Commanders
Grant's Method: Continuous Pressure Instead of Battles
Ulysses Grant’s reputation has moved further over time than that of almost any other American commander, and the reason is a change in what is being measured. Judged by the standards his contemporaries applied (the decisive battle, the elegant manoeuvre, the low casualty list) he compares unfavourably with several of his opponents. Judged by the standards that emerged after two industrial wars, he is one of the most modern commanders of the nineteenth century.
The western campaigns, and why they are the better evidence
The campaigns that made his name were fought in the Mississippi valley, and they were not attritional at all.
He used rivers as axes of advance, which in that theatre meant supply and mobility in one, and he treated naval cooperation as an integral component of an operation instead of as an accessory to it. Several of his results were achieved by positioning rather than by assault: isolating a fortified place and compelling its surrender instead of attacking into prepared defences.
The Vicksburg campaign is the most-studied example. It consisted of a sequence of manoeuvres that placed his force between two opposing armies, defeated them separately, and invested the fortress from the landward side. It involved deliberately operating for a period without a secure supply line, which was a substantial risk taken knowingly.
None of this fits the caricature, and it is the larger part of his record.
What changed in 1864, and why
Given overall command, he made one decision that reorganised the war, and it was administrative rather than tactical: the separate theatres would apply pressure at the same time.
Until then they had operated on their own schedules, which meant an opponent with interior lines and a railway network could move forces to meet each threat as it developed. Sequential threats can be met in sequence. Simultaneous ones cannot, and the arithmetic of a smaller army defending on several fronts at once is unforgiving.
This is the change on which the outcome of the final year turned, and it depended on a technology as much as on a decision: the telegraph made it possible to coordinate armies hundreds of miles apart in something approaching real time.
The Virginia campaign and the casualty charge
The 1864 campaign in Virginia was extremely costly, and this is the basis of the contemporary charge of butchery.
Its method was continuous contact. After each engagement, instead of withdrawing to refit (the pattern of the preceding three years, which had allowed both armies to recover) his forces disengaged laterally and moved around the opposing flank, forcing another engagement. The opponent was never given the interval in which to rebuild.
The reasoning was that his army could replace losses and the other could not, so continuous contact converted a numerical advantage into a decisive one. It worked, and the cost was very high, and both of those are facts about the same decision.
The honest assessment is that it was a deliberate trade rather than a failure to notice the losses, and that the argument about whether the trade was right is a real argument. What is not defensible is reading the Virginia figures as characteristic of his generalship while ignoring the western campaigns that preceded them.
Why the reassessment happened
Twentieth-century military analysis, formed by wars in which production, logistics and theatre-level coordination decided outcomes, found in Grant a commander who had grasped all three. He organised supply, coordinated distant forces, and understood that against an opponent with fewer resources the decisive variable was continuity instead of brilliance.
That is why he is now taught alongside commanders whose reputations were never in doubt, and why the nineteenth-century verdict on him is treated as evidence about the nineteenth century’s criteria.
He understood earlier than his peers that the war would be decided by attrition.
Questions and answers
Was Grant a butcher, as contemporaries claimed?
The charge came from the casualty figures of the 1864 Virginia campaign, which were severe, and it does not survive comparison with the alternatives. His earlier campaigns in the west achieved major results at comparatively low cost through manoeuvre, and the 1864 losses were the price of a deliberate decision to maintain continuous contact rather than withdraw and refit after each engagement. Whether that price was justified is arguable; that he was indifferent to it is not supported by the record.
What was distinctive about how he ran the western campaigns?
He treated rivers as the axes of advance, used naval cooperation as an integral part of operations rather than as support, and was willing to cut loose from his supply line temporarily to achieve position. The Vicksburg campaign in particular is studied for its sequence of manoeuvres that isolated a fortified position rather than assaulting it, and for the risk accepted in operating without secure supply.
What did he change when given overall command?
He coordinated the separate theatres for the first time, so that pressure was applied simultaneously and not sequentially. Previously an opponent could shift forces to meet each threat in turn because the threats arrived one at a time. Simultaneity removed that option, and it is the single most important change he made, an organisational decision instead of a tactical one.
Why is he studied more now than he was a century ago?
Because the criteria changed. Nineteenth-century military reputation rewarded the decisive battle and the elegant manoeuvre, and by that standard he compares poorly with contemporaries. Twentieth-century analysis, after two industrial wars, rewarded logistics, coordination across theatres, and the willingness to maintain pressure, which is what he actually did.