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8 - Citizen Soldiers

from Part II - Social Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2019

By
Susannah J. Ural
Edited by
Aaron Sheehan-Dean
Aaron Sheehan-Dean
Affiliation:
Louisiana State University
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Summary

In 1892, Union veteran John Palmer addressed a gathering of thousands of fellow veterans. He was the commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), America’s largest Civil War veterans’ organization. “We were citizens before we became soldiers and volunteered at the call of an imperiled Nation, that we might fulfill the highest duties of citizenship,” Palmer explained, “and the lessons we learned amidst the storm of battle have made us more mindful of our duties as citizens.” Palmer’s address captured Americans’ long cultural attachment to the concept of citizens’ obligations to the nation when it was threatened. This tradition dated back to colonial militias and the republican principles of the American Revolution that emphasized service to the community before service to oneself. Wedded to this concept was Americans’ preference for citizen soldiers, rather than professionals due to the nation’s deeply rooted prejudices against standing armies and the historic threat they posed to republics.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the American Civil War , pp. 151 - 172
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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References

Key Works

Barton, Michael and Logue, Larry M.. The Civil War Soldier: A Historical Reader (New York: New York University Press, 2002).Google Scholar
Bledsoe, Andrew S. Citizen-Officers: The Union and Confederate Volunteer Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2015).Google Scholar
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McCurry, Stephanie. Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).Google Scholar
McPherson, James M. For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).Google Scholar
Noe, Kenneth W. Reluctant Rebels: The Confederates who Joined the Army after 1861 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010).Google Scholar
Reid, Richard M. Freedom for Themselves: North Carolina’s Black Soldiers in the Civil War Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008).Google Scholar
Storey, Margaret M. Loyalty and Loss: Alabama’s Unionists in the Civil War and Reconstruction (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004).Google Scholar
Ural, Susannah J. (ed.). Civil War Citizens: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity in America’s Bloodiest Conflict (New York: New York University Press, 2010).Google Scholar
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