Major Jonathan Bratton

and do it in a way that is humble, almost like uniquely American.

I think you see when Grant comes east, you see him accompany the Army of the Potomac, the main theater army in the Eastern Theater in 1864.

See him accompany the army, not take command.

So he's going and immediately starting to listen.

He places a lot of value in General George Meade's knowledge and understanding of the situation in the East.

He also knows that his job, it is to provide vision and direction for that field army, but also to all the other field armies.

when you look at his attempts at grand strategy to not just tie his operations into Virginia, into sort of what's happening in the East, you know, along the realm of Petersburg, but also the Shenandoah Valley, but he's also looking at how is this tying into the Western theater?

How is this looking at tying into Sherman's operations into Georgia, as well as the Navy's operations?

So he's thinking holistically about,

For the Army of the Potomac, he fully understands the soldiers' belief in themselves that all they need is a general who will put the same faith in them that they have in themselves.

And this is something that you begin to get this feeling from Chancellorsville in 1863.

Major defeat of the Army of the Potomac, but the soldiers don't see it that way.

They say, hey, we fought like hell.

We did a great job.

We just need a general who believes in us as much as we believe in ourselves.

And they get that with Grant.

Yes, he is going to cause a lot of casualties in the Overland Campaign.

That's mainly because the Overland Campaign is simply a series of battles.

Almost every three days, there's a battle.

It's pretty close in numbers to the Seven Days Campaign of George B. McCollum in 1862, who we never talk about as a bloody general.