Bowman, a member of Sherman's staff, described the scene in "Sherman and His Campaigns":. Grant, in his autobiography, explained that Sherman was to attack Gen. Joseph Johnston's army in the South and capture Atlanta and the railroads, effectively cutting the Confederacy in two. Grant was to pummel Gen. Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia. Sherman famously summed up their strategy: "We finally settled on a plan.
He was to go for Lee, and I was to go for Joe Johnston. That was his plan. No routes prescribed It was the beginning of the end as Grant and I foresaw it here Their plan was not exactly the famous "March to the Sea," as is sometimes claimed, though it led to it.
Unless therefore the South found a way to fully involve those slaves in the war effort and on the Confederate side , it faced a 4-to-1 general population disadvantage.
More relevantly, the North had 4,, men of fighting age 15 to 40 , and the South had only 1,, white men of fighting age. The South could not afford to squander its limited manpower. Of the nearly three million men two million Union and , Confederate who served in the military during the war, , died , Union and , Confederate , , in battle and the rest from disease and other causes.
While many Northerners were in the military for brief periods of time many of them serving twice or more , most Southern military personnel were compelled to stay for the duration. Amazingly, almost one-fourth of Southern white males of military age died during the war—virtually all of them from wounds or war-related diseases.
The primary point of all these statistics is that the South was greatly outnumbered and could not afford to squander its resource s by engaging in a war of attrition. Robert E. As James M. The romantic glorification of the Army of Northern Virginia by generations of Lost Cause writers has obscured this truth.
His army suffered almost , casualties—55, more than Grant and more than any other Union or Confederate Civil War general. During the first fourteen months that Lee commanded the Army of Northern Virginia through the retreat from Gettysburg , he took the strategic and tactical offensive so often with his undermanned army that he lost 98, men while inflicting , casualties on his Union opponents.
The manpower-short Confederacy could not afford to trade numerous casualties with the enemy. During each major battle in the critical and decisive phase of the war from June through July , Lee was losing an average 19 percent of his men while his manpower-rich enemies were suffering casualties at a tolerable 13 percent. Far from being the uncaring slaughterer of men, Grant, again and again, displayed his feelings about the contributions of the ordinary soldier.
After Chattanooga, for example, he alone raised his hat in salute to a ragged band of Confederate prisoners through which Union generals and their staffs were passing, and at Hampton Roads late in the war, he spoke to a group of Rebel amputees about better artificial limbs that were being manufactured. This author has made the best estimate of the casualties and, at the end of that appendix, created a table of best estimates of those casualties for the entire war.
First, they determined that, in his five major campaigns and battles of —3, he commanded a cumulative total of , soldiers and that 23, of them 11 percent were either killed or wounded. Grant got help from the Navy and moved Lee in place to take over Petersburg. Grant's strategy confused the south. No other commander kept going except Grant.
The Overland Campaign was very successful it led the Union into Petersburg and to take over Richmond. Grant's strategy of not retreating worked and he led the Union to claim victory. View Overland Campaign Map. Grant Lee. Candace Scott "Ulysses S. Grant Home Page", Jan. Geoffrey C. Explore This Park. Article Ulysses S. Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant Lithograph by A. Abraham Lincoln letter to Ulysses S.
Grant, April 30, Grant, Ulysses S. Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. New York: Charles L.
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