Grant & Taylor

Both were great improvisers who were relentless in battle. Like lifting a heavy ceiling beam into position, the important thing was to continue the momentum of an attack. Both did so even against superior numbers or fortified positions, as long as they were convinced that taking the risk was strategically sound. Taylor and Grant were less interested in strict, pure military doctrine than changing plans to get results based on contingencies. Both came back quickly after setbacks. Grant saw firsthand how Taylor regrouped after falling back at Monterey in 1846, and was well aware of Taylor’s comeback at Buena Vista in 1847. He remembered the examples when he did the same at Shiloh in 1862.

Taylor and Grant both made due with what they had on hand or could create in the field, without complaining. In his Memoirs, Grant wrote that Taylor, whose nickname was “Old Rough and Ready,” operated “with the means given him.” If he argued for more resources and didn’t get them, “he would have gone on and done the best he could,” wrote Grant.

Both were willing to take losses in assaults that they believed would ultimately save lives by shortening battles and wars. Both caught political and journalistic flack as a result, but just went on winning. Taylor and Grant were both clearheaded and calm under fire. They both moved freely through their commands to see things for themselves, as Grant biographer Jean Edward Smith observed.

Grant also learned much about professionalism and strategy from General Winfield Scott. Scott, however, was too formal, officious, meticulous, and pompous for Grant, who preferred the style and approach of Taylor.

Taylor and Grant always remembered that their battlefield enemies were human beings and recognized the strategic advantages to treating them as such. Taylor and Grant were both magnanimous (and politically astute, whether or not they realized it) military victors. They knew that achieving the objective, not humiliating a worthy opponent, was the point. Taylor offered generous surrender terms to the Mexican army at Monterey. Grant remembered. Almost 20 years later, he offered almost identical terms to Lee’s defeated Army at Appomattox, wrote Smith. In making those terms, Grant paid “unspoken tribute to Taylor,” Smith noted.