Ohio History Journal

Book Reviews

 

 

 

Thomas Worthington: Father of Ohio Statehood. By Alfred Byron

Sears. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press for the Ohio Histori-

cal Society, 1958. viii??260p.; end-paper illustrations, bibliography,

and index. $5.50.)

Jeffersonian republicanism (or Jeffersonian democracy, as many prefer

to call it) is one of the great inheritances of the American people, but it

is a difficult one to approach. From one direction it appears to be monu-

mental, symbolized in the eloquence of the Declaration of Independence

and the marble of a national shrine; from a second, it is as mysterious as

the power of the ballot or the charm of Monticello; from a third, as

complex and subtle as Jefferson himself. The potency of this republican-

ism was not the power and majesty of the national government, which

it sought to diminish. It existed, rather, in the men who undertook the

responsibilities of conducting an effective and acceptable government

among people who wanted as little government as possible.

It is not easy to represent those paradoxical men after a century and

a half. Professor Sears of the University of Oklahoma tries to show us

one of them. In Thomas Worthington (1773-1827), a man who was of

importance in both national political life and state and local affairs and

yet was primarily a private citizen, he brings forward a Jeffersonian

Republican who embodied their complexity.

A Virginian of Quaker background, twice United States Senator

and for two terms (1814-18) governor of Ohio, a man who is properly

called the Father of Ohio Statehood, Worthington is in many ways an

admirable subject for biographical study. He kept an elaborate diary;

records of his life and of the lives of those around him are abundant; and

many other personal, official, and business records have survived. In

other ways he is exceptionally difficult. Should he be regarded as a man

of second-rate national importance, or a man of first-rate importance in

local and state affairs? Without benefit of an established biographical

pattern or tradition to work in, or to attack (except for the author's own

earlier work almost no biographical studies exist), and against the handi-

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194    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

cap of a cluster of modern theories and historical interpretations, Sears

has solved the problem by centering his attention on Worthington

rather than on the abstractions.

Thomas Worthington presents (without contentiousness) several broad

historical revisions. The frontier environment is shown with fewer doc-

trinaire patterns and fewer phantoms, more vivid detail and a more

exact structure than in most accounts. "Western radicalism," organ-

ized in the Tammany Society (the radical wing of the radical Jeffer-

sonian party) with Worthington as a leader, is given new meaning in

being shown as a movement led by wealthy and successful businessmen.

The well-known "war spirit" of the West in 1810-12 is surely disposed

of by the full and sensible exposition of Worthington's position: he

opposed political clamor for war but worked for national defense, and

later he voted against the declaration of war (voting against his party

in doing so) yet gave his full support to the war when the government

had engaged in it. The account of land hunger and land speculation

sheds new light on the role of the surveyor in acquiring lands and the

effect of the large landowner on the economic development of the com-

munity. The picture of early forms of capitalism suggests that some

revision of current conclusions is required, especially with respect to the

sources of capital for investment in business and the motives that led

men to initiate manufacturing.

Worthington himself is shown in the many facets seen by his con-

temporaries. They are offered impartially, and the resulting picture is

often blurred; but in the final chapter Sears resolves their contradictions

in the conclusion that the man "was fundamentally a rugged individual-

ist." One of the most interesting biographical contributions is the

development of new terms to represent the Ohioan's personality. Instead

of the familiar categories drawn from literature, the romantic child of

nature in the wilderness and the realistic "half horse, half alligator,"

these terms introduce a hard-headed, practical, common sense man who

was at the same time concerned about slavery and humanitarian reform,

quickened by emotional sensibility, and filled with piety. He is closer

to the late eighteenth century than to the late nineteenth, and seems less

anachronistic. The character of western Jeffersonians remains an un-

solved problem; but Sears, by discarding the old categories based on

theory and replacing them with others based on evidence, has moved

toward a more valid interpretation of such men.

Readers who would like to understand the life of Jeffersonian days will

find Thomas Worthington a dependable exposition. Those who would

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BOOK REVIEWS 195

 

like to understand Ohio today will also find it illuminating. Much that

is characteristic of the modern Midwest is made intelligible by Professor

Sears. The volume is written in a quiet, sober style, with a refreshing

sense of humor. It is a pleasure to add that the book is physically attrac-

tive. A worthy representation of a distinguished man, it may be con-

sidered one of the happiest achievements of Ohio biography.

Ohio University                           HARRY R. STEVENS

 

Thirty Thousand Miles with John Heckewelder. Edited by Paul A. W.

Wallace. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1958.

xvii??⁴⁷4p.; frontispiece, folded maps, bibliographical and geographi-

cal glossary, and index. $7.50.)

In this most fascinating volume, Paul A. W. Wallace presents about

thirty thousand miles of travel, which cover almost sixty years in the

life of the Rev. John Gottlieb Ernestus Heckewelder (1743-1823), the

travelogs having been written by Heckewelder in his own hand. Next

to the Rev. David Zeisberger, Heckewelder was the most outstanding

of the Moravian missionaries who, since the second third of the eight-

eenth century, tried to implant the religious and social principles of the

Moravian Church among the Iroquoian and Algonkian Indians of

Pennsylvania, New York State, and, later, the Ohio country. Wallace's

"Introduction: The Moravians" (pp. 1-32) tries to give the reasons and

motivations for doing so, not only on the part of the Moravian Church,

but especially on the part of young Heckewelder. He was born and

raised in the church as the first-born son of his father, David, the scion

of an old Moravian family which, the same as the Zeisbergers, Nitsch-

manns, and others, had suffered untold persecution and misery in

Bohemia. They were the ones who, under the leadership of Christian

David, finally fled across the mountains to Herrnhut in Saxony, an

estate of Nicholas Lewis Count Zinzendorf (1700-1760), a pietist and,

strangely to say, since 1734 an ordained Lutheran minister. It was at

Herrnhut that, shortly after 1727, they established, under Zinzendorf's

spiritual guidance, the reorganized Moravian Church, or, more correctly,

the reorganized Church of the Unitas Fratrum, that is, of the "Unity of

the Bohemian (or Moravian) Brethren."

Wallace makes it quite clear that out of no missionary zeal but rather

as a matter of self-preservation Zinzendorf, in 1735, dispatched a group

of Moravians to Georgia in North America. That group of Moravians,

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196 THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

containing among others the Zeisberger family, eventually moved to

Pennsylvania, where, in the Delaware Indian region, numerous Moravian

settlements and churches were laid out. In 1741, with Zinzendorf him-

self present, Bethlehem was founded, destined to become the seat of the

mother-church of the Northern Province of the Moravian Church in

North America. As Wallace points out, Bethlehem today is factually the

mother-church of the entire Moravian community in the world, since

Herrnhut, although nominally still the Moravian center, lies dormant

in Eastern Germany under the Russian thumb.

