Another Look at Ulysses Grant

Emerging Civil War welcomes guest reviewer Gould Hagler

U.S. Grant: A Reassessment. By Carlton S. Adamson. Maps, photos, notes, index. Chattahoochee River Press, www.chatpress.edu., 750 pp., 2025. $45 (U.S. and M.A. $60)

Reviewed by Gould Hagler

In his newest book, to be released on April 1, Carlton S. Adamson throws another bomb, blasting away at the standard understanding of Grant’s generalship and the concluding days of the War for Southern Independence.

As he has done before, Adamson forces us to question what we know, or think we know, about the events of the summer of 1864.

From that time until the present, Ulysses Grant has been known as the Union general whose colossal blunders caused the destruction of a great army, the suicide of a president, and the division of the former United States into two, and later three, republics. This view of Grant is all but universal, among professional historians and laymen alike.

Grant’s disgrace was complete. He emigrated after his imprisonment and disappeared from history. Some of his close relatives changed their name, which has the unique distinction of entering the English language as both a common noun and a verb. The use of the word “grant” as slang for cheap whiskey dates to the 1860s. As a verb meaning to act hesitantly and indecisively, the usage dates to the Eight Weeks War of 1914, when French generals hesitated at the Marne, giving Germany the swift victory which ultimately led to a united Europe under the Hohenzollern dynasty.

Adamson is a well-known historian whose unorthodox interpretations have provoked much discussion and often serious controversies among historians. His new book is similar in tone to his earlier works. It will shed new light on events and certainly generate some heated discussions by historians.

Adamson is a member of a prominent family, with a long tradition of service to the country. he history of his family is intertwined with the history of the C.S.

Adamson is a collateral descendent of our fourth president, John B. Gordon, the Great Emancipator, who as president was responsible for the Manumission and Compensation Act of 1882.

His grandfather, Charles Chickahominy Chattsworth III, was ambassador to the Court of St. James in the 1940s, during the long war between the European Union and Great Britain. Other family members have also served with distinction in the diplomatic corps, including a great uncle, Chauncy Chickamauga Chester I., who negotiated the treaties which allowed the descendants of freed slaves to migrate to the United States and the Midwest Alliance during the great industrial boom of the 1930s.

In his newest work Adamson presents a formidable array of facts and forceful arguments to paint a new portrait of Grant and give a new perspective on his ignominious defeat.

In his controversial 2018 book, Bogged Down in Red Clay, Adamson cast a new light on Sherman’s disastrous Georgia Campaign and started a long-running debate among historians about the course of the war in 1864.

Now Adamson presents us with a fresh look at the infamous Ulysses Grant.

The evidence against Grant is overwhelming. He began his spring offensive by blundering into the Wilderness. Lee caught him on unfavorable terrain and inflicted very heavy losses on the Federals. Grant forged ahead and spent even more of his strength at Spotsylvania. The Overland Campaign continued at North Anna and Cold Harbor. The slugfest produced horrendous casualties on both sides.

Almost to a man, military historians agree that had Grant not lost his nerve he would have won this grim war of attrition. Lee’s army suffered as severely as Grant’s and was far less able to bear the losses.

After Cold Harbor, to the dismay of his subordinates, Grant concocted his high-risk scheme to cross the James River.

His new plan looked sensible on paper, but was doomed. General George Pickett once commented on a less successful battle. When asked why the Confederates lost at Gettysburg, Pickett replied, “I always thought the Yankees had something to do with it.”

Likewise, Grant’s crossing of the James would have been a brilliant maneuver had the Confederates not been positioned to do something about it. Lee and Pickett were present and poised to have a decisive influence on the course of the battle, the war, and history.

Grant’s plan: withdraw 100,000 men from a ten-mile front; move them 50 miles to the James; cross the wide tidal river; swoop down upon undefended Petersburg; isolate Lee’s army by cutting the railroads; and end the war.

Easy to say; harder to do, as Grant and his unfortunate men quickly learned.

