Book Reviews
Scott Nearing: An Intellectual Biography. By
John A. Saltmarsh.
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1991. xii + 337p.; illustrations,
notes, manuscript sources, bibliography,
index. $39.95..)
Loving and Leaving the Good Life. By Helen Nearing. (Post Mills,
Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing
Company, 1992. 197p.; illustrations,
selected bibliography. $19.95.)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A
Nonfiction Reader. Edited by Larry
Ceplair.
(New York: Columbia University Press,
1991. xi + 345p.; notes, bibliogra-
phy, index. $62.00 cloth; $17.50 paper.)
"I Belong to the Working
Class": The Unfinished Autobiography of Rose
Pastor Stokes. Edited by Herbert Shapiro and David L. Sterling.
(Athens:
The University of Georgia Press, 1992.
xlv + 173p.; notes, index. $30.00.)
It is not always realized how full was
what might be called Scott Nearing's
first life. It took him as a maverick
academic from the University of
Pennsylvania's Wharton School of
Business to 1915. There and then he had
lost tenure and academic credentials. He
had defiantly carried on an anti-cap-
italist, anti-American message into
classrooms, continuous public appear-
ances, and some 20 books as well as
innumerable pamphlets, articles, and
ephemera. Given another academic chance
at the University of Toledo, he
continued his agitations against
"unearned capital" which produced wholesale
poverty, to which he then added
opposition to intervention in World War I.
This lost him his position in Toledo.
Though a shadow of a career still re-
mained in academic appearances before
student bodies willing to hear his ex-
tremist denunciations of capitalism and
government, his first life was largely
over.
He tried communism, but gave it up-and
was given up by its American
exponents-for lack of discipline to the
Party line. He is best remembered in
this connection for his and the
communist Joseph Freeman's 1926 book,
Dollar Diplomacy. For the most part Nearing and his second wife Helen
Nearing retired from economic but also social
oneness with American soci-
ety. They built houses first in Vermont,
then in Maine, growing vegetables
and writing about them, while society
itself endured the 1930s Depression, a
mightier war, then a protracted Youth
uprising which threatened national
foundations.
The measure of the Nearings's status in
society appears in the contrast be-
tween their 1954 publication of Living
the Good Life, then just another
Nearing publication, also involving such
books as Democracy is Not Enough
(1945), (with Helen Nearing) The
Maple Sugar Books (1950)-and a 1977
Book Reviews
203
reprint of Living the Good Life which
sold some 200,000 copies. It drew to
their retreat thousands of youth,
disillusioned with Youth Movement
prospects, and in transition, mainly
toward a reconciliation with the larger so-
ciety.
In our time of reevaluations, there are
questions to ask. Was Nearing a
twentieth century Thoreau? He does not
seem to have maintained a debate
relating to nature and humanity, such as
one finds in Thoreau. Nor was
Nearing steady in his war with the going
society in the Upton Sinclair man-
ner: his expose of The Jungle, his
sponsorship of the commutarian Helicon
Hall, his systematic critique of
American art, religion, and education. Or in
his EPIC (End Poverty in California) run
for the state's governorship which,
though he lost, helped keep President
Roosevelt's New Deal alive. Nearing
registered his protest against unfair
wages in the Wharton School. He and his
first wife Nellie Seeds Nearing spoke
for their not well-remembered Women
and Social Progress (1912). Nellie at last tired of his night and day
intensity
and left him for a more rounded
existence.
Indeed, Nearing was a monographic in his
pursuits, attacking unjust in-
come, education, imperialism, and so on
almost without references to life as
relating them to overall living. He
moved from Vermont to Maine for no par-
ticular reason. The Nearings had been in
one place long enough, he said;
time to go through the cycle of
building, growing, and selling once more.
When aged 100 he decided it was time to
die. He arranged with his wife for
him to stop eating, but without
explaining why it was time to die.
In perspective, it seems evident that
Nearing, in his first life, was part of the
larger Progressive drive of the time,
intended to create more equity for wage
earners, farmers, children, women, and
the continuing flood of immigrants.
Progressives have been criticized by
newer academics for not having done
more, and, with socialism in prospect,
for not having forced full equity-ad-
ministered by the government, on the
nation. It is too little realized that mod-
erate reform, hardly won, suited the
temper of Americans generally. Reform
did not "die" in the squalls
of World War I, though it brought out people who
could be generous on some issues and
mean-minded and worse on others.
Nearing's latest biographer is
conscientious in following Nearing's declining
role in those as in other events, but he
does not or cannot analyze or relate
them. Nearing's "remorseless
intransigence" left him simply alone in due
course, disillusioned with the
Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939, but with no under-
standing-economic or otherwise--of the
dynamics which had produced it.
A surprisingly bad book is Helen
Nearing's Loving and Leaving the Good
Life. She seemed very young when he married her in the early
twenties, he
being twice her twenty years of age.
When he died at 100, however, she was
80, and her own long life should have
produced evocative results. She had
studied music and the violin with
masters. She has a long "spiritual"
204 OHIO HISTORY
relationship with the theosophist
Krishnamurti. Nearing had gone to Europe
with her, and she had joined him in
researching his topics and presumably
been enriched by their findings on
Soviet Russia, China, Black America,
international peace, socialism. The
results are banal: "We take to the woods
of Vermont"; "Moving on to
Maine"; and so on to "Twilight and Evening
Star." The reader asks,
"Why?" and there is no answer. Certainly, theirs was
a good life, but there seems no residue.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman is another
matter. She was soundly of the
Progressive era, and offered it issues
and a program. She had a talented first
husband, but felt compelled to seek and
express her individual nature, at one
point handing back to family her
daughter to be freer in her search. Her
Women and Economics sounded an arresting note to others of like tempera-
ment who saw "imprisonment"
within the women's clubs and kitchen and
drawing room. Activists like Gilman saw
a necessary place on comparable
terms to men in society, and knew that
the vote by itself-basic as it was-
did not suffice.
She was specific, and in her rough prose
challenging. She denied that
simply being a mother guaranteed
legitimate growth for children. Expertise
was necessary. Day care and special
services were necessary. From 1909 to
1916 she herself published The Forerunner
which, in its ever-heavy concern
for self offended some readers, female
as well as male, but inspired others
searching for self-expression but also a
living.
Gilman's present editor is a dedicated
male feminist who admires Gilman,
but cannot always leave her alone. He
must declare his repudiation of her be-
lief in black inferiority. He is right;
but his is a form of "presentism": of in-
sisting on 1990s language, rather than
understanding that of the Progressive
era. In Gilman it meant pride in race, and
the will to improve it. Yet her edi-
tor has read scrupulously in her books,
and worked in his reading to under-
stand her time. His selection of
articles, as in her quarrel with Swedish femi-
nist Ellen Key, and her challenge to Ida
M. Tarbell, whose The Business of
Being a Woman was paradoxical: an editor and author who wanted women
to
stay at home. Gilman was also a woman,
and her life and struggles inspired
such other seekers as Rheta Childe Dorr,
whose What Eight Million Women
Want was one of the great Progressive best-sellers of the
time.
