Encyclopedia Virginia Desertion Confederate During the Civil War
"During both of
Robert E. Lee's invasions of the North—the
Maryland Campaign during the fall of 1862 and the
Gettysburg Campaign the following summer—the
Army of Northern Virginia suffered serious attrition from "straggling" and desertion. Lee himself estimated that a third of his force was absent at the Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862."
"
In August 1863, following defeat at Gettysburg, Confederate president
Jefferson Davis offered a full amnesty for deserters in order to replenish the army's depleted ranks. French leaves, meanwhile, were authorized on the
company level in order to help ward off longer-term desertions.
Desertions escalated substantially in the final months of the war, as Union general-in-chief
Ulysses S. Grant finally broke through Lee's
defense of
Richmond and
Petersburg, on April 2, 1865, and sent the Confederate army west in retreat. As many as several hundred men per night fled the army even before Richmond fell. On the
march toward Appomattox, thousands more also deserted—mostly Virginians and North Carolinians, whose homes were already temptingly close."