Unknown to Lucius J. Gartrell, March 1, 1864

DEAR SiR: In reply to your letter I state that I can make no statement about the enrollment of men between forty-five and fifty till I know the pleasure of the Legislature soon to assemble. When last in session they passed an act directing me to have enrolled all such for State defense, and I do not know that they will recognize the right of the Confederate Government now to take them all outof the hands of the State. If conscription is legal and constitutional, as our courts hold, for raising armies in the proper sense of that term, it does not follow that Congress is authorized to take into its own hands the internal police regulations of the States and deprive the States of the power to execute their own laws or to suppress internal insurrections.

very respectfully, &c.,