Cold Harbor

Grant vs Lee: The Flag of Truce at Cold Harbor

 in Cold Harbor / Grant / Grant biographies / Historiography / Lee / Meade / Reliability  tagged Grant / Historians by

One of the episodes that demonstrates how General Ulysses S. Grant’s biographers continue an undue exultation of their hero—and simultaneously denigrate General Robert E. Lee—is the much-belated flag-of-truce after his horrendous defeat at Cold Harbor on June 3, 1864. Probably hundreds of Union soldiers died unnecessarily as a result. Grant’s former staff member, Adam Badeau, directly blamed Lee for the fiasco, since Grant supposedly had “at once” sent to the […]

The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth

 in Chattanooga / Cold Harbor / Discrimination / Drinking / Favoritism / Generalship / Grant / Grant biographies / Grant Under Fire / Grant's Memoirs / Henry & Donelson / Historiography / Honesty / Hooker / Lee / Lew Wallace / McClernand / Meade / Paducah / Presidency / Reliability / Rosecrans / Sheridan / Sherman / Shiloh / Strategy / Tactics / Thomas / Vicksburg / Wilderness by

A forthcoming book posits that the “Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth” involves the existence or non-existence of Black Confederate soldiers. Yet, the Amazon description admits that it “largely originated in the 1970s.” Many myths concerning that conflict have persisted well beyond fifty years. I would nominate a far older and much more egregious example of distorted history. General Ulysses S. Grant has acquired a sterling reputation as an officer and […]

Horace Porter falsified history 2 comments

 in Battles / Cold Harbor / Grant / Grant biographies / Historiography / Petersburg / Porter / Wilderness by

James M. McPherson, in his introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of U.S. Grant’s Personal Memoirs, noted how Horace Porter served on Grant’s staff from the Wilderness to Appomattox. McPherson concluded that, Porter’s “own version of those events, entitled Campaigning with Grant, is next in value only to Grant’s memoirs as a firsthand account of command decisions in that campaign.” Porter in his own preface maintained that, “While serving as […]