265
Book Reviews
The Loyalist Americans: A Focus on
Greater New York. Edited by Robert A.
East and Jacob Judd. (Tarrytown: Sleepy
Hollow Restorations, 1975. xiv +
176p.; illustrations, notes, appendix,
index. $12.00.)
Few aspects of life during the colonial
era have failed to be singled out and
judged in terms of their importance to
the American Revolution, yet important
phases of that event remain inadequately
explored. Although the subject of
several recent investigations, Loyalism
is a case in point. For this reason books
which shed light on the half-million
Americans who opposed separation are a
welcome addition to the literature of
the Revolution. Robert East and Jacob
Judd present a volume composed of six
essays about Loyalism, five of which
originate from papers delivered at a
conference on Loyalists held in Tarrytown,
New York in 1973.
In the first chapter, John Shy discusses
the British perception of Loyalism in
the lower Hudson Valley. Shy ponders two
questions. With Loyalism so
widespread, might the British have used
that segment of colonial population to
pacify a "bankrupt" rebellion?
If, as recent research suggests, the American
Revolution was as violently intolerant
as the French, how is the quick disap-
pearance of the Tory issue after the War
explained? Shy asserts that the British
did try to use the Loyalists. But Loyalism in New York was
too varied for
uniform assessments. Thus, Shy finds
that New York did not suffer the extremes
of violence during the Revolution
because of the manner in which the British
viewed Loyalism at close range. Shy's
observations are amplified by Esmond
Wright's essay which concludes the
volume. Offering a cross-section of
Loyalism, Wright observes that New York
was the most loyal of all the colonies
and explains New York City's Loyalism as
"simply a consequence of its
location." Wright identifies
location, an interpretation of Locke which required
allegiance to both parliament and king,
and a repugnance to the use of force as the
three major strands of Loyalism in that
province. With Loyalists more numerous
in New York than elsewhere, why were
they militarily of so little value? Wright
suggests that British statesmanship
failed to properly assess Loyalism and
misread "the nature of war in the
eighteenth century."
Sandwiched between the chapters by Shy
and Wright are four essays that
offer views on the Loyalism of widely
differing colonials. Catherine Crary
singles out James De Lancey and his
Cowboys and asks if they went beyond the
bounds of conventional warfare; were
they mere freebooters? She finds the
evidence conflicting, although De Lancey
did operate under British military
authority and probably adhered to the
laws of war as recognized at that time. As
a consequence, she concludes that the
opprobrium heaped upon the Cowboys
was far too harsh. Jacob Judd is also
critical of earlier interpretations. Expres-
sing dissatisfaction with the
"behavior theory of patterned Loyalist adherence"
he points to Frederick Philipse III as
an example of hazards attending classifica-
tion of New Yorkers. Large land owner
and esteemed member of the assembly,
Philipse chose the Loyalists' side only
when events outside New York finally
produced a Tory party. Nor is Judd able
to explain why the Philipse estate was
singled out for such harsh treatment at
the hands of the New York revolutionary
government.
William Benton paints an interesting
portrait of Peter Van Schaack. A brilliant
266 OHIO HISTORY
young man whose talents were widely
recognized, Van Schaack was a willing
patriot as late as 1774. To him,
American rights and subordination to Parliament
were mutually exclusive concepts. Yet,
in 1775 he refused to sign a pledge to
fight England. Why? His behavior is
explained by reason of conscience, indi-
vidualism, and his interpretation of the
compact theory of government. Benton
casts Van Schaack among the
"Whig-Loyalists" who differed from the patriots
only over the question of separation.
For this reason their re-entry into Ameri-
can society was relatively easy.
William Franklin's conservatism is
analysed by Willard Randall. Franklin's
arrival on the New Jersey scene is
viewed as propitious. Suffering from depres-
sion, debt-ridden New Jerseymen were
hardly prepared to cope with the turmoil
of the 1760s. During this crisis, the
colony discovered it possessed a shrewd
governor, adept at both compromise and
reform, whose legislative ideas were
"years ahead of their time."
When and why did Franklin change? Randall points
to 1773 as the critical year when
personal reasons caused Franklin to conclude
that peace and public tranquility were
preferable to the anarchy and misery of
separation. Forced into his Tory role,
Franklin "was a man mistrusted, misun-
derstood, and maligned by both
sides."
It is indeed remarkable that so many
interesting insights are contained within
the covers of a book so small. Certainly
these six essays do much to sharpen the
focus on a question long blurred by
complexity, and add detail to the emerging
mosaic.
Miami University Richard M.
Jellison
Weathering the Storm: Women of the
American Revolution. By Elizabeth
Evans. (New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1975. x + 372p.; illustrations,
bibliography, index. $12.50.)
