Please feel to disagree! I have done my homework and stand by my analysis.

What you have described sounds very much like the chaos and confusion I described with the men walking out in groups of comrades from the same company and regiment and with Confederate officers having little or no control over them. It was certainly not the orderly military procession that you would have readers believe it was. You have noted the dispersal of men from their groups heading for home as soon after they cleared Federal authority as well as documented the arrival of some trying to maintain military discipline at the Parole Camp at Enterprise. The men from Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia would more likely have gone to Enterprise first because that was on their way home. I believe that you have sustained my point.

Add to your reading list:

(1) William Pitt Chambers' "My Journal" which was published by the Mississippi Historical Society. Sergeant Chambers was in the 46th Mississippi Infantry, Baldwin's Brigade.

(2) Grady Howell's work on the Sixth Mississippi Infantry. Major J. R. Stevens of that regiment was inside Vicksburg with perhaps half of the regiment which he had taken out as skirmishers during the Battle of Champion Hill. They were not able to rejoin their regiment during the retreat and ended up inside Vicksburg.

(3) Will Tunnard's "A Southern Record: The History of the Third Louisiana Infantry" originally published soon after the war. Tunnard was a Sergeant in the 3rd Louisiana Infantry.

(4) Winchester Hall's "The Story of the 26th Louisiana Infantry" - Hall was Colonel of the 26th Louisiana Infantry regiment.

(5) Mary Elizabeth Sander edited "Diary in Gray: The Civil War Letters of Jared Young Sanders" who was a Lieutenant in the 26th Louisiana Infantry.

Two of my great grandfathers and one of their brothers were captured and paroled at Vicksburg. This story has been one of long standing interest to me.

Hugh