US Citizenship attainment?

Reg Parker

Cadet
Joined
Apr 19, 2019
Location
Phoenix, Arizona
Hi,

I am not certain where to ask, but for foreign born men who served in Union Army, was citizenship granted for service or was that a later development. I cannot find the answer for my ancestor, Reuben Evans Co. G, 149th NYV. (Born England).

Thanks,
Reg Parker
 
I'm not offering an answer, but posting will show me updates to this thread, and I too am interested in this question.
I think that immigrants who served were offered an expedited process (they still had to apply and meet some requirements), but not an automatic process (I suppose the 14th Amendment's conferring citizenship on any person born in the United States is as automatic as it gets.)
 
Hi,

I am not certain where to ask, but for foreign born men who served in Union Army, was citizenship granted for service or was that a later development. I cannot find the answer for my ancestor, Reuben Evans Co. G, 149th NYV. (Born England).

Thanks,
Reg Parker
It was probably achieved through the 1790 Naturalization Act and its amendments. Before the Civil War many states were anxious for white immigrants, so it was often not hard for them to get it.

Voting rights were another matter. I think Connecticut was the first state to have literacy requirements for voting. They were intended to restrict the number of immigrants who could vote.

President Grant also used he Second KKK Act of 1871 to suppress immigrant votes in the big cities of the North. Federal election supervisors could be required if only two citizens in any city with 20,000 or more population requested it. Since sixty-three of the total sixty-eight applicable American cities were outside the former Confederacy, this "KKK" provision was really targeted at immigrants who tended to vote for Democrats. Grant, of course, did not refer to it as "voter suppression" but instead claimed he was blocking voter fraud.

 
Last edited:
Back
Top