Ulysses S. Grant: Commander Trivia Quiz

Answer: They were as afraid of his forces as he was of theirs.

Grant said, "This was a view of the question I had never taken before; but it was one I never forgot afterwards. From that event to the close of the war, I never experienced trepidation upon confronting an enemy, though I always felt more or less anxiety. I never forgot that he had as much reason to fear my forces as I had his. The lesson was valuable."

Answer: Told his men that the first to attack will win.

Grant calmly attacked with his left, talking the pressure off the right. He reorganized the right and regained the lines before the Confederate attack and he won the battle.

He responded to General Buckner, now commanding in Donelson, his terms: "Sir: Yours of this date proposing Armistice and appointment of Commissioners to settle terms of Capitulation is just received. No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works. I am sir, very respectfully, Your obt.svt. Grant"

Answer: A slaughter-fest between amateur armies

"Men ... Lying in every conceivable position; the dead ... with their eyes wide open, the wounded begging piteously for help ... I seemed ... in sort of a daze." Sherman described, "piles of dead soldiers, mangled bodies ... without heads and legs ... The scenes on this field would have cured anybody of war."

Answer: The Mississippi became a Federal river, and the Confederacy was split in two.

In the first eighteen days after crossing the Mississippi, he fought five battles--Port Gibson, Raymond, Jackson, Champion's Hill and Big Black River. He marched 200 miles with only five days of rations--and then took Vicksburg after a siege of about six weeks.

His losses are instructive. Between April 30 and July 4 Grant lost 1,243 killed, 7,095 wounded and 535 missing, a total of 8,873; he killed and wounded about 10,000 Confederates and captured 37,000; among these were 15 generals and 72 cannon.

Answer: Immediately opens the supply route at a cost of 4 men killed

The Battle of Chattanooga had momentous results. It confirmed indisputable possession by the Federal army of Chattanooga, the rail center and the heart city of the South, a community which more than any other tied the sprawling Confederacy into a nation. Grant regarded his victory as well-nigh epochal: "If the same license had been allowed the people and the press in the South that had been allowed in the North, Chattanooga would probably have been the last battle fought for the preservation of the Union."

Answer: Promoted him to Lieutenant General

General Grant was the second such awardee; President Washington was the first, awarded it in 1798, a year before he died.

Answer: A spartan existence

In comparison with the rank and file of high command, Grant ate poorly (he liked cucumbers and vinegar for breakfast); he had one extra uniform (which was a private's uniform with stars pinned on); and his staff was the size of one more closely associated with a regimental command.

Answer: Total war

Sheridan was instructed by Grant to end Confederate military power in the Valley and to destroy the Valley as an economic asset: "It is desirable that nothing should be left to invite the enemy to return. Take all provisions, forage and stock ... Such as cannot be consumed, destroy ... If the war is to last another year, we want the Shenandoah Valley to remain a barren waste."
Sherman's march had a decisive influence on the war for the destruction he wrought in Georgia.

Answer: All these

Grant and Lincoln forged an effective partership in the prosecution of the war. Lincoln redefined the concept of commander-in-chief, and Halleck created the concept of chief-of-staff, and Grant as general-in-chief, bringing politics and war-making into a unified cohesive structure.

Answer: Appomattox Courthouse

Grant did not tarry. Grant and his staff rode back to Headquarters. The news of what had happened preceded them. Cheers and artillery resounded! Grant then directed his staff officers to tell his subordinates to stop the celebration. "The war is over," he observed. "The Rebels are our countrymen again."