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Enlistment

Blessing of the Sword It was a scene repeated throughout the South, especially in the opening days of the war: the leave-taking could be as brief and simple as a fleeting embrace and a promise to remember and return. Among the leaders of the land, however, departure was often marked by a solemn ceremony with family and faithful friends, and often such ceremonies were capped by the presentation of an ornately engraved edged weapon.

Seldom in American history have men gone forth to war with enthusiasm such as that manifested in 1861. Patriotism reached a fever peak in the days following Fort Sumter's surrender. Blaring bands, fiery speeches, and the excitement in the air brought citizens streaming into recruiting stations.

To make things easier, bounty systems were established to reward love of country with hard cash. Posters offered impressive sums to recruits as the war progressed. But greed was not the prime factor motivating the first soldiers. A tingling current of patriotism pervaded the North. Flag and country were precious words. The Union must be preserved. Treason had reared its head and would be crushed.

The hurly-burly of recruiting was almost too much to resist. Golden-tongued orators exhorted and pleaded as bugle and drum attacked "The Girl I Left Behind Me" and "Dixie." Old campaigners from the Mexican War inflamed the blood. Lawn-clad maidens vowed eternal devotion to the cause.

On April 15, Lincoln called for 75,000 three-month volunteers. By May 3, after realistic consideration of the nation's needs, he asked for 500,000 men to serve three-year enlistments. The quota was topped by 200,000. With a standing army of only 16,000, and lacking machinery for a large-scale military organization, the federal government was almost helpless as war began. Recruiting was done by the states, and troops were technically state militia at the beginning.

Would-be soldiers were brought in at the company level, a company consisting of fifty to a hundred men. Prominent citizens and civic leaders organized companies, hunting recruits and signing them up on their muster lists until the required number were enrolled. As a reward, the organizer became a captain or lieutenant and his company went off to camp, where it was made part of a regiment. State-created regiments eventually came under federal control.

Uniforms and equipment came from states, community subscription, or wealthy citizens. In due time, government issue reached the soldiers, but local officials carried the burden in the beginning. Some regiments trained in camps near home. Others took train and ship for Washington to protect the capital. Along the way, patriotic ladies from Baltimore and Philadelphia offered refreshments.

By 1863, Lincoln called for a draft. The law was loose and allowed for paid substitution. Conscription never produced a great volume of men for the North, and it led to the horrible draft riots in New York City, in which unwilling draftees touched off a holocaust. Despite the draft, famed regiments like the Pennsylvania Bucktails continued to rely on enlistment, and sent recruiting parties whirling through city streets to drum up new blood.

Excitement in the South, when war began, was probably greater than that which ran through the North. Tension over secession had existed for years, and Southern citizens felt a combination of relief and elation that the issue had finally been resolved. There was no shortage of thoughtful men who decried the disruption of union, but their voices were drowned in the popular clamor for action. Southern patriotism was stirred by the drive for independence. If America had been justified in breaking the bonds laid on her by England, the argument ran, was not the South justified in dissolving unwelcome ties with the North?

Because of desire to flout federal authority, the Southern soldier became a "rebel." Self-determination was not his only spur. The North, he felt, had made war unavoidable and was about to invade his land. Protection of family and fireside were cause enough for enlistments. The host gathered from far and near. Hat-waving civilians greeted green troops making their way through the James River Canal to western Virginia. The city of Winchester, in that state, turned out to welcome Tennessee riflemen. Mississippi volunteers waved their Bowie knives in exultation as they received the salute of General Beauregard, the hero of Fort Sumter.

As in the North, the burden of raising and equipping troops fell on the states. They were given help by cities and municipal organizations. These contributed funds to send forth such splendid units as the Washington Artillery of New Orleans and the Georgia Hussars of Savannah, whose outfit cost $25,000. Most companies were not so fortunate. Lacking funds, they turned to local seamstresses for uniforms and neighborhood artisans for equipment. Volunteer ladies sewed day and night on clothes. Household stocks supplied bedspreads, quilts, buggy robes, and oilcloth piano covers. These were made into blankets and waterproofs for field use.

