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
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