GDG- Re: Grant versus Lee

[Biggsk at aol.com]

Dennis Larence writes:

Grant vs  Lee Wilderness - Appamatox
CSA losses - 134,283    - US losses -  60,369
Game, set & match -  Grant



I believe that Grant in one month alone lost 66,000 men around Petersburg,  
and if that's the case then the figures above are certainly way low for the  
Union side.
 
I would be vary wary of "Attack And Die" as well - one of their claims is  
that Confederate soldiers were aggressive because of the vast amounts of  
Scots-Celtic blood that flowed through their veins (advancing a theory set forth  by 
McWhiney in "Cracker Culture" and this argument is the foundation for their  
book.  The majority of Southern soldiers were as English as their Northern  
counterparts (of course both sides had wider ethnic breakdowns).   Genealogical 
historians have pretty much shredded McWhiney's book.
 
One only needs to read the true history of the Western way of war  dating 
back to the ancient Greeks for its genesis to find that the blood in  one's veins 
had nothing to do with it at all - it had to do with citizen-armies  being 
raised to fight a war and that the war had to be over quickly so that the  
troops could go back to their farms, etc and not starve their people!  If  you are 
away fighting then you are not home farming.  One needs only to  read a 
detailed analysis of the all Greek Peloponnesian War to see the problems  caused for 
both sides by having that one drag on and on!
 
Hence, those advocates of short, sharp wars needed to be aggressive to win  
them and win them fast.  Over time, this was indeed much more humane than  
having the war drag on and on.  Such advocates included the Duke of  Marlborough 
(Sir John Churchill), Frederick The Great, Napoleon,  Wellington,  Winfield 
Scott and Robert E. Lee.  The hope was to be  aggressive, smash the enemy army, 
and then win the war - as Napoleon did at  Austerlitz and Jena-Auerstadt.
 
Greg Biggs