Book Reviews
Blacks in Ohio History. Edited by Rubin F. Weston. Volume IV of The Ohio
American Revolution Bicentennial
Conference Series. (Columbus: The
Ohio Historical Society, 1976. 44p.;
illustrations, notes. $2.00.)
"As the nation moves into its third
century under the Constitution,"
Professor Weston remarks in the
introduction, "it is imperative that all
groups who made America be recognized
and that their contribution be
included in the history books."
With this purpose in mind, one in a
series of bicentennial conferences was
held at Central State University in May
1976. The outcome of that conference
is this volume, with papers addressed to
two general areas of black history:
the role of blacks in Ohio's political development
and selected biographical
studies of prominent black Ohioans.
In the former area Professor Lenwood
Davis draws an overview of
nineteenth-century blacks in Ohio.
Despite the "Black laws," he points out,
their numbers grew steadily even prior
to the Civil War. He indicates the
important contributions black Ohioans
made in such fields as business,
politics, abolitionism, invention,
journalism, the arts, and the military. W.
Marvin Dulaney recounts the history of
blacks as policemen in Columbus
from the first appointments in the late
nineteenth century to the first officer of
lieutenant rank at mid-century.
Professor Freddie Colston studies the
influence of black legislators in the
Ohio House during the 109th General
Assembly (1971-1972). He reports that
the preponderantly Democratic black
legislators did not constitute a bloc
but their voting behavior reflected (1)
their racial identity, (2) their heavily
black constituency, (3) their urban
background, and (4) a high degree of
party loyalty.
In the biographical studies, Professor
Emeritus Wilhelmena Robinson
explores aspects in William Sanders
Scarborough's "multi-dimensional
personality" which contributed to
the frustrations that affected his career.
She pinpoints certain attributes in the
character of the noted philologist and
president of Wilberforce University, in
the context of his life and times,
preventing this able man from
"surviving as an acceptable popular black
leader in the historical literature of
Afro-Americans." Percy Murray
indirectly examines the public career of
Harry C. Smith in a similar fashion.
Studying Smith from the founding of the Cleveland
Gazette up to the First
World War, Murray discusses the editor's
triumphs in the legislature but also
notes the failings of this militant
champion of integration and civil rights
protections as the urban black community
changed in the age of Booker T.
Washington. Professor Gossie Hudson
points to the complex nature of Paul
Laurence Dunbar's legacy by stating,
"Although he was never a black
militant or even a committed activist,
his life's accomplishments constituted
an indirect but powerful force against
racism." To Hudson, Dunbar is first
and foremost simply a poet.
The pictures which accompany the first
article provide interesting
contrasts. Colston's study contains
several tables, including a useful one
listing "pre-contemporary"
black legislators in the Ohio House (1880-1970).
Sad to say, only half the papers provide
footnotes.
Book Reviews
205
In conclusion, what unifying theme is
there in the book for such a broad
area of study? The purpose of the
conference, the editor states, was "to
recognize and place in perspective some
of the achievements of blacks in the
development of Ohio." The book
which grew from the conference, though
necessarily brief, does accomplish this
purpose.
Athens, Ohio George W. Bain
Ohio: A Bicentennial History. By Walter Havighurst. (New York: W. W.
Norton & Company, Inc., 1976. ix +
211p.; illustrations, index. $8.95.)
Ohio: A Bicentennial History, by Walter Havighurst, is part of an ambitious
project funded by the National Endowment
for the Humanities and
administered by the American Association
for State and Local History to
produce a single volume history of each
state plus the District of Columbia.
The general editor of the Project, James
Morton Smith, explained that the
purpose of the series was not to present
a new monograph written for
scholars, but to offer a thoughtful and
sensitive interpretation of the state's
history that would reach a broad-base
public. The threads that are to hold the
series together are the various authors'
knowledge of history, writing skills,
and a love for the state.
Certainly Professor Havighurst has
fulfilled the criteria outlined for the
project. No stranger to Ohio's past, the
author's previous works, including
The Long Ships Passing (1945) and The Heartland: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois
(1962, 1974), give testimony to his
understanding of the history of the
Buckeye State. His successful
contributions to Ohioana illustrate his writing
ability and his deep devotion to Ohio.
Havighurst's warm and delicate style
make Ohio: A Bicentennial History
an enjoyable book to read. He has
blended the fabric of history with the skills
of a masterful writer. He creates an
appreciation for Ohio's history while he
enhances his own reputation as a writer.
Those who know Ohio history will find
little new. Havighurst used the
older, traditional sources for his
research. What he offers, however, is an
appealing usage of vignettes: the
brother of Johnny Clem, the drummer boy
of Shiloh, was with Custer at the Little
Big Horn; Tell Taylor's "Down by the
Old Mill Stream" was written about
the Mesamore Mill on Blanchard Creek
in Hancock County; Increase Mather's
grandson, Samuel Livingstone
Mather, helped found the Cleveland
Mining Company; and Ruth McKenney,
a native of Akron and a reporter for the
Akron Beacon-Journal, wrote the
Broadway hit musical My Sister
Eileen.
If there is a theme in Havighurst's book,
it is that Ohio was a land of
promise and that it has fulfilled all
expectations. Herman Melville,
Havighurst explained, told of Ohio's
virtues in his satiric allegory Mardi
when he wrote of "a distant western
valley Hio-Hio" and patterned his
boisterous character Alanno after Ohio's
Senator William Allen. According to
Havighurst, Victor Hugo, in The
Rhine, told people to go west to Ohio. Also
Havighurst speculated that Ohio artist
Archibald Willard's use of an "eager
boy, determined man, [and] undaunted
grandfather" in his The Spirit of '76
illustrated eternal optimism.
206 OHIO HISTORY
The book contains a fifteen picture
photo essay on Ohio by Joe Clark. It
also has a useful but limited list of
suggested readings on Ohio history.
This volume holds its own in the entire
series and is probably better than
most because of the author's skills as a
writer. For collectors of Ohioana it is
a must; for the casual reader it will
provide hours of enjoyment.
The Ohio Historical Society Thomas H. Smith
The Black Family in Slavery &
Freedom, 1750-1925. By Herbert G.
Gutman.
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1976. xxviii
+ 664p.; illustrations, charts,
tables, appendices, notes, index.
$15.95.)
In 1965, the Department of Labor issued
a report entitled "The Negro
Family: The Case for National
Action." Written in large part by Daniel P.
Moynihan, then Assistant Secretary of
Labor, the report came to be known
as "The Moynihan Report."
Moynihan's basic premise was that the
Afro-American family was highly unstable
and, as a result, "the Negro family
in the urban ghettos is crumbling."
Attributing the instability of the black
family to matriarchal households
produced by divorce, separation, and
illegitimacy, Moynihan argued that the
root of the problem revolved around
the systematic weakening of the black
male's position in society, a condition
originating with the institution of
slavery. "It was by destroying the Negro
family," according to Moynihan,
"that white America broke the will of the
Negro people," thereby creating the
"tangle of pathology" characteristic of
Afro-American family structure.
With the publication of Herbert G.
Gutman's The Black Family in Slavery
& Freedom, 1750-1925, the traditional view as expounded by Moynihan and
others has been challenged. Gutman
convincingly argues that slavery did not
destroy black family structure in the
United States. On the contrary, from the
earliest days of slavery until the
mid-1920s, the black family-slave and
free-was surprisingly close, strong, and
intact.
