6 "As an excuse for dismissing the subject without further attempt to sustain your position, you remark that Major-General Cobb informs the department that he has made a satisfactory adjustment of this difficulty. While there has been perfect harmony between General Cobb and myself in military matters from the commencement of Sherman's advance upon Atlanta to the present time, as there has been between Generals Johnston, Hood, Beauregard and myself; there has been no adjustment whatever between me and General Cobb of what you are pleased to term this difficulty.' I have neither by word nor act done anything to recognize the right of the Presi dent to make this requisition, or to adınit the obligation of the Governor to fill it. I have stood in reference to General Cobb, as I have towards you and the President, upon the reserved rights of the State, and have refused to relinquish the control of the State over her reserved militia while she determines to keep them, or to fill a requisition which the President had no right to make. I am happy to find that upon reflection you seem to see your error, and are prepared to accept this as a satisfactory adjustment of a controversy which you have unjustly provoked, and in which you cannot sustain yourself upon any known principle of reason or law. "You devote a greater part of your letter to another attempt to justify your bad faith to the Georgia troops called out under the President's requisition of 6th June, 1863, and to prove, contrary to the plain language of the requisition, that they were called for during the war. You complain of what you call my 'garbled extracts,' and you quote extensively from the requisition, but you are particularly careful to so 'garble' your own extracts as not to quote that essential part of it twice stated in the letter, as I have already shown, that they were required only for six months. It was upon this requisition, with the two Acts of Congress, which you sent with it as the guide for my conduct, that I promised co-operation with you in the organization. The promise was redeemed both in letter and spirit, and your call for eight thousand men (not five thousand as you now erroneously state in your last letter) was met with more than double the number required, organized in strict accordance with the plain language of the requisition and the Acts of Congress on that subject. "As candor and truth at least are expected of one occupying your position, it is painful to witness the shifts to which you resort to do injustice to my State, and to misrepresent the conduct of her Executive in a matter where he more than doubly filled your requisition. "I am now favored by you with a copy of a general order issued by Adjutant-General Cooper weeks after the requisition was made, which I do not recollect that I ever saw till I received your letter, and you complain that I did not carry out your views as expressed in that order. I obey no orders from your department; nor was this order furnished to me when you made the requisition, or during the organization of the troops, with even a request that I conform to it. I was asked by you to organize the troops in accord ance with your letter containing the requisition and the two Acts of Congress, of which you enclosed copies for six months' service, with the pledges contained in your letter to which I referred in my last letter, that they should only be called out for sudden emergencies, etc. This I did on my part, and you refused to redeem the pledges made on your part. This is the whole case, and I here dismiss this part of the subject with my regrets that justice to myself and the large number of citizens of my State who suffered unnecessarily by your action, has made it a duty for me to expose your bad faith and the misstatements to which you have resorted to sustain an interpretation of your requisition which its plain language unquestionably precludes. 66 By the expression in your letter that: It (the unanimous voice of the Legislature of this State) has but confirmed the opinion that the seeds of baleful jealousies, suspicions and irritation that have so industriously been scattered among them (the people) have been wholly unproductive of the fruits anticipated,' I am left to conclude that in your disingenuous effort by insinuation to call in question my motives in protesting against the President's usurpations and abuses of power, you, as is your habit, base your assertion upon an assumption of facts which does not exist. The Legislature of this State at the late session passed no resolutions, and expressed no unanimous voice upon any question connected with the conduct of the Administration of which you are a member, nor did they utter in its behalf any voice of approbation. "While the people of this State are true and loyal to our cause, they are not unmindful of the great principles of Constitutional Liberty and State Sovereignty upon which we entered into this struggle, and they will not hold guiltless those in power who, while charged with the guardianship of the liberties of the people, have subverted and trampled personal liberty under foot, and disregarded the rights of private property, and the judicial sanctions, by which, in all free governments, they are protected. "The course pursued by the administration towards Georgia, in her late hour of extreme peril, has shown so conclusively as to require no further argument or illustration, the wisdom of the reservation made by the States, in the Constitution, of the right to keep troops in time of war. Georgia has furnished over one hundred thousand of her gallant sons to the armies of the Confederacy. The great body of these men was organized into regiments and battalions of infantry and artillery, which have been sustained by recruits from home, from month to month, to the extent of our ability. Those who survive of these regiments and battalions have become veterans in the service, who, if permitted, would have returned to their State, and rendered Sherman's march across her territory and the escape of his army alike impossible. I asked that this be allowed, if assistance could not be otherwise afforded. It was denied us, and the State has been passed over by a large army of the enemy. Hundreds of miles of her railroads have been for the present rendered useless. A broad belt of her territory nearly four hundred miles in length, has been devastated. Within this belt most of the public property, including several court houses with the public records, and a vast amount of private property, including many dwellings, gin houses, much cotton, etc., have been destroyed. The