The Guard on Parade

The martial displays Guardsmen witnessed as boys and youths and partici­pated in as young men promoted virtues of patriotism, organization, disci­pline, skill with weapons, fraternity, and masculinity.

When the 71st returned from New Orleans to New York in 1881, the reception it received illustrates the powerful patriotic associations that could be created in the minds of spectators observing such events. The Army and Navy Journal reported that the men, faces bronzed, appeared like veterans and reminded onlookers of “days long past, when the heroes of many a hard fought field marched up Broadway on their return from the war.” The recep­tion they received on their return from the South indicated that their mis­sion, “ to cement the friendship of the soldiers, North and South, was most fully appreciated by the people of New York City.”³² The regiment’s return was heavily steeped in the symbolism of war, echoing the return of the vic­torious Union regiments in 1865.

The martial displays of citizen soldiers—parades, shooting contests, mock or sham battles, balls and concerts in regimental armories, and par­ticipation in commemorative activities—connected the manly cultivation of martial ideals with national progress. Their uniforms and displays of skill with weapons, while presenting an image of powerful manhood also reflected a psychological need to be “in control” both physically and mor­ally. This need extended to technology, symbolizing their individuality and autonomy from market and social forces as well as their mastery of modern weaponry; their bodies, thus showing the manly discipline required for suc­cess in life; and the social space of the streets they paraded in, which helped to define the boundaries of citizenship and public order. As public spaces, the main thoroughfares of New York provided not only corridors for trans­portation but were also, as Mona Domosh has noted, “sites for the displays of social class and political power.” Because it extended the whole length of Manhattan, Broadway was the “grand boulevard of display.”³³

The 71st marched along Broadway regularly, going to and returning from war in 1861 and 1898, on their regular intrastate and interstate visits to participate in reunions and Guard training exercises, but most often to participate in parades during local and national days of celebration and commemoration. While not many cities could compete with Broadway in terms of its ability to show off parading Guardsmen to thousands of specta­tors, parades played a significant role in the ceremonial and celebrative life of most American cities. Indeed, parades were a primary form of public entertainment in the nineteenth century.³⁴ On festive occasions, holidays, and during important local, state, and national events, regiments, brigades, and divisions of National Guardsmen and militia would march through the streets in front of large crowds.

After a parade by the 71st New York Guardsmen in 1871, the Army and Navy Journal noted that the regiment was “the most manly organization in the National Guard; scarcely a member is without a beard; and as they appeared on this occasion in their full dress, they well deserved and cer­tainly gained the admiration of all observers.”³⁵ While it was not unusual for a military periodical to describe a unit in this way, the description is significant in defining the regiment’s overt signs of manhood: fine parading, facial hair, and full-dress uniforms. While the uniform held great impor­tance to the wearer, its significance stems as much from the symbolic asso­ciations it had for the audience. Through a process of myth-making and abstraction, uniforms became a system of “sartorial codes.” These codes functioned as a “vocabulary of stereotypes” by which the observer concep­tualized their world. Uniforms then were overtly political, visually confirm­ing perceptions of state authority, national military strength, and the martial prowess of the American male.³⁶ In the 1880s, the state of New York adopted a regulation blue uniform for all its Guard units. The sight of the Guard parading in blue had patriotic connotations, blue being the color of the uniforms of the victorious Union army. As well as presenting an image of a unified state Guard, the sight of soldiers parading in blue uniforms carried powerful associations of martial prowess and national progress, and thus were an effective public display of both patriotism and nationalism.

Martial spectacle was also a vital recruiting tool, with much competition between the city’s Guard organizations for the best young men to join their ranks. Importantly, it was the masculine prestige and sexual attractiveness attached to being a Guard, as much as a sense of patriotism, that drew many young men to volunteer for service. When the 71st traveled to New Orleans, they stopped in Cincinnati en route. The marching of the unit “in perfect order” down Fourth Street under the “glances of the hundreds of Ohio ladies,” the men’s blue coats, red blankets, and shiny Remington breechloaders, presented a brilliant appearance that “will long be remem­bered.”³⁷ The regiment’s martial bearing and shiny rifles symbolized American martial prowess and indeed the virility of the men themselves. The uniforms of the Guardsmen helped to underline “socially defined expectations for behaviour,”³⁸ which was both gendered and conformist and reinforced links between militarism, masculinity, and citizenship.

