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  • The Business of Civil War: Military Mobilization and the State, 1861-1865
  • James L. Huston
The Business of Civil War: Military Mobilization and the State, 1861–1865. Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology Series. By Mark R. Wilson. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. Pp. xiv, 306. Cloth, $45.00.)

Two major features of mid-twentieth-century life, the rise of large-scale corporations and the creation of government and business bureaucracy, have roots in the nineteenth century. The exact part of the nineteenth century [End Page 312] those roots began, however, has become controversial. The standard treatment, given by Alfred D. Chandler, holds that the reshaping of American life occurred between 1880 and 1920, sometimes referred to as the reorganization synthesis. But there are those who believe that the patterns extend back further. Such an author is Mark R. Wilson, who disputes the idea that the large-scale business organization created American bureaucracy and instead locates the rise of bureaucratic processes, which became most visible during the Civil War years, in the U.S. military.

Wilson's book is an excellent study of military supply on the home front during the war. He underscores how the military controlled producers, shows the conflicts that arose between the public and private economies, and provides vivid descriptions of the activities of quartermasters. Scholars of the Civil War, politics, and political economy who read it will be richly rewarded. Whether they will unqualifiedly adopt his belief that the military shaped modern America and particularly gave birth to a bureaucracy in the mid-nineteenth century is more problematic.

The core of Wilson's interpretation appears in chapter 2. In 1818, John C. Calhoun reorganized the army and created the opportunities for bureaucratization to emerge; those opportunities were seized upon by Quartermaster Thomas S. Jessup who was quartermaster general from 1818 until his death in June 1860. Especially when the nation moved to the Trans-Mississippi West and took territory from Mexico, the army was stretched to the limit and had to devise procedures for procurement of goods, transportation, and distribution to far-flung military bases. Accountability was foremost, and under Jessup the quartermasters developed elaborate procedures for their activities; they filled out monthly and quarterly reports besides their annual summations, and had thirty-seven standard forms to use in procurement. When the Civil War arrived, the quartermaster corps already had the bureaucracy in place to handle supply problems; Montgomery C. Meigs expertly expanded the existing system. However, before Meigs could guide the northern effort, the federal system had to be defeated. In the first year of the war, states tried to provide troops and materiel, expecting the federal government then to pick up the tab. Problems of standardization mounted, and several of the state governors—Yates of Illinois and Morton of Indiana—hoped to use the call for supplies as a way to reward party loyalists and spread prosperity to various parts of their states. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton and Meigs within a year defeated the federal system and concentrated purchasing power in the hands of the quartermaster corps. [End Page 313]

Wilson provides fascinating glimpses into the northern economic effort. He discovers a considerable portion of war production came from publicly owned enterprises, that is, establishments run by the military. He estimates that somewhere between 15 and 30 percent of war goods were produced by such publicly owned facilities. The bulk, however, came from contracting with agents who for a price agreed to get the needed supplies. Sometimes the contractors were the owners of production establishments, sometimes they were middlemen who took it upon themselves to arrange the details with manufacturers. Between the contractors and the quartermasters arose a discernible hostility; the contractors sought to maximize profit whereas the quartermasters were more concerned with patriotic duty. Wilson chronicles the fights between contractors and quartermasters over control of the national economy, the quartermasters wanting a much larger public role. Toward the end of the war, military commissions investigated and punished corrupt contractors. His narrative includes a fascinating battle over wages staged by seamstresses and the reception of their complaints by the business community as compared to military and...

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