Finally, we face a phenomenon of the
time: Rose Pastor, as she became,
following years of poverty, first in her
native Russia, then as a growing girl
with a frustrated mother among miserably
poor Jews in London. Their scene
shifts to Cleveland, where Rose labored
with other exploited children at
rolling cigars for ruthless overseers.
Encouraged, indeed urged, to write em-
pathetically for Jewish girls in the
English columns of ethnic papers, she
came to New York, where she was
introduced to reformist circles, and met
none other than J. G. Phelps Stokes,
scion of a wealthy New York family.
Book Reviews
205
Their romance was one of the wonders of
the age, knowledge of it coming as
far as London, where she was remembered.
No one seems to have thought of
honoring the young man-one of the
"millionaire socialists" of that open-
ended time-for his readiness to flout
the best principles of his class in order
to follow his passionately dedicated
wife into anti-capitalist principles, and
socialism-but not, as last, into
opposition to intervention in World War I.
The editors follow her life with
scholarly care. It is a mere footnote-but
helpful in this low-culture era-to say
that Rose's play, The Woman Who
Wouldn't, was a ghastly mistake, though they commend her "eloquent
femi-
nism." Her deep integrity to memory
of the poverty from which she had
sprung made her marriage, protracted as
it was, a sad mistake, for Rose and
her husband Graham, unless one sees as
viable her keen sense of injustice and
hatred of war.
Her inability to realize that her unique
marriage made her liable to exploita-
tion, not only by the affluent and
reactionary but the revolutionaries, laid
ground for her final tragedy. She could
not resist a final plunge into com-
mitment to the hopes and prospects laid
down by the Leninists. She could not
influence their amoral power principles,
and she died in poverty to no purpose
that an appreciative reader of her
unfinished autobiography can discern.
Standing at the farther end of the
Soviet tragedy-Ayn Rand's youthful
masterpiece, We the Living, is
highly relevant here-it does not become
scholars to be too sweeping in their
judgments of individuals caught in its
meshes. More appropriate would it be to
recognize that the Progressive era
was more complicated than many realize,
who are satisfied to think it did no
more than work at regulating trusts. It
produced many triumphs for the over-
all society. It no more ended poverty
and war than it did aging and death.
But it gave space to heroic and worthy
figures who left us legacies of effort
and partial achievement. We honor
ourselves by honoring them.
The Belfry Louis Filler
Ovid, Michigan
Defender of the Old Guard: John
Bricker and American Politics. By
Richard O. Davies. (Columbus: The Ohio
State University Press, 1993.
xiv + 271p.; illustrations, notes,
bibliography, index. $35.00.)
Richard O. Davies' biography of John W.
Bricker is a balanced, soundly
researched study of a major Ohio
Republican leader who held elected office
nearly continuously from the 1930s to
the end of the 1950s. After 1940
Bricker became an important player in
national politics, and his name still
triggers recognition because of his
close association with what came to be
known as the Bricker Amendment-an effort
to amend the federal Constitu-
206 OHIO HISTORY
ution to limit the treaty-making powers
of the president.
John Bricker's early life was spent on a
farm of 50 acres near the village of
Mount Sterling, Ohio. Bricker worked his
way through Ohio State University
and the Ohio State University Law School
and in 1920 opened a law practice
in Columbus. He became an energetic
participant in a multitude of business
and fraternal organizations affiliated
with the Republican party. Bricker was
appointed legal counsel for the Public
Utilities Commission in 1923; in 1932
he was elected Attorney-General of Ohio;
and in 1938 Ohio voters elected
Bricker Governor. The Republican party
nominated Bricker to run for Vice
President in 1944 on the national ticket
with Governor Thomas E. Dewey of
New York. Franklin Roosevelt easily
defeated the Dewey-Bricker ticket, but
the campaign identified Bricker as one
of the best known and most extreme
critics of Roosevelt and the New Deal.
Two years later Bricker won election
to the United States Senate where he
served two terms. Defeated in 1958,
Bricker returned to his law practice in
Columbus where for many years he
played an active role as a member of the
Board of Trustees of Ohio State
University. He died in 1986.
Davies correctly depicts Bricker as a
product of rural, small town Ohio who
showed little to no concern about the
conditions of blacks in the United States
even during the Civil Rights movement;
and he opposed nearly every major
piece of legislation passed during the
New Deal. In 1954 after it had become
obvious to nearly everyone in politics
that the Social Security program was
immensely popular, Senator Bricker voted
against a bill sponsored by his
own Republican party to extend social
security coverage. Bricker used the
"communists in government"
issue recklessly against Franklin D. Roosevelt
and the Democratic party throughout his
political career, and he became one
of the most uncompromising supporters of
Senator Joseph McCarthy of
Wisconsin. The Bricker Amendment seemed
inspired primarily by Bricker's
hatred of Roosevelt, and the Senator
persevered in pushing for the passage of
his Amendment despite the most vigorous
opposition of President
Eisenhower.
Davies concludes that Bricker's
achievements as governor of Ohio and
United States Senator left "a
limited and dubious legacy." As Governor,
Bricker seemed primarily concerned with
balancing the state budget, and in
the Senate Bricker played essentially a
negative role. Davies shows that nei-
ther Thomas E. Dewey nor Ohio's highly
regarded Senator Robert Taft,
Bricker's colleague in the Senate,
respected Bricker's ability; and he notes
that President Eisenhower found
Bricker's tenacity in promoting his
Amendment exasperating and distracting
from more important concerns.
It is legitimate to ask, as one editor
of an Ohio CIO-AFL publication did:
is a biography of John Bricker
justified? Clearly it is. Bricker's views were
not unique; many Americans and more than
a few members of the United
Book Reviews
207
States Congress shared his horror at the
changes in the United States after
1932. As Davies correctly points out,
Bricker "articulated the frustrations and
fears of millions of Americans during
one of the most difficult and dangerous
periods of American life." This
valuable study documents the intensity of
those fears as they were expressed in
the political career of John W. Bricker.
Southern Illinois University at
Carbondale Howard W. Allen
W.E.B. DuBois: Biography of a Race,
1868-1919. By David Levering
Lewis. (New York: Henry Holt and
Company, Inc., 1993. xiv + 735p.; il-
lustrations, notes, selected writings,
index. $35.00.)
