Ohio History Journal

Book Reviews         Banks or No Banks: The Money Issue in Western Politics, 1832-1865. By WILLIAM GERALD SHADE. (Detroit: Wayne State Uni- versity Press, 1972. 328p.; maps, tables, notes, bibliography, and index. $15.95.)   Banks or No Banks develops a new thesis from which to view the banking con- troversies of the mid-nineteenth century and the role of the bank issue in state politics. Mr. Shade looks at the social roots and pro- poses a broad social interpretation of the sig- nificance of the issue. He also tries to ac- count for mass political behavior by demon- strating that party, not section, was the most important determinant of attitudes on the bank issue and that ethnoreligious factors, not class or occupation, were prime determi- nants of party affiliation. The controversy over banking was both real and symbolic; how it was resolved af- fected the economic system, the status of ethnoreligous groups, as well as the domin- ance of certain value systems. That is, the controversy was not, as historians have long viewed the matter, a struggle between the haves and the have-nots. Rather, the author interprets the struggle as one between those that were Yankee-Protestant, commercially orientated who believed the government could legislate economic progress and moral reforms and those that were agrarian orien- tated, southern, or foreign who felt society could develop best without governmental in- tervention. Opposition to banks became a focal point for resisting the swift changes that were bringing about an industrial and urban society. Mr. Shade has done an impressive amount of research especially in manuscripts and Northwest newspapers of the day. From these he has culled the general feeling of the times and the specific position of the two major political parties on the bank issue. He fills a needed gap with the state-by-state study giving new depth to the banking con-

troversy and further revealing the com- plexity of the economic issues of the times. Each of the five states of the old Northwest- Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan-are examined separately. Each chapter has an introductory part delineating the issue and a summary section which draws generalizations and conclusions from the experience in the five states. The nine chapters divide the thirty-three year time frame into logical segments: (1) the bipartisan effort to respond to the de- mand for banks and capital in the 1830's, (2) the polarization of partisan positions after the Panic of 1837, (3) the hard-money revul- sion against banks as a result of the depres- sion, (4) the rise of free banking in the early 1850's (5) the nationalization of free banking in the 1860's, and (6) the key role westerners played in the national currency legislation. The book is arranged in a way that facilitates use as a reference tool. Information on any one state can be easily found and followed throughout the book. The author, however, does not start devel- oping his thesis until the last half of the book, beginning with the late 1840's. By de- tailed quantitative voting analysis for the state of Illinois, and to a much lesser extent for other states, he shows the relation be- tween the values of the various subcultures and the responses to the leading economic issue of the times. Mr. Shade makes a valuable contribution to scholarship by continuing his analysis of the banking issue past the 1850's. He has put in writing what a few banking historians have only recently begun to realize. This is that the banking controversy not only con- tinued to be of local importance throughout the 1850's, but also that the experience of the states with free banking, without a national bank, greatly affected the form in which the Federal Government again began to regu- late the currency and banking system of the country. The creation of the national bank-   235

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236   ing system in the 1860's must be properly viewed as the culmination of the debate be- gun in the 1830's and not as hindsight from the debates of the post-Civil War years. The formal bibliography is limited but there are innumerable references in the notes covering economic and financial his- tory, social history, and historiography of the period. Banks or No Banks is well written and attractively printed. Most important it adds to our knowledge of the depth of the struggle between those men and forces that molded modern America.     ABBY L. GILBERT U. S. Treasury Department       Bound with Them in Chains: A Biographical History of the Antislavery Movement. By JANE H. PEASE and WILLIAM H. PEASE. (West- port, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Inc., 1972. xvii + 334p.; bibliographical essay and index. $12.50.)   Eschewing a single-factor interpretation of the antislavery movement, Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease have committed themselves to the view that abolitionism can only be understood by "comprehend[ing] a wide spectrum of differing motives, goals, and methods undistorted by hypothetical categorical uniformity" (p. 4). In support of this position, the Peases have combined subtle dissections of ideology with, when possible, deftly-drawn personal portraits to present essays on ten individuals who partic- ipated in the antislavery crusade. Many of these individuals here receive scholarly scrutiny for the first time, but others are very well known. True to their purpose, the Peases touch upon almost all bases-Maria Weston Champman, dogmatic in her support of Garrisonianism and the American Anti- Slavery Society: Cassius M. Clay, the Ken- tucky abolitionist who opposed slavery be- cause he believed the institution was detri- mental to the economic health of the South and to the livelihood of the nonslaveholding white; Benjamin Lundy, gradualist reformer

