War, 45 percent of Confederate congressional districts were occupied, 20 percent were disrupted by military conflict, and only 33.9 percent were under Confederate control in three geographical pockets in Appalachia, the Lower South and the Trans-Mississippi West. Mobilization By the convening of the Second Session of the Second Congress, the inadequacy of all previous military laws had been made apparent through the summer of 1864 during Grant's Wilderness Campaign and the Siege of Petersburg, Sherman's Atlanta Campaign, and Sheridan's Valley Campaigns of 1864. While the emergency was agreed to on all sides, Congress was still undecided as to how much authority it should grant President Davis. There were still 125,000 men on the exemption lists. With support from James A. Seddon, his Secretary of War, John T.L. Preston, the Superintendent of Conscription, and General Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis recommended to Congress that the entire exemption system be replaced by a regime of executive detail, allowing him to decide who would work and who would fight. Although a few in each house of Congress supported the Davis exemption proposal, radical states' righters sought to restore the exemptions of the 1863 level. The largest group in both houses sought to make some small concessions to the looming manpower emergency. They chose to focus on tightening the administration of the draft, including abolishing exemptions for postal workers, railroad men and overseers, and abolishing all provost marshals not connected to the Army. All such proposals died in committee, and the passed legislation to replace existing commissary officers and quartermasters with bonded agents was vetoed as “seriously impairing our ability to supply armies in the field”. At the opening of the last session of the Confederate Congress, the conscription law of February 17, 1864 effectively had reorganized the state militias with men outside the draft ages. Thus reconstituted, state governors had lent these troops to district commanders through the campaign season of 1864 only as the Union offensives encroached upon their state boundaries. The resulting limitations on training and experience made them of little value in combat. On November 7, 1864, Davis responded to that battlefield experience with the request for a law empowering him to organize, arm and train all state militias for central government deployment. Congress was reluctant to subject state militias to central government direction. A bill passed in the House was never acted on by the Senate. In a related