They Went into the Fight Cheering! Confederate Conscription in North Carolina

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They Went into the Fight Cheering! Confederate Conscription in North Carolina. By Walter C. Hilderman III. (Boone, N.C.: Parkway Publishers, Inc., 2005. Pp. xv, 272; $24.95, paper.)

On February 23, 1863, Major General Daniel Harvey Hill, just assigned command of Confederate troops in North Carolina, impressed upon his new soldiers his opinion of men who avoided mandatory army service. "Our cities, towns, and villages," Hill wrote in a circular to the troops, "are full of young and able-bodied skulkers, wearing the semblance of men, who have dodged from the battle-field under the provisions of the exemption bill." These "abortions of humanity" would get their due, Hill believed, …