Book Reviews
The Barber and the Historian: The
Correspondence of George A. Myers and
James Ford Rhodes, 1910-1923. Edited by John A. Garraty. (Columbus:
Ohio Historical Society, 1956.
xxiv??156p.; illustrations and index. Paper,
$3.00.)
The publication of this correspondence,
first in successive issues of the
Ohio Historical Quarterly during 1955 and now in book form, is a note-
worthy event on several counts. In the
first place, the letters give an
intimate view of James Ford Rhodes which
adds to our respect for that
historian. He emerges from the
correspondence as a man of broad humanity,
humor, and candor, a man unaffected by
his fame. There is practically no
condescension (unless one counts the
gift of used ties) in his attitude
towards his correspondent, a Negro
barber, who had once served him in
Cleveland. He had his private jokes with
Myers. The two discussed pro-
hibition, for example, in a bantering
tone only possible where mutual respect
exists. Rhodes even permitted a
plaintive note of envy to creep into one
letter. "In many ways," the
historian wrote his friend, "you are in an en-
viable position. You are in a growing
city, in a good hotel and see most
people worth knowing who talk confidentially
with you. May you continue
to live long and prosper" (p. 100).
Rhodes's admiration for Myers (an
admiration abundantly reciprocated)
was well merited, for the barber was an
uncommonly talented man. Mem-
bers of the historical profession and
laymen alike are grateful to have this
portrait of a little known,
all-but-forgotten man to add to the roster of
remarkable American Negroes. Myers
possessed sharpness and toughness of
intellect, shrewd judgment, combined
with character, forthrightness, humor,
magnanimity, and sensitivity of feeling.
Few men are capable of speaking for
an oppressed people with the balance of
good sense and moving sincerity
which Myers summons to the cause of the
Negro in the United States.
This brings us to the second reason why
this is a notable publication.
These letters contribute significantly
to an understanding of the Negro
psychology in politics and aid in
explaining why the Negro remained so
long allied to the Republican party
which reformers identified with privilege
and reaction. The answer is this. The
old-line Republican leaders like
96
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
McKinley, Hanna, Foraker, Taft showed
more sympathy and respect for
the colored man in politics than did the
"lily-white" T. Roosevelt Pro-
gressives, the
"segregationist" Wilsonian Democrats, or the labor unions
which discriminated against the black
race. Not until F.D.R.'s New Deal
did reformers aid materially this
minority group and bring about a political
revolution in Negro voting habits.
A third contribution of this
correspondence is the unforgettable portrait
which Myers limns of Marcus Alonzo
Hanna, a portrait which adds sharpness
and depth to Herbert Croly's
characterization. "Uncle Mark," who had
married Rhodes's sister, was the
barber's hero, yet a life-and-blood hero, not
a shadowy, pale paragon. As an example
of Myers' power of characterization,
on which the historian more than once
complimented him, this pen por-
trait of Hanna is worth quoting:
We knew Mr. Hanna [wrote Myers] to be a
rough brusque character with
an indomitable will of his own that
respected the rights of no one who stood
in the way of his successful
accomplishment of the object he had set out to
accomplish. This of Mr. Hanna as a man.
I knew him better as a politician
and one well-versed and trained by him
to his methods. It was a question
with him, can you do it? Don't fail, but
do it, never mind the other fellow,
so long as the end justified the means.
Do it get it done and then let the
other fellow howl. Like the good boss
that he was, there was never any
question about expense; Results was what
he demanded not expense ac-
counts. Mr. Hanna was a square and
honest man, his word once given was
never broken. He neither asked quarter
of any political adversary or gave it.
He planned every political coup the same
as he would a business deal.
He introduced commercialism into
politics and believed that to the victor
belonged the spoils. He neither
advocated or practiced the doctrine of Civil
Service. Hence I claim the author in his
endeavor to enshroud Mr. Hanna
with angelic qualities in his political
dealings, has given to us a new Mr.
Hanna which would not be acceptable even
to Mr. Hanna was he alive,
because Mr. Hanna had so much faith in
himself, believing his methods to
be honest, above reproach and criticism.
(pp. 15-16).
Myers does not quibble about his own
share in adding to the "com-
mercialism" of politics, frankly
acknowledging that he "materially con-
tributed in a 'pure and incorruptible'
way, with the prefix left off the
incorruptible" (p. 101) to the game
of politics as practiced in the good
"Old Hanna Days." He argued
that the use of bribe money in Hanna's
election to the United States Senate in
1897-98 was not "a dishonest act" but
"simply playing the game" (p.
108). Although the defense is a lame one,
it does throw light on the political
code of that time.
BOOK REVIEWS 97
Uncle Mark looms largest in these pages,
but there is ample commentary
on a host of other Ohio and national
political figures of the decades from
1890 through 1920. Although a
McKinley-Hanna henchman from 1892
to 1900, Myers had refused political
office, preferring the security of his
barbershop in the Hotel Hollenden to the
uncertainties of politics. After
1900 he became a political observer
entirely rather than a participant, but
his commentary is no less keen, for he
enjoyed an inside view into con-
temporary events through the political
"greats" who patronized his shop.
They willingly shared confidences with
him because he could be trusted to
keep such information to himself. His
remarks are almost always shrewd
even though colored by a partisan bias.
He was a rabid Republican, con-
servative on the tariff, money, and
labor, on everything except the Negro
question. Nevertheless, he can be more
harsh in his criticism of some
Republican politicians than of any
Democrat. The misconduct of Harry A.
Daugherty as attorney general in
Harding's cabinet, for example, did not
surprise Myers, who possessed enough
derogatory information to have pre-
vented that Ohio politician's
confirmation by the senate. The barber had
little enthusiasm for Theodore
Roosevelt, whom Rhodes so much admired.
There is one final contribution which is
of marked significance and that
is Myers' commentary on Rhodes's History.
He was critical of Rhodes
for not having given the Negro soldier
enough credit in the Civil War and
for the treatment of the southern Negro
in Reconstruction. As the middle
man he tried to draw Rhodes into a
debate with a Negro critic, John R.
Lynch, but the historian refused to
break his rule never to indulge in con-
troversies. He did, however, read
Lynch's critique, which expressed a point
of view long familiar to him and was
generous enough to give the colored
critic the benefit of the doubt on two
statements which would be corrected
with proper acknowledgment in the next
edition. Myers' comments on the
last volume of the History, The
McKinley and Roosevelt Administrations,
are not critical but emendatory. The
letter of February 16, 1923, the longest
in the correspondence, is devoted almost
entirely to the barber's fascinating
addenda to the Rhodes story.
Professor Garraty of Michigan State
University is to be congratulated for
his careful yet unpedantic editing and
for the Introduction with its in-
dispensable biographical sketch of George
A. Myers. The publishers are to
be commended for the excellent format
and for the selection of the striking
portraits of the two principals.
Kenyon College LANDON WARNER
98 THE OHIO
HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Freedom's Fetters: The Alien and
Sedition Laws and American Civil
Liberties. By James Morton Smith. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University
Press, 1956. Published in co-operation
with the Institute of Early Ameri-
can History and Culture. xv??464p.;
appendix, bibliographical note, and
index. $5.00.)
