Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Citizen-Officers
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S): Bledsoe, Drew
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://webpages.leeu.edu/abledsoe/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://webpages.leeu.edu/abledsoe/ * http://webpages.leeu.edu/abledsoe/cv/ * http://www.chattanoogan.com/2013/8/26/257822/Lee-University-College-Of-Arts-And.aspx * https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-bledsoe-6b5b9aaa/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Ouachita Baptist University, B.A.; University of Tennessee, J.D.; Rice University, M.A., Ph.D., 2012.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and educator. Rice University, Houston, TX, lecturer, 2012-13; Lee University, Cleveland, TN, assistant professor, 2013—. Fellow at U.S. Military Academy at West Point; member of faculty of Civil War Institute Summer Conference at Gettysburg College.
MEMBER:Society for Military History, Society of Civil War Historians, Society of West Point Fellows, Southern Historical Association, Chattanooga Civil War Round Table, Civil War Trust, Cleveland-Bradley County Historical Society, Friends of the Chickamauga & Chattanooga National Military Park.
AWARDS:Has received grants, fellowships, and awards.
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles to publications, including the Journal of Military History, Journal of Southern History, Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Michigan War Studies, Journal of the Civil War Era, and Ohio Valley History. Contributor of chapters to books.
SIDELIGHTS
Andrew S. Bledsoe is a writer and educator. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Ouachita Baptist University, a J.D. from the University of Tennessee, and both a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Rice University. After earning his Ph.D. in 2012, Bledsoe joined Rice University as a lecturer. The following year, he became an assistant professor at Lee University, in Cleveland, Tennessee. Bledsoe specializes in Civil War history. His articles have appeared in publications that include the Journal of Military History, Journal of Southern History, Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Michigan War Studies, Journal of the Civil War Era, and Ohio Valley History. He has also written chapters of books.
In 2015 Bledsoe released his first book, Citizen-Officers: The Union and Confederate Volunteer Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War. In this volume, he describes how members of the junior officer corps were quickly prepared for battle. Bledsoe also focuses on the ways in which they garnered trust from the soldiers they commanded. He cites personal writings from officers and soldiers, as well as historical documents.
Reviews of Citizen-Officers were favorable. Gordon Berg, a contributor to America’s Civil War, commented: “Andrew Bledsoe has done a prodigious amount of research.” Writing in the Journal of Southern History, Joseph G. Dawson, III, suggested: “His study is worth reading.” Dawson also stated: “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.” “Brimming with primary testimony and quantitative data, Citizen-Officers provides the first sustained examination of the ideology, culture, and wartime experience of volunteer officers on both sides of the sectional divide,” asserted Jack Furniss on the H-Net Web site. Furniss concluded: “Bledsoe has filled a significant gap in our knowledge of Civil War armies. While Citizen-Officers is likely to appeal primarily to Civil War military historians or to enthusiastic general readers, it will richly reward anyone interested in the long development of the United States’ armed forces or the profoundly personal experiences of soldiering in an era of predominantly volunteer armies.” Gregory R. Jones, a critic on the Civil War Book Review Web site, remarked: “This book has its greatest value for scholars of soldiers and command in the Civil War. … The book helps historians grasp the weight of command that rested on the shoulders of these officers; they felt the demands to live as a virtuous example to their men, all while directing their citizen volunteer soldiers into life-endangering combat. It is a book that engages readers in the heart of the Civil War, preferring to allow the voices of the soldiers to drive a narrative of significance to both national and regional history.”
A reviewer on the Civil War Books and Authors Web site praised Bledsoe’s use of personal writings from citizen-officers in the book. The reviewer stated: “The pieces that describe their personal thoughts on the essential elements of the volunteer officer craft and their experiences in leading their men into combat were expertly selected and particularly insightful. Bledsoe’s quantitative research is also well expressed in the appendices in the form of pie-charts and tables.” The same reviewer added: “The Civil War reader of wide experience will find few truly startling revelations in Citizen-Officers, but Bledsoe’s study really isn’t about changing popular perceptions or challenging academic consensus. It is the first book to concentrate solely on volunteer company officers in order to present a scholarly history and analysis of their collective Civil War genesis, duties, trials, evolution and combat experiences. Bledsoe’s book is essential reading for anyone seeking to more fully understand the leadership of the most fundamental building blocks of Civil War armies.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
America’s Civil War, May, 2016, Gordon Berg, review of Citizen-Officers: The Union and Confederate Volunteer Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War, p. 61.
