State governors reacted by proposing new legislation for the militia. In May 1862 three classes of white male citizens available for militia service were available:

1) Boys under age 18,
2) Men older than 35 , and
3) Men exempt from Confederate service, ages 18 -35. Later in 1862 Congress raised the upper limit to 40. It was later raised to 45.

The latter included men who had placed substitutes in the army as well as civil officers of the state and parishes, ministers, physicians and government employees. It also included men discharged from Confederate service. New state laws were framed on the three classes listed above. The pool of men available for the militia was dramatically reduced, but some form of state militia was still possible. The exisitence of a militia was also increasingly necessary in order to enforce the law and maintain civil order in parishes still under Confederate control.

Obviously the two small mounted battalions you mentioned would have been organized on this basis.

The phrase I used earlier was intended to apply to currently existing militia organizations (Mar-May 1862). Congress did not outlaw militia organizations, having no power to do so. However, the law did effectively remove perhaps 70-80 percent of the officers and men then enrolled in Louisiana militia organizations, exclusive of non-citizen exempts. To repeat, the Conscript law "killed" existing organizations; not the ability of the state to form militia on another basis of enrollment.