The Lost Museum Archive

The outbreak of Civil War fighting in 1861 galvanized northern workers, including many immigrants. Although over the long years of fighting, foreign-born workers were slightly underrepresented in military ranks, many were initially eager to fight for the Union and prove to the world the soundness of a political democracy that recognized the rights of working people. This poster sought recruits for the Irish Brigade, a regiment originally organized by Senator Edward D. Baker of Oregon, who envisioned it as a “California Brigade” that would include eastern men who had once lived in California or Oregon. Ultimately Pennsylvania, not California, sponsored Baker’s brigade, and it included soldiers recruited from New York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts.