BOUNTY-MONEY, REWARD, paid to men to induce them to join the Army .

Bounty Jumpers

Soldiers who enlisted in the Federal Army in the United States in 1865 to get the $1500 Bonus paid for volunteers, the more unscrupulous in the group deserted soon afterward and reenlisted from one state to another, also towns etc. under another name and collected again and
again.

2 From house to house, enrollers in the spring of '63 took the names of men and boys fit for the army. Also anyone having $300 cash, and willing to pay it as "bounty" to a substitute, was exempt and could stay at home .

Now he came to the one bitter sore spot that had raised up violence and devices of evasion, the $300 clause by which the men having that amount of money could escape military service. On this Lincoln reasoned:

"Much complaint is made of that provision of the conscription law which allows a drafted man to substitute three hundred dollars for himself; while as I believe, none is made of that provision which allows him to substitute another man for himself. Nor is the three hundred dollar provision objected to for unconstitutionality; but for inequality, for favoring the rich against the poor. The substitution of men is the provision, if any, which favors the rich to the exclusion of the poor. But this, being a provision in accordance with an old and well-known practice in the raising of armies, is not objected to. There would have been great objection if that provision had been omitted. And yet, being in, the money provision really modifies the inequality which the other introduces. It allows men to escape the service who are too poor to escape but for it.

Without the money provision, competition among the more wealthy might, and probably would, raise the price of substitutes above three hundred dollars, thus leaving the man who could raise only three hundred dollars no escape from personal service. True, by the law as it is, the man who cannot raise so much as three hundred dollars, nor obtain a personal substitute for less, cannot escape; but he can come quite as near escaping as he could if the money provision were not in the law.

"To put it another way: is an unobjectionable law which allows only the man to escape who can pay a thousand dollars made objectionable by adding a provision that anyone may escape who can pay the smaller sum of three hundred dollars? This is the exact difference at this point between the present law and all former draft laws. It is true that by this law a somewhat larger number will escape than could under a law allowing personal substitutes only; but each additional man thus escaping will be a poorer man than could have escaped by the law in the other form.

"The money provision enlarges the class of exempts from actual service simply by admitting poorer men into it. How then can the money provision be a wrong to the poor man? The inequality complained of pertains in greater degree to the substitution of men, and is really modified and lessened by the money provision.

"The inequality could only be perfectly cured by sweeping both provisions away. This, being a great innovation, would probably leave the law more distasteful than it now is. "The principle of the draft, which simply is involuntary or enforced service, is not new. It has been practiced in all ages of the world. It was well-known to the framers of our Constitution as one of the modes of raising armies, at the time they placed in that instrument the provision that "the Congress shall have power to raise and support armies." It had been used just before in establishing our independence, and it was also used under the Constitution in 1812. Wherein is the peculiar hardship now? Shall we shrink from the necessary means to maintain our free government, which our grandfathers employed to establish it, and our own fathers have already employed once to maintain it" Are we degenerate? Has the manhood of our race run out?"

The draft proceeded,. But how? Tammany, Tweed, A. Oakey Hall, Fernando Wood and his brother Ben, J.P. Morgan, the World, the Express, the Day Book, the Mercury, many scurrying politicians, examining physicians, and fixers, lawyers, did their work. Upward of $5,000,000 was appropriated by the municipality of New York for draft-evasion purposes. According to the "infallible" record which Lincoln had mentioned to Seymour, of 292,441 men whose names were drawn from the wheels 39,877 failed to report for examination. Of the remaining 252,564, for good or bad reasons 164,394 were exempted. This left 88,170 available for duty, of whom 52,288 bought exemption at $300 apiece, which yielded the Government $15,666,400. The original 292,441 names were thus cut down to 35,882 men, of whom 26,002 hired substitutes to go to war for them. This left 9,880 who lacked political pull or seemed to want to join the army and fight.

Among generals it was commented that the substitutes, bounty men, human material pressed into service by the enrolling officers, were not as good soldier stuff as the earlier recruits of the war. Its Boston correspondent reported sharp practices by substitute brokers and professional enlisters:

"Cripples have been passed off as sound, false teeth have been palmed off on credulous examining physicians as of nature's own dentistry. The other day a New Yorker, who will probably be discharged and enlist again, and who is over sixty years of age, was doctored up with rice-water bandages, paints, hair-dye, a four-dollar wig, and some stimulants, so that he could manifest the greatest agility and did not appear of thirty."

Newspapers again carried sections of classified advertising calling for substitutes. Two of twelve similar want ads in the New York Herald of October 29 read: "Three hundred and fifty dollars cash in hand paid for substitutes. $350. Call at 74 Cortland St. upstairs near West St. Barker and Spencer. $425. Substitutes wanted this day, for the country. The highest cash bounty in the city will be paid down. Call early on Captain Flanagan room 22 Tammany Hall, opposite City Hall...

