University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2016 "An Army of Working Men:" Military Labor and the Construction of American Empire, 1865 to 1915 Autumn Hope Mcgrath University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Mcgrath, Autumn Hope, ""An Army of Working Men:" Military Labor and the Construction of American Empire, 1865 to 1915" (2016). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1890. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1890 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1890 For more information, please contact [email protected]. "An Army of Working Men:" Military Labor and the Construction of American Empire, 1865 to 1915 Abstract This dissertation is a labor history of the United States army in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It argues that soldiers constituted a partially-unfree labor force essential to the advance of U.S. imperialism. The project draws on government reports, military records, court-martial testimonies, memoirs, letters, and newspapers. It examines the U.S.’s military labor regime in pre-statehood California, the Reconstruction South, the trans-Mississippi West, and the southern Philippines. Military labor, often performed under duress, allowed the United States to extend its authority across North America and around the world. Soldiers built roads and telegraph lines; mapped territory; supervised elections; assisted railroads and other private companies; and governed subject populations. This state-sanctioned labor regime relied on coercive and violent practices. Soldiers were paid less and enjoyed fewer rights and protections than their civilian counterparts. They were subject to physical punishments and humiliations for various infractions. In the most telling difference between military and “free” labor, soldiers could not leave their assignments even one day short of their enlistment period; “quitting” the army was criminalized as desertion. As the United States extended its influence over new parts of the world, its military labor regime also expanded to include local populations. This study examines the army’s attempts to exploit the labor of soldiers and indigenous populations as well as resistance to these efforts. This project reframes the army’s contributions to U.S. imperialism. Beyond the battlefield, soldiers worked, often under duress, on behalf of an ambitious and expansionary state. By focusing on the army’s labor regime, it demonstrates the centrality of both the military and unfree labor to the construction of an American empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group History First Advisor Stephanie McCurry Keywords empire, labor history, military history, soldiers, U.S. army Subject Categories History | United States History This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1890 “AN ARMY OF WORKING-MEN:” MILITARY LABOR AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF AMERICAN EMPIRE, 1865-1915 Autumn Hope McGrath A DISSERTATION in History Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2016 Supervisor of Dissertation __________________________ Stephanie McCurry, Professor of History Graduate Group Chairperson __________________________ Benjamin Nathans, Ronald S. Lauder Endowed Term Associate Professor of History Dissertation Committee Stephanie McCurry Professor of History Steven Hahn Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of History Adolph Reed Professor of Political Science “AN ARMY OF WORKING-MEN:” MILITARY LABOR AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF AMERICAN EMPIRE, 1865-1915 COPYRIGHT 2016 Autumn Hope McGrath ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii Very few people get to work at what they love and get paid for it. It is a pleasure to now thank the individuals and institutions that have given me this wonderful privilege. Funding from the University of Pennsylvania made it possible for me to attend graduate school in the first place. The General and Mrs. Matthew B. Ridgway Military History Research Grant gave me the opportunity to conduct research in the rich collections at the U.S. Army War College Library and Archives. A graduate fellowship from the Penn Program on Democracy, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism provided a final year to write. I thank Professor Rogers Smith, the program’s director, for his encouragement. In the Penn History Department, Joan Plonski, Octavia M. Carr, Yvonne Fabella, and Bekah Rosenberg have helped me on many occasions. The staffs of several libraries and archives provided valuable assistance. Special thanks go to the staff at the U.S. Army War College Library and Archives, particularly Dr. Richard Sommers for his kind interest in my research. Randy Vance, Tai Kreidler, and Nicci Hester at the Southwest Collection and Special Collections at Texas Tech University Library were patient with my many questions during the time I spent in the Panhandle. This dissertation is stronger because of the feedback I received at a number of conferences. I would like to thank the organizers and participants at the Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas Small Conference on Labor and Empire in Santa Barbara; the Cornell Conference on the Histories of American Capitalism; the Joint Conference of the Labor and Working-Class History Association and the Working-Class Studies Association in Washington, D.C.; the American Historical Association and Organization of American Historians annual meetings in New York, Atlanta, and St. iv Louis; the Penn Program on Democracy, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism Graduate Workshop; and Penn’s Workshop in the Global Nineteenth Century. To everyone who took the time to read and listen to my work and offer ideas and suggestions, I am grateful. By their own examples, my committee members set the highest standards for intellectual labor. The idea for this project began in Steve Hahn’s seminar. Since then, Steve has given me many opportunities to think deeply and ask my own questions. For his time, interest, and the challenging questions he always asks, I thank him. I am also indebted to Adolph Reed for his time, insight, and reading of my work. He has been a kind, gracious, and brilliant mentor. He has also changed the way I see the world beyond academia. It will be years before I take the full measure of what I have learned from Stephanie McCurry. Stephanie has been the rarest of advisors: generous, demanding, humane, good-humored, and available. She is an intellectual powerhouse, and because of her my “ideal reader” will always speak with the inflection of Northern Ireland. It is not enough to thank her here for all she has given me, but I am happy to try. Some of my greatest debts are my oldest. It is a pleasure to thank Brad Bates, my first high school history teacher. Mr. Bates challenged us to interpret history from primary sources, and his course on Colonial History was my first exposure to historical critiques of imperialism. After leaving his classroom, I was lucky enough to find myself in a first-year literature and humanities class at Columbia University taught by English professor Amanda Claybaugh. I thank her for all her priceless counsel over the years. Columbia is also a remarkable place to study history. Courses with Betsy Blackmar, Barbara Fields, and William Leach were especially exhilarating. Betsy Blackmar has v continued to support my work and is always extremely generous with her time. I am among the legion of students in her debt. I may never have gone to graduate school if it weren’t for Merlin Chowkwanyun. I am lucky to have such a generous and wise friend. We are now scattered to the four corners, but the graduate student community at Penn continues to sustain me. I owe special thanks to Noria Litaker, Emma Teitelman, Jack Dwiggins, Noor Zaidi, Annie Schatz, Lori Daggar, Elizabeth della Zazzera, Abby Cooper, and Freddie LaFemina. I cannot name all the friends beyond academia who have kept me going, but I owe a special debt to Emily Behl Wells, Serena Roberts Houlihan, and Lydia Kiesling for their unfailing support. When I met my husband I also met a wonderful new family. Mario, Linda, Kelly, and Tim have supported me in every way possible, from funding travel to taking care of a four-month-old baby while I presented a paper on the other side of the country. I thank them for their love and generosity. My grandmother, Harriet Bradley, has been patient through my long years of schooling, which I know she finds puzzling. Early in the writing stage of this project, my sister, Joy McGrath, allowed me the use of an empty office for a week. I wrote the first sentences of this dissertation there. She also read a full draft. I thank her for all her help, both material and psychic. My brother, Josh McGrath, was the real trailblazer in our family, earning a Ph.D. in soil science long before the thought of graduate school ever occurred to me. I thank him for the interest he has shown in my work, which he can understand far better than I can decipher his research on phosphorus. I am also grateful to Ty Jones and Kimberly Monahan for taking care of my siblings; they have their own vi labor histories to write. My mother’s parents prevented her from attending college, and my father finished his degree in night school after having two children and working full-time. Despite or because of these obstacles to their own formal schooling, Joan and Michael McGrath opened every possible door to their children’s educations. They encouraged me to learn on my own terms, often with no endgame in mind. Doing so has made me very happy. I thank them for their extraordinary sacrifices. I am lucky that Carey Kopeikin loves ideas and loves to argue.