Really looking forward to this. I really hope the make it accurate and not some propaganda piece like most civil war films are.
OT: History Channel Miniseries "Grant"
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Accuracy likely depends on how influential Chernow is on the work. His recent biography was thorough and a balanced view of Grant, his military, political and business successes and failures.
Civil War history is surprisingly difficult to accurately discern, as the "history" was written by people with obvious agendas and the truth is now forever foggy. A lot emanated from Southern lost cause Jubal Early history. A lot also from the anti-Lincoln factions and a lot of Grant stuff from military factions between politicians and generals seeking power and influence. Every general on both sides seems to have had Senators and Congressmen supporting their man at the expense of stories, who knows if they're true, about the other man. It is amazing how cloudy the "truth" is about something that is not that far back in history. Especially considering much was written when many participants were still living.
This is how I know you know what you’re talking about: you mentioned Jubal Early.
Even better is the 1100 page documentary "Grant" by Ron Chernow. In my opinion Grant was the greatest general, warrior, and basically just the greatest man in American history. Unlike any other president before, and after him.
Agreed. If they stay with Chernows account then they will get it right.
Will we finally find out who’s buried in his tomb?
The three volume Civil War by Shelby Foote is a good read. 1,000 pages per volume and they aren't small pages. It will keep you occupied for a while.
I recently moved into the Shenandoah Valley to open a new facility for the company I work for. It is amazing how some people still absolutely hate Grant and Phil Sheridan today because of what was done to civilians near the end of the war here.
The answer to that is of course General Grant. Many people tend to miss that his wife is also buried in the same tomb.
Pretty heroic task for him to finish them while dying. He knew his family would be destitute without him finishing them, so “soldiered” on while in great pain
Let me guess, they give slaveholders a bit of a pass.
Spare me traitors - they got off relatively lightly when you look at civil wars in history. If that happened centuries early, they all would have been sold into slavery themselves.
I appreciate the conjecture, but I’ll wait for the exhumation and subsequent DNA test.
I dont like yankee fanboy fiction. Yo Joe Pa, take the blue and white yankee cap back to Brooklyn bro...
Fun fact - Grant smoked stogies using tongs. He didn’t want his hands discolored from handling tabaccy
I've read them and they are great, but Foote gets a lot of information from Douglas Southall Freeman and Bruce Catton who include a lot of lost cause "facts" in their works.
Actually about 150 miles northwest of Chicago is the small town of Galena, IL.....about 10 miles south of Wiscy and 10 miles east of the Mississippi River & Iowa.
Grant actually lived there for a while after the war, his home is a local tourist attraction.....visited it between rounds of golf probably about 35 years or so ago.
Don't know never asked, to be fair we all gave plenty of slaveholders a pass. I don't buy the traitor thing.....they tried to leave the union nothing more. But thats beside the point. The point was that the animosity is still there to this day. But then again they were the side that believed they were invaded.
Yup I find that this is a huge problem with civil war research. They either have a lost cause bias or the northern shining light of freedom spin. As far as Grant I've always thought of him as a competent yet mediocre commander, basically he won when he should have won, however that is exactly what the army needed at the time.
James Robertson stuff on Jackson is really good. Then again Jackson fascinates me....his Valley campaign is almost unbelievable. He is another example of that fine line between genius and crazy.
Grant is a member of the long grey line and his statue was inaugurated on the plain last year. He joins the likes of Ike, Washington, Patton, MacArthur, and Sedgwick. Good company.
The 3 part Washington series was pretty good I thought. McAndrew's opinion (who seems to know his stuff on history) generally thought the accuracy level was pretty high and very high on the important stuff, with most inaccuracies being more minor type's of things that didn't change the narrative at all. So I would suspect that Grant will be similar.
Grant's greatness was that he didn't care about what the other guy did or would do. Sherman found that to be an unbelievable trait of Grant's. He did some amazing work in Mississippi, at Chattanooga and getting to Petersburg. At Petersburg his generals really let him down. But you're right he didn't scare away and won when he should have. If Hooker would've not run, or just proceeded through the Wilderness at Chacellorsville when he could've, the war would've probably ended much earlier. Lee only had about 12,000 men defending against the entire Union army while Stonewall took the other 30,000 on their flank attack. If Hooker simply attacked their was a huge rout. Even after the flank attack, he was still in position to rout them but got scared. Grant didn't. Hooker didn't have "it" when he was in charge. He had "it" when someone else was. Grant wasn't a great strategist, but he had "it".
I would say grant was dumb lucky at shiloh. The armies were equally matched and he was routed all the way to the river, he was only saved by Buell. I've often wondered if Lee and Grant were equal in men equipment and supply would there be 2 countries now.
actually his contemporaries thought of him as a butcher. However he did understand that advantage he had was numbers and that eventually Lee could not continue.....his overland campaign was a bloody mess but it was effective.
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