Book Reviews
Life, Journals, and Correspondence of
Rev. Manasseh Cutler, LL.D.: Volume
I. By William Parker Cutler and Julia
Perkins Cutler. (Athens: Ohio
University Press, 1987. xii + 524p.;
notes. $40.00/set.) Volume II. By
William Parker Cutler and Julia Perkins
Cutler. (Athens: Ohio University
Press, 1987. iv + 495p.; notes,
appendices, index. $40.00/set.)
Manasseh Cutler was a community builder
of the first rank during a very
formative era in our nation's history.
To mark the Centennial of the Northwest
Ordinance, his grandchildren published a
compendium of his papers to applaud
Cutler's achievements. Their foremost
goal was to gain recognition for Cutler,
his New England principles and his
Federalist persuasion. Combining the roles
of editors, biographers and historians
intermittently, they sought to counter a
prevailing Jeffersonian and Democratic
bias to the history of our republic's
first west. Cutler, as a pivotal
director of the Ohio Company of Associates in
1787-1788, was the architect of key
aspects of the Northwest Ordinance and
hence the architect for the five new
states that would evolve from the territory.
At the Bicentennial of the Ordinance,
Ohio University Press has printed the
twin volumes and thus provides us with
further perspective on the rich life of
a remarkable man. It is now more clear than in 1888
that in addition to his Ohio
enthusiasms (the ancient Indian mounds
at Marietta, magnificent black walnuts
and sycamores on the Muskingum, the
initial charter for Ohio University),
Cutler simultaneously created two other
types of communities. From 1771 to
1823 he led his congregation and town of
Ipswich hamlet (later Hamilton),
Massachusetts, through a half decade of
turbulence. All the while through a
correspondence network that stretched
from New England to the Carolinas,
and from Sweden to Hindustan, he
tirelessly pursued myriad scientific
curiosities. Where his grandchildren
might focus on his political achievements
in 1787-1788, now his versatility as
community booster and enlightened
polymath are equally attractive.
The editing of these volumes, as pointed
out by Lee Nathaniel Newcomer in
1960 (MVHR 47:88-101), is not up
to the standards of current practice. A
variety of materials from Cutler's pen
are combined with a potpourri of public
papers, Ohio Company records and
commentaries from Cutler's contemporar-
ies. These are but selections from more
than 75 volumes located chiefly at
Northwestern University. The grandchildren
censored as they edited, blended
narrative with documents and, one third
of the way through the second
volume, replaced a chronological
approach with chapters of correspondence
passing to and from Cutler's desk. For the modern
reader this approach is
distracting. If the Ohio University Press had wished to
make a scholarly
contribution, at least it could have
offered a more complete index.
Cutler's journals are the gems at the
core of this collection. They are of two
types as they cover 1765-1823, with only
nine years missing. By and large they
record the pace and prospects of the
usual life of an unusual pastor (e.g., "June
30, 1800. About Town. Wrote to General
Putnam. Completed the Charter for
the University." II, 38.). At other
times, such as his 1787 trip to New York and
Philadelphia, the diaries are rich in
detail. In the Bicentennial we are obliged to
Cutler for his evocative descriptions of
turtle frolics and steam engines in
150 OHIO HISTORY
Rhode Island, of travelers' delights and
hardships in Connecticut taverns, of
business dinners with New York
financiers, of maneuverings at the Grand
Convention in Philadelphia. It is Cutler
with a sharp eye for character and
setting who has supplied posterity with
descriptions of the meeting room of the
Convention, of caucuses at the Indian
Queen Tavern, of medical rounds with
Banjamin Rush and garden parties with
Benjamin Franklin.
Cutler's letters make three main points.
First, and foremost, he was a firm
believer in scientific observation and
experimentation. All natural phenomena
that he encountered intrigued him. For
the last half of his life he sought to
collect, and publish, a complete
botanical catalog of New England. Second, his
terms in Congress (1801-1804) caused him
not only physical discomfort
(asthma), but alarmed him. He
prophesized, "the moment Louisiana is
admitted into the Union, the seeds of
separation are planted" (II, 140). Lastly,
wherever he went, he organized those
around him. Fresh from college, in 1765,
he headed the Honorable Free Brothers
discussion fraternity in Dedham. In
1786, when bitten by a "new maggot
in my head" (II, 239), he moved to the
foreground of the Ohio Company of
Associates. After the War of 1812 he led
a Sunday School Society movement. Not
all his plans were brought to fruition.
The initial Ohio settlement became
Marietta rather than Adelphia; he remained
a Massachusetts clergyman rather than
becoming the head of the institution he
christened American University. His
influence was considerable; his zeal
unquenchable; his versatility
remarkable.
University of Missouri-Kansas City Louis W. Potts
The Creation of Patriarchy. By Gerda Lerner. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1986. xvi + 318p.; notes,
appendix, bibliography, index. $21.95.)
In this study, Gerda Lerner examines the
origins of Western patriarchal
institutions in the ancient societies of
Mesopotamia. She begins with a synopsis
of current scholarship on male-female
relations among prehistoric hunters and
gatherers, then turns to the cultures of
the Tigris and Euphrates valleys. After
discussing Mesopotamian law codes and
religions, Lerner devotes two chap-
ters to the emergence of patriarchy
among the Jews, and a chapter to the
Greeks, particularly the thought of
Aristotle. This volume is the first of a
projected two; the second will deal with
the efforts of women to express
themselves from ancient times.
Lerner argues that the earliest form of
inequality was the enslaving of
women captured in warfare. On this base
of female subordination, the peoples
of the Middle East built male slavery,
class hierarchy, and monarchy. They
then enshrined these institutions, and
the patriarchal family that underlay them
as well, in law, religion, and history.
Women in the law codes were designated
the property of males. Fertility
goddesses lost their supremacy in religion,
replaced by male dieties made in the
image of patriarchal kings and served by
male priesthoods. Because men
monopolized literacy as well as religion, they
also set down the record of the past,
and thus gained control over the written
history of humankind. Woman found
herself "marginalized," to use Lerner's
term, pushed out of the center of the
record of her species as well as confined
under the power of man.
Book Reviews
151
This is a most ambitious study for a
scholar whose area of expertise is
nineteenth-century U.S. history, and
Lerner confesses her debt to the special-
ists on Assyriology on whose work she
depends. What she has done is take
their discoveries and fit them into an
interpretive framework derived primarily
from Engels. In so doing, she has
provided students of women's history with
an informative survey of the patriarchal
institutions and mythologies of the
ancient world.
The survey would be strengthened,
however, by an introduction that sets out
the chronology and surveys the rise and
fall of these cultures more compre-
hensively. The nonspecialist sometimes finds
herself a bit lost amid Sumerians,
Hittites, and Babylonians. A map of the
Middle East would also be helpful.
