In the first year of the war, both sides had far more volunteers than they could effectively train and equip. After the initial enthusiasm faded, reliance on the cohort of young men who came of age every year and wanted to join was not enough. Both sides used a draft law—conscription—as a device to encourage or force volunteering; relatively few were actually drafted and served. The Confederacy passed a draft law in April 1862 for young men aged 18 to 35; overseers of slaves, government officials, and clergymen were exempt. When the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect in January 1863, ex-slaves were energetically recruited by the states, and used to meet the state quotas. States and local communities offered higher and higher cash bonuses
Confederate Tennessee's State General Assembly in 1861, was the first state to draft black men into military service. The requirements for this Act were: all free black men age 15 to 50 were eligible for labor units, they would be paid $18 a month, and anyone who refused would arrested. This left the black man little choice but to enlist and go to war for the South.
Throughout the years, many people have been taught that the reason the Civil War happened, was to abolish slavery all through the United States. Although that is true, there were more reasons why the Civil War occurred.Referencing will be done on different articles and writers to support the findings of the authors. The article “Slavery, the Constitutional, and the Origins of the Civil War” by Paul Finkelman, discusses about the North (union) and the South (confederacy) and the disagreement of the territories following the constitutional laws regarding slavery, the article explores both sides of the territories and their beliefs of how the situation of slavery should have been dealt with. The article “The Economic Origins of the Civil War” by Marc Egnal, discusses the North’s (union) and the South’s (confederacy) economic situation that could have pushed the two territories to engage in war with one another. Finally, the last article “Politics, Ideology, and the Origins of the American Civil War” by Eric Foner, focuses on the Norths (union) and Souths (confederacy) views on politics and ideas of how each territory is ran and how they have affected the North and the South. These historians supplied specific and different explanations that explained what exactly caused the United States to enter into a Civil War. With the information provided by the authors, the evidence will lead us to the answer of what caused the Civil War.
On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves in the rebelling territories of the confederacy and authorizing Black enlistment in the Union Army. Since the beginning of the Civil War, free Black people in general, , were ready to fight on behalf of the Union, yet they were prevented from doing so. Popular racial stereotypes and discrimination against Blacks in the military contributed to the prevailing myth that Black men did not have the intelligence and bravery necessary to serve their country. By the fall of 1862, however, the lack of White Union enlistment and confederate victories at Antietem forced the U.S. government to reconsider its racist policy. As Congress met in October to address the issue of Black enlistment, various troops of Black volunteers had already been organized, including the First South Carolina and the Kansas Colored Troops. It wasn't until January 26, 1863, however, that secretary of war Edwin Stanton authorized the enlistment of Black troops. As a result, the 54th Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer infantry was founded, becoming the first all-Black Union regiment raised in the north.(Emilio 1990)
serve, were arrested. The draft would lead to protests and riots due to its faults.2
Lincoln also abused his power with the draft. Prior to the draft, the Union depended on the states to fill assigned quotas with volunteers. But then Lincoln instituted a new draft. By its terms, all men between the ages of 20 and 45 were liable to military service. However, any man who was called for the draft could avoid it by hiring a substitute or paying $300 dollars to the government. Many groups rightfully denounced these acts, called the conscription acts, as a rich man's law. Indeed, many wealthy men were able to bribe poorer men into taking their place in
Since the beginning of the Market Revolution, the institution of slavery became the leading factor that intensified the relations between the North and the South. Regarding the geographic differences between the North and South, the South was primarily agrarian and the North was mainly urban. Therefore, the North rapidly industrialized while the South remained relatively rural and cotton-slave based. As a result, the Market Revolution economically separated the North and the South and created a second party system. Thus, the issues of pro-slavery and anti-slavery arose between the Southern Democrats and Northern Republicans in the 1850s. The North desired to halt the expansion of slavery into western territories while the South strongly opposed. These two opposing parties led to radical abolitionism in the North, William Henry Seward and John Brown, and extreme secessionism in the South, James Henry Hammond, and South Carolina Ordinance of Secession. Due to their strict ideologies regarding slavery, both parties could not compromise on the issue of the expansion of slavery. Therefore, according to Americans in the years prior to the Civil War, conflict was inevitable.
During the majority of the war, men were guided into civilian and military positions through a policy that the Selective Service Director Lewis B. Hershey called "channeling." The draft system used induction as a threat to "channel" people into more desirable pursuits that were in the interests of the nation. For instance, an engineer earned a deferment from the war because he was needed at home while a person who did not have a deferment could be inducted into the army. For every solider in combat, there were many other positions that needed to be filled...
