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To discourage jumping, enlistment officials in Concord, New Hampshire, photographed every new recruit. |
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King's Battery |
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Formed as Missouri state guard 1861 |
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Top Ten |
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A monthly look at a new topic relating to the civil war or the reenacting hobby. |
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Acts of Dissent |
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Below are the most common and widespread acts of dissent during the war, ranked by the number or participants. Estimates are just that, as some individuals dissented for brief periods while others committed themselves to insurgence for the duration. For the most part, dissenters were neither traitors nor martyrs. Most were simply trying to keep their own principles and bodies in one piece. |
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1. Slave Insubordination—(3million) The traditional image of the obedient and contented servant dissolved soon after the war started. Infuriated owners watched as their institution quickly collapsed. The large scale slave uprising never occurred. Instead slaves resorted to less confrontational methods. Escape was the most conspicuous. The number of escape attempts multiplied by more than 120% during the war. A few slaves committed arson and theft. Owners had ways of trying to make their charges obey. Giving up the home and moving miles from the front, scary stories of Yankees sending captured slaves to Cuba or lashing them to plows. The Twenty Negro Law of 1862, passed by the Confederate Congress, exempted anyone supervising more than 20 salves from military service. This backfired on the plan and caused almost 90% of the Confederate enlisted to charge the Richmond government with favoring the rich, and morale in the ranks to sink to a new low.
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In 1864 one slave set fire to his master’s home and then ran away, a scene repeated several times during the war. This case was unique because the owner was Jefferson Davis, and the building was the Confederate White House. |
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2. Peace Movements (1million)- Accused of sedition, treason, and sabotage, most armistice advocates simply believed the war created more problems than it resolved. Called Peace Democrats in the North and Tories in the South, most called for restoration of the Union with or without settlement on slavery. Several of these groups were well organized such as the Southern Order of Heroes of America and the Northern Knights of the Golden Circle. Both sides linked the growing power of eastern banks, contractors, and government with the rising number of armless men, fatherless children, drafts, death, and taxes. The most ardent critics of the armistice lobby were the soldiers themselves. As tired of the war as anyone, men in uniform loathed the thought of endangering their lives while folks back home undermined their sacrifices.
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By 1864 Gov. Joseph E. Brown of Georgia seriously considered making a separate peace between his state and the Union government. |
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3. Desertion (320,000) - The synonym for desertion, cowardice, manifested itself more often with men who stayed in the ranks. Its estimated that 200,000 Union men and 120,000 Confederates disappeared from the ranks during the war. Fear was not the only driving factor, incompetent generals, meager rations, poor pay, harsh weather, and bad news from home drove many honest men from their ranks. Some of these men returned home to help in the field or move their families to safer areas. Others fled to “save havens” in Mexico, Canada, Pennsylvania, or beyond the Mississippi River. |
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Of the 76,000 Union deserters who were caught, almost all were returned to duty. Officially, 141 were executed. |
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4. Draft Evasion (250,000) - Out of nearly half a million men in the country, 46,000 Northerners and 180,000 Southerners were drafted into service. Many others chose to show up before their report date in search of a bonus, others hired substitutes or were exempted for professional, physical, or psychological reasons. Fraud was a popular ruse. In the South men claimed professions, illness, or injuries they did not have. In the North healthy men bribed surgeons for rejection slips, claimed they were single parents when they had no children, or in some cases, dressed as women. Concentrations of the working poor were the most resistant, fearing the loss of their jobs, for the emancipation of the very group with whom they competed for employment. |
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To fail medical examinations, several men on each side faked insanity or performed very real self mutilation. |
