Ohio History Journal

Book Reviews

 

 

 

The Barber and the Historian: The Correspondence of George A. Myers and

James Ford Rhodes, 1910-1923. Edited by John A. Garraty. (Columbus:

Ohio Historical Society, 1956. xxiv??156p.; illustrations and index. Paper,

$3.00.)

The publication of this correspondence, first in successive issues of the

Ohio Historical Quarterly during 1955 and now in book form, is a note-

worthy event on several counts. In the first place, the letters give an

intimate view of James Ford Rhodes which adds to our respect for that

historian. He emerges from the correspondence as a man of broad humanity,

humor, and candor, a man unaffected by his fame. There is practically no

condescension (unless one counts the gift of used ties) in his attitude

towards his correspondent, a Negro barber, who had once served him in

Cleveland. He had his private jokes with Myers. The two discussed pro-

hibition, for example, in a bantering tone only possible where mutual respect

exists. Rhodes even permitted a plaintive note of envy to creep into one

letter. "In many ways," the historian wrote his friend, "you are in an en-

viable position. You are in a growing city, in a good hotel and see most

people worth knowing who talk confidentially with you. May you continue

to live long and prosper" (p. 100).

Rhodes's admiration for Myers (an admiration abundantly reciprocated)

was well merited, for the barber was an uncommonly talented man. Mem-

bers of the historical profession and laymen alike are grateful to have this

portrait of a little known, all-but-forgotten man to add to the roster of

remarkable American Negroes. Myers possessed sharpness and toughness of

intellect, shrewd judgment, combined with character, forthrightness, humor,

magnanimity, and sensitivity of feeling. Few men are capable of speaking for

an oppressed people with the balance of good sense and moving sincerity

which Myers summons to the cause of the Negro in the United States.

This brings us to the second reason why this is a notable publication.

These letters contribute significantly to an understanding of the Negro

psychology in politics and aid in explaining why the Negro remained so

long allied to the Republican party which reformers identified with privilege

and reaction. The answer is this. The old-line Republican leaders like

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McKinley, Hanna, Foraker, Taft showed more sympathy and respect for

the colored man in politics than did the "lily-white" T. Roosevelt Pro-

gressives, the "segregationist" Wilsonian Democrats, or the labor unions

which discriminated against the black race. Not until F.D.R.'s New Deal

did reformers aid materially this minority group and bring about a political

revolution in Negro voting habits.

A third contribution of this correspondence is the unforgettable portrait

which Myers limns of Marcus Alonzo Hanna, a portrait which adds sharpness

and depth to Herbert Croly's characterization. "Uncle Mark," who had

married Rhodes's sister, was the barber's hero, yet a life-and-blood hero, not

a shadowy, pale paragon. As an example of Myers' power of characterization,

on which the historian more than once complimented him, this pen por-

trait of Hanna is worth quoting:

 

We knew Mr. Hanna [wrote Myers] to be a rough brusque character with

an indomitable will of his own that respected the rights of no one who stood

in the way of his successful accomplishment of the object he had set out to

accomplish. This of Mr. Hanna as a man. I knew him better as a politician

and one well-versed and trained by him to his methods. It was a question

with him, can you do it? Don't fail, but do it, never mind the other fellow,

so long as the end justified the means. Do it get it done and then let the

other fellow howl. Like the good boss that he was, there was never any

question about expense; Results was what he demanded not expense ac-

counts. Mr. Hanna was a square and honest man, his word once given was

never broken. He neither asked quarter of any political adversary or gave it.

He planned every political coup the same as he would a business deal.

He introduced commercialism into politics and believed that to the victor

belonged the spoils. He neither advocated or practiced the doctrine of Civil

Service. Hence I claim the author in his endeavor to enshroud Mr. Hanna

with angelic qualities in his political dealings, has given to us a new Mr.

Hanna which would not be acceptable even to Mr. Hanna was he alive,

because Mr. Hanna had so much faith in himself, believing his methods to

be honest, above reproach and criticism. (pp. 15-16).

 

Myers does not quibble about his own share in adding to the "com-

mercialism" of politics, frankly acknowledging that he "materially con-

tributed in a 'pure and incorruptible' way, with the prefix left off the

incorruptible" (p. 101) to the game of politics as practiced in the good

"Old Hanna Days." He argued that the use of bribe money in Hanna's

election to the United States Senate in 1897-98 was not "a dishonest act" but

"simply playing the game" (p. 108). Although the defense is a lame one,

it does throw light on the political code of that time.

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Uncle Mark looms largest in these pages, but there is ample commentary

on a host of other Ohio and national political figures of the decades from

1890 through 1920. Although a McKinley-Hanna henchman from 1892

to 1900, Myers had refused political office, preferring the security of his

barbershop in the Hotel Hollenden to the uncertainties of politics. After

1900 he became a political observer entirely rather than a participant, but

his commentary is no less keen, for he enjoyed an inside view into con-

temporary events through the political "greats" who patronized his shop.

They willingly shared confidences with him because he could be trusted to

keep such information to himself. His remarks are almost always shrewd

even though colored by a partisan bias. He was a rabid Republican, con-

servative on the tariff, money, and labor, on everything except the Negro

question. Nevertheless, he can be more harsh in his criticism of some

Republican politicians than of any Democrat. The misconduct of Harry A.

Daugherty as attorney general in Harding's cabinet, for example, did not

surprise Myers, who possessed enough derogatory information to have pre-

vented that Ohio politician's confirmation by the senate. The barber had

little enthusiasm for Theodore Roosevelt, whom Rhodes so much admired.

There is one final contribution which is of marked significance and that

is Myers' commentary on Rhodes's History. He was critical of Rhodes

for not having given the Negro soldier enough credit in the Civil War and

for the treatment of the southern Negro in Reconstruction. As the middle

man he tried to draw Rhodes into a debate with a Negro critic, John R.

Lynch, but the historian refused to break his rule never to indulge in con-

troversies. He did, however, read Lynch's critique, which expressed a point

of view long familiar to him and was generous enough to give the colored

critic the benefit of the doubt on two statements which would be corrected

with proper acknowledgment in the next edition. Myers' comments on the

last volume of the History, The McKinley and Roosevelt Administrations,

are not critical but emendatory. The letter of February 16, 1923, the longest

in the correspondence, is devoted almost entirely to the barber's fascinating

addenda to the Rhodes story.

Professor Garraty of Michigan State University is to be congratulated for

his careful yet unpedantic editing and for the Introduction with its in-

dispensable biographical sketch of George A. Myers. The publishers are to

be commended for the excellent format and for the selection of the striking

portraits of the two principals.