The majority of speculations regarding the causes of the American Civil War are in some relation to slavery. While slavery was a factor in the disagreements that led to the Civil War, it was not the solitary or primary cause. There were three other, larger causes that contributed more directly to the beginning of the secession of the southern states and, eventually, the start of the war. Those three causes included economic and social divergence amongst the North and South, state versus national rights, and the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dred Scott case. Each of these causes involved slavery in some way, but were not exclusively based upon slavery.
Over forty years has passed since the United States inducted the last draftee through the Selective Service System. The Selective Service System is an independent agency of the United States, which gives the President the right or power to conscript men for military service. There have been different Acts passed by congress since 1917 that require men of various ages to register for service. Although, the name of each Act and the age requirements of the registries changed, the Acts were all similar in nature. They all gave the President the right to call men to war when he deemed necessary. In January 1973, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird announced the creation of the all-volunteer service, retracting the need for the draft (GAO.gov). Under current law, all men between the ages of 18-25 must register within 30 days of their 18th birthday, however this information is used mostly for recruitment purposes and in case of any future crisis. There has been much controversy over this matter since the Vietnam War, when people started to realize the draft was unfair due to loopholes and draft exemptions making the draft unfair for working men. At one point in time the military draft may have been necessary, but today’s all-volunteer military has eliminated the need for a draft.
The Conscription Act delivered the final straw in the long list of discrepancies, the catalyst that turned that small forest fire into a raging inferno of hate and fear. The white working class (mostly Irish immigrants) were infuriated, they couldn’t understand how they, white, hard-working voters were being punished. The government was forcing them to fight a war they didn’t support and the only way they could avoid it was to pay 300 dollars (a years wages for most), yet they would pay African Americans 1,000 dollars for volunteering. The new federal draft conditions also expanded to include a wider age range of men it would take. “The conscription law targeted men between the ages of 20 and 35, and all unmarried men up to age 45.” Adding to the already high tensions of laborers, since the enactment of the Emancipation Proclamation they ...
In the month of April of 1862, the government issued the first draft of the Civil War. Throughout the war, they put out drafts because so many men were needed to fight. Citizens were expected to obey these orders, and as the war progressed, it was harder and harder for men to avoid fighting for their country. Towards the end, the government began forcing almost every able man to enlist in the army. Men of ages 17-50 were drafted in the South (20-45 in the North); bodies were needed. And the government made sure that they got what they needed.
This Emancipation Proclamation is a copy from the original five-page document which is stored in the National Archives Building in Washington. It was a presidential proclamation and executive order issued by Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war between the north (the Union) and the south (the Confederacy). It is a legal and political text addressed to all the American people but mainly to the people in the Southern states (the Confederacy not under the Union control) of the United States of America. It also reached Europe. The preliminary Proclamation was signed on the 22nd of September 1862, when the Confederacy did not
In 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation was in fact “proclaimed” there was still slavery in a new name. Just because, slavery was no longer permitted, it did not eliminate the ability for sharecropping to exist. The Emancipation Proclamation did not even free all slaves, meaning slaves in the borderline states were not free. The only slaves that were free, were the slaves that were in the states that went against the Union. However, it can be observed that there was a technological and medical revolution.
Before World War II, the age of majority in America was twenty-one. At this age, men entered into their full rights and obligations, such as the expectation to fight for their country, the freedom to vote, and the right to consume alcohol (Poe, 2). There was no confusion pertaining to what a man was allowed to do. Everything was consistent. When the draft age was lowered to eighteen during the Second World War, the nation went into frenzy. The American people did not think it was fair that at eighteen young men could be forced to go out and fight for their country, but were not permitted vote (Poe, 2). In their minds the only compromise that seemed fair was to give the men the ballot in return for their service to our country (Poe, 2). However, no one argued that men be given the right to drink, because of their service to our country. In fact, Senator Joshua Lee believed that soldiers under twenty-one years of age needed to be protected from drinking by their older fellow service men (Poe, 2). Congress concluded that only the states could change their voting and drinking ages, but surprisingly, the states did not rush to do so (Poe,2). Eventually, the soldiers were demobilized,...
The ex-slaves after the Civil War didn’t have a place to settle or money. They had no skills other than farming to procure jobs, so they couldn’t earn money. Freedmen’s Bureau provided shelter, resources, education, and taught necessary skills to get jobs (Jordan 386). Though the issue of slavery was solved, racism continues and Southerners that stayed after the war passed Black Codes which subverted the ideas of freedom including the actions of state legislatures (Hakim 19). Black Codes were a set of laws that discriminated against blacks and limited their freedom (Jordan 388).