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From: silber@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Ami A. Silberman)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Grant the Butcher
Message-ID: <1991Jun1.012913.28196@amd.com>
Date: 30 May 91 19:03:29 GMT
References: <1991Apr23.053719.23595@amd.com> <1991May18.051207.11395@amd.com> <1991May23.055301.14672@amd.com> <1991May29.010537.5090@amd.com>
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From: silber@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Ami A. Silberman)


>	Grant's 'directness' was a reaction to greater southern mobility.
>(The south had less of a supply train to tie themselves down with. :)
>	But his strategy was mostly indirect, a narrow outflanking of
>cities with few direct assaults.
>	He learned the folly of direct assault against a prepared defense,
>several times.

A factor in Grant's "directness" was the larger army sizes he had in
the East compared to those employed in the Wilderness campaign.  Time
and time again, in 1862 and 1863, numerically superior Union forces
were defeated due to their own command and control problems (chiefly
those created by expecting sub-moronic, petty, and egotistical generals
to carry out plans that required even a rudementary level of
coordination.)  Another factor in Gran't directness was the presence of
Mead, the hero of Gettysburg, as his chief of staff.  For political
reasons, it seems that most orders went through Meade, in the later
phases of the war there were few occasions on which Grant showed the
sort of tactical initiative he had earlier in the war.  There is quite
an extensive discussion of this in "From the Jaws of Victory", a very
informative book on military incompetence.  (I have, alas, forgotten
the writers name.)

	[Followups to soc.history, please. --CDR]

-- 
ami silberman - janitor of lunacy
	silber@cs.uiuc.edu