Here are some earlier post...
The fund was called the Commutation Fund.
I've been keeping an eye out for the last year or so for any information on the total amounts of money paid to slave owners for the enlistment of their slaves. I know of the original laws in the mid war for bounties of $100 and $300 according to type of service. Now I find a second law by Congress for an extra $300 of compensation each slave after the war. This is 1866. The states of Delware and Maryland are mentioned in this law specifically with commissioner determining claims with no more states commissioners "yet been made". Monies on hand to spend over $12,000,000!
Wait theres more!
It seems there was a political battle over these monies between Congress and the Treasury and War Departments who opposed the new law. The appropriations made to the "bounty law" were not affixed. "The Treasury variously estimateed the amount required under this bounty act at from $60,000,000 to $200,000,000 and the other objects for which no specific amounts are given at from $100,000 to $500,000. Amoug the items on the Civil Appropriation Bill is one directing the payment out of the "commutation fund" arising from the draft, which now amounts to $12,000,000, the sum of $300 for each slave who either enlisted or was drafted into the military service, to be paid to the loyal owners of slaves. As these same owners received the $100 bounty when the slaves enlisted they will be pretty well compensated for their loss. The benefits of the bill are confined to the Slave States represented in Congress since 1864. The amount necessary to make the payment will be about $10,000,000. " The Anglo-American Times, September 8, 1866.
Wait there is ever more!
According to Appleton's Annual Cyclopedia and Register of Importent Events. 1865.
Rememeber Kentucky was not allowed to participate in the above law.
"The emancipation question continued to be the most exciting topic of discussion in the State [of Kentucky], until it was finally settled by the ratification of the constitutional amendment by the number of States required to make it valid. The effect of the agitation, together with the military measures of the Government, upon the value of slave property, caused a decline from $34,179,246 in July, 1864, to about $8,350,000 in July, 1865. This was the result of the returns on the books of the tax assessors. On the other hand the friends of emancipation urged as follows:
At to the effect of emancipation in Kentucky, no argument can be so convincing as the rapid increase in the value of real estate in the State of Maryland and the District of Columbia since the abolition of slavery there.
The value of the land in Maryland has enhanced already to an extent that more than compensates for the pecuniary value of the slaves emancipated; and in the city of Washington the increase in the value of real estate and taxable property since the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, has been unparalleled and unprecedented. Nor is this prosperity merely apparent and attributable to the inflated condition of the national currency, as some are ready to charge. The gold valuation of real property in the city of Washington is now more than fifty per cent.— perhaps a hundred—greater than it was four years ago. Such also will be the effect in Kentucky. Nor is any thing to be feared from the temporary disturbance to the labor system of our State which the extinction of slaverv will effect. The laws of labor, like the laws of trade, will regulate themselves. The freed slave must have bread, and to get it he must work. He will work where his labor is most in demand and best requited, and the cost of his labor to his employer will be much less than it ever has been to his owner. The examples of the States of Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois, where negroes have long performed a large part of the unskilled labor of the city and the country, may be cited in proof of this. Negroes have never been drones upon society there, and they never will be here.
The State election was held on Angust 7th. The issue was between those who advocated the amendment of the Federal Constitution abolishing slavery, who were termed Unionists, and those opposing the amendment, who were termed Conservatives. The latter, at one of their conventions to nominate a candidate for Congress, thus expressed their views:
That no power has been delegated bv the Constitution to the Government of the United States to
emancipate the slaves of any State; that such power is, therefore, reserved to the States respectively, or the people; and that we, as Kentuckiana, claim the same right on this subject which has been heretofore exercised by the non-slavehulding States, constituting a part of the United States, and a part of our National Government and Union, and that we are now unwilling to delegate any such power to the Government or Congress of the United States, or in any manner to place it in the power of that body to prescribe the terms upon which the slaves of Kentucky shall be emancipated, and determine the social and political rights they shall enjoy. We are, therefore, decidedly opposed to the adoption and ratification of the amendment recently proposed by Congress to the Constitution of the United States, granting powers to the National Government on the subject or slaves and slavery in the United States.
