>Fortunately, Grant had very little to worry about at Ft. Donelson given the ineptitude of the Confederate command there. John Floyd, the former Secretary of War under President Buchanan, and Gideon Pillow, an incompetent political general who had gained derision in the Mexican War for accidentally digging a trench on the wrong side of a fortification, and was one of the few Confederate generals that Grant openly derided and ridiculed--one time early in the war, Grant had admitted that fortifications weren't his area of expertise as he'd forgotten the little he'd learned at West Point about engineering and had no desire to "gain a Pillow notoriety for it.">As Grant's army surrounded the fort, Floyd also decided to flee the scene, apparently fearing capture--no Confederate general officer had yet been taken prisoner as of February 1862 and Floyd couldn't be sure if the Yankees wouldn't simply hang him for treason, especially as he was a former Cabinet member.
>fortifications weren't his area of expertise as he'd forgotten the little he'd learned at West Point about engineering*ahem* McClellan was a very handsome and popular genius if the radical Republicans hadn't been sabotaging him at every step the war would have been over two years early
>>18223870Your fooling yourself.
Pillow was given one more chance, led a brigade at Stones River, got it butchered, and was permanently removed from field command.
>>18223896No; he designed and constructed the extensive system of fortifications around DC.Rebuilt the entire army after Pope squandered it at 2nd Bull Run.His official status as the Army's observer during the Crimean War was formative, deeply relevant to the Civil War, his memoirs of that fight were a best seller stateside.His understanding of logistics and engineering was criminally under utilized.The railroad strategy he personally formulated was critical to Union success.The enormous siege guns he brought to bear against Richmond as part of the Peninsula campaign should have never been recalled.He spoke many languages.Dude was a natural genius, the most popular general of the war among the soldiers and civilians alike, and this is not controversial.You have been mislead by over a century of federal propaganda.
You know what, actually R Lee was and is still more popular. I should have specified *Union* general.But this same Lee said McClean is the only Union general he ever personally feared.
Halleck apparently greenlighted Grant's move on Donelson and Henry without actually believing he could pull it off and was surprised and dismayed when he did.
>>18222930As a non-American reading the civil war, I find Grant's generalship to be similar to early Confederate generalship: bold, relentless, trust his subordinates and was often able to take advantage of the opponent's incompetence and unpreparedness.His operations was in a lot of way a reversal of previous situation when Union armies were passive and indecisive. You can certainly see why Lincoln believed in him and why he eventually rose to the top
>>18224020war isn't a video game. His leadership ability was mixed. The resume you listed make it look like he shouldn't have been a general at all and would have been a better assets working in the backend
>>18224150grant also understood that he had every advantage and fully intended to make use of themlost causers will call grant a butcher because a lot of soldiers died under his command, but as a percentage of overall strength grant lost fewer men than his opponents. he had way WAY more men to work with, so his forces were much larger in absolute terms. even though his % losses were smaller in absolute numbers they were pretty large which is where the lost cause claims come fromgrant was also more willing to be aggressive because in addition to more manpower, the union had much better logistics. new equipment could be manufactured and delivered to new units/reinforcements for existing units in a timely manner, so losses were temporary setbacks that could be dealt with by rotating units away from the front while the trains brought up the new men and materiel. meanwhile, the southerners had to scrounge for anything they could use since they had no industrial base and slowly move it up to the front because what little rail they had was being ripped apart by union armies
>>18224177Someone once put it to me like this: any other Union general would have retreated after Shiloh. Grant simply lit his cigar, smoked it for a bit and said, "Well boys, we'll try again tomorrow," then walked abck to his tent and allowed no space for even a little bit of discussion on the matter.That spirit is why Grant was on the winning side. Lee was equally dogged but in a different way and Grant didn't fight him nor the ANV until after they were very much past their prime. Even then it took seven days of non-stop fighting to even get the discussion of a ceasefire to begin. This was after losing a pivotal siege.
>>18224253>Grant didn't fight him nor the ANV until after they were very much past their prime.which was a demonstration of grant's skill as a general. he didn't fight lee not because he couldn't but because he didn't need to. union forces could advance in so many different places that lee had to pick and choose where to defend, and grant simply ordered the troops in that spot to hold while the rest kept marching. when lee moved to defend a different point, grant would flip flop the orders and the men that had been holding started advancing and the men that were now facing resistance dug in and waited for lee to reposition again. it was a slow but steady noose being tightened around lee and both of them knew it, but lee had no ability to stop it.
>>18224278Well until recently Lee was treated like a fucking Ancient Heroic figure while Grant's tomb became the place where heroin junkies went to die.Even now all the Union-Posters are Contrarian Pseudo-Whites or straight-up Browns who only like the Union because it opened the door for them to plunder and by extension ruin this nation.So really, anon - who won? Who was right?
>>18224312the south would've kept importing more niggers and also ruined the nation thoughbeit
>>18224312I'm brown and I like Dixie because their culture is similar to us though
>>18224337Slave importation was already banned by this point, dumb nigger.
>Maury County, Tennessee was one of the wealthiest counties in the nation during the antebellum era; here Gideon Pillow made his home in a stately manor house. The property was confiscated by the Union army early in the Civil War; today it is one of the most complete and well-preserved antebellum plantation homes anywhere. A huge portrait of Pillow in military uniform greeted visitors who entered the front door.
>For contrast, the property also boasts three rickety slave cabins constructed of wood with a corrugated tin roof over top, each about 15 by 15 feet in area. As late as the 1990s, poor black farmhands occupied these modest dwellings. The toil of countless unnamed such individuals made possible the splendor the general lived in. Their story is mostly unrecorded, we do not even know their names in most cases--the 1840 US Census mentions two Pillow farmhands by name--Sarah and Randall. Were they buried in the nearby cemetery in the woods, or were they buried in St. John's Church Cemetery, far in the back, away from the final resting places of the white folks? Or perhaps they ended up in one of the scores of family cemeteries that dot the county? In the cabins scraps of old newspapers can be found that the farmhands used as insulation, but these are all from later periods--no artifacts from the slave era have been found.
>>18224813>>18224805no one cares, LBJfag
>>18222930>FloydI CANT FLEE
>>18223870Based McClellan Chad. Hating McClellan is probably the most normie Reddit opinion ever.
>>18224824Do you not acknowledge that Mr. Pillow's wealth came off the sweating backs of countless black laborers who lived in total poverty without human dignity and died forgotten and nameless?
>>18224834kek
>>18224848Sounds boring af. Would be more based if he made money off breaking bucks like Calvin Candie from Django Unchained.
Pillow and Floyd both fled actually; they left Simon Bolivar Buckner in charge and to handle the surrender. Afterwards Grant told a Confederate prisoner "If I had Pillow, I'd give him back. It's more helpful to us for him to be in command of you fellows."
>>18224848Don't you have a thread about the Tulsa Massacre to make now?
>>18224834>Floyd surrounded, choked, and cut off by an army of men wearing blue
>>18224873What a breathtaking scenario.
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