The Business of Civil War: Military Mobilization and the State, 1861-1865 (review)

Mark Wilson has written an important book that should find a wide readership not only among historians of technology, but also among economic, business, social, military, and political historians. His study of the North's military mobilization during the Civil War adds significantly to our understanding of the U.S. military's role in the nineteenth-century political economy. Moreover, Wilson's work contributes to the literature put forward by Louis Galambos, Robert Wiebe, Alfred Chandler, and others who have shown the dramatic influence that railroads and corporations had on business and society. Wilson argues persuasively that "the military should figure much more centrally in discussions of the development of national, state and bureaucratic institutions of all kinds in America" (p. 4).

Wilson first examines the antebellum organization of the U.S. Army's quartermaster department. He provides valuable insights into the struggles of West Point–trained officers to create an independent military bureaucracy in order to take advantage of new technologies and uniform production methods. He makes clear that the quartermaster department largely avoided the Jacksonian spoils system. Just as importantly, he reveals that the transportation and communication demands of a continental empire forced the officers to create a systematized and bureaucratic supply system. The western frontier "became the army's primary challenge and the national government's heaviest new fiscal burden during the 1850s" (p. 50). The army was often the largest employer, buyer, supplier, and depot in the western states and territories. Thus, when West Point–trained quartermasters rushed to new assignments in the east after the bombing of Fort Sumter, they carried with them the lessons of their western experience.

In the first few months of the war, state governments assumed a large role in purchasing materials. This rapidly changed as the quartermaster department asserted control of purchasing on a national scale. Although some states complained, many gratefully relinquished the difficult and costly task. Wilson points out that the bureaucratic system that served the army's needs on the frontier remained remarkably intact as it greatly expanded in size and scope. Moreover, the department played an important role in the liquidity of the North's economy by purchasing goods with "certificates of indebtedness"—notes that could be easily converted to cash. Bankers quickly incorporated these certificates into the financial structure of the Civil War economy.

Wilson scrutinizes the ideological questions that emerged with respect to the role of the military in the nation's political economy. Politicians tried to steer contracts to friends and local communities. When pushed by politicians, Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs asserted the department's independence. Another issue centered on whether manufacture should be the responsibility of the government or private contractors. Many citizens believed that contractors treated their employees poorly, paid lower wages, and cheated the government. Wilson argues that quartermaster officers essentially agreed and sought to keep production under their control whenever possible. Private contractors could often supply goods more cheaply, however, and a "mixed military economy" dominated by contractors soon emerged. In the same vein, many citizens questioned the role of "middlemen" in the war economy. Were they patriots or parasites? Again, the quartermasters understood the need for middlemen, but they also kept a close eye on them and even prosecuted some under military law. Meigs and his quartermasters tried to enforce strict rules regarding advertising, bidding procedures, and inspection.

Wilson ably shows that the military remained in the forefront of manufacturing technology and bureaucratic control during the antebellum period and the Civil War. But how did military thinking impact the industrialization of the postwar period? Here, he grapples with a difficult question. Most of the quartermaster officers returned to western outposts or retired; very few played any role in big business after the war. Thus Wilson is reduced to arguing that one of the concrete legacies of the quartermaster department is civil-service reform. Much more tantalizing are the echoes that he...