Volunteering

[Dave Wilma]

I am reading World On Fire about Britain's role during the CW (I recommend it). Some of the stories told are of British citizens who found themselves in the Union and the Confederacy with no intention of taking sides, but being kidnapped or threatened with violence or jail unless the volunteered. Some were physically dragged to musters and forced to enlist. I suspect that this aspect of war fever in 1861 has gone unexamined. Communities got caught up in patriotism and demanded 100 percent participation on the part of young men. This is distinct from the official conscription.

Has anyone run across these accounts?

 

[ExNavyPilot]

I haven't seen accounts like that. My GG Grandfather Procter immigrated with his family from England to Wisconsin in about 1852 (he was age 13) and then enlisted in Oct 1862, serving until mustered out in Sep 1865. His two brothers, both of age for enlistment, did NOT serve.

 

[John Hartwell]

I've never heard anything like that either, and have to be suspicious. One or two exaggerated stories can too easily become a trend. I'm sure there could be a lot of mob-pressure, especially in regions where an immediate threat or high guerrilla activity was present. But, I can't believe the regular establishment of either army would allow it. But then, I seem to hear a lot of things "I can't believe"!

jno

 

[John Hartwell]

Thinking this over, could it involve long-term "permanent residents" who had never bothered to file for naturalization? Does anyone know the status of such men, and there were a great many all over the country, under the Federal and Confederate conscription acts?

jno

 

[ole]

I'll suspect it had to do with those who stayed too long in the eastern ports. Those who went directly to the hinterlands were a bit too hard to keep track of.

My ggfather went directly to Wisconsin in 1851; bought a farm in Minnesota in 1852. In 1861, he was 50 and had 7 kids. I don't think anyone ever tried to recruit him. And, on another note, I'm not sure he ever became a naturalized citizen. Not much law reached into that county.

 

[Dave Wilma]

In A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War Amanda Foreman cites Times correspondent William Howard Russell's conversation with British consul in New Orleans William Mure as a source. She writes

British subjects were being marched to recruiting posts by self-appointed vigilantes, "not in twos or threes, but in tens and 20s," the consul told Russell. One woman had complained to him that her husband was held hostage and beaten for three days until he agreed to enlist; his face was so badly disfigured when they brought him home that she failed to recognize him. Dissent was treated in the same harsh manner. "Every stranger is watched, every word is noted," Russell wrote in one of his dispatches to The Times.​

​

Throughout the Confederacy intense pressure was being exerted on the 233,000 foreign residents to prove their loyalty to the South. Fort William Watson, a Scotsman working as a mechanic in Baton Rouge, failure to follow his friends into the Pelican Rifles of the 3rd Louisiana infantry would have been unthinkable. "I would never take up arms to maintain or enforce slavery," he wrote his memoirs. But Watsons friends told him he would be fighting for independence, because so worthy that he could not remain aloof "without injury" to his honor.​

​

There are other accounts of coercion.

 

[John Hartwell]

In A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War Amanda Foreman cites Times correspondent William Howard Russell's conversation with British consul in New Orleans William Mure as a source. She writes

British subjects were being marched to recruiting posts by self-appointed vigilantes, "not in twos or threes, but in tens and 20s," the consul told Russell. One woman had complained to him that her husband was held hostage and beaten for three days until he agreed to enlist; his face was so badly disfigured when they brought him home that she failed to recognize him. Descent was treated in the same harsh manner. "Every stranger is watched, every word is noted," Russell wrote in one of his dispatches to The Times.​

​

Throughout the Confederacy intense pressure was being exerted on the 233,000 foreign residents to prove their loyalty to the South. Fort William Watson, a Scotsman working as a mechanic in Baton Rouge, failure to follow his friends into the Pelican Rifles of the 3rd Louisiana infantry would have been unthinkable. "I would never take up arms to maintain or enforce slavery," he wrote his memoirs. But Watsons friends told him he would be fighting for independence, because so worthy that he could not remain aloof "without injury" to his honor.​

​

There are other accounts of coercion.

If they were a part of the garrison sent to the forts below New Orleans (mostly local troops, I believe), it's no wonder they offered so little resistance to Farragut's attack.

jno