In this first volume of his biographical
study of W.E.B. DuBois, David
Levering Lewis has furnished a splendid
contribution to the literature of
African-American history and world
thought. The book is deeply researched
and beautifully written, illuminatingly
setting DuBois in the broader context
of modern history. In many ways Lewis
sheds light on DuBois's activity, his
intellectual development and the
relation of his personal life to his role as a
public figure. Others have written of
DuBois before; we are all obliged to
Herbert Aptheker for editing the DuBois
correspondence and for publication,
in a modern scholarly series, of his
writings, but Lewis has provided the ma-
jor biography for which we have been
waiting. Lewis has undertaken the
daunting task of writing about a figure
whose life span was ninety-five years,
who worked in a variety of academic
disciplines and who was an academi-
cian, editor, poet, novelist, and
activist. In this first volume he has achieved a
glowing success.
DuBois is presented here as a towering
figure of the twentieth century.
Lewis notes some of his signal
contributions: "DuBois had shaped and
launched upon the rising tide of
twentieth-century nationalism the idea of the
solidarity of the world's darker peoples,
of the glories in the forgotten African
past, of the vanguard role destined to
be played by Africans of the diaspora in
the destruction of European
imperialism .. ." (p. 9). Much of
African
American leadership, its civil rights
organizations, colleges, clubs, and Greek
letter and professional societies
"were increasingly imbued with and guided
by his ideals and goals" (p. 468).
But the DuBois appearing in this biography
is not some idealization but rather a
flesh and blood person whose thought
developed over the years and who was not
without blemishes. Lewis shows
us the young DuBois who deplored the
"ignorant lawlessness" he saw in the
railroad strikes of 1886 and who
apparently approved of the brutality inflicted
on the Chicago anarchists after the Haymarket
bombing. DuBois, coming to
adulthood in the Victorian era, was
influenced by that era's thought and ad-
mired such figures as Carlyle and
Bismarck. Lewis shows that DuBois's au-
208 OHIO HISTORY
tobiographies are not always reliable
concerning the precise details of his life.
The biography renders a candid and
psychologically sensitive view of
DuBois's life as husband and father,
affirming that in these relationships he
was something of a tyrant and hypocrite.
DuBois, however, was a devoted fa-
ther, strongly interested in the
education of his daughter Yolande and fully
sharing his wife Nina's anguish at the
death of their first-born son Burghardt.
We are given an insightful portrayal of
the process of radicalization that
marked DuBois's life. In DuBois's focus
at Harvard upon the relation of
mind to matter Lewis finds parallels to
the epistemology shaping dialectical
materialism. During his interval of
graduate study in Germany, DuBois came
to see the need not only to explain the
world but to change it. He also took an
exploratory interest in socialism, a
significant first step according to Lewis,
while yet committed to "an ideology
of culture in which human progress was
measured in terms of manners, the arts,
great literature, and great ideals" (p.
144). DuBois's concept of racial twoness
was indeed profoundly radical, of-
fering an alternative view of what it
meant to be an American at a time when
Anglo-Saxon Protestants believed their
notions of established culture were
the only definitions of Americanism.
The biography includes first-rate
discussions of DuBois's writings of the
period until 1919. Lewis underscores the
significance of the 1897 paper "The
Conservation of Races" as a
magnificent assault upon racism that helped
shape such twentieth century movements
as black nationalism, black
Zionism, Pan-Africanism, and black
aestheticism. Regarding The
Suppression of the African Slave
Trade, DuBois's Harvard dissertation,
Lewis
observes that the book contained flawed
specifics but was pioneering in its
stress upon the profit-making inherent
in the total slave economy.
Suppression for the first time linked the Haitian revolution to the
suppression
of the slave trade and Jefferson's
acquisition of Louisiana. The work con-
nects the slave trade to capitalism and
Lewis finds it to be a work that was
proto-Marxist. Lewis tells us much about
the context of tensions between the
Philadelphia political machine and the
city's reformers that led to the call for
DuBois to undertake the work that led to
publication of The Philadelphia
Negro. The book was groundbreaking in its marshaling of
evidence concern-
ing the social and economic roots of the
problems facing black
Philadelphians. Lewis sets The Souls
of Black Folk in the escalating contro-
versy between DuBois and Booker T.
Washington, finding the book to be one
of those events that divide history into
a before and an after. It was, as Lewis
writes, an electrifying manifesto
mobilizing people for an epochal struggle.
There is also in Souls, and not
adequately noted by Lewis, a poetry and
beauty of language that immeasurably
added to the power of the book.
The biography perceptively treats the
DuBois-Washington split and gives
us a clear outline of the friction that
later was to surface between DuBois and
Book Reviews
209
some of the other NAACP leaders. In
considering DuBois's relations with
Washington, Lewis emphasizes the role of
a clash of temperaments and the
centrality of differences over the
educational perspectives of African
Americans. Washington the master of
expediency and DuBois who spoke out
boldly on issues as he saw them were
bound to be antagonists. Lewis does go
too far in placing the controversy in a
North-South matrix. By no means did
all Northern black leaders support
DuBois's militancy or did all Southern
blacks endorse Washington's
accommodationism and opposition to liberal
education.
There are a few slips in the biography.
The wartime American Protective
League is described as a citizens
organization but closer to the truth is Harold
Hyman's observation that the League
"was a force for outrageous vigilantism
blessed with the seal and sanction of
the federal government." Generally,
however, this is a work of meticulous,
thoroughly documented scholarship.
This is a benchmark biography against
which all future studies of DuBois
will be measured. This is to be sure not
the last word; there are a variety of
issues raised in the book calling for
further exploration and future biographers
may see some matters differently. But in
grappling with the meanings of
W.E.B. DuBois's life, Lewis has taken us
to new and higher ground and we
are all in his debt. We eagerly await
the second volume.
University of Cincinnati Herbert Shapiro
Bad Habits: Drinking, Smoking, Taking
Drugs, Gambling, Sexual
Misbehavior, and Swearing in American
History. By John C. Burnham.
(New York: New York University Press,
1993. xviii + 385p.; illustrations,
notes, index. $35.00.)
This book is the most rigorous overview
of the historical literature on vari-
ous emotionally-enhancing substances and
activities in American history. It
is primarily a synthesis of the large
amount of writing on these subjects that
has emerged over the last three decades,
but it also relates some interesting
primary material (including advertising
photos and illustrations). For stu-
dents of the underworld and crime, it is
an indispensable collection of infor-
mation woven together with Burnham's own
provocative analysis. For the
general reader, it also offers
interesting details and a convincing argument
that these subjects have great
importance for understanding American culture.
