three-year term of service for volunteers whose enlistment was about to expire. Seddon now proposed extending their service for the duration, as 315 regiments and 58 battalions were eligible for discharge in 1864. General Lee had earlier proposed the end of all class exemptions, and General William J. Hardee along with twenty other generals had publicly proposed that all men should be eligible for service, both black and white, from the ages of 15 to 60. From December to February, the Congress considered bills and reported out a measure that passed both houses on February 17, 1864. It provided for conscription for the duration of white men from ages 17 to 50. Those between 18 and 45 years of age would be retained in their field organizations. Those aged 17-18 and 45-50 would constitute a reserve corps for detail duty, subject to military duty in their home states. Exemptions in government were limited to those certified as necessary. Plantation overseers were exempted only if provisions were provided at set impressment prices; other enumerated occupations were exempted only if they had been engaged for a number of years. Postal workers and railroad employees were exempted, as well as those the president was authorized to detail. Following complaints of Confederate civilian depredations by independent Confederate ranger units, Lee's flat recommendation to terminate them, and General Jeb Stuart’s assessment that they were inefficient and detrimental to the best interests of the Army, Congress reconsidered the “partisan ranger” innovation of April 1862. On February 17, 1864, Congress absorbed the existing Confederate bands of Rangers into the regular Army, although permitting the Secretary of the Army to use regular troops in a Ranger capacity within enemy lines. At the same time, Congress again suspended the writ of habeas corpus from February 15 to August 1, 1864. It was seen as the most effective way to enforce conscription, maintain Confederate army coherence, and arrest potential traitors and spies. Second Congress, Second Session Following an intersession from June 15 to November 6, 1864, the Second Session of the Second Congress sat from November 7, 1864 to March 18, 1865. This period saw the military collapse of the Confederacy, as Sherman turned northward in his Carolinas campaign, and both Fort Fisher and Charleston, South Carolina were captured. Union advances in the Valley of Virginia forced a collapse of Confederate forces onto Richmond. At the end of the Civil