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So the comments on this post got me thinking. Who was the best general in American History? It’s been several centuries, the US has fought lots of wars, and we have lots of famous generals.
So, who is it? Well, first, a disclaimer. As a historian I hate “who is the best…” or ranking lists of all kinds. History isn’t a sport, and it’s not organized like one. Generals don’t often get to fight against one another and certainly generals from the same countries rarely do. They fight in different eras with different resources and different enemies. Generals fight the wars in front of them, not the wars they want and certainly not a standardized war that would allow us to dial out personal differences. That makes rankings unfair, no matter how they are organized.
Nonetheless, it’s the end of the year when rankings flourish like kudzu, and I’m going to do it. Or, at least, I’m going to lay out a case and make a choice based on that case. It won’t be the only possible case. It might not even be the best case. It’ll be my case, though.
So, onward.
My first requirement is that the general had to be fighting for the United States. Uncontroversial, seemingly, but there go Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
My second requirement is that the general had to be fighting an enemy that was equal or superior to the United States in military and economic power and the general had to be fighting the main body of the enemy in that war. Everyone looks great beating up the Cleveland Cavaliers (sorry, sports metaphor). They’re out.
That takes out the Indian Wars of the 19th century, the Spanish-American War, the Philippine-American War (ahh, booo!), the Boxer Rebellion (double boo!), the Moro War, the interventions in Latin America, World War II (Japan was nowhere near equal to the US in economic size and the larger part of their army was in Manchuria during the war; Germany always had the bulk of its army in the East) and everything post-1945.
Whew.
Eliminated are such contenders as Arthur MacArthur, Teddy Roosevelt (okay, he was never a general, but still…), Adna Chaffee, George Patton, Omar Bradley, Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, Matthew Ridgway, Creighton Abrams, Norman Schwarzkopf, Colin Powell, and David Petraeus.* If I’m leaving anyone out, remind me in the comments.
The wars left are the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War, and World War I.My third requirement is that the general must have some argument to being the critical general of that conflict. That means that either they were the overall commanding general or were of such importance that they cannot be ignored. Or both.
Eliminated are “Light Horse” Harry Lee (not a general), William Sherman (wasn’t fighting the main body of the enemy), George Thomas (ditto), and Black Jack Pershing (not the most important commander).
Thus, for generals left after the three requirements, we have George Washington, Horatio Gates, Winfield Scott, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, George McClellan, George Meade, and Ulysses S. Grant.
I’m eliminating Gates immediately. Saratoga was the victory of the Revolution but Camden was a disaster. Out also goes Andrew Jackson. New Orleans was a great battle to set up a Presidential run, but otherwise it was British stupidity that shaped it more than Jackson’s abilities. Plus, one battle? Feh. Zachary Taylor’s battles in the Mexican-American War were unimaginative bloodbaths, and he wasn’t even a famous President afterwards. McClellan? Okay, I know he was facing Robert E. Lee, but the man was a nickname rather than a general. Meade won Gettysburg, the most important battle of the most important war of American history, but that doesn’t make him the greatest general.
That leaves Washington, Scott, and Grant.
Two more get eliminated tomorrow, sort of, and the first one eliminated isn’t the one you might guess.
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*One of the unfair parts of my formulation is that it eliminates those fighting counter-insurgenices. Insurgency warfare is a form of tactics designed effectively to eliminate large differences in military and economic resources.
The Edge of the American West 
34 comments
December 21, 2011 at 8:43 pm
eric
You’re also stipulating we had to have won the war, maybe?
December 21, 2011 at 8:44 pm
eric
Also, it seems a little bogus, this eliminating World War II.
December 21, 2011 at 8:58 pm
Mike W
Well, we won all the relevant wars. Of the three, the one I’d guess to be the first to go would be Washington–he was good at getting out of tricky situations and likewise being at the right place at the right time, but I don’t think he raises to the level of the genius of the other two. For a good portion of the Revolutionary War, all he had to do was hold his army together and win by a combination of attrition and the changing diplomatic situation–no small accomplishment, but not as obviously impressive.
