Book Reviews
An Archeological History of the
Hocking Valley. By James Murphy.
(Athens:
Ohio University Press, 1975. xi + 360p.;
illustrations, tables, figures, ap-
pendix, index. $15.00.)
In the past the major portion of the
archaeological literature for Ohio has
been derived from work done in the
central, southern and southwestern parts
of the state; that situation is
currently changing for the better. In An Archeolog-
ical History of the Hocking Valley, James Murphy broadens our knowledge of
prehistoric Ohio Indian cultures by
presenting a comprehensive view of an
area extensively inhabited throughout
the prehistoric era but poorly recorded
or understood. It is a logical outgrowth
of a brief survey by Murphy and
Orrin Shane published in 1967, and
incorporates data from Murphy's own in-
vestigations in the Athens area as well
as that of other archaeologists.
The book begins with a "note"
on nomenclature which quickly develops into
a detailed (14 pages long) disagreement
with the way in which Olaf Prufer
and Shane have used various terms in
their theoretical constructs. Such a
chapter is more suitable as a separate
article in one of the archaeological
journals rather than a book that is
expected to have an appeal to a fairly
wide audience. The reader will, however,
be frustrated in any attempt to delve
further into the works Murphy is
criticizing, since the list of references that
accompanies every other chapter is
missing from this section.
The next three chapters introduce the
Hocking River valley, its history,
its resources and the previous
archaeological work that has been carried on
there. The section on the origin of the
name "Hocking" ably demonstrates
the problems of the varying
interpretations of Indian words. The Primitive
Environment chapter introduces the
geology, pedology, flora, and fauna of the
Hocking valley; the descriptions of the
various flint sources in the area are
particularly detailed. The third chapter
of this section discusses the small
group of nineteenth and early twentieth
century archaeologists working in the
Hocking valley, many of whom described
sites that are no longer in existence.
Their work and observations, crude as
they sometimes were, are valuable be-
cause they are often the only records we
have.
The remainder of the book is devoted to
descriptions of the various cultural
traditions whose presence has been
documented in the Hocking area-the
Palaeo-Indians, Archaic, Early Woodland
(Adena), Middle Woodland (Hope-
well), Late Woodland, Late Prehistoric,
and historic Indians. A special chap-
ter addresses the numerous rockshelters
that are particularly characteristic
of the Hocking valley. Each section is
introduced by a summary of the more
recent literature on the particular
tradition, followed by a discussion of the
evidence for that group in the study
area. In some instances, Murphy pre-
sents data on sites he has excavated
himself while in other cases he merely
describes the work and collections of
others. Of particular interest is the re-
port on the Daines mounds in Athens, one
of which, Daines #2, provided
fragments of corn cob, suggesting that
the Adena were familiar with this cul-
tigen in the third century B.C. The book
ends with a short discussion of the
historic period, treating some of the
American Indian as well as Euro-Ameri-
can sites such as Fort Gower. The single
appendix follows with brief descrip-
88 OHIO
HISTORY
tions of sixty-three sites in the
Hocking valley; locational information is suit-
ably vague so that its publication would
not encourage looters to attempt to
find the sites.
The real worth of Murphy's work lies in
the individual site reports, many
of which represent the only tangible
evidence of prehistoric habitation in some
localities. Since numerous sites have
been destroyed we are grateful for
every bit of information we can get!
Also of great importance are the sum-
marizations of the current literature
relating to each cultural tradition that
begin each chapter.
The book is not without problems,
however. Many of the sites Murphy in-
vestigated, particularly the mounds, had
been disturbed by untrained indi-
viduals, making his interpretations
difficult and incomplete. More detailed draw-
ings of mound plans and profiles should
have been included in the volume.
Of all the sites excavated, only one is
illustrated with a photograph-a tiny,
dark, indistinct view of the Daines
mound #3; only one excavated feature,
a burial from the McCune site, is shown in
situ. The artifacts have been
photographed under varying conditions,
some of which may not have been un-
der Murphy's complete control and many
are dark and indistinct making it
difficult to use them for comparative
purposes. For some reason, apparently
determined by the publisher, two figures
are shown on a single page with one
of the captions printed on the opposite,
otherwise blank page. This arrange-
ment is not aesthetically pleasing, and,
more importantly, has meant that
photographs have been reduced to fit
them onto a given page. There are also
errors in references to figures in the
text that are annoying.
From the viewpoint of the more general
reader the discussions of the site
reports may be difficult to follow,
particularly the details of differentiating
among various projectile point types and
the theoretical positions. To make
his contribution complete, therefore,
Murphy should have finished the book
with an overview, a look at the whole
forest rather than the trees, that would
relate the Hocking River valley and its
cultural history to the rest of the state.
Perhaps that will be the subject of his
next publication.
The Ohio Historical Society Martha Potter Otto
The Mapping of Ohio. By Thomas H. Smith. (Kent: The Kent State Univer-
sity Press, 1977. xiii + 252p.;
illustrations, maps, appendix, bibliography,
index. $29.00.)
This handsome volume, for the most part
well-illustrated with some eighty
uncolored maps and views, provides a
concise and well-documented histori-
cal narrative through a discussion of
selected early maps and mapmakers of
the area, all within a seemingly strict
framework as outlined in the introduc-
tion. The book is arranged into seven
chapters with an appendix, a general,
primary and secondary bibliography and
an index.
Chapter I traces the history of the Ohio
region from the time of the French
pioneers and explorers to the beginning
of the British westward movement
across the Allegheny Mountains. Five key
maps, made between 1650 and 1778,
representing the works of noteworthy
French and English map makers, are de-
scribed and portions reproduced. The
second chapter deals at length with the
Book Reviews 89
prehistoric earthworks which are a
dominant feature of the landscape. Many
of the well-known maps portraying the
mounds are shown including those of
the nineteenth-century American
journalist, diplomat and archaeologist
Ephraim G. Squier. Although this is a
fascinating subject, both for the
archaeologist and the historian, it is
not of itself a study in the history, develop-
ment and chronology of Ohio mapping. It
is, rather, a graphic record of these
unusual manmade features.
Chapters III and IV group together maps
of towns, battles and fort plans
and describe in detail the survey
systems employed by the United States Gov-
ernment to divide the public domain.
Interesting and important exploration
maps, fort plans and views are depicted,
but only one "battle" map is illus-
trated, that of the defeat of Arthur St.
Clair at the hands of the Miami Indians
in 1791. In this section, as also to
some extent in other parts of the book,
more careful editing would have
eliminated such errors as the caption for
Plate 28, which shows what is left of
Fort Miami in 1888, but describes the
fort in 1794 (not illustrated elsewhere)
as the "only foreign fort built in Ohio."
The notation apparently refers to earthen
and not foreign. Additionally, the
map in Plate 34 should be dated 1863 and
not 1965.
A well-illustrated study recounting the
growth of state map production to
the beginnings of the Civil War
constitutes the fifth chapter. This growth
paralleled the introduction of
nineteenth-century printing inventions which
enabled maps and atlases to be produced
inexpensively and in great quantity.
This easy availability in turn helped
disseminate geographic information and
gave a stimulus to further exploration,
rail travel and settlement in the West.
The last two chapters illustrate the
close relationship between Ohio's early
urban growth, the development of
internal improvements, and map making as
a promotional enterprise. Many of the
early urban maps were designed as
virtual advertisements designed to
highlight the advantages of each town in
the competition for Eastern immigrants.
Though the author includes no map,
to illustrate turnpikes or roads in the
state, an interesting map of Columbus,
dated 1818, and annotated in 1831 by
Columbus publisher Horton Howard,
shows the economic impact of two
different routes through the city. The map
is accompanied by an extract from
Horton's long letter to Secretary of War
Lewis Cass insisting upon construction
of a route extending the length of the
business district and arguing against a
"secret influence" that sought a less
commercially favorable but more direct
route.
By peopling its great interior west of
the Alleghenies the United States at-
tained maturity in the nineteenth
century, and this work affords much docu-
mentation to that great effort. The
selected maps, however, do not include
some of the landmark developments in cartography
of the time. The detailed
and important nineteenth-century county
maps are only mentioned in a foot-
note. Real estate and insurance maps and
atlases, panoramic maps of Ohio
cities, geology, mining, and early U.S.
Geological Survey topographical maps,
and U.S. Lake Survey navigation charts
are not discussed, although all meet
the criteria for inclusion established
by the author's introduction.
There is no discussion or illustration
of Rufus Putnam's January 1804 map,
popularly known as the first map of
Ohio, or of Arthur G. King's article
"The Earliest Map of Cincinnati
(1792)," which appeared in the Historical
and Philosophical Society of Ohio Bulletin,
1957.
A list of Ohio state atlases, minus most
twentieth-century "plat books,"
appears to be an updating by about a
dozen atlases (and two maps?) of
90 OHIO
HISTORY
Clara E. LeGear's United States
Atlases, and is included without comment as
an appendix. In addition, it would have
been useful if a list of illustrations
was included which gave credit
information. It is difficult without reading the
text to trace where an original is
located.
Although the present decade has seen a
marked increase in the literature
of the history of cartography and map
librarianship, the latest quoted source
in this work is dated 1970. There seems
to be, therefore, a long gap between
the end of the research for the project
and its final publication. Despite these
critical observations, the book, taken
as a whole, is a welcome addition to the
growing literature on early cartography
and a popular guide to the study of the
early mapping and history of Ohio.
Library of Congress, Andrew M.
Modelski
Geography and Map Division
Golden Door to America: The Jewish
Immigrant Experience. Edited by
Abraham J. Karp. (New York: Viking
Press, 1976. xiv + 271p.; bibliography,
index. $8.95.)
With the appearance of the Golden
Door to America, Abraham J. Karp,
Professor of History and Religious
Studies at the University of Rochester,
has provided students of American Jewish
and Immigration History with a
well-edited documentary history
beginning with Peter Stuyvesant's invective
against the earliest Jewish arrivals
(1654) and concluding with attempts to
create a securely Jewish and American
life style in the inter-War years.
Part I is a narrative history which
carefully weaves poetry, documents,
diaries, reports, letters, descriptions
and reminiscences by those who expe-
rienced migration or by those who wrote
about those who experienced it. Of
greatest interest are the little-known
sources (non-political) for and against
Jewish immigration restriction from the
late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, the unique sources on East
European Jewish immigration trans-
lated by the author from the European
Yiddish press, and the care with which
Karp's choices link Europe, the United
States, and the ocean between them.
Part II documents the adjustment of
Jewish immigrants to the stresses of
family, generational conflict, work and
education in America and the Jewish
community's response to these tensions.
Here the most compelling sources
are articles from the Yiddish and
American press, many of which this re-
viewer has not seen in other collections
of immigrant materials.
Part III consists of excerpts from four
immigrant memoirs: childhood
memories of an East European Jewish
woman and man in Buffalo and Utica,
and the recollections of a poet (Ephraim
Lisitzky) and a philosopher (Morris
Raphael Cohen). They serve to amplify
several of the previously articulated
themes.
Generally, the documents which comprise
this collection, and Karp's brief
narrative introductions, reveal careful
selection and attention. The sources
touch repeatedly upon what the poet
Elyakum Zunser described: "Tears and
suffering and tales of woe. . . .
