All the President's Men

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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