Myths, Memories and Realities of the War Between the States

Dr. Mary Ellen Rowe and Dr. Larry Olpin

German, Irish, African and Native are all American

For minorities, as for other Americans, the Civil War was an opportunity to prove their valor and loyalty. Among the first mustered into the Union army were a De Kalb regiment of German American Clerks, the Garibaldi Guards made up of Italian Americans, a Polish Legion, and hundreds of Irish American youths from Boston and New York.

Many people firmly believed, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that immigrants instinctively supported the union, and given the chance, deserted the South and sought their compatriots in Northern regiments (Burton 201).

More than 400,000 European immigrants fought for the Union, including more than 170,000 Germans and more than 150,000 Irish. Many saw their services as a proud sacrifice. William Burton writes in his book Melting Pot Soldiers about John Cochrane, the colonel of a regiment who was of Irish decent. Cochrane recalled

the "native" soldiers in the Union forces as typically a conscript rather than a volunteer, lacking in zeal and fire. Immigrant soldiers, in Co

When the first three months were over "more than 500 immediately reenlisted for three years" (Jones 93) and "most of the remainder joined other Irish-American units forming in the city, getting a step or two in rank as experienced soldiers" (Jones 93). Most Irish-Americans were willing to fight wherever they could but also had the desire to be recognized as being Irish-Americans.

Hauptman, Laurence M. Between Two Fires: American Indians in the Civil War. New York: Free Press, 1995.

Cynthia H. Enloe, in her pioneering work Ethnic soldiers: State Security in Divided Societies, went astray when she examined the history of immigrants in the North. "State Security Planners" she argued, treated recent immigrants as though they were outside the nation-state political system in the early part of the war, as they did the blacks" (Burton 212). This has been shown to be untrue, as stated earlier, ethnic groups were some of the first to join the war effort. Far from being a threat to state and national security, both the North and the South accepted the different ethnic groups into regular regiments and ethnic regiments where they proved very loyal.

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Approximate Word count = 1315
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)