The use of fear of foreign attack as a
weapon to silence domestic political
opponents constitutes by now a fairly
familiar technique in the history of
all political parties. But in 1798, in
what Jefferson called the "reign of
witches," the four measures
collectively titled the Alien and Sedition Laws
were by far the most flagrantly abusive
the modern world had yet seen.
Under them the safeguards of the Bill of
Rights were conveniently ignored,
to the point that mere spiteful words
were branded as seditious and their
utterers banished to terms in prison.
Thus, one Jedidiah Peck was charged
with criminally circulating a petition
for redress of grievances; Harrison
Gray Otis accused the Jeffersonians of
treason on the ground that they
opposed the alien bill itself; and
Matthew Lyon, a congressman, went to
prison for sedition for referring in a
newspaper letter to President Adams'
"continual grasp for power"
and his "unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp,
foolish adulation or selfish
avarice." The number of arrests, indictments,
and convictions for similar offenses ran
into the hundreds.
To contemporary ears calloused by the
magnificent name-calling of the
last twenty years, these are indeed
almost mere ripples in the sound waves
of political discord. Nowadays the
tongue is more clever, the stakes perhaps
higher, the attack more varied with the
use of nuance and inference; but
the essential design remains the same.
Where the Federalists sought to
intimidate those who denied the
exclusive right of the wealthy and well-
born to govern, the contemporary
neo-Federalists seek, essentially for the
same reason, to silence those who
dissent from the existing social, political,
or economic order.
Mr. Smith, avoiding what must have been
a powerful temptation, has
studiously refrained from drawing the
obvious painful analogies to more
recent events, but they emerge by
implication nonetheless. Instead of the
French we now have the specter of
Russian communism as the revolutionary
force to be defeated at all costs; and
instead of unconstitutional enactments
followed by equally unconstitutional
arrests, trials, and convictions, we now
have an attempt at a semblance of
respectability by the use of the so-called
congressional "investigation,"
a word currently earning a new meaning in
English usage. It is, indeed, debatable
whether the extremists of the
eighteenth century, with the use of
criminal statutes, or those of the twentieth,
BOOK REVIEWS 99
with the use of congressional
committees, are the more despicable. The
victims themselves, given a choice,
might be hard pressed to choose be-
tween a term in jail or a lifetime of
public disgrace, financial ruin, and
professional excommunion.
Mr. Smith's book is neatly readable and
so rich in detail one imagines
he resisted vigorously all pressures to
discard any morsel uncovered in his
research. This is, of course, not
intended as adverse criticism; on the con-
trary, the book is the ablest and
probably most definitive account yet
written of the nation's earliest
tyranny.
Columbus
MILTON FARBER
Frontier Politics and the Sectional
Conflict: The Pacific Northwest on the
Eve of the Civil War. By Robert W. Johannsen. (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 1955. xiii??240p.;
illustrations, bibliography, and
index. $5.00.)
Politically speaking, the Pacific
Northwest in the late ante-bellum period
consisted of Oregon, organized as a
territory in 1848 and admitted to the
Union eleven years later, and Washington
territory, carved from Oregon
in 1853. Because of Oregon's advanced
position and its greater population,
it receives major attention in Frontier
Politics and the Sectional Conflict.
The clash in this remote area was less
potent than in older portions of the
United States; despite remoteness and
isolation, sectional issues acquired
impressive significance. Frontier
Politics repeats some of the old story of
sectional conflict as perspective;
greater space is devoted to a new analysis
of the local scene. Dr. Johannsen makes
two contributions in this premise:
he disentangles the complex factionalism
of the Pacific Northwest, and he
indicates clearly variations from the
national pattern wrought by frontier
influences.
Quite appropriately the study begins
with sources of settlers and their
attitudes toward slavery. Some New
Englanders created discord, but a
border state attitude toward slavery and
the free Negro prevailed; the
views of extremists, whether
abolitionists or fire-eaters, were rejected. Per-
haps the most significant variation from
the northern pattern was Republican
acceptance of popular sovereignty, an
endorsement determined by conviction
as well as expediency. To Oregon
pioneers that principle meant self-
government. The convergence in Oregon of
Douglas Democrats and Re-
publicans on this issue reached a climax
in 1860, when cooperation led to
the election of Republican Edward D.
Baker and Democrat James W.
100
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Nesmith to the United States Senate. The
stalwart Joseph Lane was thus
repudiated after the Breckinridge wing
of the Democracy made him the
party's candidate for the vice
presidency.
While popular sovereignty was the
foremost issue among the three
Oregon parties, the homestead and
Pacific railroad proposals were advocated
by Republicans; but as Democrats also
endorsed these measures effective
use by Republicans was diminished.
Neither Douglas Democrats nor Re-
publicans accepted unqualifiedly the
national platform of their party. Election
results varied from the northern
pattern. Only one other free state chose
Lincoln electors by a plurality, and
only one other gave Breckinridge a
larger vote than Douglas. After the war
began, Union sentiment in the
Pacific Northwest increased: many
Douglas Democrats were converted to
support of the Lincoln administration,
and a remnant of the Breckinridge
group became a Copperhead faction. But
conservatism was everywhere ap-
parent: Oregon had two Douglas Democrats
in the United States Senate
and another in the governor's chair.
Frontier Politics is essentially a study of events and movements, but
there are valuable notes on a score of
Pacific Northwest politicians, most
of them little known beyond the area.
Dr. Johannsen could have enhanced
the value of his volume if he had
introduced an occasional comparison of
northwestern politics with the sectional
clash on the contemporary Kansas
frontier. Historians in search of social
and economic factors that supposedly
affected political alignments will be
disappointed in his book. Such factors
are suggested here and there, but he
adheres closely, perhaps wisely, to
his political and sectional theme. The
author should be commended for
achieving his major purpose.
University of Oregon WENDELL HOLMES STEPHENSON
The American Presidency. By Clinton Rossiter. (New York: Harcourt Brace
and Company, 1956. 175p.; appendices and
index. $2.95.)
This book is the direct outgrowth of the
author's Walgreen lectures at
Chicago this spring, and indirectly the
distillation of a course in the subject
he has given at Cornell for some years.
It has already reached the drug-
stores and airports in a paper-backed
edition, too. It deserves the widest
circulation it can get, for in small
compass it says more, and says it more
readably, than anything of similar scope
on the subject that has appeared.
Only the first of the six chapters,
which sketches the powers of the
presidency under a half dozen functional
categories, is conventionally
familiar. The third, on the presidency
in history, as the office came from
BOOK REVIEWS 101
the framers and as it has been molded by
strong presidents, is also familiar
but more freshly written. The second, on
the limits of the presidency,
reminds us of reasons why the recurrent
cries of presidential "dictatorship"--
as distinct from occasional lapses into
abuse of power--have never in
practice materialized from the images
conjured up in partisan argument.