Although intended for a popular rather
than an academic audience, this
collection of diaries and journals
achieves its goal of illustrating how women in a
variety of ways weathered the storm of
the American Revolution. The book is a
useful reminder that women as well as
men bore the brunt of the military and
political conflict between England and
the colonies.
Ms. Evans' introduction describes the
historical context in which these
women lived, particularly their limited
legal, economic, and political status and
the precariousness of childbirth and
health in the eighteenth century. In addi-
tion, each of the eleven primary sources
is preceded by a lively description of the
physical setting and the social life of
the community of its author.
The impact of the war was far from
uniform. Some women were left almost
unscathed. Young Sally Wister, for
example, viewed the conflict simply as an
occasion for flirtation with the
officers quartered in her home outside Philadel-
phia. Jemima Condict Harrison's diary is
preoccupied with disease and death,
and Elizabeth Foote Washington's with
the problems of servants, children, and
her husband. Other women's lives,
however, underwent dramatic change. Jane
Young Ferguson's family fled from a
British-inspired Indian attack, which
wiped out much of their settlement;
Grace Growdon Galloway was driven to the
brink of insanity when she lost her
inherited property because of the British
sympathies of her husband.
Of most interest is the women's variety
of responses to the Revolution. Only
two-Martha I'ans Walker and Deborah
Sampson Gannett-were supporters of
Book Reviews
267
the Patriot cause. Walker's support was
occasioned less by her convictions in
the righteousness of rebellion than by
loyalty to her husband, with whom she
was exiled from Canada for his
conspiracy with the rebels to overthrow the
British administration there. Gannett's
patriotism, on the other hand, was
motivated by a desire to escape the
confining female role. Dressed in male garb,
Gannett enrolled in the Continental Army
and managed to keep her female
identity a secret for over a year. She
received an honorable discharge and later a
pension from the government of the
United States for her valiant service.
Although her recollections of life in
the military, written some years afterwards,
may be romanticized, they make
fascinating reading.
By contrast, most of the women
represented in the collection were either
indifferent or opposed to the Revolution. Some were
Quaker pacifists, but
one-Mary Gould Almy-simply remarked
caustically to her Patriot husband as
she watched Newport invaded and ravaged
first by British and then by French
and American troops, "Well may we say, what havoc
does ambition make."
The picture of the Patriots which
emerges in these diaries is also a useful
corrective to the self-congratulations
which surround the celebration of the
Bicentennial. Two of the diaries in
particular-those of Elizabeth Sandwith
Drinker and Anna Rawle Clifford-vividly
describe the official coercion and
mob violence directed at pacifists and
Tories, the arbitrary seizure and destruc-
tion of their property, and the hanging
of Quakers suspected of treason. The
general lack of enthusiasm for the
Revolution which pervades the collection may
result from the use of the diaries of
women whose upper-class status predisposed
them toward the Tory side; only two of
the women are from the lower class. The
want of "patriotism" may also
be the natural response of a group uninformed,
politically powerless, and left at home
to witness the destruction of war without
any of the compensating military
glories.
These strong women, however, were far
from passive and long-suffering. Yet,
with the exception of Gannett, they did
not throw themselves into revolutionary
or military activities. Their central
concern in this time of chaos and danger was
the welfare of their children, husbands,
families, and neighbors. Their diaries are
testimony either to their limited lives
or to their sanity and good sense.
John Carroll University Marian J. Morton
Unrecognized Patriots: The Jews in
the American Revolution. By Samuel
Rezneck. (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1975.
xiv + 299p.; illustrations,
notes, bibliography, index. $19.95.)
Samuel Rezneck, professor emeritus of
history at Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute and author of several books in
American economic history, undertook
an ambitious project with Unrecognized
Patriots. His intent was "to have
established that the Jews of early
America, however few [one-tenth of one
percent], made a subtle and notable
contribution to the American Revolution in
several aspects." The "several
aspects" of the Jewish experience during the
Revolutionary period, all treated in
some depth, are the demographic,
economic, military and political.
Moreover, Rezneck discusses the consequ-
ences, after the Revolution, for both
patriotic and Loyalist Jews.
The delineation of these areas is
supported by two questions which run
throughout the text. What did the Jews
do for and during the Revolution? And
268 OHIO HISTORY
what did the Revolution do for the Jews?
While analysis and synthesis are
subordinated to narrating events and
biographies, and while many sources are
naively accepted at face value, the dual
questions provide the author with
several opportunities for tying
otherwise isolated facts into a work of history.
