may deem expedient. The general features of these regulations I have already stated. They define with exactness the conditions as to time of enlistment, the place of service, the duration of their special and particular service upon the Presidential call. These were the organizations that you were expected to form, and you seem to have entirely overlooked or forgotten the duty that you undertook to fulfill. It is not pretended by you that you carried into effect this plan for the organization of the State reserves, and that your promised co-operation was unproductive of the results anticipated from it. You followed the suggestions of your own mind and did not act, and, so far as this Department knows, did not attempt to act conformably to the views presented to you.

I made no complaint of your failure to do this, nor was the failure made the subject of any observation, until you assumed the ground of being the injured party, from which your railed at the President and the Department as wanting in faith to you; while the fact was, if there was any want of faith or breach or duty, you alone were the guilty party. I recur to the subject now simply to correct the misrepresentation of the conduct of the Department by your garbled extracts from its correspondence, extracts which do not exhibit fairly the subject under consideration. I abstrain now from imputing your conduct to bad faith to the Department, in repelling the wantom and reckless assault upon the integrity of the administration of this Department.

Your remarks upon the patriotism and services of the people of Georgia will have no contradiction from me. I fully apprieciate both. I have not believed that they could be seduced from their fidelity to the Confederate States or their duties under their Constitution. I have not supposed that they could be betrayed into any desertion of the common cause. The ananimous voice of the Legislature of the State was not required to assure me of their truth and loyalty. It has but confirmed the opinion that the seeds of baleful jealousies, suspicions, and irritations that have so industriously been scattered among them have been wholly unproductive of the fruit anticipated. It is to be hoped in the future that all the energy that has been thus employed will be diverted to the legitimate object of achieving the independence of the Confederate States, securing the peace and transquillity of the Confederacy, and promotion thereby the true greatness of Georgia.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

JAMES A. SEDDON,

Secretary of War. GIBSON, December 20, 1864.

President DAVIS:

From a knowledge of your character, and from a remark you made in one of your speeches in Georgia, that you read everything that was sent to you, I am emboldened to trouble you with this letter from this point of our struggling, heroic Confederacy, endeared to me and no doubt to you as the place we call home, but to you now enlarged to the boundaries of our glorious Confederacy. I have no doubt you are perfectly posted as to the locality and condition of the enemy's garrisons at Vicksburg, Natchez, Port Hudson, and Baton Rouge. Those points with their now feeble garrisons enable them to devastate at pleasure the choicest portion of our State with their cowardly cavalry, composed mostly of negroes and a few unprincipled whites. It appears to me that if you could snatch a moment of your precious time and