message to the Southern Congress at the opening of
the session of 1864, the desperate plight of the middle Gulf country was
at once a warning and a menace to the Government. If the conditions of
that debatable land should extend eastward, there could be little doubt
that the day of the Confederacy was nearing its close. To remedy the
situation west of the main Confederate line, to prevent the growth of a
similar condition east of it, Davis urged Congress to revive the statute
permitting martial law and the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus.
The President told Congress that in parts of the Confederacy "public
meetings have been held, in some of which a treasonable design is masked
by a pretense of devotion of state sovereignty, and in others is openly
avowed... a strong suspicion is entertained that secret leagues and
associations are being formed. In certain localities men of no mean
position do not hesitate to avow their disloyalty and hostility to our
cause, and their advocacy of peace on the terms of submission and the
abolition of slavery."

This suspicion on the part of the Confederate Government that it was
being opposed by organized secret societies takes us back to debatable
land and to the previous year. The Bureau of Conscription submitted to
the Secretary of War a report from its Alabama branch relative to "a
sworn secret organization known to exist and believed to have for its
object the encouragement of desertion, the protection of deserters from
arrest, resistance to conscription, and perhaps other designs of a still
more dangerous character." To the operations of this insidious foe were
attributed the shifting of the vote in the Alabama elections, the defeat
of certain candidates favored by the Government, and the return in their
stead of new men "not publicly known." The suspicions of the Government
were destined to further verification in the course of 1864 by the
unearthing of a treasonable secret society in southwestern Virginia, the
members of which were "bound to each other for the prosecution of their
nefarious designs by the most solemn oaths. They were under obligation
to encourage desertions from the army, and to pass and harbor all
deserters, escaped prisoners, or spies; to give information to the enemy
of the movements of our troops, of exposed or weakened positions, of
inviting opportunities of attack, and to guide and assist the enemy
either in advance or retreat." This society bore th