Meticulously utilizing both quantitative
sources (census reports, plantation
journal books, and county marriage registers) and
qualitative materials, such
as personal slave narratives and letters,
Professor Gutman specifically
analyzes black family relationships on
six antebellum southern plantations. In
each case, he finds that black slaves
consciously and tenaciously created and
maintained family bonds of great
strength. He shows, for example, how
slaves often named their children for
kinfolk, including grandparents and
great-grandparents, as well as how they
utilized appellations of "aunt,"
"uncle," and
"cousin" for each other, thereby creating threads of family
identity. The typical slave family,
according to Gutman, was characterized by
a two-parent household and a
long-lasting marriage, with a concurrent
emphasis placed upon marital fidelity.
Of the literally thousands of freedmen
who legally registered their marriages
after the Civil War, approximately
one-fourth had been living with the same
spouse for at least ten years, while
an additional one-fifth for twenty years
or more.
This is an important book that should be
read by all historians. Professor
Gutman's achievement is that he has
provided a new vision of the past which
will enable readers to appreciate more
fully the black experience in the
Book Reviews
207
United States-an experience, at least in
terms of family life, which in large
part has been misunderstood.
Ohio Northern University Robert R. Davis, Jr.
The Character of John Adams. By Peter Shaw (Chapel Hill: The University
of North Carolina Press, 1976. ix +
324p.; notes, index. $12.95.)
Peter Shaw's monograph on the character
of John Adams is the latest in a
long series of high-quality volumes
published by the Institute of Early
American History and Culture. Always
well researched, well written, and
carefully edited and published, these
books serve as a standard for the
historical profession.
During 1976 a common quip used by
speakers to open a lecture was that
while the Patriots had won the American
Revolution, the Tories were winning
the bicentennial. Reflecting on the
large number of monographs and primary
source documents published on the Loyalists
in the preceding several years,
these lecturers were pointing to one of
the most interesting aspects of the
bicentennial celebration. On the whole,
the event was marked by a
conservative and nostalgic ideological
flavor in contrast to the robust,
materialistic extravaganza of the
centennial. The same atmosphere that
encouraged sympathy for the Loyalists
evidently also produced a major
revival of interest in John Adams.
It is clearly diffcult and perhaps
impossible for a single historian, given
the vast extent of the documentation, to
encompass in one volume the life of
John Adams. Reviewers and critics have
almost uniformly been disappointed
with most of the biographical studies of
this man. In this volume Peter Shaw
chooses a much more restricted
framework. His purpose is not to study the
entire career of John Adams for the
purpose of presenting a narrative
summary, but rather to view "his
character, thought, and acts as a whole."
The portrait Shaw paints of Adams is one
that is based upon a psychological
analysis of this character. The
ambitious Adams constantly sought
recognition, but not necessarily power,
and he was constantly frustrated in
this pursuit. He pictures Adams as a
passionate, aggressive individual locked
in a cage of his own manufacture.
While the book itself does not reveal
any new or unusual information about
the career of John Adams, it does
highlight clearly and precisely the influence
of personality and character on the
execution of public affairs. What Shaw
provides in this volume is a brilliant
analysis of the frustrations of power and
position. What Adams, perhaps more than
any of his contemporaries,
revealed in his correspondence was the
tremendous strain and stress that
positions of power and authority entail.
The danger, however, in studies such
as this is the assumption that the
individual under consideration was rather
unique in this characteristic. Many of
the founding fathers, who were more at
home with books and ideas than in the
messy world of politics, were affected
severely by the stresses of public life.
This is certainly evident in the career of
Thomas Jefferson. Of the greatest of the
founding fathers, only Benjamin
Franklin seems to have felt totally at
home in the highly charged atmosphere of
politics and diplomacy.
208 OHIO HISTORY
Perhaps to a greater degree than
necessary, Shaw dwells on the negative
aspects of Adam's character. The book is therefore
rather depressing. Adams
may have turned to the diary and letters
to vent his frustrations at periods of
special stress. During times of
happiness, he may have been less inclined to
retreat to his notebook. A large portion
of the book is concerned with Adam's
diplomatic career in Europe where,
marooned in France and Holland and
often without his wife and family, he
was subject to periods of depression.
But this is only a minor quibble with a
book of far-reaching importance. Shaw
has used the tools of the new
psychoanalytic history and yet has refrained
from relying on jargon to confuse the
reader. The book represents a major
attempt to integrate psychological
theory with a straightforward narrative
history.
Western Reserve Historical Society David C. Twining
Campaigns of the American Revolution:
An Atlas of Manuscript Maps. By
Douglas W. Marshall and Howard H.
Peckham. (Ann Arbor: The
University of Michigan Press, 1976. v +
138p.; maps, list of sources,
index. $25.00.)
Howard Peckham, director of the William L.
Clements Library and
Professor of History at the University
of Michigan, and Douglas W. Marshall,
curator of maps at the Clements Library,
have produced an unusual and
worthwhile volume of maps of the
American Revolution culled from the
Clements Library collection. The maps
are accompanied by an expository
narrative that brings to life the role
of cartography in the first great colonial
war for independence.
Contents-both maps and narrative-are
arranged chronologically, with
each year from 1775 to 1781 represented
by three to ten maps. Fifty-eight
maps are included: fifty British, four
American, three German, and one
French. Thirty-two maps portray
traditional battle scenes drawn after the
event, commemorating principal engagements
using conventional tactics. To
illustrate the diversity of the war, the
editors include fortification plans,
on-site sketches, and reconnaissance
maps. These examples amply support
their contention that maps played a
fundamental role in the war if examined
within a context of large-scale
pacification efforts, partisan raids,
non-stationary fronts, and logistics
requirements.
At the beginning of each section is a
standard outline map of North
America east of the Mississippi River
which clearly indicates colony
boundaries and sites of battles and
skirmishes illustrated by the maps. The
general map in the section entitled
1775, for example, pinpoints Lexington
and Concord, Boston, Breeds Hill, the
Great Bridge at Norfolk, Virginia,
Montreal, and Quebec. Following each
general map is a narrative of the
progress of the war during that year
with comtemporary maps depicting the
course of the conflict. The reader is
thus able to place individual battles into a
continental context.
The narrative, for the most part clear,
concise, and supported by
refreshingly-presented military and
scholarly commentary, serves at least two
Book Reviews
209
major purposes. First, from section to
section, the narrative affords a general
account and interpretation of the war,
including political and economic
issues, and logistic, command, and
reconnaissance problems. Thus the
narrative, supported and illustrated by
the maps, provides an overview of the
war in the North American continental
theatre. For this purpose the maps
reveal the complexity and sometimes the
absurdity of the war, emphasizing
the sheer geographic and topographic
problems that ultimately determined to
a great extent the course of the land
war. Also, each section, with its
fronting map, narrative, and
contemporary maps, examines in detail a
particular aspect of the war-a set
battle, a frontier raid, tactical preparation
and execution, and sieges-narrated and
illustrated with large- and
small-scale maps to enable the reader to
analyze and understand the
immediate problems and alternative
decisions facing the combatants in the
field.
By reading from narrative to maps, and
ideally by additionally referring to
contemporary and secondary accounts of
the war, laymen and professional
scholars alike can come to a clearer
understanding of the Revolution as it was
fought by its participants.
