Ohio History Journal

Book Reviews

 

 

Bougainville:  The Forgotten Campaign, 1943-1945.  By Harry A. Gailey.

(Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1991. vii + 237p.; maps, illustra-

tions, notes, glossary, bibliography, index. $27.00.)

 

On November 1, 1943, U.S. Marines landed on the west coast of Bougainville, the

largest and most northerly of the Solomon Islands. Following successes on

Guadalcanal and New Guinea, this assault opened the last phase of the campaign to

reduce Japan's base at Rabaul and oust Japan from the southwest Pacific.

Harry Gailey, a San Jose State historian, provides a thorough account of the fight-

ing on Bougainville. He puts it in the broader context of the Pacific War and allied,

mostly American, strategy, keeping the campaign in perspective. The flow of events

reduced Bougainville to a strategic "backwater" within six months, but fighting con-

tinued to August, 1945. This stemmed largely from Australian forces replacing

American troops in the fall of 1944.

American planners never intended to conquer all of Bougainville. Instead, they

sought to destroy Japan's airfields there and establish a secure perimeter. From here,

planes could attack Rabaul constantly. Initially viewed as preparation for an invasion,

these raids, along with those by carrier and other land-based planes, effectively de-

stroyed Japan's stronghold and made a landing unnecessary.

Despite problems, the early stages of the campaign went well for the Americans.

By avoiding the main concentrations of Japanese forces, they were able to establish a

beachhead and advance inland despite difficult terrain. Sites for airstrips were se-

cured, and these were operational before 1944. The Japanese did not launch a major

counterattack until March, 1944, although there was sharp fighting from the begin-

ning. By then, American control of the air and sea, coupled with vastly superior

fighting power, doomed Japanese efforts. Questionable tactics also cost the Japanese

dearly.

For their remaining time on Bougainville Americans refrained from major offensive

actions, being content to keep the isolated Japanese garrisons off balance with deep

patrols. A de facto cease fire existed until the Australians arrived. Japanese troops

concentrated on raising food, being totally cut off from supplies, while the Americans

made the best of life in a difficult climate by developing extensive facilities with as

many comforts as possible.

During this lull African-American troops went into action on Bougainville. The

Army had replaced the Marines in December, and units of the black 25th Regiment

and 93rd Division arrived by early spring. One company of the 93rd panicked while

on patrol when it stumbled upon some unexpected Japanese. The incident unfairly

discredited black combat troops and brought a virtual end to their use in the Pacific.

Gailey handles this episode with balance and sensitivity, showing how too many saw

what they wished in what was basically a minor failure of green troops.

Treated as very junior partners by MacArthur, Australian Commanders decided to

take the offensive once they assumed responsibility for Bougainville. Gailey is criti-

cal of their decision to abandon the U.S. strategy, but the Aussies managed to drive

the Japanese to the tips of the island by August, 1945. This resulted in literally un-

necessary casualties on both sides. Whether these were politically or psychologically

worthwhile is not addressed directly, though Gailey feels they were not.

When dealing with the major issues and events, Gailey presents a fine narrative and

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analysis. When turning to operations, he delivers a blow-by-blow account worthy of

classic practitioners of the Old Military History. On Bougainville, this too frequently

involves actions by patrols and platoons. Yanks were on the island a scant year. At

times Gailey makes it seem much longer.

Despite the small-unit actions, this work is an important contribution to our under-

standing of the Pacific war and how Americans fight. Bougainville was a classic case

of limited war for specific objectives. As such, the campaign worked brilliantly.

Would that all U.S. tropical undertakings had so clear a focus.

 

Wilmington College                                    Vinton M. Prince, Jr.

 

 

Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.: The Political Biography of an American Dilemma. By

Charles V. Hamilton. (New York: Atheneum Publishers, 1991, x + 545p.; illustra-

tions, notes, index. $24.95.)

 

It is not unusual for discussions of the civil rights movement to omit the presence

of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. A career based on uninhibited outrage at American

racism and compromised by personal self-indulgence, if not corruption, composes an

ambiguous legacy. In this extensive biography Charles V. Hamilton seeks to place

Powell's course as a grass-roots activist, pastor of one of the largest and most influen-

tial black churches in New York City, and thirteen-term congressman in better per-

spective.

Powell intended to expose and rectify the American Dilemma-a fundamental

contradiction between the ideal of equality and the reality of racism. Reaction to

Powell's vigorous campaign depended on one's tolerance of that dilemma. Using this

model, Hamilton contends Powell's fight was composed of three distinct periods. In

the earliest, Powell addressed himself to the economic and social ills of his Harlem

neighbors. The origins of his liberal commitment are not well developed.

Nevertheless, with the Abyssinian Baptist Church as his political base, Powell in the

1930s created a shifting set of alliances to secure jobs for blacks in white-owned

stores and in the city's Harlem Hospital. He attacked police brutality and apathy

among the black leaders of the city. Ultimately Powell successfully combined protest

politics with electoral politics to gain a seat on the city council and then in Congress.

The second stage was Powell's congressional career from 1945 to 1960. His was a

lonely voice excoriating hypocrisy and racism in the federal government. Southern

congressmen met with his sarcasm, and the good intentions of northern liberals were

condemned for producing too little progress. For blacks Powell's attacks provided

"cathartic" and "psychological" relief and had "enormous positive consequences, to

the soul, if not to the solution" (p. 155). Real achievements were extremely few, but

his persistent advocacy of the Powell Amendment, which would prohibit segregation

on federally-funded projects, attained headlines. One of the curious twists in Powell's

career was his fragile alliance with the Eisenhower administration. Hamilton skill-

fully explores that relationship are well as Powell's later ones with the Kennedy and

Johnson administrations.

The culmination of Powell's career seemingly came in the third period, the 1960s,

when the New Yorker became chairman of the House Committee on Education and

Labor. His innate political skill and the acquisition of power at a time of rapid

progress in civil rights offered Powell tremendous opportunities for leadership.

Personal foibles, however, stunted his career. The March on Washington in 1963

showed that initiative on civil rights lay elsewhere. Powell's exclusion from Congress

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Book Reviews                                                        139

 

in 1967 and his electoral defeat in 1970 epitomized his abdication of responsibility.

Woven throughout the biography is Powell's troublesome personal behavior which

irritated enemies and friends alike. As a young preacher he advocated the practice of

Christian values in daily life and simultaneously practiced the contrary. He was an

unreliable ally for the NAACP and other civil rights leaders. Cynicism and oppor-

tunism too often characterized his public behavior and his private affairs. Hamilton

concurs with Powell who accused other congressmen of abusing committee funds and

leading less than exemplary lives. Nevertheless, Powell "was never able to subordi-

nate his personal desires to an obvious obligation for probity that his self-chosen role

of public leader demanded .... The people who needed him most were deprived of

the greater leadership he could have provided" (p. 485).

Hamilton presents the complexity of Powell's career in a detailed and readable

fashion. Occasionally he is repetitive and engages in puzzling digressions such as the

discussion of Eleanor Roosevelt. While Hamilton covers Powell's relationship to the

major civil rights activists of the 1960s, scholars may wish he had explored the topic

further.

This should stand as the authoritative biography of Powell for many years.

Hamilton's success is attributable to extensive research and a sympathetic considera-

tion of this controversial figure. Powell's noble goals, his successes, and his crippling

personal flaws receive fair-minded treatment. The result is an effective portrait of a

complicated individual. Perhaps now a new generation will better appreciate this sin-

gular politician who battled the American racial system during a dilemma-filled life.

 

Cornell College                                           M. Philip Lucas

 

 

John Jacob Astor: Business and Finance in the Early Republic. By John Denis

Haeger. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991. 365p.; illustrations and ta-

bles, notes, selected bibliography, index. $39.95.)

 

Since the days of the early American republic, the name of John Jacob Astor has

elicited mixed responses from historians and commentators alike. Assessments of the

fur trade magnate and entrepreneur have ranged from praise for his supposed "rags-to-

riches" ascent to condemnation of his excessive wealth and lack of stewardship which

contradicted the democratic ideals espoused by the American nation. In this new

biography, John Denis Haeger has undertaken a well-documented reexamination of

Astor, presenting him as one who "seized on new opportunities and experimented

with different strategies and structures" (p. 41) and personified the emerging new

business leadership of the young republic.

Haeger traces Astor's rise to fame and fortune, beginning with his days as a

German-born salesman in New York City exploring new markets for his brother's

musical instrument business, and culminating with his empire of land holdings, trade

partnerships, and financial investments in an emerging urban-centered manufacturing

economy. He portrays Astor as an aspiring entrepreneur, possessing business acumen

and political connections and consciously employing "modern" business strategies

and managerial practices to establish an empire decades before the boom in "big

business."

