Ohio History Journal

Book Reviews

 

 

Forlorn Hope of Freedom: The Liberty Party in the Old Northwest, 1838-1848.

By Vernon L. Volpe. (Kent: The Kent State University Press, 1990, xxii +

²³⁶p.; notes, tables, bibliography, index. $24.00.)

 

In Forlorn Hope of Freedom, Vernon L. Volpe reassesses the brief life of the

Liberty Party in the Old Northwest by emphasizing the religious foundations of

the abolitionist third party. Historians have often treated eastern Liberty leaders

as religious in motivation but have viewed western Liberty men, as epitomized

by Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, as more political and pragmatic. Volpe, however,

locates the sources of the midwestern Liberty appeal within evangelical Protes-

tantism, discounts the pragmatism of Chase and the "Cincinnati group" of abo-

litionists as atypical, and identifies a religious core of Liberty support in the Old

Northwest that focused on principle rather than practicality.

At the outset, Volpe contrasts "religiously minded abolitionists" with "politi-

cally minded abolitionists," such as Chase and Gamaliel Bailey, and finds the re-

ligiously minded at the heart of western Liberty. "More than any other factor,"

he argues, "identification with a particular church community motivated indi-

viduals to cast Liberty party ballots" (p. xiii). Liberty men were concentrated in

"come-outer" sects of evangelical Protestants-Congregationalists, Free Pres-

byterians, Wesleyan Methodists, Free Will Baptists, and Anti-Slavery Quakers-

who refused to commune with slaveholders and so chose to leave their churches

to preserve their own purity. They were also concentrated geographically in ho-

mogeneous rural communities dominated by these antislavery sects. Regional-

ly, the Liberty movement commanded minuscule electoral power, garnering at

its peak no more than 3.3 percent of all northern votes. Locally, however, the par-

ty controlled many communities. Whole "antislavery villages" and "third party

communities" united in their "come-outer" dissociation from the sin of slavery.

Volpe's emphasis on the community context of Liberty support-"communities

of believers"-is his major contribution.

Unfortunately for Liberty, however, the religious roots of the party represented

its greatest weakness. Volpe points out that sectarians, the core of Liberty, clung

to the Whig Party as the best hope for antislavery until after the disappointing elec-

tion of 1840. After embracing Liberty, their religious orientation limited the third

party's popular appeal. Liberty men emphasized national, rather than merely

southern, responsibility for slavery and roundly condemned northern society for

its complicity in the sin. They rejected half measures, such as free soil, insisting

on abolitionism as their only legitimate political goal. Liberty men therefore dis-

trusted the Free Soil and Republican parties as compromises with sin orchestrated

by political opportunists. Volpe thus challenges the currently fashionable notion

of continuity between the Liberty Party and its more effective free soil succes-

sors. Throughout the 1840s, gains were slight and were considerably offset by the

antiabolitionism that swept the North in the wake of Liberty agitation. Volpe con-

cludes that religiously minded Liberty men managed to preserve their own puri-

ty by leaving their churches and the major parties but failed to persuade anyone

else to join the antislavery crusade.

Despite its forceful arguments, however, this slim book is more suggestive than

conclusive and should prompt additional research. Volpe's dichotomy between

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Book Reviews                                                     57

 

"religiously minded" and "politically minded" abolitionists, for example, de-

mands fuller definition and exploration. Detailed political and religious portraits

of selected Liberty leaders would put Volpe's dichotomy to the test. With little

explanation, Volpe consistently portrays such "politically minded" leaders as

Chase, Bailey, Theodore Dwight Weld, and Lewis Tappan as influential and yet

unrepresentative of the religious foundations of their own party. Further, the au-

thor does little to reconcile his own dichotomy with the pietistic-liturgical di-

chotomy posed by a vast number of ethnocultural studies of nineteenth-century

political behavior. Similarly, Volpe's emphasis on community organization

merits more detail. Brief case studies of one or more of the "come-outer com-

munities" that Volpe identifies as the core of Liberty support would speak vol-

umes about the religious foundations of the party. More sophisticated statistical

analysis of voting returns, which unfortunately are scant, would tell us more about

the motives of Liberty voters. Finally, despite its title, this book focuses almost

exclusively on Ohio with only passing reference to other states in the Old North-

west.

Despite its shortcomings, however, Forlorn Hope of Freedom represents a

sound survey of the midwestern Liberty Party and offers a badly needed reeval-

uation of the movement's principles and politics.

 

University of Nebraska-Lincoln                       Kenneth J. Winkle

 

 

War on the Great Lakes: Essays Commemorating the 175th Anniversary of the

Battle of Lake Erie. Edited by William Jeffrey Welsh and David Curtis Skag-

gs. (Kent: The Kent State University Press, 1991. vi + 154p.; figures, notes,

index. $17.50 paper; $29.00 cloth.)

 

To celebrate the 175th anniversary of the Battle of Lake Erie in 1988, a con-

ference on the War of 1812 was held partly at Windsor, Ontario, and partly at Put-

in-Bay, Ohio. Though meant for popular consumption, the papers presented were

generally by historians of high professional calibre, and ten of them are published

here, replete with footnotes and bibliographies. The title of the volume suggests

a general treatment of the naval war along the lakes, but with the exception of the

historiographical and bibliographical essays, the main emphasis is on a single

battle.

Fittingly the volume is introduced by "The Battle of Lake Erie: A Narrative"

in which Gerard T. Altoff unfolds a lively description of how the battle was fought

and won by Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry. More analytical in its ap-

proach is an essay by Frederick C. Drake on the artillery used by the two sides

and the effect of armament on the naval tactics employed. Ships and armament

were of course important but so was leadership. The intrepid and victorious Per-

ry has been the subject of much scholarly attention; his one-armed opponent, Cap-

tain Robert Heriot Barclay, less so. This situation is remedied by W.A. B. Dou-

glas who gives us a biographical sketch not only of Barclay but of William Bell,

the shipwright without whose efforts Barclay would have had no ships to com-

mand. The biographical approach is pursued further by sketches of Tecumseh, his

half brother, the Prophet, and lesser known chiefs who fought with the British reg-

ulars and Canadian militia. In regard to the role of native Americans, R. David

Edmunds maintains that the Prophet, rather than Tecumseh, was the prime mover

in Indian resistance to white encroachments, especially in the period before 1810.

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58                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

Dennis Carter-Edwards reminds us that the Battle of Put-in-Bay meant that the

Americans seized control of Lake Erie; naval control enabled General William

Henry Harrison to retake Detroit in 1813 and to defeat a British force at the Bat-

tle of the Thames. These victories ensured the security of the Old Northwest dur-

ing the remainder of the conflict, and the Indian confederacy was defeated nev-

er to be revived.

It was part of the object of the conference to celebrate peace as well as war be-

tween the two nations. Hence an essay by Harold D. Langley on the Treaty of

Ghent which helps to bring us up to date on the diplomatic literature. There are

historiographical essays on the Canadian point of view by Ian C. B. Pemberton

and the United States point of view by Christopher McKee. Lastly there are sur-

veys of both Canadian and United States sources by Stuart Sutherland and Dou-

glas Clanin respectively.

All of the essays are lively and well written, scholarly and reasonably well bal-

anced. But these essays show what 175 years have not been able to totally alter:

Americans and Canadians cannot view the War of 1812 from the same perspec-

tive. The people of Upper Canada were invaded, defeated and occupied. The sting

has not been completely erased and possibly will not be for another 175 years.

The Kent State University press is to be congratulated on an attractive book,

well edited, neat and pleasing to the eye.

 

The Ohio State University                             Harry L. Coles

 

The Midwest and the Nation: Rethinking the History of an American Region. By

Andrew R. L. Cayton and Peter S. Onuf. (Bloomington: Indiana University

Press, 1990. xix + 169p.; notes, index. $25.00.)

 

Regionalism is slippery concept, but one that makes for a fascinating field of

historical research. The nature of regionalism in America is complex and does

not, as Merill Jensen has noted, readily lend itself to facile generalizations nor

simplistic formulations. Despite the challenges of regionalism, however, regional

history is also among the most rewarding and illuminating kinds of scholarship.

Regional themes in American culture add substantially to the breadth and depth

of our historical understanding. Those who would make sense of the vageries and

paradoxes of our nation, past and present, would do well to ponder the concept

of regionalism and its utility for explicating American life. The countervailing

and seemingly contradictory forces of regionalism and nationalism have creat-

ed a dynamic in our history that goes to the very heart of the American experi-

ence. In The Midwest and the Nation: Rethinking the History of an American Re-

gion, Andrew R. L. Cayton and Peter S. Onuf have illuminated these meaningful

connections between regional and national history.

The Midwest and the Nation is a synthesis of the most recent scholarship on

the economic, social, and political development of the Old Northwest. It is not a

narrative history of familiar events, but rather a work of critical historiography.

Cayton and Onuf's primary purpose is to trace the emergence of a distinct regional

consciousness through the deconstruction and analysis of several generations of

historical scholarship. They seek to learn how historians have attempted to cre-

ate meaning out of the Midwestern past, and what they have seen as the most

salient characteristics of the region's culture. This book is about the processes

of self-definition: the development of a Midwestern identity and regional ethos.

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Book Reviews                                                     59

 

It is an exploratory and argumentative exposition that ambitiously aims at noth-

ing less than establishing the "interpretive framework" for future research. The

authors seek "to provoke, to stimulate, and above all to encourage more study."

They are certain to be successful in this effort.

Cayton and Onuf begin the process of deconstruction by examining the ways

in which historians have interpreted the history of the region since its creation

under the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. The Northwest Ordinance was the

opening act of self-definition. That act of Congress established the territorial sys-

tem of the United States and served as a temporary constitution in which the re-

gion's nascent economic and social order was forged. The Ordinance created the

territorial matrix in which the key ingredients to Midwestern culture and identi-

ty were nourished: commercial capitalism and the bourgeois values that enabled

it to flourish. The Midwest, to be sure, held no unique claim to nor monopoly of

commercial capitalism and middle-class culture in nineteenth-century America.

But the extent to which these combined and permeated the region's economic and

social order, argue the authors, set the region apart from the South, Southwest,

and New England in the minds of Midwesterners. This mind-set eventually led

them to deny that the Midwest was distinctive at all. Instead, it represented all

that was essentially American. The American Midwest was the United States.

Midwesterners have, indeed, often made this assertion. They have insisted that

their region is so typical of what is generally considered to be American that it

is the model for American culture at large. Even Easterners have sometimes made

this assertion. Theodore Roosevelt, one who can hardly be accused of Midwest-

ern provincialism, regarded the Midwest "as the heart of true American senti-

ment." As James H. Madison observed in the introduction to Heartland: Com-

parative Histories of the Midwestern States (1988):

 

When the Midwest is seen as distinctive, it is usually presented as the most representative

part of the American nation. From the beginning of settlement to the present, midwestern

boosters have conveyed such notions, implying thereby that other regions have fallen away

from the Midwest's standard of the ideal American way.

 

Cayton and Onuf's work is a compellingly argued elaboration of that observa-

tion.

