Why aren't you DVRing it and fast forwarding through the commercials? That's the only way I watch TV now. Yes, even live Cyclone sporting events. So what if I'm 45 minutes behind everyone else? At least I don't have to listen to that Progressive Insurance witch hawking her sh!tty product.
Grant Miniseries
- Thread starter cyson
- Start date
Why aren't you DVRing it and fast forwarding through the commercials? That's the only way I watch TV now. Yes, even live Cyclone sporting events. So what if I'm 45 minutes behind everyone else? At least I don't have to listen to that Progressive Insurance witch hawking her sh!tty product.
I generally do that with Cyclone sports so I’m not tempted to go in to the CF Game threads.
McClellan also had a close relationship with Allan Pinkerton -- of "the Pinkertons" fame, yes, that Pinkerton -- who was the head of his intelligence apparatus...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Pinkerton#American_Civil_War
Pinkerton was notorious for supplying McClellan with faulty intelligence that overestimated Confederate strength and numbers. Pinkerton was either being double-crossed by his sources in the South and/or falling for some of the oldest tricks in the book. Some examples would include the Confederates lighting an unusually high number of campfires at night relative to their actual numbers (which Pinkerton and the Union would count assuming far too many men to a fire) or painting logs black and putting them on mounts and towing them around. They look exactly like real cannons from a distance.
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/420411
There is a camp of Civil War historians who paint McClellan as the victim here. That he was a brilliant administrator and organizer who built the Union Army into a fighting machine from virtual scratch, and he was overly cautious as a commander in the field not for any failings of nerve, intelligence, or daring, but rather because he was dumb enough to listen to (and continue to listen to) faulty information. Listening to that information demanded care and caution, so McClellan eventually takes the fall for that, even if his own doings and decisions were not the kernel of the failings there. They claim, even for his faults, he deserves credit for creating the weapon that more aggressive commanders like Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and Thomas eventually wielded in the victory over the South.
Once Grant showed up, he stopped listening to such suspect warnings. He dismissed them as preposterous given the difference in population and industrial might between the Union and the Confederacy. His own experience fighting in the West, where he always had superior numbers, equipment, and logistics to his opponents, probably strongly informed that view when he moved to Virginia for his showdown with Lee.
Pinkerton constantly putting a bridle on McClellan is one of the greatest intelligence failings in American history. This is true if you believe that McClellan was being prudent in his failings OR if you think this just gave the guy polishing his car for the third time today yet another excuse not to take it out and drive it. Either way, telling a commander he faced 50% to 100% more than he actually did much of the time, particularly during some crucial moments during the Seven Days' Battles and Antietam, definitely influenced McClellan towards blowing some opportunities to pin Lee and, by extension, win the war.
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I've like it so far, really like the story around Vicksburg including the first time freed slaves fought. Just hearing more details about that campaign I was surprised at how close to losing the North was in a couple of those battles...and I was a history major. I guess I focused more on the Eastern Theater. 
My wife and I went to Gettysburg on our honeymoon. (We went to Philly and Atlantic City too). We enjoyed it, I did more. I went running in the early morning a couple of times and it was kind of eerie. Fog everywhere and monuments that look like people and horses are lurking in the fog. Good times!
My wife and I went to Gettysburg on our honeymoon. (We went to Philly and Atlantic City too). We enjoyed it, I did more. I went running in the early morning a couple of times and it was kind of eerie. Fog everywhere and monuments that look like people and horses are lurking in the fog. Good times!
CycloneErik
Well-Known Member
Tonight's the one with stuff people really need to know about with Grant's presidency, unless they soft sell his fight against the Klan.
But that was the genius of Grant, he was aggressive, he knew he outnumbered the south, so he kept on attacking. Up until Grant shows up in the East, the union commander would fight a battle, and then retreat, regroup and then try again. By doing so, this allowed Lee to replenish his army, reequip his army and prepare for the next battle.
If the North would have continued fighting like they did at the Seven Days battle, they could have won the war earlier.
Lincoln himself said, I will continue to lose until we find a commander that can do the math. Meaning until he found someone like Grant, that goes into battle, today, tomorrow and the next day, forcing Lee to continue to lose men that he cannot replace. Grants famous cable back to Lincoln informing him that its his plan to fight on throughout the summer shows this.
That is how Grant won the war, after the Battle of the Wilderness, Meade, wants him to pull back, and regroup, not Grant, he slides left and starts the next battle of Spotsylvania, and keep moving south. Always sliding left, knowing the Lee must remain between him and Richmond, Grant actually ends up south of Richmond and that is where he starts his siege of the city.
