Funny enough, the Germans of the US Civil War brought much more enthusiasm for The Cause than actual military experience - their combat records during the war were pretty average, and the German people had a reputation in the US at the time as artisans and academics, not soldiers. And, considering that many of these revolutionaries' military experience was limited to their year of failed revolution, it wasn't an entirely unearned reputation; they largely were middle-class civilians who came to settle in the US.

We could use definitely some of that anti-aristocratic enthusiasm right now, though, I feel.

For God-knows-what-reason, the Union's best troops were largely Midwesterners. Guess dying on a battlefield is less terrifying than being bored for another forty years in the corn fields.