United States Military Draft or Conscription Records

Online Resources

 * 1917-1918: at FamilySearch; index & images; Also at Ancestry ($), MyHeritage ($)
 * 1940-1947: US WW II Draft Cards Young Men at Ancestry - index & images ($)
 * 1942: at FamilySearch; images only
 * 1942: at FamilySearch; index & images; Also at Ancestry ($)

Draft or Conscription Records
Congress passed the first military conscription act in 1863 during the Civil War, allowing President Abraham Lincoln to draft men between the ages of 20 – 45. Our nation’s second military draft law, the Selective Service Act, went into effect in 1917 and gave President Woodrow Wilson the authority to conscript men for World War I.

In 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Selective Training and Service Act, creating the country’s first peacetime draft and officially establishing the Selective Service System. The draft continued from 1948, during both peacetime and war, to 1973, when President Richard M. Nixon signed legislation officially ending the draft. The Selective Service registration requirement was later suspended in April 1975. However, in 1980, President James E. Carter resumed Selective Service registration in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Selective Service System remains in place today.


 * Selective Service System. Induction Statistics, 1917-1973


 * Arthur Vollmer. Military Obligation. the American tradition : a compilation of the enactments of compulsion from the earliest settlements of the original thirteen colonies in 1607 through the Articles of Confederation 1789. Selective Service System, 1947. FS Library Digital Images

Draft Records by Conflict

 * Civil War, 1861 to 1865
 * World War I, 1917 to 1918
 * World War II, 1941 to 1945
 * Korean War 1950 to 1953
 * Vietnam War 1964 to 1972


 * Draft or Conscription]]