Poverty, misery, darkness, cold-Everywhere,
in this Land of Gold!" We feel
respect and fascination when presented with
Book Reviews 91
the hardships, disillusionment and
modest achievement of these men and
women.
The major weakness of the collection is
that many of the sources are dull,
although not unimportant. On several
occasions lengthy selections from The
Russian Jew in the United States (1905) anesthetize the reader, while the
same holds true for some of the
congressional documents in the chapter on
immigration restriction. Thus while some
chapters move from topic to topic
with stimulating and diverse sources,
other chapters move tediously and slow-
ly. We need to be reminded, however,
that most emigrants unfortunately
wrote nothing that can be traced and
said nothing that we can hear. Given
the potential sources then, this is a
rich and valuable collection.
The Ohio State University Marc Lee Raphael
George Rogers Clark and the War in
the West. By Lowell H. Harrison. (Lex-
ington: The University Press of
Kentucky, 1976. xi + 120p.; map, notes,
bibliographic essay. $3.95.)
This slim volume, written for the
general reader, is part of the Kentucky
Bicentennial Bookshelf, sponsored by an
impressive group of Kentucky indi-
viduals and business concerns. Within
this context, Harrison has produced an
excellent summary of George Rogers
Clark's role in the complex military
activities in Kentucky and the Illinois
Country during the American War of
Independence.
George Rogers Clark possessed
exceptional talent for forest warfare and
diplomacy as his brief moment of glory
in the years 1777-1780 demonstrates.
The glory was earned. His story is
filled with the endless frustrations that
marked eighteenth-century American
military endeavours-lack of manpower,
essential supplies, prompt and accurate
communications, and reliable military
intelligence. Perhaps these difficulties
were in the nature of eighteenth-century
warfare generally, but in the American
wilderness they were exaggerated. It
took men of persistence and character to
surmount them. Such men, bold
and assertive by nature, often become
the targets of jealous men who try to
humble them, even by lies and slander if
necessary. Thus Clark was frus-
trated by those who deliberately
misrepresented his intent and his interests.
Harrison presents Clark as a wise leader
of courage and foresight who con-
ducted one of the "brilliantly
conceived and executed campaigns of the Amer-
ican Revolution" (p.109). A
consummate practical psychologist, Clark used
persuasion and the power of suggestion
to maneuver the Indians and French
in the Illinois Country. But psychology
was no substitute for men and sup-
plies, and these he was unable to get in
suitable quantity from a bankrupt
Virginia government. Clark fell short of
achieving his major objective in the
West-the seizure of the British
stronghold at Detroit from which the bloody
raids against Kentucky were launched.
With sound strategic insight, he knew
that his proper objective should be the
war-making potential of the enemy.
This aggressive intent was frustrated
not only by shortages of men and mate-
rial, but also by colleagues who favored
a static defense of the Kentucky set-
tlements, a policy that left initiative
and choice to the British and Indians.
Like some other frontier adventurers of
this period, Clark's career peaked
92 OHIO HISTORY
at an early age. Frustration,
disappointment, and whiskey wore him down, and
physical infirmities finished the
erosion of strength and purpose. In his later
years, he became an object of pity.
Harrison tells his story with economy
and with fidelity to the records.
He uses sources selectively, and he
provides the inquiring reader with notes
and a bibliographical essay. This is a
successful venture in popular history.
The University of Akron George W.
Knepper
Dimity Convictions: The American
Woman in the Nineteenth Century. By
Barbara Welter. (Athens: Ohio University
Press, 1976. 230p.; notes. $12.00
cloth; $4.50 paper.)
Anyone familiar with the explosion in
knowledge and methodology in wom-
en's history over the last decade will
find Dimity Convictions an interesting
book to peruse. Six of its essays
appeared in scholarly publications between
1966 and 1973. The other three were
written for this collection before 1976.
To read these essays in 1978 is to gain
an insight into the key issues which
have occupied practitioners of women's
history since revived interest in the
topic developed in the mid-1960s.
Barbara Welter, Professor of History at
Hunter College, was a pioneer in
the field. She is well-known for her
article "The Cult of True Womanhood,
1800-1860" which is key in this
collection. Her ability to move beyond the
narrative history of women toward wider,
interpretive themes was remarkable
when most historians of women were still
experimenting with the factual ap-
proach now known as "remedial"
women's history. She was also one of the
first to attempt an interdisciplinary
approach by looking at women's history
in relation to other fields,
particularly religion and literature.
With this background, it is unfortunate
that Welter's Dimity Convictions
is not more innovative. The three new
essays are simply "notable women"
history. Here she deals with women who
wrote on religious controversy; with
Anna Katharine Green, the first woman
writer of detective stories; and with
Transcendentalist Margaret Fuller. The
pieces thoroughly review the ideas
of these women's works, but hardly touch
upon their background or their im-
pact and meaning.
Combined with the other essays, they
form a disjointed compilation whose
direction is unclear. This might have
been remedied by an introduction tying
together the essays' themes or by a
conclusion interpreting their theses. The
time frames are also unclear. The first
six chapters deal primarily with the pe-
riod before the Civil War, the next two
with the years after the war, and the
last jumps back to the early nineteenth
century. If there was intent in this
organization it is never explained and
one is left to assume that the nineteenth
century was an entity, rather than a
series of developmental stages.
Another problem is that the subtitle,
"The American Woman in the Nine-
teenth Century," is misleading because
the book is geared to only one seg-
ment of women. Welter deals almost
exclusively with middle- and upper-
class women of New England; nothing is
said of ethnic, racial, sectional, and
class differentiations. Of course, this
criticism reflects recent awareness
levels which Welter could not have been
expected to display in her earlier
Book Reviews 93
essays. However, they might have been
integrated into the new chapters or
into the missing introduction or
conclusion.
Finally, Welter's use of literature as
source material is problematic. Much
nineteenth-century literature was
prescriptive rather than normative. It ex-
hibited what writers, often male,
thought women should do, not what women
did. Even some of the women writers
cited, such as Lydia Maria Child and
Lydia Sigourney, prescribed what women
were "supposed" to do while fail-
ing to follow their own dictums. So many
"shoulds" would not have been
necessary if women were already
practicing what was so widely preached.
This is not to say that Dimity
Convictions lacks value. Having these essays
in one collection gives a feeling for
the complexity of women's history. It
suggests topics, people, and areas
needing more research. It is of historio-
graphical significance to those who want
to determine what the field was and
where it is going.
University of Northern Iowa Glenda Riley
The Kentucky Shakers. By Julia Neal. (Lexington: The University Press of
Kentucky, 1977. 98p.; illustrations,
bibliographical note. $4.95.)
The revival of interest in America's
most enduring and successful com-
munal sect, the Shakers, has prompted
the emergence of numerous books
about the Shakers and their crafts. This
book, as the title implies, differs in
that it deals primarily with one
geographic area. The Kentucky Shakers in-
volvement in Ohio and Indiana are
included, which resulted in a fuller under-
standing of their range and activity.
The work concerns itself primarily with
the Kentucky Shakers themselves, their
growth, industry, religion, hardship
in the Civil War, and dissolution,
rather than the artifacts that they produced.
The extraction of material of Kentucky
interest from numerous sources in
conjunction with sometimes congested
quotes, dates, and figures, occasionally
results in difficult reading. This may
be the result of trying to condense a num-
ber of sources and ideas into a
relatively small book.
Surprisingly little background
information about the Shakers is included.
In fact, there is only an occasional
reference to Ann Lee, the fanatical founder
and Mother of Shakerdom. A previous
knowledge of the Shakers is necessary
to place the importance of the two
Kentucky colonies into the entire Shaker
picture.
To those unfamiliar with the Shaker
communities of Pleasant Hill in Mer-
cer County, and South Union in Logan
County, the narrative concerning
the buildings at these sites would be
somewhat confusing. The inclusion of a
diagram among the illustrations would
have been helpful in the identification
and outlay of their buildings.
The Shakers' beliefs, manners, and
religious dances often made them a
subject of controversy among the outside
world. The author presented an
impartial outlook of the attitudes
towards the Shakers and of the problems
and persecutions they encountered
defending their faith. A great deal of
attention was given to the problems the
Shakers met during the Civil War.
This was the most devastating period of
their existence and the beginning
of their decline.
94 OHIO HISTORY
One problem that seemed somewhat
over-rated, however, was the threat
of danger from wild animals and Indians on Shaker
messengers traveling to
Ohio and Indiana in 1805. This was ten years after the
Greene Ville Treaty
and by this time the Indian threat was
very minimal. Wild animals were also
a small danger. Most were wary of human
beings and would attack only the
most weak or injured.
The Kentucky Shakers provides a worthwhile condensed account of the
history of the Shakers in Kentucky, and
would be recommended not only for
those interested in Shaker history, but
in Kentucky history also. The book
would be especially benefiting to anyone
who plans to visit the two Shaker
sites in Kentucky. It was published as
part of the Kentucky Bicentennial
Bookshelf and reflects a sensible
project of publications that will be of endur-
ing value.
The Ohio Historical Society Doug White
Harpers Ferry Armory and the New
Technology: The Challenge of Change.
By Merritt Roe Smith. (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1977. 363p.; il-
lustrations, bibliography, index.
$17.50.)
The notion that all nineteenth-century
Americans, with the possible excep-
tion of southern plantation owners, were
so fully committed to the glories of
industrial progress that no serious
popular resistance to technological innova-
tion could have existed on this
enlightened side of the Atlantic is one of the
favorite axioms of American historians.
Although numerous studies written
by historians of American workers during
the last decade and a half have
challenged that facile assumption, none
of them has documented the
tenacity of popular opposition to the
time-discipline demanded by industrial
capitalism quite as thoroughly and
convincingly as Merritt Roe Smith has
done in this impressive volume. Although
the author's sentiments clearly
lie with the innovators, he has analyzed
all parties involved in more than
half a century of chronic controversy
over work methods at the Harpers
Ferry armory with sensitivity and skill.
At least since Andrew Ure published The
Philosophy of Manufactures in
1835, it has been well known to all
those who cared to know that those
"desultory habits of work,"
which we have lately come to call "pre-
industrial," were most deeply
ingrained and most effectively defended not by
workers of recent agricultural
backgrounds, but by artisans. Smith makes
clear to us why this was so, starting
with a description of hammering musket
barrels around swedges out of flat
wrought iron bars so vivid as to leave the
reader perspiring, and proceeding
through a detailed analysis of the sporadic
but often intense efforts of
superintendents of the armory and chiefs of the
Ordnance Department to harness science
to the breaking of the craftsmen's
"refractory spirit" (to use
Ure's apt phrase), to a lucid exposition of the role
of "the very fibers of things"
(p.279) in the Harpers Ferry community in
frustrating the utilitarian designs of
the armory's reformers.