Of the other two, I’m leaning towards Scott being the greatest. My faulty memory of the Mexican-War is that he showed both strategic and tactical skill, contrasted well with Taylor (and was more instrumental to winning than Taylor–wasn’t Taylor deployed to a sideshow on the border, while Scott marched from the sea to Mexico City?). And as a bonus, he was still ticking in the 60’s, long enough to formulate the Anaconda Plan. Not to slight Grant–he understood the new forms of warfare the war was built around better than anyone else, and he both triumphed in the west and closed the war in the east.
The fact that Scott is the only one not on any currency probably factors into this decision one way or the other.
December 21, 2011 at 9:19 pm
ari
Once Eric realized that FDR can’t win, even by proxy, he lost interest.
December 21, 2011 at 9:26 pm
ari
Also, it’s gotta be Grant, right? I’d offer my reasons, but I prefer to wait to see if I’m right and then, assuming I am, pretend that whatever you write is what I was going to say. No, that’s not as cowardly a strategy as it might appear. Riding the coattails of actual experts is trickier than it looks!
December 21, 2011 at 9:31 pm
Spike
Its a stretch to call the Mexico of the 1840s equal or superior to the United States in military and economic power. If the had been, we wouldn’t have had a war.
December 21, 2011 at 9:39 pm
eric
I believe Spike is correct. So did Grant, of course:
December 22, 2011 at 4:41 am
chris y
Hello? American generals fighting in Europe and North Africa in WWII weren’t fighting the main body of the enemy, but neither were they leading the main body of US forces, which was concentrated in the Pacific. Therefore they should qualify.
December 22, 2011 at 5:33 am
Mr Punch
“[E]qual or superior to the United States in military and economic power – Mexico? The Confederacy? Too easy. I think this and the “main body of the enemy” criterion are questionable though. A commander is responsible only for his (unless Jeanne d’Arc) theater, and these are less than ideal measures of degree of difficulty (implying, for example, that poor people can’t fight).
December 22, 2011 at 6:09 am
Lurker
In fact, as Mr. Punch lines out, the US has never waged war against an equal enemy, one against one. In 1812 and in the Revolutionary War, the US was waging war against a massively superior enemy, and without credible chances to win with a decisive US military action. In both cases, the solution was brought by waging a war of attrition against an empire for which the US was a secondary theatre of action. In WWI, the US came into the fight late, and fought with two cobelligrents that had massive military resources.
I’d like to posit that a typical war for the US has been a counter-insurgency campaign. That is what the US generals usually do. Thus, the “greatest US general” should be a general who has managed a successful “small war”.
December 22, 2011 at 7:41 am
politicalfootball
Washington played during the dead musketball era, and his results should be adjusted accordingly. I’ll get back to you after I refer to my U.S. generals trading cards.
December 22, 2011 at 8:30 am
sleepyirv
The secret of being a great historian or magician: setting the parameters in your favor. Will Scott get extra credit for creating the Anaconda plan?
December 22, 2011 at 8:31 am
Ben C
It has to be Grant. You have to be a good politician to be a good general, and Scott was spectacularly bad at this. Also, the magnitude of Grant’s strategic victory far outshines Scott’s. While Scott was unquestionably a brilliant strategic mind, and he may have had the Duke of Wellington’s vote, the garland goes to Grant.
I’d eliminate Washington for the same reason that Mike W lists above, although Washington does qualify as “good politician” in terms of his relationships with civilians, Congress, and his own men.
December 22, 2011 at 8:56 am
Anderson
“equal or superior to the United States in military and economic power”
Concur w/ Punch and Lurker: the Confederacy and Mexico are disqualified by that element. Which leaves Washington as the greatest American general. Which suggests something is wrong with the question.
(Washington can be underrated of course; fighting the British Empire with a ragtag army was no mean achievement.)
… Also, claiming that Scott possessed strategic skill and Grant did not would mean overlooking the Vicksburg campaign; it took Grant a while to figure out the strategy, but once he did, it worked brilliantly, totally throwing away the rulebook and astonishing friend and enemy alike.
