Canada, French
Canadians and Franco-Americans in the Civil War Era (1861-1865)
Preface
Introduction
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliographical Note
Last modified:
2001-08-13
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Chapter
One
Franco-American
Enlistments: Facts and Figures
Franco-Americans
were one of the most important Catholic groups present in the
Union forces. Though thousands of Franco-Americans appear to have
served in the conflict the exact number is largely unclear. There
are no truly reliable statistics concerning foreign enlistments
in the Union forces. Consequently, the historian is forced to
estimate. Many have done so, and as a result most scholars tend
to claim that anywhere from 20,000 to 40,000 Franco-Americans,
many of whom would have been born in the United States or had
resided there for several years, served in the Union forces. Historians
Armand Chartier and Yves Roby both feel that the number of Franco-American
enlistments could be about 20,000. In his monumental study, Histoire
des Franco-Américains (1958), French-born historian
Robert Rumilly expresses doubts regarding the forty thousand enlistments
claim but does not offer the reader a counter-estimate. Robin
Winks, who has examined all enlistment estimates feels that "most
of the forty thousand or more ‘Canadians’ who enlisted probably
were third and even forth generation French-Canadian Americans."
Many historians, including Marcus Lee Hansen and John Bartlet
Brebner have claimed that "the standard authority on the
nativities of the soldiers serving in the Federal armies (an investigation
based upon state and regimental records) lists 53,532 as being
born in the British-American provinces."1
What
is the scientific base for these estimates? Most are indirectly
derived from the text of a sermon given in early 1865 by abbé
Hercule Beaudry (1822-1876) on the occasion of a Libera sung
in Notre Dame Cathedral of Montreal for the souls of French Canadian
soldiers killed in the Civil War. The very popular parish priest
of St. Constant, Quebec, claimed that 40,000 French Canadians
had fought in the Civil War and that 14,000 of these men had already
been killed. Through the years this estimate was transformed into
a fact in the scholarly literature surrounding the Civil War.
Beaudry had a good reason to inflate the number of French Canadians
in the Union forces: he wished to impress on his listeners the
horrors of war with the ultimate goal of keeping French Canadians
from immigrating to the United States. Other historians have extrapolated
the number of Franco-American enlistments from an estimate made
shortly after the war by Benjamin Apthorp Gould, who had been
the actuary of the United States Sanitary Commission from July
1864 to the end of the war. He claimed that 53,532 Union soldiers
were born in British North America. However, this frequently quoted
figure was based on a very random and unscientific survey and
has since been largely discredited by the research of American
historian Robin Winks. The apparent precision of this figure seems
to have given it quite a bit of credence among historians.2
Most nineteenth-century estimates of Franco-American participation
in the Civil War tend to be high. During and after the war both
the Franco-American and the French Canadian elite inflated earlier
estimates to serve their respective agendas. In May of 1864, the
Catholic Bishop of Montreal, Msgr. Ignace Bourget (1799-1885),
warned the priests of his diocese that at least 25,000 French
Canadians were taking part in the fighting on the Union side and
that unless something was done to stop them from enlisting, more
would be headed for the boucherie (slaughterhouse).3
Major
Edmond Mallet (1842-1907), who had served in the Union army, felt
that 60,000 French Canadians had fought in the Civil War. In 1893,
at a meeting of French Canadian Civil War veterans held in Montreal,
Jean-Baptiste Rouillard (1842-1908), a radical journalist and
veteran of the Tenth Vermont Regiment, claimed that forty-three
thousand French Canadians had served in the Northern armies. These
later observers used these figures to legitimize the presence
of Franco-Americans in American society at a time when, following
massive immigration from Quebec, Franco-Americans were frequently
accused of failing to "fit in."What better justification
of the presence of Franco-Americans in the United States could
there be than to show that so many had fought for the cause of
emancipation and liberty in the Civil War?4
Local
historians and genealogists who have painstakingly compiled lists
of French Canadian servicemen offer the only possibly reliable
figures on Franco-American enlistments. Some authors provide figures
for individual cities: Southbridge, Massachusetts, sent thirty-nine
Franco-Americans into the Union forces, Worcester, Massachusetts,
thirty-six, Rutland, Vermont, twenty-nine, Waterville, Maine,
sixty and Woonsocket, Rhode Island, fifty-six.5
Using
these figures and comparing them with reliable estimates of the
Franco-American population of the towns in question in 1860 we
can figure that anywhere from four to nine percent of French-Canadians
residing in the United States served in the Civil War. This figure
is high but not surprising because like most immigrant groups,
French Canadian men of military age were over-represented within
their communities.
