If History is correct, about 2% of the Union Army was conscripted. The balance were volunteers. Gerard J. Nolan Lottsburg, VA

If memory serves me correctly, about two thirds of the Union's casualties were either Irish born or of Irish descent. I dont think that the war could have been prosecuted without the Famine Irish. It doesn't matter whether they accepted a bounty of any kind; it does matter that they preserved the Union. GJN

>If memory serves me correctly, about two thirds of the Union's casualties >were either Irish born or of Irish descent. I dont think that the war could >have been prosecuted without the Famine Irish. Irish participation in the war was high perhaps 200,000 Irish born of the 3.5 million men involved. 500,000 died. Two thirds of the casualties would be 330,000 Irish dead. Maybe a bit of a stretch there. With the nebulous "Irish descent" added we then go back to the 1700s, but many of these Irish were not starving dirt farmers but tradesmen and were accepted members of the American community and many were Scots-Irish forced out of Ulster. Suffice it to say the famine Irish certainly played a larger part in the war than other ethnic groups. I remember reading somewhere that General Thomas Sweeny was at the docks in New York greeting the young Irishmen and luring them into combat. There was active recruiting in Ireland and there is somewhere in the OR correspondence a remonstrance of our ambassador in England not to allow in any way the paying of nationals to fight which was a breech of international law. Surely the more exuberant recruiters in Ireland promised, over a cruiskin lan (full small jug), that which wasn't forthcoming upon arrival in the American docks. Mike