Journal of Southern History, February, 2017, Joseph G. Dawson, III, review of Citizen-Officers, p. 179.
ONLINE
Andrew S. Bledsoe Home Page, http://webpages.leeu.edu (August 1, 2017).
Civil War Book Review Online, http://cwbr.com/ (August 1, 2017), Gregory R. Jones, review of Citizen-Officers.
Civil War Books and Authors, http://cwba.blogspot.com/ (December 17, 2015), review of Citizen-Officers.
H-Net, https://networks.h-net.org/ (August 1, 2017), Jack Furniss, review of Citizen-Officers.*
University, and has been an assistant professor of history at Lee University since 2013. best-image
Dr. Bledsoe’s research and teaching interests are in the American Civil War and Reconstruction, American military history and leadership traditions, the American Revolutionary Era, the Early American Republic, the American South, and Civil War battlefield preservation.
He is the recipient of a number of awards, grants, and fellowships. He has been a Fellow at the United States Military Academy at West Point and a faculty of Gettysburg College’s Civil War Institute Summer Conference. Dr. Bledsoe also leads Lee University’s HIST 492: The Battle of Chickamauga in History and Memory seminar in the fall of even-numbered years.
Dr. Bledsoe’s first book, Citizen-Officers: The Union and Confederate Volunteer Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War, was published in 2015 by Louisiana State University Press.
He is also the author or co-editor of works for LSU Press, Cambridge University Press, Southern Illinois University Press, Wiley-Blackwell, the Journal of Southern History, the Journal of Military History, the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, the Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Ohio Valley History, and others.
Email
abledsoe@leeuniversity.edu
About
Dr. Bledsoe’s research and teaching interests are in the history of the American Civil War and Reconstruction, American military history and leadership traditions, the American Revolutionary Era, the Early American Republic, and the American South and American West.
His first book, Citizen-Officers: The Union and Confederate Volunteer Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War, was published in 2015 in Louisiana State University Press’s Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions in the American Civil War series.
He is the recipient of a number of awards, grants, and fellowships. He has been a Fellow at the United States Military Academy at West Point, as well as a faculty of Gettysburg College’s Civil War Institute Summer Conference.
Dr. Bledsoe also leads Lee University’s HIST 492: The Battle of Chickamauga in History and Memory seminar in the fall of even-numbered years. This seminar is an in-depth exploration of various aspects of the 1863 Chickamauga Campaign, from its planning and execution to its commemoration and place in public and historical memory. Through original research projects, readings, in-class discussions, and multiple “staff rides” or battlefield excursions to the Chickamauga National Military Park, undergraduates explore issues of the Civil War combat experience, strategy, tactics, terrain, battlefield preservation, public commemoration, and historical memory.
He has published or is presently working on several projects related to the military history of the Civil War, including an edited volume on new approaches to Civil War military history, a book on the military staff of Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, and works on the 1863 Vicksburg Campaign, the 1862 Battles of Forts Henry and Donelson, the 1864 Battle of Franklin, the 3rd Arkansas Volunteer Infantry Regiment, 19th-century military technology, and other subjects.
Curriculum Vitae
Academic Appointments
Assistant Professor of History, Lee University, 2013-Present
Lecturer in History, Rice University, 2012-2013
Education
Ph.D., Rice University, 2012
M.A., Rice University
J.D., University of Tennessee
B.A., Ouachita Baptist University
Specialties
U.S. Civil War and Reconstruction, American Military History, Military Leadership and Citizen-Soldier Traditions, American Revolutionary Era, Early American Republic, American South
Publications
Citizen-Officers: The Union and Confederate Volunteer Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2015).
“The Destruction of the Army of Tennessee’s Officer Corps at the Battle of Franklin,” in Steven E. Woodworth and Charles D. Grear, eds., The Tennessee Campaign of 1864: Spring Hill, Franklin, and Nashville (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 2016), 114-132.
“Technology and War,” in Aaron Sheehan-Dean, ed., A Companion to the U.S. Civil War, Vol. I (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014), 540-560.
War is the Remedy: Toward a New Civil War Military History, co-edited with Andrew F. Lang (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, Under Contract).
