The bounty system was an important part of the raising of a VOLUNTEER ARMY in the Civil War, particularly in the North. In the first year of the conflict, states, counties, private organizations, and the federal government all offered modest bounties to recruit soldiers. For example, on July 22, 1861, the U. S. Congress passed a law authorizing each volunteer to receive $100 for volunteering, in addition to the monthly soldier’s pay. In this way, patriotism was rewarded with more than parades and cheers. Bounties were also used in the CoNEEDERATE STATES Of America early in the war, but the system was discontinued due to lack of funds.
As the war progressed, mounting Northern casualties dampened the enthusiasm for voluntary military service. In July 1862, President Abraham Lincoln called for 300,000 more soldiers to be added to the Union army. When the states could not meet the quotas set for them by the government, bounties were raised, which increased the number of men in the ranks. Still, even more men were desperately needed to replenish the ranks of the Union armies, especially after the losses suffered at Fredericksburg, Virginia, in December 1862. To encourage volunteering, the federal government passed the Conscription Act of 1863.
Conscription, also known as “the draft,” was never seriously considered as the primary method to provide troops for the Union. Only 6 percent of men in both Union and Confederate armies were raised through the draft. The Conscription Act was intended only as a stimulus for volunteering. Every state was assigned a quota that it had to meet by a given time. If the state did not meet that quota through volunteers, then it had to raise the required number through a draft. Since the draft was unpopular in the North, it was in the interest of states, townships, counties, and cities to encourage volunteer enlistment to meet their quotas, and avoid the draft entirely. They did this by awarding ever-larger bounties. As in 1861, all units of government—local, state, and national—contributed money for bounties. The local government of Cook County, Illinois, spent more than $3 million on bounties. By 1864 some volunteers were receiving $1,000 for their enlistment.
The bounty system played an integral role in mobilizing Northern men for duty from 1863 onward. There were, however, negative repercussions to the late-war bounties. Some men took advantage of the system by enlisting, receiving their bounty, then deserting the army at the first opportunity. Many of these so-called bounty-jumpers not only got away with their crime but also reenlisted several times. Sometimes they were caught and punished, sometimes not. Another issue was that men who enlisted just for the money were often terrible soldiers and were resented by their battle-tested comrades. These negatives were balanced out, however, by the benefits of the bounty system. Most importantly, the bounty system encouraged three-year veterans to reenlist in the critical winter, spring, and summer months of 1864, when the Union army needed every experienced soldier it could muster.
See also common soldier.
Further reading: James W. Geary, We Need Men: The Union Draft in the Civil War (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1991); Emory Thomas, The Confederate Nation: 1861-1865 (New York: Harper & Row, 1979).
Boyd, Belle (1844-1900) Confederate spy Born May 9, 1844, in Martinsburg, Virginia (now West Virginia), Belle Boyd became one of the Confederacy’s most active and well-known female spies. Boyd’s success as a spy resulted, in part, from her ability to use her femininity to escape detection and punishment. Called “La Belle Rebelle” by the French press and “That Secesh Cleopatra” by unfriendly Northern reporters, Boyd was bold, brash, and beautiful.
Boyd’s parents, Mary Rebecca Glenn and Reed Boyd, both came from prominent Virginia families. She received her education at Mount Washington Female College of Baltimore, Maryland, returning home at the outbreak of the Civil War to serve as a nurse and to raise money for the Confederacy. She also organized groups of women to visit Southern troops. When a Northern soldier broke into her house and insulted her mother in 1861, Boyd shot and killed him. She escaped punishment because the shooting was seen as self-defense. Approximately a week later, Boyd began her career as a Confederate spy. To gather information, she engaged Federal soldiers in flirtatious conversations. Boyd passed on to Confederate officials any information that they revealed concerning Union movements and plans.
Generals P. G. T. Beauregard and Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson used Boyd as a courier in late 1861. She successfully carried information, supplies, and weapons across enemy lines. Her role became vital in the spring of 1862, when Boyd delivered information to Jackson as he launched an offensive in the Shenandoah Valley. For her part in the Confederate successes in this campaign, Union forces arrested Boyd on July 29, 1862, on the order of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. For the next month, they held her in Washington, D. C.’s Old Capitol Prison. In June 1863 she was again arrested, this time in her hometown of Martinsburg, and imprisoned in Washington’s Carroll Prison. After contracting typhoid, Boyd was released in December 1863 and banished to the South.