Between
1840 and 1860, roughly 225,000 immigrants born in British North
America had settled in the United States. A little less than half
of these immigrants were French-speaking. Most had left the poverty
of rural Quebec to find work or affordable homesteads in New England
or the Midwest. Many would return to Canada after a few years.
By 1860, almost a quarter of a million Americans were born in
British North America. These immigrants comprised 6 percent of
America’s foreign-born population and about one American in 125
was born in British North America. An overwhelming percentage
of these immigrants resided in the North. Moreover, roughly nine
percent of all people born in British North America lived in the
United States. Canadian-born Americans were the fourth largest
group of immigrants in America, behind the Irish, the Germans
and the English but well ahead of any of the Scandinavian countries
or Italy.6
In
1860, the population of French America would have been about 100,000.
Many of these Franco-Americans were born and raised in the United
States. Nonetheless, most were Canadian-born. If four to nine
percent of French America’s population had served in the Union
forces then the total number of Franco-American enlistments would
have been less than ten thousand. However, many French Canadians
crossed the border, enlisted, and returned home after their term
of service. It is impossible to ascertain the extent of this phenomenon.
Yet, it is probable that the number of French Canadians who joined
the Union forces after simply crossing the border is larger than
the total number of enlistments generated by the various Franco-American
communities of the Northeast and Midwest. These French Canadian
recruits should be added to any estimate of Franco-American participation.7
Moreover, after a serious slump in 1861 and 1862, French
America’s population would experience rapid growth after mid-1863.
Thus, it is probably safe to advance that anywhere from ten to
twenty thousand French Canadians and Franco-Americans served in
the Union forces during the Civil War. Twenty thousand represents
an ambitious but not impossible maximum. Nonetheless, the true
figure would likely be closer to the ten than the twenty thousand
enlistments mark. An overwhelming proportion of these men enlisted
in the army. Only a very small number of French Canadians seem
to have served in the Union navy.
Nevertheless,
all estimates of French Canadian enlistment and service in the
Civil War, including those presented in this booklet, are inherently
flawed. We will never know exactly how many Franco-Americans
fought and died in the Civil War. During the first half of the
war, no records were kept of the birthplace or parentage of enlisted
men. When such information was at last requested, recruiting agents
frequently filled in the forms with guesses or falsified information
to fill state or town quotas. Moreover, Yankee recruiting officers
often saw very little difference between an Acadian, a French
Canadian, a Frenchman or a French-speaking Belgian or Swiss recruit.
All francophones might thus end up being lumped into a large "French"
group. Even among French Canadians a certain degree of confusion
existed. In fact, during the Civil War era, the term Canadien
français had not yet become generalized in French Canada.
French Canadians continued to refer to themselves as Canadiens,
a term they had used since the French Regime and which distinguished
them both from les Français and les Anglais.
Franco-Americans, even those born in the United States were often
referred to as Canadiens des États-Unis (Canadians
of the United States). This confusion was the direct consequence
of the temporary nature which most French Canadian immigrants
gave to their American sojourn and to a conception of nationality
based not on civic allegiance but on ethnicity. A Canadien
was a Canadien no matter what side of the border he
lived on. During the 1860s, the sense of a Franco-American community
distinct from that of French Canada had not yet emerged and the
term Canadien was often used to designate French Canadians
on both sides of the border. Poor and lacking the basic institutions
necessary to foster a distinctive sub-culture, Franco-Americans
existed, but did not yet have a strong sense of their own identity.
This distinct identity would emerge in the next few decades.8
Shoddy
records and confusing identities aside, even a systematic examination
of regimental lists would yield little information about French
Canadian enlistments because many, if not most French Canadian
recruits do not appear under their real surname. Often illiterate,
an important number had their names anglicized by recruiting officers
on official documents. This process provides an endless source
of frustration to modern researchers and genealogists, as given
name and surname changes were common during this phase of French
Canadian immigration and seem to almost have been the norm in
the army.
Recruiting
officers were not the only officials to change French Canadian
names. Unable to pronounce French surnames properly, customs and
immigration agents, town clerks and English-speaking priests were
also frequently responsible for changes. However, the immigrant
himself was sometimes the initiator of surname changes. Like many
other immigrants, some Franco-Americans actively anglicized their
surnames in an effort to better fit into American life. Either
way, an anglicized surname was and remains one of the more tangible
signs of assimilation. Later in the nineteenth century, as the
Franco-American population grew, as levels of literacy rose, and
as the community gained a greater institutional structure, surname
changes would become less frequent.