The authors develop their exploration of regional identity through six chapters,

which deal with the historiography of the Northwest Ordinance, early patterns of

migration and community-building in the Old Northwest, the development of an-

tebellum politics, and the literary expressions of self-definition that continued

into the early twentieth century. The work concludes with an epilogue on Fred-

erick Jackson Turner, whose seminal work is presented as the penultimate ex-

pression of regional history. Other historians, notably Lee Benson and Ray

Allen Billington, have noted the formative influence of Turner's Wisconsin back-

ground on his historical thought. But the extent to which Cayton and Onuf ex-

pand upon this theme and integrate into it their own far-ranging interpretation of

the Midwest is one of the most original and valuable features of this work. Turn-

er's understanding of Midwestern history informed his vision of the westward

movement and the formulation of his famous frontier thesis. The Turner thesis

held a mirror to long-standing assumptions about the nature of frontier societies,

amplifying and elaborating the popular beliefs which Turner had himself inter-

nalized as a Midwesterner.

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60                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

Cayton and Onuf are, however, anything but neo-Turnerians. They dissent from

and severely take to task several of Turner's leading conclusions. By presenting

Turner as a regional historian, they turn him, as they say, completely on his head.

Nevertheless, the authors convey an appreciative understanding of his vision of

the Midwest and its larger importance in American history. They also accept the

essential correctness of Turner's equation of the abundance of free land in the

Midwest with economic opportunity and its social and political consequences.

"Traditional patterns of social order and political authority," they observe,

"were not easily replicated in the new societies that quickly emerged on the fron-

tier." The economic opportunities present in the frontier communities of the Old

Northwest and the American ideology of self-government resulted in "something

very much like Turner's 'democracy."' In short, Turner's version of the Ameri-

can story was powerfully appealing because it seemed so true to the experience

of so many Americans."

Turner aside, the authors make an articulate and long overdue reaffirmation of

the larger signficance of the Midwest. Earlier generations of historians also un-

derstood this signficance. A. L. Kohlmeier, for example, saw the Old Northwest

as the commercial and political keystone of the federal union. R. Carlyle Buely

was no less impressed with the region's's geographical and social importance.

 

The Old Northwest, geographically the connecting region between the Great Lakes-St.

Lawrence system and the Mississippi, and socially the fusion center of population elements

from the Northeast, East, South, and Europe, came in time to control the economical and

political balance in the Union; traditionally and culturally it developed and maintained, at

least until the close of the Civil War, something of an entity.

 

How the Midwest "developed and maintained" this "entity" is what The Midwest

and the Nation is all about.

Cayton and Onuf are the inheritors of a rich historiographical tradition relat-

ing to the Old Northwest and its gradual evolution into the American Midwest.

But the new questions they ask of that history have ushered in the next genera-

tion of scholarship on Midwestern themes of vital importance to American his-

tory at large. They argue compellingly that the Old Northwest was more than "a

generic frontier or a cultural crossroads or a meeting ground of North and South.

If the region was all those things to one degree or another, it was also a place with

a distinctive character of its own." This collaborative effort will indeed set the

"framework" of future research into the history and culture of the American Mid-

west. The authors' penetrating analysis of the persistence of self-perceptions over

time is certain to stimulate new scholarship in response to their central arguments.

Certainly this is the measure of success for any scholarly enterprise.

 

Ohio Historical Society                               Terry A. Barnhart

 

 

Western Rivermen, 1873-1861: Ohio and Mississippi Boatmen and the Myth of

the Alligator Horse. By Michael Allen. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Uni-

versity Press, 1990. xvi + 261 p.; appendix, glossary, bibliographical essay, in-

dex. $25.00)

 

This is a book Ohioans, especially those living close to the Ohio river and its

tributaries, will enjoy. It is a history of the boats and boatmen on the waters of

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Book Reviews                                                      61

 

the Western rivers in the days before the steamboat came first to dominate then

displace these man, wind, and water-powered craft and their crews. Flat boats,

keel boats and rafts are explained and their size, shape, and structure described

with real insight into their place on the rivers.

The changes in the nature and use of flat boats are well covered. How they were

involved in the Indian trade and then carried settlers down river to new areas for

settlement is recognized. The real, and feared, dangers from Indians until the

1790s and the dangers from river pirates in later years are dealt with. The author

points out that the realities of both dangers were much less than the fears and tales

at the time indicated. And especially for pirates and outlaws, stories were much

enlarged in popular writing years after the era was past. The continuing and in-

creasing use of flat boats to carry freight-cotton, corn, whiskey, livestock, lum-

ber, minerals and processed goods-is detailed. Also the persistence of the flat

boat as a viable commercial carrier is pointed out. Flat boats continued to increase

in numbers and in the amount of cargo carried for 30 years after the coming of

the steamboat, their use peaking about 1850. The author points out that in later

years the boats also became more efficient and longer lived. By the 1840s rather

than being sold for scrap lumber after going down river, the boats were loaded

with cargo and pulled upriver as barges by steamboats. Then they became flat

boats again to float another load down river.

In emphasizing flat boats and flat boatmen, the author perhaps minimizes the

importance of keel boats. He quite properly compares tonnage carried by the two

crafts to the great disadvantage of the keel boat. But he does not recognize suf-

ficiently the role of the keel boat, the only freight carrier on the rivers before the

steamboat that could and did carry significant quantities of freight upstream.

In title and subtitle the author indicates his intention to make the people who

manned the boats his primary subject. From 1978-80 he lived and worked on riv-

er boats, and he is obviously engrossed by the life, and changes in the life, of river-

men from the 18th to the late 20th century.

He deals with the makeup of boat crews in depth at different periods. The dif-

ferences between the experienced boat captains and the crews-who were always

young, had little experience and mostly left the river in a year or two-are well

brought out.

Much interesting information on age, home area, marital status, and national-

ity of the boatmen is included. Also living conditions-cooking, eating, sleep-

ing, and sanitary facilities-are described, and such things as health care facili-

ties are reported. But the people remain too much statistics, and are not treated

as ably as the boats. "Myth of the Alligator Horse," the last part of the subtitle,

is dealt with in a good historiographical essay.

This is an excellent book: one that satisfactorily describes the boats and the men

who preceded the age of steamboats, locks, and maintained channels on the im-

portant river routes of Western or Mid-America. The sections on people are ably

done, but those on boats are even more successful. It is an interesting book to read,

one that will appeal to general readers as well as specialists.

 

University of Cincinnati                            W. D. Aeschbacher

 

 

Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism. By Alfred D. Chandler,

Jr., with assistance from Takashi Hikino. (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of

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62                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

Harvard University Press, 1990. xiv + 860p.; tables, figures, notes, appendix-

es, index. $35.00.)

 

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., has long been recognized as the leading historian of

American business. His earlier works, Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the

History of American Industrial Enterprise (MIT Press, 1962) and The Visible

Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Harvard University

Press, 1977) described the rise of big business and bureaucratic management in

the United States. In this new encyclopedic study, Chandler compares the de-

velopment of large industrial companies in the United States, Germany, and Great

Britain from the 1880s through the 1940s. Once again, Chandler's work sets the

standards for future research in business history.

Chandler examines the 200 largest manufacturing companies in each of the

three nations. These companies were the prototypes of the modern industrial en-

terprise which Chandler calls the central institution of managerial capitalism. The

modern industrial firm is "a collection of operating units, each with its own spe-

cific facilities and personnel, whose combined resources and activities are co-

ordinated, monitored, and allocated by a hierarchy of middle and top managers"

(p. 15). These firms remain today at the center of their national economies. From

1870 to the onset of the Great Depression, the United States, Great Britain, and

Germany accounted for about two-thirds of the world's industrial output.

The modern industrial enterprise appeared in roughly the same fields in all three

nations-primary metals, machinery-making, petroleum, food, and chemicals.

Successful firms were those which made interrelated investments in production

facilities large enough to obtain the lowest possible cost per unit (economies of

scale), marketing and distribution networks large enough to keep up with pro-

duction (economies of scope), and professional managers to coordinate these ac-

tivities and plan future development. The first companies to make these invest-

ments acquired competitive advantages as "first-movers" in their industries. These

industries quickly became dominated by a few large firms.

It was in the United States that the modern industrial enterprise first appeared

in large numbers. Germany's experience closely resembled that of the U.S., while

Great Britain lagged behind. The major difference was in the business systems

or competitive environments of each nation. Chandler describes the business sys-

tem in the United States as one of "competitive managerial capitalism," made up

of big professionally-managed firms which produced both consumer and indus-

trial goods and competed with one another for market share. In Germany big busi-

nesses often negotiated with one another over market share and focused on pro-

ducing industrial goods. Chandler calls the German system one of "cooperative

managerial capitalism." In Great Britain, a committment to "personal capitalism"

lasted well into the twentieth century. The smaller, personally-managed British

companies produced mainly consumer goods and failed to make the three-

pronged investment which Chandler views as critical to the success of modern

industrial firms. In the American system of competitive managerial capitalism,

firms were forced to sharpen their "organizational capabilities" or their collec-

tive physical and human skills. The coordination and integration of these orga-

nizational capabilities by professional managers, Chandler asserts, provided the

core dynamic for the growth of modern industrial enterprises.

Many factors accounted for the differences in the competitive environments of

these nations. Chief among these differences were the size of the domestic mar-

kets, with the American market being the largest; the legal systems, of which only

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Book Reviews                                                     63

 

the American one had anti-monopoly laws; and the educational systems, which

in the U.S. and Germany produced trained managers.

Chandler has once again documented masterfully the rise of big business, this

time in the three most important industrial nations of the pre-World War II era.

The collective history of the two hundred largest industrial firms in each coun-

try is complemented by several more detailed case studies of notable companies.

In the conclusion Chandler discusses postwar developments including the rise of

Japan as a major international economic power. Chandler admits that Scale and

Scope "is an internal history of the central institution in managerial capitalism,

rather than an analysis of the broader impact of that institution on the polity or

society in which it appeared" (p. 13). Management-labor relations, government-

business relations, and the history of small business are some of the important

elements of the evolution of business which Chandler has ignored. When this work

is added to Chandler's, we will have a much better understanding of the history

of modern business.

 

The Ohio State University                            Ronald D. Gibbs

 

 

Cleveland: The Making of a City. By William Ganson Rose with new introduc-

tion by John Grabowski. (Kent: The Kent State University Press, 1990. xiv +

1272p.; illustrations, notes, index. $75.00.)

 

In 1945 Cleveland was balanced atop one of the several summits that has

marked its roller coaster ride through history. The city was climbing out of the

depths of the Great Depression, entering a prosperous post-World War II era. The

breadlines were gone, and the Cuyahoga was not yet aflame.

The sesquicentennial of the city's founding was approaching when, in Septem-

ber 1945, Mayor Thomas Burke established a commission to plan for the notable

event. The slogan, "Saluting the past, Cleveland builds for the future," pointed

the way for myriad celebrations that followed. A now-standard recipe was fol-

lowed: a few parts filial piety, a large helping of public relations hype, and a gen-

erous seasoning of "spectaculars" better soon forgotten (as they always are) were

all stirred together with more than a dash of optimistic outlook toward even bet-

ter days ahead.

