The conscription act of April 1862 as a constitutional challenge in the confederate revolution

Abstract

In the years leading up to the American Civil War, the South was sensitive to state rights, focusing particularly over the issue of slavery. After secession, and with the formation of the Confederate States of America, the governors were viewed, in part, as defenders of state rights. For the first year of the war, both the governors and the president of the Confederacy cooperated extensively in an effort to win the war. But that would change in April 1862 with the passage of the first conscription statute by the Confederate government. This article examines the reactions of the Confederate governors to that measure. As the first conscription law in American history, its passage elicited significant opposition within the Confederacy. The governors’ responses varied, from refusal to recognize any constitutional infringement of a state right, to recognizing a potential violation but delaying a response until after the war, to outright hostility and interference with the law’s implementation. Passage of this law led to the governors, as a whole, moving from a phase of cooperation with the central government to one of a negotiated federalism, leading to conflict over competing resources (e.g., draftees) for the defense of the nation as well as the states. This paper challenges the current historiography asserting that the Confederate national government was the most centralized national government in America until the New Deal in the 1930s by suggesting that the state governors carved out appropriate constitutional authority and responsibility during the exigencies of fighting for the nation’s independence. Refs 29.