Caroline Cox. A Proper Sense of Honor: Service and Sacrifice in George Washington's Army.A Proper Sense of Honor: Service and Sacrifice in George Washington's Army. by CarolineCoxReview by: By Mark Edward LenderThe American Historical Review, Vol. 110, No. 4 (October 2005), pp. 1165-1166Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/ahr.110.4.1165 .

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and Edwin Way Teale turned into an enduring populargenre in the twentieth century.

Kammen argues that seasons allowed Americans toexpress feelings not only about a unique and vastlandscape but also about the passage of time andespecially the transition from a rural to urban world.The classical motif of seasons had been linked to thelabors of cultivation. In an industrial society, to invokeand often to domesticate seasonal rhythms, Kammensuggests, was to look backward to a prior cultural era.That impulse, which he variously calls nostalgic orantimodern, gained resonance as cities materially al-tered Americans’ experience of nature and seasonalchange. Not only are contemporary Americans insu-lated from the weather, they are far more likely toencounter seasons as cycles of holidays rather than oflabor. Yet, even as consumer appropriations of holi-days have reworked the modern calendar, consumerculture’s sentimental depictions of seasons also feedthe American impulse to turn to nature for relief fromthe excesses of a pecuniary civilization. Thus, Tho-reau’s legacy yielded the seasonal meditations of bothNorman Rockwell and Aldo Leopold.

It is hard to keep the terms “nostalgic” and “anti-modern” historical; as analytic tools, they risk becom-ing as timeless as seasonal cycles themselves and thuslose some of their explanatory power for why Ameri-can artists and writers have invested so much imagi-native energy in contemplating the turns of the year.But Kammen takes a fresh and rewarding tack in theconcluding chapters by exploring how recent artistsand writers have closed down seasons as a retrospec-tive theme and instead opened them up as a synchronicstructure—what Jennifer Bartlett calls “symbolic seri-alism“—in order to express ideas about subjectivity,sexuality, and creativity. Probing contemporary artists’ambivalent relation to the tradition he has just docu-mented, Kammen himself pays tribute to artists’ andordinary people’s expression of nuanced, personal, andlocal attachments through their observations of theall-encompassing experience of changing seasons.

ELIZABETH BLACKMAR

Columbia University

CAROLINE COX. A Proper Sense of Honor: Service andSacrifice in George Washington’s Army. Chapel Hill:University of North Carolina Press. 2004. Pp. xxii, 338.$37.50.

For the past thirty years, historians have paid consid-erable attention to the individuals who bore arms forthe revolutionary cause. Who were they? Where didthey come from? Why did they serve, and what hap-pened to them? All of these questions have beencentral to broadening our understanding of the Warfor Independence from the vantage of those whoactually fought it, and we now know a great deal moreabout these men and women than we did a generationago. Caroline Cox’s book continues in this vein but

adds a remarkable new layer of subtlety and detail tothe subject.

Cox’s new departure comes with her focus on thegulf between officers and rank and file, an aspect of therevolutionary military that she sees as fundamental tounderstanding early American social relationships andvalues generally. Her chapters tell the story, detailingthe differences in social expectations of officers andmen, in their training and living conditions, theirpunishments, medical treatment, circumstances asprisoners of war, and even funerary arrangements. Inall cases, it was clear that patriots routinely sawcommon soldiers as representatives of the lower socialstrata from which many, if not most, had enlisted.Officers, by contrast, were military manifestations ofthe social betters they considered themselves as civil-ians; they were men with aspirations to gentility, and itwas “civilian standards of gentlemanly honor” that thearmy relied on to “maintain the distinctions of rankunder all circumstances” (p. 71). The revolution, asGordon Wood and others have reminded us power-fully, offered fundamental challenges to many existingsocial norms; but the army was a relatively insularorganization that prized discipline and hierarchy, andsuch challenges had little place.

Cox presents a convincing case in this regard. Theharshest aspects of military discipline, for example—the lash and other frequently brutal physical ordeals—were reserved for enlisted men; gentlemen were rarelyflogged as civilians, nor were they whipped or sub-jected to humiliating punishments as officers. Sick andwounded officers seldom endured the horrors of armyhospitals, which many soldiers rightly saw as waystations to death. Rather, commissioned ranks usuallyhad better access to doctors, medicines, and treatmentin private homes. Captured officers might be paroled,but common soldiers usually languished in squalid andoften fatal prisons. And distinctions in rank persistedeven in death. Whenever possible, officers were buriedwith the honors of war, and even memorialized insome fashion. Personal effects frequently were senthome to families. But a common soldier was muchmore likely to end up in a common grave, oftenunmarked, and the lower ranks often had little ornothing to send home anyway—if they had a home. Ofcourse such disparate social values existed in thecivilian world as well; but in the army they wereactually enforced by custom and even military law. Thewar may have been waged in the name of liberty andfreedom, but hierarchy remained the norm. Indeed,Continental Army officers clearly saw themselves asentitled to the prerogatives of legally established au-thority and the traditional deference accorded eigh-teenth-century gentlemen.