Unrecognized Patriots is written simply and concisely, and would seem to
have appeal to students of American
history as well as interested laypersons.
Rezneck knows the Revolution, as well as
the American Jews of the eighteenth
century, and writes in an interesting
style about both. He has used extensive
published materials, including articles,
papers, documents and books, and his
bibliography is extremely useful.
Despite making use of only a limited number of
manuscript collections, the volume
demonstrates diligent scholarship.
The major fault with the work, perhaps
more the blame of an editor than the
author, is its repetitious narrative.
Individuals appear and then re-appear con-
tinually, and we are either reminded of
what was said about them earlier or some
part of their story is retold. For
example, David Franks (not to be confused with
David S. Franks) is the subject of an
economic biography on pp. 103-07, and part
of this narrative is repeated on pp.
143-44. Despite this flaw, Unrecognized
Patriots is a
sympathetic and even scholarly history of a fascinating and signifi-
cant aspect of the American experience.
The Ohio State University Marc Lee Raphael
The American Heritage History of the
Congress of the United States. By
Alvin
M. Josephy, Jr. (New York: American
Heritage Publishing Company, 1975.
416p.; illustrations, bibliography,
index. $27.50.)
This is a very ambitious book that in
presenting a history of Congress actually
provides a history of the United States.
To accomplish this in four hundred pages
obviously requires careful selection of
materials as well as concise reporting and
interpretation of events. Josephy has
generally managed to cover this broad
ground without overly simplifying or
distorting key issues, although of necessity
certain events and persons are given
less coverage than one might desire. The
book has three major aims: to portray
the range of personalities that have
inhabited Congress since its inception;
to describe Congress as a basic unit of
government with emphasis on how its
structures have evolved over time; and to
illustrate the varying relationships
between Congress and the President in the
past two hundred years.
The book is eminently successful with
respect to its first aim. The reader gets a
full sense of the personalities and
behaviors of key legislative actors. Josephy
presents many amusing and fascinating
anecdotes about the foibles of various
personages, yet these anecdotes also
serve to illustrate more general points
about congressional politics. One shortcoming
of the book in this area is that
insufficient attention is given to
recent congressional leadership. For example,
the leadership style of Lyndon Johnson
as Senate Majority Leader certainly
merits more attention.
The book is not as successful in
presenting the mechanics and workings of
Congress. If the reader is looking for a
nuts-and-bolts description of congres-
sional operations, he or she would do
better to consult a standard introductory
American government textbook. This is not
to say that information about
committee systems, voting procedures,
legislative maneuvering, and the like is
Book Reviews
269
entirely omitted; rather, such topics
are not given high priority and their cover-
age is not very thorough or systematic.
The book is more successful in
presenting the various executive-legislative
relationships that have existed since
the colonial era. What is most impressive
about Josephy's efforts in this highly
controversial area is his relatively dispas-
sionate and balanced presentation of
contending positions. The major weakness
of this section is the limited attention
given to contemporary developments in the
relationship between the President and
the Congress in both domestic and
foreign affairs. For example, the reassertion
of congressional prerogatives in the
realm of foreign policy-making in the
Vietnam and post-Vietnam era is given
short shrift. Likewise, the attempts by
Congress to regain control over the
national budget via new budget
committees and procedures are virtually ig-
nored.
In addition to the generally informative
and insightful text, the book contains
more than three hundred illustrations
that make it a visual delight. There are
beautiful pictorial spreads of
Washington, D. C. and the Capitol over time,
portraits of leading personages, and
sketches and cartoons portraying various
aspects of congressional life. In
summary, Josephy's book will appeal to those
seeking a broad and personality-oriented
history of the Congress; it will prove
less satisfying to those seeking a
systematic understanding of the contemporary
Congress.
The Ohio State University Herbert B. Asher
Levi Coffin and the Underground Railroad.
By Charles Ludwig. (Scottdale,
Pennsylvania: Herald Press, 1975. 184p.;
$4.95.)
This light and brief historical
biography and novel is the life story of Levi
Coffin, abolitionist and prominent
operator in the Underground Railroad. Fol-
lowing a chronological pattern, much of
the content is devoted to those adult
years when Levi and his wife Katie were
involved in the movement at Newport,
Indiana and Cincinnati, Ohio. During the
1840s and 1850s the Coffins aided
nearly 3000 black fugitives to escape
from the South. Such extensive participa-
tion earned Levi the nickname and
unofficial title of president of the Under-
ground Railroad.
Levi was born and reared in a Quaker
community in Guilford County, North
Carolina, where his Quaker parents
instilled in him the evils of slavery. At an
early age he witnessed whippings and
kidnappings; Ludwig notes that "Levi
began to adopt abolitionist principles
long before he had shed his last baby
:eeth." He befriended the blacks on
numerous occasions. In 1821, at the age of
23, he established a "slave school" to teach them to read and
write.