Charles A. Otis, scion of a pioneer Cleveland family and cochairman of the

Sesquicentennial Committee, wanted something more substantial. He urged the

publication of a new history of Cleveland. While nine previous histories lined the

shelf, none had been published since 1933. Otis's foresight ensured that this cel-

ebration would have an enduring legacy.

William Ganson Rose, former newspaperman and head of his own advertising

and public relations firm, was selected as author. Rose, a Cleveland native, knew

the city and was willing to put forth the effort to compile the book. And what a

compilation. Four years after inception, Cleveland: The Making of a City ap-

peared. It was a 1,272-page chronology that traced the city from its founding (the

few paragraphs Rose devoted to pre-1796 deserve little mention) to the present.

To complete the book, Rose then tacked on a final chapter on the Western Re-

serve, several appendices, and a 152-page index. Clevelanders snapped up the

10,000 copies at $6 per, and "Rose" became a standard. It also became a diffi-

cult book to procure, for owners were seldom willing to part with their copies.

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64                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

Rose organized the book in a straight-forward, chronological fashion. Each

chapter traced a decade of the city's history, starting with "Cleveland Born

Great" and ending with "Greatness Achieved." The chapter headings themselves

provide an accurate indicator of Rose's predilection. Each chapter begins with a

statistical overview of the city and where it stood nationally. Thus we learn that

in 1910 Cleveland, with a population of 560,663, was the nation's sixth largest

city. We find that the automobile business was becoming a more and more im-

portant part of the city's economy, ranking third among Cleveland's industries.

We learn that city planning had become a major issue, that the interurban system

was expanding, that the Cleveland Foundation was established in 1914, and so

on and on. Following these introductions, Rose broke the decade down by year

and, with amazing detail, gave an account of the year's happenings. If not exactly

a "great read," the book smothered the reader under a mountain of data.

In 1990, when Cleveland was again emerging from the tunnel of misfortune,

the Kent State University Press, in cooperation with the Western Reserve His-

torical Society, reprinted the book. Much to their credit, they added a marvelous

introduction written by John Grabowski, archivist at the Western Reserve His-

torical Society and author of Cleveland: A Tradition of Reform. In his ten-page

essay, Grabowski provides a brief historiography of Cleveland and then skillfully

traces and insightfully analyzes Rose's work. The book, he notes, ". . .is not so

much a narrative history, or indeed even a history, as it is a compilation of facts

that seem to relate to every aspect of the city's past .. ." But Rose has also paint-

ed a portrait of the city as it was in its post-WW II glory days, making it "a pri-

mary source for the study of postwar Cleveland."

The book also has its weaknesses, and Grabowski is quick to point them out:

little or no discussion of labor unrest, of radical social or political movements,

of racial or ethnic plights-anything, in short, smacking of controversy. In ad-

dition, Grabowski notes that publication was funded by contributions from the

Cleveland Foundation, several prominent families (Hanna, Gund, Mather), and

various corporations. These groups "reviewed" the Rose manuscript and, as

Grabowski says, "help[ed] file off more of the rough and unsightly edges of lo-

cal history."

The very age of the book also creates problems. In the four decades since the

book was first published, scholarship has moved forward. New information and

interpretations, which often employed Rose, have eclipsed the older work. And,

of course, forty years of Cleveland's history-with such notables as Carl Stokes,

Dennis Kucinich, and George Voinovich, to name but three in the political are-

na-have passed. Finally, to nitpick, the publishers could have added a new sec-

tion of illustrations, rather than regurgitating the first edition's weak images.

Nevertheless, Cleveland: The Making of a City remains a much-valued refer-

ence, which anyone wanting to know just about anything about pre-1950 Cleve-

land must consult. First and foremost, though, read Grabowski's excellent in-

troduction. You may want to read it at the library, for the book carries a list price

of $75. But then again, good things are seldom cheap.

 

Ohio Historical Society                      Christopher S. Duckworth

 

 

Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age. By Virginia Scharff.

(New York: The Free Press, 1991. xi + 219p.; illustrations, notes, index.

$22.95.)

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Book Reviews                                                     65

 

Virginia Scharff begins her feminist history of American women and "the com-

ing of the motor age" with contrasting stereotypic portraits of the turn-of-the-

century bourgeois woman and the figure of the male mechanic turned automo-

tive pioneer. After a discussion of the relationship of women as passengers with

their hired chauffeurs, she goes on to relate how women overcame gender stereo-

typing to become drivers first of electric-then of gasoline-powered cars by the

1920s. Attention is given to the early achievements of women as drivers in races

and on cross-country tours, to the use of the motor vehicle by suffragettes, to

women drivers during World War I, and to the impact of the automobile on mid-

dle-class women, and vice versa, into the 1920s.

Scharff directs her main argument against the gender-based assumptions of

automobile manufacturers, who held that women were concerned primarily

about the cosmetics of the car and convenience options such as the self-starter,

the closed body, and the automatic transmission, while the "automotive taste" of

men was alleged to be governed by practicality and "rugged masculinity." She

contends that, contrary to these assumptions, men and women in reality viewed

cars in much the same way and (p. 125) that "the tendency to confuse preferences

believed to be masculine or feminine with men and women led many to see wom-

an's influence at work where there was no evidence to support such a conclusion."

Conventional wisdom has been that such preferences did indeed exist and that,

for example, women preferred the electric over the gasoline car because it was

noiseless, odorless, did not have to be hand-cranked to start, and did not involve

learning to shift gears. Scharff contends that it was more important that the short-

range, underpowered electric was pushed as a woman's car by auto manufactur-

ers, who viewed the "circumscribed mobility" that the electric afforded as "ap-

propriate" for women's limited "sphere." So much so, she alleges, that because

the self-starter for gasoline cars was considered a feminine device, even being

called "the ladies' aid," auto manufacturers delayed its development to keep wom-

en out of the driver's seats of more powerful, longer-range gasoline cars. "The

application of electricity to the problem of starting an automobile was a relatively

simple engineering problem," she claims (p. 65). "Partly because of popular

assumptions about proper masculinity and femininity, the self-starter and

the American car culture took rather longer in coming than they might have

done." Similarly, because the closed car was associated with the demand of wom-

en for comfort, she claims (p. 124) that "car makers' assumptions about gender

blinded them to the potential market for enclosed vehicles, thus delaying the in-

dustry's effort to meet the technological challenges of producing closed cars,"

and that "manufacturers' identification of enclosed automobiles with women and

with home may have done as much to perpetuate price differences between open

and closed cars (with the concomitant early market predominance of touring cars

and runabouts) as more material factors."

Thus Scharff trivializes as but a simple step beyond turning on the juice of an

electric car's batteries the invention of the self-starter by Charles F. Kettering in

191 1, after a decade of effort by others. She trivializes as well the technological

problems surmounted by a cluster of technological innovations that made mod-

erately-priced all-steel closed bodies a reality by the early 1920s, less than two

decades after the introduction of the closed body-a cluster that involved the de-

velopment of automatic welding machines and sound deadening materials at

Budd, the continuous-process technique for making plate glass at Ford, and the

standardization of parts and subassemblies for bodies at Hudson. Beyond ex-

hibiting a technological naivete unparalleled in the automotive literature,

• 10
 

66                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

Scharff's surmises about what might have been technologically were it not for

gender are counterfactual assumptions for which there is no direct evidence and

which by their nature are not subject to empirical verification.

Elsewhere in the text, in several instances the discussion of automotive tech-

nology is marred by misinformation. To cite but one example, Scharff erroneously

contends (p. 57) that "electric cars ... led the way in two important areas of au-

tomotive design, electric starting and closed vehicle design." Not so. The limou-

sine and the coupe, the first automotive closed-body designs, were offered on

American-built gasoline cars as early as 1903-1904, while the only closed body

available on an American electric car in 1903-1904 was the Woods Hansom Cab-

a horse carriage minus only the horse with front-opening door and the coachman

seated high atop the rear of the rig. It was 1908-1909 before closed bodies were

designed that were light enough for the electric's underpowered chassis. And both

before and after that all trends in automobile body design were established by

gasoline cars, while the styling of electric car bodies was retrogressive in its

imitation of horse-drawn carriage forms.

In my opinion, Scharff's best chapter is "Women Drivers in World War I." Their

story is told here for the first time, and it is told well. It demonstrates a signifi-

cant turning point in recognition of the capabilities of women motorists, which

included being the first long-distance truck drivers. Her coverage of pioneering

women cross-country and racing drivers and suffragettes also contains useful in-

formation new in the secondary literature.

Scharff's weakest chapter is "Women at the Wheel in the 1920s." Fully nine

pages of this too scanty twenty-nine page chapter unaccountably are devoted to

the 1920 Los Angeles downtown parking ban, a topic of minor importance already

covered in too much detail elsewhere by Scott Bottles, while topics of major im-

portance are either entirely neglected or given short shrift. Consequently, the

chapter adds nothing new of importance to our understanding of the auto's im-

pact on American women.

In a blurb on the book's dust jacket, Elaine Tyler May praises Taking the Wheel

for "combining meticulous research with insight and wit" and as "feminist schol-

arship at its best-and great fun to read." Perhaps so. I regret to conclude that I

do not rate Taking the Wheel nearly so highly as automotive history.

 

University of California, Irvine                       James J. Flink

 

 

Bingham of the Hills: Politician and Diplomat Extraordinary. By Erving E.

Beauregard. (New York: Peter Lang, 1989. xxi + ³²⁷p.; chronology of John A.

Bingham, genealogy of the Bingham Family, notes, bibliography, index.

$54.50.)

Reverend John Walker: Renaissance Man. By Erving E. Beauregard. (New York:

Peter Lang, 1990. x + 225p.; chronology, genealogical charts, maps, Presby-

terian Churches to 1845, bibliography, index. $42.95.)

 

Mention Harrison County, in eastern Ohio's hill country, and from many

Ohioans you are apt to get comments about strip mines, reclamation, Clark Gable,

and George Armstrong Custer of Little Big Horn fame. Mention Harrison Coun-

ty to Professor Erving Beauregard of the University of Dayton, however, and from

this respected historian you may well hear and learn much about the county and

• 11
 

Book Reviews                                                     67

 

its people as they were in the nineteenth century, particularly in and about the

small town of New Athens, the home of the now nearly forgotten Franklin

College, and in and around the picturesque county-seat, the village of Cadiz.

Read the titles of the articles and books published by Professor Beauregard in

the past dozen or so years and you quickly see the inter-connectedness of the top-

ics which have claimed his attention. He has had an ongoing love affair with Old

Franklin, the tiny Presbyterian college which struggled valiantly for more than

a century before its remains were finally absorbed by Muskingum; he has been

enthralled by the struggle for academic freedom not only at Old Franklin but in

all of Ohio's colleges and universities; and now, in his two most recent books,

he has written engagingly of the contributions to our state and nation of John

Armor Bingham, congressman and "diplomat extraordinary" from Cadiz, and of

Bingham's mentor and professor of history at Old Franklin, the Reverend John

Walker, described by Beauregard as a "Renaissance man."

