Generals Grant And Lee - The Myth

 There are many myths in American history. Too many times we view history the way we want to remember it rather than the way it actually happened -- the truth.

One of the myths that has always bothered me, and seems to be widely believed now by too many Americans, is that Robert E. Lee (the Confederate general) was a great general, while Ulysses S. Grant (the union general) was little more than a butcher who didn't care about his men.

All one has to do is look at the Battle of Gettysburg to know that Lee was not a great general. He kept throwing men at the middle of the Union lines until his army was decimated, and he had to withdraw.

But it wasn't just Gettysburg. Throughout the Civil War, Lee had a larger percentage of his men killed and wounded than Grant (or other Union generals) did.

Here is how historycollection.co debunks this myth:

During the American Civil War and the emergence of the Lost Cause in its wake the contending commanding generals, Lee and Grant, found themselves with reputations neither wholly deserved. Grant is often presented as a butcher, indifferent to casualty lists, who ground down the gallant Lee, the Confederate general being much more solicitous of his troops. The numbers do not bear this out. Throughout the war Lee’s armies inflicted casualties (killed and wounded, disregarding captured or deserted) of 15.4% on his enemies, while the troops under his command suffered 20.2% casualties. Lee’s casualty rate not only exceeded Grant’s, but all of the other major commanders of the Confederacy as well.

By the end of the war Lee’s armies suffered casualties which exceeded those of Grant by over 55,000 men – again considering only killed and wounded, desertions increase the number significantly. And while it is true that during the bloody march down the peninsula in the spring of 1864 the Army of the Potomac suffered horrendous casualties, as a percentage of his fighting strength Lee’s were worse. The Confederate Army bled itself out before withdrawing into the trenches at Petersburg and Richmond, from which Lee surely knew there would be no escape. The casualties were grisly for both sides of the American Civil War, but that Grant was a butcher in comparison to Lee is a myth according to the numbers.