The Top Nine American Generals in History

We rank American generals on tactical brilliance, strategic insight and choosing the right subordinates.  

Transcript

The top Nine Generals in American History

August 2025 

A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week. 

George S. Patton

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. Dwight D. Eisenhower

It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it.

Robert E. Lee 

As with all listings, there needs to be some criteria. This is a list based solely on the merits of their military careers, so Ulyssess S. Grant’s or Dwight D Eisenhower’s presidencies are non-factors.  And even politics surrounding their positions is not relevant.  Whether one thinks of Robert E. Lee as a noble Virginia patriot or a general in rebellion does not matter here.  Time frame also matters.  I believe the Confederate General Sydney Johnston might have rivaled Lee had he lived, but his death at Shiloh early in the war significantly diminishes his presence.

Also, keeping this to generals so no David Farragut, John Paul Jones, or Chester Nimitz will appear on this list.  Also, one battle, not matter how impactful will not alone bring generals to this list.  No Zachary Taylor and William Henry Harrison.  Winfield Scott Hancock was, to use his epithet, superb, but did not lead his own armies in independent command.  Thomas Jackson, who does make the list, spent the majority of the war under Lee, but often operated independently, and, of course, his Valley Campaign, one of the masterpieces of American warfare, was conducted separately.  

Honorable mentions

John J. Pershing in World War I – and tellingly the only American general, aside from Douglas MacArthur to be mentioned in context of that conflict. Andrew Jackson for New Orleans. Nathanael Greene in the Revolutionary war, JEB Stuart and Nathan Bedford Forrest, Southern cavalry leaders in the Civil War. Joe Johnston, another Southern Civil War general, Omar Bradley for World War II. And the aforementioned Zachery Taylor. Two modern generals: Norman Schwarzkopf and David Petraeus for Gulf War I and the Iraqi surge respectively. I considered Winfield Scott for his Veracruz to Mexico City campaign but not to the caliber of the nine who made this roster.

And a quick note on this list.  One of the distinctions of the great captains from history, from Napoleon to Genghis Khan to Caesar and Alexander, was the sheer number of set-piece battles and sieges they undertook.  Part of it was the nature of conquest.  Napoleon was in the field for 20 years, Alexander for over 13, Caesar even longer.  Progressives may differ, but America’s wars, though aggressive, were not the same as Alexander’s decision to conquer the Persians or Napoleon’s desire to conquer Spain.  Also, when compared with other conflicts, America’s have tended to be mercifully short.  We were in World War II for less than four years, World War I for less than three, and the Spanish-American War lasted only a few months.  With the exception of the War for Independence and the Civil War, our generals were more limited in comparison to historical figures.  Perhaps Winfield Scott was a military genius, but his body of work was essentially a single campaign, as this was the only war he fought during his prime lifetime. The same applies to Norman Schwarzkopf and David Petraeus. This list, however, obviously skews towards the Civil War.  And though I would argue that Nathanael Greene was a good general, he did lose some of his major battles. During his tenure in the South, Daniel Morgan and Francis Marion greatly assisted him.  Hence, only one commanding General from one of our longest conflicts makes it.  

And finally no mention of any general in regard to Vietnam.  

And here is the criteria:

1. Tactical success on the battlefield
2. Solid strategic decision-making
3. Ability to identify good subordinates 

9. Douglas MacArthur

MacArthur, as the son of the senior military officer in the Army in 1906, graduated first in his West Point class of 1903.  In World War I, he commanded a division. Though it was not his idea alone, MacArthur’s support of island hopping was critical to the success in the Pacific theater in World War II.  General Douglas MacArthur’s leadership in the New Guinea campaign was crucial to the Allied victory in the Pacific, characterized by his “leapfrogging” strategy, which involved bypassing Japanese defenses, his focus on capturing airfields, and his command over combined American and Australian forces in the grueling jungle war. This complex, hard-fought campaign established a vital forward base for future operations and fulfilled MacArthur’s vow to return to the Philippines, although it was a costly endeavor due to the unforgiving terrain and the prevalence of tropical diseases. However, his Luzon campaign in the Philippines was not particularly successful.  