Though Bingham has been the subject over the years of countless articles and

at least nine master's theses and doctoral dissertations (at such diverse universi-

ties as Columbia, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Ohio, Kentucky, California State at Long

Beach, and New York), surprisingly no book-length biography on him has been

published, to this reviewer's knowledge, until this one by Beauregard. Gifted or-

ator, outspoken abolitionist, moderate reconstructionist, eight-term congressman,

twelve-year minister to Japan, Bingham began his political life as a Whig cam-

paigning for the election of William Henry Harrison in 1840. In 1854, in the wake

of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, he joined the newly established Republican Party,

supporting it from that point to his death. In his long forty-five year political ca-

reer, he is best remembered as prosecutor of Lincoln's assassins, as author of the

"due process" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, as a key figure in the im-

peachment trial of President Andrew Johnson, and as Envoy Extraordinary and

Minister Plenipotentiary to Japan, regarded by some as one of two Americans (the

other being Commodore Perry) primarily responsible for the "modernization" of

that Far Eastern nation.

Interestingly, throughout his long career, John Bingham made frequent refer-

ence to the influence which his alma mater, Franklin College of New Athens,

Ohio, and most particularly his favorite teacher and mentor, the Reverend John

Walker, had in shaping his personal standards and values, indeed, his entire phi-

losophy of life. Not by accident, a companion volume to Beauregard's biogra-

phy of Bingham is a biography of John Walker. Ordained a minister of the

Associate Presbyterian Church following study at Jefferson College and Service

Seminary, Walker began his ministry in Mercer, Pennsylvania, in 1811, but soon

headed westward into the new state of Ohio, where he began pastorates in no

fewer than four small communities in 1815: Cadiz, Piney Fork, Mt. Pleasant, and

Unity. He served the latter continuously until his death in 1845. Significantly, he

also practiced medicine in that same thirty-year time span, while also finding time

to help found the tiny community of New Athens in 1815, Alma Academy in 1819,

and Franklin College (named for Benjamin Franklin) in 1825.

A trustee of Franklin College until his death, he also served as the institution's

vice-president and professor of world history. Caught up in endless crusades-

antislavery, anti-masonry, and prohibition-Walker exerted profound influence

on the Franklin students with whom he came in contact, Bingham and Titus

Basfield (the first black to graduate from an Ohio college) principal among them.

Indeed, as Beauregard has noted, Walker helped produce "an impressive array of

graduates during his tenure: educators (including two founders of colleges and

• 12
 

68                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

fourteen college presidents), lawyers (including two Ohio Supreme Court jus-

tices), physicians, politicians (including three U.S. senators, six congressmen, a

state governor, a territorial governor, and an organizer of the Republican Party),

two diplomats, an inventor, and forty-nine ministers; the latter overwhelmingly

of various branches of Presbyterianism and including some who rose to the high-

est posts in the denomination. . . . This remarkable record [begun by Walker]

would continue until Franklin College closed in 1921" (pp. 69-70).

Encyclopedic in detail, the product of solid scholarship attested by the lengthy

bibliographies and numerous endnotes, the two biographies are worth reading and

including in personal and academic libraries. If they have a fault it is the tendency

of their author to overwhelm the reader with detail as well as redundant phrases,

such as "Cicero of the House," "Madison of the Fourteenth Amendment," and

"revered mentor." Also, like many other biographers, Beauregard has a tenden-

cy to extol the virtues and diminish the vices of his biographees.

Happily, the two books are nearly free from misspellings and typographical

mistakes. This reviewer noted "privite" instead of "private" on page xx and "com-

plemented" instead of "complimented" on page 150 and again on page 175 of the

Bingham book. But these are minor flaws and do not detract from the overall wor-

thiness of the biographies, both of which deserve to be read by serious students

of Ohio history.

 

Miami University                                    Phillip R. Shriver

 

 

Missionary for Freedom: The Life & Times of Walter Judd. By Lee Edwards. (New

York: Paragon House, 1990. xv + 364p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography, in-

dex. $21.95.)

 

Lee Edwards in the foreword to Missionary for Freedom admits that he has writ-

ten an authorized biography of Walter Judd, a fact that enhances, but at the same

time detracts from, this work. Too often historical objectivity succumbs to de-

fending the subject.

Edwards has contributed a much-needed study of this important postwar con-

gressman. In the past, Judd has been treated simply as an eloquent and outspo-

ken politician closely associated with the China lobby and the right-wing con-

servatism of the McCarthy era. Judd indeed was all these things, but Edwards

shows that there was substance to Judd's beliefs and that he was a more multi-

dimensional figure. With strong personal religious convictions and trained as a

medical doctor at the University of Nebraska, Doctor Judd served as a medical

missionary in China between the two world wars. Here he gained an appreciation

for and understanding of Chinese civilization. Through personal experience in

that war-torn country, he developed his disdain for communism. Thus, after mov-

ing to Minnesota and entering politics, support for Nationalist China and oppo-

sition to communism topped his agenda during his congressional career.

According to this biography, Judd was a modern-day Saint Paul, a man of in-

tegrity driven by his beliefs. Edwards contends that, unlike his right-wing cohorts,

Judd's anti-communism did not translate into isolationism. He was a "reasoned,"

not a "Red-baiting," anti-communist. He supported the Truman Doctrine, the Mar-

shall Plan, and other aspects of the Truman containment policy. Throughout his

tenure in Congress, he was a consistent proponent of foreign aid. In domestic af-

• 13
 

Book Reviews                                                     69

 

fairs, Edwards describes Judd as a Jeffersonian, a "pragmatic liberal" who be-

lieved that government should be used only when necessary and as a last, not a

first, resort.

This being an authorized biography, Edwards had access to manuscript col-

lections and interviews with Judd's colleagues and family that might have been

unavailable to other researchers. This is an important addition to the historical

record. However, as is the case with so many authorized biographies, at times his

writing tends to lose perspective and become too laudatory. Often it appears that

Edwards takes Judd's words at face value without critically examining or ques-

tioning his viewpoint. For instance, he accepts Judd's evaluation that Nixon's Wa-

tergate problems were attributable to his excessive loyalty to the White House

staff. Judd emerges as a man of almost unbelievable integrity who never uttered

a self-serving phrase in his life. Particularly since this book is written from the

perspective of 1990 as communism in Eastern Europe is crumbling, the author

attributes great prescience to Judd's anti-communist crusade.

Furthermore, Edwards periodically lets his own conservative leanings in-

trude. To cite just one example, in a comment on Judd's warnings about com-

munist intentions in Vietnam and the need for continued United States support

for the South, he notes that Judd proved correct when the North finally overran

the South in 1975. But then Edwards proceeds to link the victory of the Khmer

Rouge in Cambodia, the situations in Angola and Mozambique, the Sandinistas

in Nicaragua, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as examples of an Ameri-

ca, paralyzed by the effects of the Vietnam War, unable to resist Soviet expan-

sionism. He reverts to the old domino theory. A sweeping statement such as this

linking such diverse crises is an oversimplification and ignores the nuances and

complex circumstances of these different areas of the world.

If the reader is aware of these weaknesses, this is a biography worth consid-

ering. It does provide a needed analysis of an important political figure in post-

war America.

 

Saint Louis University                             T. Michael Ruddy

 

 

Fernando Wood: A Political Biography. By Jerome Mushkat. (Kent: The Kent

State University Press, 1990. x + ³²³p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography, in-

dex. $35.00.)

The devotion of Akron professor Mushkat to the intricacies of New York's

19th-century Democratic politics has long been clear: see his Tammany: The Evo-

lution of a Political Machine, 1789-1865 (1971), The Reconstruction of the New

York Democracy, 1861-74 (1981), and numerous articles such as "Ben Wood's

Fort Lafayette : A Source for Studying the Peace Democrats" in Civil War His-

tory (June 1975).

Now he has turned to Ben Wood's brother Fernando (1812-1881), "Model

Mayor" of New York City in the 1854-1861 period, to construct in the most

painstaking fashion a "political biography" of that controversial Democrat. The

last scholar to attempt this was Samuel A. Pleasants in a 216-page doctoral dis-

sertation published by Columbia Univ'ity Press in 1948, but Mushkat's decade

of research has probed far beyond that study's sources. Given the subject's ha-

bitual secretiveness about his inner life, this latest work should be definitive.

• 14
 

70                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

Contemporary observers of Wood's career as three-time mayor and nine-term

congressman were typically partisan in defense or attack. As a leading machine

politician of that turbulent era, moreover, he was not much better or worse ethi-

cally than his equally crafty and ambitious rivals. Mushkat does not dwell long

here upon unsavory methods used to swing elections; rather he focuses on the

clash of ideas and personalities. Yet he does not hesitate to criticize Wood's ac-

tions wherever required, his "basic thesis" being that the man combined "deep

moral flaws" with "high ideals."

It is these "high ideals" that Mushkat believes have generally gone unac-

knowledged in previous evaluations. And certainly he makes a good case that from

Wood's conversion to Locofoco ideology in the 1830s he continued to espouse

"'equal rights for all,' antimonopolyism, limited government, dogmatic indi-

vidualism, and hard money." As New York City's mayor, that translated into ad-

vocacy of urban "home rule" under a stronger, more effective municipal gov-

ernment that would promote civic reform and social justice. As U.S. congressman

after a war he had strongly resisted on pro-slavery, pro-northern worker, anti-draft

grounds, those old Jacksonian ideals reappeared in his espousal of Southern

"home rule," lower tariffs, fewer greenbacks, and civil service reform. Such a

forward-looking program, argues Mushkat, Wood passed on to the Bourbon

Democrats.

That Locofoco thread helps to hold together this richly detailed story of north-

ern urban Democratic difficulties through the Civil War crisis. But Mushkat's fur-

ther contention that Wood as New York's mayor anticipated various strands of

the later Progressive Movement raises questions. Wood did seek a more efficient

government under home rule, yet Albany replied with a Charter that weakened

some executive controls and a Metropolitan Police Act placing his newly uni-

formed force under a bipartisan four-man commission that would later frustrate

Theodore Roosevelt. Similarly, Wood's reform proposals in inaugural address-

es often did not materialize, while his Central Park planning possibly reflected

personal real estate interests and his public works projects of October 1857 re-

sponded mainly to that fall's financial panic. Mushkat never tries to show that

Wood's mayoralty furnished an example that later leaders specifically tried to em-

ulate.

More interesting for Civil War buffs will be the pro-Southern course that this

Northern Democrat pursued so avidly before and during that conflict. And

though the political lingo involved will intimidate the uninitiated, Mushkat does

interweave interpretation with fact in a helpful way. Finally, despite a few

spelling errors that escaped proofing, author and press produced a scholarly vol-

ume with appropriate portraits and postwar political cartoons.

 

Denison University                              G. Wallace Chessman

 

Louis Rorimer: A Man of Style. By Leslie A. Pina. (Kent: The Kent State Uni-

versity Press, 1991. vii + ¹⁴⁹p.; illustrations, notes, appendices, bibliography,

index. $24.00.)

