civilian is deceptive. Because the powerful Federal armies of the
Southwest, at the opening of 1864, were massed at strategic
points from Tennessee to the Gulf, and were not extended along an
obvious trench line, every brave civilian would still keep up his
hope and would still insist that the middle Gulf country was far
from subjugation, that its defense against the invader had not
become hopeless.

Under such conditions, when the Government at Richmond called
upon the men of the Southwest to regard themselves as mere
sources of supply, human and otherwise, mere feeders to a theater
of war that did not include their homes, it was altogether
natural that they should resent the demand. All the tragic
confusion that was destined in the course of the fateful year
1864 to paralyze the Government at Richmond was already apparent
in the middle Gulf country when the year began. Chief among these
was the inability of the State and Confederate Governments to
cooperate adequately in the business of conscription. The two
powers were determined rivals struggling each to seize the major
part of the manhood of the community. While Richmond, looking on
the situation with the eye of pure strategy, wished to draw
together the full man-power of the South in one great unit, the
local authorities were bent on retaining a large part of it for
home defense.

In the Alabama newspapers of the latter half of 1863 strange
incidents are to be found throwing light on the administrative
duel. The writ of habeas corpus, as was so often the case in
Confederate history, was the bone of contention. We have seen
that the second statute empowering the President to proclaim