In all, this volume promises a
stimulating educational experience for
anyone interested in the American
Revolution. The reproductions of the maps
are excellent, and the narrative
fulfills its dual function of combining macro
and micro history. One does wish for
more in-depth analysis of the
significance of the maps in relation
both to the total war and individual
military actions. This, however, is a minor
cavil. Learning to "read" the
maps is, indeed, one of the pleasures
the format of the book affords.
Campaigns of the American Revolution bears out the editors' contention that
their work is both an interpretation of
the evidence and a portfolio of source
material.
The Ohio State University Paul C. Bowers
A New Age Now Begins: A People's
History of the American Revolution. By
Page Smith. 2 vols. (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1976. Vol. 1: xi + 872p.;
maps. Vol. II: ix + 1027 p.; maps,
bibliographical note, index. $24.95 per
set.)
The bicentennial year has drawn to a
close, and the bookshelves are
groaning with the newly-produced
publications in honor of this unique event.
One of the most monumental single
undertakings of this genre is Page Smith's
A New Age Now Begins. Having earned Emeritus status at the University of
California where he was Professor of
History, Dr. Smith has most recently
served as the historical advisor to the
People's Bicentennial Commission.
Consciously rejecting the monographic
approach, Dr. Smith has chosen to
write a lengthy new history of the
American Revolution in a popular style.
The early chapters of the first volume
concentrate on the social history of
early America up to the Stamp Act crisis
in 1765. The author then turns to a
very tightly-knit summary of the events
of the American Revolution. The text
is robust, fast-moving, and interesting.
The book was designed to be read by
a popular audience and therefore
contains a significant amount of spicy and
tantalizing prose.
210 OHIO HISTORY
Academic historians, however, are apt to
question the need for a new
narrative summary of an event that has
been covered amply in the past. The
author was, of course, conscious of this
potent objection while he was writing
the book and, in some of the most
anti-academic prose in recent historical
literature, he addresses this concern in
his bibliographical note. Smith
confesses a great prejudice against
footnotes, arguing that originally they
provided "a modest and useful means
of giving the source of specific
quotations in the text. Now they have
progressed (or regressed) to being
contentious, expository, and didactic, a
sort of cumbersome vehicle, full of
scholarly impetimenta, which is dragged
along with the text and from which
the author pulls forth for display
endless exhibits of this erudition, fending off
critics with frequent asides designed to
demonstrate his knowledge of the
literature of the field, making snide
comments about rival historians." To sum
it all up, Smith believes "Most of
this is absurd."
After a very good summary of the source
material utilized, Smith focuses
on the role of mongraphs. In his view,
"At worst, the monograph is very apt
to muddy the historical waters and draw
attention away from the primary
issues. At best, it serves an important
if transient purpose of relating
historical events to the 'Spirit of the
times,' and thus keeping them
accessible, at least on a scholarly
level, through 're-interpretation'."
Smith makes clear in this volume that
the major role of the historian is to
tell the story of the major events that
have influenced or affected the flow of
history. Given his own objectives, A
New Age Now Begins is a brilliant
success. While the book is long, the
prose moves along at a lively rate and the
stories that Smith has managed to revive
will serve as excellent source
material for professorial lecture notes
in the future. One factor that would
delight many readers, although it
distresses some historians, is that Smith is
really a social historian or biographer
at heart and not a military historian.
Smith, in this book and others, is
endlessly fascinated by the individual and
his role in history. While due
consideration is given to military details, Smith
spends a great deal of time discussing
the war in terms of the officers and
common soldiers, and the diaries and
letters of the latter form an important
source for the volume.
Although the book is not a thesis volume
and it does not argue anything
new, Smith does have some strong
feelings about the meaning of the event.
He sees the American Revolution as an
irreversible and utterly compelling
occasion that will stand for all time as
one of the major events in human
history. In his speech accepting the
Nobel Prize, Saul Bellow, the
distinguished novelist, indicated that
for too long artists have been involved
in probing the peripheries of human experience
rather than the core. "One
can't tell writers what to do,"
said Bellow. "The imagination must find its
own path. But one can fervently wish
that they-that we-would come back
from the periphery. We do not, we
writers, represent mankind adequately."
Perhaps the same could be said of
historians. Clearly, Smith has decided that
there are more compelling reasons to
retell the important story of the
American Revolution to a new generation
than to use his excellent talents to
produce highly specialized monographs.
It is difficult not to applaud him for
this decision.
Western Reserve Historical Society David C. Twining
Book Reviews
211
The Impact of the American Revolution
Abroad: Papers Presented at the
Fourth Symposium, May 8 and 9, 1975. Edited by the Library of
Congress. (Washington, D.C.: Library of
Congress, 1976. viii + 171p.;
notes. $4.50.)
It is fitting that the Library of
Congress has been a leading contributor to
colloquia on the meaning of the American
Revolution during the bicentennial
celebrations. Clothed with ample
prestige and funds, it has sponsored annual
symposia since 1972 which have dealt
with the ideology of the Revolution,
the significance of its major documents,
and the range of its leadership. The
fourth symposium on the American
Revolution, held on May 8 and 9, 1975,
explored the impact of the American
Revolution on the outside world. For
this exercise distinguished Americanists
from abroad came to Washington to
share their views with each other, with
Richard B. Morris of Columbia
University, the interlocutor of the
program, and with Robert R. Palmer of
Yale who provided an overview of the
issue. Claude Fohlen of the Sorbonne
spoke of the Revolution's impact on
France, J. W. Schulte Nordholt on the
Netherlands, J. H. Plumb of Cambridge on
Great Britain, N. N.
Bolkhovitinov of the Institute of
General History of the Soviet Academy of
Science on Russia, Mario Rodriguez of
Southern California on Iberia and
Owen Dudley Edwards of Edinburgh on
Ireland. Brief commentaries were
added by Erich Angermann of Cologne on
Germany, Nagauo Homma of
Tokyo on Japan, and Ignacio Rubio Mane,
Archivist of Mexico, on Spain.
Although this blue-ribbon assembly
managed to say a number of things,
some of them fresh, their additions to
scholarship were not commensurate with
their collective distinction as
scholars. This is not surprising. The Japanese,
Russian, and German spokesmen recognized
the marginality of the
Revolution in their respective
countries. Bolkhovitinov, observing that the
American experience concerned a
bourgeois society and an anti-colonial
problem alien to Russia, believes that
the Revolution did not become relevant
until the time of the Decembrists a
half-century later, and even then the
impact was minimal. Similarly, Homma
points out that Japan did not perceive
the Revolution until almost a century
after its inception, and that the
Federalist Papers may have been a minor
influence on the constitution which
the Japanese drew up in 1889. Ironically,
the impact of 1776 was more
apparent in the Constitution of 1947,
even though it was imposed rather than
freely adopted. Angermann concludes that
despite considerable German
interest in the Revolution there was
little or no impact on Germany itself.
