Dennis --

From an accounting perspective, employer payroll accounts are carried as a liability. Only times an employee doesn't have payment due would be the day before he starts work and the day he gets his final check. That's also true of these soldiers -- money was always due when the paymaster came, and that wasn't often. The only real questions were (1) how much, and (2) who to pay in event of the soldier's death.

To encourage enlistment and keep men in service, the Confederate Congress passed several bounty and volunteer acts. In general any new volunteer or soldier enrolled for a twelve-month term who reenlisted for the war was due a fifty-dollar bounty.