North Carolina's Junior Reserves-- Part 1: Confederate Conscription

From the NCpedia.

This past Friday I wrote about there being a N.C. Junior Reserves encampment at Fort Fisher over the weekend.  There were members of this unit of 17-year-olds at the First Battle of Fort Fisher.

In 1862, the Confederate Congress passed a conscription act to establish the draft for  all males ages 18-35.  Later that year, the age was raised to 45, but, as in the North, there were exemptions for a variety of reasons or the men would be assigned to work in industries deemed essential to the war effort.  A third conscription law passed in early 1864 brought many of the previously exempted men into combat units.

One provision of this third law was that it required 17-year-old boys and 45 to 50-year-old men to join up and serve in units of their own age group.

The boys became part of the Junior Reserves and the men became the Senior Reserves.

--Old B-Runner