Alan J. Pitts
How do we explain this?
Mon Feb 26 11:52:05 2001


By definition, you couldn't volunteer for the state militia, nor could you be conscripted into volunteer militia. Let's try this: if you recall, the county judge wrote out patrol assignments for each militia beat, similar to jury duty today. War removed more and more men from the available number of citizens in each beat, so it became difficult to get enough men to serve on patrol duty as they had before the war. This may have required local law officers to 'conscript' militiamen.

You could only volunteer to join a militia organization if you weren't obliged to serve by law. If a man was exempt from militia duty and elected to serve anyway, he might be termed a volunteer. In either case, I believe it's a mistake to lead people to believe that state militia units like the ones mentioned in the post you referenced were anything like our National Guard units today or any Confederate military units in the field. Except on muster days when they appeared for company or battalion drill, they were paper organizations only.

• Volunteer status and militiamen's status. — Hayes Lowe, Mon Feb 26 17:01
• University Cadets — Alan J. Pitts, Tue Feb 27 07:00
• I agree again with what you say — Hayes Lowe, Tue Feb 27 07:09
• State military schools.... — Alan J. Pitts, Tue Feb 27 09:36