Army University Press: The ‘Union Army’ Is No More, By Fred Bauer, National Review, April 27, 2021
Having triumphed over rebel forces 160 years ago, the Union army now faces a new challenge: the effort to erase it from history books The Army University Press announced new guidelines for article and book submissions that strongly discourage the use of the term 'the Union' to refer to the forces of the U.S. government during the Civil War.
Similarly, citizens in states who remained loyal to the
United States did not all feel a strong commitment towards dissolving
the institution of slavery, nor did they believe Lincoln’s views
represented their own.
Thus, while the historiography has traditionally
referred to the “Union” in the American Civil War as “the northern
states loyal to the United States government,” the fact is that the term
“Union” always referred to all the states together, which clearly was
not the situation at all. In light of this, the reader will discover
that the word “Union” will be largely replaced by the more historically
accurate “Federal Government” or “U.S. Government.” “Union forces” or
“Union army” will largely be replaced by the terms “U.S. Army,”
“Federals,” or “Federal Army.
However, it’s not just “the historiography” in the abstract that has
referred to the states loyal to the federal government as “the Union.”
The people who fought to preserve the Constitutional order called their
side “the Union,” too. In his memoirs, Ulysses S. Grant referred many
times to the “Union army” or “Union troops.” Countless documents written
during the Civil War (by those who fought against the Confederacy)
spoke of the “Union army.” Referring to the effort to preserve the U.S.
federal government during the Civil War as “the Union” is not some
retrospective invention of historians.
In fact, it’s arguable that erasing the term “the Union” from
historiographical discourse, far from being “more historically
accurate,” distorts the vision of Lincoln, Grant, and many other
Americans.
“Union” has a particular charge in American discourse, from the
Constitution’s “more perfect Union” onward. In his first inaugural
address, Lincoln reflected on the centrality of the hopes of union for
the American republic. He held in that address that secession was not
just the splintering of the United States but the obliteration of
political order: “The central idea of secession is the essence of
anarchy.” The secession crisis threatened the U.S. government, but
Lincoln and his contemporaries also saw violent secession as threatening
the prospect of democratic governance in general.
The project of Union was about the U.S. federal government, but it
was about more than that, too. Union was the hope of reconciling
conflict within a democracy. Union was the assertion of the rule of law
over factional violence. Union was securing the prospect of republican
liberty. For many Americans, the army that marched under the Stars and
Stripes was in that deeper sense the Union army.
In his funeral sermon for Abraham Lincoln, the minister Phineas
Gurley did not once mention the “federal government” or even “United
States.” Instead, he spoke again and again about “union”: “through all
these long and weary years of civil strife, while our friends and
brothers on so many ensanguined fields were falling and dying for the
cause of Liberty and Union.” If one of the goals of historical study is
to capture the textures of past eras, erasing “the Union” and “the Union
army” from historical discourse would make it harder to understand the
passions and principles of those who risked their lives to preserve the
American republic.
Image: accompanying National Review online article
Union troops form near the battlefield during a re-enactment of “The
Wheatfield” as part of the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg
in Gettysburg, Pa., July 5, 2013. (Gary Cameron/Reuters)
UVA Unionists: Digital Project Studying University of Virginia Alumni Who Stayed Loyal to the Union
