A Fight to the Finish

Robert E. Lee, in a meeting with some of his officers on May 11, 1864, at the end of a day of more hard fighting, was discussing information about the movements of Union forces and what should be done to counter them when a staff officer said something about how General Grant had been throwing his troops against Confederate defenses like a “butcher.”

“I think,” Lee said, “that General Grant has managed his affairs remarkably well up to the present time.”  

Read all of Geoffrey Norman's essay in The Weekly Standard.