The parades of Guard organizations, especially when connected to com­memorative events, contributed to the formation of a national patriotic cul­ture. War commemoration became intimately connected to the portrayal of martial manhood and the emerging connection of martial ideals with nation­alism that would reach its fullest expression with the national reconciliation engendered by war with Spain in 1898. That the Civil War had a deep- seated impact upon American attitudes toward war and ideals of manhood is evident in the attitudes of volunteers in 1898, which were conditioned by indoctrination into the martial culture of the United States. The promotion of martial manhood was assisted not only by war commemoration but also by a general interest in war and violence as the century drew to a close.⁴⁰ Games depicting war were enjoyed by family members of all ages, apparently untroubled by grisly images of bloodshed. The popularity of board games inspired by war reflected a late-nineteenth-century fascination with violence and with current events and foreign affairs. In 1895, Parker Brothers pro­duced the “Game of Napoleon: The Little Corporal,” while “Mimic War” contained a box of 30 military figures with a cover depicting the Franco- Prussian conflict, although the figures were in the costumes of 1898.⁴¹

Thus, before the real war in 1898, there were many fantasy wars played out by boys, youths, and military-minded men. They were played out in mock battles at Guard encampments, through reading newspapers and mili­tary and popular periodicals with their description of the world’s armies and navies, regular comparisons of the strengths of other countries’ forces and fictional accounts of future battles, and in the continued popular interest in reminiscences of warfare.

The growing interest in the possibility of a major war in the 1890s was noted by the literary journal The Bookman. The journal noted that there was “no more striking proof” of the drift toward war than “the extraordinary amount of space devoted by editors and publishers to the discussion of mili­tary themes.” However, the “feverishness of public sentiment and the grow­ing interest in whatever relates to battle” were not confined to the United States, but were common to all the “Western peoples.” The writer's justifica­tion for this goes right to the heart of the appeal of warfare to young men seeking to test their manhood. War was the only game “that can thrill the nerves and give the fullest play to the emotions.”⁴³ The Bookman succinctly describes the process of remembering and forgetting that had taken place during the three decades that had passed since the end of the Civil War.

Describing New York National Guardsmen going to their encampments in May of 1898, Vaughan Kester notes the responsibility felt by the sons to accept the mantle handed down by veterans. “A new generation had arisen since the Civil War. The battles, if they came, were to be fought by the sons of those who had fought before... The musket and the sword had passed from sire to son.” Kester revealed that while all were “eager for the actual scenes and experiences of war and the grim reality of battles,” it was through no “personal love of strife or conflict.” They were motivated by “an eagerness to prove their worth, a desire to pass the test, to escape from the last doubt, to become indeed tried soldiers.”⁴⁴ Volunteers believed they owed a debt to the Civil War generation and envied their place in history.

I could imagine it as it was in the days of Sherman and Grant and Lincoln, and see that last parade of the “Boys in Blue,” with the Civil War that had closed but thirty years before. I could see the ranks, tanned and grizzled, of veterans of great battles, and rugged campaigns that had made history, men who faced death and survived. I envied those veterans their memories, and their great parade.⁴⁵

Post was only 24 when he volunteered for service in 1898, so he could only imagine the grand parades at the Civil War's end. However, as a young man growing up in New York, he would regularly have witnessed many parades and other displays of a martial nature. The sight of marching men, veterans and Guardsmen alike, in blue uniforms was marked on Post's mind as symbolic of American military prowess and martial manhood.

A. Maurice Low in an article on the volunteers of 1898 noted that while “it is easy to create armies on paper, soldiers, unlike poets, are not born, but made, and... the process of manufacture is a slow and difficult one.”⁴⁶ The process by which large numbers of Americans from many sections and com­munities accepted martial ideals of manhood and supported war in 1898 has been widely documented. However, the Guard's role in that process has not been. The 71st New York played a pivotal role in the dissemination of mar­tial ideals to the wider community of New York City and surrounding states throughout the postwar period. While displays were often on a smaller scale than those presented by the 15,000 members of the New York Guard, they were regular events that promoted nationalism, sectional reconciliation, the military power of the State, and ideals of manhood.