Nobody is really sure. The night before he surrendered, when a member of his staff suggested the army scatter and continue a guerrilla war, Lee estimated he had less than 15,000 men. After the surrender, when Grant offered to send rations for 25,000 men to the army, Lee assured him that would be sufficient. Official totals of the surrender put it at 27,800. The answer is somewhere in between all those. Grant, on the other hand, probably had over 100,000 men with him.
“Any one know what the Confederate troop (v. Union) strength was at the close of hostilities?”
This was not the “close of hostilities”. There were several more small battles after the surrender, with the last one in Texas. Areas that did not receive word of the surrender. Here is some triva for you. The South won that last battle in Texas. The Battle of Palmito Ranch may 12-13, 1865.
http://www.qsl.net/w5www/palmito.html
I actually have all of that in my books, but in a word, overwhelming.
The Confederates were beaten down to almost nothing at the end had virtually nothing left but their lives.
There were not 2 spare miles of RR track in the entire Confederacy at the end.
Earlier, Sherman predicted that it would end that way.
The Union, on the other hand, benefited greatly from the Civil War, in an industrial sense.
The US industries were already starting to boom, but the war gave them a real kick in the pants.
That same war ground the CSA into the dirt.
Still it was a great testament to unflagging devotion to the cause. On both sides.
If I could muster 1/10 of that character today, we could succeed from this quagmire.
Lee had lost a fairly large piece of his army [including Ewell and other generals] at Saylor’s Creek during the retreat. His retreat west was initially cut off by Union cavalry, but an infantry corps came up and sealed him off. I believe Lee was down to approximately 30,000 give or take, maybe 40,000 tops. Grant had probably 50,000 or more [Sheridan alone had three divisions of Cavalry]
I don’t have the exact numbers but in the Appomattox Campaign that led up to the Army of Northern Virginia’s surrender, Grant had Lee massively outnumbered in every possible measure—infantry, cavalry, artillery, supplies, everything. Plus, a few days before the surrender, part of Lee’s army had been cut off, trapped, and forced to surrender at Sayler’s Creek.
I grew up 25 miles from Appomattox and have been there many times. We learned this stuff, through osmosis if nothing else. :)
}:-)4