Burnham's main argument is that the
derided "bad habits" and "minor
vices" of the Victorian underworld
have over the last one hundred years
transformed American culture. This
"inversion of values" has been accom-
plished through a combination of
cultural, demographic, and economic
forces. Two movements in particular-a
"lower-order parochialism" defined
210 OHIO HISTORY
as a young male ethos among primarily
white ethnic minorities in cities and a
high culture "rebelliousness"
typified by Greenwich Village bohemians-
were at the forefront of the cultural
subversion, especially in the catalytic
decade of the 1920s. Yet, these
movements could not have succeeded with-
out a burgeoning constituency in a newly
arrived immigrant population or
without the economic support of people
like Pierre DuPont who bankrolled
the successful effort to repeal national
Prohibition.
A consumer culture by the late 1920s
blunted ethnic and religious identifi-
cations and paved the way for more
personal individualism. By the late
1960s, the increasing frequency of, for
example, alcohol and tobacco adver-
tisements-and the behavior that the
imagery in those advertisements fos-
tered-indicated a more decentralized
social commitment to the values of
"nonrestraint" and the
"antisocial." The six substances and activities that
form a "constellation of minor
vices" have allowed profiteering by ruthless
capitalists and an escape from community
responsibility. Eventually,
Victorian "bad habits" became
important identity-forming manifestations of
"a culture that revolved not around
work but around consumption and leisure"
(p. 278).
Reflecting the culmination of about
three decades of new scholarly research
and writing, this book is a major
achievement. Burnham's insightful analysis
adds significantly to the studies
synthesized. Some readers will want a more
thorough elaboration of the structural
underpinnings and an explanation of
how this transformation impacted
minority communities and women, al-
though the way advertisers lured women
to cigarette smoking is told. Still
others, while acknowledging the gradual
ascendance of values of nonrestraint,
will want a clearer discussion of how
the values of defiant and violent under-
world criminals were diluted by
contented middle class white suburbanites.
Finally, the Victorian underworld was
characterized as "bad" by Victorian
elites who were concerned about the
chastity, temperance, and industrious-
ness of newly arrived workers. Despite
their rhetoric, Victorian elites were
hypocritical, indulging in their own
minor vices. Perhaps then the shift to-
ward greater individualism does not
constitute a complete inversion of values,
but an increased incidence of certain
behaviors that were able to spread
through culture because of changes in
the standard of living and social struc-
ture. Above all, this book is an
admirable achievement, raising some sensi-
tive issues which historians have
traditionally ignored but which have been
crucial in forming our individual and
national identities.
Temple University Michel J.
Martin
And Sin No More: Social Policy and
Unwed Mothers in Cleveland, 1855-
1990. By Marian J. Morton. (Columbus: The Ohio State
University Press
Book Reviews
211
1993. xiv + 183p.;
illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $39.50.)
This work by Marian Morton chronicles
care for unwed mothers of
Cleveland by focusing on six
institutions: the Cleveland Infirmary, the
Retreat, the Florence Crittenton Home,
St. Ann's Infant and Maternity
Asylum, the Salvation Army Rescue and
Mary B. Talbert Home, and
Cleveland City/Metropolitan General
Hospital. It is a story not only of health
care (or lack of it) for these women,
but also a treatise on care for those whom
society deems unfit, fallen from God's
grace, or simply unimportant.
It does all get to be a bit confusing,
not to the least fault of Ms. Morton, but
because the institutions continually
evolve, change names, move, are bought
out, etc. The Cleveland Infirmary
becomes, for instance, Cleveland City
Hospital, which becomes Cleveland
Metropolitan General Hospital, and in
turn results in Cleveland MetroHealth
Services. St. Ann's Infant and
Maternity Asylum takes likewise twists
by springing St. Ann's Loretta Hall,
which becomes DePaul Family Services.
The homes are both public and sec-
tarian, Protestant and Catholic.
But besides recounting the evolution of
the homes themselves, she traces
the evolution of care as well. Help for
unwed mothers has roots in the
Cleveland poorhouse of the mid-19th
century; religion was a main impetus
for the founding of the Retreat in 1869.
While religion was a main factor in
the Florence Crittenton Home
(1912-1970), it also brought in the concept of
social work. The shift from home to
hospital is evidenced with the story of
St. Ann's (1873-1983). Providing
separate (and unequal) care for unwed
black women is evidenced by the
Salvation Army's Rescue and Mary B.
Talbert Home (1892-1990). The circle
then completes itself with the focus
on unwed, poor mothers seeking care at
an institution that can trace its roots
back to the Cleveland Infirmary: the
Cleveland City/Metropolitan General
Hospital (perhaps still a poorhouse in
another guise).
It is also a book about segregation-of
unwed and wed mothers being
housed separately (St. Ann's); of black
women in separate facilities from
whites (the Salvation Army). Yet,
ultimately it is about poor women versus
middle class and access to family
planning so that there would not be an un-
planned pregnancy to begin with.
Although probably unintended by the
author, this book could also serve as
a metaphor for AIDS. In reading the
text, one has an eerie feeling that we
have all heard these arguments lately.
The notion of equating a medical
condition with a fall from God's grace,
the pious canting of "concerned" peo-
ple who "love the sinner but hate
the sin." The unwillingness to provide care
at all, lest they be considered
condoning the behavior. ". . . Cleveland's
Catholic community. . . was at first
reluctant to provide shelter for unwed
mothers, fearing that this would imply
diocesan sanction for illegitimate
pregnancy" (p. 76). This is the
same argument many religious groups and
212 OHIO HISTORY
politicians gave (and give) for not
wanting to provide care for people with
AIDS or fund research for HIV/AIDS.
How society treats those whom it
disdains says lots about the society itself.
It does not matter if it is unwed
mothers or AIDS. "In the final analysis, the
care of those who cannot care for
themselves is the creation of the larger
American society: a society that
allocates opportunities to succeed on the
basis of class, race, and gender and
then punishes those who fail" (p. 124).
Historical Society of Pennsylvania Lee Arnold
Democrats and the American Idea: A
Bicentennial Appraisal. Edited by
Peter B. Kovler. (Washington, D.C.:
Center for National Policy Press,
1992. xxvi + 388p.; maps, appendix,
notes, index. $29.95.)
The study sets the birth date of the
Democratic party in 1792 when Thomas
Jefferson first referred to his
organization in a letter to George Washington.
Calculated this way the Democratic party
was two hundred years old in 1992,
and this volume is intended as a tribute
to "the oldest political party in the
world." It is a collection of
essays by a group of authorities in American
politics who examine topics on the
history of the Democratic party.
Most of the essays focus on the
nineteenth century. Part One examines the
origins of the Democratic party with an
essay by Lance Banning on the
Jeffersonian Republican or Democratic
Republican party and with two essays
on the Jacksonian era by Robert B.