Astor's interest in the fur trade developed during a brief residence in London, the

center of European fur markets, and was spurred on by promises of lucrative rewards

in North America. He established a succession of partnerships which, Haeger claims,

initially were not intended to challenge the entrenched British/Canadian interests but

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140                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

which allowed him to make contacts throughout the North American fur network and

to position himself in the international market.

Haeger emphasizes that Astor exhibited his business savvy and knowledge of polit-

ical situations by capitalizing on the declining Canadian fur trade industry, caused by

British trade laws intended to restrict American interests. Astor bypassed the

Montreal-based companies to claim control of the American trade, employed agents

to purchase furs from independent traders, sought greater penetration of European

markets, and helped to open the China trade. These activities led Astor to build his

own ships, assume greater responsibility for managing his heavily capitalized opera-

tions, and capture larger shares of markets abroad, all of which represented, in

Haeger's view, the modern phenomena of vertical integration (p. 66).

President Jefferson, who saw the fur trade as the principal arm with which to chal-

lenge British presence and undercut their influence among Native Americans, en-

hanced Astor's role in securing the American West. Astor parlayed his resources and

established the short-lived Astoria settlement on the Columbia River, founded the

American Fur Company, and made arrangements with the Russian-American

Company to transport furs to China, thereby advancing his own business interests

while squeezing out British competition.

Besides the fur trade, Astor was heavily involved in land speculation and real estate

development in New York City. He invested in stocks and bonds fundamental to

transportation and financial institutions, thereby diversifying his investments so his

capital was both productive and protected.

Haeger presents an engrossing and finely-crafted history of Astor's empire-building

efforts. He concludes that Astor was not a business revolutionary who altered the

system but a shrewd entrepreneur who "grasped the greater size and complexity of an

emerging commercial economy" and "adopted strategies and structures that trans-

formed the fur and China trades" (p. 284). Haeger claims that Astor experimented

with and altered corporate structures, used government connections to limit competi-

tion and secure control of a greater portion of the trade, and thereby produced the

capital necessary for continued growth and profit for his ventures.

The volume unfortunately lacks maps to assist readers in determining the extent of

fur company trading areas or the location of trading posts. This does not, however,

detract from Haeger's well-argued analysis. While Astor's involvement in the fur

trade and land speculation might have characterized him as a preindustrial en-

trepreneur, Astor, concludes Haeger, truly exhibited a "modern" business mentality

and epitomized the energy, acquisitiveness, opportunism, and speculation common

throughout the early republic.

 

Indiana University-Purdue                             David G. Vanderstel

University at Indianapolis

 

 

Showplace of America: Cleveland's Euclid Avenue, 1850-1910. By Jan Cigliano.

(Kent: The Kent State University Press, 1991. xiv + 398p.; illustrations, notes, ap-

pendices, bibliography, index. $45.00.)

 

Showplace of America provides a comprehensive account of the rise and fall of

what was Cleveland's premier residential street up until the time of World War I. Jan

Cigliano takes her readers on a trip through time along Euclid Avenue and paints a

portrait of Gilded Age wealth and opulence. Running four miles east from downtown

Cleveland, "Millionaires' Row" (p. 89) became home to the city's nouveaux riche, the

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factory owners, bankers, and lawyers who sought to create a haven for themselves

from the urban-industrial squalor created by their own enterprises. Cigliano combines

a description of the built environment and lifestyles of Euclid Avenue, with an analy-

sis of its development during the nineteenth century and then rapid decline after the

turn of the century.

Euclid Avenue residents "established a neighborhood whose purpose was to be...

the heart of the city's social, cultural, and material life" (p. 8). During the antebellum

years several of Cleveland's leading citizens began to build houses along the old road

to Buffalo, New York, to take advantage of the rural countryside while at the same

time be within walking distance of their offices. They built houses in classical styles

and surrounded their homes with expansive landscaped gardens and lawns. By the

1860s the neighborhood came to be compared to "grand avenues" in other cities

worldwide. Despite the public attention, residents sought to protect their solitude

symbolized by their use of cast iron fences which "defined the boundary between

public and private property and protected residents from intrusion by envious

strangers and trespassers" (p. 29). They created a community bonded together by

both its elitist tendencies and its isolationist sentiment.

Much of the book is devoted to descriptions of the built environment and its archi-

tects. More fascinating is the author's analysis of the relationship between the physi-

cal characteristics of Euclid Avenue and its social and cultural development. Not a

part of the "established gentry," residents sought to put down roots. They built mon-

uments to their individual wealth, to "glorify" their names, and to stand as

"unmistakable symbols of prosperity and cultural leadership" (p. 95). In addition, a

common lifestyle and shared set of values defined the neighborhood as a distinct

community. These included success and affluence, a sense of social responsibility,

education, and family. "Intermarriages, cross-family friendships, and front-porch

meanderings knit this linear neighborhood together" (p. 232) and helped to perpetuate

its values and property from one generation to the next. Churches, an integral part of

the street, upheld religious beliefs but also encouraged the practice of "Sunday

parading along the Avenue" (pp. 263-64). Formal affairs, seasonal travel, and private

clubs reflected the practice of conspicuous consumption so apparent in the building

styles along Euclid Avenue.

A recurrent theme throughout the book is the eventual downfall of Euclid Avenue.

According to the author the "rival interests of residential and commercial growth

prospered through the turn of the century, competing in uneasy but happy coexistence

for many years" (p. 39). By the end of the century, however, the balance between

these forces tipped decisively in favor of commerce. Cigliano points to the "collective

impact of traffic and transit lines on the Avenue, commercial development pressures,

extraordinarily high property values, and the buildup of nearby black neighborhoods"

(p. 309) as causing the decline of Euclid Avenue's residential nature after 1910.

Prominent families moved elsewhere, the neighborhood's physical elegance declined,

and the "community of shared interests that was centered around the Avenue" (p. 324)

disappeared.

The author makes extensive use of family papers, many found in the manuscript

collections of the Western Reserve Historical Society, in conjunction with standard

architectural records, newspapers and periodicals. Cigliano's combination of social

and architectural history makes an important contribution to our understanding of ur-

ban development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

 

 

University of Toledo                                      Diane F. Britton

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142                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

The Last Great Necessity: Cemeteries in American History. By David Charles

Sloane. (Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. xxiii +

²93p.; illustrations, tables, notes, bibliographical essay, index. $35.95.)

 

The recent publication of several books dealing with American cemeteries and

funerary art is striking evidence of the growing scholarship and interest in designed

historic landscapes and cemetery iconography. In The Last Great Necessity, Sloane, a

teacher at Dartmouth College and Dartmouth Medical School, has written a lucid

investigation of cemeteries that moves beyond being a purely descriptive account and

follows a provocative analytical approach. The author, in charting the subject over a

period from 1796 to 1990, has organized the text chronologically into four major

parts: The Living Among the Dead, 1796-1855; Commercialization of the Cemetery,

1855-1917; Isolating Death, 1917-1949; and The American Way of Death, 1950-

1990. Nine chapters guide the reader through common themes such as cultural

attitudes toward death, the perennial dilemma of sanitation, and the transition from

churchyard to cemetery and rural cemetery to memorial gardens. References are

generously provided throughout the text, and over fifty maps, drawings, illustrations,

and black and white photos are handsomely reproduced. Along with extensive notes

and a good bibliographical essay, there is a lengthy index and several useful statistical

tables.

Expectations of discovering new information on American cemeteries are for the

most part fulfilled. The shift from graveyards and domestic burial grounds, both

American colonial traditions, to cemeteries, particularly rural "gardens of graves," is

presented as an urban influence originating in New York and New England.

Cemeteries such as the New Haven Burying Ground (1796) separated themselves

from the church, still retaining nonprofit and non-taxable status that had a far-

reaching impact to the present day. And even though many colonial burial grounds

were viewed as miasmatic hazards to urban society because of the body gases and

threats of yellow fever, seventeenth century gravestone carvings were, as Sloane

claims, "American folk art at its finest."

In exploring the critical link between romanticism and the rise of the rural cemetery

movement, both of which sought to recapture the rural values many Americans feared

had been lost, Sloane profiles several landmark rural cemeteries, including Pere

Lachaise in Paris (1804), Mt. Auburn in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1831), and

Cincinnati's Spring Grove (1845). These new rural cemeteries, conceived in response

to increased vandalism, abandonment, and overcrowding in many inner-city burial

grounds, became tourist attractions in their own right. Rural cemeteries served as

"resting places for the living as well as the dead." Located beyond the seedy confines

of the city, rural cemeteries were distinguished by their simpler, cleaner landscapes,

picturesque vistas, curvilinear roadways, and large family monuments. Founders of

these new cemeteries typically were locally prominent civic boosters who, like

Cincinnati's Robert Buchanan, had an avocational interest in horticulture. Buchanan,

a founder of Spring Grove, turned to the professional expertise of Howard Daniels,

then a fledgling landscape gardener who later described the rural cemetery as a

"peculiarly American institution." Daniels, deserving of wider recognition, ranks

among the nation's premier nineteenth century landscape gardeners, designing, in

addition to Spring Grove, several of Ohio's notable rural cemeteries, including

Woodland in Dayton (1843), Green Lawn in Columbus (1849-1851), and Woodland

in Cleveland (1852-1853).

