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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2014
This article examines the World War I service of the University of Michigan historian Ulrich Bonnell Phillips (1877–1934). Phillips worked first with black recruits as a volunteer officer for the Young Men's Christian Association at Camp Gordon, Georgia, and later as a U.S. Army Military Intelligence officer in Washington, DC. In these years, Phillips ranked as America's foremost authority on the antebellum South generally and of African American slavery in particular. In 1918 he published his landmark American Negro Slavery. While on leave from Ann Arbor, Phillips taught English and French, planned educational and recreational programs, and supervised the management and construction of buildings at Camp Gordon's segregated facilities. Phillips's daily interactions with black troops in the cantonment reaffirmed—at least as he saw it—his conclusions that North American slavery had been a relatively benign institution, his belief in the virtues of plantation paternalism and in the management of subject peoples by educated whites, and his attitude that contemporary race relations were generally harmonious. Phillips's observations of African American recruits validated his conviction that blacks benefited most from white-run, regimented organizations and strengthened his belief in economic assimilation and social segregation. His military intelligence work confirmed Phillips's overall commitment to conservative change, whether in foreign or race relations.
The author presented an earlier version of this article as the Julia Flisch Lecture at Georgia College & State University, Milledgeville, Georgia, on April 4, 2012. Ryan Bean, Amanda Binder, Catherine Bishir, Bill Bragg, Ann Davis, James J. Harris, Jim Hogue, Michelle Michael, Mike Musick, Tim Nenninger, Craig Pascoe, Richard Peuser, Lois Stickell, Alyssa Tidwell, Mitchell Yockelson, and Andrew Zimmerman assisted the author with his research. Two anonymous readers generously provided suggestions for the article's improvement.
2 “Thousands Pour into Camp Gordon; Many are Negroes,” Atlanta Constitution, Oct. 5, 1917, 1.
3 McCarthy, T. F., “A Year at Camp Gordon”: United States Cantonment, No. 123 (Wilkes-Barre, PA, 1920), 10Google Scholar; Camp Gordon Historical Marker Number 044-91, http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=14570 (accessed Mar. 22, 2012); Todd Womack, “World War I in Georgia” in New Georgia Encyclopedia, http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-3223 (accessed June 27, 2011). The cantonment was located at the present site of Airport Drive. It was named for Confederate lieutenant general and later Georgia governor and U.S. senator John Brown Gordon.
4 Roper, John Herbert, “Introduction to the ROSE Edition,” Phillips, Ulrich Bonnell, Georgia and State Rights (1902; Macon, GA, 1984)Google Scholar, xxiv.
5 Paul Raymond Din Lawrie, “‘To Make the Negro Anew’: The African American Worker in the Progressive Imagination, 1896–1928” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2011), 205, 255.
6 Phillips, Georgia and State Rights, vii–xxxv.
7 O'Brien, Michael, “Southern Intellectual History” in A Companion to American Thought, ed. Fox, Richard Wightman and Kloppenberg, James T. (Cambridge, MA, 1995), 648Google Scholar.
8 Achille Loria to Ulrich B. Phillips, July 29, 1905, Charles McCarthy Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison. On Loria's impact on Turner and thus indirectly on Phillips, see Benson, Lee, “Achille Loria's Influence on American Economic Thought, including his Contributions to the Frontier Thesis,” Agricultural History 24 (Oct. 1950): 182–99Google Scholar.
9 Phillips, Ulrich B., “The Economic Cost of Slaveholding in the Eastern Cotton Belt,” Political Science Quarterly 20 (June 1905): 135CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10 Phillips, Ulrich B., “An American State-Owned Railroad,” Yale Review 15 (Nov. 1906): 260Google Scholar.
11 In addition to the articles collected in Phillips, Ulrich Bonnell, The Slave Economy of the Old South: Selected Essays in Economic and Social History, ed. Genovese, Eugene D. (Baton Rouge, 1968Google Scholar), see the following Atlanta Constitution articles by Phillips: “Plantation Economics,” Aug. 24, 1903, 4; “Wisconsin University Object Lesson for Georgia,” Dec. 4, 1904, 5; “Mr. Phillips' Strong Letter,” May 1, 1905, 6; “Preserving Documentary Collections of South,” Dec. 29, 1905, 4. Also, Smith, Rembert G., “The University of Georgia and Dr. Phillips' Suggestions,” Atlanta Constitution, Dec. 8, 1904, 8Google Scholar. On Phillips's advocacy writings, see Roper, John Herbert, “A Case of Forgotten Identity: Ulrich B. Phillips as a Young Progressive,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 60 (July 1976): 165–75Google Scholar.
