Slavery and War in the Americas: Race, Citizenship, and State Building in the United States and Brazil, 1861-1870

TWOThe Crisis of the AmericanRecruitment System

25 On November 10, 1862, a hostile crowd surrounded William A. Pors, a longtime resident of the town of Port Washington in Ozaukee County, Wisconsin , as he entered the courthouse. Weeks before, Pors, a local attorney, had been appointed the district draft commissioner by the Wisconsin governor Edward Salomon. Early that morning, a large group of men armed with stones and clubs made their way through the town in an ad hoc procession . The crowd congregated in front of the courthouse, where it confronted the commissioner. A group of women unfurled a banner inscribed “No Draft.” Pors was warned at the courthouse door that “should he go to the court-house he would be a dead man.” He tried to persuade the crowd to disperse, but to no avail, and “as soon as they saw the draft-box they made a rush for it and knocked it in pieces.” The women assaulted Pors, pushing, kicking, tearing out his hair, rending his clothes, and knocking him on the head. The draft commissioner made his way through the crowd as best as he could but was thrown down the courthouse steps. Outside, the crowd turned uglier. Twice Pors was hit on the head with stones. Despite his injuries, the beleaguered man raced to the post office for refuge as the mob tore down the draft lists. After destroying the lists, it turned against the building that housed the post office. The crowds intended to hang the commissioner but were prevented by the postal clerk, a German immigrant, who denied them entrance. Later that day, Pors escaped to Milwaukee in a covered carriage prepared by “the good citizens.” After the commissioner left town, a crowd of “several hundred” turned TWO The Crisis of the American Recruitment System Union Army Recruitment, April 1861–July 1863 Slavery and War in the Americas 26 on his residence, doing “a good deal of damage” to a mill it attacked on the way there. The mob broke into the commissioner’s house and destroyed everything inside. Two pet canaries were torn into pieces; the chimneys, the windows, and all the furniture were demolished. Finally the mob turned on the property of several other citizens who were identified with the Republican Party. The party of Abraham Lincoln was then associated with government policies that demanded more recruits for the Northern armies. The riots lasted two more days before order was restored by six hundred soldiers who imposed martial law.1 As harrowing as these events were, Pors met a kinder fate than other commissioners who were killed for enforcing the draft. But his case is emblematic of conflicts that arose as the Republican administration increased the scale of the federal government’s military mobilization in its struggle with the Confederacy. Many northern and western communities reacted against what they saw as unacceptable changes in the socially constructed rules connecting military service, volunteerism, and citizenship. Struggles arising from the centralization of military recruitment and against the imposition of rigid discipline were common in other countries. Such struggles also existed in Brazil, but there, recruiting agents normally targeted individuals who were not protected by a local leader or affiliated with a National Guard unit, a fluid but significant part of the population that can be called the “unprotected poor.” Their status depended on personal connections with patrons. In the United States, recent immigrants were in a similar condition as Brazil’s unprotected poor, but, except in urban areas, they were a minority of the population. Unlike in Brazil, most white adult males in the United States had actively participated in elections since the 1830s. Thus, the Civil War is unusual because authorities had to negotiate with a majority of enfranchised citizens from the beginning. In both countries, innovations in recruitment procedures conflicted with rooted concepts of individual freedom, local power, and the idea of nationhood. As with the Brazilian situation during the Paraguayan campaign, the consequences of the Civil War were not confined to the defeated regions of the South. The conflict would bring unintended effects to most areas of the Union as it challenged the authority of states over state militias and introduced a different balance of power between federal and state governments. In the same way, Brazilian war efforts would bring some of the Northern The Crisis of the American Recruitment System 27 provinces to the edge of rebellion as recruitment challenged some traditional political privileges, even...