The difficulties in dealing with the
elusive "impact" are made clear in
Palmer's paper. Rather than extend it
too far into the future or tie it too
specifically to individuals, he feels
that the impact abroad should be identified
with the inspiration of a successful
revolution. Fohlen and Schulte Nordholt
follow this lead in noting the special
importance of state constitutions of the
1770s and 1780s in French and Dutch
considerations of revolution. The
Declaration of the Rights of Man in
particular owed much to Virginia's
Declaration of Rights. Similarly, the
success of American militias in creating
a citizen army was to have an immediate
as well as a long-range impact on
Europe. Most of the authors resist the
impulse to equate impact with the
conduct of an individual. Lafayette is
barely mentioned. Bernardo de Galvez
stands in for Spain only when Rodriguez
and Rubio Mane can find nothing
more positive to offer.
212 OHIO HISTORY
In one way or another each of the
authors wrestle with the shortcomings of
the Revolution. In France, Holland, and
Russia the inconsistency between
liberty for some and slavery for others
perplexed friends of the Revolution.
For all there were problems of
communication that could not be overcome.
The different experiences of the Old and
New Worlds made it impossible for
American bicameralism and federalism to
be understood in Europe. Yet,
properly understood or not, the American
Revolution, as Palmer sees it, was
"the opening signal, raised on a
distant shore, for revolutionary outburst
which in the next few years was to sweep
through the world of Western
civilization." Presumably all the
nations could agree on this general impact.
Kent State University Lawrence S. Kaplan
Fort Laurens, 1778-1779: The
Revolutionary War in Ohio. By Thomas
I.
Pieper and James B. Gidney. (Kent State
University Press, 1976. xi +
97p.; maps, note on sources. $7.95.)
As military operations are measured, the
Detroit campaign of 1778-1779
was a failure. Starting at Fort Pitt, it
reached only the Tuscarawas River in
eastern Ohio and left there a starving
garrison in a modest wooden stockade
to await a spring campaign which never
occurred. When the last troops left
Fort Laurens in the summer of 1779, the
British at Detroit were more secure,
the Ohio Indians were more hostile to
the United States, and American
settlements along the upper Ohio valley
were more vulnerable to incursions
than they had been a year earlier.
This failure resulted from the usual
multitude of factors influencing
Revolutionary War military operations:
ineffective leadership, divided
councils, provincial animosities,
insufficient resources, excessive delays, and
more critical demands upon manpower and
supplies. Mr. Pieper, a Stark
County teacher, and Professor Gidney of
Kent State University have
effectively described the trials and
tribulations of Fort Laurens and illustrated
its modest role in American history.
Because this outpost is the only
Revolutionary War fortification in this
state, its history is of particular
interest to Ohioans.
Fundamental to our understanding of the
Fort Laurens story is the rivalry
between Pennsylvania and Virginia for
the control of the upper Ohio valley.
Both colonies claimed the Pittsburgh
area and Virginia used its
seventeenth-century charter to assume
title to all land between the modern
Tennessee-Kentucky boundary and Hudson
Bay. All frontiersmen agreed
that the British garrison at Detroit was
the key to control of the transmontane
west. However, cooperation by Virginians
with the Continental Army
garrison at Fort Pitt commanded by
General Lachlan McIntosh of Georgia
would lessen the Old Dominion's claim to
the land north of the Ohio. Instead,
Governor Patrick Henry sent George
Rogers Clark and Virginia militiamen
against the Illinois and Wabash towns
which neither posed any military threat
nor promised any significant advantage
in a campaign against Detroit.
Consequently, General McIntosh's effort
was delayed, undermanned,
ill-supplied, and unable to advance more
than a third of the way to its
objective. Rather than withdraw
completely, he left an outpost garrison on
Book Reviews
213
the Tuscarawas in a fortification named
after Henry Laurens, President of the
Continental Congress. While this
garrison suffered through starvation and
siege, intrigue at Fort Pitt resulted in
McIntosh's dismissal and his
replacement by Colonel Daniel Brodhead,
a Pennsylvanian who saw the
major threat from the Iroquois in New
York rather than from the Shawnee
and Delaware in Ohio.
The Brodhead appointment was unfortunate
for two reasons. His hatred of
any strategy conceived by McIntosh
caused him to abandon Fort Laurens
even though it constituted both a
logical stepping-stone for any Detroit attack
and provided some insurance of Delaware
support for the American cause.
Second, as a military leader Brodhead
lacked the charisma of Clark and he
never united the quarrelling
Pennsylvanians and Virginians in a common
effort. In the final analysis, the only
military value of Fort Laurens was that it
served as a decoy which kept the British
and Indians from concentrating their
full effort against General John
Sullivan's 1779 campaign into New York's
Finger Lake region because they feared
an attack via Forts Pitt and Laurens
toward Detroit.
As a well-written monograph about an
almost forgotten episode in Ohio
history, this small book is a welcome
addition. Because it does not reference
the documentation that lay behind the
story, it fails to make the definitive
scholarly contribution that could have
been accomplished. It was most
unfortunate that the results of the
recent archaeological excavation of the fort
could not have been appended to this
history. Moreover, Fort Laurens
constitutes only a small part of the
Revolutionary War in Ohio. For those
desiring a broader view of the war in
the west, Dale Van Every's A Company
of Heroes (1962) is still the best account available.
Bowling Green State University David Curtis Skaggs
The American Revolution in the West. By George M. Waller. (Chicago:
Nelson-Hall, 1976. xxi + 153p.; maps,
illustrations, index. $10.00.)
This is the kind of book one is tempted
to call "lavish." Printed on fine
stock, with lots of white space and
elaborate chapter heads, it is richly
supplied with maps, plans of
fortifications, drawings, and portraits. Even the
dust jacket is a thing of beauty. With
these attractions it easily could be
dismissed as a coffee table book. That
would be unfortunate, for once
Professor Waller gets past an unimpressive
start, he provides his readers with
a good account of a rather neglected
aspect of the American Revolution.
His preface is unimpressive because he
devotes too much of it to explaining
why his account is better than others.
In a field so neglected there would be
no need for such claims even if they
were demonstrably true. Except for the
admirable brevity which he rightly
stresses, his book does not quite match
Dale Van Every's A Company of Heroes (1962).
He further weakens his
opening pages by attempting to summarize
the events and attitudes leading to
the outbreak of war in the east. Perhaps
some background was necessary, but
it is a twice-told tale with little
originality.
However, when the author gets to his
subject he offers a narrative that is
clear, objective, and reasonably
comprehensive. Even more than Van Every,
214 OHIO HISTORY
he makes George Rogers Clark the central
figure of his story, paying
deserved tribute to Clark's courage,
endurance, and resourcefulness. Like
Van Every he overestimates the
importance of Clark's victories, not
one of which achieved permanence. The claim of the
infant republic to the
lands between the Appalachians and the
Mississippi did not rest on Clark's
sensational but ephemeral victories but
rather on the combination of plain
people seeking western land and prominent people
speculating in it. In any
case, Clark's mission was less motivated
by devotion to the emerging United
States of America (in whose armies he
never served) than by his
determination to hold Kentucky and the
Old Northwest for Virginia. For this
he seized Kaskaskia and Vincennes and
came closer than any other American
to taking Detroit.
Interlaced with Clark's movements are
Cornstalk's murder and its
consequences, disagreement at Fort Pitt
on the way to deal with the Indians,
the Continental drive into the western
country, the British power at Detroit
and on the Sandusky from which they
could launch Indian attacks on the
frontier, the diversion of effort from
the Ohio country to the Allegheny in
support of Sullivan's campaign, and the
final years of the war in which
American determination to stir up the
frontier without a thought of how to
control it led to unimaginable suffering
on the part of the settlers. It is only
when Waller deals with events at Fort
Laurens in early 1779 that he betrays
confusion.
