Ohio History Journal

BOOK REVIEWS

 

A Handbook to Aid in the Study of State & Local History: A Comprehensive

Reference Book of Special Interest to Teachers in Ohio Schools. Compiled

by George F. Jenny. (Columbus, Ohio Sesquicentennial Commission,

1953. 124p. $0.50.)

A Handbook to Aid in the Study of State & Local History is at once the

most comprehensive and the most challenging publication of its nature that

has come to our desk. "Inspirational" seems a misnomer for a work of this

sort, but it is just that. Surely it will set a vigorous fire in the imagination

of some social science teachers and fan the embers of "creative" teaching

in any teacher who is blessed with this little white volume on his desk.

Fiction and Non-Fiction; Visual Aids; Free and Inexpensive Materials;

Activities; Construction and Experimentation; Trips and Culminating Activ-

ities; Aesthetic Activities; Verbalization and Dramatization; Collections and

Exhibits document the units on Prehistoric Ohio, Indians, Pioneer Life,

Agriculture, Industry, Minerals, Transportation, and Communication. These

are not units of work but are divisions for classification of aids for the

teaching of state and local history. The Handbook is especially aimed at

Ohio history, of course, being one of many good things to accrue as a

result of the Ohio sesquicentennial, but a social science teacher anywhere in

the Midwest can find much material here.

The three sections on Famous Ohioans, My Community Now and Then,

and State Government complete the treatment by units of interest. The

second is especially intriguing with the bibliography being arranged accord-

ing to Ohio's eighty-eight counties. This is a useful innovation, one that

has not come to our attention. It is here especially that local and county

historical societies will find assistance in the promulgating of their local

heritage.

Here is a comprehensive coverage of source material, treating with Ohio

from the simplicity of prehistoric times to the complexity of the twentieth-

century way of life in the area. The level of scholarship is high in the

compilation and indicates extensive research in the field, yet the source

materials listed are readily available in most libraries or historical collections.

Works of non-general interest are excluded and references are specific.

Suggestions for activities are practicable, as the proposals are feasible and

possible for most teachers in the social sciences.

One might wish for a general index of publications referred to--and a

less soilable cover for a volume which should be "dog eared" from use

194

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Book Reviews                          195

 

early in its ownership by Ohio history teachers. More constructively, one

might wish--and this reviewer does--that the other forty-seven states would

provide such a publication for the guidance of teachers in bringing to our

young Americans the story of their great heritage.

Detroit Historical Society                 MRS. CURRAN P. BOYER

 

Stanton: Lincoln's Secretary of War. By Fletcher Pratt. (New York, W. W.

Norton & Company, 1953. xiii+520p.; maps, appendix, and index.

$5.95.)

Fletcher Pratt, a well-known historian of the Civil War period, has pre-

pared a revisionist biography of Edwin M. Stanton, Lincoln's secretary of

war. This biography, the first to appear since 1905, attempts to make

Stanton a credible rather than an attractive person. The objectives of the

author as stated in the Preface are accomplished in part only.

Edwin McMasters Stanton, the son of a Steubenville, Ohio, physician,

was born on December 19, 1814, and, following the death of his father,

became the ward of Daniel Collier, a local attorney. Young Stanton, inde-

pendent in mind and action, soon found it necessary to shift for himself.

He clerked in Steubenville and Columbus bookstores, worked his way

through Kenyon College, and later studied law in the office of his legal

guardian. Admitted to the Ohio bar in 1836, he began the practice of law

in Cadiz. He served as prosecuting attorney of Harrison County, and later

formed a law partnership with Colonel George McCook of Steubenville.

In 1847, after achieving success in Ohio, he moved to Pittsburgh, where his

field of operation was greatly widened. Here he handled successfully the

Wheeling Bridge and McCormick patent cases. Nine years later he moved

to Washington, D. C., where he won national fame while serving as one

of the defense attorneys in the Sickles murder case, and as a special counsel

for the United States Government in investigating fraudulent land claims in

California arising out of the Mexican cession.

It was his success in California which led to his appointment as attorney

general of the United States following a revision of the Buchanan cabinet.

During the secession crisis Stanton, although a Breckinridge Democrat, was

a firm defender of the Union. He recommended the enforcement of federal

law and the relief of Fort Sumter.

In temporary retirement at the time of Lincoln's inauguration, Stanton was

appointed chief legal adviser to Secretary of War Cameron, who, as a

political appointee to satisfy pre-convention commitments on behalf of

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196      Ohio Stale Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

Abraham Lincoln, proved to be inefficient and not unfavorably disposed

toward awarding lucrative army contracts for political purposes. Following

Cameron's resignation, Stanton, who had met and described Lincoln as a

"long armed baboon" during the McCormick case, was appointed to the

office. This appointment, according to the author, was made out of Lincoln's

recognition of Stanton's incorruptibility, the desire to attach the wavering

Breckinridge Democrats to the Union cause, and the possibility of capital-

izing on the apparent friendship existing between General McClellan and

his former legal counsel for positive military action.

The new secretary proved, in some respects, to be an able administrator,

a firm defender of the Union cause, and an effective buffer between the

chief executive and political opportunists. Moreover, he eliminated waste,

corruption, and special privileges in the war department, and soon became

anathema to army contractors who envisioned enormous profits arising from

the sale of arms and war material. Yet Stanton was sometimes guilty of

lapses in administrative judgment which resulted in unwise decisions. A

burst of enthusiasm led him to commit what some authorities on the ad-

ministration of the Union Army have labeled one of the colossal blunders

of the war. On April 3, 1862, Stanton discontinued the draft. Although

the author admits that the cessation of the draft was a mistake (p. 213), he

neglects to account for the secretary's rash action.

Due to a paucity of documentary materials Stanton's part in the tragic

drama of the war is meager in the extreme. It is shown that with the coming

of Halleck in July 1862 Stanton became the "invisible man." While the

secretary expedited the shipment of armaments, improved transportation

facilities, and made better provision for the sick and wounded, he had

little part in drafting and executing the battle strategy of the Union forces.

The final section of the biography is devoted to an account of Stanton's

growing misunderstanding with Lincoln's successor, his relationship with

the radical reconstructionists led by Thaddeus Stevens, the passage of the

tenure of office act, designed specifically by the radicals to keep Stanton in

office for the administration of military reconstruction, and the use of the

tenure of office act by Stanton's friends in forcing the impeachment of the

president. Stanton assisted with but did not, as stated on page 448, write

President Johnson's veto message.

In analyzing the character of Stanton, the author shows, and quite

properly so, that the Ohioan had a kindlier nature as revealed in the letters

to his wife. On the other hand, the author does not omit evidence reflecting

Stanton's tendency toward hypocrisy, which the school of psychological

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Book Reviews                          197

 

historians might possibly attribute to his illness occasioned by periodic

attacks of asthma and ophthalmia. To take one example, the author's quo-

tations treating of Stanton's relationship with General McClellan have a

tendency to confirm, rather than reverse, previous historical judgments con-

cerning the secretary's occasional fits of chicanery. Thus on July 5, 1862,

Stanton assured the general "there is no cause in my heart or conduct for the

cloud which wicked men have raised between us for their own selfish

purposes." Yet on August 28 of the same year the gyrating secretary

attempted, but quite unsuccessfully, to convince other cabinet members of

the advisability of affixing their signatures to a letter addressed to Lincoln

requesting McClellan's resignation! The author fails to present adequate

evidence which might possibly excuse Stanton's growing hostility toward

Lincoln, his petty autocracy, and his adolescent emotionalism sometimes

accompanied by copious weeping. Indeed, the secretary's childlike behavior

was often evidenced by temper tantrums when he vented his hatred toward

Lincoln by tearing his messages or instructions to pieces, throwing them on

the floor, and trampling upon them. Moreover, Stanton's sense of legal

justice, so dearly demonstrated in the case of Thomas T. Eckert, was com-

pletely overshadowed by his action in the case of Charles P. Stone, a Union

officer, who, after the Ball's Bluff disaster, was arrested, imprisoned for 189

days, and released without an explanation.

It should be clear that the author, weighing his evidence on the impartial

scales of history, has achieved only in part the objectives outlined in his

Preface. Despite some shortcomings, particularly in matters of organization

and the allotment of space to military campaigns, the volume is a significant

contribution to a better understanding of Lincoln's secretary of war. The

volume, well-written and substantially bound, contains neither a classified

bibliography nor footnote citations to the sources consulted and quoted.

Columbus, Ohio                                     JOHN 0. MARSH

 

Fleur de Lys and Calumet: Being the Penicaut Narrative of French Adventure

in Louisiana. Translated and edited by Richebourg Gaillard McWilliams.

(Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1953. xxxiii+282p.;

illustrations, bibliography, appendices, and index. $4.00.)

For more than two centuries and a quarter information about early settle-

ments in the Mississippi Valley has been detailed and enhanced by the

widely known Penicaut Narrative, "perhaps the best sustained piece of

literature portraying early French dominion in old Louisiana." Despite the

obvious importance of this document to scholars of early colonial penetra-

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198      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

tion in the New World, the first English edition of the full manuscript has

only now appeared, the product of an editor's distinguished translation and

explanatory notes. Throughout the entire editorial work, in fact, whether

in the extensive scholarship of the footnotes or in the introductory history

of the manuscript, Professor McWilliams has displayed a rare sense of

devotion to the fullest possible explanation of the Penicaut Narrative. And

in the Louisiana State University Press he has fortunately found a publisher

willing to lavish care and resources on the production of a beautifully

printed book.

From 1698 to 1721 master carpenter Andre Penicaut lived the fantastic

life of frontiersman and explorer in the wilds of Louisiana, adapting his

building skills to the construction of such fortress outposts as Biloxi, Mobile,

Natchez, and New Orleans, and eventually placing a facile pen at the service

of his graphic memory. Out of a storehouse of recollections Penicaut con-

structed neither an interpretative history of French colonization nor the

detailed chronicle of a diarist. But he did produce a set of reliable im-

pressions, arranged roughly in chronological fashion and casting light on

such diverse matters of geography and ethnology as the topography of the

Mississippi country and the customs of its Indians. Without conscious

design Penicaut managed to reveal many facets of French rule in the

Louisiana territory--the hazardous explorations up the Mississippi, the

curiously mixed pattern of hostility and friendship with the Indian tribes,

the activities of successive French administrators, the role of religion in the

French New World mission, and the rivalry with Spanish and English

colonists.

His simple facts are for us valuable insights. He cast light, for example,

on the amoral economic habits of early settlers when he noted the appearance

among the Natchez in 1713 of three Englishmen from Charleston, who had

incited the Indians to war among neighboring tribes "so that by this means

they might find a good number of slaves to buy and take back to Carolina."

And he revealed in the chapter for 1714 the hardheaded economic outlook

of the Natchez (probably a dubious triumph of culture contacts with the

Europeans), who preferred to deal, not with the French but with the

English, whose merchandise was cheaper. So the savagery of barbarism,

whose ritual did not exclude ambush and murder of white intruders, began

to give way to the savagery of civilization, whose ritual was performed

mainly in the market place.

If M. Penicaut had been a twentieth-century social scientist, he might

have cast more than just fleeting light on the fundamental questions that

surround the subject of eighteenth-century French imperialism. Several of

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Book Reviews                          199

 

these questions are central categories for any inquiry concerning the effect

of the colonial adventure on the structure of France during the Old Regime.

The eighteenth century for France was an interlude of a suffocating paradox.

While the techniques for production and exchange grew greater, the social

prohibition against aristocratic derogation grew more stringent. The nobility

lived almost exclusively by privilege and the remnant of its wits. How

significantly then did the lucrative concessions and posts lavished upon the

nobility in the Louisiana territory contribute to the temporary support of an

effete ruling caste? And how did this social procedure affect the character

of French rule in its colonies? Were the aristocratic administrators more

courageous and less economic in their behavior than middle-class tradesmen

would have been? Penicaut, of course, accepts French administration with-

out question. But his narrative aids the contemporary critic simply by listing

many families which were beneficiaries of Louisiana concessions, while

Professor McWilliams enhances the significance of these notations with

brief biographical data about the men in question (especially in his valuable

footnotes between pages 211 and 215).

Then the question arises about the role of this manuscript in the En-

lightenment literature on the noble savage. The editor implies that it ought

to be accorded high place in the list of travel accounts so widely discussed

by the philosophical critics of the Old Regime. Assuredly Penicaut presents

Louisiana as a potential garden, in which, if the trees were cleared, there

"would be a terrestrial paradise with the agriculture that would be developed

there, where wheat grows a great deal bigger than in France." Was the

narrative, therefore, a prop to the cult of primitivism in France, a touch-

stone for revealing the depth of decay in civilized France?

But Penicaut was a carpenter, not a social scientist. And perhaps that is

well. For only the craftsman could have gone where the carpenter went and

seen what he saw. And only one of such reasonable temper as Penicaut

displayed could have described so generously the Indian habit of the

calumet, or peace pipe, indicating something less than a continuous state of

barbarism among the tribes.

Ohio State University                           HARVEY GOLDBERG

 

Grinnell College. By John Scholte Nollen. Edited, with a foreword, by

William J. Petersen. (Iowa City, State Historical Society of Iowa, 1953.

xi+283p.; illustrations, appendices, and index. $5.00.)

The history of American colleges and universities is an essential part of

the cultural and intellectual history of the country. Too often, however,

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200      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

histories of particular institutions are devoted almost wholly to administra-

tions and statistics, and too seldom are they concerned with the interrelation

of higher education and the social and economic order. Commendably,

both of these objectives are, to a considerable degree, inherent in the present

effort. The Puritan zeal of New England theological graduates that led to

the formation of academies and colleges, out of which Grinnell emerged,

is discussed in some detail, as are the changing intellectual currents which

were significantly marked when President George Frederick Magoun

(1865-84), a conservative Calvinist to whom the Higher Criticism of the

Bible and the evolutionary hypothesis were anathema, was followed by

George A. Gates (1887-1900), an avowed evolutionist and religious liberal.

The rising influence of the social sciences was signalized at the college by

the long and significant career of Professor Jesse Macy (prior to his re-

tirement in 1912), and the impact of the Social Gospel was strikingly

illustrated in the service of the nationally known George Davis Herron, who

personally, however, was more impassioned than disciplined and resigned

under pressure in 1899.

Most of the volume was written by John Scholte Nollen, president from

1931 to 1940. His maternal grandfather, the Rev. Hendrik Peter Scholte,

had come to Iowa as a rigorous Dutch Calvinist, but Nollen himself, in a

rather remarkable summary of his administration at Grinnell, indicates that

his own philosophy was that "of a realistic meliorist" who was "inclined

to pragmatism." An extended autobiography by Nollen constitutes an

interesting appendix.

Attention is given to the problems of liberal education in a utilitarian age

and to the special difficulties faced during the Great Depression and the

two world wars. The present president, Samuel N. Stevens (1940- ), has

written a concluding chapter, and special contributors have provided sections

on various phases of campus life. On the campus spacious dormitories have

been used to develop an integrated college life without Greek-letter social

organizations, and the college has been definitely successful in securing

substantial financial support, including a recent gift of $5,000,000.

All in all, a reader of this volume can appreciate the spirit which prompted

a novelist to write of Grinnell graduates, "I have never known the alumni

of any other institution to emanate such complete satisfaction with their

alma mater" (p. 156).

Ohio State University                     FRANCIS P. WEISENBURGER

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Book Reviews                           201

 

Virginians at Home: Family Life in the Eighteenth Century. By Edmund S.

Morgan. (Williamsburg, Va., Colonial Williamsburg, 1952. ix+99p.;

illustrations, note on the sources, and index. $2.00.)

Edmund S. Morgan's brief book on family life in the Old Dominion is

the second study in the "Williamsburg in America Series," a project

devoted to the popular presentation of the history of Williamsburg and

Tidewater Virginia in the eighteenth century. Although the author broadens

the scope of his inquiry to include all strata of the social hierarchy and all

sections of the colony, his main emphasis is on plantation family life in the

tidewater area prior to the American Revolution. This emphasis, of course,

is not of Mr. Morgan's own choosing. He knows the complexity of colonial

society, but he labors under the handicap of all social historians: the scarcity

of sources which reveal how common folks lived. The common people,

though prolific in producing children, are not so gifted in otherwise re-

cording their social activities. Social history, therefore, tends to be skewed

in the direction of the articulate who have sufficient leisure time and edu-

cation to devote to diaries and letters; and during the colonial period,

certainly, this group consisted almost exclusively of the wealthy few. By

reducing these methodological limitations as best he could and by writing

an easy, informal, and often colorful, narrative, Professor Morgan of Brown

University does an admirable job in reconstructing what he calls "the unique

pattern of colonial times."

