Person
Ulysses S. Grant
Commander, Union Army of the Tennessee
Life: 1822–1885
The commander who replaced the town with the line the town was blocking as his object — and gave up his own supply line to reach it.
A commander who failed at Vicksburg repeatedly: through the swamps from the north, and by digging a canal to move the river. The ordinary conclusion is that the town cannot be taken frontally. His was that the object was not the town but the line the town blocked. To get at it he cut loose from his own supply line, trading food for the disappearance of anything to defend, swung inland for seventeen days and five actions, and sealed the town from the east. A man who could choose the unglamorous way of winning and stay with it.
Strategic signature — give up the premise for the sake of the aim
Grant failed repeatedly at Vicksburg. He tried to come through the swamps from the north, he dug a canal to move the river itself, and none of it worked. The ordinary conclusion at that point is that the town cannot be taken frontally. His conclusion was different: go after not the town but the line the town was blocking.
To do it he cut loose from his own supply line. Supplies stop arriving, but so does the need to guard a line, and freedom of movement is what you get in exchange. Pay a price to remove a constraint — that is the shape of this man's decisions. 17 days, 5 actions, some 290 km on foot13.
Recurring patterns
Separate the aim from the means
Taking the town and opening the river are different aims. If the second is the aim, the first is only one way to it.
Pay to remove a constraint
Cut the supply line and you go hungry — and you also stop having a line to defend. He could say what he was giving up and what for.
Do not count the failures
Nearly everything attempted since the previous winter had failed. What matters is not the tally but whether an untried direction remains.
Give up on the assault
After both May attacks failed he switched to digging. He did not require his victories to look impressive.
Strengths and weaknesses
Works back from the aim and will swap the means boldly.
That boldness is the same thing as having no way back if it misses. Pushed off the east bank, there was no line home.
Will choose the unglamorous way of winning and stay with it.
Being unglamorous, it loses the memory to a more dramatic victory won the same week.
Where the signature showed — Vicksburg
What he took was not a town but a line. The 47-day siege was the dullest and surest method left after the assaults failed. If Stalingrad is a design for pinning the enemy in place, this is a design for stopping things reaching him.
Photograph by Mathew Brady, c. 1870, Library of Congress — seven years after Vicksburg. Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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