In only one instance-but it is a crucial
one-is the author somewhat
unfair. He writes: "Detroit offered
a highly favorable target had Clark's
leadership been utilized or had McIntosh
displayed the same kind of spirit."
McIntosh's defects are plain enough. He
was at loggerheads with his
subordinate, Colonel Brodhead, and with
Indian Agent George Morgan; he
was disliked by the soldiers under his
command; and he aroused mirth rather
than admiration by a bombastic speech to
the Delawares. His entire record
shows, however, that he never lacked
spirit. What Waller overlooks is that,
on his own showing, Governor Patrick
Henry had given Clark exceptional
leeway to fight Virginia's western war
as he saw fit, while McIntosh, an
officer of the Continental army, was
bound by his orders. On July 25, 1778,
his objective had been cut back from an
assault on Detroit to a chastisement
of the "savages" on the
Sandusky. At any time after that an attack on Detroit
would have been military
insubordination.
Kent State University James B. Gidney
Diplomacy on the Indiana-Ohio
Frontier: 1783-1791. By Joyce G. Williams
and Jill E. Farrelly. (Bloomington:
Indiana University Bicentennial
Committee, 1976. 99p.; illustrations,
appendix, bibliography. $3.00 +
postage.)
This study deals with the struggle for
control of the land north of the Ohio
River immediately following the
Revolution. Three forces came into conflict
over this territory. The Americans
wanted the land. The Indians did not want
the Americans to get their tribal areas
and banded together in a powerful
confederation to stop them. The British,
who had ceded all claims to this
Book Reviews
215
territory in the Treaty of Paris,
decided to retain their influence in the
Northwest. They held on to their old
frontier posts and gave the Indians
supplies and encouragement in their
stand against American penetration.
Although the book does not offer
anything significantly new to the
specialist in the history of the Old
Northwest, it might serve as a useful, if
limited, introductory guide for the period
from 1783 to 1791. Williams and
Farrelly write well and effectively
weave insights from the major monographs
and general works on the subject into a
fairly coherent overall pattern. They
treat particularly well the growth of
American policy toward Indian land, the
evolution of the Indian confederation,
and the uncertain and not always
consistent British approach of using the
Indians to advance English interests
while simultaneously avoiding a war with
America.
Some problems, however, do mar the
book's introductory function.
Although the authors do discuss American
desires to get the British out of the
frontier posts, there is virtually no
treatment of the diplomatic contacts
between the British and American
governments over the issue of the posts.
There were numerous contacts and most
authorities who deal with the period
consider them an important part of the
picture. To leave them out is a curious
omission.
That the authors conclude with 1791,
after St. Clair's disastrous defeat,
also seems unusual. The internal logic
of the book argues for going as far as
the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794
when the Indian power was crushed.
Most of the authors' major themes
continued to evolve beyond 1791.
American land policy increasingly
recognized Indian soil rights, the Indian
confederation lived on although changed
in shape and leadership, and the
British intensified their efforts to
block American expansion, becoming quite
enamored with the concept of a
British-dominated Indian buffer state. Also,
overzealous and fearful Canadian
officials possibly came close to provoking
war between the U.S. and Great Britain.
The story of the opening of the
Ohio-Indiana frontier lasted until 1794.
The period between St. Clair's fiasco
and Fallen Timbers was a significant
part of that story which the authors, for
the most part, have left out except for
a cursory treatment in a brief, vague
epilogue. Evidently they prefer to see
1791 as the watershed for America's
securing the Old Northwest. Outside of
an unconvincing description of the
British becoming more amenable to
American expansion after 1791, which
does not seem supported by the facts,
they do not offer any real arguments as
to why this book should basically end in
1791. Their study is adequate as far
as it goes, but the reader who knows
nothing about the period should be
warned that it does not provide a full
picture of how Americans displaced the
Indians and the British in the Old
Northwest.
Denison University Clarke L. Wilhelm
The Brick and Tile Industry in Stark
County, 1809-1976. By C. Harold
McCollam. (Canton: The Stark County
Historical Society; distributed by
The Kent State University Press, 1976.
xiii + 337p.; illustrations, notes,
appendices, index. $12.50.)
McCollam's book possesses most of the
virtues and many of the faults of
the amateur local historians' efforts.
The work displays considerable
216 OHIO HISTORY
enthusiasm and diligence on the part of
the author, who apparently has
performed personally much of the legwork
which the professional historian
often assigns to a graduate student or spouse. The book
is an extended
compilation of the basic data which McCollam has
retrieved from city
directories, newspapers, courthouse
records, local histories, and personal
interviews with company executives and
workers.
The book is largely an account of
company officers, changes in ownership,
and type of products, with considerable family history
interspersed. There is
much information on individual plant
production, but little in the way of
comparative statistics or changes in
production methods. Virtually nothing is
said of manufacturing methods or
machinery. The Bonnot Company, an
important Canton manufacturer of clay
products equipment, is given a scant
two paragraphs.
No attempt is made to relate the Stark
County industry to the industry
throughout Ohio or nationwide. Labor
relations, safety hazards, frequency of
losses due to fires, and similar factors
are not discussed. One of the few
general conclusions reached by the author is that
"the brick industry is still
viable if market conditions are
favorable." The last chapter, "What of the
Future for the Brick and Tile
Industry?", is a paean in praise of the many
(undisputed) virtues of brick.
Although the text is documented by
numerous footnotes, there is no
bibliography. Several important sources
seem to have been overlooked.
Wilber Stout's pioneering "History
of the Clay Industry in Ohio" (Chapter I
in Geological Survey of Ohio Bulletin 26,
1923), which contains specific
information that McCollam states he was
unable to find (p.60), goes
unmentioned. There is no indication that
the author has checked Brick, The
Clay Worker, and similar trade journals for information.
Perhaps the most unaccountable lapse is
the author's failure to relate the
Stark County ceramic industry to the
geology of the area. His repeated
statement that the coals and fireclays
of the Pennsylvanian System were
formed by Pleistocene glaciation (pp.18,
19, 25) suggests a lack of interest in
this aspect of the subject.
American Ceramic Society James L. Murphy
Case Western Reserve: A History of
the University 1826-1976. By C. H.
Cramer. (Boston: Little, Brown and
Company, 1976. viii + 401p.;
illustrations, appendices, notes, index.
$12.50.)
The history of higher education in the
United States is by no means a new
field but has only recently received
widespread attention from professional
historians. One reason for the neglect
is that too many works in this field
have been written by persons who were
not qualified historians and whose
approach was usually institutional,
encyclopedic, or hagiological. We are
fortunate in Ohio, however, in having a
number of professional university
histories, notably those of Akron
University by George Knepper, Kent State
University by Phillip Shriver, and the
University of Cincinnati by Reginald
McGrane. Outside of Ohio the histories
of the University of Maryland by
George H. Callcott and the University of
South Carolina by Daniel Hollis and
Book Reviews
217
the recent study of the Harvard faculty
by Robert A. McCanghey are
evidence of a rising interest in the
history of higher education written by
competent historians who portray both
the good and bad in their institutions
and assess their personnel as human
beings rather than plaster cast saints.
