1 avr. 1862 - South starts drafting

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before: battle of Shiloh, ppl saw war would be long and bloody and didn't want to volunteer

-1st legally binding draft in American history


New laws required existing soldiers to serve for the duration of the war and mandated three years of military service from all men between ages eighteen and thirty-five. In September 1862, after heavy casualties at Antietam, the age limit jumped to forty-five.

two controversial loopholes that made the war a poor man's fight: wealthy could hire substitutes until 1864, twenty-Negro rule (A law adopted by the Confederate Congress that exempted one man from military conscription for every twenty slaves owned by a family to "maintain order at home". The law showed how dependence on coerced slave labor could be a military disadvantage, and it exacerbated class resentments among nonslaveholding whites who were required to serve in the army. )



-some southerners refused. Confederate constitution had sovereign states (central gov couldn't compel military service). Some states ignored the draft. Some had writs of habeas corpus to make te army release reluctant draftees; they were overridden by Confederate Cognress)

-confederates searched for deserters and conscripted or hung them, causing an internal civil war in the south

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