I’ve got a question about the tail end of the war.  As a matter of fact it is actually a post war question but it is going to take some word salad to get the question asked.  Lee had already surrendered to Grant in Virginia.  Johnson was negotiating with Sherman in North Carolina.  Sherman proposed to accept the surrender of the Confederate civilian government as well as Johnson’s army.  The battle of Blakely had been resoundingly won by the Federals on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay after the Appomattox Courthouse surrender.  Confederate general Richard Taylor and Federal general ERS Canby met at Magee Farm in present day Kushla, AL, to negotiate the surrender of the last remaining organized Confederate force east of the Mississippi River.  Taylor and Canby were more politically astute than Johnson and Sherman in that the pair of generals in Alabama knew the Federal military forces did not have the authority to accept surrender of the Confederate civilian government.  At Magee Farm the details of the military surrender were agreed upon pending the out come of what happened in North Carolina.  During this time span Lincoln was assassinated.  Sherman accepted Johnson’s surrender.  The Confederate governmental leaders were scattering.  The Confederate Department of Alabama, Mississippi, and East Louisiana surrendered at several locations.  Among these were Citronelle, AL, Meridian, MS, and Gainesville, AL.  Richard Taylor and ERS Canby insisted on formal surrender proceedings at these locations so that Confederate soldiers were issued paroles.  All of this has been written to ask does anyone know the nuts and bolts procedure of that paroling process?  

--Last edited by Curtis Makamson on 2007-06-07 16:46:50 --

The parole was pretty simple. Take the oath of allegance, sign off on a paper and go home. The "go home" part was accomplished by the "shoe leather express" in almost all cases as the Federal government didn't care about you as long as you had laid down your arms. Enlisted go to keep their kit, sans rifle and acouterments. Officers, horses and a side arm.

Do you know how many copies were involved and where the copies went?  The reason I ask is when my great-grandfather applied for a pension, his parole could not be found by the government official.  He was declared a deserter.  Fortunately, he had his copy and was still able to lay hands on it.  Even though he had his copy he had to furnish affidavits from some of the people with whom he served.  Those affidavits were still in his records and made for some interesting reading.

Curtis,

Great question and neat story. I'd love to see the documents, is there any way to get a copy of them on line?

No, Robert, I don’t have any of that stuff any more.  Katrina got it.  I will have to contact the Mississippi Department of Archives and History and reorder that record.  Until we get the house back together that kind of thing is going to have to wait a bit longer..

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Curtis Makamson wrote : Do you know how many copies were involved and where the copies went?  The reason I ask is when my great-grandfather applied for a pension, his parole could not be found by the government official.  He was declared a deserter.  Fortunately, he had his copy and was still able to lay hands on it.  Even though he had his copy he had to furnish affidavits from some of the people with whom he served.  Those affidavits were still in his records and made for some interesting reading.

Way back when the forum here was first set up, I posted some letters from an "ancestor" of mine who was in the 4th Texas.  The reason his letters are in the Texas Archives is because they listed him as a deserter and when his wife applied for his pension, she was denied.  But she had the letters to prove where he was when he was.  

There are no parole records in the packet I have on my ancestor, but I do have her pension application.  It is quite the legal document.

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GrumpyDave wrote : The parole was pretty simple. Take the oath of allegance, sign off on a paper and go home. The "go home" part was accomplished by the "shoe leather express" in almost all cases as the Federal government didn't care about you as long as you had laid down your arms.

Grump,

That wasn't exactly true in all cases. If you had a valid parole, you were authorized to travel on Federal trains and steam ships on a "space available basis". A lot of guys in the Texas Brigade made at least a portion of the trip home at governmant expense.

As an aside, one of the things that held up the final disbanding of the ANV, was waiting for the parole chits to get printed up, so they could be filled out and distributed to the troops.

I think I put a parole form in the 2007 "School of the Clerk," available from that other forum, or me if you ask.  It's based on the one issued at Vicksburg.  There's no oath of allegiance, but a pledge to abide by the terms of the 1862 cartel, which essentially means performing no military service for your government (including home guard or other sedentary security tasks) until properly exchanged.  I believe it was to be filled out in duplicate, with one copy kept by the parolers and another by the parolee.  A document like that would have been quite valuable, keeping said parolee out of the hands of either army until the exchange.

Thank you, Michael.  That “School of the Clerk” is a wonderful piece of work you did.  The Vicksburg parole also hits close to home in this household.  My mother’s grandfather, another of my great grandfathers, surrendered at Vicksburg.  (Incidentally, did you know that for many years the citizens of Vicksburg did not celebrate the 4th of July?)  He walked his broken down horse to Pontotoc County, MS, which is in north Mississippi.  The horse was tended during the fall and winter.  It was used to put in a huge garden the next spring.  If the passed down story has not been too greatly exaggerated, all of the surrounding families used this garden.  That horse was one of the few left in the area.  All of the other horses had been taken for the war effort by the Confederates or Federals.  This great grandfather was eventually declared a deserter.  When he walked that horse back to his home he literally walked out of the war and remained at home.