Thread 17973988

Why did so many military-aged men immigrate to the US during an active civil war in which they were subject to military draft? Why did they believe in the cause of the Union so fervently that they were willing to sail all the way from Europe to die in battle for those values?

>>17973988 (OP)
Money

>>17973993
Socialists love doing to other countries to fight capitalism

>>17973988 (OP)
Many of them were from ghettos in Europe. They were promised a better life at the expense of southerners. The union was a globalist army.

They were part of a big wave that started in the 1840s with the failures of the potato crop, which affected all Europoors and not just Ireland, and the failed revolutions of 1848. The Gold Rush, Mormon proselytizing in England, booming industry, the promise of midwestern farmland—lots of pull factors as well. I’m curious how many changed their plans as the war kicked off and if anyone has reliable numbers on immigration. I have a feeling a lot of people stayed home and apart from some officer types, I don’t think many jumped on the boat out of ideology to fight for the Union.

War wasn't seen a horrific scary thing that you had to avoid at all costs and should maim yourself for back then. Young men were generally eager to go to war and would sometimes go to foreign countries for war if they didn't have any at home

A lot of the Hessians were communist 48ers just looking for a new country to burn and pillage. Europe was literally emptying its prisons to send its trash to America.

>>17974221
t. LaDravius Rodrigo Patel

>>17974194
Was it because they were bored and had nothing else better to do?

The north was mass importing anybody including socialists and eventually communists. Immigrants often took the least desired jobs because they were willing to work for less and were often illegal immigrants/had displaced all the locals so they were the only people you could hire. On the eve of the civil war the northern economy collapsed. Poor people in DC couldn't warm their houses in the winter. There would have been incredible incentives for immigrant groups to fight for the union, especially after Lincoln offered Germans fast tracked citizenship if they voted for him

>>17974354
>and were often illegal immigrants
Until 1924 there was no such thing because the us had full open borders.

>>17974329
Yes, especially at the start of the war. Why be a farmhand, clerk or factory worker when all you bros are going off on a big adventure, and maybe Liza Jane will finally let you put your hand under her petticoats if you enlist. As always, most men didn’t ponder the deep ideological justifications for the war.

>>17974362
US immigration was based on people essentially clearing virgin forest, 10+ acres a year, and turning it into farmland. Germans were "okay" because so many of them were farmers. But if you were coming over in a steam ship US immigration required more from you. Like English literacy, some sort of specialization, or if you were a farmer you had to either be signed up to essentially serve some land baron or you had to have enough money to financially support yourself. Virtually nobody the north let in met these standards

>>17974362
>full open borders
Not exactly. Don’t be a retard, indigent, hack up blood from TB, shout “yeah man I’m an anarchist!” or be Chinese after 1882, but otherwise wide open with minimal vetting.

>>17974390
To be fair a lot of the Chinese were illegal immigrants and most of the ones in the US from that time created false documents to get here

>>17973988 (OP)
>The South would have won
The South's defeat wasnt because the Union barely scratched by with just a little more manpower in reserve. They were defeated because they ran out of everything including manpower while the Union had an endless reserve of such things.
The South also had a lack of heavy weaponry the industrial base necessary to make heavy weaponry effective, any city or fort the South lost was gone, as they lacked the industry to invest fortified points.

It had nothing to do with Northern Manpower.

>>17974406
The south grabbed a lot of weaponry seizing forts and arsenals at the start of the war, got more with early victories, and pulled off some impressive feats with what industry they had, but as the blockade clamped down and they lost territory their war machine ran out of gas. They kludged together some scary ironclads but couldn’t make a turret or marine engine, and their vast railroad network fell apart in the latter half of the war as they couldn’t manufacture locomotives or rail.

>>17974194
Irish immigrants literally rioted because they started getting drafted you disingenuous twat.

>>17974381
No, that's not true at all. You didnt need a visa or anything, you could just come even if you were unskilled.

