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 and James Longstreet as division commanders. Beauregard quarreled with Johnston and was transferred to the Western theater over the winter months. Jackson was sent to the Shenandoah Valley in October 1861, initially with his own old Stonewall Brigade and later with two other brigades from Western Virginia. Several newly arrived brigades were added to Johnston's army in late 1861-early 1862. When the Peninsula Campaign began, Johnston took his army down to the Richmond environs where it was merged with several smaller Confederate commands, including a division led by D.H. Hill as well as Benjamin Huger's Department of Norfolk, John Magruder's