An American Profession of Arms: The Army Officer Corps, 1784-1861 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS An American Profession ofArms: The Army Officer Corps, 1 784-1861. By William B. Skelton. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992. Pp. xviii, 481. $45.00.) An American Profession ofArms is primarily a study of the emergence of military professionalism in the United States; it is also a social history of those army officers who served the new nation from the Revolution to the Civil War. Based on a careful analysis ofthe lives ofofficers serving in 1786, 1797, 1830, and i860 and on an extensive reading of correspondence, memoirs, and other writings for the entire period, 1783-1 860, this book adds substantially to what historians have known about the antebellum army, its officer corps, and the origin of the profession of arms in the United States. Skelton has found little professionalism in the officer corps before 1815. Because Americans feared a standing army and a powerful national government . Congress supported the army only sporadically. Such sporadic support discouraged officers from pursuing military careers. So too did the government 's practice of appointing prominent civilians to lead the army in times of crisis. Only rarely then before the War of 1812 did officers remain in the army long enough to contribute to the development of military professionalism . Federal and Republican administrations alike tried to improve the quality of their officers. But before 1 815 the United States was unable to establish the systematic recruiting, the common education and training, the orderly central management, the pervasive expectation of nonpartisan service to the nation, and—above all—the sustained interest in army careers needed to turn young officers into professional soldiers. But the War of 1 8 1 2 revealed such weaknesses in the army and the officer corps as to encourage sweeping reforms, reforms that Skelton believes created a profession of arms in the years before the Civil War. A small group of young officers and a nationalistic secretary of war, John C. Calhoun, provided the impetus for this professionalization. Between 1817 and 1821 Calhoun gave the army a "high degree of regularity in its internal operations " (109) by creating a permanent staff and uniform procedures for dealing with personnel, equipment, and doctrine. At the same time, Superintendent Sylvanus Thayer was not only establishing standards for the admission, 152CIVIL WAR HISTORY instruction, and examination of cadets at the United States Military Academy but also developing among cadets an ideal of apolitical national service and a sense of identity with the officer corps. Graduates of the Academy, favored by higher standards for commissioning (1821), soon came to dominate the officer corps (increasing from 14.8 percent of all officers in 1817 to 63.8 percent in 1830 and to 75.8 percent in i860). As the officer corps became more homogeneous, it also doubled in size (1830-60), encouraging an increasing number of officers to make the army a career. Common education and ideals as well as long common service in frontier posts and a growing interest in the art of war nourished military professionalism. Some officers continued to seek preferment through prominent politicians; but most eschewed party politics, subordinated themselves to civilian authorities, and drew together as expert, impartial servants of the nation—as professional soldiers. While Skelton concentrates on emerging professionalism, he also contributes substantially to the social history of the officer corps. From the Revolution to the War of 1812, officers were typically men of "middling" social background who had served in the Revolutionary War and were broadly representative of the states. Most were not only preoccupied with and successful in their civilian occupations but were also active in politics and identified with a party. They were all too often fractious and quarrelsome comrades. The officers who served after 1815 were of a slightly different class with substantially different interests and attitudes. Those officers were usually of middle- or upper-middle-class families without wealth to match their social standing but with a tradition of public service. If the South was slightly overand the Northwest somewhat underrepresented, the officer corps did in general reflect the geographic distribution of the American people—especially after 1 838 when congressional appointments to the Academy began to tie local elites to...