I finished Mark Wilson's The Business of Civil War: Military Mobilization and the State, 1861-1865 and am glad to recommend it.
Now for some nits.
* This is a book about the military procurement effort so the title is misleading.
* On whatever terms they set for themselves, the author (and publisher) are promising way too much for a 225 page survey, the chapters of which are essentially essays.
* The point of this book may not interest Civil War readers as it is aimed at debunking certain received wisdom in Gilded Age history. The Civil War procurement effort is fodder for demonstrating the formation of immense bureaucratic organization centrally directed by the government (pre-Gilded Age) and for showing massive industrial enterprises at work (again pre-Gilded Age). As a result, there is just enough material supplied to carry Wilson's points but not enough to describe the procurement effort in systematic way.
* Certain arguments internal to the book are not sustained or developed (such as that Montgomery Meigs inherited a well managed, thoroughly professional department without adding much value to it).
Nevertheless, the author has marked out a territory which he now owns: the origins of modern bureacratic and corporate forms being rooted in the Civil War's Quartermaster Department, through which the bulk of military spending passed.
Meigs' authority and responsibility were big stuff: over 100,000 civilian employees in the first half of the war; factories run at arsenals employing huge workforces; untold millions in disbursements. The man was essentially at the head of a government trust made up of many large state enterprises any one of which far outstripped the largest American firms of the day. And he was the head of a truly massive military bureaucracy.
In terms of organization and scope of work, the Army's quartermasters were operating at exponentially higher levels than captains of industry, cabinet officers, or field generals. They seem quite modern.
When you juxtapose the patronage, informality, and personal dealing that represented federal civil government standards, 1861-1865 with the orderly, rules-based administration of the parallel government run by the chief quartermaster, you get some sense that indeed here is a precursor of what reformers intended for the Civil Service in a later day.
So a Civil War result can come out of what is essentially not a Civil War book. We learn what all those quartermasters were up to during the war.
7/31/2006
Giving credit where credit is due
These entertainment reporters think Spike Lee made the movie "Confederate States of America."
Enjoy the many free clips, anyway.
Enjoy the many free clips, anyway.
7/30/2006
Craig Symonds and rewarding bad behavior
Craig L. Symonds is one of the few Civil War historians publishing today capable of analyzing naval policy as history. He "gets" Joe Harsh. He is intrigued enough by the Joe Johnston conundrum to produce a study.But he is also tempted by the demons of popularity. Two examples: this can be justified but this is beyond the pale.
With a teetering author like Symonds, you want to reward good behavior and punish the bad.
The Roosevelt Naval History Prize has (over the last decade) been awarded to writers of what James McPherson likes to call the people's history - aka pop history. McPherson himself won the prize - with his wife - for editing some inconsequential letters in 1997 (while he was president of the AHA) . This feat has positioned him - in lieu of Symonds - to write the definitive history of Civil War navies.
But I digress. The Roosevelt committee has reached out to Craig Symonds to reward him for another foray into "the people's history." Pity.
Where are the prize committees looking out for us, the advanced readers? Might some university press not scrape up a little money for a small trophy? Or a little plaque that could be awarded amidst fanfare and self-congratulation? It could be re-used with a new name inscribed on it each year. Total cost = $39.99 plus engraving.
Sometimes I wonder.
(The prize was awarded Symonds in May; this piece appeared over the weekend.)
Hokey is as hokey does
Bathos: ... you'll find Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Jefferson Davis and General William Sherman and other historical figures from the Civil War era. They will be dressed in period clothes and delivering powerful arguments about issues that surrounded the war.It's the High Plains Chataqua staged for people to busy to read or think, people not embarassed to have some costumed clown deliver their HISTORY! to them. Get this, from a professor no less:
"They are human beings trying to come up with answers that will make sense to them."They? Being statesmen, one assumes they were looking beyond themselves. If we're talking about the actors, not the statesmen, I'm not sure they'll ever make sense of the question, "What the hell was I thinking when I got on the stage dressed as (whomever)?"
Casino funds ACW site
The Grand Ronde tribe in Oregon is funding the restoration of a Civil War period fort next to its gaming parlors:
With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, the fort became home to the 4th California Infantry Volunteers. The men wanted to fight a war, but never got to fire a shot. They could only read about the great battles - Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg and so forth - in the newspaper.
7/26/2006
Gallagher on TV
Some of you are Gary Gallagher fans: note that his appearance on C-Span2 is being promoted in targeted web advertising with the come-on that you can call in your questions.
The fly in the ointment here is that clicking on the ad link brings you to the current Book TV schedule, not the one for August 6 - the one you need - and that a click on the Gallagher program link on that page brings up a screen labeled Encore Booknotes. You can't phone an encore program, of course, and it seems unlucky that the Gallagher page says "No program has been scheduled for this category at this time."
C-Span rarely does ACW author interviews. Hope this works out for them.
The fly in the ointment here is that clicking on the ad link brings you to the current Book TV schedule, not the one for August 6 - the one you need - and that a click on the Gallagher program link on that page brings up a screen labeled Encore Booknotes. You can't phone an encore program, of course, and it seems unlucky that the Gallagher page says "No program has been scheduled for this category at this time."
C-Span rarely does ACW author interviews. Hope this works out for them.
