Released In Paper---The War For Citizenship: The Conflicted Loyalties of Jews, Germans, Irish, Native Americans and Blacks

Civil War Citizens: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity in America's Bloodiest Conflict, Susannah Ural, Editor, Contributors: Stephen D. Engle, William McKee Evans, David T. Gleeson, Andrea Mehrländer, Joseph P. Reidy, Robert N. Rosen, and Susannah J. Ural, New York University Press, 256 pages, paperback, $23.00.

Aaron Sheehan‒Dean, author of Why Confederates Fought: Family and Nation in Civil War Virginia: “Civil War Citizens adds a new dimension to our understanding of the war by offering a window into the complex exchange between ethnic and national identity. The stories told here should have special resonance for our increasingly diverse society as it continues to debate the contours of citizenship and belonging. By showing how immigrants as well as native‒born Americans struggled over the meaning of democracy, freedom, and slavery, the essays also connect American history to the same debates going on around the world.”

Christian G. Samito, author of Becoming American Under Fire: Irish Americans, Africans Americans, and the Politics of Citizenship During the Civil War Era “In the Union and the Confederacy, in the armed forces and on the home front, the Civil War caused people of different races and ethnicities to interact in new ways. The well‒written, well‒researched essays in this important new book offer a fine‒grained narrative about the experiences of different ethnic groups during the Civil War. The essays also probe, in provocative ways, the intersection between military service and the call by different ethnic groups for fuller inclusion and citizenship. This book is not only a fascinating read, it makes a real contribution to the study of ethnic groups during the Civil War era.”

Peter S. Carmichael, author of The Last Generation: Young Virginians in Peace, War, and Reunion “The illuminating essays in Civil War Citizens capture the view from below, where immigrants and other non‒whites confronted an array of confusing loyalties, often in conflict, always changing, and never clear cut in their meaning. This superb collection reveals that their identity as outsiders did not prescribe a united or single course of action. Civil War Citizens is an eye‒opening book, for it shows how people who existed on the political periphery were forced to rework their self‒understandings as individuals and as a collective group while also being denied their place in the nation that they were fighting and dying for.”

NYU Press: "At its core, the Civil War was a conflict over the meaning of citizenship. Most famously, it became a struggle over whether or not to grant rights to a group that stood outside the pale of civil-society: African Americans. But other groups--namely Jews, Germans, the Irish, and Native Americans--also became part of this struggle to exercise rights stripped from them by legislation, court rulings, and the prejudices that defined the age."

"Grounded in extensive research by experts in their respective fields, Civil War Citizens is the first volume to collectively analyze the wartime experiences of those who lived outside the dominant white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant citizenry of nineteenth-century America. The essays examine the momentous decisions made by these communities in the face of war, their desire for full citizenship, the complex loyalties that shaped their actions, and the inspiring and heartbreaking results of their choices-- choices that still echo through the United States today."

CWL: Looks similar in topic to Margaret Creighton's wonderful Colors of Courage that presented new material on the civilians who experienced the Gettysburg Campaign. Finally Civil War Civilians is at an affordable price for libraries and enthusiasts and goes on the early summer reading list.

New---True Sons of the Republic: Europeans Fighting for the Union

True Sons of the Republic: European Immigrants in the Union Army, Martin W. Öfele, Praeger/Greenwood Publishing, 240 pp., photos, notes, bibliography, $49.95.

Up to 500,000 Union soldiers, or one fourth of the Union army, had been born in Europe. These immigrants had left their home countries for a multitude of reasons, mostly economic and political. In the United States, they envisioned a country of freedom that would allow them to pursue their goals of acquiring wealth and participating in politics. Soon immersed in the great debate over the expansion of slavery, many immigrants found themselves forced to take sides and eventually rallied around the Union flag. Ethnic Americans joined the Northern army out of the same motivations as their native-born comrades, with one notable difference. By defending the Union, immigrant volunteers hoped to tear down nativist obstruction against their assimilation into society and prove their worth as full citizens.

Declaring their unconditional loyalty, several groups entered into veritable competitions to raise separate regiments that would defend not only the Union but ethnic and national pride. Through their high visibility within the army, those units became synonymous with the ethnic war effort. The conduct of noticeable organizations such as the Irish Brigade or the partly German Eleventh Army Corps shaped public notions of immigrant participation in the war for decades to come, notwithstanding the fact that the large majority of foreign-born soldiers served in mixed and predominantly native American regiments. These new Americans contributed substantially to Union victory.

