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  • Citizen-Officers: The Union and Confederate Volunteer Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil Warby Andrew S. Bledsoe
  • Joseph G. Dawson III
Citizen-Officers: The Union and Confederate Volunteer Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War. By Andrew S. Bledsoe. Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2015. Pp. xx, 322. $47.50, ISBN 978-0-8071-6070-1.)

Andrew S. Bledsoe’s work addresses topics such as the motivations to enlist and to continue serving, the selection of men for commissioning, and the comparison of volunteer and career officers. Providing background from previous American wars, Bledsoe analyzes the multiple reasons that men in the Union and Confederacy decided to put themselves apart from enlisted men and noncommissioned officers and assume the myriad responsibilities of being lieutenants and captains. His study is worth reading.

Commendations go to Bledsoe in tackling junior officers in both blue and gray, who had differences but shared points in common. Bledsoe concludes that, like American junior officers of other eras, volunteers commissioned as lieutenants and captains in the Civil War always had much to learn but lacked the benefit of modern officer training. No easy path led either northerners or southerners to improve their knowledge of weapons and military units, maneuvering troops into formations, persuading their men to drill—the necessity of tactical preparation for combat—or actually leading soldiers in battle. Meeting such demands occupied the days of junior officers. Using numerous well-chosen examples of officers with names both notable and unfamiliar, Bledsoe observes that nothing came automatically for novice officers. The author draws often on an instructive 1864 article by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a Union volunteer officer. Even as volunteers gained experience through service, pressures and anxieties often increased rather than diminished.

Bledsoe finds that most junior officers possessed no military experience and had no interest in military careers, and thus they had to adjust their leadership style accordingly. The greatest number of citizen-officers expected “to return to their civilian lives” when the war ended (p. xiii). An important outlook shared by Union and Confederate officers rested on the belief that in a republic virtuous and diligent amateurs serving for a few years was preferable to a long-service standing army. Bledsoe concludes that like their compatriots before and after them in other American wars, some Civil War officers acted out of self-interest, but most unselfishly fulfilled their obligations to their comrades, to their army, and to their cause. [End Page 179]Furthermore, sergeants and enlisted men reminded volunteer lieutenants and captains that most shared the bond of being citizens temporarily in uniform. Junior officers did not employ the same level of stern discipline that regular soldiers were often forced to endure; no citizen-soldier wanted to tolerate tyrannical officers. Bledsoe reminds readers that as long as officers wore their badges of rank, they dealt with challenges of leadership. Such challenges included learning and teaching soldierly fundamentals, setting a good example, and building trust, all with the purpose of overcoming soldiers’ laxness and inefficiency. Civil War soldiers (and Americans of other eras), Bledsoe observes, “persistently tested the boundaries of an officer’s authority” (p. 91). Officers cajoled their men to behave and abide by discipline and inspired them in combat. The best among them went beyond the basics and demonstrated exceptional qualities, such as “charisma, and personal magnetism” (p. 84). Bledsoe contends that most company officers, many of whom were elected by their soldiers, did remarkably well under the demanding circumstances.

Bledsoe examines a large variety of sources from the Civil War era, and he is familiar with several studies by modern historians. His work also offers valuable appendixes with information on officers’ backgrounds, employment, and other characteristics.

Joseph G. Dawson III
Texas A&M University

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