ABSTRACT
German immigrants who came to the American North prior to 1861 volunteered en masse once the Civil War began, and they became the largest group of foreign fighters in the Union Army during the war. The initial motivations of German immigrant soldiers in the Union Army have been misunderstood by many historians who look at Germans as Hessian mercenaries in the Union ranks – who fought purely for money –and historians who focus too heavily on the failed 1848 German Revolution as the basis of German immigrant involvement in the war. Both answers are correct to some degree, but neither fully explains the initial motivations of 190,000 German immigrants and 56,000 German Americans who volunteered to fight for the Union. This paper asks the question: what were the initial motivations of German immigrants who fought for the Union? The answer is much more complex than any one historian has presented prior, and only by exploring the full range of their initial motivations can we understand their sustained motivations for remaining in the Union Army.
To demonstrate its argument, the paper utilizes sources ranging from English- and translated German to English-language newspapers, personal letters, soldiers’ memoir s and manuscripts in American archives. The paper traces German soldiers in the army from 1861 through the entirety of the war, and it explores the significance of their reenlistment in 1864. It concludes that German immigrant soldiers’ commitment to the Union was rooted in numerous intertwined situations that existed in the years prior to and during the American Civil War, especially their desire for liberty and a new home.
