Joe Brown’s
Pets
The Georgia
Militia, 1862–1865
William R. Scaife
and William H.
Bragg
The
definitive history of the Georgia Militia during the Civil War
 At the
beginning of the Civil War, Georgia
ranked third among the Confederate states in manpower resources, behind
only Virginia and Tennessee.
With an arms-bearing population somewhere between 120,000 and 130,000
white
males between the ages of 16 and 60, this resource became an object of
a great
struggle between Joseph Brown, governor of Georgia, and Jefferson
Davis,
president of the Confederacy. Brown advocated a strong state defense,
but as
the war dragged on Davis applied more
pressure
for more soldiers from Georgia.
In December 1863, the state’s general assembly reorganized the state
militia
and it became known as Joe Brown’s Pets.
Civil
War
historians William Scaife and William Bragg have written not only the
first
history of the Georgia Militia during the Civil War, but have produced
the
definitive history of this militia. Using original documents found in
the
Georgia Department of Archives and History that are too delicate for
general
public access, Scaife and Bragg were granted special permission to
research the
material under the guidance of an archivist and conducted under tightly
controlled conditions of security and preservation control.
William
R.
Scaife has taught at Emory
University,
and is a
retired architect with more than 40 years experience in architecture
and
engineering. He is a widely respected Civil War historian with numerous
publications and has served as consultant to or member of many
organizations of
history, national parks, and history magazines.
William
H.
Bragg teaches history at Georgia
College and State University
in Milledgeville, Georgia,
and is the author of two previous books on the Civil War published by
Mercer.
Mercer University
Press
http://www.mupress.org/
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