It is important to note that the
artisans never enjoyed the legendary
pleasure of fabricating an entire
weapon. Extensive specialization of work was
the rule in Harpers Ferry from at least
the time full-scale operations were
Book Reviews 95
first attained in 1802. By the 1820s
fifty-five separate detailed tasks (including
twenty-one on the lock alone) had made
the armorers living appendages of
specialty files and hammers. They faced
incessant pressures to change their
habits of work. In 1809 inside
contracting was introduced, one effect of which
was the displacement of formal
apprenticeship within the shops by simple
child labor. Piece work payments and
accounting became the rule during the
next decade, and, at the insistance of
Col. Decius Wadsworth of the Ordnance
Department, inspection gauges, trip
hammers, and turning lathes were in-
troduced. From 1819 onward John H. Hall
experimented, under special con-
tract with the government, with massive
milling machines, jigs, and ingenious
locator studs on castings, all of which
enabled inexperienced workers to turn
out interchangeable parts. In 1829 rules
against gambling, loitering, and
drinking in the armory's buildings were
posted, but they were subsequently
allowed to lapse into neglect. Early in
the 1840s the superintendents were
required to be military officers, and
time clocks were installed.
Each of these innovations was fiercely
opposed, and often frustrated, by
the armorers. As late as 1841 farmers
took orders for hogs to be slaughtered,
and other household affairs were
regularly conducted in the shops, workers
transferred between jobs at will and
continued to exercise such perquisites
as absenting themselves for hunting and
farming, handing round the jug on
the job, and selling off armory tools.
Long after formal apprenticeship had
disappeared, armorers taught their own
sons the mysteries of the craft on
the job. The posting of time clocks
provoked the armory's first strike, and
the superintendent who decreed workshop
rules in 1829 was shot by a dis-
charged armorer, who became a folk hero.
"For the most part," Smith con-
cludes, "hard work prevailed at
Harpers Ferry; a systematic work regime
did not" (p.66).
What Smith has provided in this
well-written and splendidly illustrated
volume, however, is far more than simply
a chronicle of resistance to change.
He has shown, first of all, the decisive
role of the state, and in particular of
its military arm, in the evolution of
both the machinery and the work disci-
pline of capitalist metal working.
Before the 1840s, he argues convincingly,
machine technology was not cheaper than
hand methods. Only government
contracts and armories sheltered from
the competitive pressures of the market
could encourage its use, before large
scale private enterprises emerged in the
1840s. Moreover, the earliest effective
champions of "Uniformity, Sim-
plicity, and Solidarity" (p.106)
in production appeared in the army itself.
Although the cause of utilitarian reform
of the arsenals was supported by
congressmen beholden to local Maryland
timber interests and by Jacksonian
politicians, who wished to substitute
party for family patronage, the links
between work discipline and military
discipline were always evident.
Second, Smith quite properly does not
offer a bucolic image of "pre-
industrial" artisanal life. The
armory's workers were entrapped in deprivation,
disease, and petty exploitation.
Interwoven with the lax work regime was a
network of managerial perquisites,
effectively exploited and preserved by the
extended family of the civilian
superintendent and the rest of a coterie of local
landowners. Monopoly prices for food and
housing, and even payment in
"shinplasters" by paymasters
who pocketed the difference between the de-
preciated value of the banknotes they
gave the armorers and the payroll
sent from Washington, were integrated
into arsenal life as thoroughly as
were hunting and fishing.
96 OHIO
HISTORY
Finally, as these comments suggest,
Smith has offered some provocative
insights into the relationship between
paternalism and the largely self-
regulated work regime of the artisans.
The utilitarian decrees of the Ordnance
Department were defied by all echelons
of the community, not just by the
armorers, and the relationship among
these various levels of defiance was
symbiotic. On the other hand, the author
vacillates between depicting this
symbiosis as especially resillient in a
rural southern setting and envisaging
Harpers Ferry as "a microcosmic
view of the industrial revolution which is
perhaps more suggestive of America's
bittersweet relationship with the
machine than many historians have
heretofore recognized" (p.21). Only more
local studies, which strive to match the
quality of this book, can clarify
what belonged generically to the
experience of technological change in early
industrialization and what was
distincively southern in the experience of
Harpers Ferry.
State University of New York at
Buffalo David Montgomery
Racism, Revolution, Reaction,
1861-1877: The Rise and Fall of Radical Re-
construction. By Peter Camejo. (New York: Monad Press, 1976. 269p.;
illustrations, notes, bibliography,
index. $12.00 cloth; $3.45 paper.)
Making use of selected secondary
accounts, Peter Camejo has written a
Marxist interpretation of the
Reconstruction period. He has followed closely
the ideas of Charles and Mary Beard and
W. E. B. DuBois and relied heavily
on the economic interpretation of Howard
K. Beale and C. Vann Woodward.
The author oversimplifies and overlooks
the complexity of this era, yet he
follows a tortured path to establish a
thesis that the events leading to the
postwar exploitation of the blacks and
dominance of northeastern capitalism
was entirely the result of deliberate
planning by an industrial capitalist "ruling
class." According to Camejo, race
relations were improving during the Civil
War as a result of the policies of the
Radical Republicans. However, the
ruling class broke with the Radicals,
because of the corruption of the machine
politicians, and in the interest of
stability. Turning against the blacks,
northern capitalists forged an alliance
with southern Conservatives that re-
sulted in a sell-out of the freedmen and
the subordination of the South to
northern interests. Thus, the second
American revolution was betrayed. It
will take a third, writes Camejo, to
replace capitalism with socialism and
realize the complete liberation of
blacks and other minorities.
The Civil War did result in the triumph
of northeastern capitalism over
the agricultural South and West and
there can be little doubt of the subse-
quent fate of the black population.
However, Camejo overlooks much recent
research, makes questionable unproved
assumptions, and in general does little
with non-economic factors. There is no
understanding of Lincoln's war-time
policy, of the western attitudes that
divided the Republican party, or of the
lack of unanimity among the Radicals.
The author underestimates the extent of
racism in both the North and South
during the war and afterward. Neither
are the politics of the period
sufficiently explained. For example, there were
many reasons why Carl Schurz turned
against the Grant Administration,
including the support the latter gave to
France in the Franco-Prussian war.
The Half-Breeds were hardly the liberal
reformers Camejo portrays them.
Book Reviews 97
Reference to recent studies such as
Keith Polakoffs The Politics of Inertia
(1973) would have contributed additional
insights.
Because historians hesitate to be
definitive where complex issues are in-
volved and because they often fail to
pass judgment on the past, Camejo
castigates most in the profession as
historical agnostics. The author, however,
is much less restrained, and he
forthrightly asserts that "Radical Reconstruc-
tion was the last progressive act of the
American ruling class."
But the truth is much more subtle, and
must be quite frustrating to Camejo,
who was the Socialist Worker's party
presidential candidate in 1976. Unable
to explain how capitalism came to be
institutionalized in the last part of the
nineteenth century, Camejo fails to see
how public opinion provided a favor-
able climate for unrestrained industrial
capitalism. Much history is irrational,
and has so biased American society that
we may move toward repressive
tyranny rather than the revolution which
Camejo expects.
Kent State University Harris L.
Dante
The Antislavery Appeal: American
Abolitionism after 1830. By Ronald G.
Walters. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1976. xvii + 196p.;
illustrations, notes, bibliographical
note, sources for illustrations, index.
$11.00.)
Professor Walters hopes to
"comprehend why abolitionists perceived slavery
as they did after 1830." His method
is to "trace the institutional, cultural,
and social parameters of
abolitionism" by focusing on its "cultural com-
ponents." Primarily interested in
what abolitionists had in common with
each other and, more importantly, with
antebellum America, he has written
what he calls a "contextual"
history. He wants to divert our attention from
the abolitionists' motives
("causal" history) and factions and to force us to
consider his contention that the
abolitionists had "as much or more in common
with those who attacked them as with
latter day reformers and radicals."
The book is original, thoughtful,
well-written, interesting and important.
Walters shows clearly and specifically
how abolitionists built upon and used
feelings, fears, values, hopes, and
perceptions which they shared with other
Americans. Ignoring geography and
chronology, he uses what important
abolitionists wrote and said after 1830
to reconstruct their most "persistent"
themes and then demonstrates what was
"antebellum and American" about
the movement. For instance, he
establishes that abolitionists were Protes-
tants for many of whom antislavery was a
church, and that they believed
simultaneously in environmentalism and
an innate moral sense (and thus
were "relatively optimistic"
about human nature) and that mankind had
continuously to struggle against an
innate drive to dominate other people.
The abolitionists saw within all people and
within American society a
constant tension between freedom and
order. They shared this perception with
other Americans because the idea was a
product of their common culture.
Most Americans, including the
abolitionists, believed that the family was a
rudder that could steer society through
impending disorder and that women
were especially able to chart the way;
they hoped that the United States
could be redeemed and become the great
nation God had intended it to be-
98 OHIO HISTORY
a virtuous, civilized nation of
Christian individuals freely competing in com-
mercial capitalism.
None of this especially distinguished
abolitionists from other Americans.
What did, Walters argues, was that only
the abolitionists perceived slavery
as a major threat to the moral order
which most Americans wanted to impose
upon the great social and economic
changes of the era. For them, slavery was
"a guidepost, marking the outer
limits of disorder and debauchery;" it
became "an archtype" of the
threatening forces they saw at work "within
mankind and within American society,
North and South."
One can disagree with Walters'
contention that the divisions among
abolitionists were relatively
insignificant without raising a serious objec-
tion to this book. A more important
problem is his candid refusal to ask why
thousands of men and women became and
remained abolitionists. He believes
that the "vagaries of
personality" make it useless to ask what made individual
abolitionists. But it is very different
to ask why an individual became an
abolitionist than to ask why thousands
did. Abolitionism was itself evidence
that individual abolitionists did not
share some important values and per-
ceptions with other Americans; it was
itself a culture, even by Walters' static
definition of the term, and as such it
attracted only certain people. To refuse
to ask why not only avoids the question
Walters wanted to avoid-that of
individual motivation-it also leaves
unanswered the question he does ask:
why did abolitionists as a group
perceive slavery as they did after 1830? That
is, after all, a "causal"
question.
Stanford University Douglas A.
Gamble
Brand Whitlock's The Buckeyes:
Politics and Abolitionism in an Ohio Town,
1836-1845. Edited with an Introduction by Paul W. Miller. (Athens:
Ohio
University Press, 1977. 273p.;
illustrations, notes, index. $12.00.)
Statesman and man of letters, Brand Whitlock
combined both pursuits more
happily than any other leader of the
Progressive Movement. That he himself
was not particularly happy merely shows
how difficult a path he had taken.
Neither, however, did he fall between
two stools: to his credit are an ex-
cellent performance as reform mayor in
Toledo, service as ambassador to
Belgium during the "Great
War," the best existing biography of Lafayette,
and several finely crafted novels that
present-day critics class as very good
if not "great." His fiction includes
J. Hardin and Son, similar in theme to
Sinclair Lewis' Main Street and
unquestionably a better written book.
At his death in 1934, Whitlock left
unfinished The Buckeyes, a historical
novel of pre-Civil War Ohio based rather
closely upon the life of his grand-
father Brand and Governor Tom Corwin.
Inability to resolve certain aspects
of character and plot, as well as
brooding upon a tactless criticism by his
friend Edith Wharton, undermined
Whitlock's already weak self-esteem and
prevented completion of the novel.
