Posted on 10/02/2007 1:10:01 PM PDT by BGHater
There are North Koreans, North Vietnamese, and damnYankees, they all come down South were they ain’t wanted and cause problems for the decent folks.
“One of the reasons why, unlike the confederate army, the U.S. didn’t need to draft 50 year old men to keep the ranks populated.”
That’s true, the Union, unlike the Confederacy, had an endless supply of imported German, Irish, etc. immigrants to populate its army — many drafted the minute they stepped off the boats.
No, but some Northern states paid enormous bounties to keep from having to draft their own men. From the Vicksburg Herald as reported in the New Orleans Daily Picayune:
RECRUITS FOR MASSACHUSETTS QUOTA
$625.00 Bounty
$425.00 CASH DOWN
The same bounty and pay to
WHITE OR COLORED RECRUITS.
All get sixteen dollars per month.
Choose your own Regiment or Company.Liberal pay to agents for bringing recruits to me.
Lieut. Col. E. C. Kinsley
Ass’t Provost Marshall of Massachusetts for the District of Mississippi
Headquarters at Vicksburg – Office on Washington Street near Clay, over Col. Saunders & Co.’s store.
The bounty was equivalent to 39 months of pay.
You seen the enlistment bonus's available to today's Army enlistee?
The overwhelming majority of all Union soldiers were either native born, or had been living here before the rebellion began. The idea that the Union army was mainly comprised of straight-off-the-boat immigrants is a figment of rebel imagination, fueled by that terrific historical reference Gangs of New York.
I didn’t say “mainly comprised,” but it’s true that thousands of immigrants were drafted by the Union army to fight in that Late Unpleasantness.
“About 24 percent of the Union Army was made up of immigrants, and about 10 percent of the Confederate Army was made up of immigrants.” -— www.librarythinkquest.org.
“Over the course of the war, 2.2 million men served in the Union Army (93% of whom were volunteers). The South, with a smaller population base, had 800,000 men pass through the ranks of the Confederate Army (77% of whom were volunteers). The manpower needs of the Confederacy were exacerbated by two significant disadvantages: more immigrants had settled in the North, and a third of the Southern population was slaves. The Confederate Army had approximately 100,000 foreign born soldiers (the Union had 500,000) and a negligible number of black soldiers (the Union had 190,000).”
Is Massachusetts offering them to Iraqi citizens to join our army?
Considering how ineffective the Union draft was I'd say the number and part played by these shanghaied immigrants you're so concerned about was comparatively low.
Context is everything in this instance, PR -- by March, 1861, several Southern states had already seceded and war was threatening. This has to be seen as an attempt to avert that war. Obviously the attempt failed.
The fact that the attempt was made to avert war by protecting slavery has an interesting corollary: that they held this out as a prize, shows that slavery was, in fact, the issue upon which secession turned.
As opposed to native born soldiers. What that doesn't say is how many of those immigrants were in the U.S. prior to the outbreak of the war and how many came to the U.S. during the rebellion and went straight into the ranks as you claim. Considering that the article says that 10 percent of the confederate ranks were immigrants, and since the blockade made immigration to the Southern states between 1861 and 1865 pretty near impossible, then I think it's safe to say that the overwhelming majority of that 10 percent were people born outside the U.S. but who have immigrated to the Southern states before the war broke out. And I'm equally sure that the large majority of that 24 percent figure for U.S. troops were the same.
I'm sure that anyone from the Southern U.S. who joined a Massachusetts regiment in 1864 got the bonus, carrying this twisted logic of y'alls just a little further. Masachusetts offered bonuses for enlistment in their regiments during the rebellion. I believe that ever Northern state did. So what?
Pssst. Don't forget to attend the next meeting!
LOL! Because referring to someone as a "neo-Lincoln fascist derangement syndromer" isn't a personal attack at all.
You guys are such unintentional comedians.
Here's the money question: how exactly was Lincoln a fascist?
I can't wait to see the answers.
;-)
Don’t mess with Southron primary sources. “Gone With The Wind”...”Gods and Generals”...”Gangs of New York”...”Outlaw Josey Wales”...
Brazil had one million African slaves and I never hear a peep out of the reparations crowd about holding that country’s feet to the fire over it like they do us.
Brazil had one million African slaves and I never hear a peep out of the reparations crowd about holding that country’s feet to the fire over it like they do us.
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