79th New York Veterans

[macwilkin]

I would guess that these Confederate units mentioned above contained mostly people of Scottish descent who were born in the US, while the original companies of the 79th NY contained a large proportion of men born and raised in Scotland who were recent immigrants to the US. That's the strange thing about the Union Army during the Civil War: it had a vast number of recent immigrants in it, and many couldn't speak a word of English.

It's hard to say, Richard. There just isn't a lot of information out there on the Confederate Scottish units, although I do remember reading somewhere about a militia company from Mobile, Alabama that was largely made up of British expatriates. Others, like Sgt. William Watson of the 3rd Louisiana Infantry, originally from Glasgow, simply enlisted in his local hometown unit.

One group that hardly ever gets mentioned is the fairly large number of Canadians that crossed the border and enlisted:

http://suvcw.org/CanadianMonument/CanadianMonument.htm

T.