Can you prove that not one person from Coosa County, Alabama, either living there before or after the war, served in a Confederate Cavalry unit under an officer named McDonald? To prove it you must have all the names of each person who ever lived in Coosa County, Alabama who claimed to have been a Confederate soldier, and provide a complete Confederate military record of each person. The military record shall include enlistments, transfers, temporary detachment, training, work detail, evaluation, equipment issue, medical and physical records and history of all commanding officers, temporary officers and non-commissioned officers they served under for their entire service. Without this type of detail there is no way to positively know exactly what any soldier or sailor experienced in their time in service.
Even today's military personel records, done with computers, cannot show the complete picture of a person's military experience. One of my all time favorite experiences was being detailed to train Navy SEALS in winter warfare environmental training, none of it is in my records. I had to fight forrest fires, chase downed pilots through swamps, locate and move unexploded live 1000-lb bombs, and fly in the door of a Huey over the Everglades...none of these experiences are in my military records...along with hundreds of other things I got assigned to do in my career. I believe this would be exactly the same for soldiers of the Civil War and their military records, or the minute fraction that exist.
________________________
David Upton