Once the Confederacy was established, Brown, a states' rights advocate, spoke out against expansion of the Confederate central government's powers. He denounced President Jefferson Davis in particular. Brown tried to stop Colonel Francis Bartow from taking Georgia troops "out of the state" to the First Battle of Bull Run. Though he objected most strenuously to military conscription by the Confederate government in Richmond, Brown also protested the army's impressment of goods and slave labor, and was critical of Confederate tax and blockade-running policies. In time, other Confederate governors followed Brown's example, undermining the war effort and sapping the Confederacy of vital resources.