>>17974429
Northern immigrants often rioted when it came to niggers. To them they were nothing but even lower wage scab labor

>>17974430
If you showed up to a port and said you were illiterate and could smell colors they were supposed to stick you back on the boat, that didn't happen

>>17974397
IIRC Chinese men did paperwork scams as some kind of chain migration was allowed—“yes my wife is waiting for me in San Francisco, here’s her photo”.
Their biggest impact during the war was blasting the Central Pacific through the Sierras with hand drills and black powder, an epic feat no matter how you feel about them or immigration.

>>17974438
Yes they would create fake papers to say they were related to each other. They were also hopelessly addicted to opium. We dumped them in salt lake city

>>17974063
The south accepted European immigrants too there were immigrants fighting for the confederacy, its just for some odd reason most immigrants preferred the north.

>>17974447
Because the northern port cities let everyone in because they made money off of every head they accepted. It also facilitated the collapsing of wages and created a bunch more consumers for their useless products

>>17974447
>>17974451
The South had only one major port city in New Orleans and it was the only place with a significant immigrant community.

>>17974429
>>17974431
New York’s Draft Riots came after over two years of war and the Irish thought a draft was unfair after so many of them had volunteered and paid the cost. There was animus towards blacks and also wealthy Republicans as a man could buy his way out for $300, more than a year’s wages for a laborer. The film Gangs of New York has some /his/ inaccuracies but really captures the factors that led to the Draft Riots.

>>17974451
I have never seen anything suggesting the south had a problem with white immigrants anymore than the north so can you cite a single law or policy to that effect?

>>17974362
no. immigration was Federalized and regulated since 1892.

>>17974467
The main thing gangs of New York gets wrong is it makes the Irish look civilized

>>17974466
New Orleans immigrants adapted southern ways. The original Louisiana Tigers were Irish waterfront lowlifes that scared the rest of the Army of Northern Virginia when they weren’t killing Yankees.

>>17974469
I'm saying the north lacked discretion on who they imported, which is how the people they let in were illegal. Because they were knowingly poisoning their cities with bums for immediate financial benefit

>>17974469
They didn’t. It’s just that European immigrants didn’t want to compete with black labor, either before or after the war.

>>17974485
Originally the south relied completely on volunteers and indentured servants but the crown didn't like that so they started giving away niggers for free to anyone that bought land

>>17974479
>which is how the people they let in were illegal.
I don't think there was such a thing as illegal white immigrants from Europe before the war.

>>17974497
There were naturalization laws that these people obviously weren't following and a lot of the people that came over on contracts would end up just leaving and going into cities and being bums *cough* Irish *cough*

>>17974503
Also
>not all Europeans were considered white in the 1790s, many, including Italians, were initially excluded from citizenship because they did not fit the narrow definition of "white" used at the time.

>>17973988 (OP)
Why would the Germans ever fight for their fellow co-racialists?

>>17974560
Germans are also very nationalistic. Despite most of them being English illiterate when they came here they were the first immigrant group to achieve widespread English literacy.

I will say I didn't appreciate the militaristic goons like the wide-awakes

They don't tell you Lincoln had his own private militia of Germans. They don't tell you that it was then the socialist Germans that got our militia rights taken away, by nationalist Germans

>>17973988 (OP)
>in which they were subject to military draft?
They weren't. Only 2% of union soldiers were drafted and 6% were paid substitutes (a lot of which were vets who got paid extra to take on a second contract/tour)
also there were active wars in yurop at the time

>>17974666
There was widespread conscription fraud during the civil war where people just went around signing up and getting their bonus and rations and then skipping town to the next recruitment drive.

>>17974669
also tons of desertions on both sides, the US historically has had a lot of desertions or draft dodging

>>17974669
>>17974700
I was just reading an article about the execution of some Union bounty jumpers for desertion and they were all foreign born. It seems like it would be harder to pull that scam if you were from say a small Ohio town enlisting in an Ohio regiment. I know desertions were a big problem with the Confederates but did they have bounty jumpers as well?