And finally, when Lerner turns to the
Hebrews and the Greeks, she would do
well to discuss the interrelations among
these peoples and the Mesopotamians;
there is too little analysis of the ways
in which the development of patriarchy
proceeded across the centuries and
across the region.
The understanding of the development of
patriarchy would also be enhanced
if Lerner exercized more rigor in
terminology. She refers to the monarchies of
the ancient world as "nation
states." Perhaps she intends to extend the
meaning of this term beyond its
conventional usage in the study of modern
history. If so, she never says so, and
one is left with a concept that seems
anachronistic and unilluminating when
applied to the clan-based dynasties of
Mesopotamia. More serious is a continual
equivocation in application of the
terms "class" and
"slavery." Lerner treats the two words as though they are
synonyms; they are not. Furthermore, her
discussions of slavery (a central
concern of her study) draw far too
heavily on studies of U.S. slavery, asserting
in particular the existence of a
separate slave consciousness that may have
characterized American blacks, but was
probably quite alien to people
enslaved under the enormously different
conditions of the ancient world.
These terminological difficulties
reflect occasional theoretical weaknesses in
what is otherwise an ambitious work of synthesis.
Lerner believes that the
writing of women's history is essential
to women's emancipation from patri-
archy. She is to be commended for making
a contribution to this liberating
enterprise.
The University of Akron Barbara Evans Clements
War and Justice. By Robert L. Phillips. (Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1984. xvi + 159p.; notes,
appendix, select bibliography, index.
$14.95.)
War and Justice is neither history nor law, and Robert L. Phillips is a
philosopher. It is a little unfair,
then, that a lawyer-historian should evaluate
his book, and predictable that such a
reviewer should find legal and historical
reasons to quibble with it. That someone
from another discipline should detect
a logical fallacy in Phillips argument
is more unsettling.
The author's expressed purpose is to
"defend the traditional position on the
use of force by political states"
(p. ix). In other words, this book is a defense
of the doctrine of the just war,
developed by medieval political theorists. As far
152 OHIO HISTORY
as Phillips is concerned, twentieth
century developments do not "call for a
reevaluation of a doctrine which has ...
proved adequate in the past" (p. x). He
views "the contemporary doctrine of
the just war" as providing "a moral and
prudential alternative to absolute
passivism on the one hand and realpolitik or
state necessity on the other" (p.
3).
Phillips articulates and defends his
thesis in a long and lightly documented
essay. A mere four pages of endnotes
support 146 pages of text, and most of
these notes do little more than identify
the sources of direct quotations.
To an historian, War and Justice seems
not only inadequately documented
but also a little out of touch with the
real world. Phillips insists that a bright line
can be drawn between combatants and
noncombatants. Yet, at least since
World War I, the armies of the great
powers have been little more than
uniformed tips of giant
military-industrial pyramids. Destroying the economic
base on which the enemy's armed forces
rest has been a viable means to the
end of military victory. It is a little
unrealistic to expect that warring nations
will not continue to attack their
opponents' civilian populations. Even Phillips
concedes the propriety of bombing
munitions factories, but he insists that
when off duty, defense plant workers
should enjoy immunity. Since they
remain both military assets and members
of the body politic that sent an army
off to war, an enemy would appear to
have much to gain by attacking them,
however. One can argue that it would be
immoral to do this, but Phillips insists
"moral questions aside,
terrorization [is] unsuccessful as a tactic" (p. 54).
General William T. Sherman would not
have agreed with him about that, and
Sherman proved his point in Civil War
Georgia and South Carolina. Phillips is
certainly right to condemn the
terrorists of today, but it is a little unrealistic to
expect, as he does, that those (such as
the PLO or black South Africans) who
lack the numbers and/or firepower to
challenge hostile armed forces should
refrain from trying to break their
enemies will by attacking more vulnerable
civilian targets.
Besides being unrealistic, Phillips'
thinking is also, from a lawyer's perspec-
tive, sometimes muddled. For example, he
argues that a soldier does not
commit murder when he kills an enemy in
battle, if his desire is merely to
incapacitate a hostile combatant rather
than to take a human life. This is so
even if, when the soldier fires his
weapon, he knows that the inevitable result
will be the death of his adversary. The
reason, according to Phillips, is the
absence of any "intention" to
kill. No lawyer would accept his analysis. Both
tort and criminal law equate
foreknowledge to a substantial certainty with
intent. They do so in part because of
the impossibility of proving what the
defendant's real purpose was, but also
because to the victim, it really does not
matter. He is hurt just as much by
someone who knows harm will result and
acts anyhow as by someone who desires to
inflict harm.
Phillips work is flawed logically as
well as legally. He makes his case for the
proposition that the just war doctrine
is preferable to realpolitik by attacking a
straw man. Rather than taking on such
actual proponents of realpolitik as
Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Kissinger,
Phillips contents himself with
assaulting unnamed "disciples of
Clauswitz," whom he faults for divorcing
war from politics. Even a
lawyer-historian has a right to expect more from a
philosopher than that.
California Western School of Law Michal R. Belknap
Book Reviews
153
An American Art Student in Paris: The
Letters of Kenyon Cox, 1877-1882.
Edited by H. Wayne Morgan. (Kent: The
Kent State University Press, 1986.
ix + 224p.; illustrations, notes, index.
$35.00.)
Considering how much material has
already been published concerning the
experience of American artists in Paris,
readers may be inclined to approach
this book with something less than eager
anticipation. Lois Fink and H.
Barbara Weinberg, among others, have
provided thorough accounts of the
ateliers run by French painters of
varying talents where Americans learned
about life and art-usually in that
order. Morgan's introduction does little to
dispel one's hesitation. He lays out the
well-known facts in a bland though
lucid manner and does not, I am afraid,
do much to make us very interested in
Mr. Cox either. There is rather a lot on
Cox's early schooling, tedious because
this part of his education was abortive
for the most part, and not very much on
Cox's paintings. Morgan seems to think
Cox's place in the history of art is
well-known. In fact, he is familiar
mostly, if not solely, to American specialists
and most of them have rarely seen more
than a handful of Cox's works (out of
favor, they languish in museum storage). The problem is
compounded by the
peculiar editorial decision to
reproduce, out of fifteen illustrations, only one
painting by Cox. Still, all is not lost,
for the letters of Kenyon Cox make very
good reading indeed.
From 1877 to 1882, Kenyon Cox, Ohio-born
son of a distinguished states-
man, educator and attorney, learned the
difficult art of painting and drawing in
the studios and academies frequented by
American pupils: Carolus-Duran, the
Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the Academie
Julian, Jean-Leon Gerome. He went, as
well, to Italy and to small towns and
art colonies in the French countryside,
where he sketched and appreciatively saw
the sights. Appreciative is the key
word here because Cox responded to what
he saw and heard-but not tasted,
perhaps the glories of French cooking did not extend to
a poor student's
pocketbook-with unfeigned warmth and
wonder. Moreover Cox's literary
style is readable, entertaining,
informative without being pedantic, and often
charming, though rarely humorous.
