Grant under fire

"He has a sterling reputation as an officer and a gentleman, despite suffering the biggest surprise of the war, initiating the worst official act of anti-Semitism on U.S. soil, and coming closest of all Union commanders to losing Washington. Defenders rank his generalship above Robert E. Lee's, but in doing so, they ignore his simplistic, pugnacious strategies that led to a war of attrition and his amateurish tactics of impetuous frontal assaults, all along the line against fortified positions. He relied on favoritism to decide military matters, trashing personal enemies, unreasonably…