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Article: Volunteer Army
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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VOLUNTEER ARMY
VOLUNTEER ARMY.
Use of volunteers for military service was popular throughout the first hundred years of U.S. history. Volunteers fought in the American Revolution, the Indian wars of the late 1700s, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, on both sides of the Civil War, and in the Spanish-American War. Permanent state militia units tended to put military training on a volunteer basis, and until World War I, individuals volunteered for national military service through the state quota system in state units.
With the passage of the Selective Service Act of 1917, volunteer forces began to diminish. Passage of the National Defense Act of 1920 rendered all state ...