Of the Ca'd'Oro in Venice, he says,
"I intend to paint it as best I can in the
glowing afternoon sunlight with deep
blue sky beyond and its rich reddish
marbles tremblingly reflected in
confused and glorious coloring way below [in
the water] ...." Such poetic, but not, I think,
pretentious writing appears
everywhere. The complex systems of the
Beaux-Arts competitions are ex-
plained in a manner that makes them easy to understand.
And, most touch-
ingly, the roller coaster of hope and
disappointment on which the American
students especially were compelled to
ride is handled with sincere regret but
not whining. Finally, there are the
family messages: he repeatedly assures his
strict and worried Mama that he has not
grown a beard, that he is working very
hard, that he eats well, that he keeps
company with no ladies, that his
surroundings are clean. Father,
incidentally, seems remote and stern in Cox's
eyes but also tolerant of his artistic
ambitions.
At one point, Cox writes Mama,
"Don't bother about the influence over me
of the French or Spanish students I
meet. It is necessary to know them. .. but
their ideas of life and mine are
different and will remain so. .." One thinks of
Samuel Finley Morse's mother warning him
in the very first part of the
century, as he prepares to leave for the
continent, of the dangers of theaters
and other decadent European practices. Cox lives in
Paris nearly 80 years later
154 OHIO HISTORY
but puritanical American attitudes
remain. For this and similar glimpses of a
life, a mind, a mode of study, a
collection of attitudes, Cox's letters are
worthwhile. Editor Morgan should be
applauded for resurrecting them and
overseeing their publication.
The Ohio State University Barbara Groseclose
The Life and Legend of Jay Gould. By Maury Klein. (Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1986. xvi +
595p.; illustrations, notes, index.
$27.50.)
Jay Gould's dizzying manipulation of
railroads, newspapers, the Western
Union Telegraph Company, and even the
gold market in late-nineteenth
century America encouraged muckraking
journalists to portray him as an evil
robber baron. While acknowledging Jay
Gould's business acumen, Maury
Klein argues that Gould's historical
image as a Mephistophelian businessman
is incomplete and inaccurate. Klein
originally intended to write a much shorter
interpretive biography and, later, a
novel on Gould, but the discovery of new
sources encouraged him to undertake a
larger project. These sources, including
Gould letterbooks in the possession of
Kingdon Gould, Jr., and archival
records, persuaded Klein that prior
biographies based largely on newspaper
records had erroneously portrayed a
one-sided personality. In this chronolog-
ically organized work, Klein presents
Gould's business dealings interwoven
with details on Gould's family life,
philanthropic donations, limited friendships
and more limited social activities.
Klein's descriptive writing style
combined with his access to new materials
on Gould produces a highly-detailed but
readable counterargument to such
writers as Gustavus Myers and Matthew
Josephson who had presented an
image of Gould as a buccaneering robber
baron in their works History of the
Great American Fortunes and The Robber Barons. Dedicated to debunking
the
myths surrounding Gould's railroad and
financial dealings, Klein sometimes
examines Gould's business transactions
on a daily or even hourly basis.
Although Klein's obvious interest in the
machinations of system building
sometimes interrupts his narrative, he
succeeds in combining the Gould who
transformed the Missouri Pacific with
the Gould who carefully raised rare
orchids in palatial greenhouses. This
integration provides historians with a
more well-rounded portrait of Gould than
is available for most other similar
business personalities.
Although Klein furnishes a much-needed
updated biography, the book
suffers from several structural
weaknesses. Klein wisely divides his thirty-
three chapters into five major
chronological periods: "Struggling Upward,
1836-1860," "Grasping,
1861-1878," "Reaching High, 1879-1881," "Holding
On, 1882-1892," and "Letting
Go, 1888-1892." Each chapter, however, opens
with three or four quotations which
distract, rather than enlighten, the reader.
Klein intended that the reader contrast
the opening quotations in each
chapter-many from newspaper sources or
historical works-with Klein's
revisionist interpretation of Gould.
Klein could have accomplished such
comparisons more profitably within the
text itself. Later portions of the
biography exacerbate this problem by
placing quoted Gould letters in italicized
paragraphs within the narrative with
little textual rationale.
Book Reviews
155
Despite these weaknesses, Klein's
biography of Gould addresses an impor-
tant historiographical issue: To what
extent can and should historians depend
upon contemporary popular accounts for
factual information? Klein presents a
strong argument that reliance upon this
type of data can lead to slanted, if not
erroneous, conclusions. Although I am
not convinced that Gould is as guileless
as Klein might have me believe, I am
persuaded that he is more than the
newspaper legends of his day. Klein,
however, might have argued this point
more concisely.
The Ohio State University Meg Sondey
Gamaliel Bailey and Antislavery
Union. By Stanley Harrold. (Kent: The
Kent
State University Press, 1986. xvi +
301p.; notes, bibliography, index.
$28.00.)
Stanley Harrold has written extensively
on the career of Gamaliel Bailey.
This publication of Harrold's revised
and expanded dissertation succeeds in
rescuing the Cincinnati abolitionist
editor from the obscurity that resulted
partly from Bailey's death before the
Civil War (in 1859) and the subsequent
loss of his personal papers. After
participating in the famous Lane Debates of
1834, Bailey replaced James G. Birney as
editor of the Cincinnati Philanthro-
pist in 1836 and then edited the National Era in the
nation's capital from 1847
to 1859. Bailey's skill as an editor and
as a businessman helped make the
Philanthropist the leading antislavery journal in the Old Northwest
and the
National Era one of the most important newspapers in antebellum
America.
Perhaps Bailey and the National Era are
best remembered for first publishing
Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's
Cabin in serial form in 1851-1852. Yet
Bailey's contribution to the antislavery
movement does not rest solely on this
noteworthy achievement.
Harrold maintains that Bailey provided
an important "link" between the
immediate abolitionists of the 1830s and
the Republican party of the 1850s.
Along with his friend Salmon P. Chase,
Bailey helped translate antislavery
idealism into a powerful political
movement to destroy slavery primarily by
stopping its expansion. Hoping to build
a broad-based political party dedicated
to ending slavery's curse, Bailey sought
antislavery consensus while steering a
middle course between
"self-defeating impracticality and unprincipled expe-
diency" (p. 196). Unfortunately, he
did not live to see slavery's fall, and before
he died he was forced to endure the
distrust of the immediate abolitionists as
well as Republican politicians. Still,
his constant denunciations of the "Slave
Power" and its domination of the
federal government facilitated constitutional
opposition to slavery and contributed to
the institution's eventual defeat.