December 22, 2011 at 9:02 am
silbey
Rapid fire responses, while I work on part II:
“bogus”: hah! Ari’s got it right. Mexico: Had a larger army than the US, and comparable (ie same order of magnitude) population and GDP in 1846 (their’s was about half the size of ours, for each). By comparison, Japan’s population was comparable in 1940 (about half the US), but GDP was anywhere from 1/5 to 1/10 that of the United States. Grant was writing from a very long distance in time about the Mexican War, and a distance which had seen the US become–briefly–the greatest military power in the world. @Chris Y: the main body of American forces were in Europe in WWII (60 Army divisions vs. about 30-40 in the Pacific). Germany First!. In any case, the way you’ve framed it was not how my requirement read. @Mr. Punch Thus the last sentence in the second paragraph and the entirety of paragraph 3. @Lurker: I think that the Mexican-American War and the Civil War qualify as wars against relative equals (Potentially the Spanish-American War, though I disqualified it in the post. Any good generals in that war I’m leaving out?). YMMV. The 20th century is a bit difficult after 1918, because how do you handicap the difficulties of distance? The US is certainly enormously larger than Japan in economic terms, but Okinawa is close to Japan and distant from the US. Again, last sentence of paragraph 2. As to counterinsurgencies, note the footnote. @PF: Hah hah! In fact, Washington’s WAR, adjusted for era, are quite high.
(Note also that I’ve disqualified Air Force generals and Admirals. The former because there’s not really enough of a history and the latter because sea warfare is different, and because the US hasn’t really had a historically broad range of great admirals. It would kind of be Oliver Hazard Perry vs. a bunch of WWII folks. And I’d choose Frank Jack Fletcher, just to annoy people anyway.)
December 22, 2011 at 10:39 am
arbitrista
I’d have to say that Grant gets the prize Scott faced generals of much poorer quality, and Washington lost many more of his battles. One can argue the point, but I think that Lee was a much more formidable adversary than Howe, Clinton, etc. Additionally, Grant was fighting an offensive war in a time when the tactical advantage was shifting much more to the defensive side of the field. I don’t believe Scott had to assault lines of minie rifles. I think Washington probably ranks second, given his ability to keep an army of volunteers intact when fighting professionals, for avoiding major defeats, and for his gem at Trenton.
December 22, 2011 at 10:53 am
Ralph Hitchens
Has to be George Washington, & I disagree with Mike W. above, who in my opinion completely underestimates how hard it was to do “all he had to do.” Washington learned from his mistakes, convincing squabbling politicians and squabbling army officers to continue trusting him. With an army barely worthy of the name he forced the British into a humiliating withdrawal from Boston. He pulled off the epic Trenton-Princeton counterattack campaign from the depths of what seemed like near-total defeat in the winter of 1776-77. He erred seriously at Brandywine, but extracted his army, fought energetically at Germantown, and, after a hard winter, fought the British to a respectable draw at Monmouth. Thereafter he contained the main British forces in the New York area, and seemed to have realized that their southern campaign was strategically pointless and would probably fail. Finally, his Yorktown campaign was a strategic success unprecedented in scale during the 18th century, in terms of coordinating the timely juncture of an army and a fleet to achieve decisive results. I see nothing in America’s subsequent wars that comes close to matching these achievements.
December 22, 2011 at 11:52 am
Josh
because the US hasn’t really had a historically broad range of great admirals
“Your conclusions were all wrong […] Halsey acted stupidly.”
December 22, 2011 at 12:44 pm
WM Rine
Have to agree with Chris Y that you can’t leave out WWII, no matter what the relative economic strength of the US versus Germany. In The Storms of War, Anthony Roberts makes the convincing case that under some different circumstances and with some different decisions, the Germans might have won the war; in any case his narrative suggests that the German troops in WWII were the best fighters, by a significant margin.
Of those you have left, I’d probably argue for Scott. Grant’s 1864 campaign through Virginia to Petersburg was a disaster that would have cost Lincoln re-election were it not for Sherman’s taking Atlanta.
December 22, 2011 at 2:00 pm
Anderson
Grant’s 1864 campaign through Virginia to Petersburg was a disaster
Yes, which is why Grant surrendered to Lee at Appomattox.
December 22, 2011 at 4:12 pm
WM Rine
“Yes, which is why Grant surrendered to Lee at Appomattox.”
