exempted by law, and all of those enrolled in service would continue to serve for three years from the date of their enlistment. Thousands of additional volunteers in 1862 and 1863 enlisted to avoid the odium of being labeled a “conscript”. Lee was able to use the reinforced army of trained recruits to defeat McClellan in the Seven Days Battles immediately before Richmond June 25-July 1, when the army otherwise might have been halved by lapsing enlistments. Generally, the volunteers in the Army supported conscription, and most of the Southern press endorsed the measure, but a strong minority opposed. On April 14, Senator William Lowndes Yancey, a fire-eater of Alabama 1862–1863, proposed exemptions from the Confederate draft. It was termed “over generous” by one scholar, in a system of “class exemptions” related to the physically unfit, the politically connected, several service-related categories such as preachers, teachers and social workers, textile workers and a few other economic categories. It was passed at the end of the First Session of the First Congress. After an earlier failed effort, Representative John Jones McRae of Alabama successfully secured legislation to establish a “Volunteer Navy”, more like privateering and less like the regular navy. While formally a part of Confederate forces, they were to operate within “the ebb and flow of the tide” . Turning to strategic considerations of war policy, Representative William Smith of Virginia, former governor and future Confederate general and Virginia governor, proposed a band of "partisan rangers" to operate within enemy lines, and to be paid a bonus of $5 in addition to regular army pay for each enemy killed, as a way of raising men otherwise exempt. A substitute measure was passed in April that authorized Jefferson Davis to commission officers to raise partisan bands. The experiment was a failure, as rangers tended to spend their time attacking Confederate civilians. By the end of 1863, Lee was recommending that the law be repealed. Following the recommendation of President Davis on March 28, Congress enacted its Conscription Act on April 16, the first military draft on the North American continent. It required three years' military service of all white males from ages eighteen to thirty-five. Substitutes were allowed. All volunteers, a majority of the army, had their terms of service extended, although they were granted a sixty-day furlough and the privilege of electing their own company-grade officers, captain and below. In