Ohio History Journal

BOOK REVIEWS

 

Three Virginia Frontiers. By Thomas P. Abernethy. (University,

La., Louisiana State University Press, 1940. 96p. $1.50).

In recent years various historical writers, including Louis

Hacker, Benjamin F. Wright, Jr., Murray Kane, and Fred A.

Shannon, have challenged or minimized the importance of Fred-

erick Jackson Turner's famous interpretation of the democratiz-

ing influence of the frontier upon American life and institutions.

Professor Abernethy's short volume is an additional contribution

to this "revisionist" literature. He sketches the development of

the three Virginia frontiers (the Tidewater, Piedmont, and Trans-

montane areas) as fairly representative of the first three stages in

the westward march of the whole American frontier. In tracing

this movement he was "impressed with the manner in which the

democratizing influence of the frontier was largely offset by such

countervailing factors as European customs and traditions, British

legal systems, and the methods by which the public lands were

disposed of." (Preface, p.ix.)

In the Tidewater region, Professor Abernethy finds that the

cost of migration to America, the undemocratic laws and prece-

dents, and the scarcity of towns (potentially focal points of dis-

content) were factors making for social stratification. This aris-

tocratic tradition "was established by law, supported by custom,

and accepted without serious question by all classes. For a hun-

dred years frontier conditions made only minor inroads against

it." (p.19.) In Bacon's Rebellion the author finds not a demon-

stration prompted by special frontier grievances but one "against

a governor who usurped the established rights of the people."

(p.24.)

In the movement into the Piedmont, moreover, the author

asserts that the path was blazed by prosperous Tidewater planters

who wanted additional lands for tobacco cultivation, for planta-

tions for younger sons, and for speculation. (p.42.)  Among

these people were the grandfather and father of Thomas Jefferson.

In the Shenandoah Valley and in southwestern Virginia greater

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democracy prevailed, but here also the law carried its conserva-

tive influence. (p.60.)

Among the early settlements in Kentucky were: (1) Those

in the rich Blue Grass region, where the leaders were speculators

for themselves or for absentee investors; (2) Those of a less

fertile type outside the Blue Grass area. Professor Abernethy

contends that when Kentucky attacked the problem of a state

constitution in 1792, the radicals drew part of their views from

the conservative "east", e.g. the Pennsylvania Constitutional Con-

vention at Philadelphia, which he suspects was "much more radi-

cally democratic" than anything ever produced by the American

frontier. He asserts that, in general, from 1792-1802 the estab-

lished leaders controlled Kentucky's affairs and passed enlightened

and even progressive legislation; and that when (1802) the radi-

cals, under Felix Grundy, scored a victory, the results were un-

fortunate. He believes that "the vulgarization of the judiciary

and of officeholding in general was one of the chief accomplish-

ments of that frontier leveling spirit of which so much has been

said by the historians of the West."

Professor Abernethy's interpretation is thus one which does

full justice to the importance and intelligence of the aristocratic

element, especially the liberal agrarian aristocracy of Jeffersonian

Republicanism. He admits that in Kentucky "perhaps the best

purpose served by frontier democracy was the pressure which it

brought to bear upon the more conservative leaders who, while

wishing to protect their interests, were in this period still indoc-

trinated with the philosophical ideas of the Revolutionary era."

(p.91.) Doubtless many readers will feel that Professor Aber-

nethy has not sufficiently stressed the importance of this pressure

in the struggle of the popular cause against conservative views.

FRANCIS PHELPS WEISENBURGER

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BOOK REVIEWS                    295

 

The Planting of Civilization in Western Pennsylvania. By Solon J.

Buck and Elizabeth Hawthorn Buck. (Pittsburgh, Univer-

sity of Pittsburgh Press., 1939. xiv + 565p. Illus. maps.)

This is one of the studies that grew out of the Western

Pennsylvania Historical Survey which was sponsored jointly by

the Buhl Foundation, the Historical Society of Western Pennsyl-

vania and the University of Pittsburgh. The survey was under

the direction of Dr. Buck for five years, 1930-5, and this work

represents one of its crowning achievements. Equally scholarly

and interesting studies by other members of the survey staff have

appeared from this press in the last few years.

The authors have presented a graphic account of the history

of the western part of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania down

to the War of 1812. The dominant theme is that evidenced by

the title, "The Planting of Civilization," and no significant phase

of human activity in that region has been neglected. Although

they have made scholarly use of both source materials and sec-

ondary works, they have spared no pains to present the story in

an interesting and popular manner.

A look at the table of contents reveals some 20 chapters. The

first few deal with the natural setting, the Indians, the early set-

tlers and their cultural heritage. Other chapters deal with the

establishment of political boundaries, the expansion of settlements,

frontier economy, transportation, domestic and community life,

and religion.

