Mercenary Motive
 
From: bernhard1848@att.net
 
Both the elaborate Northern bounty system to attract soldiers, and the use of captured black slaves to fill Northern State quotas and enable white men to escape military service reveal the war as a mercenary undertaking by the North.  The bounty-enriched immigrants knew nothing of the United States Constitution and its delegation of few powers to the federal agent in Washington, nor the true nature of the Union.
 
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
 
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Mercenary Motive:
 
“Finally comes the motive which we may designate as mercenary. From the start, that was undoubtedly one reason why the Irish volunteered so readily…”Our poverty and friendliness” [was the] prompt answer.  As the day of bounties arrived – and it came early in the war – we see the pecuniary inducement operating strongly.
 
Sometimes it was openly avowed, as in the case of Bersven Nelson, a Norwegian immigrant who had arrived in Wisconsin in the summer of 1861.  After working in a sawmill for a few weeks, he encountered a Norwegian sergeant recruiting for the Scandinavian regiment of Wisconsin. “Yes, and then there was a bounty of a hundred dollars, and thirteen dollars a month, free clothes and free food.  This seemed good enough to me, and furthermore, (revealing still another incentive), I would have an opportunity to travel and to see a great deal.”
 
The most offensive aspect of this inducement – the presence at the docks in port cities of recruiting officers and runners, who took advantage of, and even abducted, foreign immigrants as they came off the ships…”
 
(Foreigners in the Union Army and Navy, Ella Lonn, LSU Press, 1951, page 75)