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Transnational Volunteers: A Research Note on Border-crossing to Enlist in the American Civil War
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| Author/collaborator |
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| Title |
Transnational Volunteers: A Research Note on Border-crossing to Enlist in the American Civil War
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| Abstract |
The author notes that historians of transnational and global relations have increasingly reminded us that fighting in “someone else’s war” is not a new phenomenon. She focuses on soldiers who left British North America (BNA) to enlist in the American Civil War. The author’s research note describes a method for distinguishing cross-border enlistments from the many BNA-born immigrants already living in the United States. By cross-referencing online data archives, the author was possible to create an original database of BNA-born individuals who lived in the Eastern Townships in 1861 and crossed the border to enlist in Vermont. A comparison of patterns of enlistment behaviour shows that the transnational volunteers’ actions closely tracking those of native-born and naturalized Vermonters. Both groups followed the same trajectory, with high rates of volunteering in early months, a decline, and then a spike in late 1863, when federal authorities deployed more generous bounty payments as a policy instrument to alter the incentive structure for enlistment. Nonetheless, the author concludes that seventy percent of these BNA residents had already enlisted before September 1863.
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| Publication |
The Canadian Historical Review
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| Volume |
Vol. 104
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| Issue |
no. 3
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| Pages |
387-406
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| Date |
September 2023
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| Language |
en
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| Citation |
Jensen, Jane. “Transnational Volunteers: A Research Note on Border-Crossing to Enlist in the American Civil War.” The Canadian Historical Review Vol. 104, no. 3 (September 2023): 387–406.
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