‘My General Idea of This War’: Simultaneous Advances and Civil War Military History

This essay offers a reconsideration of an idea in the ‘old’ military history, the wisdom of simultaneous advances by Union armies, that has become part of the established wisdom about the American Civil War. It describes how Ulysses S. Grant, whom historians have praised as evidence of Abraham Lincoln's wisdom in advocating simultaneous advances, understood there were times to employ alternative methods in conducting operations—and how in doing so, he was acting in line with Lincoln's own observation that there were times to set aside rules and ‘think anew’.