[Ditto]

Any conscription was thus placed in the hands of the states, and this was a prime example of a power that was "reserved" under the 10th Amendment.

Which is exactly how the draft was handled by both sides. I'm surprised you didn't know that.

[Greybird]

>> Any conscription was thus placed in the hands of the states, and this was a prime example of a power that was "reserved" under the 10th Amendment. <<

> Which is exactly how the draft was handled by both sides. I'm surprised you didn't know that. <

I had understood that the 1863 draft was intended to repopulate the U.S. Army regulars, not the militias, though I could have missed that detail.

Nonetheless, the imposition of conscription by an act of Congress, whether implemented by national action or through state militias, remained unauthorized, and in violation of both the guarantee of state militia independence in Article I and of the Second and Tenth Amendments -- Madison made this clear long before, and he was in a position to clarify it.

(As to the Second, the word "state" in that long-disputed first clause actually did have a definite constitutional meaning -- though to justify, not to restrict, the scope of a "right of the people.")

And the Confederate States Constitution adopted all three of these provisions nearly verbatim from the United States Constitution. So it was against any semblance of the rule of law, and merely "justified" by the assertion of wartime necessity, on both sides of the Potomac.