 

Leslie A. Pina, who heads the Department of Interior Design at Ursuline Col-

lege, has extracted from her doctoral dissertation, "Rorimer-Brooks: Interior De-

sign in Cleveland, Ohio, 1896-1957," completed in 1986 at Case Western Reserve

University, a book-length study of the individual behind this design firm, Louis

• 15
 

Book Reviews                                                     71

 

Rorimer (1872-1939). Although this Cleveland-born German-American is now

largely forgotten, he ranks as an historic leader in the field of decorative arts. Ed-

ucated locally and in Europe, including the Kunstgewerbeschule in Munich, Ger-

many, Rorimer (his family spelled its surname Rohrheimer and he briefly used

"Rorheimer") returned to Cleveland and launched a design firm in 1893. Later

he merged his operations with a competitor, Brooks Household Art Company, to

create Rorimer-Brooks, Inc. This company prospered. Cultivating a clientele of

wealthy Cleveland-area residents and exploiting a profitable commercial market,

the firm also captured the prosperous chain of Statler hotels.

Rorimer participated in the widespread movement away from the effeminate,

cluttered and frequently helter-skelter Victorian look. He embraced early on the

developing Arts and Crafts crusade inspired by two Englishmen, John Ruskin, a

prominent art critic, and William Morris, a poet, decorator and artisan. Rorimer

liked functional forms; the clean and practical lines associated with this move-

ment appealed to him. Later he embraced another modern style, Art Deco. Yet

Rorimer did not reject all designs of the past; he showed considerable eclectic ten-

dencies. "Rorimer's fluency in both traditional and modern idioms characterized

his contribution to twentieth-century American interior design," argues Pina. "The

compatibility between traditional and modern design elements was something

Rorimer believed in, and his work demonstrates that a designer can select one

without rejecting the other" (p. 3).

Rorimer's importance is considerable and wide-ranging. For one thing, he in-

troduced the works of some important European designers to America; for ex-

ample, he brought notice to the bronzes of Rembrandt Bugatti. Similarly, he

served as an influential patron of culture, particularly in Cleveland and New York,

and both the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art ben-

efitted from his talent and generosity. Rorimer even sought to improve popular

tastes; in fact, he viewed his work for the Statler Hotel Company as a "chance to

educate and elevate the American cultural level" (p. 73); perhaps he had some suc-

cess.

Louis Rorimer: A Man of Style is a useful book. Unquestionably, Leslie Pina

has filled a void in the literature of early twentieth-century American design.

Moreover, she skillfully connects this prominent Clevelander to movements,

events and personalities in a national and international framework. The book, too,

is nicely illustrated. The most intriguing photographs show various views of Ror-

imer's shops in Cleveland. The work, though, is mildly marred by a stilted prose

style and a nearly useless appendix, "Rorimer Clients," which lists residential and

commercial customers from 1929 through the 1930s. Since Pina fails to annotate

the entries, they are mostly meaningless unless the reader knows individuals and

companies in northeastern Ohio during this time period. Fortunately, this beau-

tifully manufactured book, a hallmark of the Kent State University Press, sports

a useful bibliography and index.

 

The University of Akron                               H. Roger Grant

 

 

 

Fleeting Moments: Nature and Culture in American History. By Gunther Barth.

(New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. xxii + 222p.; illustrations, notes,

sources, index. $29.95.)

• 16
 

72                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

Two abstractions, "nature" and "culture," figure prominently in the exploration

and settlement of America. Barth sets out to document those "brief interludes that

find nature and culture in balance." This requires an analysis of two additional

metaphors for nature and culture-the "wilderness" and the "city." Barth has writ-

ten a provocative and perceptive account of the American encounter with land-

scapes wild and civilized. He relies on writings (including contemporary accounts

and journal entries) to describe three time periods in which nature and culture co-

existed harmoniously.

The first "fleeting moments" occurred at the time of the search for the Wilder-

ness Passage, a seminal period (ca. 1580-1700) of encounter between native Amer-

ican peoples/landscapes and Europeans. Barth reviews the travels and exploits

of the major European explorers to determine how they related to the native peo-

ples and landscapes during this fluid, utopian period when the Wilderness Pas-

sage signified both adventure and safety. To some explorers, especially the French

who found a common humanity with native Americans, the traveler's culture was

put "on an even footing with churning rivers and deep canyons, with powerful

Indian nations and straggling bands"-a scene that can be acted out in different

eras, as exemplified by the metaphorical journey portrayed in the recent popular

film epic Dances With Wolves.

The second period, which Barth titles "On Culture's Edge," belongs to the ear-

ly 19th century-a time when the American landscape had not yet been "domes-

ticated by cliches of landscape writers," or landscape painters. Barth uses the ex-

periences of Lewis and Clark, whose expedition (1803-05) "was actually the last

of a long line of adventures in the search for the Wilderness Passage" that led the

explorers into concord with nature as they came to recognize "the beauty and val-

ue of the new American scenery in its own right and on its own terms." Barth puts

the Lewis and Clark expedition in cultural/aesthetic context; his use of two sym-

bols, one, the grizzly bear, standing for the power of the wilderness and the oth-

er, Lewis' iron boat, for the shortcomings of technology and civilization, helps

the reader understand the disturbing revelations experienced by the expedition.

According to Barth, Lewis' tragic suicide seems to portend the "exploitation of

resources, the annihilation of Indians, and the destruction of nature" that would

characterize the 19th century.

One of the great artifacts of the 19th century was the city, which had come to

dominate nature so thoroughly by the 1850s that designers began to search for

ways of putting nature back into the cityscape. They found it in the "natural" park

and the garden cemetery. Barth tells us that, for a fleeting moment, culture and

nature were integrated; within a short time, however, monuments came to dom-

inate nature in these enclaves. Barth puts the development of major urban land-

scaping projects (New York's Central Park, Cincinnati's Spring Grove Cemetery,

Oakland's Mountain View Cemetery, San Francisco's Golden Gate Park) in his-

toric/environmental context, reaffirming that respect for nature in the period was

dependent on the ". . . engineering of culture [that] made large-scale attempts to

conserve nature in the United States an offspring of the city." Paradoxically, it

is when writing about nature from the perspective of the 19th century city that

Barth's writing is particularly effective.

In some ways, Fleeting Moments is a historical primer of the environmental

movement. Its premise, that culture and nature have come together harmonious-

ly, reaffirms the duality of our culture's attitude while offering an element of hope.

Concerned as it is with both intellectual and popular history, Fleeting Moments

is a significant reinterpretation of American exploration and settlement. Barth re-

• 17
 

Book Reviews                                                     73

 

lies heavily on secondary sources and earlier interpretations, as well as original

accounts, to effectively analyze historical figures. Their aspirations and motives

are exposed with compassion and sensitivity, which is a difficult feat for an au-

thor writing about America's peculiar love/hate relationship with nature. Fleet-

ing Moments is highly recommended for students of American History, Ameri-

can Studies, and Environmental History.

 

University of Texas at Arlington                 Richard Francaviglia

 

 

The History of Wisconsin. Edited by William Fletcher Thompson. Volume V: War,

a New Era, and Depression, 1914-1940. By Paul W. Glad. (Madison: The State

Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1990. xv + ⁶⁴²p.; maps, illustrations, notes,

appendixes, essay on sources, index, $35.00.)

This is the fifth volume to be published in the State Historical Society of

Wisconsin's monumental six-volume History of Wisconsin series. Volume V is

the work of University of Oklahoma Professor Paul W. Glad, who taught at

Wisconsin in Madison, 1966-1978, and whose well-received works include The

Trumpet Soundeth: William Jennings Bryan and His Democracy (1960). Glad is

well equipped to handle Wisconsin's past as well as its imaginative LaFollette

family.

Any history of Wisconsin between 1914 and 1940 is also going to be an account

of the comings and goings and doings of Senator Robert M. LaFollette, Sr. (Old

Bob), and his two sons: Senator Robert M. LaFollette, Jr. (Young Bob), and Gov-

ernor Philip LaFollette. Father and sons, they headed the Progressive faction of

the state's powerful Republican Party as opposed to the conservative Stalwart fac-

tion. And although they would mingle mightily with FDR and his New Deal

Democrats, they viewed Wisconsin's own Democrats as "reactionaries." In any

event, it is owing to the imaginative work of these Progressive gentlemen and their

constituents that a major theme of this book is that of revealing Wisconsin's po-

litical policy as a forerunner and then abettor of the New Deal. It was the first state,

for example, to enact an unemployment compensation law, "and that law was to

exert a profound national influence" (p. 450). Interestingly, Ohio had developed

a somewhat different plan that became the principal rival of the Wisconsin leg-

islation.

World War I brought severe tension to Wisconsin as a result of its large Ger-

man population. Old Bob risked his career in opposing American entry, and again

in helping prevent ratification of the Versailles Treaty. Spanish Flu and a Red

Scare followed the war as well as a realization that the flaws of society did not

disappear with victory! Prohibition was aimed at one of the "flaws," and it should

be noted that Wisconsin was probably "wetter" than Ohio owing to knowledge-

able brewers who provided "wort," a simple beer "requiring mainly the addition

of yeast" (p. 100). Catholicism was seen as a "flaw" by Wisconsin's small Ku

Klux Klan, but the author might have revealed that the Midwest, especially In-

diana and Ohio, was a great center of Klan activity.

Ironies inherent in the postwar decade-the "New Era"-range from the "ten-

der solicitude" of commercial interests bent on raping the state's great forests,

to the completely unexpected turn of business classes away from the Progressives

to the more "up-to-date" Stalwarts. Old Bob died in 1925, in the midst of these

• 18
 

74                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

and other political battles, but his two sons carried on his crusade against privi-

lege and "predatory interests."

The University of Wisconsin's role is fully portrayed, from the great influence

of the Agricultural School on the state's dairy economy, to the many professors

who entered state and national politics, such as John R. Commons, the distin-

guished labor economist. One of his students, Arthur Altmeyer, was instrumen-

tal in bringing about the Federal Social Security Bill of 1935.

The important transition from the Progressivism of Old Bob to the Progres-

sivism of his two sons provides a major theme for the last half of this work. Young

Bob held a Senate seat from 1925 to 1947, while Phil won two terms as governor

during the 1930s. Glad asserts that "the complex relationship between the New

Deal and Wisconsin Progressivism provides a leitmotif for the history of the state

during the Great Depression, but the theme had begun to resonate even before

there was a New Deal" (p. 351). Although the Progressives increased popular ac-

ceptance of the New Deal, Phil led them toward the formation of a new party while

Wisconsin's younger leaders often migrated into the state's newly powerful

Democratic Party.

FDR's suspicions of Phil were borne out when the governor launched the im-

mensely unsuccessful National Progressive Party of America (NPA) in 1938. The

American people wanted no new party. As for Roosevelt, Glad believes that his

"broad humanitarian instincts provided him the freedom to interpret events

without regard to Progressive dogmatism" (p. 526).