7/24/2006
Nationalization and the ACW war industries
One of the fascinating things about Mark Wilson's new book, The Business of Civil War: Military Mobilization and the State, is his rundown of federal control of war industry during the ACW. The feds themselves competed with contractors and through Meigs' quartermasters, they put at least 1/4 of the new, massive national war production in key military goods into army-managed facilities. The contemporary rationales for this are worth visiting in a future post.Meanwhile, this just in from HNN: Why It's Time to Nationalize the US Defense Industry . This HNN piece is high concept, starting from a premise that the business of defense is national business. But in Wilson, the ACW quartermasters are operating on micro-economic rationales: contractors are colluding; their prices are too high; the quality is second rate; the army can do better without a middleman; the army needs to produce goods at a standard the private sector can then model. The quartermasters are also operating in a political mode: poor women need higher income than contractors will pay; soldiers' families should be preferred for government work; the political balance will tip in key cities if military industry there is privatized.
I have been prepped for all this, by these good people and their point that the current military setup turns our top generals into mere shepherds (poodles?) of military procurement. (One of their heroes, Jim Burton, sits on my county board and does my interests proud, bless him.)
I am not grinding a political axe here, it's just that Mark Wilson has got me rethinking the business-of-war issue via those old Civil War anti-contractor memes.
Wilson did an article on ACW price fixing here. The Italians seem to dig him. And he's featured in an MIT course on ACW technology.
See for yourself.
(Caption to Harper's cartoon, above right: PENNSYLVANIA BEEF CONTRACTOR. "Want Beefsteak? Good Gracious, what is the World coming to? Why, my Good Fellow, if you get Beefsteak, how on earth are Contractors to live? Tell me that.")
Bad news for "The Last Full Measure"
AP reports:
Movie director Ron Maxwell has begun paying back the loan he received from Washington County, Maryland for a film project that later stalled. Maxwell was unable to begin production of the Civil War movie "The Last Full Measure," much of which was expected to be filmed in the county.Admin note: I posed this by mail earlier today but it did not make the blog for technical reasons. If Blogger coughs it up later, I'll delete this post.
7/23/2006
Lincoln's war powers and the courts
During my military service, should some loose talk have led to a politcal observation someone would inevitably offer the comment: "I thought we solved that problem in the officer's club last night?" End of topic. Instant cure for the political psychosis.Not sure if they have officer's clubs anymore - they say Clinton abolished them to reduce expenses - and if they do have them, I'm not sure they would serve alcohol to today's athletic, health-conscious officer corps. Not sure, in other words, if the world's problems are being solved at happy hour.
I do think of that line when I myself try to do too much in a single blog posting. I also think of it when I see some mere newspaper columnist tackling monumental issues in a brief piece.
Now, Nat Hentoff (right) is no mere columnist, but he is suffering from the delerious overconfidence that marks his trade if he thinks he can settle the war powers controversy in a column.
We are often exposed to Lincoln's rationale for the suspension of habeas corpus and I have seen more than one Civil War historian leave the argument where it lies in the early war, i.e. the war powers of the president are undefined. Hentoff does Civil War readers the favor of reminding them that Lincoln was repudiated in 1866 when the Supreme Court said, "'The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances.''
Our pop historians, ever careful of their discipline, naturally leave the events of 1866 out of their histories since they are charged only for reporting on the period 1861-1865. Unfortunately, that leaves a lot of readers deeply impressed with Lincoln's interpretation of presidential rights without supplying them with arguments (and law) contra Lincoln.
Now, I have noticed, in the defense of his conduct of certain matters in this current war, our incumbent president seems to take the definition of war powers as an open question. This should resonate with ACW readers - it resonated with me. I have also noticed, sadly, that the lifestyle section of the papers hereabouts report that the president and his vice president are avid readers of pop history.
And so, I appreciate Hentoff bringing up 1866 and all that to correct the Administration's pop history tendencies but I don't think a ruling in the matter of habeas corpus settles the entire business of war powers.
When the Supreme Court decides, "'The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and peace..." the court has not clarified what war powers are, nor has it settled the basis of its own authority in defining war powers.
Drat, now he's got me doing it.
Tour guide specializes in Mormon War
Interesting article on a Mormon War tour guide. Harney, Marcy, Johnston feature prominently - what a roster. Good to see a two-volume history of that conflict in preparation.
7/20/2006
Saintly letter discovered
Do you remember that other 13th Amendment?You know, the one that would have made slavery legal nationally? I refer to the slavery amendment that Lincoln urged governors to adopt in March, 1861?
ART. 13. No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.Well the fourth of many Lincoln letters urging the adoption of the national slavery amendment was discovered in Allentown recently.
No big deal though. As usual, it was (somehow) all Buchanan's fault.
The perfect heritage tourism headline
They misrendered"HISTORY!!!" as "history" but otherwise it's the perfect headline: Preservation of Civil War history advances with state grants.
And where did the money go? "... to the Catoctin Center for Regional Studies at Frederick Community College, the National Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick and the Catoctin Aqueduct Restoration Fund." (The NMCWM appears to be the fig leaf here.)
Dive under a Civil War headline like this a year from now and the awardees will be a pet shelter, a day care for working moms, and a highway extension.
And where did the money go? "... to the Catoctin Center for Regional Studies at Frederick Community College, the National Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick and the Catoctin Aqueduct Restoration Fund." (The NMCWM appears to be the fig leaf here.)
Dive under a Civil War headline like this a year from now and the awardees will be a pet shelter, a day care for working moms, and a highway extension.
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