The loss of Bailey's correspondence
precludes a complete picture of his
personality and motivations. The author
partially overcame this difficulty by
relying on Bailey's editorial opinions
in the Philanthropist and in the Era, and
by conducting impressive research in
other manuscript collections. As a result
a recognizable image of Bailey as a
person does emerge. Hardly a typical
abolitionist, Bailey grew to maturity in
New Jersey, belonged to the Methodist
Protestant church, resided nearly all
his life on the "border" area between
slavery and freedom, and was personally
acquainted with slaveholders. What
Harrold calls Bailey's "border
state perspective" shaped a distinctive
156 OHIO HISTORY
antislavery philosophy that denied
federal power to abolish slavery in the
Southern states while hoping to persuade
slaveholders to emancipate their
slaves voluntarily. Moderate in
approach, Bailey still sought slavery's ultimate
destruction by "divorcing" the
federal government from its support. Toward
this end he strove to separate
abolitionism's controversial moral position from
the political program he helped
construct for the Liberty, Free-Soil, and
Republican parties.
While authoritative on Bailey's career,
Harrold's political analysis suffers
from a failure to examine systematically
the origins of third party involvement.
For example, while questioning the
traditional notion of conflict between the
idealistic "eastern" and the
pragmatic "western" wings of the Liberty party,
he persists in claiming that Bailey
helped to make the Ohio Liberty party a
"distinct political entity"
(pp. 53-54). Without investigating the concerns and
motives of third party voters, Harrold
simply assumes a majority of Ohio and
western abolitionists shared Bailey's
political orientation. My research indi-
cates that most Liberty party voters
were religiously-minded abolitionists who
largely opposed Bailey's efforts to
create a nonabolitionist political party. Few
western abolitionists shared Bailey's
"border state perspective."
The author also fails to evaluate
Bailey's often questionable positions,
including the editor's hope to broaden
the Democratic party's "egalitarian
ideals" to include blacks, his
expectations to attract immigrant workers to the
Liberty party, his efforts to convince
slaveholders to emancipate their slaves,
his claim that an antislavery party
would find wide appeal in the South, or his
belief that a laissez-faire,
decentralized government could end slavery and
racial intolerance in America.
Considering these somewhat dubious proposi-
tions, Bailey's credentials as a
"practically-minded" abolitionist deserve
reexamination. Still, Harrold's
description of Bailey's efforts to maintain union
among slavery's opponents certainly
captures the editor's primary function
and gives focus to his life.
This biography of a previously neglected
abolitionist leader is a welcome
addition to the scholarship of antebellum America's
struggle over slavery. The
author should rest content in the knowledge that he has
served his subject well,
without producing an uncritical study of Bailey's
career. Indeed, Harrold may
be too harsh in stressing Bailey's
ambivalent attitudes toward blacks and his
willingness to compromise his beliefs to
advance antislavery goals. Consider-
ing the virulence of the racism and
antiabolitionism he faced in antebellum
Cincinnati and Washington, D.C., Bailey
need not apologize for his brand of
abolitionism or the part he played in
opposing America's racial oppression of
blacks.
Kearney State College Vernon L. Volpe
The Life and Times of Little Turtle:
First Sagamore of the Wabash. By
Harvey
Lewis Carter. (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1987. xvii + 275p.;
illustrations, maps, notes,
bibliography, index. $24.95.)
As a war chief of the Miami Indians,
Little Turtle was a major participant in
Ohio Valley frontier affairs at the turn
of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. He first came to prominence
by leading an attack on a group of
pro-American Frenchmen near modern Fort
Wayne, Indiana, in 1780. His
Book Reviews
157
greatest renown came as leader of the
Indian forces against U.S. military
forces under Josiah Harmar in 1790 and
Arthur St. Clair in the following year.
Highly regarded as an orator as well as
a warrior, Little Turtle came to the fore
among the Indian chiefs gathered to
negotiate the Treaty of Greene Ville in
1795. As determined a statesman as he
had been in war, Little Turtle worked
to promote the education and general
welfare of the Miami, fostering a
governmental civilization program for
his peoples. He and his son-in-law
William Wells are generally given credit
for maintaining the neutrality of the
Miami in the face of the Indian
confederacy organized by the Prophet and
Tecumseh in the early years of the
nineteenth century. Little Turtle died in
1812 at the age of sixty-five.
Despite Little Turtle's importance,
Harvey Lewis Carter is the first scholar
to prepare a full-length biography in
almost fifty years. This is undoubtedly due
in large part to the problems inherent
in writing histories of eastern Woodland
culture Indians. Few of these people
ever wrote a word of their own, certainly
not in English, thereby depriving
biographers of the benefit of their personal
perspective. Virtually all eighteenth
century accounts of Indians were pro-
duced by Europeans to whom Indian
culture was intriguing but quite alien.
For example, one of the most fascinating
contemporary sources on Little
Turtle is the account of his
conversations, accomplished through an interpret-
er, with the French traveler Constantin
Volney in Philadelphia during 1797 and
1798. Volney incorporated these into
some "general observations on the
Indians" near the end of a volume
on the climate and soil of the United States
published in 1804. Here Little Turtle
comes across as an Indian of intelligence,
thoughtfulness and wit, but one is
constantly struck by the European, and
particularly late-eighteenth century
French, perspective of the writer. And so
it is with virtually all contemporary
accounts of Indians in the Ohio Valley. All
were produced by white observers whose
point of view simply cannot be
divorced from their own non-Indian
background.
It is, therefore, only the most intrepid
who venture into the potential
quagmire of eighteenth and
early-nineteenth century Indian biography. Harvey
Lewis Carter deserves our accolades for
accepting and meeting the challenge.
A native of the Indiana county that the
Miami considered part of their
homeland, Carter is a professor emeritus
of history at Colorado College and
known more for his contributions to
far-western history. To account for the all
too numerous gaps in the recorded
history of Little Turtle, the author directed
his volume towards the life "and
times" of the chief and frequently the
emphasis is, by necessity, on the
latter. In addition, Carter writes concurrently
of the life of William Wells, a white
man who was adopted into the Miami as
a youth and subsequently married the
daughter of Little Turtle, and who was
of the same mind and worked closely with
his father-in-law.
Given the problems, Carter does a good
job of relating the events of Little
Turtle's life, and he provides a concise
and useful summary of the culture and
often convoluted history of the Miami as
well. One wishes, however, that
Carter had examined Little Turtle's
actions more critically, for at times the
volume has the quality of many
late-nineteenth century laudatory biographies,
where the protagonist can do no wrong.
In addition, Carter seems to have
come to a better understanding of the
late-eighteenth century Miami culture
than he did of the U.S. military of the
period, misinterpreting, for example,
Anthony Wayne's use of open-order linear
tactics.
