GENERAL ORDERS,
WAR DEPARTMENT,
ADJT. AND INSP. GENERAL'S OFFICE, Numbers 64.
Richmond, September 8, 1862.

I. Conscripts in the employ of the Government who leave their employment without authority will be arrested as deserters on the order of the officer under whom they are employed. Conscripts working for contractors will, under like circumstances, be arrested as deserters by the enrolling officer of the district on complaint and proof by the contractor.

II. The reception of substitutes under eighteen years of age is hereby prohibited. The reception of substitutes into partisan corps is prohibited, as is also the reception of substitutes into any company not fully organized and received by the Department. A substitute becoming liable to conscription renders his principal also liable, unless exempt on other grounds.

* * * * *

V. Paragraph II, General Orders, Numbers 62, current series, is amended so as to read as follows:

It is hereby announced that no oath of allegiance to the United States and no parole by a person not in military service pledging himself not to bear arms against the United States will be regarded as an exemption from service in the armies of the Confederate States, but persons liable to conscription taking such oath or giving such parole will be enrolled for service. If captured by the enemy they will be demanded as prisoners of war.

By order:

S. COOPER,

Adjutant and Inspector General.

SAN ANTONIO, September 8, 1862.

Captain C. M. MASON, Acting Assistant Adjutant-General.

SIR: I have examined with care the transcript referred to me through you, the same being a certified record of the proceedings and decision of the provost-marshal of Travis County in the matter of the Confederate States vs. George W. Paschal, charged in general terms with disloyalty.

The facts proven on the examination consisted altogether of a culpable neglect on the part of Paschal to render for assessment his property, and a consequent failure to pay the Confederate States war tax when assessed by the proper officer. For this neglect on his part he suffered the penalty of the law, viz, the forced sale of his property, the imposition of a double tax, &c. The law having provided this penalty and no other, and Paschal having suffered it, it appears plain under the facts presented on the record there is no case for the action of the military commission, as under the paragraph of the general order defining its jurisdiction it is clearly inhibited from taking judicial cognizance of a matter which (in the form here presented at least) is so peculiarly and completely within the province of the civil authorities, and on which they have already acted in the manner pointed out by the law. It is not deemed necessary further to refer to the pleading, protest and other documents in the record.

Respectfully submitted.

C. S. WEST,

Judge-Advocate and Recorder.