Militarism

The concept of militarism occupies an uncertain place in U.S. history and in the development of American male identity. Militarism exalts the warrior (and masculine) virtues of loyalty, bravery, discipline, and physical strength. It emphasizes war, and preparation for war, as a necessity for national survival and idealizes military service as the highest calling for men. Militarists consider military service to be a rite of passage to manhood, regarding males who have not served in the military as incomplete men. Although military service in wartime has always been part of American male identity, militarism's values clash with the equally masculine virtues of independence and individualism that American culture also idealizes. The result has been an American brand of militarism that extols the citizen soldier while retaining a suspicion of standing armies and aggressive international behavior.

Early American views of militarism and masculinity originated on the colonial frontier, particularly during the American Revolution. Resentment of the large British military presence in the colonies following the French and Indian War (1754–63), combined with the notion that British Army regulars harbored low moral character, produced an image of standing armies as threats to liberty and republican government, and as antithetical to republican manhood. The colonists' victory in the Revolutionary War in 1783 strengthened the ideal of the male citizen-soldier who was a frontiersman, a yeoman farmer, or a shopkeeper. In the early republic, the ambivalent relation between militarism and manhood persisted. The standing national army remained an object of suspicion, constitutionally subject to civilian control, while the male citizen was expected to be willing to serve his family, community, and country in wartime through local and state militias. Women, defined as caregivers and supporters, were to raise and nurture men to be strong enough to serve their country when the United States had to go to war to defend itself, but at the same time they were expected to curtail the glorification of war and large armies that might undermine male republican virtues and foster aggressive international behavior. This view predominated through the Civil War (1861–65).

Several interrelated developments of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries led to a change in these attitudes and began to foster a more unambiguously positive relation between militarism and masculinity. First, the presence of large numbers of Civil War veterans generated a mystique that contributed to the rise of American nationalism and glorified military service. Veterans and government officials in [Page 310]both the North and South used the celebration of Memorial Day—the annual commemoration of American soldiers killed in battle—and the dedication of dozens of local Civil War memorials to instill in young men a sense of duty to the state. At about the same time, industrialization and urbanization generated anxiety that modern “overcivilization” had made American men soft; Darwinism identified struggle (sometimes violent) as a norm of existence and a mechanism of evolutionary development; and journalists, intellectuals, and political figures (including Theodore Roosevelt), spurred by these developments, urged the United States toward overseas expansion and increased military strength during and after the 1890s. The crisis that arose with Spain over Cuba and the resulting Spanish-American War in 1898 offered a new generation of males born after the Civil War an opportunity to prove themselves in battle.

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