@PitManHokie @RodDMartin Perhaps there were other factors at play then Grant?
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Trump Enjoyer
3.2K posts
@thunderchief68 @RodDMartin He also cried in a drunken stupor after Cold Harbor (given the Union losses that day in a front attack Grant said later he wished he hadn’t ordered) but that didn’t stop him from rolling on to the next battle & eventually defeating Lee with surrender soon thereafter @ Appomattox.
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Everyone loves asking: “If Grant was such a great general, how come he lost nearly every battle to Lee and suffered way more casualties?”
Robert E. Lee himself had a very different answer.
“I have carefully searched the military records of both ancient and modern history, and have never found Grant’s superior as a general. I doubt his superior can be found in all history.” — Robert E. Lee
The entire question is built on two flat-out falsehoods.
First: Grant didn’t “lose nearly every battle.” There was essentially ONE continuous campaign — from the Wilderness in May 1864 straight through to Appomattox in April 1865.
Grant seized the initiative in the very first clash and never gave it back. Lee spent the rest of the war reacting to Grant’s moves.
When Lee attacked in the Wilderness hoping the old forests and bogs would save him (like they always had), Grant didn’t retreat north like every previous Union commander. He simply disengaged, slid south, and flanked Lee again.
Lee never dictated the terms of battle after that day.
James Longstreet had tried to warn the Army of Northern Virginia: “We’ve never faced anyone like this man.” They didn’t listen. They learned fast.
Second: The casualty comparison ignores that Lee was almost always the defender. Context matters.
But the deeper truth is bigger than any single clash. Lee still fought war the old way — disconnected battles, win-loss record like a sports season.
Grant fought the next war: coordinated campaigns across multiple theaters, using railroads, telegraph, navy, and engineers to keep relentless pressure until the enemy simply could not continue.
Grant didn’t win by accident. He made contact and maintained it until victory was inevitable.
Lee fought the last war. Grant wrote the blueprint for the next one.
That’s why he was great. That's why he won.
Change your mind yet? Drop your hottest take on Grant vs. Lee below. 🔥
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@foster_type He cried after the first day in the Wilderness. He got lucky Longstreet got shot when he did.
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Despite Lee's tactical skill he was forced into a siege of Petersburg in two months while his the rest of the confederacy burnt across half a dozen different fronts. Again, Grant was not obliged to strategize symmetrically with Lee, he had more men and materiel and better coordination across theaters. Moreover he was fighting on enemy turf with long supply lines and exhausted men. He beat Lee, period.
Milk Vessel Pilot@trueliberal1848
The Overland campaign is proof that Lee was probably the best overall general of the entire Civil War
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@Jeff_Davis1808 He wrote them. Or edited them so heavily that he should have credit
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@thunderchief68 He didn't write them but provided the resources to bring it to market and that included ensuring that it was tailored to the target audience. It was being sold to ex-soldiers early, so he was providing the market with what it desired.
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Grant’s conduct at Appomattox will make him a hero for all time but the rest of the record must be told. Before the “Civil War”, Grant was a mediocre officer who washed out of the regular army in 1854. Stationed in remote California, he drank heavily, neglected duties, and resigned under a cloud rather than face a court-martial; the official reason was “personal reasons,” but contemporaries knew better. He then failed at farming, real estate, and even his father’s tannery, drifting through civilian life until the war gave him a second chance. That early record of personal and professional collapse is conveniently omitted when Grant is presented as an inevitable military genius.
His presidency was equally marred by incompetence and scandal. The Whiskey Ring, Crédit Mobilier, and Belknap impeachment exposed a administration riddled with corruption; Grant’s own aides and appointees looted the Treasury while he looked the other way or defended them. Even his much-praised campaign against the Ku Klux Klan relied on legally dubious tactics—mass arrests, suspension of habeas corpus, and federal military occupation—that courts repeatedly rolled back. The Supreme Court’s rulings in Cruikshank and other cases gutted the Enforcement Acts, showing that Grant’s heavy-handed approach was often unconstitutional overreach rather than principled enforcement of civil rights.
Finally, the financial ruin that prompted his deathbed memoirs was self-inflicted. In 1884 Grant was swindled by Ferdinand Ward’s Ponzi scheme, losing everything and leaving his family destitute. Desperate for money, he raced to finish his Personal Memoirs while dying of throat cancer, dictating through excruciating pain while heavily medicated on morphine and cocaine. He leaned on old notes, memory joggers from former staff, and Union-veteran ghostwriters to romanticize his record and pay off debts. What the original post calls a “literary classic” was, in reality, a painkiller-fueled cash grab written for old comrades and a forgiving public, not an impartial historical document.