Grant’s Men: Ulysses S. Grant and his Military Staff in War and Peace (In Preparation).
“Technology and War,” in Aaron Sheehan-Dean, ed., The Cambridge History of the American Civil War, Vol. II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Forthcoming).
“’By Hazard and By Spasms’: Grant and his Staff at the Siege of Vicksburg,” in Steven E. Woodworth and Charles D. Grear, eds., Vicksburg Assaults and Besieged (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, Forthcoming).
“Leadership Crises at Fort Donelson,” in Steven E. Woodworth and Charles D. Grear, eds., Forts Henry and Donelson (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, Forthcoming).
Articles, Book Reviews, and Notes
A variety of pieces in the Journal of Southern History, the Journal of Military History, the Journal of the Civil War Era, the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Ohio Valley History, the Arkansas Historical Quarterly, H-War, H-CivWar, Michigan War Studies, On Point: The Magazine of Army History, and others.
Panels, Presentations, and Talks
Presentations for the Society for Military History, the Society of Civil War Historians, the United States Military Academy at West Point Summer Seminar in Military History, the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College, the Virginia Civil War Center at Virginia Tech University, the Southeast Tennessee Regional History Conference, the Snell Lecture Series at Lee University, the Cleveland-Bradley County Civil War 150th Commemorations, the Phi Alpha Theta Tennessee Regional Conference, the Hess-Thompson History Colloquium at Lee University, the Red River Heritage Symposium at Historic Washington (Arkansas) State Park, the Houston (Texas) Area Southern Historians, the Conference on Millennialism and Providentialism in the Era of the American Civil War at Rice University, and others.
Professional Associations
Society for Military History, Society of Civil War Historians, Society of West Point Fellows, Southern Historical Association, Chattanooga Civil War Round Table, Civil War Trust, Cleveland-Bradley County Historical Society, Friends of the Chickamauga & Chattanooga National Military Park
Andrew S. Bledsoe is an Assistant Professor of History at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee. A historian of the Civil War and the American military, he is the author of a number of works on military leadership, citizen-soldiers, and the American military tradition. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from Rice University, and in 2015 was a Fellow at the United States Military Academy at West Point.
QUOTED: "Andrew Bledsoe has done a prodigious amount of research."
Citizen-Officers: The Union and Confederate Volunteer Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War
Gordon Berg
29.2 (May 2016): p61.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 World History Group, LLC
http://www.historynet.com/magazines/americas_civil_war
Citizen-Officers: The Union and Confederate Volunteer Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War
Andrew S. Bledsoe
LSU Press, 2015, $47.50
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
What does it take to lead men into battle? Why are some men successful at assuming command when others fail? At the war's outset, thousands of young men without formal military training had to quickly learn how to lead their friends and neighbors into life or death situations. Andrew Bledsoe has done a prodigious amount of research to document "their struggle for authority, along with the delicate intellectual, psychological, and emotional balancing act necessary for maintaining it."
Bledsoe documents the steep learning curve required of the junior officer corps in both the Union and Confederate armies and the challenges these men faced. "Trust," he writes, "perhaps more than any other aspect of the military relationship depended on the establishment of a personal connection between officers and their men." He offers a wealth of anecdotal examples of the ways junior officers achieved the trust and demanded the discipline needed to command obedience from subordinate volunteers.
Bledsoe supplements those anecdotes with a data-driven sample of 150 junior officers drawn from letters, manuscripts and military records. Casualties among those Union junior officers sampled totaled 43.5 percent; for Confederate officers, it was 47.6 percent. Clearly the best school for junior officers turned out to be the battlefield. By the summer of 1862, Bledsoe maintains, "The application of standards and training, along with valuable experience accrued in combat, led to a gradual improvement in the combat and command abilities in the junior-officer corps of both the Union and Confederate armies."
"Civil War citizen-officers developed a unique interior culture" during the war, Bledsoe points out, "a culture informed, in part, by the example of the regular-army officer corps." This officer ethos changed as the war went on. Many new company-grade officers had previously served in the ranks, giving them "significant experience to their positions, along with an intrinsic understanding of the mentality of their enlisted volunteers."
