vote. The Act of March 13, 1865 authorized the president to raise 300,000 troops “irrespective of color”. A bitter Jefferson Davis complained that he had wanted a statute arming the slaves the year before, at the beginning of 1864. On February 6, 1865, Congress made Robert E. Lee commanding general of all Confederate armies. In March, one of its final acts was the passage of a law allowing for the military induction of any slave willing to fight for the Confederacy. This measure had originally been proposed by Patrick Cleburne a year earlier but had met stiff opposition until the final months of the war, when it was endorsed by Lee. Davis had proposed buying 40,000 slaves and emancipating them, but neither Congress nor the Virginia General Assembly considering a similar proposal would provide for emancipation. Opponents such as Howell Cobb of Georgia claimed such an action would be "the beginning of the end of the revolution. If slaves will make good soldiers, our whole theory of slavery is wrong." Davis and his War Department responded by fiat in General Order Number Fourteen asserting emancipation: "No slave will be accepted as a recruit unless with his own consent and with the approbation of his master by a written instrument converting, as far as he may, the rights of a freedman." On March 23, the first black company of Confederates were seen drilling in the streets of Richmond. In the closing days of the Confederacy, the Congress and President Davis were at loggerheads. The executive recommendations were debated, but not acted upon. March 18, 1865 was the last day of official business in the history of the Confederate States Congress. The Senate was still in secret session and the House in open session, although it adjourned with the wistful sine die as a last entry, "the Confederate Congress, with its work still undone went silent forever". President Davis met with his cabinet for the last time on May 5, 1865 in Washington, Georgia.Davis's cabinet declared the Confederate States of America dissolved and forthwith ceased any attempt to continue operating the executive branch of the Confederate government. As with the U.S. Constitution on which the C.S. Constitution was based, the president and executive branch had no constitutional power to dissolve the Confederate Congress under any circumstances, but, in any event, the fall of Richmond followed by the surrender and dissolution of the