The second section provides that all between eighteen and forty-five, now in service, shall be continued during the war in the same regiments, battalions, and companies to which they belong at the passage of this act, with the organization, officers, &c., provided that companies from one State organized against their consent, expressed at the time, with regrets, &c., from another State, shall have the privilege of being transferred to the same arm in a regiment from their own State, and men can be transferred to a company from their own State.
Section three gives a bounty eight months hence of $100 in rebel bonds.
Section four provides that no person shall be relieved from the operations of this act heretofore discharged for disability, nor shall those who furnished substitutes be exempted, where no disability now exists; but exempts religious persons who have paid an exemption tax. * * *
The tenth section provides that no person shall be exempt except the following: ministers, superintendents of deaf, dumb, and blind, or insane asylums; one editor to each newspaper, and such employees as he may swear to be indispensable; the Confederate and State public printers, and the journeymen printers necessary to perform the public printing; one apothecary to each drug store, who was and has been continuously doing business as such since October 10, 1862; physicians over 30 years of age of seven years’ practice, not including dentists; presidents and teachers of colleges, academies and schools, who have not less than thirty pupils; superintendents of public hospitals established by law, and such physicians and nurses as may be indispensable for their efficient management.
One agriculturist on such farm where there is no white male adult not liable to duty employing fifteen able-bodied slaves, between sixteen and fifty years of age, upon the following conditions:
The party exempted shall give bonds to deliver to the Government in the next twelve months, 100 pounds of bacon, or its equivalent in salt pork, at Government selection, and 100 pounds of beef for each such able-bodied slave employed on said farm at commissioner’s rates.
In certain cases this may be commuted in grain or other provisions.
The person shall further bind himself to sell all surplus provisions now on hand, or which he may raise, to the Government, or the families of soldiers, at commissioner’s rates, the person to be allowed a credit of 25 per cent. on any amount he may deliver in three months from the passage of this act; Provided that no enrollment since Feb. 1, 1864, shall deprive the person enrolled from the benefit of this exemption.
In addition to the above, the Secretary of War is authorized to make such details as the public security requires.
The vote in the House of Representatives was—yeas, 41; nays, 31.