Foreign enlistment in the American Civil War

• 1. Introduction

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  Foreign enlistment in the American Civil War pulled men from dozens of countries into a conflict whose outcome mattered well beyond American borders. A German volunteer captured the stakes in a private letter to his mother. 'It isn't a war where two powers fight to win a piece of land,' he wrote. 'Instead it's about freedom or slavery, and you can well imagine, dear mother, I support the cause of freedom with all my might.' He was one of hundreds of thousands of immigrants who enlisted in a war many believed would decide the future of freedom itself.

  When fighting broke out in 1861, roughly 13% of Americans were foreign-born. Nearly all lived in northern cities. Historians estimate that between a quarter and a third of the entire Union Army consisted of foreign-born soldiers. Some have argued the North could not have prevailed without them. On the Confederate side, tens of thousands of immigrants also took up arms, often out of loyalty to local communities rather than in support of slavery.

  The largest foreign contingents on either side were German, Irish, and British. The Welsh, who largely held abolitionist beliefs, sent more than 6,000 men to the Union. Others came from Canada, France, Poland, Italy, and Scandinavia. Smaller numbers enlisted from China, Mexico, Hawaii, and Native American nations. Immigrants fought for varied reasons: ideological opposition to slavery, loyalty to an adopted homeland, or economic necessity. Most reportedly served with as much distinction as any native-born soldier. Yet many also faced nativist prejudice, and the Confederacy ran propaganda campaigns claiming the Union was filling its ranks with foreign mercenaries. Who were these men, what drove them to enlist, and what shaped the armies they helped build?

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• 2. The Immigration Wave

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  Four million immigrants arrived in the United States in the four decades before the Civil War. Ireland contributed roughly one million, most fleeing famine, poverty, and colonial repression. The German states sent around 500,000, and Great Britain another 300,000. The cumulative effect on the country was dramatic. The American population stood at roughly five million at the start of the 19th century. By 1860 it had reached approximately 31 million.

  Ninety-one percent of all pre-war immigrants found themselves in Union-controlled territory after secession. Two-thirds of all Americans, about 21 million people, lived on the Union side of the conflict. This demographic concentration gave the North a decisive structural advantage before a single battle was fought.

  The upheavals of 1848 shaped the political convictions of many recent arrivals. Revolutions swept across Europe that year, challenging monarchies from France to Hungary. When those uprisings failed, many participants were forced into exile and made their way to the United States. They brought republican convictions and a deep hostility to political oppression. Many drew parallels between the enslavement of African Americans and the treatment of serfs and peasants under European aristocracies. When the Union launched its recruitment drive, one poster, written in Italian, French, Hungarian, and German, called on '250 able-bodied men' to serve their 'adopted country.' It described the recruits as 'Patriots of all nations.'

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• 3. The Forty-Eighters

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  President Lincoln appointed Franz Sigel, a German veteran of the 1848 revolutions, to the rank of major general partly as a political strategy. Sigel's name was synonymous with the ideals of the German American community, and his appointment was designed to drive recruitment. Lincoln was attentive to the diversity of the army's makeup and made conscious efforts to foster inclusivity through high-level appointments and promotions. Major recruiting efforts targeted German communities in Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Milwaukee. The largest numbers of German volunteers came from New York, Wisconsin, and Ohio.

  Sigel was part of a cohort known as the Forty-Eighters, European veterans of the 1848 revolutions who had been forced into exile after their uprisings failed. Others serving at high rank included Major General Carl Schurz, Brigadier General August Willich, Louis Blenker, Max Weber, and Alexander Schimmelfennig. Many had previously served in European armies or joined the armed uprisings of 1848, giving them military experience most American-born volunteers lacked.

  Approximately 216,000 Union soldiers were of German birth or German descent. Several regiments were composed entirely of Germans. Among them were the 52nd New York, the 9th Ohio, the 74th Pennsylvania, the 32nd Indiana (formally known as the 1st German), and the 9th Wisconsin. German units had a strong reputation for discipline and martial proficiency.

  The XI Corps shows how thoroughly German leadership shaped Union command at the operational level. In its two years of operation, all but one of its commanders were German, including both Sigel and Schurz. The Corps fought at Chancellorsville and at Gettysburg. Numerous German American soldiers from these formations received the Medal of Honor. Lincoln's attentiveness to minority communities did not stop with Germans; he made similar efforts to ensure Jewish soldiers were accommodated and appointed to leadership roles, and those efforts would soon face a serious test.

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• 4. A Regiment of Nations

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  The Irish Brigade's best-known unit was the 'Fighting 69th' New York Infantry Regiment, a formation with a reputation that preceded the war. Its ranks also included the 63rd and 88th New York Infantry and the 28th Massachusetts. The 116th Pennsylvania later joined as well. The Brigade fought in almost every major battle and campaign in the Eastern Theater. It reportedly suffered some of the highest casualty rates of any Union formation. After the war, several veterans took part in the Fenian raids against British targets in Canada.

