Force Generation

This page is for the purposes of Canadian Forces College Experiential Learning Visit in support to the Joint Command and Staff Programme.

Prior to the war, the standing professional army of the US was comparatively small. The mass generated for the civil war was largely due to the influx of civilians. Both sides had to create the macro military organizations (staff, logistics, communication) and integrate these into the existing civilian infrastructure.

Conscription was used by both the Union and Confederacy. In the Spring of 1962, the Confederate Congress passed the first conscription and exemption acts in American history. All men between eighteen and thirty-five years of age were eligible for three years' service. Substitutes were allowed and certain types of professionals and factory workers were exempted. However, these exemptions were abused so neither enlistment nor conscription filled the ranks sufficiently for the Confederate army. The population base from which the Confederacy was able to enlist or conscript was considerably less given for most the war, slaves were not to be included. By the Fall of 1862, Lee's army was outnumbered, undernourished and ill-equipped, prompting his retreat to the south bank of the Potomac. There the army found enough forage and subsistence.

In comparison, the Union did not enact conscription until March 1863. All men between the ages of twenty and forty-five were liable to be called for military service. Service could be avoided by paying a fee or providing a substitute, both actions deemed unfair to the poor. In New York City, riots broke out in working-class sections.

The combination of force generation capacity with employed doctrine mutually enabled the North and crippled the South. Through their preference for the offensive and a strategic need to demonstrate to the Europeans that the Union could not win, combined with strained sustainment that also contributed to desertion rates, Confederate generals faced attrition that far exceeded that of their generation capacity. Institutional capability, strategic narrative imperatives, and operational warfare conduct worked against one another for the South. Conversely, the Union generals tended to adopt more defensive postures and had more efficient and abundant sustainment, all of which worked with their greater generation capacity. One could argue that Mclelland of the Union, criticized for being reluctant, took the time to build the needed coherent and sustainable military structure.