Civil

By Joan Wenner · Originally published September-October 2024 · pp. 29

War

Conscription By Joan Wenner

Just as in modern times, armed opposition fuels volunteerism but is typically followed by conscription when increased mobilization is needed to bolster the ranks, particularly front-line troops, if volunteer recruitment provides insufficient replacements due to sickness, death, injury, and desertion. On March 4, 1861, President, Abraham Lincoln, rode up Pennsylvania Avenue to deliver his inaugural address. By May 3rd, he would be calling for 75,000 three-months, volunteers, another 42,000 three-year volunteers, plus 18,000 sailors to blockade southern ports, even though the Navy had fewer than 60 ships at that time and any increase would require many more sailors to man them. While not all young males were interested due to factors such as fear and disillusionment, many eager men came to recruiting offices from farms, villages, and cities across the North and South. Excitement, as well as alarm, seemed to permeate every home, it was reported. A journalist traveling in the South witnessed “crowds of armed men singing and promenading in the streets… though of course unfamiliar with the horrors of the battlefield…” The same sequence of enthusiasm and conscription concern USCT regiments, in which a number of ‘recruits’ were said to be fighting for their freedom as Union soldiers. According to The Civil War Chronicle, which provides an extensive timeline of the war and beyond, Fort Sumter was a flashpoint for the disputing sides from late December 1860. Confederate forces began seizing Federal property throughout the South. Following the secession of South Carolina on December 20th, the Federal garrison at Fort Moultrie relocated to “the haven of Fort Sumter in the middle of Charleston Harbor.” What are sometimes considered the first shots of the war were from secessionist artillery targeting the Federal supply ship Star of the West, which was also carrying reinforcements for the garrison. Further south, the governors of Florida and Alabama demanded Federal troops at Fort Pickens surrender, though it remained in Union hands. Lincoln had vowed not to fire the first shot at Sumter, but when Confederate batteries opened fire on April 12, 1861, the Union garrison returned fire but suffered defeat two days later and filed out of the battered fort. The next day, Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 three-month volunteers to quell the insurrection.

This political cartoon, entitled “Don’t you see the point?” Published in Harper’s Weekly on August 29, 1863.

Most, it’s said, believed the war would be of short duration, but when the reality of a prolonged conflict set in, volunteering dried up in contrast to the patriotic fervor shown in the beginning, With a definite lack of enthusiasm for the draft, some other solution for obtaining military manpower had to be devised. In mid-April 1862, Confederate President Jefferson Davis “approved an act calling for the conscription of every white male between the ages of 18 and 35 for three years of military service—the first national military draft to be instituted in the United States.” Historians oddly overlooked the point that the Confederacy was not in the United States at the time, and forgot all about the statewide drafts employed during the Revolutionary War. On March 3, 1863, the Union Congress passed the Military Act, also called the Enrollment Act, which was a replacement for the “ineffectual Militia Act of July 17, 1862.” The Federal government was now solely responsible for conscripting troops for the Union army, writes author David McCormick. It designated the position of provost marshal and added enrollment officers within each congressional district. In May 1864, Pennsylvania advertised a draft event to take place in Chambersburg, calling for 700,000 men. The legislation, especially the opportunity of paying of a fee to have someone else serve for an individual able but unwilling to serve, did not sit well with Democrats. They were reluctant, to say the least, to put “whole control” of males aged 20 to 45 solely with the president, with one newspaper Continued on page 33