"General Grant had no fixed plan of campaign beyond the general idea to avoid the strong defensive line occupied by General Lee behind Mine Run, and find a way to draw him out to open battle"
About this Quote
Longstreet is doing something very Southern, very postwar: praising Grant just enough to sound fair while quietly sharpening the knife. On the surface, the line reads like professional courtesy - Grant is flexible, not doctrinaire, guided by a clear strategic instinct: don’t smash your face into Lee’s prepared works at Mine Run; maneuver until the Confederate army is forced to fight in the open. But the phrasing “no fixed plan” is the tell. It flatters Grant’s adaptability while also implying a kind of improvisation, a commander feeling his way forward rather than executing a master design.
The context matters. Mine Run (late 1863) was a cautionary tale: the Union Army looked at Lee’s fortifications and, wisely, did not attack. By 1864, Grant’s Overland Campaign would be defined by sidestepping strongpoints and keeping pressure constant - not a single Napoleonic set piece, but relentless movement and contact. Longstreet, a Confederate general later castigated by Lost Cause traditionalists, writes with an eye toward credibility: he acknowledges Grant’s modern strategic logic (avoid entrenched lines; force decision elsewhere) even as he preserves Lee’s aura as the defensive virtuoso who must be “drawn out.”
Subtext: open battle is framed as the real test of generalship, the clean duel. That’s an old-school soldier’s preference, and it quietly minimizes the industrial reality Grant embraced: attrition, logistics, and political necessity. Longstreet’s sentence turns a grinding campaign into a chess problem - and casts Lee as the piece you can’t capture unless you lure it into daylight.
The context matters. Mine Run (late 1863) was a cautionary tale: the Union Army looked at Lee’s fortifications and, wisely, did not attack. By 1864, Grant’s Overland Campaign would be defined by sidestepping strongpoints and keeping pressure constant - not a single Napoleonic set piece, but relentless movement and contact. Longstreet, a Confederate general later castigated by Lost Cause traditionalists, writes with an eye toward credibility: he acknowledges Grant’s modern strategic logic (avoid entrenched lines; force decision elsewhere) even as he preserves Lee’s aura as the defensive virtuoso who must be “drawn out.”
Subtext: open battle is framed as the real test of generalship, the clean duel. That’s an old-school soldier’s preference, and it quietly minimizes the industrial reality Grant embraced: attrition, logistics, and political necessity. Longstreet’s sentence turns a grinding campaign into a chess problem - and casts Lee as the piece you can’t capture unless you lure it into daylight.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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