| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 36.1

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 36.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Bulwark of the Republic: The American Militia in the Antebellum West. By Mary Ellen Rowe. (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. xii + 232 pp. Notes, bibliography, index. $69.95.)

Bulwark of the Republic is one of the most important works on trans-Appalachian and trans-Mississippi militias ever published. Mary Ellen Rowe traces the history of western militias by focusing on Kentucky, Missouri, and Washington, as both territories and states, between the time of the American Revolution and the Civil War. Yet "focusing" is not really an appropriate term here because this work's geographical and chronological sweep transcends the case study format. "The circumstances of settlement of Kentucky, Missouri, and Washington were very different, yet the same militia system took shape in each, virtually unchanged across time and space" (p. xi). The author concludes that, during the nineteenth century, America's "corporate" republican society was replaced with a more democratic, individualistic one, leading to the miltias' demise.

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