Review - "Confederate Conscription and the Struggle for Southern Soldiers" by John Sacher

[Confederate Conscription and the Struggle for Southern Soldiers by John M. Sacher (Louisiana State University Press, 2021). Hardcover, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:x,204/280. ISBN:978-0-8071-7621-4. $45]

It is undeniable that conscription's centrality to the Confederate war effort was fully matched by the amount of controversy the measure engendered within all segments of Southern society. That has led to all manner of claims about conscription's role in Confederate demise at home and in the field. Enacted in its initial form in April 1862, the Conscription Act was the legislation that perhaps most exposed the ideological differences between pro-Confederate nationalism and States' Rights localism, and its exemption and substitution stipulations led to heated charges of presumed class favoritism from politicians, soldiers, and civilians alike. The debate over conscription endures among historians tasked with its interpretation. Did conscription save the Confederate Army in 1862 (when it arguably faced dissolution in the face of the impending enlistment expirations of the twelve-month volunteers who formed the army's core) and sustain it throughout a long and bitter conflict, or was conscription a failure that betrayed States' Rights ideals and destroyed home and fighting front morale from within? Given this 'big topic' status, scholars and casual readers alike might be surprised to learn that, until now, only one comprehensive history of Confederate conscription exists in the literature, Albert Burton Moore's Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy (1924). A fresh reappraisal of this important subject, John Sacher's Confederate Conscription and the Struggle for Southern Soldiers recounts the history and evolution of Confederate conscription, critically engages with all the major historiographical arguments (both classic and more recent) surrounding it, and presents well-supported conclusions that reshape our understanding.

Passed on April 26, 1862, the first Conscription Act made all white males in the Confederacy aged 18 to 35 eligible for military service. It kept existing soldiers in the ranks and, by way of some compensation, allowed new officer elections. Well cognizant of the need to balance home front producers with fighting front shooters, the act, as mentioned earlier, provided rules for purchasing substitutes and obtaining draft exemptions. An added benefit was the flood of new recruits who immediately volunteered as a way of escaping the considerable stigma of being labeled a conscript. The constitutionality of the act, what it said about the courage and patriotism of southern men of fighting age, and the dangers it raised regarding the centralization of power were all hotly debated issues. It was also recognized that the hurried nature of the first act meant that the law would require subsequent revision, the first round of which took place when congress reconvened in the fall. As Sacher relates, though the idea of state quotas was raised by States' Rights advocates as preferable to any compulsory national law, what conscription's critics did not offer was a comprehensively laid out alternative for keeping southern armies up to strength and expanding them for future needs.

The most infamous of the late-1862 revisions was what came to be called the "Twenty Negro Law." The law is often alleged, then and today, as proof of egregious class favoritism, but Sacher effectively argues that multiple issues were involved and maintains that the law's underpinnings continue to be misrepresented in an overly reductive manner. The timing of the debate that produced the law (October 1862) firmly establishes the proposed exemption as both a slave control measure in response to the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation and a necessary (if unpopular) balancing tool between the needs of the home and fighting fronts. Further, the exemption only applied to plantations that did not have a non-draft eligible male in residence, so the assumption that a plantation owner could readily gain an exemption for a son or overseer is a popular misconception. Though records are incomplete, the author's research across several states where data is available clearly demonstrates that only a tiny percentage of total exemptions were given to overseers (who had to prove on the job experience). According to Sacher's findings, up to 95% of all planter households across the Confederacy did not receive an overseer exemption. Of course none of that stifled opposition and contributing to the law's 'bad look' was its perceived lack of sufficient concern for the most straitened families on the other end of the wealth spectrum.

Sacher's detailed description of the interpersonal, local, state, and national-level challenges faced by conscription officers on a regular basis is highly illuminating, as are as his insights into the elements of the investigative process employed by the most conscientious bureau appointees. Often plagued by vague direction from above and possessing dated policy information, these men implemented a system that could never perfectly balance the needs of the army versus the home front. Though corruptive influences certainly were present in the process, it is effectively maintained that conscription officers on the whole were not heartless bureaucrats but those that took their difficult duties seriously and performed as best they could under enormous pressures (and in some place even under lethal threat).

The impact of conscription and conscription law on the unit-level fighting efficiency of Confederate armies is largely beyond the scope of this study. However, a few issues are briefly discussed. Officers of all ranks, Robert E. Lee most prominent among them, criticized the first act's provisions regarding new officer elections, as it was alleged (with much justification) that those elections too often threw out highly capable junior officers who were regarded as disciplinarians in favor of lax populists of dubious competence. In Reluctant Rebels, historian Kenneth Noe effectively refuted the stereotype of later enlisters as less effective soldiers who were more eager to desert the colors, and here Sacher finds no compelling evidence to support similar assumptions regarding Confederate conscripts.

