tax would have contributed materially to facilitate the purchase of provisions and diminish the necessity that is now felt for a supply of coin.

The measures passed by Congress during the session for recruiting the Army and supplying the additional force needed for the public defense have been, in my judgment, insufficient, and I am impelled by a profound conviction of duty and stimulated by a sense of the perils which surround our country, to urge upon you additional legislation on this subject.

The bill for employing negroes as soldiers has not yet reached me, though the printed journals of your proceedings inform me of its passage. Much benefit is anticipated from this measure, though far less than would have resulted from its adoption at an earlier date so as to afford time for their organization and instruction during the winter months.

The bill for diminishing the number of exempts has just been made the subject of a special message, and its provisions are such as would add no strength to the Army. The recommendation to abolish all class exemptions has not met your favoor, although still deemed by me a valuable and important measure; and the number of men exempted by a new clause in the act just passed is believed to be quite equal to that of those whose exemption is revoked. A law of a few lines repealing all class exemptions would not only strengthen the forces in the field, but be still more beneficial by abating the natural discontent and jealousy created in the Army by the existence of classes privileged by law to remain in places of safety while their fellow-citizens are exposed in the trenches and the field.

The measure most needed, however, at the present time for affording an effective increase to our military strength is a general militia law, such as the Constitution authorizes Congress to pass, by granting to it power "to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the Confederate States," and the further power "to proviide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Confederate States, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions. " The necessity for the exercise of this power can never exist if not in the circumstances which now surround us.

The security of the States against any encroachment by the Confederate Government is amply provided by the Constitution by "reserving to the States, respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia accoroding to the discipline prescribed by Congress. "

A law is needed to prescribe not only how and of what persons the militia are to be organized, but to provide the mode of calling them out. If instances be required to show the necessity for such general law, it is sufficient to mention that in one case I have been informed by the Governor of a State that the law does not permit him to call the militia from one county for service in another, so that a single brigade of the enemy could traverse the State and devastate each county in turn without any power on the part of the Executiive to use the militia for effective defense; while in another State the Executive refused to allow the militia "to be employed in the service of the Confederate States" in the absence of a law for that purpose.

I have heretofore, in a confidential message to the two Houses, stated the facts which induced me to consider it necessary that the