158 OHIO HISTORY
More irritating is Carter's apparent
confusion between his annotated notes
and the main text. Repeatedly I found
myself wondering why a seemingly
important detail had been relegated to a
footnote when almost antiquarian-like
detail such as the spelling of the Miami
word for Little Turtle remained in the
main text.
On the whole, though, we are fortunate
to have Carter lead us through the
trail of historical fact and
misinformation of Little Turtle's life, even though his
interpretations may at times be somewhat
slanted. This biography should,
nonetheless, help bring more attention
to an important, but neglected, frontier
personage.
Ohio Historical Society David A. Simmons
Hubert Humphrey: A Biography. By Carl Solberg. (New York: W. W. Norton
Company, 1984. viii + 572p.;
photographs, notes, bibliography, illustra-
tions, index. $19.95.)
Hubert Humphrey was catapulted into
national prominence when in the
summer of 1948 he stormed onto the stage
of the Democratic National
convention and demanded that his party
adopt a radical civil rights plank. For
the next thirty years Humphrey was
seldom out of the headlines. Mayor of
Minneapolis at the time of his dramatic
emergence, he was soon elected to the
United States Senate and took his place
as successor to the earlier prairie
Progressive leaders: Bryan, Norris and
LaFollette. Like them in many ways,
he was to become the foremost
Progressive leader of the twentieth century, an
advocate of the proposition that the
general welfare clause of the Constitution
requires the government to help people
who are in need. Unlike his predeces-
sors, though, he was an internationalist
and throughout most of his career an
ardent Cold War warrior.
Though Humphrey's contributions were
many and his achievements impres-
sive, his greatest goal, the Presidency,
eluded him. Even his legislative
successes came slowly. During his first
four years in the Senate, not one of his
bills was passed. In fact, it was not
until John Kennedy became President that
Humphrey's long years of tenacious
politicking began to pay off. With
Humphrey mobilizing his constituencies
on the outside and mustering his
majorities on the floor, the Kennedy
administration put through many mea-
sures which Humphrey had proposed long
before: among them the Peace
Corps, arms control, and a nuclear test
ban treaty. After Kennedy's death
Humphrey finally broke the back of the
long Southern filibuster and won
passage of the civil rights program he
had first proposed in 1949. Later, as Vice
President, he saw Congress pass numerous
bills he had pioneered over the
years. These included federal aid to
education, Medicare, the Job Corps,
vocational training, and welfare reform,
to name a few. Ironically, many of
these bills were, in their final form,
sponsored by others and did not bear
Humphrey's name.
Senator Humphrey failed to achieve the
Presidency because of his relation-
ship with Lyndon Johnson. He had eyed
the White House from afar even as
Mayor of Minneapolis and always felt
that he was on track to his goal, but his
later efforts to move closer to the seat
of power were thwarted. His bid for the
Vice Presidency in 1956 was crushed, and
his presidential campaign against
Book Reviews
159
Kennedy in 1960 was smashed ruthlessly.
Then in 1964 Johnson gave him the
chance he thought he had lost; he gave
Humphrey the Vice Presidency and
with it the opportunity to seek the
White House for himself at a later time.
Because of Vietnam, Humphrey's chance
came unexpectedly in 1968, but
the circumstances were not promising.
When he had become Johnson's Vice
President in 1965, Humphrey had at first
opposed the war. Ostracized for his
deviation from the Johnsonian line, the
Vice President found that the only
course open to him if he wished to
regain the good graces of the old scoundrel
from Texas was to become a hawk. This he
did with a will, devoting all his
influence and considerable oratorical
skill to the defense of Johnson's policies.
Of course, it all went sour and by 1968
Humphrey was rethinking his decision.
Then, in March, he was caught by
surprise by Johnson's decision not to run-a
decision which catapulted Humphrey into
the position of leading candidate,
but left him saddled with a war policy
he most earnestly wished to abandon.
His situation in the summer of 1968
appeared to be so hopeless that the extent
of his comeback was well-nigh miraculous
even though it fell some distance
short of victory.
In this volume Carl Solberg has
chronicled the life and career of Hubert
Humphrey with sympathy, taste and
balance. Humphrey was a good man, but
he was not perfect and Solberg has
skillfully portrayed him in all his
dimensions. There will undoubtedly be
other biographies of Humphrey as time
goes by, but this one will be difficult
to match.
Midwestern State University Kenneth E. Hendrickson, Jr.
Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History. Edited by Helen Hornbeck Tanner.
Cartography by Miklos Pinther. (Norman:
The University of Oklahoma
Press, 1987. xv + 224p.; illustrations,
maps, bibliographic essay, selected
bibliography, index. $75.00.)
This beautifully illustrated reference
work is an extremely useful compilation
of geographic and historical data on the
Indian tribes of the Great Lakes area.
By virtue of its scope and the absence
of any comparable work, it belongs in
every university and public library.
Grand in concept, the Atlas of Great
Lakes Indian History remains,
unfortunately, less than brilliant in
execution. Judging from data on the Ohio
portion, this sourcebook must be used
with caution. Maps of subsistence
patterns and Late Prehistoric cultures
are so generalized and inaccurate as to
be of little value-other than, perhaps,
for provoking debate or suggesting
needed areas for further research. Some
surprising errors of fact, compounded
by embarrassing typographical errors
(Galliopolis, Muskingham), markedly
detract from the work's pleasant
physical appearance and, unfortunately, are
common enough to make it necessary for
the reader to double-check any piece
of information before accepting it.
In extenuation of Charles Cleland's map,
"Distribution of Late Prehistoric
Cultures c. 1400 to 1600," it must
be said that any such map inevitably reflects
the state of archeologists' collective
ignorance of Late Prehistoric demography
and geography in the Ohio area rather
than the state of our collective
knowledge, a fact underscored by his
predilection for drawing cultural bound-
aries along river courses. Nonetheless,
it would be difficult to find an Ohio
160 OHIO HISTORY
archaeologist who would not insist, on
the basis of our current knowledge,
upon moving Cleland's
"Whittlesey" boundary 60 km. or so to the south, to
include the Riker and Wellsburg sites,
and his "Monongahela" boundary 30 or
more km. to the west, to include various
sites in the Allegheny Plateau of
southeastern Ohio. The boundaries he
indicates for the Madisonville Phase and
for Fort Ancient in general are also
subject to considerable debate.
