Conscription ledgers are official government recordings of soldiers that signed up for military service, who were not already in the military and it was considered a formal military draft. During the Civil War, there was both Union and Confederate conscription, which enabled the armies to supply soldiers to the battlefields and to replace soldiers who either went home or were killed. The Conscription Act, the first Confederate conscription law began in April of 1862, which required all able bodied white men between the ages of 18 and 35 liable for a three-year term of service in the PACS (the Provisional Army of the Confederate States). Men employed in certain occupations considered to be most valuable for the home front (such as a school teacher, postmaster, and telegraph operators etc.) were exempt from the draft. On October 11, 1862, the twenty-slave rule, which exempted plantation owners who owned twenty slaves or more so they could stay and run their plantations, took effect. Conscription during the Civil War did not work well as a whole, because soldiers could buy out of going to war (later abolished in 1863). This created friction with the average farmers who had to fight because they didn’t own slaves and could not afford to pay someone to take their place. In addition, if an overseer was exempted, he also had to provide the government with a certain amount (lbs.) of food per each slave owned and surplus from the plantation as partial compensation for not fighting.