39. The Union Army demobilized quickly after the end of the war
Grant and Sherman commanded huge armies at the end of the American Civil War, and there were arguments that they were still needed to contain the French intervention in Mexico, occupy the defeated South, and control the Native American tribes on the plains. The veterans of the war had other ideas, as did their families at home, and the Union army disbanded with startling speed, from over 1 million men in arms in April 1865, to about 54,000 in May of 1866. Many of the volunteers in the reduced United States Army were veterans from the Confederate Army, particularly in the cavalry units of the Western Plains.