Unquestionably the most remarkable map
in this atlas is that titled "Sub-
sistence Patterns," in which giant
cornstalks and miniature bison and deer
symbolically or emblematically suggest
that 1) maize was not grown in West
Virginia, 2) significant utilization of
bison did not occur east of central Indiana
(even along the Ohio River), and 3)
intensive fishing did not occur in the
western Great Lakes. This map also shows
a line demarcating present-day
areas of more than 140 frost-free days,
a line to which some archaeologists
ascribe almost mystical importance, on
the theory that it reflects a similar
temperature distribution in prehistoric
times that in turn reflects a prehistoric
difficulty in growing prehistoric maize
beyond that boundary. Whatever real
significance such an isothermic line may
have is drastically obscured by the
vagaries (affecting thousands of square
km.) shown between its delineation in
Map 4 and that shown in the inset in the
same map.
Historians and archaeologists familiar
with early Ohio will note the absence
of any reference to Tarhe's Town or to
Toby Town, both in Fairfield Co.; Three
Legs Town, in Tuscarawas Co.; Raccoon
Town, in Licking Co.; the Delaware
Hurricane Tom's Town, in Ross Co.; Fort
Industry; and other sites of at least
moderate historical interest. Further,
the Shawnee Kiskimenetas town is
generally located on the west bank
of the Ohio River, i.e., in Ohio rather than
in West Virginia; the Mahoning Salt Lick
was located above the mouth of
Mosquito Creek, not below it, and on the
south bank rather than the north
bank. Similarly, Kuskuski Town was below
the confluence of the Mahoning
and Shenango Rivers, on the west
bank-not between the two rivers, as shown
on at least one map. (Others locate it
correctly.)
If the compilers and editors are purists
enough to spell Alliquippa as
"Allaquippa," after all these
years, it does not seem too much to expect them
to spell Ray A. Billington's and Albert
T. Volwiler's (not to mention Nancy
Cleland's, Glenn A. Black's, and Richard Yarnell's)
names correctly. The
bibliography, which appears to have been
compiled by a graduate student with
a recalcitrant word processor, seems to
be arranged by author or "key word."
It is, or should be, an embarrassment to
any library but particularly to one of
the stature of the Newberry Library. The
compiler does not have the faintest
glimmering of the concept of corporate
author; if a personal author could not
be determined, the first word with a capital letter
sufficed. Thus we have
entries under "British,"
"Canada" (numerous, assorted entries), "Coopera-
tive" (for a state cooperative
extension agency), "Gratiot Co." (i.e., a book
about Gratiot County [Michigan], not a
book compiled or published by the
Gratiot Company), "Isabella"
(i.e., a book about an Isabella County [state
undeterminable from the bibliographic entry but
presumably Michigan], not a
work by Queen Isabella),
"MPHC" (the Michigan Pioneer and Historical
Society Collections to us incognescenti),
"McDonald" (a "McDonald Collec-
tion" of manuscripts housed at the
Hiram Walker Museum), "National
Archives (presumably ours), and
"Sault" (for a manuscript map of Sault Ste.
Marie. Has the term
"Anonymous" become bibliographically archaic? (And,
Book Reviews
161
in regard to word processing, somebody
connected with the Atlas seems to
have had particular trouble with
underlining commands and with "orphan"
lines.)
More substantive errors noted include
mapping the route of Col. Henry
Bouquet's 1764 march against the Ohio
Indians as if his army crossed the West
Virginia panhandle (Map 11). Likewise,
the route ascribed to Lord Dunmore's
1774 march against the Shawnee bears
only a remote resemblance to reality
and gives no indication that at least
half of his trek followed the Hocking River.
Text and maps, as well as the
bibliography and index, are marred by
typographical errors and errors of
interpretation. It is Fremont, not Freemont,
and Younge tradition, not Young. The
cities of Covington and Newport both
remain in Kentucky rather than Ohio.
Such errors in what is intended to be a
major reference work are more than
embarrassing: they cast doubt on the
reliability of the rest of the work and, with
the lack of specific documentation for
each fact, an understandable constraint
in a work of this scope, render it
necessary for the reader to verify indepen-
dently each fact before accepting it.
This said, the Atlas will nontheless remain
of considerable value for some time to
come (if not for the next century, as
prophesied on the dust jacket). The text
is clearly written and well-balanced,
ably summarizing the mass of geographic
and historic data presented. It is
regrettable that more care could not be
taken with editorial aspects of the
project. In short, misleading
dust-jacket descriptors such as "absolute
triumph," "awesome,"
"wondrous and majestic," and "a joy to read"
notwithstanding, one has to say a valuable
rather than an invaluable work.
The Ohio State University Libraries James L. Murphy
The Early Architecture of Madison,
Indiana. By John T. Windle and Robert
M.
Taylor, Jr. (Madison and Indianapolis:
Historic Madison, Inc., and Indiana
Historical Society, 1986. xvi + 230p.;
illustrations, glossary, bibliography,
index by street addresses, index.
$29.95.)
Studies of nineteenth century
midwestern architecture, in contrast to other
regional works, have, for the most part,
not received the attention they
deserve. This attractive publication
ranks as a welcome contribution to the
neglected topic of midwestern
architecture, and the first major study that
documents an aspect of Indiana
architecture since Wilbur Peat's seminal
volume Indiana Houses of the
Nineteenth Century, published twenty-five
years ago. Drawing on their combined
decades of research and study, the
authors, one an Indiana historian and
the other Madison's foremost historic
preservationist, have produced a highly
detailed and generous account of this
architecturally significant Ohio River
town.
Founded in 1809, Madison was by 1830 the
largest, most prosperous
settlement in Indiana, and for a time
even boasted one-eighth of all the taxable
property in the state. Its economic
preeminence, particularly during the 1830s
and 1840s, is today physically
manifested in one of the region's finest
collections of nineteenth century
high-style and vernacular architecture. After
1870, when the population reached a peak
of 10,709, Madison experienced a
period of quiet decline. Fortunately,
the community has remained remarkably
intact, escaping the ravages of urban
renewal and other misguided twentieth
162 OHIO HISTORY
century revitalization efforts.
Madisonians are proud of the fact that over 130
city blocks of the old downtown have
been listed in the National Register of
Historic Places, a distinction that few
if any American communities of its size
can claim. Within this historic area,
the authors have selected those structures
built during the fertile period from
1809-1875 as the focus of their study.
Following an introduction in which
Madison is briefly profiled, Robert
Taylor's essay on the community's historical background
traces its develop-
ment and physical character. Next there
is a brief chapter that provides an
attractively illustrated section on a
series of architectural details such as iron
fences, gates, window hoodmolds and pressed metal
cornices. Six subsequent
chapters that comprise the body of the
book are subdivided chronologically
according to style ranging from the
Federal to Queen Anne. An introduction to
each chapter presents the standard
identifying features and background
development associated with the major
styles, followed by numerous illustra-
tions and large double-column pages that
present detailed information on a
total of 165 buildings. The inclusion of
over 300 historic and present-day black
and white photographs, many of which
were taken by the noted photographer
Jack Boucher and the HABS/HAER inventory
programs, greatly enhance the
quality of this volume. The judicious
use of primary sources is equally valuable
as they provide the reader with
contemporary accounts of several structures.
