The Draft, Popularized

Men Is Cheap ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 143-176
Author(s):  
Brian P. Luskey
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Wage Labor ◽  
Union Army ◽  
Black Soldiers ◽  
Personal Benefit ◽  
Army Officers

Benjamin F. Butler’s ideas about how to “popularize” certain types of coercion—the Federal draft—unfolded at the end of 1863 on the Virginia coast as he and his subordinates defined the parameters of wage labor in their military department. That was a process dependent upon the intersecting imperatives of coercion and consent operating within the army. The ways white officers, recruiters, and black soldiers experienced and understood wage labor during the war was through the filter of force, obligation, and free will. Union Army officers and recruiting agents sought access to laborers and tried to harness them to the nation’s—and perhaps their personal—benefit. These men did so in different ways, and they came into conflict with each other because they disagreed about the legitimate balance of consent and coercion in a wage labor economy.

Practical Liberators

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristopher A. Teters
Keyword(s):  
Racial Equality ◽  
Union Army ◽  
The West ◽  
Black Soldiers ◽  
Military Necessity ◽  
Army Officers ◽  
Differences Of Opinion ◽  
Emancipation Proclamation ◽  
Pragmatic Strategies ◽  
Internal Strains

During the first fifteen months of the Civil War, the policies and attitudes of Union officers toward emancipation in the western theater were, at best, inconsistent and fraught with internal strains. But after Congress passed the Second Confiscation Act in 1862, army policy became mostly consistent in its support of liberating the slaves in general, in spite of Union army officers' differences of opinion. By 1863 and the final Emancipation Proclamation, the army had transformed into the key force for instituting emancipation in the West. However, Kristopher Teters argues that the guiding principles behind this development in attitudes and policy were a result of military necessity and pragmatic strategies, rather than an effort to enact racial equality. Through extensive research in the letters and diaries of western Union officers, Teters demonstrates how practical considerations drove both the attitudes and policies of Union officers regarding emancipation. Officers primarily embraced emancipation and the use of black soldiers because they believed both policies would help them win the war and save the Union, but their views on race actually changed very little. In the end, however, despite its practical bent, Teters argues, the Union army was instrumental in bringing freedom to the slaves.

Union Officers and the Intense Debate over Emancipation and Black Troops

2018 ◽  
pp. 60-82
Author(s):  
Kristopher A. Teters
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Black Soldiers ◽  
Political Sphere ◽  
Army Officers ◽  
Peace Democrats ◽  
Harsh Reality ◽  
Intense Debate

As Washington officials moved toward an emancipationist policy during the second half of 1862 and the beginning of 1863, Black soldiers and emancipation had both proved to be very divisive issues among western army officers. Most Union officers believed that the Union—not emancipation—was their cause. The Second Confiscation Act, along with the Preliminary and final Emancipation Proclamations, generated substantial discord in the army. Significant numbers of officers opposed these measures out of political, practical, and racial concerns. Other officers just as fervently approved these policies for their practical benefits, with some going much further and becoming downright abolitionists. But overall, pragmatism counted for far more than morality or idealism. In the political sphere, Peace Democrats, or “Copperheads”, of the Union adamantly opposed abolitionism and sought a negotiated peace. Opposition to emancipation declined strikingly after the first few months of 1863 because officers came to realize its practical benefits and, in some cases, came to understand the harsh reality of slavery. This pattern did not hold when it came to enrolling black troops. Many officers supported this policy out of practical considerations, but there was also considerable opposition that lasted through the end of the conflict.

