'Aggregate present' does not include prisoners of war, deserters &c. You mean 'aggregate present and absent'. By definition any officer or man listed as a prisoner of war, deserter, hospital patient, on leave or detached for any reason is absent, not present.

If you are quoting McMurry, he's a little off target. On page 3 of Confederate inspection reports, columns 7-18 appear under the heading 'PRESENT'. Columns 7-11 are labeled 'FOR DUTY', column 11 being the aggregate, or present for duty. Columns 12-18 are all the others you mentioned as present but not immediately available for duty. Column headings are 'SPECIAL, EXTRA OR DAILY DUTY', 'SICK' and 'IN ARREST OR CONFINEMENT'. Column 18 includes all those in columns 12-17 plus column 11.

This is the aggregate present.

In my previous post, I referred to June 10th reports. You're referring to April 30th reports, which mentions two of Wheeler's brigades and the horse artillery "not included in the effective total". In any case, I'll contend that these reports are designed to list all those present for duty with their commands, wherever those commands may be. That standard holds for both armies.

If memory serves, Livermore states that actual present for duty may be determined as 85% of aggregate present. To test this premise, Cheatham's Division reports an aggregate present of 5,270 officers and men. Reduced by 15%, his strength will be 4,479. Compare that to 591 officers and 3,850 men present for duty in this division, or a total of 4,441. Rounded off to four decimal places, that's a margin of error of .0085 -- not bad!

Cheatham's report gives his 'present effective total' as 3,689, which represents the number of working firearms available to the division. If we're to believe Confederate inspection reports, stockpiles of weapons to arm those in field hospitals, on details or in arrest simply didn't exist.

For the combined Armies of Tennessee and Mississippi, Confederate reports for June 10th list 91,493 officers and men present for duty, with an aggregate present of 106, 876. Deducting 15% as suggested by Livermore, the calculated present for duty will be 90,845, which isn't far from the actual PFD reported.

To further support the aggregate present figure, let me suggest that being present, any of the 106,876 could have been killed, wounded or captured in action between June 11th and June 30th, the date of the next set of reports. In other words, any officer or enlisted man in the aggregate present total could become a casualty, even if he isn't counted among 'effectives' of his command.