The meatiest chapter, the fourth, on the
modern presidency, analyzes
with perception the major
transformations in the character of the office
over the past three decades: the
president's working relations with congress,
his exploitation of new channels of
communication, his role of Protector of
the Peace--a "one-man riot
squad"--and the institutionalization of his
office in the staff of the executive
office of the president. In this chapter
too are a few pages of good sense on the
"frustrating office" of vice president.
In his spiciest chapter, the fifth, on
the modern presidents, he ventures
to rank Roosevelt, Truman, and
Eisenhower among their predecessors, in
anticipation of the verdict of future
historians. It is an intrepid essay and
his estimates will surprise or shock a
good many readers--he gives Eisen-
hower only "a reasonable
chance" of measuring up to Truman's stature, for
instance. But they are disarmingly
labelled as opinions, and they are based
on eight criteria, stated at the outset
and applied without fear or favor
to one and all.
The last chapter, on the presidency
reconsidered, mulls judiciously over
the various proposals for change that
have been agitated. Rossiter plumps
for an item veto, regrets the
twenty-second amendment, and would be
willing to try an experiment with an
executive-legislative council, but other-
wise he would leave the institution to
elbow its own way in the future.
Rossiter's previous writings have
brought him acclaim which this book
should enhance. They have also given him
the reputation of a conservative.
It is an ironic commentary on the
ambiguity of that label that long con-
templation here has led him to admire
the object of his gaze principally
because of its dynamic responses to
democratic needs, and to oppose changes
in it because of its capacity for adaptation.
Ohio State University HARVEY C. MANSFIELD
Wilderness Christians: The Moravian
Mission to the Delaware Indians.
By Elma E. Gray in collaboration with
Leslie Robb Gray. (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1956. xi??354p.;
illustrations, maps, appendix,
bibliographical note, and index. $5.00.)
In missionary work among the American
Indians in colonial times the
Moravians of Pennsylvania played a small
but vital role. From their center
102
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
at Bethlehem the emissaries of the
church of the Unitas Fratrum went among
the Delawares and established missions
upon the Delaware and Susquehanna
rivers. At these centers little bands of
Christian Indians were maintained
under their tutelage and strict
supervision, for the Moravians were exacting
in their standards. The Delawares on the
other hand were degenerate from
the white man's influence and were
dominated by the powerful Iroquois
Confederacy of New York. Intercolonial
wars and later the Revolution
placed these Christian Indians in a
compromising position. The Moravians
were pacifists and taught their charges
to be neutrals. When the Delawares
went to war the "Wilderness
Christians" were suspected by both sides,
and repeatedly were forced to move on,
farther west in Pennsylvania, and
then to new settlements at Gnadenhutten
and Schoenbrunn on the Mus-
kingum River in Ohio. During the
Revolution, John Heckewelder and David
Zeisberger strove to preserve the
mission way of life, while both British
and Americans suspected that neutrality
was but a cloak for secret aid to the
enemy. Some of their towns were
destroyed and they moved on again to
Detroit, and then to Ontario, Canada. At
Detroit of course they were on dis-
puted ground after the Revolution.
Americans quite naturally looked upon
them as British tools during British
occupation. Their eventual settlement
along the Thames River brought them
under the Canadian Indian Office. It
was their misfortune to be in the path
of the American invasion during the
War of 1812, when again they received
harsh treatment. For some time the
settlements at Fairfield and New
Fairfield (after 1812) were model com-
munities, but as new settlers poured in
and new economic, social, and religious
interests affected them they gradually
lost their grip. Was it the disappearance
of the old missionary spirit among their
leaders, the weakening of mission
Indians themselves, or the impossibility
of the old and strict communal
Christianity in the new era? At any
rate, the experiment came to an end and
is marked today only by some physical
survivals--the church at New Fairfield
and the descendants of the Christian
Indians.
This tragic story, with its succession
of migrations and frustrated ventures
and its record of privation and self
sacrifice on the part of the devoted
missionaries, has been told by Mrs. Gray
with sympathy and warmth. She
had a wealth of material in the Moravian
diaries and other sources in the
Moravian archives, and she has
diligently followed her subjects in field
research. She writes well and has
illumined her story with fascinating details
of life in the wilderness and its effect
upon these pioneers. The progress of
the missionary effort, with its
achievements as well as failures, is of course
the major theme. Missionary diarists,
however, tend to cast an optimistic
glow of hope over the most distressing
and unpromising ventures, and it
BOOK REVIEWS 103
requires some objectivity to keep the
picture in balance. And there is also
at times much tedious detail in the
records of the families of the
missionaries.
This story has already received some
attention from students of Penn-
sylvania German culture, its migration
through Ohio, and its survival in
Canada. Mrs. Gray has dwelt with evident
pleasure upon the German
customs, cooking, and crafts as they
were exercised by the Moravians and
their charges. There is an anachronism,
however, when she mentions
lithography (invented about 1796) as one
of the crafts practiced by the
Moravians in the colonial period (p.
27).
On the whole the treatment is scholarly
and well documented and few
errors have been noted. There is an
incorrect translation of the Indian name
of Joseph Brant, Thayendanegea (p. 112).
One would anticipate some bias
in a work on a religious group, and one
notes that other denominations in
the Indian field, such as the Methodists
and Anglicans, get unfavorable
comment in their few contacts with the
Brethren. Illustrations and two maps
indicating present-day and former
locations embellish the book. Yet the
reader may wish with the reviewer that
one map might have traced the
various migrations.
Albany, New York MILTON
W. HAMILTON
The Mackinac Bridge Story. By Prentiss M. Brown. (Detroit: Wayne State
University Press, 1956. [xii]??25p.;
diagrams. $1.00.)
In 1948 the Detroit Historical Society
instituted an annual program known
as the Lewis Cass Lecture, in which a
subject of current historical interest was
to be presented to the society and later
distributed in published form. In
the years that followed, lectures on
variegated historical subjects have been
given by Stanley Pargellis, Raymond C.
Miller, Frank Woodford, R. Darwin
Burroughs, S. K. Stevens, and Milo M.
Quaife. The seventh of these
lectures, which has to do with the
building of the Mackinac Bridge, was
presented in May 1955 by Prentiss M.
Brown and now appears in published
form. The story of this great bridge,
which, when completed, will join the
northern and southern peninsulas of
Michigan, is of great interest to the
people of Michigan, and Mr. Brown, a
former president of the Detroit His-
torical Society and the Michigan
Historical Commission, is uniquely qualified
to tell the story. Born in St. Ignace,
Michigan, he has been a lawyer, prose-
cuting attorney, congressman, United
States senator, federal administrator,
business executive, and perhaps more
importantly for the purpose of this
104
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
subject the chairman of the Mackinac
Bridge Authority which finally suc-
ceeded in getting the bridge under
construction. The magnitude of this enter-
prise is impressive. Extending 8,614
feet from cable anchorage to cable
anchorage, the Mackinac Bridge will
exceed the next largest suspension
bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge, by 2,164
feet. Although the Mackinac
Bridge Authority, which was established
in 1950, was the body which set the
final activities into motion, the
bridge, when completed, will be the creation
of many hands, as public-spirited
citizens of Michigan have been dreaming,
planning, and working on this project
since 1884. Mr. Brown describes all
of these painstaking efforts in this
informing little case-study of American
democracy at work. He has done a good
job.
