page_title: Draft evasion
section_title: Civil War
hierarchical_section_title: Draft evasion / By country / United States / Civil War
caption_attribution_description: English: Unionists throughout the Confederate States, including Germans, resisted the imposition of conscription in 1862. Title: Southern "volunteers" Summary: The print may have appeared soon after the Confederate Congress passed a national conscription act on April 16, 1862, to strengthen its dwindling army of volunteers. The artist characterizes regular Confederate troops as unsavory, criminal types. Two of them (in uniform, left and center) have a well-dressed young gentleman in tow. The leader pulls on a rope around the reluctant recruit's neck, saying, "Come along you rascal! and fight for our King Cotton." The man protests, "Let me go, I tell you I'm a Union Man, and don't believe in your Southern Confederacy." He is prodded by the bayonet of a second soldier, gin flask protruding from his pocket, who urges, "Blast your Union! Them as won't go in for the war must be made to do it. Go ahead, or we'll hang you on the next tree." A second group follows. Two men in wide-brimmed hats have seized another gentleman, and urge him at bayonet point toward the left. One of the men, barefoot and ragged, with a knife and pistol in his belt, resembles a Mexican bandit. Atop a nearby hill two soldiers drag a third civilian along the ground by a rope around his neck. The print is comparable in both style and political sympathy to contemporary prints by Currier &amp; Ives, such as "Re-Union on the Secesh-Democratic Plan" (no. 1862-10).
context_page_description: Draft evasion is any successful attempt to elude a government-imposed obligation to serve in the military forces of one's nation. Sometimes draft evasion involves refusing to comply with the military draft laws of one's nation. Illegal draft evasion is said to have characterized every military conflict of the 20th and 21st centuries. Such evasion is generally considered to be a criminal offense, and laws against it go back thousands of years.
  There are many draft evasion practices. Those that manage to adhere to or circumvent the law, and those that do not involve taking a public stand, are sometimes referred to as draft avoidance. Those that involve overt lawbreaking or taking a public stand are sometimes referred to as draft resistance. Draft evaders are sometimes pejoratively referred to as draft dodgers, although in certain contexts that term has also been used non-judgmentally or as an honorific.
  Draft evasion has been a significant phenomenon in nations as different as Colombia, Eritrea, France, Russia, South Korea, Syria, and the United States.
context_section_description: Both the Union (the North) and the Confederate states (the South) instituted drafts during the American Civil War – and both drafts were often evaded. In the North, evaders were most numerous among poor Irish immigrants. In the South, evaders were most numerous in hill country and in certain other parts of Texas, Louisiana, and Georgia.
  Resistance to the draft was sometimes violent. In the North, nearly 100 draft enrollment officers were injured in attacks. An anti-draft riot in New York City in 1863 lasted several days and resulted in up to 120 deaths and 2,000 injuries.
  According to historian David Williams, by 1864 the Southern draft had become virtually unenforceable.  Some believe that draft evasion in the South, where manpower was scarcer than in the North, contributed to the Confederate defeat.
caption: Parody of Confederate troops forcing a pro-Union Southerner (left foreground) and other reluctant Southerners to comply with the Confederate draft, c. 1862.[74]
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