Soldiers in the Union Army

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorien Foote
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
Self Care ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Union Army ◽  
Democratic Government ◽  
Us Army ◽  
Army Officers ◽  
The Us ◽  
Military Discipline ◽  
Union Soldiers

Soldiers enlisted in the Union Army from every state in the Union and the Confederacy. The initial volunteers were motivated to preserve the accomplishments of the American Revolution and save the world’s hope that democratic government could survive. They were influenced by their culture’s ideals of manhood and republican ideals of the citizen soldier. They served in regiments that retained close ties with their sending communities throughout the war. Recruits faced a difficult adjustment period when their units were mustered into the US Army. The test of battle taught soldiers to value some drills and discipline, but many soldiers insisted that officers respect their independence and equality. Soldiers successfully resisted many aspects of formal military discipline. Army life exposed conflicts between soldiers who sought to create moral regiments and soldiers who displayed manliness through fighting and drinking. Establishing honor before peers was an important component of soldier life. Effective soldiering involved enduring the boredom and disease of camp, the rigors of marching, and the terror of battle. To survive, soldiers formed close bonds with their comrades, mastered self-care techniques to stay healthy, applied skills learned from their civilian occupations on the battlefield, and remained connected to their families and communities. Conscription changed the character of the Union Army. Officers tightened discipline over the influx of lower-class “roughs.” Union soldiers generally demonized their enemies as inferior barbarians. Because of their interaction with slaves in the South, Union soldiers quickly shifted their support to emancipation. Although Christianity and ideals of civilized behavior placed some restraints on Union soldiers when they encountered southerners, they supported and implemented hard war measures against the South’s population and resources, and treated guerrillas and their supporters with particular brutality. In the election of 1864, Union soldiers voted to fight until the Confederacy was defeated.

scholarly journals Forging a New Identity: The Costs and Benefits of Diversity in Civil War Combat Units for Black Slaves and Freemen

2006 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 936-962 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dora L. Costa ◽  
Matthew E. Kahn
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Farm Workers ◽  
Union Army ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Life Outcomes ◽  
Black Soldiers ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Short Run ◽  
Wartime Experience

By the end of the Civil War 186,017 black men had served in the Union Army, roughly three-quarters of whom were former slaves. Because most black soldiers were illiterate farm workers, the war exposed them to a much broader world. Their wartime experience depended upon their peers, their commanding officers, and where their regiment toured and affected their later life outcomes. In the short run the combat units benefited from company homogeneity, which built social capital and minimized shirking, but in the long run men's human capital and acquisition of information was best improved by serving in heterogeneous companies.

Men Is Cheap

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian P. Luskey
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Political System ◽  
Wage Labor ◽  
Union Army ◽  
Free Labor ◽  
Irish Immigrants ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Northern State ◽  
The Military ◽  
Union Soldiers

When a Civil War substitute broker told business associates that "Men is cheep here to Day," he exposed an unsettling contradiction at the heart of the Union's war effort. Despite Northerners' devotion to the principles of free labor, the war produced rampant speculation and coercive labor arrangements that many Americans labeled fraudulent. Debates about this contradiction focused on employment agencies called "intelligence offices," institutions of dubious character that nevertheless served the military and domestic necessities of the Union army and Northern households. Northerners condemned labor agents for pocketing fees above and beyond contracts for wages between employers and employees. Yet the transactions these middlemen brokered with vulnerable Irish immigrants, Union soldiers and veterans, former slaves, and Confederate deserters defined the limits of independence in the wage labor economy and clarified who could prosper in it. Men Is Cheap shows that in the process of winning the war, Northerners were forced to grapple with the frauds of free labor. Labor brokers, by helping to staff the Union military and Yankee households, did indispensable work that helped the Northern state and Northern employers emerge victorious. They also gave rise to an economic and political system that enriched the managerial class at the expense of laborers--a reality that resonates to this day.