An essay entitled "Growing Up" discusses child life two hundred years

ago, and presents some conclusions which challenge the usually accepted

ideas about child discipline in the eighteenth century. On one of the

perennial parental problems, the author reassures modern parents that their

colonial predecessors were almost "as uncertain about what constituted

proper discipline as we are . . ; by no means were all agreed on the

virtues of the rod." The myth that eighteenth-century children were seen

but not heard, so often comforting in contemplation, is dismissed as the

invention of harassed mothers and fathers. Most of the chapter is devoted

to education, a thing fairly difficult to obtain in colonial Virginia. Except

for the grammar school affiliated with the College of William and Mary,

there were no public schools before the Revolution. The affluent minority

therefore sent their children to private schools in the colonies or in England,

or hired tutors to teach them. The education of most boys and girls, how-

ever, was devoted to vocational training, usually acquired by the apprentice

system of on-the-job training.

Morgan's discussion of education illustrates perfectly the limitations which

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202      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

the sources impose upon the historian. Drawing his material largely from the

diary of Philip Fithian, a tutor for the wealthy Landon Carter family, he

devotes fourteen pages to the education of upper class children. On the

education of the great bulk of the youngsters, however, he manages to scrape

together only three pages, and even then he concedes that there is so little

information on the life of an apprentice that he is forced to "make a few

conjectures." Perhaps the lack of material also explains his failure to discuss

the religious education of colonial youth, or perhaps he takes too seriously

Parrington's characterization of the seventeenth century in America as a

saeculum theologicum and the eighteenth as a saeculum politicum. On the

other hand, the omission may reflect the aristocratic approach dictated by

the sources. By concentrating on the planter class, a pretty worldly bunch at

best, Morgan avoids a discussion of the religious revivalism that swept the

various denominations during the eighteenth century. In a later chapter he

points out that the planters were identified with the conservative Anglican

Church and "were apt to take religious beliefs pretty much for granted and

to concentrate their attention on living gracefully." But it is doubtful if

there was a complete omission of religious training for children in colonial

Virginia.

In chapter two the author discusses another of those perpetual perplexities

of parents--that of marrying off their children. In the eighteenth century

marriage involved more than two people; it was more than a private affair.

The business of establishing a family was family business, and interest some-

times seemed to center not so much on the principals as on property. Indeed,

there was a direct ratio between the amount of property one possessed and

the ease with which one could be joined by the bonds of matrimony: the

more property, the more difficult it was to get married. "Though marriage

was supposed to be connected somehow with love," Mr. Morgan observes,

"it was also an investment, and anyone who entered upon it with a good

share of capital was expected to take care that his partner should also con-

tribute a proper share." In upper circles, at least, the marriage contract was

arrived at by paternalistic collective bargaining; the pattern thus established

ordinarily provided that the girl's parents should contribute about half what

the boy's parents did. Colonial newspapers sometimes cited the considera-

tion involved in the choice of a mate. When Betty Lightfoot married

Beverley Randolph in 1737, the Virginia Gazette reported that she was "an

agreeable young Lady, with a Fortune of upwards of 5,000£." As these

examples indicate, the emphasis in this chapter again is on the upper class;

ten pages chronicle genteel courtship and marriage, while two and a half

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Book Reviews                           203

 

discuss the doings of the less well-to-do. The daily routine of wives,

whether rich or poor, indicates that in those days, as today, woman's work

was never done.

If one had plenty of "Servants and Slaves," however, one might manage

tolerably well. In his third chapter Morgan relates the everyday life of those

anonymous individuals who made up the bulk of colonial society: the town

craftsmen, the wage-earning hired hands on the plantations, the indentured

servants, the leased-out convicts, and the slaves. Appropriately enough, most

of the space is devoted to the lives of the slaves, because "most of the work

which made Virginia a pleasant place for some people to live in was done

by slaves." Most eighteenth-century planters recognized slavery as an evil,

but none knew how to eradicate it. According to Morgan, slaves worked

unwillingly, discontentedly, without incentive, and their owners knew no

other way to keep them working "than to beat them." Though the slaves'

adjustment to life was not easy, they did manage to live a life of their own

within the limits closely prescribed for them by a white man's world.

Evenings, Sundays, religious holidays, and the king and queen's birthdays

gave them time off from their duties, when they became almost their own

masters. Leisure-time pursuits included such diverse activities as drinking,

dancing, music, cockfights, and church. Although the slavery system estab-

lished conditions favorable to sexual license, family life among the slaves

was based upon stable marriages. Housed in individual cabins rather than

in barracks, the families ate in their own quarters rather than in messhalls.

Often the slave supplemented the food supplied to him by the master by

cultivating his own Sunday garden patch. Moreover, surplus produce from

this plot could be sold to local merchants, thus furnishing a source of income

to the slave. Indeed, Morgan asserts that trade with slave truck-farmers

formed a substantial part of the business of the crossroads stores which

were established in the eighteenth century.

One of the keys to the final chapter on houses, holidays, and hospitality

is provided in the preceding one. In those days before the invention of

labor-saving devices, lavish entertaining called for a large number of servants

and slaves. After a brief discussion of the cabins of the frontier farmer, the

larger homes of the valley farmers, and the even more spacious dwellings in

the piedmont and tidewater areas, Morgan turns his attention to the huge

plantation mansion, focal point of southern society. Over half the chapter

is devoted to the dining habits, leisure pastimes, religious affairs, holiday

entertaining, and southern hospitality of plantation society. Horse racing

and cockfights appealed to all segments of society, both in town and country,

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204      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

and the nearest tavern served as a convenient gathering place for men of all

classes. Annual county fairs, complete with prizes, parades, and a beauty

contest, were popular in the Old Dominion. During "Publick Times" when

the colonial assembly was in session, Williamsburg became a center of

festivities. Grand balls and fairs shared honors with theatrical performances,

concerts, and, in 1772, an early version of the Wild West show.

Given the limitations which any social historian labors under, Professor

Morgan has done a job of which he and the educational department of

Colonial Williamsburg may well be proud. Not the least of the book's

charm is the author's pleasing sense of humor.

Ohio State University                          JAMES MORTON SMITH

 

Valley of Democracy: The Frontier Versus the Plantation in the Ohio Valley,

1775-1818. By John D. Barnhart. (Bloomington, Indiana University

Press, 1953. x+338p.; bibliography and index. $5.00.)

Professor Barnhart, like many other disciples of Frederick Jackson Turner,

finds little in the recent attacks on the latter's "frontier thesis" to convince

him that there is any valid reason to discard the teachings of the Master.

The major purpose of this study of the evolution of American democracy in

the Ohio Valley is to test the Turner thesis by applying it in detail to a

particular area at a particular point in history, and thus provide the basis for

a comparison of actual events with the theories of Turner and his critics.

Turner emerges an easy victor, and Barnhart concludes that henceforth in-

stead of trying to refute the Turner interpretation, historians should devote

themselves to supplementing and completing his work by similar detailed

studies.

In a final chapter the author summarizes the influence of the Old World

heritage, the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, and the contest in

the older states between aristocracy and democracy, as a background for the

history of the Ohio Valley frontier. In Kentucky and Tennessee the frontier

period came to an end with the triumph of a planter civilization, but there

had been a frontier era nevertheless, and north of the Ohio the story was

very different. Barnhart argues that Turner never claimed that democracy

originated on the frontier, but only those characteristics which made it

specifically "Western" and "American," and therefore different from the

European variety. The author finds in the history of the Ohio Valley the

basis for a hope and a faith that America will continue to be unique.

Historical scholars will find these conclusions perhaps more interesting

reading than the recapitulation of the familiar details of the oft-told tale of

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Book Reviews                            205

 

the advance of the frontier beyond the mountains, but Professor Barnhart

has explored a mass of source material in many places to buttress his con-

clusions, and to add new details and refinements to earlier accounts. He

analyzes the older governments of the seaboard, follows again all the routes

of the westward movement, discusses pertinent issues such as land policies,

the removal of the Indians, foreign relations, speculation in land, the ex-

pansion of governmental services, the separatist movements of Watauga,

Westsylvania, Transylvania, and the state of Franklin, and other factors

which were significant in the contest between democrats and aristocrats

during the "rash of state making" that followed the Revolution. Studies of

the personnel of the various western conventions, the interests they repre-

sented, and tables which show the sources from which new constitutions

were made, are especially valuable. Kentucky and Tennessee copied largely

from Pennsylvania; Ohio from Tennessee. In Indiana, democratization made

rapid strides, and by the time it was Illinois' turn to become a state, the trail

had been sufficiently blazed to make it possible to avoid much of the strife

that marked the controversy in other states.

This study meets all the criteria of sound historical craftsmanship. It is

more significant for its clear synthesis than for new viewpoints. It is a

serious, heavily documented treatise and very detailed, and its many pages

of footnotes and bibliography testify to the author's thorough study of

widely-scattered and not easily obtainable sources. Turner would have been

pleased with the book. It is a worthy tribute to a modest, kindly scholar

who won the respect and affection of his students, and left a lasting imprint

on American historiography.