Kenyon College                                    LANDON WARNER

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Freedom's Fetters: The Alien and Sedition Laws and American Civil

Liberties. By James Morton Smith. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University

Press, 1956. Published in co-operation with the Institute of Early Ameri-

can History and Culture. xv??464p.; appendix, bibliographical note, and

index. $5.00.)

The use of fear of foreign attack as a weapon to silence domestic political

opponents constitutes by now a fairly familiar technique in the history of

all political parties. But in 1798, in what Jefferson called the "reign of

witches," the four measures collectively titled the Alien and Sedition Laws

were by far the most flagrantly abusive the modern world had yet seen.

Under them the safeguards of the Bill of Rights were conveniently ignored,

to the point that mere spiteful words were branded as seditious and their

utterers banished to terms in prison. Thus, one Jedidiah Peck was charged

with criminally circulating a petition for redress of grievances; Harrison

Gray Otis accused the Jeffersonians of treason on the ground that they

opposed the alien bill itself; and Matthew Lyon, a congressman, went to

prison for sedition for referring in a newspaper letter to President Adams'

"continual grasp for power" and his "unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp,

foolish adulation or selfish avarice." The number of arrests, indictments,

and convictions for similar offenses ran into the hundreds.

To contemporary ears calloused by the magnificent name-calling of the

last twenty years, these are indeed almost mere ripples in the sound waves

of political discord. Nowadays the tongue is more clever, the stakes perhaps

higher, the attack more varied with the use of nuance and inference; but

the essential design remains the same. Where the Federalists sought to

intimidate those who denied the exclusive right of the wealthy and well-

born to govern, the contemporary neo-Federalists seek, essentially for the

same reason, to silence those who dissent from the existing social, political,

or economic order.

Mr. Smith, avoiding what must have been a powerful temptation, has

studiously refrained from drawing the obvious painful analogies to more

recent events, but they emerge by implication nonetheless. Instead of the

French we now have the specter of Russian communism as the revolutionary

force to be defeated at all costs; and instead of unconstitutional enactments

followed by equally unconstitutional arrests, trials, and convictions, we now

have an attempt at a semblance of respectability by the use of the so-called

congressional "investigation," a word currently earning a new meaning in

English usage. It is, indeed, debatable whether the extremists of the

eighteenth century, with the use of criminal statutes, or those of the twentieth,

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with the use of congressional committees, are the more despicable. The

victims themselves, given a choice, might be hard pressed to choose be-

tween a term in jail or a lifetime of public disgrace, financial ruin, and

professional excommunion.

Mr. Smith's book is neatly readable and so rich in detail one imagines

he resisted vigorously all pressures to discard any morsel uncovered in his

research. This is, of course, not intended as adverse criticism; on the con-

trary, the book is the ablest and probably most definitive account yet

written of the nation's earliest tyranny.

 

Columbus                                               MILTON FARBER

 

Frontier Politics and the Sectional Conflict: The Pacific Northwest on the

Eve of the Civil War. By Robert W. Johannsen. (Seattle: University of

Washington Press, 1955. xiii??240p.; illustrations, bibliography, and

index. $5.00.)

Politically speaking, the Pacific Northwest in the late ante-bellum period

consisted of Oregon, organized as a territory in 1848 and admitted to the

Union eleven years later, and Washington territory, carved from Oregon

in 1853. Because of Oregon's advanced position and its greater population,

it receives major attention in Frontier Politics and the Sectional Conflict.

The clash in this remote area was less potent than in older portions of the

United States; despite remoteness and isolation, sectional issues acquired

impressive significance. Frontier Politics repeats some of the old story of

sectional conflict as perspective; greater space is devoted to a new analysis

of the local scene. Dr. Johannsen makes two contributions in this premise:

he disentangles the complex factionalism of the Pacific Northwest, and he

indicates clearly variations from the national pattern wrought by frontier

influences.

Quite appropriately the study begins with sources of settlers and their

attitudes toward slavery. Some New Englanders created discord, but a

border state attitude toward slavery and the free Negro prevailed; the

views of extremists, whether abolitionists or fire-eaters, were rejected. Per-

haps the most significant variation from the northern pattern was Republican

acceptance of popular sovereignty, an endorsement determined by conviction

as well as expediency. To Oregon pioneers that principle meant self-

government. The convergence in Oregon of Douglas Democrats and Re-

publicans on this issue reached a climax in 1860, when cooperation led to

the election of Republican Edward D. Baker and Democrat James W.

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Nesmith to the United States Senate. The stalwart Joseph Lane was thus

repudiated after the Breckinridge wing of the Democracy made him the

party's candidate for the vice presidency.

While popular sovereignty was the foremost issue among the three

Oregon parties, the homestead and Pacific railroad proposals were advocated

by Republicans; but as Democrats also endorsed these measures effective

use by Republicans was diminished. Neither Douglas Democrats nor Re-

publicans accepted unqualifiedly the national platform of their party. Election

results varied from the northern pattern. Only one other free state chose

Lincoln electors by a plurality, and only one other gave Breckinridge a

larger vote than Douglas. After the war began, Union sentiment in the

Pacific Northwest increased: many Douglas Democrats were converted to

support of the Lincoln administration, and a remnant of the Breckinridge

group became a Copperhead faction. But conservatism was everywhere ap-

parent: Oregon had two Douglas Democrats in the United States Senate

and another in the governor's chair.

Frontier Politics is essentially a study of events and movements, but

there are valuable notes on a score of Pacific Northwest politicians, most

of them little known beyond the area. Dr. Johannsen could have enhanced

the value of his volume if he had introduced an occasional comparison of

northwestern politics with the sectional clash on the contemporary Kansas

frontier. Historians in search of social and economic factors that supposedly

affected political alignments will be disappointed in his book. Such factors

are suggested here and there, but he adheres closely, perhaps wisely, to

his political and sectional theme. The author should be commended for

achieving his major purpose.

University of Oregon                WENDELL HOLMES STEPHENSON

 

The American Presidency. By Clinton Rossiter. (New York: Harcourt Brace

and Company, 1956. 175p.; appendices and index. $2.95.)

This book is the direct outgrowth of the author's Walgreen lectures at

Chicago this spring, and indirectly the distillation of a course in the subject

he has given at Cornell for some years. It has already reached the drug-

stores and airports in a paper-backed edition, too. It deserves the widest

circulation it can get, for in small compass it says more, and says it more

readably, than anything of similar scope on the subject that has appeared.