Soon after its foundation, Bethlehem became the pivotal point of that

unrivaled Moravian Indian Mission system with its remarkable absence

of the desire just to save souls, such as prevails in most Christian

missions. As missionaries, the Moravians always did what was nearest

at hand. As true Christians, they had tried in Georgia to improve the

situation of the Negro slaves by giving them, spiritually and economi-

cally, what they themselves had. In the North American East, they

were naturally concerned with the native Indians, the same as they had

been in Georgia with the Negro slaves. In principle, all their mission

stations were alike: Moravian living-and-worship units, planted among

people less fortunate than they themselves. Not only Christ, their "Su-

preme Elder," had taught them to act that way, but in particular their

own bishop, Komensky (Comenius), one of the greatest in the Moravian

fold, who, as a shining torch in the age of enlightenment, had sown

the seeds of modern education. His Moravians were the first to estab-

lish schools according to his philosophy, and no Moravian mission settle-

ment was without a school. In fact, every Moravian living-and-worship

unit, whether or not established as a mission proper, is a mission, being

a concrete instance of Comenius' leading educational principle: teaching

by example.

From here, the way to Heckewelder, the traveler of thirty thousand

miles, seems longer than it really is. At a first glance, Wallace's "Intro-

duction: The Moravians" appears lengthy and too detailed. Reading it,

however, one sees that he had meant it as a justification of his attempt to

present the essentially Moravian character of the man, Heckewelder, as

well as of his travels and of his travelogs. With that Introduction in

mind, the reader sees Wallace's historical passages, which, throughout

the book, connect Heckewelder's travel reports, in their proper light. It

is an idle question whether it might have helped the book, if Wallace,

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BOOK REVIEWS          197

more frequently than he did, had referred to his Introduction in order

to demonstrate the inner necessity of Heckewelder's travelings in the

framework of Moravian thinking and feeling.

In his translating and editing the travel accounts which fill the entire

productive part of John Heckewelder's life of eighty years, Wallace (like

Heckewelder himself) excels as an eminent reporter rather than an

expositor. Hence, his book of thirty thousand miles of travelogs is

Wallace's natural form of a Heckewelder biography. Being too much

of a source-bound historian, he could not have written a better one,

and, perhaps, nobody can.

It is not the object of this review to familiarize the public with the

often fascinating travel accounts of Heckewelder, the Moravian mis-

sioner, the ethnologist, and the linguist. The best and shortest way to

catch the spirit of those travelogs is to read Wallace's fine book.

A few minor errors have crept into Wallace's otherwise well edited

pages. The Moravian name, for instance, of the Indian mission town,

Langundo Utenink, on the Great Beaver River in northwest Pennsyl-

vania, ought to be written "Friedensstadt," as it occurs in the Index,

but not "Friedenstadt," as it is found on the folded-in map and all

throughout the text. Another error affects this reviewer personally.

Both in the Index (p. 463, under "Mahr, August C.") and on page 151,

and note, Mahr is credited with a book, Federal Indian Relations, 1774-

1788, which he never wrote. The author of that publication is Walter

Harrison Mohr of the University of Pennsylvania (Oxford University

Press, 1933).

Finally, this reviewer wishes to stress the regrettable fact that his

editions of the Diaries of the Moravian Indian Mission of Schonbrunn

(1772-77), and that of Gnadenhutten (1773-77), for some time have been

ineffectively reposing, as unprinted manuscripts, with the Ohio Histori-

cal Society at the Ohio State Museum, Columbus, O. Their publication,

at approximately the same time as Wallace's excellent work on Hecke-

welder, might have been of equal benefit to Wallace's book and, through

it, to the Diaries themselves, and, last but not least, to the student of the

Moravians' missionary philosophy, which is still alive in the Moravian

Church.

Ohio State University                       AUGUST C. MAHR

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198    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

The Miami Years, 1809-1959. By Walter Havighurst. (New York:

G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1958. ²⁵4p.; illustrations. $4.50.)

Walter Havighurst is a well-known writer, author of ten novels and

histories, a professor of English and a professional in every sense. (He

has published a history of a Cleveland steel company since this book

came out.) Here is striking contrast to the usual author of a college

history, who is typically more of a researcher than a writer, traditionally

lacking in his command of style.

A surprisingly pedestrian account of the beginnings of the university

gives way to a lively treatment of Robert Hamilton Bishop, who was

nearer to being the "Founder" of Miami than any other man. Havighurst

says significantly that "for years returning alumni at Commencement

marched in silence past the Bishop grave." Here was the influence that

reached farthest through the years. The author has, of course, been able

to use the results of the researches of James H. Rodabaugh in this

section of the book.

In the chapter entitled "Primer from a Green World" he develops

the classic tale of William Holmes McGuffey and his Readers. It is well

done, but almost irrelevant to the story of Miami. McGuffey taught in

Miami for ten years. There he began the publication of his school books

through a printer at Cincinnati at that time. After this essay McGuffey

still remains the editor of a series of anthologies and not, except inci-

dentally, a significant member of the faculty of Miami University. Mc-

Guffey also taught at Cincinnati, at Ohio University, and at the

University of Virginia; he never had anything equaling the influence

in Miami that Bishop had.

There is impressive drama in "The Fortunes of the Greeks," the

chapter in which is told the story of the fraternities. In 1841 the board

of trustees expelled all students who were known to be members of

secret societies and prohibited students from belonging to such organiza-

tions in the future. Fifty years later, the author notes, Miami was

known as the "Mother of Fraternities." The rebellious spirit thus

demonstrated came to a particular crisis in the "Snow Rebellion," in

which the classrooms in the Main Building were filled with melting

snow and firewood, the chapel bell was dropped in the cistern, and all

academic activities brought to a halt for some time. It was the kind of

demonstration that gained for college boys something of the reputation

for irresponsibility which they still have in some quarters today.

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The book is full of neat character sketches of the odd-balls found in

all colleges, who were loved by all undergraduates and those perpetual

undergraduates who are called alumni and, at the same time, are the

subjects of the mild ridicule of the same. Here is Harry Thobe, that

"aging, agile, irrepressible man," "a bricklayer by trade and exhibition-

ist by nature," "conspicuous at all athletic events in his red-and-white

pants, coat, and shoes, with his red-and-white megaphone and umbrella,"

whom Dean Brandon sought, usually without success, to evict from the

football field. Then there was "lean, limping, and tobacco-chewing Dad

Wolfe, the Campus watchman," volunteer adviser to "president, faculty,

and students," unique but a type familiar on all campuses. Introduced

also is Fardy Devine, janitor, whose firewood the students regularly

stole, not so much because they needed or wanted the fuel as because

it was a part of the glorious game of going to Miami and because they

would not want to let down an old Miami tradition. On a different level

was Professor "Heppy" Hepburn, who loathed coeducation, and whose

name, with perfectly appropriate inappropriateness was chosen for one

of the women's dorms when those undesirables were let into the uni-

versity.