Glad has achieved a notable blend of state history turned national by people

and events. Few states were as influential as Wisconsin during this period, and

even fewer have had such a finely written and nicely interpreted volume as this

one to tell the tale.

 

University of Dayton                                Frank F. Mathias

 

 

The Enduring Indians of Kansas; A Century and a Half of Acculturation. By

Joseph B. Herring. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. 1990. xii, 236p.; il-

lustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $25.00.)

 

In this study of the tribes of the Old Northwest after their removal to Kansas

in the 1830s and 1840s Joseph Herring recovers a neglected but instructive piece

of history. By 1850 some 10,000 natives had been relocated in supposedly per-

manent homes in eastern Kansas, but during the ensuing decades, as white set-

tlement in the area increased and lines of communication were driven through it

to the newly acquired territories in the American southwest, speculators, mis-

sionaries, railroad companies, settlers, government agents and corrupt native

spokesmen collaborated to besiege Indian cultures and expel the tribes to Indi-

an Territory. This process is not unfamiliar, but it is not so much the dispossessed

who are the focus of this book, but the survivors, the few hundred Kickapoos,

Iowas, Sacs, Munsees, Chippewas and Potawatomies who remained in Kansas in

the 1870s.

Herring explains their survival by stating that "they had managed to walk the

fine line between their traditional ways and those of the whites" (p. 1), modify-

ing their societies to accommodate the majority culture, rather than rejecting or

wholly imbibing it. Natives who were unduly conservative or who attempted to

• 19
 

Book Reviews                                                     75

 

assimilate into mainstream American society tended to lose their lands, but "ac-

culturation" proved a "defense mechanism ... crucial to survival" (p. 2).

In a series of well-researched and lucid case studies, Herring goes far towards

justifying his thesis. Confronted by increasing white settlement, these bands aban-

doned the warrior society to peacefully coexist with neighbors, and made agri-

culture the basis of their economies. Some Indians even supplied casual labor for

white farmers, and among the Kickapoo, Iowa and Sac the debilitating influences

of alcohol were checked. No longer perceived as a threat, the Indians won the re-

spect of local whites, who even petitioned Congress on behalf of a Sac band fac-

ing removal in 1879. Herring also makes it clear that the policy of persuading the

Indians to accept citizenship and farm their land in family-owned allotments, in-

troduced in 1853 but receiving greater impetus by the Dawes Act of 1887, was

disastrous to the native land base. Not only did it provide a rationale for induc-

ing the Indians to cede land "surplus" to allotment, but it exposed the allottees,

now empowered to sell their farms, to unscrupulous business men. Generally,

those bands who continued to hold their lands in common, such as the Kickapoos

or Prairie Potawatomies, fared best, and even the Commissioner of Indian Affairs

who introduced allotment to the Kansas Indians lived to admit that it had been a

"grievous mistake" (p. 137).

But these points need to be qualified. Peaceful acculturation by no means guar-

anteed survival. Mokohoko's Sacs, undermined by a fraudulent removal treaty,

were forcibly shifted to Indian Territory in 1886. Nor did allotment invariably

lead to dispossession. Indeed, after 1868 it assisted the Chippewas and Munsees

to protect their land by removing it from the control of corrupt chiefs. Moreover,

the price paid for remaining in Kansas was often ferocious. All the surviving

groups were compelled to cede land, and many were wasted by disease. Some,

such as the Kickapoos influenced by the prophet, Kenekuk, were able to fuse na-

tive and white culture and preserve a separate ethnic identity, but the Chippewas,

Munsees and others were eventually brought to assimilation. In Herring's own

words, "They had retained their lands, but they were no longer Indians" (p. 150).

However, peopled with forgotten but important native leaders, and industri-

ously and skillfully quarried from extensive primary sources, this book is an ex-

cellent and sometimes moving contribution to the history of Indian Kansas. It is

to be hoped that it will inspire someone to complete the picture by a study of such

tribes as the Shawnee, who quit the state for Indian Territory.

 

Hereward College, England                               John Sugden

 

 

Inside Looking Out: The Cleveland Jewish Orphan Asylum, 1868-1924. By Gary

Edward Polster. (Kent: The Kent State University Press, 1990. xiv + ²⁴0p.; il-

lustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $32.00.)

 

This handsome volume on Cleveland's Jewish orphanage makes for interest-

ing and instructive reading. This book traces the history of this Cleveland insti-

tution from its founding on Woodland Avenue after the Civil War as the Jewish

Orphan Asylum until its move to Cleveland Heights and name change to Bellfaire

right before the Great Depression. In this tracing, Professor Polster interweaves

information gathered from traditional primary and secondary sources as well as

interviews conducted with twenty-nine orphanage alumni and their relatives. In

• 20
 

76                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

particular, these interviews do much to enliven and make poignant what other-

wise could have been a solid but uninteresting institutional history. The ample

photographs which illustrate the text also serve to constantly remind the reader

that young lives and personal stories were (and still are) at the heart of this in-

stitution. That these stories could be so vividly retold by the alumni decades af-

ter leaving the orphanage is testament to its impact on those it attempted to serve.

"Attempted to serve" seems the correct characterization of what the orphan-

age did for much of its history. It is no secret that America's vaunted immigrant

melting pot is pretty much a fiction of the national imagination, and Professor Pol-

ster reminds us that this was also true in Cleveland. The German Reform Jews

who organized and controlled the Jewish Orphan Asylum were determined to

Americanize their charges and relieve them of their Orthodox faith. Proud of their

elevated economic and social status, Cleveland's German Jewish population was

also constantly aware of its precarious position in a Christian society. The mas-

sive influx of Eastern European Jewish immigrants into the city in the latter part

of the nineteenth century alarmed the earlier arrived German Jews. Their or-

phanage was their vehicle for social engineering, allowing them a chance to make

over the Eastern European Jews who by dress and faith seemed to challenge the

American ideals the Germans were proud to have adopted. The melting pot was

not to be left to chance, and Polster's alumni interviews tell us about the human

wreckage that could be caused by this determination to make every orphan a true

blue American. Family ties were destroyed, religious faith was lost, and the abil-

ity to conduct normal interpersonal relationships was seriously impaired. The

name changes of the Jewish orphanage-from Jewish Orphan Asylum to Jewish

Orphan Home to Bellfaire-symbolize the increasing enlightened opinions of a

succession of remarkable superintendents of this social agency. Gradually, the

orphanage changed from an asylum to a treatment center for emotionally disturbed

children.

While the first and second superintendents of the orphanage (Louis Aufrecht

1868-1878 and Samuel Wolfenstein 1878-1913) were its most unenlightened (to

our way of thinking) leaders, they must be credited with bringing about and hold-

ing together an important institution. Their dramatic stories are also a part of Pro-

fessor Polster's narrative. It was especially Dr. Samuel Wolfenstein (Ph.D., Bres-

lau, 1864; rabbinical degree, Rabbiner Seminar, 1864) who had a great impact

on the charges of the orphanage. Wolfenstein's long tenure and forceful person-

ality insured that he was reverentially called "Doctor" by orphanage alumni six-

ty years after his death, and it is a treat that Professor Polster has introduced us

to this remarkable individual. Indeed, the chapters about Dr. Wolfenstein and his

running of the orphanage are the heart of the book.

Quality books on local history, such as Inside Looking Out, are important. They

remind us that what happened where we live or lived is not divorced from national

history and that local leaders can be just as important and colorful as those who

capture national attention. It enriches our historical understanding when authors

such as Gary Edward Polster and presses such as Kent State University make these

books possible.

 

Cleveland State University                            Michael Wells

• 21
 

Book Reviews                                                     77

 

Slavery Attacked: Southern Slaves and Their Allies 1619-1865. By Merton L.

Dillon. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990. viii + ³⁰⁰p.;

notes, bibliography, index. $16.95 paper; $39.95 cloth.)

The Anti-Redeemers: Hill-Country Political Dissenters in the Lower South from

Redemption to Populism. By Michael R. Hyman. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State

University Press, 1990. ix+ 252p.; tables, notes, appendixes, bibliography, in-

dex. $16.95 paper; $39.95 cloth.)

 

It is well recognized that there has been a modern professional effort to mini-

mize differences between our historically geographic sections, so to augment so-

cial and cultural justice for social minority elements. The problem from histori-

ans is to ensure that their disciplines do not suffer distortions because of the

generous will to find equities in past conditions-or shift responsibilities-where

they did not exist.

It should not surprise that novel ideas can pass by historians-ideas they would

not accept if given open, bare statement. One well-regarded study sees slavery

ideas as more virile in the North than in the Old South. Another seems to spon-

sor slavery in its traditional form: discussion about it veers between saying noth-

ing, and approving research for its own sake; never mind the thesis.

Two new books dovetail in premise: one, in finding a democratic thread in the

post-Civil War South; the other in all but burying abolitionism as previously un-

derstood in its attempt to aggregate new antislavery alliances headed by the black

slaves themselves. One must hasten to approve the good intentions manifested.

Research has been real, results apparently credible. Historians must determine

whether their overall findings show a balance which serves reality.

The Anti-Redeemers opposes older studies which honored a democratic South,

with social flaws, true, but with dynamics and promise. The argument is not whol-

ly new; it can be found in major works by George Tindall and Vann Woodward,

to cite but two. The novelty in Mr. Hyman's book is to work his theme intensively,

emphasizing hill-country dissent only in districts of Mississippi, Georgia, and

Alabama. The implication is that, if the author's claims are persuasive, they can

probably be extended in further studies.

The Anti-Redeemers features political independents and panacea hunters, no-

tably Greenbackers. It finds poor agrarian whites suffering many of the ills vis-

ited on blacks. Such dissidents often felt prejudices toward blacks, but also joined

in protesting "Ring rule"-tying them thus with "Ring Leaders" in the North-

on many issues. Dissidents gathered evidence of hypocrisy against "patriotic"

southern white politicians who waved Confederate flags, but gave road contracts

to wealthy or elite compatriots. As one bitter victim of their machinations in non-

elective collaborations had it in 1882:

 

Who does not remember several years ago-when our officers were appointed by the

'Radical regime' that no word in the English language was more odious than he is an 'ap-

pointee.' Now it seems to have lost all of its offensiveness (p. 91).

 

Anti-Carpetbag sentiments these harassed, poorer whites did share with their

political masters, to be sure. But jury selection, taxes, sharecropper lives, and im-

prisonment for debt were problems whites could and did pursue in part with black

neighbors and politicos.

Southern conservatives held their own despite sometimes ardent efforts to cre-

ate a southern Populism. The bottom line remains that Populism nowhere blazed

• 22
 

78                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

in the South as it did in the North, and notably in the Old Northwest. Yes, there

was a southern Populism, and it would overlap into the Progressive era, but how

firmly? We can create a northern and southern hand-clasp in theory, with the

added factor of free black participation. Its actual strength remains unresolved.

Mr. Hyman has done what he could with his carefully culled materials. He has

evaded the complexities inherent in such a career as Georgia's Tom Watson.