Bledsoe pays his highest tribute to the men who served as volunteer junior officers by describing how they returned home: "They went to peace in much the same way as they had gone to war--with little guidance or instruction, armed mainly with their instincts, natural aptitude, and the capacity to adapt to uncertain and changing circumstances." Those admirable characteristics continue to define American warriors to this day.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Berg, Gordon. "Citizen-Officers: The Union and Confederate Volunteer Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War." America's Civil War, May 2016, p. 61. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA444817926&it=r&asid=9c47115c868da63bd4bab986511a7c27. Accessed 22 June 2017.
QUOTED: "His study is worth reading."
"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."
Gale Document Number: GALE|A444817926
Citizen-Officers: The Union and Confederate Volunteer Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War
Joseph G. Dawson, III
83.1 (Feb. 2017): p179.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Southern Historical Association
http://www.uga.edu/~sha
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. 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 stem 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
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Dawson, Joseph G., III. "Citizen-Officers: The Union and Confederate Volunteer Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War." Journal of Southern History, vol. 83, no. 1, 2017, p. 179+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA481354160&it=r&asid=7529604a369c462a5baeb8e288804784. Accessed 22 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A481354160
QUOTED: "Brimming with primary testimony and quantitative data, Citizen-Officers provides the first sustained examination of the ideology, culture, and wartime experience of volunteer officers on both sides of the sectional divide."
"Bledsoe has filled a significant gap in our knowledge of Civil War armies. While Citizen-Officers is likely to appeal primarily to Civil War military historians or to enthusiastic general readers, it will richly reward anyone interested in the long development of the United States’ armed forces or the profoundly personal experiences of soldiering in an era of predominantly volunteer armies."
Furniss on Bledsoe, 'Citizen-Officers: The Union and Confederate Volunteer Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War'
Author:
Andrew S. Bledsoe
Reviewer:
Jack Furniss
Andrew S. Bledsoe. Citizen-Officers: The Union and Confederate Volunteer Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War. Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War Series. Baton Rouge: Lousiana State University Press, 2015. 352 pp. $47.50 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8071-6070-1.
Reviewed by Jack Furniss (University of Virginia)
Published on H-War (November, 2016)
Commissioned by Margaret Sankey
On the eve of the Civil War, the regular United States Army contained 1,100 officers, several hundred of whom would eventually resign their commissions to join the Confederacy. Such numbers sufficed for a peacetime force of 16,000 but left an immense deficit in leadership when four million men donned blue or grey uniforms during the next four years. This gap could only be filled by appointing thousands of men as officers who generally had no more military experience than those they commanded. As Andrew S. Bledsoe explains in his deeply researched and compelling study, historians have taught us much about the common citizen-soldier, but little about these “citizen-officers” as a collective. Brimming with primary testimony and quantitative data, Citizen-Officers provides the first sustained examination of the ideology, culture, and wartime experience of volunteer officers on both sides of the sectional divide.
Bledsoe grounds Citizen-Officers in relevant scholarship without letting historiographical jousting detract from the neglected history he wants to tell. While works detailing soldiers’ perspectives on race, gender, loyalty, and party politics appear, studies examining soldier motivation by, among others, James McPherson, Lorien Foote, and Gerald Lindermann figure more centrally. The findings of these historians are generally incorporated rather than challenged, but while Lindermann has strongly stressed Victorian values, particularly courage, as explaining soldier conduct, it is clear that Bledsoe sees his officers driven primarily by their adherence to a citizen-soldier ethos rooted in republican ideology. As Bledsoe acknowledges, other scholars have looked at volunteer officers before, and highlighted some of the same themes, but Bledsoe adds much to our understanding by treating them as a distinct subset of both armies with their own unique culture and experiences. At a time when the vast majority of scholarship expounds the profound differences between North and South, Bledsoe also provides a reminder that powerful continuities endured, at least in elements of military culture and experience.
Bledsoe opens with a condensed history of the citizen-soldier ideal from Cincinnatus to the Civil War. Volunteers had performed poorly in every war but remained the popular ideal due to the revulsion of standing armies embodied in republicanism and Jacksonian Democracy. This is familiar ground for anyone conversant with US military history but Bledsoe succinctly recounts it to trace the lineage of the book’s core theme: the persistent clash “between antebellum democratic values and the demands of military necessity” (p. xii). As future Union Major General George Gordon Meade complained during the US-Mexican War, volunteer officers exhibited “no command over their men” since they knew that at the end of their service “these men will be their equals” (p. 19). Democracy, it turned out, did not lend itself to efficiency.