Much emphasis is placed on the forest setting of the university,

through which the "slant walk" proceeds through a century and half

of pranks, romance, study, the division of Civil War days, the abnormal

Students' Army Training Corps and the V-12 of a later war. It is this

that makes so tragic the "Death of the Elms," though the chapter that

bears this title devotes only one brief paragraph to the matter indicated

by its heading. Demonstrating the kind of problem that college adminis-

trators often have to face was the legal suit in which a freshman girl

called in the law to prove that the university could not deprive her of

her equal right to public education merely because she flunked! One

pioneering venture in which apparently Miami still takes pride was the

hiring of an "artist in residence"--Percy MacKaye--who exhibited to

the students of his time the creative mind in action.

Largely lacking in this history are what the literary critics often

choose to call "the paraphernalia of scholarship." There are no foot-

notes, no bibliography, no index. There are two pages of acknowl-

edgments.

Oberlin College                          ROBERT S. FLETCHER

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200    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

The Stark County Story. By Edward Thornton Heald. Volume IV,

Part 2, The Suburban Era, 1917-1958. (Canton, Ohio: Stark County

Historical Society, 1958. xvi??⁸⁵0p.; illustrations, maps, bibliography,

and index. Set, Part 2 and Part 3, $15.00.)

This is the fifth of six units in the series on Stark County being pre-

pared by Mr. Heald, who is the historian of the Stark County Historical

Society. It is Part 2 of Volume IV, which covers the county's story

from 1917 to the present. Part 1 is entitled Free People At Work,

1917-1945, and Part 3 will be called The American Way of Life. Part 1

emphasizes Canton and its industry, Part 2 the suburbs, the rural areas,

and county-wide government and social organizations. Part 3 will relate

the political history, diagnose the automobile era, and develop the

story of social and religious organizations. The chapters of Part 2 are

numbered from 302 to 370, and are listed in the table of contents as

scripts. This means, according to the title page, that they were broad-

cast over WHBC-WHBC-FM, and rearranged and edited as a county

history. Each chapter heading contains the date or dates of the broad-

casts, which cover the years from 1952 to 1958. In a bibliographical

note it is stated that the radio broadcasts "have been a cooperative

project, in which more than 500 different persons have contributed their

thoughts, time and energy in interviews, checking the correctness of

script copies, and verifying same to bring up to date for manuscript."

The reason for calling this book The Suburban Era is that the popu-

lation not included in the cities (Canton, Massillon, and Alliance)

became, during the period involved, larger than any single city. How-

ever, the author admits that the combined city population is about fifty-

nine percent and is unable to state what percentage of the remainder

would be classified as village or agricultural. However, it is demon-

strated that the non-city area is growing much faster than the city areas.

The material is divided into eight sections: "County Government and

Operations"; "Rural"; "City-County Operations"; "Wars, Veterans,

and Armed Services"; "Civic and Social"; "Medical and Dental";

"Unusual Persons"; and "Industrial." The treatment is mostly by

offices and organizations, for example, county commissioners, Molly

Stark Hospital, Agricultural Extension Service, volunteer fire depart-

ments, patriotic organizations, the Red Cross, Stark County Medical

Society, the Alliance Manufacturing Company.

Tremendous effort has gone into the preparation of this work. The

main sources of information in the current volume have been interviews

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BOOK REVIEWS          201

 

and newspapers. In a special reference section, the sources are given for

each chapter, including the newspapers by date and item, and the persons

interviewed by name. Significant chapters include those on the consoli-

dation of the county schools, the Amish, liquor control, and crime and

the police record. The latter makes use of FBI Uniform Crime Reports,

which relate Stark County statistics to those of other cities in the

nation.

Full judgment and evaluation of the coverage of this work, as well as

of its utility for educational purposes, especially in the state and local

schools and colleges, must be reserved until Part 3 of the present work

is published. It is obvious that the job of interpreting twentieth century

local history is not easy. Four of the six units in the Stark County

Story are devoted entirely to the years since 1900.

Historical Society of Northwestern Ohio   RANDOLPH C. DOWNES

 

The Heritage of the Middle West. Edited by John J. Murray. (Norman:

University of Oklahoma Press, 1958. xiv??303p.; illustrations and

index. $4.00.)

The Middle West, a nation's heartland, is explored in this collection

of twelve essays by specialists, each of whom puts emphasis not upon

contemporary characteristics but upon various facets of the region's

heritage. Although the middlewestern section of the nation is not always

crisply defined, a careful survey of the volume indicates that the Middle

West is made up of the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa,

Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas.

These are the areas, at any rate, enumerated in a final essay contributed

by Walter Johnson.

Actually, after a rather sweeping survey called "Inheritance from the

Old World," based primarily upon secondary sources, many of the

contributors not only restrict themselves to a specific topic but also limit

their discussion to segments or portions of the Middle West. Albert

Schmidt, for example, does not extend his discussion of the small college

from Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, and other states into Minnesota, Missouri,

Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. It is curious also that Mr. Schmidt

should confine his discussion only to the Protestant liberal arts college,

for it is most surely true that the educational heritage of the Middle West

was more than Protestant. Sidney E. Mead, discussing the search for

God, also gives scant credit to contributions made by non-Protestant

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202        THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

denominations. This reviewer is neither Irish nor Catholic, but he is not

unmindful, as an historian, that some of the rich threads woven into

the tapestry of the Middle West were the work of Catholics and Jews

and non-conformers and just plain heretics.

It is, of course, impossible to discuss in detail each of the essays

which form this stimulating attempt to interpret middlewestern back-

grounds. Of the twelve, four seem to stand out as worthy of serious

consideration. These are Ray A. Billington's "The Garden of the World:

Fact and Fiction"; Paul Sharp's "From Poverty to Prosperity"; Arthur

E. Bestor's "The Search for Utopia"; and John T. Flanagan's "A Soil

for the Seeds of Literature." Billington's comments upon land policy

are provocative, Sharp's economic analysis is sharply corrective in places,

Bestor's explanation of the waves of communitarianism offers fresh

information, and Flanagan's chapter is really a survey of regional litera-

ture from the 1840's until past the time of the great depression of the

1930's. Each of these contributions, regardless of whether or not one

agrees with every opinion expressed, is well organized, close reasoned,

and adequately documented.

The Ohioan, scanning some of the results of the Coe College Con-

ference on the Heritage of the Middle West as they appear on the pages

of this book, will find many and various references to his state and his

region. The Iowan will find much more, but, curiously enough, neither

the Buckeye nor the Hawkeye will find a clear summary of his heritage.

The pieces seem to be present, but the pattern appears vague. This dis-

jointedness may be due to the lack of a single theme which runs through

the entire book, to the built-in weakness which always is present when

several authors contribute, to a failure on the part of some contributors

to understand the heritage of the region, and to the failure on the part of

others to know the area's history. Perhaps, as Billington points out, fact

is too frequently confused with myth. It may be that the poet could better

express the heritage than the politician. It could be that a series of con-

ference papers do not always make a book even if they are printed and

bound as a volume.

