Desertion and Loyalty in the South Carolina Infantry, 1861-1865

Abstract

On May 2, 1863, Pleasant Tinsley and Middleton Patterson left the Confederate army. 1 They were some of the first men to enlist in the 16th South Carolina Volunteers and had served without incident for a year and a half. Patterson's residence is not known, but Tinsley probably began to make his way back home to Marietta, in northern Greenville District, where his mother, father, and ten siblings awaited him. Although both men would return to the regiment that autumn—after Gen. Joseph Johnston had sent a detachment of troops to scour Greenville for deserters—their departure marked the beginning of the regiment's largest wave of desertions. While most of these deserters left behind no record of their motivations, this unfortunate fact does not mean that their rationale for leaving is lost to the present-day historian. By examining the timing of absenteeism from South Carolina infantry regiments during the Civil War, I hope to illustrate the influence of nonideological factors on these soldiers.

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