A DifferentAbraham Lincoln Brigade

WI instead of the draft Lincoln tried to recruit from Europe after the Emancipation Proclamation?

Could this have happened?
 
Not at all possible.

"International volunteers" are a joke in a time of mass communications, much less in the era.
 
Not to mention that it would add at least 6 months, perhaps a year, onto the time to get those hypothetical recruits battle-ready over recruiting from the USA. I'd say that would probably mean that any recruits he did achieve would arrive far too late to be militarily viable, not to mention they would be emotionally withdrawn from the conflict (since they wouldn't be fighting for nationalism) and thus probably liable to desert in numbers.
 
WI instead of the draft Lincoln tried to recruit from Europe after the Emancipation Proclamation?

Could this have happened?

It did happen, as well as the draft. The U.S. government offered a $30 bounty for all new recruits and there were enterprising individuals who travelled to Europe and pursuaded Europeans to join up and fight to end slavery and then pocketed the bounty. Joseph Pulitzer was one of many who joined up without knowing about the bounty. Added this, there were hundreds of thousands of migrants to the U.S.A during the civil war and the bounty allowed many more to join the military after only a few days in the U.S.A. And to put the bounty into context, a private soldier was paid $7 a month.
 
It did happen, as well as the draft. The U.S. government offered a $30 bounty for all new recruits and there were enterprising individuals who travelled to Europe and pursuaded Europeans to join up and fight to end slavery and then pocketed the bounty. Joseph Pulitzer was one of many who joined up without knowing about the bounty. Added this, there were hundreds of thousands of migrants to the U.S.A during the civil war and the bounty allowed many more to join the military after only a few days in the U.S.A. And to put the bounty into context, a private soldier was paid $7 a month.

Indeed it was so prevalent that many Southerners (Because their newspapers exaggerated it.) though most Union soldiers were foreign hirelings.
 
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