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In his seminal 1957 study, The Soldier and the State, Samuel P. Huntington made many influential assertions about civil-military relations and the rise of military professionalism. Many of these received sharp challenges at the time. One that did not was his contention that a true profession of arms did not emerge in the United States until after the Civil War. To most military historians this view seemed unexceptionable, even obvious. William B. Skelton, however, has not merely challenged this conventional wisdom; he has overthrown it. He makes a convincing case that the basic structure of a professional army officer corps was already in place by 1861.
Until the War of 1812, Skelton argues, the traits of true professionalism were conspicuously lacking in American officers. Few saw officership as...