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CLASS OF 1881
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No sooner had Crowder joined the frontier cavalry than he began studying for the law
degree that redirected his career. Transferred to the Judge Advocate Corps, he
oversaw a thorough updating of the Articles of War and the Manual for Courts Martial.
Eventually Crowder became judge advocate general.
When war in Europe after 1914 showed that America’s reliance on volunteers would
not produce the huge numbers that modern war seemed to demand, Crowder helped draft and
implement the 1917 Selective Service Act. Reasonably equitable and administered chiefly
by civilian volunteers in local draft boards, it was conscription with a human face that
avoided the Civil War’s widespread opposition and violence. The draft registered
almost 24 million men and called about 2.8 million into service—four-fifths of the
army raised by the United States in World War I.
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