Dictionary:

conscription

  (kən-skrĭp'shən)

1. Compulsory enrollment, especially for the armed forces; draft.
2. A monetary payment exacted by a government in wartime.

noun

Compulsory enrollment in military service: draft, induction, levy. See give/take/reciprocity.

Compulsory military service has played a periodic and often controversial role in raising America's wartime forces. It has only rarely been used in peacetime in America.

English colonists revitalized the county militia system of compulsory, short‐term training and service for local defense. However, in the eighteenth century for longer‐term forces most colonies turned to ad hoc units composed primarily of volunteers with occasional draftees and legally hired substitutes.

During the Revolutionary War, state governments assumed the colonies' authority to raise their short‐term militias through drafts if necessary. They sometimes extended this to state units in the Continental Army, but they denied Gen. George Washington's request that the central government be empowered to conscript. As the initial volunteering slackened, states boosted enlistment bounties and held occasional drafts, producing more hired substitutes than actual draftees.

The Constitution neither mentioned nor prohibited national conscription, simply providing Congress with the power “to raise and support armies.” Most of the framers apparently believed that the United States, like England, would enlist rather than conscript its soldiers, paying for them through federal taxes.

For much of the nineteenth century, the United States relied upon a small, all‐volunteer regular army, augmented in wartime by the militia (renamed the National Guard) and by large numbers of temporary, locally organized, federally funded units—the U.S. Volunteers. During the War of 1812, however, the Madison administration tried unsuccessfully to adopt a national draft (which Daniel Webster, a New England Federalist, denounced as “Napoleonic despotism”).

National conscription came to America in the Civil War. With fewer people, the South adopted conscription in 1862, eventually applying it to white males seventeen to fifty years of age. Conscription raised 21 percent of the 1 million Confederate soldiers. But because it violated individual liberty and states' rights and included unpopular class‐based occupational exemptions, such as for overseers on large plantations, it eroded some popular support for the Confederacy.

The North adopted the draft in 1863, making it applicable to males twenty to forty‐five. Avoiding unpopular occupational exemptions, Congress permitted draftees to hire a substitute or pay a commutation fee of $300, then comparable to a worker's annual wages. Peace Democrats denounced it as a “rich man's war but a poor man's fight,” and thousands evaded or resisted when military provost marshals began conscripting. Bloody draft riots erupted New York and other cities.

Four federal drafts produced only 46,000 conscripts and 118,000 substitutes (2 and 6%, respectively, of the 2.1 million Union troops). Most soldiers were U.S. Volunteers. However, the draft was credited, along with $600 million in enlistment bounties, with prodding volunteers, encouraging reenlistments, and demonstrating political will.

Not until World War I did the United States rely primarily upon conscription. A civilian‐led “Preparedness” movement helped persuade many Americans that national compulsion was more equitable and efficient than local voluntarism for an industrial society to raise a mass army. President Woodrow Wilson overcame considerable opposition—particularly from agrarian isolationists and ethnic and ideological opponents of U.S. involvement—to obtain a temporary wartime, national, selective draft.

The Selective Service Act of 1917 prohibited enlistment bounties and hiring substitutes but authorized deferments on the grounds of dependency or essential work in industry or agriculture. The draft was implemented by a Selective Service System composed of a national headquarters commanded by Gen. Enoch Crowder and some 4,000 local draft boards staffed by civilian volunteers. The boards decided, within overall national guidelines, on the induction or deferment of particular individuals.

In 1917–18, Selective Service registered and classified 23.9 million men, eighteen to forty‐five, and drafted 2.8 million of them. In all, 72 percent of the 3.5 million‐man wartime army were draftees. Despite the initial divisions over the war, there were no draft riots. Authorities arrested those who counseled draft resistance, including the anarchist Emma Goldman and Socialist Party leader Eugene V. Debs. Except for a few rural incidents, opposition took the form of draft evasion or registration as conscientious objectors (COs). Apparently between 2 and 3 million men never registered, and 338,000 (12% of those drafted) failed to report when called or deserted after arrival at training camp. In addition, 64,700 registrants sought CO status. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the draft law in 1918.

