For
the American scholar, no period of history is more fascinating,
challenging and controversial than that of the Civil War. Nevertheless,
few historians have studied the Franco-American participation
in the war, which has remained shrouded in myths. This booklet
examines this little known aspect of the conflict along with the
growth of the Franco-American communities in the Northeast and
Midwest during the Civil War era. Throughout the study, the Canadian
dimension of the conflict is explored to provide the reader with
an overall sense of its continental impact.
The
American Civil War was an irrepressible and bloody conflict whose
underlying causes can be linked to the institution of slavery
and to the fundamental cultural, social, ideological, moral, political,
constitutional and economic divisions it engendered. Today, historians
widely accept the proposition that, if slavery had not existed
or had been restricted to one location within the United States,
then a civil war would not have occurred, or at least not in the
way it did. The issue of slavery was thus at the root of the conflict.
It expressed itself in a variety of ways. For instance, after
the Mexican War (1846-1848) extended America’s borders to the
Pacific Ocean, the question of slavery’s westward expansion spawned
a serious disagreement over the nature of the American political
system. Indeed, Americans had not yet resolved the central question
as to who was the ultimate authority under their federal system.
During the 1850s, they debated whether the States were sovereign
entities, and thus each able to retain the right to decide on
the issue of slavery, or if the central government the ultimate
authority, and therefore capable of imposing uniformity on the
issue of slavery to all of the States and territories. The tone
of the debate soon shifted dramatically as America argued over
more explosive questions: did the States have the right to secede
from the Union, or was the American federation indissoluble? The
Civil War answered these questions in a conclusive manner.1
Slavery
was about more than money or cotton, it was the foundation of
a whole social order. In the past, some historians sought to minimize
slavery’s role in the coming of America’s most destructive war.
However, in recent years, most have come to accept its centrality
among the causes of the Civil War. Accordingly, the issue that
preoccupies contemporary historians is no longer whether slavery
caused the Civil War, but how and why it did. Though a vast majority
of Americans, including those who supported the Republican Party,
were hardly abolitionists in 1860, it is clear, as Abraham Lincoln
had put it, that the nation could not endure "half slave
and half free." Slavery was a lucrative system. Given a new
life in the early nineteenth-century with the spread of cotton
production in the South, it would not have collapsed under its
own weight. Only a violent struggle could purge America of its
"peculiar institution."2
Over
two million men served in the Union army and navy during the Civil
War. Though some idealistic young men enlisted because they felt
that the war was a righteous crusade to abolish slavery, the bulk
of the Union’s soldiers and sailors were not fighting in hope
of freeing the slaves. In fact, during the conflict’s first couple
of years, abolition was not a formal war goal. Consequently, during
the first half of the Civil War, Lincoln tried desperately to
avoid turning the conflict into an unpopular struggle to free
the Southern slave. Paradoxically, while the war’s underlying
causes lay in the divisive issues spawned by slavery, the general
unpopularity of emancipation made it impossible for the North
to conduct an abolitionist crusade until the conflict was well
underway. In 1860, most Northerners denounced the cruelty and
degradation surrounding the institution of slavery and bitterly
opposed its westward expansion but were not ready to embrace emancipation.
This was the great paradox of antebellum America. Indeed, most
of those who fought and died for the North did so because they
felt compelled to restore the Union by force. Others sought adventure
or employment in the Union ranks. Nonetheless, though most were
hardly abolitionists, hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans
took part in what some historians have rightly termed "the
Second American Revolution." This revolution would free the
Southern slave.
American
historians have long discussed which side had the best troops
or generals or the more efficient War Department. These debates,
while interesting, miss an important point. Bravery, training,
tactics and generals may have won battles and campaigns, but economics
and demographics won the Civil War. Simply put, the North won
because it had superior resources at its disposal.
In
1860, the North’s greatest advantage over the South was not so
much its industries or its railways but rather its large pool
of labor. In any war, manpower is a strategic resource. It fuels
industry, raises crops and fights battles. Not only was the North’s
population more than double that of the South, but it also received
an overwhelming proportion of America’s immigrants.
Although
the Civil War temporarily disrupted the flow of immigration, the
North could still count on a fairly steady stream of new arrivals
to contribute to its war effort. After a sharp decline in 1861
and 1862, immigration began to pick up again by 1863. Still, fearing
war and conscription, many potential immigrants stayed away. However,
after the economic dislocation of the war’s early months, some
arrived specifically to find work in a booming economy suffering
from a severe labor shortage. Throughout the United States, soldiers
needed to be replaced on the farms and in the vital industries
of the home front, and wages were high. Some immigrants also came
with the intention of enlisting in the Union forces.3
Roughly
half a million Union soldiers and sailors were foreign-born. Indeed,
a large proportion of the immigrants were of military age and
there was a higher proportion of males among the foreign-born
than in the general population. Proportionally, they could furnish
more soldiers than native-born America. The sheer numerical importance
of foreign-born recruitment has given rise to a persistent Southern
myth that "the majority of Yankee soldiers were foreign hirelings."
However, nothing could be further from the truth. While the foreign-born
contribution to the Union cause was crucial and increased with
time, it was not as massive as some historians have claimed it
to be. In fact, foreign-born men, who accounted for about a quarter
of the servicemen, represented roughly 30 percent of the males
of military age in the Union states. Immigrants were thus under-represented
in the Union forces. Catholics, especially the Irish, were the
most under-represented group in proportion to population. This
can be explained in part by the Democratic allegiance of a majority
of American Catholics and by their opposition to Republican war
goals and policy, especially emancipation and conscription. In
New York City, Irish resistance to military conscription spawned
the infamous draft riot of 1863, which terrorized the city and
left at least 105 people dead. To this day, it remains the worst
riot in American history.4