Swiss Officers and Prominent Personalities

Authors

Keywords

Switzerland, Swiss history, European history

Abstract

The United States census of 1860 listed 53,327 Swiss-born residents who represented 1.3 percent of the foreign-born in the nation. John (Johannes) Hitz, Sr. ( I 797- 1864), Swiss Consul General from 1853- 1864 in Washington, D.C., estimated the number of Swiss serving during the Civil War in the Union Army at 6,000. In his 1862 register of names, he listed 537 Swiss in the military. In 1863, he included an additional 302 men. He presented no separate lists for 1861 , 1864, and 1865. Paul de Valliere stated that 4,000 Swiss served in the Union Army in his monumental work of 1940, Treue und Ehre. Geschichte der Schweizer in Fremden Diensten [Loyalty and Honor. A History of the Swiss in Foreign Service]. No reliable estimates for the number of Swiss fighting in the Confederate Army are available

Recommended Citation

(2015) "Swiss Officers and Prominent Personalities," Swiss American Historical Society Review: Vol. 51: No. 2, Article 5.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_review/vol51/iss2/5