Meanwhile, at times when desertion was especially likely, both armies took steps to try and stop soldiers from leaving. Some officers would resort to frequent roll calls, as many as three or four an hour. Another common strategy, especially in the Rebel army, was to distribute extra rations. When possible, Northern and Southern leaders would grant their soldiers furloughs, which in most cases guaranteed their return.
At the same time that Union and Confederate leaderships were struggling to combat desertion in their own ranks, they were making every effort to convince enemy soldiers to desert. The Confederacy offered Union deserters sanctuary in the South, jobs, and sometimes land. The Northern government offered even more generous terms. Confederate deserters were given amnesty, payment for any equipment they brought with them, and free transportation back to their homes if it was in an area under Union control. Those who could not return home, or did not wish to do so, were given jobs in the North or allowed to serve in the U. S. Army on the western frontier.
It is difficult to say how many soldiers deserted over the course of the war. The official estimates by the two sides place the number at 200,000 for the North and 104,000 for the South. These numbers, however, are not especially trustworthy. Many men killed in action were classified as deserters because their bodies were never identified. Other men were incorrectly identified as deserters because they were temporarily separated from their units, either deliberately or inadvertently. Also, toward the end of the war, Northern authorities began to classify lesser offenses, such as dereliction of duty, as desertion. After January 1865, so many men were fleeing the Confederate ranks that Southern officials stopped bothering to count them.
Indeed, Southerners in particular became quite nonchalant about deserters by the end of the war. In 1865 Gen. John S. Preston, commissioner of the Confederate Bureau of Conscription, commented that “so common is the crime, it has in popular estimation lost the stigma which justly pertains to it.” To an extent, a relaxed attitude toward desertion has filtered down to the present. Since the Civil War, only one American soldier has been executed for the crime.
See also bounty system; conscription.
Further reading: Ella Lonn, Desertion during the Civil War (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998); Mark A. Weitz, A Higher Duty: Desertion among Georgia Troops during the Civil War (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000); Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978).
Dickinson, Anna E. (1842-1932) abolitionist, orator, feminist
An abolitionist and feminist, Anna Elizabeth Dickinson was one of the nation’s best-known female speakers of the 19th century. She was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on October 28, 1842. Her father was a successful merchant, and both parents were Quakers and ardent abolitionists. Dickinson, after passing through numerous Friends educational institutes, determined to carry on her parents’ work.
Dickinson’s public career began in 1856, when at the age of 14 she wrote an articulate essay for William Lloyd Garrison’s abolitionist newspaper The Liberator. Four years later she addressed the Pennsylvania Anti-slavery Society Convention, and the following year she delivered a fiery speech at Clarkson Hall, entitled “The Rights and Wrongs of Women,” that gained her considerable renown. A vigorous lecturer, she gained and held audience attention through natural eloquence, acerbic wit, and oftentimes outrageous statements. Her incendiary demeanor on the podium, highly unusual for a woman of this period, earned her the nickname “America’s Joan of Arc.”
Dickinson was in much demand as a public speaker, and she lost her regular job at the U. S. Mint after roundly criticizing Gen. George B. McClellan in 1861. Thereafter she became a fixture at most antislavery gatherings, where she was a frequent speaker, along with noted abolitionist Frederick Douglass. On December 16, 1864, Dickinson made history by becoming the first woman to address the U. S. House of Representatives. In this historic speech she lauded Radical Republicans and castigated President Abraham Lincoln for being too conciliatory toward the South.
After the Civil War Dickinson continued lecturing on women’s rights and civil rights, becoming the nation’s highest-paid female speaker. Her fortunes turned in 1872, however, when she broke with the Republicans to support the candidacy of Horace Greeley. She lost a large part of her following and thereafter met with indifferent success as an actress, a dramatist, and a novelist. Declining mental and physical health resulted in her detention at the State Hospital for the Insane in Danville, Pennsylvania. She successfully sued to gain her release. Dickinson spent the rest of her long life with friends in Goshen, New York, where she lived in obscurity and died on October 22, 1932.
See also abolition; women’s status and rights.
Further reading: J. Matthew Gallman, America's Joan of Arc: The Life of Anna Elizabeth Dickinson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
World History
