Despite the modern image of the patriotic volunteer in the Civil War, not all men fought for the Union or the Confederacy. Between 1861 and 1865 thousands of eligible men refused to serve. Some were draft dodgers and others were conscientious objectors. Still others purchased substitutes to fight for them. There were also thousands of deserters from the armies of the North and South who tried to melt into the general population.

Eligible men who did not serve risked being perceived as cowardly or unpatriotic. In a rousing letter to Kentuckians in 1861, one writer said that it was a time when "the workshop, the office, the counting-house and the field may well be abandoned for the solemn duty that is upon us … while the noble ship pitches and rolls under the lashings of the waves … the man who, at such...