Western Reserve University                              CARL WITTKE

 

Portrait of an American: Charles G. Dawes. By Bascom N. Timmons. (New

York, Henry Holt and Company, 1953. ³⁴⁴p.; illustrations and index.

$5.00.)

Charles G. Dawes stands as an exemplar of a noble breed of men in our

history: men who, despite success in the business world, willingly devote

years of public service to the nation. He began his dual role early. By his

thirtieth birthday he had entered politics to forward the 1896 presidential

campaign of McKinley in Illinois. Such was his influence in swinging his

state and in managing the finances of the Republican national committee in

that crucial election, that he was rewarded with the post of comptroller of

the currency. In 1902 he resigned this office to seek election as senator.

Failing miserably as a vote-getter, he turned full attention to banking in

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206      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

Chicago, a field in which he became extremely successful. His bank, the

Central Trust Company of Illinois, was familiarly known as the "Dawes

Bank."

Soon after American entry into World War I, Dawes volunteered his

services as an engineer, only to be ordered by his good friend General

Pershing to duty as head of the general purchasing board of the army,

which coordinated and directed all purchasing for the United States Army

in Europe. His services during the war and in the hectic days of readjust-

ment won him the Distinguished Service Medal and decorations from Great

Britain, Belgium, France, and Italy. After the 1920 election Harding, im-

pressed with Dawes's financial abilities, offered him the treasury post, but

he turned it down on the grounds that he could save the government more

money as a presidential assistant than as a cabinet member. In 1921 Harding

appointed him as first director of the budget, a position which he firmly

established in the nation's governmental structure. The following year,

with Owen D. Young, he was invited to advise the Allied Powers on the

knotty problem of reparations. His famous plan won him the Nobel peace

prize and unquestionably the vice presidency.

As vice president he took a far more vigorous role in the senate than

had his predecessors. During the Hoover administration, as ambassador to

Great Britain, he did much to smooth over relations between the two

countries, especially in disarmament matters. In January 1932 he resigned

the ambassadorship to serve as director of the hard-pressed Reconstruction

Finance Corporation. That June he returned to Chicago and private life.

His services to Chicago, especially in setting up Lincoln Park and the

World's Fair, had ranked him among the civic leaders of that city. He

died April 23, 1951, at the age of 86.

Ohio readers of this important biography will take keen interest in the

general's Marietta background and in his close association with McKinley.

The young Chicago banker and utilities promoter was one of the Ohio

president's most intimate friends and a frequent dinner and overnight guest

at the White House.

While Bascom Timmons has given us a colorful and fast-moving biog-

raphy of Dawes, he has fallen far short of writing a definitive biography.

His chief source seems to be the voluminous Dawes diary, part of which he

edited as A Journal of the McKinley Years, and from which he draws in

extenso for certain periods. This makes for a decidedly one-sided account.

We are at a loss to know what other materials were used, since Timmons

fails to give footnotes or list a bibliography--there is no preface or fore-

word to give us a clue to these important matters. At some points it appears

• 13
 

Book Reviews                           207

 

that the only other sources were newspaper accounts. Could it be that

Timmons used only the diary and a newspaper scrapbook? A second major

criticism lies in the insufficient amount of background material for a full

understanding of Dawes. The campaign of 1896, the Dawes Plan, the

spectacular and questionable $80,000,000 R.F.C. loan to the Dawes Bank

in 1933, to name a few examples, are superficially treated and always with

carefully chosen words of praise for Dawes's role. So slight is this back-

ground that the reader feels that he has slipped from 1896 to 1932 in a

matter of minutes, merely tasting rather than fully savoring the life of the

man. There is no sense of the deep change in American life during these

turbulent decades. Finally, Timmons does not give us a convincing portrait

of Dawes the man. There are a few anecdotes and stories, including the

general's preference for the underslung pipe, but there is little of his personal

tastes, his reading habits, his dress, and so forth. If Dawes ever took a

vacation, we do not learn of it. And certainly Mrs. Dawes and his children

deserve better than the few lines they receive here. "Caro," Mrs. Dawes,

remains a colorless figure to the reader, and the marriage of Carolyn Dawes

is never recorded.

Because it includes large excerpts from the Dawes diary, this biography

will be a valuable book for the historian. But "Hell'n' Maria," how much

better it could have been!

Ohio State University                             EVERETT WALTERS

 

Victorian Architect: The Life and Work of William Tinsley. By J. D. Forbes.

(Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1953. xiv+153p.; illustrations,

bibliographical notes, and index. $5.00.)

John Douglas Forbes, in presenting the life and work of William Tinsley,

Victorian architect, has pioneered into an important area of research in the

history of American architecture. As befits a professor of history of the fine

arts (Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana) and editor of the Journal

of the Society of Architectural Historians, Mr. Forbes has carefully sought

out regional documentary evidence for his subject, both in archives and in

buildings, many of which are still standing in southeastern Ireland and in

Indiana, Ohio, and Wisconsin, to testify to the importance of William

Tinsley as a citizen and as an architect. The buildings in turn, especially

those in America, proclaim the characteristics of a somewhat historically

neglected epoch of midwestern culture from 1851, when William Tinsley

with his large family arrived in New York from County Tipperary, Ireland,

until 1885, when he died in Cincinnati, Ohio.

• 14
 

208      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

Several important themes present themselves as the author proposes and

attempts to answer such questions as: how did a young man learn the art

and discipline of building in post-Napoleonic Ireland; what were the prob-

lems and functions of the architect-builder in the two rather diverse en-

vironments of Ireland and midwestern America; how did the architect

become involved in religion and politics; what was the dependence on

monuments and publications during a period notoriously eclectic in archi-

tectural style. The answers to such questions may be sought in the two

chronological, geographical divisions of the work, the Irish phase and the

American phase. The reader becomes conscious of such general themes as

the European contributions to the ingredients of the "melting pot" of

America; expanding frontiers and the hardships involved; the Protestant

movement centering in Methodism; the educational as well as the religious

problems of a rapidly increasing population; the aesthetic problems, or lack

of recognition thereof, in a new social environment. Running through the

whole intricate design of the social backdrop is the golden thread of a

sincere and rugged individual.

As material for architectural biography, William Tinsley was himself

monumental. Tinsley's own efforts to comprise an autobiography not having

matured beyond rough manuscript form, Mr. Forbes has done a real service

in recording such a remarkable career, or two careers, as it were, one in

Ireland and one in America, with three marriages, numerous children, and

an impressive list of homes, churches, colleges, and public buildings to prove

his energy. Yet withal, the man Tinsley hardly comes to life on the well-

illustrated pages of the book. It would need a Tolstoy, or at least a

Galsworthy, to cope with the spiritual intricacies of such a character. Mr.

Forbes is not writing fiction but giving facts well documented and scholarly

presented.

Clearly emerging from the data is the impression of the Victorian Age

with all its amazing vitality, economic development, class consciousness,

religious frustration, social standards, and evidently much misunderstanding

of the architectural styles they sought to adapt for their own aesthetic ex-

pression. Thanks to this publication, William Tinsley may take his place as

a provincial companion of Pugin, Scott, Tennyson, Ruskin, and the illustrious

who hovered around the romantic radiance emerging from the throne of

Queen Victoria, supported by the aesthetics of the prince consort. Historically

the Victorians have come of age.

Ohio State University                             RALPH FANNING

• 15
 

Book Reviews                           209

 

Ohio Government, State and Local. By Albert Henry Rose. (St. Louis,

Educational Publishers, 1953. xxv+452p.; illustrations, charts, sugges-

tions for further reading, appendices, and index. $7.50.)

The author, a professor of political science at the University of Dayton,

exerts in the Foreword: "This work is offered as a complete guide to the

state and local governments and is intended as a textbook for the student of

Ohio government, for people of the professions, for the service of school

libraries, public libraries, and even as a convenient desk copy for the

harassed official in the government office."

To a considerable degree this work measures up to the intention of the

author. The usefulness of the volume has been enhanced by the varied

illustrations and charts and by numerous appendices. Suggestions for addi-

tional reading, furthermore, are found at the end of various chapters.

Certainly a prodigious amount of labor has entered into the preparation

the material presented. The rather complex organization, however, may

cause many to find it more useful as a reference work than as a classroom

text. It is unfortunate, moreover, that proofreading has been carelessly

preformed. Lyndhurst village (p. 27), Beverley W. Bond, Jr. (p. 45),

Alfred E. Binkley (p. 249), Francis R. Aumann (p. 250), and Richard

Banta (p. 295) are misspelled in the main part of the text, as is ballot in

index (p. 443).

