At 12:32 AM 8/30/2001 -0400, Gautam wrote:
>Doug:
>I could make the argument that there were many worse than
>he, starting with the Republican trio of Grant, Harding and
>Nixon (whose damage to the office he held dwarfs anything
>Clinton did), but I didn't really want to get into a
>contentious argument about whose most deserving of debasement.
>
>Doug
>
>Me (my historical side kicking in at this point):
>
>Actually, while I'm second to few in my condemnations of Nixon, grouping
>Grant in with him is entirely unfair, I think. Grant himself was
>completely honest - there are not, so far as I am aware, any accusations
>that he profited personally from official actions. Modern historians
>often, I have been told by a Harvard history professor, consider him the
>most successful of the reconstruction Presidents. Setting aside the fact,
>of course, that Grant (not the vastly over-mythologized Lee) was probably
>the greatest American military leader of the 19th century (if not ever) and
>his services to the nation in the Civil War would qualify him as a "great
>American" even if he was an atrocious President - which I don't think he
>was.<snipped>
Grant is certainly one of the great American military leaders, and one of
the great military leaders of the 19th Century worldwide. But I believe
that it is Sherman who has a better claim to the title of greatest American
military leader of the 19th Century. It was Sherman who conceived the
strategy of striking at the enemy's will to make war by destroying its
means to make war, a strategy adopted in the 20th Century by nearly all the
major combatants of the Great 20th Century War (my term for what is
popularly known as World War I and World War II). Conventional wisdom of
the time thought Sherman a fool for cutting loose from his base of supply
and marching to the sea, but it was a bold and brilliant stroke that
certainly shortened the Civil War (War Between the States for some of you
;-)). The combination of Grant and Sherman proved to be an unbeatable one.
As far as who might be the greatest American military leader, IMHO, I
believe that it is Washington, who formulated the strategy that enabled the
Colonies to win Independence from Great Britain. If I had to list them (at
least the top five), it would be Washington, Sherman, Grant, Marshall, and
Nimitz.
john
