The Roots of Social Order in the Union Army
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“Decidedly Unmilitary”: The Roots of Social Order in the Union Army A Thesis Presented to The Honors Tutorial College Ohio University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Graduation from the Honors Tutorial College with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in History by Eric Michael Burke April 2014 1 This thesis has been approved by The Honors Tutorial College and the Department of History _____________________________ Dr. Brian D. Schoen Professor, History Thesis Adviser _____________________________ Dr. Miriam Shadis Honors Tutorial College, DOS History _____________________________ Jeremy Webster Dean, Honors Tutorial College 2 Eric Michael Burke, History Honors Thesis Dr. Brian D. Schoen, History, Thesis Adviser “DECIDEDLY UNMILITARY” The Roots of Social Order in the Union Army TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 4 - 35 CHAPTER I “I DEPEND UPON THIS REGIMENT” MOTIVATIONS AND CHALLENGES 36 - 63 CHAPTER II “THIS WAY OF USING DID NOT EXACTLY SUIT US” THE RE-ENLISTMENT OF THE FIFTY-FIFTH ILLINOIS IN CONTEXT 64 – 122 Bibliography 3 Introduction "The American of the North…learns in good time to recognize for himself the natural limits of his power; he does not expect by force to bend the wills of those opposed to his, and he knows that if he wants to get others to help him he must win their favor." Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 18331 Twenty-nine suspenseful years elapsed between the conclusion of Alexis de Tocqueville's tour of the American republic and the beginning of the conflict that tore the nation apart. On average, the volunteers that would later fill the ranks of the Union Army would not be born for another three years following De Tocqueville's return to France in February of 1832. But the model of social life he witnessed and dutifully recorded within his canonical Democracy in America did not drift far from its moorings during the intervening time. As De Tocqueville saw it, political and social life in America – especially the particular breed found in the free northern states - was founded upon the principle of voluntary association. Republican citizens came together by their own free will to achieve things otherwise impossible for the lone individual. “They come...to think of association as the universal, one might almost say the only, means by which men can attain their various aims,” he noted. Interestingly though, when limited by outside forces to “combine for certain purposes” only, “they regard association as a strange and unusual procedure and hardly consider the possibility thereof.” Americans clearly placed an overwhelming value on free choice, but De Tocqueville's failure to explain why exactly this might be the case, left a major 1 Alexis de Toqueville, Democracy in America, trans. George Lawrence, ed. J. P. Mayer (New York: Harper Perennial, 1969), 375. 4 gap in his description of American life. It was, in fact, the “various aims” of men, and the fact that they often differed from and contrasted each other so greatly that freedom of association – or, conversely, disassociation – remained so pivotal.2 Although De Tocqueville perceived that “the different parts of the Union have different interests,” he admitted to being unable to “discover any [interests] in which they are opposed to one another.” Less than three decades later, the full gravity of the “different interests” that defined the political atmosphere of the entire Republic during the first half of the nineteenth century would become most painfully evident. In the late winter of 1860, disaffected Southerners, often metaphorically referring to the Union as a kind of “association” itself, opted to depart from the nation due to perceptions of the new Lincoln administration as a threat to their own “various aims” of protecting slavery and extending it into the new western territories.3 Perhaps appropriately, maintaining a very small standing military prior to the rebellion, the Republic was forced to rely on the American tradition of voluntary association yet again in order to prevent the bonds of Union from being torn asunder. By the end of the war in 1865, more than two million American men and boys had opted – the vast majority by free choice – to enlist in the volunteer Union Army, both to stem the tide of the rebellion and to achieve their own individual “various aims.” Although the voluntary associational model had apparently been effective in ordering American civil life, it very quickly seemed to fall short on the martial stage. Unlike the 2 Ibid., 522. 3 Ibid., 372. 