These observations, it must be understood, do not lessen the fact that

this collection is stimulating, informative, and of value to the general

reader. If it asks more questions than it answers, this is good. If it will

provoke others to investigate the many meanings of the Middle West, it

will have more than accomplished its purpose.

University of Minnesota                      PHILIP D. JORDAN

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BOOK REVIEWS               203

 

The Revolutionary Journal of Baron Ludwig von Closen, 1780-1783.

Translated and edited with an Introduction by Evelyn M. Acomb.

(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of

Early American History and Culture, 1958. xxxviii+392p.; illus-

trations, biographical directory, bibliography, and index. $7.50.)

Baron von Closen was an officer in the Royal Deux-Ponts regiment of

France and served General Rochambeau as aide-de-camp during the

campaign against Yorktown. Von Closen arrived at Newport, Rhode

Island, in July 1780, and left America for the West Indies in December

1782. Because of the baron's command of English, which enabled him

to make his way the faster through unfamiliar countryside, Rochambeau

frequently chose him to take important messages to Washington, to De

Grasse, and to other leaders. His many missions, in addition to side

trips taken for pleasure whenever circumstances allowed, enabled von

Closen to see a good deal of the country between Virginia and New

Hampshire. His was a lively, inquiring mind, the range of his interests

including everything from the flora and fauna of the states to methods

of sugar refining in Santo Domingo-to say nothing of the charms of

pretty women at a host of balls and parties. He comments upon the

treatment of slaves, the character of American troops, local customs,

crops and livestock, the condition of roads and taverns, and the horrors

of sea travel.

Nonetheless, the journal is a soldier's creation. Rarely does he expa-

tiate for more than a page without a sense of guilt. The day-to-day

chronicle must not be lost sight of. As one would expect, he had a

consuming interest in strategic considerations, both for battles in which

he took part and for those fought prior to his arrival. The siege at York-

town is meticulously detailed, even to the precise assignment of each

French regiment day by day. Von Closen's fair-minded attitude toward

the defeated Cornwallis, whom he met, and the courtesies generally

extended to captured enemy officers, remind one sadly of the gallantry

permissible in earlier and simpler wars.

Disappointingly, his glimpses of the life and times in city and country

are just that. His descriptive passages lean heavily on stock phrases;

distinctions become blurred until one thumbnail sketch is pretty much

like another. Occasionally the reader is refreshed with a vivid picture-

Washington waving his handkerchief from the shore in his excitement

over the arrival of De Grasse in Chesapeake Bay or the stammering

New York sheriff seeking to make Rochambeau his prisoner because

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204     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

the general refused to pay damages for wood cut on private property.

There is material of historical significance, such as the feverish corre-

spondence between Rochambeau and De Grasse concerning sea support

at Yorktown, the criticism of Rochambeau for ordering embarkation

before it was certain that Charleston had been evacuated, and other

matters. But this is a book to be mined rather than read.

For the editor this work has obviously been a labor of love. Not only

did she confront a text written in archaic French, but one that had been

transcribed years ago for the Library of Congress by none too sure a

hand. The original journal and all supporting documents were lost in

a fire. Diligently the editor tracks down allusions, corrects here a faulty

date, there an exaggerated statement of the numbers slain in battle. She

has added a biographical directory, identifying well over two hundred

persons mentioned in the journal, and a thorough bibliography, particu-

larly useful for its listing of published letters, memoirs, and papers of

the period.

Marietta College                              ROBERT J. TAYLOR

 

The Sanilac Petroglyphs. Introduction, by Robert T. Hatt; The Petro-

glyphs, by Darrel J. Richards; and An Archeological Survey of the

Petroglyph Site, by Mark Papworth. Cranbrook Institute of Science,

Bulletin Number Thirty-six. (Bloomfield Hills, Mich.: Cranbrook

Institute of Science, 1958. 48p.; references. $1.50.)

Petroglyphs and pictographs occur in almost every part of the western

hemisphere. Their study by professional and amateur archaeologists

and interested laymen has contributed much to our knowledge of this

form of prehistoric Indian art. During recent years we have seen nu-

merous reports which range from simple descriptions to fantastic theories

of the origin of the figures and symbols and equally fantastic interpreta-

tions of them. This study of the Sanilac Petroglyphs, as one of the

authors states, is concerned both with description and origin.

The "stone" is located in Greenleaf Township, near the northern

edge of Sanilac County, Michigan. It was first observed about 1872

and has been subject to some study from that time to the present. While

the stone has been defaced by the engraving of names and dates and the

addition of two figures, it is believed that the glyphs are late prehistoric

Indian in origin; the authors, however, do not rule out the possibility

of early historic Indian derivation.

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BOOK REVIEWS 205

 

The glyphs are divided into ten groups: human figures, outlines of

human hands and feet, zoomorphic figures, bird forms, animal tracks,

simple cup sculptures, spirals, club elements, rake-like elements, and

mythical animals.

Archaeological survey and test explorations of the immediate area

for cultural remains revealed nothing in the form of prehistoric artifacts

or indications of the existence of a camp or village site. It is regrettable

to note that permission was not granted to investigate a small area of

fire-cracked stones and chips of broken rocks near the stone, which might

have shed some light on the origin of the carvings.

This study is well written and illustrated with fine maps, photographs,

and line drawings. Despite its lack of detailed analysis, it is another fine

contribution to a much neglected area of Indian art.

Ohio Historical Society                     RAYMOND S. BABY

 

A Yankee's Odyssey: The Life of Joel Barlow. By James Leslie

Woodress. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1958. 347p.; illustrations,

notes on the sources, appendix, and index. $5.95.)

This Yankee was born in Redding Township, Connecticut, in 1754

and died of pneumonia in Zarnowiec, Poland, in December 1812, another

victim of the great retreat from Moscow. How he rose from penniless

farm boy to United States ambassador to the court of Napoleon is the

odyssey related by Professor Woodress in this graceful and scholarly

biography of Joel Barlow. Another interesting and influential American

has been rescued from unmerited obscurity.

Most Americans remember Barlow, if they remember him at all, for

his part in William Duer's plan to sell land options to unsuspecting

French settlers who made the abortive colony at Gallipolis, Ohio. But

Barlow was a school teacher, chaplain in Washington's army, poet, and

lawyer before he was briefly an agent for the Ohio Company and the

Scioto Associates. Nevertheless, it was as agent for Duer that he left

the United States for France in 1788, not to return for seventeen years.

