On the fifth of August, 1862, Governor Salomon received from the war department a dispatch stating that orders had been issued for a draft of three hundred thousand men to be immediately called into the service of the United States, to serve for nine months unless sooner discharged ; that if the State quota under a call made July 2, of that year, for three hundred thousand volunteers, was not filled by the fifteenth of August, the deficiency would be made up by draft ; and that the secretary of war would assign the quotas to the States and establish regulations for the draft. On the eighth of that month, the governor of the State was ordered to immediately cause an enrollment of all able-bodied citizens between eighteen and forty-five years of age, by counties.