Many enlistments were short-term at the beginning, and the government was forced into a bounty and furlough system to bring twelve-month men back into the army when their original terms expired. Despite the patriotism of 1861, volunteer troops proved inadequate in number, and by spring of 1862, Davis adopted conscription.

Turning citizens into soldiers was a back-breaking task. Practically none of the volunteers had any military experience and there were few to teach them. West Point graduates, when available, took over instruction duties. Mexican War veterans lent a hand. Discipline was crippled at the start because most volunteers elected their own officers at the company level. Having elevated a former acquaintance, the men were illdisposed to take orders from him. Since he knew no more of the military than the men who elected him, the new lieutenant was forced to tread lightly. The Civil War soldier resented the "military manner" as something appropriate to European martinets but unthinkable when applied to free Americans. An Alabama cotton planter or Iowa farmer was willing to get on with the war but resented anything that smacked of "playing soldier."

Training camps sprang up across the nation and the "awkward squad" became an everyday sight. Close order drill and the housekeeping tasks of army life were taught at first. Use of weapons and rudimentary maneuvers came later. Federal soldiers guarding the capital often found themselves drilling in the shadow of the Washington Monument but most of the western troops went into camp near their points of enlistment.

Volunteers away from home for the first time found camp life fascinating at the start. Sleeping in the open and broiling beef over campfires, away from desk and shop, the recruit felt he had achieved a dream existence. The military rituals of reveille and taps, band music for parades, ceremonies attendant on raising and lowering the flag, were stimulating and impressive. Of all the military bugle calls, none is so easily recognized or more apt to render emotion than the call Taps. Taps (Extinguish Lights or Lights Out)

The glamour faded fast. Guard duty, fatigue details, kitchen police, constant inspections, and fitful weather took their toll of tempers. With the edge of their enthusiasm blunted, the volunteers found ways of avoiding onerous duties and began to complain of things in general. They were becoming soldiers.

As company-grade officers imparted basic training, their superiors embarked on the enormous task of creating armies that could be self-sufficient in the field. They had little but theory to work with, for the nation had never conceived of such forces as were coming into being. Quartermaster organizations to supply food and clothing were basic, as was the ordnance service for weapons and ammunition. Engineers to provide transportation, signalmen to transmit messages, medical personnel to supervise mass sanitation as well as repair wounds - all were mustered into service and assigned to appropriate units.

In this preliminary stage, strong central control was necessary to progress. Such control was exercised by Lincoln and his Cabinet, but denied to Jefferson Davis. "States rights" had led to secession, and the individual states were jealous of their prerogatives. Davis was authorized to receive arms and munitions from Southern states for the Confederacy, provided the supplies should be volunteered by the "consent of the state." Wearing down local political leaders to the point where they sacrificed minor rights for a major cause taxed the strength of the Confederate president and his associates.

Gradually, the armies of both sides emerged as entities. Tables of organization were similar in terminology, North and South. The company was the smallest basic unit in the field, where infantry was concerned (its equivalent in the cavalry was a troop; in the artillery, a battery). Several companies, or their equivalents in other services, made up a regiment. A regiment contained some thousand men in theory. In practice, after losses in battle, regiments had considerably less. A regiment had a number and state designation: the 17th Illinois, the 52nd Tennessee. Regiments were grouped together in varying numbers to create a brigade; brigades were grouped to make a division; divisions were grouped to make a corps.

Several corps created an army, such as the Army of the Potomac or the Army of Northern Virginia. Southern brigades, divisions, and corps were larger numerically than their Northern counterparts. As Northern and Southern armies built up, enormous military reviews were held at Richmond and Washington. Lincoln often attended them with interest; Davis did so less frequently.

Enrollment Act

On March 3rd, 1863, the federal government passed the Enrollment Act. This was the first example of conscription or compulsory military service in United States history. It is estimated that of those who took part in the American Civil War, 75,215 were regulars, 1,933,779 were volunteers and 46,347 were drafted and 73,600 were substitutes. Officially, 201,397 men deserted, of these 76,526 were arrested and returned to their regiments.

