who was the successful commanding general of the northern forces in the civil war
George B. McClellan
title: Eastern Theater of the American Civil War text: capital of Richmond, Virginia; many of these were frustrated by the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by General Robert E. Lee. President Abraham Lincoln sought a general to match Lee's boldness, appointing in turn Maj. Gens. Irvin McDowell, George B. McClellan, John Pope, Ambrose Burnside, Joseph Hooker, and George G. Meade to command his principal Eastern armies. While Meade gained a decisive victory over Lee at the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, it was not until newly appointed general-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant arrived from the Western Theater in 1864 to take personal control of operations in Virginia that title: American Civil War text: Army of Tennessee to Major General William T. Sherman at the Bennett Place near present-day Durham, North Carolina. It proved to be the largest surrender of Confederate forces, effectively bringing the war to an end. President Johnson officially declared a virtual end to the insurrection on May 9, 1865; President Jefferson Davis was captured the following day. On June 2, Kirby Smith officially surrendered his troops in the Trans-Mississippi Department. On June 23, Cherokee leader Stand Watie became the last Confederate general to surrender his forces. The causes of the war, the reasons for its outcome, and even the name title: American Civil War text: renamed the former Army of Mississippi. While the Confederate forces had numerous successes in the Eastern Theater, they were defeated many times in the West. The Union's key strategist and tactician in the West was Ulysses S. Grant, who won victories at Forts Henry (February 6, 1862) and Donelson (February 11 to 16, 1862), by which the Union seized control of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. Nathan Bedford Forrest rallied nearly 4,000 troops and led them to escape across the Cumberland. Nashville and central Tennessee thus fell to the Union, leading to attrition of local food supplies and livestock and title: American Civil War text: of the Appalachian Mountains, including the states of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, and the coastal fortifications and seaports of North Carolina. Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan took command of the Union Army of the Potomac on July 26 (he was briefly general-in-chief of all the Union armies, but was subsequently relieved of that post in favor of Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck), and the war began in earnest in 1862. The 1862 Union strategy called for simultaneous advances along four axes: The primary Confederate force in the Eastern theater was the Army of Northern title: Ulysses S. Grant and the American Civil War text: in nineteenth-century American history." When Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans was defeated at the Chickamauga in September 1863, the Confederates, led by Braxton Bragg, besieged the Union Army of the Cumberland in Chattanooga. In response, President Lincoln put Grant in charge of the new Military Division of the Mississippi to break the siege at Chattanooga, making Grant the commander of all Western Armies. Grant, who immediately relieved Rosecrans from duty, personally went to Chattanooga to take control of the situation, taking 20,000 troops commanded by Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman from the Army of the Tennessee. Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker