Grant Vs Lee

“Engaging, entertaining, educational, and eclectic, this collection of brief essays . . . provides hope for the future of accessible Civil War history.” —A. Wilson Greene, author of A Campaign of Giants: The Battle for Petersburg With the election looming in the fall, President Abraham Lincoln needed to break the deadlock. To do so, he promoted Ulysses S. Grant—the man who’d strung together victory after victory in the Western Theater, including the capture of two entire Confederate armies. The unassuming “dust-covered man” was now in command of all the Union armies, and he came east to lead them. The unlucky soldiers of George G. Meade’s Army of the Potomac had developed a grudging respect for their Southern adversary and assumed a wait-and-see attitude: “Grant,” they reasoned, “has never met Bobby Lee yet.” By the spring of 1864, Robert E. Lee, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, had come to embody the Confederate cause. Grant knew as much and decided to take the field with the Potomac army. He ordered his subordinates to forgo efforts to capture Richmond in favor of annihilating Lee’s command. Grant’s directive to Meade was straightforward: “Where Lee goes, there you will go also.” Lee and Grant would come to symbolize the armies they led when the spring 1864 campaign began in northern Virginia in the Wilderness on May 5. What followed was a desperate. bloody death match that ran through the long siege of Richmond and Petersburg before finally ending at Appomattox Court House eleven months later—but at what cost along the way? This book recounts some of the most famous episodes and compelling human dramas from the marquee matchup of the Civil War. These expanded and revised essays also commemorate a decade of Emerging Civil War, a “best of” collection on the Overland Campaign, the siege of Petersburg, and the Confederate surrender at Appomattox.

Grant and Lee: Victorious American and Vanquished Virginian is a comprehensive, multi-theater, war-long comparison of the command skills of Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. Written by Edward H. Bonekemper III, Grant and Lee clarifies the impact both generals had on the outcome of the Civil War—namely, the assistance that Lee provided to Grant by Lee's excessive casualties in Virginia, the consequent drain of Confederate resources from Grant's battlefronts, and Lee's refusal and delay of reinforcements to the combat areas where Grant was operating. The reader will be left astounded by the level of aggression both generals employed to secure victory for their respective causes, as Bonekemper demonstrates that Grant was a national general whose tactics were consistent with acheiving Union victory, whereas Lee's own priorities constantly undermined the Confederacy's chances of winning the war. Building on detailed accounts of both generals' major campaigns and battles, this book provides a detailed comparison of the primary military and personal traits of the two men. That analysis supports the preface discussion and the chapter-by-chapter conclusions that Grant did what the North needed to do to win the war: be aggressive, eliminate enemy armies, and do so with minimal casualties (154,000), while Lee was too offensive for the undermanned Confederacy, suffered intolerable casualties (209,000), and allowed his obsession with the Commonwealth of Virginia to obscure the broader interests of the Confederacy. In addition, readers will find interest in the 18 highly detailed and revealing battle maps, as well as in a comprehensive set of appendices that describes the casualties incurred by each army, battle by battle.

In Grant vs. Lee, graphic novel author and artist Wayne Vansant narrates the story of the two greatest generals during the last year of the Civil War: General Ulysses S. Grant and General Robert E. Lee. In many ways, the campaigns these two led against each other in 1864-65 represented the beginning of modern warfare--the era of the strategic and gentleman amateur was over.

Dust jacket. Civil War and American History Research Collection, purchase 1983.

A biography of the two gifted Civil War commanders from a New York Times–bestselling author: “A great story . . . History at its best” (Publishers Weekly). Their names are forever linked in the history of the Civil War, but Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant could not have been more dissimilar. Lee came from a world of Southern gentility and aristocratic privilege while Grant had coarser, more common roots in the Midwest. As a young officer trained in the classic mold, Lee graduated from West Point at the top of his class and served with distinction in the Mexican–American War. Grant’s early military career was undistinguished and marred by rumors of drunkenness. As commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, Lee’s early victories demoralized the Union Army and cemented his reputation as a brilliant tactician. Meanwhile, Grant struggled mightily to reach the top of the Union command chain. His iron will eventually helped turn the tide of the war, however, and in April 1864, President Abraham Lincoln gave Grant command of all Union forces. A year later, he accepted Lee’s surrender at the Appomattox Court House. With brilliance and deep feeling, New York Times–bestselling author Gene Smith brings the Civil War era to vivid life and tells the dramatic story of two remarkable men as they rise to glory and reckon with the bitter aftermath of the bloodiest conflict in American history. Never before have students of American history been treated to a more personal, comprehensive, and achingly human portrait of Lee and Grant.