Today in History:

1129 Series IV Volume III- Serial 129 - Correspondence, Orders, Reports and Returns of the Confederate Authorities from January 1, 1864, to the End

Page 1129 CONFEDERATE AUTHORITIES.

important and indeed indispensable portion of our local defense troops consists oof these mechanics and artisans. They amount to many thousands in the Confederacy, and while they are and should remain exempt from general service, no good cause is perceived why they should not, like all other citizens capable of bearing arms, be organized for local defense and be ready to defend the localities in which they are respectively employed against sudden raids and incursions. If exempt from this local service, it will be necessary to detach in many cases troops form the armies in the field to guard the towns and workshops where they are employed. It is believed that if this provision become a law, the gain of strength resulting from the repeal of other exemptions enacted by the first section of the law would be more than counterbalanced by the loss of this local force.

The second provision to which I refer is that which revokes all details and exemptions heretofore granted by the President and Secretary of War, and prohibits the grant of such exemptions and details hereafter. There is little hazard in saying that such a provision couold not be executed without so disorganizing the public service as to produce very injurious results. In every department of the Government, in every branch of the service throughout the country, there are duties to be performed which cannot be discharged except by men instructed and trained in their performance. Long experience makes them experts. Their services become in their peculiar sphere of duty worth to the country greatly more than any they could possibly render in the field. Some of these it would be impossible immediately to replace. The Treasury expert who detects a forged note at a glance; the accounting officer whose long experience makes him a living repository of the rules and precedents which guard the Treasury from frauds; the superintendent of the manufacturing establishments of the Gsupply shoes, harness, wagons, ambulances, & c., for the Army; the employes who have been specially trained in the distribution and subdivision of mail matter among the various routes by which it is to reach its destination, are among the instances that are afforded by the daily experience of executive officers. To withdraw from the public service at once and without any means of replacing them, the very limited number of experts, believed to be less than 100, who are affected by the bill, is to throw the whole machinery of Government into confusion and disorder, at a period when none who are not engaged in executive duties can have an adequate idea of the difficulties by which they are already embarrassed.

The desire of the Executive and the Secretary of War to obtain for the Army the services of every man available for the public defense can hardly be doubted, and Congress may be assured that nothing but imperative public necessity could induce the exercise of any discretion vested in them to retain men out of the Army. But no Government can be administered without vesting some discretion in Executive officers in the application of general rules to classes of the population. Individual exceptions exist to all such rules, in the very nature of things, and these exceptions cannot be provided for by legislation in advance.

I earnestly hope that Congress will pass an amendment to the act now under consideration, in accordance with the foregoing recommendations, so that I may be able by signing both the act and amendment to secure unimpaired benefit from the proposed legislation.

JEFFERSON NDAVIS.


Page 1129 CONFEDERATE AUTHORITIES.