Generalship of General Ulysses S. Grant

"e;THE greatest event in European history was the discovery of the New World: today it could only be rivalled by landing on a habitable planet.

The greatest event in American history was the Civil War; greater than the Rebellion, because separation from England was sooner or later inevitable.

The man who most greatly influenced this war was Ulysses S.

Grant; not because he was so clear-sighted a statesman as Lincoln, or so clever a tactician as Lee, but because he was the greatest strategist of his age, of the war, and, consequently, its greatest general.Grant was not of the type of Alexander, Caesar, Frederick and Napoleon: he was a simple-minded man of vision, and one who for nearly forty years remained an obscure citizen of the Great Republic.

It is for this reason that I have dedicated my book on his generalship to the Youth of America; for I believe that the second greatest event in American history was the recent World War, which, cracking the Old World to its foundations, left the United States standing like a granite rock.In writing this book my object has been to examine what Grant accomplished as a soldier; to show that as such he has not been fully appreciated, and that as he looked upon war as a necessary evil so long as peace remains imperfect, we also, after the greatest war in modern times, may find in his honesty and in his vision our direction towards creating a happier and less turbulent world. "e;Let us have peace,"e; he said: well then-let us examine war."e;-J.

F. C. Fuller, Preface