The Gentlemen and the Roughs Book Review

The Gentlemen and the Roughs: Violence, Honor, and Manhood in the Union Army by Lorien Foote In the year 1861, the Civil War erupted throughout the United States. After four long gruesome years, the Union Army enlisted a total number of 2,893,304 northern soldiers. In The Gentlemen and the Roughs, Lorien Foote sheds light on northern conceptions of violence, honor, and manhood. Foote argues that the Union army originated by dividing class and social status, fighting a war for masculinity within its ranks at the same time it fought the Southern enemy. Many historians disregarded the friction between educationally refined officers and the vulgar, unskilled, and uneducated roughs under their authority. The idea to write about honor and manhood during the Civil War Foote said, “came from the unforgettable summers in the National Archives. (183)” Initially Foote had a desire to write about discipline and military justice but after 75,961 primary sources containing court martial cases, newspapers, journals and diaries were all at the fingertips of a Civil War fanatic, these stories about fighting for honor and manhood in the north had to be told. Foote’s highly sophisticated evidence prepared me to look at history, especially the north, in a new way. The fuse that led the gentlemen and roughs to fight over honor and manhood during the Civil War came from insults and dishonoring higher-ranking officials. If a private insulted another private, officers allowed them to fight for honor. An officer insulting an officer during war was an issue that needed to be addressed in military court. Depending on the severity of the insult officers faced military discharge from the war and their honor and rank in society withered away. In chapter two, “The Model of the Gentlemen: Gentility and Self-Control (41),” Foote discusses how gentlemen were perceived during the Civil War. To be recognized as a gentleman in society one had to be from a high economic status,