Trolling Europe for Lincoln's Patriots

From: bernhard1848@gmail.com

By mid-1862 it was reported that voluntary enlistments in Lincoln's armies had all but ceased – once the carnage of Fredericksburg got through Lincoln's media blackout he favored conscription and foreigners to fight his war against Southern independence. This still did little to improve the quality of the Northern soldiery as noted author Ella Lonn (Foreigners in the Union Army and Navy, 1951) wrote that "foreigners who were enticed, kidnapped, or bludgeoned into the army could hardly make good soldiers."

Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com   The Great American Political Divide


Trolling Europe for Lincoln's Patriots

"We copy from the Savannah Republican A.D. 1863:

"We have before us proof conclusive that our enemy, utterly despairing of their ability to conquer us, at this time, agents and lecturers in almost every country in Europe, who by lying misrepresentations and the meanest duplicity, united with pledges at the enormity of which all Christiandom must shudder.

It is in the form of a poster, or hand-bill, which is now being circulated throughout Great Britain, in aid of such lecturers as Beecher & Co., and a copy of which has just been received from a friend through the blockade.

We present it to the world as a burning witness against a God-forsaken people. They will doubtless denounce it as a forgery, but we are assured upon authority beyond all question that the copy sent us and published is one of   thousands that are floating over the Kingdom of Great Britain, and, what is worse, are winked at by the British Government.

To gallant Irishmen, Germans and others:

The war contractors of New York, Boston and Philadelphia, are in want of a few thousand enterprising young men to join the glorious army of the United States. The profits of the businesses are so large that the country can afford to pay handsomely all who will speedily enter their noble service. Camp life in America is remarkably salubrious and enjoyable, and offers immense attractions to the oppressed populations of Europe.

The troops will have free license while occupying the enemy's country, and the estates and property of the vanquished "rebels" will be divided by a grateful nation among its heroic defenders. For further particulars apply to the Contractors' Lecturers now on the mission to Britain, and to Messrs John Bright and W.E. Forster, Ranters Hall, London. New York, September 1, 1863."

(Cullings From the Confederacy: A Collection of Southern Poems, Original and Others, Popular During the War Between the States and Incidents and Facts Worth Recalling, 1862-1866, Nora Fontaine M. Davidson, Rufus H. Darby Printing Company, 1903, pp. 116-117)