So, this is a man who failed at farming, failed at business, failed at his role in the peacetime army. Then, when the war came, the war revealed a genius. So, he'd known a lot of failure. He'd known a lot of setbacks. And his wartime record shows that he learned to deal with those things. He had a great, tremendous relationship with his wife, a very strong family life, a family he loved. I think that was the rock for him. But, during the war, what he exhibited was an absolute willingness to break rules, to take risks, to take responsibility for what he was doing, whether it was a success or a failure, and not to be cast down by things that didn't work. If something didn't work, he'd say, 'Okay, that didn't work. Now, let's do this.'
He very famously, when he got to Virginia in 1864 and took over the Army of the Potomac, he had all these subordinates who were saying, 'Well, what if General Lee does this? What if General Lee does that?' He finally said, 'Why don't we start worrying—let's not worry about what General Lee is going to do and let General Lee worry about what we are going to do.' I mean, he just had—he was unflappable under stress. He was the perfect person to end up heading the Union armies, and he and Lincoln—and Lincoln realized that. And he proved indispensable.
But, he has this reputation as a butcher, Grant the butcher. That's something that former Confederates and some Democrats in the North fastened on him. His preferred way of fighting wasn't just kind of slug it out. It's really interesting to compare his record in the war and Lee's record in the war before they wound up opposing each other in Virginia in a really bloody Overland Campaign. Grant's total casualties in all his great battles before they met were 37,000. Lee's were over 98,000 in the same period. The bloodiest general in US history by far in terms of how many of his men get shot is Robert E. Lee.
The most careful demographic study of any Civil War army is one done of Lee's army by a scholar named Joe Glatthaar, and Joe figured out that if you were a soldier in Robert E. Lee's army, you had a 73% chance of becoming a casualty. 73%. Grant's casualties get high when he runs into Robert E. Lee, just like everybody else. So, the butcher tag is completely unfair about Grant.
He's also known as a drunk, and people have gone back and forth on that, whether he just had a weakness, couldn't hold his alcohol very well, or was okay as long as his wife was around and he had a key staff officer to help him. The point is, alcohol never got in the way of anything Grant did during the war, and he had a superlative record of delivering victories when the United States needed them, and Lincoln figured that out.
And the absolute proof of his stature because of this is that in March of 1864, Congress decided to dust off the rank of three-star general, lieutenant general, and give it to Grant. The only person who had ever had that rank was George Washington. The man, George. I mean, he is the man. And so, they are saying, 'Okay, Grant, you get the rank the man had.' And that shows there's never been anyone else who got it. You're the first. And then he would also be the first to get a four-star rank in the United States Army. There couldn't be a better indication of his stature than that he got Washington's rank. Winfield Scott had had it by brevet. Grant got the actual rank.
So, in part, the Grant the Butcher label was from the Overland Campaign that we'll talk about.
Well, Lee is sort of the antithesis of Grant in some ways. Lee is from an aristocratic family. Grant was from a solidly middle-class family. Lee's from an aristocratic family at the very top of the Virginia aristocracy. The Lees are all—he has uncles who were prominent, two signed the Declaration of Independence. His father was a famous commander under George Washington. His father's the one who said that Washington was first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen. That's Lee's father, who was a later prominent Virginia politician. Lee's idol is George Washington.
He patterns himself on Washington. He differs from him in some ways, but he patterns himself on Washington. He considered Washington the most admirable person in United States history. And then, of course, he almost undoes the work that George Washington put in place during the American Revolution. He chose Virginia. He didn't leave—he didn't resign his commission in the United States Army to go with the Confederacy. He resigned his commission in the United States Army to go to Virginia, which wasn't in the Confederacy yet, become the head of state forces in Virginia. But then when Virginia went into the Confederacy, he took his Confederate commission and ended up as the third-ranking officer in Confederate service.
And he makes an easy transition to a Confederate loyalty. I think it's his loyalty to Virginia and what that means. That means his family, and of course that means slavery. That's part of what that loyalty is. He's devoted to the slave-holding South as well as to Virginia. Virginia's a subset of that. All of that is in one bundle with Lee.
But he also had been an ardent US nationalist earlier in his career. He was a very successful military officer. Winfield Scott thought he was the greatest soldier in the army, and Scott—he probably really thought, except for me. But Scott is a great soldier that people don't remember that way because he became a kind of Jabba the Hutt figure by the time of the Civil War. He's enormous, weighs 350 lb, has to be winched onto his horse. But he was a very smart guy, and he thought very highly of Lee. Lee was a superb soldier as he would show during the war. But he's on the wrong side.