Sensing a calling from God to further
his crusade against slavery and desiring
o escape from a pro-slavery environment,
a year later he, with several other
nembers of the church, migrated to a
Quaker community in Newport, Wayne
bounty, Indiana. In 1824 Levi married
Catherine "Katie" White, also a Quaker.
Both in Newport and later in Cincinnati,
where they moved in 1847, the Coffins
owned and operated a successful dry
goods store which served as "cover" for
heir activities in the Underground
Railroad.
Active as a teacher, lecturer, minister
and member of abolitionist societies.
'offin's crusades brought personal
torment, hardship and suffering. The store
270 OHIO HISTORY
was boycotted, division split his
church, friends shunned him and violations of
the Fugitive Slave Laws forced him into
court.
Through Levi's experiences, the book
gives insight into Quakerism, as well as
many aspects of slavery and facets of
the Underground Railroad. It is generally
recognized that there is a tie-in
between the Coffins and Harriet Beecher
Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Ludwig
relates this connection; thus a highlight of
the study is a chapter on the fugitive
slave, Eliza Harris, who became "Eliza" in
Uncle Tom's Cabin. The author also reminds us that Rachael and Simeon
Halliday, characters in Stowe's book,
are supposedly Levi and Katie Coffin.
In Levi Coffin, Levi is depicted
as a man of destiny and determination.
Ludwig's Coffin is heroic, pious,
flawless in character and messianic. He ap-
pears too saintly.
The volume has no index, no
illustrations, four short explanatory footnotes
and no bibliography, except for a few
sources cited in the Preface. The author
relied primarily upon Coffin's
autobiography, Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, a
factor which could account for the
book's subjectivity.
The biography addresses itself to the
young, especially the junior-senior high
school student, and the general reader.
The study would be of little value to the
serious scholar, researcher or
specialist. In spite of its limitations, it is pleasant
and entertaining reading. Not to be
overlooked is that such books do supply a
genuine need for sizeable segments of
the reading public.
Ashland College John L.
Nethers
A Compromise of Principle:
Congressional Republicans and Reconstruction,
1863-1869. By Michael Les Benedict. (New York: W. W. Norton &
Com-
pany, 1974. 493p.; illustrations, notes,
bibliography, index. $18.95.)
The debate over the motivation behind
Radical Reconstruction has centered
on genuine racial liberalism versus
political expediency. Professor Benedict, of
Ohio State University, emphasizes the
different factions which divided the
Republican party. He demonstrates that
radicals were genuinely committed to
black equality, even when it was
politically damaging, while the moderates and
conservatives were ready to compromise
with the racist policies of Presiden
Andrew Johnson. Because of Johnson's
tactlessness in vetoing moderate mea
sures, conservatives were forced to turn
to more radical ideas, but Benedic
emphasizes that the radicals never were
in control of Reconstruction. The
radicals emerge as nationalists who
realized that the Constitution did not giv
directions on how to handle the
emergency of civil war, but whose centralizin
tendencies were opposed by
constitutionally-conservative Republicans wh
wanted to preserve federalism and state
rights.
Consequently, Benedict concludes, the
Reconstruction program that resulte
was a halfhearted patchwork that was
doomed to failure. By ignoring radic:
appeals for land redistribution,
education, and permanent disenfranchisement (
rebels, Reconstruction failed to provide
lasting economic and political securit
for the freed slaves and white unionists
in the South. This book coincides wi
other recent studies which show that the
result of this failure was continuin
sectional hatred and grinding proverty
for the Southern masses.
Benedict's study demonstrates that Ohio
played a prominent role in Reco
struction. Ohio Congressmen participated
in each faction, with consistent radi-
cals represented by Benjamin Wade, James
Ashley and Robert Schenck; cons
Book Reviews
271
tent centrists by John Sherman, Reader
Clarke, Benjamin Eggleston, and Martin
Welker; and consistent conservatives by
John Bingham and Ralph Buckland. As
in most states, the centrists and
conservatives outnumbered the radicals. A
Democratic victory in the Ohio state
election of 1867 had national significance
not only because a provision for black
voting was defeated in a racist scare
campaign, but because Republican defeat
weakened radical Senator Benjamin
Wade's chances for the presidential
nomination.
As he pointed out in his earlier book, The
Impeachment and Trial of Andrew
Johnson, Benedict emphasizes that a major reason why Johnson was
not re-
moved from office was that he would have
been replaced by the president pro
tempore of the Senate, Benjamin Wade.
