As I start to do some more work on my U.S. History A course and my Civil War unit I want to have my students work with data such as immigration and come up with a prediction(s) and thesis. Obviously I am taking this from a very basic level and will work up from there. Here’s what I am thinking of working with thus far:
| Union States (top 10) | Total | Confederate States | Total |
|
New York Pennsylvania Ohio Illinois Wisconsin Missouri Michigan California New Jersey Indiana |
997,580 430,163 328,120 324,573 276,901 160,525 148,610 146,077 122,701 118,270 |
Louisiana Texas Virginia Tennessee Alabama Georgia S. Carolina Mississippi Arkansas N. Carolina Florida |
80,549 43,401 35,053 21,218 12,350 11,643 9,981 8,556 3,599 3,289 3,280 |
Potential Thesis: Immigration, Integration, and Nationalism, and its influence (or lack there of) on Union and Confederate soldiers and armies during the Civil War.
Predictions:
1. More foreign-born immigrants/soldiers fought for the Union than did the Confederacy.
2. In every state in the Union, regiments had a significantly higher percentage of foreign-born soldiers than did the Confederacy.
3. The process of social integration was already in motion in the Union before the war ever ended. This, I suspect, is a product of the number of foreign-born immigrants traveling to the rural areas of the Midwest in search of cheap farmland, and to the urban areas in search of jobs. Integration for the North allowed for a more democratic fighting force that was fighting for a “national†cause more so than the Confederate states, who fought mainly for their “state.†Confederate soldiers tended to be defined more by their loyalties to an individual state, than a national cause, whereas Union soldiers were more national in their thinking.
Questions:
1. Did immigrants sign up at a comparable rate to American born soldiers before the draft?
2. Did foreign-born soldiers fragment Union regiments and make them unequal to their Confederate counterparts, or did their desire to integrate, along with Northern acceptance, form stronger ideological bonds and better fighting units. In other words, did these foreign-born soldiers feel they had something to prove and did they become better fighters?
3. Was there a more “national†sentiment among Union soldiers than Confederate?
