For what it's worth, "the required number of men" is never specified in this act. Obviously it could not have been enforced in Nashville or Memphis after the capture of those cities. Can someone check the published census to determine how many free men of color lived in the state? That might give us an upper limit for the number of men involved.

As mentioned in another post, I don't know of anyone who suggests that blacks and FMoC were not present in the services, such as quartermaster, commissary, ordnance, medical, engineer department. Apparently numbers were insufficient in February 1864, as Congress passed a similar law covering the Confederacy, not just Tennessee.

How many times have you read of an incident such as artillery shell exploding in the rear, which caused black teamsters and cooks to scatter in terror? The presence of non-whites in service capacity in the Confederate (and Federal) armies was commonplace thoughout the war. This is not part of Black Confederate myth.