Right on Time
According to this editorial Congress did a great job timing the implementation of the Enrollment Act because it takes time to set up a new bureaucracy. If there is an emergency in the meantime, the volunteer spirit in the North will come to the rescue.
From The New-York Times April 18 1863:
When Will the Draft Be Enforced ?
It seems to have been contemplated by the framers of the Conscription act of the late Congress that it w[o]uld not be possible to arrange all the details for putting it in operation before the 1st of July next. The 10th section of the act provides that the general enrollment of the militia for the purpose of drafting “shall only embrace those whose ages shall be, on the first day of July thereafter between twenty and forty-five years.” And the 11th section provides that “all persons thus enrolled shall be subject for two years after the first of July succeeding the enrollment, to be called into the military service of the United States, and to continue in service for three years or during the war.” It seems from this reading that persons liable to military duty under the Conscription act, cannot be called into the service previously to the “first of July.”
It appears from the Washington correspondence of an evening co[n]temporary, that this clause in the eleventh section of the act is considered by some an inadvertence, and a very unfortunate one, as causing an unnecessary delay in the raising of troops by conscription. But the fixing of the 1st of July for the beginning of liability to do military service was not an oversight. It was a matter of deliberate calculation, as the 10th section of the act clearly proves; for that section fixes the 1st of July as the date from which the years of age are to be reckoned that begin and limit the period of liability to military service. It is evident from sections 10 and 11, that the lawmakers meant to date the beginning of Conscript Service from July 1.
It is not at all clear to us that any needless delay in raising troops by draft will occur from the provision of the Conscript act in question. It is an enormous labor to enroll the militia of a great nation. It cannot be done in one month, nor in two. It is a month and a half since the act was passed, and yet, in all that time the War Department has not been able to fix upon suitable agents to execute the law in the various States. The district provost-marshals and enrolling boards are not yet appointed, though we learn that the list is nearly complete, and will be announced in a few days. It will certainly require a longer time for the Board of Enrol[l]ment in every district to number the people subject to military duty than has been consumed in their own selection and appointment. Our experience in this City, last Fall, where an enrollment commenced in September was not completed till late in November, teaches us what a cumbrous and dragging work it is. If the enrolling Boards are appointed, organized, and ready to begin their duties by the 1st of May, it will be as much as we expect. Give them only six weeks for the completion of their herculean labors, and we shall have the lists prepared for drafting not before the middle of June. Suppose the draft to take place instantly, the act allows the drafted men ten days before they are required to report for duty. In this time they may procure substitutes, or close up their business and prepare to take the field. It thus appears, that under the most energetic and expeditious execution of the act that is possible, it must necessarily be the last week of June before troops can be obtained under it. The fixing of the 1st day of July for the beginning of its operative power to put men in the field is, therefore, not a blunder, but a careful and successful calculation to make available every day of the duration of the act, for the national defence.
We do not anticipate any great emergency that will call for reinforcements of the armies in the field before the Conscript act can yield them. If there should, however, be a crisis demanding extraordinary efforts to meet the enemy, the volunteer spirit of the country would be equal to the emergency, as it has been time and again heretofore.
