I'm the furthest thing from a Civil War expert, but my understanding of how bounties worked is that each county was assigned a quota of troops it was expected to supply, and essentially no resources for creating incentives (promises of land had been used in the Revolution and, I believe, 1812), so they resorted to bounties to induce enlistment. The bounties varied by county depending on how much they had to offer to make their quota. This is completely different from the substitution fee, by which a draftee could pay a fee (usually $300) to have a substitute serve in his place. -- Carl Johnson cjohnson@nycap.rr.com http://home.nycap.rr.com/cjohnson Researching Peck, Johnson, Cath, Goodrich, Crisalle in Franklin, Essex, and Schenectady Counties, NY