for the slave-owning class. Congress debated and negotiated an adjustment to the law from January until May. It finally agreed to exempt only overseers so employed before April 16, 1862. In the administration of plantation overseer exemptions, the War Department moved cautiously, granting temporary exemptions to those engaged in food production. The critique of the Davis Administration waging a “rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight” persisted, objected by the poor as being discriminatory and by the upcountry on sectional grounds. In March, Postmaster John H. Reagan proposed, with the support of Jefferson Davis, that the 1,509 men of the postal service should be exempted from the draft. Congress immediately exempted most contractors and their drivers. On April 2, those elected to Congress, state legislatures and several other state posts were exempted. Following the Battle of Antietam, where Lee failed to gain additional Marylander recruits, Representative George G. Vest of Missouri brought to the attention of Congress, in January 1863, that there were some 2,000 Marylanders vocally supporting the Confederacy in the environs of Richmond, displaced as were numerous citizens of Missouri, and that the Marylanders should also be subject to conscription laws. Both House and Senate passed enabling legislation, but Jefferson Davis pocket-vetoed the measure at the close of session in May for fear of alienating a state that was virtually neutral in the conflict. The Confederate Congress never developed a coherent anti-administration party, but, in 1863, facing re-election amidst growing dissatisfaction with the Davis administration, it did refuse to extend Jefferson Davis's authority to suspend habeas corpus nationally as an emergency power. Nevertheless, state courts in the Confederacy substantially upheld the prerogatives asserted by the Davis government. Likewise, the Congress did not enact a bill allowing commanding generals to appoint their own staffs, allowing Jefferson Davis to place his personal stamp on every chain of command. Historian Emery Thomas has noted that, in the name of wartime emergency, Jefferson Davis "all but destroyed the political philosophy which underlay the founding of the Southern Republic," and Congress furthered his purposes. Extending the earlier conscription of whites into the Confederate States Army, Congress now allowed impressment of slaves as military laborers. Army quartermaster and commissary officers were authorized to seize private property for army use, compensated at below-market prices with depreciated currency. Not only did the Confederate States Congress anticipate the United States initiating a draft to conscript a