“The Confederacy acted first, partially because the Union’s manpower advantage (a ratio of greater than three to one in military age males) made it more imperative for the South to get every available man into the army. Initially, the Richmond government stressed keeping its soldiers in the ranks rather than adding new ones. By the end of 1861, the Confederate army stood on the verge of disintegration. Most men had enrolled only for a year, so their enlistments were set to expire in May, June, or July 1862. President Davis, the army, and Secretary of War Judah Benjamin struggled to alter this inexpedient policy with Benjamin recommending that Congress entice current troops to re-enlist for the war by granting them bounties and furloughs. In December 1861, Congress enacted this legislation providing each re-enlistee with $50 and a 60-day furlough. Yet, in February 1862, Benjamin estimated that 92,275 troops had enlisted for the war, while 240,475 were twelve-month men.[1]
By the end of March, the Confederacy needed even more men. Facing a desperate military situation - General George McClellan’s Army of the Potomac approaching Richmond, a Union army slicing south through Tennessee and into Mississippi, and the Union navy poised at the mouth of the Mississippi River - in addition to the looming expiration of the enlistments of its original volunteers, President Davis suggested a straightforward solution. On March 28, 1862, he proposed the passage of a law declaring that all men between the ages of eighteen and thirty five should be enrolled in Confederate service. Davis contended that a military draft would be the most equitable method of expanding the army, and, he matter-of-factly brushed aside any constitutional objections, asserting that “the right of the State to demand, and the duty of each citizen to render, military service, need only to be stated to be admitted.”[2]”
It seems not as many as hoped or needed had voluntarily re-enlisted for the slaveholders’ rebellion. Conscription was their only course to continue their war.