Did Iowa send more troops into Union armies, per capita,
than any other state? I have no idea.
Internet research is becoming more and more viable as access
to reliable information expands exponentially. Nowadays one can easily access a
broad array of digitized primary source material and supplement it with
indispensable reference works like the Official Records. And yet, the internet
researcher must be more vigilant and discriminating than ever—because sadly,
unreliable information may be expanding at an even greater clip.
Consider the astonishing example of a Virginia fourth-grade textbook
which relied on ahistorical, neo-Confederate propaganda on the internet to
perpetuate the fiction that thousands of black men fought in Confederate
armies.
If one of the major tenets of Lost Cause mythology—that
the war was not about slavery, which is ultimately what the myth of Black
Confederates aims to underscore—can fly so easily under the radar and even find its
way into state-sanctioned texts, we can safely assume that more innocuous misinformation takes root on servers every day with nary an objection from the public. I was
reminded of this recently when trying to find a quick and dirty confirmation of
a claim I had read somewhere—the claim that the state of Iowa sent more
soldiers per capita into Union armies than any other state of the Union. It
seemed like a simple enough assertion to corroborate, but not so fast. A
Google search on the subject instantly uncovered a virtual warren of
interconnected rabbit holes. . . Click on the state names below to link to the online sources for each quote.
IOWA: “Nearly 80,000 Civil War military men were from Iowa, the
largest number of soldiers per capita of any state participating during the
war.”
Fair enough, but then I remembered that Dave, one of my friends in the Civil
War Forum, made a similar claim about Vermont.
VERMONT: “Vermonters believed passionately in the war. The state contributed
more soldiers per capita than any other Northern state but Michigan.”
Any other state but Michigan? Maybe Vermont is Number Two.
MICHIGAN: “Michigan sent 90,000 men to fight in the Civil War including
specialized regiments of sharpshooters and engineers, and more cavalry per
capita than any other northern state.”
Just more cavalry? What about Ohio. Surely Ohio was a major contributor. . .
OHIO: “Faber’s claim was that more than 300,000 Ohioans served
in the Civil War and that the per capita enlistment was the highest in the
nation. The Ohio Historical Society, the state’s official archive, backs his
claim. On the Truth-O-Meter, it rates True.”
I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "what about Maine?"
MAINE: “Maine contributed more soldiers per capita than any
other state to the Union Army during the Civil War.”
I know a webmaster in Illinois who takes issue with that claim.
ILLINOIS: “By war's
end, Illinois sent more men per capita into the army than any other state.”
That's all well and good, but New York was the most populous state in the Union, right?
NEW YORK: “New York sent more troops per capita
than any other state in the Union to the Civil War.”
Kansas and Missouri each stake a claim, but they’re probably counting
soldiers who went South as well.
KANSAS: “Per capita, Kansas sent more soldiers
to fight in the Civil War than any other state” — MISSOURI: “Missouri
sent more men to war, in proportion to her population, than any other state.
The total number of Missouri Volunteers who served was 199,111.”
I'm tired of the history of the Civil War giving such short shrift to the Cornhusker state.
NEBRASKA: “I am informed that, in proportion to
population, Nebraska sent more soldiers into the army than any state in the
union. The aggregate was 49,614 according to a report at the provost marshal
general, without counting the medical corps or Red Cross enlistments.”
I’m going to settle this once and for all, and you can take this one to
the bank:
CALIFORNIA: “In
all, over 17,000 Californians would join as soldiers; this is the
highest per-capita total for any state in the Union.”
