While I can't add anything to the substantive question in this thread, I have a good example of the problem of Confederate death records. My great grandmother's first husband, John F. Barksdale, enlisted in Monticello Light Artillery (Arkansas) in Feb. 1862. He has two CMSR cards. The first deals with the enlistment in Feb. and the second dated May-June, 1862 is only one word "DEAD." It is only through a reference in a family letter I have written in the early 1900s that I know he died in a Confederate Hospital in Columbus, MS. What few records from the hospitals in Columbus that have survived make no mention of him. Probably buried in an unmarked grave there. If he had not died there, the odds are good that I would not exist.

Mike