Not only was Wade a radical, but his
high-tariff and inflationary financial
views alienated many Republicans. The
picture was complicated by intra-party
factional infighting within Ohio politics.
While Benedict's book is in many ways a
synthesis, it also makes original
contributions. By extensive quantitative
analysis of Congressional voting pat-
terns, it provides the best listing of
the shifting alliances of the era. At last we can
know who the radicals were, so that
collective biographical studies can be done.
The bibliography is also quite good.
While the book is well written, at times its
detailing of intricate parliamentary
maneuvers, combined with a mass of politi-
cians' names, becomes confusing. The
fact that footnotes are not placed at the
bottom of each page is distracting. Some
of the lists are unclear, because at times
only last names are given, and an
examination of The Biographical Directory of
the American Congress reveals a few discrepancies. Nevertheless, Benedict has
written a well-researched and important
study that will add much to Congres-
sional and Reconstruction historiography.
University of Cincinnati Walter L. Williams
Stranger and Traveler: The Story of
Dorothea Dix, American Reformer. By
Dorothy Clarke Wilson. (Boston: Little,
Brown and Company, 1975. xxiii +
360p.; illustrations, bibliography,
index. $8.95.)
The Lady and the President: The
Letters of Dorothea Dix & Millard Fillmore.
By Charles M. Snyder. (Lexington: The
University Press of Kentucky, 1975.
400p.; chronologies, notes,
bibliography, index. $9.50.)
Books about Dorothea Dix are
disappointingly similar. Generally speaking,
Biographers have simplistically and even
woodenly described the heroic charac-
er and tireless efforts of this
Antebellum reformer who dedicated her life to
leading for a more humane treatment of
the insane. Unfortunately, Dorothy
Clarke Wilson has not strayed from
biographical tradition. Her study of Dix
iffers very little from those by Helen
Marshall in 1937 and Francis Tiffany in
890. (In fact, one of the chapters in
the Wilson book has almost the same title as
similar chapter in the Tiffany version.)
Charles Snyder, on the other hand, has
dded to historical knowledge by
gathering together Dix's correspondence with
[illard Fillmore, which reveals her to
be, in Snyder's words, "a warm and
,metimes tender and lonely woman with a
longing to share in the lives of
hers."
Mrs. Wilson is an amateur historian and
popular writer, and her book will
tisfy the general reader, if not the
professional historian. Many vignettes
istrate poignantly Dix's unhappy
childhood and personal life, her concern for
272 OHIO HISTORY
the neglected insane in prisons, barns,
and sheds, and her polite but determined
persuasiveness in urging tight-fisted
legislators to appropriate money for insane
asylums. Between 1841 and 1887 she
personally inspected the living conditions
of the legally insane in practically
every state, and this biography has many
descriptive and informative accounts
which serve to publicize the physical
suffering of the mentally handicapped.
But professional historians will find that
Mrs. Wilson did not document her text
with footnotes.
Dorothy Clarke Wilson's book will
especially disappoint historians interested
in the origins of insane asylums. Her
research did not make use of recent and
controversial literature in the field,
particularly David Rothman's The Discovery
of the Asylum and
Gerald Grob's Mental Institutions in America. There is no
evaluation of Rothman's thesis that
insane asylums developed out of a wide-
spread fear that the instability and
competitiveness of Antebellum America
increased the numbers of insane and that
asylums, with strict regulations and
paternal discipline, would cure the
afflicted by stabilizing their environment.
Dorothea Dix's views on the origins of
insanity are not even presented. Nor will
the reader find Dix's opinions on the
proper way to manage asylums, even
though the author notes that she often
acted as a mediator in administrative
disputes. Thus, Grob's insights into the
day-to-day difficulties of asylum
superintendents-the overcrowding, the
unexpected presence of a permanent
inmate population, and the inability of
White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant superin-
tendents to understand Black and Irish
Catholic patients-are not discussed.
Mrs. Wilson's book is also flawed as a
biography. She never effectively
integrates the private life of Dorothea
Dix with her public life, even though the
facts suggest a comprehensive
interpretation. Dix grew up in a family setting
troubled by an absent father, an invalid
mother, and a general uncertainty about
feelings for family members and their
ability to deal with the world around them.
So unhappy was family life that at the
age of twelve she ran away from Maine to
live in Boston with her grandmother. The
daily routine in her grandmother's
home emphasized discipline and
regularity, and Dorothea herself soon took up a
life of energetic self-discipline to the
point of exhaustion. Her involvement it
reform began shortly after her
grandmother died. Was Dix's enthusiasm fo
asylums the outcome of a special
sensitivity to family life, the importance o
stability, and the belief that mental
unrest could be cured by restricting the socia
environment to emphasize discipline and
regularity, much as her own life ha
been so altered? In the end, a
biographer of Dorothea Dix should explain wh
she became involved with the care of the
insane rather than with other benevo
lent concerns.
