> The old “school of strength and character” is gone. The nineteenth-century pattern of life that created it no longer exists. But the features of its social fabric demonstrate what an agentic society with a recognizably modern set of technologies and institutions looks like. This culture was upstream of organizations like the Sanitary Commission, making possible the agentic behaviors of those who founded them. Three features are especially prominent: the aspirational ideal of public brotherhood, a commitment to formality and discipline in self-government, and organizational structures that combined decentralization with hierarchy. These are the same patterns any future culture of high agency self-government will also have to cultivate in themselves and their neighbors.