Various unimportant contributions are mentioned in the bibliographical

suggestions, but the six-volume History of the State of Ohio (edited by Carl

Wittke) fails to receive notice. Inquiry, moreover, would easily have secured

information that Arthur C. Johnson (p. 317) has died since 1949, and

that his position as president of the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical

Society was later filled by Arthur Hamilton.

These, however, are minor considerations, and the work should do great

sufice as a guide for thousands who are vitally interested in the functioning

state and local government in Ohio.

Ohio State University                    FRANCIS P. WEISENBURGER

 

The Wild Ohio. By Bart Spicer. (New York, Dodd, Mead and Company,

953. 328p. $3.00.)

This book--Bart Spicer's first historical novel--by intention is supposed

break new ground. It was touted as a story of high adventure, swift

but colorful, set against a background of frontier settlements, hostile

wilderness, and uncharted rivers.

• 16
 

210      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

It is really only a few of those things. It does break new ground--being

the story of the founding of Gallipolis, Ohio, city of the Gauls. The story

of the little company of French emigres has seldom been told in fiction--and

it is a fabulous, incredible, sorrowful tale.

Basically, it would be a story of high adventure, but under Mr. Spicer's

treatment, it pales, and he rarely does justice to the material. As he tells it,

it is neither swift nor colorful; most readers will have little trouble putting

it down. Perhaps he dwells overmuch and undeservedly on the long journey

from Virginia to Fair Haven, Ohio, later named Gallipolis. That part of

the narrative consumes all but 90 of the book's 330 pages, and seems rather

a preface to the real drama of the story--the settlement of the four hundred

in Ohio.

All the elements for a stirring true adventure are here--fascinating historic

figures like Rufus Putnam, Arthur St. Clair, and the French noblemen who

journeyed to the Free World, knee buckles, plumed hats, and all, to take

up their regal residence; their women, noble and not; the American soldiers,

Colonel Duncan Crosbie and Captain Nathaniel Blanchard, commissioned

to guide them to their purchased lands--and others. The tale is one of the

most interesting and shameful in American annals--natural story and movie

material. But what action Mr. Spicer gives it often seems awkward and too

slowly paced. His style is natural and simple--almost styleless. It is

amazingly un-selfconscious--a rare treat in these days of 900-page self-

impressed verbiage on unimportant subjects. There is little studied or

contrived in the book; perhaps it would have built more movingly if there

had been. The death of Lucie, for example, the paramour of a French

traitor, seems baseless so far as the text is concerned. Very little sympathy

builds for her when she should have been the most pathetic figure in the

book.

The weaknesses seem to be in story technique. More economical selection

of material and careful attention to building empathy would immensely help

the telling of this thrilling, human story. Mr. Spicer, who is honorably

known for his series of mystery stories featuring Carney Wilde, will no

doubt do a much more absorbing second novel as he becomes experienced in

historical fiction.

Columbus, Ohio                             ARDIS HILLMAN WHEELER

 

Churches in the Buckeye Country: A History of Ohio's Religious Groups

Published in Commemoration of the State's Sesquicentennial. Compiled

by the Religious Participation Committee of the Ohio Sesquicentennial

• 17
 

Book Reviews                          211

 

Commission. (Columbus, the Committee, 1953. ⁷1p.; index. Paper,

$0.75; cloth, $2.00.)

In connection with the sesquicentennial celebration of statehood in Ohio

(1953) it was fitting that religious groups should endeavor to summarize the

contributions of the churches in the development of the state. The publi-

cation here reviewed, in the form of an attractive brochure, is the fruit of

that effort, under the chairmanship of the Rev. W. Henry Shillington of the

Ohio Council of Churches. The material consists of sections on the Roman

Catholic, Jewish, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant churches in Ohio, with

an introduction by Gov. Frank J. Lausche and a brief discussion of "The

Importance of Religion in the History of Ohio" by Arthur Hamilton,

president of the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society. The

section on Protestantism is divided into forty-one parts, each being a treat.

ment of one denominational group.

The authors of the various portions are generally those who have culti-

vated a definite interest in religious history. Thus, for example, the part

dealing with the Disciples of Christ is written by Henry K. Shaw, pastor in

Elyria, who has recently published a history of his denomination in Ohio.

That dealing with the main body of Presbyterians is written by James H.

Brown, now a pastor in Mansfield, who secured a Ph.D. degree at the

University of Pittsburgh in the field of pioneer church history. The Diocese

of Southern Ohio in the growth of the Protestant Episcopal Church is

discussed by Ann N. Hansen, an M.A. from Ohio State University, who has

recently done research on St. John's Church, Worthington, the oldest

Episcopal congregation west of the Allegheny Mountains.

The religious leaders concerned with this project are to be commended

for taking time in the midst of manifold duties to concern themselves with

the historical aspects of their organizations.

It is to be regretted however, that a more balanced and comprehensive

treatment was not attempted. As much space is given to the Moravians,

always insignificant in numbers in Ohio, as to the Methodists, the largest

Protestant denomination in the state. Many of the accounts, moreover, fail

to follow the denominational activities beyond the pioneer period, as is the

case of such an important group as the Presbyterians.

The publication is a praiseworthy achievement, but it makes only a feeble

beginning in relation to the story of the "Churches in the Buckeye Country."

Ohio State University                    FRANCIS P. WEISENBURGER

• 18
 

212      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

Mary Lincoln: Biography of a Marriage. By Ruth Painter Randall. (Boston,

Little, Brown and Company, 1953. xvii+555p.; illustrations, notes, biblio-

graphy, and index. $5.75.)

Mary Todd, a plump Kentucky belle, went husband-hunting in Spring-

field, Illinois. She married Abraham Lincoln in a hastily arranged ceremony

that followed a broken engagement, and the cause of the estrangement still

is a mystery. Children began to arrive with becoming regularity. Lincoln,

even when love was young, remained away from home for weeks at a time

when riding the legal circuit. His fellow attorneys took note.

In Washington as the wife of a president, Mary created a sensation with

her low neck dresses and costly finery. She meddled in public affairs and

carried on secret correspondence with generals, politicians, and all manner

of public men. One was the crafty and dangerous James Gordon Bennett,

publisher of the New York Herald, who planted a correspondent and spy

right in the White House. She exposed herself to malicious gossip by

making trips to New York with a railroad executive. She overspent an

appropriation to redecorate the White House and tried to connive with

cabinet members to cover up for her. She juggled White House accounts.

She brought her widowed half-sister to the White House to live after her

rebel general husband was killed.

She repeatedly tipped off her friends to impending military movements.

She went deeper and deeper into debt to buy fine clothes, although the

country was fighting for its life. She played at smart resorts while Lincoln

battled to save the Union. She was accused of spying for the Confederates,

and Lincoln was compelled to make a public denial to congress.

Her jealousy of Lincoln, while she herself was "clever" with men, was

the talk of Washington society. She refused to let him lead the grand

march at balls with any woman but herself. She went "berserk" at an army

review when the wife of General C. C. Ord rode beside Lincoln, and

vulgarly berated both the lady and the president in the presence of General

and Mrs. Grant and other high officials until forcibly restrained.

Throughout her married life she was subject to "physical seizures"; she

performed wild outbursts; she insulted her husband in the presence of

others. Her "emotional instability" made it uncertain what she would do or

say under any circumstances. This, then, was the woman Lincoln endured all

his life. Only a Lincoln could have done it. The author insists Lincoln

loved her deeply. He must have.

The book written by Mrs. Randall could have become one of the great

Lincoln works had it been written objectively. That it was not is a matter

of regret among Lincoln scholars. The weakness of the book lies in the

fact that the author always excuses Mary, tries to explain away her terrible

• 19
 

Book Reviews                         213

 

faults. Little is added to the world's knowledge of the wife of Abraham

Lincoln, although much is made by the author in claiming new evidence.

but the book does manage to assemble the information into one collection,

and because of that it demands serious attention.

In the Foreword, the author, widow of the late J. G. Randall, Illinois

scholar and historian, states the reason why she wrote the book, saying,

The long result of my collaboration with Mr. Randall . . . was our con-

viction that Mary Lincoln needed a new trial before the court of historical

investigation, that in view of much new material and new means of checking

on some of the 'old' evidence which had been accepted, judgment should

be appealed."

The book that follows is only the plea of the defense attorney (Mrs.

Randall). A strange trial! For the most part, Mrs. Randall, apparently

writing in great anger, appears chiefly concerned with denying the testimony

of the chief witnesses for the prosecution--William  Herndon, Lincoln's

law partner of many years, and his competent secretaries, Nicolay and Hay.