Conclusion

Men Is Cheap ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 207-220
Author(s):  
Brian P. Luskey
Keyword(s):  
Abraham Lincoln ◽  
Labor Movements ◽  
Wage Labor ◽  
Free Labor ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Freedmen's Bureau ◽  
Army Officers ◽  
Working People ◽  
Private Entrepreneurs ◽  
Union Soldiers

Wage labor employers won the war for Union, and they had won it with the assistance of intelligence offices managed by private entrepreneurs and state institutions such as the Freedmen’s Bureau. Union soldiers, northern women, businessmen, army officers, and politicians should get credit for being among abolition’s agents. They believed wholeheartedly in free labor, because the trajectory that ideology mapped for northerners showed that the only way to more independence in a market in which all were dependent was through the accumulation of capital and the opportunity to exploit others’ labor. They fought the war for Union against the slaveholders’ aristocracy to bolster their own authority. The movement of workers created by soldier recruitment, emancipation, and what Abraham Lincoln called the “friction and abrasion” of war gave them opportunities to do so. Intelligence offices served this war for Union by marshaling workers whose “capital in self” the state and employers could access for their benefit. These institutions could also take the blame for the inequalities and disappointments of wage labor capitalism in ways that obscured the fact that the war’s labor movements had unmade the promise of free labor for working people.

“Deeds of Our Own”

2018 ◽  
pp. 268-302
Author(s):  
Thaddeus M. Romansky
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Union Army ◽  
Black Soldiers ◽  
Fair Treatment ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Status ◽  
National Loyalty ◽  
American Society

In this essay, Thaddeus Romansky addresses expressions of national loyalty among African-Americans who joined the Union army. African-Americans both in and out of slavery were stigmatized and thought by many to be incapable of loyalty and citizenship. Military service, however, opened a way to take agency in achieving emancipation while laying claim to the status of loyal men in American society. Focusing on military protests of abusive treatment by white officers, Romansky contends that black soldiers saw the loyalty of their military service as entitling them to equal and fair treatment in the ranks. The author characterizes these protests as reflecting the internalization of broadly held notions of rights, liberty, and resistance to tyranny that formed the core of republicanism. In other ways, however, the sensitivity to claims of equality stemmed from long-suffered racial discrimination. Thus notions of loyalty were complicated by the issue of their race.

Minstrel-Soldiers: The Construction of African-American Identity in the Union Army

Prospects ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 109-136
Author(s):  
Matthew Conner
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil War ◽  
American History ◽  
African American History ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Union Army ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Black Soldiers ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Mass Recruitment

The Emancipation of Slaves during the Civil War is celebrated as the pivotal event in African-American history. But this act overshadows another milestone of the war: the mass recruitment of blacks into the Union Army. Although blacks had fought alongside white soldiers since the colonial era, the Civil War was the first conflict in which blacks were enlisted in large numbers and recognized as regular soldiers in the army. By the war's end, black soldiers numbered 180,000 men and contributed crucially to the Union victory.

Academic Course Evaluation

2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 297-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edith Braun ◽  
Bernhard Leidner
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Education Reform ◽  
Bologna Process ◽  
Course Evaluation ◽  
Higher Education Reform ◽  
Teaching Behavior ◽  
Personal Benefit ◽  
Quality Of Higher Education ◽  
Confirmatory Factor ◽  
The Bologna Process

This article contributes to the conceptual and empirical distinction between (the assessment of) appraisals of teaching behavior and (the assessment of) self-reported competence acquirement within academic course evaluation. The Bologna Process, the current higher-education reform in Europe, emphasizes education aimed toward vocationally oriented competences and demands the certification of acquired competences. Currently available evaluation questionnaires measure the students’ satisfaction with a lecturer’s behavior, whereas the “Evaluation in Higher Education: Self-Assessed Competences” (HEsaCom) measures the students’ personal benefit in terms of competences. In a sample of 1403 German students, we administered a scale of satisfaction with teaching behavior and the German version of the HEsaCom at the same time. Using confirmatory factor analysis, the estimated correlations between the various scales of self-rated competences and teaching behavior appraisals were moderate to strong, yet the constructs were shown to be empirically distinct. We conclude that the self-rated gains in competences are distinct from satisfaction with course and instructor. In line with the higher education reform, self-reported gains in competences are an important aspect of academic course evaluation, which should be taken into account in the future and might be able to restructure the view of “quality of higher education.” The English version of the HEsaCom is presented in the Appendix .

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