Remini and Harry L. Watson. Part Two
covers the years between roughly 1840
and the end of the nineteenth century
with two essays by Robert Kelly, and one
each by Jean Baker and Lawrence
Grossman. Part Three includes essays on
the Democratic party under the
leadership of William Jennings Bryan and
Woodrow Wilson by Robert
Cherny and John Milton Cooper, Jr., and
one on the 1920s by Allan J.
Lichtman. The New Deal and the years
since World War II are covered in
essays by Alonzo L. Hamby and Steven M.
Gillon in Part Four, and Part Five
concludes with "Bicentennial
Appraisals" by E. J. Dionne, Jr., Gary Hart,
Hanes Walton, Jr., and Michael Barone.
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., provides an
Afterword.
Several of the authors make a valiant
effort to identify underlying values or
goals which have remained constant
during the entire history of the
Democratic party. Except for a few
superficial propositions, however, this
effort is in vain. The modern Democratic
party differs in very substantial
ways from the party of Jackson, Wilson,
and yes, even of Al Smith. Until the
New Deal and the realignment of the
1930s which brought the urban
electorate into the Democratic camp,
southern and western agrarian groups
ruled the party as they had since Andrew
Jackson's time. With a few
Book Reviews
213
exceptions, the legislation passed in
the Wilson administration addressed
long-standing southern and western
agrarian needs by abandoning, as John
Milton Cooper's essay argues, nineteenth
century laissez faire traditions.
And, as Allan Lichtman's essay makes
clear, in the 1920s Democratic party
leaders (and Republic leaders for that
matter) gave no evidence of a new
concern for urban problems or any other
social and economic problems
except some of those faced in the farm
belt.
Other essays on the nineteenth century
present without reservation or quali-
fication what is often called the
ethno-cultural interpretation of political be-
havior. This hypothesis has been widely
embraced and has even sifted down
to college textbooks, but it remains
unproven and much debated. Readers
should be advised to read these essays
with appropriate skepticism.
While this collection provides a complex
and sometimes contradictory
overview of the history of the
Democratic party, it is a very useful volume. It
is especially helpful in bringing
together some of the most recent interpreta-
tions of the Democratic party and the
history of American politics more gen-
erally. Some of the essays are
especially useful. Harry Watson argues per-
suasively that the Democratic party in
the early nineteenth century was domi-
nated by southern and western forces
that were tilted more toward a pro-slav-
ery, anti-Indian position than was the
Whig party; and, while Democrats
generally stood for a laissez faire role
for government, he states that by the
1850s in most state legislature
Democrats actively supported measures to
foster economic growth. Also especially
noteworthy is John Milton Cooper's
essay which stresses how Woodrow Wilson,
following in the footsteps of
William Jennings Bryan (see also
Cherny's essay), led the transformation of
the Democratic party into a more
progressive and international organization.
Southern Illinois University at
Carbondale Howard W. Allen
Beautiful Machine: Rivers and
the Republican Plan 1755-1825. By John
Seelye. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1992. xii + 430p.; illustra-
tions, notes, bibliography, index.
$35.00.)
John Seelye is a professor of literature
at the University of Florida. This
mistitled work is a sequel to Prophetic
Waters: The River in Early American
Life and Literature (1977). Seven of the fifteen chapters have previously
been published, independently, in
literary journals and publications.
According to the book cover, this is the
first book to "use rivers, canals and
steamboats as cultural signifiers"
using "the literature and personal narratives
of the period to put these developments
in an imaginative and cultural con-
text ..." Unfortunately,
"imaginative" is the key variable. Seelye uses liter-
ary research techniques, including
comparative criticism, allusion and symbo-
214 OHIO HISTORY
lism, which smother the procrustean
historical subjects and events.
For example, the "Prologue: The
Shadow of the Dome," opens with "Our
sensibilities having been shaped by
romantic attitudes, we tend to think of
primitive people as living in harmony
with the natural world, an organic clo-
sure best signified by the notion of a
terrestrial paradise" (p. 5).
In "Ancestral Voices," he
comments on contemporary writings including
William Byrd, Washington, J. Adams, and
Franklin and their interest in the
"west." Their writings
indicated that, between 1753-63, Anglo-Americans
were "on the move-which could be
figured either as martial adventure,
geopolitical outreach, or the expansion
of the mind-and that westward-
trending and eastward-bending rivers
defined the direction of their march" (p.
41).
In "Fertile Ground," he
describes a comment on lakes and rivers by a D.
Pownall, a colonial politician, as
". .. nascent Romanticism. .. a delight in the
landscape for its own sake, but it is
only nascent, for there is also a Horatian
slant to Pownall's view of natural
beauty. . ." (p. 48). "Flashing Eyes and
Floating Hair" is, primarily, a
literary critique of nationalistic poems by T.
Dwight and J. Barlowe. "Beware!
Beware!" is about Crevecoeur and the
botanist Bartram's travels. Of the
latter's writings, the author concludes that
"Fountains of light, the sources of
the St. John's [River in Florida] are also
basins of darkness, evoking the
revelation of the wilderness saint for whom
the river was named, and containing
likewise an apocalyptic beast, which
lends the illusory pastoral garden its
one absolute but not very utilitarian fact"
(p. 148).
In "the Fountain and the
Cave," he critiques H. H. Brackenridge's novel
Modern Chivalry, set largely in western Pennsylvania. (Pittsburgh is
spelled
Pittsburg twice, then correctly later in
the chapter.) Then the sexual imagery
of the Ohio, Allegheny, and Monongahela
Rivers is noted in G. Imlay's The
Emigrants as "a celebration of love with an associative
geographical back-
drop" (p. 155). Other travellers'
accounts include V. Chateaubriand's Les
Natchez and T. Ashe's Travels. H. Blennerhasset is
"admired by Ashe [as]
Imlay's ideal settler in the flesh, a
paradigm of enlightened physiocracy estab-
lishing an orderly oasis of culture in
the heart of the western wilderness" (p.
188).
"Measureless to Man" is also a
critique of the journals of Lewis and Clark.
The Missouri River "provided the
man axis. . . for the expedition... [but] the
facts of actual encounter. .. including
collapsing cutbanks, oxbows, sawyers,
and sandbars, gave dramatic evidence
that [it] would be a violent and moody
ally to the westward advance of
personified Enlightenment" (p. 203). J.
Wilkinson and Z. Pike are the subjects
of "Interlude: Mild of Paradise."
J. Barlow's poem "Columbiad,"
R. Fulton's "Treatise" on canals, J. Fitch
and Z. Cramer's "Navigator"
are the subjects of "Midway on the Waves."
