authority to raise that number to
nearly three times as many. And, though there was protest in some
States, and some friction between the Confederate War Department and the
State militias, on the whole the seceding States, in theory jealous of
their rights, submitted very readily in questions of defence to the
Confederacy.

It is not clear how far the Southern people displayed their warlike
temper by a sustained flow of voluntary enlistment; but their Congress
showed the utmost promptitude in granting every necessary power to their
President, and on April 16, 1862, a sweeping measure of compulsory
service was passed. The President of the Confederacy could call into the
service any white resident in the South between the ages of eighteen and
thirty-five, with certain statutory exemptions. There was, of course,
trouble about the difficult question of exemptions, and under conflicting
pressure the Confederate Congress made and unmade various laws about
them. After a time all statutory exemptions were done away, and it was
left entirely in the discretion of the Southern President to say what men
were required in various departments of civil life. The liability to
serve was extended in September, 1862, to all between eighteen and
forty-five, and finally in February, 1864, to all between seventeen and
fifty. The rigorous conscription which necessity required could not be
worked without much complaint. There was a party disposed to regard the
law as unconstitutional. The existence of sovereign States within the
Confederacy was very likely an obstacle to the local and largely
voluntary organisation for deciding claims which can exist in a unified
country. A Government so hard driven must, even if liberally minded,
have enforced the law with much actual hardship. A belief in the
ruthlessness of the Southern conscription penetrated to the North. If
was probably exaggerated from the temptation to suppose that secession
was the work of a tyranny and not of the Southern people. Desertion and
failure of the Conscription Law became common in the course of 1864, but
this would seem to have been due not so much to resentment at the system
as to the actual loss of a large part of the South, and the spread of a
perception that the war was now hopelessly lost. In the last extremities
of the Confederate Government the power of compulsion of course
completely broke down. But, upon the surface at least, it seems plain
that what