Professionalism and Politics in the Procurement Process: United States Civil War Early Years

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-76
Author(s):  
Ellen Lippman ◽  
Martin McMahon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Internal Controls ◽  
Early Years ◽  
The Political ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Procurement Process ◽  
False Claims Act ◽  
One Year

ABSTRACT The start of the United States Civil War in 1861 necessitated an increase in the U.S. military force from a population of approximately 16,000 men just prior to the beginning of the war to 700,000 men in less than one year. By the completion of the war four years later, an estimated 2,000,000 soldiers fought for the Union. The dramatic increase in manpower required a rapid response to supply the soldiers with clothing, equipment, and food. This paper analyzes the procurement process and its challenges during the early years of the war, from the initial rush to obtain a large number of supplies when established purchasing procedures were ignored, to the implementation of formalized internal controls and the adoption of the False Claims Act that was used to punish frauds carried out by procurement officers and outside contractors. This paper considers the political influences affecting procurement and finds that politics played only a small role in procurement, although a greater role in oversight of the procurement department.

scholarly journals U.S. War Powers and the Potential Benefits of Comparativism

2019 ◽  
pp. 752-770
Author(s):  
Curtis A. Bradley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Military Force ◽  
War Powers ◽  
Potential Benefits ◽  
Legal Methodology

This chapter describes U.S. law governing the use of military force, and it considers the potential value of comparative study of how different countries regulate the issue. As the chapter notes, there is significant uncertainty and debate in the United States over the distribution of authority concerning the use of force—in particular, over whether and to what extent military actions must be authorized by Congress. Because courts in the modern era have generally declined to review the legality of military actions, disputes over this issue have had to be resolved, as a practical matter, through the political process. For those who believe that it is important to have legislative involvement in decisions to use force, the political process has not proven to be satisfactory: presidents have often used military force without obtaining congressional approval, and Congress generally has done little to resist such presidential unilateralism. The United States is not the only country to struggle with regulating the domestic authority to use military force. This issue of foreign relations law is common to constitutional democracies, and nations vary substantially in how they have addressed it. Comparative study of such approaches should be of inherent interest to scholars and students, including those trying to better understand the U.S. approach. Whether and to what extent such study should also inform the interpretation or revision of U.S. law presents a more complicated set of questions that are affected in part by one’s legal methodology and how the comparative materials are being invoked.

A Secret Society History of the Civil War

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark A. Lause
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Secret Society ◽  
Secret Societies ◽  
Harpers Ferry ◽  
History Of ◽  
Key Events ◽  
The Impact

This history of the Civil War considers the impact of nineteenth-century American secret societies on the path to as well as the course of the war. Beginning with the European secret societies that laid the groundwork for Freemasonry in the United States, the book analyzes how the Old World's traditions influenced various underground groups and movements in America, particularly George Lippard's Brotherhood of the Union, an American attempt to replicate the political secret societies that influenced the European Revolutions of 1848. The book traces the Brotherhood's various manifestations, including the Knights of the Golden Circle (out of which developed the Ku Klux Klan), and the Confederate secret groups through which John Wilkes Booth and others attempted to undermine the Union. It shows how, in the years leading up to the Civil War, these clandestine organizations exacerbated existing sectional tensions and may have played a part in key events such as John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, Lincoln's election, and the Southern secession process of 1860–1861.

scholarly journals Political Science Funding Black Out in North America? Trends in Funding Should not be Ignored

2013 ◽  
Vol 46 (03) ◽  
pp. 599-604 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Plazek ◽  
Alan Steinberg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
North America ◽  
Political Science ◽  
National Science Foundation ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Science Funding ◽  
National Science ◽  
One Year

AbstractRecent actions in Congress that threaten political science funding by the National Science Foundation (NSF) have caught the attention of political scientists, but this was not the first attack and not likely to be the last. Less than one year ago, the Harper government ended the Understanding Canada program, an important source of funding for academics in the United States and abroad. This article stresses the value of the program and the importance of this funding steam by demonstrating what the grants have done both more generally as well as for the authors individually. In addition, by looking at the political process that led to the end of the Understanding Canada program and the similarities in the attacks on NSF political science funding, this article identifies potential reasons why these funds were and are at risk. We conclude by arguing that normative action in support of political science is a necessity for all political scientists.

