Desertion During The Civil War eBook Ella Lonn
Download As PDF : Desertion During The Civil War eBook Ella Lonn 
Desertion during the Civil War, originally published in 1928, remains the only book-length treatment of its subject. Ella Lonn examines the causes and consequences of desertion from both the Northern and Southern armies. Drawing on official war records, she notes that one in seven enlisted Union soldiers and one in nine Confederate soldiers deserted.
Lonn discusses many reasons for desertion common to both armies, among them lack of such necessities as food, clothing, and equipment; weariness and discouragement; non-commitment and resentment of coercion; and worry about loved ones at home. Some Confederate deserters turned outlaw, joining ruffian bands in the South. Peculiar to the North was the evil of bounty-jumping. Captured deserters generally were not shot or hanged because manpower was so precious. Moving beyond means of dealing with absconders, Lonn considers the effects of their action. Absenteeism from the ranks cost the North victories and prolonged the war even as the South was increasingly hurt by defections. This book makes vivid a human phenomenon produced by a tragic time.-Print ed.
“[The book is] better calculated to convey a sense of the sickening realities of the Civil War than many volumes of military history.”—American Historical Review
“An excellent piece of historical research.”—Journal of Negro History
Desertion During The Civil War eBook Ella Lonn
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Desertion During The Civil War eBook Ella Lonn Reviews
Actually far more than 1 in 7 Southern soldiers deserted. According to Jeff Davis Sept speech in Macon, 2/3 of the soldiers had already deserted or gone AWOL -- and if just half of them came back, he said, the South could not lose.
Edward Pollard, editor of Richmond newspaper all through the war, likewise mentioned massive desertions as the cause of the Southern loss. In fact Pollard wrote that the lasting shame of the Civil War, would be not the violence to spread slavery, but the massive Southern desertions. He mentioned 2/3 of Southern soldiers deserted too.
Lee claimed his army "evaporated" and General Johnson told Davis that virtually all soldiers had deserted, and those that remained, would no long fight.
Was Jeff Davis wrong? Was Lee wrong? Was Johnson wrong? Was Pollard wrong? Were they trying to make the South look bad?
So Im curious how Ms Lonn avoids these fairly well known facts. Some defend the desertions, showing that the citizens of the South were starving, because so many slaves escaped or quit obeying commands -- there was not enough food. So the men deserted, wisely I think, to feed their families.
I was prompted to read this book after having read "Cold Mountain" and having someone complain to me about the hero of that book being a deserter. How could someone write a book glorifying desertion! That got me to wondering and led me to Lonn's book. I found it very informative about many aspects of desertion, including the reasons men deserted, what happened to them if they were caught, the means the governments (both Union and Confederate) used to persuade deserters to return to their units, the bounties paid to capture deserters, and many more aspects that I had never considered, most importantly, the effect it had on the outcome of the war. She also examines the effects of desertion on the civilian population, and how the stigma of desertion became what it is today. Some chapters were a bit redundant (she covers both North and South), and the sections on the numbers who deserted and from which states, etc. bored me, but overall I would recommend it to anyone interested in the Civil War.
Despite its age, "Desertion During the Civil War" remains the standard introduction to the topic. The book's major shortcoming is touched on in William Blair's introduction to this reprint "Lonn relied primarily on the 'Official Records.' Although adequate for the time, this would be considered merely a good beginning today."
The "Official Records" are the most complete and impartial documentation of the Civil War, and the necessary foundation for any serious research. But they were never edited for accuracy, and many reports were condensed for space, and the information about the South was especially spotty in the 1920s. Modern historians are severely cautioned against relying on them without corroborating evidence.
Historians from Prof. McPherson on down have been saying for years that there needs to be a fresh study of desertion, especially in the Confederacy. But that would require a couple of people to spend the rest of their natural lives sifting through tens of thousands of provost marshals' reports and muster rolls of thousands of regiments.
So we're left with Ella Lonn. Her analysis of the "disease" takes into account both North and South, as well as mentioning the Napoleonic armies, Wellington's experience in Spain, the U.S. military before 1861, and the Franco-Prussian War.
Part of her thesis, now much-shaken by better information than was available in the 1920s, was that the South had a serious desertion problem for much of the war, and that it spiraled out of control in the last months. She wrote that the North seemed to get its own desertion problem under relative control about the same time -- largely by draconian measures.
Her conclusion is that one out of every seven men deserted from the Union Army, and one out of every nine men deserted from the Confederate army. Though the Union lost proportionately more to desertion, she feels the South suffered more because of the initial difference in manpower, and that desertion ultimately was instrumental in the South's failure to achieve independence.
Lonn concludes that Union desertions helped prolong a war that the South was losing, because the news of them gave the South hope and allowed it to cling to a dream of eventual victory long after that was practically out of reach.
Lonn seems to be writing with an eye on her own time, in the wake of World War I, which brought up a great many of the ugly things in American democracy that we think only emerged during the Cold War. She alludes to it often, and seems intent on pointing out that the horrors of war -- any war -- are more worthy of note than the characters of men who desert from armies.
DESERTION DURING THE CIVIL WAR is everything you never studied or imagined. It is a real eye opener that has been meticulously studied and prepared for readers.
Desertion has undoubtedly been a problem for every army since the beginning of time. Anyone who has spent time reading about the Civil War is aware of the fact that this problem existed for both armies. But, I never seen such an in depth discussion combined with analyses of the causes which this author provides. Typically, the large number of deserters from the Army of Northern Virginia under Gen. Lee in 1865 is offered by many apologists as contributing to the ultimate surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. While desertion had a significant impact, Gen. Lee couldn't feed his army either. The author looks at each side in the Civil War as separate entities and this is appropriate because "Johnny Reb" and "Billy Yank" did come from different backgrounds. The numbers of deserters from each side need to be viewed with some degree of skepticism, especially those from the Confederacy. A lot of Confederate Army records were destroyed, especially in the last 12 months of the war. A big surprise was the number of officers who deserted and it appears there were more from the Union Army than the Confederacy. Regrettably the author did not clarify the difference between a soldier who is AWOL and the soldier who is a deserter. This book is worth reading and should be in the possession of anyone who claims to be well informed about our Civil War.
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