First Corps, Army of Northern Virginia Tennessee and performed important forage service in Suffolk, Virginia. It was disbanded shortly following Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender to Union forces on April 9, 1865. On June 1, 1862, Robert E. Lee took command of the Army of the Potomac following Johnston's wounding during Battle of Seven Pines, and shortly afterwards this army would be known as the Army of Northern Virginia. Lee re-organized the army as two "wings" (corps were not legally allowed by the Confederate Congress until September 18), with Lt. Gen. James Longstreet in charge of the Right Wing and Lt. Gen.Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson in
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