The Civil War Bounty System: Substitutes, Brokers and Bounty Jumpers

When the Volunteering Ran Dry

Barnaby, my black bear, took a squirrel on the woodpile for a recruiting sergeant this week. I had to remind him that nobody pays a bounty for eating one, and I had asked the selectmen to be sure. The war is over and the boys are coming home, those who are coming at all. Somebody ought to set down plainly how Washington, the State House at Concord, and every town meeting from here to Coos went into the business of buying men by the head like spring shoats.

Think back to the spring of '61. Sumter fell, and every young buck in the Suncook Valley fell over his own feet to sign the roll. He went for the flag, for his mother's tears, and for the girl at the Baptist social who admired a man in uniform. The government paid him thirteen dollars a month for a private's work and he thought himself rich. Nobody had to bribe him. He would have paid them.

Then came Bull Run, the Peninsula and Fredericksburg. Letters came home with black borders, and boys came home with one leg, or in a pine box packed with charcoal. By the winter of '62 the volunteering had dried up like a cow in a drought.

Three Hundred Dollars and the Town Quota

In March of 1863 Congress passed the Enrollment Act, the first federal draft this Union ever saw. Every able-bodied male citizen from twenty to forty-five went on the rolls, along with every immigrant who had sworn he meant to become one. The names went into the wheel at the provost marshal's office, and it spun like a roulette table on a Mississippi riverboat. On the riverboat, at least, a man could leave when he lost.

That is where the rot got into the timber. A drafted man could hire a substitute to go in his place, or he could pay the government three hundred dollars, which they called commutation. That was a year's wages for a man at a loom in the Pittsfield mills. The banker's son paid it out of his waistcoat and went back to his oysters, and the mill hand's son paid in blood. They called it a rich man's war and a poor man's fight, and nobody who said so was wrong. Congress was shamed into repealing commutation for most men in the summer of '64, but substitutes stayed lawful to the end, and the price of a man climbed like the price of a good molar at a dance.

Every town was given a quota. If Pittsfield could not fill hers with volunteers, the wheel would take her sons by lottery. So the towns did the Yankee thing and bought their way out. The federal government already paid three hundred and two dollars to a fresh recruit and four hundred and two to a veteran who signed on again. The state laid its share on top, and the town laid on more. By '64 a likely plowboy standing in Pittsfield town hall was worth more than the hall itself, and he had better plumbing. In some places a recruit's bounties came to more than a thousand dollars.

Brokers, Jumpers, and a Field in Virginia

Wherever a pile of money sits unwatched, a broker appears. The substitute broker would sell his mother to the Army and then collect a finder's fee from the Navy. He found some drunk off a Portsmouth wharf, or a farm boy with a sick father and a mortgage, and promised him the moon. Then he swore the poor devil in and pocketed half the bounty or more before the boy had sobered enough to count his fingers.

Worse were the bounty jumpers. A jumper enlisted under one name, took his cash, deserted at the first dark railroad siding, walked to the next county, and enlisted under another name. He was the only man in America who could serve in nine regiments without once hearing a shot fired. New Hampshire sent substitutes to her regiments by the trainload in '63 and '64, and some regiments watched them melt away by the score before they ever smelled Virginia mud.

The Army lost its patience. In August of '63, in Virginia, five substitute deserters were tied before open graves while a whole army corps stood to watch. A Concord man who stood in those ranks told me the volley went off like a barn door slamming. One of the five was not quite finished, and the provost guard had to end it at arm's length. Not one soldier ate supper that night.

The honest boys were ruined as well. A plain lad took his four hundred dollars. The broker took two hundred, the tavern took fifty, and a Washington sharper with marked cards took the rest. Meanwhile the towns borrowed, bonded and mortgaged, and our selectmen will be paying interest until Barnaby's grandchildren are grey.

The Draft Comes to My Dentist's Chair

The Army surgeon rejects a man without his front teeth, because a soldier tears open his paper cartridge with them. That news ran through Merrimack County faster than a rumor about the minister's wife. In the summer of '63 a big, hay-shouldered fellow I shall call Asa came up the turnpike from out toward Barnstead. He carried a jug and two silver dollars and wanted four front teeth gone, top and bottom.

