<P> When the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect in January 1863, ex-slaves were energetically recruited by the states, and used to meet the state quotas . States and local communities offered higher and higher cash bonuses for white volunteers . Congress tightened the law in March 1863 . Men selected in the draft could provide substitutes or, until mid-1864, pay commutation money . Many eligibles pooled their money to cover the cost of anyone drafted . Families used the substitute provision to select which man should go into the army and which should stay home . There was much evasion and overt resistance to the draft, especially in Catholic areas . The great draft riot in New York City in July 1863 involved Irish immigrants who had been signed up as citizens to swell the vote of the city's Democratic political machine, not realizing it made them liable for the draft . Of the 168,649 men procured for the Union through the draft, 117,986 were substitutes, leaving only 50,663 who had their personal services conscripted . </P> <P> In both the North and South, the draft laws were highly unpopular . In the North, some 120,000 men evaded conscription, many of them fleeing to Canada, and another 280,000 soldiers deserted during the war . At least 100,000 Southerners deserted, or about 10 percent . In the South, many men deserted temporarily to take care of their distressed families, then returned to their units . In the North, "bounty jumpers" enlisted to get the generous bonus, deserted, then went back to a second recruiting station under a different name to sign up again for a second bonus; 141 were caught and executed . </P> <P> From a tiny frontier force in 1860, the Union and Confederate armies had grown into the "largest and most efficient armies in the world" within a few years . European observers at the time dismissed them as amateur and unprofessional, but British historian John Keegan's assessment is that each outmatched the French, Prussian and Russian armies of the time, and but for the Atlantic, would have threatened any of them with defeat . </P> <P> Perman and Taylor (2010) say that historians are of two minds on why millions of men seemed so eager to fight, suffer and die over four years: </P>

Who led the north and south in the civil war