In World War II, following the German defeat of France, Congress in 1940 adopted the nation's first prewar conscription act, the result of a campaign headed by old “Preparedness” leaders. The draft system was set to operate through 1945, but because of intense opposition from isolationists, Congress obligated the 1940 draftees to serve only one year, for training purposes. A year later, the lawmakers voted (203–202 in the House) to retain the 600,000 draftees. After Pearl Harbor, the Congress extended the draft to men aged eighteen to thirty‐eight (and briefly to forty‐five), and prolonged military duty for the duration.

Headed by Gen. Lewis Hershey, Selective Service drafted a total of 10.1 million men in World War II, the majority for the army. Nearly 6 million other men and women joined voluntarily, primarily in the Army Air Corps, the navy, and the Marines. Deferments were limited primarily to war industries, hardship cases, and agriculture.

Still there was dissent, reflected in the 72,000 registrants who applied for CO status and in antidraft incidents in Chicago and other cities. The latter included protests by African Americans against discrimination and segregation in the armed forces. In addition, the Justice Department investigated 373,000 cases of draft evasion; 16,000 evaders were convicted.

After the war, until Congress let the induction authority expire in 1947, conscription was extended to help maintain the much‐reduced military. Escalation of Cold War tensions led Congress to adopt a new draft law in 1948. It required twenty‐one months of military training and service by individuals selected by their local draft boards. The Cold War military was composed of volunteers, draftees, and draft‐induced volunteers.

During the Korean War, 1.5 million men, eighteen to twenty‐five, were drafted; another 1.3 volunteered, primarily for the navy and air force. Discontent led to an increase in the number of COs, and there were 80,000 reported cases of draft evasion.

Cold War conscription became a casualty of the Vietnam War. The draft enabled President Lyndon B. Johnson to build up U.S. forces in Vietnam between 1964 and 1968 from 23,000 military advisers to 543,000 troops. In 1964–66, annual draft calls soared from 100,000 to 400,000.

Although draftees were a small minority (16%) in the U.S. armed forces, they comprised the bulk of infantry riflemen in Vietnam (88% in 1969). They accounted for more than half the army's battle deaths. Because of stu‐dent and other deferments, the draft and the casualties fell disproportionately upon working‐class youths, black and white.

Dissent increased, along with soaring draft calls and casualty rates. Supported by an antiwar coalition of students, pacifists, and clergy, and many liberal and radical groups, draft evasion and resistance increased dramatically. There were antidraft demonstrations, draft card burnings, sit‐ins at induction centers, break‐ins and destruction of records at a dozen local draft boards.

In 1965–75, confronted with well over 100,000 instances of draft evasion or resistance, the federal government indicted 22,500 persons. Some 8,800 were convicted and 4,000 imprisoned. As the Supreme Court expanded the criteria for conscientious objection, CO exemptions rose to more than 170,000 between 1965 and 1970.

An estimated 571,000 young men illegally evaded the draft. Of these, 360,000 were never caught, and another 198,000 had their cases dismissed, but some 9,000 were convicted and 4,000 sent to prison. Between 30,000 and 50,000 others fled into exile, mainly to Canada, Britain, and Sweden.

Congress came under pressure to reform or eliminate the draft. With conservative support, however, General Hershey, Selective Service director since 1941, blocked any significant changes, including recommendations for national uniformity by a 1967 presidential commis‐sion headed by former Assistant Attorney General Burke Marshall.

Having criticized the draft in his 1968 campaign, President Richard M. Nixon removed Hershey, ended new occupational and dependency deferments, and initiated an annual draft lottery in 1969 among eighteen‐year‐olds (to reduce prolonged uncertainty). He also appointed a commission, headed by former Secretary of Defense Thomas Gates, which in 1970 recommended an All‐Volunteer Force (AVF), with a standby draft for emergency use.

President Nixon reduced draft calls while gradually withdrawing troops from Vietnam. However, his dispatch of American units into Cambodia in 1970 triggered massive new public protests. Only reluctantly did Congress in 1971 extend the draft for two more years. The lawmakers also eliminated student deferments, deemed a class‐based privilege, and voted a major pay increase ($2.4 million) for the lower ranks of the military to achieve an AVF by mid‐1973. During the 1972 election campaign, Nixon cut draft calls to 50,000 and stopped requiring draftees to go to Vietnam. On 27 January 1973, the day a cease‐fire was announced, the administration stopped drafting, six months before induction authority expired on 1 July 1973.