  Brigadier General Włodzimierz Krzyżanowski recruited one of the first companies formed when the war began, made up entirely of Polish immigrants. He was a veteran of the Greater Poland uprising of 1848. The unit moved to New York City and merged with several other mostly immigrant companies. Together they formed the 58th New York Infantry Regiment, officially registered as the Polish Legion. Krzyżanowski later commanded a brigade within the XI Corps at Gettysburg and was appointed governor of Georgia after the war.

  The 79th New York Highlanders, founded in 1859, initially comprised entirely Scottish immigrants or their descendants. Soldiers wore kilts and bonnets and were accompanied by bagpipes. At the First Battle of Bull Run, they wore tartan trews of Clan Cameron in honor of their colonel. As the war continued, the regiment opened its ranks to Irish, English, and other immigrants.

  The 39th New York Infantry, known as the Garibaldi Guard after Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi, illustrated the full range of the Union's multinational composition. Led by Hungarian colonel Frederick George D'Utassy, it contained soldiers from over a dozen nationalities, including Algerians, Turks, Slavs, Swiss, and Spaniards. Communication across the Union's multinational divisions was a persistent challenge. Major General Sigel had his orders translated from German into Hungarian for his officers. Those reports came back in English. They were then translated once more into German for Sigel's review.

  In the earliest months of the war, before the Union had developed formal encryption methods, Hungarian speakers served as code talkers. They encoded and decoded telegrams containing sensitive tactical information. Most were veterans of the 1848 Hungarian uprising against Austrian rule.

  Jewish recruits formed the Union's largest religious minority, the majority of foreign-born Jews coming from German lands. They frequently faced prejudice specific to their faith. Pork was routinely served to all troops without accommodation for Jewish dietary law. The most explicit official act of anti-Jewish discrimination was General Order No. 11. Major General Ulysses S. Grant issued it on the 17th of December, 1862. It expelled all Jews from Grant's military district, citing illicit commerce attributed to 'mostly Jews and other unprincipled traders.' Lincoln countermanded the order almost immediately after learning of it. He also worked to ensure Jewish soldiers received appointments in leadership positions and chaplaincies. Leopold Karpeles, an immigrant from Bohemia, and Abraham Cohn, an immigrant from Prussia, were both awarded the Medal of Honor.

  Across the front lines, the Confederacy had assembled its own roster of immigrant soldiers. Among them was a French veteran of the Crimean War whose troops had nicknamed him 'Prince Polecat.'

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• 5. Foreigners in Gray

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  Approximately 40,000 Irish and 10,000 English-born immigrants served in Confederate ranks. Unlike most of their counterparts in the North, many foreign-born Confederate soldiers had spent the bulk of their lives in the American South. Many fought out of loyalty to their local communities rather than out of support for slavery or secession as a political cause. Social pressure played a role as well. The South faced a more severe manpower shortage than the North, and by 1863, Georgia Governor Joseph E. Brown was forcibly recruiting foreign nationals to fill Confederate ranks.

  Major General Camille Armand Jules Marie, Prince de Polignac, commanded the Confederacy's most celebrated foreign volunteer division. It drew on the various European communities settled in Louisiana. Polignac was a French aristocrat and a veteran of the Crimean War. His troops, finding his surname difficult to pronounce, called him 'Prince Polecat' with evident affection. Polignac served with distinction in the Red River Campaign, including the Confederate victory at the Battle of Mansfield.

  British political culture was broadly abolitionist, and the government maintained official neutrality. Merchants with ties to the Southern cotton trade were more sympathetic. So were those who admired the South's vaguely aristocratic social hierarchy. Confederate efforts to secure British diplomatic recognition reached a crisis in the Trent Affair, which nearly brought Britain and the United States to war. Some British subjects living in the South enlisted in Confederate service. Henry Wemyss Feilden resigned his commission in the Black Watch to become an officer in the Army of Tennessee. William Watson served as a sergeant in the 3rd Louisiana Infantry before going on to command blockade runners.

  The blockade-running trade that Watson eventually joined depended on a network of neutral ports and island harbors. The most important of these lay just off the American coast.

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• 6. Bermuda's Two Wars

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  St. George's, Bermuda served as the primary harbor through which European-produced goods moved into the Confederate South during the blockade. Cotton traveled in the reverse direction as payment. The island's commercial ties to the American South dated to the early 17th century. Bermudian merchants had both the relationships and the infrastructure to profit from the trade. Thomas Leslie Outerbridge became the most notable beneficiary, earning a fortune as a blockade runner. Confederate agents operated openly on the island. The United States consul found his mail stolen on two separate occasions and watched his consulate's flagpole cut down on the 4th of July.

  Several Bermudians, particularly from the island's coloured population, a term used there to designate anyone not entirely of European heritage, enlisted on the Union side. Most served in dedicated colored regiments alongside African American soldiers, including the 31st, the 26th, and the 6th Colored Infantry. The most notable of these volunteers was First Sergeant Robert John Simmons of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment. He had previously served in the British Army before enlisting in the Union cause. Simmons died at the Second Battle of Fort Wagner, the 54th's most famous engagement. That battle was fought outside Charleston, South Carolina. Charleston had been settled in part by Bermudians centuries earlier. It was also one of the primary destinations for the contraband that Bermuda was simultaneously shipping to the Confederacy.

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