Wages in DC for lower level federal clerks weren’t keeping up with prices. The civil servants were heading home.
From The New-York Times July 24, 1864:
NEWS FROM WASHINGTON.; HIGH PRICES AND THE CLERKS. …
Special Dispatches to the New-York Times.
WASHINGTON, Saturday, July 23.
Before the adjournment of Congress a movement was started by Government employes in Washington, to secure an increase of pay commensurate with the rapid and unprecedented advance in the cost of living. The project, though largely supported in departments, was not favorably received in Congress, and no legislation was had on the subject. Many of the lower grade clerkships are now in consequence vacant. Clerks with families, finding their salaries inadequate to their comfortable support, are leaving for their homes in different sections of the country. …