12 See Smith, John David, “Ulrich Bonnell Phillips's Plantation and Frontier: The Historian as Documentary Editor,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 77 (Spring 1993): 123–43Google Scholar.
13 Phillips, Ulrich B., “Georgia in the Federal Union, 1776–1861” in The South in the Building of the Nation, vol. 2, ed. Chandler, Julian Alvin Carroll (Richmond, 1909), 146–71Google Scholar; Phillips, “Racial Problems, Adjustments, and Disturbances” in The South in the Building of the Nation, vol. 4, ed. Riley, Franklin Lafayette (Richmond, 1909), 194–241Google Scholar; Phillips, “The Slavery Issue in Federal Politics” in ibid., 382–422; Phillips, “State and Local Public Regulation of Industry in the South” in The South in the Building of the Nation, vol. 5, ed. Ballagh, James Curtis (Richmond, 1909), 475–78Google Scholar; Phillips, “The Economics of Slave Labor in the South” in ibid., 121–24; Phillips, “The Economics of the Slave Trade, Foreign and Domestic” in ibid., 124–29; Phillips, “Railroads in the South” in ibid., 358–67; Phillips, “Financial Crises in the Ante-Bellum South” in ibid., 435–41.
14 A. C. Martin to Armistead C. Gordon, Sept. 7, 1909, Armistead Church Gordon Papers, Virginia Historical Society, Richmond.
15 O'Brien, “Southern Intellectual History,” 648.
16 [Dean ?] to E. B. Craighead, Feb. 8, 1911, Ulrich B. Phillips Personnel File, Tulane University Archives.
17 Phillips, Ulrich B., “The Central Theme of Southern History,” American Historical Review 34 (Oct. 1928)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 31.
18 Aiton, Arthur S., “Professor Phillips Goes to Yale,” Michigan Alumnus 35 (Sep. 14, 1929): 794.Google Scholar
19 John Herbert Roper interview with Ralph Henry Gabriel, Mar. 13, 1975, Ulrich B. Phillips Papers, Southern Historical Collection, Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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21 Roper interview with Gabriel, Phillips Papers; Roper, “Introduction to the ROSE Edition,” xvii.
22 Wilkes, James D., “Van Tyne: The Professor and the Hun! Claude H. Van Tyne and World War I,” Michigan History 55 (Fall 1971): 183–204.Google Scholar
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25 Gelfand, Lawrence E., The Inquiry: American Preparations for Peace, 1917–1919 (New Haven, 1963)Google Scholar, 44, 45.
26 Mennell, James, “African-Americans and the Selective Service Act of 1917,” Journal of Negro History 84 (Summer 1999): 276–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 284.
27 Coffman, Edward M., The War to End All Wars: The American Military Experience in World War I (1968; Lexington, 1998)Google Scholar, 69, 231; “Negro Conscription,” The New Republic, Oct. 20, 1917, 318.
28 Lawrie, “‘To Make the Negro Anew,’” 128, 169.
29 Sweeney, W. Allison, History of the American Negro in the Great World War (1919; New York, 1969)Google Scholar, 81; Sergt. Greenleaf B. Johnson, “The Events of the Times: The Negro's Part in the War in Democracy,” Washington Bee, Jan. 18, 1919, 1.
30 Slotkin, Richard, Lost Battalions: The Great War and the Crisis of American Nationality (New York, 2005)Google Scholar, 49.
31 “The War,” The Crisis 15 (Mar. 1918)Google Scholar: 242.
32 Dittmer, John, Black Georgia in the Progressive Era, 1900–1920 (Urbana, 1977), 194–96.Google Scholar
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34 A U.S. Army Officer, “Making Americans of Alien Soldiers,” New York Times, Sept. 22, 1918, 40.
35 Millett, Allan R. and Maslowski, Peter, For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America (New York, 1984)Google Scholar, 336.
36 Lincoln, Samuel B., Lockwood Greene: The History of an Engineering Business, 1832–1958 (Brattleboro, VT, 1960)Google Scholar, 237, 414, 418, 783.
