Do you know the soldier's unit? It would be useful to know if he belonged to one of Rousseau's or McCook's cavalry regiments, as both passed through the same area.

If the men mentioned belonged to the militia, they would never have identified themselves as 'Confederate'. Of course any of them could have enlisted in Confederate service. My ancestor F M Pitts did that during September 1864, leaving the 37th Georgia Militia in mid-September to join Milledge's Georgia Battery, then posted at West Point GA.

The other men in the militia did not enlist in Confederate service for one or more reasons. The main one likely was that they did not want to march off to Virginia, Tennessee or so other distant point. They probably wanted to stay alive and retain the use of all their body parts. So no one in the militia would have claimed to have been a Confederate.

If Captain Boykin belonged to the 37th Georgia Militia, why was he at home instead of serving with the rest of his regiment at West at Point? For what it's worth, Boykin organized the "Ben Hill Volunteers" at Antioch.