that they wished.
Before the United States even entered WWII, planners such as George Marshall, Albert Widmeyer, Anthony McAuliffe and Mark Clark developed the key elements of American mobilization and doctrine for both the armed forces and for the industry needed to support them. This planning, crucial in the 20th Century, was practically unheard of in North America until Grant introduced it as a staple of his command. Modeling after Vicksburg and Cuba, the Americans and their allies planned an army capable of deploying to any landmass and sustaining itself (within reason) using over-the-beach logistics until they captured a port. Once they secured a port, the army's capabilities became as limitless as Grant's during the Vicksburg campaign, for the same reasons.
Subordination
From the time of Fort Donelson, through Grand Gulf and the first assaults on Vicksburg, Grant had John A. McClernand as a subordinate, a Democratic politician appointed to appease Lincoln’s “loyal opposition.” McClernand showed some promise early in the war because he was fairly bright and knew enough not to get into serious trouble. But he was a braggart of the worst sort—one who claimed credit for events in which he took no part. He also commanded a thoroughly botched expedition to Vicksburg late in 1862 that ended in a minor fiasco, for which he deflected all blame onto William Sherman, a Grant favorite. At Fort Donelson McClernand had been a division commander, but by Vicksburg he commanded a corps.
Finally, in May 1863, McClernand published a congratulatory order to his corps for the success in the Vicksburg campaign thus far, which omitted the accomplishments of the other adjoining corps, which had done as much if not more than McClernand’s. This was against not only Army regulations of the time, it was contrary to Grant’s stated policy, so Grant sent Congressman McClernand home. In this action, Grant showed he could forbear much, as the political officers often had significant influence, but that there was a limit to how much any commander should have to put up with from a subordinate.
In the summer and fall of 1944, Dwight Eisenhower had two problem subordinates very similar to Grant’s. Their names were Bernard Law Montgomery and George Smith Patton, Jr. Montgomery, commanding 21st Army Group comprising British and Canadian units, was moving through northern France and into the Low Countries. Monty was a steady officer with a formidable capacity for work and occasionally brilliant flashes of insight, but of little daring and a great deal of admiration for himself. He had beaten Rommel at El Alamein and given the British ground forces a much-needed morale boost. His star glowed in the British Isles.
Patton commanded the US Third Army. Although a much smaller command than Montgomery’s, it was the tip of the American breakout from Normandy and had charged across France, displacing as much as half the German ground forces in Europe in about three weeks. Patton was as much a martinet and prima donna as Montgomery, but Patton had angered his superiors with his arrogance and mistreatment of combat exhaustion patients in several hospitals in Sicily and North Africa. However, he was a military genius with the capacity and inspirational leadership style to get his men to do practically anything, and he was wildly popular with the public. In the Sicilian campaign, he broadly interpreted his orders to “support the advance” of Montgomery’s North Africa veterans and took most of the island himself. Not surprisingly, Patton and Montgomery despised each other.
As the Allied forces moved away from the beaches and the small working ports, their logistical tether got longer, but their demands for supply of all types were undiminished. At the end of September there was a question of demand: supply Patton’s thrust into the Lorraine aimed at Metz, the Saar and the German heartland, or support Montgomery’s plodding advance from the Low Countries into the North German Plain and on to Berlin? The quarreling between the two heroes leaked into the press, which both London and Washington abhorred as much as the wags loved it. Eisenhower stepped in, threatening to fire them both. Patton caved, being a direct subordinate of Eisenhower’s, and being terrified of being sent home. But Monty dared the Supreme Commander to do anything as rash as cashier him. Ike was on the phone to Winston Churchill within the hour. The next day, Monty couldn’t apologize enough. There was only so much insubordination that any senior commander had to take in democratic armies, and Grant gave a model for those limits.
