EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT,

Macon, Ga., January 6, 1865.

Honorable JAMES A. SEDDON,

Secretary of War:

SIR: It becomes my duty to notice your communication of 13th December, which reached me a few days since. After citing the acts of Congrees of 28th of February and the 6th March, 1861, confering power upon the President to assume control of military operations in the State and to call forth the militia, &c., you declare that Congress in passing these acts did not exceed its competency under the Constitution, and you then insist on a construction of these acts, which denies the right reserved by the States to keep troops in time of war, and which confers upon the President the power to call upon one State for a class of her population which are not subject under any law of Congrees to do military duty, and for which he makes no similar requisition upon any other State. The acts which you quote are not properly susceptible of any such construction as you are obliged to place upon them to make them serve your purpose. If they were, there could be no doubt upon the mind of any lawyer who understands the rudiments of consitutional law that Congrees had no power or authority to pass them. No candid lawyer will insist for a moment that an act of Congrees can take from the States the right which they have plainly reserved in the Constitution to keep troops in time of war, or that the President has any power or control over any troops which a State may so keep, or that he can justly or legally make requisition for them, or that he has any legal or just grounds for complaint if a State refuses to turn them over to him if he should transcend his legal authority by making the requisition. Nor will any lawyer insist that the President has any power to make requisition for militia which Congress has not made provision for "organizing," or for men or boys not subject to militia duty under the laws of Congrees. As these acts of Congress could confer upon the President no powers which are denied totitution, and as his late requisition upon the Executive of this State was in clear violation of her reserved rights under the Constitution, I am surprised that you should attempt to justify this usurpation of undelegated powers by a resort to congressional action as directory to the President to violate the rights of the States.

In your former letter you declared that my refusal to fill this requisition of the President was anologous in "all particulars" to the conduct of the Governors of Massachussets and Connecticut in the last war with Great Britain in refusing to fill the requisition made upon them by the President of the United States. In my answer I showed, too conclusively for reply, that the cases were not anologous in any particular. Without attempting to make good your assertion, or to controvert a single position in my regiment, or to trace the analogy in a single particular, you again allude to the subject in your last letter by saying: "In stating the parallel case of the conduct of the refractory Governors of Massachusetts and Connecticut," &c. Now, no one knew better than yourself that the cases were in no degree parallel, and that you could neither trace the parallel lines nor point out the analogy. To avoid a mistatement contained in your former letter, that "the judical tribunals determined adversely to the pretensions of these Governors." you say you were aware that the former (the Governor of Massachusetts) had the support of the opinion of the judges of that State and of the Legislatures of those States, &c., and that the authority of