37 See Phillips, Ulrich B., review of Official History of 82nd Division American Expeditionary Forces, “All American” Division, 1917–1919 in American Historical Review 26 (Oct. 1920): 151–52.Google Scholar
38 Toomey, Joseph M., Georgia's Participation in the World War and the History of the Department of Georgia, The American Legion (Macon, GA, 1936), 15–16.Google Scholar
39 Bristow, Nancy K., Making Men Moral: Social Engineering during the Great War (New York, 1996)Google Scholar, 236; Georgia Historic Marker, 044-91, erected 1988, Chamblee, Georgia. See http://www.hmdb.org/PhotoFullSize.asp?PhotoID=47293 (accessed July 3, 2011).
40 “The War,” The Crisis 15 (Dec. 1917)Google Scholar: 85; Trawick, A. M., “Southern Race Questions in War Times” in The Human Way: Addresses on Race Problems at the Southern Sociological Congress, Atlanta, 2nd ed., ed. McCulloch, James E. (Washington, 1918)Google Scholar, 120. Dittmer, Black Georgia in the Progressive Era, 194n–95, notes that after September 1917 only Georgia blacks trained at Camp Gordon.
41 National Council of Young Men's Christian Associations of the United States of America, War Work of the American YMCA (New York, 1920), 3, 8–10Google Scholar; Harris, Frederick ed., Service with Fighting Men: An Account of the Work of the American Young Men's Christian Associations in the World War (New York, 1922)Google Scholar, 1:388; Hovde, David M., “YMCA Libraries on the Mexican Border, 1916,” Libraries and Culture 32 (Winter 1997)Google Scholar: 114.
42 Lancaster, Richard C., Serving the U.S. Armed Forces, 1861–1986: The Story of the YMCA's Ministry to Military Personnel for 125 Years (Schaumburg, IL, 1987), 52–53.Google Scholar
43 Bristow, Making Men Moral, xvii, 36.
44 Lancaster, Serving the U.S. Armed Forces, 1861–1986, 62.
45 National Council of Young Men's Christian Associations, War Work of the American YMCA, 8–10.
46 Lancaster, Serving the U.S. Armed Forces, 1861–1986, 75; Koch, Theodore Wesley, War Work of the American Library Association (Washington, 1918)Google Scholar. On the day-to-day operations of YMCA education programs, see Army Educational Commission, 1919, Box 4, Y.USA.4-1 YMCA Armed Services Department: An Inventory of Its World War I Records, Kautz Family YMCA Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries.
47 “Prof. Phillips Heads Educational Program,” Atlanta Constitution, Dec. 6, 1917, 7. On YMCA-sponsored boxing matches at Camp Gordon, see McCarthy, “A Year at Camp Gordon,” 126–27; and Lancaster, Serving the U.S. Armed Forces 1861–1986, 62 (photograph). On boxing at African American World War I-era military bases, see Nash, Horace, “Town and Sword: Black Boxers at Columbus, New Mexico, 1916–1922” in Of Times and Race: Essays Inspired by John F. Marszalek, ed. Ballard, Michael B. and Cheathem, Mark R. (Jackson, MS, 2013), 89–114.Google Scholar
48 Harris, ed., Service with Fighting Men, 1:388.
49 McCarthy, “A Year at Camp Gordon,” Introductory.
50 “Thousands Pour into Camp Gordon; Many are Negroes,” Atlanta Constitution, Oct. 5, 1917, 11.
51 Bristow, Making Men Moral, 150.
52 Barbeau, Arthur E. and Henri, Florette, The Unknown Soldiers: African-American Troops in World War I (New York, 1996)Google Scholar, 40.
53 Bristow, Making Men Moral, 150‒51, 153, 154.
54 Ibid., 150‒51, 153.
55 Ibid., 154–55.
56 See Haynes, Robert V., A Night of Violence: The Houston Riot of 1917 (Baton Rouge, 1976).Google Scholar
57 Official Register of the Officers and Cadets of the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, N.Y., June 1893 (West Point, 1893)Google Scholar, 11.
58 Isma Dooly, “Negroes Trained at Camp Gordon New War Front,” Atlanta Constitution, Nov. 11, 1917, 6.
59 “The Negroes in Camp,” Atlanta Constitution, Aug. 30, 1917, 6.
