In the United States, military conscription, commonly known as "the draft", has been employed by the U.S. federal government in six conflicts: the American Revolutionary War, the American Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. The fourth incarnation of the draft came into being in 1940, through the Selective Training and Service Act; this was the country's first peacetime draft.
From 1940 until 1973, during both peacetime and periods of conflict, men were drafted to fill vacancies in the U.S. Armed Forces that could not be filled through voluntary means. Active conscription in the United States ended in January 1973, and the U.S. Armed Forces moved to an all-volunteer military except for draftees called up through the end of 1972. Conscription remains in place on a contingency basis, however, in that all male U.S. citizens, even those residing abroad, and all male immigrants, whether documented or undocumented but residing within the United States, are required to register with the Selective Service System (SSS) between the ages of 18 and 25. Failure to register for the SSS, when otherwise required, can mean denial of federal employment, federal job training programs, and citizenship if an immigrant.
Beginning on December 18, 2026, the requirement for male U.S. residents ages 18 through 25 to register themselves with the Selective Service System will be replaced with a requirement for the Selective Service System to register them "automatically" on the basis of other federal government databases. This results from a provision of the Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act.
Although it has not been applied in recent American history, U.S. federal law continues to allow for compulsory conscription for militia service under emergency or extraordinary security conditions. The law is described in Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution and 10 U.S. Code § 246. Such conscription would apply to able-bodied men between the ages of 17 and 45 who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, U.S. citizens, as well as female members of the U.S. National Guard and some other women in certain health care occupations.
Conscription has faced strong opposition throughout American history from prominent figures like Daniel Webster, who stated, "A free government with an uncontrolled power of military conscription is the most ridiculous and abominable contradiction and nonsense that ever entered into the heads of men."
History
Colonial era to 1862 In colonial times, the Thirteen Colonies used a militia system for defense. Colonial militia laws—and after independence, those of the United States and the various states—required able-bodied non-enslaved males to enroll in the militia, to undergo a minimum of military training, and to serve for limited periods in war or emergency. This earliest form of conscription involved selective drafts of militiamen for service in particular campaigns. Following this system in its essentials, the Continental Congress in 1778 recommended that the states draft men from their militias for one year's service in the Continental Army; this first national conscription was applied irregularly, failing to fill the Continental ranks.
For long-term operations, conscription was occasionally used when volunteers or paid substitutes were insufficient to raise the needed manpower. During the American Revolutionary War, the states sometimes drafted men for militia duty or to fill state Continental Army units, but the central government did not have the authority to conscript except for purposes of naval impressment. The 1789 constitution lists among the enumerated powers of Congress the ability to create its own armies and navy for unlimited purposes, and to fund and regulate state militias that could be called up only for federal law enforcement and domestic defense. The new constitution also madeArticle Two of the United States Constitution, section 2, clause 1 the president of the United States the commander-in-chief of both the federal military and the militia when in federal service. The Second Militia Act of 1792 defined the first group who could be called up as 'each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective states, resident therein, who is or shall be of the age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years'.
During the War of 1812, President James Madison and his Secretary of War James Monroe unsuccessfully attempted to create a national draft of 40,000 men.John W. Chambers, II (ed.-in-chief), The Oxford Companion to American Military History (Oxford University Press, 1999, ), 180. The proposal was fiercely criticized on the House floor by antiwar congressman Daniel Webster of New Hampshire.Webster, Daniel (December 9, 1814) On Conscription, reprinted in Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought (Autumn 1965)
Civil War
The United States first employed national conscription during the American Civil War. The vast majority of troops were volunteers; of the 2,200,000 Union soldiers, about 2% were draftees, and another 6% were substitutes paid by draftees.Chambers, ed. The Oxford Companion to American Military History, 181.James W. Geary, We Need Men: The Union Draft in the Civil War (1991)
The Confederacy had far fewer inhabitants than the Union, and Confederate president Jefferson Davis proposed the first conscription act on March 28, 1862; it was passed into law the next month.Escott, Paul. Military Necessity: Civil-Military Relations in the Confederacy. Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2006. Resistance was both widespread and violent, with comparisons made between conscription and slavery.
Both sides permitted conscripts to hire substitutes to serve in their place. In the Union, many states and cities offered bounties and bonuses for enlistment. They also arranged to take credit against their draft quota by claiming freed slaves who enlisted in the Union Army.
