Army of the South Hardee, and cavalry commanded by Wade Hampton; both were under General P. G. T. Beauregard, commander of the Confederate Military Division of the West. However, both Confederate President Jefferson Davis and general-in-chief Robert E. Lee questioned Beauregard's ability to handle the situation in the Carolinas, so on February 23 Lee appointed General Joseph E. Johnston to command the Confederate forces in the Carolinas. Johnston established his headquarters at Smithfield, North Carolina and named his force the "Army of the South". It consisted of four separate field forces present in North Carolina: Johnston had a total of less than 25,000 men,
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