[214] C. C. Clay, Jr., to Secretary of War, O. R., Ser. IV, Vol. II, pp. 141, 142.
[215] I know of one man who for two years carried his arm in a sling to deceive the enrolling officers. It was sound when he put it into the sling. After the war ended he could never regain the use of it.
A draft from the Home Guards of Selma was ordered to go to Mobile. The roll was made out, and opposite his name each man was allowed to write his excuse for not wishing to go. One cripple, John Smith, wrote, “One leg too short,” and was at once excused by the Board. The next man had no excuse whatever, but he had seen how Smith’s excuse worked, so he wrote, “Both legs too short,” but he had to go to Mobile. “The Land We Love,” Vol. III, p. 430.
[216] Shorter’s Proclamation, Dec. 22, 1862.
[217] M. J. Saffold, afterward a prominent “scalawag,” escaped service as an “agent to examine political prisoners.” O. R., Ser. II, Vol. VI, p. 432.
[218] The list of pardons given by President Johnson will show a number of the titles assumed by the exempts. The chronic exempts were skilled in all the arts of beating out. If a new way of securing exemption were discovered, the whole fraternity of “deadheads” soon knew of it. In 1864 nearly all the exemptions and details made in order to supply the Quartermaster’s Department were revoked, and agents sent through the country to notify the former exempts that they were again subject to duty. Before the enrolling officers reached them nearly all of them had secured a fresh exemption, and from a large district in middle Alabama, I have been informed by the agent who revoked the contracts, not one recruit for the armies was secured. Often the exemption was only a detail, and large numbers of men were carried on the rolls of companies who never saw their commands. Often a man when conscripted would have sufficient influence to be at once detailed, and would never join his company. Little attention was paid to the laws regarding exemption.
[219] Curry, “Civil History,” pp. 142-148. The wealthy young men volunteered, at first as privates or as officers; the older men of wealth nearly all became officers, chosen by their men. One company from Tuskegee owned property worth over $2,000,000. Opelika Post, Dec. 4, 1903.
[220] Act of Feb. 17, 1864, Pub. Laws, C. S. A.
[221] Curry, “Civil History,” pp. 142-148, 151.
[222] N. Y. World, March 28, 1864.