Review - "High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac: Reclaiming Their Honor" by Edwin Rutan

[High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac: Reclaiming Their Honor by Edwin P. Rutan II (Kent State University Press, 2024). Softcover, 7 maps, 32 tables, photos, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xii,211/317. ISBN:978-1-60635-486-5. $39.95]

Mistrust, even outright disdain, forced upon fresh replacements by grizzled army veterans has probably been around as long as war itself, and during the Civil War strong tensions certainly emerged between the Union volunteers of 1861-62 and the new regiments and later enlisting volunteers of 1863-64. Though the depth of hostility held by the former against the latter has perhaps been exaggerated, it was nonetheless a very real phenomenon. Beginning during the war itself, further ingrained through the pages of contemporary memoirs and veteran-authored articles and unit histories, and commonly accepted by trained historians ever since, the idea that late-war volunteers of the Army of the Potomac were less patriotic, overwhelmingly motivated by monetary gain, and poor fighters in the field has gained widespread and lasting traction. But are those profoundly negative views and historical interpretations actually supported by the evidence? Edwin Rutan's High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac: Reclaiming Their Honor reexamines those questions and more.

Rutan begins his study with a fine background overview of the evolution of economic incentives involved in Union Army recruitment. Though enlistment bounties offered by local, state, and federal governments reached $1,000 or more by the late-war period, it is correctly pointed out that economic inducements of varying kinds played a factor in recruitment from the very beginning, and direct bounties were around since 1862. In the end, the degree to which financial considerations drove enlistment choices remains, of course, up for debate. Perhaps more powerfully than anywhere else in the literature, William Marvel's Mr. Lincoln Goes to War (2006) and especially his Lincoln's Mercenaries (2018) persuasively argue that economic concerns have been greatly undervalued in the scholarship's attempts to explain what was behind early-war Union enlistment fervor. Rutan agrees and finds similar conclusions to be made, albeit reaching them from a different angle than that employed by Marvel.

Clearly, late-war enlistees were far more expensive to the country than their comrades of 1861-62, and Rutan is somewhat sympathetic to the notion that the largest bounties could be overly generous, but the author's assertion that the combination of high bounties with a conditional draft (the carrot and stick approach) was a societal necessity, one that productively balanced the priorities of both home and military fronts, forms a potent argument. In contrast to the Confederate South's economy, which was comprehensively wrecked over the course of the war, the North's economy boomed, and it needed to stay that way in order to close the deal during the conflict's second half. High-ranking Union officers, with the army's needs naturally foremost in their minds, urged the institution of a unconditional draft administered by the federal government. Civilian leadership recognized that such a draconian measure would be a political dead-end that additionally threatened flourishing local and state economies. With current wages several times their prewar levels, high bounties were necessary to pry workers from their jobs and incentivize late-war volunteerism enough to fill local and state draft quotas and forestall conscription on a scale disruptive to the work force. Readers are also reminded that the veteran volunteers, when reenlisting, also accepted not-insignificant economic incentives without being subjected to similar imputations against their patriotism. Broadly speaking, bounties represented cooperation at all levels of government toward a common goal, filling the ranks and defeating a faded yet still highly dangerous national enemy. With the alternative being divisive dictatorial measures handed down from Washington, high bounties undoubtedly assisted the war effort by helping secure continued broad-based home front support for the war. In the big picture, the benefits more than made up for the costs involved, and the negative fall out from desertion and bounty jumping proved manageable. Rutan's framing of high bounties in these ways is enlightening.

Self-gain certainly factored into the decision-making process, but a refreshingly nuanced picture of issues surrounding accusations that late-war recruits lacked patriotic motives is presented in the book. As other recent scholarship confirms, a number of factors impacted whether individuals enlisted in the army to do their part on the fighting front or stayed home and continued to contribute to the war economy. Rutan points out that contemporary evidence fully supports claims that family, work, and business obligations were socially acceptable (even desired) reasons for staying home and that local communities did not as a rule view that as being incompatible with patriotism. It should also not be forgotten that age also figured into the equation, with many late-war recruits willing enough to do their part but were simply underage up to that point.

Rutan does not gloss over the fact that the new regiments had higher rates of desertion than the old regiments, but his point that it never proved unmanageable is worthy of distinction. He also effectively reminds us that there were so many factors involved in desertion that more analytical work on the relative impact of each (including high bounties) is necessary in order to really draw sound conclusions. One interesting tidbit that emerged from Rutan's quantitative investigation is that desertion essentially ceased in late-war units once they reached the front, a quality that was not shared by old regiments restocked with large numbers of substitutes and later enlisting replacements.

