He was also a great horseman. m/r
By
Michael Walsh
July 4, 2017
One hundred and fifty-four years ago, the nation was electrified by the news out of Mississippi: after a long siege,
the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, commanding the heights of the
mighty river, had fallen to Ulysses S. Grant. Coming the day after the
federal victory at Gettsyburg, it turned the tide of the Civil War and
preserved the union for Mr. Lincoln. It was a national birthday present
like none other.
Gettysburg
gets most of the attention, as well it should: the three-day struggle
between North and South in a small Pennsylvania town was the greatest
battle ever fought on the American continent: bloody, heroic, futile,
savage, and ultimately decisive, although Lee went home to Virginia to
lick his wounds and fight again. But we should not overlook Grant's feat
of engineering and generalship in the west, which supplied the victory
from which the Confederacy could not recover. The quartermaster in the
Mexican War had become the chief general in the west, soon enough to be
summoned to Washington to finish Lee and save Abraham Lincoln's
presidency.
Nearly alone
among the Union generals, Grant understood the stakes and, more
important, the meaning and necessity of victory. Facing the steep cliffs
and formidable batteries of Vicksburg from his position across the
Mississippi, Grant had to find a way to get his troops safely across the
river, attack and seize the state capital at Jackson to Vicksburg's
east, then move back west to encircle the city from the land and starve
and pound it into submission.
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