“When I became secretary of defense,” Ashton B. Carter said when announcing that the Pentagon would open all combat jobs to women, “I made a commitment to building America's force of the future. In the twenty-first century, that requires drawing strength from the broadest possible pool of talent.” That “pool of talent”—and how our nation's civilian and military leaders have tried to fill it—is what Military Service and American Democracy is all about. William Taylor chronicles and analyzes the long and ever-changing history of that often contentious and controversial effort, from the initiation of America's first peacetime draft just before our entry into World War II up to present-day conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. A history that runs from the selective service era of 1940–1973 through the era of the All-Volunteer Force of 1973 to the present, his book details the many personnel policies that have shaped, controlled, and defined American military service over the last eight decades. Exploring the individual and group identities excluded from official personnel policy over time—African Americans, women, and gays among others—Taylor shows how military service has been an arena of contested citizenship, one in which American values have been tested, questioned, and ultimately redefined. Yet, we see how this process has resulted in greater inclusiveness and expanded opportunities in military service while encouraging and shaping similar changes in broader society. In the distinction between compulsory and voluntary military service, Taylor also examines the dichotomy between national security and individual liberty—two competing ideals that have existed in constant tension throughout the history of American democracy.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1860.

William Taylor (1821-1902) was a Methodist minister specializing in "street preaching" in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., when the Methodist church sent him to California as a missionary evangelist in 1849. He remained in the West for seven years, going on to become one of the church's most tireless worldwide evangelists. He later conducted crusades in Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, South America, and South Africa. In 1884 he was named Missionary Bishop for Africa and he focused his energies on missionary activities on that continent. Taylor spent his last years in California, the site of his first mission. California life illustrated (1858) expands on his reminiscences in Seven years' street preaching in San Francisco (1857). He describes his voyage to California and gives details of family life, social life, politics and church history in San Jose, Santa Cruz, and Sacramento. He comments at length on California agriculture and mineral resources and offers a chapter on mining camp life. After founding the Powell Street church, Taylor explains, he undertook a mission to sailors in San Francisco which left him so burdened by debt that he returned east to publish books and conduct revivals in the hope of putting his finances in order.

William Taylor's Cavalier and Yankee was one of the most famous works of American history written in the 1960s. The book is an intellectual history of the South before the Civil War, the perception of it in the North, and the effect it had upon the nation in the years from 1800 to 1860. First published in 1961 and out of print for several years, Taylor's classic study remains essential to the study of the pre-Civil War South.

Stott's diary reveals a soldier who was also a scholar in camp and on the march, one who took every available moment to read theology, philosophy, great literary works, and a few novels. He also had a playful side, slyly exposing a dry wit and a sense of humor that can sneak up on the reader.

In this book, William Taylor tells in his own words the story of a foundational episode in his life. Following his trial ministry as a Methodist circuit rider in his home state of Virginia and his service of pastorates in the historic North Baltimore Conference, William Taylor (1821-1902) was commissioned as a missionary to California at the beginning of the Gold Rush Era. His subsequent "seven years of street preaching in San Francisco" set the stage for a half-century missionary career during which Taylor championed self-supporting missions to every populated continent, funded by the publication of his widely-read books. Despite his prolific writing, none of Taylor's publications reveal the personal dimensions of his struggles or the day-by-day development of his missionary perspective. This early chapter in Taylor's career emerges for the first time with the publication of his journal, privately held by family members for over a century. The substantial journal chronicles five of Taylor's seven enterprising years (1849-1856) in San Francisco, Sacramento, San Jose, and the surrounding area, while offering a rich, first-person account of contemporary events written in Taylor's fine, narrative style. With this journal, readers may trace the genesis of Taylor's approach to self-supporting missions, including the development of his thinking on fund raising and his skepticism toward the possibility of a Christian use of money. A scholarly introduction, footnotes, and appendixes, together with several images, set Taylor's California experiences in historical context, while clarifying and explaining the journal's rhetoric, holiness doctrine, missionary strategies, and oblique references.