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  • Citizen-Officers: The Union and Confederate Volunteer Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War by Andrew S. Bledsoe
  • Peter C. Luebke (bio)
Citizen-Officers: The Union and Confederate Volunteer Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War. By Andrew S. Bledsoe. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2015. Pp. 352. Cloth, $47.50.)

In the years following the Revolutionary War, Americans, largely owing to fears of military tyranny, had rejected the idea of maintaining a large standing army and had relied instead on volunteer forces to fight large wars. Doing so, the thinking ran, helped preserve republican virtue and quelled the formation of any officer class with aristocratic leanings. Thus, when the Civil War broke out, both the Union and Confederacy faced a shortage of company-grade officers. The traditional antipathy toward professional soldiers left both sides with little to speak of in the way of a trained officer corps. In Citizen-Officers, Andrew S. Bledsoe examines how volunteers developed a culture that reconciled notions of the independent citizen-soldier ethos with the discipline, obedience, and fortitude required for military service. He focuses his analysis on the lieutenants and captains because “the relationships between these volunteers and their men were at their most intimate, and the consequences for their failures or successes were immediate” (xi–xii).

Bledsoe begins with a chapter on the background of American military thought. As he points out, Americans venerated the idea of a soldier who virtuously set aside his self-interested pursuits to spring to the defense of the nation. Then, when the fight had been won, he humbly returned home. The Roman general Cincinnatus stood as the prototype of this ideal, with General George Washington proving a much more immediate example for Americans. These exemplars of the citizen-soldier, combined with the fear that a large standing army would threaten democracy, led Americans to reject the creation of a large professional military establishment. Their reliance on volunteer enlistments in times of need, however, while preserving republican virtue, led to a trade-off in effectiveness in the field. During the U.S.-Mexican War, for instance, regular army officers noticed [End Page 617] how poorly volunteers behaved both on and off the battlefield, seemingly ungovernable by the volunteer officers.

After his discussion of the ideology that underlay the junior officer corps, Bledsoe explains how the corps evolved over the course of the Civil War. At least initially, both armies allowed volunteer regiments to elect their officers, putting republicanism into action. This practice led to an initial crop of officers of mixed quality. Newly minted junior officers faced the challenge of instilling discipline in their men, most of whom they knew from home. For their part, the men resisted subordination to those who had been their equals scant weeks before. The early period of the war saw a winnowing of the junior officer corps, as the newly minted lieutenants and captains learned their job. Soldiers reacted negatively to officers who put on airs, meted out arbitrary punishments, or otherwise seemed too harsh. Conversely, officers who were overly familiar with their men lost authority and control over them in the field. As Bledsoe aptly points out, in the volunteer armies of the Union and Confederacy, officers had to walk a fine line in order to retain authority. Leading involved compromise, improvisation, and conciliation. Successful officers elicited obedience and respect from their men; they created a “delicate equilibrium . . . in the face of widespread resistance to regularization and military discipline” (134).

In the subsequent chapters, Bledsoe shows how junior officers dealt with the ordeal of combat. Performing well in combat aided the officers in creating good relationships with their men. Exhibiting raw courage helped, but Bledsoe argues that “competence, confidence, a convincing command presence, and a strong personal connection” displayed in combat “preserv[ed] trust and ensur[ed] obedience in camp” (148). An officer who performed calmly under fire earned the respect of his men, which in turn resulted in increased obedience. An officer who embarrassed himself, on the other hand, faced a nearly insurmountable loss of faith from his men. Bledsoe also illustrates how company officers “served as the moral center of gravity for the...

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