The Ann Rutledge story--which Herndon gave to the world but which

he did not invent--comes in for lengthy attention. It cannot be completely

Proved or disproved. The truth remains there was an Ann Rutledge and

Lincoln did know her. Does the fact that Ann was engaged to a man whose

whereabouts were unknown for years prove that she and young Abe didn't

old hands a few times behind the bushes along the Sangamon? They were

both extremely young, remember. Mrs. Randall apparently bases her blast

against the Rutledge legend on Mary's claim that Lincoln never told her

anything about Ann. We have never known a man who bragged to his

wife of his premarital conquests. Mrs. Randall quotes Edgar Lee Masters'

epitaph for Ann Rutledge, then lampoons it in a parody that makes the

reader retch. Does this prove a single point?

Mrs. Randall viciously attacks the Nicolay and Hay testimony. She

contends they didn't like Mrs. Lincoln, which is true. To them, Mary Todd

Lincoln was the "hell cat" and the "devil's daughter." Although the author

trives mightily, there is nothing in the book to disprove the contention

that Mrs. Lincoln was all that, and perhaps a great deal more.

To offset the testimony of Nicolay and Hay, Mrs. Randall calls on Noah

Brooks, a Washington correspondent for a then obscure newspaper, the

Sacramento Union, and a hanger-on at the White House. Brooks, who wrote

easily, was bucking for the job of White House secretary to replace Nicolay,

and he continually buttered up Mrs. Lincoln. He would have gotten the

job, too, if Lincoln had lived. While Brooks's testimony is surely open to

question, Mrs. Randall accepts it "whole hog," as Lincoln might have said.

The testimony left by William 0. Stoddard, a sort of "No. 3 boy" at the

• 20
 

214      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

White House, whose duties were chiefly that of secretary to Mrs. Lincoln,

is also accepted as gospel. Lincoln later got rid of Stoddard by sending him

to Arkansas.

The book time and again cites Professor Randall's former research

assistant, David Donald, in the attack on Herndon and his reliability.

Herndon can be successfully attacked, it must be granted, but he was not

the viper Mrs. Randall would have us believe. The world owes a debt of

gratitude to Herndon. Would Lincoln have retained him as a law partner

for almost twenty years if he were the despicable person pictured here?

The climax of attack comes in the treatment of Robert Lincoln, the oldest

son. The dust jacket blurb says that "even her son Robert turns against her."

Mrs. Randall, thank goodness, does not go quite that far, but the inference

is there. Robert, in tears, was compelled to go into court to have his mother

declared insane so that he could manage her financial affairs. She was

making a national spectacle of herself, as she did for many years previously,

by crying that she was in dire poverty, even trying to sell her clothing and

jewelry of White House days at a public auction. Robert took action when

his mother started out on one of her notorious shopping sprees with $57,000

in securities in her pocket. Mercifully, Mrs. Randall skips some of the

truth: Mary was also noted for having tried to disrobe on street corners.

The book contends Mrs. Lincoln was not actually insane. The insanity

finding was later lifted and Mrs. Lincoln went to the home of her sister in

Springfield to live out her friendless days in a darkened room, with candles

lit at noon, the storeroom floor sagging beneath the weight of finery

purchased on "shopping tours."

Others than ourself have observed that the book seems to fall into two

parts. The first is excellent; the evidence is submitted, the chips fall where

they will. In the second, every excuse for Mrs. Lincoln is offered, and at the

end, the author is fairly screaming and shouting that this poor woman has

been misjudged by the world. Maybe so, but we still are not convinced.

Ohio State Archaeological                          ROBERT S. HARPER

and Historical Society

 

Justice George Shiras Jr. of Pittsburgh, Associate Justice of the United States

Supreme Court, 1892-1903: A Chronicle of His Family, Life and Times.

By George Shiras, 3rd. Edited and completed, 1953, by Winfield Shiras.

(Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1953. xx+256p.; illustrations,

appendix, notes, bibliography, and index. $4.50.)

For sixty years a titillating question in American history has been, Which

justice of the supreme court changed his mind between the first hearing and

• 21
 

Book Reviews                          215

 

the rehearing when the income tax was invalidated in 1894? A contem-

porary scoop by the Chicago Daily Tribune was responsible, it is claimed

here, for the widely held belief that Justice Shiras was the man. More

recent writers have exonerated him without agreeing on who did "vacillate."

The present work submits "every possible hypothesis and every shred of

evidence which have been found in published works or suggested by kindly

advisers," and makes public, presumably for the first time, a letter drafted

by Shiras twenty-one years after the occurrence but never sent. Therein he

shows he did not change his mind about the tax as a whole, but he leaves

open the possibility he might have changed his mind on some part of it.

He does not give all the votes or reveal who actually changed his mind,

questions his biographer concedes are not yet answered definitively.

Save for this episode, Justice Shiras' place in history seems indistinguish-

able from that of any typical member of the supreme court. He had been

a successful Pittsburgh lawyer, only once involved in politics, whose clients

included large corporate interests. His work on the bench could be called

first-class but hardly outstanding. Personally he was a well-educated, urbane,

and amiable gentleman, who after retiring displayed crotchets of the kind

usually associated with distinguished old people. He died in 1924 at the

age of ninety-two.

Descriptions of Pittsburgh's early years and of student life at Yale,

sketches of his fellow justices, a gossipy account of how they conducted

their business on and off the bench, and an outline of the role of the court

in our national life during Shiras' tenure well justify the book's subtitle.

This is an "official" biography, based in part on family papers, which was

started by his son and edited and completed by his grandson, a nephew of

the other. It avoids many of the difficulties inherent in a study of a person

near and dear to the writer, although it cannot be compared to the accom-

plishment of an Edmund Gosse or an Eve Curie. Scholarly and unusually

well written, carefully documented and handsomely published, it contains,

alas, too little of that charm and wit, the vital spark of an ideal biography,

for which the Shiras family has been noted.

Columbus, Ohio                            WALTER RUMSEY MARVIN

 

American Gun Makers. By Arcadi Gluckman and L. D. Satterlee. Second

edition, revised. (Harrisburg, Pa., The Stackpole Company, 1953.

ii+246p.; bibliography. $6.00.)

This book represents a revised second edition of a 1940 publication, in-

cluding the contents of a 1949 supplement to the original work. Primarily

a reference book, it is intended for the serious collector and museum arms

• 22
 

216      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

curator. It is a compilation of over four thousand names of gun makers and

arms inspectors, with brief biographical sketches presented where available.

The 1953 edition differs from that of 1940 in having a vast number of

additional entries and containing for the first time a listing of arms in-

spectors.

Although several typographical errors seen by spot check indicate a degree

of editorial carelessness, this is offset by additional information which will

be welcomed by the researcher. A cursory examination reveals a number of

new Ohio entries with which the reviewer is familiar.

Columbus, Ohio                                ROBERT C. WHEELER

 

The Stark County Story. By Edward Thornton Heald. Volume III, Industry

Comes of Age, 1901-1917. (Canton, Ohio, Stark County Historical So-

ciety, 1952. xv+822p.; maps, illustrations, appendix, bibliography, and

index. $11.00.)

One of the most recent and valuable trends in the study of American

capitalism and its development has been an increasing emphasis upon the

character of men who were (and are) responsible for decisions and actions

which shaped our course. The author of this volume has succeeded in giving

us an appetite-whetting glance at many Stark County men, their essential

economic and social philosophies, their business accomplishments, their

participation in community and civic affairs, and, to a much smaller degree,

their failures. Students will find many valuable clues to fruitful investiga-

tion upon which to base critical appraisals and to point out the interrelation

of the actions of men and events.

Industry Comes of Age is a detailed account of what happened in Stark

County, Ohio, during "an era of unprecedented industrial development."

Although the period emphasized in this volume (third in a series of four)

comprises the years from 1901 to 1917, Mr. Heald actually covers more than

a century. The title is somewhat misleading because much more than indus-

trial history is treated. There are essays on real estate developments, city

governments, school systems, trade associations, labor unions, opera and

movie houses, champion football teams, "unusual persons," and many other

non-industrial aspects of community life. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine

an important situation or an active individual not touched upon in some

manner.

Of the seventy-nine essays, twenty-seven are devoted to men and their

relations with business firms, although it must be said that each chapter is

• 23
 

Book Reviews                          217

 

replete with the names of men in all walks of life. There is Henry Timken

(1831-1910): waggoner's apprentice, carriage manufacturer, gold prospector,

army captain, inventor, innovator, whose best advice--"If you have an idea

which you think is right, push it to a finish; don't let anyone influence you

against it"--seems to have been followed by sons William and Henry during

the coming-of-age years. Henry Ross Jones (industrialist), builder of the

"cradle of alloy steel," investment securities dealer, financial agent for Ford

experiments, steel company president, banker, Welfare Federation organizer,

Community Chest sponsor, was indeed a person of great energy. William

Hoover and his three sons, leather goods manufacturers, promoters of James

Spangler's sweeper (an invention growing out of the fact that janitor

Spangler suffered from asthma), typify the frequent struggles involved in

marketing the product of a new idea.