As difficult as their lot was, the army’s enlisted mengenerally accepted the recognized order. But as Coxexplains, the regulars’ forbearance stemmed frommore than mere deference (although deference re-mained a significant element). Officers and men wereunited in a shared military mission, which all ranks

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understood. Relationships between the ranks generallywere harmonious as long as commissioned and enlistedpersonnel accorded a proper respect to one another’srank, no matter how inferior. Officers had their senseof honor, but so did the rank and file. Their ranks weresubordinate, but they were an essential part of thearmy and knew it, and they took umbrage at needlessinsults that disparaged their value as good soldiers. Infact, disrespect on the part of the officers was one ofthe likeliest sources of grumbling or truculence in theranks. That the army held together, according to Cox,was attributable in large measure to the fact theofficers and men “knew their rank[s] and acted accord-ingly” (p. 71).

This is a very good book indeed. Cox’s writing isconcise and graceful throughout, her organization isadmirably clear, and her argument is compelling.Moreover, she has a fine appreciation of the grim ironyinherent in the disconnect between the popular mythof a yeoman soldiery and the harsher realities of thesocial status of the Continental Army regulars. Theentire volume represents deep and convincing schol-arship, matching genuinely exhaustive original re-search with a thorough command of the literature ofthe patriot armed forces. It is no stretch to call thisbook one of the most compelling and significant workson the revolutionary military to appear in the lastdecade.

MARK EDWARD LENDER

Kean University

ANDREW S. TREES. The Founding Fathers and thePolitics of Character. Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress. 2004. Pp. xvi, 208. $29.95.

Political life in the early American republic oftenlooked more like a court without a king than theclassical polities idealized by the founders. Instead ofthe eloquent Cicero or the incorruptible Cato, the newnation’s capitols seemed to be populated by courtiers,poseurs, and political operators on par with the capi-tols of Europe. To the chagrin of the likes of ThomasJefferson and John Adams, by 1800, calumny and theodious spirit of party seemed to have overtaken clas-sical virtue as the defining traits of national politics. Inthis elegantly composed study, Andrew S. Trees ex-plores four founders’ efforts to reconcile this new,contentious political world with their classical ideals.But, following the lead of Joanne Freeman, Treeslooks neither to ideology nor to the myriad policyimbroglios of the era to illuminate this dissonantmoment in American politics. Instead, he focuses on asingle aspect of the founders’ premodern system ofvalues: namely the notion of character, by which Treesseems to mean the exterior display of merit. It was tocharacter, Trees argues, that the idealistic founderslooked for a way through the cruel, often personalpolitics of the 1790s.

For Jefferson, Trees suggests in his opening chapter,the chief indicator of character was friendship. It was

the ability to forge and maintain bonds of affection—above political disagreement—that distinguished thevirtuous from the not virtuous. Focusing on a singleletter to the unpredictable Elbridge Gerry, Treesdeftly explores Jefferson’s rhetorical strategies formastering the gentlemanly protocols of friendship. Inchapter two, we learn that for Alexander Hamilton,character revealed itself in the defense of one’s per-sonal honor, a point made plain in his publishedresponse to accusations that he abused his privileges assecretary of the treasury. For Adams, the subject ofTrees’s third chapter, good character came from adistinct form of virtue, expressed poignantly in hispersonal diary, as a quest for faultless sincerity andcandor, whatever the political cost. And, finally, forJames Madison, it was ultimately justice and thepeoples’ determination to uphold a just constitutionthat would reflect fundamental character. Madisonmakes his case for this particular aspect of charactermost explicity, Trees believes, in Federalist 37.

Trees links these four portraits with several subor-dinate arguments, some of which are better developedthan others. On the point that these varying notions ofcharacter reflected their advocates’ varying concep-tions of American national identity, Trees is fairlyconvincing. Citing David Waldstreicher, among others,he notes the common use of physiognomic and psy-chological metaphors to characterize the body politic.A nation of friends would thus be akin to a giantaffectionate family; a nation of honorable men wouldbe a nation united by the passionate determination todefend itself, whatever the individual price; a sincererepublic would be harmonious, since there would beno way for politicians to conceal interests that deviatedfrom the peoples’ interests; and a nation defined by ajust constitution would cohere and flourish preciselybecause law, rather than the petty habits of mortals,would be the foundation of government.

Some might wonder just how far these conceptualdistinctions advance our understanding of the post-revolutionary settlement. Trees does, at points, men-tion a new American “public,” but in this study it existsmore as specter than political or social fact, much as itdid with the older ideological school. Similarly, Treeshas much to say about how the founders’ varying ideasof character influenced their vision for the nation’sfuture. But he skirts the matter of exactly how, if at all,these ideas shaped the institutions of government. Inhis discussion of Adams, for instance, he reminds usthat Adams saw in the very un-republican popularappetite for arbitrary social rank a means of harnessingthe latent good will of the people. But he offers verylittle about how, if all, such thinking played itself out inthe emergence of, say, a new American navy.

Trees’s least well-developed theme centers on thefamiliar notion that, in the eighteenth century, writingwas usually as much a public political performance asa personal act. Trees cites several students of earlyAmerican literature, including Thomas Gustafson andRobert Ferguson, on this point. But his own contribu-

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