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,
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