1862, February—The Committee on Naval Affairs were instructed to inquire into the expediency of placing at the disposal of the President five millions of dollars to build gunboats. 1862—Bill passed to “regulate the destruction of property under military necessity,” referring particularly to cotton and tobacco. The authorities are authorized to destroy it to keep it from the enemy; and owners, destroying it for the same purpose, are to be indemnified upon proof of the value and the circumstances of the destruction. 1862, April 16—The first “conscription” bill became a law. 1864, February. The second conscription bill became a law. _The Richmond Sentinel_ of February 17, 1864, contains a synopsis of what is called the military bill, heretofore forbidden to be printed: The first section provides that all white men residents of the Confederate States, between the ages of seventeen and fifty, shall be in the military service for the war. The second section provides that all between eighteen and forty-five, now in service, shall be continued during the war in the same regiments, battalions, and companies to which they belong at the passage of this act, with the organization, officers, &c., provided that companies from one State organized against their consent, expressed at the time, with regrets, &c., from another State, shall have the privilege of being transferred to the same arm in a regiment from their own State, and men can be transferred to a company from their own State. Section three gives a bounty eight months hence of $100 in rebel bonds. Section four provides that no person shall be relieved from the operations of this act heretofore discharged for disability, _nor shall those who furnished substitutes be exempted, where no disability now exists_; but exempts religious persons who have paid an exemption tax. * * * The tenth section provides that no person shall be exempt except the following: ministers, superintendents of deaf, dumb, and blind, or insane asylums; one editor to each newspaper, and such employees as he may swear to be indispensable; the Confederate and State public printers, and the journeymen printers necessary to perform the public printing; one apothecary to each drug store, who was and has been continuously doing business as such since October 10, 1862; physicians over 30 years of age of seven years’ practice, not including dentists; presidents and teachers of colleges, academies and schools, who have not less than thirty pupils; superintendents of public hospitals established by law, and such physicians and nurses as may be indispensable for their efficient management. One agriculturist on such farm where there is no white male adult not liable to duty employing fifteen able-bodied slaves, between sixteen and fifty years of age, upon the following conditions: