Could former Confederates join the post war U.S. Army?

[major bill]

Once the war was over were there any restrictions on former Confederates joining the U.S. Army or Navy? I understand that they would need to have taken an oath of loyalty to the United States.

If there were no restrictions, could former Confederate soldiers and officers serve in the U.S. Army? How common would this have been?

 

[jackt62]

Ex-Confederates Joseph Wheeler, Fitzhugh Lee, Thomas Rosser, and Matthew Butler joined the US Volunteers during the Spanish-American War.

 

[Lampasas Bill]

I don't see why not. Even during the war they could join the U.S. Army if they took an oath of loyalty to the United States.

 

[frontrank2]

I don't see why not. Even during the war they could join the U.S. Army if they took an oath of loyalty to the United States.

Used p.o.w.s to fight Indians in the West. Called them " Galvanized " yanks.

 

[Rusk County Avengers]

Spanish-American War era is well known, lots of CS vets, before during the Indian War period? I'd say it might be complicated, "Galvanized Yankees" excepted.

In the military occupation of the South, if some Southerner could be called bona fide loyal, I don't see why not. An actual Confederate veteran, I don't see it till maybe the mid-1870's. Even with the loyalty oaths, most weren't gonna join, but even if they did and were accepted there's no way they'd get an equivalent previous CS rank, and I don't see say a former CS sergeant or officer going in as a private. Plus, they'd face a lot of discrimination if they did...

I think the big change, the idea of a Confederate veteran signing up, happened with the war scare with Spain during the "Virginius Affair" 1873-1875 and some did offer to serve, Bedford Forrest being the most famous example with Sherman saying he'd love to have him.

In the end I think some years were needed. 1860's no way, post-1873 they could pretty much just officers, as most enlisted personnel were a lot older than the average recruit.

 

[ErnieMac]

William Calvin Oates, colonel of the 15th & 48th Alabama, served as a brigadier general of volunteers during the Spanish-American War. The war ended before he saw action.

 

[lelliott19]

Lieutenant John J. "Black Jack" Pershing would later write (after the Battle of San Juan Hill):
"Each officer or soldier next in rank took charge of the line or group immediately in his front or rear and halting to fire at each good opportunity, taking reasonable advantage of cover, the entire command moved forward as coolly as though the buzzing of bullets was the humming of bees. White regiments, black regiments, regulars and Rough Riders, representing the young manhood of the North and the South, fought shoulder to shoulder, unmindful of race or color, unmindful of whether commanded by ex-Confederate or not, and mindful of only their common duty as Americans."

http://www.homeofheroes.com/wallofhonor/spanish_am/11_crowdedhour.html

 

[FPT]

Once the war was over were there any restrictions on former Confederates joining the U.S. Army or Navy? I understand that they would need to have taken an oath of loyalty to the United States.

If there were no restrictions, could former Confederate soldiers and officers serve in the U.S. Army? How common would this have been?
[/QUOTE

Used p.o.w.s to fight Indians in the West. Called them " Galvanized " yanks.

Anyone who ever saw John Ford's "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" would know that "Trooper John Smith, United States Cavalry" was really Rome Clay, late brigadier general of the Confederate States Army ( "...a gallant soldier and Christian gentleman").

 

[RedRover]

Where Confederate POWs took the oath of allegiance to the United States, they were frequently released from custody, and were free to enlist in US Army service, regular or volunteer, if they so chose.

As previously mentioned above, there were the US Volunteer units, previously mentioned, allowing CS POWS to enlist for US service in the West (as volunteers) but so as not to fight fellow southerners, etc.

There were units of volunteers raised in every southern State to fight the Confederacy, totalling near 90,000 men by the end of the war; a considerable number of whom had seen some CSA service previously. There appears to have been no serious impediment to CSA veterans to enlist in the US Regular Army during or after the war.

However, from 1866 Confederate Veterans were not to be appointed to the military and naval academies, or to serve as officers of the US Army, etc.

This was not permanent. For example, James M. Ambler, Navy surgeon of the disastrous USS Jeanette arctic expedition, 1879-1881, was a Confederate cavalryman, and graduate of the US Naval Academy, etc.

Confederate veterans served in the ranks of the regular army. There were several yet in the enlisted ranks of the 7th Cavalry at Little Big Horn in 1876. If I recall one of them had served as an officer in a CSA Virginia regiment.

 

[lupaglupa]

General Wheeler was the first person I thought of

 

[Philip Leigh]

Seventeen-year-old Private Henry Stanley of the Sixth Arkansas Infantry Regiment was captured at Shiloh and sent to Chicago's POW Camp Douglas where he took advantage of an opportunity to enlist in a Union Battery that was sent to the Eastern Theater.

He was hospitalized at Harpers Ferry due to illness where he soon walked out and traveled to New York. He caught a ship to Liverpool and returned to his British mother who told him he was not welcome. He returned to New York where he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and thereby may have become the only person to be a member of the Confederate Army, Union Army, and Union Navy during the Civil War. He deserted the Union Navy in February 1865.

After the war he became a reporter for The New York Herald where his byline became familiar to readers of his adventures in America's western frontier. Soon he asked The Herald for permission to seek other adventures in the unexplored regions of Africa. He became the first white man to travel the Congo River from source to mouth. The Stanley (Boyoma) Falls were named after him, as was Stanleyville (Kisangan). In November 1871 he found Dr. David Livingston, a missionary who had been out of touch with his home in Scotland for years.

Intending to organize a colony, Belgian King Leopold engaged Stanley to explore the Congo River basin. By 1884 Leopold controlled much of the basin as the sole shareholder of the Congo Free State. It became a humanitarian disaster and in 1908 the Belgian Parliament annexed the territory, naming it the Belgian Congo. Four years later Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote Tarzan of the Apes, the first of 26 Tarzan novels, mostly set in the colony.

In 1921 the Belgian Congo opened the Shinkolobwe mine which was worked by slave laborers to produce radium and uranium. It was the World's richest source at the time. Shinkolobwe ore was about 65% pure uranium as compared to 0.02% for the Canadian mines of the era. Given Nazi aggression in 1939, in 1940 Belgium shipped 1,200 tons to Staten Island where it was warehoused until September 1942 when the Manhattan Project bought it.

The Project also contracted to purchase 400 additional tons monthly from Shinkolobwe. Only two shipments were lost during the war. Eighty percent of the uranium in the first atomic bomb (Little Boy) came from the Belgian Congo. The ore was refined into U-235 (a readily fissile isotope) at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which is at the opposite end of the state from Shiloh. Less than one percent of pure uranium is U-235 and nearly all the rest is U-238.

Since Oak Ridge used an electromagnetic separation process, it required a lot of electricity, which was the reason the plant was located in the Tennessee Valley where the TVA could provide hydropower generation. Once in operation, Oak Ridge consumed one-seventh of America's daily electricity during World War II. The plant was operated by an Eastman Kodak subsidiary. During World War II Oak Ridge rapidly became a town of 50,000 people that did not officially exist and was not on publicly available road maps.

The U-238 was not wasted. It could be used to create a nuclear reactor, which produced Plutonium (a readily fissile element) as a by-product. Being an element, as opposed to an isotope, it could also be more conveniently separated from impurities through chemical reactions. The first reactor was in Oak Ridge but large scale Plutonium facilities were shifted Hanover, Washington. Since U-238 was 100 times more available than U-235, and was the raw material for making Plutonium, the latter became the chief fissile material for our nuclear arsenal. The Hanford facilities were managed by the DuPont company, which was a major supplier of gunpowder to the Union during the Civil War.

See "The Galvanized Yankee" New York Times Opinionator June 5, 2012.

 

[GwilymT]

Seventeen-year-old Private Henry Stanley of the Sixth Arkansas Infantry Regiment was captured at Shiloh and sent to Chicago's POW Camp Douglas where he took advantage of an opportunity to enlist in a Union Battery that was sent to the Eastern Theater.

He was hospitalized at Harpers Ferry due to illness where he soon walked out and traveled to New York. He caught a ship to Liverpool and returned to his British mother who told him he was not welcome. He returned to New York where he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and thereby may have become the only person to be a member of the Confederate Army, Union Army, and Union Navy during the Civil War. He deserted the Union Navy in February 1865.

After the war he became a reporter for The New York Herald where his byline became familiar to readers of his adventures in America's western frontier. Soon he asked The Herald for permission to seek other adventures in the unexplored regions of Africa. He became the first white man to traverse the Congo River from source to mouth. The Stanley (Boyoma) Falls were named after him. In November 1871 he found Dr. David Livingston, a missionary who had been out of touch with his home in Scotland for years.

Intending to organize a colony, Belgian King Leopold engaged Stanley to explore the Congo River basin. By 1884 Leopold controlled much of the basin as the sole shareholder of the Congo Free State. It became a humanitarian disaster and in 1908 the Belgian Parliament annexed the territory, naming it the Belgian Congo. Four years later Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote Tarzan of the Apes, the first of 26 Tarzan novels, mostly set in the colony.

In 1921 the Belgian Congo opened the Shinkolobwe mine which was worked by slave laborers to produce radium and uranium. It was the World's richest source at the time. Shinkolobwe ore was about 65% pure uranium as compared to 0.02% for the Canadian mines of the era. Given Nazi aggression in 1939, in 1940 Belgium shipped 1,200 tons to Staten Island where it was warehoused until September 1942 when the Manhattan Project bought it.

The Project also contracted to purchase 400 additional tons monthly from Shinkolobwe. Only two shipments were lost during the war. Eighty percent of the uranium in the first atomic bomb came from the Belgian Congo. The ore was refined into U-235 (a fissile isotope) at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which is at the opposite end of the state from Shiloh. Less than one percent of pure uranium is U-235 and nearly all the rest is U-238.

Since Oak Ridge used an electromagnetic separation process, it required a lot of electricity, which was the reason the plant was located in the Tennessee Valley where the TVA could provide hydropower generation. Once in operation, Oak Ridge consumed one-seventh of America's daily electricity during World War II.

See "The Galvanized Yankee" New York Times Opinionator June 5, 2012.

Neat story, thanks for sharing!

 

[Bill_S]

Ex-Confederates Joseph Wheeler, Fitzhugh Lee, Thomas Rosser, and Matthew Butler joined the US Volunteers during the Spanish-American War.

To learn more about them I read the Wiki article on the war and found this amusing quote concerning Major General Wheeler:

'Still, in an exciting moment during the Battle of Las Guasimas, Wheeler apparently forgot for a moment which war he was fighting, having supposedly called out "Let's go, boys! We've got the **** Yankees on the run again!"[161]"​

It is one of those stories that might or might not be true, but darn it, it sure should be true! Cheers​