Lesson unlearned

[Eagle eye]

You are so right.

What I always though remarkable was despite the fact that union enlistments (including conscription) would approximately equal or exceed the total white male population of the Confederate states the Lincoln government had to resort to conscription only after a year the CSA. And yeah, conscription/draft laws were unpopular in the 1860s – they were also unpopular in the 1960s. And yeah, there was the Richmond bread riot but not the draft riots that occurred in the North—it wasn't just New York. And yes, desertions hurt the Confederate war effort, but Confederate desertion was never as extensive as for the Northern forces despite all the privations in the South.

What were the ages for mandatory (conscription) military service in the CSA? Something like 17 to 45 or 50?
Any idea of how many men in those age groups actually served in the CSA armed forces? Or should I say "willingly" served?

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

The fact that the majority of efforts to run the blockade were successful obscures the reality of the blockade's effectiveness. First, blockade runners have to be sleek and fast, and hence cannot carry as much cargo as a regular vessel. Second, the number of total ships coming into Southern ports was greatly lessened because large numbers of people didn't want to go to the trouble of trying to run the blockade. Third (and this is an underrated point), the existence of the blockade made insurance rates go much higher, which cut into the profits of the merchants trying to conduct trade between Britain and the South. All of these factors combined to inflict heavy, and eventually crippling, economic pain on the people of the Confederacy in the form of mass inflation.

I have (unfortunately) yet to find a suitable short treatment of the blockade's successes, failures, and effects, direct and indirect. There's a lot of writing about it that's tangential, only examines limited aspects of it, etc. All of what you say is true... what's highly uncertain is to what degree each affected the outcome. There's at least a dissertation opportunity for someone in there somewhere, and very probably a book-- ideally written by several contributors, each approaching the problem from a different angle.

Just off the top of my head, there's

• the naval/military angle: controlling and preventing the movement of armed vessels of the Confederacy;
• the logistics/military angle: controlling and preventing the movement of supply and equipment to the Confederate armed forces;
• the direct economic angle: physically limiting and preventing imports and exports;
• the indirect economic angle: dissuading imports and exports through increasing risk and therefore cost (and therefore eventual final prices)
• the diplomatic angle: establishing a barrier of Federal vessels to physically and psychologically divide the Confederacy from other powers;
• the transportation angle: limiting the use of coastal and riverine transport from one part of the Confederacy to another, both raising transportation risks and costs and forcing traffic into other routes (e.g. railroads);
• the naval/intelligence angle: familiarizing commanders and crews with conditions and topography of the Southern coastline and drawing information from the coastal areas.

And I could probably come up with a few more.

But another thing to consider is that a number of these effects and functions are after-the-fact analysis. Blockade was simply something navies did in wartime, particularly those navies that had had any experience at all with the British way of naval war, and the U.S. had experienced it twice (Revolution and 1812) and had also been the blockaders (the Mexican War), so I'm positive it was taken as a given that there would be some sort of blockade set up, with none of the above reasoning needed in its support.

 

[CSA Today]

What were the ages for mandatory (conscription) military service in the CSA? Something like 17 to 45 or 50?
Any idea of how many men in those age groups actually served in the CSA armed forces? Or should I say "willingly" served?

It would be problematic to give a figure in any army for those willing to serve. Some idea for North Carolina, at least, is that out of 125,000 men that served from the state all but approximately 19,000 were volunteers.

Hugh T. Lefler and Albert R. Newsome, North Carolina: History of a Southern State, p.430.

As for numbers who actually served in the Confederate armed forces, figures range from 6,000 up to 1.2 million with the most likely number between 700,000 -800,000. I suggest you look to the 1860 census and form your own conclusion as to how many abled bodied males that would have been available for Confederate military service.
http://www.civil-war.net/pages/1860_census.html

 

[Eagle eye]

It would be problematic to give a figure in any army for those willing to serve. Some idea for North Carolina, at least, is that out of 125,000 men that served from the state all but approximately 19,000 were volunteers.

Hugh T. Lefler and Albert R. Newsome, North Carolina: History of a Southern State, p.430.

As for numbers who actually served in the Confederate armed forces, figures range from 6,000 up to 1.2 million with the most likely number between 700,000 -800,000. I suggest you look to the 1860 census and form your own conclusion as to how many abled bodied males that would have been available for Confederate military service.
http://www.civil-war.net/pages/1860_census.html

Thanks for the link & source (I assume you meant 600,000 not 6,000)
The spread sheet on the 1860 census is pretty limited but I did notice that NC had @125,000 families so that would equate to one solder per family. Don't know if that would hold true for all of the CSA states but if it did then @900,000 solders would fit right in the middle of the estimates that are commonly used. That's not counting the border states.
Numbers are interesting …for example SC has one of the highest % of slave holders but far fewer number of families then most of the other CSA states & they fired the 1st shots to initiate the war.
I'll check out your source on the numbers & see if they break down the populations into age categories.
But if the CSA had so many volunteers why did they have to conscript kids & old men?
Thanks for the info…I'll investigate as time permits & we shall see what we shall see…