One Million Men: The Civil War Draft in the North (review)

182CIVIL WAR HISTORY ley, and others, have demonstrated, is illustrated by the overwhelming rejection of Negro suffrage when the constitution of 1857 was approved. Democratic decline in Iowa was neither inevitable nor progressive: after suffering losses in 1852 and defeat in 1856, the party was successful in statewide elections in 1853 and 1857. The short-range impact of the Lecompton issue, as well as the importance of the "neglected period" of antebellum history, 1858-1859, are both indicated by the resurgence of the Iowa Democracy in the latter year when, led by Augustus C. Dodge, the party mounted a nearly-successful challenge to Republican control of the gubernatorial chair. The author accepts the contentions of quantitative historians like George Daniels and Robert Swierenga that German, Dutch, and Irish immigrants did not support Lincoln in 1860. Finally, Hawkeye politics in the antebellum decade is more the story of the suicide of the Democracy than of the triumphs of the Republicans . Nevertheless, this narrative fails to provide a totally satisfactory account of antebellum Iowa politics. The author opens his account with a description of the ethnic and geographic origins of the state's population . But in relating these factors to later political developments, his refusal to use any form of statistical analysis or correlation makes his conclusions about these groups' voting behavior tentative and disappointing . The subtitle of the book is misleading, for the frontier aspect of Iowa politics is presented in terms of national policy on internal improvements , homesteads, and land grants for railroad construction; state policy on these issues is ignored. Thus, Iowa politics is national politics writ little. How the Republican party, "needing a broad base on which to appeal to the voters . . . tied its future increasingly to the railroad," (p. 126), while successfully resisting "the pressure of railroad entrepreneurs for state aid" and escaping "popular identification with the railroad interests" (p. 237) is never satisfactorily explained. These faults arise largely from the author's conception of his task: he is primarily concerned with narrating what happened, not with explaining why. This produces a synthesis of antebellum political happenings particularly useful to Iowans. Hopefully, political historians will use it as a convenient beginning for the still-needed examination of the causes of the events here narrated. David E. Meerse State University of New York at Fredonia One Million Men: The Civil War Draft in the North. By Eugene C. Murdock. (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1971. Pp. XI, 366. $10.00.) On March 3, 1863, President Lincoln signed into law the "Act for Enrolling and Calling Out the National Forces," commonly called the Enrollment Act or the Conscription Act. The North began the Civil War with the Regular Army and the dream of militia and volunteer support. book reviews183 When this dream went sour the Union government turned to conscription or the draft as a means of raising an army and thus established the precedent that every American male owes his country military service in time of war. Historians of the Civil War era have long concentrated on the causes, the leadership, the battles, and the results of this conflict; but few have undertaken the task of searching out how this huge army of men in the mid-nineteenth century was gathered. Professor Murdock's detailed study of the Civil War draft in the North has brought into focus the story of substitution, commutation, bounty brokers, bounty jumpers, draft resistance, and the general frustration that prevailed in administrating the Enrollment Act of 1863. Beginning with an overview of the Civil War draft system, the author describes the various administrative positions that were involved in implementing this almost remarkable and unpopular scheme. In a sensible , clearly written and intelligent style the book unfolds to describe for the reader the difficulty in meeting local draft quotas, the complexity of substitution and commutation, the fate of bounty jumpers, and the "yankee ingenuity" arrangements for getting rich developed by the draft brokers. And yet, the threat of a local draft raised an army for the Union because the local communities did not want die stigma attached to their image. Those familiar with the draft systems of recent decades will read this book...