Important works of some of the region's
leading architects are described,
ranging from the magnificent Lanier
House (1844), designed by Madison's own
Francis Costigan, to W. R. West's
Gothic-inspired Christ Episcopal Church
(1848). In concluding chapters the
authors feature a group of vernacular
buildings under the headings of railway
stations, stone buildings, firehouses
and industrial buildings, followed by a
glossary, a scholarly bibliography and
subject index. Especially useful is the
inclusion of two finding aids which
facilitate the easy location of the
structures both within the book and Madison
itself.
Although the book is clearly and
logically organized, it would benefit from
further analysis and comparisons. For
example, there is little discussion of
traditional nineteenth century building
types in the Ohio Valley such as the side
hallway, I House and shotgun, and
because of the author's emphasis on
stylistic labels one might argue their
study implicitly overestimates the
importance of architectural design in
understanding Madison's historic build-
ings. Houses that are clearly the same
building type are often treated
separately, or important features such
as brick bonding patterns, floor plans,
and interior decoration are overlooked.
In their quest to individually describe
the building's appearance the authors
commentary neglects to establish, or
present conjecturally, an architectural
context that may have existed with
other Indiana and Ohio River Valley
towns or the neighboring state of
Kentucky. Finally, the book contains a
few minor blemishes, including
questionable dates of construction (pp.
156, 176), or in one case, the actual
omission of the construction date for
what is believed to be the first Greek
Revival designed building in the
community (p. 76).
Still, the problems of covering so much
subject matter are acknowledged by
the authors in the forward, and apart
from these faults one finds it difficult to
quarrel at great length with the content
of their book. The challenge facing the
authors was a tall order, and although
Madison may not be considered by some
architectural scholars to be a city of
great monuments it is, as Windle and
Taylor have shown in their book, a city
of great architecture. The Early
Book Reviews
163
Architecture of Madison, Indiana is a carefully researched, well written and
attractively illustrated publication.
Readers who might suspect that this is yet
another glossy "coffee table"
release will soon discover otherwise. Scholars
and enthusiasts alike would be well
served by adding this work to the shelves
of their office or architectural
library.
Ohio Historical Society Steve Gordon
Bradford The Railroad Town: A
Railroad Town History of Bradford, Ohio, A
Pennsylvania Railroad Town. By Scott D. Trostel. (Fletcher, Ohio: Cam-
Tech Publishing, 1987. 152p.; maps,
illustrations, railroad statistics, index.
$24.95.)
Look for Bradford on a road map and you
will find a dot straddling the
Darke-Miami County line in the far
western part of Ohio. Bradford's 130
year-long railroad era ended when the
tracks were torn up a few years ago, but
this town once had the distinction of
being one of the busiest places on the
Pennsylvania Railroad's "Panhandle
Route," earning it the sobriquet "Little
Chicago." Bradford was located at
the junction of Pennsy's "lines west"
where one line branched to Chicago, the
other to St. Louis.
Scott Trostel has written a personal,
intimate tribute to the familiar,
inevitable life cycle of a one-industry
town (birth, youth, maturity, decline . .).
This book is an obvious labor of love,
beginning with the author's watercolor
dust jacket of a class J1 steam
locomotive and train roaring away from the
Bradford coaling tower, to the numerous
anecdotes, personal histories, news
articles, local poetry, and fiction
gleaned through years of research. Trostel is
from nearby Piqua, and thus had access
to a wealth of oral history and folklore.
His being a knowledgeable railroad buff
enables him to bring considerable
technical information to the theme of
how railroad technology affected the
evolution of Bradford. This book
represents the best of a local historian's
efforts, that is, it weaves the fabric
of mundane, everyday life into the tapestry
of regional and national history. Ohio
has been blessed with fine histories of
individual railroad companies (such as
Rehor's Nickel Plate Story), railroad
technology and design (for example,
Condit's The Railroad and the City), and
a few classics about work on and around
railroads (among which Sanders' The
Brasspounder ranks at or near the top), but this is to my knowledge
the first
local history to treat the theme of the
railroad's impact on the life and times of
an Ohio town.
Trostel tells this story
chronologically, beginning with the coming of the
Columbus, Piqua, and Indiana Railroad in
1849, the formation of the town
(1866-1872), and its development as an
important junction in the period 1870 to
1885. After setting the scene, Trostel
uses the next several chapters to describe
the lives of railroad men, and the
relationship between railroad men, iron
horses, and the ribbons of steel which
united Bradford with the outside world.
Trostel outlines the activities of
important but overlooked railroad workers
(such as gandy dancers, engine hostlers,
and boiler makers) who were exposed
to very dangerous working conditions,
and their families, whose lives were
dependent on the often sporadic
operations of late-nineteenth century rail-
roads. These conditions are described
through the use of local sources as well
as popular national publications such as
Scribner's The American Railway
(1888-1889).
164 OHIO HISTORY
Bradford's lusty, formative railroad era
came to an end after the turn of the
century, when the railroad YMCA was built. This
provided a civilizing
influence: the new YMCA building
somewhat symbolically replaced a favorite
swimming hole which had been located
inside the railroad's wye where
locomotives and trains were turned
around, and brought an end to the
bawdiness of the town's youth. Trostel's chapters on
the "Y" are delightful.
The next, and last, era of Bradford's
railroad history began when this landmark
building was torn down about fifty years
ago. The author's youth coincided
with the slow decline of the railroad
after the Second World War, which saw
the steam locomotives replaced by
diesels and the engine servicing facilities
disappear. Trostel documents the demise
of railroading in almost agonizing
detail, from the Penn Central debacle
through Conrail's puzzling removal of a
recently upgraded section of mainline in
1985, an action which ended railway
service in this part of west central
Ohio. Bradford The Railroad Town is highly
recommended to anyone having an interest
in Ohio history, railroading, or
town development.
Ohio Historical Society Richard V. Francaviglia
The "Spider Web": Congress
and Lobbying in the Age of Grant. By
Margaret
Susan Thompson. (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1986. 288p.; illustra-
tions, notes, tables, figures index. $29.95.)
The legacy of Grant's presidency in
American political history seems
indelibly etched in scandal and
corruption. Credit Mobilier and the Whiskey
Ring stand out visibly in the political
landscape of the 1870s. In this well written
and solidly researched study of
Congressional governance in the age of Grant,
Margaret Susan Thompson challenges this
widely accepted portrayal and
makes an important contribution towards
a new understanding of Gilded Age
politics.
