[From the July-August Issue of The Misesian.]
Libertarians understand — or should understand — that military conscription is a form of slavery or involuntary servitude. In fact, everyone should understand this. And yet conscription has been employed by the U.S. government for the past 161 years, ever since Abraham Lincoln signed the first federal conscription act into law in March 1863, enslaving thousands of American men.
For those who are killed in battle or executed for desertion, conscription is worse than slavery because it robs them of their very lives. To this day, one of the penalties for desertion in wartime is death. At various times in history the U.S. government has shot deserters in firing squads, and it has even imprisoned or shot civilian conscription protesters.
Even if one volunteers for the military, one immediately becomes a slave to the state because it is illegal to leave. The penalties for desertion apply to both volunteer recruits and conscripts. In “Desertion During the Civil War” historian Ella Lonn writes that after the conscription law was passed, draftees were held like “veritable prisoners ... so as to prevent their untimely departure.” And there were many, many “untimely departures” from Lincoln’s army.
Examining “The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies,” Lonn documented that some 200,000 Northern men deserted from the Union army in 1862, about 14% of the entire army. More than 90,000 Northern men deserted on the eve of the Battle of Antietam, she wrote, and there were over 100,000 more deserters the rest of the year.
According to Lonn, a policy of mass execution of deserters was implemented after a Feb. 3, 1863, cabinet meeting because Gen. George Meade asked why the executions took so long. Lonn describes the execution method, which is documented in the “Official Records,” as follows: “A gallows and shooting ground were provided in each corps and scarcely a Friday passed during the winter of 1863–64 that some wretched deserter did not suffer the death penalty in the Army of the Potomac.”
Soldiers were forced to watch the daily executions of their friends and comrades: “The condemned men marched out between the two ranks of the regiment, preceded by the musicians, playing a funeral march. ... The victim was conducted to the edge of the grave, which had already been dug. ... He was seated, blindfolded, and placed upon a board at the foot of the open coffin, into which he fell backwards when the firing squad had discharged its duty.” Lonn adds that deserters were sometimes hanged, although shooting was the most common execution method.
Hence in the Civil War the precedent was established that all military personnel are slaves to the state in wartime and that death is the penalty for trying to escape from this form of slavery. Deserters weren’t physically punished for running away as chattel slaves were. They were killed.
In the New York City draft riots, which occurred a few days after the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, Lincoln sent some 15,000 troops from Gettysburg to New York City to enforce his new conscription law. Iver Bernstein, in his book “The New York City Draft Riots” details how the Gettysburg veteran “soldiers” fired indiscriminately into the crowds, killing hundreds of New Yorkers and maiming an untold number. Some historians have said the death count may have been in the thousands. All for protesting military conscription.
The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution clearly outlaws slavery and indentured servitude. That was swept aside during World War I when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the slavery of conscription was legal and constitutional after all because, in the opinion of the Wilson administration, it was “necessary and proper” for the war effort. This ruling was based on the necessary and proper clause of the Constitution, which was first used to pervert the true meaning of the document by Alexander Hamilton to push for the creation of a national bank. Yes, conscription is not one of the powers delegated to the federal government by the sovereign states, and it’s even outlawed by the Thirteenth Amendment, the ruling argues, but it is necessary and proper to have it anyway. Such is the Hamiltonian method of constitutional interpretation.
If the government can conscript you into its army, can cause your death or mutilation in some war that has nothing to do with national defense, and can execute you if you resist, then it can do anything to you at any time, for any reason — or without bothering to give a reason.
