Home Guard in the Confederacy

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One of the keys to control of a population held in bondage was the system of police and home guard and slave patrols to enforce slave regulations. Was maintenance of this system a significant drain on CSA military resources? That is, are there reliable counts of these men employed full or part time in these roles? Did these numbers increase during the war?
 
One of the keys to control of a population held in bondage was the system of police and home guard and slave patrols to enforce slave regulations. Was maintenance of this system a significant drain on CSA military resources? That is, are there reliable counts of these men employed full or part time in these roles? Did these numbers increase during the war?

From the limited amount of information I've seen on slave patrols during the war they weren't as prominent as they had been pre-war so I wouldn't think they would have caused a significant drain on the war effort. Interesting question though, I'm not sure as to what the state of police departments were in major southern cities during the war but I'm sure they sort of doubled as a home guard if needed.
 
I don't have anything to back this up, so I'm throwing out for anyone who has studied this: I would speculate that the Home Guard as in militia/local defense troops also took part in that sort of thing, which would also limit the amount of men sucked away from the armies.
 
Professor Williams in his book "The South Bitterly Divided" and Professor Sutherland"the decisive role of guerrilla warfare in the civil war " might have some good information. Apparently the Home Guard in many Southern states had their hands full dealing with deserter gangs and Unioinst guerrillas plus free lance bandits. Professor Williams argues that the home guards where a drain on CSA Army recruitment on the other hand they was certainly needed. keep in mind it was noted has far back has the Civil War that one guerrilla can tie down (per a newspaper article in Mo cited by T.J. Stiles in "Jesse James last rebel of the civil war") 10 conventional troops. This same ratio has become accepted western military doctrine. Therefore for both the CSA and the Union they had to devote a lot of manpower on COIN warfare.
Leftyhunter
 
It's interesting that the Confederate states should have a greater problem with bandits and deserter gangs than the Union. The war was fought largely in the South, but there were wide areas never impacted by combat and campaigning. I was looking for some sort of calculation of how many men in a rural county, e.g., sheriff's posses, patrollers, militia, would be allocated on a routine basis to control slaves. Two? Twenty? Fifty? Do the math and you have a battalion, a regiment, etc.

As for guerrillas, they would target defeat of the enemy power and tie up regular troops or militia. Criminal gangs would be busy surviving and stealing for profit. No matter the nature of the group, this is still a significant public safety problem. In my reading these groups ran around without much interference. I wonder if slave patrollers were much of a match against deserting veterans or serious bandits.
 
You are heading into little known subject. I an no expert on the subject but believe can piece a statement together from the books have read.
Most people do not relise today that not everyone in the South in 1860-61 wanted the Union to split up. For example in the town of Vicksburg the most people voted no. There are stories of voters being pressured to vote yes........

SORRY HAVE TO GO WILL RETURN.
 
William C. Davis discusses this a bit in his book Look Away: A History of the Confederate States of America. He points out that conscription sucked away men who would otherwise have served in the local home guard and that the government in Richmond and state governments organizing regiments were constantly being begged not to take away too many men because of the fear of slave uprisings. He describes many counties in which almost all the fit white men were away in the army, where surprisingly large numbers of slaves simply stopped work and even raided local farms for food, with nobody able to do anything about it.
 
Sally E. Hadden has written Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas which is described on Amazon.com

Obscured from our view of slaves and masters in America is a critical third party: the state, with its coercive power. This book completes the grim picture of slavery by showing us the origins, the nature, and the extent of slave patrols in Virginia and the Carolinas from the late seventeenth century through the end of the Civil War. Here we see how the patrols, formed by county courts and state militias, were the closest enforcers of codes governing slaves throughout the South.

Mining a variety of sources, Sally Hadden presents the views of both patrollers and slaves as she depicts the patrols, composed of "respectable" members of society as well as poor whites, often mounted and armed with whips and guns, exerting a brutal and archaic brand of racial control inextricably linked to post-Civil War vigilantism and the Ku Klux Klan. City councils also used patrollers before the war, and police forces afterward, to impose their version of race relations across the South, making the entire region, not just plantations, an armed camp where slave workers were controlled through terror and brutality.​

I have not seen the book myself, but I hope to check it out of the library one of these days.

- Alan
 
William C. Davis discusses this a bit in his book Look Away: A History of the Confederate States of America. He points out that conscription sucked away men who would otherwise have served in the local home guard and that the government in Richmond and state governments organizing regiments were constantly being begged not to take away too many men because of the fear of slave uprisings. He describes many counties in which almost all the fit white men were away in the army, where surprisingly large numbers of slaves simply stopped work and even raided local farms for food, with nobody able to do anything about it.

Other books have described this as well. Oddly enough, for an unknown number of slaves, the Civil War was the best of times. There was less of a "police" presence, whatever the form; and also, they were needed due to the lack of men. So they had relatively more freedom and control over their lives. For slave families (with women, children, older people) that were not in proximity to the Union army (and so there was no easy escape route to freedom), staying on the farm was not that bad an idea.