Only the first of the six chapters, which sketches the powers of the

presidency under a half dozen functional categories, is conventionally

familiar. The third, on the presidency in history, as the office came from

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the framers and as it has been molded by strong presidents, is also familiar

but more freshly written. The second, on the limits of the presidency,

reminds us of reasons why the recurrent cries of presidential "dictatorship"--

as distinct from occasional lapses into abuse of power--have never in

practice materialized from the images conjured up in partisan argument.

The meatiest chapter, the fourth, on the modern presidency, analyzes

with perception the major transformations in the character of the office

over the past three decades: the president's working relations with congress,

his exploitation of new channels of communication, his role of Protector of

the Peace--a "one-man riot squad"--and the institutionalization of his

office in the staff of the executive office of the president. In this chapter

too are a few pages of good sense on the "frustrating office" of vice president.

In his spiciest chapter, the fifth, on the modern presidents, he ventures

to rank Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower among their predecessors, in

anticipation of the verdict of future historians. It is an intrepid essay and

his estimates will surprise or shock a good many readers--he gives Eisen-

hower only "a reasonable chance" of measuring up to Truman's stature, for

instance. But they are disarmingly labelled as opinions, and they are based

on eight criteria, stated at the outset and applied without fear or favor

to one and all.

The last chapter, on the presidency reconsidered, mulls judiciously over

the various proposals for change that have been agitated. Rossiter plumps

for an item veto, regrets the twenty-second amendment, and would be

willing to try an experiment with an executive-legislative council, but other-

wise he would leave the institution to elbow its own way in the future.

Rossiter's previous writings have brought him acclaim which this book

should enhance. They have also given him the reputation of a conservative.

It is an ironic commentary on the ambiguity of that label that long con-

templation here has led him to admire the object of his gaze principally

because of its dynamic responses to democratic needs, and to oppose changes

in it because of its capacity for adaptation.

Ohio State University                         HARVEY C. MANSFIELD

 

Wilderness Christians: The Moravian Mission to the Delaware Indians.

By Elma E. Gray in collaboration with Leslie Robb Gray. (Ithaca, N.Y.:

Cornell University Press, 1956. xi??354p.; illustrations, maps, appendix,

bibliographical note, and index. $5.00.)

In missionary work among the American Indians in colonial times the

Moravians of Pennsylvania played a small but vital role. From their center

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at Bethlehem the emissaries of the church of the Unitas Fratrum went among

the Delawares and established missions upon the Delaware and Susquehanna

rivers. At these centers little bands of Christian Indians were maintained

under their tutelage and strict supervision, for the Moravians were exacting

in their standards. The Delawares on the other hand were degenerate from

the white man's influence and were dominated by the powerful Iroquois

Confederacy of New York. Intercolonial wars and later the Revolution

placed these Christian Indians in a compromising position. The Moravians

were pacifists and taught their charges to be neutrals. When the Delawares

went to war the "Wilderness Christians" were suspected by both sides,

and repeatedly were forced to move on, farther west in Pennsylvania, and

then to new settlements at Gnadenhutten and Schoenbrunn on the Mus-

kingum River in Ohio. During the Revolution, John Heckewelder and David

Zeisberger strove to preserve the mission way of life, while both British

and Americans suspected that neutrality was but a cloak for secret aid to the

enemy. Some of their towns were destroyed and they moved on again to

Detroit, and then to Ontario, Canada. At Detroit of course they were on dis-

puted ground after the Revolution. Americans quite naturally looked upon

them as British tools during British occupation. Their eventual settlement

along the Thames River brought them under the Canadian Indian Office. It

was their misfortune to be in the path of the American invasion during the

War of 1812, when again they received harsh treatment. For some time the

settlements at Fairfield and New Fairfield (after 1812) were model com-

munities, but as new settlers poured in and new economic, social, and religious

interests affected them they gradually lost their grip. Was it the disappearance

of the old missionary spirit among their leaders, the weakening of mission

Indians themselves, or the impossibility of the old and strict communal

Christianity in the new era? At any rate, the experiment came to an end and

is marked today only by some physical survivals--the church at New Fairfield

and the descendants of the Christian Indians.

This tragic story, with its succession of migrations and frustrated ventures

and its record of privation and self sacrifice on the part of the devoted

missionaries, has been told by Mrs. Gray with sympathy and warmth. She

had a wealth of material in the Moravian diaries and other sources in the

Moravian archives, and she has diligently followed her subjects in field

research. She writes well and has illumined her story with fascinating details

of life in the wilderness and its effect upon these pioneers. The progress of

the missionary effort, with its achievements as well as failures, is of course

the major theme. Missionary diarists, however, tend to cast an optimistic

glow of hope over the most distressing and unpromising ventures, and it

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requires some objectivity to keep the picture in balance. And there is also

at times much tedious detail in the records of the families of the

missionaries.

This story has already received some attention from students of Penn-

sylvania German culture, its migration through Ohio, and its survival in

Canada. Mrs. Gray has dwelt with evident pleasure upon the German

customs, cooking, and crafts as they were exercised by the Moravians and

their charges. There is an anachronism, however, when she mentions

lithography (invented about 1796) as one of the crafts practiced by the

Moravians in the colonial period (p. 27).

On the whole the treatment is scholarly and well documented and few

errors have been noted. There is an incorrect translation of the Indian name

of Joseph Brant, Thayendanegea (p. 112). One would anticipate some bias

in a work on a religious group, and one notes that other denominations in

the Indian field, such as the Methodists and Anglicans, get unfavorable

comment in their few contacts with the Brethren. Illustrations and two maps

indicating present-day and former locations embellish the book. Yet the

reader may wish with the reviewer that one map might have traced the

various migrations.

Albany, New York                             MILTON W. HAMILTON

 

The Mackinac Bridge Story. By Prentiss M. Brown. (Detroit: Wayne State

University Press, 1956. [xii]??25p.; diagrams. $1.00.)

