| Abstract: | This article explores public attitudes toward wartime recruitment brokers and bounty jumpers. Those who enlisted merely to reap the financial rewards of doing so and then deserted, and often repeated the process, proved a striking example of the prevalence of corruption in northern society. The exposure of this practice touched on deep‐seated public fears. Bounty jumpers displayed greed, cowardice, and a lack of patriotism, all alarming manifestations of corruption and unmanliness. Many northerners were also convinced that bounty jumpers represented either disloyal and inassimilable immigrants or a professional criminal underclass, reflecting intense fears and doubts related to the region’s explosive urbanization and modernization. |
