<P> Still, men drafted could provide substitutes, and until mid-1864 could even avoid service by paying commutation money . Many eligible men pooled their money to cover the cost of any one of them drafted . Families used the substitute provision to select which member should go into the army and which would stay home . The other popular means of procuring a substitute was to pay a soldier whose period of enlistment was about to expire - the advantage of this method was that the Army could retain a trained veteran in place of a raw recruit . Of the 168,649 men procured for the Union Army through the draft, 117,986 were substitutes, leaving only 50,663 who had their personal services conscripted . There was much evasion and overt resistance to the draft, and the New York City draft riots were in direct response to the draft and were the first large - scale resistance against the draft in the United States . </P> <P> The problem of Confederate desertion was aggravated by the inequitable inclinations of conscription officers and local judges . The three conscription acts of the Confederacy exempted certain categories, most notably the planter class, and enrolling officers and local judges often practiced favoritism, sometimes accepting bribes . Attempts to effectively deal with the issue were frustrated by conflict between state and local governments on the one hand and the national government of the Confederacy . </P> <P> In 1917 the administration of President Woodrow Wilson decided to rely primarily on conscription, rather than voluntary enlistment, to raise military manpower for World War I when only 73,000 volunteers enlisted out of the initial 1 million target in the first six weeks of the war . One claimed motivation was to head off the former President, Theodore Roosevelt, who proposed to raise a volunteer division, which would upstage Wilson; however, there is no evidence that even Roosevelt had the popularity to overcome the unpopular war, and also, since Wilson had just started his second term in office the former President's prospects for substantial political gain would seem dubious . </P> <P> The Selective Service Act of 1917 was carefully drawn to remedy the defects in the Civil War system and--by allowing exemptions for dependency, essential occupations, and religious scruples--to place each man in his proper niche in a national war effort . The act established a "liability for military service of all male citizens"; authorized a selective draft of all those between 21 and 31 years of age (later from 18 to 45); and prohibited all forms of bounties, substitutions, or purchase of exemptions . Administration was entrusted to local boards composed of leading civilians in each community . These boards issued draft calls in order of numbers drawn in a national lottery and determined exemptions . </P>

When did congress authorize a draft for the vietnam war