In Paris with Jefferson and Gouverneur Morris he witnessed the fall

of the Bastille and joined in the excitement of the new revolution for

human rights. He was a friend of Tom Paine and like him had become

a deist and a pamphleteer; in one of his best essays, "Advice to the

Privileged Classes," he ably answered Burke's Reflections. This address

and his verse-satire, "The Conspiracy of Kings," put the evil eye on

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206    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Leopold of Austria, who expired March 1, 1792, and on Gustavus III

of Sweden, who was assassinated the same month; Louis XVI and

Marie Antoinette perished the next year. He was made a citizen of the

French Republic in recognition of his advisory pamphlets addressed to

the convention and stood unsuccessfully for a seat in the national assem-

bly when Savoy was annexed (here he wrote "Hasty Pudding," a

bucolic poem the world could have survived without). Sickened by the

execution of his friends the Girondins, and fearing for his own safety,

yet he outfaced the committee in behalf of Miranda and Paine. For

Paine, then in jail, he secured the publication of his Age of Reason.

In 1793 he entered into a partnership to furnish the French government

with supplies, an enterprise which took him to Hamburg for eighteen

months, during which time he was able to greatly augment a small

fortune he had gradually built up as commercial agent for various Ameri-

can exporters in the prior five years.

Barlow became an employee of the state department in 1795, when

Pickering sent him as consul to Algiers. Here after twenty months he

secured treaties with Algiers and Tripoli by very skillful, if chicane,

diplomacy.

After the failure of the XYZ embassy and Monroe's recall, Barlow

was a sort of self-appointed ambassador to France, but represented the

Jeffersonian minority rather than the Adams administration. He wished

to avert war with France, for he had come to see that all wars are funda-

mentally economic, and he hoped to maintain commercial relations with

all the states of Europe and hence the peace. He predicted that the only

workable European state system had to be a federated "United States of

Europe," buttressed by freedom of the seas in both peace and war; he

proposed a world court to adjudicate disputes and force compliance by

economic boycotts (sanctions).

In 1800 Barlow and wife lived with Robert Fulton and helped finance

and design his first submarine and steamboat. Disillusioned with

Napoleon in 1804, he returned to the United States, where he was an

unofficial advisor of his friends Jefferson and Madison. He was an

earnest advocate of free public education and had Senator George Logan

introduce a bill for the establishment of a national university, where all

the arts and sciences would be taught; although the bill failed to pass, it

laid the groundwork for George Washington University. He favored

universal military training, reliance on the militia, low taxes, and peace.

Barlow brought home from Europe a fine library and was widely

read in history and politics. Jefferson and Madison encouraged him to

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BOOK REVIEWS 207

spend his leisure years writing a history of the United States rather

than in refurbishing his Vision of Columbus into the Columbiad, a judg-

ment with which the author and this reviewer firmly agree. But Barlow

thought of himself as America's Homer and he hoped his lengthy poem

would prove an Iliad. In a very real sense, throughout his life, his major

energies were wasted on this clumsy creation. Occasional flashes of

genius and passages of real beauty are not enough to redeem it from

worse than mediocrity.

After the passage of Macon's bill in 1810, President Madison sent

Barlow as ambassador to France. He was to settle the spoliation claims,

secure an official and public repudiation of the Berlin and Milan decrees,

and perhaps a commercial treaty--stipulations Napoleon was not much

interested in at the time. But when the French foreign minister asked

him to come to Wilna to negotiate a settlement, since Napoleon would

winter there, he made the fourteen-hundred-mile trip in his own carriage.

But Napoleon did not winter in Wilna and sixteen days after Barlow's

arrival he was caught in the great ebb-tide from Moscow. Pneumonia

killed him at Zarnowiec, a martyr to duty and the cause of American

peace.

This is a distinguished biography, thoroughly researched, ably written,

and illuminated by copious quotations from, and stimulating observations

concerning Barlow. It is the only full biography of this character and

fills out the story only partially told by Charles B. Todd (Life and

Letters, 1886), Theodore A. Zunder (Early Days, 1934), and various

articles chiefly concerned with him as a "wit."

If Woodress knows more about Barlow's personal life than he tells,

his omissions are regrettable. His felicitous married life with Abraham

Baldwin's sister Ruth perhaps kept him from the fleshpots enjoyed in

Paris and Europe by Gouverneur Morris and other Americans on the

continent. Did he have no frailties or vices? Perhaps none save vanity.

But he had a powerful mind, was a sincere friend, a devoted husband, and

a real patriot. He was a bitter foe of slavery but did not live long enough

to be called an abolitionist.

The author is associate professor of English at San Fernando Valley

State College, Northridge, California, and has taught at Duke, Butler,

and Grinnell College. He was once a rewrite editor for the United

Press. He should be teaching history.

University of Oklahoma                       ALFRED B. SEARS

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208    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Altgeld's America: The Lincoln Ideal Versus Changing Realities. By

Ray Ginger. (New York: Funk and Wagnalls Company, 1958.

vi??376p.; note on sources and index. $4.95.)

Altgeld's America is an ambitiously conceived book on an interesting

and important subject. One of the hazards of such undertakings is the

likelihood that reviewers, including those sympathetic to the author's

point of view and intention, will dwell on the shortcomings rather than

the virtues of the work. There is much in this volume that will be of

interest and value both to students and general readers; and yet the

author has accomplished less than he seems to have intended. What he

has done is to recount episodes in and phases of Chicago's civic, business,

political, intellectual, and artistic life from the Haymarket bomb of 1886

to the failure of the campaign for municipal ownership of the street

railways about twenty years later. As the title suggests, the author had

something broader in mind. He tells us in the Prologue that the book

 

is not the story of Chicago alone; for it tells of how industrialism came

to the world, arm in arm with the search for profit, and of the trouble the

marriage made, and of how people of noble purpose labored to overcome

these troubles.

 

The material presented simply does not bear out this claim.

The author is not content to say that many of the people he writes

about admired Lincoln. "From the Civil War to 1900, Abraham Lincoln

dominated the visions of the good society," he asserts; during those

decades "the social realities that had shaped the Lincoln ideal were being

chipped away, and the ideal itself was being twisted beyond recognition."

This seems to be the thesis of the book. It is repeated several times but

not critically examined or thoughtfully developed. The author has

attempted to think through to the deeper meaning of his subject, but (in

the opinion of the reviewer) his reasoning and intuitions are not vigor-

ous or sharp enough to be convincing.

Mr. Ginger is at his best in describing living and working conditions

of the poor, the grafting of the "Gray Wolves," and the practical ideal-

ism of the Hull House group. He is less successful in dealing with the

national elections of 1896 and 1900; and for some reason his treatment

of the street railway struggle fails to arouse interest. Although Ginger

is to be commended for his attempt to relate intellectual, literary, and

architectural figures to the movement for social reform, he is better at

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BOOK REVIEWS          209

narrating events and sketching personalities than in analyzing ideas.

The comments on architecture, in particular, seem derivative.

The flow of the narrative is interrupted, often at crucial moments, by

"scenes" that read like newspaper feature stories. These are probably

intended to make the story come to life, but their effect is just the

opposite. They may be true but they don't sound like it.

