6.--General Adams says that the Confederate States passed the most drastic conscript law on record--which may be true; but he is mistaken in supposing that this law was successfully executed. Thus, General Cobb writes, December, 1864, from Macon, Georgia, to the Secretary of War: "I say to you that you will never get the men into the service who ought to be there, through the conscript camp. It would require the whole army to enforce the conscript law if the same state of things exist throughout the Confederacy which I know to be the case in Georgia and Alabama, and I may add Tennessee." (W. R., series iv, vol. iii, p. 964.) Again, H. W. Walters, writing from Oxford, Mississippi, to the Department, December, 1864, says: "I regard the conscript department in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi as almost worthless." Yet again General T. H. Holmes reports to Adjutant-General Cooper as to North Carolina, April 29, 1864: "After a full and complete conference with Colonel Mallett, commandant of conscription, ... I am pained to report that there is much disaffection in many of the counties, which, emboldened by the absence of troops, are being organized in some places to resist enrolling officers." And General Kemper reports, December 4, 1864, that in his belief there were 40,000 men in Virginia out of the army between the ages of eighteen and forty-five. (W. R., series iv, vol. iii, p. 855.) In support of his thesis that the whole military population was enrolled in the Confederate armies Colonel Livermore quotes a letter of General Lee, urging the necessity of "getting out our entire arms-bearing population in Virginia and North Carolina." But this letter, written October 4, 1864, six months before the surrender, is strong evidence that _up to that time_ the stringent conscript laws had failed to get out even in Virginia and North Carolina, "the entire arms-bearing population." (Livermore, "Numbers and Losses," p. 17.) Colonel Livermore quotes another letter of General Lee, dated September 26, 1864, in confirmation of his opinion that the conscription laws were thoroughly enforced, in which General Lee speaks of the "imperious necessity of getting all our men subject to military duty in the field," and adds, "_I get no additions._" (Id. p. 17.) Is that statement consistent with the rigid and successful enforcement of the conscript law? Is it not rather the most conclusive evidence that it was not successfully enforced? Or is my Bœotian wit so dull that I cannot see the point? If so, I pray to be enlightened![8]