- Alan
 
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One of the keys to control of a population held in bondage was the system of police and home guard and slave patrols to enforce slave regulations. Was maintenance of this system a significant drain on CSA military resources? That is, are there reliable counts of these men employed full or part time in these roles? Did these numbers increase during the war?

The Home Guard was over aged men or men with slight disabilities that made them unsuitable as front line troops, but capable of the less demanding task of policing a county or an area of the county. Of the approximately 125,000 North Carolinians to serve in the Confederate army the breakdown is as follows:

“North Carolina's greatest contribution to the Confederacy was manpower - the huge number of soldiers who bore the brunt of scores of battles. With one-ninth of the population of the Confederacy, North Carolina furnished about one-sixth or one- seventh of all Confederate soldiers. It furnished 111,000 offensive troops - all volunteers except about 19,000 conscripts - organized into 72 regiments; 10,000 reserves organized into eight regiments; and 4,000 home guards - a grand total of 125,000 men, a larger total than its voting population.”

Source: Hugh Talmage Lefler and Albert Ray Newsome, North Carolina: The History of a Southern State, (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1963), pp. 430-431
 
Being British the term "Home Guard" conjured up the image of men who were either too old, too young or otherwise incapable of taking the field being brought into services to guard the home front from invasion and thus free up men eligible to join the army for service in - to get a bit poetic here - a corner of some foreign field.

It also made me remember Dad's Army - a comedy classic in this country - and Bedknobs and Broomsticks, mainly for this song:


Probably entirely different to the Home Guard the Confederacy employed.
 
Being British the term "Home Guard" conjured up the image of men who were either too old, too young or otherwise incapable of taking the field being brought into services to guard the home front from invasion and thus free up men eligible to join the army for service in - to get a bit poetic here - a corner of some foreign field.

It also made me remember Dad's Army - a comedy classic in this country - and Bedknobs and Broomsticks, mainly for this song:


Probably entirely different to the Home Guard the Confederacy employed.
Actually that's a good comparison.

I had forgotten about Bedknobs and Broomsticks, . . . classic film.
Thanks for the memory.
 
It's interesting that the Confederate states should have a greater problem with bandits and deserter gangs than the Union. The war was fought largely in the South, but there were wide areas never impacted by combat and campaigning. I was looking for some sort of calculation of how many men in a rural county, e.g., sheriff's posses, patrollers, militia, would be allocated on a routine basis to control slaves. Two? Twenty? Fifty? Do the math and you have a battalion, a regiment, etc.

As for guerrillas, they would target defeat of the enemy power and tie up regular troops or militia. Criminal gangs would be busy surviving and stealing for profit. No matter the nature of the group, this is still a significant public safety problem. In my reading these groups ran around without much interference. I wonder if slave patrollers were much of a match against deserting veterans or serious bandits.

Interesting questions. per Professor Stricland the area of the South that had the most serious problem with Unionist guerrillas was the St. John River in Fl. Perhaps there is a local historical society that could answer the question how many homeguard vs Union guerrillas or Professor Stricland would know. Of course there wher other trouble spots throughout the South for the home guard Jones County, Ms perhaps being one of the better known areas.

I don't know if the CSA had a bigger problem with irregular warfare then the Union. Mo was just a hot mess for the Union and in addition to the MSM and local militias there where off the top of my head at least eight regular US cavalry units sent to fight CSA irregulars 3rd Wi. 3rd Ia, 2nd Colo, 1st and 2nd Ark, 7th Kn, 15th Kn and the 3rd Indian Home Guard .There where a few Union infantry regiments but I don't know which one off hand. On the other hand the Union did win the irregular or COIN war in Mo but it was rough and not a pretty process.

Professor Williams has pointed out that in areas that the Union Navy could control in Fl and Ga the USN could always find local men who would when supplied with weapons form Union Guerrilla units. There where even Union guerrillas in the hill country of Sc. Unionist Guerrillas in Eastern Tn could get supplies and weapons from Union troops in Ky. The Union did not seem to have a formal office that could coordinate aid to the Unionist guerrillas similar to the OSS in WW2.
This is a very interesting area of history!
Leftyhunter
 
One of the keys to control of a population held in bondage was the system of police and home guard and slave patrols to enforce slave regulations. Was maintenance of this system a significant drain on CSA military resources? That is, are there reliable counts of these men employed full or part time in these roles? Did these numbers increase during the war?
Wikipedia has an article about the Southern Home Guards. One way to look at the home guards is to compare them with local militias in Mo plus the MSM. The MSM was paid much better since they actually where paid in US dollars vs the CSA home guard. Has I noted in a thread on the firearms forum the MSM was poorly armed compared to Union cavalry. The Provisional Militia of Mo was not paid or trained for that matter and not surprisingly achieved less then optimal results against CSA irregulars. From what I gather conventional cavalry units do better then poorly paid and trained militia men who are often out of shape vs younger more physically fit men in COIN or conventional war. On the other hand both the Union and more so the CSA just didn't have enough cavalry units to use for COIN war. Without the mobility of a cavalry its just to hard to close with the irregulars.
Leftyhunter
 
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