Unknown to Thomas Bragg, March 7, 1864

Hon. THOMAS BRAGG, Raleigh, N. C.:

DEAR SiR: I have to thank you for your two letters of the 23d and 28th ultimo on the subject of the decision of Judge Pearson in North Carolina.* After very careful consideration I cannot see my way clear to any other course than a firm but temperate execution of the

acts of Congress for recruiting the Army by enrolling and placing in the service all the men liable to military duty in North Carolina’in the same manner and to the same extent as in other States. To yield to any exceptional arrangement by which conscripts in that State shall be kept out of the field until the stress of the impending campaign is passed necessarily involves the result of creating wide and well-founded dissatisfaction in all the other States and in the Army. It would also be a dereliction of duty, for I cannot see that there is any great or pressing necessity which would justify me in refraining from the execution of the law until the will of Congress on the subject could be expressed. It is only in case of such necessity that my sense of duty would permit me to postpone temporarily the execution of any law. The decision of Judge Pearson releasing the conscript in the case before him will of course be respected until the action of the appellate court, for the case was before him prior to the passage of the law suspending the writ of habeas corpus; and although I do not believe that his decision is right, the public interest will not suffer by awaiting the result of the appeal in the one case before him. But I understand that both the other judges of the supreme court of North Carolina have refused writs of habeas corpus since the passage of the law and since Judge Pearson’s decision, on the express ground that the act of Congress covers the case of the principals of substitutes, and thus we know that the appellate court will reverse the decision of Judge Pearson. The court of appeals of Virginia has just given an elaborate and unanimous opinion confirming the legislation of Congress as constitutional. In other States like decisions have been rendered, and if, under such circumstances, Judge Pearson should pursue the factious course you anticipate, and should attempt (in defiance of the very words of the law which I amsworn to execute) to put a Confederate officer in prison for contempt for making the exact return to a writ of habeas corpus which the law orders to be made, and which the law says should be sufficient to stop any further action of the judge, I shall not shrink from the issue. I am confident that it will be impossible to mislead or deceive the people of North Carolina on so plain a point, and with this conviction you will see that it is not possible for me to sanction any arrangement which practically relieves for several months the whole body of principals in North Carolina that have furnished substitutes from the operation of a law passed on my own recommendation, and which has already produced such salutary effects in the Army.

Very respectfully and truly, yours,