Mark --

Without access to the Atlanta newspapers it would be difficult to identify Capt. Roberts, but there should be contemporary notices in the news regarding meetings and scheduled drills for this company.

The Conscript Act of Feb. 17, 1864, allowed the following exemptions. You'll want to make special note of paragraph III, but all of Section 10 defined exempts.

SEC. 10. That all laws granting exemptions from military service be and the same are hereby repealed, and hereafter none shall be exempted except the following:

I. All who shall be held unfit for military service, under rules to be prescribed by the Secretay of War.

II. The vice-president of the Confederate States, the members and officers of congress and of the several state legislatures, and such other confederate and state officers as the president or the governors of the respective states may certify to be necessary for the proper administration of the confederate or state governments, as the case may be.

III. Every minister of religion authorized to preach according to the rules of his church, and who, at the passage of this act, shall be regularly employed in the discharge of his ministerial duties; superintendents and physicians of asylums for the deaf, dumb and blind and of the insane; one editor for each newspaper being published at the time of the passage of this act, and such employees as said editor may certify on oath to be indispensable to the publication of such newspaper; the public printer of the confederate and state governments, and such journeymen printers as the said public printer shall certify on oath to be indispensable to perform the public printing; one skilled apothecary in each apothecary store, who was doing business as such apothecary on the tenth day of October 1862, and has continued said business without intermission since that period; all physicians over the age of thirty years who now are, and for the last seven years have been in the actual and regular practice of their profession; but the term physician shall not include dentists.

IV. All presidents and teachers of colleges, theological seminaries, academies and schools, who have been regularly engaged as such for two years next before the passage of this act: provided that the benefit of this exemption shall extend to those teachers only whose schools are composed of twenty students or more. All superintendents of public hospitals established by law before the passage of this act, and such physicians and nurses therein as such superintendent shall certify on oath to be indispensable to the proper and efficient management thereof.

V. There shall be exempt one person as overseer or agriculturalist on each farm or plantation upon which there are now and were, on the first day of January last, fifteen able-bodied field hands between the ages of sixteen and fifty, upon the following conditions: 1. This exemption shall only be granted in cases in which there is no white male adult on the farm or plantation not liable to military service, nor unless the person claiming the exemption was, on the first day of January 1864, either the owner and manager or overseer of said plantation, but in no case shall more than one person be exempted for one farm or plantation. 2. Such person shall first execute a bond, payable to the Confederate States of America, in such form and with such security and in such penalty as the secretary of war may prescribe, conditioned that he will deliver to the government at some railroad depot, or such other place or places as may be designated by the secretary of war, within twelve months then next ensuing, one hundred pounds of bacon, or, at the election of the government, its equivalent in pork, and one hundred pounds of net beef, (said beef to be delivered on foot,) for each able-bodied slave on the farm or plantation within the above said ages, whether said slaves be worked in the field or not, which said bacon or pork and beef shall be paid for by the government at the prices fixed by the commissioners of the state under the impressment act: provided that when the person thus exempted shall produce satisfactory evidence that it has been impossible for him, by the exercise of proper diligence, to furnish the amount of meat thus contracted for and leave an adequate supply for the subsistence of those living on the said farm or plantation, the secretary of war shall direct a commutation of the same to the extent of two-thirds thereof in grain or other provisions, to be delivered by such person as aforesaid at equivalent rates. 3. Such person shall further bind himself to sell the marketable surplus of provisions and grain now on hand, and which he may raise from year to year while his exemption continues, to the government or to the families of soldiers at prices fixed by the commissioners of the state under the impressment act: provided that any person, exempted as aforesaid, shall be entitled to a credit of twenty-five per cent. on any amount of meat which he may deliver within three months from the passage of this act: provided further, that persons coming within the provisions of this exemption shall not be deprived of the benefit thereof by reason of having been enrolled since the first day of February 1864.

In addition to the foregoing exemptions, the secretary of war, under the direction of the president, may exempt or detail such other person as he may be satisfied ought to be exempted on account of public necessity, and to insure the production of grain and provisions for the army and the families of soldiers. He may also grant exemptions or details, on such terms as he may prescribe, to such overseers, farmers or planters, as he may be satisfied will be more useful to the country in the pursuits of agriculture than in the military service: provided that such exemption shall cease whenever the farmer, planter or overseer shall fail diligently to employ in good faith his own skill, capital and labor exclusively in the production of grain and provisions, to be sold to the government and the families of soldiers at such prices not exceeding those fixed at the time for like articles by the commissioners of the state under the impressment act.

VI. The president, treasurer, auditor and superintendent of any railroad company engaged in transportation for the government, and such officers and employees thereof as the president or superintendent shall certify on oath to be indispensable to the efficient operation of such railroad: provided that the number of persons exempted by this act on any railroad shall not exceed one for each mile of such road in actual use for military transportation, and said exempts shall be reported by name and description, with the names of any who may have left the employment of said company, or who may cease to be indispensable to the efficient operation of its road, at least once a month to the secretary of war, or such officer as he may designate for that purpose: and provided further, that such president or superintendent shall, in each such monthly report, certify on oath that no person liable to military service has been employed by his company since the passage of this act in any position in which it was practicable to employ one not liable to military service, and capable of performing efficiently the duties of such position; and in cases where railroads have fallen into the hands of the enemy, and a portion of the rolling stock of such roads is being used on other roads not in the enemy's hands, the president and superintendent of said first named road shall be exempt.

VII. That nothing herein contained shall be construed as repealing the act approved April fourteenth, 1863, entitled an act to exempt contractors for carrying the mails of the Confederate States, and the drivers of post coaches and hacks, from military service: provided that the exemptions granted under this act shall only continue while the persons exempted are actually engaged in their respective pursuits or occupations.