The war was not over, and Lincoln needed still more men to fight it. He issued the first Federal draft call that summer, eager to replenish his army with 300,000 fresh troops, then finish the job begun by Meade and Grant. All men between twenty and forty-five were enrolled, and all men inducted were to serve three years. The law favored the well-to-do. Any man who could come up with $300 as a "commutation fee," or could find a substitute willing to serve in his place, was exempt. "[This law] is a rich man's bill," Congressman Thaddeus Stevens charged, "made for him who can raise his $300, and against him who cannot raise that sum."

The fathers of Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt paid substitutes. So did Andrew Carnegie and J. P. Morgan, and two future Presidents, Chester A. Arthur and Grover Cleveland. George Templeton Strong found his substitute, "a big `Dutch' boy of twenty or thereabouts, for the moderate consideration of $1,100 ... My alter ego could make a good soldier, if he tried. Gave him my address and told him to write to me if he found himself in the hospital or in trouble, and that I would try to do what I properly could to help him.” Abraham Lincoln himself, though technically overage, tried to set an example by paying for a substitute, an otherwise unremarkable young man from Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, named John Summerfield Staples.

Opportunities for corruption were everywhere. Unscrupulous physicians granted unwarranted deferments for a fee. "The prospect of involuntary service," said the New York Illustrated News, "develops an amount of latent diseases and physical disabilities that are perfectly surprising." Other doctors colluded with substitute brokers, approving for service alcoholics scoured from city streets, invalids, retarded boys lured from their homes. Professional bounty jumpers - men who signed up from one district, received a reward for enlisting, then deserted to do the same from another district - also made a good living: one managed to repeat the process thirty-two times before he was caught.

None were more resentful of the system's inequities than the immigrant Irish of the northern city slums, who feared the blacks with whom they competed for the lowest-paying jobs, and for whose freedom they did not wish to fight. Democratic politicians fanned their anger. "Remember this," said New York Governor Horatio Seymour, "that the bloody and treasonable and revolutionary doctrine of public necessity can be proclaimed by a mob as well as by a government."

On Saturday, July 11, the names of the first draftees were drawn in New York City. They appeared in the newspapers the next day, alongside long lists of those who had fallen at Gettysburg. As more names were drawn on Monday morning, a mostly Irish mob attacked the draft office, destroyed the files, razed the building, then fanned out across the city, stoning Horace Greeley's offices at the New York Tribune, setting fires and looting stores.

Harper's Weekly reported, "On Monday evening, a large number of marauders paid a visit to the extensive clothing store of Messrs Brooks Brothers [and] helped themselves to such articles as they wanted." A woman watched the mob race through the streets: "Thousands of infuriated creatures, yelling, screaming and swearing ... The rush and roar grew every moment more terrific. Up came fresh hordes faster and more furious: bare-headed men, with red, swollen faces brandishing sticks and clubs ... and boys, women and children hurrying on and joining with them in this mad chase up the avenue like a company of raging fiends.”

For three days, the east side of Manhattan belonged to the mob. They broke into the homes of the wealthy and smashed store windows, killed two disabled veterans who tried to stop them, beat the chief of police unconscious, stoned to death an unarmed officer home on leave. But blacks were their special targets: they burned down black boardinghouses, a black church, a black orphanage, and lynched a crippled black coachman while chanting, "Hurrah for Jeff Davis," then set his corpse on fire.

Police and soldiers battled rioters back and forth through the streets, in and out of buildings, across rooftops, until, on the fourth day, sunburned troops fresh from Gettysburg helped impose order. At least 105 people had been killed. Forty-three regiments were eventually encamped around the city to ensure that fighting did not break out again. Smaller but bloody riots occurred in other northern cities, including Boston and Troy, New York. "The nation," wrote the editor of the Washington Times, "is at this time in a state of Revolution, North, South, East and West."

John S. Blay. Enlistment. The Civil War; A Pictorial Profile. Bonanza Books, New York, 1958.

Geoffrey C Ward. The Civil War: an illustrated history. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copywright 1990.

Campaigns of the 146th Regiment New York State Volunteers Brainard. With the escalating combat and the depletion of the Federal armies' ranks, men from the state of New York answered the call for volunteers in early 1862. The 146th New York Infantry, formed from these volunteers, became known as "Garrard's Tigers." This book is a tribute to the deeds and valor of this regiment.

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