Convict Soldiers?

[Sheltowee]

Reading about Zollicoffer's 1861 Kentucky campaign.

There is a quoted period news article, attributed to the Louisville Daily Democrat, regarding Zollicoffer's troops-

"are said to be pardoned thieves and murderers from the Nashville penitentiary….."

Of course, I strongly suspect the statement to be typical news propaganda.
But it got me to wondering.

As the south's manpower woes worsened- are there any documented accounts of prisoners being offered pardons, to enlist?
How about in the north? Any examples of companies being raised within penitentiaries?

 

[Reconstructed Rebel]

Companies raised inside penitentiaries I have not heard of yet, but criminals escaping the law by enlisting (and sometimes collecting a generous bounty as a result) appears to have been a thing.

 

[Gary Morgan]

It happened in the North, too. One of the "regulators" who supposedly served as a hangman at the execution of the Andersonville Raiders, was in prison for attempted murder (he was a soldier in the 16th Illinois Cavalry when he stabbed a railroad security guard in the chest for asking what he was doing there late at night). His CMSR has a letter from the prison superintendent recommending that he be released from prison to go rejoin the fight, and a pardon from the governor on the condition that the man went straight back into the Army. The Chicago newspaper confirms the story.

The man in question eventually became a galvanized Yankee and presented himself as an escaped prisoner at the end of the War, but then was arrested and convicted of robbing a Union prisoner who'd just gotten paid, and so he went back to prison before he could be mustered out. Another of the "regulators" was an extortionist, embezzler, alleged rapist, and went to prison after the war, and I can identify him for certain because the newspaper accounts mention that he had been with the 16th Illinois Cavalry during the War, but his name is too common to identify him for certain before that (and the name he used in the Army was an alias anyway). I strongly suspect that the "Regulators" were actually a rival gang to the Raiders at Andersonville, who took advantage of the attack on a prisoner named John Doud/Dowd by the Raiders to eliminate the competition. At any rate, they were not the lily white heroes that John McElroy (author of the first best selling Andersonville "memoir" and a POW from the 16th Illinois Cavalry) makes them out to be.

 

[Nathan Stuart]

As the south's manpower woes worsened- are there any documented accounts of prisoners being offered pardons, to enlist?

During Nov., 1864, as Sherman's invasion force approached Milledgeville, GA, state Governor Joseph Brown issued pardons to 175 prisoners of the Georgia State Penitentiary at Milledgeville, who agreed to serve in the Georgia militia. The prisoners were organized into a company called 'Roberts's Guards', under the command of Henry C. Wayne. Although the convicts generally performed well for a few days afterwards, including in a holding action at Ball's Ferry on the Oconee River south of Milledgeville, many of them deserted by the end of their first week of service.

See below link:

Georgia State Penitentiary Historical Marker

On this 20-acre square stood the first Georgia State Penitentiary. Completed in 1816, the walled compound occupied 2-1/2 acres in the center of the square. (A historical marker located in Milledgeville in Baldwin County, Georgia.)

www.hmdb.org