Draft dodger

“ This situation of affairs was telegraphed to the president and the following characteristic reply was received: "If the draft cannot take place, of course it cannot take place. Necessity knows no law. A. Lincoln." The bitterest feeling of the anti-drafters seemed to be against the old St. Paul Press, a paper that earnestly advocated the vigorous prosecution of the war. Threats were made to mob the office. A company was organized for self-defense, and Capt. E.R. Otis, now of West Superior, one of the Press compositors at that time, was made post commander. ”

“ Hendricks pretended to think it very strange and unjustifiable that now, when everything depended on getting every possible man in the field, the Senate should think of "abandoning that which it thought right last Winter!"
He opposed drafting; but if drafting must be resorted to, then he thought that what he termed "the Horror of the Draft" should be felt by as many of the Union people as possible!—or, in his own words: "the Horror of the Draft ought to be divided among the People." ”

“ We conclude, for the reasons stated, that §§ 401 (j) and 349 (a) (10) are punitive and as such cannot constitutionally stand, lacking as they do the procedural safeguards which the Constitution commands. [43] We recognize that draft evasion, particularly in time of war, is a heinous offense, and should and can be properly punished. ”

“ The committee has taken notice of the defiant destruction and mutilation of draft cards by dissident persons who disapprove of national policy. If allowed to continue unchecked, this contumacious conduct represents a potential threat to the exercise of the power to raise and support armies. For a person to be subject to fine or imprisonment, the destruction or mutilation of the draft card must be "knowingly" done. This qualification is intended to protect persons who lose or mutilate draft cards accidentally. ”

“ We have more than twice as many men here, and their own blacks are but a broken reed. When we begin to draft, however, war will begin in earnest. They dread that drafting far more than volunteering. They know by experience, what we have not as yet learned, that drafting contains many strange secrets of success. ”

“ If this right does not inhere in our government, it is built on a foundation of sand, and the sooner it is abandoned the better.
But we go farther, and deny that a draft is a despotic measure at all, but is a just and equitable mode of raising an army. True, if troops enough can be raised on a reasonable bounty, it is more expedient to do so; but the moment that bounty becomes so exorbitant as to tempt the cupidity of those in whom neither patriotism nor sense of duty have any power, volunteering becomes an evil. ”

“ It was not argued that a conspiracy to obstruct the draft was not within the words of the Act of 1917. The [p53] words are "obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service," and it might be suggested that they refer only to making it hard to get volunteers. Recruiting heretofore usually having been accomplished by getting volunteers, the word is apt to call up that method only in our minds. But recruiting is gaining fresh supplies for the forces, as well by draft as otherwise. ”

“ If Congress had not passed the amendatory act of February 24, 1864, it might very well have been asserted that making an enrolment of persons liable to draft, was a service relating to the draft; for being a necessary preliminary to putting the draft in force, it bears a very close relation to it. ”

“ You know what he thinks about the war and about the draft. You know he’s been drafted and won’t go, and says the soldiers can’t take him alive. Well, Sergeant Anderson said that, defying the draft that way, he’s classed as a deserter, and when he’s caught he’s liable to be shot. Now you know that isn’t a nice thing to happen to your father. So I’ve decided to do this. I’m going to Easton to see this provost-marshal and offer to take my father’s place as a drafted man, and go wherever they choose to send me, provided they’ll let him off. I think they will, don’t you? ”

“ Two persons are sitting in the same draft. The one is injuriously affected by it, the other experiences not even an inconvenience, but he rather enjoys it. The one is a creature of circumstances; he fears the draft, cringes before it, continually thinks of the harm it is doing him. In other words, he opens every avenue for it to enter and take hold of him, and so it—harmless and beneficent in itself—brings to him exactly what he has empowered it to bring. ”

“ Todd continued: “Seth, they’re framing a draft bill there in Washington. They’re going to make men join the army if they won’t join it voluntarily. Now our boys never had to be kicked into battle, Seth. They’ve got the good old Kentucky warrior blood in their veins; and the better the cause, the harder they fight. Let’s show the country that Breathitt isn’t as bad as printer’s ink has painted her. Let’s not wait for that draft bill. Tell your men, Seth, that this is the worst war and the best war that ever happened. ”

“ Up to the passage of our present selective draft law, we figured that our ranks would be crowded with youngsters who were craving to fight.
Now we have the selective draft upon our statute books, but no law gets full force and effect unless the people understand and approve. We have changed our entire military system because we had started wrong, and the people ought to know why. ”

“ He noted that the draft power claimed for Congress by Madison and Monroe was not limited to time of war or invasion and would permit a draft of men for any type of military service, at home or abroad, at the discretion of the Government. ”

“ No time is wasted, no argument is used. This produces an army which will soon turn upon our now victorious soldiers already in the field, if they shall not be sustained by recruits as they should be."
Notwithstanding Governor Seymour's neglect to give the enrolling officers any coöperation, preparations for the draft went on in New York city without prospect of serious disturbance, except the incendiary language of low newspapers and handbills. ”

“ TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR SEYMOUR. EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, AUGUST 16, 1863.
GOVERNOR SEYMOUR, New York:
Your despatch of this morning is just received, and I fear I do not perfectly understand it.
My view of the principle is that every soldier obtained voluntarily leaves one less to be obtained by draft. The only difficulty is in applying the principle properly. Looking to time, as heretofore, I am unwilling to give up a drafted man now, even for the certainty, much less for the mere chance, of getting a volunteer hereafter. ”

