The question as to why six of the seven brothers served in the war seems simple enough. If they were of military age and capacity, their service was due by law, irrespective of their individual enthusiasm for the war.
When the secession crisis commenced, the Governors called up the volunteer militia of their State, and many new companies formed enthusiastically when the war fever caught on. However, the common militia, by law, included all free white men, ages 18 to 45 years, excepting certain exemptions, including ministers of the gospel. Most were unorganized except those who joined a fancy uniformed volunteer company. Pretty much all the men were subject to at least militia duty in that period. The Governors are the commanders-in-chief of the militia of their State. Same in the Confederacy, which retained all the militia and military laws of the USA.
In the period before the Presidential election of November, 1860, the Southern presses, and no less in Mississippi, were rife with declarations that Lincoln, upon election, was bent upon a fanatical war with the South. Credulity varied, but the headlines more or less flashed constantly with notices of...
After Lincoln won the election, Mississippi seceded from the union January 9, 1861.
When the War commenced, the Confederate government provided quotas to the States for "volunteer" troops, etc., besides the State forces already tendered to the Confederacy. At the outset of the war there were more volunteers than the quotas required. From the Eastern Clarion of Paulding, Miss., May 10, 1861:
J.E. Robuck, a veteran of the 29th Mississippi, recalled of the setting in Mississippi in March, 1861:
And after the news of the victory at Manassas, Virginia in July, 1861:
Robuck mentions that threats of a national draft were used to induce many to volunteer by the close of '61:
Robuck mentions that where entreaties were not otherwise working to get a chap to join up, from the public men, then the ladies were next employed as the recruiters...
Where men were not forthcoming to volunteer from a certain district, etc., a militia draft would be held to provide the full number of the Confederate quota, but as noted above, near every devise possible was employed to get men to volunteer.
By April, 1862 the bulk of the Confederate army's one year enlistment was drawing to a close, and but few had enlisted for the duration. Also, enlistments generally had stagnated, and it appeared the Confederate army was about to disband. After much debate, and public notices, the CSA passed a general law conscripting all men between 18 and 35 into the army directly. Those who were formed into new volunteer units before their induction would have the advantage of electing their own officers, etc. Those who waited to be taken up would be put in a camp of instruction under regular discipline, and sent to an existing regiment for service at the front with strangers, and under officers they did not know, etc. The enlistment under the conscription laws was generally three years or the duration of the war.
Robuck mentions of this period in his memoir:
Men exempted from the Confederate conscription, were still subject to militia service, and being called forth by either the Governor, or the President of the Confederacy, during the war.
For example, from the Macon, Miss. Beacon, of July 30, 1862, is a list of men drafted for militia active service... but to report to Camp Newton
From the Natchez Daily Courier, Nov. 21, 1862.
the Confederate conscription acts, by the end of the war, declared all free white men aged 17 to 50 years in Confederate army service, with certain exemptions. Many States themselves enrolled men from 16 to 60, not otherwise in service, into Home Guard or militia formations subject to calling forth in emergencies, etc.
Mississippi supplied well over 80,000 men to the Confederate army. The compiled service records contain over 170,000 individual records.
Bringing the