Book Review

Canada and the United States

Rod Andrew, Jr.'s book examines southern public military colleges from the founding of Virginia Military Institute to the creation of the Reserve Officers Training Corps. The purpose of these schools was to produce virtuous citizens, not professional soldiers. While nonsoutherners generally found militarism, with its emphasis on corporate duty, antithetical to republicanism, with its focus on individual autonomy, white southerners reconciled the two. They equated voluntary military service with civic duty, making the citizen-soldier the ideal republican. Despite an emphasis on loyalty and obedience to legitimate authority, southern militarism contained democratic values that rewarded individual merit and initiative. Ability, education, and experience trumped socioeconomic condition in masculine competition for honor and status. Resistance to the unlawful exercise of authority was the duty of every citizen-soldier, exemplified by southerners' patriotic disobedience to redcoats during the American Revolution and to Yankees during the Civil War.

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Southern military schools offered youthful white southerners the means (apart from war) to learn and experience the rights and responsibilities of a citizen-soldier. Most southern Victorians believed that military education provided the mental, moral, and physical training that produced self-reliant and loyal men ready to defend both their personal autonomy and their community. The institutions taught the discipline and order required of militarism through drills and regulations, but they also taught students liberal values, as class standing depended upon performance rather than birth or class. Limited toleration of student rebellions by administrators reinforced liberalism by teaching students to uphold their rights when wronged by perceived illegitimate acts of authority.

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