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8 - Armies and Discipline

from Part II - Managing the War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2019

By
Lesley J. Gordon
Edited by
Aaron Sheehan-Dean
Aaron Sheehan-Dean
Affiliation:
Louisiana State University
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Summary

The Civil War brought unprecedented challenges to military and political officials on both sides. One of the key questions was how to instill discipline upon largely volunteer troops. Confederate and Union armies were primarily made up of amateurs, men who proudly believed in the ideal of the citizen soldier, but who often defiantly pushed back against conventional army regulations. This chapter narrates the efforts of the Union and the Confederacy to instill discipline and training, especially when faced with varying degrees of demoralization and disaffection. It further explores how and why commanders and soldiers adapted (or failed to adapt) to these codes of conduct, punishments, and the wider repercussions for Americans largely unused to the strict demands of wartime service.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the American Civil War , pp. 159 - 173
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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References

Key Works

Bunch, Jack A. Military Justice in the Confederate State Armies (Shippensburg, PA: White Mane, 2000).Google Scholar
Foote, Lorien. The Gentlemen and the Roughs: Manhood, Honor and Violence in the Union Army (New York: New York University Press, 2010).Google Scholar
Hess, Earl. The Union Soldier in Combat: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1997).Google Scholar
Linderman, Gerald. Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War (New York: Free Press, 1987).Google Scholar
McPherson, James. For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).Google Scholar
Mitchell, Reid. Civil War Soldiers: Their Expectations and Their Experiences (New York: Viking, 1988).Google Scholar
Mitchell, Reid. The Vacant Chair: The Northern Soldier Leaves Home (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).Google Scholar
Ramold, Steven J. Baring the Iron Hand: Discipline in the Union Army (Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010).Google Scholar
Robertson, James I. Jr. Soldiers Blue and Gray (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1988).Google Scholar
Weitz, Mark. More Damning than Slaughter: Desertion in the Confederate Army (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2008).Google Scholar
Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Billy Yank: the Common Soldiers of the Union (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1952).Google Scholar
Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1943).Google Scholar

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