of writing a history of the Hungarian War3. This was the first English book on the subject, it had a wide circulation and, although necessarily imperfect and partizan, it was used as an authority in the subsequent flood of English literature dealing with the Hungarian question. Noble Prágay! He found an opportunity sooner than most of his fellows to offer his sword for the cause of liberty. He joined Narciso Lopez's ill-fated expedition for the liberation of Cuba, was severely wounded in the engagement at Las Pozas on the second anniversary of the surrender at Világos (August 13, 1851), and, to escape the ignominy of the garote, ended his life with his own. hand before the Spanish soldiers could take him prisoner1.

II

When the conflict between national unity and states' rights and between freedom and slavery came to an issue which could be fought out only on the field of battle, the Hungarians in America responded liberally to the call for volunteers. They came of a race proud of its military qualities; most of them, as we have seen, had taken part in the Hungarian War, some of them also in the Crimean and Austro-Italian Wars; they were devoted to the cause of liberty; they felt grateful for the sympathy shown their native land in its hour of distress and for the honors showered upon their late chief, Louis Kossuth. No wonder they were eager to enlist in the Union Army; no wonder they did useful, honorable and glorious

3

The Hungarian Revolution. By Johann Prágay. New York, G. P. Putnam. 1850. 12-mo., 177 pp. An abridged German edition was simultaneously published by J. Helmich, New York, under the title Der Krieg in Ungarn.

4 A full account of this expedition by Louis Schlesinger, one of the participants, can be found in the Democratic Review for Sept., Oct.. Nov. and Dec., 1852. The final instalment of the series, dealing with the fate of some of the prisoners in Ceuta, was not published, because the magazine was discontinued. In Hungarian the matter is ably treated by Dr. Géza Kacziány in the Szabadság, Cleveland, Dec. 21, 1911. The Hungarians in the party were: John Prágay, as lieut.-general and chief-of-staff: Major Louis Schlesinger. Captain Radnics. Lieutenants Bontila, Eichler and Palánk, and Privates Biró, Nyikos and Virág.

service on the battlefield for their adopted country.

As already stated, hardly any of them had settled in the slave-holding states; consequently, hardly any of them enlisted in the Confederate Army. In fact, the only Hungarian officer I have found record of on the southern side was B. Estván, Colonel of Cavalry. Having served in the Austrian Army under Radetzky in Italy and taken part in the Crimean War (presumably in the British Army) he could not well resist the call of his southern neighbors and friends to take up arms in behalf of their cause. But at heart he was a Unionist, and he ended his dilemma by resigning his commission as soon as he could do so with honor, and going to England. There he related his experiences in the South in an interesting book which was published in London, New York and Leipzig in 1863".

It would be interesting to know the number of Hungarians in the United States at the outbreak of the Civil War and the number of Hungarian soldiers in the Union Army. For the former we should naturally look to the census of 1860, but with disappointing results, for that census-at least as far as the nativity of the population is concerned-was not made up on scientific principles. Hungarians were not treated separately, and even Austria appeared only as a subdivision of "Germany." It is very likely that the Hungarians were included among the 25,061 shown as Austrians, although-as Secretary of State Seward aptly remarked"-there were no confessed Austrians in America. Nearly one-third of

5 War Pictures from the South. New York, Appleton's, 1863. 8-vo., VIII, 352 pp. This is a cheap reprint of the London edition in two volumes. The German edition was dedicated to Gen. McClellan, a rather strange proceeding on the part of a Confederate officer.

6 "We meet everywhere here, in town and country, Italians, Hungarians, Poles, Magyars, Jews and Germans, who have come to us from that empire, but no one has ever seen a confessed Austrian among us.' Seward to Anson Burlingame (Minister to Vienna), April 13, 1861, in The Diplomatic History of the War for the Union. Boston, 1884. Page 214.

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these Austrians lived in Wisconsin, where German colonization was carried on systematically; so it is fair to presume that the majority were Austrian Germans.

We get more enlightenment from the census of 1870, in which the natives of the Dual Monarchy appear in a trialistic arrangement: Austria (proper) 30,508, Bohemia 40,289, and Hungary 3,737. The Hungarian immigration from 1866 to 1870 was so small as to be negligible (officially reported as 79), because this was a period of revival in Hungary, when many exiles returned to their native land, taking advantage of the political amnesty announced on the re-establishment of the constitution in 1867. This small immigration was undoubtedly more than offset by the deaths and re-migrations of the decade; we can not err much, then, if we estimate the average number of Hungarians during the war at 4,000. This is hardly more than a drop in the bucket, considering that the total free population of the United States in 1860 was 27,489,461, of whom 23,353,286 were natives and 4,136,175 foreign-born. Of the latter about 1,300,000 were Germans.

It is more difficult to answer our second question: What was the number of the Hungarian soldiers in the Union Army? The original musterrolls are, for very good reasons, now practically inaccessible; and even if they were not, no complete record of the nativity of the men could be. obtained from them, for the state or country of birth was not systematically required on the enlistment rolls until the Provost Marshal General's Bureau began its activity, after the war had been waged for some time. Often the place of residence was given instead of the place of birth. Francis B. Heitman's Historical Register and Dictionary of the U. S. Army is a very useful compilation, stating the nativity of the general and staff officers; but it refers only to officers and, as I have

had occasion to find out, is far from complete. The rosters published by the various states shed little light on the subject, for as a rule they contain no data as to the nativity of the men.

Shortly after the war, the U. S. Sanitary Commission started an investigation on these lines, which was under the direction of its actuary, Benj. Apthorp Gould. He was assisted by a large staff and had, to a certain extent, the co-operation of the War Department and the Adjutants-General of the various states. For more than half the enlistments he got the official figures, for nearly 300,000 men he obtained data from various commanders, and the rest he estimated in the proportions thus arrived at. His figures, while necessarily not exact, are more trustworthy than any other calculations made on the subject, and are given here for their general interest, although they contain no specific information about Hungarians. They refer only to white soldiers in the Union Army, and leave out of consideration 92,000 men from certain western states and territories.

These are impressive figures, but it is to be borne in mind that they do not take account of the numerous re-enlistments. As to Hungarians, Investigations in the Military and Anthropological Statistics of American Soldiers. By Benj. Apthorp Gould, New York, 1869. Page 27.

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their number was so small that the statistician, who deals with quantity rather than quality, did not consider them separately. We have to resort, then, to other means to make an estimate of their number.

Nearly one-half of the Garibaldi Guard or 39th New York Infantry, and about one-half of the Lincoln Riflemen, incorporated later in the 24th Illinois Infantry", were Hungarians. This makes about 400. For additional data I examined the published regimental rosters of some of the states, only one of which (Iowa) contained records of the nativity of the men. It was a rather unsatisfactory investigation, because there was nothing to go by but the names. The Hungarians being a composite race, many of them have nonHungarian names; many of the refugees, on fleeing their country, changed their names; many of the names were misprinted or had undergone more or less recognizable changes toward "Anglicisation." Nevertheless I found about a hundred Hungarian names in the regiments of Iowa, Ohio and part of Illinois. So I believe that the total number of Hungarian soldiers could not have been much above or much below 800, of whom from 80 to 100 were officers.

This is certainly a small number compared with the imposing figures above quoted. But it is about 20 per cent. of the Hungarian population, a ratio not approached by any of the other races and explainable only by the unique character of the Hungarian immigration of that period. And could anything prove more the eminent military fitness of the Hungarians than that this handful of men produced

8 Stated to me by Gen. Julius Stahel.

9

Reminiscences of an Octogenarian Hungarian Exile. By Julian Kuné. Chicago, 1911. Page 92.