Postscript

2019 ◽  
pp. 207-220
Author(s):  
Ariel Mae Lambe
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Cuban Revolution ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Fidel Castro ◽  
The 1950S

Taking a longer-term view, the postscript examines the legacy of antifascism and the Spanish Civil War in Cuban politics and historical memory during the early years of the Cuban Revolution that triumphed in 1959. The postscript returns to Teté Casuso during the struggle of the 1950s, when she helped Fidel Castro, and afterward, when she broke with the Revolution and left once again for exile in the United States. It addresses selective memory and forgetting of Cuban antifascists such as Casuso in revolutionary Cuba’s official accounts of antifascism and the Generation of the Thirties. Also, it connects Cuban antifascism to the present by discussing the Antifa movement across time and space.

scholarly journals Ernest Hemingway and His Growth as a Political Activist in the 1930s

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 01
Author(s):  
Anders Greenspan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Ernest Hemingway ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Years ◽  
The Political ◽  
Wide Audience ◽  
Political Beliefs ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Political Activist

<p>Ernest Hemingway was one the United States’ most famous authors of the twentieth century.  Known primarily for his fiction, Hemingway was also a journalist and a political commentator. Although he was reluctant in his early years to share his political beliefs with a wide audience, as he grew older and the political events of the 1930s grew more ominous, Hemingway went to Spain to cover the Spanish Civil War as a journalist. Although he began with a more neutral approach to the fighting in Spain, as the war wore on, Hemingway openly became a strong supporter of the Republican cause. He then began to work as a political commentator for the magazine <em>Ken</em>, openly espousing an antifascist view, clearly breaking with his previously neutral approach to world affairs, continuing this position with the publication of his world-famous novel, <em>For Whom the Bell Tolls</em>. By the 1940s Hemingway was internationally known and his political beliefs were an integral part of who he was.   </p>

“In the Midst of Sorrow and Death”

2020 ◽  
pp. 43-64
Author(s):  
Margaret M. McGuinness
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Yellow Fever ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Years ◽  
The Other ◽  
Subsequent Work ◽  
Religious Women ◽  
Dominican Sisters

This essay focuses on the work of Dominican Sisters in Memphis and Nashville during the second half of the nineteenth century. To a certain extent, their work often followed the trajectory of other congregations of religious women. They were sought after by priests and bishops, for example, who were anxious to establish schools and orphanages but needed religious women to staff and minister these institutions. On the other hand, the circumstances surrounding the arrival and subsequent work of the Dominicans in Memphis and Nashville differed dramatically from many of their counterparts in other parts of the United States. The sisters’ early years in Tennessee were marked by the devastation resulting from Civil War battles being fought on or perilously close to their properties. Following the war, Memphis and Nashville Dominicans experienced three outbreaks of yellow fever within a decade, as well as financial struggles that placed them in danger of being forced to abandon their schools and orphanages. Today, the Dominicans remain an active presence in both cities.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Axel Körner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Early Republic ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constitutional History ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Political Experience ◽  
Source Materials

This book examines the extent to which the United States' political experience influenced the political thought and imagination of the Risorgimento during the period 1763–1865. Drawing on various source materials such as early Italian histories of the American Republic, parliamentary documents, memoirs, and correspondence, the book shows how abstract political ideas were reflected in Italy's wider cultural imagination from the end of the Seven Years' War in the early 1760s to the American Civil War a century later, which coincided with the Unification of Italy under the crown of Savoy. It argues that Italian ideas of the United States during the period of the Risorgimento were not blind admiration for American political experiments. Instead, Italians engaged with what they knew about the early Republic in relation to their own constitutional history, as well as to a whole range of different European experiences.

Whiteness and Masculinity in Richard Lou's ReCovering Memphis: ReContexting Bodies

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 407-429
Author(s):  
JODY STOKES-CASEY
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
American South ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Confederate States Of America ◽  
Political Landscape

In 2016, racist, patriarchal rhetoric dominated the political landscape of the United States. As a response, activist artist Richard Lou of Memphis, Tennessee created a video piece as part of his series ReCovering Memphis titled ReContexting Bodies. In the artwork, Lou performs whiteness by re-creating photographs and reciting words of historic Civil War leaders Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest and President of the Confederate States of America Jefferson Davis. With his racialized body, Lou confronts the foundations of white supremacy in the United States American South. ReContexting Bodies examines how two historic identities of southern masculinity shape contemporary biases.

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