Professor Snyder has put together an
interesting collection of the Dorothe
Dix-Millard Fillmore correspondence
during the 1850-1869 period. His bo(
includes brief but adequate sketches of
Fillmore and Dix, and the selections a
excellently annotated. Particularly
interesting are letters about Fillmore's al
Dix's dislike of Northern and Southern
extremists, Dix's efforts at pressi
Congressmen to vote for a bill to
finance asylums with land grants, her despa
when President Pierce vetoed the bill,
Fillmore's mourning for his wife a
daughter, and Dix's shock at hearing
false rumors of Fillmore's indecorou'
hasty remarriage.
Snyder suggests that Dix had a romantic
interest in Fillmore. They met in 18
when Fillmore was Vice President, and
Dix was lobbying for her land b
Thereafter, they continued to correspond
regularly, and Snyder concludes t
the style and regularity of the
correspondence evidence a romantic interest
not entanglement. Actually, the letters
in large part are filled with roul
Book Reviews
273
announcements of travel plans or
interesting books and are phrased in the
Victorian style of good friends who
enjoy writing to each other, not lovers
seeking a rendezvous. Dix did write the
majority of letters, and perhaps she
hoped to enlist the former President,
who praised her crusade, more actively in
her campaigns. In any case. Snyder's
book is a worthwhile addition to the
literature about Dorothea Dix.
Case Western Reserve University Raimund E. Goerler
Letters from the Promised Land:
Swedes in America, 1840-1914. Edited
by H.
Arnold Barton. (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1975. vi +
344p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography,
index. $16.50.)
H. Arnold Barton has made a valuable
documentary resource available to
those interested in American social
history, one rich with the experiences of
numerous individuals and groups and
organized around the three "main
[chronological] phases" of Swedish
immigration to the United States: 1840-
1864, 1865-1889, and 1890-1914.
An edited collection of personal
correspondence (largely "America Letters")
and reminiscences, the book does not
attempt to explore new issues in Swedish
immigration history or to challenge
contemporary wisdom. Rather, Barton's
purpose is solely to "let the
Swedish immigrants tell their own story ... (p.4)."
His commitment to be as unobtrusive as
possible, however, presents the reader
with difficulties that compromise the
book's insights. Translated, but largely
"raw" and disparate, documents
in abundance are NOT IN THEMSELVES a
story. For all but the specialist in
Swedish immigration history, moreover, they
lack the clarity and effectiveness
necessary to make good use of them as
explanatory vehicles. While the author's
introductions to each section are
informative, their brevity and
generality cannot compensate for his obvious
assumption of historical familiarity.
As an alternative to the book's
conventional format, Barton might have
chosen one similar to that used by
Charlotte Erickson in her compilation,
Invisible Immigrants (Coral Gables, Fla., 1972). Erickson's work provides all the
background information contained in Letters
from the Promised Land and then
adds useful analytical categories,
integration and judgments that give her book
the kind of "voice" Barton
hoped to achieve. Perceptive, sophisticated historial
narrative will not mute or suffocate
data, nor need it detract from the drama and
intimacy of personal documents. Whether
Barton had chosen Erickson's study
or another approach to assisting the
reader in evaluating, using and learning from
the materials, the addition of such
information would have substantively en-
hanced his collection.
The dilemma of abundance and inadequacy
extends to the book's supportive
paraphernalia also. The footnotes are
good, but the bibliography reflects the
author's assumption of familiarity and
is too broad. The photographs, while
sparse, are compelling and more would
have been welcome. Barton and his
editor at the University of Minnesota
Press have unnecessarily short-changed
both the documents and the book's
audience. The potential of the collection was
enormous, but the reader is left at the
end with too little new understanding for
uch an expensive investment.
Case Western Reserve University Daniel E. Weinherg
274 OHIO HISTORY
Children of the Raven: The Seven
Indian Nations of the Northwest Coast. By
H.
R. Hays. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975.
xii + 316p.; map, illustrations,
bibliography, index. $12.95.)
The Raven is the trickster and culture
hero who dominated much of the
preliterate mythology of the Indians of
the Northwest Coast of North America.
His children are the Tlingit, Tsimshian,
Haida, Kwakiutl, Bella Coola, Nootka,
and Coast Salish Indians whose homelands
stretch from southern Alaska to
Puget Sound.
