on june 14, from camp defiance in harper's ferry, bartow wrote his response to the "insolent missive" of brown, who "thought proper to publish [it] in [bartow's] absence". the response was published in the "savannah morning news". bartow defended himself vehemently, countering each of the personalized attacks and stating that he had undertaken the current campaign under the sole command of jefferson davis. his recurring argument was that the "confederate government is alone chargeable with questions of peace and war and has the exclusive right, excepting in the case of invasion, to raise and maintain armies" while the governors are not "empowered to raise these armies". brown would have been committing, "here again, [his] common error, of supposing that [he was] the state of georgia ... a mistake in which i do not participate."