Bounty

“ As previously noted the distribution of bounty is now regulated by statute and proclamation. If awarded in any war it is given as head money of five pounds per man on every enemy armed vessel sunk or destroyed. [1] The sharers of bounty are much more limited than those of prize money. Thus joint or constructive captors do not share and the flag officer if not present has no claim. [2] Only those who actually take part in the conflict share in bounty. Bounty is apportioned among the officers and crew of those vessels sharing, in the same way as prize money, with the exceptions noted above. ”

“ Of store of bounty promised / might wonders great be told,
She bade on shields to carry / forth the ruddy gold,
And gave to him that wished it / or would but take her store;
In sooth a greater hire / ne'er tempted 'gainst the foe before.
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A mickle host of warriors / went forth in battle-gear.
Then quoth the valiant Volker: / "Still may ye find us here.
Ne'er saw I move to battle / warriors more fain,
That to work us evil / the bounty of the king have ta'en." ”

“ They say to another man,—you, or me, or Sam out there in the field,—'There is no bounty for you, not a cent; there is pay for you, twelve dollars a month, the hire of a servant; there is no pension for you, or your family, if you be sent back from the front, wounded or dead; if you are taken prisoner you can be murdered with impunity, or be sold as a slave, without interference on our part. Fight like a lion! do acts of courage and splendor! and you shall never rise above the rank of a private soldier. For you there is neither money nor honor, rights secured, nor fame gained. ”

“ Companies don’t pay £8 bounty for nothing. Not agents were sent to the parishes, but “sly old wolves of the North”—as one parish priest calls these demoralizers of his flock—went from village to village, gay, reckless, dare-devil veterans, old in service, young in years, clothed in all the picturesque glory of beaded buckskin, plumed hats, silk sashes, to tickle the vanity of the poor country bucks, who had never been beyond their own hamlet. ”

“ The states bidding for men against the Congress caused large numbers to desert and go home to grab the greater bounty. By 1779 the bounty had increased to $200 to any able bodied recruit who would enlist for the war. ”

“ The bankers, fearing the total bankruptcy of the Nation, had begun to refuse further loans on bonds at any rate of interest.
The bounty offered to men for reënlistment in the army when their terms expired amounted to the unheard of sum of one thousand five hundred dollars cash on signing for the new term. Bounty jumping had become the favorite sport of adventurous scoundrels. Millions of dollars were being stolen by these men without the addition of a musket to the fighting force. Grant was hanging them daily, but the traitor's work continued. ”

“ A premium offered or given to induce men to enlist into the public service; or to encourage any branch of industry, as husbandry or manufactures. Bounty jumper, one who, during the latter part of the Civil War, enlisted in the United States service, and deserted as soon as possible after receiving the bounty. ”

“ Bounty was also the name given to the money paid to induce men to enlist in the army or navy, and, in the United Kingdom, to the sum given on entering the militia reserve. During the American Civil War, many recruits joined solely for the sake of the bounty offered, and afterwards deserted ”

“ We all remember to have heard, from the lips of our parents, the narration of the fact, that in the early history of our country, the tomahawk and scalping-knife were put into the hands of our savage neighbors, by our enemies at war, and that a bounty was awarded for the depredations they committed on the lives of our defenceless fellow-citizens. ”

“ What is called a bounty is sometimes no more than a drawback, and consequently is not liable to the same objections as what is properly a bounty. The bounty, for example, upon refined sugar exported, may be considered as a drawback of the duties upon the brown and muscovado sugars, from which it is made. The bounty upon wrought silk exported, a drawback of the duties upon raw and thrown silk imported. ”

“ Recruiting went slower than cold molasses, and Washington himself is authority for the statement that men were “holding back to see what advantages could be gained, and whether or not they could extort a bounty.” Every school boy will naturally spurn the suggestion that patriots of the Revolution would put up their services at public auction. But nobody has ever written for the school boy a popular history of the bounty system. ”

“ The non-commissioned officers and privates acknowledge to have received every thing which is their due in respect to pay and clothing. One man claims a part of his bounty, which, he says, has been withheld. A regimental court martial has already decided against him, but the business shall again be investigated by a garrison court martial.
Lieut.-Colonel Murray has reported to me, that there are several men in his regiment who claim bounty, but as only one complained at the inspection, the remainder must be satisfied that he is doing his utmost to recover what is actually their due. ”

“ If, in relation to any war, His Majesty is pleased to declare, by proclamation or Order in Council, his intention to grant prize bounty to the officers and crews of his ships of war, then such of the officers and crew of any of His Majesty's ships of war as are actually present at the taking or destroying of any armed ship of any of His Majesty's enemies shall be entitled to have distributed among them as prize bounty a sum calculated at such rates and in such manner as may be specified in the proclamation or Order in Council. ”

“ We are told, that a nursery of seamen may be of great use to the nation, and the bounty proposed is a very small one. These, sir, are the reasons why I have marked this as a dangerous bill; the most dangerous innovations are made under these circumstances. To begin with a great bounty would be imprudent, and to give a small bounty for a doubtful purpose, might deserve a worse epithet. Half a million of dollars per annum would have been too much for a beginning, and perhaps a bounty on the use of sleighs, though they are convenient for travelling in winter ”

“ The history of development in the west gives overwhelming evidence of their weakness. Even when the bounty is offered for reduction of vermin, it is often misapplied. Numerous cases are on record where the bounty became a stimulant to enterprise in raising the very animals to be destroyed. Even rewards for the arrest of criminals seem sometimes to create a body of men who thrive by fostering a criminal class, with a hope of sometime getting a profit from arrests. As a means of stimulating general industry they are too unstable to be satisfactory. ”