In 1948 the Detroit Historical Society instituted an annual program known

as the Lewis Cass Lecture, in which a subject of current historical interest was

to be presented to the society and later distributed in published form. In

the years that followed, lectures on variegated historical subjects have been

given by Stanley Pargellis, Raymond C. Miller, Frank Woodford, R. Darwin

Burroughs, S. K. Stevens, and Milo M. Quaife. The seventh of these

lectures, which has to do with the building of the Mackinac Bridge, was

presented in May 1955 by Prentiss M. Brown and now appears in published

form. The story of this great bridge, which, when completed, will join the

northern and southern peninsulas of Michigan, is of great interest to the

people of Michigan, and Mr. Brown, a former president of the Detroit His-

torical Society and the Michigan Historical Commission, is uniquely qualified

to tell the story. Born in St. Ignace, Michigan, he has been a lawyer, prose-

cuting attorney, congressman, United States senator, federal administrator,

business executive, and perhaps more importantly for the purpose of this

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subject the chairman of the Mackinac Bridge Authority which finally suc-

ceeded in getting the bridge under construction. The magnitude of this enter-

prise is impressive. Extending 8,614 feet from cable anchorage to cable

anchorage, the Mackinac Bridge will exceed the next largest suspension

bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge, by 2,164 feet. Although the Mackinac

Bridge Authority, which was established in 1950, was the body which set the

final activities into motion, the bridge, when completed, will be the creation

of many hands, as public-spirited citizens of Michigan have been dreaming,

planning, and working on this project since 1884. Mr. Brown describes all

of these painstaking efforts in this informing little case-study of American

democracy at work. He has done a good job.

Ohio State University                         FRANCIS R. AUMANN

 

Tecumseh, Vision of Glory. By Glenn Tucker. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill

Company, 1956. 399p.; frontispiece, maps, bibliographical note, and index.

$5.00.)

Tecumseh was perhaps the greatest of several American Indians who

visualized the potential significance of a confederation of tribes to check the

encroachment of the whites. Son of a Shawnee father and of a Muskogee

Creek mother, he was born on the banks of Mad River in what is now the

state of Ohio. When Ohio entered the Union, Tecumseh, probably in his

thirties, was able to recognize the deterioration among the Indians, the in-

exorable expansion of the frontier, and the unpromising future of his and

the neighboring tribes. With the aid of his brother, the Prophet, who

preached reformation to the redskins, Tecumseh sought to unite the tribes-

men in a confederation which could give military backing to his refusal to

cede more land to the United States. His particular opponent was William

Henry Harrison, who defeated the Prophet and his braves while Tecumseh

sought unsuccessfully to secure allies among the southern Indians. When the

War of 1812 commenced, Tecumseh joined the British to defeat Harrison,

but was killed in the Battle of the Thames.

The author tells us that he devoted some attention to the accounts written

by individuals who knew Tecumseh or who participated in the events of his

life, but that he did not confine his writing to such first-hand accounts. At

times no supporting evidence is presented as in this hard-to-accept statement:

"[Tecumseh] was acquainted with Shakespeare and the Scriptures and under-

stood the campaigns of Hannibal and Alexander the Great" (p. 15). The

author also wrote: "I have approached my subject as an amateur and have

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tried to pursue it with the diligence, nostalgia and imagination of an

amateur" (p. 382).

The extent of Tucker's exaggeration of Tecumseh's role may be quickly

grasped from his own words: "Three months after the declaration of war by

the United States against Great Britain, Tecumseh was at the summit of his

spectacular career. No other Indian had wielded such power. The domain . . .

[of no Indian leader compared] to the prairie empire [dominated by

Tecumseh]. . . . Authority . . . rested in the hands of this one man" (pp.

14-15). This picture ignores the results of the Battle of Tippecanoe on

the Indian confederation and does not credit the English Indian department

for arousing Indians to cooperate with General Henry A. Proctor's army.

The picture in respect to the English is also erroneous. Tucker accepted

the statements of General Isaac Brock as though they were both complete

and accurate, but rejected American statements as untrue. Tucker stated that

Tecumseh did not visit Canada until November 15, 1810 (p. 175), but

the Diary of William Claus on June 13, 1808, reads: "The Prophet's

Brother and party arrived." The author also wrote that the motives of Sir

James Craig, governor general of Canada, "were most friendly to the United

States (p. 172)," and that "It was not the British who urged Tecumseh to

war, but Tecumseh who urged the British" (p. 172). On the contrary, Craig

had urged securing the Indians to the British interest as early as December

1807 (Canadian Archives, 107 Q 209). The Chesapeake-Leopard Affair of

June 22, 1807, caused the Canadian officials to realize the possibility of war

with the United States at the time Napoleon was at the height of his power.

The reinstatement of Mathew Elliott as superintendent of Indian affairs at

Amherstburg (Malden), the key post in relation to the tribesmen in the

United States, indicated the direction of Canadian policy. Elliott had been

a leader of the Indians under Lieutenant Governor Henry Hamilton against

the American frontier during the Revolution. Even a Canadian official re-

garded Elliott as too friendly with the Indians, but he was retained in this

critical post from 1808 until his death in 1814. He was a bitter foe of the

Americans. The apprehension of the English cooled somewhat when war did

not occur in 1807, but whenever American relations worsened they resumed

negotiations with the Indians. When they urged the Indians to remain at

peace, they were not merely concerned with peace but with the preservation

of the power of the Indians for future eventualities.

The division of labor between Tecumseh and the Prophet requires more

adequate delineation. Tucker exaggerated the power of Tecumseh but mini-

mized the Prophet.

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This volume should call attention to the lack of a critical biography of

these Indian leaders. Tucker's volume does not fill the need, although the

work is attractive and the story is interestingly told.

Indiana University                             JOHN D. BARNHART

 

So Fell The Angels. By Thomas Graham Belden and Marva Robins Belden.

(Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1956. 401p.; illustrations and index.

$5.00.)

Both in conception and execution this is a remarkable book. It attempts

to present a composite biography of three persons, Salmon P. Chase, his

daughter, Kate, and her husband, William Sprague. This unusual approach

has validity and relevance since the lives of these people affected each other

greatly and, though their characters presented many points of contrast, they

were all dominated by a common trait, ambition.

Chase's ambition was to become president of the United States. By a

strange combination of energy, ability, and just sheer luck he worked his

way up through Ohio politics to become United States Senator and later

governor of the state. Though lacking a national reputation he hoped to

capture the Republican nomination for the presidency in 1860 and was

bitterly disappointed when the voters of Ohio made Lincoln the candidate.

Nevertheless he campaigned for the Republican party and when Lincoln

became president he appointed Chase secretary of the treasury. This office

Chase filled with ability, even distinction, but, courting the favor of the

Radical Republicans, he utilized every opportunity for gaining the nomination

in 1864. Again he failed, but Lincoln, ignoring the scheming, connivance,

and what amounted to disloyalty on Chase's part, appointed him chief

justice of the United States Supreme Court when Taney died in December

1864. Still Chase's lust was unassuaged: he later switched parties in a

desperate but vain attempt to capture the presidency.

