ULYSSES S. GRANT: A VICTOR, NOT A BUTCHER by Edward H. Bonekemper III

 







Originally published in 2010.
Re-published in 2017 by Regnery History.

Do you remember back in school when you would get a topic to argue for in an essay? That's pretty much what this book is. The topic is "Grant has the reputation for wasting his men in useless attacks. Is Grant's reputation as a butcher justified?"

Ulysses S. Grant: A Victor, Not a Butcher might be mistaken as a biography of Grant, but it is not. What it is is a fantastic defense of Grant's record in the Civil War.

Bonekemper was a federal government regulatory attorney for 34 years before he started writing books, delivering lectures, hosting discussions and teaching classes on the Civil War as a second career after he had retired. All that practice of 34 years of digging through books and digging through stats and regulations shines through this book.

You would think that what I just described is a boring book, but it is well-written and flows smoothly from one campaign to the next. Very readable.

Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885)
Bonekemper digs through all of the stats and shows that Grant consistently inflicted a greater percentage of losses than he suffered. Only 4 armies surrendered during the Civil War. Sherman took one. Grant took the other 3 - in 1862, 1863 and 1865. Grant has a reputation of being a hard charger that just made his men charge headlong into the enemy. But, if you just look at the Vicksburg campaign you hardly see any headlong charges (sadly, they happened in every theater under every commander because they were sometimes very effective) and you do see a lot of different, creative strategies that resulted in an entire army surrendering and a second army defeated, retreating and its commander removed.

Grant gets a bad rap for his time as the commander against Lee (May 1864-April 1865). The Army of the Potomac suffered more losses from all of the previous commanders combined than under Grant and were no closer to beating Lee then when they started. Grant had more losses per day, but he finished it in less than a year. 

To be honest, I am surprised that Regnery History publishes Bonekemper's books. They usually feature a lot of books that go wholeheartedly with the "Lost Cause" tradition of Douglas Southall Freeman and Bonekemper's certainly do not. But, I am not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I am just glad they're being published. 

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: ULYSSES S. GRANT: A VICTOR, NOT A BUTCHER by Edward H. Bonekemper III.

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