The impact of an important cadre of landscape gardeners like Daniels and the

popularity of the larger rural cemeteries influenced cemetery design in many small

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Book Reviews                                                        143

 

northern towns, while the strong tradition and interest in gardening allowed for

development of designed cemeteries in southern cities and towns. This growing trend

toward professionalism in landscape design and maintenance was epitomized by

Daniels, Algernon Hotchkiss of Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis, and Adolph

Strauch, an Austrian-born landscape designer who, in 1855, transformed Spring

Grove into the paradigm of the "landscape lawn plan." In what Sloane calls the

progenitor of the modern lawn plan, Strauch's design for Spring Grove was

innovative for its simple, spacious, and less-cluttered look.

Master gardeners and landscapers like Strauch established written guidelines for lot

holders and controlled the choice of monuments, which Downing had disparagingly

referred to as objects of "status and success." The democratization of death was

partially achieved through the use of uniformly simple markers in the National

Cemeteries, although mausoleums and huge monuments remained popular in most

private cemeteries. As the business of death became more complex, the recurring

themes of professionalism and commercialism in the burial process are examined,

from the rise of funeral homes to the change from undertaker to mortician, and to the

development of advertising and professional cemetery staffs. Sloane aptly states this

was only part of a trend toward urban specialization. Before the Civil War, long-held

prejudices against cremation, both religious and secular, prevented its adoption; by

1900 proponents began to voice their support on scientific and societal grounds.

Cremationists argued cemeteries were "antidemocratic institutions within a republican

society" and that cremation was less expensive and required less land. Although the

nation's first municipally owned and operated crematory opened in Cleveland in

1924, the author also notes cremation has never had much of a following outside the

West Coast. In 1988, for example, 15 percent of all Americans were cremated,

ranging from a high of 38 percent in California, Oregon and Washington, to a low of

less than 3 percent in many southern states.

Clearly, as Sloane reiterates throughout the text, Americans have generally held

conventional views toward death, although, as the author is quick to point out, their

traditional attitudes have been skillfully manipulated by entrepreneurs and

commercial advertising. Beginning with Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale,

California (1913)-which Sloane contends had the greatest impact of any cemetery

since Mt. Auburn-images of death and denominational religion were removed from

cemetery landscapes. Rejecting death as a solemn, sober occasion, the new memorial

parks and their proponents depicted it in a setting of immortality and joy. Through a

re-emphasis on human afterlife, a new religious symbolism emerged, as seen through

the use of white marble statuary and smiling Christ figures. For the deceased to live

on in the memory of those living, cemeteries were to be viewed as memorials

fulfilling what Sloane calls the "memorial impulse." As a result, the memorial park

landscape, in sharp contrast to its romantic Victorian predecessors, was more secular,

private, and comfortable. The impact of the memorial parks was profound; by 1935

there were over 600 memorial parks in the United States. The memorial parks

movement fostered creation of the Memory Gardens Association (MGA), which

operated over 125 memorial gardens across the country. Using gardens and

concentric arrangements of flags as design focal points, the MGA also left a social

legacy of racial exclusion that typified many suburban cemeteries. More problematic

for the profession was the growing concern expressed over the cost of death and the

lack of public regulation. Critics argued funerals fulfilled little purpose while funeral

directors capitalized on survivor guilt and emotions. New threats to cemeteries such

as vandalism during the 1980s further strained the limited budgets of many older,

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144                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

less-profitable cemeteries. Sloane concludes by showing how cemeteries are

becoming increasingly irrelevant to the mainstreams of Americana life.

I have few quibbles. Sloane is clearly most knowledgeable where he is close to the

subject of nineteenth century northeastern American cemeteries, but lacks some depth

in probing major cemeteries in other regions of the country, such as Graceland in

Chicago or Cave Hill in Louisville. Minor technical flaws to this otherwise carefully

designed book are the two incorrect word choices on page 105. All in all, this

publication is a major contribution to American cemetery history, with several

important references to Ohio cemeteries and landscape gardeners.

 

Ohio Historical Society                                     Steve Gordon

 

 

Engines and Innovation: Lewis Laboratory and American Propulsion Technology.

By Virginia P. Dawson.   (Washington:  National Aeronautics and Space

Administration, 1991. $16.00.)

 

Engines and Innovation, a history of Cleveland's Lewis Laboratory, is one of the

latest in the highly-respected NASA History Series. Based on access to the laborato-

ry's archives (which the author deplores as inadequate) and extensive research else-

where, the book exhibits a happy combination of historiographic awareness and the

knowledge of when and how to bring scientific and technical matters before lay read-

ers. Dawson's handling of the Lewis Laboratory history also demonstrates that good

history of technology and science is not the tracing of the inevitable and innate logic

of devices or ideas, but rather the exploration of people, institutions, and the continu-

ing discovery of new possibilities.

Dawson engages the story at several levels. Most importantly, Engines and

Innovations describes how the research program at Lewis reflected an evolving series

of public priorities as interpreted by the National Advisory Committee for

Aeronautics and its successor, NASA. The impetus for the decision to build an

Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory at Cleveland in 1941 was the American mili-

tary's need for improved piston-engine power plants for fighter and bomber aircraft.

But even before World War II was over the emphasis at the laboratory shifted to jet

engines, and a few years later attention turned to the exotic (and dead-end) task of

creating an atomic-powered airplane, as well as a range of more worthy aspects of

airplane and rocket propulsion. After Sputnik the laboratory played important roles in

the Mercury program and unmanned space flight. In the 1970s energy concerns

moved the laboratory into such areas as automobile engines and wind power. Dawson

explains how, at each shift in priorities, the laboratory's staff and facilities were

reallocated to respond. Often she points out that innovative research tools-such as

wind and icing tunnels-were critical to the advancement of knowledge.

This book is also about the diffusion of ideas. The establishment of the laboratory

required a redeployment of staff from NACA's Langley research center at Hampton,

Virginia. Their first mission was to tackle major problems in engine design as identi-

fied by aircraft manufacturers, and to share the results of their research with the aero-

nautical engineers. Then the laboratory reversed its role, becoming a determined bor-

rower of British jet engine technology, as well as a partner with the American devel-

opers of jet technology. Subsequently, the space age information flows became pre-

dominately interagency and intra-agency, although relationships with contractors

were also important. Dawson effectively depicts Lewis as part of an ever-changing

web of idea networks.

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Book Reviews                                                        145

 

Finally, this work shows that the history of Lewis Laboratory is imprinted with

politics. Its location was a political decision (Cleveland lobbied strongly for it), in-

ternal NACA/NASA maneuvering often shaped its programs, and Lewis itself was

shaped as those agencies grew, changed and (ultimately) shrank in accord with na-

tional politics. Although Dawson's book remains focused on the laboratory, she ef-

fectively portrays its connections with these broader forces.

Engines and Innovation is a clear, complete, and unvarnished history of Lewis

Laboratory. This book provides Ohioans and aerospace historians an excellent intro-

duction to its accomplishments.

 

Rockefeller Archive Center                            Darwin H. Stapleton

 

 

 

Somewhat More Independent: The End of Slavery in New York City, 1770-1810. By

Shane White. (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1991. xxix + 278p.;

maps, tables, notes, index. $35.00.)

Lincoln, Douglas, and Slavery: In the Crucible of Public Debate. By David

Zarefsky. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990. xiv + 309p.; notes,

bibliography, index. $34.95.)

 

Somewhat More Independent, by an Australian academic, is in several respects a

pioneer production, able to be suggestive to a variety of American historians. The au-

thor had only brief visits to the United States, but he continued research from home by

way of librarians, friends, New Historians, many of whom sent materials and advice.

He sought, he says, mainly black information about New York and environs, and

accumulated enough material by way of censuses, tax rolls, contemporary newsprint,

and more to be able to generalize with confidence, despite differences between North

and South slavery. Urbanized New York was not Charleston, South Carolina, but

population statistics on Free Blacks and slaves, for example, cut at old stereotypes.

Perhaps inadvertently, the book joins others in finding little difference between the

sections in attitudes toward Blacks, culturally or in terms of treatment.

The problem is one of "Presentism." We are all against slavery today, the South

possibly a bit more fervently than North. We also oppose rude treatment of minori-

ties, and when it is found we feel or express indignation, though rude treatment and

pitiful cases of slave mistreatment can be found today around the world and even at

home, to which we give limited attention, as with enslaved children.

