was intended. I am dealing, not with individuals, but with great principles, and with the conduct of an adminstrations of the Government of which your Department is but one branch; and, if you will not consider the remark acrimonious, I will add that the people of my State, not being dependent, and never intending to be, upon that Government for the privilege of exercising their natural and constitutional rights, nor the Executive of the State for his official existence, I shall on all occasions feel at liberty to exercise perfect independence in the discharge of my official olbigatiosn with no other restraint than those thrown around me by a sense of duty and the Constitution of my country and the laws of my State. You remark that this is the first instance in the annals of the Confederacy of the suggestion of a doubt on the right of the President to make such a call, and the obligation of compliance by the State Executive. Doubtless you are right, as this is unquestionably the first instance in the annals of either the old or new Confederacy of such a call made by the President. It presents the isolated case of an attempt by the President to single out a particular State and, by grasping into his own hands its whole military strength, to divest it of its last vestige of power to maintain its sovereignty, not only denying to it the right plainly reserved in the Constitution to keep troops in time of war when actually invaded, but claiming the power to deprive it of its whole militia and leave it not a man to aid in the execution of its laws, or to suppress servile insurrection in its midst.

The President demands that Georgia shall turn over to him and relinquish her command and control over every militiaman now organized by Her Executive and all he may be able to organize. The militia is composed mainly of a class of men and boys between ages not subject by the laws of congress or of the State to serve in the Confederate armies. The President calls for all the State has of the n. As no such requisition was ever before made upon any State, and it probably never entered into the mind of any statesman that such a call ever would be made, it never became necessary to question the right to make it. You cite the case of the refusal of the Governors of Massachusetts and Connecticut, during the last war with Greant Britain, to furnish troops for the common defense upon the admitted that my President of the United States, and say it must be admitted that my course is analogous to theirs "in all particulars," and that there was more pausibility in their case than in mine in the grounds assigned for refusal. Let us test this statement by the standard of truth. You say the cases are analogous "in all particulars." I deny that they are analogous in any particular. To show the character of that call, I quote the language of President Monroe: "It will be recollected that when a call was made on the militia of that State for service in the late war under an arrangement which was alike applicable to the militia of all then, was a call under an arrangement alike applicable to the militia of all the States. This is not a call made under an arrangement alike applicable to the militia of all the States, or, indeed, of any of the other States. This is a call for all the militia which the Executive of Georgia has organized or may be able to organize. No such call was made by the President upon the militia of any other State. The analogy fails, then, at the very first step. But let us trace it a little further. That was a call for men within the age required to do military service in the armies of the United States. This is a call for men who are exempt, by act of