existence "bounty-jumping," a new crime analogous to that of
"repeating" at elections. A man would enlist and receive the bounty,
frequently several hundred dollars, but varying somewhat in
different places and periods. He would take an early opportunity to
desert, as he had intended to do from the first. Changing his name,
he would go to some new locality and enlist again, repeating the
fraud as often as he could escape detection. The urgency to get
recruits and forward them at once to the field, and the wide country
which was open to recruiting, made the risk of punishment very
small. Occasionally one was caught, and he would of course be liable
to punishment as a deserter. The final report of the
provost-marshal-general mentions the case of a criminal in the
Albany penitentiary, New York, who confessed that he had "jumped the
bounty" thirty-two times. [Footnote: Provost-Marshal-General's
Report, p. 153.]

Another evil incidental to the excessive stimulus of volunteering
was a political one, which threatened serious results. It deranged
the natural political balance of the country by sending the most
patriotic young men to the field, and thus giving an undue power to
the disaffected and to the opponents of the administration. This led
to the State laws for allowing the soldiers to vote wherever they
might be, their votes being certified and sent home. In its very
nature this was a makeshift and a very dubious expedient to cure the
mischief. It would not have been necessary if we had had at an early
day a system of recruiting that would have drawn more evenly from
different classes into the common service of the country.

The military officers of the department and district had nothing to
do with the enrolment and drafting, unless resistance to the
provost-marshals should make military support for these officers
necessary. We had hoped to have large camps of recruits to be
organized and instructed, but the numbers actually drafted in Ohio,
in 1863, were insignificant, for reasons already stated. Three or
four very small post garrisons were the only forces at my command,
and these were reduced to the minimum necessary to guard the prison
camps and the depots of recruiting and supply.

General Burnside had not come West with a purpose to content himself
with the retiracy of a department out of the theatre of actual war.
His department included eastern Kentucky, and afforded a base for
operations in the direction of E