Relentless Offensive
Early in 1862, Grant took a comparative handful of men down the Tennessee River, accompanied by gunboats. After the Navy secured the surrender of Fort Henry, Grant landed his small force. Then, rather than set up a defensive position and await reinforcements—as some counseled him to do—he instead marched overland to Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River. After a week’s fighting the Confederates, miserable weather and recalcitrant subordinates, he accepted the unconditional surrender of the fortress with over 9,000 prisoners. This displaced much of the Confederate position in Kentucky and middle Tennessee, triggering their withdrawal as far as northern Alabama.
This was a campaign that Grant’s peers said could not and should not be done, and that it was the wrong offensive, and in the wrong season. That it was successful at all was remarkable. Because an alleged drunkard did it, it was astonishing. That the alleged drunk did it with less than 16,000 men was stupendous.
Later that year, Grant got the idea in his head that he should take Vicksburg, and he spent the next nine months thinking only of how to capture it. He launched thirteen separate offensives in the effort. Canals were dug, ships ran the gauntlet of batteries over the bluffs, siege lines built, and thousands perished. On Independence Day 1863, Vicksburg was in Grant’s hands, and he captured another Confederate army .
In the spring of 1864, four separate offensives stepped off against Confederate held territory. Two offensives failed within two months, another slowed to a crawl, but one continued, making it the longest sustained offensive in American history. Even more remarkable was the fact that a single mind planned and directed these activities. Grant planned the 1864 campaign knowing that the Southern Confederacy did not have the resources, infrastructure or manpower to meet or defeat the total might of the Union, and that multiple, sustained offensives would completely defeat them.
By late 1942, the Soviet STAVKA had reached a similar conclusion. The German thrust into the Caucasus had secured oil fields and a German toehold on the Volga, a vital river system for western Russia. But the southern campaign was the only major offensive that seemed to have any real impetus. Where the rest of the front was fighting, especially around Leningrad, it appeared as if German and Axis allied resources could only stretch so far. And Hitler seemed to be obsessed with the industrial city of Stalingrad. So was Stalin.
Grigori Zhukov was one of the Soviet Union’s most pragmatic and successful generals. His plan for Stalingrad was simple, and he might have taken it from Grant’s Donelson campaign: Displace the enemy in one vital place and his front will collapse everywhere. But this required a sustained fight, and it had to occur when and where the enemy could not easily retaliate. The beginning of winter at the Volga Bend fit those conditions to a T.
The Soviets clung desperately to the rubble that Stalingrad became through the late summer and early fall. Sometimes, the Soviet “front” on the western side of the river had a depth of only a few hundred yards. Entire companies fought over stairwells for days at a time, and both sides fed more and more men and machines into the battle. Zhukov told his generals that they must maintain all that they could in Stalingrad itself and sent untrained draftees across the river—some without weapons—to reinforce the desperate fighting.
Then in November Zhukov struck, not at Stalingrad itself but to the north and the south, two massive blows that punched through the Italians, Bulgars and Hungarians guarding the flanks of the Stalingrad battlefield, smashing into the German rear and panicking the entire German effort in the Caucasus. In a week, the two Soviet thrusts joined, and Stalingrad was closed off.
For three months, the shooting rarely subsided completely. German efforts to break into Stalingrad were foiled, supply attempts continually harassed, and the soldiers in the Cauldron soon realized that they were doomed. The ghastly butcher’s bill would have horrified Grant, but he would have appreciated the need for it.
Unconditional Surrender
After five days of rain, attacks, and a failed breakout, the Confederate forces at Fort Donelson realized that escape was impractical, fighting on would be impossible, and the alternatives were death or surrender. The Confederate commander, Simon Buckner, asked for terms. In the mid-19th century, this was not in the least unusual. Negotiations usually preceded large-scale surrenders, sometimes lasting days, with elaborate terms spelled out in long documents that rivaled treaties in obscure language and complexity. Often, large forces under siege got the “honors of war” which allowed them to march out as military units—flying their flags and carrying their weapons—to pass through their enemy’s lines, who might salute them as heroes, and then to march off to rejoin their main force, having left their most of their heavy weapons, equipment and surplus ammunition behind.
Grant would have none of it. Less than a year after the Confederacy fired on Ft. Sumter and compelled the surrender of its tiny garrison, he would not allow his rebellious countrymen off so lightly. Realizing that the Confederacy was short on manpower, there would be and could be no negotiations, with Confederate commanders surrendering their forces. “No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works” was his response to his former West Point roommate, who also was one of his best friends.
This news electrified the nation, instantly earning Grant unwanted fame as Unconditional Surrender Grant. But it also set a precedent, in that the “honors of war” would rarely be acceptable any more. It showed that at least one of Lincoln’s generals recognized the Confederacy’s manpower problem and was proposing to do something about it. By cutting off prisoner exchanges in 1864, he was doing exactly the same thing.
In the spring of 1865, Robert Lee's Army of Northern Virginia ran for nine days and became completely worn out. When they reached the vicinity of Appomattox Courthouse, they learned that Federal cavalry captured their ration train. They had nowhere to go, practically no food and no country left to fight for. It was the end of the Confederacy’s most successful army.
A few miles away, Grant and his staff planned the last battle, expecting to be on three sides of the Confederate army within two days, and four sides in three. With nearly 90,000 men in the area and almost 60,000 at hand, the Army of the James and the Army of the Potomac had finally dislodged Lee from his fortifications around Richmond. The Richmond government had collapsed, and its remnants had fled. These were the circumstances when a note from Lee reached Grant: Would Grant discuss terms of surrender? Lee knew Grant would not put any conditions on surrender, but protocol suggested he had to ask, and Grant agreed to meet with him. They simply agreed on the terms of surrender. The Confederates would return Federal property, disarm, sign paroles and go home until exchanged. Those who could show ownership of a horse could take their animal with them, unusual in the Federal Army in the east.
Grant could and would discuss nothing other than the unconditional surrender of Lee’s army. He was a soldier, not a diplomat, and had no instructions on politically argued questions such as the disposition of slaves or the signing of loyalty oaths. But surrender the Confederates would, and thereafter they would pose no threat to the Union, and that was all that Grant had to do.
By early August 1945, the forces of Japan, surrounded by enemies, had nowhere to go, and nothing to fight with. Soviet forces overran Manchuria as if the million Japanese soldiers there did not even exist. American submarines sank junks in the Inland Sea with gunfire. B-29s attacked day or night with impunity. There was no way that the Japanese armed forces could stop the invasion of Japan by the Soviets and Americans. This is what the Imperial General Staff told the Showa Emperor Hirohito just after Nagasaki.
Japanese warlords ignored all peace overtures. Terms some Japanese informally—and unofficially—suggested included the preservation of the imperial polity, but suggested a mere armistice, with no withdrawal from occupied territory or disarmament, and offered no provisions for war-crimes tribunals. This was unacceptable for many reasons, but mostly because it did not suit the smaller Allies’ interests, and did not offer any long-term solutions for the dissolution of the Japanese militarist state. Unconditional surrender had always been the first requirement for peace. Germany and Italy had succumbed; so would Japan.
Realizing that he could not protect the imperial regalia after the impending invasions, the Showa saw that his sacred duty to his imperial line and his ancestors were greater than the earthly honor that the samurai insisted they were defending. He issued a rescript announcing that the conflict would end, which was resisted by some, opposed by others, but eventually accepted. Japanese diplomats preserved the imperial polity, and the Allies agreed, realizing that continued war would only bring more death. Grant would not have been happier.
Attacking Logistics
Nowhere is the influence of Grant as clear as his doctrine of attack on enemy logistics infrastructure. Attacking armies have, since time out of mind, attacked supplies and farms, sacked towns and cities and laid waste to the citizenry. But it was Grant that hit on the idea of using land forces to stop Industrial Age supplies of all sorts at the source: the factory. To an extent, this was rank opportunism: The Civil War was one of the first conflicts where factories (a long-standing contraction for manufactory), as opposed to many smaller-scale workshops, were important on a large scale. Grant was the first of his military peers to recognize that this was a potentially critical weakness in any nation’s military infrastructure. An unguarded plant, run by civilians, and often for non-directly military purposes, was an easy target for an army.