Rutan's research suggests that rapid internalization of army culture (or as he puts it, the "normative influences of army life in the field") led these regiments to perform far better than their contemporary and modern critics have maintained. Indeed, as others have also noted, new units frequently offered the army a fresh injection of offensive elan, a much-needed trait that became tempered amongst many veteran units through their extensive records of high casualties, failed attacks, and past defeats. Traditional suggestions that the quality of manhood present in late-war recruits was somehow deficient in comparison to the early war volunteers are strongly disputed in the book. Recognizing that assessing soldier "quality" can be a highly nebulous process, Rutan selects a small number of quantifiable demographic traits that arguably correspond to soldier quality as felt at the time, and his number crunching reveals late-war and early-war recruits as being roughly comparable. It is also worthwhile to recall that these new late-war regiments were not entirely composed of rookies. The officers were typically experienced and it was also commonplace that a solid number of rank and file members previously served in short-time units.

In yet another body of strong writing and analysis, Rutan contests the common interpretation that the combat effectiveness of late-war regiments in 1864-65 was so poor by comparison with veteran regiments that they comprised an almost worthless addition to the army. Recognizing that rating effectiveness can be as ill-defined a process as grading quality, the author employs a modern two-step process that ties mission-based performance assessment to a set of seven readiness capability factors. Rutan persuasively argues that his sample sets of new late-war regiments and old regiments with more than half of their strength being late-war replacements fought generally well during both the Overland and Petersburg campaigns of 1864. Given how much the negativity directed against late-war recruits was based upon the outcomes of particular battles, specific attention is paid to the embarrassing Union defeat at Second Reams's Station. Contrary to the overgeneralized and self-serving claims of Winfield S. Hancock and other officers and generals, the late-war regiments did not as a group perform poorly during the battle or really that much different from the old regiments. At Reams's Station both groups suffered the consequences of remarkably poor command decisions and the debilitating effects of sustained combat attrition, but it would be the late-war regiments that would be scapegoated for the shortcomings of their leaders. Finally, though one might argue that the opposition was so run down by the spring of 1865 that demonstrating effectiveness on the attack was much easier than before, Rutan does clearly determine that late-war regiments [specifically six new regiments in Hartranft's Division at Ft. Stedman and five Fifth Corps regiments at Five Forks) could get the job done during the waning moments of the war and with noticeable merit.

Sure, the examples cited in the above-mentioned chapters are selective rather than comprehensive, but it was never the author's intention to try to argue that the fighting prowess and battlefield achievements of the late-war recruits and regiments were entirely on par with their longer serving predecessors. What he does powerfully show is that, without a doubt, a great many of these units proved highly capable in the field, more than enough in number to greatly complicate the oversimplified and vastly overgeneralized negative impression of their service as presented in most of the historiography.

Every chapter in the book reveals Rutan to be a meticulous researcher, skilled parameter setter, and effective sorter and presenter of data. Much of that quantitative approach is compiled in the volume's nearly three-dozen tables. As Rutan readily admits, this particular study, which employs limited sampling scope and no corresponding attention to late-war western theater replacements and new regiments, is far from the last word on the topic. From a reader's perspective, the work strikes one as being on the strong side of representative status, but there is more to be done and the author frequently offers insightful recommendations in regard to areas needing further research.

Edwin Rutan's High-Bounty Men in the Army of the Potomac is a thoughtful, compassionate, and convincing exploration of the perceptions and realities commonly attached to the men comprising the massive body of late-war Union recruits that not only sustained the fighting strength of the Army of the Potomac during the bloody months of 1864-65 but were indispensable in finally defeating Robert E. Lee's powerfully resilient Army of Northern Virginia. Logic already suggested that the late-war infusion of nearly three quarters of a million men into the Union Army was instrumental in sustaining the momentum toward victory that was dearly bought through the blood and sacrifices of the early-war volunteers, but Rutan's truly groundbreaking study successfully confirms that uncommon assumption with strong documentary research, compelling writing, and deft quantitative analysis. As its subtitle suggests, this exceptionally fine book truly allows the late-war volunteers of the Army of the Potomac to reclaim service honors unjustifiably withheld for far too long.