Kate's ambition was a mere reflection of her father's but it dominated

her whole life. It was not enough for her to be the most beautiful, the

most brilliant, the most influential, and the richest hostess in Washington.

Her father must be president and to that end she dedicated her life, her

fortune, and, yes, her honor. The ambition of William Sprague was much

more difficult to define: probably what he wanted most was self-respect. He

somehow imagined that he could achieve this by accumulating one of the

largest fortunes of the time (something in the neighborhood of twenty-five

million dollars); by achieving military and political notoriety, if not fame;

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and by marrying Kate Chase. One need hardly add that none of these people

achieved the object of their desires: they all died frustrated and for the

most part unloved and unmourned.

This book then is a character study and as such it succeeds admirably.

But it is more. It is an excellent study in the social history of the Civil War

era. There have been other biographies of Chase and his daughter but

none have succeeded so well in portraying their characters and in bringing an

era to life. William Sprague has been largely ignored by historians but

the authors in uncovering an intensely interesting, if weak and vacillating

character, have added another portrait to the gallery of Civil War figures.

Ohio State University                               HARRY L. COLES

 

The Republicans: A History of Their Party. By Malcolm Moos. (New York:

Random House, 1956. xi??564p.; index. $5.95.)

What is a political party? Students have struggled long and not too

successfully with this proposition. Is it an organization of like-minded indi-

viduals trying to gain political power? Is it merely a loose political body

which attains 50,000 or more votes on election day? Or is it a tightly-knit,

well-disciplined band of doctrinaires seeking to impose its thinking on the

people? In this lengthy treatise, Malcolm Moos does not tell us what a

political party is, but his ample data allows one to prepare his own definition.

The party of Lincoln appears to be composed of vast, unwieldy, hetero-

geneous masses of divergent local and regional groups, whose beliefs vary

from time to time and from state to state.

The problems of writing a political party history become all too apparent

as one pursues this volume. The difficulties of continuity, chronological

balance, and party philosophy are not easily resolved. Without minimizing

the usefulness of the book, it impresses one as a collection of elections and

conventions knotted together by a group of politicians. The action is in a

vacuum; like a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing, the picture is

imperfect.

The political thinking of the Republican party, as with the Democratic

party, has evolved and moved back and forth a bit over the last 100 years.

First, the party of emancipation, it then became the exponent of liberal

capitalism assisting the great industrial expansion of the Gilded Age. De-

cline set in when monopoly capitalism seized the reigns from liberal capi-

talism, but the situation was salvaged by the Progressives, who checked the

unrestrained individualism of the "Robber Barons." Following World War I

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108     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

a decade of backward-looking laissez faireism set in, but this was reversed

under the impact of the New Deal, and a new broader approach toward the

problems of the day emerged with Wendell Willkie. This new approach has

been carried further by Robert A. Taft, who was not the tory he is often

painted, and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Today, although beset by a hard core of reactionaries, the GOP must

look ahead; it must accept much of the paternalism implicit in an industrial

economy, and organize energetically. Its great strength will lie in expanding

suburbia and the new middle class. Fulton Lewis and Raymond Moley will

not be happy in Malcolm Moos' Republican party of the future, but it is

the author's belief that the Republican party must continue to move forward

in the direction of a limited welfare state. Otherwise it will fall apart, and

we will all be Democrats.

In his biennial election analyses, Moos employs the methods of Samuel

Lubell. For example, attention is focused on the voting patterns in high

rent, middle rent, and low rent urban districts instead of on party platforms.

The approach is technical rather than philosophical. Although the writing

is uninspired, and although fresh ideas and interpretations appear but in-

frequently, this is still a very useful book. In view of the difficult task he

attempted, Moos did not do at all badly.

Marietta College                              EUGENE C. MURDOCK

 

Banners in the Wilderness: Early Years of Washington and Jefferson College.

By Helen Turnbull Waite Coleman. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh

Press, 1956. xvii??286p.; illustrations, bibliographical notes, index, and

maps. $4.00.)

This volume endeavors to trace carefully the progressive development of

education on the higher levels in western Pennsylvania, as such efforts

culminated in the coming into being of Washington and Jefferson College,

1865-71. Beginning with log cabin schools of the period starting about 1780,

the lineal development of the educational institutions is traced through

pioneer academies to the establishment of Jefferson College (1802-65) and

Washington College (1806-65) and to their eventual union as Washington

and Jefferson College.

The log cabin schools were largely the result of the pioneer Presbyterian

ministers who founded the first churches of that denomination in Washington

County. Especially important were: Rev. John McMillan, who established a

log school on Chartiers Creek near Canonsburg and whose biography has been

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BOOK REVIEWS         109

 

published by the University of Pittsburgh Press (1952); Thaddeus Dod, who

founded a similar school at Lower Ten Mile or Amity; and Joseph Smith,

who conducted a school at his home at Buffalo, Pennsylvania, between

Washington and Canonsburg. The author asserts that the "schools and

churches founded by these first scholar-missionaries were a fortress between

the wild disorder of the frontier and the spiritual and cultural pattern they

had brought into the wilderness and so distinctively fostered."

The next step in the evolution of these educational institutions was the

chartering, by the general assembly of Pennsylvania, of Washington

Academy at Washington (1787) and the founding of Canonsburg Academy

at the town of that name (1791). The latter institution was formally

chartered in 1794.

Demands for a collegiate institution led to the establishment of Jefferson

College in 1802. Officials of the school were somewhat surprised and dis-

turbed when four years later Washington College at the county seat town

only seven miles away was chartered. At times bitter animosity developed

between the two institutions especially in the years, 1815-17. Financial

necessity and geographical proximity dictated eventual union of the two

colleges, and an offer of $50,000 by the Rev. Charles C. Beatty of Steuben-

ville, Ohio, that was contingent on the union, made such a course practically

inevitable. Whether the combined institution should be at Canonsburg or

Washington was a question which stimulated much controversy, but the

larger importance of Washington numerically and as a county seat town and

the subscription of $50,000 by its citizens eventually settled the matter.

Considerable attention is given to the able leaders of the colleges, curricular

arrangements, religious activities, and extra-curricular trends. Two influential

national college fraternities, Phi Gamma Delta (1848) and Phi Kappa Psi

(1852) were founded at Jefferson College.

The author, a resident of Norristown, Pennsylvania, is not a professional

historian but has spent much time at Washington, Pennsylvania, and has

had the cooperation of successive Washington and Jefferson College presi-

dents, ministers, and other local residents in securing access to pertinent

materials, including many manuscript records. Almost a third of the book

is devoted to bibliographical notes and appendices. In the present period of

high printing costs perhaps some of the appended material might have

been condensed and the space utilized to continue the story from 1871

through the later decades.

