received when they have not sufficient physical development to enable them to undergo the hardships of the general service. Besides this if often operates as a conversion of the material that should be properly distributed where it is most needed. Young men use the privilege of volunteering to avoid a supposed odium of being enrolled by conscript officers, and generally under the cavalry or artillery service. Believing that such recruits were not desirable, it has been my policy not to encourage their enlistment, and hence the publication of circular of 6th of December, 1864. I am of the opinion that the publication of a general order by proper authority positively prohibiting the enlistment of youths under seventeen years of age into commands in the general service would promote the best interests of the service.

In fact, I to not believe that the interest of the service is promoted by allowing conscripts of instruction and assigned, when practicable, to commands of their choice.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

H. C. LOCKHART,

Lieutenant-Colonel and Commandant, Alabama.

[First indorsement.]

HEADQUARTERS RESERVES OF ALABAMA,
Montgomery, February 9, 1865.

Respectfully forwarded.

The true points involved in the case are not clearly presented, either in the communication of inquiry from the enrolling officer at Mobile, or in the response of Lieutenant-Colonel Lockhart. There is no law or order in force authorizing the enlistment of persons not liable to conscription otherwise than as prescribed in paragraph IV, General; Orders, No. 22, Adjutant and Inspector General's Office, Richmond, February 23, 1864. That order requires the enrollment of such parties them to their commands. The usual interpretation given of this paragraph is, that the enrollment only entitles to transportation, and was not intended to restrict the right or prescribe the mode of volunteering. Such may have been the correct interpretation of the intention of the order when first published, which was only six days after the passage of the act of the 17th of February, but such interpretation is certainly not in harmony with the policy adopted and the system inaugurated by the Government since that date.

The purpose of the Government, as I understand it, has been to correct irregularities and abuses by systematizing the dispositions of present and prospective material for filling up our armies. Why were the enrolling officers required to take the census of the youths between sixteen and seventeen years of age in their respective counties for the information of the Government, if it was not to ascertain the annual prospective material on which the government could rely for replenishing our armies? Why are enrolling officers and camps of distribution established? Why are monthly reports showing disposition of every man required from these camps? And why is it that applications to be placed in general service from individuals and from organize companies of youths between the age of seventeen and eighteen are all rejected? These are certainly more capable of bearing the hardship and exposure incident to the general service than are those of more tender years. It cannot be, therefore, that it