Ohio State University                    ROBERT H. BREMNER

 

Henry Knox:    General Washington's General. By North Callahan.

(New York and Toronto: Rinehart and Company, 1958. xi??404p.;

frontispiece and index. $6.00.)

North Callahan's biography of Henry Knox is, from a literary point

of view, a free-flowing, enjoyable bit of prose. With the exception

of intruding fragmentary details into the very readable text, the narra-

tion goes smoothly.

Perhaps of the many outstanding figures of our late colonial and

early national history, Henry Knox has been the one most passed over

by historians and biographers. Certainly this cannot be attributed to

a lack of material on the subject's life and works. Few men were so

continually in the public eye and in the public service. Likewise, one

cannot say that Henry Knox, all 380 pounds of him, was not colorful

and impressive. Yet he has been by-passed until this present biograph-

ical attempt.

This reviewer, at least, is left frustrated upon having completed a

reading and re-reading of the Knox biography. He has been pleased

with the style of the volume and its easy, informal, and warming

presentation. However, error is piled upon error, mistake upon mistake,

until, finally, the reader begins to wonder how much is truth and how

much leaves truth to be desired.

It would be folly, indeed, to attempt to list the variety of errors seen

by this reviewer alone, but a few should suffice to support the point:

On page 216 appears the following statement: "Among the original

members [of the Society of the Cincinnati] . . . were . . . Clark of

the Lewis and Clark expedition. . . ."  William Clark was born in

1770 and did not enter the military service until 1792 during the Indian

Wars. The man Knox asked to find a house for him in Philadelphia (p.

282) was Samuel Hodgdon, not Hodgson. Hodgdon was commissary

general of military stores, 1781-84, and quartermaster general, 1791-92.

The Fort Knox referred to (p. 288) was located near Vincennes in the

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210    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Northwest Territory, and is not to be confused with the armored train-

ing center now located in Kentucky.

However, the reviewer is particularly embarrassed over the errors

in Chapter 18--"The Indian Troubles." The author, in the "Acknowl-

edgements" section, cites this reviewer as having furnished him with

materials dealing with this period of Knox's life and works. Therefore

it is most distressing to find that there is more error here than fact,

Of course, anyone having consulted an historical atlas will realize that

St. Clair's defeat did not take place "near the Miami Village" (p. 320);

that Wayne did not "in the spring of 1794 . . . [move] his legion to

Greene, Ohio" (p. 325) but, rather, in October 1793 moved northward

from his camp at Hobson's Choice and established a post he called Fort

Greene Ville (present Greenville, Ohio); that Fort Recovery (p. 325)

is hardly "above Cincinnati" (it was the post that Wayne built in De-

cember 1793 on the site of St. Clair's defeat); that Wayne could not

have "taken possession of the post at Grand Claire" (p. 326), for

"Grand Claire" was called Grand Glaize and no post existed there

until Wayne, in August 1794, built Fort Defiance; and so forth.

Because of the errors in those areas with which the reviewer is

closely acquainted, he has the feeling that the treatment of other phases

of Knox's life might be also fallible. That so much time, so much re-

search, and so much good literary ability appear to have gone to waste

is indeed a pity.

Anthony Wayne Parkway Board               RICHARD C. KNOPF

 

The Americans: The Colonial Experience. By Daniel J. Boorstin.

(New York: Random House, 1958. vii??434p.; index. $6.00.)

Rhode Island and the American Revolution, 1760-1776. By David S.

Lovejoy. (Providence: Brown University Press, 1958. ²⁵6p.; map,

bibliographical essay, and index. $4.50.)

There is no preface, introduction, or conclusion that clearly sets

forth the purpose or scope of Boorstin's book. In the absence of such

guides the jacket hails the volume as "the first major interpretation of

American History since Turner, Parrington, and Beard." Presumably

what Turner was to the frontier, Parrington to intellectual history,

and Beard to the economic interpretation, Boorstin will be to the new

conservatism. The uniqueness of American experience and the con-

trast between ideals and actuality are the main themes in this new

• 18
 

BOOK REVIEWS 211

 

synthesis of American history. We are told that there are two volumes

to follow.

The first part of the book, entitled "The Vision and the Reality,"

examines the ideas and aspirations that motivated four main groups of

settlers and the effects of the American environment on these ideas.

Although much of the material is familiar, it has been arranged in

such manner that fresh comparisons and contrasts emerge. The main

groups treated are the Puritans of Massachusetts, the Quakers of Penn-

sylvania, the trustees of Georgia, and the planters of Virginia. Hardly

any mention is made of the Dutch in New York, the Germans in

Pennsylvania and elsewhere, the planters of the Carolinas, or the

Scotch-Irish all along the frontier. Perhaps these other groups did

not fit into the author's scheme of examining the effects of the new

world environment on old world ideas. In assessing the relative merits

of these early settlements the author seems to apply a strictly pragmatic

test: those experiments are most to be admired which were most

successful in modifying ideas in accordance with realities. So tested, the

Quakers come off very poorly. The author regards them as having a

mulish determination for martyrdom and an unquenchable thirst for

moral perfection, neither of which they were willing to compromise

to meet American conditions. The trustees of Georgia he regards as

wholly unrealistic and unbending in their attempts to establish a utopia

in the new world. The Virginians come off fairly well, since they were

willing "to transform as they transplanted." But taking a squint beyond

the colonial era the author warns that "the virtues of the 18th Century

Virginian would seem to be vices." Only the sturdy Puritans of New

England receive an unqualified bill of health. "They were concerned

less with the ends of society than with its organization and less with

making the community good than with making it effective, with insuring

integrity and self restraint of its leaders, and with preventing its gov-

ernment from becoming oppressive" (p. 30).

Abandoning this sectional approach, Boorstin, in the remainder

of his volume, examines such topics as American ways of thought,

education, law and the legal profession, medicine and the medical pro-

fession, science and scientists, publishing and reading habits, and war-

fare and diplomacy. Having a better grasp of European history than

many American historians, he is able to make incisive comparisons and

thus to bring out what was unique in American development. His

observations on law, education, and science seem to this reviewer par-

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212    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

ticularly good. Comments on agriculture and warfare, on the other

hand, add little to what has been said often before.

Paying scant attention to either internal or external political struggles,

Boorstin compares American and European development and finds the

Americans delightfully self-reliant but immature in most fields. Focus-

ing on politics in a single state, Lovejoy discovers that the Americans

had reached a remarkable degree of political maturity by the time of

the Revolution. During the years 1760 to 1776 the freemen of Rhode

Island were engaged in what Carl Becker described as the two-fold

struggle over home rule and who should rule at home. The question of

who should rule at home involved a long struggle between the Ward

and Hopkins factions for control of the state government. According

to the author this factional division was based on geography and eco-

nomic interests. The Hopkins faction was supported by the northern

towns with Providence as the center, while the Ward faction drew

its strength from the southern towns, chiefly Newport. Both factions

were interested in promoting economic interests, but just what these

interests were and why they should have clashed are a little vague.

