The Arkansas in the Civil War Message Board

Conscription of Veterans

It was stated elsewhere on this board that, when researching a Confederate soldier, "being listed as a conscript
would most likely mean he saw no previous service." I'm sure that the gentleman was referring, quite accurately, to the last year or so of the war, when the pool of military-age men had been pretty much tapped out, and boys and older men constituted a large percentage of conscripts.

However, in the 1862-1863 timeframe this was not necessarily the case. Large numbers of conscripts from this period included officers who had resigned their commissions and soldiers who had been discharged. For example, the 27th Arkansas Regiment consisted, in large part, of conscripts who had been recently discharged from the 14th (Powers') Arkansas Regiment.

General Orders, No. 58, dated at the War Department, Adjutant and Inspector General's Office, Richmond, Virginia, August 14, 1862, states, in Para. 9, "No previous discharge, certificate, or exemption from any source will be acknowledged, except those granted to foreigners not domiciled, and to those persons who have furnished substitutes."

Act 49 of the Congress of the Confederate States, approved on October 8, 1862, states at Sec. 3, Part VI, Para. 5, "The fact that a person has been discharged from service for physical disability or other cause does not of itself exempt from enrollment as a conscript."

I thought this should be clarified in order to avoid any confusion about the subject. Although it is the goal of Civil War soldier research to gradually narrow the parameters of the search until the man can be pin-pointed, it would be unfortunate to miss a vital clue by prematurely narrowing the search by assuming that, because a man was a conscript there is no need to investigate the possibility that he had prior service in another regiment. While that's more than likely a fairly safe assumption for men conscripted late in the war, I'd rather go the extra mile and check for prior service for men conscripted earlier in the war.

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