in creating quite a panic among the swindlers by the investigations which he instituted, and the large number of the arrests he made. The war, however, came to an end before he succeeded in discovering a hundredth part of the rascalities that were going on, so that, practically, his investigations were of very little benefit to the government.
The rates which were paid for substitutes varied from five hundred to twenty-one hundred dollars. The parties with whom I was associated enlisted chiefly for the army, and did very little for the navy. The bulk of our profits, so fast as they were made, went to Canada or England, and some of the parties who received the money are to-day living in luxury on it.
How the Recruits Escaped.
The recruits, when they were enlisted, and when they did not escape from the recruiting stations, as hundreds of them did every day, were sent to Governor's Island. It might be supposed that once there, they would have been safe. They would have been, had the officers, commissioned and non-commissioned, been honest. The temptations for gain, however, were too great, and there was not a person in authority on the island who was not pocketing hundreds of dollars every week by conniving at the escape of recruits. I have known some of the regular professionals jump as high as sixteen bounties, walking away from Governor's Island every time they were sent there with as much ease as if there was no such thing as army regulations and martial law in existence.
The way this was managed was by the purchase of passes. In going through the boat-house, a slip of paper, with the number of passes on it, would be put in a book on the table, and on returning, the passes would be found in the same book. The money for these could either be folded in the slip, or an order on the broker's office be given to the sergeant.
One application for a substitute that was made at the office with which I was connected, was from a very prominent and very wealthy gentleman of New York, who was willing to pay as high as twenty-one hundred dollars for some one to take the place of his son, who had been drafted. This old gentle man was noted for his advocacy of the war, and for his bitterness in denouncing the South, and yet, when it came to letting his son go and do some of the fighting, his patriotism tapered down to a very fine point, and he was willing to send any
