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Mark Wilson

Mark R. Wilson

The Business of Civil War: Military Mobilization and the State, 1861–1865 (Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology) Hardcover – July 15, 2006

by Mark R. Wilson (Author)

9 ratings

Part of: Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology (27 books)

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This wide-ranging, original account of the politics and economics of the giant military supply project in the North reconstructs an important but little-known part of Civil War history. Drawing on new and extensive research in army and business archives, Mark R. Wilson offers a fresh view of the wartime North and the ways in which its economy worked when the Lincoln administration, with unprecedented military effort, moved to suppress the rebellion.

This task of equipping and sustaining Union forces fell to career army procurement officers. Largely free from political partisanship or any formal free-market ideology, they created a mixed military economy with a complex contracting system that they pieced together to meet the experience of civil war. Wilson argues that the North owed its victory to these professional military men and their finely tuned relationships with contractors, public officials, and war workers.

Wilson also examines the obstacles military bureaucrats faced, many of which illuminated basic problems of modern political economy: the balance between efficiency and equity, the promotion of competition, and the protection of workers' welfare. The struggle over these problems determined the flow of hundreds of millions of dollars; it also redirected American political and economic development by forcing citizens to grapple with difficult questions about the proper relationships among government, business, and labor.

Students of the American Civil War will welcome this fresh study of military-industrial production and procurement on the home front―long an obscure topic.

Print length

320 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date

July 15, 2006
Dimensions

6 x 1.08 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

0801883482
ISBN-13

978-0801883484
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Customer reviews

5 star		56%
4 star		7%
3 star		21%
2 star		15%
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leftyjmp

Who says there is nothing new to write about on the Civil War?

Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2009

Verified Purchase

I stumbled across an enthusiastic endorsement of this book by James Schmidt, (See Mr. Schmidt's May 25, 2007 Amazon review as well.), and I thought that I would take a chance on it. This book is one of the most original pieces of research on the Civil War that I have read. Previous reviewers have done an excellent job of describing this book but I enjoyed this book so much that I wanted to add my voice to the chorus.

You can hear echoes of the books discussion on the merits of public vs. private manufacturing of war materials in our current debate over the inclusion of public option in health care. When the quartermaster general warns that a strict construction of government contracting rules would lead to a procurement system that "prevailed in some monarchical governments, where great contractors, commanding millions of capital, make general contracts to furnish all supplies for the government under periodical lettings.", you can almost hear the criticism of our government's early contracts with Halliburton in the second Iraq war.

The book's discussion of the government's lack of cash which resulted in the issuance of quartermaster vouchers two to three months after final deliver of goods which could then only be exchanged for certificate of indebtedness, one year notes with a 6 percent interest rate, was a revelation to me. Only individuals and businesses with lots of capital can afford to wait that long to be paid.

Anyone that is interested in the Civil War should read this book. It is a very interesting and original read.

3 people found this helpful

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James E. Jacobsen

The Business of Civil War

Reviewed in the United States on November 13, 2013

Verified Purchase

The American military, while less dominating as an arm of our government historically than it is today, has always proved to be a stalwart supporting institution of our democracy. This work treats the crucial manner in which pre-Civil War quartermasters took great pains to prevent the monopolization of war contracts. As such, these crusty old administrators were masters as balancing democracy with capitalism and its tendency towards making off with all the inflated profits! The issue of equal pay for female munitions workers is also nicely addressed. This is a fundamentally useful study of some of the undercurrents that influenced the federalization of our national government during a period of total war.

One person found this helpful

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Bruce W. Kletz

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2017

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On time, as described.

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double d

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2015

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Excellent resource of information.

One person found this helpful

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NYC Book Buyer

This is Not the Book I Expected

Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2013

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When I bought this book I was expecting a study of how business utilized new technologies to provide the Union with the food, materials, and equipment needed to win the civil war. Instead this book is about the military procurement process to obtain those things. Unless you are interested in the details of military procurement and how it affected the country this is a BORING book.

Helpful

T. Berner

The First Military Industrial Complex

Reviewed in the United States on August 5, 2008

Who would have thought that among his other acheivements, President Lincoln produced America's first military-industrial complex? In this well researched, well written study of military procurement during the American Civil War, the author demonstrates how the US moved from a state-by-state method of equipping its troops to a nationwide system operated by military quartermasters with the expertise and integrity to manage what was the biggest enterprise of its day.

The author's rich coverage of the most interesting issues of the day - nascent labor unions, the debate between government run arsenals and private industry, the role of brokers and middlemen - pulls you into the issues of the day. Prof. Wilson's scrupulous intellectual honesty allows one to examine these subjects without 150 years of polemics. This presents the reader with the rarest of all virtues in a history: allowing him to view issues as if he were a contemporary while simultaneously giving him the advantage of observing these issues after the passions have cooled and perspective has set in.

The trust that the author thus forms with his reader is remarkable. A good example of this is found in his last chapter, when he talks about the "militarization" of the American economy. The word "militarization" has become shorthand in academic circles - even for those academics who are respected outside of the far right and far left peanut galleries - for all sorts of bad things in the economy. Prof. Wilson merely uses the word as it is meant to be used - the application, for good and bad, of military style structure in economic enterprises. The result is a true intellectual discourse with the past, not the imposition of current fashion to old events.

The author has focused mostly on the army, not the navy, but that is where the most interesting issues arose anyway. Prof. Wilson has performed miracles with an incomplete historical record, but there are many issues I would have love to have seen addressed (although the data is probably lost to history). He presents a balanced account of the virtues of the publicly owned arsenals and factories and private enterprise, but vital questions remain unanswered:

WAS the quality of good produced at the public factories equal to or better than that of private industry? He produces claims that they were, but he also shows that army quartermasters often rejected, and refused to pay for, goods from private industry, a power they did not have at government factories. This may have made a difference - possibly never recorded - between the standards of the one against the other.

He also demonstrates that workers preferred working for the government owned entities, but then in his discussion of inflation, indicates that the government owned entities began to lose their workers to private industry as prices soared. Does this mean that the privately owned economy was more responsive in paying wages to price movements than public entities? If so, that would be an interesting study in its own right.

None of these unanswered questions detract from this vital book, which should be on the bookshelf of anyone interested in the Civil War, the history of business or political history.

5 people found this helpful

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The Business of Civil War: Military Mobilization and the State, 1861–1865 (Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology) Hardcover – July 15, 2006

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The Business of Civil War: Military Mobilization and the State, 1861–1865 (Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology) Hardcover – July 15, 2006

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