Ohio State University FRANCIS R. AUMANN
Tecumseh, Vision of Glory. By Glenn Tucker. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill
Company, 1956. 399p.; frontispiece,
maps, bibliographical note, and index.
$5.00.)
Tecumseh was perhaps the greatest of
several American Indians who
visualized the potential significance of
a confederation of tribes to check the
encroachment of the whites. Son of a
Shawnee father and of a Muskogee
Creek mother, he was born on the banks
of Mad River in what is now the
state of Ohio. When Ohio entered the
Union, Tecumseh, probably in his
thirties, was able to recognize the
deterioration among the Indians, the in-
exorable expansion of the frontier, and
the unpromising future of his and
the neighboring tribes. With the aid of
his brother, the Prophet, who
preached reformation to the redskins,
Tecumseh sought to unite the tribes-
men in a confederation which could give
military backing to his refusal to
cede more land to the United States. His
particular opponent was William
Henry Harrison, who defeated the Prophet
and his braves while Tecumseh
sought unsuccessfully to secure allies
among the southern Indians. When the
War of 1812 commenced, Tecumseh joined
the British to defeat Harrison,
but was killed in the Battle of the
Thames.
The author tells us that he devoted some
attention to the accounts written
by individuals who knew Tecumseh or who
participated in the events of his
life, but that he did not confine his
writing to such first-hand accounts. At
times no supporting evidence is
presented as in this hard-to-accept statement:
"[Tecumseh] was acquainted with
Shakespeare and the Scriptures and under-
stood the campaigns of Hannibal and
Alexander the Great" (p. 15). The
author also wrote: "I have
approached my subject as an amateur and have
BOOK REVIEWS 105
tried to pursue it with the diligence,
nostalgia and imagination of an
amateur" (p. 382).
The extent of Tucker's exaggeration of
Tecumseh's role may be quickly
grasped from his own words: "Three
months after the declaration of war by
the United States against Great Britain,
Tecumseh was at the summit of his
spectacular career. No other Indian had
wielded such power. The domain . . .
[of no Indian leader compared] to the
prairie empire [dominated by
Tecumseh]. . . . Authority . . . rested
in the hands of this one man" (pp.
14-15). This picture ignores the results
of the Battle of Tippecanoe on
the Indian confederation and does not
credit the English Indian department
for arousing Indians to cooperate with
General Henry A. Proctor's army.
The picture in respect to the English is
also erroneous. Tucker accepted
the statements of General Isaac Brock as
though they were both complete
and accurate, but rejected American
statements as untrue. Tucker stated that
Tecumseh did not visit Canada until
November 15, 1810 (p. 175), but
the Diary of William Claus on June 13,
1808, reads: "The Prophet's
Brother and party arrived." The
author also wrote that the motives of Sir
James Craig, governor general of Canada,
"were most friendly to the United
States (p. 172)," and that "It
was not the British who urged Tecumseh to
war, but Tecumseh who urged the
British" (p. 172). On the contrary, Craig
had urged securing the Indians to the
British interest as early as December
1807 (Canadian Archives, 107 Q 209). The
Chesapeake-Leopard Affair of
June 22, 1807, caused the Canadian
officials to realize the possibility of war
with the United States at the time Napoleon
was at the height of his power.
The reinstatement of Mathew Elliott as
superintendent of Indian affairs at
Amherstburg (Malden), the key post in
relation to the tribesmen in the
United States, indicated the direction
of Canadian policy. Elliott had been
a leader of the Indians under Lieutenant
Governor Henry Hamilton against
the American frontier during the
Revolution. Even a Canadian official re-
garded Elliott as too friendly with the
Indians, but he was retained in this
critical post from 1808 until his death
in 1814. He was a bitter foe of the
Americans. The apprehension of the
English cooled somewhat when war did
not occur in 1807, but whenever American
relations worsened they resumed
negotiations with the Indians. When they
urged the Indians to remain at
peace, they were not merely concerned
with peace but with the preservation
of the power of the Indians for future
eventualities.
The division of labor between Tecumseh
and the Prophet requires more
adequate delineation. Tucker exaggerated
the power of Tecumseh but mini-
mized the Prophet.
106
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
This volume should call attention to the
lack of a critical biography of
these Indian leaders. Tucker's volume
does not fill the need, although the
work is attractive and the story is
interestingly told.
Indiana University JOHN D. BARNHART
So Fell The Angels. By Thomas Graham Belden and Marva Robins Belden.
(Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1956.
401p.; illustrations and index.
$5.00.)
Both in conception and execution this is
a remarkable book. It attempts
to present a composite biography of
three persons, Salmon P. Chase, his
daughter, Kate, and her husband, William
Sprague. This unusual approach
has validity and relevance since the
lives of these people affected each other
greatly and, though their characters
presented many points of contrast, they
were all dominated by a common trait,
ambition.
Chase's ambition was to become president
of the United States. By a
strange combination of energy, ability,
and just sheer luck he worked his
way up through Ohio politics to become
United States Senator and later
governor of the state. Though lacking a
national reputation he hoped to
capture the Republican nomination for the
presidency in 1860 and was
bitterly disappointed when the voters of
Ohio made Lincoln the candidate.
Nevertheless he campaigned for the
Republican party and when Lincoln
became president he appointed Chase
secretary of the treasury. This office
Chase filled with ability, even
distinction, but, courting the favor of the
Radical Republicans, he utilized every
opportunity for gaining the nomination
in 1864. Again he failed, but Lincoln,
ignoring the scheming, connivance,
and what amounted to disloyalty on Chase's
part, appointed him chief
justice of the United States Supreme
Court when Taney died in December
1864. Still Chase's lust was unassuaged:
he later switched parties in a
desperate but vain attempt to capture
the presidency.
Kate's ambition was a mere reflection of
her father's but it dominated
her whole life. It was not enough for
her to be the most beautiful, the
most brilliant, the most influential,
and the richest hostess in Washington.
Her father must be president and to that
end she dedicated her life, her
fortune, and, yes, her honor. The
ambition of William Sprague was much
more difficult to define: probably what
he wanted most was self-respect. He
somehow imagined that he could achieve
this by accumulating one of the
largest fortunes of the time (something
in the neighborhood of twenty-five
million dollars); by achieving military
and political notoriety, if not fame;
BOOK REVIEWS 107
and by marrying Kate Chase. One need
hardly add that none of these people
achieved the object of their desires:
they all died frustrated and for the
most part unloved and unmourned.
This book then is a character study and
as such it succeeds admirably.
But it is more. It is an excellent study
in the social history of the Civil War
era. There have been other biographies
of Chase and his daughter but
none have succeeded so well in portraying
their characters and in bringing an
era to life. William Sprague has been
largely ignored by historians but
the authors in uncovering an intensely
interesting, if weak and vacillating
character, have added another portrait
to the gallery of Civil War figures.
