tion act.* While I was satisfied that there was an injustice in the enrollment which could not be ascribed to any other cause than design, I was fully impressed not only with the fairness of all your actions, but of your sincere desire that, so far as you could control it, the conscription should be free from even a taint of wrong. I have endeavored to express this conviction in my report. It is with great regret, and I may add surprise, that I have observed the resumption of the draft in this city without regulations to make fraud impossible. I have suggested such regulations on page 24 of the report, and I have written to the President to urge the adoption of some regulations of the kind. I hope they will yet be prescribed.

I remain, respectfully and truly yours, &c.,

NELSON J. WATERBURY.

HEADQUARTERS PROVOST-MARSHAL,
SECOND CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT, SOUTHERN NEW YORK,

Numbers 26 Grand Street, Williamsburg, L. I., August 20, 1863.

Colonel JAMES B. FRY,

Provost-Marshal-General of the United States:

SIR: I have the honor to submit the following report of the plan adopted by me to secure a complete and accurate enrollment of persons liable to military duty in the Second Congressional District of New York:

Great care was taken to secure competent and faithful men as enrolling officers. In the selection of these officers recommendations were required as to their character from citizens of the highest respectability and character; next, they were required to satisfy the Board that they were capable of discharging the duties required of them. After having satisfied the Board on these points, they subscribed the oath required by law, and were then furnished with the following instructions:

First. To visit every house and every part of houses occupied by families and to ascertain and enroll every person of suitable age in the proper class, and to satisfy themselves, by inquiry of other persons living in the same house and in adjoining houses, fo the truthfulness of the information given them. By this course many evasions and omissions to give information were discovered and prevented.

Second. All factories, stores, and places of business were ordered to be visited for the purpose of ascertaining whether any persons employed therein had there their residences. If so, then they were enrolled, but strict injunctions were laid down that no persons should be enrolled except at their residences. Hency no out-of-district lists have embarrassed the enrollment in this district, and any statements of excessive enrollment predicated on that idea are erroneous. This course was decided on for the very purpose of avoiding excessive enrollment, and the fact that very few duplications of names have been discovered by the most careful scrutiny of the lists must prove to any one that the enrollment is as nearly perfect as the nature of the case will admit. By the course pursued, no names could be obtained unless procured from the persons themselves or their immediate family or their neighbors, and I respectfully submit that it is extremely improbable that the names of persons residing out of

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*See p. 640.

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