So, a more fruitful heuristic might be: “For what job was it that Lincoln thought he could not spare Grant, if not for supreme command?” Lincoln had to know from early 1862 that Grant stood out among his commanders. Not long after, Lincoln said of Grant, “I can’t spare this man-he fights.” Of all his generals, only Grant got results without badgering the War Office to double his resources. Grant became a hero when he captured Fort Donelson, Kentucky, in February 1862. This perennial “Why so late on Grant?” question looks at the Civil War through the wrong end of the telescope. That had Lincoln been smart enough to put Grant in charge much earlier, he would have greatly shortened the war.That Lincoln was an absolute monarch, with no Congress to satisfy and no Army bureaucracy to work through.That Lincoln was a bumbler and no judge of military talent.
![the anaconda plan the anaconda plan](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/OAu_R5DQdcU/hqdefault.jpg)
Merely to ask it implies at least three silly ideas: It’s often asked: “Why did Lincoln wait so long to promote Grant? Why did the president hire and fire so many other top dogs before finally, almost as a last resort, settling on Grant in 1864?” The question is presented, usually, as an unparalleled mystery.Ībraham Lincoln on November 8, 1863. I will, however, assert that a proper kenning of Grant’s role in the Civil War is the best way to illuminate the war’s grand strategy as a military matter. You can get those tales elsewhere-perhaps even in this week’s telecasts. Here, I will not rehash the humilitations of Grant’s early life or the transformation of a hapless man into a world-beater.
THE ANACONDA PLAN SERIES
I am writing this before the series airs. That is the background against which the History Channel now offers its three-part miniseries- Grant: Unlikely Hero Grant: Lincoln’s General and Grant: Freedom’s Champion. Grant’s stock is now on the rise again thanks to a generation of careful historians who have worked for decades to set the record straight.
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He was that pathetic, cigar-puffing drunk who couldn’t do anything right except win battles and who went on to lead the most corrupt presidential administration in history.” His giant reputation became sicklied o’er with the pale cast of revisionism in the twentieth century.