Even without induction, Selective Service maintained compulsory draft registration until 1975, when President Ford suspended the process. President Jimmy Carter resumed it in 1980 in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. With local draft boards dismantled, Selective Service headquarters directed the program. In response to a suit that women, as equal citizens, should also have to register, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of male‐only draft registration. In 1980–84, half a million young men did not register, and under President Ronald Reagan the Justice Department prosecuted a few of those who publicly refused to register.

In the post‐Vietnam era, the military relied entirely on volunteers. However, in the 1990 buildup for the Persian Gulf War, Selective Service headquarters prepared contingency plans to call up 100,000 men in 30 days if reactivation of the draft was required to obtain replacements if there were massive American casualties. In November 1990, Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney issued orders preventing any military personnel from leaving even if their enlistment contracts had expired, in effect, making the AVF temporarily less voluntary. The quick victory against Iraq in 1991 did not produce massive American casualties; the draft was not reactivated; and after the war, military personnel were allowed to leave the service.

By 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, debate resumed over whether to maintain even a semblance of Selective Service. The House of Representatives voted in 1993 to eliminate Selective Service headquarters and end compulsory draft registration, but the Defense Department successfully argued the need to retain Selective Service and draft registra‐tion, and the measure to end them died in the Senate. Appropriations were reduced in the 1990s and evaders were not prosecuted.

[See also Conscientious Objection; Draft Resistance and Evasion; New York City Draft Riots; Peace and Antiwar Movements; Selective Draft Cases; Volunteers, U.S.]

Bibliography

• Albert B. Moore, Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy, 1924.
• Eugene C. Murdock, Patriotism Limited, 1862–1865: The Civil War Draft and the Bounty System, 1967.
• Eugene C. Murdock, One Million Men: The Civil War Draft in the North, 1971.
• John Whiteclay Chambers II, ed., Draftees or Volunteers: A Documentary History of the Debate Over Military Conscription in the United States, 1787–1973, 1975.
• Lawrence M. Baskir and William A. Strauss, Chance and Circumstance: The Draft, the War and the Vietnam Generation, 1978.
• John O'sullivan, From Voluntarism to Conscription: Congress and Selective Service, 1940–1945, 1982.
• Eliot A. Cohen, Citizens and Soldiers: The Dilemmas of Military Service, 1985.
• George Q. Flynn, Mr. Selective Service: Lewis B. Hershey, 1985.
• John Garry Clifford and Samuel R. Spencer, Jr., The First Peacetime Draft, 1986.
• John Whiteclay Chambers II, To Raise an Army: The Draft Comes to Modern America, 1987.
• James W. Geary, We Need Men: The Union Draft in the Civil War, 1991.
• George Q. Flynn, America and the Draft, 1940–1973, 1993

May be simply described as the power of the state to raise and maintain armed forces. Although commonly associated with federal authority, during the American Revolution initial American efforts to raise an army involved local militias on a temporary multistate basis. The Continental army did consist of paid enlistees, but they were recruited largely by the colonies, now newly established states, which retained the ability to conscript and tax—two prerequisites not granted to the Confederation Congress. Most of the military was made up of volunteers, with terms lasting from a few weeks to approximately six months. While several states resorted to the draft, substitutes could be hired and frequently were. The need to resolve possible conflicts between the ideal of the volunteer citizen soldier and a professional standing army (with related issues of state sovereignty, taxation, and a national government) dissipated with the end of the war when, in 1784, Congress discharged the entire Continental army, with the exception of eighty‐three soldiers to protect military supplies.

The Civil War generated large numbers of volunteers, but when it became clear that casualties would be heavy, portending an extended conflict, both North and South resorted to conscription. In 1862, the Confederacy made all healthy, white males between the ages of eighteen and thirty‐five eligible for three years of service, and those already in the army were required to stay for the duration of the conflict, whether their enlistment term ended or not. The North followed suit, but the draft met with much evasion, resistance and, on several occasions, actual rioting. The constitutionality of conscription during the Civil War never reached the Supreme Court, in large measure because President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus, thus blocking state courts from the release of draft resisters and other protesters.