This type of work almost defies review. Each essay (originally a basis

for radio broadcast) is a separate story, with little attempt at orderly cross

reference or integration. Instead of restricting himself to the subject im-

plied by the title, Heald often gives inordinately long sketches of background,

detailed mention of the numerous firms with which a given individual had

any connections, an itemized account of the charities in which the person

was interested, and even a description of the mortuary establishment having

responsibility for a "fitting" departure from this earth, as well as the

names of both honorary and active pallbearers. Even this detail may be

justified in view of the purpose for which the book was written. This

reviewer assumes the author to have had foremost in mind both the enlighten-

ment of local citizenry and Ohio's sesquicentennial celebration in 1953.

One further criticism which suggests itself is the absence of evaluation on

what has been the net effect upon Stark Countians and the welfare of

Americans in general of the activities of the men, business firms, and other

influences discussed. Each essay has been treated in substantially a similar

manner, presumably to obtain as far as possible an accurate cross sectional

representation of each phase of Stark County's many-sided life. Comparison

between the various contributions of men and organizations is absent.

To Stark Countians particularly, and Ohio people generally, the book

should be of great value in that it gives a brief history of a multitude of

organizations and men, the results of whose influences upon the mid-

twentieth century may now be more profoundly appreciated.

Ohio State University                          DAVID M. HARRISON

• 24
 

218      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

Schuyler Colfax: The Changing Fortunes of a Political Idol. By Willard H.

Smith. Indiana Historical Collections, Volume XXXIII. (Indianapolis,

Indiana Historical Bureau, 1952. xiii+475p.; illustrations, bibliography,

and index. $4.75.)

Schuyler Colfax was a man who had hoped to be president of the United

States, but his lifelong political fortunes fell just short of that goal.

Colfax's career spanned years that were some of the most exciting, stirring,

and stormy in the nation's history. He was born in New York City on

March 23, 1823, the posthumous son of Schuyler Colfax, Sr., whose father,

William Colfax, was commander of George Washington's bodyguard during

the Revolution. When young Colfax was about eleven years of age, his

mother, Hannah Stryker Colfax, married George W. Matthews of Baltimore,

and two years later the family moved to New Carlisle, Indiana. From there,

in 1841, they went to South Bend, where his stepfather had been elected on

the Whig ticket as auditor of St. Joseph County.

Colfax got his start in public life as county deputy auditor through ap-

pointment by his stepfather. He was keenly interested in politics and joined

the ranks of the Whigs. During the years 1841-43 he was a rather frequent

contributor on political subjects to the New York Tribune and formed a

long friendship and became somewhat of a follower of the editor, Horace

Greeley.

The press appealed to Colfax, especially the role that it could play in

politics. In 1845 he bought an interest in the South Bend Free Press,

changed the name to the St. Joseph Valley Register, and made it the Whig

organ of northern Indiana. He maintained an active interest in the paper

until after he had become speaker of the house of representatives.

Stepping up his political activity in Indiana through speeches and through

his paper, Colfax was made a delegate to the Whig national conventions of

1848 and 1852 and sat in the state constitutional convention of 1850. In

1854, when the Republican party was formed, he became a member and

helped it to get started in Indiana.

At this point, Colfax's political popularity was strong enough to send

him from his home district, as a Republican, to the thirty-fourth congress.

In congress he participated in the stormy debates over compromises and

slavery, and over the latter he felt that there could be no compromise. His

fame grew. He took personal interest in fostering improved travel and

delivery of mail in the West, and as chairman of the committee on post

offices and post roads he used his influence to obtain better means of travel

and communications to the West Coast. He was an early advocate of "see

America first" and made several trips across the continent.

The next political swing upward for the rising political idol who had

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Book Reviews                          219

 

his eyes toward the presidency, was his election to the speakership of the

house in 1863, a post he held until 1869, when he became Grant's vice

president. During his speakership and the turbulent years of Reconstruction

he sided with the radical Republicans, and appointed many of them to

important committees.

The peak of Colfax's popularity was reached when he was elected vice

president in 1868. On accepting this office he gave up the important role

he had served in the house, and thereafter his fortunes seemed to take a

downward turn. The subsequent investigations of the Credit Mobilier, in-

volving Colfax rightly or wrongly, caused his popularity, as a public servant,

to fall rapidly. The road that might have taken him to the presidency had

turned off in another direction.

Out of public office, Colfax found by accident that he was an unusually

successful lecturer on Abraham Lincoln, the martyred president. Demand

for his lectures grew faster than his time would allow him to fill. He

crossed the country many times giving his Lincoln lecture; and it was on

such a tour that on January 13, 1885, he died suddenly while changing

trains at Mankato, Minnesota.

Willard H. Smith is to be congratulated for his ably written study of

Colfax's life and times. His book, beautifully printed and carefully edited

by the staff of the Indiana Historical Bureau, is the first objective, balanced,

but sympathetic account written about this controversial leader in American

political history. It replaces the biography of Colfax published in 1886 by

O. J. Hollister, long the accepted source.

The appraisal which Dr. Smith makes of Colfax and his part in the

Credit Mobilier scandals is especially worthy of mention. His careful

examination and use of large numbers of manuscript collections, as well as

printed sources, form the basis of his excellent study. The Hayes Memorial

Library is pleased to have represented in Dr. Smith's sources three of its

manuscript collections containing letters written by Colfax--the Mary

Clemmer Papers, the Schuyler Colfax Manuscripts, and the Papers of

President Rutherford B. Hayes.

Hayes Memorial Library                        WATT P. MARCHMAN

 

Guide to Ohio Plants: A Teaching Manual of Vascular Plants for Use in

Field and Laboratory. By John N. Wolfe, Adolph Waller, S. S. Humphrey,.

and Clara Weishaupt. (Columbus, Long's College Book Company, 1952.

²⁶⁶p.; glossary and index. Looseleaf. $2.75.)

This is a manual designed for the beginner in the identification of local

vascular flora. The increasing interest of Ohioans in the plants around them

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220      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

has emphasized the need for a compact, accurate, and complete manual on

the rich vascular flora of the state. This manual, while not intended as a

flora or catalog, is the first recent attempt to simplify the somewhat lengthy

keys and involved terminology of the more comprehensive manuals for the

student to whom each species is new. In this matter the authors have suc-

ceeded admirably. There are, however, some drawbacks for the beginning

students at institutions other than Ohio State University who are instructed

in a different nomenclature and classification--that represented by Gray's

Manual of Botany, Eighth (Centennial) Edition--Illustrated, as rewritten

and expanded by Merritt Lyndon Fernald. The authors are not unaware of

this, however.

The nomenclature of the Revised Catalogue of Ohio Vascular Plants is

now many years out of date and is now not employed by most schools in

Ohio. Beginning students who have used the Guide at other colleges find

it generally usable and enjoy working with the simplified keys but become

very much confused when it is necessary to use additional references em-

ploying an entirely different system of nomenclature to bring the binomials

up to date. Much time is lost but perhaps not wasted learning two sets of

scientific names.

In the first key, page 1, it is assumed that the freshman will be aware

that his plant is a fern, a fern ally, or a seed plant. A beginner might at

first easily confuse plants of the fern family Salviniaceae with those of the

seed plant family Lemnaceae. An inexperienced student might also consider

the leaves of the Juniperaceae needle-like rather than not needle-like and

become lost in the depths of the key.

A most desirable but somewhat neglected feature is the mention of the

species truly native to Ohio, the naturalized plants, and those plants found

only in greenhouses and gardens. This seems important to the reviewer, for

it is desirable that the beginner in identification know what flora is native

to Ohio and what is not.

Like all manuals at first printing, there are some errors and omissions

which do not at all detract from the manual's present usability but deserve

adjustment before its second printing. Extra addition and correction sheets

are added by the authors with copies from the first printing. The omission

of the genus Cornus and the family Cornaceae from the index is noticeable.

The fern referred to on page 23 in the key as Asplenium pycnocarpon

Spreng. has been considered to be Athyrium pycnocarpon (Spreng.) Tidestr.

by most taxonomists and should be referred to that generic key.

Since this is primarily a manual of identification the authors wisely make

no attempt to mention habitats, as this would have greatly increased both

its bulk and its cost.