Boyd did not wait long to resume her spying activities. In early 1864 she boarded a ship for England, presumably for her health, but in reality, she was on her way to deliver Confederate dispatches. Before the mission could be carried out, however, Union forces captured Boyd’s ship, placed her under arrest, and brought her ship back to the United States. Boyd escaped from Federal custody in Boston and fled to Canada and then to England. Union officials held responsible Ens. Samuel Wylde Hardinge Jr., the officer in command of the captured ship. They court-martialed and imprisoned him. Before his case could be heard, Hardinge followed Boyd to England, where they married in 1864 and had a daughter. He died soon after. From England, Boyd published her memoirs, Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison (1865), to recruit support for the Confederacy.
After the war, Boyd pursued a stage career, first in Europe and then in the United States. She married two more times and had four more children. In the 1880s, Boyd lectured throughout the United States about her wartime activities. At the end of each speech, she stressed the importance of national unity and reunion. Boyd’s speeches proved particularly popular with Union veterans.
Belle Boyd died of a heart attack on June 11, 1900, while in Kilbourne, Wisconsin.
See also espionage; Greenhow, Rose O’Neal.
Further reading: Belle Boyd, Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison (1865; reprint, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998); Ruth Scarborough, Belle Boyd: Siren of the South (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1983).
—Lisa Tendrich Frank
Brady, Mathew B. (1823-1896) photographer Photographer and businessman Mathew Brady’s magnificent pictorial record of the Civil War has provided generations of Americans with an enduring legacy of that conflict. Born in 1823 in upstate New York, Brady began his studies with portrait artist William Page. In 1839 Page took Brady to New York City to study with Samuel F. B. Morse. Recently returned from Paris, where he had met Louis Daguerre, Morse’s enthusiasm for the new “daguerreotype” process of photography inspired Brady to learn the craft. Fascinated, Brady absorbed what he could from Morse, and soon he opened his own studio in 1844. Using aesthetic enhancements, such as makeup, lighting, costuming, and camera positions, Brady’s innovations refined the medium, and he quickly gained renown as a portrait artist. Working in a lavishly appointed gallery, Brady appealed to the rich and prominent citizens of New York, who lined up to have Brady take their likenesses.
A tireless self-promoter and entrepreneur, in 1845 Brady launched his “Illustrious Americans” project, photographing 24 of the most prominent American citizens of his day. Published in 1850, the book created a sensation in England, where Brady was awarded a medal for his artistic excellence. His prestige and success attracted other photographers to work at Brady’s studio. Among them was Alexander Gardner, who introduced Brady to the new “wet plate” process. This method took photography beyond daguerreotype’s single-use copper plate and allowed for the production of an unlimited number of positive prints from a fixed negative image on a glass plate, expanding the potential of the craft.
By 1860 Brady had reached the height of his artistic and commercial fame. During a campaign stopover in New York City that year, presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln visited Brady’s gallery. Brady produced a flattering photograph that Lincoln claimed helped him win the election. Lincoln would sit for Brady several more times.
When the Civil War began, Brady set out to document the war with photographs. He was convinced that he would reap large profits from such a venture and, at the same time, contribute to history. Brady put all his money into the business, purchasing expensive equipment and hiring many assistants. Brady himself photographed the First Battle of Bull Run, saying “A spirit in my feet said ‘go’ and I went.” Brady pioneered the idea of a professional force of field photographers going out into the battlefield and into the camps, recording the war in all of its many features. Mathew Brady’s haunting series of pictures of the Gettysburg battlefield and town are among his finest efforts.
Brady’s primary role, however, was not in the field but consisted of managing the huge project from his Washington, D. C., studio. Even so, many photographs attributed to Brady were actually those of his most talented assistants, such as Gardner or Timothy H. O’Sullivan. Brady’s willingness to take credit for other photographers’ work brought him harsh criticism, and many of his assistants abandoned him before the war was over. Overextended financially, Brady was broke by war’s end and tried to sell his collection of work to the government. After much pleading for a
Mathew B. Brady (Library of Congress)
Better price, he agreed to sell his negatives for $2,840. This sum was a fraction of what it cost Brady to produce the 6,176 photographs of the war. In 1875 the government paid Brady another $25,000 and gained exclusive title to his collection. Despite the infusion of funds, Brady, an alcoholic and nearly blind, was ruined. He died alone in a New York charity hospital in 1896.
Further reading: William A. Frassanito, Early Photography at Gettysburg (Gettysburg, Pa.: Thomas Publications, 1995); Web Garrison, ed., Brady’s Civil War (New York:
Lyons Press, 2000); Roy Meredith, Mr. Lincoln’s Camera Man: Mathew B. Brady (1946; reprint, New York: Dover Publications, 1974).
