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Polish Americans fought in the American Civil War on both sides. The majority were Union soldiers, owing to geography and ideological sympathies with the abolitionists.At the time of the Civil War there were 30,000 people of Polish descent in the United States. Of this number 4,000 fought in the ranks of the Union Army, and 1,000 served for the Confederacy.[33] By coincidence, the first soldiers killed in the American Civil War were both Polish: Captain Constantin Blandowski, a Union battalion commander in Missouri who died in the Camp Jackson Affair,[34] and Thaddeus Strawinski, an 18-year-old Confederate who was accidentally shot at Fort Moultrie on Sullivan's Island.[35] Two Polish immigrants achieved leadership positions in the Union Army, Colonels Joseph Kargé and Włodzimierz Krzyżanowski.[36][b] Kargé commanded the 2nd New Jersey Volunteer Cavalry Regiment that defeated Confederate Nathan Bedford Forrest in a battle.[37] Krzyżanowski first commanded the mostly immigrant 58th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment, nicknamed the Polish Legion,[38] in which Poles and other immigrants fought battles in the Eastern Theater and Western Theater of the American Civil War.[39] Krzyżanowski later commanded an infantry brigade, from 1862 to 1864, with the 58th in that formation.
In 1863–1864, the Imperial Russian Army suppressed the January Uprising, a large scale insurrection in the Russian partition of the former territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Many Polish resistance fighters fled the country, and Confederate agents tried and failed to encourage them to immigrate and join the military of the Confederate States of America.[40]
33. "Immigrants in the Union and Confederate Army during the Civil War" (PDF). upa.pdx.edu. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 3, 2013. Retrieved March 30, 2013. From McPherson, James M. (1994). What they fought for, 1861‐1865. Walter Lynwood Fleming lectures in southern history. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 9780585308432.
34. Burton 1998, pp. 41–42. 35. Waugh 2010, pp. 169–. 36. United States Department of War 1865, pp. 510, 698. 37. United States Department of War 1866, p. 62. 38. United States Department of War 1865, p. 510. 39. New York State Unit History Project 2016. 40. Michalek, Krzysztof (1987). "Diplomacy of the last chance: the Confederate efforts to obtain military support from the Polish emigration circles". American Studies. Warsaw University Press. 6: 5–16. ISSN 0137-3536.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Poles_in_the_United_States
Podczas Wojny Secesyjnej (1861-1865) w Stanach Zjednoczonych mieszkało ok. 30 tys. Polaków. 4 tys. z nich wzięło udział w wojnie po stronie Unii (166 oficerów) oraz 500-1000 po stronie Konfederatów.