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Book Reviews                         221

 

Because of the extent of the flora it covers, this manual should prove

useful to Ohio travelers who have passed the beginner stage and to the

advanced student in botany to whom the keys are such a delight that the

taxonomic perplexities may be completely ignored. The manual serves its

intended use, and we recommend it to all plant-minded Ohio people.

The book is spiral bound and well printed on good paper, possesses a

very good glossary, clean-cut illustrations, and an index.

Ohio University                              ARTHUR H. BLICKLE

 

Planting Corn Belt Culture: The Impress of the Upland Southerner and

Yankee in the Old Northwest. By Richard Lyle Power. Indiana Historical

Society Publications, Volume 17. (Indianapolis, Indiana Historical So-

ciety, 1953. xvi+196p.; illustrations and index, $2.00.)

This volume of the Indiana Historical Society Publications analyzes with

much fresh data the cultural struggle of Yankee and upland southerner in

the Old Northwest and their ultimate blending. Since the New England

"drift" was a generation behind the southern influx, the period 1830-60

receives more attention than the early years of settlement. Also, since much

of Ohio was already settled by 1830 and its cultural composition more than

a simple Yankee-southern blend, this account of a cultural "thirty years'

war" is centered on Indiana and Illinois, where the contenders were well

matched and where physical factors had significant effects. Michigan and

Wisconsin, daughters of New York, require slight attention. The five

chapters in the volume cover Yankee "cultural imperialism," the types and

conditions of men who colonized from both sections, certain geographical

factors (chiefly wet lands, transportation difficulties, and attendant un-

favorable publicity), the problems of social adjustment, and the emergence

of a western culture and regional pride.

Using a wide variety of sources but emphasizing those of grass roots

character such as the manuscripts of the American Home Missionary Society,

family letters, and agricultural and religious periodicals, the author has let

Yankee and southerner state their respective cases with a minimum of com-

ment on his part. The southerner comes off second best, for the Yankee,

more vocal and more literate, has provided the historian with a wealth of

materials about himself and much that is unfavorable about his rival. Proud

of his heritage, he set down on paper how he would make over the West

in Puritan New England's image. Clergymen, teachers, businessmen, and

farmers shared this militant crusading spirit. But the more negative

southerner, behind the barriers of inertia and wet lands, diminished the force

of the Yankee drive and retained southern Illinois and much of Indiana for

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222      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

his own. Even where Yankees and Yorkers held sway, they could not

create another New England. Various factors, chiefly environmental,

changed the pattern. Professor Power concludes, in the Turner spirit, that

the environment triumphed over both cultures and blended them into some-

thing neither Yankee nor southern but "western."

The book covers a wide range of contrasting cultural traits as found in

daily living, such as farming methods, culinary habits, types of buildings,

peculiarities of speech, religious practices, and social customs. The text is

enlivened with apt and interesting quotations of a down-to-earth character

but so numerous that in places this reviewer felt that the author should

have stepped in and summed up for his witnesses. The footnotes, placed

at chapter ends, are quite extensive and take the place of a formal bibli-

ography. For example, the thirty-nine pages of Chapter V are followed by

ten pages of footnotes. A rather surprising omission from the citations is

Buley's The Old Northwest.

Six maps and two photographs illustrate significant points in the text.

The map of routes of travel is inaccurate for the Ohio canal system and

also has Zane's Trace marked on the Cumberland Road as if it extended to

Baltimore. But, in general, the volume is remarkably free from errors.

Both text and footnotes seem to have been proofread with painstaking

thoroughness.

This reviewer's major criticism is not of what the book covers but what it

does not. Although the author in the Foreword concedes that middle

states settlers, European immigrants, southern Quakers, and second genera-

tion Ohioans also affected the melting pots of the Old Northwest, he has

not considered them in this study, believing that Yankee dynamism deserves

special treatment. As a result, the reader sees only the Yankee-southerner

clash. Yet, until someone has performed the difficult task of analyzing these

other and more complex elements, the cultural picture will lack the finer

shadings, for they, too, helped build this part of America.

Ohio State University                        EUGENE H. ROSEBOOM

 

The Indiana Home. By Logan Esarey. With pictures by Franklin Booth and

Bruce Rogers. (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1953. x+122p.;

illustrations. $15.00.)

The Golden Age of Homespun. By Jared Van Wagenen, Jr. (Ithaca, N. Y.,

Cornell University Press, 1953. xviii+280p.; illustrations and index.

$3.50.)

The author of each of these two books describes what he considers to be

the life of the pioneer or early settlers of his part of the country. Mr.

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Book Reviews                            223

 

Esarey deals, of course, with Indiana, and Mr. Van Wagenen, with east-

central New York. In each case the story is confined to the life of the

rural communities, especially to the lives of the farmers. Mr. Esarey begins

his story with the Indian inhabitants of Indiana and carries it to the 1850's;

Mr. Van Wagenen is concerned mainly with the first half of the nineteenth

century, but adds statistics, reminiscences, and other data down to the 1870's.

Mr. Van Wagenen's book is frankly personalized or autobiographical

to a large extent. He frequently draws upon his own recollections or upon

the memories of his relatives, friends, and acquaintances. Census records,

agricultural journals, and other published materials, to which this author

refers frequently, are not used for cold statistical fact or descriptive data;

rather, the reader feels, the author has absorbed the data they reveal into

his personal experience as he has the reminiscences of his father, or of

John Schaeffer, a hired hand on his father's farm, or of old John Brown,

who remembered the tannery at Muttonville. While Mr. Esarey's volume

is not so definitely personalized, the author's vicarious satisfaction in reliving

the pioneer life seems more or less evident. To Esarey the people about

whom he wrote were "our pioneers," "our farmer pioneers," "our settlers,"

people with whom he felt a kinship. Here and there in the book Mr.

Esarey gives his own recollections, and in other spots one suspects that he

is reminiscing. Throughout each book there is a nostalgia and a desire to

return to the "good old days."

The story in each book follows this pattern: People from the East migrate

to the West, where they establish a crude existence in the wilderness. They

live in log cabins, clear the forests, cultivate their crops and gardens with

homemade wooden plows, produce their own food and whiskey, make their

own tools, implements, furniture, candles, soap, clothes, and shoes, and

enjoy companionship at log-rollings, house-raisings, threshing and husking-

bees, and church meetings. Gradually, and primarily through their own

efforts, these pioneers develop the land, build better homes, and produce

surplus crops to ship from their communities and to bring in money with

which to buy manufactured products.

Each of the books tells specifically of the developing process, describing

the homes, the methods of farming, the crops, the tools and implements and

their manufacture, the making of furniture and clothing, the mill and

milling, and other details in the life and work of the people from the late

eighteenth century till about the middle of the nineteenth.

These are both fascinating and well-written books, and both are valuable

especially for the careful detail of their descriptions of tools, implements,

and machinery and methods of operation and production. The Esarey

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224      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

volume will be a collector's item, with its unique cover, its handsome design,

and its pictures by Franklin Booth and Bruce Rogers.

Reading these books has suggested some problems in interpretation. In

the first place, the subjective approach of the authors leads to the implica-

tion that life in their respective rural areas was unique. Actually, rural

life in Esarey's Indiana and Van Wagenen's New York seems to have been

the same in many respects, nor does it seem to have been greatly different

from life in rural areas of other parts of the country, as reported by other

writers. This life, too, to the authors was an isolated one, and to a con-

siderable degree it was primitive, uncomfortable, unhealthy, wearisome,

poverty-stricken, yet wonderful. While there is some truth here, this re-

viewer suggests that the adjectives are applied as a comparison with the

contemporary times of the authors. Is it good historical interpretation to

compare, directly or by implication, the mode of living and methods of

production of the early nineteenth-century western farmer and villager with

those of today? After all, was the ox in their economy much different

relatively from the tractor of today?

What, precisely, was the degree of isolation in the rural areas under

consideration? Did not these areas develop and prosper, for example, as

the general economy of the nation expanded and in relation to that expan-

sion? How much trade and intercourse was actually enjoyed between the

rural areas and the rising towns and the eastern market places? Was life

in the rural areas truly so much more difficult than the lives of many persons

in the East or in the towns and cities of the Middle West?

And what of the people who planted the frontier and later developed it?

Did the same people do both jobs? In other words, how many of the

pioneers--the real ground-breakers--remained after clearing the fields to reap

the harvest, and how many persons came later to prosper after the develop-

ment of the community's economy had begun?

The reviewer has no wish to disparage the significant contribution of the

"pioneer" farmers of this country; neither does he wish to discredit the two

fine books by Esarey and Van Wagenen. He does suggest that their pre-

sentation--the traditional one--lacks perspective.

Ohio State Archaeological                      JAMES H. RODABAUGH

and Historical Society

• 31