Immigration During the Civil War

Factual Questions
1

I can’t find actual numbers for the number of immigrants to the U.S. from 1861-1865.

All the sources say that immigration declined after the Panic of 1857 hurt the economy and increased again after the Civil War. Because of that, The Act to Encourage Immigration Law, known as The Contract Labor Law of 1864, was pushed through to get cheap labor for industries.

So there was certainly some immigration. Does anyone have a source with hard numbers?

And what about emigration to the South, if there was any?

2

An article from the 29 Oct.1863 New York Observer and Chronicle

“During the past nine months the number of emigrants(sic) has been one hundred and sixty thousand, being more than double that of last year. Eleven thousand five hundred arrived in Septermber. <snip>
This great rush has been caused chiefly by the great demand for laborers and consequent high prices and the large bounties offered by the Government for volunteers.”

Best I"ve come up with so far. I know it’s not what you want.

3

1861=91,823 1862=911825 1863=176,215 1864=193,412 1865=249,052

This is from a list in the NYTimes, 15 Sept. 1877.

As a side note, also had breakdowns on what country they came from, sex, “ethnological classification” but these were all only for the data from the 1870’s

4

I found a page online that said that immigration was also around 160,000 in 1864. Maybe it was the lack of an increase that led to the law. It would be very interesting to know what happened to immigration after the law passed.

5

1862 should be 91,825

6

According to this table from the 2003 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics (Yearbook can be found here, the table, in Excel format, can be found here , immigration was as follows:

1861-91,918
1862-91,985
1863-176,284
1864-193,418
1865-248,120

The figure represents “Alien passengers arrived at seaports”.

7

1866=318,491 1867=298,358 1868=297,215 1869=395,922

8

Here’s (again, in Excel format), a table showing place of origin, but it’s not broken down by year, only decade.

The largest number of immigrants came from Germany, followed by the United Kingdom, and then Ireland.

9

Thanks, Captain Amazing, just what I wanted.