The late historian Richard Morris, an expert in labor, law, and related mores, whom

our author did not consult, upset some of his graduate students by holding that New

York slavery was part of the labor system of the time; George Henry Evans, for ex-

ample, insisting that it affected "white slaves" more negatively than black. Once seen

as a labor system, in historic terms, such a leader in New York as John Jay-on whom

Morris was also an authority-who led also its Manumission Society, and himself

owned slaves, can be seen as less a hypocrite, and even a compassionate activist, in

driving for the abolitionist legislation of 1799 which divided New York's past from

its then-present. Morris went further, holding that slaves were fortunate to be in the

Jay's distinguished household during their quasi-indentureship.

This could sound like apologetics, and doubtless is, out of context. Since the au-

thor had no interest in abolitionist movements, subject to bitter and malicious criti-

cism in other context, the cases of cruelty he cites stand out in "presentist" form. In

other matter, his materials mix with lower class "white" mores, as in cases of misce-

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146                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

genation and use of prostitutes. These even brought into view white males of higher

social status.

Although some readers of this book, like the present reviewer, may find many of

the culled details fascinating, its larger use to our present equalitarian movements will

depend on key enclaves for giving visibility to Somewhat More Independent. It merits

rechecking, let us say, several years from now.

We tend to forget what we do not care to recall, and need reminders that only a few

years ago Abraham Lincoln, and for that matter George Washington, were treated al-

most as figures of fun among journalists, and among professional historians, memo-

rable mainly as "racialists." Public temper seems to be changing in both respects,

though how deeply cannot be said. Lincoln, Douglas, and Slavery suggests that a

higher form of knowledge is anticipated by such authors as Zarefsky.

Although the Lincoln-Douglas debates are recognized as classic, in the late

Reinhard Luthin's words, they have been "vastly more admired than read." Zarefsky,

as Dean of the School of Speech at Northwestern University and professor of com-

munication studies, has done more than read the speeches and report on their content.

He has studied their background of implications and the rhetoric devices both contes-

tants for the U.S. Senate had employed.

It wants recollection that Douglas was a national figure, and that Lincoln, in chal-

lenging him, hoped to gain wider recognition by association with Douglas. Both em-

phasized what they willed and interpreted evidence according to their maturing argu-

ments. Lincoln had to fend off accusations that he was "radical," despite his numer-

ous protests that he no more than followed the Constitution. Douglas, to win re-elec-

tion, had to separate himself from the pro-slavery Democrats. He was also thought by

some impressed by his "popular sovereignty" slogan able to cross over to the

Republican column in time.

What strikes the reader of the debates over and over again are the subtleties of the

arguments, which had to be perceived in some form not only by journalists, editors,

and innumerable spokesmen in both parties, but by the uneducated voters, the forget-

ful, and the complex but persuaded camp-followers, especially in the middle band of

Illinois between the pro-slavery south of the state and the anti-slavery Chicago and

north. Douglas highlighted every Lincoln inflexion which, Douglas noted, dulled his

opponent's passion for equality in "Egypt" and came out more forcefully when he

orated in the north.

What always impresses is, despite Lincoln's underdog position in the debates, how

many people in and out of the state were drawn in by the nationally-reported debates,

eager to help Lincoln in his assertions with information, ideas, and even words.

Correspondents urged Lincoln to be less "defensive," to treat Douglas with less re-

spect. Lincoln's "House Divided" speech was studied as under a microscope, by

friends and foes. He responded to both, insisting that he did not anticipate-and cer-

tainly would not encourage-civil war. He in his turn pounded at Douglas's "popular

sovereignty" expectations, asking whether, given the Dred decision and threatening a

"Dred 11," a state could defy national law permitting slavery everywhere.

A passage from Zarefsky indicates the kind of concentration and knowledge the

debates required:

 

Slavery had a double meaning in the antebellum political culture. To be sure it referred to the

institution of chattal slavery. But it also had an older, eighteenth century meaning: subjection to

tyranny, or, in [Bernard] Bailyn's phrase, 'the inability to maintain one's just property in

material things and abstract rights.' It connoted loss of one's ability to control one's own

choices ... Advocates of the 'slave power' conspiracy thesis appealed to both meanings.

• 10
 

Book Reviews                                                        147

 

Chattal slavery was the common self-interest of the conspirators, and their ultimate aim was the

destruction of Northern political rights.

Lincoln's famous or notorious summing up in his Charleston speech that he did not

favor Negro equality, and the fact that he did not want a woman for a slave did not

mean he must take her for a wife, does not sound well in twentieth century ears. It

does help define the world in which he spoke, and gives and sense of his clarity and-

as time showed-potential for growth. Lincoln's bottom line, that Douglas did not

seem to recognize the difference between slavery and freedom, reminds us how far

the nation had advanced since John Jay's close reading of New York's "labor sys-

tem." Zarefsky's reading of the historical, legal, and moral arguments in the immortal

debates helps us to weigh the choices we have today.

 

The Belfry                                                    Louis Filler

Ovid, Michigan

 

 

Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction,

1861-1868. By Brooks D. Simpson. (Chapel Hill: The University of North

Carolina Press, 1991. xx + 339p.; notes, bibliography, index. $34.95.)

 

Scholars and historians have traditionally studied Ulysses S. Grant by separating

the soldier from the politician, with Appomattox being the line of demarcation. From

that picture, Grant emerged as a great general but incompetent politician. Brooks D.

Simpson questions that prevailing view by focusing on the interrelationship of Grant's

military and political career during the 1860s. Simpson judiciously presents a new

understanding of the historical significance of Grant not only as a soldier but as a

statesman as well. Beginning with the start of the Civil War in the spring of 1861 to

Grant's election as president in the fall of 1868, Simpson superbly chronicles how the

Ohio native occupied a central position in the nation's history at that time, both as a

military leader and as an important political figure. Grant, like many of his Northern

contemporaries, blamed the South for starting the conflict and believed that it would

be short. According to Simpson, General Grant believed that the Civil War was the

expression of politics by different means, and that Reconstruction was, therefore, the

political continuation of that conflict.

Simpson never fails to provide a portrait of the emotional and human side of Grant.

As the war progressed and casualties mounted, Grant became a strong advocate of

emancipation and the enlistment of black troops in the Union army. Grant viewed the

death of slavery as a telling blow against the Confederacy and the achievement of a

wartime policy. In leading the United States to victory, Grant captured several

Confederate armies and endeared himself to President Abraham Lincoln. The at-

tempts by Grant to promote racial equality in the South brought him a tremendous

amount of frustration and disappointment. Simpson provides a vivid description of

life in the former Confederate States during the postbellum period. Although the war

had ended slavery, newly freed Southern blacks found their world turned upside down

by violence, poverty, and discrimination. Grant was of the opinion that immediate

suffrage for blacks was not as important as protection from angry and disillusioned

whites. Grant also expressed his displeasure with Republicans who criticized the

South for denying blacks the right to vote while many Northern states were guilty of

the same. Believing that racism would be an ephemeral social problem, Grant was

willing to tolerate abuses against black citizens in return for sectional and political

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148                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

harmony. Simpson points out that "Grant would soon come to realize his error" (p.

116).

Simpson carefully examines how the relationship between Grant and President

Andrew Johnson deteriorated over time. Johnson's efforts to secure Grant's support

for his Reconstruction policy through manipulation were especially annoying to the

Union general. Grant was deeply concerned that the gains of the Civil War would be

destroyed during Reconstruction because of Johnson's recalcitrant and uncompromis-

ing behavior. In spite of Grant's dislike for Johnson and his approach to restoring the

nation, he treated his chief cordially. Simpson notes, however, that Grant had a much

higher degree of respect for the office of the president than he did for the incumbent.

Grant was motivated in part to seek the White House in order to protect the achieve-

ments of Northern victory. This was ironic since Grant had an aversion for politics.

Simpson concludes that Grant as a politician understood the problems facing the

country and did his best to solve them.

Thoroughly researched and detailed in interpretation, this volume is a noteworthy

achievement and a valuable contribution to the military and political history of the

Civil War and Reconstruction eras. By re-evaluating Grant from a new perspective,

Simpson erases the dividing line which had been drawn by historians decades ago.

 

Kent State University                                  Leonne M. Hudson

 

 

Sherman: Merchant of Terror, Advocate of Peace. By Charles Edmund Vetter.

(Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing Company, 1992. 347p.; illustrations, notes,

bibliography, index. $25.00.)

 

Charles Edmund Vetter, a sociology professor at Centenary College in Shreveport,

Louisiana, has written a book which attempts to get behind the Sherman stereotype

and discover who the man really was and how he came to wage war the way he did.

This is not a full-scale biography: it covers only the years from Sherman's 1836 en-

trance into West Point to the end of the Civil War in 1865. Professor Vetter is to be

complimented for insisting that Sherman was a complicated individual whose major

purpose in war was not cruelty or random destruction. Vetter argues that Sherman

waged purposeful all-out war to hasten peace and restore the status quo ante bellum.

