exempted by the provisions of this act, and directing the release of all persons who, between the time of the enrollment and draft, shall have arrived at the age of forty-five years.

Section 11 of the same act provided for the consolidation of the classes as provided by section 3, act of March 3, 1863, and which was accordingly done.

By Circular Numbers 8, Provost-Marshal-General's Office, March 1, 1864, the enrollment of all colored persons (slaves) held liable to military duty was ordered, and provost-marshals were directed to furnish the persons to whom the said persons owed service a list of all so enrolled, specifying name, age, and date of enrollment. This circular applied only to the then slave States of South Carolina, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, and the instructions were immediately carried out.

June 25, 1864, Circular Numbers 24, Provost-Marshal-General's Office, was issued, calling the attention of boards of enrollment tot he first section of the act above quoted, and to Circular Numbers 101, series of 1863, making the commissioner directly responsible for the correctness of the enrollment, and informing the boards that the duty of revision was continuous. Civil officers, clergymen, and prominent citizens were invited to assist the officers of this Bureau, and the importance of having a correct list of all liable to do military duty, and none others, was particularly impressed upon them.

It was not until about this time that the people became awakened to the importance of this duty to themselves and the Government, and in many localities the proper spirit began to be manifested. Boards of enrollment of widely extended and thinly populated districts were requested and directed to hold sessions at remote points to revise the enrollment sheets of those sections. Civil officers interested themselves to have the names of deserving persons stricken off and others added to the lists, and gradually the enrollment was brought to a point as near perfection as it can well be made in a population so largely "floating" as is that of the United States.

Boards of enrollment were appointed in the State of California and the Territories, and instructed to make an enrollment in accordance with the provisions of the enrollment act, and these instructions were carried out so far as practicable, but the difficulty of obtaining reliable enrolling officers at the rate of compensation offered, the great extent of country covered by the said State and Territories, the constant changing of the population, and the resistance offered in the mining districts, all combined to render the labor performed void and without effect.

The enrollment upon which quotas under the various calls were based is as follows:

Draft of July, 1863, for 20 per cent. of persons enrolled in Class I.

Quotas under call of March 14, 1864, based on 3,112,279.

Quotas under call of July 18,3,024,429.

Quotas under all of December 19, 1864, based on 2,485,475.

The enrollment as reported to this Bureau April 30, 1865, the date upon which all corrections ceased, is 2,254,063. There can be no doubt that the latter figures showed the true military strength of the United States liable to draft at that date, as both boards of enrollment and civil officers had for months been laboring in every conceivable manner to have the lists corrected. Between December 31, 1864, and April 30, 1864, 189, 124, men had been credited on the call