Galvanized Yankees was a term from the American Civil War denoting former Confederate prisoners of war who swore allegiance to the United States and joined the Union Army. Approximately 5,600 former Confederate soldiers enlisted in the United States Volunteers, organized into six regiments of infantry between January 1864 and November 1866. Of those, more than 250 had begun their service as Union soldiers, were captured in battle, then enlisted in prison to join a regiment of the Confederate States Army. They surrendered to Union forces in December 1864 and were held by the United States as deserters, but were saved from prosecution by being enlisted in the 5th and 6th U.S. Volunteers. An additional 800 former Confederates served in volunteer regiments raised by the states, forming ten companies. Four of those companies saw combat in the Western Theater against the Confederate Army, two served on the western frontier, and one became an independent company of U.S. Volunteers, serving in Minnesota.
The term "galvanized" has also been applied to former Union soldiers enlisting in the Confederate Army, including the use of "galvanized Yankees" to designate them. At least 1,600 former Union prisoners of war enlisted in Confederate service in late 1864 and early 1865, most of them recent German or Irish immigrants who had been drafted into Union regiments.Speer (1997), p. 219.
The practice of recruiting from prisoners of war began in 1862 at Camp Douglas at Chicago, Illinois, with attempts to enlist Confederate prisoners who expressed reluctance to exchange following their capture at Fort Donelson. Some 228 prisoners of mostly Irish extraction were enlisted by Col. James A. Mulligan before the War Department banned further recruitment March 15.Brown (1963), pp. 55–56.Among the 228 was journalist Henry Morton Stanley. The ban continued until 1863, except for a few enlistments of foreign-born Confederates into largely ethnic regiments.
Three factors led to a resurrection of the concept: an outbreak of the American Indian Wars by tribes in Minnesota and on the Great Plains; the disinclination of paroled but not exchanged Federal troops to be used to fight them; and protests of the Confederate government that any use of paroled troops in Indian warfare was a violation of the Dix–Hill prisoner of war cartel.Brown (1963), pp. 61–64.The Lincoln Administration wished to avoid any legal wrangles over the prisoner cartel that might be construed as recognition of the Confederacy as a legitimate government. In January 1863, following issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, the United States began to actively recruit black soldiers. The following May, the Confederate Congress passed a joint resolution suspending exchange of black Union soldiers and their white officers, and ordering that they instead be put on trial and punished. On July 30, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln ordered suspension of exchanges of Confederate prisoners until the Confederacy agreed to treat black prisoners the same as white prisoners.National Park Service publication on Andersonville National Historic Site, https://www.nps.gov/ande/learn/historyculture/grant-and-the-prisoner-exchange.htm.
Gen. Gilman Marston, commandant of the huge prisoner of war camp at Point Lookout, Maryland, recommended that Confederate prisoners be enlisted in the U.S. Navy, which Secretary of War Edwin Stanton approved December 21. General Benjamin Butler's jurisdiction included Point Lookout, and he advised Stanton that more prisoners could be recruited for the Army than the Navy. The matter was then referred to President Lincoln, who gave verbal authorization on January 2, 1864, and formal authorization on March 5 to raise the 1st United States Volunteer Infantry for three years' service without restrictions as to use.Brown (1963), pp. 65–67. On September 1, Lincoln approved 1,750 more Confederate recruits in order to bolster his election chances in Pennsylvania, enough to form two more regiments, to be sent to the frontier to fight American Indians.Brown (1963), pp. 11–14.Pennsylvania was the home state of Lincoln's opponent General George B. McClellan, and the request was by a Pennsylvania delegation offering to pay the bounties in return for the state receiving the credit against its allocation. The final two regiments of U.S. Volunteers were recruited in the spring of 1865 to replace the 2nd and 3rd U.S.V.I., which had been enlisted as one-year regiments.
Due to doubts about their ultimate loyalty, galvanized Yankees in federal service were generally assigned to garrison forts far from the Civil War battlefields or in action against Indians in the west. However, desertion rates among the units of galvanized Yankees were little different from those of state volunteer units in Federal service.Brown (1963), p. 2Brown quotes the 1928 study by Ella Lonn Desertion During the Civil War which found that desertion rates among the state regiments was 13 percent, while that of the six U.S.V.I. regiments was 14 percent. Galvanized troops of the U.S. Volunteers on the frontier served as far west as Camp Douglas, Utah; as far south as Fort Union, New Mexico; and as far north as Fort Benton, Montana.Three companies of the 6th U.S.V.I. were posted to Camp Douglas; Company H, 5th U.S.V.I. escorted a wagon train to Fort Union; and a detachment of 10 men of Company H, 1st U.S.V.I. under Lt. Cyrus L. Hutchins traveled by steamboat on May 12, 1865, to Fort Benton to control trade between there and another post at the mouth of the Yellowstone River. (Brown 1963, pp. 67, 91, 205).