OK. By that line of logic, all you need to be a great general is more bodies to throw into the meat grinder than your opponent, and more supplies to feed the ones that live through it.
I, um, actually thought we were assessing capability, not just who won.
December 22, 2011 at 5:10 pm
silbey
@Josh: Hah! Nice Red October reference. @WM Rine One of the reasons why this an artificial exercise is that, at a certain level, war is about who won. Hannibal was certainly a better general than any of the Romans who faced him, capability-wise, but that didn’t help Carthage all that much. But, in any case, my posts were about capability.
By the way, it’s Andrew Roberts who wrote The Storms of War, not Anthony, and I prefer RJ Overy’s Why the Allies Won. Roberts’ book is a little too much in the Ferguson/Charmley “look at how the British empire threw itself away for nothing in WWII” school.
December 22, 2011 at 6:11 pm
rea
By that line of logic, all you need to be a great general is more bodies to throw into the meat grinder than your opponent, and more supplies to feed the ones that live through it.
Well, but (1) Grant recognized the nature of the Union advantage over the Confederacy, and had the intelligence and moral courage to apply that advantage to win the war, and (2) Grant’s excellence ws in operations and strategy, not tac tics 9which arguably wsn’t his job in 1864-1865, anyway.
Grant’s greatness shines through at that famous moment at the end of the Wilderness, when he turned his army south rather than north. Compare Joe Hooker, a decent general in many ways, who retreated after his army was mauled in much the same way Grant’s was, on the same ground. We remember two very similar battles, the Wilderness and Chancellorsville, very differently, but the real difference is that Hooker thought he’d been beat, and Grant knew he wasn’t.
December 22, 2011 at 6:38 pm
steve
First saying Sherman was not fighting the main body of the enemy shows plain ignorance of the Civil War. When the Confederate Army of the Tennessee surrendered it had 89,000 troops (is that chopped liver?) and the Army of Northern Virginia had 70,000. Both of these Confederate armies were just as viable. Sherman should be added, plus he understood the best tactics for the weaponry technology of the time. With Sherman there was never a Pickett’s Charge or a Cold Harbor. Jefferson Davis personally wrecked the Army of the Tennessee by sacking Joseph Johnston and replacing him with John Buell Hood.
Now for Pershing, he did make the difference World War I. He kept American troops from being murdered by the French and British. Remember we had the same type of warfare 55 years earlier. A general without a backbone would have let American army be bullied by the French and British. Give him that credit.
Stating Eisenhower destroyed the Germans in World War II is a huge stretch, so I agree, he does not belong on the list. The United States did not beat Germany; it was the Soviet Union and the US Army Air Corp. Therefore Hap Arnold needs to be added to the list. On the Pacific side of World War II there was Admiral Nimitz who definitely should have been added to the list. Douglas MacArthur was regulated to a minor role and as far as I am concerned should have been left at Corregidor. Also realize the person who made Hap Arnold shine in Europe went to the Pacific Theater and decimated the Japanese homeland, Curtis Lemay. He also should be added to the list.
December 23, 2011 at 4:50 am
rea
With Sherman there was never a Pickett’s Charge or a Cold Harbor.
Chickasaw Bluffs?
The post gives Gates waaay too much credit, by the way. He did nothing discerable at Saratoga other than to get in the way of Arnold and Morgan.
December 23, 2011 at 9:08 am
silbey
Random responses: @steve Nothing like introducing yourself to a blog by insulting the poster. Thanks. I would–if I were an impolite type–respond by pointing out that someone who thinks that “main body of the enemy” is entirely about number of soldiers is plain ignorant. Good thing that I’m a polite sort of fellow. Pershing: He did a good job in WWI, but that doesn’t make him the greatest American general. As to the admirals and air force generals, see my post earlier in the thread about why they’re not being considered. @rea Grant and tactics: Grant was pretty solid at tactics and maneuver (see the Vicksburg Campaign), but he wasn’t Robert E. Lee. He was smart enough to recognize that. Gates: Some people got eliminated at one point, some at others.
