another bounty, and so on indefinitely; and the number of men enrolled who were afterwards unaccounted for was large.  There was of course also grumbling of localities at the quotas assigned to them, though no pains were spared to assign them fairly.  There was some opposition to the working of the law after it was passed, but it was, not general, but partly the opposition of rowdies in degraded neighbourhoods, partly factitious political opposition, and partly seditious and openly friendly to the South.  In general the country accepted the law as a manifest military necessity.  The spirit and manner of its acceptance may be judged from the results of any of the calls for troops under this law.  For example, in December, 1864, towards the end of the war, 211,752 men were brought up to the colours; of these it seems that 194,715 were ordinary volunteers, 10,192 were substitutes provided by conscripts, and only 6,845 were actually compelled men.  It is perhaps more significant still that among those who did not serve there were only 460 who paid the 300-dollar penalty, as against the 10,192 who must have paid at least three times that sum for substitutes.  Behind the men who had been called up by the end of the war the North had, enrolled and ready to be called, over two million men.  The North had not to suffer as the South suffered, but unquestionably in this matter it rose to the occasion.

The constitutional validity of the law was much questioned by politicians, but never finally tried out on appeal to the Supreme Court.  There seems to be no room for doubt that Lincoln’s own reasoning on this matter was sound.  The Constitution simply gave to Congress “power to raise and support armies,” without a word as to the particular means to be used for the purpose; the new and extremely well-considered Constitution of the Confederacy was in this respect the same.  The Constitution, argued Lincoln, would not have given the power of raising armies without one word as to the mode in which it was to be exercised, if it had not meant Congress to be the sole judge as to the mode.  “The principle,” he wrote, “of the draft, which simply is involuntary or enforced service, is not new.  It has been practised in all ages of the world.  It was well known to the framers of our Constitution as one of the modes of raising armies. . . .  It had been used just before, in establishing our independence, and it was also used under the Constitution in 1812.”  In fact, as we have seen, a certain power of compelling military service existed in each of the States and had existed in them from the first.  Their ancestors had brought the principle with them from the old country, in which the system of the “militia ballot” had not fallen into desuetude when they became independent.  The traditional English jealousy, which the American Colonies had imbibed, against the military power of the Crown had never manifested itself in any objection to the means which might be taken to raise soldiers,