Desertions must have been from the urban areas. In small towns everyone knew everyone else and being a coward was about the worse thing one could be.
My great great grandfather and his brothers and a few cousins served in the 14th and 49th Tennessee Infantry and only left when wounded or the war was over.
But no doubt there were deserters.
“Desertions must have been from the urban areas. In small towns everyone knew everyone else and being a coward was about the worse thing one could be.”
Actually, support for the Southern cause was not at all homogenous throughout the Confederacy, and as the war dragged on, the casualty lists poured in, and they realized they were losing, that support ebbed further and further.