A public
sentiment had been created which looked upon the draft as a
disgrace, and the most extraordinary efforts were made to escape it.
Extra bounties for volunteering were paid by counties and towns, and
the combination of influences was so powerful that it was successful
in most localities, and very few men were actually put in the ranks
by the draft.
The offer of extra bounties to induce volunteering brought into
existence "bounty-jumping," a new crime analogous to that of
"repeating" at elections. A man would enlist and receive the bounty,
frequently several hundred dollars, but varying somewhat in
different places and periods. He would take an early opportunity to
desert, as he had intended to do from the first. Changing his name,
he would go to some new locality and enlist again, repeating the
fraud as often as he could escape detection. The urgency to get
recruits and forward them at once to the field, and the wide country
which was open to recruiting, made the risk of punishment very
small. Occasionally one was caught, and he would of course be liable
to punishment as a deserter. The final report of the
provost-marshal-general mentions the case of a criminal in the
Albany penitentiary, New York, who confessed that he had "jumped the
bounty" thirty-two times.
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