In the Preface, Vetter lists his five major points of analysis: "the complexities and

diversities of the man"; "the evolutionary development of Sherman's philosophy of

war"; "the relationship between Sherman and Grant"; "Sherman's place in the context

of American military history in general"; and "the sociological impact of Sherman's

military actions" (pp. 9-10). Though Vetter uses a chronological approach, he repeat-

edly returns to these five themes to discuss Sherman's wartime activities.

This book, like other modern studies, shows that the old view of Sherman the brute

is inaccurate. Vetter's main conclusion, therefore, is correct. His account, however,

is not completely satisfying.

In the book's bibliography, Vetter lists twenty-six manuscript collections, actually

only a fraction of the existing repositories of Sherman material. In the notes section,

however, he includes no citations to any of the letters in these collections. A perusal

of the notes, 944 in all, shows that all refer to printed material, a vast majority to

monographs and articles. For example 209 notes (22 percent of the total) are refer-

ences to books by only three authors: Lloyd Lewis, James M. Merrill, and Basil

Henry Liddell Hart, Sherman biographers.

An in-depth study of Sherman's vast correspondence shows clearly that an under-

• 12
 

Book Reviews                                                        149

 

standing of his personal life is crucial to understanding his behavior as a soldier.

Vetter argues that "Sherman knew how to keep separated... personal troubles and

public issues" (p. 180). The contrary was actually the case. One can not fully analyze

Sherman's public life without recognizing his relationships to his foster father

Thomas Ewing, his brother John, and his wife Ellen. To say, as Vetter does on page

155, that "The one man whose approval he had rapidly come to respect . . . was

Grant" is to give that general a place in Sherman's life that Ewing more correctly

filled. Sherman admired Grant enormously; he looked for approval from Ewing. The

Sherman in this book seems to have little private life, whereas in reality the relation-

ship with his family was a significant factor in his thinking and acting. Vetter says so

himself on page 62: "Who and what he was made it possible for him to revolutionize

warfare." Unfortunately Vetter does not pursue that insight further.

In summary, while Vetter has written a book whose major thrust is correct, his exe-

cution is not as satisfactory as it might have been. He would have served his readers

better had he expanded his research into primary sources and spent a bit more time

organizing his thoughts and his prose. Still, this book is another welcome corrective

for those Civil War buffs who continue to stereotype inaccurately one of the major

military figures of the Civil War.

 

Mississippi State University                            John F. Marszalek

 

 

Black Troops, White Commanders, and Freedmen During the Civil War. By Howard

C. Westwood. Foreword by John Y. Simon. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois

University Press, 1992. xi + 189p.; notes, index. $19.95.)

 

Students of the Civil War have profited from the recent outpouring of excellent

books and celluloid releases about the influence African-Americans had on our defin-

ing moment as a nation. Among the best, Joseph Glatthaar's Forged in Battle and

William McFeely's Frederick Douglass provide in-depth accounts of the struggles

blacks made to free themselves by wearing blue uniforms and fighting for their own

liberation. The movie "Glory" and Ken Burns's PBS documentary series helped non-

readers and readers toward a "living" history of black participation in the conflict be-

gat from slavery.

Black Troops, White Commanders, and Freedmen is--with one exception--a

compilation of ten essays that Westwood published from 1982-1990 in four different

state historical journals, one popular magazine, the Lincoln Herald, and Civil War

History. Commenting on the various nuances of military emancipation, the essays

highlight the ambiguities, inconsistencies, and forced necessities which black soldiers,

white officers, and the Lincoln administration faced in putting black men under arms.

Drawing primarily from the collections of the National Archives and the Library of

Congress, Westwood, a lawyer, used several collections of legal documents rarely

employed by most historians. The value of these essays lies in the illumination of

"new" sources and in the directions Westwood's research might lead.

The first four essays concentrate on Lincoln's position on black enlistments, the

actions of Union generals Grant, Butler, Hunter, and Saxton in using black soldiers,

and the reaction of Lincoln to them. Ofttimes military necessity clashed with political

needs. The generals found themselves with small armies in the midst of Rebeldom.

When slaves, ex-slaves, and free blacks offered themselves as able-bodied men, these

commanders found it in their best interest to employ them. Lincoln, however, trying

to hold onto the loyalty of the border states, countermanded his generals in most

• 13
 

150                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

cases. There is little new here. Westwood's contention that Grant refused to use

blacks in front line combat because he feared they might be captured is unsupported.

There is no real explanation of Lincoln's motives and actions beyond the traditional

border-state phobia. Butler's story has been more than twice told. Westwood's essay

on the restraints put on David Hunter and the latitude given Rufus Saxton is a good

one. Hunter was simply too heavy-handed for Lincoln, while Saxton effectively tip-

toed to the beat of the President's wishes in employing black troops. Thus Saxton

succeeded.

Continuing to trace the Union's use of blacks as soldiers, essays five through nine

examine Robert Small's bravery in sailing the Planter out of Charleston harbor, the

tussle over black prisoners-of-war, Sherman's famous Order 15, and two mutinies and

one execution over the issue of unequal pay. The two chapters on the pay problems

are the strength of the collection. The army recruited with the written pledge of equal

salaries for all soldiers, black or white. After receiving less pay than promised, black

soldiers complained. Sergeant William Walker of the 3rd South Carolina got several

men to join him in protesting by stacking arms and sitting in their tents. Walker was

charged with mutiny and executed. Company A of Rhode Island's black regiment re-

fused to answer roll call as protest to lesser pay; most of the non-commissioned offi-

cers did prison time for their part in this "mutiny." Westwood demonstrates that the

real issue involved power relationships and white-black alienation more than salary

inequalities.

The last essay presents the Reverend Fountain Brown of Arkansas, the first-and

perhaps only-person convicted of violating Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.

In November 1863, Brown sold eight people who had been his slaves before being

freed by the Proclamation. Brown claimed confusion and ensnarement. His case

points out the difficulties of transition for seceded peoples moving back into Union

concerning which nation's law has precedent.

While specialists in Civil War history might welcome this collection of articles into

a ready source, most of the information is well known. Additionally, the work suffers

from repetition and stylistic problems. A synthetic, concluding essay would have

added coherence and explanation. And while the essays look at the African-American

experience in the Civil War, they focus on the white actions and reactions and slight

black participation in their own emancipation.

John Carroll University                                   Russell Duncan

 

 

 

Indiana Quakers Confront the Civil War. By Jacquelyn S. Nelson. (Indianapolis:

Indiana Historical Society, 1991. xvii + 303p.; tables, notes, appendixes, selected

bibliography, index. $27.95.)

 

This book is the result of thorough research in Quaker and related archives, ceme-

teries, and the like in Indiana. The core finding is that, regardless of their traditional

pacifism, Indiana Quakers were far more involved in the Civil War than historians

have recognized.

Author Jacquelyn S. Nelson's research documents that at the very least 21 percent

of Indiana Quaker men served in the Union army during the Civil War. She further

estimates that the percentage could be as high as 45 percent if complete records from

all the Indiana Monthly Meetings were available. (By way of comparison, 62 percent

of Indiana males--15 through 49--served in the Civil War.) Nelson further persua-

• 14
 

Book Reviews                                                        151

 

sively argues that Quakers on the home front were far more active in war relief pro-

grams than has heretofore been suggested.

Nelson discusses the Indiana Quakers confrontation with the Civil War in six chap-

ters over the first 98 pages of the book. The chapters include "The Quaker

Background," "Quaker Military Service," "Why Did They Fight?," "Response to

Military Life," "The Home Front," and "Quaker Opposition to the War." The stance

taken by the author throughout might best be described as "sympathetic objectivity."

Pages 98 to 261 are given over to appendices A through E, which offer a summary

of some of Nelson's research data. Genealogists particularly will be pleased with the

lists in Appendix C, "Indiana Friends in Military Service" (pp. 107-236), and

Appendix D, "Soldiers Buried in Quaker Cemeteries" (pp. 237-260). Both the notes

and bibliography are extensive. The index is helpful, but covers only the first 98

pages of the book.

The author's prose over the first 98 pages is quite clear and makes interesting

reading. Here and there there is room for a quibble or two. For example, the por-

trayal of seventeenth century Anglican doctrine as "austere" and "unemotional" is de-

batable (p. 1). Also, a map showing Quaker penetration in Indiana by country and

monthly meetings would be helpful to those unfamiliar with the state. But, at base,

the book is to be appreciated for the way in which its solid research changes our his-

torical perceptions.

 

Findlay College                                             Richard Kern

 

 

Canals for a Nation: The Canal Era in the United States 1790-1860. By Ronald E.

Shaw. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1990. x + 284p.; illustrations,

notes, bibliographical essay, index. $28.00.)

