The Rise of the National Guard: The Evolution of the America Militia, 1865-1920 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS67 cal issues suffused nearly all aspects of the war experience. No one has sharpened our awareness of the soldier's political life as Frank has done in this book. The heart of Frank's study is his work in the papers of ? ,01 3 soldiers, North and South. He ranks their political awareness in three areas: political acuity, scope of interest in political affairs, and sense of political effectiveness, concluding that more than a third of the soldiers "exhibited a higher level of political sophistication in their correspondence" (34). The differences within that group are interesting; Federals were slightly more sophisticated than Confederates , Midwesterners were slightly more sophisticated than New Englanders, and officers were a lot more sophisticated than enlisted men. Generally, the strength of politic interest increased over the course of the war, although the sense of political effectiveness declined for some men. Two thirds of the sample believed that high principles and ideals were at stake in the war; nearly twice as many Federals as Confederates believed this. More than 70 percent of the politically motivated Union soldiers favored arming former slaves. Surprisingly, nearly halfofthe Confederate soldiers also favored putting guns in black hands. And, when the war ended, more than 60 percent of the Rebel soldiers totally accepted defeat, while twice as many officers as enlisted men vowed never to accept it. These are enlightening statistics, although Frank is careful to point out that his sampling is too small to be taken as typical of all Civil War soldiers. The results tend to reinforce many of the arguments made by recent historians of the soldier experience and open up some new lines of inquiry to further flesh out that subject. Frank has a particularly good sense of the internal dynamics of the war effort over time, and he is very concerned with dwelling on the concept of a people's war and a citizen army. Students ofall these topics will greatly enjoy this book. His discussion of the South's debate over arming slaves is one of the best I have read. And no one can fault Frank for his grasp of political theory and the scholarship surrounding it (he is a political science professor), or for his wide understanding ofother conflicts in theWestern world that involved mass armies. In short, Frank's book is a major contribution to a small but steadily growing body of work on Civil War soldiers, adding another important step to a lengthening ladder. Earl J. Hess Lincoln Memorial University The Rise ofthe National Guard: The Evolution ofthe America Militia, 18651920 . By Jerry Cooper. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. Pp. xviii, 246. $45.00.) In democratic countries, the raising of troops in time of war is almost always controversial. This was particularly true in the nineteenth-century United States 68CIVIL WAR HISTORY where the Jeffersonian/Jacksonian ethos of the volunteer soldier prevailed. If war came, Americans believed, a citizen should be able to choose if he would serve or not, and his decision should take into account his business and family obligations and whether or not the political ends of the conflict met with his approval (158). Most states had statutes requiring universal and compulsory militia service for limited terms, but resistance insured that elected officials rarely enforced the laws effectively. Despite cherished myths of the "minutemen ," American militias usually proved ineffective in the wars of the nineteenth century, and politicians wasted much energy squabbling over their employment . But military service was a valuable source of patronage, and after 1868, state politicians began groping for useful employment for their troops. Jerry Cooper, professor of history at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, and authority on American citizen-soldiers, has produced a detailed account of how political, fiscal, and social forces led to the transformation of state militia organizations into a national guard that today serves as the nation's military reserve. Change came gradually. In the last half of the nineteenth century, with a general conflict only a remote possibility, state guard troops were routinely used for constabulary functions: aiding civil authorities after natural disasters, quelling civil disorders, and intervening in labor-related disturbances. But for many guard members...