The following chart has been prepared from the archived Union Army Monthly Reports posted within this forum.
There are three tracks involved: the AGGREGATE COUNT, the PRESENT COUNT and the EFFECTIVE COUNT, the last being the actual number of officers who responded to that month's Muster Call. For comparison, the PRESENT COUNT represents all those officers who answered their call in the preceding month. The AGGREGATE COUNT is the total number of officers held upon the official rolls, including those on Leave of Absence, Out-of-Contact beyond one month and assigned to the field hospitals.
The information is as accurate as the AC commanders could make them at the specific months involved. There is specific data missing from early 2011 and from the transitional period into 2012, wherein not all of the required monthly reports were turned in. The numbers generated prior to November, 2011, especially those in the AGGREGATE, are held as suspect in that a number of field armies did not then exert a bonafide effort to remove from their rolls those officers who had already been missing for over a consecutive, 6-month period or from whom there was otherwise no valid contact. Subsequent to that period can be seen the separate efforts, parallel downward tracks between PRESENT and EFFECTIVE, undertaken by those particular field armies at different times to remove those particualr officers from their rolls.
From a greater perspective the AGGREGATE and EFFECTIVE tracks both show a very slight but steady upward movement, a reflection of the revised UMA training programs and retention policies introduced by the Union Army Command Staff and Advisory Group and implemented by the ACs as well as the UA's increasing, overall responsiveness.