Ohio State University HARRY L. COLES
The Republicans: A History of Their
Party. By Malcolm Moos. (New York:
Random House, 1956. xi??564p.; index.
$5.95.)
What is a political party? Students have
struggled long and not too
successfully with this proposition. Is
it an organization of like-minded indi-
viduals trying to gain political power?
Is it merely a loose political body
which attains 50,000 or more votes on
election day? Or is it a tightly-knit,
well-disciplined band of doctrinaires
seeking to impose its thinking on the
people? In this lengthy treatise,
Malcolm Moos does not tell us what a
political party is, but his ample data
allows one to prepare his own definition.
The party of Lincoln appears to be
composed of vast, unwieldy, hetero-
geneous masses of divergent local and
regional groups, whose beliefs vary
from time to time and from state to
state.
The problems of writing a political
party history become all too apparent
as one pursues this volume. The
difficulties of continuity, chronological
balance, and party philosophy are not
easily resolved. Without minimizing
the usefulness of the book, it impresses
one as a collection of elections and
conventions knotted together by a group
of politicians. The action is in a
vacuum; like a jigsaw puzzle with half
the pieces missing, the picture is
imperfect.
The political thinking of the Republican
party, as with the Democratic
party, has evolved and moved back and
forth a bit over the last 100 years.
First, the party of emancipation, it
then became the exponent of liberal
capitalism assisting the great
industrial expansion of the Gilded Age. De-
cline set in when monopoly capitalism
seized the reigns from liberal capi-
talism, but the situation was salvaged
by the Progressives, who checked the
unrestrained individualism of the
"Robber Barons." Following World War I
108
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
a decade of backward-looking laissez
faireism set in, but this was reversed
under the impact of the New Deal, and a
new broader approach toward the
problems of the day emerged with Wendell
Willkie. This new approach has
been carried further by Robert A. Taft,
who was not the tory he is often
painted, and Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Today, although beset by a hard core of
reactionaries, the GOP must
look ahead; it must accept much of the
paternalism implicit in an industrial
economy, and organize energetically. Its
great strength will lie in expanding
suburbia and the new middle class.
Fulton Lewis and Raymond Moley will
not be happy in Malcolm Moos' Republican
party of the future, but it is
the author's belief that the Republican
party must continue to move forward
in the direction of a limited welfare
state. Otherwise it will fall apart, and
we will all be Democrats.
In his biennial election analyses, Moos
employs the methods of Samuel
Lubell. For example, attention is
focused on the voting patterns in high
rent, middle rent, and low rent urban
districts instead of on party platforms.
The approach is technical rather than
philosophical. Although the writing
is uninspired, and although fresh ideas
and interpretations appear but in-
frequently, this is still a very useful
book. In view of the difficult task he
attempted, Moos did not do at all badly.
Marietta College EUGENE
C. MURDOCK
Banners in the Wilderness: Early
Years of Washington and Jefferson College.
By Helen Turnbull Waite Coleman.
(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh
Press, 1956. xvii??286p.; illustrations,
bibliographical notes, index, and
maps. $4.00.)
This volume endeavors to trace carefully
the progressive development of
education on the higher levels in
western Pennsylvania, as such efforts
culminated in the coming into being of
Washington and Jefferson College,
1865-71. Beginning with log cabin
schools of the period starting about 1780,
the lineal development of the
educational institutions is traced through
pioneer academies to the establishment
of Jefferson College (1802-65) and
Washington College (1806-65) and to
their eventual union as Washington
and Jefferson College.
The log cabin schools were largely the
result of the pioneer Presbyterian
ministers who founded the first churches
of that denomination in Washington
County. Especially important were: Rev.
John McMillan, who established a
log school on Chartiers Creek near
Canonsburg and whose biography has been
BOOK REVIEWS 109
published by the University of
Pittsburgh Press (1952); Thaddeus Dod, who
founded a similar school at Lower Ten
Mile or Amity; and Joseph Smith,
who conducted a school at his home at
Buffalo, Pennsylvania, between
Washington and Canonsburg. The author
asserts that the "schools and
churches founded by these first
scholar-missionaries were a fortress between
the wild disorder of the frontier and
the spiritual and cultural pattern they
had brought into the wilderness and so
distinctively fostered."
The next step in the evolution of these
educational institutions was the
chartering, by the general assembly of
Pennsylvania, of Washington
Academy at Washington (1787) and the
founding of Canonsburg Academy
at the town of that name (1791). The
latter institution was formally
chartered in 1794.
Demands for a collegiate institution led
to the establishment of Jefferson
College in 1802. Officials of the school
were somewhat surprised and dis-
turbed when four years later Washington
College at the county seat town
only seven miles away was chartered. At
times bitter animosity developed
between the two institutions especially
in the years, 1815-17. Financial
necessity and geographical proximity dictated
eventual union of the two
colleges, and an offer of $50,000 by the
Rev. Charles C. Beatty of Steuben-
ville, Ohio, that was contingent on the
union, made such a course practically
inevitable. Whether the combined
institution should be at Canonsburg or
Washington was a question which
stimulated much controversy, but the
larger importance of Washington
numerically and as a county seat town and
the subscription of $50,000 by its
citizens eventually settled the matter.
Considerable attention is given to the
able leaders of the colleges, curricular
arrangements, religious activities, and
extra-curricular trends. Two influential
national college fraternities, Phi Gamma
Delta (1848) and Phi Kappa Psi
(1852) were founded at Jefferson
College.
The author, a resident of Norristown,
Pennsylvania, is not a professional
historian but has spent much time at
Washington, Pennsylvania, and has
had the cooperation of successive
Washington and Jefferson College presi-
dents, ministers, and other local residents
in securing access to pertinent
materials, including many manuscript
records. Almost a third of the book
is devoted to bibliographical notes and
appendices. In the present period of
high printing costs perhaps some of the
appended material might have
been condensed and the space utilized to
continue the story from 1871
through the later decades.
Ohio State University FRANCIS P. WEISENBURGER
110 THE OHIO HISTORICAL
QUARTERLY
Published Sources on Territorial
Nebraska: An Essay and Bibliography. By
John Browning White. Nebraska State
Historical Society, Publications,
XXIII. (Lincoln: Nebraska State
Historical Society, 1956. ix??300p.;
appendix and index. $6.00.)
With this book a series which started in
1885 and last had a new volume
appear twenty years ago happily resumes
publication. The present work,
which is based on a doctoral
dissertation at the University of Nebraska,
gives full bibliographical data and
critical notes for all printed sources on
territorial Nebraska that could be
located by the author, including many
articles in periodicals and sections of
more general writings not primarily
concerned with the state. Separate
groupings are major sources, minor
sources of immediate record, other
sources (mostly reminiscences), news-
papers, and maps, while two introductory
chapters explain the scope and
limitations of the project. One
difficulty is that on-the-spot accounts seem
few as against later recollections and
fact-gathering. The listing within the
sections is entirely by author, leaving
the subject approach to an extensive
index.