This work on Case Western Reserve is an
example of the best type of
history in this field. The author, a
diplomatic historian and dean at Case
Western Reserve, has written a scholarly
history of his university to
commemorate the 150th anniversary of its
founding.
Western Reserve College was founded in
1826 at the small town of Hudson,
Ohio, about twenty miles southeast of
Cleveland. This town was located in
that part of Ohio known as the
"Western Reserve." The area was originally a
part of Connecticut and had been settled
by people from that state. In the
settlement of western land claims of the
eastern states, Connecticut gave up
its sovereignty over this territory but
retained the ownership of the land. This
was divided into two parts. The
westernmost land was given to Connecticut
people whose homes were destroyed,
usually by fire, by the enemy during the
Revolution and this area therefore was
called "The Firelands." The eastern
part of the "Reserve" was sold
to land speculators.
One of these speculators was David
Hudson from Connecticut who in 1799
purchased seven thousand acres on which
he proposed to build a town, a
church, and a college. The town and
church soon materialized but it was not
until twenty-seven years later that the
Western Reserve College was founded,
taking its name from the region's traditional
name.
Western Reserve College remained in
Hudson for over fifty years, sharing
the trials and tribulations of most of
the small church-related colleges which
were founded in that era. The fact that
it survived can be attributed largely to
the courage, determination, and
sacrifices of a small group of men who not
only kept it going but managed to build
a reputation which won for it the
nickname "The Yale of the
West." Removal of the school to Cleveland was
made possible in 1880 by several
donations amounting to $600,000 from a
wealthy Clevelander, Amasa Stone, who
gave the money on the condition
that the college's name be changed to
Adelbert College in memory of his son.
This is still the name of the undergraduate
college of Case Western Reserve.
A major motive of Stone's donation was
the fact that another Cleveland
family, the Case family, was planning to
establish a scientific school to be
called the Case School of Applied
Science. This was done in 1877 through a
gift from Leonard Case of real estate in
the center of Cleveland which in time
would be worth several million dollars.
In the deed for the new school, Case
stipulated that "mathematics,
physics, mechanical and civil engineering,
chemistry, economic geology, mining and
metallurgy, natural history,
drawing, and modern languages" be
taught. The board of trustees decided at
the beginning that the institute should
emphasize faculty instead of buildings,
so the Case School of Applied Science
opened with sixteen students in the
red brick dwelling that the Case family
had occupied since 1856, on a site that
today is just off Public Square.
Thus Case began its existence at about
the same time that Western Reserve
moved to Cleveland. The schools were
situated next to each other and their
relationship was characterized by both
cooperation and rivalry. For many
years there were proposals to unite them
which were finally consummated in
1967. Dr. Cramer gives a valuable
picture of the development of the two
schools into a university whose chief
distinction was in scientific research.
218 OHIO HISTORY
In this otherwise comprehensive book
there are a few subjects on which
Dr. Cramer might have given us fuller
information. Why were the reputations
of both schools so largely based on the
physical sciences and so little on the
humanities and social sciences? Why has
Case Western Reserve never
attained rank as one of the top universities of the
nation? Cleveland has
produced an internationally known art
museum, public library, and symphony
orchestra. Why not a first rate
university rather than a "first rate second
rate" university? One opinion is
that most wealthy people in Cleveland send
their children to eastern colleges and
that they tend to donate money to their
alma mater rather than a local
university. Dr. Cramer touches on the Western
Reserve and the Cleveland in which the
university developed but does not tell
us much about this background. Finally,
was Case Western Reserve a
genuine "urban" university or
only a university located in a large city? In
other words, was it integrated with the
life of the city or simply located in the
city but with a separate community of
its own?
We can be grateful to Dr. Cramer,
however, for giving us a book that will
be valuable to scholars in several
fields. Urban historians will be interested in
this account of the rise of a well-known
city university; scholars in the field of
the history of science will be
interested in the contributions that Case
Western Reserve made to scientific
research; historians of American higher
education will find this book a valuable
addition to the growing literature in
their field; historians of Ohio will
find it valuable in understanding some
little-known aspects of Ohio history;
and general American historians will
find information on interesting aspects
of American history such as the
abolitionist versus colonizationist
controversy which nearly wrecked the
college. Since the book is written in a
readable manner it should appeal not
only to loyal alumni of Case Western
Reserve but also to the reading public in
Ohio.
Youngstown State University Alvin W. Skardon
Memoirs of My Services in the World
War, 1917-1918. By George C.
Marshall. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.,
1976. xiv +268p.; illustrations,
maps, diaries, notes, index. $10.00.)
As a public figure, George Catlett
Marshall had a horror of memoirs,
particularly those written by soldiers.
It is distinctly disconcerting, therefore,
to have his reminiscences of World War I
suddenly materialize, since General
Marshall had intended that the
manuscript be destroyed. Neither friends nor
detractors need be alarmed. The work
itself is no expose of Marshall's
feelings toward his comrades-in-arms. It
is not polished-Houghton Mifflin
was justified in rejecting the
manuscript in 1924-and lacks both introduction
and conclusion, but it is written
nonetheless carefully for all that.
Marshall, for example, entirely omitted
his clash with General Pershing in
October 1917, although an account of the
incident, which occurred during
training maneuvers, appears in Forrest
Pogue's George C. Marshall:
Education of a General. Marshall, characteristically, in recounting the
incident to Pogue in 1957, thought it
"too much of a personal thing for me to
put in here." The closest Marshall
came to criticizing fellow officers in his
memoirs occurred at the height of the
Meuse-Argonne offensive. Against
Book Reviews
219
stiffening German opposition, "the
real leaders of the Army stood forth in
bold contrast to those of ordinary clay.
Men who had sustained a reputation
for soldierly qualities under less
trying conditions, proved too weak for the
ordeal and became pessimistic calamity
howlers." Marshall himself, we may
be sure, was one of the "real
leaders." He had been largely responsible for
planning the movement of American combat
forces from the St. Mihiel salient
to the Meuse-Argonne front, earning for
his efforts the sobriquet of "wizard"
in Army circles.
Marshall also makes few judgments on
tactical matters. It was the good
fortune of the American doughboy that he
entered the war in strength when it
was returning to a relatively fluid
state. A taste of the horrors of trench
warfare was reserved for the First
Division-and Marshall-earlier at
Cantigny. "It was not the ordeal of
personal combat that seemed to prove the
greatest strain. .. .It was the
endurance for days at a time of severe artillery
bombardment by shells of heavy caliber,
that proved the fortitude of [the]
troops."
It is with pleasure that the reader
discovers that Marshall possessed a lively
sense of humor. On one occasion just
prior to the Armistice, wearied of talk
of apportioning the German colonies to
the victors, he solemnly informed a
British officer that America was opposed
to having any colony "that had a
wet or a dry season and an abnormal
number of insects," but would consider
taking Bermuda. This horrified the
Englishman, who failed to realize his leg
was being pulled. Just after his arrival
in France, determined to speak the
language, Marshall commented to a French
riding companion on the
wonderful weather by remarking "Je
suis tres beau aujourd'hui." Receiving
an odd look in return, he mentally
translated the remark-and never spoke
French again during the ensuing
twenty-six months abroad "except when
forced to." Finally, there was Winston
Churchill's comment on Prohibition,
uttered during the victory celebration
in England in 1919 while Churchill was
reviewing an American regiment:
"What a magnificent body of men never to
take another drink."
