THE CIVIL WAR: THE TRUE STORY BOOK 1

No Comparison Between Grant and Lee

No Comparison Between Grant and Lee

By James Ronald Kennedy on Apr 27, 2020

Over a century and a half has passed since Confederate States General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant. Yet, despite surrender by one and victory by the other, controversy continues regarding which man better represents the virtues of honor, duty, and American patriotism. For those who believe that might makes right, then the answer is clear—trial by combat has pronounced General Grant as America's icon of patriotism, valor and honor. But from the South there lingers the refrain penned by Father Ryan, the Poet Priest of the Confederacy, "The triumphs of might are transient—they pass and are forgotten—the sufferings of right are graven deepest on the chronicle of nations." There exists an antagonistic gulf between the estimations of two different peoples as they take measure of the men who championed their nation's cause. In reality Lee and Grant cannot be compared but only contrasted.

Grant the Champion of One Nation Indivisible

If Grant had any political philosophy at all it was that of an American nationalist. His nationalist fever arose from his military training at West Point and his military experience in the Mexican-American War (1846-48). Grant ranked number 21 out of 39 in the class of 1843.[1]  Although never known as a deep thinker in political or theological matters, he followed the nationalist views of Alexander Hamilton, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Abraham Lincoln. All of these American nationalists stressed the supremacy of the national (federal) government. Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804), is the father of American nationalism. Hamilton:

...wanted to use the (federal government's) centralized power to subsidize business in particular,...so as to make them supportive of an ever-growing state...(He) believed that the new American government should pursue the course of national and imperial glory, just like the British, French, and Spanish empires."[2]
Grant's radical nationalism is demonstrated by the fact that he wanted to expel the French from Mexico. After Appomattox he sent 50,000 troops to the Texas-Mexican border and provided 30,000 rifles to Mexican guerrillas.[3] No doubt he hoped to establish a puppet government in Mexico that would be subservient to the U.S. federal government, as was eventually done in the conquered Confederate States.[4]

Nationalists owe their primary allegiance to the national government and said allegiance is seldom constrained by traditional Christian morality. Grant's apologists attempt to obscure Grant's moral failings by draping him in the robes of one "fighting to end slavery." But Grant's wife held personal slaves at the beginning of the war. These slaves were not freed by Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln's Proclamation applied to slaves in territories controlled by the Confederate States while exempting slaves in territories controlled by the United States.  Mrs. Grant's slaves were freed well after the War by the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. According to one account, Grant's excuse for not freeing his wife's slaves was that "good help is so hard to come by these days."[5]

During the War, General Grant followed the United States' war policy of attempting to inflict starvation on Southern civilians—an act of war that was a violation of international moral standards for civilized warfare. One of Grant's orders was, "In pushing up the Shenandoah Valley...it is desirable that nothing should be left to invite the enemy to return...such as cannot be consumed destroy..."[6] In 1863, Grant wrote:

Rebellion has assumed that shape now that it can only terminate by the complete subjugation of the South...It is our duty to weaken the enemy, by destroying their means of subsistence, withdrawing their means of cultivating their fields, and in every other way possible."[7]
So successful were the invader's efforts to induce civilian starvation that by 1865 over 500,000 Southerners were without the necessities of life and many died of starvation—and this number accounts for starvation in only four of the Southern states.[8]