 

The history of nineteenth century transportation is one of the more significant as-

pects of the "rise" of American industry, commerce, and technology. However, the

"canal era" has received little attention from professional historians except for spe-

cific studies of individual canals. Professor Shaw (Miami University), in fact, au-

thored, in 1966, a volume on the Erie Canal of which a paperback edition has just

been released by the University Press of Kentucky.

Shaw undertakes "a survey of the history of American canals, which would reflect

the economic studies that have emphasized the role of government and mixed enter-

prise in canal building, as well as the more recent emphasis on canals and the preser-

vation of republicanism in the new American nation" (p. ix).

Initially, he describes the early "pioneer," largely experimental, canals in eastern

Pennsylvania, on the Potomac and in the Mohawk Valley, which failed; then, the suc-

cessful Middlesex Canal in Massachusetts and the Santee and Cooper Canal in South

Carolina. The familiar role of the Jefferson Administration on "improvements" is

also retraced.

Shaw eschews canal technology. Four chapters deal with regional canal construc-

tion, politics and, particularly, the economics of canal promotion and maintenance. In

"From the Great Lakes to the Atlantic" he retells the familiar story of the Erie Canal,

and, briefly, the canals attempted in Connecticut and Massachusetts where the New

Haven and Northampton, Farmington, and Hampshire and Hampden failed. Only the

Cumberland and Oxford Canal in Maine succeeded. The Pennsylvania and New

Jersey canals are delineated, with emphasis upon the former's state-built network

which brought "exhilarating triumphs, solid returns, and near bankruptcy to the state"

• 15
 

152                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

(p. 57). There are sketches of the "Chesapeake and Southern Canals," particularly the

Chesapeake and Ohio and the James River and Kanawha Canals.

Ohio is the centerpiece in the "Canals of the Old Northwest." Here the Miami and

Erie and the Ohio and Erie, connecting Lake Erie with the Ohio River, are described

in some detail. "Frontier" canals included the Wabash and Erie in Indiana, as well as

those in Illinois (the Illinois and Michigan) and Wisconsin. He concludes that "The

Northwest Ordinance of 1787 foreordained five large states in the Old Northwest and

set the stage for long state-owned canals" (p. 159).

The "Canal Network" deals with canal engineers (with an emphasis upon New

Yorkers and their influence); canal labor (particularly Irishmen); and travelers' ac-

counts, including seven women. Shaw also contends that canals "hold a conspicuous

place in the spirit of reform that spread across the nation between 1820 and 1860" and

"contributed to the educational impulse of the period" (p. 191). He concludes that

"Canals brought new basins, new towns, and new cities" (p. 197).

The final and best chapter is "The Canal Era in Politics and Economic

Development." Here Shaw examines in each state the banking problems, land grants,

and, again, local and state politics.

Shaw uses and quotes from dozens of secondary sources; hence, there is little that

is new here. In addition, he is uncritical of these sources or his topic. Inexplicably,

there are no maps in the narrative for the "pioneer" canals, New England, the deep

South, or Illinois and Michigan. Yet there is a map on the inside of both book covers

for most of those areas.

More serious, however, is evidence of shoddy scholarship. For example, a limited

check of a few of the endnotes indicate that in chapter 1, he cites his Erie work in

endnote 20 (p. 238) as having used pp. 14-21; then in endnote 22, he cites pp. 15-21;

and yet again in endnote 23, p. 20. The latter citation does not contain the quote indi-

cated in the text. This is also true in chapter 2, endnotes 9, 33, and 34. In chapter 3,

endnote 1, he cites Louis Hunter's entire volume on Steamboats on the Western

Waters, and indicates the wrong page numbers for two more sources (McCall and

Haites, et. al.), (p. 243). There are endnotes that only partially substantiate the narra-

tive. Too, there are gaps in the text for which there are no endnotes, e.g., p. 55, the

two-paragraph comment concerning the important Cumberland and Oxford Canal in

Maine.

Repetitiousness abounds. It seems impossible that an assistant editor at the

University Press of Kentucky would not have noticed on pp. 67-68 that Shaw writes

the Western Division of the Main Line "began at Pittsburgh in 1827 and moved east-

ward along the Monongahela [a factual error] and Allegheny . . . to Johnstown."

Then, two sentences later, in the same paragraph, he writes: "The 104 mile canal line

here . . . began on the Monongahela River and ran eastward to Johnstown" (p. 68).

There is a useful nine-page bibliographical essay of secondary sources and an

eleven-page index. Finally, there is no mention of the canal associations and gov-

ernments whose primary functions are to preserve (for the public) what is left of our

canal heritage.

 

California University of Pennsylvania                       J. K. Folmar

 

 

 

Immigrants on the Land: Agriculture, Rural Life, and Small Towns. Volume 4:

American Immigration and Ethnicity. Edited by George E. Pozzetta. (New York:

Garland Publishing, Inc., 1991. xiv + 396p.; illustrations, notes. $60.00.)

• 16
 

Book Reviews                                                        153

 

In the introduction to the twenty-volume collection of essays, American

Immigration and Ethnicity, editor George E. Pozzetta quotes Oscar Handlin, "Once I

thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the

immigrants were American history." Immigrants on the Land, the fourth of the

Garland Press series, highlights the diversity of immigration and ethnicity in relation

to American agricultural history. Pozzetta's concerns for twentieth century immigra-

tion and labor history are apparent in this distinctive collection representing the expe-

rience of small proprietary and tenant farmers as well as sharecroppers and rural la-

borers in several regions of the United States. Individual essays examine immigration

and ethnicity in the context of social and economics developments as well as pro-

cesses within ethnic enclaves, families, kinship networks, and neighborhoods of adap-

tation to American and specific regional and historical conditions.

I found that the organization of the seventeen essays in alphabetical order by author

obscured both the development of immigration scholarship over time and some signif-

icant connections between studies. Two articles, for example, provide overviews of

immigration history vis-a-vis American agriculture; in Theodore Saloutos, "The

Immigrant Contribution to American Agriculture" and Robert P. Swierenga,

"Ethnicity and American Agriculture," both authors discuss streams of ethnic settle-

ment, cultural continuity and adaptation in patterns of farming as well as immi-

grant/ethnic contributions to agricultural innovation. The two selections also point to

a repetitive reliance on Benjamin Rush and J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur's com-

ments on ethnicity and farming (pp. 288-89 and 357-58).

Several essays examine aspects of European migration to the Upper Midwest and

Great Plains states. John C. Hudson traces Canadian, German, German-Russian and

Scandinavian migrations and influences on the cultural geography and economy of

North Dakota between 1874 and 1915, and Frederick C. Luebke's essay deals with

similar patterns of settlement across the Great Plains. In "White Eagles in the North

Woods," Richard H. Zeitlin examines the less well-developed history of rural settle-

ment, social institutions and cultural patterns related to the massive waves of Polish

immigration in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Ann M. Legreid and

David Ward look at conflicts and tensions within Norwegian Lutheran communities

through data on church membership and religious schisms. Robert C. Ostergren

makes a comparative analysis of the impact of economic conditions, social relation-

ships and cultural patterns in the regions of origin on settlement patterns and ethnic

communities in South Dakota. Murray W. Nicolson also uses a comparative method

to argue that rural Irish Catholics shared in a distinctive culture that had emerged in

and spread from the Irish ghettos of Toronto.

The anthology's greatest strength is in its selection of essays exploring non-

European immigration, ethnic groups and rural labor patterns. Terry G. Jordan exam-

ines the interactions between ethnic minorities and the host/dominant group in Texas

between 1836 and 1986, suggesting that at different times northern Anglo migrants

shared, to some extent, the ethnic group experience of European and Mexican immi-

grants, Amerindians, and African-Americans in relation to the southern Anglos. The

earliest essay in the collection, Robert L. Brandon's "The End of Immigration to the

Cotton Fields" (1946), discusses the failure of efforts to attract Italian immigrants to

the post-Reconstruction South. Brandon's essay analyzes the fascinating concerns

and interactions of planters, local politicians, railroad interests and Italian politicians

in the context of southern economic developments. Because Brandon presents the

planter perspective on African-American labor without analytical commentary on ei-

ther strategies to maintain white economic ascendancy or the racial stereotyping that

supported Jim Crow segregation, this article is best read in relationship to other stud-

• 17
 

154                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

ies of sharecropping and segregation. Pozzetta's essay, "Foreigners in Florida: A

Study of Immigration Promotion, 1865-1910" and Jean Ann Scarpaci's "Immigrants

in the New South: Italians in Louisiana's Sugar Parishes, 1880-1910," complement

the Brandfon essay. Scarpaci analyzes the experience of Italian immigrant laborers in

the context of a specific crop and locale, while Pozzetta looks both at efforts to pro-

mote Florida as a destination for Italian, Chinese, and Japanese immigrants as agricul-

tural laborers and at the ensuing economic, cultural and religious tensions.

