Were all civil war deaths Americans?

Answer 1

Almost all those killed in the US Civil War would have been American (or Confederate) citizens.

The northern armies did include thousands of soldiers who were born in foreign countries, particularly Irish and German troops. The Irish had been emigrating in vast numbers since the potato blight and the famine which followed it hit Ireland in the 1840s, and continued to arrive during the war years. Meaghar's Irish Brigade of the Union Army was recruited mostly in New York City, and followed an emerald green flag with the Irish harp on it. By the time of the Civil War most immigrants to the US arrived in northern ports, such as New York, Philadelphia, and Boston and tended to settle down in those cities. Lesser numbers of immigrants arrived in Baltimore, a border state port, and only a few in Charleston, South Carolina. The Irish who were so disposed volunteered, perhaps drawn by the bounty money paid to volunteers, early in the war, but when the Union forces tried to institute a draft law in 1863, and sought to go through neighborhoods in New York to make a list of men subject to the draft, the worst riots ever in American history followed, and it was said that the mobs on the streets of New York were largely Irish. Apparently they felt volunteering to be one thing, but to be forced into the service another. There are scenes in the movie "The Gangs of New York" depicting the arrival of immigrants at the docks in New York, and the recruiting officers meeting the disembarking passengers at the foot of the gangplank to sign these new arrivals up for the Union Army, and also a depiction of the draft riots of 1863, all done with a fair degree of accuracy. I have not mentioned the citizenship of these new arrivals because there was from time to time a practice in New York to make "instant citizens" out of immigrants just off the boat, so they could vote in New York elections for these new political friends they had found upon first setting foot in the new world; most often these were the Democratic politicians of Tammany Hall, the corrupt machine controlled by Boss Tweed which controlled politics in New York City and New York State. Whether the numerous Irish who fought in the Union armies had undergone such an instant transformation into citizens, or had become citizens through more regular means, or never became naturalized, really doesn't matter. When they came to America they intended to stay and make their lives here.

There were also large numbers of Germans in the north, many of whom had fled after the failed wave of revolutions which had swept Europe in 1848. The entire XI Corps of the Union Army of the Potomac was "Dutchmen", as they were called, and few spoke much English. There is a story of Lincoln, when he was asked to sign a commission as a general for General Schimmelpfennig to command some of the Dutchman, that Lincoln laughed, bemused, and said Schimmelpfennig was "just the fellow".

Thee were a number of foreign military officers who came as observers of the war. There had been no large wars in Europe for about fifty years, so this was valuable professional experience. Some only observed, such as the British Colonel Freemantle, who was with the Rebels at Gettysburg, and later in life was Chief of the Imperial General Staff, commanding the British Army, and who wrote an informative book of his time in America during the Civil War. Others took part in the fighting, such as the German Heros von Borcke, a Prussian officer who fought on the Confederate side with Jeb Stuart's cavalry command. But I recall no deaths among these.

The Confederate population differed from that of the north in that most southerners had roots that went back to the early colonial times. There were few immigrants in the south, and what there were of them tended to be concentrated in seaports like New Orleans, Savannah and Charleston. Southerners in general disliked and distrusted foreigners, and held the foreign troops serving in the enemy armies in great contempt, especially the Germans, calling them "Hessians" and "foreign hirelings". Though some of the few foreign born individuals sprinkled throughout the south had military experience the Confederate military usually made little use of this scarce experience. Only two foreign born officers were promoted to two star general in the Confederate Army, and only another seven were made one star generals. One of the best Confederate generals was Patrick Cleburne, an Irishman who had served in the British Army before moving to Arkansas in the mid-1840s. Cleburne was never promoted above two star Major General rank, which was a loss of a man who might have been a great help to the cause in a place where such men were sorely needed. Cleburne was killed at Franklin in November 1864.

Most Confederate troops were volunteers serving in units raised by the states, but there were a handful of Rebel units which were formed early in the war as part of a movement to create a regular army for the new nation. Instead of being designated by a numerical followed by the state of origin, these few regiments were called "Confederate" regiments, as the "5th Confederate" for example. There were a lot of Irishmen in these units.

The "Louisiana Tigers" were a unit enlisted in New Orleans from among the dock workers mostly. These "wharf rats" were mainly creoles and foreigners, and had a terrible reputation for thieving and lack of discipline.

The greatest naval successes the Confederacy had were the feats of the "commerce raiders". These were fast ships built in England and bought by the Confederate government for its Navy, whose purpose was to prey upon Yankee merchant shipping, and to force the Union Navy to take ships from the blockade of the south to chase them. The officers of these ships were southerners, but the crews were almost all foreign citizens. Some of these crews were inevitably killed, especially when the USS Kearsarge sank the CSS Alabama.