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The Confederate Conscription Acts, 1862 to 1864, were a series of measures taken by the Confederate government to procure the manpower needed to fight the American Civil War. The First Conscription Act, passed April 16, 1862, made any white male between 18 and 35 years old liable to three years of military service.
The Enrollment Act of 1863 (12 Stat. 731, enacted March 3, 1863) also known as the Civil War Military Draft Act, [1] was an Act passed by the United States Congress during the American Civil War to provide fresh manpower for the Union Army. The Act was the first genuine national conscription law. The law required the enrollment of every male ...
The Confederacy had far fewer inhabitants than the Union, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis proposed the first conscription act on March 28, 1862; it was passed into law the next month. [14] Resistance was both widespread and violent, with comparisons made between conscription and slavery.
The Third Conscription Act of February 1864 dropped the number of slaves from 20 to 15, but in turn required the person so exempted to sell to the Confederacy at government-set prices one hundred pounds of bacon and/or beef for each slave, with the surplus to be sold to soldiers' families, also at government prices.
After awaiting formal initiative from the Confederate Congress since December 1861 for the first national draft on the North American continent, Davis finally proposed military conscription of all men between 18 and 35 without deferring to the states for a policy unauthorized in the Confederate Constitution. The conscription bill was staffed by ...
Confederate conscription was not universal; it was a selective service. The First Conscription Act of April 1862 exempted occupations related to transportation, communication, industry, ministers, teaching and physical fitness. The Second Conscription Act of October 1862 expanded exemptions in industry, agriculture and conscientious objection.
The Confederate Conscription Act of April 1862 had expressly forbid the raising of new units through conscription. The intent of the law had been to provide replacements to the existing Confederate regiments in the field for the losses that they had already experienced through disease, desertion and battlefield loss.
The buildup to this event began in the spring of 1862 with the Confederacy's initiation of conscription of Texans, to which many German Texans voiced their objection. [25] The Confederate Conscription Act of 1862 turned general German objection into open opposition. [26]