I've known about the Civil War service of my Great Grandfather Simpson Jones Nash for some time. He was a Confederate soldier captured at Gettysburg and imprisoned at David's Island in Long Island Sound. I also knew my maternal Great-Great Grandfather, John McIlheran, had served for the Confederates but really didn't know much about his time in the service. I decided to use my time in DC to visit the National Archives and look up his records.
The records themselves are not actually available and would be hard to use if they were. What the government has done is created a sort of event card from each entry of every sort of military record where a Confederate soldiers name appears. Some came from Confederate enlistment records, some from musters or roll calls during service, others from Confederate hospital admission and discharge records and many from Union prisoner of war records. I'm sure there are many other categories. Once these cards were complete, they were brought together as military units then sorted by name then date. This creates a mini-history for each soldier. These cards have been microfilmed in order and are available for researchers to look up and print copies.
Upon finding my McIlheran ancestor, I discovered that he had been a prisoner of war also. He joined up 11 Nov 1862, a member of the 23rd Battalion, Tennessee Infantry, Company D. He was captured on 11 September 1863 during the run-up to the battle of Chickamauga. According to the records, he went first to a prison in Louisville, KY and ended up in the Rock Island Barracks in Illinois. On May 11th, 1865, a few days after the Confederate surrender, he signed an Oath of Allegiance to the United States and was released. He lived to be 98 years old and is buried in the McIlheran Cemetery near Cowan, TN.
