 And at this stage in the war effort, Home Guards and Confederate enrolling officers were hunting deserters and draft evaders all over North Carolina in the desperate hope of refilling the depleted ranks of General Robert E. Lee's vaunted Army of Northern Virginia. And Yokely's son and neighbors were just the kinds of people the Home Guard were looking for, men dodging the local enforcement of the Confederate conscription law. The last best hope to replenish Confederate armies in the field