Army Recruitment

Recruiting for the U.S. Army began in 1775 with the raising and training of the Continentals to fight in the American Revolutionary War under Article I of the U.S. Constitution. Today's Army Recruiting Command traces its organisational history to 1822, when Major General Jacob Jennings Brown, commanding general of the Army, initiated the General Recruiting Service. For much of the rest of the 19th century recruitment was left to the regimental recruiting parties, usually recruiting in their regional areas as was the practice in Europe.

Up to the commencement of the American Civil War two types of forces existed in the United States that performed their own recruiting: those for the regular Federal service, and those for the state Militia service.

Due to severe shortage of troops after the first year of the war, conscription was introduced by both the Union and the Confederacy to enable continuing of operations on a thousand-mile front. The conscription was first introduced in the South by President Jefferson Davis on the recommendation by General Robert E. Lee on 16 April 1862. The U.S. Congress enacted by comfortable majorities the Enrollment Act of 1863, also known as the Conscription Act, on 3 March after two weeks of debate. As a result, approximately 2,670,000 men were conscripted for federal and militia service by the Northern states.