Slavery Attacked is not a book about abolition. It is a study of the slavery sys-

tem as it affected southern slaves, first of all, and others afterward. It concentrates

on slave discontents from the very beginning of white settlement. It focuses on

the slaves as undermining the institution all the time that it grew. It sees those

slaves as providing the leadership which tore at what dedicated slaveholders

hoped would be a permanent system, one giving all human parts of it proper places

in a graceful and productive civilization. Note again the book's sub-title, "South-

ern Slaves and Their Allies."

"Allies" are everywhere: among slaveholders with a bad conscience, insur-

rectionists as far away as Haiti and as near as Border States, sympathizers, north-

ern blacks who labored to free their relatives and friends in the South by purchase

or underground plots. The slave remains central: the abolitionist of abolitionists.

Many of them have been long known: Gabriel of "Gabriel's Conspiracy," Nat

Turner, Solomon Northrup, Frederick Douglass, Denmark Vesey, among nu-

merous others.

What Slavery Attacked adds to the widely-known record is a point of view,

which places slaves so far in the foreground that it can be said that the slaves freed

themselves. This needs to be underscored, so that the process can be followed.

The classical abolitionists as leaders, organizers, politicos, and activists, from

Benjamin Lundy to Abraham Lincoln, become adjuncts to slave dissidents-ad-

juncts, rather than principals.

Whether this makes for wishful thinking rather than solid statement or docu-

mentary fact cannot be settled here. The key fact is that the author must divest

himself of the known materials which can be found in major or even more mod-

est libraries, and which involve different points of view, none of which are ar-

gued here.

Professor Dillon's own mentor, the late Dwight Dumond, held that Abraham

Lincoln was an abolitionist. Numerous writers have found abolition not in the

briefs, speeches, laws passed in the states, and actions which defied anti-black

laws as demeaning the Constitution or the laws of nature, but in the military ac-

tions which bent the slavery South to the nation's anti-slavery will.

The character of the slave-here depicted as guiding the whole country to free-

dom-has been challenged in books by esteemed historians such as Richard C.

Wade, Stanley M. Elkins, Russel B. Nye, Avery O. Craven, and still others too

numerous to recall here. Clement Eaton in his studies of Old South liberalism

found its major fault to have been a too successful suppression of slaves, creat-

ing docile and contented "Sambos": a view which can be found in other histori-

ans North and South.

Professor Dillon's own studies of Benjamin Lundy and Elijah P. Lovejoy are

given short shrift in Slavery Attacked, and are not noted on the book's jacket. His-

torians are yet to unfold their true character in this field, but we need to make cer-

tain that basic communication maintains its necessary granary of content.

 

The Belfry                                               Louis Filler

Ovid, Michigan

• 23
 

Book Reviews                                                     79

 

The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. By Lewis L. Gould. (Lawrence: The Uni-

versity Press of Kansas, 1991. xii + 355p.; notes, bibliographical essay, index.

$29.95.)

Back in 1980, in The Presidency of William McKinley, Lewis Gould contend-

ed that historians had seriously underrated that Ohio statesman, who had simply

disguised his "masterful skill" and "dominant political personality" as he moved

"inexorably though imperceptibly" to enhance the power of his office. McKin-

ley, as Gould put it, was really "The First Modern President."

Now his focus shifts to the man often called that, Theodore Roosevelt, whom

he newly characterizes as "The Personalized President" who built upon McKin-

ley's accomplishments but eclipsed him publicly through "charisma" and "flair."

Gould does recognize TR's achievements at home and abroad, but also plays up

his shortcomings in administrative methods, to provide what even Blum and Har-

baugh term a "judicious" or "balanced" account.

Gould's continuing effort to improve McKinley's historical image is nonethe-

less evident in his analysis of tariff policies: Roosevelt not only should have

pushed harder for the reciprocity program his predecessor had initiated, but by

using just the threat of rate revision in order to gain other goals, he put off a vi-

tal task that would later cause his party much trouble.

The McKinley administration had never taken an antitrust action under the

Sherman Act such as Roosevelt launched in 1902 against the Northern Securi-

ties Company. Aside from declaring in September 1900 that "publicity will be a

helpful influence to check this evil," moreover, McKinley had never suggested

an investigative agency such as the Bureau of Corporations (1903). Such vigor-

ous moves went beyond the charismatic flair of a "Personalized President." And

quite possibly they were worth the administrative troubles that inevitably de-

veloped later.

Debate over the Spanish-American war had involved Gould in a lengthy defense

of McKinley; foreign affairs under Roosevelt were easier to handle. Indeed, Gould

does not even rise up in criticism over Panama, nor does he see more than the "im-

pression of bluster" marring the "limited victory" in the Roosevelt Corollary. So

though the Germans may have been pressed "too hard" over Morocco, the pres-

ident's actions abroad in general seem to be commended.

Hence it is mainly in domestic administration after 1905 that Gould finds Roo-

sevelt's "troubling contributions to the emergence of the modern presidency."

TR's distinction between "good" and "bad" trusts, for example, continued to im-

part "a personal, improvised, and self-contradictory cast to his regulatory poli-

cy." By acting outside the democratic process at times in his conservation efforts,

moreover, he failed there also to shape a positive, long-range program. "Roosevelt

rarely violated the law as an administrator," Gould concludes, "but he did push

its boundaries in the interest of what he deemed to be larger purposes."

Yet in the balance Gould seeks to strike between constructive and troubling con-

tributions, the conservative forces arrayed against Roosevelt's increasingly pro-

gressive leadership deserve more attention. Amid all the detail about Washing-

ton doings, the political structure of House and especially Senate is neglected;

in fact, the "Old Guard" and "Big Four" are not mentioned, their key role is un-

examined. And TR's relations with reform forces in Congress and the nation needs

more attention, particularly as G.O.P. unity wanes and he tries "to keep the left

center together."

• 24
 

80                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

Like other works in this series, however, this one does give an unusually in-

clusive account of people and events associated with the presidency. At the same

time it quite often pursues an unusual chronological approach to the many exec-

utive activities. Professors will find such an approach more stimulating than will

students; indeed, by breaking up discussion of important topics (e.g., the

Brownsville shooting) into segments of several chapters, this method of analy-

sis can make balanced judgments more difficult for everyone.

The wide-ranging research that went into this study will serve future histori-

ans well. At the same time they will have to heed the general argument of this pro-

fessor at the University of Texas at Austin. So in good time his scholarly labor

(and that of his graduate students involved) should find its due reward.

 

Denison University                              G. Wallace Chessman

 

 

The Presidency in the 20th Century: From Lyndon B. Johnson to Ronald W.

Reagan. Volume 2 of The Presidency in Crisis. Edited by Louis Filler.

(Englewood, New Jersey: Jerome S. Ozer, Publisher, 1991. viii + 347p.; notes,

selected bibliography. $35.95.)

 

Louis Filler argues that Americans can only develop "workable measuring rods"

to judge presidential leadership by "penetrating" the "Enigma of Presidential

promises" through "the expertise gained by the study of past administrations."

He attempts to do this by separate chapters on Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Ford,

Carter, and Reagan consisting of one-to-ten page chronologically arranged, an-

alytical-biographical comments interspersed with presidential speeches and ex-

cerpts from press conferences. Filler follows his running commentary with short

lists of relevant books on the topic at hand. This format makes the book rather

an odd hybrid. He does not construct his commentaries as balanced thematic es-

says, so the book falls short of the several recent books by authors such as Fred

Greenstein, Barbara Kellerman, and William Leuchtenburg that do this. On the

other hand while the presidential speeches do give insight into political philoso-

phies, their number, ranging from twelve for Johnson to seven for Ford, do not

give a well-rounded view of each presidency. Serious researchers will still want

to use the presidential paper series.

Filler never establishes a central theme of presidential leadership. Rather he

gives short bursts of almost editorial comment on the weaknesses and strengths

of the five presidents, and these comments range from the conventional to his tart,

but uneven, views. Johnson he sees as done in by his own character flaws, the con-

troversial nature of the Great Society, and Vietnam. "Johnson," he writes, "was

a study in political wisdom baffled by the enigma of American dreams and real-

ity" (p. 45). Nixon, he argues, was a survivor who tapped the real America more

effectively than his enemies would like to admit. Filler creates a very sympathetic

portrait of the embattled Nixon and includes three Nixon speeches defending his

role in Watergate. Filler spends much of his commentary attacking Nixon's de-

tractors. He sees Ford as a "good man, a sincere man" but is hard pressed to make

a case for a significant presidency aside from the Nixon pardon and the inabili-

ty to carry on the Vietnam War. Filler dislikes Jimmy Carter's personality and

• 25
 

Book Reviews                                                     81

 

his presidency. He scorches Carter's handling of the Iranian hostage problem.

Filler would have had him declare war, collect Iranians in this country as counter-

hostages, and even assemble a huge army on Iran's "borders." He gives short shrift

to Carter's domestic policies. Filler is out of step with the mild Carter boom now

happening. The Reagan chapter is wildly uneven, based as it is on the pre-pres-

idential career and the first years of the Reagan presidency. Reagan, to Filler,

might be the best president of the five given his "clarity of purpose," and Filler's

documents concentrate on his anti-government conservatism, with no hint of the

stalemates of the second term and the stench of Iran-gate. The noted F. D. R. bi-

ographer, Frank Friedel, in a three-paragraph introduction to the work, writes that

Filler brings to the speeches the insight of a "seasoned iconoclast." That might

be right because the value of the book lies in Filler's angle of vision as a singu-

lar brick in the wall of president watching.

 

The College of Wooster                              James A. Hodges

 

 

We Shall Return! MacArthur's Commanders and the Defeat of Japan. Edited by

William M. Leary. (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky,

1988. 305p.; illustrations, maps, notes, bibliographical essay, contributors, in-

dex. $25.00.)

 

The major complaint about We Shall Return! is that it has been so long in com-

ing. As exploits of the American commanders in Europe in World War II-Eisen-

hower's lieutenants-have been written, rewritten, and overwritten, the achieve-

ments of those talented officers who labored in the obscurity of Douglas

MacArthur's vineyards, the Southwest Pacific area, have gone relatively unno-

ticed. In fact, as William M. Leary notes, not a single biography of MacArthur's

chief subordinates was written in the four decades following VJ Day. It is this

gigantic oversight that Leary and his assemblage of historians seek to rectify.

To understand why such competent men as the army's Walter Krueger and

Robert Eichelberger, the air force's George Kenney and Ennis Whitehead, and

the navy's Thomas Kinkaid and Daniel Barbey received virtually no mention even

during the war, one must, of course, look to Douglas MacArthur who, narcotized

by visions of his place in history-which he saw as somewhere in the neighbor-

hood of Napoleon and God-saw to it that he alone monopolized publicity in the

Southwest Pacific. All releases to the public referred to MacArthur's ground

forces, MacArthur's naval forces, MacArthur's air forces. At the same time

his top commanders remained largely a mystery; perhaps it was appropriate that

late in the war, just before the planned invasion of Japan, a war correspondent

finally wrote about General Kruger-MacArthur's senior army commander who

was a four-star general-calling him "the mystery man of the Pacific."

