of her reserved power, for her own defense, when greatly needed for that purpose, and which are her only remaining protection against the encroachments of centralized power. I therefore decline to comply with or fill this extraordinary requisition. While I refuse to gratify the President's ambition in this particular and to surrender the last vestige of the sovereignty of the State by placing the remainder of her militia under his control for the war, I beg to assure you that I shall not hesitate to order them to the front, and they will not shun the thickest of the fight, when the enemy is to be met upon the soil of their beloved State. Nor will I withhold them from the temporary command of the Confederate general who controls the army during great emergencies when he needs their aid. I shall, however, retain power to withdraw them and to furlough or disvand them for a time, to look to their agricultural and other vital interests, which be ruined by neglect, whenever I see they can be spared from the military field without endangering the safety of the State. Of this the Governor of the State, at Milledgeville, where he is near the field of operations and can have frequent interviews with the commanding general, ought to be as competent to judge as the President of the Confederacy, some hundreds of miles from the scene of action, charged with the defense of Richmond and all the other responsibilities which require his attentionand divide his time.

Georgia now has upon the soil of Virginia nearly fifty regiments of as brave troops as ever met the enemy in deadly conflict, not one of which ever faltered in the hour of trial. She has many others equally gallant aiding in the defense of other States. Indeed, the blood of her sons has crimsoned almost every battle-field east of the Mississippi from the first Manassas to the fall of Atlanta. Her allant sons who still survive are kept by the President's orders far from her soil whole their homes are being overrun, their wives and children driven out before the enemy and reduced to beggary and want, and their almost indolized State exposed to temporary subjugation and ruin. Experience having shown that the Army of Tennessee, with the aid of the militia force of the State, is not able to withstand and drive back the overwelming numbers of the army of invasion, as the Executive of Georgia, in behalf of her brave sons now absent in other States, as well as of her whole people at home, I demand as an act of simple justice that such re-enforcements be sent as are necessary to enable the army upon her sol to stop the progress of the enemy and dislodge and drive him back. In view of the fact that the permanent possession of Georgia by the enemy not only ruins her people but cuts the Confederacy east of the Mississippi in two and strikes a death blow at the Confederate Government itself, I trust this most reasonable request will be granted. If, however, I should be informed that the President will send no re-enforcements and make no further effort to strenthen our defenses, I then demand that he permit all the sons of Georgia to return to their own State, and, within her own limits, to rally around her glorious flag, and, as if flutters in the breeze in defiance of the foe, to strike for their wives and their children, their homes, and their altars and the "green graves" of their kindred and sires, and I, as their Executive, promise that, whoever else may be withdrawn from her defense, they will drive the enemy back to her borders, or, overwhelmed and stricken down, they will nobly perish in one last grand and glorious effort to wrest the standard of her liberties and independence from the grasp of the oppressor and plant it immovably upon her sacred soil.

I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

JOSEPH E. BROWN.

[39.]