The Pacific coast is represented in three essays. Theodore Saloutos provides on

overview of immigration patterns up to 1940. Sucheng Chan examines changing pat-

terns of work among Chinese immigrants in rural counties of California between 1860

and 1890, including manual labor such as mining, tenant farming, paid farm labor, in-

dustrial labor and domestic service as well as entrepreneurs, professional, artisans and

merchants. Robert Higgs, "Landless by Law: Japanese Immigrants in California to

1941," analyzes the impact on Japanese American assimilation and economic status in

relation to both economic and legal discrimination against Japanese under the

California Alien Land Law and other restrictive legislation.

Pozzetta's introduction, which along with the list of supplemental reading is the

same for each volume of the series, emphasizes the significance of gender as a strand

in immigration history: "The broader challenge has been to reveal how women con-

fronted the multiple dilemmas posed by migration, and, more generally, to insert the

issue of gender into the wider interpretations of the immigrant experience." However,

the selection of essays for Immigrants on the Land slights interpretations focused on

the intersections of gender, immigration and ethnicity which are, however, well de-

veloped in volume twelve of the series, Ethnicity and Gender: The Immigrant

Woman. An introduction specific to each volume rather than Pozzetta's generic in-

troduction could guide the reader to examine relationships between essays. In addi-

tion, some repetition could have been omitted in favor of even greater development of

the themes of comparative analysis, non-European immigration and rural labor pat-

terns that make this volume so rewarding.

 

Miami University-Middletown                          Marjorie L. McLellan

 

 

The Dragon and the Cross: The Rise and Fall of the Ku Klux Klan in Middle

America. By Richard K. Tucker. (Hamden, Connecticut: Archon/The Shoe String

Press, 1991. xi + 224p.; illustrations, appendix, notes, bibliography, index. $27.50.)

 

As a seven-year-old living in rural Iowa, Richard Tucker had his first glimpse of

the "mysterious robed and hooded figures, with their flaming crosses on the bluffs

overlooking the Mississippi River" (p. ix). Years later in Indiana while working at his

first full-time job for the Indianapolis News, his curiosity was pricked again when he

came across a news story concerning David Curtis Stephenson, the former 1920s

Grand Dragon of the Indiana Knights of the Ku Klux Klan who had been denied pa-

role from the Indiana State prison where he was then serving a life sentence for sec-

ond degree murder. Retired from professional journalism (he worked also for the

Baltimore Sun), Tucker returned to his native Iowa where his long-standing interest in

the Klan and its most notorious midwestern leader, Stephenson, led him to write The

Dragon and the Cross. Why had the Klan become by the early 1920s such a force in

Indiana and throughout "Middle America"? How had Stephenson, a salesman of coal

and manufactured goods, twice divorced by the time he arrived in Indiana in 1923, a

man of already questionable moral and ethical behavior (especially regarding women

• 18
 

Book Reviews                                                        155

 

and alcohol), and of limited formal education, become the most powerful political in-

fluence in Indiana politics by the mid-1920s? And, following Stephenson's convic-

tion for the rape and second-degree murder of a young state employee, Madge

Oberholtzer, why had the Klan declined so quickly from a membership of over a

quarter of a million to less than a few thousand bitterly divided leftovers?

These and other questions form the basis of this thoughtful account of the life of

David Stephenson and the Klan "movement" he led during the 1920s. Although uti-

lizing a number of personal memoirs as well as standard Klan works such as David

Chalmers' Hooded Americanism, this is not primarily a work of original research.

What Tucker discovers about the KKK and of its appeal to many within and outside

of Indiana (Stephenson's career began, by the way, in Columbus, Ohio, and, in the

twenties, he had a summer "White House" at Buckeye Lake) is consistent with that of

other scholars and writers. But it is Tucker's focus upon Stephenson, the interweav-

ing of Stephenson's personal skills in public speaking, organization, and ruthless self-

purpose with the Klan's capabilities of tapping in to the social, cultural, and political

uncertainties of many midwestern lives at the time, which gives this clearly-written

account its special importance.

As others, Tucker shows how the Stephenson Klan built its power out of the pre-

vailing social issues which emerged from the era of postwar disillusionment, decline

of progressive reform, and complex economic and cultural changes in American life

in the 1920s. Fear of African-Americans, Jews, Catholics, and immigrant labor; de-

bate over prohibition and prostitution; disagreements about public schools and reli-

gious teachings; a perceived erosion of family life; and political corruption were the

breeding ground for the KKK's "100 percent Americanism" and its celebration of a

lily-white, Christian, and temperate America. Appealing to certain Protestant groups,

to the "joiner" mentality of many Americans, and, for some, to a love affair with ritual

and regalia, Stephenson and the KKK assumed for many a legitimate alternative to

what they often believed was the unraveling of their lives and their country. So strong

was that appeal, so powerful were Stephenson's skills, that by 1925 the Klan had

helped elect a KKK supporter as governor, a majority, pro-Klan Republican legis-

lature, a mayor of Indianapolis, and countless other state and local public officials.

No wonder that Stephenson could proclaim that he was "the law" in Indiana.

It is sobering to note that it was only after Stephenson's overwhelming arrogance

which led him to force Madge Oberholtzer into a violent relationship thus making

public his private lechery, alcohol abuse, and immoral lifestyle that his and the Klan's

power ultimately collapsed. Although he does not explore the matter to the extent

that he might, Tucker's study raises the obvious question about how long Stephenson

and the Klan might have maintained their hold on state power had the Oberholtzer af-

fair not occurred. By the time of his trial, Stephenson's power and popularity were so

great that he was beginning to see himself as an American Mussolini, his hero, look-

ing beyond Indiana and the midwest to the nation and the White House.

In its final chapters, The Dragon and the Cross pursues the histories of Stephenson

and the Klan into the present. Having served thirty years in prison, Stephenson was

paroled in 1956, married twice more, convicted at the age of seventy of physical as-

sault of a sixteen-year-old girl, and died in anonymity in Jonesboro, Tennessee, in

1966. Tucker explores the rebirth of the KKK in the 1950s and 1960s and the David

Duke era and reflects on some of the underlying social forces which during the 1980s

and 1990s have fed the rise of the Radical Religious Right. Some of his observations

are perceptive and he concludes that the 1920s were a special time, distinct from even

the 1950s and 1960s Klan days (primarily because of the power and success of the

civil rights movement), and it is unlikely that a Stephenson-styled nativistic racism

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156                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

could have today the broad appeal it had in the "roaring twenties."

Perhaps-but finally what this story tells us again is how despicable individuals

like David Stephenson with their considerable skills of salesmanship, charming per-

sonality, and single-minded ambition, can tap into the deep, underlying insecurities

and fears of a people and turn them into bigots capable of inflicting enormous physi-

cal and emotional violence on those "others" whom they have come to hate. It may

be true that the KKK has finally become an organization so infamous that it can no

longer enlist supporters outside of a small minority of alienated Americans. But

other, more "respectable" public leaders and organizations are still capable of appeal-

ing to existing sources of national discontent, doubt, and to those with a continual

need to find simple answers-and scapegoats-for our complicated and imperfect

lives. In that sense alone, Robert Tucker's The Dragon and the Cross deserves to be

read and reflected upon by all of us today.

 

Denison University                                         John B. Kirby

 

 

Citizen Klansmen: The Ku Klux Klan in Indiana, 1921-1928. By Leonard J. Moore.

(Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1991. xiv + 359p.; tables,

maps, figures, notes, bibliography, index. $34.95.)

 

Leonard Moore is uncomfortable. He agrees that the Klan represented an outburst

of white ethnic nationalism, but finds it hard to understand why the state of Indiana,

where the number of immigrants and blacks was small compared to surrounding Great

Lake states, should have become one of the leading centers of Klan activity nationally.

Equally confusing for Moore is the fact that the Klan did not directly attack ethnic or

black communities, nor pass discriminatory legislation during its control of the

Indiana state assembly. Thus, Moore concludes that it is necessary for historians to

examine a broader social and economic context in order to understand the extent of

Klan popularity in Indiana.

From the fact that few wealthy, elite Indianans joined the Ku Klux Klan in the

1920s, Moore has constructed a new interpretation of the rise of the Klan in that era.

Less concerned with providing a narrative account of Klan activities (there exists no

such full-blown effort in print by a historian), Moore argues that the Klan represented

a people's movement fostered by a sense of powerlessness politically. The main cul-

prit was the business community, especially those elements representing modern in-

dustry. Moore suggests that with the decline of voting that occurred nationally be-

tween the 1880s and 1920s, wealthier businessmen had gained a measure of control

over local cities, especially in Indiana. These businessmen were also distancing

themselves from the rest of the community by intermarriage, the placement of their

housing, the building of country clubs and private schools, and the formation of busi-

ness clubs, such as Rotary and the Chamber of Commerce. In Moore's words this

business elite was attempting to impose a "new definition of community, one that

emphasized business success as a city's most fundamental unifying principle." The

rest of the population, having grown up with a different sense of community with

more face to face interaction and more shared control, banded together in the Klan to

reassert traditional community values. Thus, the Klan, according to Moore, was less a

reaction to the growth of immigrant neighborhoods than a response to a changing

social order.