I do not pull sound teeth. He told me he would go to the Epsom smith instead, who pulls teeth with the same tongs he shoes mules with. So, God forgive me, I did it, and I did it clean. The first upper incisor gave a wet crack like a green branch breaking under snow, and Asa spat blood into my brass basin and asked, "Is that one of them, or my whole skull?" It cost four teeth, a pint of rye, and a towel I had to burn afterward.

One month later the town voted a bounty of four hundred dollars, and Asa marched to Concord and enlisted. He had bought himself out of the draft with his teeth and then sold himself back to the Army for cash. He gummed his cartridges like a widow eating corn on the cob, came home last spring without a scratch, and still owes me the second silver dollar.

One February night in '64 Barnaby caught a jumper cutting across my land. The man wore three uniforms, one over the other: Vermont outside, Massachusetts in the middle, and our own New Hampshire next to his skin. He was bound for Maine and a fourth bounty. The bear tore away the outer trousers and then the middle pair, and left him the inner pair out of Christian charity. I sent him to the provost marshal in a blanket.

What the McAllister Shop Saw

Silas 'Hacksaw' McAllister, the third-generation coppersmith who works our foundry here at Fort Wilkins, brought me stories from his family's shop. In the fall of '64 a Manchester broker with a fine mustache ordered a great copper wash boiler and paid with five gold eagles. Silas's grandfather dropped one on the anvil face. Gold rings soft and deep, and this coin went tunk like a dropped spoon. A file on its edge raised pink under the yellow, for it was gilded copper offered to a coppersmith. Being a deacon, the grandfather did the man no violence. He nailed one coin to the shop door through the eagle's eye, where it stayed eleven years, a good deal longer than the broker stayed in New Hampshire.

In the winter of '65 a polite young man asked to have a brass cap number filed down. His gunny sack tipped over and spilled numerals from seven regiments. Asked which one he was, he answered, "Mister, I've plumb forgot," and fled without the sack. The brass became hinges for the meetinghouse door. The grandfather also kept a bounty ledger of twenty-two names given by men whose money he distrusted. The same crooked capital S appears in at least six of the signatures.

Great-uncle Ike took the town's bounty fairly in '63 and came home in '65 missing the top half of his left ear, lost at Cold Harbor. With that bounty money he bought a two-hundred-weight English anvil with a hardened face. Every pot, swan neck and thumper the McAllisters have made since was hammered on it. It is the only bounty money in the county still earning its keep.

No Bounty for the Heads

Mark the law first: making spirits for drinking without a federal permit is illegal, and what follows is history and natural philosophy. I have been arrested twice and do not recommend the county biscuits. For a corn whiskey of the old style, take about a bushel of cracked corn for every ten or twelve gallons of water and cook it until it gels, stirring so it does not scorch. Cool it to blood-warm; if it is too hot for a clean finger, it is too hot for your yeast. Add a peck of malted barley or rye, pitch the yeast, cover it loosely, and let it work four or five days until the cap falls. A still makes no spirit. It only gathers what the yeast has made.

Strip fast for low wines, then make the spirit run slow. Silas holds that the copper does its real work where the vapour rides, in the helmet, shoulder, swan neck and lyne arm, so he hammers those parts heaviest and keeps them bright. Make your joints with silver solder or a tight union, and never seal the vessel shut. The foreshots smell of a varnish shop and carry the methanol that blinds a man, so throw every drop on the ground. Run the rest into a long line of small numbered jars, let them breathe overnight, and judge each by daylight. Keep the hearts and save the oily tails for a later run. Keep sand and water near the still, and never leave a run alone. I once saw a Gilmanton still-house burn to the sills while its owner visited the necessary.

Ashes, Oak Shavings, and the Bead

Cletus 'Rabbit' Miller of Wilkesboro asks whether hickory ashes or red oak shavings in the thump keg clean out bad heads. Hardwood ash is potash, a strong alkali, and it will soften the sour acids of a soured wash. It does nothing whatever to methanol. Oak gives tannin, colour and a vanilla sort of flavour, but that is flavouring and not purification. A bad cut that has been oaked is still a bad cut, only now it wears a Sunday coat.

As for the shake test, the bead does shift with strength, but reading it is only a guess, and it tells you nothing about poison. A jar of pure poison can bead as handsomely as a debutante's necklace. Use a hydrometer, correct it for warmth, and trust honest arithmetic. Keep your copper clean, your cuts honest, and your fire low.