Various circumstances indicate the necessity of relieving the troops at New Orleans, and substituting for them troops of African descent. This will be done as far as possible by the organization of troops already acclimated; but it may greatly facilitate that organization
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at Boston.
Assistant provost-marshals were appointed for the several congressional districts.
These appointments were made at Washington.
A board was also established to make an enrolment of all persons in the State between the ages of twenty and forty-five years. The persons thus enrolled were 164,178.
The whole number of persons drafted—that is, the persons whose names were drawn from the boxes—was 32,079.
Of these, 6,690 were held to serve; and of these only 743 joined the service, 2,325 procured substitutes, 22,343 were exempted, 3,044 failed to report, 3,623 paid commutation, which amounted in the gross to one million eighty-five thousand eight hundred dollars. The whole number of drafted men, and substitutes for drafted men, who were sent to camp at Long Island, was 3,068.
Of these, 2,720 were assigned and sent to regiments in the front, 224 were organized as a provost guard for duty at the camp.
Of the whole number, 124 deserted.
Of the drafted men or substitutes, 73 were colored, who were sent to the Fifty-fourth Regiment.
These were all who were drafted in Massachusetts up to Jan. 1, 1864; and there was in reality no adequate cause why a draft should ever have been made in Massachusetts, because the State had more than filled her quotas upon previous calls by voluntary enlistments, and, as will be seen, filled all subsequent calls without resort to a draft, and came out of the war with a surplus of 13,083 men.
The second colored regiment (Fifty-fifth) left the State July 21, embarking at Boston in transports for Morehead City, N. C., where it arrived July 25.
On the 29th, it was ordered to South Carolina, and arrived at Folly Island, in that State, Aug. 3.
There had been some question in regard to the destination of this regiment.
It was the wish of the Governor to have it sent to South Carolina, where the Fifty-fourth then was. On July 11, the Governor received from the Secretary of War this despatch:—
1868. E. P. DUtton and Co. Boston,.
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