The decision of President Woodrow Wilson to rely primarily on conscription rather than volunteers in 1917 for military service during World War I made a legal challenge to the draft necessary if only to ensure that it received judicial sanction from the Supreme Court. This it did when Chief Justice Edward White, on behalf of a unanimous bench, upheld the Draft Act (Arver etal. v. United States, 1918) and relegated state authority over the militias to a very limited level, subordinate to the federal government. Effectively raising military forces for both World War II and the Korean Conflict, by 1968 the draft reflected the collapse of consensus that accompanied the Vietnam War. In 1973, it was eliminated, and replaced with an all volunteer armed force—a decision resulting from political rather than military consideration. Registration for a national draft continues, however, and conscription remains readily available, now causing ambivalence rather than the antagonism of an earlier era.

See also War.

Bibliography

• John Whiteclay Chambers II, To Raise an Army: The Draft Comes to Modern America (1987).
• Stephen M. Kohn, Jailed for Peace: The History of American Draft Law Violators, 1658–1985 (1986)

— Jonathan Lurie

n. compulsory enlistment for state service, typically into the armed forces.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

For more information on conscription, visit Britannica.com.

In 1914 Britain was the only great power which relied upon volunteers to man its army. This tradition was continued until January 1916, by when nearly 2.5 million men had volunteered. But by the summer of 1915 the flow of volunteers was failing to keep pace with the anticipated rate of casualties. Asquith compromised. In January 1916 legislation was passed conscripting single men, followed in May by a second Act conscripting married men. In 1939, conscription was introduced at once.

The term conscription has an unpleasant connotation to Americans who prefer the word draft whenever they speak of compulsory military enrollment. Temporary, selective drafts have played a periodic and often substantial part in obtaining America's wartime armies.

The draft has been characterized by two traditions in America. One is that it has often contributed, along with voluntarism, to raising forces of short-term citizen-soldiers in time of international tension and war. (In contrast, the regular standing army is composed of longterm volunteers.) The other tradition has been an ongoing opposition to conscription by pacifists, libertarians, and opponents of particular wars. This is not surprising in a pluralistic society that emphasizes individual liberty and religious freedom.

The English colonists brought to America the county militia system of universal short-term military training and service under local officers. In the eighteenth century, however, most colonies turned for their expeditionary forces to ad hoc units, composed of volunteers and an occasional draftee or a legally hired substitute. In the French and Indian War, Massachusetts's provincial units were more than 90 percent volunteers, primarily young men in their late teens or early twenties who enlisted, as do most wartime volunteers, for a combination of economic, religious, or patriotic reasons, or because of social pressure or a desire for adventure.

In the American Revolution, the new state governments assumed the colonies' authority to draft men, through county militia officers, for their short-term militias. They extended it to the long-term state units of the Continental Army, but they denied Gen. George Washington's request that the central government be empowered to conscript. As the initial volunteering subsided, most states boosted enlistment bounties and held an occasional draft, producing more hired substitutes than actual draftees. Although some dissenters suffered, several states recognized Quaker and other religious conscientious objectors. In contrast to the largely middle-class, short-term militia, the long-term volunteers and substitutes of the Continental Army were mainly poor youths, white and black, who were indentured servants, laborers, unemployed drifters, recent immigrants, or the sons of marginal farmers.

The Constitution adopted in 1789 gave Congress the "power to raise and support armies," but it neither mentioned nor prohibited conscription. The Framers left that issue to the future, although most of them believed that the United States like Britain would enlist its men rather than conscript them, and would pay for its armies through the power to tax.

Since threats to the country's national security in the nineteenth century were generally limited or sporadic, Americans built a two-army tradition. The small Regular Army, a peacetime constabulary and wartime cadre, was obtained exclusively by voluntary enlistment. The wartime armies of citizen-soldiers, from the Indian wars of the 1790s through the Spanish-American War of 1898, were composed primarily of ad hoc wartime units of volunteers, locally raised and led but federally financed and directed. Units of the so-called U.S. Volunteers were distinct from the U.S. Army and the militia, later called the National Guard.

