A Republic in the Ranks: Loyalty and Dissent in the Army of the Potomac

Abstract

In The Life of Billy Yank (1952), Bell Irvin Wiley concluded that patriotism, coupled with a devotion to the Union, sustained Northern soldiers. Politically aware and ideologically driven, Union troops vehemently disagreed about the execution of the war. Political discord within the armies has garnered much scholarly interest in recent years, though it is often through the perspective of the high command. In A Republic in the Ranks: Loyalty and Dissent in the Army of the Potomac, Zachery A. Fry shifts the locus of inquiry and seeks to understand “the deep divisions over the war’s conduct among junior officers and enlisted men” (p. 1). He cogently argues that the Civil War created a political awakening for common soldiers. Educated and prompted by junior officers, the army’s political neophytes became schooled in Democratic or Republican ideology. In the end, the Republican camp won out as witnessed especially in loyalty to the Lincoln administration and participation in the public sphere of opinion. Carefully argued and trenchantly researched, A Republic in the Ranks is a highly readable and historiographically significant work on the Union army’s political life as viewed from the ground. Composed of six chapters with an extended introduction, Fry’s book is framed chronologically around a series of political crises in the Army of the Potomac. While giving essential context through concise discussions of the war’s military dimensions, Fry dwells on the months between campaigns to explore the army’s shifting political culture. In the war’s first year, many soldiers believed George B. McClellan and Fitz John Porter “represented the army’s greatest bulwark against radicalism and civilian interference” (p. 67). By mid1863, though, junior officers, primed for emancipation, skillfully turned soldiers against Democrats who they portrayed as antiwar partisans threatening to undo the army’s hard-fought gains. It was also during this period that news sources changed—one of the book’s