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Some men, good and true, were led to join by the offer of a sum which made them more at ease about the comfort of their families, but many joined the service from mercenary considerations only, who seized the first opportunity to desert, and turning up in another locality, enlisted again and obtained a second bounty. These men obtained the name of bounty-jumpers, and there was a host of them.
In July, 1863, the "draft" called for over four hundred additional soldiers from Lowell; less than thirty were forced into the service. These were the palmy days for the substitute brokers and bounty-jumpers. In July, 1864, the Sixth Regiment again responded, and served one hundred days. In 1865, came the close of the war and the return of the battle-scarred veterans.
Patrick Delaney, Company E, Eighty-Third Pennsylvania. A. Muir, United States Navy. Terence Sullivan, Seventy-Second New York. These names and regiments are of little consequence, however, as I believe all the rascals were professional bounty-jumpers, and did not belong to any regiment longer than they could find an opportunity to desert and join another.
Patrick Delaney, Company E, Eighty-Third Pennsylvania. A. Muir, United States Navy. Terence Sullivan, Seventy-Second New York. These names and regiments are of little consequence, however, as I believe all the rascals were professional bounty-jumpers, and did not belong to any regiment longer than they could find an opportunity to desert and join another.
The fact that a man could buy himself out of danger made some patriots call it "a rich man's war and a poor man's fight." And the further fact that substitutes generally became regular bounty-jumpers, who joined and deserted at will, over and over again, went far to increase the disgust of those who really served.
And, lastly, there were about three hundred of the most thorough paced villains that the stews and slums of New York and Baltimore could furnish bounty-jumpers, thieves, and cut-throats, who had deserted from regiment after regiment in which they had enlisted under fictitious names and who now proposed to repeat the operation. And they did repeat it.
The war did much to bring these latter into prominence. They made money when money was in the hands of every one, when bounty-jumpers were as thick as berries on the bushes, and the leading streets of the city were a blaze of light at night, from the myriads of colored lamps displayed by the pretty waiter-girl saloons and other notorious and questionable dives.
One afternoon a number of us went across to their camp, to witness a fight according to the rules of the Prize Ring, which was to come off between two professional pugilists. These were a couple of bounty-jumpers who had some little reputation in New York sporting circles, under the names of the "Staleybridge Chicken" and the "Haarlem Infant."
The strangers who were the subject of discussion, were from the counties in the Southern part of the State, and all bore the same general appearance of vagabonds, cut-throats, felons, bounty-jumpers and deserters.
But the fraudulent "bounty-jumpers" wanted nothing so little as a full investigation before the United States Courts. These cases, therefore, if they appeared in court at all, would be brought before local judges supposed to be prejudiced against the government and who would not require restitution.
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