The Enrolment Act of April 16, 1862, established the conscription act for military service. On April 21, 1862, the Confederate Congress enacted an amendment to the Enrolment Act exempting certain class of persons. These were: Confederate or State officials, mail carriers, ferrymen on post-office routes, pilots, telegraph operators, miners, printers, ministers, college professors, teachers with twenty pupils or more, teachers of the deaf, dumb, and blind, hospital attendants, one druggist to each drug store, and superintendents and operatives in cotton and wool factories. The act was modified on Oct. 9, 1862 to include special details from the army to perform certain types of skilled labor. This was considered to be an exemption. The first details were for the manufacture of shoes but was extended to include: state militia officers, state and confederate clerks in the civil service, railway employees who were not common labor, steamboat employees, one editor and the necessary printers for each newspaper, those morally opposed to war, provided they furnished a substitute or paid $500 into the treasury, physicians, professors, and teachers who had been engaged in the profession for two years or more, government artisans, mechanics, and other employees, contractors and their employees furnishing arms and supplies to the state or the confederacy, factory owners, shoemakers, millers, tanners, blacksmiths, wagonmakers, and engineers. On every plantation where there were twenty or more negroes one white man was entitled to exemption as overseer. In mid and late 1863 amendments were added to exempt mail contractors and drivers of post coaches and it was ordered that those exempt under the "Twenty-negro" law should pay $500 into the confederate treasury and also state officials exempted by the governor might also be exempt by the Confederate authorities. The law permitting the hiring of substitutes by men liable to service was repealed on December 28, 1863, and a few days later even those who had furnished substitutes were made subject to military duty. Fleming states that, "The Enrolment Laws were necessary to make the people aware of the actual situation of the state of the war at that time. Upon the passage of the law all the loyal population liable to service made preparations to go to the front before being conscripted, which was deemed a disgrace, and at the close of 1862 saw practically all of them in the army. Those who entered after 1862 were boys and old men." He also is of the opinion that the best men were in the army and those that were left behind, mainly the malcontents and lingerers, formed the public opinion as they were the majority that had not left for military service. From them came the complaint about the favoritism toward the rich. The talk of a "rich man's war and a poor man's fight" originated with them, as the criticism of the "twenty-negro law". In the minds of the soldiers at the front there was no doubt that the slaveholder and the rich man were doing their full share. The wealthy young men volunteered, at first as privates or officers; the older men of wealth nearly all became officers, chosen by their men. Very few of the slaveholders and wealthy men tried to escape service; but when one did, he attracted more attention and called forth sterner denunciation than ten poor men in similar cases would have done. In fact few able-bodied men tried to secure exemption under the "Twenty-negro law". It would have been better for the Confederacy if more planters had stayed at home to direct the production of supplies, and the fact was recognized in 1864, when a "Fifteen-negro law" was passed by the congress and other exemptions of planters and overseers were encouraged. This was extracted from "Civil War and Reconstuction in Alabama", by Walter L. Fleming and from the ORs of the War of the Rebellion. I hope this helps. Michael Lee Busby, Ohatchee, AL MBusby3237@aol.com