Ohio State University                   FRANCIS P. WEISENBURGER

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110     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Published Sources on Territorial Nebraska: An Essay and Bibliography. By

John Browning White. Nebraska State Historical Society, Publications,

XXIII. (Lincoln: Nebraska State Historical Society, 1956. ix??300p.;

appendix and index. $6.00.)

With this book a series which started in 1885 and last had a new volume

appear twenty years ago happily resumes publication. The present work,

which is based on a doctoral dissertation at the University of Nebraska,

gives full bibliographical data and critical notes for all printed sources on

territorial Nebraska that could be located by the author, including many

articles in periodicals and sections of more general writings not primarily

concerned with the state. Separate groupings are major sources, minor

sources of immediate record, other sources (mostly reminiscences), news-

papers, and maps, while two introductory chapters explain the scope and

limitations of the project. One difficulty is that on-the-spot accounts seem

few as against later recollections and fact-gathering. The listing within the

sections is entirely by author, leaving the subject approach to an extensive

index.

Pending the test of actual use no one can be sure whether it would have

been wiser to have a single alphabet except for the newspapers and maps,

making less of the distinction between major and minor sources. Some of

the forms of entry might seem artificial to readers unfamiliar with the library

practices that have been used as the author's standard. It could be also that

certain of the lists of page numbers in the index are too long to serve their

purpose. In any case the work has been carefully and thoroughly done and

should be standard in its field for a long time. Few states are so fortunate

as to have an aid of this sort available for the study of its early history, and

it is to be hoped that the provision of similar basic treatments for other areas

will be stimulated by the appearance of this fine example.

Ohio Historical Society                                GEORGE KIRK

 

John D. Rockefeller, Jr.: A Portrait. By Raymond B. Fosdick. (New York:

Harper and Brothers, 1956. ix??477p.; illustrations, sources and bibli-

ography, and index. $6.50.)

Toward the close of this impressive volume the author remarks that

John D. Rockefeller, Jr., was born into a situation that probably could not,

and certainly should not occur again. "So vast a fortune under single control

runs the risk of being an unhealthy and even hazardous ingredient in any

kind of economic order. It was one of history's felicitous deviations that Mr.

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BOOK REVIEWS          111

 

Rockefeller turned out to be the kind of man he was" (p. 433). Given this

orientation, it is natural that Mr. Fosdick should pay particular attention to

the factors that have made his subject the kind of person he is: modest, re-

served, and deeply impressed by the responsibilities of wealth; driven by a

sense of duty to a life of painstaking activity; and--no less important--

possessed both of a wide range of interests and enlightened attitudes on

social and religious issues.

In evaluating the forces that have shaped Rockefeller's character and

career, Mr. Fosdick gives due emphasis to what J. D. R., Jr., himself called

"the drawbacks and the disadvantages and the inconveniences and the an-

noyances of being the son of a very rich man." Not the least of the hardships

he suffered was deprivation of the satisfaction of earning his own way.

J. D. R., Jr., sorely missed this reassuring experience, for he grew up in an

environment that placed great value on "commercial worth," the ability to get

ahead in the race of life. "In my father's office," he once said, "I wasn't in

a race with anybody. I didn't have to worry that somebody would get my

job.... I really was in a race with myself and my own conscience" (p. 87).

The reference to "my own conscience" is a reminder that J. D. R., Jr.,

inherited more than wealth from his parents. He also inherited, or at least

accepted, their purposeful approach to life, and their standards of personal

conduct and morality. His relations with his father--who emerges as one of

the most engaging personalities in the book--were close, and marked on both

sides by admiration and respect.

If J. D. R., Jr., was happy in his family relationships, he was also for-

tunate in coming into close association during early manhood with Simon

Flexner, George E. Vincent, and other leaders of the philanthropic trusts

created by his father. Mr. Fosdick believes that the younger Rockefeller's

growth in "breadth, tolerance, and catholicity of understanding" was ad-

vanced by the influence of these men, by the wise counsel of W. L. Mackenzie

King, and by the impact of events such as the Colorado strike of 1913-14.

Mr. Fosdick, a former president of the Rockefeller Foundation, has known

J. D. R., Jr., for forty-five years. The author's closeness to his subject,

which in lesser hands might have affected the objectivity of the work, en-

hances the value and importance of this particular book. Mr. Fosdick handles

the personal side of the story with sympathy and insight, and he deals with

Mr. Rockefeller's contributions to industrial relations, medicine, religion, edu-

cation, conservation, restoration, and international understanding in a highly

informative, often penetrating way.

Ohio State University                            ROBERT H. BREMNER

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112     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

The Meaning of America: Essays Toward an Understanding of the American

Spirit. By Leland Dewitt Baldwin. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh

Press, 1955. 319p.; maps and bibliography. $4.00.)

In this comparatively brief volume Professor Baldwin gives us his

philosophy of American history. Some may choose to consider it a com-

panion piece for his well-known college text. Others will prefer to set it

upon the shelf of rapidly growing single-volume essays dealing with the

spirit and interpretation of the national epic, of which the works of

Hofstadter, Saveth, Commager, and Goldman are perhaps best known. But

unlike these men, Baldwin is refreshingly midwestern in his approach to

the subject, in his slangy, anecdotal style and in his thinly disguised bias.

After a curtsey to the regional basis of American political life and the

"federal question" which is its legacy, Baldwin gives us his concept of the

American mission. In brief, this is to provide an example to the world of how

democracy can succeed in transforming political, economic, and social re-

sources from "the exclusive property of a few" into a shared possession "of

service to all." Her chief reliance in this endeavor has been science, the

friend of the demos; "to save itself the elite class must crush science"

(p. 39). Baldwin believes that the American model was only foreshadowed

during the long agrarian era. Nevertheless it was at this time that democracy

came to recognize and accept capitalism as its proper economic form; the

so-called struggle between property and human rights is more accurately

regarded as a contest between big property and little property.

But only with the industrial revolution could Americans construct the

engines characteristic of modern life in these United States. The South fought

a blind, gallant, and hopeless delaying action which helped to surrender

control of technology into unworthy hands. The result was the reign of the

Big Business Baron during the latter nineteenth century, with the divine

right of wealth replacing the divine right of kings as the major challenge

to democratic self-confidence. Then came the great rebuttal of American

pragmatism. The pragmatic challenge appeared first in the arts, then in

politics and last, but most important, in scientific business. As its end product

we have the pragmatic corporation with a social conscience, of all the

nation's great achievements perhaps most worthy of display to the world in

our twentieth century showcase. Its methods are intelligent mass production

and human relations; its makers are Frederick W. Taylor and Henry Ford,

men who should be numbered among the foremost Americans.

