| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

C. Edward Skeen. Citizen Soldiers in the War of 1812. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. 1999. Pp. 229. $27.50.

President James Madison's administration relied mainly on the militia to fight the War of 1812. C. Edward Skeen's book documents the abject failure of that reliance. It also locates the nadir of the militia system as a warfighting organization in this war. By war's end, the federal government still had not developed a workable method to raise an army or to feed, clothe, and arm such forces as it was able to raise. Federal funds were insufficient to pay for the men and supplies needed. Congress never levied the taxes that might have brought in enough income to pay the bills. The government tried to shift the financial burden to the states, but states also lacked the means needed. 1

The best chapters in this book are those that do not cover combat, namely chapter two, "Congress and Military Mobilization"; chapter three, "Military Organization"; chapter four, "The States and Military Mobilization"; chapter eight, "Federal and State Relations"; and chapter ten, "The War's End and the Decline of the Militia." The combat narratives have been handled in other books adequately and with more vividness than here. . . .

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