Conscription and Volunteerism

Conscription as a means to fill an army's ranks offers many advantages. Because men are compelled to serve, the state does not need to offer financial incentives to draw them into military service. Conscription can therefore provide a large army much more economically than can most other accession systems. Conscription also brings men into the armed forces for a long enough time to train them in basic and advanced military procedures and skills. This process leaves the state with a large reserve of trained men to call upon in a national emergency. When conducted with a reasonable level of fairness and equity, conscription can also lead to a shared sense of service among a state's young males.

Despite these advantages, Americans largely resisted conscription until the 20th century. American libertarian ideals about limiting the power of government generally argued against the state possessing the power to remove men from the civilian job market, especially for compulsory [Page 187]military service. The level of security provided (until 1941) by two large oceans also argued against the need to create a large standing army. Perhaps most important, Americans of the early republic saw large standing armies as a potential threat to civil liberties much more than as a means of protection from external enemies. Conflict with Native American nations created anxieties, but not enough to lead Americans to see compulsory military service as a solution.

Although some states had used drafts during the Revolutionary War, this authority more often led to men hiring substitutes than it did to men serving against their will. The Continental Congress did not assume the authority to impose military service, and the Constitution, while it empowers Congress to raise and support armies, makes no mention of doing so by conscription. Local pressure and economic hardship led many men into the military who might have preferred to avoid it, but the United States had no equivalent to the system of conscription that, for example, provided Napoleon's armies with more than two million conscripts.

Voluntary service, most often performed in local militias, has historically been embraced as the system most consistent with Americans' concepts of liberty. The Madison administration discussed introducing conscription during the War of 1812, but the plan faced enormous domestic opposition. Even had it passed, the limited power and immature bureaucratic apparatus of the young nation would likely have doomed conscription to failure. Instead, Americans fought the war as they had fought the wars on the frontier—with volunteers. Although their technical proficiency often left much to be desired, highly motivated American volunteers often fought quite well, as Andrew Jackson's lopsided victory over the British at New Orleans in 1815 testified.

The popularity of volunteerism was reinforced in the American mind by the apparent successes of American soldiers in the War of 1812 and later in the Mexican War. Volunteerism was therefore the most obvious method of drawing men into the armies of both sides when war between northern and southern states broke out in 1861. One year later, however, the 12-month commitments of the volunteers of 1861 had come to an end. After the initial rush to the colors at the beginning of the war, moreover, enlistments had not kept pace with the needs of the military. In April 1862, therefore, the Confederate States of America introduced the first military draft in American history. The Union introduced its first conscription system one year later.

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