Confederate Conscription and the Struggle for Southern Soldiers by John M. Sacher (review)

John M. Sacher’s Confederate Conscription and the Struggle for Southern Soldiers is the first book-length study of the topic since Albert B. Moore’s Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy appeared in 1924. Moore, like some later scholars, wrote that conscription was anathema to ordinary Confederates. Recent historians like Paul Escott and David Williams who emphasize internal factors in explaining the Confederacy’s collapse also argue that conscription greatly exacerbated class tensions. The Twenty-Negro Law passed by the Confederate Congress in 1862, these historians claim, resulted in the widespread belief among white Southerners that they were engaged in a “rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” Sacher, in contrast, claims that conscription policy is “best considered as a lens to analyze competing loyalties in the Confederacy” (6). White Southerners believed in states’ rights, Sacher argues, but also acknowledged that their national government needed additional power in times of war. Many people, including soldiers, might have admired the stern efficiency of army-run conscription but also realized that a civilian-run Bureau of Conscription would provide more protection for civil liberties. Civilians wanted conscription enforced on an equitable basis, believing that the country must meet military demands while also fulfilling the needs of the home front.

Sacher’s interpretation of the debate over conscription and its enforcement is based on deep research into a wide array of government documents, newspapers, personal papers, and memoirs. While the study encompasses the entire Confederacy, Sacher pays particular attention to Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia, in part because the surviving records related to conscription from these states are more complete than others. He also analyzes how the governors of Georgia and North Carolina offered some of the most outspoken criticism of conscription, while also considering themselves loyal Confederates.

Historians who argue that conscription undermined the Confederate war effort, Sacher rightfully points out, often make two key errors. They fail to see that conscription was a policy that evolved over the course of the Confederacy’s brief existence. Sacher believes that the South’s conscription policy represented a “give-and-take” among various stakeholders, including the Confederate president, Congress, the army, governors, state judges, prospective conscripts, and ordinary Confederates (202). Leaders listened to the complaints of soldiers and civilians, writes Sacher, striving to make the enforcement of conscription equitable.

The other major mistake historians make is to conflate criticism of Confederate policies like conscription with a lack of support for the cause of Southern independence. Sacher instead provides ample evidence to suggest that while Confederates fiercely debated aspects of conscription, a majority of white Southerners saw the policy as the best means to mobilize manpower to win the Civil War. Politicians such as Jefferson Davis and Georgia’s Governor Joseph E. Brown might argue about whether the policy of conscription violated states’ rights, but Sacher says that those involved in both sides of the debate had the same shared ultimate goal of Confederate independence.

The final chapter of Sacher’s book includes a detailed analysis of the incomplete records and figures for conscription in the Confederacy. Sacher points out that while there are records of conscripts brought into the CS Army by the Bureau of Conscription, it is far more difficult to assess conscription that took place outside of the scope of the bureau. Ultimately, Sacher concludes that conscription did not completely strip the Southern home front of white men. Instead, enrolling officers left a sizeable minority of men at home, “as medically unfit, in exempt occupations, detailed, or as principals [who had hired substitutes]” (196).

John Sacher’s well-written and well-researched Confederate Conscription is a welcome addition to the scant body of existing scholarship on an important topic. It offers a convincing counterargument to recent studies that portray Confederate conscription as a failed policy that alienated ordinary white Southerners and contributed to the Confederacy’s defeat, a...