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32 Judge Advoc. J. 1 (1962)

handle is hein.journals/jajrnl34 and id is 1 raw text is: THE CIVIL WAR FEDERAL CONSCRIPTION AND EXEMPTION SYSTEM By William L. Shaw* What we need is a good army, not a large one.' I. INTRODUCTION On 1 January 1861, the numerical size of the United States Army was 16,367.2 On 1 May 1865, the same army had expanded to 1,000,576 men not including casualties and those men discharged during the course of the war.3 This remarkable increase of over 60 times the initial strength of the army was not an easy transition process. A trial and error method of obtaining men was followed until the very cessation of hostilities. The federal government sought to raise troops through successive stages of calls for state militia, volunteering, a presidential draft, and, finally, the adoption of the Enrollment Act of 3 March 1863. We shall review these phases and consider the con- stitutionality of the Act and judi- cial review. There will be stressed the Oakes Report of 9 August 1865 which made specific recommendations for any conscriptive system of the future. II. GENERAL BACKGROUND A. Voluntary Recruiting In the organization of an army in 1861, the Confederacy gained at least a six months start on the Union.4 At the period of the inauguration of President Abraham Lincoln, the Unit- ed States were without an army of any proportions.5 There were three phases of Ameri- can military service existing by law * The author, a lieutenant colonel in the California (Army) National Guard is a member of the California State Bar, a graduate of Stanford University, a Deputy Attorney General of California and a member of the Staff of the Adjutant General of the California National Guard in the Selective Service Section. He is an officer of the Sacramento Civil War Round Table. I General George Washington to the President of the Congress immediately after the disastrous Battle of Camden on 17 August 1780: Upton, Military Policy of the United States, p. VII (1907). 2 Upton, op. cit., 225. 3Selective Service System, Monograph No. 16, Problems of Selective Serv- ice, p. 5-7 (1952). Channing, A History of the United States: vol. VI, 'War for Southern Independence', 398 (1925). 52 Draper, History of the American Civil War, 186 (1868).

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