Beginning after the 1863 draft call, enrollment officers went door to door in every community collecting names of men eligible for the draft. When specific calls were made by the government, the Enrollment Board drew names from that list and sent a notification to those men. When a notification was received, each man was told to report to a rendezvous to be examined. Based upon this physical examination the man was either exempted from service or told to report to be mustered into service. To understand this sample and use it to its best advantage, one must understand this mechanism and the terminology used.

Recruits, also known as Volunteers, enlisted in military service of their own volition. Draftees were conscripts compelled to duty by law and drawn from the ranks of enrolled men – that is to say, all men within a certain age range. Substitutes were sometimes hired and paid by potential draftees to serve in their place. In some instances, “Representative Recruits” substituted themselves for other potential draftees, yet were technically classified as Volunteers, not Substitutes.

Medical examiners used three different templates upon which to transcribe these data. The first template could accommodate recruits, substitutes, and draftees. The second template type dealt exclusively with draftees. The third was exclusively for recruits and substitutes. The different formats generally recorded the same variables with slight variations; for example, the first template reports “Where Born,” whereas the others report “Nativity.”

One important thing to note is that the way in which these documents were filled in varies substantially. Some documents include data for which there is no specified field, such as weight, while others leave certain fields partially or entirely blank throughout a month’s worth of data. Each form also has varying levels of specificity in how fields were filled in. For example, sometimes the Nativity field includes only the state, whereas in others it includes a city, a county, or both.

There is a major difference in terminology between voluntary soldiers (i.e. recruits and substitutes) and draftees. The Result field on each document was generally filled by one of four responses, which were assigned according to whether the potential soldier was a recruit, substitute, or draftee. Recruits and substitutes received Result field values of either “Accepted” or “Rejected”. Draftees, on the other hand, were either “Exempted” or “Not Exempted”. (Draftees, as a rule, could, and nearly always did, claim some form of medical or other exemption from service, whereas voluntary service soldiers were either accepted or rejected based upon their health.)