Pending the test of actual use no one
can be sure whether it would have
been wiser to have a single alphabet
except for the newspapers and maps,
making less of the distinction between
major and minor sources. Some of
the forms of entry might seem artificial
to readers unfamiliar with the library
practices that have been used as the
author's standard. It could be also that
certain of the lists of page numbers in
the index are too long to serve their
purpose. In any case the work has been
carefully and thoroughly done and
should be standard in its field for a
long time. Few states are so fortunate
as to have an aid of this sort available
for the study of its early history, and
it is to be hoped that the provision of
similar basic treatments for other areas
will be stimulated by the appearance of
this fine example.
Ohio Historical Society GEORGE KIRK
John D. Rockefeller, Jr.: A Portrait.
By Raymond B. Fosdick. (New York:
Harper and Brothers, 1956. ix??477p.;
illustrations, sources and bibli-
ography, and index. $6.50.)
Toward the close of this impressive
volume the author remarks that
John D. Rockefeller, Jr., was born into
a situation that probably could not,
and certainly should not occur again.
"So vast a fortune under single control
runs the risk of being an unhealthy and
even hazardous ingredient in any
kind of economic order. It was one of
history's felicitous deviations that Mr.
BOOK REVIEWS 111
Rockefeller turned out to be the kind of
man he was" (p. 433). Given this
orientation, it is natural that Mr.
Fosdick should pay particular attention to
the factors that have made his subject
the kind of person he is: modest, re-
served, and deeply impressed by the
responsibilities of wealth; driven by a
sense of duty to a life of painstaking
activity; and--no less important--
possessed both of a wide range of
interests and enlightened attitudes on
social and religious issues.
In evaluating the forces that have
shaped Rockefeller's character and
career, Mr. Fosdick gives due emphasis
to what J. D. R., Jr., himself called
"the drawbacks and the
disadvantages and the inconveniences and the an-
noyances of being the son of a very rich
man." Not the least of the hardships
he suffered was deprivation of the
satisfaction of earning his own way.
J. D. R., Jr., sorely missed this
reassuring experience, for he grew up in an
environment that placed great value on
"commercial worth," the ability to get
ahead in the race of life. "In my
father's office," he once said, "I wasn't in
a race with anybody. I didn't have to
worry that somebody would get my
job.... I really was in a race with
myself and my own conscience" (p. 87).
The reference to "my own
conscience" is a reminder that J. D. R., Jr.,
inherited more than wealth from his
parents. He also inherited, or at least
accepted, their purposeful approach to
life, and their standards of personal
conduct and morality. His relations with
his father--who emerges as one of
the most engaging personalities in the
book--were close, and marked on both
sides by admiration and respect.
If J. D. R., Jr., was happy in his
family relationships, he was also for-
tunate in coming into close association
during early manhood with Simon
Flexner, George E. Vincent, and other
leaders of the philanthropic trusts
created by his father. Mr. Fosdick
believes that the younger Rockefeller's
growth in "breadth, tolerance, and
catholicity of understanding" was ad-
vanced by the influence of these men, by
the wise counsel of W. L. Mackenzie
King, and by the impact of events such
as the Colorado strike of 1913-14.
Mr. Fosdick, a former president of the
Rockefeller Foundation, has known
J. D. R., Jr., for forty-five years. The
author's closeness to his subject,
which in lesser hands might have
affected the objectivity of the work, en-
hances the value and importance of this
particular book. Mr. Fosdick handles
the personal side of the story with
sympathy and insight, and he deals with
Mr. Rockefeller's contributions to
industrial relations, medicine, religion, edu-
cation, conservation, restoration, and
international understanding in a highly
informative, often penetrating way.
Ohio State University ROBERT H. BREMNER
112
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
The Meaning of America: Essays Toward
an Understanding of the American
Spirit. By Leland Dewitt Baldwin. (Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh
Press, 1955. 319p.; maps and
bibliography. $4.00.)
In this comparatively brief volume
Professor Baldwin gives us his
philosophy of American history. Some may
choose to consider it a com-
panion piece for his well-known college
text. Others will prefer to set it
upon the shelf of rapidly growing
single-volume essays dealing with the
spirit and interpretation of the
national epic, of which the works of
Hofstadter, Saveth, Commager, and
Goldman are perhaps best known. But
unlike these men, Baldwin is
refreshingly midwestern in his approach to
the subject, in his slangy, anecdotal
style and in his thinly disguised bias.
After a curtsey to the regional basis of
American political life and the
"federal question" which is
its legacy, Baldwin gives us his concept of the
American mission. In brief, this is to
provide an example to the world of how
democracy can succeed in transforming
political, economic, and social re-
sources from "the exclusive
property of a few" into a shared possession "of
service to all." Her chief reliance
in this endeavor has been science, the
friend of the demos; "to
save itself the elite class must crush science"
(p. 39). Baldwin believes that the
American model was only foreshadowed
during the long agrarian era.
Nevertheless it was at this time that democracy
came to recognize and accept capitalism
as its proper economic form; the
so-called struggle between property and
human rights is more accurately
regarded as a contest between big
property and little property.
But only with the industrial revolution
could Americans construct the
engines characteristic of modern life in
these United States. The South fought
a blind, gallant, and hopeless delaying
action which helped to surrender
control of technology into unworthy
hands. The result was the reign of the
Big Business Baron during the latter
nineteenth century, with the divine
right of wealth replacing the divine
right of kings as the major challenge
to democratic self-confidence. Then came
the great rebuttal of American
pragmatism. The pragmatic challenge appeared
first in the arts, then in
politics and last, but most important,
in scientific business. As its end product
we have the pragmatic corporation with a
social conscience, of all the
nation's great achievements perhaps most
worthy of display to the world in
our twentieth century showcase. Its
methods are intelligent mass production
and human relations; its makers are
Frederick W. Taylor and Henry Ford,
men who should be numbered among the
foremost Americans.
In the outside world proto-fascism and
communism were competing sys-
tems which did not hesitate to carry the
ideological war aggressively into the
citadel of democracy. It is in this
context that the New Deal can best be
BOOK REVIEWS 113
understood and recognized as a form of
"soft socialism," today being re-
modeled by the Young Republicans into
"the cooperative-plutocratic state."
Peeping at the years ahead in his
concluding (and least convincing) chapter,
Baldwin attempts to weave Galbraith,
Riesman, and Elton Mayo into a fabric
which will support continued American
optimism about a future manifestly
ours.
As an example of popular intellectual
history, in language which the
intelligent sophomore can understand,
Baldwin's book is particularly in-
teresting. Of course it is more than
this; it is also an act of faith. "America
is building a new phase of Western
Civilization which will mold the old
traditions to the new machine age and
will give a better life to the common
man" (p. 195). Perhaps. We can all
hope so.
A few criticisms ought to be made. The
style is both didactic and racy--
an unusual combination--and there is
perhaps too much reliance upon
analogy. Baldwin shows little respect
for the Yankee East and less for the
South, which is not likely to increase
his popularity in either of those sections.