Book Reviews
215
"Stately Decree" traces
internal improvement ideas in Jefferson, Madison and
Monroe's administrations. "Through
Wood and Dale" is a survey of E.
Watson's role in canal building in New
York and its impact on D. Clinton.
"With Music Loud and Long"
describes Monroe and LaFayette's tours of the
northeast in 1817 and 1825. "A
Miracle of Rare Device" is the literary de-
scriptions of celebrations attendant to
the opening of the Erie Canal. This su-
perfluous literary critique continues in
"Mingled Measures" and "0, That
Deep Romantic Chasm" (with more
erotic allusions). The Epilogue,
"Ceaseless Turmoil," is a
repetitious summary of disjointed comments, in-
cluding: "The Erie Canal was hardly
THE cause of the Civil War, but had
Providence disposed the geography of the
North American continent in such a
way that Washington's Potomac route had
been more feasible, then the shape
and the mission of the nation that
emerged during the first half of the nine-
teenth century would surely have been
much different from what they be-
came."
There are nineteen illustrations with
artistic and literary commentaries.
One, is a map of the semicircular fleet
of canal boats celebrating the opening
of the Erie Canal in New York harbor in
1825 (p. 334); opposite it is a paint-
ing of the Union fleet's bombardment, in
a circular manner, of Port Royal,
South Carolina, during the Civil War in
1862. Seelye's comment is: "A dia-
gram of a highly destructive tactic that
certifies the extent to which the cele-
bration of geopolitical union in 1825
provides a prefiguration of the war be-
tween the states thirty years
later."
There is a six-page annotated
bibliography. The MLA Style of citation
method is used, in the text, which
refers to the five page "Bibliography of
Works Quoted." There is a
twenty-seven page index.
California University of
Pennsylvania J. K.
Folmar
General Thomas Posey: Son of the
American Revolution. By John Thornton
Posey. (East Lansing: Michigan State
University Press, 1992. vi + 325p.;
illustrations, notes, appendices, select
bibliography, index. $31.95.)
Historians have paid considerable
attention to the most prominent charac-
ters of the early American republic. Yet
persons of less distinction also
played a role in civic affairs. John
Thornton Posey has produced a sympa-
thetic biography that examines the life
of one such figure, Thomas Posey.
Born in 1750, Thomas Posey spent his
youth at "Rover's Delight," a house
adjacent to George Washington's Mount
Vernon estate. Washington and the
young boy's father, Captain John Posey,
were close friends, even though their
personalities differed markedly.
Irresponsible and compulsive, Posey squan-
dered his property and his children's
inheritance. Washington, on the other
216 OHIO HISTORY
hand, was sober, diligent, and
honorable. In his private and public life
Thomas Posey displayed little of his
father's character. Thus the author con-
tends that Posey's primary role model
was Washington. Though as a youth
Posey probably admired and desired to
imitate Washington, the case for a
continuing influence is more asserted
than demonstrated.
During the Revolutionary War, Thomas
Posey served with distinction as an
officer in the Virginia Continental
Line. His postwar career is notable more
for diverse public appointments and
brief terms of service than for any tangi-
ble individual achievements. In 1793
Posey, with the rank of brigadier gen-
eral, participated briefly in the
campaign against the Miami Indians, but he
departed before the Battle of Fallen
Timbers. He also served as lieutenant
governor of Kentucky, spent two months
as an appointed U.S. Senator from
Louisiana, and most important, was the
last territorial governor of Indiana.
For those who question whether Posey's
career merits a book-length biog-
raphy, there are some items of interest.
In the aftermath of the daring and
successful attack on the British post at
Stony Point, several officers, including
Posey, complained bitterly when their
commander, Anthony Wayne, failed to
mention their exploits in public
accounts. Here the author successfully uti-
lizes the concept of fame to explain
Posey's behavior. Like his contempo-
raries, Posey worried over his
reputation in posterity and bristled at any slight
against his character as an officer and
a gentleman. There is, moreover, an
enlightening discussion that explains
how martial music boosted the morale
of soldiers.
In 1799 Posey petitioned the legislature
of the Northwest Territory, request
ing that he and other prospective
settlers from Virginia be allowed to bring
their slaves. Because the Northwest
Ordinance of 1787 prohibited the intro-
duction of slavery, the legislature
rejected Posey's application, and he moved
his family to Kentucky, a slave state.
That story speaks volumes on the im-
plications of a national land policy
that made slavery a sectional institution.
This book was obviously a labor of love
for John Thornton Posey. He
contends that Thomas Posey was "an
illustrious man well worth remember-
ing." The book's avowed purpose is
to "memorialize" the achievements of
Thomas Posey and to
"illuminate" the period in which he lived (p. 4). The
author largely succeeds in detailing
Posey's life and accomplishments. This
study will be the source for readers
interested in Posey.
Unfortunately, John Thornton Posey is
not a detached observer. He is in
awe of Thomas Posey and his
contemporaries, who "must surely be regarded
as the most remarkable and prolific
generation to grace this nation" (p. 1).
This statement becomes a recurring
theme. The result is a study that clearly
displays Thomas Posey's virtues, but
glosses over his warts. Posey was ob-
viously a driven, ambitious man. During
his later years, he neglected his wife
and family as he pursued one public
position after another and speculated in
Book Reviews
217
western lands. Certainly his quest for
advancement involved more than love
of fame and a desire to provide for his
progeny. At one point Posey, claiming
that he was down to his last dollar,
refused to loan money to one of his sons.
Rather than exploring available evidence
that Posey made risky or unwise in-
vestments, the author merely reflects on
the "truly alarming and lamentable
state of financial affairs for an
eminent soldier and distinguished public
statesman" (p. 179). Far too often
this book is more a hagiography than a bi-
ography.
Freed-Hardeman University Gregory D. Massey
Crusade: The Untold Story of the
Persian Gulf War. By Rick Atkinson.
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993.
xii + 575p.; illustrations,
maps, author's note, notes,
bibliography, index. $24.95.)
With his Crusade: The Untold Story of
the Persian Gulf War, Rick
Atkinson has once again hit the
historical jackpot. Earlier in his career, in
1982, he won a Pulitzer Prize for a
series of articles on the West Point class of
1966 that later became a book, The
Long Gray Line. This book, which should
be required reading for all those who
picture the Point as little more than a
factory which annually spews out yet
another set of Prussian-like automatons,
had as one of its strengths Atkinson's
skillful use of biographical sketches to
humanize his subjects. He does so again
in Crusade, particularly with
Generals Norman Schwarzkopf and Colin
Powell.