Though differing on internal questions, these factions were united on

resistance to parliamentary taxation.

After tracing the story of resistance to British measures the author

concludes that Rhode Island supported and fostered the Revolutionary

movement because the people had attained a high level of political

maturity and felt that control of their government meant not only

freedom to manage their own affairs but also the protection of property

interests which they considered to be in jeopardy. Acknowledging

that he has been much influenced by the studies of Sir Lewis Namier

in the field of British politics in the same period, the author is inclined

to minimize or rule out ideals and principles. In attempting thus to

fit the case of Rhode Island into the Namier mold, the author, in the

opinion of this reviewer, gives too little weight to a tradition of freedom

and a sense of mission that animated the Revolutionary generation. By

the time of the break with England there had grown up in America

the firm conviction that this country represented something precious

and unique in the history of mankind, and that the benefits of this

heritage must be nourished, developed, and extended. The Founding

Fathers were neither wild-eyed idealists nor unrealistic fanatics, but

their faith was firm and their hope eternal.

Ohio State University                         HARRY L. COLES

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BOOK REVIEWS          213

Cities and Camps of the Confederate States. By Fitzgerald Ross.

Edited by Richard Barksdale Harwell. (Urbana: University of

Illinois Press, 1958. xxii??262p.; illustrations, appendix, and index.

$4.50.)

This is the Confederacy during the latter half of 1863 and the early

months of 1864 as seen by Fitzgerald Ross. Ross was born in England

and educated in Germany. He had served, just prior to his visit to

the United States, both as a private soldier and as an officer in the

Austrian Hussars.

While in the South, Ross came to know Lee, Longstreet, Stuart,

and the other Confederate leaders. He traveled with them, lived in their

camps, shared their experiences. He was present at Gettysburg, at the

shelling of Charleston, at Chicamauga, and at Fredericksburg. He

became acquainted, too, with Jefferson Davis and with the planter aris-

tocracy. Unfortunately he had "no opportunity of seeing ... the private

houses of the poorer people." In his circles the South was a land of

plenty. He lists menus for camps and for city hotels and boarding

houses, and remarks, "I never saw such profusion, and, I might say,

waste." This when the South was supposed to be in severe want.

There is material here aplenty for the historian of whatever special

interest. Ross discusses food and drink, armaments and ammunition,

manners and morals, generosity and rapacity, planters and slaves,

countryside and city, prison and fort, and the horrors of the battlefield

and its glories. Little escaped his attention during his brief stay in the

Confederacy, and his word pictures, though mere sketches, are sharply

drawn.

The annoying feature of Ross's book is his openly intense prejudice

against everything northern. "Most Northern newspapers make it a

rule never to tell the truth if they can help it." As to the crime of

breaking up plantation Negro families by sale, "The few cases . . . have

almost invariably taken place when Northern creditors . . . have insisted

upon their pound of flesh." The northern soldiers are drunkards,

ruffians, and thieves who have "wreaked their wrath on women and

children in the South wherever they had an opportunity." The southern

troops, however, are well disciplined teetotallers and "as cheerful and

good natured a set of fellows as I ever saw . . ., never pushing or

insolent."

Ross never misses a chance to hurl an insult at the North and every-

thing that it represents. His is a true love affair with a South which

he found congenial. He left the United States, after a brief stay in

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214    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

northern parts, full of hope and confidence for his southern friends, and

convinced that Grant, after Chancellorsville, Spotsylvania, and Cold

Harbor, had done nothing more than succeed in "spoiling a large

army with greater celerity than any other general of modern times."

Fortunately a masterful job of editing has corrected Ross's errors,

supplied identifications where necessary, cited corroborative or con-

tradictory accounts, and furnished antidotes, when needed, to lessen

the effects of Ross's venom. He has accomplished this without inter-

rupting the narrative. Mr. Harwell is to be congratulated on bringing

to our attention a personal account, originally published in 1865 in

Edinburgh and London. In these days of reawakened Civil War inter-

est it is a book that can be of considerable value to historians if

judiciously used.

Ashland College                         GERALD W. MACKELLAR

 

Drums in the Forest. Decision at the Forks, by Alfred Procter James,

and Defense in the Wilderness, by Charles Morse Stotz. (Pittsburgh:

Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, 1958. viii??²27p.; end-

paper maps, illustrations, bibliography, glossary, and index. $3.50.)

Drums in the Forest is the title of a volume which, in fact, consists

of two monographs: Decision at the Forks, by Alfred Procter James, the

background and story of the Forbes campaign against Fort Duquesne

in 1758; and Defense in the Wilderness, by Charles Morse Stotz, a

scholarly study of the frontier defenses built on the site of present-day

Pittsburgh. Unlike many such anniversary works (this one marks

the two hundredth anniversary of the founding of Pittsburgh in 1758),

Drums in the Forest is a valuable historical contribution as well as a

commemorative volume.

Mr. James's Decision at the Forks offers little new to the student of

early American and frontier history. Beginning with a short discussion

of the "Amerinds," the author traces the history of the various elements

which vied for position in the "West." Interestingly, though perhaps

too strongly, he ties the European march of seventeenth and eighteenth

century imperialism to the struggle on the frontier (though admittedly

this was a part of a world-wide "competition for empire"). In short

sections he summarizes the developments which led to the struggle,

particularly between the British and French, for control of the "West."

He ends his succinct discussion with the British control of "The Forks"

in 1758, concluding that "the most lasting effect of the decision at

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BOOK REVIEWS 215

 

the Forks of the Ohio, was the breach in the dam against settlement,

a final result of which was the eager and later quick occupation of

the entire Ohio Valley."

One can take little issue with Mr. James's presentation except on a

few points of emphasis. Yet this drawing together of bits and pieces

into a recognizable and intelligent whole gives Decision at the Forks

a firm place among the writings on the history of the frontier.

Charles Morse Stotz's Defense in the Wilderness is a thorough, de-

tailed, yet highly readable account of the frontier forts which formed the

nucleus around which modern Pittsburgh grew and flourished. Pro-

fusely illustrated, however, it is more than just a description of five

posts and their relation to the contest of the French and English for the

possession of the frontier. Rather, it is an intriguing story of military

engineers and military engineering principles and methods. Tracing

the history of military engineering from its modern inception at the

end of the Middle Ages, Mr. Stotz summarizes the developments in

fortifications from the turreted castle to the frontier post, defining

terms, showing reasons for changes in methods and design, and detail-

ing some of the seeming minutiae which meant, in fact, so much in

assessing the strength and/or weakness of any particular fortification.

Having reviewed the development of fortifications, the author then

discusses, in detail, the plans and construction of the five forts erected

at The Forks: Fort Prince George, Fort Duquesne, Mercer's Fort,

Fort Pitt, and Fort Fayette.  In each he points out the inherent

strengths and weaknesses and supports his arguments with facts, figures,

and illustrations.

