Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 32.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

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Two hundred and fifty thousand ‘Union’ Hessians.

The Union States, pending these incidents of Confederate financiering, was selling bonds in Germany and devoting the proceeds to bounties to German subjects to enter its army. Approximately a quarter of a million stout Germans flocked to save the Union upon their bounties. At the same period the United States had agents in Ireland recruiting soldiers to come to the rescue of the Union on promise that the scanty farm at home, crippled with tithings and landlords exactions, should be replaced with many fruitful American acres as a free gift. Then, too, to fill out the quota of soldiers, school teachers and others of both sexes came from New England to Southern rice and cotton plantations to recruit negro troops, and of these some 241,000 were armed and mustered into the ranks of the Union army. What the United States bonds brought on the market in Europe is immaterial. They sold as low as 40 cents on the dollar in Wall street.