The draft was developed to get middle and lower class Americans to fight in the Vietnam war. It was ran as a government program that called up its citizens to serve their country. People could not decline to serve, other Wise they would have been jailed. The rich avoided the draft by having their doctors write them off as having a physical condition that will interfere with training and performance.
In an attempt to expose and criticize the actions of the government against enslaved populations, Helen Hunt Jackson wrote this non-fiction book in order to create critical thinking about the problem.