By 1861, the United States population was steadily growing more diverse. Most nineteenth-century immigrants settled in cities and on farms in the northeastern and western states, but some gravitated to the cities of the South.
Most of the 500,000 new Americans serving in the Union and Confederate armies did so alongside their native-born neighbors. But some formed units solely based on ethnicity, giving themselves names like the “Telfair Irish Grays,” “German Rifles,” “Highlanders,” “Lafayette Guard,” and the “Garibaldi Guard.”
Sgt. Peter Welsh of the 28th Massachusetts Infantry expressed the sentiments of many immigrants when he wrote of the United States, "This is my country as much as the man that was born on the soil, and so it is with every man who comes to this country and becomes a citizen."