Now published for the first time,
through the courtesy of the Champaign
County Historical Society and the effort
of Dr. Paul W. Miller, Whitlock's
last, "lost" novel is found to
be an excellent imaginative portrait of early
Ohio. Miller's able introduction and
notes indicate the few relatively minor
Book Reviews 99
points in which historical fact has been
made subservient to the necessities
of novel writing. The product of
Whitlock's strict historicity, his broad
knowledge of politics and human nature,
and his love for the Macochee
country around Urbana, Ohio, the novel
is a highly readable description of
southwestern Ohio from 1835 to 1845,
with particular attention given to Tom
Corwin and the Abolitionist Movement.
In recent years Whitlock's reputation as
a writer has steadily increased in
stature, and rightly so; for that
matter, in regard to Ohio's contribution to
the twentieth-century novel, if we take
away Whitlock, Bromfield, and
Howells, who is left other than the
likes of Zane Grey and James Ball Naylor?
Even in its unfinished state, The
Buckeyes is a novel of which Whitlock
should have been proud, though he was
not, and a novel in which Ohioans
today may well take pride. His
"unfinished swan song of Macochee, Ohio,"
serves as a fine monument to a talented
and dedicated son of Ohio.
The Ohio Historical Society James L. Murphy
The History of Wisconsin. Volume II. The Civil War Era, 1848-1873. By
Richard N. Current. (Madison: State
Historical Society of Wisconsin,
1976. xiv + 659p.; illustrations, maps,
notes, appendix, essay on sources,
index. $20.00.)
The State Historical Society of
Wisconsin is to be commended for em-
barking upon such a laudatory project as
to commission a six-volume
professional history of the peoples of
Wisconsin. Thus far, volumes I (From
Exploration to Statehood by Alice E. Smith) and II have appeared and
represent an outstanding contribution to
local and regional history.
Richard N. Current's volume encompasses
the historical development of
antebellum, civil war and reconstruction
Wisconsin. Intersperced with ex-
cellent maps, meticulously printed and
bound, and generously endowed with
quality photographs and an extensive bibliographical
essay, The History of
Wisconsin: The Civil War Era,
1848-1873 traces in a most engaging
style the
political crises, the economic ups and
downs, and to a lesser degree the social
and cultural composition and fluctuation
of a frontier region undergoing
mild industrialization and urbanization.
All of this is accomplished in sixteen
chapters of some 600-plus pages.
Of special note and interest are
chapters 4 and 16. In an early division
entitled "Living Together and
Apart," historian Current describes life in
Wisconsin. Clearly Wisconsin embodies
heterogeneity, a differentness that
made for conflict. Numerous European
immigrants settle; various racial groups
reside; abundant religious communities
converge; and many divergent tribes
maintain or attempt to sustain their
cultures in Wisconsin. Also family
functions and male-female relationships
are briefly discussed.
Chapter 16, "The Politics of
Reconstruction," analyzes the relative turbu-
lence of Wisconsin politics during the
post-Civil War decade. The Republican
party, according to Current, did not
have an easy time dominating Badger
state government; it had to cultivate
the electorate carefully and it did so
around appeals to patriotism and support
of veterans in time of peace.
Andrew Johnson, his policies and
impeachment, split Republicans, but
100 OHIO HISTORY
they still managed to maintain control
until 1873. Generally, Wisconsinites
favored congressional reconstruction,
but they were uncomfortable with radi-
cal Republicans. National politics undeniably had a
major impact upon state
politics in Wisconsin during
Reconstruction.
Only one noticeable deficiency does
exist in The Civil War Era. For this
reviewer an insufficient amount of
social history is included in this survey,
especially regarding the status and role
of women in the life of mid-
nineteenth-century Wisconsin. Still,
Volume II of The History of Wisconsin
is a book that every major library,
American middle period historian, and
midwest educational institution should
house in their collections, and if it is
an indication of the quality of the
series, all should be obtained.
Case Western Reserve University John R. Wunder
The Transformation of American
Foreign Relations: 1865-1900. By
Charles S.
Campbell. (New York: Harper & Row,
1976. xviii + 393p.; illustrations,
maps, bibliographical essay, index.
$15.00.)
This is the most recent volume in the New
American Nation Series edited
by Henry Steele Commager and Richard B.
Morris. Unlike other recent
studies which have been monographic in
scope or which have emphasized
commercial expansion, Professor
Campbell's study presents a classical, "old
school" survey of American
diplomatic history for the three and a half
decades following the Civil War. Both in
its style and its content, the ap-
proach is reminiscent of Thomas A.
Bailey's Diplomatic History of the Ameri-
can People and of Julius W. Pratt's A History of the United
States Foreign
Policy. Campbell's treatment of events, however, is much more
detailed and
comprehensive than either of these
general texts.
Two general themes or problems which run
throughout the period are
identified and examined, the first being
that of Anglo-United States rela-
tions. Professor Campbell, who has
published extensively on this subject,
details the troubled relations between
the two principal English speaking
powers from the Alabama Claims and the
Washington Conference of 1871
(which he believes
"exacerbated" relations) through the Venezuelan Boundary
Dispute of 1893 (which he sees as a
turning point preparatory to rapproche-
ment). His familiarity with this aspect
of American foreign policy permits
him to build his case upon extensive use
of English as well as American
primary sources. Indeed, seven of the
eleven cartoons reprinted in the volume
are taken from Punch and all but
two photographs of foreign personalities
are English, a balance which betrays his
great concern with Anglo-American
relations.
The second theme or problem which is
identified as characterizing Ameri-
can diplomacy during the late nineteenth
century is the nation's changing
posture on territorial expansion. After
the annexation of Alaska, additional
acquisitions were stymied despite the
activities and desires of such men as
President U. S. Grant, "an
instinctive expansionist." Moreover, taking issue
with the findings of Walter LaFeber and
John A. Williams, Campbell finds
little evidence of a diplomatic effort
to advance American commercial ex-
pansion prior to the Panic of 1893.
Then, partly as the result of the "stagger-
Book Reviews
101
ing increase in American industrial
output," both commercial and territorial
expansion become major themes in the
transformation of foreign policy.
Those sections of the volume which treat
United States relations with
powers other than Britain are based
almost exclusively on English language,
secondary sources. The coverage given
these problems is usually judicious,
yet on occasion flaws emerge. For example,
when dealing with the origins
of American intervention in Cuba,
Campbell reports that "About 400,000
reconcentrados, a quarter of the total Cuban population, were commonly
believed to have perished by early
1898" (p.243). Only in a footnote does he
acknowledge that the figure "may
have been nearer 100,000." He uses no
Spanish sources on the state of affairs
in Cuba and nowhere does he try to
assess the state of affairs in Cuba. Yet
he concludes that the United States
had "ample justification to intervene"
(p.277) for Americans could not "en-
dure much longer the horrible slaughter
just off their shores" (p.278). The
conclusion in this instance reflects the
view of recent American scholarship,
but it is not supported by the evidence
provided. Nevertheless, most of the
book must be regarded as an accomplished
narrative history of American
diplomatic history and of the
personalities who made it.
Bowling Green State University David C. Roller
Keep the Last Bullet for Yourself:
The True Story of Custer's Last Stand. By
Thomas B. Marquis. (New York: Two
Continents Publishing Group, 1976.
203p.; illustrations,
bibliography, index. $8.95.)
Few incidents in our nation's history
have created as much controversy as
the Battle of the Little Big Horn. In
the one hundred years that have passed
since it took place there have been many
things written, painted, filmed, or
said about it. General George Armstrong
Custer has been portrayed as every-
thing from a hero to an egotistical and
vilainous fool. There has been much
debate and speculation as to whether
Custer would have been found guilty of
disobeying orders if he had survived the
battle. On the morning of June 25,
1876, General Custer and 213 soldiers
and civilian and Indian scouts of the
Seventh U.S. Cavalry rode into the
valley of the Little Big Horn. The last
white man to see them alive was Sergeant
John Martin, then a trumpeter,
who rode out with orders for Captain
Frederick Benteen who was with the
pack train. Two days later the bodies of
Custer and all of the men with him
were discovered. What actually happened
on that hillside will never be known.
During the 1920s and early 1930s, Dr.
Thomas Marquis was a physician
for the Northern Cheyenne and Crow
Indian Reservations in Montana near
the site of the Little Big Horn. He had
long been interested in the battle and,
after gaining the confidence of the
Indians, he spent years interviewing their
old warriors and listening to their
stories. According to Marquis, the Indians
themselves were not sure what had
happened to Custer and his men. Like
the soldiers, they had been fighting on
foot and from behind cover. The smoke
was thick and no one had a clear view of
the fighting. The only thing the In-
dians knew for sure was that suddenly
the firing from the soldiers stopped
and they were all dead. According to
Indian legend the "Everywhere Spirit"
caused an invisible barrier to surround
the soldiers and their bullets bounced
102 OHIO HISTORY
hack and killed them. Dr. Marquis'
interpretation was that the soldiers had
panicked and committed suicide. His
theory was so unpopular when he first
presented it, that no publisher would
handle the book. It was not until forty-
one years after the author's death that
his account was published.
In spite of the implication of the
title, Marquis in no way accuses Custer or
his men of cowardice. He defends Custer
and the Seventh Cavalry. He points
out that almost 30 percent of the
regiment were recruits and that most had
little experience in Indian fighting.
None of them had any real knowledge of
Indian ways and most believed that the
Indians would torture captives to
death. Marquis mentions instances when
small parties of soldiers fought
larger parties of Indians in similar
situations and had survived with minimal
losses. He also debunks the theory that
Custer and his men were drunk on
that day. Dr. Marquis' hypothesis was
that Custer had too many men with
him and that if he had had fewer but
more experienced Indian fighters, they
might have had a better chance to come
out of the battle alive. He believed
that mass depression and feelings of
hopelessness and doom had set in and
that the panic-stricken men of the
Seventh Cavalry killed themselves and
each other rather than risk capture.
Keep the Last Bullet for Yourself is a well-researched and well-documented
work and would be a welcome addition to
the library of any student of Custer
and the Indian War.
Fort Meigs State Memorial Michael N.
Morell
Affairs of State: Public Life in
Nineteenth Century America. By Morton
Keller. (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 1977.
ix + 600p.; tables, notes, index.
$17.50.)
In this monumental volume Professor
Keller dispassionately argues that
"the intense conflict between old
values and the pressures generated by
massive change" is the dominant
theme of the American polity in the Gilded
Age, demarcated by two generational
experiences: the Civil War and its con-
sequences, and, after about 1880, the
problems associated with industrialism.
This book revises the traditional view
of government in this period as domi-
nated by "lethargy and subservience
to vested interests" by developing a dual
theme: the impulses toward a stronger
sense of nationhood and government,
and the countervailing traditions of
individualism and localism.
Keller is a student of political
institutions, widely read in printed sources
and secondary writings, who develops a
broad view of polity which should
attract considerable interest among
scholars of state and local history. His
discussion of state and local political
institutions is substantial, weaving it
with better-known federal developments.
