THE LESSONS OF APPOMATTOX

LYNDON JOHNSON often likens his own problems to Lincoln's, and indeed the 16th and the 36th Presidents have many in common: a long, frustrating war, a divided homefront, and national doubts about presidential leadership. There is one even more striking similarity: though the North was vastly superior to the South in nearly everything that should have brought early victory, four years were required to bring about Lee's sur render at Appomattox. However, unlike Lincoln, who tested--and found wanting--more than half a dozen generals before he found a winner in Grant, Lyndon Johnson has yet to name his second field commander.

Though major battles raged in the West, most eyes focused on the 100 miles of Virginia that separated the two warring capitals, Washington and Richmond. The commander of the main Union force in Virginia was always considered Lincoln's top brass hat. For most of the war, the President, a brilliant, if amateur, strategist, would have done better to take the field himself.

Irvin McDowell started the line--and quickly led his army into defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run. He was followed by George McClellan, who had won the small but impressive victories that enabled West Virginia to break away from the Confederacy and become a separate state. While he did wonders in boosting morale after Bull Run and turning an undisciplined mob into an army, McClellan, only 34 at the time of his appointment, did little to justify the nickname of "young Napoleon." Excessively cautious to begin with, he was reduced to timidity by his primitive version of the CIA, whose intelligence reports pictured small, ill-equipped Southern armies as fearsome hordes. "If General McClellan does not want to use the Army," Lincoln said at one point, "I would like to borrow it."

After nearly a year of McClellan's dillydallying, Lincoln, in effect, demoted him by forming a whole new army under John Pope, who was to attack Lee anew. While he will not compare them on other grounds, Civil War Historian Bruce Catton notes at least one "striking" parallel between McClellan and General William Westmoreland. "McClellan was always saying he could do the job if they gave him more troops," observes Catton. "He always wanted more. Finally, Lincoln got tired of this and put him on the shelf. It seems that Westmoreland is in the same position."

"What Does It Mean?"

Pope led his army into the Second Battle of Bull Run--an even more stunning defeat for the Union than the first--and McClellan, a good organizer if nothing else, was given the task of putting the Union's forces back together. "Again," he wrote his wife, "I have been called upon to save the country." In September 1862, Lee invaded the North for the first time, and--with sensational luck--McClellan's men came upon a copy of his orders, detailing the exact positions of the divided rebel army. "Here is a paper with which, if I cannot whip Bobbie Lee," said McClellan, "I will be willing to go home." Though he might have defeated Lee once and for all at Antietam, the "young Napoleon" hovered near defeat himself, barely managing to check the invasion.

Lincoln lost all patience and appointed Ambrose Burnside to take McClellan's place. With even less agility, Burnside also snatched defeat from the jaws of victory at Fredericksburg, where a correspondent observed that "it can hardly be in human nature for men to show more valor, or generals to manifest less judgment."

Joseph Hooker took charge from Burnside with appropriate swagger--"May God have mercy on General Lee, for I will have none"--and quickly gave Lee his most brilliant victory at Chancellorsville, where the Northern army was nearly routed by a force half its size. Federal dead numbered 17,000. In the summer of 1863, Lee prepared his second invasion of the North. George Meade, called in at the last minute to replace the bumbling Hooker, turned back the new thrust with considerable competence at Gettysburg--"General Meade will make no blunder on my front," Lee had correctly predicted--but let the defeated Rebs retreat unimpeded to the other side of the Potomac. Once again the North had lost an opportunity to end the war quickly: "What does it mean?" asked a despairing Lincoln. "Great God! What does it mean?"

The Final Choice

Against all logic and reason, the North seemed unable to win in the East. The West was a different story, however, and slowly the federal vise tightened on the vital Mississippi. One improbable name, Ulysses S. Grant, stood out, and as defeat followed defeat in the East, Northerners still remembered his blunt demand for the "immediate and unconditional" surrender of Fort Donelson in 1862: "I propose to move immediately upon your works." Donelson surrendered. Finally in March 1864, Lincoln himself remembered, and Grant was given charge of all the Northern armies, Moving East to take personal command of the ill-starred Army of the Potomac. Lincoln had found his general, and though the war lasted for another arduous year, the outcome was never again seriously in doubt.

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