If you read about Grant's campaign in the east, he basically lost every battle but continue to wear down Lee and the Army of Virginia to win the war. Grant unlike all the other Northern commanders understood the math. He can afford to lose men, Lee cannot.
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Yes, Grant understood the bloody math of a war of attrition.
The Civil War is fascinating -- it starts off on Napoleonic terms and ends in what amounts to trench warfare. A century of advances in military, industrial, and logistical technology essentially assimilates into both armies in just four years.
Grant was able to see that terrible reality but, perhaps even more importantly, he was willing to accept its grim recommendations for strategy. Lee has (usually) had a higher historical reputation than Grant because of his tactical flare and handful of battlefield masterpieces compared to "the butcher." Grant was just the one willing to pay the price with the lives of his men and his own reputation when others would not.
Grant is one of the finest Americans to ever live. He had his faults, certainly, but he is S-tier as a general and A-tier as a president. He is behind some of the highest luminaries as president, such as Washington or Eisenhower, but he is not far back. When Grant is generally rated mediocre-to-bad as a president while historians given a pass to an incompetent, reckless playboy in Kennedy or the literal devil himself in Woodrow Wilson still infuriates me on a frequent basis. There are not many men who can claim to have basically saved his country twice, and Grant is one of the very few of them.
He probably wrote the best memoir in U.S. history, as well. Very worth reading --
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Memoirs_of_Ulysses_S._Grant
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No, but we wanted to stop at some others on our trip. But it was a long trip. It started out in Iowa at a family reunion. We traveled 550 miles to get to that, then we headed straight for Gettysburg from Iowa. From Gettysburg, we went to New York City and spent two days there, then headed south to Antietam after that. Then we followed some trail in the smoky mountains for a while with the Shenandoah Valley down below. I forget the name of the trail but it connects two national parks. The speed limit on it was only 45 and you had to pay $15 a car to get on it and every so often along the way, they charged you $15 more.
We got tired of going so slow and came down the mountain and took the interstate in the valley from there. This was the point where we were thinking of seeing more battlefields, because there are a lot in that area, but we had been on the road so long we just wanted to get home. Shiloh was on the way home, so we stopped there, and then at a casino near Memphis, then went home.
In other documentaries Grant's "dogged determination" is portrayed as him being a butcher. Or at least they refer to others who had that interpretation.
It is in interesting question.
It is in interesting question.
Several years back I read a book about Iowa (specifically Muscatine area) Civil War soldiers. Most of them were involved in the Vicksburg campaign. Lots of detail about the swamp mentioned last night.
https://muscatinejournal.com/news/l...cle_ff026070-af77-11e1-9659-0019bb2963f4.html
https://muscatinejournal.com/news/l...cle_ff026070-af77-11e1-9659-0019bb2963f4.html
While researching something in the New York Public Library American History and Genealogy Room, I inadvertently came across Ulysses Grant’s ancestry, many years ago.
His Grant ancestors came aboard a ship named the Mary and John, which set sail from Plymouth in southwest England in 1630, loosely affiliated with and ahead of 11 other ships that set sail from London that same year, led by John Winthrop. They founded and settled Boston and neighboring communities. This was the first of the great Puritan migration.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_and_John
Those aboard the Mary and John settled Dorchester, which is now part of Boston. Many from this group, including Matthew Grant, later moved west and founded Windsor, on the Connecticut River, the first English settlement in Connecticut.
Still later, many from this group moved north along the river and founded Northampton, Massachusetts. Here an important leader of the Great Awakening, Jonathan Edwards (from East Windsor), would later preach. He succeeded his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, well known in his own right— “the ‘Pope’ of the Connecticut River Valley,” and advocate of the “half-way covenant.” The church in Northampton was the only one of the same size and prestige as those in Boston.
The Grants continued to move west, and it sounds like Ulysses’ father was a self made man. Grant’s success with his memoirs, including high praise from Mark Twain, is probably partly a function of this background (such as being literate enough, in the first place, to read the English Bible).
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Cool story!
I will say one other thing about Grant's memoirs...
The prose is shockingly modern and conversational. Many older writings can feel like ye olde English covered up in layers of formality and odd sentence structures to the modern ear, but that is absolutely not the case with Grant. His words speak.