5 voluntary associations that had dominated peacetime society, armies could not effectively allow for complete freedom of choice by their members. “Concert in action makes strength,” the leading contemporary treatise on military strategy and structure explained. “Order produces this concert, and discipline insures order; and without discipline and order no success is possible.” Unquestioning obedience, complete subordination, and dutiful cooperation with orders were perceived to be the trademarks of successful European militaries, and it seemed absolutely necessary to instill such virtues into the new volunteer army if victory was to be achieved and the Union saved.4 Success in this endeavor though, was not immediately forthcoming. As many erstwhile enthusiastic volunteers gradually began to see the military institution as counter to the achievement of their unique “various aims” they instinctively reached for the same safety valve that had governed their involvement in civil voluntary associations – the free choice to associate or disassociate at will. Not surprisingly, it was nowhere to be found. The volunteer army was a very different kind of association, and many of the “boys in blue” learned it the hard way. While officers tried desperately to curb individualistic tendencies and foster order and discipline within the ranks adequate to the brutal task at hand, those disaffected acted out ceaselessly in an attempt to maintain whatever vestiges of individual freedom might still be secured. The result quite often resembled anything but an army. As historian Steven Ramold 4 Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union (Indianapolis: Bobbs- Merrill, 1952), 96; Baron De Jomini, The Art of War, trans. Capt. G. H. Mendell and Lieut. W. P. Craighill (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1862), 42. 6 has pointed out, an observer of “a typical Union army camp might characterize the assembled body of men as little more than a mass of hooligans, with a thin line of officers as all that kept the entire mob from unrestrained lawlessness.” Men refused orders outright, often abandoned camp or even battle on their own volition, and usually vehemently rejected any suggestion of subordination to men they considered their equals. Officers bickered, dueled, and sometimes even murdered each other, often due to social conflicts that mirrored the culturally fractious nature of diverse Northern society before the war. Indeed, as De Tocqueville had pointed out, when forced to “combine for certain purposes” only, as the institution of the volunteer army had hoped to achieve, heterogeneous Americans were anything but compliant. Only voluntary associations that were structured in a way that allowed for all of the “various aims” of each unique member to be met vicariously and simultaneously through the achievement of the group's larger objectives could such an association succeed.5 Despite the fact that this reality forced the Union Army to appear nothing like a traditional military force, illustrating little of the supposedly vital disciplined characteristics thought to embody European armies, the volunteers were still successful – they did, after all, crush the rebellion. In order to achieve this feat, military leaders were forced to take into consideration the character and culture of the volunteer, adjusting their leadership philosophies accordingly. Instead of ordering around conscripted automatons as in Europe, successful officers were required at 5 Steven J. Ramold, Baring the Iron Hand: Discipline in the Union Army (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010), 7; An enlightening discussion of how contentious an social environment existed within the ranks is available in Lorien Foote, The Gentlemen and the Roughs: Violence, Honor, and Manhood in the Union Army (New York: New York University Press, 2010). 7 every turn to view their men as free citizens, entered into association with each other (and their superiors) on strictly voluntary and temporary terms. In order to understand what this meant for the resulting structure and social order of the army, as well as our understanding of what motivated the volunteer soldier, it is important that we temporarily suspend our own modern intuitive definitions of what it means or meant for an army to be an army. Instead, by examining the words and actions of Union soldiers themselves in light of the voluntarist worldview they carried with them into military service, we can begin to understand how they perceived the relationship between the army as a social institution and themselves. Further, we can uncover how shifting qualitative perceptions of this relationship affected the volunteer's motivations, willing subordination, and behavior both on and off the battlefield. Such an examination allows us to construct a much more complex understanding of the Union Army not rooted in our own contemporary notions of what an army is or was supposed to be, but rather what its unique voluntary social order forced it to be. This thesis will argue that the volunteer Union Army and the men who filled its ranks were products of their specific time and place in history. Free American citizens joined into voluntary association with one another upon enlistment, each in order to fulfill his own unique personal ambitions. Once associated, the volunteer mass provided a bountiful resource of willing manpower with which the Federal government was able to overwhelm the Southern Confederacy. Importantly though, the same personal calculus that governed voluntary association or disassociation in 8 American community and institutional life during the antebellum period continued to hold sway over motivations and behavior in uniform.