A Proper Sense of Honor: Service and Sacrifice in George Washington's Army (review)

Abstract

A Proper Sense of Honor: Service and Sacrifice in George Washington's Army. By Caroline Cox. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Pp. xxii, 338. Cloth, $37.50.)No other book provides so much thick description of face of hierarchy, both ritual and concrete, in Army. (A Proper Sense of Honor does not examine militia.) Indeed, no other book provides so thorough a treatment of discipline, health and medicine, burial, and experience of prisoners of war in so short a space. While doing so, Caroline Cox strives for an interpretive (xviii) in debate over motives, social characteristics, and conditions of service of Army soldiers. She succeeds, but one has to ask whether sum totals more or less than parts.Cox's thesis can be summarized as there was hierarchy in colonial America; it predisposed Army to hierarchy; and army's soldiers normally accepted this If half value of A Proper Sense of Honor lies in detail of individual chapters, other half lies in Cox's argument that Army hierarchy was founded on colonial social structure. Yet she takes no explicit stance on significance of this conclusion for study of revolutionary America. What were social and political consequences of soldiers' acceptance of hierarchy during, and especially after, Revolution? This, question of outcomes, has to be big question for a study of this topic, and Cox does not address it.Indeed, Cox's middle ground is surprisingly bereft of explicit attention to two of core issues in debate between those historians (e.g., Robert Middlekauff, Charles Royster, and John Resch) who emphasize political/ideological motivation of soldiers, with its implications of greater social equality and unity, and those who stress social or class dynamics (a much larger number, perhaps most notably Mark Lender and Edward Papenfuse), especially those of hierarchy and division. A Proper Sense of Honor is a work of cultural, not social, history, and Cox takes social (or class) origins of enlisted soldiers for granted: the level of treatment that soldiers accepted indicates that they came mostly from society's lowest ranks. Those men who accepted [such low] standards . . . were presumably those who did not see such conditions as a shameful degradation (xvii).Though essentially siding with Papenfuse and Lender on origins of soldiers and presence of hierarchy, Cox sidesteps question of motivation. A couple of pages (240-41) suggest that it probably changed over time, with increasing unit pride and cohesion like that found in professional European military forces of day, but Cox does not explore shifts in motivation any more than she does those in origin. Why soldiers joined army is never resolved. Why did they stay? Grumbling resignation was order of day (116), she argues, but Continental army soldiers did not question conventions of time (117). If they didn't like conditions of service, they deserted or refused to reenlist. In effect, actions explain motives, or make examining motives unnecessary.Cox offers two possible answers to these conundrums. The first is socialization, both in colonial society and military institutions, which encouraged subordination to hierarchy. Accustomed to demands of deference, the men of army respected military hierarchy and accepted different standard of living dictated by that arrangement. …