United States Military Draft or Conscription Records

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Draft or Conscription Records

Congress passed the first military conscription act in 1863 during the Civil War, allowing President Abraham Lincoln to draft men between the ages of 20 – 45. Our nation’s second military draft law, the Selective Service Act, went into effect in 1917 and gave President Woodrow Wilson the authority to conscript men for World War I.

In 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Selective Training and Service Act, creating the country’s first peacetime draft and officially establishing the Selective Service System. The draft continued from 1948, during both peacetime and war, to 1973, when President Richard M. Nixon signed legislation officially ending the draft. The Selective Service registration requirement was later suspended in April 1975. However, in 1980, President James E. Carter resumed Selective Service registration in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Selective Service System remains in place today. See also National Archives at St. Louis - Selective Service Records

  • Arthur Vollmer. Military Obligation. the American tradition : a compilation of the enactments of compulsion from the earliest settlements of the original thirteen colonies in 1607 through the Articles of Confederation 1789. Selective Service System, 1947. FamilySearch Digital Library
  • John Whiteclaw Chambers, II, To raise an Army : the draft comes to modern America New York, New York: The Free Press, 1987 FS Library 973 M2cha

Draft Records by Conflict