Examples
of surname changes abound. Typically, they followed one of three
established patterns:
Phonetic
surname changes: The name was spelled phonetically so that
an English-speaking person could pronounce it. Thus, the abbé
Thomas Ouellette, who was the chaplain of the Irish Sixty-ninth
New York Regiment, was known as Father Thomas Willet. He served
with his regiment at the battles of Antietam and Fredericksburg.
Joseph Bérard of Woonsocket, Rhode Island, served in
the Union army under the name Jerry Berry. The phonetic name
change was probably the most common and could be more or less
direct (Bigraw for Bigras, Ducett for Doucet, Dubay for Dubé,
Dupry or Du Pray for Dupré, Eno for Hénault, Favro
for Favreau, La Bounty for Labonté, Lamar for Lamarre,
Ledue for Ledoux, Legassey for Lagacé, Maynard for Ménard,
Rondo for Rondeau, or Tebo for Thibault), or more approximate
(Brother for Brodeur, Dawiran for Dorion, Francu for Francoeur,
Friezy for Foisy, Gubby for Gobeil, Jefferson for Geoffrion,
Leberdee for Labadie, Perquins for Paquin, Scambo for Archambault,
or Shapeal for Lachapelle).
Translated
surnames: This pattern, whereby the original French Canadian
name was simply translated into English, was common among those
whose surnames expressed an emotion (Lovejoy for Lajoie, or
Happy for Content or L’Heureux), a profession (King for Roy,
or Wright for Charron), an object (Stone for Lapierre, or Wood
for Dubois), an animal (Beef for Leboeuf), or any other translatable
term (Forest for Laforest, Rivers for Larivière, Luck
for Lachance, or Small for Petit). Jacques Papillon of Rutland,
Vermont, served in the union army under the name James Butterfly,
while Denis Courtemanche of Burlington, Vermont, served in the
Fifth Vermont Regiment under the name Denis Shortsleeve.
Complete
surname changes: The changed surname bore no resemblance,
either phonetically or through translation, to the original
French Canadian surname. Examples of this type abound and do
not follow any pattern (Young for Lemoyne). Thus Louis G.-A.
Fauteux, born in Concord, New Hampshire, in 1848, served in
Company D of the Second Massachusetts Cavalry from February
1864 to June 1865 under the name George H. Sanford. He died
in Boston in 1899.9
When
French Canadian migrants returned permanently to Canada, some
kept their anglicized surname. Today, a quick look in any phone
book in the Province of Quebec will provide examples of some of
the name changes listed above, especially the phonetic ones.
Acadians
do not appear to have participated in the Civil War in any significant
number. A peaceful people, they have traditionally shunned military
pursuits. Moreover, in the early 1860s, Acadians had not yet begun
their large-scale immigration to New England. Indeed, most Franco-Americans
in the Union forces hailed from Quebec or from the Franco-American
communities of New York, New England or the Midwest. The Acadians
of Aroostook County, Maine, whose inhabitants had become Americans
after the Ashburton-Webster Treaty of 1842 transferred their half
of the Madawaska Valley to the United States, did contribute roughly
150 soldiers to the Union forces. However, when the 1862 draft
went into effect, the county failed to supply its quota of men,
and fifty potential recruits fled to New Brunswick. By 1863, the
whole Madawaska Valley was said to be a haven for deserters and
copperheads. The geographic and cultural isolation of the Acadian
populations of Maine, Gaspesia, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and
of Prince Edward Island contributed to their low participation
rates. In fact, in the Atlantic colonies, interest and participation
in the Civil War seems to have bypassed many locales and internal
minorities such as the Acadians. In Aroostook County, which was
the most distant point in the United States from the theater of
war, rumors swirled during the whole conflict. In early 1865,
the Acadians of St. Bruno, Maine, built barricades, dusted off
outdated muskets and prepared to repel a reported Confederate
invasion of Maine. Such a seemingly alarmist reaction may seem
absurd to the modern observer. However, in the wake of the Confederate
raid on St. Albans, Vermont (1864), it was not wholly irrational
to imagine that Confederate agents operating in Canada might launch
a desperate assault on Northern New England.10
©
2001 Claude Bélanger, Marianopolis College
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