The value of the work is enhanced by more than 125 maps

and illustrations, and a bibliographic essay of 42 pages. The lat-

ter was prepared not merely to indicate sources of information

used by the authors, but to assist those who may be desirous of

doing further work in the field. Ohioans will find the volume of

interest because much of the history of Ohio and Western Penn-

sylvania for this period is the same.

W. D. O.

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Youth in Museums. By Eleanor M. Moore. (Philadelphia, Uni-

versity of Pennsylvania Press, 1941. 115p. Illus.)

The author of this book visited more than a hundred museums

in the United States and Canada in order to gather information

in regard to the work for children in museums. Some of these

were "adult ones with children's departments as well as those with

distinct children's museums," also included were those belonging

to other organizations such as boards of education and recreation

centers as well as "independent children's museums." The study

deals with those phases of museum work which are directly con-

cerned with children.

After discussing what is meant by the term "children's

museum" in the first chapter she devotes other chapters to such

topics as the staff, collections, exhibits, activities both supple-

mentary and independent, publications, and finances. The last

chapter discusses what may be anticipated for the future "Young

People's Museum."

The book should be very helpful not only to members of

museum staffs but also to administrators and trustees. It abounds

in ideas which can be modified to suit the individual situation. To

know how others have met and solved problems is likewise an

encouragement and inspiration.

The museum has a definite role in the field of progressive

education. The need for visual aids is on the increase and what

better place to find them than in the museum? As Miss Moore

says, the museum is "an educational institution in a treasure house

and a magic carpet which bears children from a land of books to

the land of things."

She emphasizes the importance of high standards which must

be maintained to keep the museum a true "treasure house." Yet

she warns lest these high standards result in a snobbishness which

repels rather than an excellence which invites. They should

result in a friendly house, open to all, especially to children, who

come frequently because of the vital interests to be found there.

After reading the book one feels that the number of pages

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BOOK REVIEWS                     297

 

is all too small--twice the number would have been better con-

sidering the type of material presented.

L. OLIVE CLEVENGER

 

 

The Catholic Church in Indiana.    By Thomas T. McAvoy.

(New York, Columbia University Press, 1940. 226p.)

The purpose of this volume is to examine the religious con-

tributions of the French in the state of Indiana, within the terri-

tory of the present dioceses of Fort Wayne and Indianapolis, and

the time from 1789 to 1834.

It is an explanation of the French Catholics' attitudes toward

faith and morals. Their laxity, however, is not condoned. It also

is a description of the hardships of life and of the customs on the

French frontier and a contrast with the life of the ordinary

American frontiersmen such as were found in Ohio.

New unpublished materials in the form of letters and jour-

nals of the priests who ministered to these Frenchmen were at

the author's disposal. The book is well documented, contains a

lengthy bibliography and a detailed index.

A. J. O.

 

 

Crusader in Crinoline--The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe. By

Forrest Wilson. (Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott Co., 1941.

⁷⁰⁶p. Illus. $3.75.)

This is without question one of the most readable biographies

of the year.

Although seven biographies of Mrs. Stowe had already been

written the author, after much research and acquirement of new

material, saw the opportunity for a new book embodying the re-

sults of this research and the product is one of the most success-

ful stories of modem times.

Mrs. Stowe was born in   1811 in Connecticut and died in

1896. For eighteen years of this term (1832-1850) she resided

in Ohio. She was married to Calvin Stowe in 1836. Her coming

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to this State was occasioned by her father, who had been induced

to move from New England to Cincinnati to establish a college

for the Presbyterians in the frontier West. This was the Lane

Theological Seminary. Calvin Stowe was a member of the fac-

ulty of that institution.

Mrs. Stowe's life spanned one of the most complicated and

interesting periods of American history. New England life was

still colonial when she was born and she lived through the pre-

Civil War, Civil War and post-Civil War eras of our national

history, and the years spent in Cincinnati were exciting ones,

politically, religiously and socially, to say nothing of riots and epi-

demics. She became interested in various aspects of human slav-

ery and became an antislavery crusader.

In 1850 she removed with her husband to Bowdoin College,

Maine, when he accepted a teaching position and, while the mother

of seven children, she began to write a story in 1851 which was

completed in about a year. This was Uncle Tom's Cabin which

had a tremendous reception both in the United States and in

Europe.

Many have considered her book one of the most outstanding

causes of the Civil War. In addition to this she wrote a number

of other books.