Mr. Stotz, an architect by profession with an avid interest in historical

structures, has made, in Defense in the Wilderness, a major contribu-

tion to our knowledge and understanding of defensive works; and,

though he confines most of his discussion of frontier forts to those at

The Forks, one easily makes the transition to other contemporary

structures of a similar nature.

One might also note that Mr. Stotz includes a section on garrison

gardens and their management which adds an interesting sidelight to

military life on the frontier.

Both monographs are fully annotated. The glossary of "Selected

Definitions of Fort Terms" which accompanies the Defense study,

though not quite as complete as this reviewer would wish, adds clarity

to the reading of an interesting volume.

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216        THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Drums in the Forest not only offers stimulating reading, but achieves

a high degree of scholarly accomplishment, which makes it a useful

tool of reference for the historian of the frontier.

Anthony Wayne Parkway Board                                               RICHARD C. KNOPF

 

The Health of a Nation: Harvey W. Wiley and the Fight for Pure

Food. By Oscar E. Anderson, Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1958. ix+332p.; illustrations, bibliography, and index. $6.00.)

Few Americans know the long, hard-fought struggle waged to provide

them with pure food and drugs. They take for granted that the flour

they purchase is clean, that the coffee they brew is not cut with chicory,

that the cosmetics they use do not contain harmful ingredients, that the

flavoring extracts are not diluted, that the medicines they swallow are

pure. And fewer consumers, purchasing bakery goods or flavorings or

drugs, ever have heard of Harvey Washington Wiley, Hoosier-born

chemist, who fought and hammered and badgered until in 1906 a not-too-

eager congress passed the first federal pure food and drugs act.

This book is the first full-length biography of Wiley, the individual

who the author suggests was a sort of knight in shining armor who,

battling terrific odds, finally succeeded in replacing falsehood with truth

and patent drugs with those properly compounded. In large measure,

this is correct, but it must also be understood, as Mr. Anderson points

out, that a pure food and drug law would have come had Wiley never

come to Washington in 1883 as chief chemist of the United States De-

partment of Agriculture. In a thousand communities throughout the

land and in many states, statutes of a pure-food-and-drug nature already

were on the books, and it took no "poison squad" such as the one Wiley

set up to determine the deleterious effect of certain food preservatives

upon the human body.

The nub of this pleasant excursion into biography is not so much the

impact of Wiley upon improper practices, but the influence of a dedicated

scientist upon many areas of thought. Mr. Anderson, it seems to this

reviewer, makes a much more positive contribution when he is describing

the relations of a fairly young scientist to sugar and politics; when he is

charting the development of the chemical division of the department of

agriculture to food and science; when he is reporting the fascinating

contents of Bulletin 13, which discussed foods and food adulterants;

when he sketches Wiley's period of disappointment during the admin-

istration of J. Sterling Morton as the department's new secretary; when

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BOOK REVIEWS 217

 

he delineates change and progress during the administration of Secre-

tary James Wilson.

In 1912, weary from a successful attempt to vindicate himself from

charges of maladministration, Wiley resigned after twenty-nine years of

service. The web of circumstances, some of Wiley's making and others

not, give interesting insight into politics during the Taft administration.

Perhaps, as the author suggests, the scientist had become too much the

reformer. Perhaps, as the author does not suggest, Wiley's personality

had not mellowed with the years.

After retirement, this man who had helped, along with so many others,

to bring a bit of significant legislation into being, continued as a faculty

member of George Washington University. After 1914 he left this

post to become director of Good Housekeeping's bureau of foods, sani-

tation, and health, a position he held until 1930. He lectured on the

Redpath Chautauqua circuit, published a book on nutrition, and wrote

a set of school readers. He busied himself during the Wilson adminis-

tration, continued to work to "liberalize" the pure food and drug law

from restraints he felt had been placed upon it, and still rode the nervous

steed of reform. He won friends, but had many enemies. He died in

1930 just twenty-four years to the day after the pure food and drug

bill went into law.

This book, clear, plain, honest, recounts bits of humanitarian history

that could be better known than they are. The volume contains much

new information, based upon papers not available until recently, that

give insight into the workings of the agricultural department. The con-

tributions of Wiley are well set forth--yet, for some reason, the man,

as shaped and interpreted by Mr. Anderson, seems more like a refrig-

erated shade than a warm-blooded human being. Pathetically, he does

not even come alive when he is treated as a passionate reformer.

University of Minnesota                     PHILIP D. JORDAN

 

Messages and Papers Relating to the Administration of Noah Noble,

Governor of Indiana, 1831-1837. Edited by Dorothy Riker and Gayle

Thornbrough. Indiana Historical Collections, Volume XXXVIII.

(Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau, 1958. viii??645p.; illus-

trations, appendix, and index. $6.00.)

The present volume is another step in the publication of the messages

and papers of the governors of Indiana. The project was initiated in

1922-24 by the Indiana Historical Commission (predecessor of the

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218    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

present Indiana Historical Bureau), when three volumes were issued,

two dealing with the papers of the territorial governors and one with

those of the state administrations before 1825. After about three decades

the program was revived, with the publication in 1954 of the messages

and papers of James Brown Ray, governor from 1825 to 1831. (See

review in the Ohio Historical Quarterly, LXIV [1955], 102-104.)

Noble, a native of Kentucky, was elected governor as a National Re-

publican in 1831 (for a three-year term) and was reelected three years

later. His life and work, interestingly summarized in a forty-eight page

introduction, was to come to a relatively early end by his death in

February 1844, at the age of fifty.

The Messages and Papers are gathered largely from the printed house

and senate journals, from contemporary newspapers, and from manu-

script sources, including some presented to the Indiana State Library by

Noble's granddaughter in 1931.

Although probably a stronger political leader than his predecessor,

Governor Ray, Noble was not a vigorous executive. He, however,

enjoyed great personal popularity, and his love of extensive hospitality

(the dining rooms of the two leading hotels in Indianapolis being secured

for one dinner) helped to create a gracious atmosphere in the society

of the frontier commonwealth.

Of special interest to Ohioans are the arrangements made during this

period between Ohio and Indiana for the building of the Wabash and

Erie Canal through the Maumee Valley of Ohio. The program of inter-

nal improvements resulted in the creation of a large state debt, and

with the coming of the panic of 1837, blame was placed upon Noble's

shoulders, although citizens had earlier shown great enthusiasm for the

program, and Noble made personal sacrifices to do his part in coping

with the difficulties.

The published materials include much that is of interest to students

of American political and social history, as the problems of denomina-

tional influences in the state college and conditions in state prisons are

among those dealt with in the volume.

The editing has, in general, been done with imaginative intelligence

and painstaking accuracy, and the publication is a distinct credit to

those involved in its production.

Ohio State University                FRANCIS P. WEISENBURGER

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