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The Union Army was the army that fought for the Union during the American Civil War. It was also known as the Federal Army, the U.S. Army, the Northern Army, or the National Army.[1] It consisted of the small United States Army (the regular army), augmented by massive numbers of units supplied by the Northern states, composed of volunteers as well as draftees. The Union Army fought and defeated the Confederate States Army during the war, from 1861 to 1865. Of the 2.5 million men who served in the Union Army during the war, approximately 9.5% were African American, about 360,000 died—in combat, from injuries sustained in combat, disease, or other causes—and 280,000 were wounded. When the Civil War began in April 1861, there were only about 16,000 men in the U.S. Army, and many Southern soldiers and officers were already resigning and joining the new Confederate States Army. The army consisted of ten regiments of infantry, four of artillery, two of cavalry, two of dragoons, and one of mounted infantry. These regiments were scattered widely. Of the 197 companies in the army, 179 occupied 79 isolated posts in the West and the remaining 18 manned garrisons east of the Mississippi River, mostly along the Canadian border and on the Atlantic coast. With the secession of the Southern states, and with this drastic shortage of men in the army, President Abraham Lincoln called on the states to raise a force of 75,000 men for three months to put down the insurrection in the South. The first to offer a regiment was Minnesota's Governor, Alexander Ramsey. It was this callup of Federal troops that incited four more states of the South to secede, making the Confederacy eleven states strong. The war proved to be longer and larger than anyone had expected, and on July 22, 1861, Congress authorized a volunteer army of 500,000 men. At first, the call for volunteers was easily met by patriotic Northerners, abolitionists, and even immigrants who enlisted with the hope of a steady paycheck and food rations. Over 10,000 Germans in New York and Pennsylvania immediately responded to Lincoln's call for volunteers, and the French were also among those quick to volunteer. As more men were needed, the number of willing volunteers fell, but nevertheless, between April 1861 and April 1865, at least two and a half million men served in the Union Army, most of whom were volunteers.
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