The book, despite its shortcomings,
deserves a wide readership. Those who
revere the General's memory and
accomplishments will not be disappointed.
Libraries with substantial holdings on
the United States Army and the First
World War will want to acquire it. The
layman who wants to know what it
was like "over there" from a
staff point of view will receive a number of
insights into the perils and rewards of
training and operational planning.
However, the reader should keep a copy
of Pogue's biography at his elbow.
Allegheny College Richard W. Turk
The German-Americans. By La Vern J. Rippley. (Boston: Twayne
Publishers, 1976. 271p.; notes,
bibliography, index. $8.95.)
Beginning with a biographical sketch of
the author, followed by a foreword
by Congressman Henry S. Reuss and a page
of acknowledgements from the
author, we are given a brief
geo-political sketch of German history by way of
an introduction to the subject of the
book-the historical phenomenon of the
assimilation of the third largest
contingent of German peoples in the world.
Thus, this history of the
German-Americans is unique in that both the first
220 OHIO HISTORY
and the last chapters of the book end
with a note of finality, like a part from
the German Requiem of Brahms: "For
all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of
man as the flower of grass. The grass
withereth, and the flower thereof falleth
away." We will return to this
thought later.
As a part of Twayne's Immigrant Heritage
of America Series, this
compact volume is subject to certain
limitations of space which one must take
into consideration in judging the
contents. One omission is noticed
immediately because it concerns a group
which is particularly vociferous in
this country and which has been proud of
its German heritage. Richard
O'Connor, in his The German-Americans:
An Informal History (Boston,
1968), devotes a full chapter to them
entitled "The 'Jewish Grand Dukes' and
Others." However, it would be
unfair to hold this against the author because
we must consider that this series will
not just devote a chapter but an entire
volume to the Jewish heritage in
America.
Chapters 2 through 7 move
chronologically from early German immigration
to the post-Civil War period. Chapters 8
through 13 discuss religion, schools,
theater, the musical arts, fine arts,
architecture, the sciences, newspapers,
"belles-lettres," and the
Russian-Germans. After this the author again moves
chronologically with the following
chapters: "German-Americans in the Early
Twentieth Century and in World War
I," "The Relationship of Nazi
Germany to America's German
Element," and "The German-Americans
Today." These chapters are followed
by a very compact but full "Notes and
References" and a fine
"Selected Bibliography." In reading the text itself
one would commit a grave error not to
refer constantly to the notes section,
because we see here how fully the author
has informed himself about his
subject. Much valuable information and
reference is found in the notes that
does not appear in the bibliography. For
compiling his bibliography the
author had the good fortune of having
the help of his "librarian wife."
Anglo-American historians have been
quite critical of German-American
historians for their
"filio-pious" approach to the great contributions of
German-Americans to our Fatherland. We
have had many great
German-American historians who wrote in
German: Cronau, Kapp,
Rattermann, Loher, and Von Bosse; and
others who wrote in English: Faust,
O'Connor, Ward, Wittke, and Zucker. We
have had local, regional, and
national historians, and most have done
a very creditable job. The criticism of
filio-piety strikes this reviewer as
iconoclastic nonsense. Should a
German-American historian perhaps devote
his research energies and writing
talents to negation or the new
"objectivity"? Our most sacred book is
historical and the authors certainly do
not hesitate to practice ancestor
worship, and only those who depart from
the ways of the Chosen of Jehovah
are chastized, just as Pastor Helmuth of
Philadelphia in Revolutionary times
castigated those German-Americans who
became "Eirisch."
Rippley's The German-Americans is
an excellent modern work that
certainly cannot be accused of ancestor
worship or an excess of filio-piety.
By comparison with previous works in
this field it is perhaps too short, but
that may be due to the space limitations
required by the series. He has largely
compensated for this brevity by
compactness. He has given us an excellent,
readable, and concise volume that can be
recommended highly for courses in
the ethnic heritage of our nation, for
directed readings, and for self-study or
self-improvement. The book was produced
without a grant from the Ethnic
Heritage Branch of the Department of
Health, Education and Welfare, which
Book Reviews
221
has been spending over a million dollars
each year for several years on
studies supposedly of this kind, most of
which are completely worthless and
not one of which has produced a volume
equal to this in solid research,
readability, and practical benefit to
the serious study of our American ethnic
heritage.
In conclusion I return to my opening
comment. Rippley's concluding
sentence, referring to the great Gatsby,
"And besides, the ladylove has
already passed away," is in
conflict with the spirit that gave life to this
informative and perspicacious book. No,
the ladylove lives in the author's
heart and inspired this work. She lives,
and this volume testifies to her
vitality, "denn im Innern ist ein
Universum auch." As Brahms in his German
Requiem rises from the gloom and
tragedy, cited at the close of this review's
opening paragraph, with the powerful and
hopeful words and music, "Aber
des Herrn Wort bleibet in
Ewigkeit," so the very book Rippley has given us
joins in the chorus of those who sing
and will always sing the praises of the
largest and most productive minority of
this country-the
German-Americans.
Clark University Karl J. R. Arndt
Appointment at Armageddon: Muckraking
and Progressivism in American
Life.By Louis Filler. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976.
xiii + 476p.;
illustrations, bibliographical note,
index. $15.95.)
Progressivism and Muckraking. By Louis Filler. (New York: R. R. Bowker
Company, 1976. xiv + 200p.;
bibliography, indices. $15.95.)
More than a third of a century ago Louis
Filler wrote his classic study of
muckraking, Crusaders for American
Liberalism (1939), in which he argued
that muckraking had been a central
feature of the progressive movement. In
Appointment at Armageddon-and a companion interpretive bibliography,
Progressivism and Muckraking-he elaborates his earlier convictions and
comments on the values and methods of
historians who have written on the
subject in the intervening thirty-seven
years.
He traces modern muckraking in Appointment
back to Anne Royall's
newspaper, Paul Pry (1831-1836),
and to William Lyon Mackenzie's
exposures of Martin Van Buren. From the
Age of Jackson to the Age of
Theodore Roosevelt many reformers and
writers exposed evils and proposed
solutions, and Filler explores
relationships between their efforts and the
public's yearning for scapegoating,
information, and reassurance. Filler still
believes, as in 1939, that the
muckraking movement of the early twentieth
century was a golden age of
"popular education" in which writers created
"unprecedented heights of social
awareness" among magazine readers
which, in turn, "led to social
action" before the triumph of Woodrow Wilson
and the administrative, elitist
progressives around 1912. But there are
differences between Crusaders and
Appointment. He now places the blame
for muckraking's demise more directly on
the public itself and less directly on
the counterattack by corporations and
politicians.
Filler clearly knows more about
journalists and social reformers in the
Progressive Era than any other scholar,
and he presents a fresh approach for
understanding the role of muckrakers in
reform. However, to review these
222 OHIO HISTOR
two books in the same manner one would
review other works on the sam
subject would be to mislead readers
about the essence of Filler's uniqu
contribution. That contribution is not
so much his fresh facts and ne
interpretations as it is his fresh
approach to the whole study of reform
Concerned above all with the
preservation of moral authority, with th
changing reputation of reformers among
fickle voters and scholars, Fille
stands distinctly outside the mainstream
of modern historians. This make
him an unusually perceptive critic of values which have
shaped moder
scholarship, capable of revealing unclad
emperors. Even more importantly
he treats reformers with the dignity and
respect they received in thei
lifetimes and thus offers fresh and
humane judgments that must b
considered by all historians of reform.