In the outside world proto-fascism and communism were competing sys-

tems which did not hesitate to carry the ideological war aggressively into the

citadel of democracy. It is in this context that the New Deal can best be

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BOOK REVIEWS           113

understood and recognized as a form of "soft socialism," today being re-

modeled by the Young Republicans into "the cooperative-plutocratic state."

Peeping at the years ahead in his concluding (and least convincing) chapter,

Baldwin attempts to weave Galbraith, Riesman, and Elton Mayo into a fabric

which will support continued American optimism about a future manifestly

ours.

As an example of popular intellectual history, in language which the

intelligent sophomore can understand, Baldwin's book is particularly in-

teresting. Of course it is more than this; it is also an act of faith. "America

is building a new phase of Western Civilization which will mold the old

traditions to the new machine age and will give a better life to the common

man" (p. 195). Perhaps. We can all hope so.

A few criticisms ought to be made. The style is both didactic and racy--

an unusual combination--and there is perhaps too much reliance upon

analogy. Baldwin shows little respect for the Yankee East and less for the

South, which is not likely to increase his popularity in either of those sections.

There are many substantive matters to which one may take exception. For

example, the argument that Americans "as a rule objected fervently to the

melting pot process" (p. 219) seems misleading at best, and raises the

question of just what it was that they actually did favor. More important,

Baldwin's assertion that democracy is the friend of science, and aristocracy

its enemy is highly vulnerable. This reviewer would be prepared to argue

that the elite have nearly always supported science, with the masses in

suspicious opposition particularly in the realm of industrial technology.

It is not necessary to agree with all the interpretations advanced to pro-

nounce this a worthwhile book. It contains much that is familiar and a good

deal that is comparatively new. It is full of challenging statements which

are likely to stimulate, though not always to please. But the best books may

well be those which arouse the most extensive criticism and keep the mind

exercised. On this ground, as well as for the intrinsic merit of its contents,

The Meaning of America can be strongly recommended to the readers of

the Ohio Historical Quarterly.

Ohio University                                  F. D. KERSHNER, JR.

 

Granville: The Story of an Ohio Village. By William T. Utter. (Granville,

Ohio: Granville Historical Society and Denison University, 1956. xii??

347p.; illustrations, bibliographical essay, and index. $4.00.)

I have traveled much, said Henry Thoreau, in Concord. Not wholly un-

like Concord is Granville, Ohio, a village gathered around a white church

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114     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

spire, with lengthening memories of men and movements, and Dr. Utter

has traveled widely in his town. Now at the time of Granville's sesqui-

centennial he has written a model town history, a book full of warmth and

humanity, lighted with glints of humor and with affectionate understanding.

All that is required for a drama, Balzac said, is a passion and four walls.

All that is required for a history is a community of people--and an informed

and articulate historian. This book is local but not parochial; it shows

Granville in the context of a changing nation and it throws light on

America as well as on the village on Raccoon Creek.

Dr. Utter is fortunate in his subject and his sources. The Granville com-

munity was a community from the start. Its founders kept full and expressive

records, they voiced their hopes and aspirations--not only in sermons and

speeches but even in poems to mark special times. One of their poems, "The

Pleasant O-hi-o" composed by carpenter Timothy Spelman, became familiar

throughout New England and the West. And like Spoon River, Granville

had some people who composed their own epitaphs, which may be read in

the Old Colony Burying Ground.

Like many American stories the Granville story begins with wilderness,

with new lands waiting. The action begins with a company preparing to

exchange their stone-walIed Massachusetts farms for unfenced lands near

the headwaters of an Ohio river. They sent land-lookers ahead, subscribed

to a land purchase, and made the long journey. They built their first cabins

along the "Broad Way" surveyed through the lofty forest. In the next year

came a cargo from New England, containing a long blade for the Company

sawmill, a box of books for the village library, and a hardy Massachusetts

rosebush. It was a successful transplanting.

They founded a church and a school, built a tanyard, distilleries, an iron

furnace. In time the iron ore ran out, the tannery business dwindled, Dr.

Bancroft's Granville Water Cure replaced the distilleries and then it, too,

disappeared. Meanwhile some special things were happening. Two pioneer

academies opened their doors to young ladies, and at a Baptist convention

Granville was chosen, because of its sobriety and intellectual atmosphere, as

the site of Denison University. So Granville found its lasting business--the

education of other people's children.

The book is richly illustrated with old prints and photographs. But the best

pictures are called up in the mind: droves of cattle choking Broadway, hogs

and turkeys streaming down the old Centerville Road, big Pennsylvania

freight wagons creaking through, the great wolf hunt of 1823, the Abolition

convention in Ashley Bancroft's "Hall of Freedom" barn, the military

parades on muster day and the '49ers creaking off toward California.

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BOOK REVIEWS          115

 

Other Granville emigrants moved on to new ventures in Illinois, Missouri,

Kansas. (I learned here that my native town of Appleton, Wisconsin,

was laid out by Granville men and named for a Granville banker.) Mean-

while others came to Granville and the town assumed its pattern, with

Broadway carrying a steady stream of travel and the college serene on its hill.

Dr. Utter has a nostalgic chapter on the Nineties and then shows the

quickening of the village tempo in the new century. In 1937 the government

built a new post office which an old resident observed cost more than

the Granville Company had paid for the entire township.

One or two reflections occur to a reader of this appealing book. Eighty

years ago Henry James, writing in the time-rich city of Florence, referred

to "our silent past" in America. Now our past is somewhat longer and

certainly it is more vocal. And unlike the Old World communities we have a

past that is recoverable. Dr. Utter can quote the farewell sermon when the

Granville emigrants left Massachusetts, he can raise the songs they sang on

the way West, he knows through what weather they journeyed, how much

they paid for their land, where the first cabins stood. Whether the subject

is war or trade or politics, a commonwealth or a village, we can have the

whole many-stranded story. We can recover it all.

Miami University                               WALTER HAVIGHURST

 

The Framing of the Fourteenth Amendment. By Joseph B. James. Illinois

Studies in the Social Sciences, Vol. 37. (Urbana: University of Illinois

Press, 1956. ix??220p.; appendix, bibliography, and index. Cloth, $4.00;

paper, $3.00.)

