Your question as to why former EMM members were not entitled to federal pensions is valid, but the answer is not simple.

You mentioned page 104 in "Guerrilla Warfare in Civil War Missouri, vol. I, 1862," but I list some sources in endnote number 1 for this section of Chapter 12 on page 222 in the back of the book.

I could answer that it was a matter of money.

From the article by James A. Hamilton in the "Missouri Historical Review" I cited on page 222, it addresses the money problem, beginning on page 414 of the article. The Federal government calculated that it could only pay to clothe, arm, feed, and house 10,000 full-time, active, real soldiers in the Missouri State Militia (MSM) program to defend Missouri from the Confederates. Those men gave up their professions and were on duty away from their families in various parts of Missouri for their three-year enlistment to defend the state. The Federals refused to pay for more troops to defend Missouri, yet in the summer of 1862, just weeks after Union troops expelled regular southern forces from the state, literally hundreds of southern guerrillas and behind-Union-lines Confederate recruiters swarmed into the state and threatened to seize it back from the Union. Although the 10,000 full-time soldiers of the MSM and a few active-duty Union troops from neighboring states serving in Missouri did what they could, it was not nearly enough.

The Union cause in Missouri needed thousands more troops, but the Federals wouldn't pay, and, frankly, the state of Missouri could scarcely pay much, either. What was to be done in this real emergency?

The Missouri Federal commander (Major General John Schofield) and the provisional governor (Hamilton Gamble) worked together in a solution that harked back to colonial times for the defense of the state. They formed an emergency army of militia who would serve by-and-large only when southern forces were close enough to form a real threat, and the rest of the time, these militiamen would remain at home with their families at their civilian occupations. Since these men were NOT in service except for short periods, nobody had to pay them! Simple, right? To form this emergency army, the general and governor made it a law that every able-bodied man in the state would enroll at designated enrolling stations and could be compelled to serve in emergency situations only. General Scofield committed the Federals to supply firearms and ammunition for this emergency army and occasionally rations for those on actual duty. The governor committed the state to pay for some wages and a little else to keep the armories for all these scattered companies of militia guarded full-time. The soldiers were simply "come as you are" mostly without uniforms, training, and most of the time without pay using their own horses in units where they elected their own officers, who also were not trained, uniformed, or paid. The resulting army was not much of an army, as you can imagine. It was composed of about 70 regiments of thousands of men across the state who were well-meaning (and many were not) who didn't amount to much. But, the very existence of this large body of armed northern men (they simply turned away the southern men), did form a deterrence against southern hopes for Missouri.

Therefore, because nobody could pay, these men generally did not serve except during emergencies for a few weeks at most. And, since these men did not have to march away (at least usually very far) and leave their jobs and families (at least for long), the Federal government decided these EMM members were not eligible for federal pensions. Many, many applied in the decades after the war, and they were nearly all rejected. There was the one exception of the four regiments of EMM of southwest MO that served nobly and well and fought right alongside the active-duty troops in the Battle of Springfield in January 1863 to repel Confederate General Marmaduke's raid, and the Feds decided these men were eligible for federal pensions because of their exceptional service and sacrifice. In the main, however, nobody expected much of this amateur army, and in most cases, their poor performance lived up to expectations. They were a deterrent, and often little else.

That being said, some parts of regiments or even whole regiments surprised everybody, including themselves, and did valiant service when "the chips were down," and some of them fought surprisingly well on occasion even against the worst of the bushwhackers. Some of the EMM units of SW MO were in 1864 formed into two regiments of active-duty, real cavalry and performed well for the rest of the war. One regiment formed from six to eight counties of SE MO forged their own cannon, and when activated briefly in the winter of 1862-1863 to repair roads and build bridges not only did that put discovered a Confederate colonel was recruiting hundreds of southern men in a nearby town, and raided the place capturing a bunch of them. The topper was a makeshift unit formed from men of three or four EMM regiments of NW MO north of the MO River who formed their own task force and were the only Union unit to beat Bill Anderson's bushwhacker band in an open fight--once in August 1864 in which they put him out of action for weeks with a leg wound and once in late October 1864 when they killed him. No other Federal unit could bring Anderson to defeat except these part-time soldiers.

Sad to say, these men did not serve but a few weeks at most and the Federals ruled did not serve enough to warrant federal pensions.

Another source for the EMM and eligibility for pensions is Kirby Ross' article "Federal Militia of Missouri" found in George and Deb Rule's "Civil War in St. Louis" website at http://www.civilwarstlouis.com/militia/federalmilitia.htm

Did that answer your questions?

Bruce Nichols