PC:Intnl. Brigades in ACW?

Is there a possibility for International Brigades to fight in the American Civil War, especially on the Northern Side?
 
To get international volunteers for the Union, the emancipation proclamation probably needs to happen earlier and should be more immediately meaningful.

To get international volunteers for the Confederacy, the emancipation proclamation should never happen.
 
You might be able to tie this into the other thread that has Garibaldi taking his services over the Atlantic to the Union. His presence might motivate some international brigades...
 
To get international volunteers for the Union, the emancipation proclamation probably needs to happen earlier and should be more immediately meaningful.

I think the problem is that it will be seen by a lot of people the world over to be just the feds trying to keep part of their territory and not, unlike the SCW, a political fight. Maybe if there is a fear of some of the liberalisation being wounded back in other countries if the CSA won.

To get international volunteers for the Confederacy, the emancipation proclamation should never happen.

Going along the same way, have people from independentists groups see a link between the CSA's plight and their own.

I also wonder if you could see volunteers units being organised in some places who still have slavery and who might believe that supporting the CSA ensured the marketability of it won't go out.
 
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I think the problem is that it will be seen by a lot of people the world over to be just the feds trying to keep part of their territory and not, unlike the SCW, a political fight. Maybe if there is a fear of some of the liberalisation being wounded back in other countries if the CSA won.

There's at least one country that would see it as a political fight, especially once the Emancipation Proclamation is issued.

Liberia.

The trouble is that there aren't enough Americo-Liberians, they've got problems of their own, and they don't have the wealth to finance an overseas military intervention. But if some African-American adventurer got the idea of recruiting a Liberian volunteer regiment, and raised some money by subscription...
 
There's at least one country that would see it as a political fight, especially once the Emancipation Proclamation is issued.

Liberia.

The trouble is that there aren't enough Americo-Liberians, they've got problems of their own, and they don't have the wealth to finance an overseas military intervention. But if some African-American adventurer got the idea of recruiting a Liberian volunteer regiment, and raised some money by subscription...

Maybe if Congress somehow delayed the recruitment of black troops, you could see substantial support from the African-American community for such a project as a way to get blacks fighting the Confederacy anyway? Maybe some African-Americans could join such a force, as a work-around to actually fighting in the Union army?
 
IIRC there were international volunteers for the Union cause. Not a lot, but the international brigades are lionised out of proportion to their numbers, too. You could easily see their numbers grow ifd the emancipation proclamation comes earlier, or if the US side makes slavery a bigger issue earlier.

What you most likely will not see is international brigades. There is, as yet, no US citizenship requirement for service, so any volunteer from Germany, Italy or Britain could basically get off the boat in New York and head for the nearest recruiting office (conveniently located righ by the pier....) That also means it is hard to untangle motives. Did the men enlisting off the boat in NYC plan to become Union soldiers and only later decide to stay? Did they mean to join the army and become US citizens from the start? Or were they planning to immigrate and get talked into military service? I wouldn't be surprised if a fair number of Europeans coming during the Civil War had intended to support the Union cause (and stay afterwards, of course).
 
I don't know enough about any other country to offer an opinion, but I think that to get significant numbers of British volunteers you would need to either avoid or alter Britain's neutrality proclamation since under its terms it was illegal for any subject of Queen Victoria to fight for either side. I don't know if anyone was ever prosecuted for trying to enlist, but I think that if there was no risk of prosecution then there's a good chance there would be more British who were willing to fight especially if this was combined with an earlier Emancipation Proclamation.

If the neutrality proclamtion is completely avoided though I think that would also mean that warships could be legally built for the Confederacy (and for the Union too, but I doubt they would bother buying ships since they can build so many of their own far more easily than the Confederacy can) so that might make the war at sea more costly for the Union and probably damage relations between the US and Britain more than the volunteers would help.
 
i heard that Canadians went and fought for the NORTH but do not remember the source

here's an online book about the french-canadians in the civil war (in english). The estimate is between 20 000 and 40 000 however many of them were probably 2nd+ generations americans.

The problem with exact origin comes from the fact that as british subjects they were supposed to be neutral but the border was quite porous and many had relatives in new england so giving a fake place of birth wouldn't have been that hard.
 

Kaptin Kurk

Banned
Well, a lot of foreigners did come to the U.S. to fight on various sides in the civil war. I don't think either side felt the need to group them all together in a brigade though. I know the Union, at least, was actively recruiting Irish to come over and fight at a certain point (in Ireland, that is.) As to the English, it seems that of those that felt to come over and fight, about half went north and half went south. Germans of various kinds flowed in to. I'm sure there were probably enough foreign adventures to put together an international brigade on either side, but I doubt from one specific country. For the south, a true international brigade sent by another country would have been tantamount to that country intervening in the war, and for the North, I still don't think it would be politically feasible to just invite another country's forces in.
 
For the south, a true international brigade sent by another country would have been tantamount to that country intervening in the war, and for the North, I still don't think it would be politically feasible to just invite another country's forces in.

In the SCW, the brigaders were, in large part, intended for propaganda purposes. Its not that they didn't fight obviously but that their primary function was to inspire the republicans by showing the world was behind them. So probably you would to create a situation when the government would feel that having foreigners operating openly outweight the possible international backlash.
 

Ancientone

Banned
More than a third of all Union forces were made up of immigrants with German and Irish troops being in the majority. More than 216,000 German immigrants and volunteers served in the Union forces and over 20 regiments were wholly made up of German speakers. A handful of regiments were also exclusively Scottish or Scottish-Irish notably the 79th New York Infantry regiment that wore the kilt.
Over 60,000 Canadians and Britons served in the Union forces as volunteers.
As the American Civil War was the most interesting war of the period and serving soldiers, including senior officers, looking for excitement seconded themselves to both sides and arrived from Hungary, Italy, Prussia, France, Spain, Mexico and elsewhere. "Official" representation as observers saw scores of British Officers attached to staff headquarters and in the case of both Grant and McClelland being treated as advisors, while down South JEB Stuart's Chief of staff was Prussian officer Heros von Borcke. Sir John Fitzroy De Courcy, who later became Lord Kingsale, was the colonel of the 16th Ohio Volunteers. He was the colonel who captured the Cumberland Gap from the Confederacy. Several Britons became generals in the Union and Confederate armies--you can see some of the bios here. Some were immigrants, others resigned their commissions to travel to America to volunteer.
Both Union and Confederate navies had their ranks well filled by British and Canadian volunteers, the confederate navy especially. The CSS Alabama's crew was two-thirds British.


Lord Abinger (William F. Scarlett, 3rd Baron Abinger,
Lt. Col., Scots Fusilier Guards
(middle, third from right, Virgina 1863) ..................................................................... 79th New York Infantry regiment


Lord-Abinger-and-Officers-300x227.png
.........................................................
imgres-5.jpeg


Scots Guards officers attached to McClelland's staff
British-Observers-McClellans-Staff-1862-300x225.jpg

 
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