The recent supreme court rulings in the "desegregation cases" have

focused attention as never before on the actual intent of the framers of the

fourteenth amendment. Joseph B. James sets out in this exhaustive but at

the same time rewarding study to determine, through analysis of the words

and actions of the leaders of the post-civil war period, just what those in-

tentions were. His conclusions indicate all too clearly that no realization of

the amendment's applicability to modern-day problems existed. Rather "the

most important purpose in the minds of most framers and members of the

Republican party in the summer of 1866 was undoubtedly that the amend-

ment might furnish a popular platform in the political campaign."

Agreeing generally with Jacobus TenBroek as to the origins of the

amendment, Mr. James devotes his attention to maneuverings in the years

1865 and 1866, showing step by step how the Radical leadership sought to

preserve its wartime victories and consolidate them in a set of binding

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116     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

constitutional provisions. That such an objective was attained both ruthlessly

and pragmatically further attests to the absence of consideration of long-

term consequences by those involved, and Mr. James brings a mass of data

to bear to show what thorough disagreement there was, even among Radi-

cals as to how their general ends should be accomplished, or even as to

what those general ends should be.

At the outset Radical focus was primarily upon the dual problems of

suffrage and representation. Although gnawing doubts existed concerning

Negroes voting in the South when most were disfranchised in the North,

the major concern was that if slaves were counted as whole persons, in-

creased representation in the South would naturally result. Hence unless

the basis of representation were changed, the Negro vote would have to be

"controlled" for northern protection. Such sectional self-interest was not

confined to fear of the South but existed between Northeast and West where

a changed system of representation might endanger political power and ad-

vantage. In addition, some eminently practical politicians carefully weighed

the comparative advantages of supporting the president and insuring re-

tention of executive patronage for themselves and their constituents, or

supporting the Radicals and insuring appropriated funds for internal im-

provements.

As the suffrage hurdle rapidly appeared too great, attention turned toward

the more attainable objectives of guaranteeing citizens equal rights (not

social or political rights, nor the deprivation of states rights, "God forbid!");

a practical solution to the representation problem; and denunciation of the

Confederate debt. The famous first section, with its direct limitation of state

power was not developed systematically or even very purposefully but

originated late in the framing process. Although belaboring a dead horse,

Mr. James also destroys with a mass of convincing evidence the once held

"conspiracy theory" of the person-equals-corporation argument put forward

by Conkling in 1882 and accepted by the supreme court in the Santa Clara

case.

Mr. James in accomplishing his avowed purpose casts penetrating light

upon the leaders, pressures, and prejudices of a highly controversial period

of American history. However, one must inquire whether the intentions of

the framers of any law or amendment are as pertinent for modern inter-

pretation as the altered conditions which require new departures in appli-

cation of a constitution which the original framers certainly intended to be

flexible and to change with the times.

Ohio State University                            PAUL L. MURPHY

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BOOK REVIEWS          117

 

Ohio: The Buckeye State. By William R. Collins. Study Aids by Carolyn D.

Dillehay. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1956. xvi??352p.; maps

and charts, illustrations, appendix, and index. $4.95.)

This book was written in response to the mandate of Section 3313.60 of

the Revised Code of Ohio which states, among other things, that in the Ohio

grade schools "there shall be included the study of the following subjects . . .

geography, the history of the United States and of Ohio, and national, state

and local government in the United States." This mandate was supplemented

by the Ohio Department of Education's pamphlet entitled An Educational

Program for the Seventh and Eighth Grades in Ohio Schools (1955). The

detailed specifications in this pamphlet for Ohio history, geography, and

civics are, in a large measure, faithfully adhered to. The author is a resident

of Worthington, Ohio, has been in the publishing business with the

Macmillan Company, and is president of Presbyterian Life, published by the

Presbyterian Church. He is currently engaged in writing several grade-school

textbooks in American history.

There are thirteen units in all, ten devoted to history, one to geography,

one to government, and one to biography. The appendix consists of the com-

plete Constitution of the State of Ohio as adopted in 1851, with amendments

to January 1, 1956. Each unit closes with a list of study aids by Miss

Dillehay, social studies teacher and dean of girls in the Crooksville, Ohio

Junior High School. These study aids contain questions, objective tests

(completion, true-false, matching, etc.), word hunts, vocabulary tests, projects

(Tell a Story, Where Am I?, Play Ball, Do You Know Me?, Do These

for Fun, For Your Bulletin Board), map exercises, book lists (These Will

Interest You), and lists of films, filmstrips, and slides.

The book is lavishly illustrated with pertinent maps, charts, and pictures--

a few in color. The cover is a beauty, consisting, in front, of an attractive

colored view of Lake Hope in Vinton County, and, in back, of the frozen

waterfall at Ash Cave in Hocking County. The author and publishers have

done a splendid job of selection and arrangement of illustrations. Hardly a

page lacks something of an eye-catching nature. The acknowledgments

show the sources of illustrations to include the Ohio State Museum, the Ohio

Historical Society, the Ohio Development Commission, the Ohio State

University Department of Photography, to mention only a few.

How adequate the book is to make Ohio history meaningful to seventh

and eighth graders depends on how the teachers use it. Now, at last,

teachers cannot complain that they lack adequate textbook equipment to

cope with their responsibility. Especially attractive seem to be the units on

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118     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Ohio Government, "Famous Men and Women of the Buckeye State" and

perhaps "A Look at the Geography of Ohio." The style of writing is simple

and matter of fact. If it is too much so the teachers and the illustrations

ought to stimulate the young people's interest and even enthusiasm.

The history is somewhat marred by bits of inaccuracy here and there.

For example, the supremacy of the Iroquois Indians in the Ohio country is

exaggerated. George Croghan, the Indian trader, was hardly "well educated."

It is rather unusual to read, "Finally St. Clair was able to lead the remnants

of his army southward in a disorderly retreat. This is known as the Battle

of Fort Recovery." The fort was built on the site by Wayne two years after

St. Clair's defeat there. The battlefield of Fallen Timbers is not "⁴⁰ miles

above Fort Defiance," nor were the Indians "badly defeated" in the engage-

ment. Hull's route, in the War of 1812, is accurately described on page 118,

but quite wrongly illustrated in the map on page 119. The Battle of Lake

Erie was not "at Put-in-Bay." The governor of Michigan Territory in the

"Toledo War" was not "Governor Brown." The exclusive use of the phrase

"the War Between the States" instead of the Civil War seems a poor choice

for Ohioans, as does also the use of the term the "Ohio Territory" for the

latter part of the period of the Northwest Territory.

Historical Society of                        RANDOLPH C. DOWNES

Northwestern Ohio

• 24