Alan J. Pitts
Frequently asked questions, part 2....
Thu Mar 22 14:02:12 2001


Perhaps we should have a section....

Your ancestor served in Company "F" of the 1st Alabama Infantry Regiment, first organized as the "Tallapoosa Rifles" under Capt. James Daniel Meadows. Officers and men were accepted in state service at Montgomery, Alabama, March 20, 1861, and sworn into Confederate service April 7, 1861. They mustered out after twelve months service at Island Ten, Tennessee, March 20, 1862. Many members reenlisted for two years in Company "A", 1st Alabama Artillery Regiment.

As for your question about Young's Reserve Company, make sure you are thinking about the right company. A company was recruited in Jackson County by Capt. James H. Young for service with the Nitre and Mining Bureau. I believe there was another company raised as state reserves which you may have in mind. At any rate, here's a summary of the law that created state reserves for future reference:

A law passed by the Confederate Congress on February 17, 1864, placed all white male residents of the Confederate States between the ages of seventeen and fifty in military service for the war. The law allowed soldiers serving in units from one state to transfer to units from their home state, and provided a bounty of $100 for enlisted men in service on April 1, 1864, to be paid in six months to all those who had not been absent without leave in the interim. It also made men who had previously been discharged from the army or exempt because they had furnished a substitute for the army liable for service.

The most significant portion of this law created two classes of state reserves. Those between the ages of 17 and 18 were to be enrolled as junior reserves, while men aged 45 to 50 would become senior reserves. Reserves were limited to service within the borders of their home state. Seniors and exempts were expected to replace able-bodied men on duty as “clerks, guards, agents, employees or laborers” with hospitals, ordnance depots, navy yards, recruiting offices and the provost guard, as well as those serving with the commissary and quartermaster departments. Officers who retained able-bodied men for any of these duties would be subject to court martial. Junior reserves and any surplus of senior reserves would be employed for local defense.

All previous laws granting exemptions from military service were repealed, and none were exempt afterwards except the following:

1. Men determined to be exempt by reason of physical or mental disability,
2. Political officers of the Confederate and state governments,
3. Ministers, asylum superintendents, newspaper employees, printers, druggists and physicians (but not dentists).
4. Teachers at colleges, seminaries and schools who had been teaching for at least two years and had at least 20 students registered at their schools.
5. Overseers on farms including at least fifteen able-bodied field hands between the ages of sixteen and fifty where no other white male adult not liable for military service lived on the farm. These persons were obligated to supply the government with a 100 pounds of bacon and 100 pounds of beef for each able-bodied field hand working on his farm.
6. Persons declared exempt by the secretary of war or the president “on account of public necessity”.
7. Railroad employees working for companies which company provided transportation for the Confederate government.
8. Mail carriers and other postal employees on contract with the government.

Finally, boards appointed to examine men liable to military service would not include physicians from the county or enrolling district in which they served.