The author is concerned that the
knowledge of the rich cultural unit which
these people constituted has been
obscure from the outside world except for the
studies of specialists. He has written
this popular account to correct the conven-
tional sterotyped notion that the totem
pole is the only cultural manifestation of
these peoples that has survived or is
worthy of preservation.
From a material standpoint these
fishermen and hunters were highly success-
ful in a geographic area of natural
abundance. In this rich context these peoples
developed an extraordinarily complex and
highly sophisticated mythology,
religion, poetry, theatre, music, and
social structure. All this was accomplished
with a remarkable adjustment to the
natural world. With justification these
attainments can be described in
superlative terms as constituting perhaps "the
highest type of culture" in the New
World outside of Latin America.
The Russians, Spanish, and English
discovered the area as the culture of the
Raven children was in full flower. With
the coming of explorers and traders there
was the inevitable friction and
adjustment that occurs when different cultures
meet. The missionaries of the latter
half of the last century had an even more
devastating effect on the Northwest
culture. They seemed bent on replacing the
Indian way of life with the values and
culture of the whites. They were so
successful that they virtually destroyed
the old culture, but they did not replace
it with anything. Despite these and
other serious setbacks there is a cultural
reawakening taking place today in each
of the seven nations. Ethnic conscious-
ness is helping to create a continuity
with the tradition of the past and to develop
it further.
The author's history of the seven Indian
peoples is a repetition of already
published accounts in all their details.
He makes little effort to eliminate the
repetitious observations of the
explorers and traders. They could well be con
densed. Much of the anthropological data
herein could appropriately be put in
the next section. The first thirteen
chapters are, therefore, wearisome readin
for a popular account.
The middle chapters or section are
devoted exclusively to culture; and her
the author is at his best. The
concluding section is concerned with the contem
porary scene. The author's closing
assertion, however, seems to go beyond h
study: "To the writer they mirror
countless peoples of the colonial world wh
have been carelessly brushed aside by
the arrogance of Western technologic
civilization and, like so many of these
peoples, they had built a balanced socie
and succeeded in creating something
magnificent from their relation to th
planet, an achievement which we are only
just learning to respect, particularly
the light of the threat that technology
will impose a universal featureless cultu
upon the whole world"(pp. 296-97).
Miami University Dwight L.
Sm
Book Reviews
275
The Long Thirst, Prohibition in
America: 1920-1933. By Thomas M.
Coffey.
(New York: W. W. Norton & Company,
1975. xii + 346p.; notes, bibliog-
raphy, index. $9.95.)
One autumn day in 1921 Prohibition
agents Izzy Einstein and Moe Smith
posed as cigar salesmen in an upstate
New York town and raided the Chicken-
Coop Inn for violating liquor laws. Only
the drawn pistols of both agents cooled
twenty lumberjacks, men enraged by this
intrusion upon their fun. Much of
Coffey's book, itself well-written but
modestly researched, follows this episodic
line. Tales of arrests, payoffs,
prosecutions, gangland killings, and lavish parties
in the Great Gatsby mold, all follow one
another as part of Coffey's effort to
narrate prohibition "in human
terms, through the lives of a number of real
people . . . affected by
prohibition." A deft writer, Coffey weaves vignettes of a
diverse group of characters, ranging
from president to prosecutor, from re-
former to rum-runner, from bishop to
bootlegger. For the casual reader the end
product is enjoyable and lively, full of
the anecdotes that captivate amateur
historians and undergraduates.
Commercial appeal is appreciably enhanced by
the $9.95 asking price-a real bargain in
today's hardcover market.
Serious students of social history,
however, will find little to challenge them.
Judging from dust-jacket citations,
Coffey has embarked upon a career of
writing popular histories about such
events as the fall of Japan in 1945 and the
Irish uprising of 1916. As a result
scholars will confront a shop-worn interpreta-
tion of the social bases of Prohibition.
Frustrated and frightened fundamen-
talists, as Coffey and many others would
have it, attempted to impose their
Puritan ethic upon an unsympathetic
populace. Coffey's drys are either power-
hungry, such as Wayne Wheeler, the
Anti-Saloon League's "formidable lob-
byist"; or they have feet of clay,
such as Bishop James Cannon, Jr., linked to
promiscuous behavior, campaign
contribution irregularities, and imprudent
stock market activitities. Even
Assistant Attorney General Mabel Walker Wil-
lebrandt, always tenacious in
prosecuting liquor law violators, resigned to seek
federal farm loans on behalf of the
depressed California grape and wine industry.
