Long Gray Lines

Long Gray Lines: Southern Military School Tradition, 1839-1915. By Rod Andrew Jr. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Pp. viii, 169. Illustrations, appendix. $29.95.) Long Gray Lines makes significant contribution to the ongoing historical debate over the existence of unique southern tradition by examining the development, support, and longevity of schools and programs in the American South from 1839 to 1915. Supported by extensive research and analysis, Rod Andrew Jr. challenges the arguments presented by scholars such as Marcus Cunliffe in Soldiers and Civilians: Martial Spirit in America, 1775-1865 (1968) and, more recently, by Don Higginbotham in The Martial Spirit in the Antebellum South: Some Further Speculations in National Context(Journal of Southern History, 57 [Feb. 1992], 3-26), both of whom reject the existence of unique tradition of southern militarism. Andrew insists that scholars can find substantial evidence of uniquely southern perspective on the purpose of education and its contributions to republican values in America by examining the reasons behind southerners' lasting support for education. Long Gray Lines contains several themes that support this argument. First, Andrew limits his definition of military describing this as a society's attitude toward its past, its institutions, and the latter's relationship with the society's other cultural and political traditions, and he argues that southern militarism was rooted in tradition of the exaltation of ideals and (2) that, at least within the southern interpretation, supported republican values. This definition relates closely to second theme in the work, which may be Andrew's greatest contribution to the historiography. He theorizes that southerners never accepted the notion that militarism was inherently in conflict with the republican virtues of liberal thought and individual freedom. southern tradition did not call for blind obedience and subversion of liberties; rather, Andrew argues, southerners saw education as providing an armed, trained, and disciplined citizenry that was vital for the health of free government while ensuring that southern young men became valuable, useful and honorable members of the republic (24). Offering further support for his thesis, Andrew emphasizes the legend of the Lost Cause and the southern memory of the Confederate experience of the American Civil War. He argues that both sustained and enhanced the tradition of southern militarism in post-Civil War America by continuing to emphasize republican values and the responsibility of citizenship. Andrew presents the case of the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862, which insisted that tactics be part of the curriculum of any school established through the Act, as additional evidence of the regional differences with which Americans implemented the martial guidelines of this legislation. He finds that while northerners met the basic requirements of this regulation, southerners emphasized the requirement, which contributed to an increase in southern programs in the postwar era. In the case of African-American schools in the South and their role within the southern tradition, Andrew argues that both southern whites and blacks associated tradition of education with the development of valued citizens

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