Department strained all the powers vested in it for recruiting the army within the limits of Georgia and accumulating supplies for its support. The legislation of the Congress that ended its session in February last had been comprehensive and vigorous. Your Excellency cannot have forgotten how that legislation was denounced and the efforts of the Department impaired by the countervailing action of the Executive and local authorities of your State. To the Department it cannot be imputed as a fault that Georgia was invaded by "overwhelming numbers." The 10,000 militia you boast to have organized, without adding to the count those you are proceeding to organize, if incorporated with the veteran regiment prior to the 1st of May, would have been an invaluable acquisition to the Army of Tennessee, and not improbably have hurled back the invader from the threshold of your State. That they, or a large proportion of them at least, were not ready for that service, and other auxiliary means to its operations were not afforded, I am bound to think was due to the obstacles and embarrassments interposed by Your Excellency and the local authorities, with your countenance, to the enforcement of the acts of Congress for the recruitment and maintenance of the armies. Your Excellency may not have foreseen and realized the extent and import of the approaching invasion, but to whom, then, with most safety and wisdom (apart even from constitutional obligation) can the disposition and command of the trooos in question be committed?

In your second reason it is difficult to find anything but the ascription to the President of an unworthy design - a design that cannot be accomplished without disappointing the objects which I have explained as the cause of the requisition. The disbanding of the militia organizations after their call into service would result in the discharge of such of the men as are not liable to service under the act of Congress of February last, and those who are liable, in such an event, would be placed in those veteran regiments raised for Confederate service in the State of Georgia prior to April, 1862, whose diminished numbers attest the fidelity, valor, and suffering with which they have performed their duty. Whether, therefore, the militia be retained in their militia organization, as is contemplated, or be disbanded, as you apprehend may be done, in neither event can new organizations be made or new officers appointed. Your supicions as to the motives and designs of the President are simply chimerical.

In your third reason Your Excellency has apparently forgotten the true inquiry, where, constitutionally and legally, in all such matters, the discretion of decision is lodged, and further, that a provision adequate, in the view of Congress, against abuse has been provided in the limitation of time for which the militia may be called out to six months. In illustrating the danger of undue detention in Confederate service, Your Excellency refers to the course pursued toward the troops for local service enlisted by you last fall under a call from the Department. During the last winter Your Excellency addressed to this Department an acrimonious letter on this subject, which was replied to in a spirit of forbearance and with a careful abstinence from the use of recriminating language. Justice to myself demands that I should place upon the records of the Department the facts to which you have again alluded in the same language of acrimonious reproach. It had been designed to raise troops for special defense and local service as the general rule throughout the State, to constitute a part of the Provisional Army and to be all of the President when needed. You asked to supervise and control the whole matter, and, unfortunately, the privilege was yielded. You abused it to form nondescript organizations,