My side was the one that immigrants wanted to come to. European immigration to the south was miniscule compared to the north for decades before the war because immigrants can't compete with slaves. Of course we had more immigrants.
One of my ancestors, by the way, was among those immigrants.
Lentullusgracchus complains about Grant being a drunk and Idabilly complains about the army being full of immigrants. It must be embarrassing as hell to have lost to a lush leading a bunch of foreigners.
No, it was minuscule because in the early 1850's the Irish who came to New Orleans and lived next to the short drainage canal in the lower Garden District next to Adele Street, called ever since then the Irish Channel, couldn't compete with yellowjack, cholera, and malaria.
The word got out: stay away from New Orleans, it's a death trap for Irishmen.
Other Irish who emigrated to Georgia instead flew their green regimental flag at Fredericksburg, and found themselves confronting and shooting down the charge of the New York Irish Brigade and its famous "Fighting Sixty-Ninth" regiment.
So were all of mine, by the way, from Galway and Kerry and Roscommon.
Only I didn't grow up to go around telling my Southern neighbors, "Nyaaah, nyaaah, nyaaah, our Indiana regiments burned down your worthless state ha ha ha!"
Study the German migration to Texas in the 1850’s. Not miniscule...Texas has a mixture of towns named New Braunfels right next San Marcos. German-Mexican kind of thing...