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 Joseph T. Glatthaar (bio) A Republic in the Ranks: Loyalty and Dissent in the Army of the Potomac. By Zachery A. Fry. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. Pp. 336. Cloth, $45.00.) Until very recently, scholars embraced the idea that Union soldiers overwhelmingly endorsed Abraham Lincoln’s reelection bid in 1864. Soldiers despised the opposition Peace Democrats, applauded Lincoln’s unwavering support for victory, and embraced a belief that the confiscation or destruction of slavery and other Rebel property was both morally right and advantageous to the cause of reunion. In 2014, Jonathan W. White challenged that notion in Emancipation, the Union Army, and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln. In it, White argues that Republican authorities suppressed Democratic opinions, persecuted those who openly opposed emancipation, and ultimately drove large numbers of Democrats into leaving the army when their term of enlistment expired in 1864, rather than reenlisting. White insists that 60 percent of the soldiers actually voted for Lincoln (20 percent were too young, and a few states prohibited soldiers voting in the field), and many of them were coerced. In A Republic in the Ranks: Loyalty and Dissent in the Army of the Potomac, Zachery A. Fry challenges White’s arguments. Fry attempts to develop the formation of political culture in the ranks of the Army of the Potomac by framing it with the theories of Mats Alvesson and Edgar Schein, business and management scholars whose work translates readily to the armed services. Although Fry draws on a range of sources, he relies principally on manuscripts, memoirs, and published materials of officers. Fry is particularly adept at tapping published letters by officers in dozens of local newspapers, a vastly underutilized source. [End Page 288] Fry’s thesis is that while high-ranking officers battled to shape the politics of the army, it was the junior officers, the lieutenants and captains, who converted enlisted men to the Republican cause. He explains how Major General George B. McClellan and his high-ranking associates tried to build support for the Democratic Party by preventing Republican and abolitionist newspapers and tracts from circulating in the army. When Major General Joseph Hooker, a regular army officer and Republican, took command in 1863, he blocked Democratic literature from the army and promoted the distribution of pro-administration material. Hooker’s successor, Major General George G. Meade, confessed a lack of expertise to determine what type of published literature came to the army. By then, Fry argues, the demand for pro-Democratic literature had declined owing to its increasingly strident antiwar position. This is unquestionably Fry’s strongest contribution. Fry agrees with White that there was some harassment of Democratic voters in the ranks in 1864, but he dismisses that as largely insignificant, arguing that there were also officers who made it explicitly clear that soldiers were free to vote their conscience without any repercussions in their units, and 20 percent of the troops did vote Democratic. Fry concedes that campfire discussions, experiences in war in the slave states, a need for more manpower, and the extremist views of Peace Democrats all helped convert the troops to Republicanism. What he underplays is the trust that soldiers developed in the Lincoln administration. By targeting slavery, authorizing the confiscation and destruction of goods and property of secessionists, providing essential manpower by enlisting Black men and imposing a draft, soldiers believed that the Lincoln administration would take any measures to aid them in winning the war. Fry also places too much emphasis on the role of junior officers in building Republican support among the ranks. Here his approach with regard to sources fails him. By relying heavily on officers and newspaper articles as sources, he does not capture the true sentiments of enlisted soldiers and strips them of their agency. Many soldiers expressed a surprising level of animosity toward their officers at all ranks, including their captains and lieutenants. Moreover, 53 percent of all soldiers in the Army of the Potomac at the time of Lincoln’s reelection had never been able to cast a vote...