Martin W. Ofele has taught history at the Universities of Leipzig and Munich. He is the author of several publications on the Civil War Era in Germany.

Source: text from publisher

CWL: True Sons of the Republic: European Immigrants in the Union Army by Martin W. Öfele is the second in the series 'Reflections on the Civil War Era' from Praeger/Greenwood Publishing and was released in February. Decision in the Heartland: The Civil War in the West, the first in the series, was released in January and Weary of War: Life on the Confederate Home Front by Joe A. Mobley is the third and released in March.

CWL --- A Poor Man's Fight in 1863? Not So! But Maybe?

Which Poor Man's Fight? Immigrants and The Federal Conscription of 1863
Tyler Anbinder, Civil War History, 52:4, 344-372, 2006.

George Washington University professor of history, author of 'Five Points: The 19th Century Neighborhood . . .,' and contributor to the History Channel regarding the film 'Gangs of New York,' Tyler Anbinder breaks a myth of the 1863 Northern draft and NYC riots of July 1863.
Myth: The rioters' fear that they would be disporportionately affected by the draft caused the civil disturbance. The fear was well founded.

Anbinder has discovered in the National Archives the Provost Marshall reports of that year. Parsing and perusing the reports, he concludes that the rioters' fear was unfounded, that the military draft did not disportionately pull the immigrants into the army and navy. Indeed, the Provost Marshall's reports show that the number of impoverished immigrants forced into the military was below the national average. "Immigrants were not disproportionately forced into the army as a result of the draft. (346)

"If one considers all those forced to contribute to the war effort as a result of the draft, by combining those forced to serve with those who hired substitutes or paid the communtation fee, then immigrants lag even further behind natives in their contributions." Native-born rural laborers are those, as a group, do appear to "have been disproportionately forced into service as a result of the draft." (347)

The commutation fee of $300 was not placed into the 1863 draft law in order to allow the wealthy to escape military service. Lincoln and others in both houses of Congress understood that if a 'cap' of $300 was not in place then the wealthy would bid up the price of a substitute to a point were middle income individuals could not afford one. In the three drafts of 1864, the second and third ones had no commutation fee and the cost of a substitute rose from the 1863 price of $250-$275 to over $500 in the summer of 1864. The inflation in the cost of a substitute did indeed make the last two drafts during 1864 more of a poor man's fight than did the 1863 draft. (354)

The majority of draftees in 1863 avoided service by claiming any of the following exemptions:
17 years of age or younger, 45 years of age or older and single, 35 years of age or older and married, only son of a widow or infirm parents, father of a motherless child, two or more brothers in the federal armed services before March 3, 1863, and a variety of physical ailments.
Those included sensitive feet, crooked toes, hernia, excessive stammering, inflamed testicles, and imbecility among others. Of all those who reported for the draft 40% were exempted for medical reasons.

The 60% who reported for the draft and had no physical excuse had three choices: serve in the military, hire a substitute, pay the commutation fee of $300. This fee was applicable until the next draft. At that time another commuation fee would have to be paid if a substitute was not purchased and the draftee, the second time around, did not want to serve.

'Immigrants, it turns out, had far more agency in controlling their draft fate than most observers--both then and now--have imagined." They could claim exemption by not supplying court documents regarding their application for citizenship. Immigrants that were in the process of receiving citizenship were eligible for the draft. Very few immigrants were forced into the military during the 1863 draft; but, about half the soldiers who entered the armed forces as a result of the 1863 draft were immigrants. Primarily, these immigrants enlisted as substitutes.
'They chose to join the army, gambling that the benefits of subsitition fees and enlistment bonuses were worth the risk of disease, injury, or death . . . ." (373)

So were the immigrants forced into military service? In most cases, no, not in 1863.

So did the immigrants choose to join the military service due to monetary incentives? In most cases, yes, in 1863.

So which nationality were these immigrants who choose to join the military service for money?
In most cases, Irish, in 1863.

So were the immigrants, who choose military service because of economic incentives, poor.
In most cases, probably, I think. I've read Anbinder's 'Five Points: . . . " and if the immigrant was living in NYC and was Irish, than more times than not, that immigrant was economically disadvantaged.