How and why tens of thousands of Northern men said "no" to Lincoln’s military invasion of his own country in the name of "national unity" is told in chapter and verse. Some men "deliberately enlisted in the Union forces in order to be carried South on to Confederate soil in order more easily to cross the lines and join the Confederates." In the border states about half of the men in the U.S. Army deserted. Many took advantage of sick leave and furloughs to leave the army for good. An entire Pennsylvania regiment simply refused to go to West Virginia when ordered. After being coerced onto a train, over 100 of them jumped off. Many Northern men refused to cross their state lines, seeing it as a violation of their enlistment agreements, and eventually deserted.
There were thousands of "bounty jumpers" who, because of "the large and numerous bounties given to volunteers," were induced "to desert for the purpose of reenlisting, or to enlist when the recruit knew that he had no intention of remaining in the field." Many of the bounty jumpers were from "the large Eastern cities" where many of the men in the Union Army were "raked in" by the Lincoln regime despite the fact that they were "criminals, bullies, pickpockets, and vagrants." A great many of them "enlisted under fictitious names, such as Abe Lincoln, Johhny Boker, or Jim Crow."
There were also secret organizations in the Northern states that discouraged enlistment (Lincolns abolition of free speech in the North required secrecy of all dissenters to the war). "The existence of disloyal organizations through the North is notorious," wrote Professor Lonn. The massive desertions by Union solders were "disgusting to the rebels themselves," wrote one Union soldier.
Although General McClellan had 180,000 men on his official roster prior to the Battle of Antietam (a.k.a., Sharpsburg), he had no more than 90,000 during the battle itself, Professor Lonn remarks. General Sherman reported 70,000 men missing during the Battle of Shiloh.
In June of 1862 General Buell reported from Tennessee that 14,000 officers and soldiers were "absent" from his command. When General Hooker took command of the Army of the Potomac in January of 1863, "desertions were occurring at the rate of several hundred a day." About 25 percent of his army was "absent" according to the Official Records. There was still massive desertion taking place as late as the spring of 1865.
"Tender-hearted" Lincoln oversaw a government in which "executions [of deserters] were taking place almost daily in the Army of the Potomac." General Halleck complained to Lincoln that "hundreds of officers were almost continually absent from their commands" and that about 200 more were absent without leave every month.
According to the Official Records there were 100,000 deserters from the Union Army in 1862 alone. When General Hooker took control of the army he found that 2,923 commissioned officers were missing along with 82,188 non-commissioned officers and privates. General Halleck computed that one-third of the entire army was "absent." The largest numbers of deserters were from New York, followed by Pennsylvania, Ohio and New Jersey.
Among the methods used by Union soldiers to desert were: taking advantage of the confusion of battle; purposeful capture by the Confederates; escaping while on the march; jumping from trains; riding off on their cavalry horses; deserting the picket line; hiding in suttler’s wagons; pretending to be teamsters; and posing as telegraph repairmen.
Yeah, sure. That was par for the course for Dishonest Abe.
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