deserters to be shot
The Huntington Library
All that is written on the mount of this 1863 image by Captain Andrew J. Russell, photographer for the U.S. Military Railroad, is “deserters to be shot.” The soldiers are unidentified and there is no record whether they were in fact shot. If so, they were among the unlucky small number of Union deserters—about 150—executed during the war. The Union army desertion rate was estimated at between 9% and 12%, or about 200,000 of the estimated 2 million men who served. For some, called “bounty jumpers,” it was a profitable pastime to collect bounties by serving as a paid substitute, promptly deserting and then repeating the process. The number of executions undoubtedly would have been greater except for the dozens of pardons issued by President Abraham Lincoln. He was said to have no sympathy for bounty jumpers and turncoats but was generally averse to soldiers in his own army being executed. In one 1864 case in which he issued a pardon, Lincoln wrote, “I did this, not on any merit in the case, but because I am trying to evade the butchering business lately.”
Bob Zeller is president of the nonprofit Center for Civil War Photography, which is devoted to collecting, preserving, and digitizing Civil War images.
