Second, the northern law contained exemptions. The list was unusually brief, consisting of the physically or mentally unfit, convicted felons, a restricted number of state and national officials, only sons of dependent widows, and sole supporters of infirm parents or orphaned children. The North did not allow the occupational exemptions that southerners so successfully manipulated to evade the draft. However, more than 50 percent of northern draftees found a way to gain an exemption, with physical disability being a sure avenue of escape. Some men practiced self-mutilation, while other draftees fabricated disabilities, buttressing their claims with testimonials from unscrupulous friends and doctors.
Third, a drafted man who was ineligible for an exemption, legal or otherwise, had two traditional means of evading service. He could provide a substitute or pay a $300 commutation fee. By setting a fixed commutation rate, Congress kept the price of substitutes under $300, since no one would pay more than that for a substitute. As in the South, substitutes were often of poor quality and likely to desert at the first opportunity; but unlike the Confederacy the North did not abolish the practice. However, in July 1864 it abolished commutation for everyone but conscientious objectors, and substitute prices rapidly increased. Since the South needed men more than money, Confederate conscription contained no provision for commutation.
Finally, to entice volunteers, the North resorted to the traditional method of offering bounties. Although providing a substitute or commuting carried no stigma, being conscripted did for both the draftee and his community. Wards, cities, and counties collected money for bounties through voluntary contributions, real estate taxes, and special fundraising events. States tacked on an additional bounty, as did the national government. The nation spent more than $700 million on bounties, which equaled the entire wartime pay for the Army! Since localities competed for volunteers, local bounty rates spiraled upward, giving richer cities and counties an advantage in avoiding the draft. With bounty piled upon bounty, a man could collect a substantial sum for volunteering, and he could become even richer if he volunteered more than once. “Bounty jumping” became a national scandal. A man would volunteer, collect the bounties, desert, volunteer in another district collecting more bounties, and so on. Not all volunteers were jumpers, but there were so many that the Army detailed armed squads to escort groups of them to the front. The Confederacy, with its more direct method of raising men and its limited financial resources, avoided the bounty problem.
Surprisingly, among those who volunteered, both North and South, were hundreds of women who—for reasons including the desire to be near a husband or brother in the ranks, patriotism, love of adventure, or the lure of a soldier’s paycheck—rejected the battlefield exclusion that being female ordinarily provided them. Moreover, women who had been living as men before the war may have felt the pressure to enlist to prove their “manhood.” In an age when medical exams were cursory and superficial, and when individuals did not carry personal identification papers (such as a driver’s license), enlisting was fairly easy. Hiding one’s identity could be more challenging as a woman made the difficult dual transition from a female to a male persona, and from a civilian to a soldier. Some women were discovered when hospitalized for illnesses or wounds and some when they had babies. At the Battle of Antietam, for example, two were killed in action and three more suffered wounds, including one who had to have an arm amputated. “There was an orderly in one of our regiments & he & the Corporal always slept together,” wrote a soldier in a Massachusetts regiment. “Well, the other night the Corporal had a baby, for the Corporal turned out to be a woman! She has been in 3 or 4 fights [battles].” Many females served lengthy enlistments without being discovered and, at least in some cases, continued living as men long after the war. When an accident in 1911 required “his” hospitalization, it turned out that Albert Cashier, who had served in the 95th Illinois Regiment, was really Jennie Hodgers.12
If northern conscription remained dependent on the colonial past for some of its operative features, it also represented a radical change from previous manpower mobilization policies. The draft law made the principle of universal military service an obligation to the national government rather than the states. Both in the Confederacy and in the Union the conscription procedure ignored the states. Another significant change was from voluntary to compulsory enlistments as the basis for mobilization. In one respect these changes weakened the war efforts of both North and South. With their intense localism and a strong tradition of voluntary associations, Americans identified with and took pride in regiments drawn from a limited geographic area. These bonds of kinship and friendship between the folks at home and the regiment in the field began to dissolve as the national government put conscripted “outsiders” into the ranks. However, the changes permitted more efficient use of manpower. States had rarely channeled volunteers into old regiments, since governors preferred to create new regiments, earning the loyalty of men appointed as officers. As a unit in the field became more experienced, it shrank from battlefield losses and disease, the numerical decline offsetting any increase in military skills. At Stones River, for example, Rosecrans commanded 139 regiments, representing a theoretical strength of approximately 139,000 men, but he actually had only one-third that many soldiers. Commanders believed that one new man in an old regiment was worth two or three in a new regiment, for, as Sherman wrote, “the former, by association with good experienced captains, lieutenants, and non-commissioned officers, soon became veterans, whereas the latter were generally unavailable for a year.” Although the North and South continued to form new volunteer units, by assigning at least some draftees to experienced regiments both governments increased the fighting effectiveness of their units.
