[Inclosure No. 3.]

HEADQUARTERS CONSCRIPT DEPARTMENT,
Columbia, January 14, 1865.

General JOHN S. PRESTON,

Superintendent of Conscription:

GENERAL: I am in receipt of your communication of yesterday making the following inquiries:

First. Whether in my judgment there can be procured in this State, under existing laws and regulatioins, the slaves required by instructioins of the War Department of date the 12th of December, ultimo?

Second. Whether by any means the instructions of the 12th of December can be executed and the 2,500 slaves procured on the terms of the law?

In reply to these inquiries I beg leave respectfully to say:

First. That the "laws and regulations" of the State are inadequate to the furnishing of the slaves required, and such slaves cannot be procured by any proceeding on the part of the conscript authorities according to or in conformity with those regulatioins. The State enactment appeart not to have been framed with a view to the meeting of requisitions for slaves under the act of Congress, and its provisions are not such as to facilitate the enforcement of such an impressment.

Second. The instructions of the 12th of December cannot, in my judgment, be executed otherwise than irrespectively of all State regulations.

Having been present at the several conferences between yourself and His Excellency Governor Magrath and Colonel Johnson, the State agent, and having myself carefully examined the laws of Congress and of the State, as also the orders and instructions of the War Department, I have attained these conclusions:

First. That there exists no impeding springing either from the laws of the Sate or from the views of His Excellency the Governor to the impressment of slaves by the Confederate Government for the purpose contemplated by the instructions of the War Department.

Second. That such impressment, if authorized irrespectively of State regulations, may be made by the conscript authorities in accordance with the Confederate law of impressments.

The chief question inquiry appears to me this; Whether, in view of the fact that the slaves required cannot be procured according to the regulations of the State, it be advisable to attempt to procure them by an impressment made irrespective of State regulations. Without assuming to indicate any opinion on this point my judgment is that the attempt at this time is unadvisable. The reasons which induce this opinion are many. I may mention these. You are aware that the orders of the State agent have already been issued for the impressment during the month of one-tenth of the male slaves of the State between the ages of eighteen and fifty years. Whilst these orders are operating and ownersand slaves are subject to the disturbing effects of their enforcement, it would, I think, be injudicious to complicate the matter by throwing out other orders and executing still another impressment. The levying of slaves is a matter of the utmost delicacy, and I would hesitate to provoke a disregard of the orders of the Government and of the great necessity from which these orders spring by such a complication of things as would leave slave-owners doubtful and embarrassed as to what to do, or dissatisfied with what may be done.