During the Civil War, citizen-officers were either chosen by election from among the volunteers, producing “popularity contests, corruption, and outright demagoguery,” or appointed through political patronage. Some societal deference clearly lingered among the wartime generation as both armies chose officers who were older and richer, and possessed greater status in civilian life than the average soldier. This was especially true of the Confederacy, where 40 percent of officers came from slaveholding families, compared to 25 percent of the entire Confederate army. While elections granted officers some legitimacy, militarily they remained entirely green. To address this problem, both armies soon adopted systems of examination for volunteer officers in an attempt to wed competency to democracy.
Learning the basics of drill aided officers only minimally in their most daunting task: converting theoretical authority into inspiring leadership. Bledsoe offers illustrative vignettes of officers’ varying success in winning over their charges. Pennsylvanian Samuel Craig confided to his diary that, in order to exude confidence when conducting drill, he “would slip away to some distant secluded spot, and there by myself practice my voice in giving commands ... to the surrounding stumps and the trees” (p. 85). Levi Duff recounted how his commander lost all respect after “he had the impudence,” when drilling his men in the rain, “to wear an India rubber coat ... that the privates could not afford” (p. 96). Attempting to simultaneously display authority and social parity constituted an unenviable task.
Existing in the chasm between free-spirited citizen-soldiers and the regular army, citizen-officers went through a process of “regularization” that helped them construct their own “unique interior culture” (pp. 105, 102). Retaining a democratic civilian ethos, officers nonetheless tried to reflect the professional standards of the regular army and engender them in the volunteers. Army camps offered endless opportunities for indulgence and excess, undermining military preparedness. The officer able to exhibit moderation and infuse a “culture of moral excellence” within his unit could promote cohesion and attract loyalty (p. 112). Officers’ distinctive uniforms and swords sometimes drew ridicule from volunteers who saw them as elitist trappings, but they held great “emotional and symbolic meaning for the men who wore them into battle” (p. 133).
The book’s final chapters deal with the experience and consequences of combat. Career progression ended rapidly for any officer who showed cowardice (and many did), but Bledsoe insists that “a brave officer was far less important to his men than a good officer who stayed alive” (p. 148). Chastened by combat, men increasingly valued discipline in battle but never accepted “broader military discipline” in camp and on the march (p. 193). By 1864, units operated with greater harmony and efficiency, but volunteer officers continued to be killed in disproportionate numbers. As Bledsoe’s analysis reveals, Union and Confederate junior officers suffered 43 percent and 47 percent casualty rates respectively, compared to 16 percent and 31 percent for all soldiers (pp. 161-162). Even for those officers who emerged physically unscathed, psychologically the Civil War was still a “fundamentally damaging experience” (p. 180).
While Bledsoe’s evaluations of officers occasionally appear overly heroic, he nonetheless manages to make his generally sympathetic portrayal convincing. Consistently, Bledsoe credits men with having found “creative, often ingenious solutions” to overcome “unique leadership challenges” (p. xii). This appraisal sometimes strains against evidence showing men who failed spectacularly due to some combination of cowardice, incompetence, or indifference. But, in the end, it is the abundance of counterexamples that paint a convincing picture of fallible human beings who, in the context of the immense challenges they faced, “fulfilled their duty with great distinction” (p. 71).
Bledsoe has filled a significant gap in our knowledge of Civil War armies. While Citizen-Officers is likely to appeal primarily to Civil War military historians or to enthusiastic general readers, it will richly reward anyone interested in the long development of the United States’ armed forces or the profoundly personal experiences of soldiering in an era of predominantly volunteer armies.
Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=46636
Citation: Jack Furniss. Review of Bledsoe, Andrew S., Citizen-Officers: The Union and Confederate Volunteer Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War. H-War, H-Net Reviews. November, 2016.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=46636
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Add a Comment
QUOTED: "This book has its greatest value for scholars of soldiers and command in the Civil War. ... The book helps historians grasp the weight of command that rested on the shoulders of these officers; they felt the demands to live as a virtuous example to their men, all while directing their citizen volunteer soldiers into life-endangering combat. It is a book that engages readers in the heart of the Civil War, preferring to allow the voices of the soldiers to drive a narrative of significance to both national and regional history."