Mr. Wilson deals with her life in chronological order: Litch-

field, Connecticut, 1811-24; Hartford, Connecticut, 1824-32; Cin-

cinnati, Ohio, 1832-50; Brunswick, Maine, 1850-52; Andover,

Massachusetts, 1852-64, and Hartford, 1864-96. The book con-

tains thirty illustrations and a chapter of eight pages giving

sources of material. There is an excellent index.

The author was born in Ohio, and began his early career as

a newspaper reporter in Cleveland. He lived for a number of

years in Paris, France, and now resides in Weston, Connecticut.

H. L.

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BOOK REVIEWS                    299

 

Let My People Go. By Henrietta Buckmaster. (New York,

Harper and Brothers, 1941. 398p. Illus. $3.50.)

The appearance of this book which tells the story of the Un-

derground Railroad and the growth of the abolition movement

supplements the recent book of Forrest Wilson, Crusader in Crin-

oline, which is the life of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Miss Buck-

master tells the story of the origin of the Underground Railroad

and how it operated, in a series of nine chapters. The first of

these gives a very graphic word picture of the road and the way

it operated and this is followed by the history of the growth of

abolition through its various phases until the days of Reconstruc-

tion following the Civil War. The book reveals a great amount

of research into newspapers, diaries, books, contemporary docu-

ments and personal evidence. Particular mention is made of the

research and collection of Professor Wilbur H. Siebert of the

Ohio State University on the Underground Railroad and the book

tells, as perhaps no other one book does, how the North organized

the means of leading slaves from the southern plantations to free-

dom. The book has a very exhaustive classified bibliography of

fourteen pages.

Miss Buckmaster was born in Cleveland, Ohio, but has spent

most of her life in New York.

H. L.

 

 

Washington and the Revolution. By Bernhard Knollenberg.

(New  York, Macmillan Company, 1940. 269p.     $3.00.)

This reappraisal of Washington and his generals during the

Revolution is the product of many years' study of contemporary

letters and diaries by a lawyer who has recently been made libra-

rian at Yale University. Among the outstanding features of the

book are: a defense of General Horatio Gates, evidence in support

of a belief that the so-called Conway Cabal was a myth, and a

deflation of Washington. The latter is accomplished, more by in-

creasing the stature of Washington's contemporaries, than by

debunking the general himself. However he reveals "Washing-

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ton's hypersensitiveness to criticism and morbid determination to

prove himself always in the right; traits which led him to shift

responsibility for his errors to others and to be unduly suspicious

of the motives of those who ventured to criticize or differ with

him. It brings out his misunderstanding of those whose social or

economic status was different from his own and shows that his

judgment in military matters was sometimes fallible."

The author set himself to the task, with apparent success, of

showing that practically all writers on the subject of Washington

and the Revolution, both in biography and general history, have

been unduly critical of Gates and have accepted the existence of

some sort of conspiracy among the generals, and certain mem-

bers of the Continental Congress, to replace Washington as

commander-in-chief. He gives author and page citations in his

refutation of the treatment of Washington by "the historians"

from Jared Sparks to Rupert Hughes and he particularly empha-

sizes the fact that the contributors of the sketches on Revolution-

ary figures in the recently completed Dictionary of American

Biography all assumed the existence of the Conway Cabal. The

tendency of historians to puff up Washington at the expense of

his less important colleagues, he believes, resulted from the fact

that we had no heritage of great public men and that it was essen

tial for our national pride that we endow our first great national

hero with the excellent qualities that would be attributed to several

personages in a nation having a longer history.

The volume has a good index, a bibliography and a large ap-

pendix containing much of the controversial material. For a work

replete with quotations from the sources, and from "the historians"

he refutes, it is not ponderous and the general reader will find it

both interesting and quite readable. Some scholars may not ap-

prove of the book in all its aspects but must admit that Mr. Knol-

lenberg has escaped the tendency of many former writers on this

subject to accept Washington's own view of himself, as set forth

in his letters, as a correct statement of the facts.

W. D. O.

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BOOK REVIEWS                     301

Lazare Carnot: Republican Patriot. By Huntley Dupre. (Ox-

ford, 0., Mississippi Valley Press, 1940. 343P. $4.50.)

Lazare Carnot, the powerful and ubiquitous figure in the

French Revolution, is portrayed here as saturated with the philos-

ophy of Rousseau, though differing in certain ideas from him.

This dynamo of energy differed in other respects from the man

whose ideology influenced him so greatly: Carnot was thorough

in his planning and execution, devoting much time and pains to

detail; he also believed in action both for himself and for those

with whom he was associated. In this volume Professor Dupre

traces Carnot's life in its multifarious detail. The reader becomes

acquainted with Carnot as an engineering student, as an army

officer writing works on mechanics and on Vauban, as a legislator

and member on mission, as member of the Directory, as an exile,

and as minister of interior during the Hundred Days (Napoleon

offered him the title of count, but the confirmed republican refused

it).