First of all, Atkinson gives Schwarzkopf
his due as a strategist, tactician,
and, perhaps most important, leader of a
multinational military coalition. But
what really hits the reader is his
portrayal of the general as something of a
MacArthur-Patton come-lately rather than
the businesslike, cool rock of com-
posure we all watched on TV. Schwarzkopf
rode around in a royal-like mo-
torcade (one finds it difficult to
imagine Matt Ridgway doing this), had an en-
listed aide who preceded him into a
briefing room and, "with the care of a
grandmaster setting chess pieces, placed
on the tables...polished glasses, a
tumbler of water, a glass of orange
juice, a cup of coffee, and a glass of
chocolate mocha" (page 21); as
prima donna George Patton once put it, "All
very successful commanders are prima
donnas and must be so treated" (page
70). On a plane with him flying to Saudi
Arabia, Secretary of Defense
Richard Cheney noticed that in a line
formed to use the bathroom, a major,
upon making his way to the front, turned
and said, "General?"; he had been
holding Schwarzkopf's place. At about
the same time, Cheney observed a
colonel down on hands and knees ironing
the general's uniform blouse (pages
94-95).
Along with his imperial tendencies,
Schwarzkopf frequently and publicly
218 OHIO HISTORY
flew into volcanic rages, often at the
expense of lower-ranking generals,
which were so demoralizing that Cheney
actually considered relieving him of
his command. Instead, and wisely as it
ended-Schwarzkopf made no seri-
ous mistakes during the entire
campaign-he chose to follow Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell's
advice that Schwarzkopf's strengths far
outweighed his shortcomings. Leaning on
Powell, Cheney assigned him the
task of "managing the Schwarzkopf
account," a job which Powell performed
admirably.
Powell emerges as one of the war's most
impressive figures, with a reputa-
tion so bright that he might yet be
tempted to run for public office. He ex-
uded self-confidence and poise
(displayed on his desk was the maxim, "Never
let them see you sweat"), lacked
pretension, and was no bellicose war lover,
having initially played the role of
"reluctant warrior" by arguing against war
with Iraq. Once into the war he took as
his guidelines for combat those crite-
ria formulated in 1984 by Caspar
Weinberger in what became known as the
"Weinberger Doctrine."
Weinberger, obviously with Vietnam in mind, pub-
licly stipulated that American armed
forces should be committed to combat
only "with the clear intention of
winning," with "clearly defined political and
military objectives," with
"the support of the American people and their
elected representatives in
Congress," and only as "a last resort" (page 122).
(Powell later echoed these sentiments in
an article he wrote for Foreign
Affairs.) No seeker of martial glory, Powell saw war for what it
was: "not an
abstract means to achieve national
objectives but rather a brutal enterprise
that produced dead soldiers, shattered
lives, and smoking wreckage" (page
120).
Atkinson sees war in much the same
light, and goes to some length to cor-
rect the Pentagon's version of the war
we all watched on TV-an antiseptic,
near-flawless war waged from on high by
pilots who, with deadly accuracy
suggestive of Crockett, Boone, and
friends, nailed their targets dead center.
Actually, many bombs missed their
targets, hitting Iraqi civilians in non-mili-
tary areas instead; air strikes killed
roughly 2,300 and injured some 6,000
Iraqi noncombatants (military spokesmen
generally label this sort of thing
"collateral damage") despite
the efforts of pilots who jeopardized their own
lives in attempting to avoid all but
strictly military objectives. As Air Force
General Tony McPeak had warned President
Bush before the shooting
started, "You're going to kill two
thousand people you're not mad at (page
225). Atkinson in making his point
paints graphic scenes of horror and pain.
In describing our bombing of the Al
Firdos bunker, mistakenly assumed to be
a pure military target, he writes:
"The lucky ones died instantly. Screams
ripped through the darkness. .... Sheets
of fire melted triple-decker bunk
beds, light fixtures, eyeballs....
Bodies lay in grotesque piles, fused together
by the heat. Limbs and torsos were
strewn across the floor. Eighteen inches
Book Reviews
219
of water flooded one corridor, the
surface covered with a skim of melted hu-
man tallow" (page 285). All the
public saw on TV were highlight films,
those video game-like precision hits
supplied by our planes' gun camera
videos. Several thousand feet of gun
camera videotapes of bombs missing
their targets were classified, kept from
public view.
It was a great war for America, a
"splendid little war" as John Hay once de-
scribed an earlier war. It was brief,
casualties were few, and victory was total
(or so it seemed for a brief time). It
was everything Vietnam had not been, a
fact especially satisfying to American
generals who as young officers had suf-
fered through the earlier debacle. For
some twenty years American military
power and its practitioners had lived
under a dark cloud. No more. As
George Bush declared, "By God...
we've licked the Vietnam syndrome once
and for all" (page 493). True, the
U.S.-led coalition was overwhelmingly su-
perior to the forces of Saddam Hussein,
and true that Saddam's leadership
qualities were better suited for a
backwater Arab spat, but the fact remained
that the armies of right had put to rout
those of a tyrant who had invaded a
peaceful neighboring state.
And yet, in the end, the war's results
were not altogether gratifying.
Atkinson concludes, as have a number of
war reporters, that George Bush, in
order to muster support for what was
essentially a limited war, in the best of
American tradition "encouraged the
nation to consider the war a great moral
crusade-a struggle of good versus evil,
right against wrong." He loudly
proclaimed, in what Atkinson rightly
judges to have been an absurd over-
statement, that "Nothing of this
moral importance" had happened "since
World War II." To arouse the
public's ire, or fury, Bush demonized Saddam,
thus guaranteeing that said public would
settle for no victory that left Saddam
in power. "I pledge to you: there
will not be any murky ending.... I will
never, ever agree to a halfway
effort" (all on page 497). But, as Atkinson
notes, almost all modern wars have murky
endings, and this war's ending
grew even murkier in pretty short order.
Saddam remained in power and our
land forces did not invade Baghdad, much
to the disgust of many who felt we
had not completed the job. That there
were geopolitical reasons for allowing
Saddam, no matter how foul, to remain in
power, and that continuing and ex-
tending the war would have exceeded our
original war aims, while at the
same time increasing our number of
casualties, seemed to matter little to
those unsophisticated homefront warriors
whose blood lust was up. For them,
what mattered was that this ogre,
although now out of Kuwait, still asserted
his claim to that country, still had
sufficient military force to repress force-
fully minority groups within Iraq, and
still had the temerity to thumb his nose
at the United States and the United
Nations. Once more, it seemed, we had
won the war only to lose the peace.
Crusade is an excellent addition to the history of the Persian
Gulf War,
220 OHIO HISTORY
well researched and written by a man who
flat knows how to write. Rick
Atkinson is a rising star in the field
of military history and will bear watching
in the future.
Ohio Historical Society Robert L. Daugherty
African-Americans in the Early
Republic, 1789-1831. By Donald R.
