The Daily Dispatch: February 17, 1864., [Electronic resource]

The Military bill.

Section 1st provides that all white men, residents of the Confederate States, between the ages of seventeen and fifty, shall be in the military service of the Confederate States during the war.

Section 2 provides that all between the ages of eighteen and forty five now in service shall be retained during the present war in the same organization in which they were serving at the passage of this act, unless they are regularly discharged or transferred. Companies from one State who were put into organizations from another State shall be transferred, provided they expressed their dissent at the time they were placed in said organization. Individual soldiers are allowed the same privilege

Section 3 provides that, at the expiration of six months from the 1st of April next, a bounty of one hundred dollars, in a six per cent. Government bond, shall be paid to each non-commissioned officer and private then in service.

Section 4 provides that no person shall be relieved from the operation of this act by reason of having been discharged, where no disability now exists, nor by reason of having furnished a substitute; but no person who has heretofore been excepted on account of religious opinions, and paid the required tax, shall be required to render military service.

Section 5 provides that all between 17 and 18 years, and 45 and 59 years of age shall form a reserve corps, not to serve out of the State in which they reside.

Section 6 provides that the last named persons shall elect their own regiment and company officers, and be entitled to the same pay and allowances as troops in the field.

Section 7 provides that any person of the last named falling to attend at the place of rendezvous within thirty days, as required by the President, without a sufficient reason, shall be made to serve in the field during the war.

Section 8 provides that all the duties of provost and hospital guards and clerks, and of clerks, guards, agents, employees, or laborers, in the Commissary and Quartermaster Department, in the Ordnance Bureau and Navy Department, and all similar duties, shall be performed by persons who are declared, by a board of surgeons, as unable to perform military service in the field. The President may detail such bodies of troops or individuals required to be enrolled under the sixth section of this act (between the ages of 45 and 50) as may be needed for the discharge of such duties. Persons between seventeen and eighteen years of age shall not be assigned to such duties. The President is empowered to detail artizans, mechanics, or persons of scientific skill, to perform indispensable duties in the departments or bureaux herein mentioned.

Section 9 provides that any quartermaster or assistant quartermaster, commissary or assistant commissary,(other than those serving with organizations in the field,) or officer in the ordnance bureau, or navy agent, or provost marshall, or officer in the conscript service, who shall hereafter retain or employ any person subject to military duty, as herein provided, shall be cashiered.

Section 10 repeats all existing exemption laws, and exempts the following:
1. All who shall be held unfit for military service, under rules to be prescribed by the Secretary of War.
2. The Vice President of the Confederate States; the members and officers of Congress, of the several State Legislatures, and such other Confederate and State officers as the President or the Governors of the respective States may certify to be necessary for the proper administration of the Confederate or State Governments, as the case may be.
3. Every minister of religion authorized to preach according to the rules of his church, and who, at the passage of this act shall be regularly employed in the discharge of his ministerial dirtiest superintendents and physicians of asylums of the deaf, dumb, blind and insane; one editor for each newspaper being published at the time of the passage of this act, and such employees as said editor may certify on oath to be indispensable to the publication of such newspaper; the public printer of the Confederate and State Governments, and such Journeymen printers as the said public printer shall certify on oath to be indispensable to perform the public printing; one skilled apothecary in each apothecary on the 10th day of October, 1862, and has continued said business without intermission since that period; all physicians over the age of 30 years who are now and have been for the last seven years in the practice of their profession, but the town physician shall not include dentists.
[The old law exists covering professors and teachers.]
All superintendents of public hospitals established by law before the passage of this act, and such employees us the said superintendent shall certify on oath to be essential to the management thereof.
4. There shall be exempt one person as owner or agriculturist on each farm or plantation upon which there are now and were, on the first day of January last, fifteen able bodied field hands between the ages of 16 and 50, upon the following conditions: 1. This exemption shall only be granted in which there is no white male adult on the farm or plantation not liable to military duty, nor unless the person claiming the exemption was on the 1st day of January, 1864, either the owner and manager or overseer of said plantation; but in no case snail more than one person be exempted for one farm or plantation. 2. Such person shall first execute a bond, payable to the Confederate States of America, in such form and with such security and in such penalty as the Secretary of War may prescribe, conditioned that he will deliver to the Government, at some railroad depot, or such other place or places as may be designated by the Secretary of War, within twelve months next ensuing, one hundred pounds of bacon, or at the election of the Government, Its equivalent in pork, and one hundred pounds of nett beef, (said beef to be delivered on foot,) for each able bodied slave on said farm or plantation within the above said ages, whether said slaves are in the field or not, which said bacon, or pork and beef shall be paid for by the Government at the price fixed by the Commissioners of the State under the impressment act: Provided, that when the person thus exampled shall produce satisfactory evidence that it has been impossible for him, by the exercise of proper diligence, to furnish the amount of meat thus contracted for and leave an adequate supply for the subsistence of those living on said farm, the Secretary of War shall direct a commutation of the same of the extent of two-thirds thereof in grain or other provisions to be delivered by such persons as aforesaid at equivalent rates.
5. Such person shall furthermore bind himself to sell the marketable serpins of provisions and grain now on hand, and which he may raise from year to year, while the exemption continues, to the Government or to the families of soldiers, at prices fixed by the commissaries of the State under the impressment act: Provided, That any person, exempted as aforesaid, shall be entitled to a credit or 25 per cent, on any amount of meat which he may deliver within three months from the passage of this act: Provided further, That persons coming within the provisions of this exempt on shall not be deprived of the benefit thereof by reason of having been enrolled since the 1st day of February, 1864.
In addition to the forgetting exemptions, the Secretary of War may, under the direction of the President, exempt or detail such other persons as he may be satisfied ought to be exempted on account of public necessity, and to insure the production of grain and other provisions for the army and for the families of soldiers. He may also grant exemptions or details, on such terms as he may prescribe, to such overseers, farmers, or planters, as he may be satisfied will be more useful to the country in the pursuits of agriculture than in the military service; provided, that such exemption shall cease whenever the farmer, planter, or overseer shall fail diligently to employ in good faith his own skill, capital, and labor exclusively in the production of grain and other provisions, to be sold to the Government and the families of soldiers at such prices not exceeding those fixed at the time for the articles by the commissaries of the State under the impressment act.
The old law is re-enacted relating to railroads.
6. Nothing herein contained shall be construed as repealing the act approved April 14, 1863, exempting contractors for carrying the mails of the Confederate States, and the drivers of post-coaches and hacks, from military service: Provided, That all the exemptions granted under this act shall only continue while the persons so exempted are actually engaged in their respective pursuits or occupations.

Sec. 11. That the President he, and he is hereby authorized to grant details, under general rules and regulations to be issued from the War Department, either of persons between 45 and 50 years of age or from the army in the field, in all cases where, in his judgment, justice, equity, and necessity require such details, and he may revoke such orders of details whenever he thinks proper: Provided, That the power herein granted to the President to make details and exemptions shall not be construed to authorize the exemption or detail of any contractor for furnishing supplies of any kind to the Government, by reason of said contract, unless the head or secretary of the department making such contract shall certify that the personal services of such contractor are indispensable to the execution of the contract: Provided, further, That whenever such contractor shall fail diligently and faithfully to proceed with the execution of such contract, his exemption or detail shall cease.

Sec. 12 That in appointing local boards of surgeons for the examination of persons liable to military service, no member composing the same shall be appointed from the county or carolling district in which they are required to make such examination.