>>17973988 (OP)
>giving me even more reasons to hate immigrants

Thanks Newt

>>17973988 (OP)
It was engineered by the British Famine in Ireland. The British were hoping that they’d get killed off in the war once they were deported or left, that way nobody’d be coming back to claim any inherited land.

>>17974959
I don't know about bounty jumpers in the south I only read about it in the north. They had an equal amount of desertion

The Irish had a famine, many other Europeans were facing conscription, and European countries had already banned slavery.

>>17975035
The thing is it has nothing to do with slavery. Lincoln claimed the entire time the Confederacy was just a small pack of rebels he needed to kill

>Always the army reflected the nation and the nation itself was changing. Like the army, it contained many new people these days. The war had speeded everything up. The immigrant ships were coming faster, there were more factories and slums and farms and towns and the magical hazy light that came down from the country's past was beginning to cast some unfamiliar shadows. The old unities were gone: unities of blood, of race, of language, of shared ideasl and common memories and experiences, the very things which had always seemed essential beneath the word "American." In some mysterious way that nobody quite understood the army not only mirrored the change but represented the effort to find a new synthesis.

>What was going on in front of Petersburg was not the development of a stalemate or the aimless groping of frozen men stumbling down to the last dead end of a cold trail. What was beginning meant more than what was ending, even though it might be many years before anyone knew just what the beginnings and endings were. Now and then there was a hint, casually dropped, as the country changed the guard here south of the Appomattox River, and the choking dust hung in dead air under a copper sun. The men who followed a misty dream had died of it but the dream still lived even though it was taking another form.

>There was in the 67th New York Infantry a young German named Sebastian Muller, who got off an immigrant ship in 1860 and walked the streets unable to find work because he could speak no English and because times in this land of promise were harder than he had supposed they would be. The war came and in 1861 a recruiting agent got him and to his people back in the fatherland Muller wrote "I am a volunteer soldier in the Army of the United States, to fight the rebels of South America for a sacred thing. All of America has to become free and united and the starry banner has to fly again over the new world. Then we also want to have the slaves freed, the trading of human beings must have an end and every slave should be set free and on his own in time. Evil of all kinds, thievery, whoring, lying and deception have to be punished here."

>Muller served in the 67th and on June 20, 1864 the regiment's time expired and it was sent back for muster out. But he had enlisted a couple of months late and he and a few others were held in service and were transferred to the 65th New York to serve out their time, and two days after the 67th went back home Muller was a picket in an advanced gun pit on the VI Corps front and a Rebel sniper drew a bead and killed him. A German comrade wrote a letter of consolation to Muller's parents. "If a person is meant to die on land, he will not drown. If death on the battlefield is to be his lot, he will not die in the cradle. God's dispositions are wise and his ways are inscrutable." The chaplain added a note saying that Muller had died without pain and had been given "a decent Christian burial." That was that.

>In the 19th Massachusetts there was an Irish sergeant named Mike Scannell--the same who won his chevrons by carrying the flag at Cold Harbor--and in the II Corps debacle over by the Jerusalem Plank Road Mike and his flag were out in front and were taken by the Confederates, one of whom came at Mike with leveled bayonet, ordering: "You damned Yankee, give me that flag!" Mike looked at the Southerner and he looked at the bayonet, and he replied:

>"Well, it is twenty years since I came to this country and you are the first man who ever called me a Yankee. You can take the flag for that compliment."

>Nothing much had happened. A German who could not tell Virginia from South America had seen a sacred thing in the war and died for it and an Irishman after twenty years of rejection had been accepted, at the point of a bayonet but in the language of his time and place, as a full fledged American.

>The synthesis was taking place.

>>17974397
good reason to not like them

>>17974662
Germans love the state compared to us Burgers.