the militia under the general's orders and control, varying in no respect from the manner in which they were formerly under the command of General Hood. At my suggestion the same course was pursued in reference to the detailed men in the militia which I adopted when they were first called out; that is, to allow all who were already in the militia service - that is, in actual service - to remain there until the expiration of their term of service. I had already issued an order to that effect before General Beauregard came, and this was merely carrying out the policy and rule upon which I have acted from the time of the first call of Governor Brown. As nothing has been done at the suggestion of Governor Brown, I need not say that there need by an apprehension on the part of the President that any concession has been made to improper demands, nor has the position of the Department been in anywise compromised. In order that you may be fully advised on the subject, I beg to place before you a full statement of what I have done and my reasons for it, for I am not only anxious to do what I believe to be best for the country, but I am also desirous of having the approval of those under whose orders I am acting. When Governor Brown made his call for militia, and included in that call exempts and detailed men, I held (and such was the opinion of the Department) that exempts were liable to the call, but detailed men were not. Such detailed men as were engaged in the public service were notified that they were not required to respond to that call, and upon the fact of their being thus engaged being made known to Governor Brown he released them from the call, and thereby prevented the issue which would otherwise have arisen between the Confederate and State authorities. In reference to detailed men not thus engaged in the public service, I said to them:

In my opinion you are not legally liable to this call of Governor Brown, but the only court to which a case has been carried has decided otherwise, and in view of the pressing emergency in your own State requiring every man that can be brought into the field for the defense of Atlanta road and the rest of the State, you must either go into the militia or your details will be suspended for the present and you must go into the Confederate service.

My object was to get every man that could be gotten into the field for the then pressing emed well; some went into the Confederate service, others went into the militia. The result was that the army at Atlanta was considerably increased, and though Atlanta fell, neither Governor Brown nor any one else could charge upon the Confederate authorities that men had been withhedl from the field by them who could and would have been brought out by the Governor. You may rest assured that had I followed a different policy, and attempted to keep out of the service the detailed men, it would have resulted either in actual collision between Confederate and State officers, or the fall of Atlanta wound have been attributed to the withholding these detailed men from the service. Probably both results would have occurred. You rightly suppose that Governor Brown is not only willing, but anxious to bring the Confederate authorities into disrepute with the people of Georgia, and I have no doubt it would have afforded him unalloyed pleasure to have attributed the loss of Atlanta to the withholding by the Confederate authority of detailed men from the service at that critical juncture. These detailed men having thus gone into the militia, in the publication of my orders for the organization of local companies for local defense I expressly announced that they would not be relieved from their militia organization by joining such local companies. My reason was that the local companies could not be carried to the front, and I found that there was a strong disposition to avoid going to the front by joining mere local organizations. Besides,