Origin of term
The National Park Service describes the origin of the expression "galvanized Yankee" in a bulletin published in 1992 for visitors to the Gateway Arch National Park (then known as the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial): The term "galvanized" is most commonly associated with metal when it is coated with zinc to protect it from corrosion. In the process the surface color of the metal is altered, but underneath the coating the steel is unchanged. During the Civil War, in both Northern and Southern prison camps, soldiers sometimes decided to "galvanize," or change sides, to save themselves from the horrors of prison life. Like the metal, these galvanized soldiers in many cases were still "Good old Rebels," or "Billy Yanks," underneath their adopted uniforms.
The expression "galvanized Yankees" sprang up as a term of deprecation among Confederate prisoners for those who chose to enlist.Butts (2005), "Trading Gray for Blue". At the same time, the use of "white-washed Rebels" as a reference came into being among Federal state regiments stationed on the frontier at the time when the 1st U.S.V.I. arrived. Dee Brown cites documentation from March and April 1865 indicating that the term was first used to characterize captured Federals who turned Confederate. The general use of "galvanized Yankees" originated in a story in the Springfield Republican (Springfield, Massachusetts) on May 25, 1865, by Samuel Bowles, who wrote: Among the present limited number of troops on the Plain are two regiments of infantry, all from the rebel army. They have cheerfully re-enlisted into the federal service. They are known in the army as "white-washed rebs," or as they call themselves, "galvanized Yankees."Brown (1963), p. 9.
Federal regiments composed of "galvanized Yankees"
United States Volunteers Concise histories of all units of U.S. Volunteer Infantry are at Frederick H. Dyer's Compendium, p. 1717
1st U.S. Volunteer Infantry
The 1st U.S.V.I.Commanded by Col. Charles Augustus Ropes Dimon, 23-year-old protégé of Gen. Benjamin Butler. Dimon had served as a junior officer in a number of regiments, including the 2nd Louisiana Infantry, composed of former Confederates and Union loyalists. (Brown 1963 pp. 8, 77; Butts). was recruited at Point Lookout prison camp between January 21 and April 22, 1864, as a three-year regiment. Assigned to the District of Eastern Virginia, Department of Virginia and North Carolina, it moved to Norfolk, Virginia, where on orders of General Grant it was relegated to provost duty there, Portsmouth, Virginia, and Elizabeth City, North Carolina. In August 1864, Grant ordered it to the Department of the Northwest in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The 1st U.S.V.I. traveled by ship to New York City,The ship was the transport SS Continental, which in 1866 would carry the 100 "Mercer Belles" as brides to Seattle, Washington. (Brown 1963 p. 71). and by train to Chicago, where it received further orders splitting the regiment. Four companies continued to Milwaukee, while six companies (B, C, D, E, H, and K) were sent to St. Louis, Missouri, arriving there August 22. They moved by the steamboat Effie Deans and by forced march to Fort Rice, Dakota Territory, arriving there October 17 for garrison duty. Conditions were hard over the winter, and fully 11% of the command died of illness, primarily scurvy.Utley (1967), p. 316. Between May 10 and August 31, 1865, Company K garrisoned Fort Berthold and Company B the trading post known as Fort Union at the mouth of the Yellowstone, obliged to travel by steamboat through hostile territory.Brown (1963), pp. 91, 109.The large side-wheeler Yellowstone and small stern-wheeler Big Horn made the respective trips. Four companies were present at Fort Rice, along with two companies of the 4th U.S.V.I., when a large force of Lakota and CheyenneButts places the number at 500, Brown 1,000. led by Sitting Bull attacked for three hours on July 28, 1865, making away with the entire horse herd and killing two soldiers.Brown (1963), pp. 105–106. In October 1865, the battalion returned to St. Louis to muster out November 27.Brown (1963), pp. 71–81, 111.
The four companies continuing on to Wisconsin in August 1864 were ordered to the District of Minnesota.Companies A, F, G, and I were commanded by Lt.Col. William Tamblyn, and posted respectively at Fort Abercrombie, Fort Wadsworth, Fort Ripley, and Fort Ridgely. Their muster out in July 1865 was canceled and in October, they were ordered to build and garrison Fort Fletcher, Kansas, and man two outposts at Monument Station and Ponds Creek Station, also in Kansas, to protect the new Butterfield Overland Despatch stagecoach route. Companies A, F, G, and I of the 1st U.S.V.I. mustered out at Fort Leavenworth on May 22, 1866, after 25 months of active service, the longest service of any of the "galvanized Yankees."Brown (1963), pp. 191–193, 203–204.
2nd U.S. Volunteer Infantry