In the spring of 1864, after his promotion to Lieutenant General, Grant directed Sherman into the Confederate logistical support areas of northern Alabama and Mississippi—called the Meridian campaign. The purpose was not to seize territory or to pursue an enemy army, but to destroy factories making war materials for the Confederacy. Throughout the ensuing Atlanta campaign, Sherman’s instructions were clear: destroy Confederate industry and infrastructure.
Grant attacked factories with land forces, but by 1939 there were other ways, some of which would have horrified him. In the spring of 1944, the bocage bogged down the Allied forces in Normandy, and the German resistance seemed to be unabated. Daytime tactical aerial attacks were useful enough, but at night, the Germans could move with impunity. The success of Arthur Conningham’s attacks on German supply lines in North Africa seemed to elude the Allies in France.
Then someone observed that the Seine River had only 24 bridges that could carry substantial traffic. Strategic bombing accuracy was not as accurate as desired or promised, but tactical fighters that could hit single-point targets could reach these bridges. In three weeks, the fighter-bombers destroyed all but two of the bridges, and regular patrols kept them dropped. They smashed the last two bridges in the last week in July, by which time the German supply situation in northwestern France had gone from barely adequate to critical. As the Allied breakout began, the Germans had barely a week’s supply of ammunition on hand, and less than three day’s fuel. The long influence of Grant had reached out again.
By late 1944, however, target planners decided that the time was right to attack the German petroleum industry. With the right number of aircraft and information on the targets, USAAF and RAF bombers destroyed the oil plants that supplied Hitler’s armies in a few weeks.
In Japan, meteorological conditions made bombing factories difficult. Dispersion made it worse: workers performed a large percentage of machine work in small shops and private homes. The firebombing of Japanese cities in the spring and summer of 1945 reflected not only the savagery of the Pacific War, but the practical reality foreseen by Grant, and carried out by Sherman in his March to the Sea: When a nation is at arms, all in the nation are combatants, whether in the field or the factory.
On 9 February 1951, a very Grant-like air attack around Pyongyang spread eight tons of roofing nails on the roads and the fields. Far from being a farcical mistake, this attack recognized the very low-tech nature of the NKPA and the PVA. The nails attacked vehicle tires and the unshod feet of the thousands of porters who moved the supplies behind the army. While the actual effects of Operation TACK (the author is NOT making this up) were negligible, it was the recognition of a weakness—in this instance, in the North Korean and Chinese system of logistics—that would have made Grant proud.
From the humblest of beginnings in 1861 at Belmont to the Gulf War, Grant’s influence on warfare has been great, long after his death. He may not have been able to see Berlin, Tokyo or Baghdad from the pine barrens of Tennessee, but the map he drew showed us how to get to all those places, and more.
Not a bad legacy, after all, for someone whose family nickname for him was “Useless.”
The Devil’s Own Day: Shiloh and the American Civil War
Grant didn’t begin his long legacy at Shiloh, but it shone there.
And Finally...
On 5 July:
1943: The battle of the Kursk Salient begins in Russia. Touted as the largest battle in military history (by some lights) it was the deadliest armor and air clash in history. Kursk is often called the turning point in the Russo-German War, second only to Stalingrad six months before. More accurately, it was the point when Germany permanently lost the strategic initiative in WWII.
1994: The online retailer Amazon begins in Bellevue, Washington. Initially, Amazon only sold books, and operated at a loss for several years until the WWW became more popular and they started selling more than books. For a time, they also sold real estate and automobiles. As of 2024, Amazon was the second largest company in the world by revenue.
And today is NATIONAL BIKINI DAY, commemorating the introduction of the then-daring swimsuit by 18-year-old French nude dancer Micheline Bernardini at the Piscine Molitor, a public pool, in Paris, France, on this day in 1946. By the standards of 2025, the original bikini was fairly tame.