Originally aired on January 30, 1998 - In part 179 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson discusses the ongoing problem of supplying manpower to the Confederate armies.
#179 – Manpower for the Confederacy
The Confederate States of America was never the land of moonlight and magnolias that romanticists have sought to make of it. From the beginning as the new nation struggled to get on its feet the Southern states found themselves all but overwhelmed by the demands of civil war. Conceived in confusion the Confederacy spent most of its life in chaos.
Initially the most urgent task confronting the war-time South was man-power for the armies. A flood of volunteering accompanied the enthusiasm attendant to the declaration of Southern independence. After a few months of war however; the picture changed abruptly, the Civil War did not end after one battle as had been presumed. Patriotism lost its glory in the face of dank and dirty camps, sickness and disease, wounds and death, and in the endless monotony of army life.
With the Spring campaigns of 1862 approaching the twelve month terms of some 148 Southern regiments were about to expire. The government undertook a number of promotional and patriotic efforts to get recruits for the armies. None worked. Hence on April 16, 1862 the Confederate Congress passed the first national conscription act. The inclusive ages were eighteen to thirty-five, though by the end of the war the age range was seventeen to fifty. Not only were civilians subjected to being drafted, more importantly the conscription act required men already in service to remain there.
This national draft may have possessed careful thought and good intentions, yet a few days after the bill’s enactment the Congress proceeded to de-gut it by passing the first in a series of exemption laws. Obviously the government could not simply herd an entire generation into the field and leave no producers at home to support the Southern armies.
In addition, certain groups with special skills were of more use to the cause at home than in the ranks. The first exemption law pardoned from military service all state and local officials, mail carriers, boat pilots, railroad hands, telegraph operators, ministers, mine workers, foundry employees, college professors, and teachers having more than twenty students.
A second law gave exemption to overseers and owners of twenty or more slaves. Many plantation owners thereupon broke up their large estates and gave portions to their sons to keep them out of service. Then came a third exemption act which excused from service anyone who could hire a substitute to go in his place.
The last two exemption bills brought loud howls from the poorer classes in the South. To them the Civil War had become “a rich man’s war but a poor man’s fight”. The inference being, that wealthy slave owners had started the war, but the poor dirt farmer had to do all the fighting and the dying.
Conscription caused a storm of protests throughout the South. State writers asserted that it was gross violation of the principles on which the Confederacy had been founded. And never before had the South been so flooded with men wanting to teach school.
Conscription created so much back-lash and ill-will; it was so poorly enforced by the weak Confederate government, that it was never successful. Enrolling officers, examining physicians and other officials allowed thousands of men to escape the draft, for a price. For example, of 25,000 men drafted in east Tennessee, only 6,000 ever made it into the armies.
In short, conscription destroyed the strongest weapons that the South supposedly had, mainly the cooperation of state governments and the support of the people. The idea of a war-time South having a one-for-all and all-for-one attitude is a leading myth of the nineteenth century.
