| There has been considerable historical debate over whether the American South has a unique "military tradition," or whether it has traditionally been more militaristic than other parts of the nation. This dissertation assumes that the answer to this question involves cultural issues rather than matters of military policy and battlefield events. The work focuses, therefore, on educational policy, cultural beliefs, and student life at southern military colleges. It begins with the establishment of Virginia Military Institute and The Citadel in the antebellum period, and ends in 1915, just before the federal government officially assumed control over the training of reserve officers through the establishment of the Reserve Officers' Training Corps. The primary research consists mainly of college catalogs, college presidents' papers, minutes of boards of trustees, student memoirs, and contemporary newspapers.;This work concludes that the South's remarkable commitment to military education is evidence of a rich, distinctive, military tradition. That tradition, however, consisted less of a policy of aggressive military preparedness or a hunger for war, than it did the prevailing southern belief that military training made a young man a more honorable, virtuous, useful, and law-abiding citizen. Thus, many southerners saw military education as beneficial, if not vital, to the health of the republic. This belief, when combined with the legend of the Lost Cause after the Civil War, provided a powerful justification for establishing southern land-grant schools as military schools. Southerners believed that by instilling in young men the habits and feelings of disciplined soldiers, they could make them good Christians and respectable citizens as well.;Military schools, in comparison with many civilian colleges of their time, were quite egalitarian institutions, in that rank among students depended on their academic, rather than social, standing. They were also quite successful in reconciling militaristic notions of duty and obedience with liberalism's emphasis on free expression and individual rights. Southern military schools, then, rather than being aberrations from American notions of individual rights and free expression, originally represented an enlightened innovation in higher education, and were fully in touch with southern nineteenth-century republicanism. |
