Since the commencement of hostilities, the Government had been indefatigable in its efforts to promote enlistments of _volunteers for the war_, instead of the twelve-months' system, which could be adequate for the demands of a temporary exigency only, and not for such a terrific struggle as must result from the temper and resources of the two contestants. Volunteering was as yet the only method of raising troops sanctioned by law, or likely to meet popular approval. The country was not yet prepared for an enforced levy of troops; and it is only necessary to remember the opposition, in certain quarters, to the execution of the subsequent conscription law, adopted under the pressure of disasters which made its necessity plain and inevitable, to conjecture the temper in which such a measure would have been met, in the over-confident and foolishly exultant tone of the press and public in the winter of 1861. Mr. Davis especially sought to disabuse the public mind of its fallacious hope of a short contest, by his efforts to place the military resources of the South upon a footing capable of indefinite resistance to an attempt at conquest, which was to end only with the success or exhaustion of the North. Conscious of the perpetual disorganization and decimation of the armies which must result from the system of short enlistments, he had, early in the war, attracted unfriendly criticism by his refusal of any more six or twelve-months' volunteers than were necessary to meet the shock of the enemy's first advance. It was clear to his mind that, under the wretched system of short enlistments, which he characterized as a "frightful cause of disaster," the country must, at some period of the war, be virtually without an army. Such was the case in January and February, 1862, when the enemy eagerly pressed his immense advantage while the process of furloughs and reënlistments was in progress, and the army almost completely disorganized. Such a crisis was inevitable, and had it not occurred then, it would merely have been deferred, to be encountered at a period when the capacity of the Confederacy was even less adequate for its perils. The lesson was not without its value, since it drove the country and the press to a recognition of the fact that independence was not to be won by shifts and dalliance, by temporary expedients, and by spasmodic popular uprisings for temporary exigencies.