This focus on institutional history,
however, tends to delete human con-
tent. Keller argues that the postwar
southern experience was close to that of
the north, convincing the reader from an
institutional viewpoint, but omitting
analysis of the human tragedies
involved-which he mentions parenthetically.
This difficulty appears elsewhere.
Throughout-because the subject is polity-
social and economic change is assumed.
Keller would have had to write an
even longer book to do otherwise. This
leaves future authors with exciting
Book Reviews
103
opportunities to integrate more fully
institutional developments with the hu-
man experiences of societal change.
Keller has provided state and local his-
torians with an informed basis from
which to embark, examining subjects
with both an understanding of responses
to industrialism and a comprehen-
sion that industrialism was itself
dynamic.
Thus this study should guide us away
from parochialism while helping to
raise profitable questions. For
instance, Keller examines the widespread state
constitution writing after the Civil
War, arguing that it involved a two-staged
pattern. The first was an effort to
revise charters to conform to new standards
of government power and citizenship; the
second, a reaction to limit govern-
ment power. He bases the generalization
on results, but in so doing seems
trapped in inconsistencies which future
scholars could resolve through the
social and behavioral analysis of
institutional change. Because the Illinois
Constitution was a fifty-page document
it may not have been a reaction to
increased government activity, but an
effort of new groups to circumvent a
legislative stalemate entrenched in
established institutions. The constitution
proposed by Ohioans in the 1870s
foundered on the temperance issue; social
analysis of the range of issues involved
could well question Keller's generali-
zation that this was simply a rejection
of growth in government power and
reveal an intense human grappling with
revolutionary new social and economic
conditions.
Readers will profit from this book's
broad scope and thorough grounding
in new scholarship. From it scholars can
further enrich our understanding of
Americans coping with evolving
conditions in society.
The Ohio State University K. Austin Kerr
The Railroad and the City: A
Technological and Urbanistic History of Cin-
cinnati. By Carl W. Condit. (Columbus: Ohio State University
Press, 1977.
xii + 335p.; illustrations, notes,
appendices, bibliography, index. $15.00.)
More profoundly perhaps than any one
else of his generation, Carl Condit
has changed the way we respond to our urban
environment by teaching us to
see buildings, bridges, and now railway
stations not as inevitable excres-
cences of the social body but as
intentional constructions, technical solutions
to technical problems which yield human
consequences often undreamed of by
the engineers and architects who bring
them into monumental being, and who
thereby provide that unintended legacy,
the shape of the city in our time.
Through his books and articles,
moreover, Condit has freed us from the domi-
nant anecdotal tradition in
architectural history, which sees design as an
aesthetic activity, the product of
cultural trends rather than of social and
practical necessity, and he has made
possible a new kind of architectural
history which seeks to examine the
process of problem solving as a social and
ultimately a political act, and which
itself is a social and political act, criti-
cism in the best sense. It is thus to
the tasks of the "new" history which his own
work has made possible, that Condit
turns his attention in his most recent
book.
The relationship of the railroad and the
city, Condit sees, provides an
opportunity to explore the processes by
which problems defined in terms of
104 OHIO
HISTORY
one system are solved or not solved, and
in their solution or nonsolution have
consequences for the future of both
systems. The Railroad and the City, that
is, is much more than a history of the
"impact" of the railroad on American
life, or on that small slice of it which
is the history of Cincinnati, and bears
no relationship to the narrow causal and
genetic renderings which largely
constitute that genre. It is rather an
attempt to explore the relationship be-
tween systems which are at once
fundamentally interdependent and practi-
cally independent, and which, in this
case as perhaps in all such cases, are
characterized by competing and
contradictory needs, goals, and modes of op-
eration. It is an attempt of
appropriately magisterial proportions.
On the whole, it must be said, the book
as currently published points the
way. It does not complete the task
Condit has set for himself, but consists
very largely of the record of his
preliminary investigations into the details of
Cincinnati's complex railroad
history-routes, lines, mergers, schedules, rolling
stock, the location of terminals, the
impact of design changes on the operation
of the system itself-all discussed
however in relationship to the broader pat-
terns of American railroad history and
to the structure of the Cincinnati sys-
tem. (In these areas, moreover, Condit
knows considerably more than he tells
us in the text or, more important, in
the notes, which are both extensive and
curiously diffuse, so that future
scholars will be hard put to follow up the hints
he offers or to track down the bases for
some of his generalizations.) In his
discussion of two parallel
"events" in the transportation history of Cincinnati,
however, Condit begins to focus clearly
on the processes which are his ulti-
mate concern.
The first of these "events" is
the attempt of the city-as-system to rationalize
"its" transportation network
by authorizing in 1912 the design of a subway
system that would not only link suburbs
with the central business district, as
in other cities, but would also ease
human transit in the metropolis by elimi-
nating grade crossings and by
facilitating the transfer of people, freight, and
rolling stock among the several
inter-city carriers, the "interurban" lines and
the street railways. The design of the
subway system, which was partially
built between 1920 and 1923 but never
put into operation, was made with the
needs of the city in mind, and thus
stands as the articulation of a problem for
which there was no solution, that is no
solution without the cooperation of
the railroads for which the city's
problem was no problem. In contrast, the
monumental Union Terminal, with its
related system of bridges, overpasses,
feeder roads, approaches, and yards,
constructed between 1928 and 1932 on
the extreme periphery of the central
business district, represents for Condit a
solution for which there was no problem.
Designed with the needs of the inter-
city carriers in mind, for more
efficient means of handling rolling stock,
freight, and passengers within a closed
system, it not only failed to acknowl-
edge that social, economic, and
technological changes had already severely
cut into the market for rail service,
but made access to the railroad conceived
as a closed system even more difficult
than it had been before, and further
isolated the railroad from the city.
Cincinnati's Union Terminal, Condit tells
us, however splendid an achievement as a
technical solution to technical prob-
lems, and however splendid an
achievement as design for human use, was doomed
from the start, for it stood-and
stands-outside of any relationship with the
city, a useless curiosity and a monument
whose message must be remembered.
University of Cincinnati Henry D.
Shapiro
Book Reviews 105
The Indiana Voter: The Historical
Dynamics of Party Allegiance During the
1870s. By Melvyn Hammarberg. (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press,
1977. xi + 251p.; tables, figures,
appendices, notes, bibliography, index.
$17.50.)
This is certainly the most
methodologically sophisticated book written by a
political historian. Appropriately
entitling his book The Indiana Voter, Ham-
marberg has been strongly influenced by
the survey researchers at the Uni-
versity of Michigan, whose best known
work, The American Voter, provides a
framework on which to place the Indiana
political culture of one hundred years
ago. At the same time the book also
deals with questions which have in-
terested historians in the last fifteen
years, namely the "ethno-cultural" model
of voting behavior, and the important
topic of bias caused by data linkage.
Hammarberg's research design-indeed his
ability to use the many insights
provided by Campbell and his
colleagues-is based on materials which are
unique in the nineteenth century. Only
in a few counties in Illinois and In-
diana were "People's
Guides" produced. The Guides were reasonably com-
prehensive lists of citizens at the
minor civil division level. Unlike the Fed-
eral census they provided two crucial
pieces of information: religious and
political affiliation for each person
enumerated. Like the modern survey re-
searcher, the author has used this
material to study individual rather than just
aggregate voting behavior.
To this reviewer the most useful and
worthwhile contribution of the
volume is not the sophisticated
analysis, and the extremely elegant presen-
tation, but the fact that Hammarberg is
the first historian to acknowledge
and honestly tackle the question of
biases caused by data linkage. This is
obviously a problem encountered more
often by the social historian than the
political. In his case he attempts to
link a census sample of male voters in 1870
to his People's Guides four years
later. With a successful linkage rate of 37%,
Hammarberg's problem is to measure the
biases caused by this substantial
loss of respondents. Fortunately, when
he attempts to draw inferences to his
voting population, he is able to show
that in his nine counties there is no ap-
preciable difference between his census
sample and his traced sample to the
People's Guides.
While Hammarberg's methodology is
admirable, his attempt to re-work the
ethno-cultural model is, however, less
successful. For a start his uncritical
use of the information on party and
religious affiliation in the Guides is suspect.
It is possible that a certain percentage
of respondents refused to give this
personal information, especially in the
case of religion where over 20% gave
no response. He claims, quite rightly,
that much of the revisionist work in
political history which uses the
ethno-cultural model is based on aggregate
data. Therefore, individual level data
from counties should in theory provide
a much more solid test for the model. In
the People's Guide counties, occupa-
tional status turned out to be a better
predictor of party affiliation than did
religion. Which brings us the important
point as to whether the Guide coun-
ties, and for that matter Indiana as a
whole, are suitable locales for a fair test
of the ethno-cultural model. In
comparison to northern Illinois, Wisconsin,
and Iowa, the ethno-religious make-up of
Indiana was strongly old stock and
Protestant. In addition, what ethnic
concentrations there were in the state
were outside the nine Guide counties.
In the only other study which uses
106 OHIO HISTORY
similar materials in Illinois, a much
more positive reading is given to the
question of party affiliation and its
connection to religion and ethnicity.
This is not to say that Hammarberg's
interpretation is unsuited to the In-
diana context-indeed in a state where
ethnicity and religion were not espe-
cially important we should see
reasonably sharp "cleavages" between occupa-
tional groups and ecological areas. And
in a chapter devoted to a comparison
between town and open country-a rare
example in the literature where an
author takes the trouble to explore
differences between village and farm-
Hammarberg not only highlights the
political cultural of rural Indiana, but
also explains the variability of the
farm vote and adds to our understanding
of the high levels of voter
participation of a hundred years ago.
In sum, this is a work of social
science, written in the language and analyzed
with the tools of the political
scientist. It is very much a product of the heady
days of the late 1960s when some
historians spent their summers at Ann
Arbor learning the "new political
history." Hammarberg has written a book
which is a credit to his teachers.
The Newberry Library Mark
Friedberger
New Burlington: the Life and Death of
an American Village. By John Baskin.
(New York: W.W. Norton & Company,
1976. 260p.; illustrations. $9.95.)
In his brief "Introduction" to
this book, John Baskin remarks that "It is
likely the reader will wish to look at New
Burlington as a history. When I
think of history, I think of a lady
named Abigail Winans who said, 'History
is a drunk in the snow with his feet
sticking out.' I think of New Burlington
as a book of stories and voices.
..." It is, in fact, at once a history and a
book of stories, or rather a history
continually defining and discovering itself
through the reminiscences, anecdotes,
and family sagas-the stories-of the
people of New Burlington, Ohio. It is a
history as immediate, as personal and
local, as a treasured packet of family
letters or courtship customs or the
village chicken thief. The book is, in
this respect, close to what Richard M.
Dorson has defined as "oral
traditional history"-an oral history from the
point of view of the folk themselves,
deriving from them and their traditions.
As such it has a special importance, for
New Burlington as a place is no more.
