10. Abraham Lincoln and the Draft Laws
It was Congress which enacted the law which led to federal conscription in the Union, which came about because recruiting had come to a standstill in the states which comprised the old Northwest territory. The populations of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan were largely against the announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation, with newspapers and politicians claiming that the act would prolong the war, rather than shorten it as Lincoln intended. Eligible men were not encouraged to join in a long and bloody war. After Congress passed the draft bill and Lincoln signed it into law opposition to the draft began almost immediately.
When the Draft Riots occurred in New York in 1863, Lincoln ordered troops from George Meade’s Army of the Potomac, then involved in the Gettysburg campaign, diverted to New York to suppress the riots. In doing so, Lincoln assigned the riots status as a rebellion, rather than as a civil disturbance, which should have been suppressed by the city’s police force and the state militia, though most of the militia were serving with the Union army at the time. The Draft Riots and the soaring casualty figures of the war were serious blows to Lincoln’s popularity and he was excoriated as a dictator and worse for his actions in office, but eventual Union victories in the field and the steady retreat of the Confederate armies in 1864 led to his re-election, and his eventually being regarded as one of America’s greatest Presidents.
