Nation or State: US Army Officers' Conflicting Loyalties at the Start of the Civil War

Abstract

The decision by southern-born professional US Army officers to join the Confederate States' rebellion at the state of the Civil War was in-fluenced at least as much by their success or lack of success in their military careers, their family connections and their friendships as it was by any sense of loyalty to the state where they were born, a review of US Military Academy graduates' records suggests. This in turn suggests the idea that pre-Civil War American ideas of citizen put nation subordinate to state needs to be qualified.