Citizen-Officers: The Union and Confederate Volunteer Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War
by Bledsoe, Andrew S.
Publisher: Louisiana State University Press
Retail Price: $47.50
Issue: Spring 2016
ISBN: 9780807160701
Citizen Soldier Ethos Held Civil War Armies Together
Civil War historians describe the armies of the Union and Confederacy as “volunteer armies”; it was a war for the destiny of the nation fought by the people of the nation. Andrew S. Bledsoe’s book Citizen-Officers: The Union and Confederate Volunteer Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War explores the leaders of those volunteer soldiers. Bledsoe argues that there was significant change in the officer corps over the course of the war, including a great deal of impatience and unpreparedness in the early part of the war, replaced by sage veterans near the end of the war who knew how to motivate and, at times, temper the enthusiasm of their hardened men. Bledsoe’s contribution is valuable to all who study Civil War soldiers, providing numerous primary sources as evidence to sustain an argument that shows how junior officers were the mortar that held together both armies in the American Civil War.
The most important concept from Bledsoe’s book - one that he does not let readers easily forget - is that of the “citizen-soldier ethos.” By this, Bledsoe describes soldiers’ backgrounds in revolutionary ideology and their interpretation of the republican tradition (x). These soldiers volunteered to fight for their cause because they believed that it was their duty, wrapped up in language of citizenship. It mattered, too, that they were volunteers and not conscripts. Bledsoe writes, “voluntary consent was the essence of civic virtue, and a citizen’s choice whether or not to render military service was the difference between ‘subjectship and citizenship,’ or put another way, between liberty and tyranny” (6).
In order to make his convincing argument about the evolving experience of war for junior officers, Bledsoe puts forth 221 pages of text followed by another seven appendices of various data. The appendixed data appears in other places throughout the book to support Bledsoe’s primary points. For example, Appendix 1 explores the antebellum professions of the junior officers (with skilled artisans and agriculture unsurprisingly at the top of the list). A few of the other appendices look at the attrition and casualty rates of both armies as well. None of the statistics were shocking, instead revealing much of what historians of Civil War armies already knew. It was helpful to have a sustained sampling of junior officers from both the Union and Confederate armies to illustrate both similarities and differences of the two sides.
What makes Citizen-Officers such an important book, though, is that it gives unequivocal legitimacy to concepts that seemed merely ideological. Other historians, such as James McPherson, have argued the importance of patriotism as a motivating factor for Civil War soldiers. But here Bledsoe carves out a particular subset of the soldier population and shows that it was extremely important for these soldiers that they were acting as citizen officers. It was their republican duty to do so. The qualitative comments in the form of excerpted soldier sources provides flesh and humanity to the statistical data provided in the appendices. It all comes together for a tangible, accessible, and interesting take on an underappreciated group in Civil War scholarship.
Quote after quote gives the reader the sense that junior officers, Union and Confederate alike, experienced an incredible transition throughout the course of the war. Initially they were idealistic and nervously unprepared. Later in the war, they had learned how to survive and how to help their soldiers survive. But what held them together with their men, even when it felt uncomfortable to lead, was the fact that they were all free citizens of a democratic nation. In the chapter on the making of the junior officer corps, Bledsoe explains that in the early part of the war officers were chosen by their men via democratic election. That caused dramatic moments in the early days of training, but after the baptism of fire at places like First Bull Run and Shiloh, soldiers quickly realized the importance of having officers who were best in combat situations, regardless of their personal popularity.
Tucked away in the middle of the third chapter of the book is a description of the officer corps that deserves to be highlighted here. The junior officers, “...formed the sinews and tendons that held the armies together and provided the emotional spark necessary for their respective armies to endure the ordeal of the Civil War” (71). Bledsoe explains many wrinkles of this sentiment, talking about character and behavior, as well as the burden of learning new strategies and techniques. These officers had to motivate their soldiers, control them, feed them, keep them alive, and do all of this while dealing with the ordinary pressures of life as a soldier. Very few of them had any military background before joining to fight in the Civil War.