His discussion of urban bosses, fo
example, cuts through all the modern
romantic nonsense about bosses an
reformers and develops Lincoln Steffens'
major insight that bosses were often
disloyal to their constituents. His
appreciation of Theodore Roosevelt shoul
be read by that president's detractors.
His chapters on Anne Royall and
Josephine Shaw Lowell in Appointment should
be read by those who have
not appreciated the central significance
of those reformers. Students o
modern reform should read Progressivism
and Muckraking to discove
writers and people overlooked in recent
treatments. The curren
preoccupation with methodology, social
analyses of behavior, and ideolog
have brought modern scholars dangerously
close to denying the very
existence of a serious reform tradition,
let alone treating that tradition with
respect. Filler reminds us that reformers
often sought more than security, thai
they fought hard and sometimes died for
their beliefs. Too many historians
have forgotten that combat and struggle
are crucial parts of reform, although
anyone who has ever campaigned for a
cause understands their significance
Louis Filler's work, and Appointment in
particular, is unique and urgently
necessary for any reader who has been
tempted to challenge the motives or
vitality of American reformers.
Filler's provocative judgments about the
public, reform, and scholarship
inevitably invite questions. In writing
about American individualism,
"American indecisiveness,"
"the nation's will," the public's "true self,"
and "the electorate," Filler
has carried consensus history too far for this
reviewer. Filler claims a nation of
greedy individualists scapegoated its failure
to amass huge fortunes by attacking
railroads. But perhaps it was the
railroads themselves that introduced to
many areas competition and
individualism-and with
them, conspicuous
consumption and
production-for-profit-as Mark Twain and
Charles Dudley Warner argued in
The Gilded Age (1874). Perhaps resistance was rational and not
neurotic. In
focusing on the response of the public
to reformers, Filler misses the
influences that flowed in the opposite
direction. Perhaps ordinary and
forgotten Americans who never wrote
books created the issues and values
that Filler attributes only to
articulate leaders. Filler's militant disapproval of
the thesis-interpretation approach to
scholarship unfairly denies an important
way that Americans have made their past
meaningful.
Every reader will quarrel with one or
another judgment or assumption in
these books. However, every reader will
come away from them with a new
sense of the vitality of the American
reform tradition.
University of Missouri-Columbia David P. Thelen
Book Reviews
223
crossroads and Fence Corners:
Historical Lore of Fairfield County. By
Charles R. Goslin (Lancaster, OH: The
Fairfield Heritage Association,
1976. 303p.; illustrations, maps, index.
$15.00.)
Charles Goslin has taken Fairfield
County, Ohio, as his province and, for
over half a century, minutely studied
its history-both natural and civil. For
twenty-five years he has distilled the
results of his findings in a weekly
column for the Lancaster Eagle-Gazette.
Written in a rough-hewn,
countrified style, these "Nature
Notes" describe Goslin's findings along
Fairfield County's byways and
demonstrate his contentions that every square
mile contains many things of interest to
both the naturalist and the local
historian and that much more can be seen
and learned in a short walk than by
viewing mile after mile of scenery from
a car window.
Goslin has supplemented his outdoor
observations with forays into the
Fairfield County courthouse, producing
early civil records of the region and
combining these with his ornithological,
botanical, geological, and
archeological notes to produce
mini-travelogues of the countryside around
Lancaster and the upper reaches of the
historic Hocking Valley. Numerous
photographs, drawings, and maps from the
author's collection augment the
text.
Although not intended as a formal
history, the book contains relatively few
errors. Written Rock shelter, for
example was named for Indian rock carvings
or polissoirs, and these are
still clearly visible at the site. Also, some of the
Latin botanical names scattered
erratically thoughout the text have been
mangled-Platanus occidentalus becomes Platnus occidentialus-and the
purist may be bothered by such usages as
"fungi" for "fungus" and
"mycelium" for
"mycelia."
Although the voluminous notes on which
these newspaper articles were
based are a wealth of basic data on the
region, Goslin's selected columns
provide the reader with a sense of
immediacy, almost as if they were written
during the very walks he describes.
Whether hiking along the abandoned
Ohio-Lake Erie and Hocking canals,
searching for the site of a vanished
pioneer cemetery or "little red
schoolhouse," or exploring the Baltimore
"outback," the naturalist and
historian conveys something of his own joy and
excitement at happening upon a rare
plant or sighting a new bird.
The Ohio Historical Society James L. Murphy
Book Reviews
Blacks in Ohio History. Edited by Rubin F. Weston. Volume IV of The Ohio
American Revolution Bicentennial
Conference Series. (Columbus: The
Ohio Historical Society, 1976. 44p.;
illustrations, notes. $2.00.)
"As the nation moves into its third
century under the Constitution,"
Professor Weston remarks in the
introduction, "it is imperative that all
groups who made America be recognized
and that their contribution be
included in the history books."
With this purpose in mind, one in a
series of bicentennial conferences was
held at Central State University in May
1976. The outcome of that conference
is this volume, with papers addressed to
two general areas of black history:
the role of blacks in Ohio's political development
and selected biographical
studies of prominent black Ohioans.
In the former area Professor Lenwood
Davis draws an overview of
nineteenth-century blacks in Ohio.
Despite the "Black laws," he points out,
their numbers grew steadily even prior
to the Civil War. He indicates the
important contributions black Ohioans
made in such fields as business,
politics, abolitionism, invention,
journalism, the arts, and the military. W.
Marvin Dulaney recounts the history of
blacks as policemen in Columbus
from the first appointments in the late
nineteenth century to the first officer of
lieutenant rank at mid-century.
Professor Freddie Colston studies the
influence of black legislators in the
Ohio House during the 109th General
Assembly (1971-1972). He reports that
the preponderantly Democratic black
legislators did not constitute a bloc
but their voting behavior reflected (1)
their racial identity, (2) their heavily
black constituency, (3) their urban
background, and (4) a high degree of
party loyalty.
In the biographical studies, Professor
Emeritus Wilhelmena Robinson
explores aspects in William Sanders
Scarborough's "multi-dimensional
personality" which contributed to
the frustrations that affected his career.
She pinpoints certain attributes in the
character of the noted philologist and
president of Wilberforce University, in
the context of his life and times,
preventing this able man from
"surviving as an acceptable popular black
leader in the historical literature of
Afro-Americans." Percy Murray
indirectly examines the public career of
Harry C. Smith in a similar fashion.
Studying Smith from the founding of the Cleveland
Gazette up to the First
World War, Murray discusses the editor's
triumphs in the legislature but also
notes the failings of this militant
champion of integration and civil rights
protections as the urban black community
changed in the age of Booker T.
Washington. Professor Gossie Hudson
points to the complex nature of Paul
Laurence Dunbar's legacy by stating,
"Although he was never a black
militant or even a committed activist,
his life's accomplishments constituted
an indirect but powerful force against
racism." To Hudson, Dunbar is first
and foremost simply a poet.
The pictures which accompany the first
article provide interesting
contrasts. Colston's study contains
several tables, including a useful one
listing "pre-contemporary"
black legislators in the Ohio House (1880-1970).
Sad to say, only half the papers provide
footnotes.