![A hard-bitten Prussian recruiting officer dragoons a reluctant peasant into the service in Louis Joseph Watteau’s 1770 painting, The Unwilling Recruit.](https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/M-Draft-LEAD-4C-Feb08-760x575.jpg)
Emancipation Proclamation
To Field an Army: A Short History of the Draft
By Mike HaskewThe call of a nation on its civilian population either to create a military force or to augment a standing army is virtually as old as civilization itself. Read more