to repel invasion, never came otherwise than with their company, field, and general officers. Your former secretary of war, now secretary of state, has also admitted the right of the State to appoint the officers to command the troops sent by her into the service of the Confederacy, under requisition from you.

"You have not thought proper in either of your letters to give any reason why the State should be denied the exercise of this clear constitutional right. In this state of the case you still exercise the appointing power which belongs to the State, and commission the officers who are to command these troops. The laws of this State give to these gallant men the right to elect their own officers, and have them commissioned by the Executive of their own State. This question is of the more practical importance at present, on account of a large number of gallant officers belonging to these regiments having lately fallen upon the battle-field, whose places are to be filled by others. The troops volunteered at the call of the State, with a knowledge of their right to elect those who are to command them, and went into the field with the assurance that they would be permitted to exercise this right. It is now denied them under the Conscription Act. Some of them have appealed to me to see that their rights are protected. As an act of justice to brave men, who by their deeds of valor have rendered their names immortal, and as an act of duty, which as her Executive I owe to the people of this State, I must be pardoned for again demanding for the Georgia State troops, now under your command, permission in all cases in which they have already been deprived of it, or which may hereafter arise, to have the company, field, and general officers, who are to command them, appointed by election, and commissioned from the Executive of Georgia, as guaranteed to them by the Constitution of the Confederacy and the laws of this State.

"I make this demand with the greater confidence in view of the past history of your life. I have not the documents before me, but if I mistake not, President Polk, during the war against Mexico, in which you were the colonel of a gallant Mississippi regiment, tendered you the appointment of brigadier-general for distinguished services upon the battle-field, and you declined the appointment upon the ground that the President had no right under the Constitution to appoint a brigadier-general to command the State volunteers then employed in the service of the United States, but that the States, and not the General Government, had the right, under the Constitution, to make such appointments. If Congress could not at that time confer upon the President the right under the Constitution to appoint a brigadier-general to command State troops in the service of the Confederacy, Congress certainly cannot now, under the same constitutional provisions, confer upon the President the right to appoint, not only the brigadier-generals, but also all the field and company officers of State troops employed in the service of the Confederacy. May I not reasonably hope that the right for which I contend will be speedily recognized, and that you will give

notice to the Georgia State troops, now under your control, who went into service under requisitions made upon the State by you, that they will no longer be denied the practical benefit resulting from the recognition.

"You conclude your letter by saying, 'you cannot share the alarm and concern about State rights which I so evidently feel.' I regret that you cannot. The views and opinions of the best of men, are, however, influenced more or less by the positions in which they are placed, and the circumstances by which they are surrounded. It is probably not unnatural that those who administer the affairs and dispense the patronage of a confederation of States should become, to some extent, biased in favor of the claims of the Confederacy when its powers are questioned; while it is equally natural that those who administer the affairs of the States, and are responsible for the protection of their rights, should be the first to sound the alarm, in case of encroachments by the Confederacy, which tend to the subversion of the rights of the States. This principle of human nature may be clearly traced in the history of the government of the United States. While that government encroached upon the rights of the States from time to time, and was fast concentrating the whole power in its own hands, it is worthy of remark, that the Federal Executive, exercising the vast powers and dispensing the immense patronage of his position, has seldom, if ever, been able to share in the alarm and concern about State rights,' which have on so many occasions been felt by the authorities and people of the respective States. "With renewed assurances of my high consideration and esteem,

"I am, very respectfully,

"Your obedient servant,

"JOSEPH E. BROWN."

COPY OF A LETTER TO PRESIDENT DAVIS, TO WHICH NO

REPLY HAS BEEN RECEIVED.

"CANTON, GA., Oct. 18, 1862.

"HIS EXCELLENCY, JEFFERSON DAVIS :

Dear Sir:-The Act of Congress passed at its late session extending the Conscription Act, unlike its predecessor, of which it is amendatory, gives you power, in certain contingencies, of the happening of which you must be the judge, to suspend its operation, and accept troops from the States under any of the former acts upon that subject. By former acts you were authorized to accept troops from the States organized into companies, battalions and regiments. The Conscription Act of 16th of April last repealed these acts, but the late act revives them when you suspend it.

"For the reasons then given, I entered my protest against the first Conscription Act on account of its unconstitutionality, and refused to permit the enrolment of any State officer, civil or military, who was necessary to the in

tegrity of the State government. But on account of the emergencies of the country, growing out of the neglect of the Confederate authorities to call upon the States for a sufficient amount of additional force to supply the places of the twelve-months troops, and on account of the repeal of the former laws upon that subject, having, for the time, placed it out of your power to accept troops organized by the States in the constitutional mode, I interposed no active resistance to the enrolment of persons in this State between eighteen and thirty-five, who were not officers necessary to the maintenance of the government of the State.

"The first Conscription Act took from the State only part of her military force. She retained her officers and all her militia between thirty-five and forty-five. Her military organization was neither disbanded nor destroyed. She had permitted a heavy draft to be made upon it, without constitutional authority, rather than her fidelity to our cause should be questioned, or the enemy should gain any advantage growing out of what her authorities might consider unwise councils. But she still retained an organization, subject to the command of her constituted authorities, which she could use for the protection of her public property, the execution of her laws, the repulsion of invasion, or the suppression of servile insurrection which our insidious foe now proclaims to the world that it is his intention to incite, which if done may result in an indiscriminate massacre of helpless women and children.