It feels like you are sitting around a campfire while one of the greatest war heroes in all history tells you some incredible stories. Additionally, Grant had no ego about himself. There's a frankness and forthrightness with him that is rare to see in any era, and his religious upbringing towards humbleness and humility probably had a lot to do with that -- along with him writing while dying slowly from throat cancer.
There was a clarity in his words, coming from a man who knew any day could be his last, considering the role he played in the history of a country he loved so much, in what was its most difficult time, and if he did right and did enough.
I stand by what I said earlier with Grant --
Few Americans have done more.
It is a shame he is not held up among Washington, Lincoln, King, Franklin, Edison, Ali, Parks, Ford, Eisenhower, and Armstrong as one of the greatest Americans.
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I couldn’t agree more with what you’ve contributed to this thread and I have the same admiration for Grant. I feel however that WTS gets lost in the discussion in so far as what he meant to Grant and the Union.
George Thomas is actually my most underrated figure of the war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Henry_Thomas
-- like many of the senior officers in the Civil War, he had a distinguished service record in the Mexican-American War and successful peacetime service
-- subordinate commander at the Battle of Perryville, and important tactical and strategic defeat for the Confederacy at its high-water mark, even if not nearly as celebrated or discussed as Antietam at the same time
-- bailed out William Rosecrans at Stones River
-- they don't call him "the Rock of Chickamauga" for nothing
-- it was his troops that took Missionary Ridge to secure Chattanooga so Sherman could launch his campaign to Atlanta and then to Savannah
-- Sherman left him behind to chase down John Bell Hood and the Army of Tennessee... having to guard Sherman's flanks, defend Nashville, and eventually wreck the last functioning Confederate army in the field at the Battle of Franklin and the Battle of Nashville... all the guy did was win victory after victory, grinding out difficult sieges and defending
I know Grant and Sherman go down in history, but Thomas deserves a lot more credit. He is practically forgotten despite his role in the Western Theater.
He's the Rodman to the Grant/Sherman Jordan/Pippen duo.
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Really good stuff, I’d completely forgotten about him. I’ve just always had a soft spot for Sherman due to my,possibly mistaken,belief he actually detested slavery.
I couldn’t watch the new miniseries, and look forward to what more others have to say.
But I looked around some, and will put a few additional links here.
American Experience did a nice program on Grant, but I don’t believe it is still available for viewing online. Here is a link to the webpage though:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/grant-biography/
I’ve watched most of this documentary on YouTube, which is pretty good:
At one point, the depiction of him writing out orders single page after page at his desk, reminded me of the AE program at the end on his memoirs, consistent with what Sigmapolis says here.
I might try to post more tomorrow about General Grenville Dodge of Council Bluffs, who was the youngest Civil War general, I believe.
Dodge knew Lincoln, who visited Council Bluffs in 1859, and later knew Grant well. Here are some observations of his on Grant:
https://www.granthomepage.com/intdodge.htm
Although a field general and railroad engineer, Dodge was also involved in intelligence. He was later the chief engineer of the Union Pacific and construction of the transcontinental railroad west from Council Bluffs-Omaha. Here is what the 1970s Church Senate Intelligence Committee report said about his intelligence work in the Civil War (includes Vicksburg)
And a recent news article on Dodge’s military governance in Missouri in 1864-65
https://www.nonpareilonline.com/lif...cle_584c2433-2d3f-584c-9090-97ade63ee264.html
But I looked around some, and will put a few additional links here.
American Experience did a nice program on Grant, but I don’t believe it is still available for viewing online. Here is a link to the webpage though:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/grant-biography/
I’ve watched most of this documentary on YouTube, which is pretty good:
At one point, the depiction of him writing out orders single page after page at his desk, reminded me of the AE program at the end on his memoirs, consistent with what Sigmapolis says here.
I might try to post more tomorrow about General Grenville Dodge of Council Bluffs, who was the youngest Civil War general, I believe.
Dodge knew Lincoln, who visited Council Bluffs in 1859, and later knew Grant well. Here are some observations of his on Grant:
https://www.granthomepage.com/intdodge.htm
Although a field general and railroad engineer, Dodge was also involved in intelligence. He was later the chief engineer of the Union Pacific and construction of the transcontinental railroad west from Council Bluffs-Omaha. Here is what the 1970s Church Senate Intelligence Committee report said about his intelligence work in the Civil War (includes Vicksburg)
And a recent news article on Dodge’s military governance in Missouri in 1864-65
https://www.nonpareilonline.com/lif...cle_584c2433-2d3f-584c-9090-97ade63ee264.html
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