1. The enclosed Massachusetts resolution of 20 April set town quotas to raise by draft or voluntary enlistment 2,000 troops, who were to serve nine months from the date of their rendezvous at Fishkill, New York. The resolve also set procedures regarding substitutes, stated that enlistments of prisoners or deserters would not count toward a town’s quota, levied fines on officers not discharging their recruiting duties and towns not filling their quotas, and forbade a former practice whereby towns deficient in their quota were allowed to hire men from towns that had filled their quotas. Finally the resolve encouraged the recruitment of up to 2,000 volunteers to serve for six months “in such manner as the Commander in Chief of the American army shall order” (Mass. Resolves description begins Resolves of the General Assembly of the State of Massachusetts-Bay, Begun and held at Boston, in the County of Suffolk, on Wednesday the twenty-eighth Day of May, (being the last Wednesday in said Month) Anno Domini, 1777; and thence continued by Adjournments to Wednesday the seventh Day of January 1778, following, and then met at Boston aforesaid, being the fifth sitting of said Assembly. [Boston, 1778]. description ends , May 1777–April 1778 [1 April–1 May 1778], 16–21). On 19 Mar., Congress had “earnestly recommended” that the states “take the most speedy and effectual measures” for raising the “quotas of men” set by a previous resolution of 26 Feb (JCC description begins Worthington Chauncey Ford et al., eds. Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789. 34 vols. Washington, D.C., 1904–37. description ends , 10:270, see also 200).