Science & Tech Quote by Shelby Foote

Foote’s affection for Ulysses S. Grant arrives with a critic’s knife already out: the kind of praise that only matters because it’s specific. “His science in fighting” is a historian’s way of admitting Grant wasn’t just brave or lucky; he was methodical, modern, almost clinical about war as a system. Foote’s intent is to preserve that admiration while refusing the easier hagiography that turns competence into sainthood.

The turn comes on “But,” and it’s not a gentle pivot. Foote zeroes in on a leadership flaw that doesn’t show up on battlefield maps: moral accounting. Grant, in this telling, had the strategic imagination to see through chaos but not always the temperament to own it. The subtext is that American hero-making often demands a spotless protagonist, so the narrative pressure is to outsource error. Foote pushes back against that pressure by naming the mechanism: blame as self-defense.

The reference to Shiloh is doing heavy work. That battle, drenched in surprise and slaughter, became an early referendum on Grant’s judgment. By invoking Prentiss - a convenient scapegoat in postwar storytelling - Foote points to how reputations are negotiated after the smoke clears. Accountability isn’t just personal; it’s political, mediated by memoirs, allies, and the long shadow of national myth.

Foote’s larger context is his own project: treating the Civil War as a tragedy full of gifted, compromised humans. Grant can be great and still be small in the face of fault. That tension is the line’s electricity.