Although some states drafted men during the War of 1812, James Madison's administration was unable to enact national conscription (which Daniel Webster, a Federalist opponent, denounced as an attempt at "Napoleonic despotism"), and it was not until the Civil War that the need to sustain massive armies brought a taste of national conscription to America. With a smaller population to draw upon, the Confederacy adopted the draft in 1862, eventually applying it to white males seventeen to fifty years of age. In all, 21 percent of the 1 million Confederate soldiers were conscripts. But by violating individual liberty and states' rights and by including unpopular class-bound occupational exemptions such as for overseers on large plantations, the Confederate conscription act engendered much discontent and considerable resistance.

In the North, following some state drafts in 1862, Congress adopted a selective conscription law in 1863 applicable to males twenty to forty-five. Avoiding unpopular occupational exemptions, the lawmakers authorized draftees to escape personal service by hiring a substitute or paying the government a commutation fee of three hundred dollars, which, although equal to a worker's annual wages, was less than the current price of substitutes. Peace Democrats claimed it was a "rich man's war but poor man's fight," and when military provost marshals began conscripting, thousands evaded or actively resisted the draft. Bloody draft riots then erupted in New York City.

Northern authorities also increased enlistment bounties and actively recruited immigrants and southern blacks (ultimately, 25 and 10 percent, respectively, of the Union army). In 1864 Congress did away with commutation, but allowed drafted religious pacifists to provide alternative service or contribute to a hospital fund. Four federal drafts produced only 46,000 conscripts and 118,000 substitutes (2 and 6 percent, respectively, of the 2.1 million Union troops). The draft was credited, however, with prodding volunteers and, equally as important, with encouraging the reenlistment of battle-trained veterans.

Not until World War I did the United States rely primarily upon conscription. The Selective Service Act of 1917 was adopted in large part because a civilian-led "preparedness" movement had persuaded many Americans that a selective national draft was the most equitable and efficient way for an industrial society to raise a wartime army. Woodrow Wilson overcame considerable opposition, particularly from agrarian isolationists in the South and West and ethnic and ideological opponents of the war in the North, to obtain the temporary wartime draft.

The 1917 draft law prohibited enlistment bounties and personal substitution, but did authorize deferments on the grounds of dependency or essential work in industry or agriculture. It allowed religious conscientious objectors (COs) to choose noncombatant service within the military. The law was implemented through a Selective Service System, composed of a national headquarters--commanded by a major general--and some four thousand local draft boards staffed by civilian volunteers who decided on the induction or deferment of particular individuals within overall national guidelines.

In 1917 and 1918, Selective Service registered and classified 23.9 million men, eighteen to forty-five, and drafted 2.8 million of them. In all, 72 percent of the wartime army of 3.5 million troops was raised through conscription.

There was no repetition of the Civil War draft riots. Aside from a few violent episodes and a number of antidraft demonstrations, opposition was expressed mainly through criticism and evasion. Between 2 and 3 million men apparently never registered, and 338,000 (12 percent of those drafted) failed to report when called or deserted after arrival at training camp. In addition, 64,700 registrants sought CO status. Of the 20,900 COs drafted into the army, 4,000 refused to participate in any military role, and 450 "absolutists" were sent to prison. In 1918, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held that national conscription was constitutional.

In World War II, the fall of France in 1940 led Congress to adopt the nation's first prewar conscription act as a result of a campaign headed by old preparedness leaders. The draft was to run through 1945, but because of intense opposition from pacifists, isolationists, and others, the draftees (aged twenty-one to thirty-five) were obligated to serve only one year, and service was restricted to the Western Hemisphere and U.S. territories. In August 1941, however, Congress, by a one-vote margin (203-202) in the House, voted to keep the one-year draftees in the Army beyond their term. After Pearl Harbor, the lawmakers removed all remaining restrictions and extended the draft to men aged eighteen to thirty-eight (and briefly to forty-five) for the duration. Approximately 10 million men were drafted through the Selective Service System, and nearly 6 million enlisted, primarily in the U.S. Navy and Army Air Corps.