60 “Negro Minister Bespeaks Race Harmony in Places Where Colored Troops Train,” Atlanta Constitution, Sept. 9, 1917, A4.
61 Dooly, “Negroes Trained at Camp Gordon New War Front.”
62 Ibid.
63 “English to be Taught to Foreigners in Camp,” Atlanta Constitution, Oct. 23, 1917, 9. On Souby, see “Flour Barrels and Spring Suites,” The Outlook, May 2, 1917, 34; and “A History of the Economics and Finance Department at Middle Tennessee State University,” p. 1, frank.mtsu.edu/ ~ econfin/documents/history.pdf (accessed June 24, 2011).
64 “Famous Educator Joins Gordon Staff,” Atlanta Constitution, Oct. 13, 1917, 11. Also “Prof. Phillips Heads Educational Program,” Atlanta Constitution, Dec. 6, 1917, 7.
65 Dillon, Ulrich Bonnell Phillips: Historian of the Old South, 103‒04.
66 Phillips to Claude H. Van Tyne, Nov. 4, 1917, Claude H. Van Tyne Papers, Michigan Historical Collections, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.
67 Phillips to Van Tyne, Dec. 20, 1917, Van Tyne Papers.
68 “Prof. Phillips Heads Educational Program.”
69 U. B. Phillips to J. R. Effinger, n.d., Michigan Alumnus 24 (Dec. 1917): 151‒52.Google Scholar
70 Clipping from Atlanta Constitution, n.d., paraphrased in Roper, “Introduction to the ROSE Edition,” xxvii.
71 “‘Y’ Training School Ends Session Today,” Atlanta Constitution, Mar. 1, 1918, 12.
72 Ulrich B. Phillips to the General Secretary [Jan. 1, 1918], Michigan Alumnus 24 (Feb. 1918): 283‒84.Google Scholar
73 Ulrich B. Phillips to William Watts Ball, June 24, 1918, William Watts Ball Papers, Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University.
74 “Minutes of the Second Annual Meeting,” Proceedings of the Second Annual Session of the Georgia Historical Association, Atlanta, Ga., April 6, 1918 (Athens, GA, 1918), 5‒6.Google Scholar
75 Ulrich B. Phillips, “The Plantation Product of Men” in ibid., 12n.
76 Ibid., 12‒13.
77 Ibid., 13‒14.
78 Ibid., 14.
79 Genovese, Eugene D., “Race and Class in Southern History: An Appraisal of the Work of Ulrich Bonnell Phillips,” Agricultural History 41 (Oct. 1967): 345‒58.Google Scholar
80 Ulrich B. Phillips, “The Plantation Product of Men,” 14‒15.
81 “Dr. Phillips Is Made Captain in the Army,” La Grange (GA) Graphic, Nov. 7, 1918, 1.
82 William H. Esslinger to Whom It May Concern, Oct. 31, 1918, Army Official Military Personnel Files, Record Group 319, Records of the Army Staff, National Personnel Records Center, National Archives and Records Administration, St. Louis, Missouri (hereafter Army OMPF Files). Esslinger was a member of the Selective Service Local Board for the County of Washtenaw, Michigan.
83 Kornweibel, Theodore Jr., “Investigate Everything”: Federal Efforts to Compel Black Loyalty during World War I (Bloomington, IN, 2002)Google Scholar, 25.
84 Bidwell, Bruce W., History of the Military Intelligence Division, Department of the Army General Staff: 1775–1941 (Frederick, MD, 1986), 110‒11Google Scholar, 117; Gilbert, James L., World War I and the Origins of U.S. Military Intelligence (Lanham, MD, 2012), 104‒05.Google Scholar
85 Gelfand, The Inquiry, 33‒34, 110.
86 Powe, Marc B., The Emergence of the War Department Intelligence Agency: 1885‒1918 (Manhattan, KS, 1975), xi‒xiiGoogle Scholar, 87‒90, 95.
87 Bidwell, History of the Military Intelligence Division, 150‒51, 153.
88 U. B. Phillips to F. P. Keppel, Assistant Secretary of War, Aug. 27, 1918, Army OMPF Files. Phillips's given name was Ulysses, but he changed it to the Germanic Ulrich in the 1880s so as not to be identified with Ulysses S. Grant. See John Herbert Roper, “Ulrich Bonnell Phillips: His Life and Thought” (PhD diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1977), 6.
