The Commanding Generals and the Question of Civil Control in the Antebellum U.S. Army

Abstract

Civilian control of the military is one of the most important of America’s political traditions. While direct military challenges to civilian supremacy have been rare, tensions over the degree and character of civil control have been endemic. During the nineteenth century, a main focus of friction was the office of commanding general of the army, or general‐in‐chief. This position was an unintended byproduct of the reduction of the army in 1821, and its powers and functions were never clearly defined, particularly its relationship to the civilian secretary of war. Ambitious commanding generals, notably Alexander Macomb (1828–1841) and Winfield Scott (1841–1861), strove for actual command of the army as a whole: staff departments as well as line regiments. In their view, the president’s command powers should be exericsed directly through the professional head of the army, with the secretary relegated to a supporting administrative role. Civilian leaders, backed by high‐ranking staff officers, resisted the generals’ pretensions, claiming that they threatened the president’s constitutional powers and undermined civilian control. The commanding generals were most successful in navigating the civil‐military minefields when they downplayed active command and focused on the more prosaic but vital role of chief military adviser to the government, a function later confirmed with the establishment of the modern army general staff in 1903.