city of Atlanta, with several of the villages of the State, has been burnt; the capital has been occupied and desecrated by the enemy, and Savannah, the seaport city of the State,. is now in his possession. During the period of Sherman's march from Atlanta to Milledgeville, there was not one thousand men of all the veteran infantry regiments and battalions of Georgians, now in Confederate service, upon the soil of this State. Nor did troops from other States fill their places. "Thus 'abandoned to her fate' by the President, Georgia's best reliance was her reserve militia and State line, whom she had organized and still keeps, as by the Constitution she has a right to do. Without them, much more property must have been destroyed, and the city of Macon, so important to the State and Confederacy, must have shared the fate of Atlanta and Savannah, while Augusta, with the small Confederate force by which she was saved, divided with Macon, must also have fallen. "These troops whom Georgia keeps have not only acted with distinguished gallantry upon many bloody battle-fields upon the soil of their own State, but they have, when an important service could be rendered by them, marched into the interior of other States. The noble conduct of the Troup County militia in their march to Pollard, Alabama, to aid in the protection of the people and property of that State against the devastations of the enemy, and the heroic valor displayed by Maj.-Gen. G. W. Smith and part of his command then with him at Honey Hill, in South Carolina, where he won-with the Georgia militia, her State line and a small number of gallant Confederate troops, most of whom were Georgians-one of the most signal victories of the war in proportion to the number engaged, fully attest the correctness of my assertion in their behalf. "In view of these facts, with the late bitter experience of the people of this State fresh in his recollection, the Georgia statesman must indeed be a blind worshipper of the President who would advocate the policy of turning over to his control, to be carried out of the State at his bidding, old men and boys not subject under the laws of Congress to military service, and of a class not required by him of any other State. "I cannot close this communication without noticing certain expressions in your letter which are not unfrequently used by persons in authority at Richmond, such as 'refractory Governors,' 'loyal States,' etc. Our people have become accustomed to these imperial utterances from those who wield the central despotism at Washington, but such expressions are so utterly at variance with the principles upon which we entered into this contest in 1861 that it sounds harshly to our ears to have the officers of a government, which is the agent or creature of the States, discussing the loyalty and disloyalty of the sovereign States to their central agent-the loyalty of the creator to the creature-which lives and moves and has its being only at the will of the States; and to hear their praise of the Governors of sovereign States for their subserviency, or their denunciation of those not subservient as 'refractory.' If our liberties are lost the fatal result will not be properly chargeable to disloyal States or 'refractory Governors;' but it will grow out of the betrayal by those high in Confederate authority of the sacred principles of the Constitution which they have sworn to defend. "Had some officials labored as successfully for the public good as they have assiduously to concentrate all power in the Confederate Government and to place the liberty and property of every citizen of the Confederacy subject to the caprice and control of the President, the country would not have been doomed to witness so many sad reverses. Nor would we now be burdened to support the vast hoard of supernumerary officers and political favorites, who are quartered upon us to eat out our substance while they avoid duty and danger in the field, having little other duty to perform but to endorse, indiscriminately and publicly, by newspaper communications and otherwise, every act of the President whether right or wrong; and to reconcile the people by every means in their power to the constant encroachments which are made upon their ancient usages, customs, and liberties. "If all these favorites of power who are able for active duty and whose support in the style in which they live, while all around them is misery and want, costs the people millions of dollars, were sent to the field and compelled to do their part in battle, the President would have no reason to make illegal requisitions upon this State for her old men and boys, who are not subject to his control under any law, State or Confederate; but he would soon be able by heavy reinforcements to fill the depleted ranks of the armies of the Confederacy. As the President is clothed with all the power necessary to compel these political favorites to shoulder arms and aid in driving back the invader, the subject is respectfully commended to your consideration as well worthy of energetic action. "I am, very respectfully, "Your obedient servant, "JOSEPH E. BROWN." CHAPTER XI. CORRESPONDENCE OF PRESIDENT DAVIS AND GOVernor BROWN UPON CONSCRIPTION. In the spring of 1862, upon the subject of raising troops, there sprung up a fundamental difference of opinion between President Davis and Governor Brown. So long as volunteer forces were raised in the States by the authority of the President, or he made requisition on the Governor for them, there was no serious or exciting issue between them. But when, as will appear, in order to force the citizen soldiers of other States, which, unlike Georgia, appeared to be tardy in responding to his calls, the Congress, at the request of the President, attempted to place all within given ages subject to summary conscription, the execution of the law within this State gave rise to a severely critical correspondence. It relates to and contains the matters that tended in no small part, in the sequel, to the failure of the Confederacy. It was a difference in opinion between men who were each intent on independence for the South, which will appear in the letters of each. To avoid all appearance of unfairness, we dispense with abbreviations, and set forth their entire letters. "EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT, "HIS EXCELLENCY JEFFERSON DAVIS, Richmond, Virginia: } "Dear Sir:-So soon as I received from the Secretary of War official notice of the passage by Congress of the Conscription Act, placing in the military service of the Confederate States all white men between the ages of 18 and |