89 J. Franklin Jameson to the Adjutant General of the United States Army, Oct. 8, 1918; Joseph Schafer to the Adjutant General, Oct. 8, 1918; John Morris to Chief of Staff, United States War Department, Sept. 26, 1918, Army OMPF Files.
90 M. Churchill, Memorandum for the Adjutant General of the Army, Oct. 30, 1918, Army OMPF Files. In 1920 Churchill provided one of the best overviews of the history and function of the MID: Churchill, Marlborough, “The Military Intelligence Division General Staff,” Journal of the United States Artillery 52 (Apr. 1920): 293‒315.Google Scholar
91 The Adjutant General of the Army to the Director of Military Intelligence, Nov. 1, 1918, Army OMPF Files.
92 Ulrich B. Phillips, “A Study of the Prospects concerning the Extension of Occupation by the Allies in Germany and Austria-Hungary,” Dec. 17, 1918, Record Group 165, Military Intelligence Division, 124–112–1, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland.
93 Ibid.
94 Ibid.
95 Ibid.
96 Ibid.
97 Ibid.
98 Ibid.
99 Ibid.
100 Ibid.
101 Ulrich B. Phillips to George J. Baldwin, May 2, 1903, Phillips Papers.
102 Separation Order, Feb. 10, 1919, Army OMPF Files.
103 Philip Alexander Bruce to Ulrich B. Philips, Mar. 11, 1919, Ulrich Bonnell Phillips Papers (MS 397), Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.
104 Roper, John Herbert, U. B. Phillips: A Southern Mind (Macon, GA, 1984)Google Scholar, 111.
105 Four photographic images Phillips captured of Camp Gordon include photographs of men, possibly recruits, standing along a train at Camp Gordon (# 44302); black civilians, possibly recruits, lined up outside a camp structure (# 44303); soldiers in a Camp Gordon courtyard near barracks (# 44304); and men, possibly recruits, walking from a train at Camp Gordon (# 44305). These images are available at Yale University Library's Manuscripts and Archives Digital Image Database: http://images.library.yale.edu/madid/showThumb.aspx?qs=76&qm=15&q=ulrich+phillips (accessed June 5, 2012). On Phillips and photography of African Americans and the built environment, see Patricia Bellis Bixel and John David Smith, Seeing the New South: Race and Place in the Photographs of Ulrich B. Phillips (Columbia, SC, 2013).
106 Roper, U. B. Phillips: A Southern Mind, 111.
107 Phillips, Ulrich Bonnell, American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Régime (New York, 1918)Google Scholar, [ii].
108 Ibid.
109 Ibid., [ii‒iii].
110 W.E.B. Du Bois, review of Phillips, Ulrich B., American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Régime in American Political Science Review 12 (Nov. 1918): 723Google Scholar. On the Phillips-Du Bois relationship, see Smith, John David, “Du Bois and Phillips: Symbolic Antagonists of the Progressive Era,” Centennial Review 24 (Winter 1980): 88‒102Google Scholar. Rosenberg, Jonathan, How Far the Promised Land? World Affairs and the American Civil Rights Movement from the First World War to Vietnam (Princeton, 2006)Google Scholar, ch. 1, provides an excellent analysis of the meaning of the war to black activists, including Du Bois.
111 Lentz-Smith, Adriane, Freedom Struggles: African Americans and World War I (Cambridge, MA, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 2.
112 Phillips, Ulrich B., “The Plantation as a Civilizing Factor,” Sewanee Review 12 (July 1904): 257Google Scholar, 260. Phillips made the same arguments in “The Economics of the Plantation,” South Atlantic Quarterly 2 (July 1903): 231‒36Google Scholar; “Making Cotton Pay,” The World's Work 8 (May 1904): 4783‒92Google Scholar; and “The Decadence of the Plantation System,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 35 (Jan. 1910): 37–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar. He continued to note the ubiquity of the plantation following World War I in “Plantations with Slave Labor and Free,” American Historical Review 30 (July 1925): 738–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
113 Phillips, “The Plantation as a Civilizing Factor,” 264, 266.
114 Roper, U.B. Phillips: A Southern Mind, 112 (emphasis in original).
115 Ibid., 113.
116 Phillips, American Negro Slavery, 401.
117 Lawrie, “‘To Make the Negro Anew,’” 255.
118 Roper, “Introduction to the ROSE Edition,” xxvii.