After decades of being on the decline, conscription is making something of a comeback. Since 2012 more than 20 countries have introduced conscription policies. While debates surrounding the implementation of similar policies have taken place in many more. Although considerable scholarly attention has been paid to the causes and consequences of conscription, important questions remain unanswered. We disaggregate military manpower aqusition systems into three types--selective, unversal, and all volunterer. We contend that the type of manpower system will determine how the costs of war are distributed throughout society. Further, the way the costs are distributed will have an effect the way the war is fought and whether or not a state is victorious. To test our theory, we employ a mixed methods approach. We use orginal data to find the effect of different manpower aquisition schemes on battlefield deaths, intensity, war duration, and war outcomes. On average, states employing selective conscription fight shorter and more intense wars and are more likely to be victorious relative to states using other systems. We gain additional insight into this phenomenon through an in-depth case study of the United State's expericence during the Vietnam War using both secondary and archival sources and synthetic control for counter factual analysis.