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Rich Man's War, Poor Man's Fight: Race, Class, and Power in the Rural South during the First World War

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This was required reading for a graduate course in the history of American military affairs. Jeannette Keith's excellent study Rich Man's War, Poor Man's Fight: Race, Class, and Power in the Rural South during the First World War explained that the Wilson administration quickly realized it had to institute a draft system to quickly build a two million man army, but it also had to avoid the pitfalls of the disastrous draft used during the Civil War. Secretary of War Newton Baker, thought that one of the ways to avoid previously held hard feelings about a federal draft was to create a system made up of local draft boards, which would give the draft a more local appeal to America's communities. This is one more example of an institution invented for the Great War that lasted until the draft was abolished by the government in 1973. Although the local draft board looked good on paper and the government conscripted the soldiers it needed without a repetition of draft riots like the ones that took place in New York City during the Civil War, Keith's research proved that the system was not without its faults. The local draft boards, "Intended to be sensitively responsive to local conditions, they were also susceptible to local political pressures, and not immune to local prejudices." Keith's book examined in detail the conscription program and state mobilization policies implemented in the rural South during the Great War. What Keith found bore out Kennedy's conclusions about the problems of the local draft boards. Keith observed that many Southern rural white draft board members used "...their power to get their sons exempted from service. However, powerful white men also intervened with draft boards to obtain exemption for their black workers and tenants." Thus, this inequity in the draft system sent a disproportionate number of poor blacks and whites to war.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in American history.