Inevitability,masculinity, and the American military tradition: the committee on the conduct of the war investigates the American Civil War

This essay examines the work of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, a joint select committee of investigation formed by Congress during the American Civil War. During its tenure in the 37^th and 38^th sessions of Congress, the Committee investigated almost every aspect of Union military operations; however, its principal concern was the examination of Union military defeats. Members of the Committee on the Conduct of the War were influenced by the notion of inevitable Union victory. As self‐made men who had achieved a degree of success in the emerging market economy of nineteenth‐century America, Committee members exemplified the period's predominate concept of masculinity. Also skeptical of military science and distrustful of the United States military academy at West Point, the Committee showed a marked preference for volunteer soldiers and officers throughout the war. Believing that West Point generals who endorsed strategic maneuver were cowardly and disloyal, Committee members were frequently critical of regular army officers in their investigations. Confusing the rhetoric of ‘hard war’ with military competence, the Committee's disdain for military education caused it to endorse incompetent military leadership and advocate mediocre generals for high command.     

Fifty Years Since Lashley's In Search of the Engram: Refutations and Conjectures

In his well-known article “In Search of the Engram” published in 1950, Karl Spencer Lashley summarized his 33 years of research and theory on memory and the brain. He concluded that (1) memories are not localized but are instead distributed within functional areas of the cortex and (2) memory traces are not isolated cortical connections between inputs and outputs. Though not the first time he had expressed such convictions, their reiteration in this article was backed by Lashley's estimable reputation and expressive power and they have taken firm root in the collective knowledge of today's memory and neuropsychological research community.