Another Look at Grant's Crossing of the James, 1864

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Another Look at Grant's Crossing of the James, 1864 Brian Holden Reid In his biography of Dwight Morrow, Sir Harold Nicolson, in an author's "apology," wrote that for an Englishman to write about an American "may seem a hazardous, and perhaps impertinent enterprise." This is perhaps no less the case for a Scotsman. "With whatever modesty he may approach his task," Nicolson continues, "however scrupulous may be his endeavour to appreciate the American background, there must always occur some gaps in comprehension, some mistaken attribution of values, some errors in perspective .'" This observation is relevant to the theme of this essay not simply because of the diffidence any European author might feel for writing about a commander who has been described on numerous occasions as "quintessentially " American, but because the idea behind such a reconsideration grew out of discussion among British Army officers. The British Army has a long tradition of studying the American Civil War, and initially this had a strong pro-Confederate bias, with Col. G. F. R. Henderson's famous biography of Stonewall Jackson and Maj. Gen. Sir Frederick Maurice's no-lesscelebrated study of Robert E. Lee's generalship. Indeed one student at the Staff College, Camberley, Capt. (later Brig. Gen. Sir) James Edmonds RE, had found the Staff Course so undemanding that he found time with his brother-in-law, Capt. W. Birkbeck Wood (iDG), to write a history of the Civil War; when this was published in 1905 it was adopted by the United States Army as a textbook. None of these writers, however, underestimated Grant's generalship. One British soldier-author, Maj. Gen. J. F. C. Fuller, made a decisive contribution to the resurgence of Grant's reputation when, in 1929, he published The Generalship of Ulysses S. Grant. This remains the greatest book ever written on Grant's military career, both in intellectual range and the shrewdness of its military analysis, and is still in print today. Much more recently, 1 Harold Nicolson, Dwight Morrow (London: Constable, 1935), v. Civil War History, Vol. XXXIX, No. 4, © 1993 by The Kent State University Press 292CIVIL WAR HISTORY John Keegan (formerly of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst) has described Grant as "the greatest general of the American Civil War."2 Since I have worked at the Staff College, Camberley, I have been able to develop studies on the Civil War and move away from the traditional focus on the Battle of Gettysburg. One ofthe topics that I thought would be of interest to today's soldiers is river crossings, and here Grant's crossing of the James is still of extraordinary interest. But my keen and scholarly British Army students found after a scrutiny of the recommended sources that although they could find much general comment on Grant's general aims and strategy there was rather less material available on how this operation was actually completed. So after agreeing with them that the mechanics of the operation were neglected in favor of airy generalization, I deemed it appropriate to consider the whole operation afresh. But it was also prompted by some further thoughts about military historiography . The campaign in Northern Virginia in 1864 is often represented as a kind of duel between Grant and Lee, and the issues are often personalized. Fuller, in his detailed account, gives full weight to the extent of Grant's success and, with some zeal, rubs salt into the wounds inflicted on the reputation of one of the British Army's most revered heroes, Gen. Robert E. Lee. "Why did not Lee strike?" Fuller asks, while the Army of the Potomac was straddled across the James. "Here was presented to him [Lee] an opportunity of attacking his enemy in detail and in flank and, in spite of his numerical inferiority , of concentrating superiority of force against a most favourable target. There can be but one answer to this question, namely, that Lee had been completely out-generalled. An adept in audacious flanking movements, he failed to credit Grant, by reputation a stolid, unimaginative fighter, with an equal daring."3 Yet, despite this praise, Fuller contents himself with scoring points off Lee rather than explaining the methods that...