The United States has participated in no less than one hundred wars and armed conflicts since its foundation nearly two hundred and fifty years ago.
In those one hundred wars, America has won several key victories that completely turned the tide of the respective struggles and helped snatch complete victory from the jaws of seemingly inevitable defeat.
Many of these triumphs could not have been possible had it not been for the skill and talent of the military leaders who directed the troop movements, logistics, and overall strategies for these critical battles to ensure victory.
Here are the greatest victories of fifteen legendary American military leaders on the battlefield:
1 – Horatio Gates – Battle of Saratoga (Revolutionary War)
Horatio Gates was a British-born American general who commanded the Continental Army in New York during the Saratoga campaign in 1777. A British force, commanded by General John Burgoyne, marched south into New York from Canada with the goal of taking Albany. Burgoyne hoped to link up with more British forces, but instead, Gates’ numerically superior army managed to surround Burgoyne before he could link up with his fellow British forces and forced him to surrender after battle. British losses were heavy.
The Battle of Saratoga was significant because news of the American victory convinced France to join the side of the Continental Army, and the money and resources they provided to the American war effort helped prove decisive. The battle also effectively ended British aspirations to control the northern colonies.
2 – George Washington – Battle of Yorktown (Revolutionary War)
While Saratoga was one of the turning points of the Revolution, the 1781 Battle of Yorktown was the battle that ended it. After their defeat at Saratoga on the northern front, the British turned their attention to the southern colonies instead. The war continued for four more years of bloody conflict until the British were gradually forced back to the town of Yorktown in Virginia.
The Continental Army, commanded by future President George Washington, laid siege to the town and forced the British to surrender after three weeks of battle. The defeat compelled the British Parliament to seek peace with the United States. Yorktown was not Washington’s only victory in the war, but it was perhaps his most important because it cleared the way for the United States to form as its own country.
3 – Andrew Jackson – Battle of New Orleans (War of 1812)
The War of 1812 is one of the lesser known wars that the United States has fought. The war was fought between America and Great Britain due to escalating tensions between the two countries following the Revolution. In 1814, the British launched the Gulf Campaign with the goal of conquering western Florida and the Louisiana Territory; this would effectively give them control over the Gulf of Mexico.
The British attacked the strategically vital port of New Orleans with over 8,000 men, which was defended by General (and future President) Andrew Jackson with less than 6,000 men. Despite being outnumbered, the Americans managed to defeat the attacking British forces in less than half an hour while inflicting substantial casualties with minimal losses of their own. The battle was the biggest American victory in the war and helped make Jackson a national hero.
4 – Winfield Scott – Battle of Mexico City (Mexican-American War)
Another lesser-known but nonetheless significant war that America fought was the Mexican-American War from 1846 to 1848. After fighting broke out between American and Mexican troops after years of escalating tensions, American forces blockaded the Pacific side of Mexico and launched an invasion deep into the country. The invasion was commanded by General Winfield Scott, who was a veteran of the War of 1812.
Winfield’s forces defeated the Mexican armies multiples times in battle before launching a successful assault upon the capital of Mexico City. The capture of the city brought an end to the war and forced the Mexicans to later sign the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. As a result of the treaty Mexico lost well over half of its territory, which became the American states of California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and parts of Wyoming, Oklahoma, and Kansas.
5 – Robert E. Lee – Battle of Chancellorsville (American Civil War)
The Battle of Chancellorsville in May of 1863 was one of the greatest victories the Confederates won over the Union during the Civil War. The Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by General Robert E. Lee, outmaneuvered and defeated a Union army that was more than three times its size. Losses on both sides were heavy, but the Union forces were forced to retreat.
In the above photo, Lee is seen with General Stonewall Jackson, who was accidentally shot by his own men after the battle and later died of his wounds. The Confederate victory would be short lived as the Army of Northern Virginia under Lee would be decisively defeated at Gettysburg two months later. Speaking of which…
6 – George Meade – Battle of Gettysburg (American Civil War)
Motivated by the success at Chancellorsville, General Lee led the Army of Northern Virginia into an invasion of Pennsylvania. His objective was to defeat the Union Army of the Potomac once and for all and force President Abraham Lincoln to negotiate peace terms with the Confederacy. General George Meade took command of the Army of the Potomac just three days before the two forces met for battle at a small town called Gettysburg.
Meade wisely placed his forces on favorable high ground and allowed Lee to attack repeatedly. The Confederates attacked the Union forces again and again for three days straight, but the Union army held out against the relentless Confederate onslaught. The Confederates were eventually forced to withdraw after the disastrous Pickett’s Charge in which they lost an entire division of troops. Losses on both sides were heavy, but the Union never lost the initiative in the war following their victory at Gettysburg.
7 – Ulysses S. Grant – Battle of Vicksburg (American Civil War)
Along with Gettysburg, Vicksburg was the other major turning point of the Civil War in the Union’s favor. The Union Army of the Tennessee, commanded by General (and future President) Ulysses S. Grant, beat back the Confederate Army of the Mississippi to the town of Vicksburg. Grant laid siege to the city, and while the Confederates fought bravely for forty days straight, they were eventually forced to surrender the day after the Battle of Gettysburg had concluded.
By controlling Vicksburg, the Union controlled the Mississippi River and cut the Confederacy in half; the states of Texas, Arkansas, and most of Louisiana remained separated from the rest of the Confederacy for the remainder of the war. The victory also increased Grant’s stature as a leader, and he was transferred to lead the Army of the Potomac to victory over Lee by 1865, ending the war.
8 – William Sherman – Atlanta Campaign (American Civil War)
General William Sherman took command of Union forces in the western theater of the Civil War after General Grant took command of the Army of the Potomac in the eastern theater. Sherman marched the Union army in an onslaught across the south with the aim of taking Atlanta; he forced the Confederate forces to retreat in earnest by repeatedly outflanking them.