This book has its greatest value for scholars of soldiers and command in the Civil War. It would not be a good book for teaching at the undergraduate level and should be treated as a serious academic monograph for the purpose of advancing research. The book helps historians grasp the weight of command that rested on the shoulders of these officers; they felt the demands to live as a virtuous example to their men, all while directing their citizen volunteer soldiers into life-endangering combat. It is a book that engages readers in the heart of the Civil War, preferring to allow the voices of the soldiers to drive a narrative of significance to both national and regional history.
Gregory R. Jones is an instructor at Grace College and the University of Northwestern (St. Paul). He is the author of How To Read a Civil War Letter (2015).
QUOTED: "The pieces that describe their personal thoughts on the essential elements of the volunteer officer craft and their experiences in leading their men into combat were expertly selected and particularly insightful. Bledsoe's quantitative research is also well expressed in the appendices in the form of pie-charts and tables."
"The Civil War reader of wide experience will find few truly startling revelations in Citizen-Officers but Bledsoe's study really isn't about changing popular perceptions or challenging academic consensus. It is the first book to concentrate solely on volunteer company officers in order to present a scholarly history and analysis of their collective Civil War genesis, duties, trials, evolution and combat experiences. Bledsoe's book is essential reading for anyone seeking to more fully understand the leadership of the most fundamental building blocks of Civil War armies."
Thursday, December 17, 2015
Bledsoe: "CITIZEN-OFFICERS: The Union and Confederate Volunteer Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War"
[Citizen-Officers: The Union and Confederate Volunteer Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War by Andrew S. Bledsoe (Louisiana State University Press, 2015). Hardcover, photos, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:240/341. ISBN:978-0-8071-6070-1. $47.50]
Much has been written about the Civil War regiment but analysis of the backbone of small-unit leadership, the company officers, has thus far evaded a similar degree of specialist study. Union manpower needs were so large and so immediate that the nation's tiny contingent of Regulars could not fulfill their intended role as cadre for the Third System's expansible army. Instead, it was common to find entire regiments composed of complete military amateurs who would all have to learn their craft on the fly. It was a rough transition but most units were able to balance democratic ideals with enough subordination and discipline to get the job done, often at a very high level of proficiency achieved only after enduring a costly learning curve. The new Confederacy had the same problems but none of the existing bureaucratic apparatus. Andrew Bledsoe's Citizen-Officers explores the wartime journeys of both Union and Confederate company grade officers (the lieutenants and captains), along the way he delves into a wide variety of specific challenges, examines officer culture, and traces early to late war differences in officer expectations and skill levels.
The study of the citizen-soldier ethos in United States history from the Revolutionary War to today is a common theme in the literature and it's certainly a major part of Bledsoe's investigation. Civil War volunteers were extremely reluctant to give up the egalitarian privileges of republican citizenship and obtaining their consent to serve at the bottom of the army's rigid hierarchical system was a hard fought struggle by the junior officer corps of the Union and Confederate armies. One of the most cherished and consequential concessions to democracy was the election of regimental officers, a subject dutifully explored in the book. It was a "right" expected by the soldiers and was widespread, though it became less so as the war dragged on. It's obvious negative consequences for competent leadership, discipline and efficiency could be somewhat ameliorated by the need to pass officer examination boards. Bledsoe, one thinks, properly points to the great army reorganizations of 1862 as the pinnacle of the institutional harm rendered by officer elections. At that time, many company officers of demonstrated ability were cast out only to be replaced by more popular men (the electioneering could be quite cynical). All too often, the new officers were less likely to impose the type of discipline that was necessary yet chafed the men's democratic sensibilities.
According to Bledsoe, the challenges experienced by citizen-officers in adapting to military culture can be difficult to analyze due to their infrequent presence (at least at a detailed level) in most wartime writings and post-war reminiscences, but many generalities can be enumerated. Fortunate was the volunteer officer who had Regular Army veterans in his regiment that could provide a model for leadership and training. Otherwise, the entire process was haphazard and chaotic. Citizen-officers and their men also found it difficult to shed their ingrained egalitarianism, a process made even harder by the fact that in many cases the officers knew their men personally from civilian life. The soldiers naturally and quite actively resisted military hierarchy. Officers most able to effectively solve these problems were those that could compromise without destroying discipline, firmly assume the habit and presence of command without being a martinet, and resort to coercion as infrequently and judiciously as possible. Different from Regular Army officer habits, the willingness to teach and the ability to explain why certain demands were made upon the volunteers was an important citizen-officer trait. It was by no means an easy task. Simply being competent, in both combat leadership and in providing for and taking care of the men off the battlefield, also went a long way toward ensuring soldier obedience, confidence and respect. If used with discretion, officers from higher class backgrounds could apply their paternalistic instincts to their leadership style with some success. Over time, strong emotional bonds could be built between company officers and men, and many leaders could further motivate their men to mutual sacrifice with appeals to patriotism.
