condition in which Alabama had found herself in the previous
year. A great mobile army of invaders lay encamped on her soil.
And yet there was still a state Government established at the
capital. Inevitably the man who thought of the situation from the
point of view of what we should now call the general staff, and
the man who thought of it from the point of view of a citizen of
the invaded State, suffered each an intensification of feeling,
and each became determined to solve the problem in his own way.
The President of the Confederacy and the Governor of Georgia
represented these incompatible points of view.

The Governor, Joseph E. Brown, is one of the puzzling figures of
Confederate history. We have already encountered him as a dogged
opponent of the Administration. With the whole fabric of Southern
life toppling about his ears, Brown argued, quibbled, evaded, and
became a rallying-point of disaffection. That more eminent
Georgian, Howell Cobb, applied to him very severe language, and
they became engaged in a controversy over that provision of the
Conscription Act which exempted state officials from military
service. While the Governor of Virginia was refusing certificates
of exemption to the minor civil officers such as justices of the
peace, Brown by proclamation promised his "protection" to the
most insignificant civil servants. "Will even your Excellency,"
demanded Cobb, "certify that in any county of Georgia twenty
justices of the peace and an equal number of constables are
necessary for the proper administration of the state
government?" The Bureau of Conscription estimated that Brown
kept out of the army approximately 8000 eligible men. The truth
seems to be that neither by education nor heredity was this
Governor equipped to conceive large ideas. He never seemed