November 2, 1864---Pardon me . . .

NOVEMBER 2, 1864:       

Albert Hobbs, a New York State Assemblyman, requested and received from President Lincoln a pardon for his nephew Nathan Wilcox, whom General Grant had ordered hanged for desertion. 

In late 1864, desertion was a plague on the Confederate armies --- at one point in the ongoing Franklin-Nashville Campaign General John Bell Hood C.S.A. was leading only 4,500 effectives  in his Army of Tennessee (rated at 40,000 on paper). This was an extraordinary desertion rate; however, a number of these men quit Hood’s army to join Lee’s army or to become itinerant self-styled partisans. Then too, desertion was not an irrevocable act. Men returned to combat sometimes, after visiting their families or having a change of heart. Many of these deserters were summarily pardoned, especially given the Confederacy’s desperate manpower needs. Field officers often issued pardons, as did Jefferson Davis. Others re-enlisted under pseudonyms. Often, weather conditions and the prospect of victory or defeat had a tremendous impact on the desertion rate. At this point in the war, there was an almost constant leakage of men from the Southern ranks, a leakage which had not yet reached its flood tide.

Essentially the same conditions applied for the Union. During the war, at least 200,000 men walked off the blue line. Late in the war, men often decided for themselves that the war was won, and that they need not risk themselves any more. Some of these men had been fighting since 1861.  By 1864, ordered hangings and shootings for desertion in the Union army had become far more common, because of the available manpower pool, than in the Confederate army, but executions were often deferred or cancelled for reasons of unit morale or because pardons were routinely issued by President Lincoln, and more occasionally by his field commanders. Edwin M. Stanton, Lincoln’s waspish Secretary of War, was driven to distraction by Lincoln’s constant habit of issuing pardons. Lincoln was often derided as “weak” on army discipline. In reality, he had just grown exhausted from all the bloodletting and wanted to commit no more.  In all, only 147 men were executed for desertion by the Union during the war.