That the enlistment of slaves to serve in the armies of the United States, and compelling them to serve, is the taking of private property for public use, and for which the Constitution requires that a just compensation shall be made, and we cannot perceive the justice of that policy on the part of the Government which continues the enlistment of slaves when vast armies of white men are about to be discharged; nor can we perceive the justice or the humanity of tho policy which congregates thousands of negro women and children, at different posts and camps in Kentucky, to be supported at public expense, when tho wives and children of white soldiers actively engaged in putting down the rebellion have not been in any manner provided for.
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Were slave states being bribed with slave bounties (commutation funds) in exchange for Constitution amendment ratification votes?
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Yes, the area around Fort Pillow was notorious for slaves being "freed", taken to the fort, conscripted, and their names changed. The owners would come to the fort asking for the slaves return and not being able to prove the slave his, turned away. The commutation money alloted for the slave never being given to the owner, but the books were cooked. And somebody pocketed the money.
Others, by name, were suspected of foul play with Black recruits. General Jacob H. Smith, enlisted early in the Civil War, but was disabled in Battle of Shiloh. He tried to return to duty that summer, but the wound would not heal properly, so he became a member of the Invalid Corps, serving out the remainder of the Civil War as a mustering officer/recruiter in Louisville for three years. His service record states that he was good at recruiting colored troops.
In 1869, Smith's father-in-law, Daniel Havrety claimed bankruptcy. The lawyers for the bankruptcy court noticed a tremendous enlargement of Jacob Smith's assets while in Louisville, from $4,000 in 1862 to $40,000 in 1895. Smith admitted that he was involved in a brokerage scheme using bounty money for army recruits to finance a side business and speculations in whisky, gold, and diamonds. Smith said he receipted for a package sent via Express from New Orleans to Cleveland. The package came from his father-in-law and was addressed to Smith's mother-in-law. Smith later learned the package contained $13,000.
In 1869, Smith was trying to get a temporary army judge advocate position converted into a permanent position. One of the parties in the bankruptcy case, John McClain, informed the Senate Committee on Military Affairs about Smith’s bounty brokerage scheme.
Smith wrapped himself in the flag and argued to the committee that he had been in seven engagements and had been wounded in the Battle of Shiloh, and referring to himself said: “one who took upon himself all the odium that the rebels and conservatives of Louisville, Kentucky, heaped upon him, by being the first officer, to my knowledge, who commenced mustering into service the colored man in Kentucky during the year 1863.” Smith said that he had scoured Kentucky’s prison pens, jails, and workhouses to find these men. He concluded that his only aim was to serve his God and his country properly. Smith admitted to speculating, but justified it by saying that others had made three times as much money as he had in Louisville during the war, and he had not defrauded anyone.
His military superiors did not accept this patriotic excuse. So Smith wrote a more apologetic explanation, painting himself as a gullible dupe. Everyone who could substantiate his story had either died or left the country. Smith had also conveniently destroyed or lost all of his own bank account records for that period. Smith insisted he had not cheated any of the colored recruits out of their $300 bounty money/enlistment bonus.
Military officials did not believe Smith. Smith’s temporary appointment as judge advocate was revoked by the President and it was recommended by Joseph Holt that the entire file of papers be sent to the Senate Committee. Holt mentioned by Smith’s own testimony how Smith felt it was alright to mislead and deceive military auditors. “By his conflicting statements and his unfortunate explanation, he is placed in a dilemma full of embarrassment.”
Smith would not be punished properly until he was a general in the Philippine War in 1902. During this war he had ordered his officers...
"I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better it will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States.” General Jacob H. Smith said.
Since it was a popular belief among the Americans serving in the Philippines that native males were born with bolos in their hands, Major Littleton "Tony" Waller asked "I would like to know the limit of age to respect, sir?."
"Ten years," Smith said.
"Persons of ten years and older are those designated as being capable of bearing arms?"
"Yes." Smith confirmed his instructions a second time.
As a consequence of this order, Smith became known as "Howling Wilderness Smith".
In May of that year Smith faced court-martial for his orders, being tried not for murder or other war crimes, but for "conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline". The court-martial found Smith guilty and sentenced him "to be admonished by the reviewing authority."
To ease the subsequent public outcry in America, Secretary of War Elihu Root recommended that Smith be retired. President Theodore Roosevelt accepted this recommendation, and ordered Smith's retirement from the Army, with no additional punishment.