Soldier Life during the War

Michigan Civil War soldiers

Drafts and Exemptions

White men represented the primary source of recruits, and men in all states resented the draft, which had been imposed in an amended fashion in the North. States were given quotas, and had to do what they could to fill them, including paying bonuses. Resentment focused on wealthy men; northerners who could afford to do so hired substitutes, while southerners who owned a large number of slaves were exempt from the draft. Resistance in the North sometimes took the form of public protests, and particularly violent draft riots in New York in the summer of 1863 forced Lincoln to send troops to restore order. Dissent in the South was more covert, and desperate, but met with no less deadlyresponses. Soldiers hanged or shot many of those who opposed the Confederacy in almost every southern state. With such efforts, the Confederacy mobilized perhaps 80 percent of its eligible male population for military service, while about half of the Northern military age population joined some branch of the service. As the war dragged on, both the North and South would turn to women and African-Americans to support the war effort.

Uniforms

soldiers

Although Union soldiers are generally associated with the color blue, and Confederates are remembered in gray, these color distinctions were not quite so clear-cut during the years of the Civil War. At the beginning stages, Union troops wore gray while many Confederates sported the color blue—in fact both armies could be seen in a wide array of colors like