The village, a farming community
situated between Dayton and Cincinnati,
has fallen victim to progress in the
form of a dam and at the hands of the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers. Its inhabitants
have been scattered but happily
not before John Baskin recorded their
stories. Taken together, they offer
moving testimony that, like other
American villages, New Burlington was
a place of loneliness and frustration,
peopled with pious preachers and maiden
schoolteachers, country doctors and town
drunks. It was a place of blighted
crops and blasted hopes that left scars
on the landscape and the soul alike.
But like the inhabitants of those other
villages, the people of New Burlington
cultivated a comic sense along with
their crops and harvested a richness of
experience that to some degree
compensated for material poverty and the
pain of back-breaking labor.
Baskin's narrative captures all of this
and more. Or rather Baskin's nar-
ratives do, for New Burlington consists
largely of a collection of dramatic
Book Reviews 107
monologues and diary entries, selected
and arranged with an unerring eye for
the significant and meaningful and an
ear for cadences that lie below the
surface language. The effect upon the
reader is strikingly similar to that
conveyed in Faulkner's early great
works, in which the work seems and is
infinitely greater than the sum of its
several parts. This is possible only be-
cause Baskin is himself a gifted writer
and the book is as much a work of art
as it is a historical record. The coarse
and rugged humor of the men and
the eccentric ways of the village's
local characters are more than balanced
by the delicate, almost startling beauty
of the young women who look out
from the book's early pages only to be
supplanted by their aging counter-
parts later on. There is understatement
throughout and a severe economy of
style and emotion. Best of all, there is
a sense of dignity and worth, pre-
served here without condescension or
sentimentality.
New Burlington stands as both a chronicle of its people and a moving
tribute to them. As such, it is worthy
of a place on any historian's shelf.
The Ohio State University Daniel R. Barnes
The Presidency of Warren G. Harding. By Eugene P. Trani and David L.
Wilson. (Lawrence: The Regents Press of
Kansas, 1977. ix + 232p.; notes,
bibliographical essay, index. $12.00.)
This volume in the American Presidency
Series is an attempt to present
historians and the general public with a
scholarly assessment of the Harding
years. Eugene P. Trani and David L. Wilson have
admirably synthesized
recent scholarship surrounding Warren G.
Harding. Utilizing recent revi-
sionist studies, Trani and Wilson question
the appropriateness of the "New
Harding" literature. They believe
that Harding has been "partially re-
habilitated" (p.190) by scholars
such as Randolph C. Downes and Robert K.
Murray. Yet, an aura of pessimism
permeates this excellent study. The gen-
eral conclusion is that the Harding Administration was
short-sighted and did
little to promote long-term reform in American
politics.
The main strength of this study lies in
the skillful organization of the
material. In eight beautifully written and cogently
argued chapters, Trani
and Wilson weave a highly interpretive
synthesis incorporating all significant
material on the Harding years. The
result is to produce a volume which
examines the transition in American
politics from the Wilson years to the
"normalcy" of the 1920s.
In the first chapter, "The United
States in 1920," Trani and Wilson set
the tone for the remainder of the study
by examining the problems inherent
in the postwar transition to a peacetime
economy. Using a wealth of fasci-
nating statistical information, the
authors charge that Americans desired to
return "to the simple life
exemplified by Marion, Ohio, rather than face up to
the worldwide contention the nation had
been involved in under the leader-
ship of the Democratic party and
Wilson" (p.28). The next chapter, "Peopling
the Government," is a brilliant
reexamination of President Harding's Cabinet
and the inner circle surrounding
Harding. Although the quality of appoint-
ments varied, Trani and Wilson believe
that Harding attempted to select
108 OHIO HISTORY
well qualified individuals. It was the
weakness of a select number of ap-
pointees that doomed the Harding
Administration.
The two chapters examining domestic
affairs present a highly skeptical
view of Harding's ability to control
national politics. His weak position
with Congress is detailed to suggest
that Harding's goals were short-sighted
and impractical. In fact, Trani and
Wilson argue that domestic gains "would
have occurred with or without
Harding" (p.80). This conclusion indicates that
the moderate, conciliatory, manipulative
Harding of recent revisionist literature
does not appeal to Trani and Wilson.
In foreign affairs this volume contain's
its strongest material. Drawing
heavily upon Trani's extensive work in
American diplomacy, the authors draw
a clear picture of the ties between
business and government in foreign affairs.
While business influences upon foreign
relations are not startling revela-
tions, nonetheless, Trani and Wilson
refrain from the heady moralism of
New Left scholars. The conclusions
regarding American foreign policy are
balanced and judicious and reflect
extensive research into primary and
secondary sources. Harding's personal
interest in foreign affairs is carefully
analyzed, and the authors conclude he
was a president who "understood
the complex relationship of the United
States . . . to the world" (p.169).
Perhaps the strongest recommendation for
this volume is that only seventeen
pages are spent analyzing the Harding
scandals. Trani and Wilson deal with
the substantive matters surrounding the
early 1920s. In the final analysis
they believe that Harding failed as a
president because he did not under-
stand the significance and impact of
America's transition from a rural society
to an urban-industrial power. This is
the finest synthesis available on the
Harding Presidency and it deserves the
attention of serious scholars.
Ohlone College Howard A. DeWitt
Roosevelt's Revolution: The First
Year, A Personal Perspective. By
Rexford G.
Tugwell. (New York: Macmillan, 1977. xix
+ 327p.; addendum, index.
$14.95.)
Tugwell was adviser or "Brains
Truster" to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932
and "Assistant Secretary and
Undersecretary of Agriculture, 1933-1936. In
this account of the hectic first year of
the New Deal he does not go so far as
to say the New Dealers did not know what
they were doing. He does note
that Roosevelt ran on a platform
embracing contradictions, and he views the
New Deal reaction to economic crisis as
a conglomeration of specific re-
sponses to the exigencies of the moment
rather than the implementation of a
comprehensive, logical plan of attack on
the Depression. Out of the legisla-
tive maneuvers of the first hundred days
emerged a flood of measures, exe-
cuted by massive organizations. What was
done by the big government which
the Depression produced was minimally
effective, but decline was arrested
and slow recovery initiated. This story,
as Tugwell vividly recalls it, is still ex-
citing, although its basic components
are familiar to the historian of the
thirties.
Still, there is much of value here, even
for those who have read Tugwell's
major works on Roosevelt and the New
Deal: The Battle for Democracy
Book Reviews 109
(1935); The Democratic Roosevelt (1957);
The Art of Politics as Practiced by
Three Great Americans (1958); FDR: Architect of an Era (1967); The
Brains
Trust (1968); and In Search of Roosevelt (1972).
Tugwell's portraits of indi-
viduals, beginning with himself, are
impressive. The professor of economics,
telling students and a presidential
candidate what the government should do,
soon found himself in Washington, where
things did or did not get done. Amid
the scheming of a swarm of arrogant,
self-interested "fixers and power brok-
ers who descended on the capital along
with the new officials," Tugwell expe-
rienced both dismay and political
maturation.
Tugwells characterizations of Harry
Hopkins, Harold Ickes, and Henry
Wallace are entertaining. Unusual for
their inclusion as well as their quality
are his depictions of some able, honest,
dedicated civil servants who shunned
politics as they pursued the promotion
of the public interest. In this gallery,
Walter Campbell of the Food and Drug
Administration and Ferdinand Sil-
cox of the Forest Service are striking
figures. Above all, Tugwell presents
an outstanding portrait of Roosevelt,
contrasting the imaginative idealist, even
dreamer, harboring unbounded hopes for
the nation, with the practicing poli-
tician who both manipulated and appeased
his formidable opponents. Let us
hope that Tugwell, now in his
eighty-seventh year, will carry his insider's
recollections, year by year, down to his
resignation at the end of 1936.
Bowling Green State University Bernard Sternsher
Madison's Battery Workers, 1934-1952:
A History of Federal Labor Union
19587. By Robert H. Zieger. (Ithaca: New York State School of
Industrial
and Labor Relations, 1977. xiv + 126p.;
notes, bibliographical essay, index.
$6.25 cloth; $4.50 paper.)
Madison's Battery Workers is a useful addition to the literature on the
labor movement of the 1930s, to which
about two thirds of the text is devoted,
while the war and postwar years are
dealt with rather briefly. The book deals
with a fairly homogeneous small-town
work force (with a significant admix-
ture of workers of Norwegian stock)
whose organizational involvement did
not go beyond the Federal Labor Union
set up by the American Federation
of Labor (AFL) in 1934, although there
was significant, but vaguely specified,
support for the Committee for Industrial
Organization (CIO) when the Lewis
group parted company with the AFL. The
author provides us with a useful
description of the dependence of the
local unionists on outside administrative
aid: the Wisconsin Federation of Labor, the
United States Conciliation Ser-
vice, and the National Labor Relations
Board. We thus gain some insight into
a segment of the American working class
that in many respects was more
conservative than those heroic figures
memorialized in song and story, and
the book advances our understanding of
the overall conservative character of
the American labor movement. Yet the
book raises many more questions
than it answers, and reveals more about
the intellectual quandry of much of
labor historiography than it does about
the period and processes under discus-
sion.
In what purports to be a local study the
specific strategies of historical
analysis that ought to be associated
with that genre are completely lacking.
110 OHIO HISTORY
The concrete descriptions of
occupational structure, ethnoculture, and institu-
tional relationships that one expects to
find in a particular workforce under-
going a process of politicization and
organization are absent. Although the
author relies heavily on interviews with
former activists, the specific relation-
ship of these activists both to each
other and to the broader milieu that
they seek to mobilize is not an object
of historical analysis. The author de-
scribes a persistent factional conflict
between "moderates" or "conserva-
tives" and "militants,"
but beyond the fact that he specifies two leaders of
each tendency, and mentions in passing
that the "militants" seemed to have
the support of younger workers, we learn
very little about what appears to be
a central conflict within the union. It
is only when the reader had gotten two
thirds of the way through the text that
he learns that the machinists domi-
nated the leadership of the union
following a disasterous confrontation with
the company in 1938, and this piece of
information is mentioned only in pass-
ing as the author describes the
departure of the machinists from the federal
local and their organization into a
lodge of the International Association of
Machinists. The reader might well wonder
whether these same machinists
were the principle protagonists of the
conservative tendency, and, more gen-
erally (since they seemed to function as
a coherent group) what role they
played in the development of the local
from 1934 onwards.
While acknowledging the strength of this
ill-described conservative ten-
dency, the author tends to contradict
himself when he uses general terms de-
scribing the "feisty" and
spirited character of the workers-terms which evoke
the romantic ideological imagery of a
working class poised on the brink of
militant class action. Yet in
comparative political terms this was a local on
the right wing of the industrial labor
movement of the CIO era; a local which,
had it left the AFL for the United Auto
Workers, for example, most likely would
have been in the camp of the
anti-Communist anti-CIO Homer Martin fac-
tion of that union in 1939. Certainly we
might infer as much from the author's
description of the rise of the
machinists to power in that year.
Wayne State University Peter
Friedlander
The Imperial Years: The U.S. Since 1939.
By Alonzo L. Hamby. (New York:
Weybright and Talley, 1976. xi + 429p.;
bibliography, index. $14.95 cloth;
$6.95 paper.)
In his preface to The Imperial Years,
Alonzo Hamby reveals the approach
of this survey of America since 1939. He
acknowledges that he leans toward
the "liberal-democratic
tradition" in American politics. He then proceeds to
criticize "the modish strains of
radicalism," particularly challenging those re-
visionists who constitute the New Left.
True to his admission, The Imperial
Years-though hardly imbued with original insights-presents a
liberal interpre-
tation of American history in a balanced
and professional fashion.
Although Hamby never specifically
defines the liberal tradition, his meaning
indirectly emerges as the narrative
unfolds. He sees much to praise in the
administrations of the more liberal
Democratic presidents of this era. The
more conservative Republican presidents
do not fare so well since in his opin-
ion they have failed to keep pace with
modern society. Concentrating on the
Book Reviews 111
backgrounds and personalities of the
presidents and other prominent figures,
he establishes an enlightening
correlation between personalities, goals, and
accomplishments which pervades the text.
Although liberal presidents had
their shortcomings, their actions are
portrayed in a more favorable light than
those of conservative chief
executives-as in his evaluations of Dwight Eisen-
hower and John Kennedy: Ike
unsuccessfully tried to replace the "traditional
conservatism" of the Republican
party with "responsible moderation." He
agrees that this effort had abstract
appeal, but failed to evoke the response the
GOP had hoped, a far less adulatory
assessment than his treatment of Ken-
nedy. According to Hamby, Kennedy
"sought to attune himself to the reali-
ties of power and to exercise
constructive, responsible leadership within the
pragmatic limits as he perceived
them." Upon his death, the western world
lost an "invaluable asset."
Even if he sees shortcomings in
conservative politics, the author shuns
revisionism and has little patience with
radical revisionist historians. He laces
his commentary with periodic
consideration of New Left interpretations,
consistently exposing their
deficiencies. Revisionist theories ranging from the
"back door to war" thesis to
the more recent interpretations of the causes of
the Cold War and Kennedy's handling of
the Cuban missile crisis fall under
Hamby's scrutiny. On most occasions, he
advocates a moderate approach
and the traditional judgment. Upon
assessing the causes of the Cold War, for
instance, he acknowledges both American
and Soviet foreign policy mistakes.
Yet he places the bulk of the responsibility
for this tense and volatile period
on the Soviets: "The cold war may
have begun to take shape in 1945-46, but
it became the dominant factor of world
diplomacy because of communist
pressures and apparent Russian designs
on areas beyond the power of Soviet
armies." He argues that America's
postwar "empire" emerged naturally from
its position of power in 1945, not from
some conscious, sinister imperial
drive (hence the title The Imperial
Years). Other revisionist interpretations
are handled in a similar manner.
Throughout this book, Hamby provides an
upbeat, yet objectively scrupu-
lous, survey of the emerging American
empire. He expounds a convincing
case for the liberal democratic
tradition, with proper recognition of its weak-
nesses. Although the work, like any
attempt to write recent history, is already
somewhat dated since it was completed in
late 1975, it is a worthwhile addi-
tion to the numerous histories of modern
America. Hamby's handling of his
liberal outlook is a revealing and
convincingly stated picture of American
political and diplomatic history.
St. Louis University T. Michael
Ruddy
The Afro-American and the Second
World War. By Neil A. Wynn. (New
York: Holmes & Meier Publishers,
1976. vii + 183p.; appendices, notes,
bibliography, index. $18.50.)
In this book Neil A. Wynn focuses upon
alterations in Afro-American life
resulting from World War II. The author
recognizes the need to understand
the nature of war and the manner in
which it brings about social change.
Wynn proceeds from the work of Arthur
Marwick and finds especially rele-
112 OHIO
HISTORY
vant the concept that war is the supreme
test of a country's institutions and
also the view that war requires the
participation of minority groups and so
makes possible social gains. Basically
an interpretive essay rather than an
uncovering of new evidence, the
monograph is a useful addition to American
social history of the war period. The
book, concise and clearly written, draws
extensively upon an assortment of
manuscript collections and documents in the
National Archives.
The author deals with a number of facets
of the wartime black experience.
Individual chapters are devoted to black
participation in the armed forces,
employment patterns, war-induced migration
and racial aspects of the cultural
media. Viewing the war years in
perspective Wynn perceptively notes that
the basis was then laid for the civil
rights advances of the 1950s and 1960s.
Wynn does not seek to cover
comprehensively the armed forces situation
but instead outlines key developments
and offers some new emphases. Blacks
persistently strove to secure full
involvement in the services and Wynn prop-
erly points to the gains made while
making clear the limitations of that prog-
ress. Particularly interesting is his
discussion of the British response to black
servicemen. Clearly there was some
British importation of American racism
but the evidence also shows considerable
public sympathy for blacks and
opposition to discriminatory practices.
Wynn notes that while many civilians
welcomed blacks, the official British
attitude was one of neutrality on the
racial question.
Wynn's history of the Fair Employment
Practices Commission (FEPC)
makes clear that while the struggle for
fair employment practices was impor-
tant, of more significance to black
economic gains was the wartime labor
shortage. Conservative efforts to
obstruct FEPC were unrelenting and the net
result of economic changes wrought by
the war was that while incomes of
Afro-Americans rose during the conflict
many employers resorted to merely
token compliance with Roosevelt's
Executive Order 8802. Blacks tended to be
confined to hot and grimy industrial
occupations and the discrepancy between
the incomes of blacks and those of
whites remained substantial. Added to all
this, as Wynn stresses, was the
realistic apprehension that with peace, black
economic gains would be erased.
The story of urban adjustment to wartime
black migration was largely one
of failure. A key index of that failure
was indifference to the Afro-American's
need for decent housing, with the
consequence that the war brought an inten-
sification of discriminatory housing
patterns. There is obvious irony in the fact
that the war for democracy reinforced
residential segregation in many Amer-
ican cities. As Wynn realizes, in this
context the racial violence that struck
Detroit and New York was understandable,
especially so when it was apparent
that all progress by blacks met with
stubborn resistance. There was little
persuasive evidence that the dominant
institutions of American society looked
favorably on black aspirations. Drawing
upon Myrdal, Wynn also percep-
tively links housing status with the
general conditions of health and welfare
and he concludes that serious
inadequacies in health care for blacks persisted
throughout the war years. Viewing
together the problems of health, educa-
tion and housing the author offers the
pertinent conclusion that blacks played
their part in the war effort and
expected their due rewards.
Included also in this work is a brief
but thoughtful discussion of the black
role in films, music and literature.
Black intellectuals focused upon the war
and in their work themes of protest and expectation
were joined. Wynn refers
Book Reviews
113
to the prevailing black mood as
"demanding and expectant" and this mood
was influenced by broader portrayals of
blacks on stage and screen and the
work of white authors who dealt
seriously with racial issues. Although the
war did not eliminate white racism it
posed a challenge to that ideology and
aroused hopes that commitment to
democracy would be strengthened by the
war experience.
Two shortcomings of the book should be
noted. Firstly, there is little at-
tention to the diversity of ideological
currents within the black community
with a resulting a lack of perspective
on the richness and complexity of Afro-
American culture. Secondly, the
Afro-American experience is inadequately
related to the specific character of the
war. The war's nature as a struggle
against fascist racism formed the
context for Afro-Americans seeking to win
new victories for democracy at home, but
Wynn gives this relationship little
attention. This question is central to
the subject matter of the book and Wynn's
useful work could have been better if he
had considered this problem and more
fully developed his interpretive
approach.
University of Cincinnati Herbert Shapiro
Norman Thomas: The Last Idealist. By W. A. Swanberg. (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1976. xii + 528p.;
illustrations, notes, index. $14.95.)
When H. L. Mencken covered a Norman Thomas
political rally during the
1948 presidential campaign, he confessed
to being captivated by this "really
intelligent and civilized man."
While the libertarian Mencken was happy with
Thomas' refusal to espouse much of the
usual "Socialist whim-wham" and his
dismissal of "Papa Marx" and
"other Socialist archangels," what impressed
him most was Thomas' striking character
and mind. Mencken found Thomas'
speech "full of adept and memorable
phrases, some of them apparently
almost new. It shined with wit and
humor. The speaker poked gentle but
devastating fun at all the clowns in the
political circus, by no means forgetting
himself. There was not a trace of rancor
in his speech, and not a trace of
Messianic bombast." It is fair to
state that Mencken's judgment has come to
be shared by many people. For it was
incontrovertible to both Thomas'
admirers and his critics that he was the
luminous opposite of all the hollow
men with their fabricated personalities,
contrived behavior and grim de-
termination to wield power. Thomas
radiated a blend of authenticity and
sympathy so transparent and captivating
that he won the respect of men he
could never persuade. It is W. A.
Swanberg's ability to portray this dimension
of Thomas which makes his biography a
compelling and important book.
While there have been several previous
treatments of Thomas' career,
Swanberg's narrative is the only one
written from the perspective of an
admiring camp follower with access to
many of Thomas' relatives, friends,
associates as well as the more
traditional sources. Swanberg's evocation of
the private and inner man provides an
important insight into a figure who
has often been obscured in the tedious
ideological polemics characterizing
many histories of American Socialism and
its principal spokesmen. While
this approach will annoy readers who
prefer a rigorous analytical exposition
of political thought and socialist
ideology, it should not result in a cavalier
dismissal of the whole work.
114 OHIO HISTORY
Swanberg has written a rather
traditional political biography. It is totally
animated by the desire to portray Thomas as an
individual and it frequently
falls into the problem of treating him in
vacuo or ignoring the milieu in
which he lived and acted. It is
impressionistic, summary and often disap-
pointingly awkward in its juxtaposition
of major intellectual and political
issues along with references to his
wife's raising cocker spaniel puppies and
other domestic revelations. And because
it assumes an undeviating chrono-
logical focus, the narrative frequently
gives evidence of undigested file cards
assuming a life of their own. In many
crucial sections the book simply floats
from one theme to another without any
organizing principle other than
sequential linearity. And, if it is true
that virtually all of the major themes
in Thomas' political career are
included, they are often simply mentioned,
buttressed with a Thomas quote and then
dropped. Perhaps the salient
instance demonstrating the inadequacy of
this approach is Swanberg's in-
ability to show cogently how much
Thomas' actual socialist beliefs under-
went substantial modifications from 1918
to his death in 1968. Swanberg
also manages to say virtually nothing
about the many books Thomas wrote
during his life. Norman Thomas was, as
Murray Kempton once observed,
always willing to occupy "some
lonely unfashionable place where only he
would stand." Swanberg's book will
serve as an excellent guide to the
numerous occasions when Norman Thomas
affirmed the politics of civility,
hope and conscience.
Eisenhower College Frank
Annunziata
The Committee of One Million:
"China Lobby" Politics 1953-1971. By Stanley
D. Bachrack. (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1976. xi + 371p.;
notes, bibliography, index. $14.95.)
Stanley D. Bachrack carefully points out
that he conceived and researched
his book before the Watergate and CIA
scandals of the mid-1970s, but his
work reflects a spirit fostered by those
scandals. That spirit is embodied in
his final sentence: "Government
officials who distort the difference between
politically embarrassing information and
genuine national security secrets
also distort and diminish the democratic
process" (p.285). The Committee of
One Million (more accurately, its
predecessor), according to Bachrack, de-
veloped in such secrecy, its origins and
its ties to an important congres-
sional subcommittee and to Nationalist
Chinese officials obscured from public
view. The thesis is well supported by
the evidence.
