Alan J. Pitts
ditto
Fri Mar 9 10:28:33 2001


Hayes is correct about the home guard being eligible for state pensions. The limited correspondence from veterans I've seen on the subject indicates that they would've marched on Montgomery if any government official had ever suggested that home guards or militia be accorded any of the benefits reserved for Confederate soldiers. Home guards were able to eat home cooking, sleep in warm beds and enjoy the company of the ladies with no real concern for ever having to fight and die. Soldiers had a very different experience far away from home in the army, and believed the home guards had enough benefits during the war.

As Hayes mentioned, there are exceptions, but these are few and far between. The 'Cradle and Grave' militia that fought at Marianna Fla. would be the most notable. Check these URL's for descriptions of that struggle:
http://www.eplex.com/episcopal/stlukemarianna/stlbatmarn.html
http://members.aol.com/bettymaes/cox/wfw1.htm
http://www.newsherald.com/local/wom1116.htm

You asked what they did at home. You might search the recent message thread on Lockett's City Guards, in which I offered a couple of documents from 1864 which refer to conditions on the homefront. They were highly unsettled, to say the least. That was certainly true along the Alabama-Florida line.

Home guards usually acted as local vigilance committees, questioning Confederate soldiers home on leave or recovering from wounds and illneses. More than one person has told me of home guards hanging a family member with Confederate discharge papers in his pocket. I wrote a paper on a home guard unit in Shelby County that spent much of its time looking for deserters in the hills around present-day Calera, Jemison and Clanton. Frustrated by lack of success, they began arresting family members suspected of harboring deserters. Things got really ugly in that area, and there were reprisals against home guards members when the war was over. It's also clear that old family feuds and personal grudges played a part in these homefront tragedies.

To conclude, the home guard or County Reserves were defined as youngsters aged sixteen and seventeen, together with older men between the ages of forty-five and sixy, and men exempt from Confederate service. Of course when the reserves were constituted on Feb. 17, 1864, the pool of men available for County Reserves got smaller. General Withers and his staff at Montgomery had authority to grant details from the Senior Reserves if you could produce some reason for needing to be at home, such as you operated the only mill in your community. These men often appear in home guard units as well.

Alabama pension files are full of applications by former home guards and militiamen, so don't stop looking there just because the applications were uniformly denied....