All,
Let me amen John's appropriate remarks from my own study of Missouri's notorious Enrolled Missouri Militia (EMM). In some counties, Saline County for one, if you failed to submit yourself and sign in when the mandatory EMM program was initiated by Union Department of the Missouri General Orders Number 19 in July 1863, you would be counted with the secessionists. The more extreme members of the EMM would mark you as an enemy and treat you and your property accordingly. According to the record, R. O. Green held out until 10 January 1863 before enrolling in Company E of the local 71st EMM, so at least he didn't jump to the requirement in late July or in August 1862 when the EMM began. Further, Confederate General Marmaduke's notable January 1863 raid in the Springfield area of southwest Missouri was under way when Robert enrolled, and that may have something to do with the peculiar date of his enrollment at Marshall, the county seat and designated site for the required enrollment. And, John is correct, in that Private R. O. Green's brief card in the Missouri State Archives reflects nothing more than his enrollment, not even a mustering in, and there is no remark. It appears as though Private Green fulfilled only the minimal requirement of what Union martial law laid out as mandatory for all able-bodied Missouri men of military age. Before the EMM program was ended in March 1865, it contained over 70 regiments of men made to enroll and serve by law--quite a number of them actually southern in sympathy and seveal with southern service earlier in the war. R. O. Green could have been subject to Union military tribunal and possiby imprisonment again in one of the Federal military prisons in the St. Louis area simply for refusing to enroll, especially since he had been captured and imprisoned for his southern service in December 1861. This is a matter of record, and would have been common knowledge to Union authorities in Saline County. Please don't hold this brief mention of service in a Union grass-roots militia against Robert. In his defense, the brevity of his record card tends to tell a story of its own.
Bruce Nichols