Echoes of War@EchoesofWarYT
He won the Civil War, broke the Klan, went bankrupt at 62, got terminal throat cancer, and wrote one of the greatest books in American literature in the final year of his life. He finished it 5 days before he died. Ulysses S. Grant was born 204 years ago today. His name wasn't even Ulysses S. Grant. He was born Hiram Ulysses Grant in Point Pleasant, Ohio on April 27, 1822. The congressman who nominated him to West Point wrote down the wrong name. Grant kept it. The "S." stands for nothing. He hated his father's tannery and loved horses. Graduated 21st of 39 at West Point. Fought in the Mexican-American War, then came home convinced it was an unjust war designed to expand slavery. He later said he believed the Civil War was divine punishment for it. He married Julia Dent in 1848, into a slave-owning Missouri family. His abolitionist father refused to attend the wedding. In 1859, broke and desperate, Grant freed the one enslaved man he'd briefly owned instead of selling him. He could have gotten a year's wages. In the Civil War he became what no other Union general was: relentless. Vicksburg (July 4, 1863) split the Confederacy in half. Lincoln then gave him every Union army. His Appomattox surrender terms: officers kept sidearms, men kept horses for spring planting, no one prosecuted. As president (1869 to 1877) he did something no president would do again until LBJ: used federal troops to crush the Ku Klux Klan. He suspended habeas corpus in 9 South Carolina counties, prosecuted Klansmen before predominantly Black juries, and broke the first Klan. His presidency was also rocked by scandal: Black Friday 1869. Crédit Mobilier. The Whiskey Ring. Belknap. Grant himself never took a dime. He was just disastrously loyal to corrupt friends. The pattern damaged his reputation for a century. After the White House, he toured the world for 2 years. Dined with Queen Victoria. Met the emperor of Japan. Then in 1884, a Wall Street partner named Ferdinand Ward ran what we'd now call a Ponzi scheme. Grant was wiped out. 62 years old. Penniless. Weeks later he was diagnosed with terminal throat cancer. Mark Twain offered to publish his memoirs. Grant wrote in agony, sometimes 50 pages a day, racing the disease to leave Julia an inheritance. He finished the manuscript July 18, 1885. He died July 23. The book made Julia $450,000, about $14M today. It's now considered one of the finest memoirs in the English language. For decades historians ranked Grant a failure. Since 2000 he's jumped 13 spots in the C-SPAN survey, the biggest rise of any president. Happy birthday, General 🇺🇸
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Can you guess this city in one try?
Hint: It is in USA 🇺🇸
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Grant was one of the most consequential Americans in history. He was the only one of the Union’s generals who understood the depth of the problem in front of him.
The Confederates were fighting for a cause. They were ideologically possessed. Be it for State’s Rights, Slavery, or the principles of the American system, it did not matter.
He saw this in his first battle with them and knew that they would not relent or submit until soundly broken.
This is why he fought them the way he did. Why he pursued them and pressured them the way he did. And it’s why he won battles that he “lost” the first time.
Grant understood this was an industrial war, a war of attrition. And that that logistics behind you were more important to winning than the men in front of you.
He was nearly erased from history because he was the man who, along with Sherman, saved the American experiment from the depredations of British and French external pressure and support.
This is why he was consigned to the role of “a drunk butcher who got lucky,” rather than the man who won Lincoln the war and gave the US republic another chance to thrive.
He and Lincoln were the first of historic consequence to beat the Color Revolution playbook and his reward was opprobrium and marginalization.
In short, U.S. Grant was a badass who learned from his failures and never wavered. In the end, he beat Lee to a pulp, while his strategy tore the South’s fever dream to pieces.
Yes, total war is deplorable. It brings out the very worst in humanity. But, sometimes that is all your enemy offers you in return.
Look around you today, and you’ll see this vile pattern playing itself out in Ukraine, Tehran, and yes, in the Blue States in the US.
They are banking on weaponizing our humanity against us to stop short of where they are willing to go to win.
Grant was both a model and a warning. If you are going to fight, fight like a demon. He didn’t have the luxury of the broken field Patton had in France in 1944-45. He couldn’t move so fast that he could beat the enemy before they knew they were beaten.
Grant had to force the issue head on, being just as relentless as Patton, and did so knowing the price would be almost too high to bear.
That’s America. That’s what fighting for a cause truly looks like…. Where kings aren’t gods, but men, created equal.
I hope that this is the message Donald Trump conveys without equivocation to Charles and Camila this week. Do this great American’s legacy proud on the anniversary of his birth.
