ommand; and
the whole army was divided into corps, of three divisions each,
commanded by a lieutenant-general.

Whatever the weakness of its construction--and the abuses of the
exemption and detail power in carrying it out--there can be little
doubt that the conscription at this time saved the country from speedy
and certain conquest; and credit should be given to the few active
workers in the congressional hive who shamed the drones into its
passage.

Had the men whose term expired been once permitted to go home, they
could never again have been collected; the army would have dwindled
into a corporal's guard here and there; the masses the North was
pouring down on all sides would have swept the futile resistance before
it; and the contest, if kept up at all, would have degenerated into a
guerrilla warfare of personal hatred and vengeance, without a semblance
of confederation, or nationality.

Once passed, the people of the whole country acquiesced in and approved
the conscription, and gave all the aid of their influence to its
progress. Here and there a loud-mouthed demagogue would attempt to
prejudice the masses against the measure; but scarcely a community
failed to frown down such an effort, in the great extremity of the
country, as vicious and traitorous. The opposition that the project had
met in the administration--from doubt as to its availability--was
removed by its very first working. What had been in its inception an
unpopular measure, received now the approbation of all classes; and the
governors of every state--save one--went to work with hearty good will
to aid its carrying out.

This exception was Governor Joseph E. Brown, of Georgia, who entered
into a long wrangle with the administration on the constitutional
points involved. He denied the right of Congress to pass such an act,
and of the Executive to carry it out within the limits of a sovereign
state; averred--with much circumlocution and turgid bombast--that such
attempt would be an infringement of the State Rights of Georgia, which
he could not permit.

Mr. Davis replied in a tone so reasonable, decorous and temperate as to
wring unwilling admiration even from his opponents. He pointed out
briefly the weak points that rendered the governor's position utterly
untenable, ignored the implied warning of resistance to the law; and
succinctly stated that he relied upon the patriotism of Georgians to
grasp the full meaning of the crisis their execut