—Rebecca Dresser
Bragg, Braxton (1817-1876) Confederate general Braxton Bragg was one of the Confederacy’s most prominent generals. Born in Warrenton, North Carolina, on March 22, 1817, Bragg graduated fifth in the United States Military Academy at West Point class of 1837. He served in the Seminole War and the Mexican-American War and became a national hero for his action at the Battle of Buena Vista. He remained in the army until 1856, when he resigned and used his wife’s considerable wealth to build a sugar plantation in Louisiana. In March 1861, he was appointed brigadier general in the Coneed-ERATE army and assigned to command the defense of the Gulf Coast between Pensacola, Florida, and Mobile, Alabama. At the Battle oe Shiloh, Bragg commanded the Second Corps and in June 1862 took command of the Army of the Mississippi (later known as the Army of Tennessee).
While fiercely devoted to the Confederacy and an accomplished administrator, Bragg had a difficult personality. Many of his problems stemmed from a series of illnesses, including migraine headaches, dyspepsia, boils, and rheumatism. Often manifest during active campaigns, Bragg’s ailments frequently left him “sick, befuddled, and beleaguered” at moments of crisis. In addition, he failed to build cohesion among his officer corps, and he constantly quarreled with his high-ranking subordinates. These fights were especially problematic during the winter and spring following the Battle oe Murereesboro and during the siege of Chattanooga. At least one historian claims Bragg’s obsession with internal conflicts led to the disaster at Missionary Ridge on November 25, 1863. He was relieved of command December 1, 1863.
In February 1864 Jeeeerson Davis appointed Bragg military adviser to the president. He held that position until October, when he was assigned to command the Confederate defenses at the critical port city of Wilmington, North Carolina. After the city fell in February 1865, Bragg helped organize troops to resist Sherman’s advance. He was captured May 10, 1865, at Concord, Georgia. After the war, Bragg held a variety of positions in the railroad, utility, and insurance industries. He died in Galveston, Texas, on September 27, 1876.
See also Chattanooga, Battle oe.
Further reading: Grady McWhiney, Braxton Bragg and Confederate Defeat (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1991).
Breckinridge, John C. (1821-1875) U. S. vice president, U. S. senator, Confederate general,
Confederate secretary of war
John Cabell Breckinridge was a U. S. vice president and a Confederate general. Breckinridge was born near Lexington, Kentucky, on January 16, 1821, into one of that state’s most prominent political families. Carefully groomed to continue the family tradition of public service, he obtained a major’s commission in the 3rd Kentucky Regiment and briefly served in the Mexican-American War of 1846-48. Back home, Breckinridge’s drive, intellect, and family connections catapulted him into the political arena with a seat in Kentucky’s legislature, and in 1851 he won election to the U. S. House of Representatives.
In 1856, much to his surprise, the promising young politician was nominated as Democrat James Buchanan’s vice presidential candidate. He became, at age 35, the youngest man to occupy that office. Breckinridge was largely ignored by the Buchanan administration, which was increasingly preoccupied by mounting sectional tensions over slavery and secession. Though a slaveowner himself, Breckinridge felt that the institution was doomed, and he worked tirelessly to discourage secessionism among Southern “eire-eaters.” When the Democratic Party split along regional lines in 1860, he was nominated as the candidate of the Southern Democrats. They lost. Breckinridge then left the White House, and in January 1861 the Kentucky state legislature appointed him to serve in the U. S. Senate.
Five months after the Civil War commenced in April 1861, a federal court in Kentucky ordered Breckinridge arrested for treason. He then fled to the Confederacy. He received a brigadier general’s commission the following November and set about organizing the famous “Orphan Brigade” for Kentucky expatriates like himself. In this capacity, Breckinridge performed well under Gen. Albert S. Johnston at the Battle oe Shiloh of April 6-7, 1862, and he rose to major general in June 1862. In 1864 he replaced Gen. John H. Morgan as head of the Department of Southwest Virginia, becoming responsible for the defense of the fertile Shenandoah Valley. On May 15, 1864, Breckinridge defeated a larger Union force under Gen. Franz Siegel at New Market. In February 1865 President Jeeeerson Davis appointed Breckinridge as his final secretary of war, where his most significant contribution was to convince the president not to tarnish the Confederacy by resorting to guerrilla warfare.
After the fall of Richmond in April 1865, Breckinridge fled to Cuba and England, returning to Kentucky under a general amnesty in 1868. Thereafter he served as a spokesman for national reconciliation and formally denounced the infamous Ku Kiux Klan for violence against African
Americans. Breckinridge died of physical exhaustion in Lexington on May 17, 1875, at the age of 54.
Further reading: William C. Davis, Breckinridge: Statesman, Soldier, Symbol (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992); William C. Davis, Honorable Defeat: The Last Days of the Confederate Government (New York: Harcourt, 2001).
—John C. Fredriksen
World History
