And yet conscription has been employed by the U.S. government for the past 161 years, ever since Abraham Lincoln signed the first federal conscription act into law in March 1863, enslaving thousands of American men.

For those who are killed in battle or executed for desertion, conscription is worse than slavery because it robs them of their very lives. To this day, one of the penalties for desertion in wartime is death. At various times in history the U.S. government has shot deserters in firing squads, and it has even imprisoned or shot civilian conscription protesters.

Even if one volunteers for the military, one immediately becomes a slave to the state because it is illegal to leave. The penalties for desertion apply to both volunteer recruits and conscripts. In "Desertion During the Civil War" historian Ella Lonn writes that after the conscription law was passed, draftees were held like "veritable prisoners … so as to prevent their untimely departure." And there were many, many "untimely departures" from Lincoln's army.

Examining "The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies," Lonn documented that some 200,000 Northern men deserted from the Union army in 1862, about 14% of the entire army. More than 90,000 Northern men deserted on the eve of the Battle of Antietam, she wrote, and there were over 100,000 more deserters the rest of the year.

According to Lonn, a policy of mass execution of deserters was implemented after a Feb. 3, 1863, cabinet meeting because Gen. George Meade asked why the executions took so long. Lonn describes the execution method, which is documented in the "Official Records," as follows: "A gallows and shooting ground were provided in each corps and scarcely a Friday passed during the winter of 1863–64 that some wretched deserter did not suffer the death penalty in the Army of the Potomac."

Soldiers were forced to watch the daily executions of their friends and comrades: "The condemned men marched out between the two ranks of the regiment, preceded by the musicians, playing a funeral march. … The victim was conducted to the edge of the grave, which had already been dug. … He was seated, blindfolded, and placed upon a board at the foot of the open coffin, into which he fell backwards when the firing squad had discharged its duty." Lonn adds that deserters were sometimes hanged, although shooting was the most common execution method.