Mark R. Wilson's The Business of Civil War is a fascinating account of how the North marshaled its economic might to win the Civil War. Wilson's remarkably well researched book focuses on the North's Quartermaster Department, which outfitted the North's million-plus men army with uniforms, tents, knapsacks, horses, and other supplies. At first glance, the Quartermaster's Department might appear to be the stuff of narrow institutional history, but Wilson deftly integrates business, labor, political, and cultural history into his analysis. The result is a book that will appeal to a wide range of readers, including economic historians interested in how political and legal institutions grapple with wartime demands.

Wilson begins with the transformation of the army's Quartermaster's Department into a national administrative bureaucracy. In the prewar era, the quartermaster's department was charged with equipping an army of approximately 15,000 men, mostly scattered throughout the trans-Mississippi West. In response to Lincoln's 1861 call for volunteers, some states tried to supply their own units, but the end result was an unwieldy collection of different uniforms of widely uneven quality. When the first Battle of Bull Run exposed the hazards of outfitting troops in different uniforms, the army's quartermasters quickly exerted centralized control. The mobilization of the Union's economy quickly became a decidedly national affair.

Given the size of army contracts, cities across the nation vigorously competed to become a quartermasters' depot, with New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Louisville, and St. Louis doing particularly well. One might expect that Republican politicians—hoping for a share of graft and influence—controlled the quartermaster system. The reality, though, was quite different. Professional military men, many of them graduates from West Point, commanded the most important supply depots. They and their subordinates exerted firm control over a system that relied on direct government production, competitive contracting, and open-market purchases.

Believing that the government itself could best control prices and quality, quartermasters often set up their own workshops to produce uniforms and other supplies. The depot in Philadelphia, for example, employed nearly 6,000 workers, most of them seamstresses. Women workers mounted organized campaigns, in fact, to promote more government hiring, as the quartermaster depots typically paid far more than private contractors. Wilson indicates that many quartermasters—believing that helping the wives (or widows) of Union soldiers was an important consideration—would gladly have hired more women workers. A shortage of specie and Greenbacks, however, limited the ability of quartermasters to expand their workforce. Workers could not accept IOUs, but contractors gladly accepted promissory notes (called “certificates of indebtedness”) in lieu of ready cash. The realities of Union wartime financing dictated that contractors play a major role in supplying northern troops.

The Union contracting system, based on a strictly regulated system of open bidding, had its own problems. Contractors often used a number of subcontractors to fill large orders, resulting in complex webs of middlemen and suppliers funneling resources into the Union army. Unclear or changing standards of quality—or simply the production of inferior goods—led the Army to reject many of the supplies that contractors provided. Some quartermasters felt that contracting, which required advertising in advance of bidding, raised prices by encouraging speculators to corner the local market for the supplies in question. Quartermasters might have purchase some goods more cheaply on the open market, but government regulations requiring contracts often stood in the way.

Although some contractors made huge profits, fluctuations in prices and the availability of supplies made supplying the army a risky business. Contractors that failed to meet their obligations or provided inferior goods not only lost money, but might find themselves court marshaled. Northern public opinion held contractors in low regard, frequently regarding them as war profiteers who benefited at the expense of workers and soldiers. The need to satisfy the outraged public undoubtedly contributed to the convictions and incarceration of several prominent contractors for “willful neglect of duty.” When the war ended (public outrage dissipated), contractors fared remarkably well in the legal system, winning many cases against the government in the newly created Court of Claims.

The political vicissitudes that contractors encountered drives home a point that Wilson frequently stresses: political concerns and public opinion helped shape a mobilization presided over by professional military men. That argument is persuasive. A second major argument—that the Civil War experience militarized the U.S. economy and society—is more intriguing than convincing. Wilson, in fact, shows that demobilization of the Quartermaster's Department was quick and decisive. Given the rapid pace of demobilization, militarization took place on the rhetorical level in debates about the relationship between the government and the economy. The evidence is hardly overwhelming. Wilson highlights how civil service reformers often referred to wartime experiences, as well as how populists and socialists called for nationalization of railroads and other industries. This hardly seems the stuff of militarization of an economy, society, or political discourse.

If more evidence is needed to establish what Wilson calls “the military foundations of modern America,” the rest of The Business of Civil War is impressively researched and clearly written monograph that shows how bureaucrats, contractors, and public opinion influenced the mobilization of the northern economy.