

Bounties Produce Bounty-Jumpers
By May of 1862, Lincoln demanded more troops from Northern governors who responded that their citizens “had developed an immunity to patriotic appeals,” and some other inducement than oratory was required. This was to begin the North’s descent into the hiring of well-paid mercenaries with which to subdue the truculent American South. During the war, the US government would pay – with its fiat money greenbacks – roughly $750,000,000 in recruitment bounties for soldiers.
Bounties Produce Bounty-Jumpers
“[Northern] governors were finding that Lincoln’s threat of a draft a compelling reason to raise men. An exception, however, was found in Ohio, where blunt Governor John Brough did not face the problem of reelection in 1864. Freed from the political anxieties that weighed upon his colleagues, Brough had time to think of the costs of the recruiting program.
Under the threat of Lincoln’s draft, States, counties and townships had been giving bounties, bidding higher and higher for the lives of men, until it was possible for a potential soldier to obtain a thousand dollars for joining the army. The local communities were bankrupting themselves to avoid the draft of their citizens. The system, as Brough saw it, was destroying the confidence of the people in the government, was compounding corruption and undermining patriotism.
Brough’s solution, however, was political suicide: Let the States fill their quotas by their own drafts and let them agree to a common bounty policy. When Stanton reported to Congress that the governors asked for delays in drafting, Brough hastened to disclaim any such intention. The financial situation was bad, and recruiting had ceased: Brough wanted the draft made promptly.
But more than he wanted a draft, Brough wanted an end to the war. The bounty-bought enlistments did not produce soldiers; they only contributed bounty jumpers.”
(Lincoln and the War Governors. William B. Hesseltine. Alfred A. Knopf, 1955. Pp. 349-350)