Foreign Recruitment for Union Forces

FOBEIGN BECBUITMENT FOB UNION FOBCES Robert L. Peterson and John A. Hudson Soon afteb the beginning of the Civil War, and continuing virtuaUy until its end, Southern officials and sympathizers angrily accused the Federal government of recruiting foreign troops for military service against the Confederate states. These charges were denied with equal ardor by pro-Northern spokesmen. Though a number of contemporary scholars write with the mien of authority concerning the alleged recruiting by the North, they tend to disagree, as scholars sometimes will, in interpreting the cause, extent, and importance of recruiting, as weU as the interesting question of Federal attempts to encourage or halt the practice. The three points of view most often expressed are ( 1 ) that a considerable number of troops were recruited specifically for the Northern armies, (2) that so few troops were recruited as to make negligible their influence in the war, and (3) that a large number of immigrants, recruited for labor and industry, entered the army upon arrival in this country. F. A. Shannon wrote: The accusation of the use of foreign mercenaries is amply supported by evidence. Most of these were simply tempted by bounties and by high wages in industry to emigrate to America, and then found their way either into wage labor or the army according to the relative monetary inducement. Yet some mercenaries were imported expressly and by official action for use in the army or at least to fill quotas. Senator Wilson asserted with some pride that Massachusetts had imported 907 men from Germany for use in four regiments .1 E. D. Adams pointed out that from the mid-1840's large numbers of European laborers entered the United States and were quickly absorbed Robert L. Peterson, formerly of Del Mar College, is now associated with the Harvard School of Business. John A. Hudson is Librarian at Arlington State College, Arlington, Texas. 1 F. A. Shannon, The Organization and Administration of the Union Army, 18611865 (Cleveland, 1928), II, 78. 176 into the expanding productive enterprise which characterized the period . He stated that this steady flow of immigrants, badly needed after the North began to mobilize, was abruptly halted when the conflict began. But private agents often secured large profits as "bounty profiteers " under thebounty system ofsome ofthe Eastern states. The agents enticed Irishmen into signing contracts of such a nature that they were virtuaUy blackjacked into the army upon arrival in America. As soon as this scheme was discovered, "prompt steps were taken to defeat it by the American Secretary of State."2 EUa Lonn also concluded that private recruiting agents "engaged emigrants to come over, expecting to lure them into the military service after they had landed, partly of their own free will, partly ... by force." However, she added, that while governmental officials were very interested in securing laborers for Northern industry, they did not countenance "the practices to which some of the agents stooped."3 A fourth writer, George O'Dwyer, concluded that immigrants came to the United States primarily of their own free will and chose their occupation without undue pressure being brought to bear upon them. To prove his point he quoted a letter from Secretary of State William Seward to Charles Francis Adams: The mass of European emigrants, not sensibly lessened by the abstraction of a few recruits, scattered, as soon as they reached our shores, and might be found prosperously and happily employed in our marts, our wheat fields, our factories, our forests, or our mines, or, if they wished, in the army and navy, now maintaining the integrity and freedom of the country which they have adopted as their own. This emigration has been wrongly treated in the British Parliament as something new and anomalous. On the contrary, it was but the continuation of that process, begun in the 16th century, by which society in Europe is relieved and civilization in America instituted.4 These writers were dealing with subjects much broader than the question of recruiting. In their works the problem is superficially considered as a subject which might be of interest to the reader but which will not detract from the main thesis. It is conceivable, then, that the...