Replies

"Your Jackson quote has no more basis in fact than your 94% AWOL rate claim."

Please Non-Sequitur...make some effort yourself to do basic research. Just Google this stuff, ok? I swear, it's like feeding a baby, the baby gurgling it back, then having to wipe its mouth. But fine, here we go:

JACKSON:

(Q and A with Jackson's doctor)

"Was Jackson intimate with President Davis? When did you see him for the first time?" queried the scribe.

"The first time General Jackson ever saw President Davis was at First Manassas," replied Dr. McGuire. "The enemy had been routed and the wounded brought back to the field hospital which I had made for Jackson's brigade. Out of about eighteen hundred shot that day in our army six hundred or more were out of Jackson's brigade, and he himself had come back to the hospital wounded. The place was on the banks of the little stream of water just this side of the Lewis house. Hundreds of men had come back, the fight being over, to see about their wounded comrades, so there were really several thousand people gathered in and about that hospital. President Davis had gotten off the cars with his staff at Manassas Junction and ridden as fast as he could to the field of battle, He had been told along the route by stragglers that we were defeated. He came on down the little hill which led to this stream in a rapid gallop, stopped when he got to the stream and looked around at this great crowd of soldiers. His face was deadly pale and his eyes flashing. He stood up in his stirrups, glanced over the crowd, and said: 'I am President Davis; all of you who are able follow me back to the field.'

"Jackson was a little deaf, and didn't know who Davis was or what he had said until I told him. He stood up at once, took off his cap and saluted the President and said: 'We have whipped them; they ran like dogs. Give me ten thousand men and I will take Washington city to-morrow.'"

http://www.huntermcguire.goellnitz.org/stnwall.html

CONSCRIPTION

Conscription nurtured substitutes, bounty-jumping, and desertion. Charges of class discrimination were leveled against both Confederate and Union draft laws since exemption and commutation clauses allowed propertied men to avoid service, thus laying the burden on immigrants and men with few resources. Occupational, only-son, and medical exemptions created many loopholes in the laws. Doctors certified healthy men unfit for duty, while some physically or mentally deficient conscripts went to the front after sham examinations. Enforcement presented obstacles of its own; many conscripts simply failed to report for duty. Several states challenged the draft's legality, trying to block it and arguing over the quota system. Unpopular, unwieldy, and unfair, conscription raised more discontent than soldiers.

Under the Union draft act men faced the possibility of conscription in July 1863 and in Mar., July, and Dec. 1864. Draft riots ensued, notably in New York in 1863. Of the 249,259 18-to-35-year-old men whose names were drawn, only about 6% served, the rest paying commutation or hiring a substitute.

http://www.civilwarhome.com/conscription.htm