All the President's Men

From the moment the war started, Abraham Lincoln was surrounded. Across the Potomac was the Confederacy; in Washington was a Cabinet unsure of his abilities, an increasingly hostile Congress and a growing list of Union generals with sensitive egos but alarmingly few victories on the battlefield.

As the war's shocking toll mounted, Lincoln turned from commander to commander, looking for the man who would protect Washington from rebel armies and press the Union's biggest advantage: "We have the greater numbers."

Lincoln had no real military experience except for 77 combat-free days in an Illinois militia, but he became an avid strategist, continually peppering field leaders with questions, suggestions, precise orders and emphatic, if often ignored, exhortations to drive against the enemy.

By 1864 he had found his fighter.When Ulysses S. Grant took command in the East, Lincoln didn't, for once, demand specific plans. Six weeks later Grant had lost more men than every general before him, but Robert E. Lee's army was bottled up in Petersburg, Va. "Hold on with a bull-dog grip," Lincoln urged Grant. Unlike his predecessors, Grant did.

GENERAL DISAPPOINTMENT

Lincoln professed to Grant that he just wanted someone to "take the responsibility and act." But as Robert E. Lee's legend grew, so did the list of failed Union commanders

WINFIELD SCOTT

PROMISE "Old Fuss and Feathers" was a national hero from the Mexican War of 1846. He devised the "Anaconda Plan" to blockade the South's ports

PERIL He nominally commanded the Union armies, but was too old, obese and infirm to lead troops. History would vindicate his strategy

IRVIN McDOWELL

PROMISE The fastidious Ohioan didn't drink or smoke. He wanted more time to train the Army, but Lincoln ordered him ahead, saying "They are green also"

PERIL His plan for the first big battle at Bull Run was sound, but his Army and his logistics weren't. Union soldiers called their retreat "the Great Skedaddle"

GEORGE McCLELLAN

PROMISE Undeniably a great organizer, he built the Army of the Potomac and filled it with confidence. He then hatched a plan to capture Richmond from the south

PERIL An organizer but not a fighter. Sidelined after his Peninsula debacle, he got a second chance at Antietam. He fought to a draw there despite knowing Lee's plans

JOHN POPE

PROMISE A politically connected, boastful man who liked to headline his dispatches "Headquarters in the Saddle." Lee called him a "miscreant"

PERIL He vowed to "bag the whole lot" of Lee's army on the site of the war's first battle. He didn't, and was banished to Minnesota for the rest of the war. McClellan was back

AMBROSE BURNSIDE

PROMISE Famous for his eponymous whiskers, he was often indecisive and lacked confidence, but tried to show the aggressive spirit his predecessors lacked

PERIL Taking over after Antietam, he led the Union into one of the greatest slaughters of the war, losing 13,353 men outside Fredericksburg

JOSEPH HOOKER

PROMISE A courageous soldier and hard drinker, "Fighting Joe" once openly mused about becoming a dictator, drawing a sarcastic rebuke from Lincoln

PERIL "My plans are perfect," he said before being knocked senseless and thoroughly outgeneraled at Chancellorsville, Lee's strategic masterpiece

GEORGE MEADE

PROMISE A snappish but decent man without political connections, he wasn't thrilled to find himself in command. "I have been tried and condemned," he said

PERIL He won the great Union victory at Gettysburg and turned the tide of the war, but let Lee's battered army escape to Virginia, where it would fight again

ULYSSES S. GRANT

PROMISE An unmitigated failure as a civilian, he was nearly sacked after the carnage at Shiloh in 1862. Lincoln stood by him, saying simply "He fights"

PERIL Despite suffering enormous casualties, he relentlessly pounded Lee's army through Virginia to the siege at Petersburg and, finally, Appomattox

Major Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac 1861-65 with Estimated Casualties [NORTH & SOUTH]

MEADE to Gettysburg

July 1-3, 1863

NORTH: 23,000

SOUTH: 28,000

MCCLELLAN to Antietam

Sept. 17, 1862

NORTH: 12,400

SOUTH: 10,320

MCDOWELL to First Bull Run

July 21, 1861

NORTH: 2,896

SOUTH: 1,226

MCCLELLAN to Peninsula,

Seven Days' Battles

March-July, 1862

NORTH: 25,900

SOUTH: 30,500

BURNSIDE to Fredericksburg

Dec. 13, 1862

NORTH: 13,353

SOUTH: 4,576

HOOKER to Chancellorsville

May 1-4, 1863

NORTH: 14,000

SOUTH: 10,000

GRANT Wilderness to Siege of Petersburg

May 5-June 18, 1864

NORTH: 67,500

SOUTH: 37,000

Sources: National Park Service; Library of Congress; National Archives; Speeches and Writings of Abraham Lincoln, 1859-1865 (Library of America); The Civil War (trilogy), by Shelby Foote; Battle Cry of Freedom, by James M. McPherson; Lincoln, by David Herbert Donald; Mr. Lincoln's Army, by Bruce Catton; Battlefields of the Civil War, by William C. Davis; Historical Atlas of the United States