" For the modern believers in conscription,
one of their best bits of political thunder is still the defense
of it by Lincoln.
The Act provided for a complete military census, for which
purpose the country was divided into enrollment districts. Every
able-bodied male citizen, or intending citizen, between the ages
of twenty and forty-five, unless exempted for certain specified
reasons, was to be enrolled as a member of the national forces;
these forces were to be called to the colors--"drafted," the term
was--as the Government found need of them; each successive draft
was to be apportioned among the districts in the ratio of the
military population, and the number required was to be drawn by
lot; if the district raised its quota voluntarily, no draft would
be made; any drafted man could offer a substitute or could
purchase his discharge for three hundred dollars. The latter
provision especially was condemned by Stanton. It was seized
upon by demagogues as a device for giving rich men an advantage
over poor men.
American politics during the war form a wildly confused story, so
intricate that it cannot be made clear in a brief statement. But
this central fact may be insisted upon: in the North, there were
two political groups that were the poles around which various
other groups revolved and combined, only to fly asunder and
recombine, with all the maddening inconstancy of a kaleidoscope.
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