The Union’s conscription act of March 1863, put in force at the height of the Civil War, made all men of able body between ages 20 and 45 liable for military service, but a draftee who produced a human substitute or paid the government a flat $300 was excused. A defective and greatly unpopular piece of legislation, the act provoked nationwide disturbances, known as the draft riots. The uprisings were bloodiest in New York City, where for four days in July 1863, large, violent outbursts occurred, some of such intensity that they were deemed to be a war within a war. Not only unfair, the Civil War draft was ineffective—only 6 percent of the 2.5 million who served in the Union Army from 1861 to 1865 were inducted by conscription.66
Conscription in the South was far more demanding and inflexible than it was in in the North. The Confederacy’s conscription law, which was enacted on April 16, 1862, not only subjected all men between the ages of 18 and 35 eligible to be drafted into military service but also voided existing voluntary enlistment contracts and required those men to serve for the remainder of the war. Of the million men who fought for the Confederacy, close to 80 percent were volunteers now forced to stay for the duration with the remainder who were drafted under the provisions of the law.
Initially, substitutes could be hired to replace draftees, but this practice was eventually outlawed along with almost all occupational exemptions. The one major exception came under the Twenty-Slave Law, which allowed a legal exemption for one overseer or slaveholder for every 20 enslaved people owned. The law was enacted October 11, 1862, in reaction to a preliminary version of the Emancipation Proclamation, issued by U.S. president Abraham Lincoln less than two weeks earlier. In the South, Lincoln’s proclamation was seen as an attempt to inspire a slave rebellion. The law, which only benefited the large landowner, contributed to the widespread belief that the war was fought by the poor—albeit poor whites—for the benefit of the rich and a negative factor for troop morale.67
In May 1917, the United States committed itself to a full mobilization of manpower and resources to support its allies in a European war that had assumed the slogan “the war to end war” (or “the war to end all wars”). At the time, an overwhelming majority in Congress passed the Selective Service Act, creating “local, district, state, and territorial civilian boards to register, induct, examine, classify and ship out men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty” for active duty for the war’s duration. The boards could also issue deferrals.
Then secretary of war Newton Baker coined the term selective service to indicate that the Army would take only the men it wanted. Left out would be those who were essential to the wartime economy and those who were physically or mentally unfit for service. The system automatically exempted ministers, divinity students, and public officials from some of the higher categories. It also recognized that dependency could serve as a basis for exemptions.
The full military draft faced considerable opposition from southern and western Congressmen and their constituents. Some 300,000 men failed to respond to their draft notices, and 170,000 more deserted within weeks of reporting. In one dragnet staged in New York City in 1918 to catch those who had not reported, 16,000 men were arrested. Of the 3.5 million men who served during the war, 72 percent were conscripts.68
The draft was canceled abruptly at the end of World War I in November 1918. On March 31, 1919, all the local, district, and regional medical advisory units were dissolved, and on May 21, 1919, the last state draft headquarters office shut its doors. The U.S. Army’s provost marshal general was relieved of all duties on July 15, 1919, thereby fully closing down all the elements of the Selective Service System of World War I and sidelining the giant goldfish bowl from which random numbers had been pulled.
* The word phony/phoney, which first appeared in print in the early 20th century, was spelled with an e by the British and without one by Americans. But during the era of the Phoney War, the British spelling tended to be used on both sides of the Atlantic.
* Equivalent labels were the bore war in English, la drôle de guerre (the strange war) in French, and der Sitzkrieg in German (the sitting war). Time magazine dubbed it the Lullablitz.
* Rhode Island’s area is 776,957 square acres.
* May 10 was also the day Neville Chamberlain resigned, replaced by Winston Churchill as British Prime Minister.
* During this period it was common for the newspapers united under the banner of the black press to refer to African Americans with the word race, just as race records was the term used to describe 78-rpm phonograph records produced for the African American market between the 1920s and the early 1950s.
** With modifications—some major—the C ration would remain the military’s combat meal until 1958.
* Parran gained notoriety later in the century because of his role in overseeing the early period of the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment in which the government withheld treatment from poor black men suffering from syphilis in rural Alabama. The experiment lasted from 1932 to 1972.
* This marked the first and last time a sitting president led armed troops.
* It has been pointed out that Monroe’s plan embodied the four basic principles of conscription later adopted in the 20th century: universal obligation, individual selection, local administration, and national control.
The degree to which America did not want to go to war again was exemplified by the attitude of college students who had come of age as the nation dealt with the plight of the veterans of the Great War. With the Selective Service System in mothballs and no great push for volunteers, these young Americans had little concern for military service, yet they sensed the inevitability of war and conceived of such service as a future folly.
They dealt with their fear of future war through satirical action. One such initiative was inspired by impending payment of the bonus owed to the veterans of World War I. While it would not come until June 15, 1936, three months earlier, Lewis J. Gorin Jr. and seven friends at Princeton University’s Terrace Club founded the Veterans of Future Wars and issued an anticipatory call to arms in the Daily Princetonian on March 14, 1936, under the headline: FUTURE VETERANS, UNITE!
I. War is imminent.
It is high time that we openly, in the face of the world, admit that America shall be engaged in it.
To this end the Veterans of Future Wars have united to force upon the government and people of the United States the realization that common justice demands that all of us who will be engaged in the coming war deserve, as is customary, an adjusted service compensation, sometimes called a bonus. We demand that this bonus be one thousand dollars, payable June 1, 1965. Because it is customary to pay bonuses before they are due we demand immediate cash payment, plus three per cent compounded