Wright.
(Arlington Heights, Illinois: Harlan
Davidson, Inc., 1993. xii + 252p.; illus-
trations, bibliographical essay, index.
$9.95. paper.)
In this most recent addition to Harlan
Davidson's American History Series,
Donald Wright has synthesized a wide
range of secondary literature, inter-
spersed with primary source material,
and issued a provocative reconsidera-
tion of the periodization of antebellum
African-American history. Wright
contends that the years from
Washington's inauguration to Nat Turner's
Rebellion were a "particularly
important and formative time" (p. 209) for
Blacks, a fact hidden by scholar's
fascination with the thirty years leading up
to the Civil War. In fact, says Wright,
"[n]o startling changes for African
Americans came along soon after
1831" (p. 205).
Changes in the demographic and political
realities of slavery and in the ex-
tent of slave resistance mark the Early
Republic as a significant epoch in the
African-American experience. Nearly
one-fifth of all Africans brought to
British North America came between 1783
and 1808, yet during the same pe-
riod most northern states abolished the
institution. Moreover, the Early
Republic witnessed a second forced
movement, both internal and interre-
gional, that was perhaps twice as large
as the original transatlantic migration
and which caused significant disruption
in the lives of African-Americans.
These were years in which slaveholders
created an efficient, large-scale, and
seasonal slave-trading network, and the
planter elite consolidated and repli-
cated its position throughout the
growing South. The American Revolution,
Wright notes, challenged the ideological
basis for slavery, influenced the rise
of an anti-slavery movement among both
Whites and Blacks, and spurred
widespread and significant slave
rebellions throughout the period. Indeed,
the Early Republic was an "Age of
Slave Unrest" (p. 85), marked by not only
Gabriel's plot, the Deslondes uprising,
the Vesey conspiracy, and Turner's
revolt, but by a steady stream of
individual and collective acts of insolence
and insurgency.
Wright's synthesis is a clear antidote
to the pervasive and persistent ten-
dency to think of slavery as defined by
cotton plantations and slave quarters.
He emphasizes that slavery not only
"was different from one property to the
next and from one region to the next but
also was a dynamic institution that
changed in one place over time" (p.
45). Wright describes the five American
Book Reviews
221
slave systems that existed between the
Revolution and the Jacksonian era and
is particularly effective at surveying
rural slave working conditions within the
framework of the plantation life cycle.
Wright tackles other myths, refuting
the view that slavery in the North was
milder than in the South or the myth
that the uprooting caused by the
domestic slave trade resulted only in minor
and short-term effect on Blacks and
their families. But, while Wright agrees
with Herbert Gutman and other historians
who have found evidence of signif-
icant and long-term emotional harm
resulting from this movement, he ne-
glects to use much of that powerful
evidence. Wright seems to prefer the
method and style of scholars such as
Fogel and Engerman, and thus we hear a
great deal about statistical samples and
demographic issues and too seldom
hear the illustrative voices of
African-Americans themselves.
Synthesizing from literature that
adheres to the more traditional and broad
definition of the antebellum period is
difficult, and in several ways African-
Americans in the Early Republic could be improved. More attention could be
paid to questions of culture within the
slave and free Black communities.
While Wright discusses slave religion
and the formation of independent
Black churches, little is said about
life in the quarters, the values and pastimes
of slaves or free African-Americans.
Wright mentions, for example, Philip
Morgan's discovery of a Low country
Black society that enjoyed a relatively
large degree of autonomy and thus
retained many African cultural an-
tecedents, but then tells us nothing
about the elements of that culture. And,
surprisingly, there is little discussion
of the sexual division of labor among
slaves or free African-Americans and
almost no consideration of women.
Despite Wright's claims for the
uniqueness of the period 1789-1831, one is
left wondering why this survey ends in
1831. By eschewing the late antebel-
lum years, Wright slights the mature
antislavery and Negro Convention
Movements, the tremendous western and
southerly shift in slave population
during the 1840s, and the substantial
increase in slave escapes and the rise of
the underground railroad during the
1850s. Still, as with his African-
Americans in the Colonial Era: From
African Origins through the American
Revolution (1990), the companion volume in the American History
Series,
Wright's book will be most useful as a
supplementary text. He accomplishes
a difficult synthesis and offers a
provocative challenge to traditional peri-
odization.
The Ohio State University Eric Karolak
Book Reviews
Scott Nearing: An Intellectual Biography. By
John A. Saltmarsh.
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1991. xii + 337p.; illustrations,
notes, manuscript sources, bibliography,
index. $39.95..)
Loving and Leaving the Good Life. By Helen Nearing. (Post Mills,
Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing
Company, 1992. 197p.; illustrations,
selected bibliography. $19.95.)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A
Nonfiction Reader. Edited by Larry
Ceplair.
(New York: Columbia University Press,
1991. xi + 345p.; notes, bibliogra-
phy, index. $62.00 cloth; $17.50 paper.)
"I Belong to the Working
Class": The Unfinished Autobiography of Rose
Pastor Stokes. Edited by Herbert Shapiro and David L. Sterling.
(Athens:
The University of Georgia Press, 1992.
xlv + 173p.; notes, index. $30.00.)
It is not always realized how full was
what might be called Scott Nearing's
first life. It took him as a maverick
academic from the University of
Pennsylvania's Wharton School of
Business to 1915. There and then he had
lost tenure and academic credentials. He
had defiantly carried on an anti-cap-
italist, anti-American message into
classrooms, continuous public appear-
ances, and some 20 books as well as
innumerable pamphlets, articles, and
ephemera. Given another academic chance
at the University of Toledo, he
continued his agitations against
"unearned capital" which produced wholesale
poverty, to which he then added
opposition to intervention in World War I.
This lost him his position in Toledo.
Though a shadow of a career still re-
mained in academic appearances before
student bodies willing to hear his ex-
tremist denunciations of capitalism and
government, his first life was largely
over.
He tried communism, but gave it up-and
was given up by its American
exponents-for lack of discipline to the
Party line. He is best remembered in
this connection for his and the
communist Joseph Freeman's 1926 book,
Dollar Diplomacy. For the most part Nearing and his second wife Helen
Nearing retired from economic but also social
oneness with American soci-
ety. They built houses first in Vermont,
then in Maine, growing vegetables
and writing about them, while society
itself endured the 1930s Depression, a
mightier war, then a protracted Youth
uprising which threatened national
foundations.
The measure of the Nearings's status in
society appears in the contrast be-
tween their 1954 publication of Living
the Good Life, then just another
Nearing publication, also involving such
books as Democracy is Not Enough
(1945), (with Helen Nearing) The
Maple Sugar Books (1950)-and a 1977