Young men, with an overwhelming sense of martial excitement, not only rushed to enlist in the forming armies but actually worried that the fighting would be over before they could see action."
So far as I can tell, only William T. Sherman in 1861 foresaw a very long & bloody war.
The Union's top general, Winfield Scott, predicted the war to be over in about a year, if no foreign interventions.
Northern newspapers, as you can see, are expecting to make quick work of pushing back Confederates in Virginia.
We'll see about that...
As for a "pandemic of war fever", in all about three million will serve during the war (USA 2 million, CSA 1 million), of whom "today" just over 100,000 have volunteered, meaning "war fever" has so-far overtaken only 3% of those who must eventually join.
allendale: "In fact the genetic losses marked the beninning of the end of America’s Protestant core. Subsequent manpower and labor shortages in the coming industrial expansion reguired immigration fron Catholic southern and central Europe.
America was transformed."
Ah... no... not really.
From 1860 to, say, 1930 the US population grew by 92 million (from 31 to 123 million), of whom ~1/3 were new immigrants (33 million).
Of those about 10 million arrived before 1890 and those were primarily Germans, Brits & Irish.
Reasonable estimate that half of those were Catholics.
After 1890 the locus of migration shifted to Southern (Italy) and Eastern (Russia-Hungary) Europe of whom again maybe half were Catholic, the rest Orthodox Christians and Jews.
And again, it was 20 million immigrants among the 60 million in population increase from 1890 to 1930.
The question is whether any of this was related to the loss of, perhaps, 600,000 young men in the Civil War?
Well, consider this: even with those losses, the US population increased from 1860 to 1870 at a faster pace than at any time since 1890.
So I don't see how the Civil War gets blamed for immigration from Southern Europe that began 30 years later.
As of today, Protestants still outnumber Catholics two-to-one, though "unaffiliated" is the #2 "religion" after Protestants.
And which religions today are more likely to vote Republican?