There was some discontent. Some 72,000 registrants applied for CO status, of whom 25,000 entered the army in noncombatant service, another 12,000 went to civilian work camps, and 20,000 had their claims rejected. Ultimately, 6,000, the majority of them Jehovah's Witnesses, were imprisoned. Some antidraft incidents in Chicago and other cities stemmed from protest by African-Americans against discrimination and segregation in the armed forces. Draft evasion did not disappear. The Justice Department investigated 373,000 alleged evaders and obtained convictions of 16,000.

The draft did not end with World War II. Except for a brief hiatus between 1947 and 1948, it helped maintain throughout the cold war a sizable number of men in the armed forces (a mix of volunteers, conscripts, and draft-induced volunteers). During the Korean War, 1.5 million men, eighteen to twenty-five, were drafted; another 1.3 million volunteered, primarily for the navy and air force. Discontent led to an increase in COs (the percentage of inductees exempted as COs grew to nearly 1.5 percent, compared to .15 in each world war). Some 80,000 draft evasion cases were investigated.

Conscription became one of the many casualties of the Vietnam War. After President Lyndon B. Johnson committed American ground troops in 1965, draft calls soared from 100,000 in 1964 to 400,000 in 1966, enabling U.S. forces there to climb from 23,000 military advisers in 1964 to 543,000 troops by 1968.

Although draftees were only a small minority (16 percent) in the American armed forces, they made up the bulk of the infantry riflemen in Vietnam (88 percent by 1969) and accounted for more than half the army's battle deaths. Because of student and other deferments, the draft and the casualties fell disproportionately upon working-class youths, black and white. African-Americans, 11 percent of the U.S. population, accounted for 16 percent of the army's casualties in Vietnam in 1967 (15 percent for the entire war).

Opposition mounted along with the rising draft calls and casualty rates. Supported by an antiwar coalition of students, pacifists, clergy, civil rights and feminist organizations, and many other liberal and radical groups, a draft resistance movement grew in strength. It generated demonstrations, draft-card burnings, sit-ins at induction centers, and break-ins and destruction of records at a dozen local draft boards.

Between 1965 and 1975, faced with well over 100,000 apparent draft offenders, the federal government indicted 22,500 persons, of whom 8,800 were convicted and 4,000 imprisoned. As the Supreme Court expanded the criteria from religious to moral or ethical objections, CO exemptions grew in relation to actual inductions from 8 percent in 1967 to 43 percent in 1971 and 131 percent in 1972. Between 1965 and 1970, 170,000 registrants were classified as COs.

The most common form of draft "protest" was evasion. Of the 26.8 million young men who reached draft age between 1964 and 1973, 16 million (60 percent) did not serve in the military. Of those who avoided service, 15.4 million received legal exemptions or deferments, and perhaps 570,000 evaded the draft illegally. Among illegal draft evaders 360,000 were never caught, another 198,000 had their cases dismissed, 9,000 were convicted, and 4,000 sent to prison. In addition, an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 fled into exile, mainly to Canada, Britain, and Sweden.

With the draft so controversial, Congress came under increased pressure either to reform it or to eliminate it. Supported by many conservatives, Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, the director of Selective Service since 1941, blocked any changes until 1969, including the 1967 recommendations for equity and national uniformity from a presidential commission headed by former assistant attorney general Burke Marshall. President Richard M. Nixon, after criticizing the draft in his 1968 campaign, ended new occupational and dependency deferments, instituted an annual draft lottery among eighteen-year-olds (beginning in December 1969), removed General Hershey, and appointed a commission, headed by former secretary of defense Thomas Gates, which in 1970 recommended an All-Volunteer Armed Force (avf) with a stand-by draft for emergency use.

Nixon reduced draft calls while gradually withdrawing U.S. troops, but his dispatch of American units across the border into Cambodia in 1970 led to massive public protests. Only reluctantly did Congress in 1971 extend the draft for two more years. The lawmakers also eliminated student deferments and voted a massive ($2.4 billion) pay increase for the lower ranks in order to achieve an avf by mid-1973. During the 1972 election campaign, Nixon cut draft calls to 50,000 and stopped forcing draftees to go to Vietnam. On January 27, 1973, the day a cease-fire was announced, the administration stopped drafting, six months before induction authority expired on July 1, 1973.

Compulsory draft registration, which President Gerald Ford suspended in 1975, was resumed in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter in reaction to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. President Ronald Reagan extended it in 1982 and prosecuted a few of those who refused to register (estimated at 500,000 between 1980 and 1984).