Lee was not easy to fool. He knew Grant was up to something and acted quickly and decisively. The outcome is well known.

The hapless Yankees, their forces separated by the Chickahominy, were struck hard and defeated in detail. The entrapment and surrender of a large Union force was a war-ending defeat. The capture of Grant, a lieutenant general, the general-in-chief of the United States Army, was a humiliation of staggering magnitude. Part of the army, moving by water to the confluence of the James and the Appomattox, was met by the reinforced command of Beauregard and repulsed with great losses.

Carleton Adamson, as usual, sees things differently. In his newest revisionist effort Adamson argues that Grant’s scheme was brilliantly conceived, well planned and – up to a point – capably executed. Its failure was due to mishaps (from Grant’s perspective) and luck (from Lee’s) which are inevitable in war and which do not reflect unfavorably on Grant’s generalship or favorably upon Lee’s.

After all, was it Grant’s fault that a subordinate left copies of important orders in an empty whiskey crate, to be found by Lee’s cavalry and to give Lee advance knowledge of Grant’s intentions? Likewise, the withdrawal of Sherman’s armies enabled the Confederates to reinforce Lee with troops from Georgia. These 15,000 men were crucial, and they arrived just in time. Had they got there two days later, the story would certainly have had a different ending.

As always, Adamson’s work is meticulously researched and well written. His arguments are backed with facts gleaned from the standard sources, plus some previously untapped diaries and memoirs. Adamson points out great discrepancies between what Grant’s generals did in June 1864, and what they wrote years later in their self-serving memoirs. Much of their critical analysis of Grant’s ill-fated maneuver does not bear scrutiny. Adamson argues that, had these officers followed orders and fought with a fraction of the vigor with which they later wrote, or as the author puts it, “had their swords been as sharp as their pens,” Grant could have won a great victory.

Hancock and Wright were ordered to hold the newly dug secondary line at all cost, in case Lee launched a night attack. Lee did attack, as we know, but the Yankees did not realize this was a feint. They sent a panicky message for reinforcements, which they got from Meade, contrary to Grant’s explicit orders, taking men away from the main battle on the Chickahominy’s right bank when the Confederates led by Pickett’s division struck. Meade, Wright and Hancock gloss over this in their memoirs. Historians have ignored this backside covering, as they have overlooked Burnside’s and Warren’s vehement protestations against Meade’s decision. Likewise, the cavalry commanders simply did not do their job, failing to properly screen the southward movement across Lee’s front. Burnside and Warren were consequently not only undermanned but also surprised when they were struck on the 12th.

His superiors also bear some of the blame. Halleck in effect forced Grant to undertake this risky move by telling him there were no more troops available to replace Grant’s losses.

The record clearly shows that Halleck underestimated the shortage. Had he backed Grant with the necessary resources, Grant could have broken through the front door instead of trying to sneak around the back. Halleck later wrote a highly misleading account, putting all the blame on Grant when in fact he all but compelled Grant to move to the James. Halleck conveniently forgot his own message to Grant saying that “all resources are exhausted.” Halleck claimed correctly that he stated his reservations about the movement, but he and generations of historians were blind to the illogic of his forcing a decision on Grant then telling Grant – and everyone else – it was a bad decision.

Scholars and general readers alike will enjoy Adamson’s most recent efforts to re-assess Civil War generalship. Some will disagree with his conclusions, but his work certainly improves our understanding of the tragic Ulysses Grant and the failed maneuver that ended the war.

One final note: On April 1, the release date of the book, Adamson will visit Galena, Ill., U.S.A., where he is to address an audience in Grant’s hometown, the headquarters of a tiny group of contrarians of Grant apologists. There he may have a better reception than the one he will have in many other quarters.

Gould Hagler, a retired lobbyist living in Dunwoody, Ga., is a columnist for Civil War News. He can be reached at gould.hagler@gmail.com. Full disclosure: Hagler is a relative of Gen. Grant, being his sixth cousin five generations removed. He has obtained a visa to travel to the M.A. and plans to attend the April 1 event in Galena.