ned means for feeding them. And it would have been equally
suicidal to draw from forge and from lathe, those skilled artisans who
were day and night laboring to put weapons in the hands of those sent
to wield them.

But the "Bill of Exemptions" left possible both of these things, at the
same time that it failed to restrain abuses of privileges in certain
high quarters. The matter of "details" was, of course, essential; and
it was only to be supposed that generals in the field could best judge
the value of a man in another position than the front.

But the most objectionable feature to the army was the "Substitute
Law," which allowed any one able to buy a man, not subject to the
action of conscription, to send him to be shot at in his place.
Soldiers who had endured all perils and trials of the war, naturally
felt that if they were retained in positions they objected to, those
who had been comfortably at home--and in many instances coining that
very necessity into fortunes--should be forced at the eleventh hour to
come and defend themselves and their possessions. Besides, the class of
men who were willing to sell themselves as substitutes were of the very
lowest order. All citizens of the South were liable to conscription;
and the "exempts" open to purchase, were either strange adventurers, or
men over and under age, who--argued the soldiers--if fit for service
should come of their own free will.

Veteran troops had a low enough opinion of the "conscript" as a genus;
but they failed not to evince, by means more prompt than courteous,
their thorough contempt for the "substitute."

These causes produced much discontent, where men would cheerfully have
acquiesced in a law essential to the preservation of the fabric they
had reared and cemented with their blood. To quell this feeling, a
reorganization of the army was effected. A certain time was allowed for
any liable man to volunteer and choose his branch of the service and,
if practicable, his regiment; and so great was the dread of incurring
the odium of conscription, that the skeleton veteran regiments rapidly
filled up to a point of efficiency. They were then allowed to choose
their own officers by election; and, though this lost to the service
many valuable men who had become unpopular, still the army was better
satisfied within itself.

The refilled regiments were re-brigaded by states when practicable, a
general from a different state being sometimes placed in c