No conscription in the North during the Civil War was absolute. The drafted man could always hire a substitute if he could afford it. Starting in 1862, the U.S. government allowed this escape from military service on the theory that, so long as each name drawn from the wheel produced a man, it made no difference whether the drafted person or one hired to take his place appeared for muster. The Conscription Act of 3 March 1863 legalized this method of draft evasion. Until the act of 24 February 1864, the conscript could choose between hiring a substitute or paying the government $300 as commutation of service. Thereafter, the government only permitted substitution, except for conscientious objectors. Furthermore, exemption by furnishing a substitute extended only until the next succeeding draft, at which point the principal again became liable. Immediately, the prices of substitutes rose far above the $300 to which the commutation clause had held them. For this reason, legal draft evasion became the prerogative of only the unusually well-to-do.

From the early days of the war, the Confederacy also allowed a limited substitution system. The first Confederate Conscription Act permitted substitutes from men not legally liable to service to the extent of one man a month in each company. The second conscription act made men previously furnishing substitutes again liable to serve, thus causing much dissension and legal action. By the end of 1863, the Confederacy had abolished the whole system. Scholars have never accurately compiled the number of substitutes.

Bibliography

Geary, James W. We Need Men: The Union Draft in the Civil War. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1991.

Madden, David, ed. Beyond the Battlefield: The Ordinary Life and Extraordinary Times of the Civil War Soldier. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000.

Wert, Jeffry D. A Brotherhood of Valor: The Common Soldiers of the Stonewall Brigade, C.S.A., and the Iron Brigade, U.S.A. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999.

Encyclopedia of American History Copyright © 2006 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.