I’m finding this a difficult question to research, in part due to the somewhat convoluted way the Union called up manpower due to the constitutional limits on the federal government’s authority:
First there was the regular army, which according to the constitution Congress could appropriate funds sufficient to support an army of a certain size every two years. Then there were the federal Acts which authorized funding for additional volunteers, serving for various terms according to the Act. As the war progressed the length of enrollment for volunteers expanded from ninety days to nine months and finally to three years. But tellingly, when such enlistments expired the Union government had to let the men go; there was no draft “for the duration”. Unlike the Confederacy which passed such a draft law, leading to Texas’s delegate Louis Wigfall voicing one of the least liberal theories of government ever expounded: “No man has any individual rights, which come into conflict with the welfare of the country”. By contrast during the war the Union government paid millions in signing bonuses to persuade as many men as possible to volunteer for service, as well as accepting paid substitutes for people who had been drafted.
Which finally leads us to the draft. Formulated under the federal government’s constitutional authority under Article One Section Eight Clause Fifteen “To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;”. When the state governments couldn’t meet the manpower quotas placed on them as the war progressed, the Union passed a series of Militia Acts which federalized the enlistment and mustering process.
So if you were involuntarily, unwillingly conscripted into federal service as one of your state’s militia, just how long did you have to serve? I can’t imagine that it was for the duration given that the Union had to respect expired enlistments; but how long then? I thought I’d read a reference in McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom to “Ninety-day Men”, perhaps referring to the three months service traditional in English common law; but the only references to that phrase I could find online were to the short-term volunteer enlistments in 1861.
The first actual national conscription law, as opposed to the various ways they tried to organize militias and volunteers, was the enrollment act of 1863. Text in the link below.
Reading the text of it, people called up had up to a 3 year term of service to deal with the Rebellion. Of course, the war ended before that point and they were drawn down before that, but those were the terms. And, if you had the money, each ways of getting out of it.
What are the missing sections of that link? Sections 5, 6, 7, and 9 not listed for example.
So if someone who had previously volunteered had their enlistment expire after March 3, 1863, could they be summarily re-drafted, perhaps before they even finished packing their gear? If they’d served two years already could they only be drafted for another year?
Good questions. I’d like to know the answers, too, but I’m not sure on the legal details. A broad reading of Section 3 would suggest they aren’t subject to the draft, as it was written to be applicable to those “not now in military service”, but IANAL and couldn’t say how that would have actually been applied. A WAG but I wouldn’t think local draft boards would be eager to pick them first, though, even if they were still subject to the draft.
I did find a scan of the bill on the Congressional website, though, which has the full text.
I’m away from my references at the moment, but I have some things I remember.
Generally, on the Union side a term of service was named when a call for a certain troops was issued. Early in the war, volunteerism was sufficient to fill the quotas; after a couple years, Congress passed a law to make up deficiencies with a draft. There was a formula for equating a certain number of lower-service-term soldiers with the standard term of the call for troops - so that a company of 100 men who signed up for two years might only count as 70 men against the draft quota.
Generally, purchasing a substitute in lieu of service as a response to the draft would exempt a man from future service. I would imagine that actually performing that service would come with a similar exemption, but I can’t cite you anything to back that up at the moment.
What interests me is that it wasn’t until after the Spanish-American War and the 1903 Militia Act that the federal government asserted a general authority to draft men into the regular Army for the duration, especially for a conflict not fought on domestic soil. That wouldn’t happen until World War One and the constitutionality of such a draft upheld by the Supreme Court in the Select Draft Law Cases. During the Civil War the federal government was clearly operating on its authority to call up the militia, which leads me to the question “for how long”?
As I alluded to, in common-law precedents in English law going back to time immemorial, the understanding was that the mass of the populace– serfs, peasants and yeomen– could only be levied for three months a year. This was a practical consideration more than anything: the three months of high summer were typically the campaign season for war at the time, which coincided with the lull between spring planting and fall harvesting that commoners could be spared away from the farms. So I’m wondering if there was any previous law on just how long levied civilians could be required to serve; and where the three-year term of service came from especially given that constitutionally military appropriations could not be more than two years in advance.