page_title: Bounty jumper
section_title: Punishment
hierarchical_section_title: Bounty jumper / Punishment
caption_attribution_description: English: Prisoners at Camp Morton, c. 1863
context_page_description: Bounty jumpers were men who enlisted in the Union or Confederate army during the American Civil War only to collect a bounty and then leave. The draft of 1863 allowed individuals to pay a bounty to someone else to fight in their place rather than be drafted. Bounty jumpers commonly enlisted numerous times in the army, collecting many bounties in the process.
context_section_description: Bounty jumping could be a capital offense. The most notable execution of bounty jumpers in the Union Army took place at Beverly Ford, Virginia on August 29, 1863. Five bounty jumpers had been recaptured after deserting from the 118th Pennsylvania "Corn Exchange" Regiment and sentenced to death. Appeals were sent all the way to President Lincoln, who decided that the desertion of bounty jumpers was becoming too severe a problem and denied the appeal. The execution of the five deserters took place with the entire V Corps (to which the 118th Pennsylvania belonged) assembled to witness the shooting. In 1864 three bounty jumpers were executed on the parade grounds of Camp Morton in Indianapolis.  At Governor's Island in early 1865, bounty jumper James Develin was executed; he had been turned in by his wife after she caught him with another woman.  Bounty jumpers were more likely to receive death sentences than those deserters who left due to homesickness, or to help the family farm, or simply as a lark against authority.  In another incident, a bounty jumper attempting to escape his captors was shot when one of them overtook him, placing the pistol directly to the back of the man's head while both were running.
  Not all punishments were capital.  When a man who bounty jumped 32 times was caught, he was sentenced to four years in prison.  The infamous Andersonville prison held hundreds of bounty jumpers.
  Bounty jumpers also faced torture.  One method to torture bounty jumpers was by use of thumbscrews.
caption: Camp Morton
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