“ Regarding the act of Congress approved 28th September, 1850, granting bounty lands to persons who had been engaged in the military service of the country, as a great measure of national justice and munificence, an anxious desire has been felt by the officers intrusted with its immediate execution to give prompt effect to its provisions. ”

“ Land or money, other than current salary or pay, granted by the government to a person entering the military or naval service of the country, has always been called a bounty; and while it is by no means a gratuity, because the promise to grant is one of the considerations for which the soldier or sailor enters the service, yet it is clearly distinguishable from salary or pay measured by the time of service. ”

“ I would not, however, be understood as intimating that this Cabinet project of invasion is impracticable, either as it respects the collection of means and instruments, or in the ultimate result. On the contrary, sir, I deem both very feasible. Men may be obtained. For if forty dollars bounty cannot obtain them, a hundred dollars bounty may, and the intention is explicitly avowed not to suffer the attainment of the desired army to be prevented by any vulgar notions of economy. Money may be obtained. ”

“ A man steals a candlestick out of a church, and goes to the State prison for a year and a day. Another quarrels with a man, maims him for life, and is sent to the common gaol for six months. A bounty is paid, or was until lately, on every gallon of intoxicating drink manufactured hero and sent out of the country. ”

“ But that term was a misnomer, unless these men proved later that they were deserving of it, for a bounty-jumper was a man—I hate to call him one—who enlisted only to get the bounty, and deserted at the earliest opportunity.
Recruits, it should be said, as a class, stood the abuse which was heaped upon them with much greater serenity of temper than they should have done, and, indeed, so anxious were they to win favor with the veterans, and to earn the right to be called and pass for old soldiers, [203] that they generally bore indignities without turning upon their assailants. ”

“ If men had stopped to think, these promises carried with them abundant proof of their own falsity. Where was the evidence of good treatment, judging of the future by the past? What did good pay and large bounties amount to when it took two hundred dollars of that good pay and large bounty to buy a pair of boots? And the good clothing, yes they could clothe them with the uniforms stripped from their dead comrades upon the battlefield or stolen from the supplies sent to the prisoners. ”

“ If the hostile force was equal or superior, then the bounty was to be double what it would be if the enemy's force was inferior, because the hazards to be run were so much the greater. But the bounty was limited in total amount by the number of persons on board the vessels of the enemy, which appears to have been considered to be a practicable restriction. ”

“ I shall therefore take the liberty of giving it as my opinion, that a good bounty be immediately offered, aided by the proffer of at least a hundred, or a hundred and fifty acres of land, and a suit of clothes, and a blanket, to each non-commissioned officer and soldier, as I have good authority for saying, that however high the men's pay may appear, it is barely sufficient, in the present scarcity and dearness of all kinds of goods, to keep them in clothes, much less to afford support to their families. ”

“ Though a Hudson’s Bay servant could not take as much as one beaver skin for himself, every man afield had as keen an interest in the total returns as the shareholders in London. This was owing to the bounty system. To encourage the servants and prevent temptations to dishonesty, the Company paid bounty on every score (20) of made beaver to captains, factors, traders, and trappers, in amounts ranging from three shillings to sixpence a score. ”

“ When he was told that he often threw away his bounty on ungrateful persons, he playfully told his advisers they were mercenary and that he saw they sold their gifts, since they expected so great a return as gratitude. ”

“ The melancholy effects which tyrannical conduct, harsh and opprobrious language, ungovernable passion, and a worrying and harassing temper, on the part of naval commanders, seldom fail to produce on the minds of those who are subject to their capricious and arbitrary command, are strongly exemplified in the cause and consequences of the mutiny in the Bounty, as described in the course of this history. ”

“ The soldier, while on the field of battle, or on his weary march, will bear in mind, that, when the time of honorable discharge at last arrives, or should he be taken away by death, then, for the benefit of his wife and minor children, he may look to the fund from these contributions for a bounty which shall be to him or to them something in the way of support. ”

“ It might be a desperately foolish thing to do, but Lafe could not hold himself from doing it—and for that matter didn't try.
Lafe and the Bounty-Jumper.
"Why, they hang men caught robbing the dead on battle-fields, don't they—specially when they're bounty-jumpers to begin with?" ”

“ The bounty money offered for a recruit during the war amounted sometimes to as much as twenty pieces of eight, a sum, burthensome indeed to the nation when paid to whole regiments, but little enough if it be considered as the price for which a man sells his liberty for life. ”

“ So far as it relates to the soldiers of the late civil war, the bounty it affords them is given thirteen years earlier than it has been furnished the soldiers of any other war, and before a large majority of its beneficiaries have advanced in age beyond the strength and vigor of the prime of life. ”

“ Chap. LXXVII.—An Act to provide for designating, surveying and granting the Military Bounty Lands. [1] Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the President of the Lands set apart for satisfying military bounty claims not exceeding six millions of acres in Michigan, Illinois and Louisiana. ”

“ On the face of this will, it is plain that the Second or South Ecclesiastical Society were the objects of the testator's bounty, in respect to this land, and that he intended this bounty to be perpetual. ”

“ The usual effect of such bounties is, to encourage rash undertakers to adventure in a business which they do not understand; and what they lose by their own negligence and ignorance, more than compensates all that they can gain by the utmost liberality of government. In 1750, by the same act which first gave the bounty of 30s. ”

“ On the other hand, should the countryman be averse to enlisting, and talk of going away, these crimps will swear that he has received a shilling or more of the bounty-money, insisting that they saw him put the money into such and such a pocket; it is in vain that the countryman denies having received it, search is made, money found, and he is compelled to submit or pay the smart. ”