Army of the Tennessee since the days of Julius Caesar." On April 10, 1865, the day after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Grant at the village of Appomattox Court House, Virginia, Sherman resumed his advance, headed toward Raleigh, North Carolina, now with almost 90,000 soldiers—Howard's Army of the Tennessee on the right, Schofield's Army of the Ohio in the center, and Slocum's Army of Georgia on the left. Only learning of Lee's surrender on the night of April 11–12, Sherman had as his immediate target the separate Confederate force under General Johnston, then near Raleigh, but there was little need for further fighting. Sherman
USS Azalea (1864) President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet retired into the Deep South in the hope of continuing the struggle. However, Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia on the 9th and General Joseph E. Johnston realized that his army, the only significant body of Confederate troops left in the field, could not prevail. On the 25th, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman informed Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren that he expected General Johnston to surrender the next day and asked the commander of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron to ". . . watch the east coast and send word round to the west