UISTOEY OF THE CIVIL WAR, BY THE COMTE DE PARIS. 519 



Upon the nativity ot the voluuteer army of the North, the Comtc de Paris makes the followiug 



comments : 



"This army was as national in its composition as it was in spirit, representing in due propor- 

 tion the various elements of the American population. It has, indeed, been urged that foreigners 

 predominated in its ranks. This is a great mistake, but easily susceptible of explanation, from the 

 fact that the German accent and the Irish brogue frequently struck upon the ear wherever the vol- 

 unteers were collected." # # * 



" A few figures will suffice to confirm this assertion. Of the volunteers who enlisted during 

 the first year, only one-tenth were foreigners; of the remainder, two-thirds were born on American 

 soil,'and seven-thirtieths, or rather less than one-fourtli, were naturalized Europeans. By examin- 

 ing separately the contingents of the Eastern States, where but a small number of emigrants settle, 

 we find a still larger proportion of natives — a proportion which, in 1864, when conscription was par- 

 tially resorted to, reached as high as eighty per cent. This army, two-thirds of which consisted of 

 native Americans, and only one-third of foreigners, was raised out of a population of about 

 19,000,000 souls. In order to ascertain which of these two elements supplied the largest proportion 

 of men, we have only to compare the number of able-bodied men that each of them was able to 

 contribute. , The statistics of ISCO render this comparison impracticable ; but the census of 1863, 

 taken in the loyal States preparatory to the conscription, gave upwards of 3,100,000 as the number 

 of men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five years. By adding 900,000 more, the maximum 

 number of soldiers then in act..al service or disabled, it may safely be affirmed that the class which 

 in 1801 contributed exclusively to the recruitment of the Army did not exceed 4,000,000. With the 

 help of the emigrant rolls, it is easy to calculate how many of these were born in America and 

 how many in Europe. During the decade from 1849 to 1858, the United -States received ,3,000,000 

 new-comers, 1,200,000 of whom were women and 1,800,000 men ; 1,370,000 of the latter being over 

 fifteen and under thirty-five years of age. Deducting 8,000 from this number, which, accord- 

 ing to the tables of mortality, is the decrease of that population since its arrival iii America, we 

 find that emigration had, in the course of ten years, brought over to that country 1,362,000 men, 

 who, when the levies of volunteers took place, were still living and between the ages of eighteen 

 and thirty-eight, and consequently forming part of the 4,000,000 among whom the American Army 

 ■was recruited. This number already exceeds by 31,000 the third of those 4,000,000; but in order 

 to make our statement complete, we should add thereto the number of Europeans who in 1861 were 

 between thirty-eight and forty-five years, as well as those who at the time of their lauding, before 1849, 

 ■were under thirty-three years of age, inasmuch as both categories were comprised in the 4,000,000. 

 We see, therefore, that those of European birth constituted considerably more than one-third of 

 the effective male population of the Northern States, while they only entered in just the same 

 proportion of one-third into the composition of the Army, thus leaving to the native Americans 

 the largest proportion in the aggregate representation of races. 



"We are not in possession of the necessary documents to continue this comparison by ascer- 

 taining the number of those emigrants who became naturalized and those who retained their con- 

 dition of aliens; such a comparison would, however, be of little value. Naturalization is so easily 

 obtained in the United States that, after a few years' residence in the country, nearly every person 

 settled in business exercises the rights of citizenship. It was only when the conscription attached 

 onerous duties to the exercise of these rights that the people who had enjoyed them endeavored to 

 discover informalities in their naturalization-papers, in order to get rid of the obligations devolving 

 upon Americans. All emigrants who have left Europe without any intention of returning — sans 

 esprit de retour, as the French law tersely expresses it — should, in reality, be reckoned as Ameri- 

 cans; the number of those who persist in preserving their nationality unimpaired being altogether 

 insignificant. Strictly speaking, those belonging to the latter category alone, and Ihe recruits 

 obtained outside the territory of the republic, could be considered as foreigners among the Federal 

 soldiers. The Federal Government could only have introduced a large foreign element into the 

 ranks of its Army by enticing volunteers from Europe or from countries adjacent to the United 

 States. Now, notwithstanding the close vigilance with which all the actions of that (iovernment 

 were watched, its enemies never could prove that such enlistments had been nuide on its account 

 upon any large scale; there was seeu nothing in America to be compared with the foreign legion 