In October 1863, Halleck wrote to Sherman regarding the Conscription Act. “A more complicated, defective, and impracticable law could scarcely have been framed,” he said. Twentieth-century authorities agreed and revamped the process in 1917. The act of 1863 showed them what to do fifty years later: omit substitution and commutation; outlaw bounties; increase civilian participation in administration; and instead of using enrolling officers, make it an obligation of citizenship for men to come forward to enroll. Despite the judgment of the general in chief that northern conscription was a failure, it worked exactly as its authors intended. The government held four drafts, and altogether enrollment boards examined 522,187 men, exempting 315,509 of them. Of the 206,678 men held to service, 86,724 commuted, 44,403 hired substitutes before they were drafted, 73,607 furnished substitutes after being drafted, and only 46,347 were actually drafted. Combining all substitutes and draftees, only 13 percent of Union Army enlistments came directly from the draft. Yet during the war’s last two years the North enlisted more than 1 million men. Some of these were veterans who reenlisted, but most were new volunteers motivated in varying degrees by the fear of conscription and the lure of bounties. Southern conscription more directly augmented the gray armies. It kept veterans in the ranks and produced approximately 120,000 draftees and 70,000 substitutes, representing 20 percent of Confederate manpower. Inevitably the South’s draft also had an indirect effect: Anxious to avoid the odium associated with conscription, an undetermined number of Confederates volunteered.
Although conscription filled the ranks, it also created internal dissension. Long accustomed to limited government, people in both sections considered conscription an un-American and despotic exercise of national power. To the lower classes it seemed especially unfair, since exemptions, substitution, and commutation appeared to make the conflict a rich man’s war but a poor man’s fight. Although opponents of the Davis and Lincoln administrations vigorously cultivated the charge of class favoritism for political purposes, this accusation was unfair. The Confederate and Union armies rather accurately mirrored their respective populations. If anything, unskilled laborers were proportionally underrepresented and white-collar workers proportionally overrepresented. To states’ rights adherents, conscription was u
nconstitutional. In the South, Governors Brown and Vance obstructed its enforcement by expanding the number of civil and militia offices that qualified for exemption, and state judges issued writs of habeas corpus preventing the arrest of unwilling draftees. Northern Peace Democrats, often as state-oriented as southerners, fanned antidraft sentiment, sparking widespread evasion, bitter hostility to draft officials, and riots. More than 161,000 men who were not exempt and did not provide a substitute or commute failed to report when summoned by their local enrollment boards. The number of these illegal draft evaders nearly equaled those who obtained substitutes or paid the commutation fee. Enrollment officers discovered their duty was dangerous, since they were assaulted by irate individuals and mobs, threatened and intimidated, attacked by dogs, scalded with boiling water, and bombarded with everything from eggs to bricks. The worst antidraft riot (which included a strong element of racist, antiblack sentiment) occurred in New York City, where four days of arson, looting, lynching, and shooting erupted in mid-July 1863, resulting in about 120 deaths. Grim troops coming from the Gettysburg battlefield finally quelled the outbreak. Lesser mob violence against the draft took place throughout the North.
The Lincoln administration not only freed and armed the slaves and countenanced conscription but also suppressed civil liberties, permitting the occasional repression of newspapers, the censorship of reporters’ telegraphic dispatches, and the military arrest of perhaps as many as 15,000 people. The vast majority of those arrested were from the border states or the Confederacy and included blockade-runners, smugglers, spies, defectors, and refugees. The only large group of Northerners arrested came in the wake of the militia draft and the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which generated tremendous opposition among Peace Democrats (reproachfully known as Copperheads). These antiwar advocates urged resistance to both emancipation and the draft, discouraged volunteering, and encouraged desertion. Primarily to deal with resistance to the militia draft, the administration suspended the writ of habeas corpus nationwide. Suspension of the writ, the final Emancipation Proclamation, and the Conscription Act intensified opposition to the government’s war policies. Copperheads accused “King Lincoln” of military despotism and vowed they would not support his “wicked abolition crusade against the South,” but would “resist to the death all attempts to draft any of our citizens into the army.” But Republicans countered charges of tyranny with accusations of treason. Congress passed a Habeas Corpus Act in March 1863 sanctioning the practices established by the executive branch, and the president vigorously defended his administration’s actions. Under the guise of freedom of speech and press and the right of habeas corpus, he said, the Confederacy “hoped to keep on foot amongst us a most efficient corps of spies, informers, supplyers, and aiders and abettors of their cause in a thousand ways.” Ordinary legal processes did not restrain these disloyal persons, but courts-martial and military commissions would. Furthermore, the infringements were only temporary. Military arrests during the rebellion did not mean that Americans would be denied their constitutional liberties “throughout the indefinite peaceful future which I trust lies before them.”
Drawing the line between disloyalty and legitimate expressions of free speech, press, and assembly is not easy, and Lincoln did not draw it perfectly. Although innocent men suffered injustice, the administration’s use of the Army against civilians resulted in no reign of terror. Moreover, just as Polk established bold precedents of strong executive wartime leadership, Lincoln created equally far-reaching precedents for the wartime interference with basic civil liberties. To conquer the South, he exercised new presidential powers that many people believed he did not and should not have, for liberty squelched in war might be lost in peace.