Company grade officers of both sides developed a similar citizen-officer culture during the war. They eventually adapted to the regulations, expectations, and standards of the professionals but always with concessions to the democratic traditions of the American volunteer soldier. This modified "regularization" process became more consistent over time and served the volunteer armies well during the middle and later periods of the war, though the citizen-soldier ethos stubbornly persisted until the end. In addition to discussing many of the military cultural aspects of officer duties, virtues, responsibilities, routines, rank privileges and moral expectations, Bledsoe also keenly points out some of the material benefits (like higher pay) and symbolic tools of the office (like shoulder bars and swords).
The maturation process of citizen-officers is another important theme in the book. Early war company officers were green, uncertain in their abilities, and made tremendous mistakes. Though conspicuous courage was expected, Bledsoe maintains that many historians have overestimated its importance in the eyes of the soldiers, who equally valued competence and coolness under strain and realized that the best officers needed to stay alive to be any good to them. Regardless, dangerous and even reckless exposure on the battlefield was commonplace and casualty rates high. In Bledsoe's sample of 2,592 volunteer junior officers that served in 33 regiments between 1861 and 1865, Union officers suffered an astounding casualty rate of 43 percent and Confederates an even higher figure of 47 percent. Of course, bravery wasn't the only component in this, as Bledsoe points to officer targeting and vulnerable positions in the battle line as important factors in high officer casualties. The author also delves into some junior officer duties less covered in the literature, like file closing.
By the late war period, due both to casualties and high attrition from discharge, resignation and promotion [in Bledsoe's sample, there was 43% non-combat attrition in Confederate regiments and 53% in Union ones], the junior officer corps of the armies were largely composed of men who had worked their way upward through the ranks. According to Bledsoe, these individuals were experts in the tricks of the trade, they successfully adopted the veteran's emotional and psychological survival technique of protective callousness, and they were also capable of tactical innovation. Citizen-officers evolved with the changing nature of combat. With the continuous fighting that was a common characteristic of 1864-65 campaigns, it also became more acceptable for company officers to expose themselves only when critically necessary. Given the extreme levels of flux among the junior officer corps throughout the war, Bledsoe is probably right to reserve judgment over the issue of whether late war company officers were instrinsically "better" than their early and middle war counterparts.
Bledsoe's research sample of nearly 2,600 officers has been mentioned above but he also examined the letters, journals, diaries, and memoirs of 150 junior officers (75 Union and 75 Confederate) and mined this material for meaningful extracts which he flawlessly integrated into the text of Citizen-Officers. The pieces that describe their personal thoughts on the essential elements of the volunteer officer craft and their experiences in leading their men into combat were expertly selected and particularly insightful.
Bledsoe's quantitative research is also well expressed in the appendices in the form of pie-charts and tables. While much of the content and analysis in the main text was common to both armies, the quantitative analysis points to many differences. The typical Confederate company officer was slightly older, much wealthier, and more likely to be married with children than his Union opponent. In terms of antebellum occupations, the two most common backgrounds were agriculture (40% owned slaves) and the professions for the Confederates and skilled artisanship and agriculture for the Union junior officer corps. Bledsoe also charts officer casualties on a monthly basis as well as promotion/resignation attrition raw totals and rates for each regiment in his sample. Aggregate casualties are also graphed by month for each year of the war.
The Civil War reader of wide experience will find few truly startling revelations in Citizen-Officers but Bledsoe's study really isn't about changing popular perceptions or challenging academic consensus. It is the first book to concentrate solely on volunteer company officers in order to present a scholarly history and analysis of their collective Civil War genesis, duties, trials, evolution and combat experiences. Bledsoe's book is essential reading for anyone seeking to more fully understand the leadership of the most fundamental building blocks of Civil War armies.