|
|
“Costume Suggested for the Brave Stay-at-Home Light Guard”
No caption
This
is one of several Harper's Weekly cartoons that questioned the
manliness of Northern men who did not volunteer for Union military
service at the start of the Civil War. Here, the
"stay-at-home" is armed with broom, dustpan, and feather duster,
while uniformed in a dress, hairbrush epaulets, and cooking-pot hat.
Although images in Harper's Weekly and elsewhere extolled the
importance of women
contributing to the Union cause through
various auxiliary services (e.g., nursing, preparing medical kits, or
raising money), the proper place for eligible men in wartime was
considered to be in the military. By violating that social
expectation for men, the "stay-at-home" is ridiculed as a
coward hiding in the domestic role of a woman.When the Civil War
began in April 1861, the American military was ill prepared. There
were just over 16,000 men in the U.S. Army, mainly scattered across the
Western frontier, and only 42 ships in the U.S. Navy, most patrolling
far from American shores. Almost one-third of the army's officers
and over one-fifth of the navy's officers resigned to fight for the
Confederacy.
On April 15, President Abraham Lincoln
activated 75,000 state
militiamen for three-month federal service, provoking criticism that the
number was far too low. On May 3, he called for 42,000 army
volunteers for three-year enrollments and 18,000 navy volunteers for one- to
three-year contracts, and he expanded the regular army by nearly
23,000. In July, the reconvened Congress ratified the president's unilateral
actions, and approved recruitment of an additional one million
volunteers for three-year terms.
Many Northern state governments had been preparing for armed conflict
with the South even before the war officially began. After
the first clash of arms in April, Union states competed as
a point of pride to recruit the most men,
and (like the Confederacy) had
no problem filling their quotas and beyond. In towns across the
North, when word arrived of the call for recruits, posters were tacked
up announcing a public meeting, at which local notables spoke on the
need for fulfilling one's patriotic duty. Men in the audience
signed enlistment contracts, and then elected their military leaders
from the local community, while the women of the town began sewing uniforms. Within a week or so, the volunteers left their town for
the state capital, where they joined similar units from communities
throughout the state. Indeed, volunteers enlisted at such a rate
that initially federal and state officials could not keep them all
properly armed, fed, drilled, or equipped.
This
cartoon appeared in the wake of the First Battle of Bull Run, when realization that the war would not be quickly won had
set in, and as the three-month enlistments of the early volunteers were
up for renewal. Cartoons such as this one were a humorous way to
encourage or shame Northern men into reenlisting or joining for the
first time; in fact, many of the three-month enlistees signed on for
three-year tours of duty.
The
regular army never fulfilled its recruitment goals, but that situation
was more than remedied by the flood of volunteers--640,000 by December
1861--enlisted by the Union states to fight in state units under state
banners (e.g., 69th New York). As with recruitment, the men
representing their states competed for battlefield glory with their
compatriots from other Union states. By 1863, however, the number of volunteers proved
insufficient, and the Union, like the Confederacy a year before,
resorted to an unpopular military draft, which
included a controversial provision allowing draftees to pay for a substitute to fight in their place. During the course of the war,
the Union put about 50% of its young white men into service (2.6
million), while the Confederacy, with a smaller population, utilized at
least 80%.
Robert C. Kennedy
|
|
|