There are many substantive matters to
which one may take exception. For
example, the argument that Americans
"as a rule objected fervently to the
melting pot process" (p. 219) seems
misleading at best, and raises the
question of just what it was that they
actually did favor. More important,
Baldwin's assertion that democracy is
the friend of science, and aristocracy
its enemy is highly vulnerable. This
reviewer would be prepared to argue
that the elite have nearly always
supported science, with the masses in
suspicious opposition particularly in
the realm of industrial technology.
It is not necessary to agree with all the
interpretations advanced to pro-
nounce this a worthwhile book. It
contains much that is familiar and a good
deal that is comparatively new. It is
full of challenging statements which
are likely to stimulate, though not
always to please. But the best books may
well be those which arouse the most
extensive criticism and keep the mind
exercised. On this ground, as well as
for the intrinsic merit of its contents,
The Meaning of America can be strongly recommended to the readers of
the Ohio Historical Quarterly.
Ohio University F. D. KERSHNER, JR.
Granville: The Story of an Ohio
Village. By William T. Utter.
(Granville,
Ohio: Granville Historical Society and
Denison University, 1956. xii??
347p.; illustrations, bibliographical
essay, and index. $4.00.)
I have traveled much, said Henry
Thoreau, in Concord. Not wholly un-
like Concord is Granville, Ohio, a
village gathered around a white church
114
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
spire, with lengthening memories of men
and movements, and Dr. Utter
has traveled widely in his town. Now at
the time of Granville's sesqui-
centennial he has written a model town
history, a book full of warmth and
humanity, lighted with glints of humor
and with affectionate understanding.
All that is required for a drama, Balzac
said, is a passion and four walls.
All that is required for a history is a
community of people--and an informed
and articulate historian. This book is
local but not parochial; it shows
Granville in the context of a changing
nation and it throws light on
America as well as on the village on
Raccoon Creek.
Dr. Utter is fortunate in his subject
and his sources. The Granville com-
munity was a community from the start.
Its founders kept full and expressive
records, they voiced their hopes and
aspirations--not only in sermons and
speeches but even in poems to mark
special times. One of their poems, "The
Pleasant O-hi-o" composed by
carpenter Timothy Spelman, became familiar
throughout New England and the West. And
like Spoon River, Granville
had some people who composed their own
epitaphs, which may be read in
the Old Colony Burying Ground.
Like many American stories the Granville
story begins with wilderness,
with new lands waiting. The action
begins with a company preparing to
exchange their stone-walIed
Massachusetts farms for unfenced lands near
the headwaters of an Ohio river. They
sent land-lookers ahead, subscribed
to a land purchase, and made the long
journey. They built their first cabins
along the "Broad Way" surveyed
through the lofty forest. In the next year
came a cargo from New England,
containing a long blade for the Company
sawmill, a box of books for the village
library, and a hardy Massachusetts
rosebush. It was a successful
transplanting.
They founded a church and a school,
built a tanyard, distilleries, an iron
furnace. In time the iron ore ran out,
the tannery business dwindled, Dr.
Bancroft's Granville Water Cure replaced
the distilleries and then it, too,
disappeared. Meanwhile some special
things were happening. Two pioneer
academies opened their doors to young
ladies, and at a Baptist convention
Granville was chosen, because of its
sobriety and intellectual atmosphere, as
the site of Denison University. So
Granville found its lasting business--the
education of other people's children.
The book is richly illustrated with old
prints and photographs. But the best
pictures are called up in the mind:
droves of cattle choking Broadway, hogs
and turkeys streaming down the old
Centerville Road, big Pennsylvania
freight wagons creaking through, the
great wolf hunt of 1823, the Abolition
convention in Ashley Bancroft's
"Hall of Freedom" barn, the military
parades on muster day and the '49ers
creaking off toward California.
BOOK REVIEWS 115
Other Granville emigrants moved on to
new ventures in Illinois, Missouri,
Kansas. (I learned here that my native
town of Appleton, Wisconsin,
was laid out by Granville men and named
for a Granville banker.) Mean-
while others came to Granville and the
town assumed its pattern, with
Broadway carrying a steady stream of
travel and the college serene on its hill.
Dr. Utter has a nostalgic chapter on the
Nineties and then shows the
quickening of the village tempo in the
new century. In 1937 the government
built a new post office which an old
resident observed cost more than
the Granville Company had paid for the
entire township.
One or two reflections occur to a reader
of this appealing book. Eighty
years ago Henry James, writing in the
time-rich city of Florence, referred
to "our silent past" in
America. Now our past is somewhat longer and
certainly it is more vocal. And unlike
the Old World communities we have a
past that is recoverable. Dr. Utter can
quote the farewell sermon when the
Granville emigrants left Massachusetts,
he can raise the songs they sang on
the way West, he knows through what
weather they journeyed, how much
they paid for their land, where the
first cabins stood. Whether the subject
is war or trade or politics, a
commonwealth or a village, we can have the
whole many-stranded story. We can
recover it all.
Miami University WALTER HAVIGHURST
The Framing of the Fourteenth
Amendment. By Joseph B. James.
Illinois
Studies in the Social Sciences, Vol. 37.
(Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1956. ix??220p.; appendix,
bibliography, and index. Cloth, $4.00;
paper, $3.00.)
The recent supreme court rulings in the
"desegregation cases" have
focused attention as never before on the
actual intent of the framers of the
fourteenth amendment. Joseph B. James
sets out in this exhaustive but at
the same time rewarding study to
determine, through analysis of the words
and actions of the leaders of the
post-civil war period, just what those in-
tentions were. His conclusions indicate
all too clearly that no realization of
the amendment's applicability to
modern-day problems existed. Rather "the
most important purpose in the minds of
most framers and members of the
Republican party in the summer of 1866
was undoubtedly that the amend-
ment might furnish a popular platform in
the political campaign."
Agreeing generally with Jacobus TenBroek
as to the origins of the
amendment, Mr. James devotes his attention
to maneuverings in the years
1865 and 1866, showing step by step how
the Radical leadership sought to
preserve its wartime victories and
consolidate them in a set of binding
116
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
constitutional provisions. That such an
objective was attained both ruthlessly
and pragmatically further attests to the
absence of consideration of long-
term consequences by those involved, and
Mr. James brings a mass of data
to bear to show what thorough
disagreement there was, even among Radi-
cals as to how their general ends should
be accomplished, or even as to
what those general ends should be.
At the outset Radical focus was
primarily upon the dual problems of
suffrage and representation. Although
gnawing doubts existed concerning
Negroes voting in the South when most
were disfranchised in the North,
the major concern was that if slaves
were counted as whole persons, in-
creased representation in the South
would naturally result. Hence unless
the basis of representation were
changed, the Negro vote would have to be
"controlled" for northern
protection. Such sectional self-interest was not
confined to fear of the South but
existed between Northeast and West where
a changed system of representation might
endanger political power and ad-
vantage. In addition, some eminently
practical politicians carefully weighed
the comparative advantages of supporting
the president and insuring re-
tention of executive patronage for
themselves and their constituents, or
supporting the Radicals and insuring
appropriated funds for internal im-
provements.
