Conscription in America - The Myths and the Truths from Am. Revolution to Beyond Civil War

"From Mandatory Militia for Men Ages 16-65 in Some American Colonies 

to Standing Armies of a Centralized American Government"

Using the 49 page "THE AMERICAN MILITIA AND THE ORIGIN OF CONSCRIPTION: A REASSESSMENT" by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel as important new material on the real impact of conscription pre-Civil War, it is imperative that we learn from these times the harm that conscription does to society as well as to the true effectiveness of the fighting forces it supplies.

A key contrast was the performance of the conscripted militia during the War of 1812 and the totally volunteer forces that assisted US Army regulars in Mexico in the 1840s ..

As Hummel concludes: "... Conscription not only was inherent in the traditional militia system, but may also have been the hidden factor behind that system’s ill repute. The contrast in military competence between the U.S. citizen soldiers who fought in the War of 1812 and those who fought in the Mexican War is so striking that it has escaped the notice of few observers. Yet, most do not realize that, in the years between those two wars, the militia system underwent a dramatic transformation from compulsion to voluntarism, and none has drawn the obvious causal inference. On the contrary, American military theorists, starting with Washington and Knox and moving on to those of the present, have used the traditional militia’s weaknesses to justify far more extensive conscription and universal military training. Ironically, they have sought more of the very feature that may have been responsible for the mili-tia’s poor military performance in the first pla ce.
If libertarians wish to look to the past for guidelines about a free society’s ideal defense, they must pass over the traditional militia system. Despite its appealing decentralist rhetoric and its close ties with the American Revolution, it was from the very core a coercive system, one clearly inimical to liberty. Instead, they should cast their eyes upon the volunteer militia of the Jacksonian period. Although maligned by military historians, forgotten by all others, and corrupted by post-Civil War statism, it is the one military precedent that most closely embodies libertarian precepts."

During his in-depth look at the conscription inherent in "common militia" efforts at the state level includes this piece of irony from the Confederate Government when it got desperate especially in 1864:

".. The Confederate draft, unlike the Union draft, but like modern conscription, had occupational exemptions, such as the exemption of one white man on each plantation of twenty or more slaves. The Confederate government pursued an active policy of economic intervention into the labor market by manipulating these exemptions. In February 1864, the Confederate Congress abolished all industrial exemptions and replaced them with the direct detailing of conscripted soldiers to industry. The inexorable logic of military conscription had led the nation of black agricultural slavery to the ironic but appropriate adoption of white industrial slavery..."

As someone who volunteered just after an era where conscription leveraged the Vietnam War debacle, and as a father and grandfather I can only say that conscription is in fact slavery no matter how you slice it. I would not wish it on my kids, grandkids or even their kids!!!