A couple of questions on conscription in the United States.
Has there ever been a non-military conscription in the US? I’m not talking about alternative service programs for conscientious objectors or short-term emergency drafts. I’m wondering about something like the “national service” programs that other countries have used. I’ve read that there was a unused plan to conscript health service personnel in the 1980’s. Anything else?
Is conscription exclusively a federal option? Is there any law on the ability of states to conscrip their citizens? If New York, for example, couldn’t find enough people willing to work in the highway department, could they theoretically draft people into public service? Could teachers or police officers or medical people be drafted into state service?
It’s late, and my analytical skills may not be at their best, but you’re essentially asking a 14th Amendment (slavery) question. Military conscription is regarded as being outside the 14th Amendment (which bans involuntary servitude) on reasoning that hasn’t always been a shining model of logic, IMO.
I can (sort of) accept the argument that the drafters of that amendment could not possibly have meant to ban military conscription, given that it was so well-established, and there’s little evidence that the issue was discussed at the time (as it no doubt would have been if anyone had thought it would preclude military conscription.)
Less convincing is a 20th century case (WWI era, IIRC) that simply defines conscription into the military as a high honor, and therefore not anything that a True American would ever characterize as “servitude”. (Sorry, I’d normally get a quote, but accuracy has to bow to speed, given the hour.)
Another case makes it clear that military conscription is not limited to wartime.
Physicians have been conscripted into the military.
In the past, civil conscription by states for roadwork has existed, although that’s not recent.
Given all that, there is no clear US Constitutional impediment to civil, state conscription. I’d like to think that a modern Supreme Court would reject some of the pro-conscription precedents, but I can’t be sure that it would.
I’ll try to improve the quality of my comments tomorrow.
Some states in the middle west had laws allowing for the conscription of people to fight locusts. I do not recall any state invoking it, or it going to the courts.
I heard anecdotes about looky loos being conscripted to fight forest fires way back when. Google didn’t turn up any examples. It certainly isn’t done now as untrained, out-of-shape firefighters are a definite hazard to themselves and everyone else.
I believe in California, convicts in work camps are often used to build firebreaks but as far as I know they are not used in actual contact with the fire. I’m not sure this would quite fit the definition of “conscripted.”
When I lived in California this was a common preception. I would have gladly helped fight a fire (I was a LOT younger) but have never heard of conscription to fight a fire actually happening.
States used to conscript citizens into their militias. This site is written from an anti-draft perspective but has much useful background. As they note, during peacetime, “the primary duty expected of each militiaman was merely that he enroll, arm, muster, and attend periodic general training sessions”–not serve as a full-time soldier.
During wartime, state conscription sometimes served as a precursor to national conscription. For example, during the Civil War, Congress (in 1862) imposed quotas on the states to supply given numbers of militiamen, and states which fell short imposed a draft. In 1863 Congress took over and imposed a national draft.
Nowadays, states don’t draft people into the National Guard. When we last had a national draft the Guard piggybacked off of it, as we know all too well from certain politicians. But, I don’t know of anything, legally or constitutionally, that would bar a state from drafting if it felt the need.
With respect to non-military service, other than some of the oddities mentioned in this thread, all that I’m aware of is the occasional use of compulsory labor for road building. This was called the corvee in France, and was occasionally used during the colonial period, and I believe for a short time after independence. It was resurrected briefly in some of the Southern states after the Civil War, for racist motives–with black people share-cropping on the margins of the cash economy, it was viewed as the only viable way to wring taxes out of them. (This shouldn’t be confused with convict leasing on chain gangs, which was unfortunately more common and more abused.) It died out by the early Twentieth Century.
"As we are unable to conceive upon what theory the exaction by government from the citizen of the performance of his supreme and noble duty of contributing to the defense of the rights and honor of the nation, as the result of a war
declared by the great representative body of the people, can be said to be the imposition of involuntary servitude in violation of the prohibitions of the Thirteenth Amendment, we are constrained to the conclusion that the contention to that effect is refuted by its mere statement.’’ Selective Draft Law Cases, 245 U.S. 366 (1918).
They waved their hands and made that argument disappear, didn’t they?
Makes you wonder why, if Chief Justice White thought military service was so great, he didn’t run down and volunteer as soon as he finished delivering his decision.
They had no choice. We were at war, and public sentiment was particularly virulent against “slackers.” Showing any leniency towards them, however justified from a civil rights standpoint, would have been a huge mistake politically.