“ However sure a check you may be, you should never be anxious to leave your position, to check men who ought to he stopped by some other of your side. When a man finds himself a special terror to dodgers, he is too apt to undertake the checking of the entire field of opponents, thereby causing confusion in his own ranks.
Our laws allow any strength of attack at one dodger, but it is the custom among the St. Regis Indians not to interfere between two adversaries, unless at goal; so that the dodger has only one opponent at a time to avoid. ”

“ I am the more inclined to reply to these questions, since I can thus illustrate how that which is deemed impossible is easy enough for a well-regulated police.
Firstly, concerning forged drafts. I refer here only to those which are transferable by indorsements. In large cities, such drafts often change owners many times in a day. Perhaps the persons through whose hands the draft passes know each other not at all or only slightly. Now, it is very true that merchants do not usually take a draft unless they know the maker or makers, and his or their signature to the draft. ”

“ I mean, sir . . . There's no way of getting hold of an officer to march the draft. Them as are eligible gets to 'ear of what drafts is going and they've all bolted into their burries. Not a man of 'em will be back in camp before five to-morrow morning. Not when they 'ears there's a draft to go at four of mornings like this. . . . Now . . ." His voice became husky with emotion as he offered to take the draft hisself to oblige Captain Tietjens. And the captain knew he could get a draft off pretty near as good as himself: or very near. ”

“ Had the Armistice not been declared, had respondent gone on to Camp Dodge, and had he then been rejected for any reason there, he would have received, not an honorable discharge from the Army, but a 'Discharge from Draft.' Yet we are asked to give the regulations and certificates a judicial construction, contrary to the Army's construction, whereby respondent, who got no farther than his local board, would stand in a better status than the tens of thousands of other draftees who came much closer to complete integration into the Army than he ever did. ”

“ The simplest way of explaining the operation of raising a draft or check is as follows:
Two men are necessary for success at any given point, and hence they are not so liable to detection as if a number of confederates were engaged. It is the business of one of these men to enter a bank, and purchase a draft on New York City, for a certain amount of money, usually about fifteen hundred dollars, and a short time after this another draft would be procured from the same bank for a small amount, seldom over ten dollars. ”

“ The Draft Act was so amended that it allowed men of property to escape being conscripted into the army by permitting them to buy substitutes. The poor man who could not raise the necessary amount had to submit to the consequences of the draft. ”

“ Neither evidence nor argument is needed to prove that the efforts of the government to strengthen the national forces by draft would have been seriously retarded, and perhaps altogether thwarted, if substitute brokers could, with impunity, and for purposes of private gain, impose fraudulent enlistments upon recruiting officers, and then connive at or aid and abet the desertion of the substitutes as soon as they had received their bounty-money. ”

“ Such men as Franklin Pierce and Horatio Seymour had done much in their utterances to encourage resistance to the drafts. Seymour was then Governor of the State of New York, and while the mob was doing its deadly work he addressed them as "My friends," telling them to desist then, while he could arrange at Washington to have the draft arrested. Had Governor Seymour been loyal to his country, and to his country's cause, in this her moment of need, he would have burned his tongue with a red hot iron sooner than allow it to call these thugs, thieves, and murderers his "friends." ”

“ With this drain upon them the end is not far distant, if we will only be true to ourselves. Their only hope now is in a divided North. This might give them reinforcements from Tennessee, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri, while it would weaken us. With the draft quickly enforced the enemy would become despondent, and would make but little resistance. I have no doubt but the enemy are exceedingly anxious to hold out until after the Presidential election. They have many hopes from its effects.
“They hope a counter revolution; they hope the election of the Peace candidate. ”

“ It would not be wise to assert that the not having such a reserved force necessitated the recent draft, and thereby occasioned the horrible outbreak in New York. But if it may even be safely suggested as possibly true, the successful enforcement of the draft becomes all the more a matter for boundless joy and congratulation. Important as its enforcement throughout the country was as a means of filling up the ranks of our armies, the outbreak in New York made it a thousand times more important as the only adequate assertion of the supremacy of national law. ”

“ Nicolay brought the President a telegram from Philadelphia, stating that a man had been arrested in that city for an attempt to obtain fifteen hundred dollars on Lincoln's draft.
"I have given no authority for such a draft; and if I had," he added, humorously, "it is surprising that any man could get the money." ”

“ The legislation now before us, on the other hand, is by its terms completely inapplicable to those guilty of draft evasion who have remained in the United States; it is exclusively aimed at those, whether or not ever criminally convicted, who have gone to or remained in another land to escape the duty of military service. Moreover, the conduct which the legislation reaches could never be equivocal in nature, but is always and clearly a 'refusal to perform this ultimate duty of American citizenship.' Trop v. ”

“ The "drafted men", consisting of men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-one, fairly represent the adult male white population of the country, except in two respects. Many able young men were not included in the draft, having previously volunteered for officers' training camps or for special services. ”

“ Many of the men, therefore, who with a sort of terror shuffled their feet in the sand, would be sent home, to the draft, or to the questioning scorn of their friends, under suspicion of a form of treason, of not having banged the drum quite hard enough. ”

“ Monroe, every male citizen of the United States between the ages of 20 and 45 was made subject by the direct action of Congress to be called by compulsory draft to service in a national army at such time and in such numbers as the President in his discretion might find necessary. In that act, as in the one of 1814, and in this one, the means by which the act was to be enforced were directly federal and the force to be raised as a result of the draft was therefore typically national as distinct from the call into active service of the militia as such. ”