the question of injustice to meritorious officers who are left without commands. They must try to get new ones. If you want to fill up your Army you must accept new organizations. If the authority does not exist, get Congress to give it. I honestly believe that I could raise between 5,000 and 10,000 men in Georgia in a very short time if I could announce that the Government would receive companies, battalions, or regiments, ant that all men liable to conscription were permitted join them, and those who did not join would still be conscribed. The effort to conscribed and send men to old organizations is a failure, and if persisted in will end in a continually reducing Army. Of this you may rest assured emain a reasonable doubt.

With sincere esteem, yours, truly,

HOWELL COBB.

[First indorsement.]

DECEMBER 31, 1864.

Respectfully submitted for the consideration of the President.

J. A. SEDDON,

Secretary of War.

[Second indorsement.]

Presented to the President in person. He does not coincide with General Cobb. For answer. Return.

J. A. S.,

Secretary.

CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA, WAR DEPARTMENT,

Richmond, Va., December 25, 1864.

Brigadier-General BRANDON,

Commanding Reserves, Enterprise, Miss.:

GENERAL: Your letter of the 5th instant has been received. The Department can oppose no objection to the interposition of the courts in the determination of questions which properly arise in cases that may regularly come before them for adjudication. Unfortunately the Confederate States have not organized their judiciary so as that questions arising under the Constitution and laws of the Confederacy shall be finally settled by their own tribunals, nor have they provided that they shall be brought to adjudication, exclusively, by their own courts.

This has compelled the Department to submit to decisions by courts that are nor under the Constitution the ultimate arbiters of such questions. But the Department has not usually regarded the decisions as authoritative over the question decided, but only in the particular cases. It has yielded to the judgment of the court, but not to the opinion that might be pronounced as settling all similar cases. If the Department had adopted any other rule it would have found itself compelled to administer the same law differently in the different States; for in different States diverse opinions upon the same questions have been more than once expressed by their highest courts.

The acts of Congress of February last placed in the service all persons between seventeen and fifty years of age for military service under circumstances. The reserved classes were designed