1863: Year of Decision
As the 1863 campaigning season approached, Union forces stood poised at five critical points. The Army of the Potomac, under a new commander, held the Rappahannock line. Following Fredericksburg, Burnside tried to redeem his reputation with a mid-January movement around Lee’s left flank, but torrential rains turned the countryside into a swamp and the army sank to its knees and axles in muck. The “Mud March” destroyed what little confidence the army still had in Burnside, and on January 25 Lincoln replaced him with “Fighting Joe” Hooker. In the western theater Rosecrans’s Army of the Cumberland occupied Murfreesboro, Grant’s Army of the Tennessee was north of Vicksburg, and Banks’s Army of the Gulf held the lower Mississippi. At sea Samuel DuPont had an ironclad squadron off Charleston. The South viewed these enemy hosts with alarm but for the first half of 1863 had reason to be optimistic. Northern antiwar sentiment surged, the drive to clear the Mississippi seemed stalled, Rosecrans remained inert, and the Confederacy won victories at Charleston and Chancellorsville. Then in midsummer and fall disaster struck. The North mangled Lee’s army at Gettysburg, captured Vicksburg and Port Hudson, and expelled the rebels from Tennessee.
The Union public expected DuPont to achieve a victory at Charleston akin to Farragut’s at New Orleans. But the tactical problems were not comparable. Once beyond the river forts Farragut could continue upstream, but Charleston was a cul-de-sac protected by powerful batteries. DuPont had a mere thirty-two guns on his eight monitors and the flagship New Ironsides. Moving on the noontime ebb tide of April 7, the vessels came within range of enemy batteries about three o’clock. To DuPont’s chief of staff, “It seemed as if the fires of hell were turned upon the Union fleet,” as Confederate gunners badly damaged all the ships. The repulse was a naval Fredericksburg, and its impact on northern morale was similarly depressing.
Surely Hooker would redeem Union fortunes! Fighting Joe performed wonders in reviving the dispirited army. For example, he abolished the “grand divisions” and reestablished the old corps, insisting that the men of each wear a distinctive insignia to enhance esprit de corps. Hooker also reorganized the cavalry into a single corps. Previous commanders assigned cavalry regiments individually to infantry divisions, a practice that hampered Union cavalry operations, since Lee and Stuart kept their cavalry concentrated. Properly organized and, after midsummer, increasingly armed with Spencer repeating carbines, Union troopers soon demonstrated that they were not inferior to their Confederate counterparts. Finally, the general’s fighting spirit was contagious. When he proclaimed that he commanded “the finest army on the planet,” people expected imminent victory.
Hooker was a skillful commander as well as a proficient organizer. Outnumbering Lee two to one, he planned to leave 40,000 men under John Sedgwick at Fredericksburg and take the remainder of the army upstream to turn the enemy left flank. Crossing the Rappahannock River simultaneously, the two wings would crush the Army of Northern Virginia. Initially the plan went well. By April 30 both Sedgwick and Hooker were across the river, the latter near Chancellorsville, a crossroads in an extensive area of tangled brush and second-growth timber called the Wilderness. “The rebel army,” exulted Hooker, “is now the legitimate property of the Army of the Potomac.”
Hooker’s strategy placed Lee in a precarious position, but he responded with tactical daring. As he had done against Pope, the Confederate general divided his army, containing Sedgwick with 10,000 men and taking 50,000 troops to assail Hooker. Lee then further divided his army, sending Jackson’s corps around Hooker’s right flank on May 2. A vigilant commander would have crushed Lee’s scattered army. Hooker, however, lost his nerve. When Jackson’s men smashed the Union flank, Lee also attacked and the southerners initially drove the Yankees back. But stiffening resistance and nightfall halted the attacks, with Lee’s army still divided. Most of Hooker’s subordinates urged him to counterattack on May 3, but he refused. Instead, Lee attacked again, reuniting his army’s wings after fierce fighting. Meanwhile, Sedgwick seized Marye’s Heights and advanced toward Chancellorsville. Running another incalculable risk, Lee divided his army yet again. A fraction watched Hooker while the remainder assaulted Sedgwick on May 3–4, forcing him north of the Rappahannock. Lee then return
ed to confront Fighting Joe, who ordered his army to recross the river on the night of May 5–6.
Although the Battle of Chancellorsville was Lee’s most dazzling victory, two factors tempered the rejoicing. First, Lee’s 13,000 casualties, while fewer than the North’s 17,000, represented a much higher proportion of his army. One of those casualties was especially costly: In the twilight after his flank attack, Jackson rode beyond his lines to survey the situation. As he returned, a jittery Confederate unit fired, fatally wounding him. His death forced Lee to reorganize the army, from the successful two-corps structure into three corps under Longstreet, Ambrose P. Hill, and Richard Ewell. Whether Hill or Ewell could match Jackson’s genius for long marching and tough fighting was questionable. Second, the Union army had again been humiliated and hurt but not destroyed. Accustomed to suffering and surviving, the Army of the Potomac still manned the Rappahannock line.
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