Now the matter of conscription was one wherein Congress had kept to itself certain very strict powers. The President could be a dictator in enforcement of the draft law, bust as to what that law provided--whether the commutation should be $300, $500, $1,000, or whether no man could buy exemption with money--Congress held the powers and the President was no dictator at all. He was limited to advising Congress what the draft law should say. And so, Executive Document No. 97 went to Congress.

The first item in this document had the signature of Abraham Lincoln, the date of June 8, 1864, the address " To the Senate and House of Representatives," and the text: "I have the honor to submit for the consideration of Congress a letter and enclosure from the Secretary of War, with my concurrence in the recommendation therein made." The letter enclosed, signed by Stanton and addressed "To the President," recommended "a repeal of the clause in the enrollment act commonly known as the $300 clause."

Any drafted man could hire an able-bodied substitute, at a price arranged between himself and the substitute, a current market figure in the substitute market which had become wide and flourishing. Both the $300 bounty clause and the substitute clause would be struck out by the Schenck bill. To repeal the $300 clause and let the substitute clause stand would run the price of substitutes up beyond the reach of drafted men of limited means. "The truth is," said Congressman Schenck, "that so far as the $300 clause operates, it operates to the protection of men of limited means, and therefore I say that if you repeal it and go no further you leave them a right to complain that you run up substitutes in the market so as to make it impossible, for them to obtain substitutes and compel them to go.

And in place of the $300 clause which was absolutely repealed, a House and Senate conference bill, the act of July 4, 1864, provided that the President had authority to call for volunteers for one, two, or three years, the one-year men to be paid $100 bounty, the two-year men $200, the three-year men $300, each receiving the final one-third installment of his bounty on completion of service.

With the $300 clause done away with, any man drafted must either go into the army himself or pay someone else to go for him. Such a substitute had to be either an alien, a veteran of two years' service, or a boy under twenty. Hustlers in the business of finding substitutes and selling them to those who wished to buy-- hustlers came forward. "Wanted. Irishmen, Englishmen, Scotchmen, Germans, Frenchmen, to enlist as volunteers." Thus one amid columns of similar ads, paid for at regular rates, in the New York Herald.

"Who wants a one-year substitute for eight hundred dollars?" Thus another also paid for at regular rates. "Forty-one were furnished by us on Monday," ran another. "Thirty-four more are wanted at the same price, nine hundred and fifty dollars each." Only four days after the President's proclamation one New York Herald ad made the appeal: "It is clearly to the interest of every man liable to military duty to procure an alien substitute at once and save dollars, cents and worry. The price of substitutes will soon reach $1,200, because of the great bounties that will be offered by cities, towns and States."

Prices for substitutes were boosted so high that a Supervisors' Committee in New York City publicly took steps to help those who desired at a low and reasonable rate to make their purchases. By entering their names in a book and paying $335 the committee would serve them, the $300 being for the substitute, the $35 for the person bringing the substitute. In Philadelphia, the Citizens' Volunteer Substitute Committee opened an exchange, received applications from those seeking substitutes, urged aliens and veterans to enlist as substitutes, offered $650 over and above the government bounty and charged no commission nor brokerage.

Six hundred dollars cash paid for substitutes," ran one of many ads in newspapers of Cincinnati, where on August 20 prices went to $1,200 and $1,500 for substitutes.

The draft marched on. But not in the one large city most hostile to Lincoln, not where draft and race riots the year before had for three days overthrown the Government, not in New York City. Harper's Weekly put it briefly: "The War Department has credited New York City with 18,448 men enlisted in the navy from April 15, 1861, to February 24,1864. There was a surplus over the last draft of 1,137. This surplus, together amounts to 22,010. The quota of the city is 23,124, leaving a balance in favor of the Government of 1,114 men. There will therefore be no
draft in this city." In other words, if a boy from Ohio or Iowa became a gunner or seaman on a warship, the enlistment was credited to the quota of New York City if that was where he signed the papers.

"The large sums offered in some places in the competition for men have demoralized many of the people, and the most atrocious frauds connected with the system have become common. The men of some of the poorer counties have been nearly exhausted by their volunteers being credited to richer counties which paid higher bounties. Of the number of men to whom bounties have been paid, it is believed that not one-fourth have been actually placed in the ranks of the army, and even those who have joined it have probably not, on an average, received for their own use one-half of the bounty paid for them." One decision of the State supreme court had held the draft law unconstitutional. Then a changed court had reversed the decision.

When a Pennsylvania boy in a poor county enlisted as a substitute, taking the bounty paid him by a man in a rich county, the boy was credited as from the rich county. And the poor county to maintain its quota had to dig up someone else for the army.

(End of Article)