And more than anything, his decision in the Korean War to land at Inchon, roughly 1/3 up the Peninsula, instead of 

The Battle of Inchon was an amphibious invasion and a battle of the Korean War that resulted in a decisive victory and strategic reversal in favor of the United Nations Command (UN). The operation involved some 75,000 troops and 261 naval vessels and led to the recapture of the South Korean capital of Seoul two weeks later. The code name for the Inchon operation was Operation Chromite. A rapid collapse of the KPA followed the battle; within a month of the Incheon landing, the Americans had taken 135,000 KPA troops

8. Phillip Sheridan 

I added Sheridan to this list and excluded his opposite, JEB Stuart, which may bring recrimination down on my head.  I did this for two reasons.  At critical moments during the war, Stuart left the Confederates blind for personal glory, and Sheridan exercised independent command.

He is most famous for his destruction of the Shenandoah Valley in 1864, called “The Burning” by its residents.  He was also the subject of an extremely popular poem entitled “Sheridan’s Ride”, in which he (and his famous horse, Rienzi) save the day by arriving just in time for the Battle of Cedar Creek.

In September, Sheridan defeated Jubal Early’s smaller force at Third Winchester and again at Fisher’s Hill.  Then he began “The Burning” – destroying barns, mills, railroads, factories – destroying resources for which the Confederacy had a dire need.  He made over 400 square miles of the Valley uninhabitable.  “The Burning” foreshadowed William Tecumseh Sherman’s “March to the Sea,”   another campaign aimed at denying resources to the Confederacy and bringing the war home to its civilians. 

Others will say Forrest should have been on the list, but unlike Sheridan, he did not alter the landscape of success in a similar way to Sheridan’s campaign.  Forrest was a successful general, hence the honorable mention.

7. George Washington

Speaking of a truly honorable man, George Washington, who started as a mediocre general.  So how could he have made this list?  For the simple reason that he learned.  He was wrong in trying to defend New York City, a city of large islands, against the leading naval power in the world.  He was wrong at Brandywine, employing a complex tactical scheme with ill-trained troops, and trying this at night!  Yet it was later that same year that he used the incredibly bold move at Trenton.  He developed an eye for talent, later relying on the likes of Henry Knox, Nathanael Greene, the Marquis de Lafayette, and Friedrich William von Steuben.  

After his near victory at Monmouth Courthouse, he did not attempt something reckless, such as trying to reconquer New York.  And his speed in moving to Virginia was genuinely remarkable.  And part of generalship is not just strategic insight or tactical cunning.  It is keeping the Army not only fed and intact, but also inspired.  Nearly three to four times during the war, Washington could have lost his Army not through battlefield defeat but simply due to morale.  Unlike the generals of the North in the Civil War, He had no real mechanism to keep his troops in place.  All he had was his character and his integrity, and as a general (and as a president), he had more than enough of that.  

6. Dwight Eisenhower 

Eisenhower did not have the tactical brilliance of Patton, the dogged determination of Montgomery, or the common touch of Bradley.  

Yet he could keep all of these personalities in check. One of the criteria I started with was the ability to identify and utilize talent, and Ike was a master of it.  I should add ‘manage talent’ as he inherited Montgomery.   

It was not just his subordinates, but Eisenhower’s ability to manage up, to maintain Roosevelt’s support, and keep Churchill from derailing his focused plans with secondary purposes.  

Also, after the Patton slapping incident, he managed to resuscitate his career.  Although Patton and Montgomery received the most press, it was also the selection of extremely solid, if less flashy, generals, such as 1st Army commander Courtney Hodges and Jacob Devers, commander of the 6th Army Group.  

