Final Examination

History 582.01
Prof. Grimsley
Autumn Quarter 2001


Part Ia. (10 minutes, 25 points). Identify and give the significance of ONE of the following terms:

“blowback”                     “informal empire”

Part Ib. (20 minutes, 50 points). Identify and give the significance of TWO of the following terms:

“expansible army” plan                         Stephen B. Luce
Army War College                                 “bounty jumper”


Part II. (30 minutes, 100 points). Pretend that you are Theodore Roosevelt. Your opinions, for this purpose, should draw clearly on The Rough Riders with regard to factors like racial superiority/inferiority, masculinity, social class, and soldier motivation. Incredible as it may seem, you have read and have specific knowledge of the arguments used by Gerald F. Linderman in Embattled Courage and James M. McPherson in For Cause and Comrades. In a concise, well-organized essay, write as if you were Roosevelt on one of the following questions:

1. It is 1901. Roosevelt is talking (and talking!) about Linderman and McPherson to Secretary of War Elihu Root over snifters of brandy. He tells Root about Linderman’s idea of “courage at the core,” then compares and contrasts it with McPherson’s appraisal of the primary motivation of American Civil War soldiers. Next, he tells Root in no uncertain terms which of the two historians is right. (Obviously no one can know for sure whether Roosevelt would have agreed with Linderman or McPherson. For purposes of the essay, the important thing is to make a solid case for one or the other.) Finally, he tells Root the ways—if any—in which his Rough Riders differed from Civil War soldiers.

2. Amazingly, Roosevelt has also read Prof. Grimsley’s The Hard Hand of War. There he discovers that when Sherman’s army marched into South Carolina in February 1865, it burned a number of towns and mansions. Most Union soldiers approved such destructive behavior, notes the book, but Pvt. William Pritchard did not. “It is barbarous, cruel and rough and if we are defeated in this campaign, which by the way I am afraid shall be the result, I shall assign as the reason the wanton destruction of private property and the savageness in which this campaign is conducted.” As Roosevelt—primed with your knowledge of Embattled Courage and For Cause and Comrades—how would you account for BOTH the army's attitude and behavior AND Pritchard's misgivings? How do you think your Rough Riders would have behaved in South Carolina? What makes you think so?

Part III. (48 minutes, 75 points). In a concise, well-organized essay, respond to ONE of the following questions:

1. Compare the institutions, organization, and mission of America’s armed forces in 1916 with those envisioned by George Washington in “Sentiments on a Peace Establishment.” Be sure to address the armed forces’ role as an aid to expansionism, both territorial and extracontinental.

2. Trace the development of American military and naval officership between 1784 and 1914, using as the basis for your analysis the concepts of “professionalism,” “technicism,” and “popularism.”

Return to the History 582.01 Syllabus