The law required the enrollment of every male citizen and those immigrants (aliens) who had filed for citizenship, between 20 and 45 years of age, unless exempted by the Act.

James Barnet Fry was appointed to the position and answered directly to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.

Career "jumpers" made a living by enlisting as substitutes, collecting their compensation, deserting before their units were dispatched to the front, and repeating the process.

In addition, troops furnished by substitution were considered to be of an inferior quality in comparison to regulars and volunteers.

Commutation (paying $300 to escape the draft, roughly the equivalent of $5,000 earned by an unskilled worker in 2018[2]) was created in an effort to keep substitution prices low.

490, passed on March 3, 1865), imposed denationalization (loss of citizenship) as a penalty for draft evasion or desertion.

[4] In Afroyim v. Rusk (1967), Justice John Marshall Harlan II's dissent mentioned the Enrollment Act of 1865 as an example of a law in which citizenship could be revoked without a person's consent and that the Congress regarded as constitutional.