December 23, 2011 at 11:38 am
Anderson
“By that line of logic, all you need to be a great general is more bodies to throw into the meat grinder than your opponent, and more supplies to feed the ones that live through it.”
And yet this was so simple and obvious that Lincoln went through, uh, how many generals before he found Grant?
There was not a great deal to be done with maneuver against the Army of Northern Virginia: Richmond was *there*, Lee’s army was between Grant and Richmond, and at some point the two were going to have to lock horns. Maneuver favored Lee.
Sometimes, being a great general means you *do* throw bodies into the meat grinder, if that is what it takes to win.
December 24, 2011 at 10:36 am
Ralph Hitchens
One last word re. Grant: His frontal assault at Cold Harbor was a serious mistake, as he acknowledged, but his wide swing across the James to Petersburg was a masterstroke — as Esposito noted, he “completely outwitted Lee.” Grant’s error throughout the overland campaign was that he failed to lead from the front, where he might have seen what was working and who needed more prodding; Petersburg was there for the taking, had he or Meade been closer to the front. Still, at the end of the summer he had pinned Lee to Richmond, and the great master of maneuver was decisively out of the maneuver business thereafter.
This is the sort of online discussion I relish!
December 24, 2011 at 11:01 am
silbey
Let me re-emphasize Ralph’s excellent point. Within two months in 1864, Grant had robbed Lee’s ability to use his greatest talent, his skill at maneuver. That’s a remarkable achievement.
And, by the way, if Grant was such a butcher, why were his casualties during the Overland Campaign roughly comparable to Lee as a percentage of their forces?
(If you take out Cold Harbor, Grant’s casualties are substantially *less* as a percentage of his force than Lee’s were. You obviously can’t take out Cold Harbor, but it’s worth noting).
December 24, 2011 at 12:03 pm
ari
And, by the way, if Grant was such a butcher, why were his casualties during the Overland Campaign roughly comparable to Lee as a percentage of their forces?
I never tire of making this point in my Civil War class. And I do harp on the aberrant nature of Cold Harbor, which, as others have said, Grant himself knew was a major blunder. Also, the more I teach the Civil War, the more depressing it becomes. I can’t tell if that’s just because of my maturing affect, an outgrowth of the current trajectory of national politics (in which Southern fire-eaters sometimes seem to have won the peace), or something else entirely. Nevertheless, the whole course this past quarter was one long dirge.
December 29, 2011 at 4:31 am
bexley
Disclaimer: This isn’t on the main topic of the post so feel free to ignore it.
Isn’t it the case that if Hitler had been capable of making those different decisions then in all likelihood there wouldn’t have been a european war in the first case? Sure, there were some blunders (Stalingrad) that ended up dooming German armies that you can imagine being different in some alternative universe. However others (such as how badly conquered Eastern populations were treated) were a direct result of Hitler’s core ideologies. If the Nazis had been capable of treating the conquered Soviet populace well, they wouldn’t have launched a war in which they aimed to settle large chunks of the German rural populace in the East by displacing the existing inhabitants.
December 30, 2011 at 7:38 am
TF Smith
Bexley –
Sure, but an alternative history where Adolf becomes a sucessful artist and decent human being (because of universal pre-school in Pisdorf or whatever) isn’t half as much fun who those who start off their days thinking “if only HItler hadn’t been such a bastard…”
Second-guessing Ma and Pa Hitler or his kindergarten teacher isn’t nearly as entertaining for those who wallow in such as second-guessing those who actually stood up back in the day and defeated the Hitlers, Tojos, and Mussolinis of the world…
Where’s the wish-fulfilment in something like “Inglorious Basterds” otherwise?
Best,
January 11, 2012 at 4:29 pm
chris
My second requirement is that the general had to be fighting an enemy that was equal or superior to the United States in military and economic power
As others have suggested, I’m surprised the Confederacy makes it over this bar. Especially if you agree that Grant wasn’t really as good as Lee but beat him anyway — that’s perilously close to *proof* that the material differences between the sides were insurmountable, and it really only took someone capable of realizing that they had the resources to grind the Confederacy into dust, and dogged enough to do it.
January 11, 2012 at 4:34 pm
Silbey
Grant wasn’t as good as Lee. He was better.