Synopses & Reviews
Military training was a prominent feature of higher education across the nineteenth-century South. Virginia Military Institute and the Citadel, as well as land-grant schools such as Texas A&M, Auburn, and Clemson, organized themselves on a military basis, requiring their male students to wear uniforms, join a corps of cadets, and subject themselves to constant military discipline. Several southern black colleges also adopted a military approach.
Challenging assumptions about a distinctive "southern military tradition," Rod Andrew demonstrates that southern military schools were less concerned with preparing young men for actual combat than with instilling in their students broader values of honor, patriotism, civic duty, and virtue. Southerners had a remarkable tendency to reconcile militarism with republicanism, Andrew says, and following the Civil War, the Lost Cause legend further strengthened the link in southerners' minds between military and civic virtue.
Though traditionally black colleges faced struggles that white schools did not, notes Andrew, they were motivated by the same conviction that powered white military schools--the belief that a good soldier was by definition a good citizen.
Review
Using a combination of the published and unpublished records of the southern military schools, newspapers, government records, and a wide-ranging secondary literature, the book makes an important . . . contribution. (Choice)
Review
Andrew's stimulating investigation of the southern military school tradition yields original insights into why and how southerners, more than other Americans, equated martial valor with civic virtue. (Winfred B. Moore Jr.,The Citadel)
Review
Andrew skillfully employs his analysis of educational goals and institutional growth to illuminate larger themes central to the history of the New South: the nature of the Lost Cause, the fate of the republican tradition after the Civil War, and most important, the development of the southern military tradition. (Gaines M. Foster, Louisiana State University)
Review
A significant contribution to the ongoing historical debate over the existence of a unique southern military tradition. . . . It is well-researched and well-written, and it offers a solid discussion of the historiography while making a significant contribution to it. (Journal of the Early Republic)
Review
Andrew's brief study of the southern military school tradition is a valuable resource. It is well researched, well argued and thought provoking. . . . A useful work with important insights into a significant southern tradition. (Civil War Book Review)
About the Author
Rod Andrew Jr. formerly taught history at The Citadel and is now assistant professor of history at Clemson University. He has served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps and is currently a major in the Marine Corps Reserve.