Vicksburg-Grant’s Campaign that Broke the Confederacy

[Carmel]

I’m posting this without a review of this highly readable book, as I haven’t finished it yet. I’m very interested in what other people think of it.

Notable points for me:

• The author, Donald Miller, has a chapter on Grant’s role in establishing places for Black refugees to be self sufficient by setting them up on abandoned plantations. I hadn’t seen very much on his role in this apart from Brooks D. Simpson’s work
  
• At the same time he’s more critical of Grant’s decisions than I expected. He describes many blunders and near misses.
  
• I did happen to catch a minor error in his research when he described Sherman as a “classmate at West Point,” which is a stretch in that Sherman was a couple of years ahead of Grant at West Point. This made me wonder how solid the extensive research is. It might seem like a minor quibble, but minor errors always prompt me to question the veracity of more important assertions.
• https://www.amazon.com/Vicksburg-Grants-Campaign-Broke-Confederacy/dp/1451641370

 

[jgoodguy]

At the same time he’s more critical of Grant’s decisions than I expected. He describes many blunders and near misses.

It is not that Grant was a great tactician or strategiest, but that he kept on until he found a solution.

I did happen to catch a minor error in his research when he described Sherman as a “classmate at West Point,” which is a stretch in that Sherman was a couple of years ahead of Grant at West Point. This made me wonder how solid the extensive research is. It might seem like a minor quibble, but minor errors always prompt me to question the veracity of more important assertions.

If the small things we can verify are problematic, what does that say for what we cannot verify.

 

[Carmel]

It is not that Grant was a great tactician or strategiest, but that he kept on until he found a solution.

If the small things we can verify are problematic, what does that say for what we cannot verify.

Exactly.

 

[5fish]

Failures ??? Grant dug a ditch off the top of my head? What was his failures at Vickburgs before he chose to move past Vicksburg and cross the Mississippi below the city...

Snip... Amazon summary...

Ultimately, Vicksburg was the battle that solidified Grant’s reputation as the Union’s most capable general. Today no general would ever be permitted to fail as often as Grant did, but in the end he succeeded in what he himself called the most important battle of the war, the one that all but sealed the fate of the Confederacy.