All of these officers, by necessity, made their peace with MacArthur and rec-

ognized his military talents, but all were aware of the cavalier treatment they re-

ceived at his hands. Admiral Kinkaid, who generally got along with MacArthur,

complained about how the "Bataan Gang," MacArthur's praetorian guard head-

ed by his chief of staff General Richard K. Sutherland (perhaps the most abra-

sive officer in all theaters of war), treated the navy. General Eichelberger, some-

thing of a combat trouble shooter for MacArthur, was ordered during the New

Guinea campaign, "I want you to take Buna, or not come back alive" (p. 162).

• 26
 

82                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

Eichelberger took Buna, a feat for which he attracted much publicity, including

having his picture on the cover of Life magazine. When MacArthur learned of the

publicity, he sent for Eichelberger and told him, "Do you realize I could reduce

you to the grade of colonel tomorrow and send you home? . . . Well, I won't do

it." Having learned the dangers of publicity without MacArthur's permission,

Eichelberger, who referred to MacArthur as "Sarah," short for great actress Sarah

Bernhardt (naval correspondence often called him "The Great Man"), later con-

fided to a friend in the Bureau of Public Relations: "I would rather have you slip

a rattlesnake in my pocket than to have you give me any publicity." (Both quotes

are on p. 165.)

We Shall Return! is a fine account of the contributions a group of superior of-

ficers made to the war in the Southwest Pacific area. The book's various histo-

rians chronicle their campaigns thoroughly, emphasizing that in too many cases

their strategic and tactical innovations were mistakenly credited to MacArthur.

Their military achievements compare favorably with those of such soldiers as

Bradley and Patton.

As a bonus, Leary has included detailed maps, an excellent bibliographical es-

say, and brief accounts of his contributors' scholarly careers. We Shall Return!

is, all told, the type of high-class history that one now takes for granted from the

University Press of Kentucky.

 

Ohio Historical Society                          Robert L. Daugherty

 

 

What's a Coal Miner to Do? The Mechanization of Coal Mining. By Keith Dix.

(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989. x + 258p.; illustrations, ta-

bles, appendix, notes, index. $29.95.)

 

Keith Dix is primarily concerned with the effect new technology had on the

work environment of bituminous coal miners in the 1920s and 1930s, and how

the miners lost their independence in the work place. He examines how opera-

tors and miners reacted to new coal-loading machinery. Dix narrowly defines

technology as "a mechanical process, simple in design and function, which was

developed for the purpose of eliminating the hand loading of coal" (vii). Dix ar-

gues that technology is, in part, a control mechanism for the accumulation of

wealth and should not always be equated with progress.

Prior to the invention of coal-loading machines, mines were organized in a way

that allowed workers, and especially hand loaders, to control much of the work

process. Hand loaders were traditionally paid by the ton and often left the mine

when they earned the amount of money they wanted. Coal mining required a high

level of skill and knowledge which was acquired serving an apprenticeship, of-

ten under one's father. Operators had little control over the miners. However, min-

ers usually lived in company towns, which gave operators the control they

lacked in the mines. If coal prices fell, operators simply raised rent and food prices

to keep profits stable. Miners were expected to buy their own tools, lamp oil, blast-

ing powder, and other supplies. The trade-off for miners was that they were un-

der little supervision.

Mechanical loaders began to appear before World War I. However, operators

were reluctant to introduce mechanical loaders on a large scale because they

feared miners would strike, damage the machinery, or harm the man charged with

• 27
 

Book Reviews                                                     83

 

teaching them how to use the new loader. Several important factors came together

in the 1920s and 1930s to change the traditional system. The declining demand

for coal in the 1920s, followed by the Great Depression, prompted operators to

rationalize their operations. Rationalization meant operating mines in a more ef-

ficient manner. The miners' independence had to end so operators could control

production and make more informed business decisions.

An industry journal survey in 1924 found that at least thirty-six mechanical

loading devices had been developed, of which twenty-seven had been used with

various degrees of success (p. 33). Operators were assisted in the drive to ratio-

nalize the industry by John L. Lewis, president of the United Mine Workers of

America, who believed rationalization would result in stability. While Lewis fa-

vored mechanization because he believed it would make the industry more sta-

ble, he was unable to implement his program as long as the rank-and-file remained

committed to the traditional system. Dix argues that the first time the union backed

away from its traditional opposition to mechanization occurred in a 1924 agree-

ment in Ohio's Hocking Valley District. The local union made several conces-

sions to operators, including a clause that stated miners could be employed on new

types of mining machinery and that temporary wages could be arranged. Dix con-

cludes that local conditions were more important than national union policy in

the implementation of mechanization. By the 1930s, when many mines became

mechanized, miners had experienced a decade of economic hardship (p. 214).

Dix makes it clear that once rationalized and mechanized the traditional min-

ing system was turned on its head. Miners lost the control they traditionally had

in the mines, and foremen increased in number and importance. Tonnage rates

disappeared as day and hourly wages prevailed. Most importantly, safety in the

mines did not improve as operators argued it would. Because operators assumed

mechanical loading was safer, they tended not to enforce safety regulations as vig-

orously. One study found that half of all roof-fall fatalities took place where coal

was loaded mechanically, although fewer men were engaged in this work than in

hand loading (p. 101). More pressure on the hauling systems led to an increased

number of accidents. Coal loaders created large amounts of dust which hand load-

ing did not produce, leading to black lung disease. Finally, early loaders often

lacked proper safety motors, which led to explosions when underground gas es-

caped.

Dix was inspired to write this volume, in part, by the "new history" (vii). Of-

ten, however, his narrative gets bogged down in United Mine Workers politics.

He also discusses the evolution of mechanical coal-loading machines at length,

which detracts from the book's overall effectiveness. The interviews with min-

ers are the strength of this work, because they worked in the mines during this

critical period. Overall, Dix's work is valuable and shows us how the miners were

affected by mechanization.

 

University of Akron                                 Jon R. Huibregtse

 

 

Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789. Volume 17: March 1-August 31,

1781. Edited by Paul H. Smith, Gerard W. Gawalt, and Ronald M. Gephart.

(Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1990. xxx + 617p.; editorial method

and apparatus, acknowledgments, chronology of Congress, list of delegates to

Congress, illustrations, notes, index, $34.00.)

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84                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

Looking at the matter from an anthropological point of view, somewhere in the

course of the evolution of our species we humans developed what we now term

a historical sense. From that time on, nothing has ever been the same. For that

historical sense is almost a sixth sense, one affording us, among other things, the

opportunity of experiencing in a whole new way-that is, vicariously as opposed

to directly. Through history, we humans can experience an event from long ago

without having physically been there. It is almost magical, this ability of ours.

Insofar as we know, no other species is capable of doing this.

Just what is it that we, now two centuries later, experience vicariously as we

go through these well-edited letters penned in the spring and summer days of

1781 ? Of course, the simplest and, at the same time, the most accurate of answers

is: a whole range of things-little things, big things, things human, things con-

tradictory, things agonizingly complex, things uncertain, things hoped for. In

short, there is experience here in such a variety that it cannot be neatly contained

in any of our contemporary, narrow-gauged, academic theories about the Amer-

ican Revolution and its meaning. As this reviewer has indicated before, when this

ongoing and valuable Letters of Delegates to Congress series is finally completed,

we historians will have "experienced" the Revolutionary era in a fresh, new light,

and we will perforce write about our vicarious experience in different (if as yet

not altogether predictable) ways.

With John Mathews of South Carolina we feel the mild frustration that still

comes today when postal workers lose some of our mail. "The public is at a most

enormous expense in supporting the post office, but it appears to me that they de-

rive very little benefit from it" (p. 25). Obviously, this is typical overstatement,

but it is all very human nonetheless. With Thomas Rodney of Delaware we spend

some time drawing up a series of not always completely accurate sketches of our

fellow delegates. Many of these sketches are, in fact, rather harsh, and some of

them are highly unflattering. Even the noted Presbyterian clergyman, moral

philosopher, and former college president, Dr. John Witherspoon of New Jersey,

does not remain unscathed; and neither does his former student, the intelligent

and hard-working James Madison of Virginia. The latter is dismissed as a mere

thirty-year-old who, Rodney writes, "possesses all the Self conceit that is Com-

mon To youth and inexperience in like cases-but it is unattended with that grace-

fulness & ease which Sometimes Makes even the impertinence of youth and in-

experience agreeable or at least not offensive" (p. 38).

In these our vicarious experiences of 1781, we turn from sizing each other up

(and cutting each other down) to ambivalent feelings about power. Though we

have just celebrated the long-delayed ratification of the Articles of Confedera-

tion, some of us are already certain that the powers of the central government are

still woefully inadequate for the tasks at hand. James Madison writes to his friend

Thomas Jefferson regarding the necessity for increasing the powers of Congress,

and James Mitchell Varnum of Rhode Island calls for a convention to systemat-

ically revise the hopeless Articles. For his part, however, Samuel Adams of Mas-

sachusetts is still characteristically wary of entrusting very much power to any

one person or to any one political entity. "The Love of Power, like the Love of

Money, increases with the Possession of it; and we know, in what Ruin these Bane-

ful Passions have involved human Societies, in all Ages, when they have been let

loose, & suffered to rage uncontrould. There is no Restraint like the pervading

Eye of the virtuous Citizens" (p. 93).

Money, or the lack thereof, continues to be a vexatious problem, both for the

individual delegates and for the war effort as a whole. With James Lovell of Mas-

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Book Reviews                                                     85

 

sachusetts we experience the near chaos caused by a collapse of confidence in pa-

per money and the consequent necessity for having specie instead. "We are in an

Uproar here about the Money. Sailors with Clubs parade the Streets instead of

working for Paper. The Beer houses demand hard for a Pot of Drink" (p. 222).

Similarly, John Sullivan of New Hampshire writes that very few people or busi-

nesses will accept Continental currency in exchange for goods or services. Sul-

livan's New Hampshire colleague, Samuel Livermore, finds that even hay for

one's own horse is hard to come by, and Meriwether Smith of Virginia does not

even have enough hard money to travel home.

Most of what we experience vicariously through the letters contained in this

thickish tome proves to be rather unpleasant, it seems. But much of what happens

to Lovell, Sullivan, Livermore, Smith, and company (and, through them, to us)

pales in comparison to the misfortunes experienced by Theodorick Bland, Jr., of

Virginia in the summer of 1781. Despite what he believed to be a grant of pro-

tection by British Gen. William Phillips, Bland's plantation, Farmingdell, was

sacked: "my House has been plunderd of the whole of my Furniture, and my Plan-

tation Stript of every Negro and all my Stock which added to the loss I have suf-

ferd by the destruction of the Tobacco in the Warehouses and all my Crops of grain

&c. cannot amount to less than four thousand Pounds Specie Value" (p. 573).

By the time we conclude this volume, we readers are likely to be nothing short

of grateful-grateful, to be sure, that our historical sense allows us to experience

events like these back there in our Revolutionary past, but perhaps even more

grateful that that experience, valuable though it be, is vicarious and not up-close-

and-personal.

 

Marquette University                                   Robert P. Hay

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