OHIO HISTORY   who engaged in impractical "practical works"; Hiram Wilson, a second-rate man with a first-rate heart who ministered to the fugitives in Canada; Samuel E. Cornish, black minister and conservative reformer, and his opposite, the militant black minister Henry Highland Garnet; Stephen Foster, a moderate anarchist whose nonresistant views warred with his militancy; Elizur Wright, a political reformer who never understood politics; Joshua Giddings, a political refor- mer who did; and finally, Samual J. May, apostle of brotherly love and antagonistic to the factionalism pervasive among anti- slavery adherents. For readers with a special interest in Ohio history, the Peases' treatment of Giddings will be particularly rewarding. Although in substantial agreement with the interpretative outlines of James Brewer Stewart's recent bi- ography of the Ashtabula County congress- man, the Peases have produced a stimulating essay emphasizing the inherent difficulty Giddings confronted in blending political regularity with an antislavery posture. Despite the high quality of most of the es- says, Bound with Them in Chains poses cer- tain problems-beyond the fact that readers will undoubtedly quarrel with some of the interpretations and cavil at the Peases' occa- sionally inadequate citations. First of all, the authors regrettably use too much space treat- ing individuals who have received full-scale biographical consideration in recent years. One can also question the Peases' decision to include such secondary or peripheral figures as Wilson and Clay. More troublesome, however, is the au- thors' decision to portray ten diverse individ- uals in a single volume rather than develop "a social science model" (p. 5) of abolition- ism or write an institutional study. They ar- gue that only by studying individuals-many of whom had, at best, unstable institutional affiliations, if any at all-can historians begin to understand the scope and complexity of the antislavery movement. This, of course, raises the question of the relative importance of the part to the whole, and the Peases' claim that their subjects "most closely ap- proached representative diversity" (p. 5) simply begs the question once again. In ad-

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Book Reviews   dition, the Peases maintain that those who pilloried the abolitionists physically or sim- ply rhetorically aimed at individuals, not or- ganizations. While this may literally be true, it is also noteworthy that-as Leonard Rich- ards has aruged-it was the rapid growth of antislavery organizations in the 1830's which aroused the ire of the anti-abolitionist mobs in the North. The irate leaders of these as- semblages well recognized what the Peases themselves note in closing their approbatory sketch of Giddings-"efficient organization was the requisite of accomplishment" (p. 274). FLOYD J. MILLER Hiram College       The War of 1812. By JOHN K. MAHON. (Gain- esville: University of Florida Press, 1972. xii + 476p.; maps, illustrations, notes, bibliog- raphy, and index. $12.50.)   Scholars have written extensively in recent years about the causes and consequences of the War of 1812, but it has remained for Professor John K. Mahon of the University of Florida to present the first systematic re- examination of the course of that conflict in nearly a century. Those familiar with Mahon's previous publications know that we have here a copi- ously documented, carefully constructed narrative that testifies to an intimate famil- iarity with and utter fascination for military history. Firmly in command of an impres- sive array of primary and secondary mate- rials, Mahon expertly guides us through the various theaters of the war, explaining in painstakingly meticulous detail the salient features of engagements both major and mi- nor. Many of his descriptions-the con- frontations at the River Raisin and Fort Meigs in Ohio in 1813, Oliver Hazard Perry's activities on Lake Erie, the Creek War, and the Niagra campaign of 1814-are the best concise accounts available. And, like Jackson, Mahon is superb at the Battle of New Orleans. No mere chronicler, Mahon analyzes each facet of his martial mosaic: the cautious evaluations of battlefield oper-

237   ations and command decisions are always judicious; the portraits of ranking per- sonages are balanced; the sympathetic treat- ment of the British side of the story is re- freshing. While offering neither startling insights nor new substantive information, this comprehensive, almost encyclopedic, work of synthesis will long remain the stand- ard survey of the operational history of the War of 1812. Nonetheless, as Mahon anticipates in a rather defensive preface, the book is bound to engender criticism. The decision to ex- clude even cursory consideration of the ori- gins of the war not only deprives the general reader of the necessary context for viewing the conflict but also obscures the close corre- lation between the causes and conduct of the military operations. Similarly, the non-spe- cialist may become lost or confused because of inadequate maps and diagrams to illus- trate descriptions of engagements. All of the field maps are reprints, mostly from Benson J. Lossing's classic Pictorial Field-Book of the War of 1812 (1867), which could be greatly improved upon by modern carto- graphy. Surprisingly, there is no diagram of the Battle of New Orleans; the general map of Louisiana and West Florida taken from Latour's Memoir is virtually indecipherable (p. 342). More importantly, the work lacks editorial discipline. The presentation often lacks internal cohesion and integration (Chapter I is especially disjointed), and the narrative at times fairly groans under the op- pressive weight of inordinate detail. Is it nec- essary, for example, to tell us that 38-gun frigates were twelve feet shorter and four feet narrower across the beam than 44-gun frigates, or that "a 32-pound carronade and a long 12-pounder were roughly equivalent in range: 260 yards point blank, 1,260 yards at 5 degrees elevation" (p. 8-9)? After all, a survey is a survey. The most serious shortcomings of the book is Mahon's failure to deliver on his promise "to place the operations of the War of 1812 precisely within the politics and cul- ture of the time" (p. viii). Instead, he has penned a traditional drum-and-bugle mili- tary history featuring commanders and cam- paigns, ordnance and organization, strate-

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238   gies and tactics. Neglected or treated superficially are such vital matters as govern- mental management of the war at the local and national levels, regulars versus militia, treatment of prisoners of war, civilian-mili- tary relations, the socio-economic impact of warfare, civil liberties during wartime, and the political dissent generated by "Mr.

OHIO HISTORY   Madison's War." In short, while Mahon has produced an authoritative military history of the period of 1812-1815, a larger and more important history of the War of 1812 has yet to be writ- ten. LARRY R. GERLACH University of Utah

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