Actually, this is much clearer than anything I'd seen before. But it leads me to wonder about Col. John S. Ford. I've read that when Magruder arrived Ford was "conscription officer" in Houston. It's my understanding that Ford was a state officer and never actually in the CSA, even though from time to time he seems to have had overall command of some CSA units (was this illegal?). What I'm wondering is who he was conscripting for? The State, the CSA or both?

I've also noticed that the civilian employees of the Quartermaster Corps were apparently "exempt" from conscription. I ran across one sort of odd newspaper article stating that local civilians in East central Texas had been known to ambush or run off Mexican wagon-drivers on the cotton road because native Texans with that job were "exempt".