NOTE: 2001-2013 enlisted totals include "cadets-midshipmen" so officer+enlisted=total. This may not be the correct assumption, but the historical tables only have "officer" and "enlisted" totals.

This data consists of three files:lists of all enlisted applicants, contracts, and accessions to the US military from October 2000 to September 2010, as well as a small Excel file that serves as a data dictionary. Individuals are identified only by 3 digit ZIP codes, and do not contain an individual identifier so they cannot be reliably tracked across stages of enlistment. The data was obtained through Freedom of Information Act request 11-F-0024, filed by Garret Christensen in 2010. The only documentation provided with the request is included here, in the Excel file.

This dataset documents the records of mainly Black people incarcerated in the Tennessee State Penitentiary in the period directly before, during, and after the Civil War, from 1850-1870. It includes a staggering amount of formerly enslaved Civil War soldiers and veterans who had enlisted in the segregated regiments of the United States Military, the U.S.C.T. This demographic information of over 1,400 inmates incarcerated in an occupied border state allows us to examine trends, patterns, and relationships that speak to the historic ties between the US military and the TN State Penitentiary, and more broadly, the role of enslavement’s legacies in the development of punitive federal systems. Further analysis of this dataset reveals the genesis of many modern trends in incarceration and law. The dataset of this article and its historiographical implications will be of interest to scholars who study the regional dynamics of antebellum and post-Civil War prison systems, convict leasing and the development of the modern carceral state, Black resistance in the forms of fugitivity and participation in the Civil War, and pre-war era incarceration of free Black men and women and non-Black people convicted of crimes related to enslavement.

Little is known about military attitudes toward weapons taboos, or the durability of non-use norms in wartime. Chemical weapons are a key case given public revulsion and clear international prohibitions. We explore soldiers’ attitudes in a salient setting: the Pacific theater of World War II. We draw on a declassified survey covering a representative sample of enlisted US soldiers in Hawai‘i in 1944. This unique context, during a total war against an adversary that had employed chemical weapons, represents a hard test for the chemical weapons taboo. Up to 91% of soldiers supported using chemical weapons against Japan, including 24% who favored initiation and 67% who favored retaliatory use. To understand the influence of military instruction, we exploit a novel regimen still used in basic training, which saw some troops exposed to lachrymatory gas. We find exposure to chemical weapons in training reduced support for use. Visceral experiences can mobilize support for weapons taboos in otherwise permissive environments.