Echoes of War@EchoesofWarYT
He won the Civil War, broke the Klan, went bankrupt at 62, got terminal throat cancer, and wrote one of the greatest books in American literature in the final year of his life. He finished it 5 days before he died. Ulysses S. Grant was born 204 years ago today. His name wasn't even Ulysses S. Grant. He was born Hiram Ulysses Grant in Point Pleasant, Ohio on April 27, 1822. The congressman who nominated him to West Point wrote down the wrong name. Grant kept it. The "S." stands for nothing. He hated his father's tannery and loved horses. Graduated 21st of 39 at West Point. Fought in the Mexican-American War, then came home convinced it was an unjust war designed to expand slavery. He later said he believed the Civil War was divine punishment for it. He married Julia Dent in 1848, into a slave-owning Missouri family. His abolitionist father refused to attend the wedding. In 1859, broke and desperate, Grant freed the one enslaved man he'd briefly owned instead of selling him. He could have gotten a year's wages. In the Civil War he became what no other Union general was: relentless. Vicksburg (July 4, 1863) split the Confederacy in half. Lincoln then gave him every Union army. His Appomattox surrender terms: officers kept sidearms, men kept horses for spring planting, no one prosecuted. As president (1869 to 1877) he did something no president would do again until LBJ: used federal troops to crush the Ku Klux Klan. He suspended habeas corpus in 9 South Carolina counties, prosecuted Klansmen before predominantly Black juries, and broke the first Klan. His presidency was also rocked by scandal: Black Friday 1869. Crédit Mobilier. The Whiskey Ring. Belknap. Grant himself never took a dime. He was just disastrously loyal to corrupt friends. The pattern damaged his reputation for a century. After the White House, he toured the world for 2 years. Dined with Queen Victoria. Met the emperor of Japan. Then in 1884, a Wall Street partner named Ferdinand Ward ran what we'd now call a Ponzi scheme. Grant was wiped out. 62 years old. Penniless. Weeks later he was diagnosed with terminal throat cancer. Mark Twain offered to publish his memoirs. Grant wrote in agony, sometimes 50 pages a day, racing the disease to leave Julia an inheritance. He finished the manuscript July 18, 1885. He died July 23. The book made Julia $450,000, about $14M today. It's now considered one of the finest memoirs in the English language. For decades historians ranked Grant a failure. Since 2000 he's jumped 13 spots in the C-SPAN survey, the biggest rise of any president. Happy birthday, General 🇺🇸
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I have changed my mind on how AI will impact jobs in America.
Previously, I believed AI would replace many entry level roles typically filled by young employees. The technology would then work its way up the organization and eventually reduce the total number of jobs in a company.
The data is saying something different, so when I get new information I am willing to change my mind.
The number of software engineers being hired has been increasing. The number of open software engineer roles is growing.
The number of new college grads who get hired has increased 5.6% over the last 12 months. The unemployment level for people aged 20-24 years old who have a college degree has fallen from nearly 9% to almost 5% as well.
The Wall Street Journal recently wrote “AI created 640,000 jobs between 2023 and 2025 in the U.S., according to an analysis by LinkedIn of job posting data, including new white-collar positions such as Head of AI and AI engineer.”
And I am starting to see companies throughout our portfolio aggressively hiring to keep up with the demand for their products and services.
If AI can make employees more productive, which is widely accepted as fact, then companies are going to want as many productive units of labor as possible. This is a key reason why I am changing my mind.
AI appears to be a magical technology that will make companies more productive and more profitable. The net result will be more corporations, more startups, and more jobs.
All three are big, positive wins for the American economy.
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@DennisV34863868 @AbHomineDeus Violence will be everyone's new profession.
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My prediction for the distant future is that my grandson will join the John Connor militia.
That militia’s goal will be Destroy power to the data centers, and the receiving terminals from the data centers in space. But that’s just a wild guess.
I’m thinking my grandson‘s probably gonna need something to do to give him purpose.
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People just really really don't grok what's coming. AI and robotics will do EVERYTHING we do better/faster/cheaper/safer. There will be no margin of comparative advantage. You will be economically irrelevant as anything other than a consumer. Make peace with it.
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@AbHomineDeus Have you spent any time actually working with AI? The kind of reliance you're talking about isn't on the near horizon. In the state AI is in right now, millions will die if they tried.
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@AbHomineDeus Nah, instead we will just throw the scientists in jail and outlaw AI so we can avoid destruction of humanity.
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@butterystrokes @JByGodRod Yep
Catching requires, brains, patience and toughness and does not reward athleticism.
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Composite vibe from all the data I'm sucking up this morning is that the referendum will be a nail-biter going down to the wire
I wouldn't be surprised if the final outcome is decided by less than 10,000 votes
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@RealTrouble_Man Elon wants to go to Mars to wait out the great AI extinction he's planning for Earth.
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Trump Enjoyer retweetledi
It’s also the best way to starve 350,000,000 people with the push of a button.
Elon Musk@elonmusk
Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI. AI/robotics will produce goods & services far in excess of the increase in the money supply, so there will not be inflation.
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Holy cow look at the ratio on this 😂
People are so committed to doom and gloom when it comes to AI.
It’s going to be ok—as long as we don’t panic during the transition period and give more power to government. Don’t panic.
Joel Berry@JoelWBerry
This won’t be necessary. For every job lost to AI, 5 new jobs will be created—many of them will be jobs we’ve never even heard of that could’ve never existed without AI.
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Trump Enjoyer retweetledi
Don't fall for the AI/Robotic Singularity Communism push.
It's the end of humanity.
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Trump Enjoyer retweetledi
This would be worse than traditional slavery.
Your master government would have no incentive to keep you happy, or healthy, or fed or even alive.
In fact, the opposite would be true.
Elon Musk@elonmusk
Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI. AI/robotics will produce goods & services far in excess of the increase in the money supply, so there will not be inflation.
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