The Committee of One Million is a work of considerable merit. The author's
research-including the extraordinarily
rich manuscript collection of Marvin
Liebman, longtime secretary of the
Committee, as well as papers from three
presidential administrations and numerous transcripts of congressional
hearings-is meticulous (though he might
have buttressed it with a few
strategically chosen interviews). In its
description of the Committee's struc-
ture and operation, the book is a model
study of a lobby: Bachrack presents
a detailed account of how such an
organization builds support, conducts
mailings, uses "two-tiered"
approaches (through friendly third parties formally
unconnected to the group) to reach
larger numbers, and sets up "dummy"
Book Reviews 115
operations of at least questionable
propriety to raise funds for its own use.
The author also describes a number of
interesting episodes in his own re-
search, as pertinent to the subject as
they are fascinating to the reader, in
that they provide a realistic glimpse of
the difficulties confronting one who
researches recent "national
security" topics-even in the age of the Freedom
of Information Act (Bachrack engaged in
an unsuccessful lawsuit against the
CIA in connection with his research in
1975-1976). Finally, the book pays
attention to context, including good
coverage of international events and
turns in American foreign policy which
affected the Committee's decisions
and tactics.
Weaknesses in the book are largely
structural; at several points (chapter
three, for example), chapter subsections
are arranged in a way that confuses
the reader on chronology and produces
redundancy. There are also some lapses
in analysis. For all the strength of its
presentation of the central thesis and
its description of Committee operations,
the book is weak in examining some
of the important issues it raises-for
example, how "bipartisan" the Com-
mittee really was in its methods and
objectives, and in what ways it "co-
opted" the Congress. In fact,
Bachrack's handling of institutional partisan
politics is probably the least
satisfying aspect of the book.
In general, however, this is a useful
and informative book, an example of a
dissertation well worth expanding for
publication. As one of only a few
monographs which focus on domestic
aspects of American foreign policy mak-
ing and an excellent study of interest
group lobbying, The Committee of One
Million represents a genuine addition to the body of
scholarship on recent
United States history.
The Ohio State University Gary W. Reichard
Assassination in America. By James McKinley. (New York: Harper & Row,
1975. xii + 243p.; bibliography, index.
$10.95.)
Incomprehensible and yet often
commonplace, mysterious and mundane,
suffused with so many ironic "if
only's" and still, apparently, so inevitable:
these are the characteristics of
assassination in America. A violent country,
compared to almost all of its modern
industrialized counterparts, we are
nevertheless a land in which
assassination seems tragically out of place.
Assassination in other countries, rooted
in class war and tribal conflict,
violates our faith in democratic fair
play. Each episode of fatal public assault
thus raises the anguished question: is
there some demonic, inherent flaw
in our society that breeds violent
attacks upon political leaders? The al-
ternative explanation, hardly more
flattering to our national self-image, but
perhaps less ominous for our political
future, is psychopathological. Are our
assassins psychopathic loners, adrift in
a world too complex and demanding
for their immature superegos to
comprehend. For them, assassination would
become a twisted symbolic protest
against individual psychic pain.
James McKinley, a professor of English,
has provided a lively, vivid anec-
dotal narrative of the assassinations of
Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley,
and Kennedy, as well as Anton Cermak,
mayor of Chicago, Martin Luther
King, Malcolm X, and Robert Kennedy. The
lives and leading policies of the
116 OHIO HISTORY
victims and assailants, the dramatic
events surrounding the fatal attacks, and
the swirling controversies over
conspiracies, suppressed evidence, and
bungled investigations are here
intelligently and grippingly retold.
McKinley's style is graceful and clear,
but marred by occasional hyperbole,
gratuitous hindsight, and entire
paragraphs of questions, posed as extended
asides. These devices may be holdovers
from the original, popular form of
publication, as a serial in Playboy magazine.
They are neither good history
nor good journalism. The absence of
footnotes is disturbing, and a cryptic
reference in the preface to an assistant
who performed much of the research
invites awkward inquiries. Is it the
assistant or the author who is to blame
for the out-of-date analysis of
Reconstruction politics? The oversimplified
account of the New Deal? The caricature
of American radical ideologies?
One may forgive the eccentric asides,
sloppy scholarship and locomotive
speed of parts of the book; the style
and scope of the essay compensate
for many of its overt weaknesses. One
cannot so excuse the author for miss-
ing a real opportunity to contribute to
our understanding of the causes of
assassination. Rhetorical questions and
formal bows to deprivation psy-
chology and alienation sociology do not
explain anything here. And the author
concedes as much, when he concludes:
"But it is precisely because assassins
are so variously motivated that there is
no cure for assassination." Granted-
no cure-but how may we begin to
comprehend the act itself. Sporadically,
throughout the book, McKinley suggests
that assassins like Guiteau, Oswald
and Ray may have been psychologically
receptive to violence-that it provided
them with catharsis and relief. A bit
more research into psychiatric literature
on murder, for example the work of David
Abrahamsen and Stuart Palmer,
might have revealed more about the
complex inner turmoils of the potential
assassin. McKinley's essay is spritely
and well-meant, but the mysteries and
the terrors of assassination in America
remain unexplained.
University of Notre Dame Peter C.
Hoffer
Ships of the Great Lakes, A Pictorial
History. By Robert E. Lee and David T.
Glick, Paintings by Karl Kuttruff.
(Detroit: Wayne State University Press,
1976. 69p.; illustrations. $25.00.)
A sophisticated "coffee-table"
production dealing with Great Lakes ship-
ping never has been attempted until
recently. Now, through a grant provided
by the Detroit Historical Society Guild
and in conjunction with the Dossin
Great Lakes Museum, a handsome
developmental portrayal of the prosaic
lake vessels is available. An
introduction by Robert E. Lee, curator of the
Dossin Museum, skims the surface of this
development and historically places
the illustrated vessels in their proper
perspective. David T. Glick, of the Henry
Ford Museum and a devotee of lake
shipping history, has done an excellent
job of providing relevant data for each
vessel without becoming encyclopedic.
However, Karl Kuttruff, through his
thirty-one line drawings of the ships,
totally steals the scene. The book is
designed to do this, and through Kutruffs
artistic talent and skill for capturing
the painstaking details of each of the
vessels, is worthy of its assigned task.
The selection of ships to be highlighted
in such a volume must be arbitrary.
Book Reviews 117
Certainly some vessels must be included
because of their historic role. In
this connection, the Griffin,
Lawrence, Walk-in-the- Water, Vandalia, and
Wyandotte appear. Each is well recognized as a
"first-of-a-kind" or appear in
schoolboy texts. Others were selected as
being representative of a general
class or for having been identified with
a specific trade. Here, one finds the
carferry Pere Marquette 18, the
lumber steamer Sidney 0. Neff, and the
modern bulk freighter Paul Thayer. The
lake buff will be pleased to discover
the famous Detroit River tug Champion,
but will look in vain for a repre-
sentative harbor tug. In the modern era
there are included a tanker, a
thousand-foot "bulker," and a
diesel-powered ore carrier. But there are no
traditional coal-fired ore carriers,
powered by triple expansion engines, be-
fitting the period 1900-1925.
If this most difficult and never
all-satisfying selection of vessels to be
portrayed is a flaw, it is an admirable
and relatively minor one. However, for
a better understanding of the
comparative sizes of the ships, a greater flaw
may be the lack of a common scale, or,
for the larger vessels, perhaps even
two or three "common
denominators." As it stands, one can refer to Mr.
Glick's data, but this fails to provide
a true eye picture for the novice of the
great technological advances made over
the course of two centuries.
Nevertheless, the volume is a deserving
contribution albeit a costly one.
To understand this, one need only to
appreciate the plates, all of which are in
color. To do less would be demeaning and
the Dossin Museum should be
lauded for not shrinking to black/white
sketches to reduce the costs. It is a
book with a simple design and scenario,
beautifully done, and relatively
error-free. In this day of cheaply
produced and poorly researched volumes
on the topic, this presentation is like
a fresh lake breeze.
Bowling Green State University Richard J. Wright
Book Reviews
An Archeological History of the
Hocking Valley. By James Murphy.
(Athens:
Ohio University Press, 1975. xi + 360p.;
illustrations, tables, figures, ap-
pendix, index. $15.00.)
In the past the major portion of the
archaeological literature for Ohio has
been derived from work done in the
central, southern and southwestern parts
of the state; that situation is
currently changing for the better. In An Archeolog-
ical History of the Hocking Valley, James Murphy broadens our knowledge of
prehistoric Ohio Indian cultures by
presenting a comprehensive view of an
area extensively inhabited throughout
the prehistoric era but poorly recorded
or understood. It is a logical outgrowth
of a brief survey by Murphy and
Orrin Shane published in 1967, and
incorporates data from Murphy's own in-
vestigations in the Athens area as well
as that of other archaeologists.
The book begins with a "note"
on nomenclature which quickly develops into
a detailed (14 pages long) disagreement
with the way in which Olaf Prufer
and Shane have used various terms in
their theoretical constructs. Such a
chapter is more suitable as a separate
article in one of the archaeological
journals rather than a book that is
expected to have an appeal to a fairly
wide audience. The reader will, however,
be frustrated in any attempt to delve
further into the works Murphy is
criticizing, since the list of references that
accompanies every other chapter is
missing from this section.
The next three chapters introduce the
Hocking River valley, its history,
its resources and the previous
archaeological work that has been carried on
there. The section on the origin of the
name "Hocking" ably demonstrates
the problems of the varying
interpretations of Indian words. The Primitive
Environment chapter introduces the
geology, pedology, flora, and fauna of the
Hocking valley; the descriptions of the
various flint sources in the area are
particularly detailed. The third chapter
of this section discusses the small
group of nineteenth and early twentieth
century archaeologists working in the
Hocking valley, many of whom described
sites that are no longer in existence.
Their work and observations, crude as
they sometimes were, are valuable be-
cause they are often the only records we
have.
The remainder of the book is devoted to
descriptions of the various cultural
traditions whose presence has been
documented in the Hocking area-the
Palaeo-Indians, Archaic, Early Woodland
(Adena), Middle Woodland (Hope-
well), Late Woodland, Late Prehistoric,
and historic Indians. A special chap-
ter addresses the numerous rockshelters
that are particularly characteristic
of the Hocking valley. Each section is
introduced by a summary of the more
recent literature on the particular
tradition, followed by a discussion of the
evidence for that group in the study
area. In some instances, Murphy pre-
sents data on sites he has excavated
himself while in other cases he merely
describes the work and collections of
others. Of particular interest is the re-
port on the Daines mounds in Athens, one
of which, Daines #2, provided
fragments of corn cob, suggesting that
the Adena were familiar with this cul-
tigen in the third century B.C. The book
ends with a short discussion of the
historic period, treating some of the
American Indian as well as Euro-Ameri-
can sites such as Fort Gower. The single
appendix follows with brief descrip-