The Great Call-Up: The Guard, the Border, and the Mexican Revolution

by Charles H. Harris, Louis R. Sadler

On June 18, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson called up virtually the entire army National Guard, some 150,000 men, to meet an armed threat to the United border raids covertly sponsored by a Mexican government in the throes of revolution. The Great Call-Up tells for the first time the complete story of this unprecedented deployment and its significance in the history of the National Guard, World War I, and U.S.-Mexico relations.

Often confused with the regular-army operation against Pancho Villa and overshadowed by the U.S. entry into World War I, the great call-up is finally given due treatment here by two premier authorities on the history of the Southwest border. Marshaling evidence drawn from newspapers, state archives, reports to Congress, and War Department documents, Charles H. Harris III and Louis R. Sadler trace the call-up’s state-based deployment from San Antonio and Corpus Christi, along the Texas and Arizona borders, to California. Along the way, they tell the story of this mass mobilization by examining each unit as it was called up by state, considering its composition, missions, and internal politics. Through this period of intensive training, the Guard became a truly cohesive national, then international, force. Some units would even go directly from U.S. border service to the battlefields of World War I France, remaining overseas until 1919.

Balancing sweeping change over time with a keen eye for detail, The Great Call-Up unveils a little-known yet vital chapter in American military history.

Genres: War

576 pages, Hardcover

First published January 20, 2015

Reviews

[Adamonip · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall a very illuminating work. Authors Harris and Sadler, professors emeritus of history at New Mexico State University, co-author this book which examines the mobilization of the National Guard in 1916 to protect the border from Mexican Raiders and they make a clear distinction between the Mexican Expedition, led by Brigadier General Pershing and the mission to protect the border. The book is well researched, although they do rely heavily on newspaper accounts. The authors chose to organize the book along geographic lines instead of chronologically, which sometimes makes some accounts repetitive. This book will appeal to both a general audience and subject matter experts.