With the beginning of the third year of the war, more energetic measures
to fill the armies were seen to be necessary; and after very hot and
acrimonious debate for about a month, Congress, on March 3, 1863, passed
a national conscription law, under which all male citizens between the
ages of twenty and forty-five were enrolled to constitute the national
forces, and the President was authorized to call them into service by
draft as occasion might require. The law authorized the appointment of a
provost-marshal-general, and under him a provost-marshal, a
commissioner, and a surgeon, to constitute a board of enrollment in each
congressional district; who, with necessary deputies, were required to
carry out the law by national authority, under the supervision of the
provost-marshal-general.
For more than a year past, the Democratic leaders in the Northern States
had assumed an attitude of violent partizanship against the
administration, their hostility taking mainly the form of stubborn
opposition to the antislavery enactments of Congress and the
emancipation measures of the President. They charged with loud
denunciation that he was converting the maintenance of the Union into a
war for abolition, and with this and other clamors had gained
considerable successes in the autumn congressional elections of 1862,
though not enough to break the Republican majority in the House of
Representatives.
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