and in small bands over nearly half the territory of the State robbing and plundering the citizens indiscriminately and taking from the wives and children of our soldiers who are in service discharging their whole duty the supplies of provisions which are their only means of support. These predatory bands of thieves and robbers, who devastate the country under pretext of making impressments of property for the use of the army, are a disgrace to the commands to which they profess to belong, and I am sure their conduct meets the unqualified condemnation and scorn of every true soldier in the army. All other means for the suppression of this indiscriminate robbery having failed, the people are obliged, as far as they have the ability, to depend upon their natural rights of self-protection by the use of force.

I therefore hereby call upon the justices of the inferior courts, clerks, sheriffs, and all other persons remaining at home not subject to my last call to organize and arm themselves as best they can, and whenever a band of these plunderers enters the county and takes the property of any citizen by force to pursue them immediately and shoot them down whenever they find them, and to report the fact, if the force is more than they can manage, to Lieutenant-General Taylor, at Macon, who will, while he remains in Georgia, uphold and sustain the people by force. I am authorized by General Taylor to say that he will give the citizens all the aid in his power to slay them when and wherever they are found committing the outrages above mentioned, and in plain cases where proof of robbery is satisfactory and the parties can be identified he will order them shot as soon as they can be apprehended and the facts established. For this protection the whole people of the State will owe General Taylor a lasting debt of gratitude. No officer or band of men is authorized to make any impressment of private property without the wxhibition of competent authority from the War Department. Till further notice, no impressments will be legal unless the party making them exhibits an order from Major Norman W. Smith, Major General Howell Cobb, or in special cases from Major-General Wheeler, over his own signature, specifying the necessity and the particular property to be taken, or an order from some general of higher rank than any above mentioned, and then only when there is a strict compliance with the laws of Congress regulating impressments. All who attempt to impress without an order over the signature of one of the officers above mentioned are robbers, and will be shot down by one able to do it.

Given under my hand and the seal of the executive department this 24th day of November, 1864.

JOSEPH E. BROWN.

[44.]

AUGUSTA, GA., November 24, 1864.

His Excellency JOSEPH E. BROWN,

Macon, Ga.:

GOVERNOR: Finding that you had been cut off from communication with the eastern portion of the State, upon consultation with the leading citizens and jurists here I determined to use the authority of assuming the command of all the militia east of the Oconee, as President of the Senate, and have changed so much of your order as required all the militia to report to General G. W. Smith, and have ordered all east of Oconee River to report to me at this place. I also received a telegram from General Wayne, then at Gordon, asking me to adopt