Alan J. Pitts
Re: POW
Mon Jul 2 13:54:12 2001


You will see "for exchange" in the notes on some POW transfers, but that doesn't mean they were released anytime soon. I'd expect his Rock Island records were misfiled (they exist under a slightly different name/unit), although a Natchez release sounds a bit off base. I wouldn't discount it, though. He would've been kept on roll with the 28th Alabama, and the April 1864 record was made for reenlistment purposes. Section three of the Conscript Act of Feb. 17, 1864, provided that each man on roll in April 1st was eligible for a bounty if wasn't AWOL six months later. Here's how it reads:

SEC. 3. That at the expiration of six months from the first day of April next, a bounty of one hundred dollars, in a six per centum government bond, which the secretary of the treasury is hereby authorized to issue, shall be paid to every non-commissioned officer, musician and private who shall then be in the service, or in the event of his death previous to the period of such payment, then to the person or persons who would be entitled by law to receive the arrearages of his pay; but no one shall be entitled to the bounty herein provided who shall at any time during the period of six months next after the first day of April, be absent from his command without leave.

Obviously your ancestor wasn't present, but wasn't AWOL either, so his name would've been included on this roll.