Conscription in the U.S.

Conscription or the draft was a factor in American wars since the colonial era. There was a peacetime draft in 194041, and 1948-1973. Since 1973 the draft has been suspended, but not abolished, and men are required to register. There has never been a draft of women.

Colonial and Early National

Colonial militia laws--and after independence those of the United States and the various states--required able-bodied males to enroll in the militia, to undergo a minimum of military training, and to serve for limited periods of time in war or emergency. This earliest form of conscription involved selective drafts of militiamen for service in particular campaigns. Following this system in its essentials, the Continental Congress in 1778 recommended that the states draft men from their militias for one year's service in the Continental army; this first national conscription was irregularly applied and failed to fill the Continental ranks. In 1814, President James Madison proposed conscription of 40,000 men for the army, but the War of 1812 ended before Congress took any action.

Civil War

Although both North and South resorted to conscription during the Civil War, in neither section did the system work effectively. The Confederate congress on Apr. 16, 1862, passed an act requiring military service for three years from all males aged eighteen to thirty-five not legally exempt, and it later extended the obligation. The U.S. Congress followed on July 17, 1862, with an act authorizing a militia draft within a state when it could not meet its quota with volunteers. This state-administered system failed in practice and on Mar. 3, 1863, Congress passed the first genuine national conscription law, setting up under the Union army an elaborate machinery for enrolling and drafting men between twenty and forty-five years of age. Quotas were assigned in each state, the deficiencies in volunteers to be met by conscription. But men drafted could provide substitutes or, until mid- 1864, avoid service by paying commutation money. There was much evasion and overt resistance to the draft, including a great draft riot in New York City in July 1863. Of the 168,649 men procured for the Union through the draft, 117,986 were substitutes, leaving only 50,663 who had their personal services conscripted.

World War I

In 1917 the administration of Woodrow Wilson decided to rely primarily on conscription, rather than voluntary enlistment, to raise military manpower for World War I. The Selective Service Act of May 18, 1917, was carefully drawn to remedy the defects in the Civil War system and--by allowing exemptions for dependency, essential occupations, and religious scruples--to place each man in his proper niche in a national war effort. The act established a "liability for military service of all male citizens"; authorized a selective draft of all those between twenty-one and thirty-one years of age (later from eighteen to forty-five); and prohibited all forms of bounties, substitutions, or purchase of exemptions. Administration was entrusted to local boards composed of leading civilians in each community. These boards issued draft calls in order of numbers drawn in a national lottery and determined exemptions. In 1917 and 1918 some 24 million men were registered and nearly 3 million inducted into the military services, with little of the resistance that characterized the Civil War. The draft was universalistic and included blacks on the same tewrms as whites (althouygh they served in different units). In all 367,710 blacks were drafted (13.0% of the total). compared to 2,442,586 whites (86.9%).

World War II

The World War I system served as a model for that of World War II. The Selective Service and Training Act of Sept. 14, 1940, instituted national conscription in peacetime, requiring registration of all men between twenty-one and forty-five, with selection for one year's service by a national lottery. The term of service was extended by one year in August 1941. After Pearl Harbor the Selective Service Act was further amended (Dec. 19, 1941), extending the term of service to the duration of the war and six months and requiring the registration of all men eighteen to sixty-four years of age. In the massive draft of World War II, 50 million men from eighteen to forty-five were registered, 36 million classified, and 10 million inducted. The World War II draft expired in March 1947, but conscription was revived in 1948 and for more than two decades of intermittent peace and limited war became an established American institution. The Universal Military Training and Service Act of 1951 theoretically placed a military obligation on all men between the ages of eighteen and a half and twenty-six for a total of eight years of combined active and reserve military duty. The act was extended and variously amended at four-year intervals--in 1955, 1959, 1963, and 1967--and provided options of various types of reserve service for the basic two years of active duty required of those conscripted. In actual practice only enough draftees were called each year to fill military ranks (primarily the army) to their allotted strengths when not enough men volunteered, and thus, many physically fit youths escaped service altogether. Various deferments for educational and other reasons were provided for, as well as exemptions that were subject to some abuse. Opposition to operations of the Selective Service System was a central feature of the movement against the Vietnam War. With Congress and the public increasingly critical, the draft law was renewed for only two years in 1971. Meanwhile, President Richard M. Nixon in 1969 restored the system of selection by lottery. In June 1973, with congressional consent, he ended the draft entirely and reverted to the all-volunteer forces of pre-World War II America.

Bibliography

• Jack F. Leach, Conscription in the United States: Historical Background.
• Harry A. Marmion, Selective Service: Conflict or Compromise.

Civil War

• James W. Geary, We Need Men: The Union Draft in the Civil War (1991)
• James W. Geary, "Civil War Conscription in the North: A Historiographical Review," Civil War History 32 (1986): 208-28,
• Peter Levine, "Draft Evasion in the North during the Civil War, 1863-1865," Journal of American History 67 (1981): 816-34 online edition
• Albert Burton Moore. Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy 1924 [ online edition]
• Eugene C. Murdock, One Million Men: The Civil War Draft in the North (1971).
• Kenneth H. Wheeler. "Local Autonomy and Civil War Draft Resistance: Holmes County, Ohio." Civil War History. v.45#2 1999. pp 147+ online edition

World War I

• John Whiteclay Chambers II, To Raise an Army: The Draft Comes to Modern America (1987), comprehensive look at the national level.
• K. Walter Hickel. "'Justice and the Highest Kind of Equality Require Discrimination': Citizenship, Dependency, and Conscription in the South, 1917-1919." Journal of Southern History. v. 66#4 2000. pp 749+ [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?

a=o&d=5002373106 online version]

• David M. Kennedy. Over Here: The First Worm War and American Society (1980), online edition
• Gerald E. Shenk, "Race, Manhood, and Manpower: Mobilizing Rural Georgia for World War I," Georgia Historical Quarterly, 81 (Fall 1997), 622-62
• C. Vann Woodward, Tom Watson, Agrarian Rebel (1938), pp 451-63.
• Sieger, Susan. "She Didn't Raise Her Boy to Be a Slacker: Motherhood, Conscription, and the Culture of the First World War." Feminist Studies. v.22#1 1996. pp 7+ online edition

World War II

• Robert Westbrook, "'I Want a Girl Just Like the Girl That Married Harry James': American Women and the Problem of Political Obligation in WWII," American Quarterly 42 (December 1990 ): 587-614; online in JSTOR

Primary sources

• John Whiteclay Chambers II, ed. Draftees or Volunteers: A Documentary History of the Debate over Military Conscription in the United States, 1787-1973, (1975)

International Perpectives

• Lars Mjoset and Stephen Van Holde, eds. The Comparative Study of Conscription in the Armed Forces. Amsterdam, JAI Press/Elsevier Science Ltd., 2002, 424 pages.

---