The highest-ranking Prussian immigrant in the Confederate States Army was Adolphus Heiman, a veteran of the Mexican–American War who became a colonel and probably a brigadier general before he died in 1862.
[4] Most of the small German states were too interested in the current events of Europe to concern themselves with the American war, but they tended to sympathize with the Union's attempt to defeat the Confederacy.
[citation needed] As major powers, Prussia and its rival German state, the Austrian Empire, were more interested, but on the whole, they were still less involved in the war than the United Kingdom and France were.
[6] There is some evidence that the story is apocryphal since Sherman, appearing before the Mixed Commission of American and British Claims (1871), was quoted as saying, "Moltke was never fool enough to say that.
"[7] In 1862, British Foreign Secretary Lord John Russell tried unsuccessfully to have Prussia take part along with France and Russia to seek an armistice to end the war.