Although both sides resorted to conscription, the system did not work effectively for either. The Confederate Congress, on April 16, 1862, passed an act requiring military service for three years from all white males aged 18 to 35 not legally exempt. It later extended the obligation.
The U.S. Congress passed the Militia Act of 1862, which was similar to the 1792 Act except that it allowed African Americans to serve in state militias as soldiers and war laborers for the first time, and additionally authorized a militia draft within a state when it could not meet its quota with volunteers. This state-administered system failed in practice and Congress passed the Enrollment Act of 1863, the first genuine national conscription law, replacing the Militia Act of 1862, which required the enrollment of every male citizen and those immigrants (aliens) who had filed for citizenship, between 20 and 45 years of age, unless exempted by the Act. It set up under the Union Army an elaborate machine for enrolling and drafting men. Quotas were assigned in each state, and deficiencies in volunteers were required to be met by conscription.
Still, men who were drafted could provide substitutes, and until mid-1864 could also avoid service by paying commutation money. Many eligible men pooled their money to cover the cost of any one of them being drafted. Families used the substitute provision to select which member should go into the army and which would stay home. Another popular means of procuring a substitute was to pay a soldier whose period of enlistment was about to expire—the advantage of this method was that the Army could retain a trained veteran in place of a raw recruit. Of the 168,649 men procured for the Union Army through the draft, 117,986 were substitutes, leaving 50,663 who had their personal services conscripted. There was much evasion and overt resistance to the draft, and the New York City draft riots were in direct response to the draft and were the first large-scale resistance against the draft in the United States.
The problem of Confederate desertion was aggravated by the inequitable inclinations of conscription officers and local judges. The three conscription acts of the Confederacy exempted certain categories, such as the planter class. Enrollment officers and local judges often practiced favoritism, sometimes accepting bribes. Attempts to effectively deal with the issue were frustrated by conflict between state and local governments on the one hand and the national government of the Confederacy.Moore 1924
During the Civil War, there were critics against the policy of conscription. For example, Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave and abolitionist strongly advocated against the policy. Douglass asserted, "What is freedom? It is the right to choose one's own employment. Certainly it means that, if it means anything. And when any individual or combination of individuals, undertakes to decide for any man when he shall work, where he shall work, at what he shall work, and for what he shall work, he or they practically reduce him to slavery."
National Guard
The Militia Act of 1903 reorganized the federally supported state militias as the National Guard, better-aligning their organization, training, and materiel with active-duty needs so they could be more quickly and efficiently put into federal service when needed. In 1933, Congress reorganized the National Guard under its Article I enumerated power to "raise and support armies" instead of its power to "Provide for organizing, arming and disciplining the Militia,"H.R. Report No. 141, 73rd Cong. 1st session at 2-5 (1933) avoiding the potential constraint on militia service that it can only be used "to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions."
Able-bodied men between the ages of 17 and 45 not in the National Guard are defined in the Militia Act, and under the laws of some states, as the unorganized militia, which also may be called into state or federal service as needed.
World War I
In 1917, the administration of President Woodrow Wilson decided to rely primarily on conscription, rather than voluntary enlistment, to raise military manpower for World War I when only 73,000 volunteers enlisted out of the initial 1 million target in the first six weeks of the war.Howard Zinn, People's History of the United States. (Harper Collins, 2003): 134 One ascribed motivation was to thwart former president Theodore Roosevelt, who proposed raising a volunteer division, which would have upstaged Wilson. However, there is no evidence that Roosevelt had enough support to carry out that plan, and because Wilson had just started his second term, the former President's prospects for substantial political gain seemed dubious.
The Selective Service Act of 1917 was carefully drawn to remedy the defects in the Civil War system and—by allowing exemptions for dependency, essential occupations, and religious scruples—to place each man in his proper niche in a national war effort. The act established a "liability for military service of all male citizens"; authorized a selective draft of all those between 21 and 31 years of age (later from 18 to 45); and prohibited all forms of bounties, substitutions, or purchase of exemptions. Administration was entrusted to local boards composed of leading civilians in each community. These boards issued draft calls in order of numbers drawn in a national lottery and determined exemptions.