Ulysses S. Grant: A Victor, Not a Butcher: The Military Genius of the Man Who Won the Civil War
In line with the recent rise in the Union military leader’s stock among historians, this engaging if reverential study pegs Grant as the greatest general of the Civil War. Historian Bonekemper (How Robert E. Lee Lost the Civil War) contends that Grant relied whenever possible on maneuver, distraction and stealth rather than brute force, and that his brilliantly successful campaigns were marked by comparatively modest body counts. Even the bloody war of attrition against Lee in 1864, the main count in the "butcher" indictment, was a strategically sound approach, he says, with its carnage less the fault of Grant than of inept subordinates who squandered the opportunities created by his flanking maneuvers. The author’s celebration of Grant dovetails with his disparagement of Lee, whom he feels lacked Grant’s mastery of grand strategy, and whose unnecessarily aggressive campaigns, in which he sacrificed many more men than Grant did during the war as a whole, make him the real butcher. Bonekemper’s interpretation of Grant is not groundbreaking (although scholars and buffs will appreciate his exhaustive tabulation of casualties in Grant’s engagements), and the comparison with Lee is perhaps unfair given the vastly greater resources in men and material that Grant enjoyed. But he offers a lucid and vigorous narrative of Grant’s campaigns that vividly conveys the general’s energy, daring and shrewdness, as well as the unassuming personality that has made him a symbol of the age of the common man triumphing over Lee’s backward-looking aristocracy. Photos and maps.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.