A Republic in the Ranks: Loyalty and Dissent in the Army of the Potomac by Zachery A. Fry

Abstract

Reviewed by: A Republic in the Ranks: Loyalty and Dissent in the Army of the Potomac by Zachery A. Fry Barbara A. Gannon A Republic in the Ranks: Loyalty and Dissent in the Army of the Potomac. By Zachery A. Fry. Civil War America. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. Pp. xvi, 319. $45.00, ISBN 978-1-4696-5445-4.) Rarely does one find a study that intersects with so many critical Civil War scholarly debates. A Republic in the Ranks: Loyalty and Dissent in the Army of the Potomac by Zachery A. Fry, an assistant professor of military history at U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, does so. In this study, Fry examines the famed and sometimes defamed Army of the Potomac—the military organization that operated around the United States' and the Confederacy's capitals. This study focuses less on its military campaigns against the Confederate army and more on its internal political battles. Much of this conflict centered on the Army of the Potomac's controversial commander—George B. McClellan—a Democrat who rejected Republican Abraham Lincoln's war aims, particularly emancipation. However, this study is not about one man but instead examines the officers and enlisted men who agreed with McClellan's dissent and those who loyally supported Lincoln's actions. Despite the dominance of Democrats in this organization, all ranks in the main eastern army included Republicans. Fry focuses on the junior officers in the Army of the Potomac and "the struggle between Democratic and Republican ideologues in shoulder straps to persuade and educate the army's ranks" (pp. 1–2). Fry argues that "Republicans decisively won the struggle for the army's allegiance" (p. 2). He cites as evidence of this victory the resolutions in support of the Lincoln administration in 1863 and, more convincingly, Lincoln's victory over McClellan in the 1864 presidential election. Fry's book is extraordinarily well researched and well written. One would be hard-pressed to find a better example of documenting the political culture of a military organization. Fry makes an enormous contribution to several intensely debated issues related to the Civil War, including soldier motivation through his examination of the decision to reenlist or not and the embrace of Lincoln and his policies as demonstrated by soldiers' votes in the 1864 election. Despite these critical contributions, Fry does not convince this reader that officers' political activism changed soldiers' minds. Fry analyzes unit resolutions supporting the administration's war efforts, including emancipation. He explains that officers wrote these resolutions and read them aloud to their units on dress parades. As someone who once stood in the ranks when officers spoke, [End Page 395] I guarantee that silence in a military formation does not equal assent. In addition, enlisted soldiers formulated their own, perhaps less articulate, political views. Irish Democrats held strong opinions on war aims and emancipation, despite their limited education. While I agree that junior officers played a role in their subordinates' political education, Fry documents diverse factors that shaped their political activism, including their anger at "Copperheads"—antiwar Democrats at home. Despite this shortcoming, A Republic in the Ranks is an astonishing book. Fry's most convincing and important argument is not who prompted this mobilization but its effect on the army. Republican activism gave "the downtrodden rank and file of the Army of the Potomac a previously elusive sense of purpose," particularly in their darkest hour—the 1864 Overland campaign (p. 4). Fry also contributes to a recent scholarly debate over the 1864 election and demonstrates that soldiers willingly voted for Lincoln and rejected the candidacy of their former commander—George B. McClellan. In my own research, I found that as veterans, these men remembered how their views evolved from the beginning of the war to its end, specifically, how they ultimately embraced Lincoln's policies and rejected the restoration of the Union without emancipation. Restoring these men's political agency represents an essential corrective to studies of Civil War soldiers. Barbara A. Gannon University of Central Florida Copyright © 2022 The Southern Historical Association