It is regrettable that this is not a better life of Carnot, because

it is obvious that Professor Dupre spent much labor in gathering

material for it. Much of that material has undoubtedly been in-

corporated. The pity is that it has not been more thoroughly

digested. The book is poorly organized, and suffers from repeti-

tions. It appears to the reviewer that the author might have im-

proved his product had he worked over his notes and organization

for some considerable time. The same material better organized

would present a wholly different and more satisfying result.

The result as presented informs the reader of many facts

about Carnot, it does not permit the reader to know him. One

does not know him as an individual; one knows him only as a

student and as a man whose moving passion was love of his coun-

try. As a full picture of Carnot it is unsatisfactory.

At times the author presupposes considerable knowledge of

the subject. And yet there are many repetitions of fact. On

page 88 and on page 91 the reader is informed that Toulon sur-

rendered to Admiral Hood. In like manner the French were de-

feated at Neerwinden on page 71 and on page 79. At times the

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facts are badly marshaled. For example, after writing several

pages about Carnot's reports to the Committee of Public Safety,

the author then describes the creation of the Committee. Nothing

is apparent in the material to make this arrangement necessary.

There are many mistakes in proofreading. It will be neces-

sary to detail but a few of them. On page 70 "adject" is obviously

meant for "abject," on page 146 is "harrass," on page 155 are

"San Sebastien" and "independance," and on page 210 is the

phrase "touches we deeply."

There is a bibliography and an index of proper names.

JOHN H. McMINN

 

 

"Mr. Secretary." By Ben Ames Williams, Jr. (New York,

Macmillan Co., 1940. 507p. $2.50.)

This is an "autobiography" of Edwin M. Stanton, second

Secretary of War under Lincoln, and purports to have Stanton

tell his story from his childhood days to 1866 when President

Johnson vetoed the Freedmen's Bureau bill.

Stanton shows himself possessed of a huge egoism, an inde-

scribable conceit, and an ineffable ambition. These three qualities

remain in the reader's mind as the dominant ones in Stanton's

character.  The author also pictures a devoted husband and

father, and a man who would not permit "thought of person

to interfere with what would be the best for the Union." (p.¹⁷⁶.)

From the time when shortly after the outbreak of the War

Between the States Stanton became convinced the North would

be able to win eventually, his conduct was dominated, according

to this interpretation, by one principal motive: to prolong the

war. Stanton did not doubt the North would win, but he did not

want a quick victory. For that would mean that the South was

crushed merely on the field of battle. Stanton wanted the war

prolonged in order that the South might have her economic sys-

tem and her morale exhausted.

With Stanton it was to be a war of attrition, and after he be-

came Secretary of War his official conduct was calculated to effect

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BOOK REVIEWS                    303

that aim. He planned how to withdraw men from northern gen-

erals when they seemed in a position to deal an overwhelming

blow to the Confederate Army. After he had seen to it that an

entire corps was kept to defend Washington and Stanton feared

that as a consequence McClellan might resign or rush madly into

battle, Stanton is made to write this sentence: "I did not wish a

great defeat, but I would have been willing to sacrifice the army

of the Potomac if it had been necessary for me to do so to prevent

McClellan's taking Richmond." (p.343.) When Burnside was

defeated Stanton realized that he had been mistaken in him, but

is made to admit by the author that he had not considered Burn-

side as carefully as he might have, but that he had felt obliged to

remove McClellan before he had time to fight another battle and

possibly crush Lee.

Stanton was also convinced that Lincoln would make too

generous a peace with the Confederacy, and believed him "a threat

to the future security of the nation." (p.430.) He knew of the

plan to assassinate Lincoln the day before it was to be attempted.

He thought upon reading the note to this effect which was pushed

under his door that it would be a good thing for the Nation if

the plan succeeded. The next morning he had his wife cancel

their engagement to attend the theater with the Lincolns that eve-

ning; that evening Lincoln was shot. When he heard that Lincoln

was dead, he thought to himself: "Lincoln's dead. Reconstruc-

tion can now be done!"

Ben Ames Williams, Jr., allows his character to act out his

own life and does not intrude. Yet, what a self-centered, egotis-

tic, ambitious, unscrupulous character he has created. It is pos-

sible that this method of presentation makes Stanton more despic-

able than a diatribe against him could have. The work may con-

vince the uninitiate that they know the "true," the "real" Stanton;

it must however be classed as a tour de force.

The author includes a list of books from which the facts of

Stanton's life were taken.

JOHN H. McMINN

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