reat kindness, conceal.
He said he was going home on furlough. As I then suspected and
afterward learned, he was deserting, while I was escaping. A
fellow-feeling, though at first unconfessed to each other, drew us
together, and at length I learned his whole history. My greater
caution and accustomed reticence, gave him but a meager idea of my
adventures or purposes. His story, reaffirmed to me when near death
some weeks later, is worth recital, especially as it illustrates
both the strength of the Rebel Government, and the desperate lengths
to which they go in pressing men into the service.

The conscription act passed by the Confederate Congress went into
operation on May 16th, 1862. By this law all able-bodied white male
citizens, between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five, were
actually taken into the service; that is, they were taken from their
homes, placed in camps of instruction, and forwarded to the armies
in the field as fast as needed. Another clause of the act required
the enrolling of all between the ages of thirty-five and fifty-five
years, as a reserve militia, to serve in their own State in case of
invasion. As their States have all been "invaded," this virtually
sweeps into the Southern army all white men able to bear arms
between eighteen and fifty-five years of age. Another clause
provided that all persons then in the army, under eighteen and over
thirty-five, might return home discharged from the service within
ninety days after the act took effect, _provided_, their regiments
were filled up with conscripts. By this provision the regiments
would be kept full. Still another clause directed that the
twelve-months men now in the service, should "be allowed" (i.e.,
_required_), "at the expiration of their twelve months to elect new
officers, and take the oath for two years or the war." Under this
last clause, the reorganization of the twelve-months volunteers was
going forward at Corinth, when the Fifth Tennessee regiment of
volunteers, composed of Warren county boys, Colonel J.B. Hill
commanding, determined they would not be forced to continue their
service, and especially out of their own State. Before this
determination had entirely taken form the officers were apprised of
the disaffection, and resolved, with true military decision, to
forestall the threatened mutiny. The regiment was marched out some
distance from camp and drilled for an hour or two, and then allowed
to stack arms and return to c