Moore's study rests on the availability of Klan numbers in each county, and on

Klan rosters from the cities of Indianapolis and Richmond and from Wayne County.

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Book Reviews                                                        157

 

Moore confirms the already-stated generalization from studies of Klan membership

lists in Colorado and northeast Ohio that Kluxers came from all social strata with an

edge toward the middle class. Through quantitative analysis Moore rejects what he

labels as the "radical" thesis of historians of the 1960s that "economic and residential

competition with the growing populations of blacks and immigrants nearby" caused

lower middle-class white and blue-collar men to join the Klan. Instead he asserts that

the Klan represented a wide swath of Indiana society upset with the social and eco-

nomic changes begot by modernization and with their lack of political power. It was

then a people's movement concerned with "promoting the ability of average citizens

to influence the workings of society and government."

Moore's book has all the trappings of the school of new social history. He is very

concerned about placing the history of the non-elite, average person in a broader so-

cial and economic context, but in so doing he has mistaken the envelope for the letter.

In this well-written book Moore does not present convincing evidence that a business

elite had gained political control over Indiana communities, nor that Klan members

saw themselves as correcting an imbalance caused by the business elite. The regres-

sion analysis that he uses to discredit the nativist goals of the Klan is suspect because

he does not offer the reader a chart detailing the linkage between all the variables

compared. There is also no indication of the robustness of the regression when cer-

tain variables are held constant. In short, Moore asks a lot of good questions and of-

fers some stimulating answers, but more evidence is needed if this interpretation is to

become a standard.

 

Youngstown State University                            William D. Jenkins

 

 

Natural Allies: Women's Associations in American History. By Anne Firor Scott.

(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991. xii + 242p.; illustrations, notes, ap-

pendix, index. $29.95.)

 

In 1912, the National Municipal League commissioned Mary Ritter Beard to study

women's civic reform efforts. Beard (and the League) discovered "literally thousands

of municipal reforms and community improvements carried out by women's clubs"

(p. 151). Just as contemporaries seldom acknowledged the contributions of organized

women, only a handful of women's historians have bothered to study this phe-

nomenon. Synthesizing this scholarship, Anne Firor Scott presents a compelling case

for the centrality of women's associational activities in the shaping of American so-

cial and political history from the 1790s through 1920. Women's associations have

been, as Scott puts it, "literally everywhere" (p. 2). Operating from the left, right and

everywhere in between, they added a public dimension to the roles of women-white

and black, rich and poor-and transformed American life.

Evolving from benevolent associations to aid impoverished women, white and

black women's organizations broadened their scope to include related social problems

and became central to the antebellum moral reform movement. In the process, orga-

nized women created vital and long-lasting community institutions. Scott emphasizes

that associational activity also stretched the boundaries of women's separate sphere.

From the start, the work had a political dimension as white, middle-class women used

the benevolent association to acquire greater property rights. Experiences in the

moral reform movement produced, as Scott puts it, a "new right of woman activist"

(p. 57), increasingly willing to challenge traditional notions of women's roles in order

to bring about real social change. Scott sees the Civil War as a watershed for orga-

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158                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

nized women who, because of the social significance of their war work, "would never

be quite the same again" (p. 74) and who were propelled to greater political activity in

later reform efforts.

The chapters on women's associational activities in the Progressive Era are nothing

short of groundbreaking. They convincingly illustrate that organized women in large

part were responsible for "inventing progressivism" through the ameliorative reform

efforts of "municipal housekeeping" and more radical activism in the quest for social

justice (p. 141). In so doing, women activists continued to challenge separate spheres

of ideology.

Scott's survey, while formidable, points the way to future scholarship. Others will

be prompted to consider how associational activities may have reinforced traditional

notions of women's separate sphere while promoting women's consciousness of their

oppression. The distinctions and similarities between the organized activities of black

and white women, and of women of different religious backgrounds, also require

sharper analysis. Scott neglects the divisions among women and tends to dismiss the

paternalistic aspects of white, middle-class reform. Curiously, Natural Allies offers

little insight into the relationship between men's and women's associational activities,

except to suggest that such work occupied different places of meaning in their indi-

vidual lives. Others will want to delineate the differences in motives, mechanisms or

objects of men's and women's organizations, and perhaps challenge Scott's implica-

tion that they were fundamentally similar (at one point, she states that "women had

simply caught the prevailing contagion for organization" [p. 17]). The task of extend-

ing Scott's synthesis beyond suffrage also awaits future scholars. But, above all,

Natural Allies points up the opportunities for further research on the local level, so

that a top-down approach may be eschewed.

Still, Scott has effectively synthesized the existing scholarship and supplemented it

with her own research in archives from Massachusetts to California. What emerges is

a complex of activity in which women from varying backgrounds exerted significant

influence in American society and politics. Natural Allies will prove useful not only

to women's historians, but to specialists in the eras it treats, as well as to sociologists

and political scientists. Written in a remarkably accessible style, Natural Allies

should also benefit activists, male and female, searching for a better understanding of

the historical context of their own work.

 

The Ohio State University                                     Eric Karolak

 

Neither Ballots nor Bullets: Women Abolitionists and the Civil War, By Wendy

Hamand Venet. (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1991. xii +

210p.; illustrations, notes, essay on sources, index. $25.00.)

 

In 1915, John Jay Chapman remembered his grandmother, the antislavery activist

Maria Weston Chapman, in a striking way (quoted by Wendy Hamand Venet in

Neither Ballots nor Bullets ). "She entered a room like a public person," he wrote;

"she was a doughty swordsman in conversation, and wore armor" (p. 4). To say such

a thing in the antebellum era would have been an unthinkable insult to a lady, whose

very womanhood was defined in part by her exclusion from the aggressive and politi-

cal arena of the public sphere. Venet, in her study of women abolitionists during the

Civil War, looks at how women's political activism during that conflict began to

change the kinds of public activity in which women-including the elder Chapman-

engaged, and with what results.

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Book Reviews                                                        159

 

Venet's claims for her work, a revised version of her doctoral dissertation, are

rather modest. In her preface, she expresses an interest in exploring the achievements

of the abolitionist-feminists in an understudied portion of their careers. She suggests

that hers is a study designed to provide a denouement to the familiar story of antebel-

lum abolitionism. Yet her book does more substantial work than she intimates.

Although the monograph is not organized around a clearly articulated argument that

binds it together, the group portrait that gradually emerges over the course of Venet's

narrative is that of women who move, in different ways, from an activism based

principally on moral suasion to one laying claim to a stake in politics. That is to say,

Venet looks at the ways in which the involvement in the Civil War of these women

catalyzed their movement from an almost apologetic participation in the public sphere

to an open and triumphant one.

That the Civil War should have led to new avenues for activism in the lives of radi-

cal women should not be surprising. The war merged moral and political questions

into a single overriding cause for many of the era. In so doing, it opened the door for

women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Anna E. Dickinson to

advocate the direct involvement of women in politics for the sake of promoting the

great moral entity that the Union represented--or could represent, in its most altruistic

incarnation. Through public oratory and polemical essays-tools that had been used

in the abolitionist cause for a generation-as well as through direct political or-

ganizing, women laid the basis for the interest-group politics that the National

Women's Suffrage Association would embody after the War.

In telling the story of abolitionist women's increasing involvement in issues like the

presidential campaign of 1864, the propaganda campaign to sway England's support

to the Union, and the Women's National Loyal League, Venet provides vivid portraits

of a host of characters who played a variety of public roles in their support of a moral

cause as they understood it. Harriet Beecher Stowe, best known as the avatar of

domestic abolitionism, appears as an increasingly politicized feminist and political

propagandist. The striking "Joan of Arc" of the abolitionist movement, Anna E.

Dickinson, illustrates the new possibilities for media celebrity among women. And

Elizabeth Cady Stanton emerges as a canny, self-conscious politician, who modified

her own rhetorical strategies to move cautious audiences toward radical conclusions.

The strength of these women's lives and words carries this narrative along. If

Venet sometimes falls short of communicating clearly the overall scheme and signifi-

cance of her venture, she has a knack for choosing illustrative incidents and quotations

that themselves are bursting with implicit significance. Neither Ballots nor Bullets

asks us to turn our attention to the experience of activist women in a period where, for

the most part, historians have not seen much happening in terms of feminist

organization and growth. As Venet demonstrates, the assumption that the Civil War

put a damper on feminism is one worth questioning.

 

Miami University                                      Mary Kupiec Cayton

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