conscription; the Mercury claimed it for Rhett.

In other words, an aggressive war party led by the Examiner and
the Mercury had been formed in those early days when the
Confederate Government appeared to be standing wholly on the
defensive, and when it had failed to confide to the people the
extenuating circumstance that lack of arms compelled it to stand
still whether it would or no. And yet, after this Government had
changed its policy and had taken up in the summer of 1862 an
offensive policy, this party--or faction, or what you
will--continued its career of opposition. That the secretive
habit of the Confederate Government helped cement the opposition
cannot be doubted. It is also likely that this opposition gave a
vent to certain jealous spirits who had missed the first place in
leadership.

Furthermore, the issue of state sovereignty had been raised. In
Georgia a movement had begun which was distinctly different from
the Virginia-Carolina movement of opposition, a movement for
which Rhett and Pollard had scarcely more than disdainful
tolerance, and not always that. This parallel opposition found
vent, as did the other, in a political pamphlet. On the subject
of conscription Davis and the Governor of Georgia--that same
Joseph E. Brown who had seized Fort Pulaski in the previous
year--exchanged a rancorous correspondence. Their letters were
published in a pamphlet of which Pollard said scornfully that it
was hawked about in every city of the South. Brown, taking alarm
at the power given the Confederate Government by the Conscription
Act, eventually defined his position, and that of a large
following, in the extreme words: "No act of the Government of the