5. William Sherman

If Thomas Jackson makes this list, spending both notable moments as the right arm of the Commander in Chief, then Sherman needs to join this list as well.  In addition to being Grant’s best General during the Vicksburg and Chattanooga campaigns, Sherman’s abilities in independent command over the Western Theater show his own brilliance. In fact, after reverses in 1864, and Sherman’s taking of Atlanta, many in the North wanted Grant replaced.  However, Sherman, the reliable subordinate, would not hear of it.   

4. George Patton

I conducted an entire podcast on the question of how much the movie Patton was similar to the real General. Mainly as it turns out.  But with a figure of Patton’s legend, it is essential to separate the myth from the man.  

Patton’s reputation rests on four different commands.  The first was his command of the westernmost invasion in the Torch scheme, where he performed well.  The second was taking control of II Corps in Tunisia. The third was Sicily, and the fourth was his stellar command of the 3rd Army; here, two items stand out.  The first was his race across France, only inhibited by his lack of supplies, especially gasoline.  The 2nd was his relief of Bastogne.  As a contemporary operation, Market Garden, in which the British 1st Airborne Division was decimated when the British XXX Corps could not relieve it in time, Bastogne, and the fate of the 101st American Airborne Division might have gone down differently were it not for Patton’s speed and efficiency in relief. And unlike XXX Corp, Patton was reacting to the Germans with so little prep time.  

If Patton had any actual blemish on his record, it was his off-the-battlefield conduct in terms of insubordination and the slapping incident that cost him his Sicilian campaign.  It is a testimony to Eisenhower 

3. US Grant

If Jackson’s Valley campaign was the singular masterpiece of the Civil War, a drastically inferior force using internal lines and speed to beat much larger foes, then the 2nd best was Grant’s Vicksburg campaign. From May 1 to May 14, Grant fought four major battles, culminating in the isolation of Vicksburg, which surrendered on July 4.  This sundered the Confederacy in two, and as much as Gettysburg, limited future Confederate strategic moves to purely defensive ones.  

His campaign around Chattanooga was also brilliant. 

It was also Grant’s understanding of the nature of the Civil War that ultimately prevailed.  It was the tendency of the Union Army after defeats such as 2nd Bull Run, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville to pull back to Washington, resupply, regroup, and try again.  After a similar defeat at the hands of Lee in the Wilderness, Grant continued South, having supplies and reinforcements funnelled to him.  From that moment forward, all of Lee’s victories at Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and the Crater were pyrrhic.  Although a failed shopkeeper, Grant knew these numbers: 11.5 million men in the North versus 4.5 million men in the South.  All of Lee’s considerable brilliance could not best the math.  From the Wilderness through Appomattox, Grant never approached the genius of his Vicksburg campaign or even Chattanooga.  But he brought the war to a close, achieving unconditional surrender after so many Union generals had failed.  

2. Thomas J. Jackson

I struggled with ranking Jackson this high.  Many of his greatest battles from 1st Bull Run to 2nd Bull Run and Chancellorsville were fought under Lee’s direction.  Yet, given the autonomy that Lee liked to afford his lieutenants, many of the decisions were ultimately made by Jackson.  Enough to make this list.  But it was the 1862 Valley campaign that cemented this place—the spring 1862 campaign through the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia during the American Civil War. Employing audacity and rapid, unpredictable movements on interior lines, Jackson’s 17,000 men marched 646 miles (1,040 km) in 48 days and won several minor battles as they successfully engaged three Union armies (52,000 men), preventing them from reinforcing the Union offensive against Richmond.  And even in the initial battle at Kernstown, technically a Jackson loss, siphoned off troops from McClellan’s peninsula campaign, the main thrust of the Union effort in early 1862.   

