Conscription is the act of selecting people to serve in the military. It is
also known as the draft. Prior to the American Civil War (1861–65),
states determined when and how to use conscription, such as during the
American Revolution (1775–83) and the War of 1812 (1812–15).
During the Civil War, the congresses of both the Union and the
Confederate States of America imposed national drafts, causing much
controversy.
The Civil War began in April 1861, when the Confederate army attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina. The Union had an army of just
sixteen thousand men at the time. President Abraham Lincoln
(1809–1865; served 1861–65) called for seventy-five thousand men to
volunteer for militia service for three months, a show of force that
Lincoln expected would end the rebellion. So many men answered
Lincoln’s call that the Union army turned away volunteers.
Confederate president Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) raised one
hundred thousand volunteers at the start of the war. One year later, the
number of new volunteers was dwindling, and the Confederate congress
passed a Conscription Act in April 1862. The act compelled military
service by men ages eighteen to thirty-five, and it was later expanded to
cover ages seventeen to fifty.
Conscription was controversial among members of the Confederacy.
The law contained an exception for one white man on every plantation
who owned at least twenty slaves. A conscript also could hire a substitute
to serve for him by paying the government $300. These provisions offended working-class whites who did not own plantations or who had
small farms, no slaves, and little money. Conscription by the
Confederacy also violated the Southern concept of states’ rights, which
was the cause for which the Confederacy was fighting. Many
Southerners believed states, not a federal government, had sole power to
decide when and how to impose a military draft.
Volunteers and conscripts allowed the Confederacy to succeed in the
Civil War well into 1863. The prospect of defeat led the Union congress
to enact its own Conscription Act that year. It compelled service by men
ages twenty to forty-five. There were certain medical, hardship, and high
official exceptions. As in the South, a Northern conscript could pay
$300 or find a substitute to avoid service. Many Northerners criticized the exceptions, saying they favored the rich over
the middle-class and poor.
African Americans offered to volunteer in
the North at the outbreak of the Civil War. The
army refused to accept them until after Lincoln
imposed the Emancipation Proclamation in
January 1863. By then, Union defeats allowed
the need for more soldiers to trump the racism
that had kept African Americans out of service.
Racism, however, prevented them from serving
as officers, and black regiments received inferior
wages, equipment, and assignments.
In the last months of the Confederacy, the
Confederate congress voted to enlist black soldiers in its army too. The war ended, however,
before that process began.