Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy

New York: The Macmillan Company, 1924. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Good/No DJ present. ix, [5], 367, [3] pages. Footnotes. Index. Some cover wear and page soiling noted. The first thirteen chapters of this volume were presented for a Doctor's dissertation at the University of Chicago. Albert Burton Moore (1887-1967) in his 45-year teaching career was the embodiment of a Southern scholar-gentleman. Born and raised in Alabama, he was a descendant of Confederate veterans, and he wrote and taught at a time when many of them were yet alive. His teaching career, except for four years in Iowa, was entirely in the South. In his old age Moore served as executive director of the Alabama Civil War Centennial Commission and director of the Confederate States Centennial Conference as well as the Jefferson Davis Foundation. He served two terms as president of the NCAA. Moore's book is still valued by historians for both parts of its title. The 1996 introduction to the University of South Carolina edition rightly praises the book as still the fundamental introduction to Confederate conscription, as well as a groundbreaking exploration of internal divisions in the CSA, a topic which had been given short shrift by the Lost Cause version of the Civil War which prevailed in America at that time. This volume deals with the conscription system in the Confederacy and the conflicts which it produced between the Confederate and State authorities. It was begun with a view of discovering the effect of conscription upon the course of the was and to making available the experiences of the Confederacy, hard pressed always for fighting men, in raising armies. The author has endeavored to tell a true story, as it was revealed by the Official Records, newspapers, and other source materials, and by the memories of living men and women. Much attention has been given to conflicts between Confederate and State authorities, because they not only impaired the efficiency of conscription but led to exhaustive discussion of the political nature of the confederacy by the most eminent jurists and statesmen of the South. The literature of this conflict is most illuminating in the study of Confederate constitutional history, and shows the utter impossibility, in the last analysis, of maintaining a permanent and effective national government based on states with unlimited potency. Again and again the leaders of the Confederacy, striving to meed the demands and responsibilities of the war, were plagued by the principle upon which the old union had been dissolved. A standard source for more than three generations of Civil War scholars, Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy remains the authoritative study of the Confederate draft. In this landmark book, Albert Burton Moore uses conscription to illustrate a central paradox of the Confederacy: in order to protect its commitment to states' rights, the Confederacy was forced to adopt tactics of centralized government. Charting the strength of Confederate forces before and after conscription's implementation in 1862, Moore examines the system's daily operations, troublesome procedures for substitutions and exemptions, and ultimate collapse. He conveys the controversy surrounding conscription by quoting from acerbic and sometimes eloquent arguments for and against conscription put forth by governors, congressmen, newspaper editors, and soldiers. Although Moore credits Confederate conscription with a high degree of success, he blames it for causing friction between state governors and President Jefferson Davis, dissension between state and national judicial systems, and bureaucratic problems of colossal proportions. William Garrett Piston's new introduction places the volume in its historical context and underscores one of the most remarkable features of the study - Moore's forthright admission that a large number of Southerners did not support the Confederacy. Moore views conscription as a flawed, but ultimately successful system that kept the Confederacy's will to fight for independence focused in an effective military effort for four hard years. He quotes the Richmond Examiner, that the conscription act of 1862 "not only overcame the deficiencies of the voluntary system, but changed the character of the army 'from the desultory character of prompt enthusiasm to that of permanent and organized discipline.' "