Book Review

For decades military historians have been debating the relationship between the military establishment of the United States and the rest of American society in the nineteenth century. Samuel Huntington and Edward Coffmann have stressed, from different perspectives, the isolation of the regular army from the main currents of American life, while others, such as John Gates and William Skelton, have taken an opposite stand, arguing that the interaction between military people and civilians was significant. In both cases, the main theme has been professionalization, and the main focus has been on the officer corps. When, how, and to what extent did the regular army officers become real professionals, endowed with a sense of corporate identity? When did they develop the distinctive features of a professional organization such as a system of specialized education and clear and formal rules of access and career?	1
Matthew Moten explicitly sides with those who think that the professionalization process was already well underway, if not altogether accomplished, before the outbreak of the Civil War. In order to do so, he analyzes the work of the Delafield Commission, a group of three officers (Richard Delafield, Alfred Mordecai, and George B. McClellan) who were sent to Europe in 1855 to study the military systems of the Old World in order to bring back useful information for the modernization of the United States military establishment.	2
The first half of the book actually summarizes the development of the officer corps and of military professionalism in the United States up to the 1850s. Only the second half is specifically devoted to the commission's long trip through England, France, Prussia, Russia (including of course Crimea), Italy, and back.	3
Drawing on the personal papers and the reports of the commissioners (plus a comprehensive host of secondary sources), Moten argues that "their attitudes . . . manifested a sense of separateness, a feeling of professional corporateness" and underlines the fact that "they called for better training and dissemination of professional military information," while McClellan "specifically argued for a more professional officer corps." In short, the commissioners were living proof of the existence of an American military professionalism.	4
Indeed, the book provides a short but well-thought account of the main developments of the "professional" aspects of the regular army officer corps up to 1855 and an interesting—at times even amusing—story of the encounter between three American soldiers and the European military world of the time. On the other hand, however, Moten cannot avoid admitting the "intellectual immaturity and professional insecurity" of the commissioners, who saw a lot but certainly did not understand all. They failed to appreciate the relevance of new weapons and methods of war, such as rifled arms, trench warfare, and the transformation of the roles of cavalry and artillery, and ended up praising the Russian army as a model for the United States to imitate while paying very scant attention to the Prussian experience.	5
So, if Moten has a point in emphasizing how the three American officers felt different from diplomats and politicians, took keen interest in the technical aspects of warfare, actively looked for innovations in tactics, and called for better training for their fellow officers, it is nonetheless clear that in 1855 professionalization still had a long way to go. Each commissioner wrote a different report; there was no real intellectual collaboration, no synthesis, no common suggestion for reform of the army. Above all, there still was no idea of a well-structured professional "system" made up of professional schools, fully worked out doctrines, a general staff, and a clear sense of mission and social role.	. . .