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5. Pacifist Movements (200,000) - Religious commitment to nonviolence was nothing new to America, from the French and Indian War through the Revolutionary War, religious sects refused to fight for a wide variety of reasons. At the start of the Civil War, both governments permitted objectors to decline military service providing each draftee send a substitute or pay hundreds of dollars in exemption fees. Some pacifist draftees served and were summarily ousted from their communities. Near the end of the war both governments permitted pacifists to serve in noncombatant roles, caring for the sick or gathering supplies. The state of North Carolina allowed pacifists to work in the salt peter mines. |
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The war’s bloodiest day transpired on pacifist land. The Dunker sect owned a humble church building outside the town of Sharpsburg, Maryland, near Antietam Creek. |
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6. Serving with the opposition (160,000)- Conflicting loyalties split communities, friendships, and families. Citizens from every Confederate state left to fight in blue. The Border States in turn gave tens of thousands to Confederate service. Maryland provided more than 20,000 men to the Southern cause as did initially neutral Kentucky. Missouri had 40,000 troops in gray, almost three times as many men as Florida. A hard blow to the folks back home were “galvanized” troops, prisoners of war who joined the opposition to secure their release. Some 6,000 Confederates switched sides as did an untold number of Union boys. An even larger loss for the South was the number of former slaves who volunteered to fight for the Union. Of the 179,000 African American soldiers who donned blue, more than 100,000 were runaway slaves. |
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The highest ranking Confederate officer was Adjutant General Samuel Cooper, a native of New Jersey. |
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7. The Split of Virginia (150,000) - Since birth Virginia had a split in its allegiance. The eastern Piedmont and tidewater regions being big in the export of cotton and import of slaves, connected well with the cotton states and Europe. The land west of the Alleghenies, however, was home to many small farmers who held little influence in Richmond, doing most of their trade in Toledo and Pittsburg. Its no surprise that as Virginia declared its allegiance to the Confederacy, western Virginia petitioned the Union for financial and military help. By autumn of 1861 Union troops pushed the Confederate Army of Virginia out of western Virginia. The citizens of this area soon established wheeling as the capitol of what they hoped would be a new state. In June 1863, fifty counties of Virginia became the newest star on the Union standard. Lincoln’s cabinet openly hoped the process would repeat itself in eastern Tennessee and elsewhere. |
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The state of West Virginia was originally to be named Kanawha. |
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8. Bounty Jumping (20,000) - The monthly pay of a citizen-soldier amounted to little. The real money came from the cash he received for volunteering, ranging from ten to fifty dollars in the South to three hundred dollars in the North. Some state and local bonuses increased this amount. These monies were often paid up front, and the desire to collect and desert was too much for most men. Officially considered deserters, bounty jumpers rarely made it to the front lines. They would jump off trains and ships after enlisting or simply walk out of camp after a few days. Several went on to reenlist under false names. Repeating the process over and over again. Small Southern bounties resulted in a small number of Southern Bounty Jumpers. However, in the North, the problem was nothing short of chronic. |
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9. Bread Riots (20,000) - Before refrigeration, springtime was known as the “starving season,” when stores of harvest were nearing depletion. General distress turned into full-fledged riots in many areas. In the spring of 1863, rioters in Georgia attacked warehouses and shops alike. Salisbury, North Carolina, saw the destruction of groceries and dry-goods stores as well as jewelry and clothing stores. April 1863 in Richmond, saw a march of over one thousand women and children destroy some 10 city blocks. |
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During the Richmond bread riot, Jefferson Davis would have ridden his horse into the crowd, but it had been stolen the previous day. |
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10. Trading with the Enemy (number unknown) - We have all heard the stories of tobacco being swapped for coffee, the truth behind the “soldier trade” goes much farther than that. Illicit deals occurred everywhere, especially in border states, however no two ports saw as much of this action as New Orleans and Memphis after they fell to Union hands. Cotton, tobacco, and sugar went north. Shoes, salt, food, medicine, stolen military equipment, cloth, and cash went south. Loyalists screamed betrayal. In reality illegal trade helped keep Northern business and Southern bodies alive. |
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The U.S. Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War estimated that $30 million worth of Union goods reached the Confederacy through Memphis alone. |