Desertion - American Civil War

American Civil War

The Union Army faced large scale desertions. The total number of Union deserters far exceeded that of the South. This has been partly attributed to southern soldiers fighting a defensive war, on their own ground, rather than an offensive war of invasion, giving the southern soldiers a sense that they were defending their homeland. Through late 1863, the South had more victories than did the North, leading many northern soldiers to believe that the war was a lost cause. In three Northern states alone, desertions exceeded 86,000. New York suffered 44,913 desertions by the war's end, Pennsylvania recorded 24,050, with Ohio reporting desertions at 18,354. These are in addition to desertions faced by the other northern states. The total number of Confederate deserters is estimated to be 103,400.

Desertion was a major factor for the Confederacy in the last two years of the war. According to Weitz (2000), Confederate soldiers fought to defend their families, not a nation. He argues that a hegemonic "planter class" brought Georgia into the war with "little support from non-slaveholders" (p. 12), and the ambivalence of non-slaveholders toward secession, he maintains, was the key to understanding desertion. The privations of the home front and camp life, combined with the terror of battle, undermined the weak attachment of southern soldiers to the Confederacy. For Georgia troops, Sherman's march through their home counties triggered the most desertions.

Adoption of a localist identity caused soldiers to desert as well. When soldiers implemented a local identity, they neglected to think of themselves as Southerners fighting a Southern cause. When they replaced their Southern identity with their previous local identity, they lost their motive to fight and, therefore, deserted the army.

One example of desertion in the Civil War was Confederate soldier Arthur Muntz, who was killed by his fellow soldiers after deserting at First Manassas. In many cases, in the early years of the war, the Confederate Home Guard dealt with deserters. For a time, the Confederate government offered a bounty to be paid for the capture and return of deserters. However as the war progressively got worse for the south, often Home Guard units would deal with desertion as they saw fit, whether that be by execution or imprisonment. The lynching of Bill Sketoe, a Methodist minister from Newton, Alabama who had allegedly deserted the Southern army in late 1864, is a case in point.

In Arkansas, many units deserted completely when rumors spread that local Indians had raided towns and scalped citizens, with the soldiers feeling their place was at home rather than fighting in the war. There were also instances across the southern states where whole units deserted together, banding together and living in the mountains, at times fighting against Union Army regulars if forced to do so, but also raiding civilian farms to obtain food or supplies. Many Confederate units had signed on, initially, for a one year service, and felt completely justified in walking away when they'd reached their breaking point. By the war's end, it was estimated that the Confederacy had lost 103,400 soldiers to desertion.