required to raise. The Confederate Administration, however, had
defeated his scheme. Since then the situation had changed and had
become so serious that now there was no choice but to submit to
military necessity. He regarded the general conscription law as
"absolutely necessary to save" the Confederacy "from utter
devastation if not final subjugation. Right or wrong, the policy
of the Administration had left us no other alternative...."

The dominant attitude in South Carolina in the autumn of 1862 is
in strong contrast, because of its firm grasp upon fact, with the
attitude of the Brown faction in Georgia. An extended history of
the Confederate movement--one of those vast histories that
delight the recluse and scare away the man of the world--would
labor to build up images of what might be called the
personalities of the four States that continued from the
beginning to the end parts of the effective Confederate
system--Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia. We are prone to
forget that the Confederacy was practically divided into separate
units as early as the capture of New Orleans by Farragut, but a
great history of the time would have a special and thrilling
story of the conduct of the detached western unit, the isolated
world of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas--the "Department of the
Trans-Mississippi"--cut off from the main body of the Confederacy
and hemmed in between the Federal army and the deep sea. Another
group of States--Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama--became so soon,
and remained so long, a debatable land, on which the two armies
fought, that they also had scant opportunity for genuine
political life. Florida, small and exposed, was absorbed in its
gallant achievement of furnishing to the armies a number of
soldiers larger than its voting population.