Though Grant earned his nickname on many occasions; seems to be a hallmark of Yankee generals from Grant and MacArthur to MacArthur and Ike. Say what they will of Southerners, but where would the US be without Washington, Lighthorse Harry Lee and Patton?

While I do not have a citation handy, IIRC Lincoln and/or Grant reprimanded Sherman for that and ordered it stopped on at least one occasion. Too many modern Southerners as eager for war as their forbearers take the wrong lesson from that, btw: Force a war on people who regard war ITSELF as inherently immoral and those civilized cultured liberals turn into brutal savages. They have already forfeited their moral integrity by even deigning to fight, so in for a penny, in for a pound. Further, they resent the wars instigators far too deeply to feel any mercy or sympathy: Their sole concern is "inflicting a peace" so harrowing it forever ends ALL temptation for further war.

Not that that WORKS; just the opposite, as countless wars between countless nations have shown: That is why genocide was invented almost simultaneously with "civilization." But it does hold a valuable VITAL lesson for those with wit to learn: Anyone who starts a war like that better be CERTAIN of winning, because the sad truth is the victor is seldom asked ANY questions; no one who wants an answer has any power to compel one. And the only thing that has changed since the Civil War is that the South had all the money back then: Now the NORTH does.

Again, there is little evidence Grant was ever complicit in fraud or bribery: He just placed far too implicit trust (both personal and public) in many friends who were greedy and corrupt. Now, his political protege Rutherfraud Hayes, well, he became president by trading the South a century of Jim Crow in exchange for giving Republicans ALL the electoral votes of the Albamans and Floridians Republicans burned out of their own homes just a decade earlier, and it was downhill through Credit Mobilier and the rest from there. Seriously, how can you be a Republican KNOWING all this?

Fair point on the Northerners, too; at least as many of the powerbrokers driving that war were motivated by the Southerner monopoly on raw materials vital to Northern factories. They tried fixing that with intranational tariffs and outright price increases, but that always failed because however much the price of Northern-manufactured Southern goods rose, the South could and did always make it up by simply raising the price of cotton, wool, flax, produce, lumber and all the rest. The only route to an industrialized US was over the broken back of Jeffersonian democracys yeoman farmers; it began with the Civil War and ended when the banks foreclosed on all the land during the Depression, a good deal for Monsanto and ADM, but brutal for all others.

The most pathetic thing about that whole charade was that the North introduced conscription, but let every draftee evade it by paying a "substitute" $300 to go instead. Just as Southern plantation owners commanded from the bivouac smoking cigars and sipping brandy while Southern sharecroppers squatted in the mud and blood of the trenches till gangrene took their feet. It was truly "a rich mans war but a poor mans fight." Like most of them.