"At this critical period in our public affairs, when it is absolutely neces sary that each State keep an organization for home protection, Congress, with your sanction, has extended the Conscription Act to embrace all between thirty-five and forty-five subject to military duty, giving you the power to suspend the act as above stated. If you refuse to exercise this power and are permitted to take all between thirty-five and forty-five as conscripts, you disband and destroy all military organization in this State, and leave her people utterly powerless to protect their own families, even against their own slaves. Not only so, but you deny to those between thirty-five and forty-five a privilege of electing the officers to command them, to which, under the Constitution of the Confederacy and the laws of this State, they are clearly entitled, which has been allowed to other troops from the State, and was, to a limited extent, allowed even to those between eighteen and thirty-five under the act of 16th April, as that act did allow them thirty days within which to volunteer, under such officers as they might select, who chanced at the time to have commissions from the War Department to raise regiments. "If you deny this rightful privilege to those between thirty-five and fortyfive, and refuse to accept them as volunteers with officers selected by them in accordance with the laws of their State, and attempt to compel them to enter the service as conscripts, my opinion is, your orders will only be obeyed by many of them when backed by an armed force which they have no power to resist.

"The late act, if I construe it correctly, does not give those between thirtyfive and forty-five the privilege under any circumstances of volunteering and forming themselves into regimental organizations, but compels them to enter the present organizations as privates under officers heretofore selected by others, until all the present organizations are filled to their maximum number.

"This injustice can only be avoided by the exercise of the power given you to suspend the act, and call upon the States for organized companies, battalions and regiments. I think the history of the past justifies me in saying that the public interest cannot suffer by the adoption of this course. When you made a requisition upon me in the early part of February last, for twelve regiments, I had them all, with a large additional number in the field, subject to your command and ready for service, in about one month. It has now been over six months since the passage of the first Conscription Act, and your officers during that time have not probably enrolled and carried into service from this State conscripts exceeding one-fourth of the number furnished by me as volunteers in one month, while the expense of getting the conscripts into service has probably been four times as much as it cost to get four times the number of volunteers into the field.

"In consideration of these facts I trust you will not hesitate to exercise the power given you by the Act of Congress and make an early requisition (which I earnestly invite) upon the Executive of this State for her just quota of the additional number of troops necessary to be called out to meet the hosts of the invader-the troops to be organized into companies, battalions, and regiments, in accordance with the laws of this State.

"The prompt and patriotic response made by the people of Georgia to every call for volunteers justifies the reasonable expectation that I shall be able to fill your requisition in a short time after it is made and authorizes me in advance to pledge prompt compliance. This can be done, too, when left to the State authorities, in such way as not to disband nor destroy her military organization at home, which must be kept in existence to be used in case of servile insurrection or other pressing necessity.

"If you should object to other new organizations on the ground that they are not efficient, I beg to invite your attention to the conduct of the newly organized regiments of Georgians, and indeed of troops from all the States, upon the plains of Manassas, in the battles before Richmond, upon James Island near Charleston, at Shiloh, at Richmond, Kentucky, and upon every battle-field whenever and wherever they have met the invading forces. If it is said that some of our old regiments are almost decimated, not having more than enough men in a regiment to form a single company, that it is too expensive to keep these small bands in the field as regiments, and that justice to the officers requires that they be filled up by conscripts, I reply, that injustice should never be done to the troops for the purpose of saving a few dollars of expense; and that justice to the men now called into the field as

imperatively requires that they shall have the privilege allowed to other troops to exercise the constitutional right of entering the service under officers selected and appointed as directed by the laws of their own State as it does that officers in service shall not be deprived of their commands when their regiments are worn out or destroyed.

"Our officers have usually exposed themselves in the van of the fight and shared the fate of their men. Hence but few of the original experienced officers who went to the field with our old regiments, which have won so bright a name in history, now survive, but their places have been filled by others appointed in most cases by the President. They have, therefore, no just cause to claim that the right of election which belongs to every Georgian shall be denied to all who are hereafter to enter the service for the purpose of sustaining them in the offices which they now fill.

"If it becomes necessary to disband any regiment on account of its small numbers, let every officer and private be left perfectly free to unite with such new volunteer association as he thinks proper, and in the organization and selection of officers it is but reasonable to suppose that modest merit and experience will not be overlooked.

"The late Act of Congress, if executed in this State, not only does gross injustice to a large class of her citizens, utterly destroys all State military organizations, and encroaches upon the reserved rights of the State, but strikes down her sovereignty at a single blow and tears from her the right arm of strength by which she alone can maintain her existence and protect those most dear to her and most dependent upon her. The representatives of the people will meet in General Assembly on the 6th day of next month, and I feel that I should be recreant to the high trust reposed in me were I to permit the virtual destruction of the Government of the State before they shall have had time to convene, deliberate, and act.

"Referring, in connection with the considerations above mentioned, to our former correspondence, for the reasons which satisfy my mind beyond doubt of the unconstitutionality of the Conscription Acts, and to the fact that a judge in this State, of great ability, in a case regularly brought before him in his judicial capacity, has pronounced the law unconstitutional; and to the further fact that Congress has lately passed an additional Act authorizing you to suspend the privilege of the writ of Habeas Corpus, doubtless with a view of denying to the judiciary in this very case the exercise of its constitutional functions for the protection of personal liberty, I can no longer avoid the responsibility of discharging a duty which I owe to the people of this State by informing you that I cannot permit the enrolment of conscripts under the late Act of Congress entitled An Act to amend the Act further to provide for the common defence,' until the General Assembly of this State shall have convened and taken action in the premises.

"The plea of necessity set up for conscription last spring, when I withheld active resistance to a very heavy draft upon the military organization of the