Alan J. Pitts
Re: 1st Conf. Inf. Regt.
Thu Aug 2 12:22:24 2001


I understand your point. Two companies of conscripts, the "Swanson Guards", were on provost duty at Montgomery until the spring of 1864 when they were assigned to the 21st Alabama to give that unit ten companies. These two had a similar organization and duties as Lockett's "City Guard" at Selma, but were not broken up as Lockett's was.

The driving force behind these changes was the military law passed by Congress on Feb. 17, 1864. The law created two distinct classes of reserves, and designated seniors for primarily provost guard duties. Junior Reserves were explicitly prohibited from this service, so we can be realtively sure that the two infantry reserve companies at Selma/Cahaba were from either the 3rd or 4th Reserve Regiment. Somewhere in the archive section you should be able to locate notes about Brooks' 3rd Reserves. Confederate authorities were clearly unhappy about the extent of absenteeism among Alabama senior reserves.

One other note: the War Department did not approve of "mixed" commands; i.e., commands that included men enlisted under different provisions of the law. Some reserve companies (some in Barbiere's and Hardie's Battalions come to mind) included both juniors and seniors, and this was considered an illegal organization. The War Department understood strict age distinctions to mean that junior and senior reserve organizations were temporary: seniors would eventually reach fifty and be discharged, while juniors would become eighteen within a year, so entire junior organizations would be transferred to regular Confederate service.