Replacement Rebels: Confederate Substitution and the Issue of Citizenship

This article sheds new light on the Confederacy’s policy of military substitution. This policy, which allowed those eligible for conscription to provide a substitute who was not eligible in their place, has typically been construed through the lens of loyalty. The author seeks to move beyond this paradigm by contemplating the ways in which substitution fit with contemporary southern attitudes surrounding citizenship and its inherent duties. As the article contends, substitution became a discarded policy not simply because it caused class discontent, was subject to abuse, or was an impediment to the Confederacy’s pressing military manpower needs; it was discarded because it also grew to be increasingly incompatible with Confederate understandings of manhood and citizenship.