Who was the commanding general of the Union Army at the end of the war?

Ulysses S. Grant was the commanding general of the Union Army at the end of the Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln appointed him lieutenant general in March 1864, placing him in overall command of Union armies in the field.

Grant coordinated simultaneous campaigns against the Confederacy rather than concentrating only on Richmond. He personally directed the Army of the Potomac in its campaign against Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, while other Union forces attacked Confederate armies in the West and South.

After months of fighting around Petersburg and Richmond, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The surrender did not instantly end every Confederate army, but it marked the decisive collapse of the Confederacy. Grant’s role is sometimes confused with that of William Tecumseh Sherman, a major Union commander under Grant’s overall authority, or George McClellan, who had led the Union war effort earlier.