Civil War draft records, 1863 to 1865

The Enrollment Act and the Bureau

President Lincoln signed the Enrollment Act on March 3, 1863. The same act created the Provost Marshal General's Bureau, which enrolled men for the draft, enlisted volunteers, arrested deserters, and gathered statistics on the physical condition of recruits. Col. James B. Fry was the Provost Marshal General. The Bureau was abolished in 1866, and its records are Record Group 110 at the National Archives.

The country was divided into enrollment districts along the lines of congressional districts. Each state had an acting assistant provost marshal general, and each district had a provost marshal and a board of enrollment. Quotas were set for each district, and states offered cash bounties to volunteers to avoid a draft.

Classes, exemptions, and substitutes

Enrolled men were sorted into two classes. Class one held men from twenty to thirty-five and unmarried men from thirty-five to forty-five. Class two held all other men liable to serve. A third class for men with earlier military service was added in June 1863, and the class system ended in 1864.

The law exempted men who were mentally or physically unfit, the only son of a widow, the son of infirm parents, and a widower with dependent children. A drafted man could also pay a $300 commutation fee or hire a substitute to serve in his place, an exemption based on wealth that, the National Park Service says, caused great resentment among the poor and led to draft riots in several Northern cities. The price of a substitute could run far higher: the New York lawyer George Templeton Strong paid $1,100 for one in 1864.

The consolidated lists

The main record is the consolidated list of enrolled men, arranged by state and congressional district and by class. Each entry gives the man's name, place of residence, age as of July 1, 1863, race, occupation, marital status, and place of birth, with remarks in some cases. The lists say nothing about wives or children.

You need the congressional district before you search. For a man in a city, a city directory can give his street, and a period map can place that street in a district. Expect mistakes: John D. Rockefeller appears as John W. Rockefeller on the list for his Ohio district. Corrections were sent in on corrections to enrollment forms, which, like the lists, survive only in part.

The age column is a gift for families who know only a rough birth year, since every age was meant to be given as of the same day. Compare it with census ages and birthplaces before deciding you have the right man.

District records: why a man did not serve

The consolidated list shows that a man was enrolled, not what happened next. For that you need the records kept by his district. Nearly every district kept registers of enrolled men, lists of substitutes, and records of exemptions. Grover Cleveland, a Buffalo lawyer drafted in 1863, appears in a descriptive list of drafted men that gives his age, eye and hair color, complexion, birthplace, and the date his substitute entered the army. Strong turned up only on a list of substitutes accepted in his district.

A man rejected for health reasons would presumably appear in a medical register of enrolled men, the same article says. The Bureau's central office also kept weekly abstracts of medical exemptions and registers of deserters. The National Archives' guide lists state and district records for Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, West Virginia, and three territories.

The Confederate draft is a different record

The Confederacy began conscription first. A law of April 16, 1862 made white male citizens of the Confederate states between eighteen and thirty-five liable for three years of service. It allowed substitutes until late 1863, and a law of January 1864 required men who had hired substitutes to report for duty. Later the age range for enrollment was widened to seventeen to fifty.

Record Group 110 holds the records of the Union's Bureau. For a Southern man, start with the Confederate records in Record Group 109, the War Department Collection of Confederate Records.