Third Corps, Army of Northern Virginia Third Corps, Army of Northern Virginia The Third Corps, Army of Northern Virginia was a unit of the Provisional Army of the Confederate States. After the death of Lt. General Thomas J. Jackson at the Battle of Chancellorsville, Robert E. Lee reorganized his army from two infantry corps into three corps, giving command of the new Third Corps to A. P. Hill. For Hill's new corps, Lee assigned Hill's old "Light Division", commanded by Major General William Dorsey Pender, from the Second Corps and Richard H. Anderson's division from James Longstreet's First Corps. For the Corps' third division, Lee created
Army of Northern Virginia John R. Jones, Alexander Lawton, A.P. Hill, and D.H. Hill. The Northern Virginia and Maryland Campaigns still showed numerous defects in the organization and leadership of the Army of Northern Virginia, particularly the high rate of straggling and desertion during the invasion of Maryland. Lee had fewer than 40,000 men on the field at Antietam, the smallest his army would be until the Appomattox Campaign, and the battle was largely fought on autopilot with minimal involvement by the senior officers in the army. During the Fredericksburg Campaign, Longstreet had the divisions of Anderson, Hood, McLaws, Ransom, and George Pickett, who