East of the Mississippi, at the end of the war, the Union army provided paroled Confederates with rations and transportation in many cases, notably when large Confederate commands surrendered and were paroled as intact units; likewise with many, if not most, newly-released prisoners of war.

But in the Trans-Mississippi Department, the individual soldiers were pretty much on their own, particularly in those cases when their regiments disbanded rather than surrender.

This discussion brings to mind an incident that occurred after the Confederate Army of Tennessee surrendered in April 1865 in North Carolina. A train transporting members of Reynolds' Arkansas Brigade was involved in an accident near Flat Creek, Tennessee, on May 25, 1865, resulting in many deaths and injuries. Some of the men were horribly mutilated and disabled for life. These men had survived four years of war, only to meet a tragic fate in an accident at the end of the war while on their way home.