As the suffrage hurdle rapidly appeared
too great, attention turned toward
the more attainable objectives of
guaranteeing citizens equal rights (not
social or political rights, nor the
deprivation of states rights, "God forbid!");
a practical solution to the
representation problem; and denunciation of the
Confederate debt. The famous first
section, with its direct limitation of state
power was not developed systematically
or even very purposefully but
originated late in the framing process.
Although belaboring a dead horse,
Mr. James also destroys with a mass of
convincing evidence the once held
"conspiracy theory" of the
person-equals-corporation argument put forward
by Conkling in 1882 and accepted by the
supreme court in the Santa Clara
case.
Mr. James in accomplishing his avowed
purpose casts penetrating light
upon the leaders, pressures, and
prejudices of a highly controversial period
of American history. However, one must
inquire whether the intentions of
the framers of any law or amendment are
as pertinent for modern inter-
pretation as the altered conditions
which require new departures in appli-
cation of a constitution which the
original framers certainly intended to be
flexible and to change with the times.
Ohio State University PAUL L.
MURPHY
BOOK REVIEWS 117
Ohio: The Buckeye State. By William R. Collins. Study Aids by Carolyn D.
Dillehay. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice Hall, 1956. xvi??352p.; maps
and charts, illustrations, appendix, and
index. $4.95.)
This book was written in response to the
mandate of Section 3313.60 of
the Revised Code of Ohio which states,
among other things, that in the Ohio
grade schools "there shall be
included the study of the following subjects . . .
geography, the history of the United
States and of Ohio, and national, state
and local government in the United
States." This mandate was supplemented
by the Ohio Department of Education's
pamphlet entitled An Educational
Program for the Seventh and Eighth
Grades in Ohio Schools (1955). The
detailed specifications in this pamphlet
for Ohio history, geography, and
civics are, in a large measure,
faithfully adhered to. The author is a resident
of Worthington, Ohio, has been in the
publishing business with the
Macmillan Company, and is president of Presbyterian
Life, published by the
Presbyterian Church. He is currently
engaged in writing several grade-school
textbooks in American history.
There are thirteen units in all, ten
devoted to history, one to geography,
one to government, and one to biography.
The appendix consists of the com-
plete Constitution of the State of Ohio
as adopted in 1851, with amendments
to January 1, 1956. Each unit closes
with a list of study aids by Miss
Dillehay, social studies teacher and dean
of girls in the Crooksville, Ohio
Junior High School. These study aids
contain questions, objective tests
(completion, true-false, matching,
etc.), word hunts, vocabulary tests, projects
(Tell a Story, Where Am I?, Play Ball,
Do You Know Me?, Do These
for Fun, For Your Bulletin Board), map
exercises, book lists (These Will
Interest You), and lists of films,
filmstrips, and slides.
The book is lavishly illustrated with
pertinent maps, charts, and pictures--
a few in color. The cover is a beauty,
consisting, in front, of an attractive
colored view of Lake Hope in Vinton
County, and, in back, of the frozen
waterfall at Ash Cave in Hocking County.
The author and publishers have
done a splendid job of selection and
arrangement of illustrations. Hardly a
page lacks something of an eye-catching
nature. The acknowledgments
show the sources of illustrations to
include the Ohio State Museum, the Ohio
Historical Society, the Ohio Development
Commission, the Ohio State
University Department of Photography, to
mention only a few.
How adequate the book is to make Ohio
history meaningful to seventh
and eighth graders depends on how the
teachers use it. Now, at last,
teachers cannot complain that they lack
adequate textbook equipment to
cope with their responsibility.
Especially attractive seem to be the units on
118
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Ohio Government, "Famous Men and
Women of the Buckeye State" and
perhaps "A Look at the Geography of
Ohio." The style of writing is simple
and matter of fact. If it is too much so
the teachers and the illustrations
ought to stimulate the young people's
interest and even enthusiasm.
The history is somewhat marred by bits
of inaccuracy here and there.
For example, the supremacy of the
Iroquois Indians in the Ohio country is
exaggerated. George Croghan, the Indian
trader, was hardly "well educated."
It is rather unusual to read,
"Finally St. Clair was able to lead the remnants
of his army southward in a disorderly
retreat. This is known as the Battle
of Fort Recovery." The fort was
built on the site by Wayne two years after
St. Clair's defeat there. The
battlefield of Fallen Timbers is not "40 miles
above Fort Defiance," nor were the
Indians "badly defeated" in the engage-
ment. Hull's route, in the War of 1812,
is accurately described on page 118,
but quite wrongly illustrated in the map
on page 119. The Battle of Lake
Erie was not "at Put-in-Bay."
The governor of Michigan Territory in the
"Toledo War" was not
"Governor Brown." The exclusive use of the phrase
"the War Between the States"
instead of the Civil War seems a poor choice
for Ohioans, as does also the use of the
term the "Ohio Territory" for the
latter part of the period of the
Northwest Territory.
Historical Society of RANDOLPH C. DOWNES
Northwestern Ohio
Book Reviews
The Barber and the Historian: The
Correspondence of George A. Myers and
James Ford Rhodes, 1910-1923. Edited by John A. Garraty. (Columbus:
Ohio Historical Society, 1956.
xxiv??156p.; illustrations and index. Paper,
$3.00.)
The publication of this correspondence,
first in successive issues of the
Ohio Historical Quarterly during 1955 and now in book form, is a note-
worthy event on several counts. In the
first place, the letters give an
intimate view of James Ford Rhodes which
adds to our respect for that
historian. He emerges from the
correspondence as a man of broad humanity,
humor, and candor, a man unaffected by
his fame. There is practically no
condescension (unless one counts the
gift of used ties) in his attitude
towards his correspondent, a Negro
barber, who had once served him in
Cleveland. He had his private jokes with
Myers. The two discussed pro-
hibition, for example, in a bantering
tone only possible where mutual respect
exists. Rhodes even permitted a
plaintive note of envy to creep into one
letter. "In many ways," the
historian wrote his friend, "you are in an en-
viable position. You are in a growing
city, in a good hotel and see most
people worth knowing who talk confidentially
with you. May you continue
to live long and prosper" (p. 100).
Rhodes's admiration for Myers (an
admiration abundantly reciprocated)
was well merited, for the barber was an
uncommonly talented man. Mem-
bers of the historical profession and
laymen alike are grateful to have this
portrait of a little known,
all-but-forgotten man to add to the roster of
remarkable American Negroes. Myers
possessed sharpness and toughness of
intellect, shrewd judgment, combined
with character, forthrightness, humor,
magnanimity, and sensitivity of feeling.
Few men are capable of speaking for
an oppressed people with the balance of
good sense and moving sincerity
which Myers summons to the cause of the
Negro in the United States.
This brings us to the second reason why
this is a notable publication.
These letters contribute significantly
to an understanding of the Negro
psychology in politics and aid in
explaining why the Negro remained so
long allied to the Republican party
which reformers identified with privilege
and reaction. The answer is this. The
old-line Republican leaders like