End the All-Volunteer Force

[Steve Blair]

When you demonstrate that 8.5% is a statistically insignificant number instead of claiming it to be so, I'll take your objection about the Civil War into serious consideration.

Based on your previous record, I'm not sure if you will. But...if you want to look at a purely numeric comparison, a quote from a review of Geary's "We Need Men" is illustrative of how the Civil War draft worked:

In March 1863, the federal government elected to centralize and normalize conscription. The process adopted by the government divided conscription areas by congressional district. If a district failed to reach the quota number of volunteers, a draft lottery was then initiated. Once conscripted, the potential draftee underwent a series of examinations to determine medical fitness and the existence of hardship. Upon passing these requirements, the draftee had ten days to hire a substitute, pay a three-hundred dollar commutation fee, or join the army. Of the 292,441 names drawn during 1863, about 190,000 men were waived due to medical disability or hardship, 52,000 paid the commutation fee, and about 26,000 provided a substitute. In the end, 9,811 men, or three percent of men became conscripts.(emphasis mine)

Geary also has an article in Civil War History (Sep1986, Vol. 32 Issue 3, p208-228) that provides a nice overview of writing on this issue.

A well-researched article on the impact of the draft in two Wisconsin communities can be found here. One line in his concluding paragraph is interesting: "I believe it is important to note again that the purpose of the draft was to stimulate volunteerism through the threat of conscription."

I don't have time to dig into it right now, but in order to really determine if your 8.5% (which might be high when compared to the number who actually reported to regiments as opposed to paying commutation or simply not showing up) was significant you'd have to determine where they went. Considering that the draft didn't gain major momentum until late 1863-early 1864, if the draftees stayed in essentially home guard units their real impact would be minimal at best (showpieces for governors wanting to show their state's determination to end the war). If they went to form new state regiments, their impact would again depend on where they served. A cursory search doesn't turn up much regarding this flow of personnel, but that's where you'd have to start to determine if that slice was significant. My take at this stage is that it was not significant. Even the unsourced Wikipedia section on this states "Of the 168,649 men procured for the Union through the draft, 117,986 were substitutes, leaving only 50,663 who had their personal services conscripted." There's not much difference between a volunteer for bounty and a paid substitute.