By contrast, wets emerge as tragic
figures. One-time night-club owner Larry
Fay, already down on his luck in 1932,
was shot by his own club doorman. "Big
Bill" Thompson, the notorious wet
mayor of Chicago, suffered a nervous
breakdown between unsuccessful campaigns
for office. Jealousy drove con-
victed distiller George Remus to murder
his wife after she had deserted him for a
Justice Department investigator. Thus
Prohibition tainted all.
Despite use of several dissertations and
oral history sources, documentation
will disappoint historians. Coffey's
manuscript could certainly have benefited
from the works of K. A. Kerr and of John
Burnham on the national "experi-
ment." Kerr includes the
philosophic and symbolic nuances, while Burnham
shows a decline in alcoholic consumption
through 1925. None of Coffey's
Americans were remotely thirsty except
by choice.
Equally unfortunate is the author's
failure to expand upon the evidence in his
own data. For instance, the rivalry
between Wayne Wheeler and Bishop Cannon
night have represented deep-seated
stresses among drys that went beyond
ndividual egos. Internal lines of
cleavage within the Prohibition movement
leserve further examination. Moreover,
Coffey mentions a number of search-
nd-seizure occurrances. Prohibition must
have raised tensions between propo-
ents of competing interpretations of the
Fourth Amendment. The potential
-ony of bootleggers' being ultimately
responsible for contemporary sensitivities
276 OHIO HISTORY
to unreasonable search and seizure is
too good an opportunity for researchers-
including Coffey-to pass up.
In sum, historians have much to teach
the author about historical inquiry; on
the other hand, historians could learn
quite a bit about writing from Mr. Coffey.
University of Kansas Lloyd Sponholtz
265
Book Reviews
The Loyalist Americans: A Focus on
Greater New York. Edited by Robert A.
East and Jacob Judd. (Tarrytown: Sleepy
Hollow Restorations, 1975. xiv +
176p.; illustrations, notes, appendix,
index. $12.00.)
Few aspects of life during the colonial
era have failed to be singled out and
judged in terms of their importance to
the American Revolution, yet important
phases of that event remain inadequately
explored. Although the subject of
several recent investigations, Loyalism
is a case in point. For this reason books
which shed light on the half-million
Americans who opposed separation are a
welcome addition to the literature of
the Revolution. Robert East and Jacob
Judd present a volume composed of six
essays about Loyalism, five of which
originate from papers delivered at a
conference on Loyalists held in Tarrytown,
New York in 1973.
In the first chapter, John Shy discusses
the British perception of Loyalism in
the lower Hudson Valley. Shy ponders two
questions. With Loyalism so
widespread, might the British have used
that segment of colonial population to
pacify a "bankrupt" rebellion?
If, as recent research suggests, the American
Revolution was as violently intolerant
as the French, how is the quick disap-
pearance of the Tory issue after the War
explained? Shy asserts that the British
did try to use the Loyalists. But Loyalism in New York was
too varied for
uniform assessments. Thus, Shy finds
that New York did not suffer the extremes
of violence during the Revolution
because of the manner in which the British
viewed Loyalism at close range. Shy's
observations are amplified by Esmond
Wright's essay which concludes the
volume. Offering a cross-section of
Loyalism, Wright observes that New York
was the most loyal of all the colonies
and explains New York City's Loyalism as
"simply a consequence of its
location." Wright identifies
location, an interpretation of Locke which required
allegiance to both parliament and king,
and a repugnance to the use of force as the
three major strands of Loyalism in that
province. With Loyalists more numerous
in New York than elsewhere, why were
they militarily of so little value? Wright
suggests that British statesmanship
failed to properly assess Loyalism and
misread "the nature of war in the
eighteenth century."
Sandwiched between the chapters by Shy
and Wright are four essays that
offer views on the Loyalism of widely
differing colonials. Catherine Crary
singles out James De Lancey and his
Cowboys and asks if they went beyond the
bounds of conventional warfare; were
they mere freebooters? She finds the
evidence conflicting, although De Lancey
did operate under British military
authority and probably adhered to the
laws of war as recognized at that time. As
a consequence, she concludes that the
opprobrium heaped upon the Cowboys
was far too harsh. Jacob Judd is also
critical of earlier interpretations. Expres-
sing dissatisfaction with the
"behavior theory of patterned Loyalist adherence"
he points to Frederick Philipse III as
an example of hazards attending classifica-
tion of New Yorkers. Large land owner
and esteemed member of the assembly,
Philipse chose the Loyalists' side only
when events outside New York finally
produced a Tory party. Nor is Judd able
to explain why the Philipse estate was
singled out for such harsh treatment at
the hands of the New York revolutionary
government.
William Benton paints an interesting
portrait of Peter Van Schaack. A brilliant