Add to this his critical performances under Lee at 2nd Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville, the battle in which he lost his life to friendly fire.  Only adds to his luster as a general.  And I am not omitting 1st Bull Run.  I have argued that it was a train that saved the Confederacy and, sadly, led to the subsequent loss of 600,000 deaths in the overall conflict.  But it was also Jackson’s conduct on that field that not only earned him the epithet that is treated almost as a middle name, Stonewall, but that saved the day for the South – until the bitter end, of course, in April 1865.  

1. Robert E. Lee

I began by noting that a general needed to have several set-piece battles on their resume.  No single American ever won more large battles than Robert E Lee. The list is impressive: Seven Days’ Battle, 2nd Bull Run, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, the Wilderness, Cold Harbor, and the Crater.  We can even add the distinction he won during the Mexican American of 1846 through 1848.  The esteem in which he was held at the beginning of the war was marked by the fact that the North wanted to give him overall command.  It would be surprising that, with Lee in Command instead of the ill-prepared McDowell, the feckless McClellan, or the incompetent Pope, in command of the North, the war would have ended in 1862, if not even 1861.  However, that is a what-if, and history has placed Lee on the side of the South, and his brilliance kept the conflict going for a long, bloody four years.  

And in every single battle Lee ever fought, he was outnumbered.  That last part is why his generalship is the stuff of legend.   Criticism has been levelled, including by me, that his offensive nature was more suited to the earlier part of the 19th century than to the middle.  And it was the defensive tactics that came to the fore in WWI. I would also argue that McClellan’s timidity at Antietam prevented him from smashing Lee and ending the war in 1862.  But again, that is based on what-ifs, and Lee (with timely aid from AP Hill) managed to stop a far superior force in Maryland and bring his Army back to Virginia mostly intact.   But the time defensive warfare, come to its head in 1914, had not fully arrived in the 1860s and I also believe that had Lee’s strategy been to hunker down in Virginia around Richmond and let the Union army have whole initiative, the war would have ended earlier as that tactic would have mirrored what actually happened later with Grant in from1864 through March 1865.  Strategically, I agree with Lee’s thinking in both his Northern invasions in 1862 and 1863.  Had he won a significant battle in PA, a war-weary North might have considered Southern independence.  

But it was in bold tactics where he truly stood out.  I could fill up a podcast alone on Lee’s ability to take the initiative, but I will narrow it down to what I consider his best battle: 2nd Bull Run.  In that battle, Lee’s 55,000 men were opposed by an army of 70,000 under John Pope.  On August 25, 1862, he sent Jackson on a sweeping flank march around the Union right to gain its rear and sever Pope’s supply line. At sunset on August 26, Jackson’s forces complete a remarkable 55-mile march, striking the Orange and Alexandria Railroad at Bristoe Station and subsequently capturing Pope’s supply depot at Manassas Junction. As Lee had anticipated, Pope abandons the Rappahannock line to pursue Jackson, while Lee circles to bring up Longstreet’s half of the Confederate Army. After fending off the advance of Pope’s Army near Bristoe, Jackson torches the remaining Union supplies at Manassas Junction and slips away, taking up a position north of Groveton, near the old Bull Run battlefield.   

I could provide so much more detail, but it was this maneuver, which completely threw off Pope and later led to his defeat, that shows Lee’s boldness.  One of the truisms of military tactics is not to divide one’s forces in the face of a superior foe.  This tenet goes back 2500 years to Sun Tzu. Pope had the opportunity to crush Lee by defeating each part of his separated force in detail.  He even had the interior lines to accomplish this task. But Lee knew both his subordinate and his enemy as he did in almost every battle he fought, with two exceptions.  He let his desire for a stunning victory cloud his judgment at Gettysburg on the third day.  And some moment after the Wilderness, he must have realized that Grant was the one Northern General, unlike McClellan, Pope, Burnside, or Hooker, who would never give up, keep coming at him.  And as noted, Lee never had a superior force.  As the greatest General in American history, had he just once enjoyed a numerical advantage, I believe the South would not be a region of the US today best known for its economic dynamism and the best college football teams, but an independent nation.