DK - The American Civil War

Immigrants in the Ranks

Immigrants to the United States came mainly from Ireland and Germany, and since relatively few

settled in the South, both groups rallied to the Union side. Many joined “ethnic” regiments, but

by 1863 immigrant enthusiasm for the Northern cause had begun to wane.

THE UNION TIGHTENS ITS GRIP 1863

York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, was

placed under the command of Brigadier

General Ludwig Blenker in the defenses

of Washington, D.C. Around the same

time, the Irish formed the soon-to-be-

famous Irish Brigade, under the

command of Irish nationalist Thomas

Francis Meagher, and the Irish Legion,

led by Michael Corcoran.

The majority of ethnic soldiers—

approximately 70 percent—served in

“mixed” regiments composed both of

immigrants and native-born Americans,

but the spotlight quickly fell on

the ethnic regiments

T

he U.S. census of 1860 counted

over 13 percent of the population

as foreign-born. Most of these

people lived in New England and the

Mid-Atlantic states, and nearly all the

rest in the Old Northwest. Fewer than

10 percent resided in the South, mainly

because of their inability to compete

with slave labor. New York, Philadelphia,

Boston, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago,

and Milwaukee all boasted German,

Irish, and Scandinavian-born

populations of over 33 percent.

On the eve of secession, New York

City was the third-largest German-

speaking city in the world. On many

city streets in the North storefronts

displayed signs in German, and only the

German language—or Irish Gaelic—was

spoken. In the Midwest, entire rural

communities were composed of just

Norwegians or Swedes. In the South,

immigrants rarely ventured beyond the

largest towns. New Orleans, Richmond,

and Charleston all had sizeable German

and Irish communities, but none

exceeded 25 percent of the population.

Proving their worth

When the war came, ethnic Americans

rallied behind their respective causes

like “native-born” Anglo-Americans.

But they did not enlist simply to

protect the flag, the Constitution, or

hearth and home. Northern Germans

and Irish especially wanted to “prove”

their worthiness as adopted citizens by

volunteering and believed that

in doing so, they might eliminate

lingering nativistic, anti-immigrant

trends in Northern society. In the

1850s the Know-Nothing Party rose

briefly to national prominence on a

platform devoted to political war on

the foreign-born. However, the

sentiments they unleashed died

hard, and ethnic Americans were

eager to do something important

in the war to overcome their fellow-

citizens’ fear of foreigners.

By the end of 1861 an entire division

of German-born troops, composed of

German-speaking regiments from New

BEFORE

The vast increase in the population of the
United States in the years before the war
was driven by mass immigration, mainly
of distinct groups of northern Europeans.

EUROPEAN IMMIGRATION
Starting in the 1830s and increasing steadily
up to 1861, thousands of immigrants from
Ireland, Germany, and Scandinavia set sail
from their native lands in hope of a new life
in America. Nearly all of them settled in the
crowded ethnic neighborhoods of the great
northern cities or, taking advantage of Federal
land grant incentives, moved to the frontier
and scratched a living from the soil.

THE FORTY-EIGHTERS
Political émigrés from the failed Prussian
democratic revolutions of 1848–49, were
known as the Forty-Eighters. They fled the area
of Europe that is now Germany after the liberal
impulse was suppressed by force. In their new
home they developed significant political clout.
Many held radical, even socialist views, most
backed Lincoln in 1860, and all hated slavery.
as their political leaders boasted of their
inherent martial abilities compared to
the “American farmboys.” It helped
that the majority of German recruits
had seen military service or even fought
as revolutionaries at some point before
coming to the United States, as had a
fair number of the Irish.

Ethnic regiments in action

By the end of 1862, the German and

Irish regiments had earned different

reputations in the Northern public’s

eye. Valiant assaults on the Sunken

Road at Antietam and Marye’s Heights

at Fredericksburg had earned the Irish

Brigade a badge of courage that persists

in the public imagination even to this

day. But plundering in the Shenandoah

Valley Campaign of 1862, caused by

inadequate provisioning by the Federal

War Department, had given Blenker’s

Germans a different report. Labeled

“Hessians,” “Dutchmen,” or “Blenkerites,”

the Germans labored under a false

reputation for waging war on civilians

while not performing well in battle.

At Cross Keys and at Second Bull Run,

the German regiments of the East

fought well, despite poor generalship;

while early Union victories in the West,

such as Pea Ridge, where Franz Sigel

and many German units fought

courageously, were downplayed.

By the summer of 1863, however,

Irish and German-American soldiers

and civilians had come to share

something: a feeling of indignation

Multilingual recruitment poster

New York’s Italian community provided recruits for

the Garibaldi Guard, more formally known as the

39th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment. Raised

in June 1861, it served throughout the war.

German soldiers at Second Bull Run

The German units of Franz Sigel’s First Corps were

heavily engaged at Stony Ridge and Henry House Hill on

August 29 and 30, during the Second Battle of Bull Run,

but their badly coordinated attacks were unsuccessful.

UNION GENERAL (1824–1902)

FRANZ SIGEL

The number

of European

immigrants who came to the United

States between 1815 and 1860. By 1860,

three-quarters of the foreign-born

population were Irish or Germans.

Franz Sigel emigrated from Germany after

fighting in the unsuccessful revolution

of 1848. By 1860 he was a prominent

member of the German community in

St. Louis, Missouri, working as an educator

and well-known for his anti-slavery views.

From the start of the war he did much to

recruit German-Americans for the Union

forces, but was less successful as a

general. He did play a major role in the

Union success at Pea Ridge (Elkhorn

Tavern) in 1861, but later failed as a

corps commander with the Army of the

Potomac and when given an independent

command in the Shenandoah Valley.

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