According to Sacher, a pattern emerged that conscription became less efficient the more west one looked, especially after the twin defeats of Gettysburg and Vicksburg suddenly increased the desperation level when it came to needing more men. In particular, the Army of Tennessee attempted to seize control of conscription from the civilian authority assigned to it by national policy and law. As Sacher and others amply demonstrate, it was in military-managed conscription that the much-maligned general Gideon Pillow shined and contributed most to the Confederate war effort. In areas previously canvassed by conscription officers, Pillow as able to ruthlessly round up many thousands of replacements (he claimed 12,000 in a single month and 18,000 more in another two month period in late 1863, but records apparently don't exist to evaluate those rather lofty numbers). Legalities aside, the main contrast between civilian and army-managed conscription was the former's mandate to balance fighting and home front manpower allocation and the latter's single-minded aim of filling out army ranks regardless of the consequences. In the end, War Department prerogatives won out, and Pillow was reassigned, leaving history to wonder what might have happened if the infamous political general had been allowed to expand his notable conscription efforts to more states rather than abandon his program altogether.

As for the 1863 congressional elections being a referendum on conscription and its class inequities, Sacher's perceptive analysis of election results finds clear evidence that winning candidates, many of whom were returning veterans, did not call for conscription's repeal nor did they offer an alternative. However, they did pledge to address class-related objections raised by their constituents. This part of Sacher's analysis seems convincing, but it does not clearly mention how many of the races described in the book provided voters with true choices between candidates holding diametrically opposed views on conscription (though we can probably safely assume there were more than a few). Nevertheless, these findings do provide more support for the book's main theme that conscription, though imperfect and a constant source of strong and varied criticism (the Twenty Negro Law exemption still being the most common wellspring of dissent), was not such an odious policy that opposition to it played a primary role in destroying popular support for the war effort.

Even more than the previous year, the tweaks the Confederate Congress made to conscription over the winter of 1863-64 pushed the imbalance between home and fighting front priorities even further toward the military by widening age eligibility, eliminating substitutes, making principals liable for conscription, and sharply reducing exemptions. Additionally, the much-hated Twenty Negro Law was abolished, replaced with the new "Fifteen Field-Hand Law" that required a large proportion of farm/plantation production be set aside for the government, families of soldiers, and the poor. It was felt that eliminating exemptions altogether (and presumably improving manpower allocation through more efficient government-supervised detailing) was a step too far for lawmakers, so congress settled on a combination of the two. That detailing would be at the sole discretion of the executive branch troubled many. However, as it had earlier, this newly revised system of conscription continued to survive legal challenges through state supreme courts that never denied to the Richmond government the broad powers deemed necessary to raise and maintain Confederate armies. The spirit of debate over conscription continued into the fall of 1864 and through the following winter, during which the conflict between military and civilian management of conscription caught fire again. This time legislative critics finally achieved their goal of abolishing the Conscription Bureau (but not conscription itself); however, Richmond fell shortly after the change was implemented, rendering the whole matter moot.

While reading this book one gains a mounting sense of the author's frustrations regarding the incomplete, inconsistent, and often contradictory nature of surviving conscription records. Such non-rectifiable deficiencies render it all but impossible for even the most dedicated scholar to arrive at reliable data-driven conclusions regarding conscription's overall numbers and efficiencies. Virginia and North Carolina archives offer the best quantitative resources for scholars to use, but Sacher very persuasively shows how dangerous it can be to extrapolate too broadly from them. Some points of interest do emerge, however. As one example, the fact that only 200 overseer exemptions were granted in Virginia over the course of the entire war challenges assumptions regarding class protections. A major source of author frustration is not being able to come up with a suitably reliable number of total substitutions (his best estimate being 20-30,000 across the entire Confederacy over the course of the war). According to Sacher, existing data does not lend itself toward supporting the idea that conscription stripped so many military-age white men from the home front that it led directly to catastrophic collapse.

Strongly opposing the view that conscription was a popularly reviled war measure that eroded the Confederate war effort from within, Sacher's research strongly suggests that conscription was instead widely accepted by critics and supporters alike as a wartime necessity. With so many examples of grudging acceptance to draw upon, the author warns against today's observers falling into the popular trap of too often equating vocal criticism of conscription in theory and/or practice as an act withdrawing loyalty and support for Confederate war aims and independence. Forming what does seem to be a more accurate representation, Sacher effectively contextualizes conscription as an evolutionary progression that was constantly reevaluated and changed on the basis of military, economic, and class concerns raised by broad constituencies of citizens, soldiers, government officials, and elected representatives. Conducted under the exigencies of war and more responsive than dictatorial, it was a law that, flawed as it was, in many ways involved the democratic process working as designed. The author's suggestion that we should replace the popularly accepted broad-brush historiographical presentation of conscription as the most hated legislation produced by the Confederate Congress to its "most debated" law is highly worthy of consideration.

Conscription's effectiveness is also a source of much debate. Clearly, conscription did not save the Confederacy's armies from being destroyed in the field, and Sacher raises serious doubts (with all other factors unchanged) that any perfecting adjustments could have changed that result. That's not to say that defeat was inevitable from the start (no one wishes to fall back on that interpretation), just that the result was largely in the hands of their Union opponents. The new standard history and analysis of Confederate conscription, this fine new study is worthy of the highest recommendation.