The Confederates were eventually forced back into Atlanta, and surrendered to Sherman after he laid siege. Sherman then marched the Union army directly to the Atlantic Ocean in his infamous ‘March to the Sea’ in which he launched a scorched earth policy to destroy Confederate morale. The Confederacy was split yet again, and combined with Grant’s successes in Virginia, ensured that Confederate defeat in the war was inevitable.
9 – Theodore Roosevelt – Battle of San Juan Hill (Spanish-American War)
Yet another lesser-known American war was the Spanish-American War of 1898. Much of the fighting of this war took place in Cuba, American forces found themselves up against a determined and entrenched enemy in the form of the Spanish army. The Spanish withdrew their forces to the strategically vital San Juan Hill and withstood repeated American artillery bombardment.
This left the American forces with no choice but to charge up the hill to take it. The Spanish fought hard and seemed like they would hold off the American assault, until Lieutenant Colonel (and future President) Theodore Roosevelt led his ‘Rough Riders’ in a famous charge up the hill that seized it from Spanish control. Roosevelt called the battle his greatest victory and his gallant actions during the battle posthumously earned him the Medal of Honor in 2001.
10 – John Pershing – Meuse-Argonne Offensive (World War I)
John Pershing was the commander of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) on the Western Front during World War I. He successfully led the AEF in what became the largest land offensive that the American military ever participated in, the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in 1918. More than 1.2 million American and French soldiers launched a series of attacks against around 450,000 German soldiers who were defending the Hindenburg Line that they had held for the duration of the war.
The offensive succeeded in breaking the Hindenburg Line and throwing the German army into full retreat, but at a great cost of over 120,000 American casualties. Nonetheless, the success of the offensive succeeded in hastening the end of the war, and an armistice ending hostilities was called around two months later.
11 – Chester Nimitz – Battle of Midway (World War II)
Chester Nimitz served as the Commander-in-Chief of the the United States Pacific Fleet during World War II. In the summer of 1942, Japan appeared unstoppable as it conquered island after island in the Pacific and forced the Americans on the defensive. The Japanese objective was to destroy the American aircraft carriers, which would allow them to carry out land assault on Midway, Fiji, and the Hawaiian Islands to seize total control over the Pacific.
Nimitz led the American fleet in a clash against the Japanese at Midway. Despite being outnumbered, Nimitz was able to anticipate the Japanese attack due to American cryptographers breaking the Japanese code. The Americans ambushed the Japanese fleet and inflicted severe losses, sinking four aircraft carriers against only one. The Battle of Midway is regarded by most historians today as the most consequential battle of the Pacific Theater of the Second World War as Japan never recovered from the defeat.
12 – Dwight Eisenhower – Normandy Invasion (World War II)
General (and future President) Dwight Eisenhower served as the Supreme Allied Commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II. Easily the largest victory he led was the Normandy Invasion in June 1944, otherwise known as Operation Overlord. This was the largest amphibious invasion in history, comprising over 5,000 ships carrying over 150,000 American, British, and Canadian soldiers to assault the German beachhead.
Despite taking heavy losses, the Allied soldiers managed to seize the beaches and allow over two million Allied troops to land over the next two months. France was liberated by the end of summer and the Allied forces were arrayed against the German border by fall. Had the Normandy Invasion failed, it is very likely that the war would have gone on for several more years than it had.
13 – George Patton – Battle of the Bulge (World War II)
In mid-December of 1944, the German Wehrmacht launched a massive counteroffensive against American and British forces in the Ardennes Forest in Belgium. The German objective was to seize the port of Antwerp and split the Allied forces in two. The assault took the Allies completely by surprise and threw them into full retreat as the German forces drove a deep ‘bulge’ into the Allied lines and surrounded several garrisons of American soldiers, including at the town of Bastogne.
The situation appeared dire until General George Patton, commander of the U.S. 3rd Army, launched a counterattack under harsh winter conditions in an attempt to relieve Bastogne. After bitter fighting, the 3rd Army succeeded in breaking through and relieving the American soldiers trapped in the town. The relief of Bastogne signaled the turn of the tide of the ‘Battle of the Bulge’ as it came to be called, and within a month the Germans had been pushed back to their starting positions.
14 – Douglas MacArthur – Battle of Inchon (Korean War)
In 1950, North Korean forces invaded South Korea, conquered Seoul, and drove American and South Korean forces down to a small pocket in the southeastern corner of South Korea called the Pusan Perimeter. It appeared that the North Koreans would be victorious in conquering the entire Korean Peninsula, but General Douglas MacArthur developed a strategy to land American soldiers at Inchon in the North Koreans’ rear position against the misgivings of his fellow commanders.
More than 260 ships landed 75,000 troops in September and caught the North Koreans by complete surprise. The North Korean offensive soon collapsed as they were attacked from the rear. Seoul was soon liberated and the North Korean forces retreated back up the peninsula in haste. The battle is widely regarded as the turning point of the Korean War and one of MacArthur’s finest victories.
15 – Norman Schwarzkopf – Operation Desert Storm (Persian Gulf War)
Norman Schwarzkopf was a U.S. General who was given command of the United States Central Command in the late 1980s. He was then tasked in 1990 with liberating Kuwait after the Iraqi army under Saddam Hussein had invaded and occupied it for seven months, a move that earned widespread condemnation from the international community.
Schwarzkopf ended up commanding almost a million international troops in what became one of the biggest military operations since the Second World War. The counteroffensive he launched against the Iraqis was a massive success and Kuwait was completely liberated in just four days. Schwarzkopf was widely praised for his leadership abilities during the war as well as for being equally adept at diplomacy as he was at commanding troops on the battlefield.
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