Evansville daily journal. (Evansville, Ind.) 1863-1866, 1863-10-24
why the Draft has been a Failure

Why the Draft has been Failure
A draft for about 10000 men was or.
dered last spring in the twelve Eastern
States, and the past six months has been
consumed in the work of selecting Off
GERS, making an enrolment, drawing the
quota of men from each district, bring
ing them before Examining Surgeons,
and forwarding those obtained to the
old regiments in the field. 1t is now
past the middle of October, and the draft
is hardly completed. The draft has
proven lamentable failure. 1t is use
less to disguise the truth, and wrong to
conceal it from the people We repeat,
the draft is.,a failure. 1t has yielded less
than $4,000 men-conscripts and sub
stitutes all told-and the commutation
money received does not represent 90
600 more, and this is all that draft of
100000 names has produced The En-
rollment Act directs that so per cent.
more names shall be drawn than mer re-
quired, in order to cover those who may
be exempted from physical disability and
other causes But astonishing to tell,
the exemptions amount to nearly seven
eights of the names drawn Not
more than thirteen men of every hun
dred have been held to serve, in person
or by substitute And this draft has
been made from the young men, between
the ages Of twenty FIVE and thirty-fve,
Twice as many old soldiers were dis
charged during the summer by reason of
expiration of term of service, as were
procured by the draft The Potomac
army is consequently dangerously re-
duced Lee now feels himself superior
to what remains after the detachment of
two army corps to reinforce Rosecrans,
and has assumed the offensive, notwith-
standing he has sent more men to Bragg
than Meade has to Rosecrans. The re.
bel conseription has swept into the Con-
federate ranks every man able to hobble
under a knapsack, and the result is, that
that they confront the armies of
of the Potomac and Cumberland in su-
perior force, and press them back. The
inaetion of the Potomac army since Get
tysburg, is due to the failure of the draft
to procure men. -
The friends of the Administration have
had to resist and endure all the obloquy
and unpopularity of the draft, and to de-
fend and enforce it. And now they dis
cover that it has been almost barren of
results.
Why has the draft produced so few
soldiets2 We can answer the question.
The War Department appointed Prof
Leiber to frame list of causes for ex-
ing Boards The learned professor ex-
ercised his profound research to discover
diseases, ailments, and ills that flesh is
heir to, that would form pretexts for
granting certificates of exemption He
succeeded in producing a catalogue of
enormous length, and susceptible OF
abuse. He opened hole as wide as
barn door, through which two hundred
thousand drafted men marched out in
double file He established standard
of physical perfection so high that only
here and there man was found equal
to it. 1t was no trouble for the soundest
and ablest bodied men to obtain certifi-
Gates of exemption from the Examining
Board. There are very few perfectly
sound men in civilized countries-men
free from all trace of disease, and if
conscript possessed any symptom of all
ment he could easily magnify it, and by
stimulation, personal influence or bribe-
ry induce the Examining Surgeons to
grant him a certificate of exemption.
But no matter how it was done, there
stands the ugly fact as prominent as the
rock of Gibraltar, that less than one
eighth of the conscripts were held to SER
vice. 1t will not do to say that the mass
of them paid their $500, because it is
not true. The number who paid is far
less than the number who serve in per-
son or sent substitutes
When we first saw Lieber's list of
causes for exemption we warned the
Secretary of War that the draft would be
a failure. But no heed was paid to it,
and no modification was made, and now
see the consequences. 1t is proposed to
draft again; but it will be "water-
haul unless Lieber's instructions are
thrown away. We believe that if the
President should order conscription of
the entire enrolled militia between twen-
ty and forty FIVE, that it would scarcely
produce two hundred thousand men.
The heaviest blow yet struck at the Ma
tional cause is Lieber's hundred pretexts
for exemption. 1t is far more danger
Gus than Lees or Bragg's rebels, as it
practically prevents the recruiting of
our armies. There is only one safe and
proper code of instructions for examin-
ing surgeons, and that is to hold every
conscript who is not manifestly incapa-
bic of bearing arms. Let the con-
scripts be examined on general princi-
pies. Abundance of them, even then,
fit to be soldiers, will slip through and
escape, on one pretext or another But
the whole number held will bear a re-
spectacle proportion to the whole num-
Der drafted. Had the present draft been
conducted on this principle, it would
have yielded four times as many soldiers
and four times as much money to pay in
counties to volunteers, and our Potomac
army, after reinforcing Rosecrans, would
still have been strong enough to over
whelm the army of Lee. There is no
calculating the injury that has been done
to the cause of the Union by the adop-
tion Of Lieber' s catalogue of exemptions,
which might justly be termed: " Lieber' S
Easy Method of Escaping the Draft" or,
a''Liebers Hundred holes in the Con
scription, Endorsed by the War Depart
ment, through which Drafted Men may
Crryyl y