Although it retained considerable support, the avf of 2.1 million (including 775,000 in the army) remained controversial. It came under criticism for drawing disproportionately from lower socioeconomic groups, particularly nonwhites. There were also concerns about the comparatively high financial cost of the All-Volunteer Force.

Bibliography:

John Whiteclay Chambers II, To Raise an Army: The Draft Comes to Modern America (1987); George Q. Flynn, Conscription and American Culture, 1940-1973 (1992); Stephen M. Kohn, Jailed for Peace: The History of American Draft Law Violations, 1658-1985 (1986).

Author:

John Whiteclay Chambers II

See also Armed Forces; Conscientious Objection; Draft Riots; and entries for individual wars.

Compulsory enrollment and induction into the military service.

Conscription is commonly known as the draft, but the concepts are not exactly the same. Conscription is the compulsory induction of individuals into the armed services, whereas the draft is the procedure by which individuals are chosen for conscription. At present, men within a certain age group must register with the Selective Service for possible conscription, but conscription itself was suspended in 1973.

Conscription first came into use as a legal term in France in 1798. It derives from the Latin conscriptionem, which refers to the gathering of troops by written orders, and conscribere, which means "to put a name on a list or roll, especially a list of soldiers." A person who becomes a member of the armed forces through the process of conscription is called a conscript.

Conscription typically involves individuals who are deemed fit for military service. At times, however, governments have instituted universal military service, in which all men or all people of a certain age are conscripted.

Most governments use conscription at some time, usually when the voluntary enlistment of soldiers fails to meet military needs. Conscription by national governments became widespread in Europe during the nineteenth century.

Some of the American colonies employed conscription. During the Revolutionary War, the American government used selective, temporary conscription to fill the ranks of its military.

The United States used conscription again briefly during the Civil War. The Union Enrollment Act of 1863 drafted all able-bodied men between twenty and forty-five years of age. The act provoked a hostile public response because it excused from military service those who were able to pay a fee of three hundred dollars. The law incited violent public disturbances, called the Draft Riots, in New York City between July 13 and 16, 1863. One thousand people were injured in the riots.

In 1917, one month after the entry of the United States into World War I, Congress passed the Selective Draft Act (40 Stat. 76). The act created a government office to oversee conscription. It also authorized local draft boards to select eligible individuals for conscription. The following year, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of conscription, noting that Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the power to "raise and support Armies" (Selective Draft cases, 245 U.S. 366, 38 S. Ct. 159, 62 L. Ed. 349 [1918]).

Congress instituted the first peacetime use of conscription in 1940 when it passed the Selective Training and Service Act (54 Stat. 885). This act, which expired in 1947, enrolled those who served in U.S. armed forces during World War II. In 1948, Congress passed the Selective Service Act (50 U.S.C.A. app. § 451 et seq.), which was used to induct individuals for service in the Korean War (1950-53) and the Vietnam War (1954-75). Presidential authority to conscript individuals into the U.S. armed forces ended in 1973. No individual has been conscripted into the military since then.

In 1976, the Selective Service System was placed on a standby status, and local offices of the agency were closed. President Jimmy Carter issued a proclamation in 1980 requiring all males who were born after January 1, 1960, and who had attained age eighteen to register with the Selective Service at their local post office or at a U.S. embassy or consulate outside the United States (Presidential Proclamation No. 4771, 3 C.F.R. 82 [1981]). Those who fail to register are subject to prosecution by the federal government.

In 1981, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of requiring only men, and not women, to register with the Selective Service (Rostker v. Goldberg, 453 U.S. 57, 101 S. Ct. 2646, 69 L. Ed. 2d 478). The United States has never conscripted women into military service, nor has it ever instituted universal military service. It has conscripted only individuals meeting certain age, mental, and physical standards. Congress has allowed the deferral of conscription for certain individuals, including those who need to support dependents or are pursuing an education. Among those who have been declared exempt from service are sole surviving sons, conscientious objectors to war, and ministers of religion.

The U.S. government also has the power to conscript property in times of emergency.

See: involuntary servitude; Solomon Amendment; Thirteenth Amendment.