Combining the perspectives of history
and political science, Thompson
focuses on two related questions: how
Congress functioned during the Grant
years and how lobbying emerged and
operated within the context of Congres-
sional government. Essentially, she describes
the setting in which lobbying
came to play an important role in the
work of Congress. National growth and
modernization in the mid-nineteenth
century generated new issues which
placed unprecedented demands on the
federal government. War claims and
pensions, freedmen's programs, and
railroad regulation greatly increased the
size and scope of Congress' workload.
Yet institutionally, Congress suffered
from what Thompson terms
"time-lag," a developmental gap between the
growth in demands and the evolution of
an institutional structure capable of
meeting those demands. Fewer than half
of the Representatives during Grant's
second administration, for instance, had
prior Congressional experience. They
often lacked the expertise to deal with
the increasing range and complexity of
issues. Adding to this instability, the
larger size and increasing heterogeneity of
a Congressmen's constituency was
changing the meaning of representation.
Clienteles with particular interests
were demanding attention. These factors,
Thompson argues, made room for an active
role by lobbying: ".. . at a time
when federal policy making was
overburdened and underequipped to handle
the number and range of demands that
pressed upon it, lobbyists could and did
Book Reviews
165
serve as facilitators and catalysts,
loosing the system from inertia" (p. 273).
Lobbying fulfilled a variety of roles in
the Grant era, affecting the content and
direction of policy. It served as an
effective bridge between emerging interest
groups and their Representatives. It
provided the necessary expertise on such
technical issues as finance and tariffs.
Finally, it proved essential in the tangled
task of distributing patronage. In these
ways, Thompson concludes, lobbyists
"helped to focus, to rationalize,
and, in the long run, to modernize late
nineteenth-century Congressional
government" (p. 273).
Thompson's argument, clearly and
convincingly presented, might prove
controversial. She portrays lobbying in
the Grant era-which has received its
fair share of criticism-in a sympathetic
and positive light. While Thompson
recognizes that political corruption did
exist during this time, she suggests that
it be viewed as a necessary by-product
of a significant systemic change in
government. Indeed, her perspective on
lobbying does tend to obscure the
sordidness of political life in the
Grant years. Yet Thompson seems aware of
these implications of her argument, and
handles the issue of corruption with
care and fairmindedness.
More important in Thompson's argument, I
think, are the implications it
contains for a new understanding of
Gilded Age politics. Her study joins a
growing body of work that discerns in
the polity of this era the faint outlines of
the modern state. Indeed, the 1870s was
a turbulent and critical decade in
American history. While settlers pushed
westward, Reconstruction was un-
raveling in the South and class and
ethnic conflicts were surfacing in industrial
regions. It was not coincidental that a
more modernized system of governance
arose during a time when economic change
and social tensions were placing
increasing demands on the national
state. Historians must now draw connec-
tions between the substance of the 1870s
and its structure of government.
Thompson's solid and insightful study of
Congressional government, while not
fully pursuing these connections,
provides an invaluable foundation for this
endeavor.
Denison University Mitchell
Snay
New World, New Roles: A Documentary
History of Women in Pre-Industrial
America. By Sylvia R. Frey and Marian J. Morton. (Westport:
Greenwood
Press, 1986. 246p.; notes, suggested
readings, index. $35.00.)
Recently we have learned a great deal
about the role of women in preindustrial
America. Regional differences in family
and religious traditions as well as
practices produced a wide variety of experiences
for women and families in the
colonial period. By the late eighteenth
century, the American Revolution
inspired some women to apply its
principles to their own positions in society
and nascent industrialization and
urbanization changed the economic role of
many, including some women,
significantly. Unfortunately, much of this
research is not readily available to
undergraduates. In addition, there are few
readers available which concentrate
specifically on women's roles in the
preindustrial period.
New World, New Roles in some ways fills both of these needs in the form of
a documentary history. The volume
collects primary sources on the private
history of women before 1815 from public
documents including wills and trial
166 OHIO HISTORY
transcripts, as well as more personal
documents like diaries, journals, and
fiction. The collection divides the
preindustrial period at the end of the
seventeenth century. Each half includes
parallel sections on the experiences
and conditions women faced in four
areas: the family, work, religion, and the
law. The lively, succinct introductions
to each section are useful to the student
in three ways; they provide general
background as they emphasize continuity
and change, they often indicate current
scholarly interpretations, even when
they conflict, and they include a
selected bibliography. The descriptions which
begin each subsection supply additional
information on typical marriage
customs or Protestant conversion
experiences, for instance, and the brief
introduction to each document gives
necessary background and often notes the
limitations of the type of source.
Frey and Morton have done an admirable job
compiling and editing New
World, New Roles. While the selections can only be illustrative, the
introduc-
tions present an appropriate context
whether the documents are inventories,
slave ship lists, or poetry. The authors
carefully highlight regional differences,
especially those between the Chesapeake
and New England. Creative selec-
tions present Black women in a variety
of settings including the harsh realities
of miscegenation described by a British
traveler and the religious perceptions
of poetess Phillis Wheatley. Excerpts
like Smith's description of the starving
time at Jamestown, testimony by Anne
Hutchinson and from the Salem witch
trials, and descriptions of executions
of those convicted of infanticide are lively
and appropriate for the most part.
Through these pages students see women as
poor and rich, saints and sinners, and
wives and mothers who confront and
adapt to the preindustrial world.
Of course, there are some limitations in
a work of this breadth and
complexity. The collection is
appropriate for courses on family history and
women's history, but the chronological
break at 1815 could hamper its use in
United States survey courses. The
occasional documents on Indian practices
while interesting and suitable for
comparison do not reflect the variety of
Indian experience. Moreover, sometimes
one wonders if the laudable attempt
to keep the text in its original form
will not overwhelm students. The sections
on the law are burdened with legalese
and are especially difficult to follow.
The scholarly comments could be improved
as well. Sometimes the intro-
ductions make it difficult to pursue
information further. For instance, we learn
(on p.11) that one scholar
thought more than one-fourth of Maryland males
died unmarried, but the scholar is
unnamed and is not readily apparent in the
accompanying bibliography. It should be
easy to pursue these matters in a
work intended for students. Similarly,
if the student wishes to read an entire
document the work offers no way to know
if it is readily available. In a few
instances, information intended to apply
generally is not qualified sufficiently.
Such is the case when most servant women
are incorrectly characterized as the
dregs of society. The accuracy of the
statement depends on which portion of
the seventeenth century and which
geographical section of the colonies is
chosen. Also, the bibliography, while
understandably selective, leaves out
such significant works as that of John
Demos on witchcraft.
Despite these problems New World, New
Roles is a considerable accom-
plishment. It demonstrates the vitality
and variety of material on women's
history in preindustrial America. It
also convinces the reader that the history
of women is an integral part of American
history.
The Cleveland State University Robert A. Wheeler
Book Reviews
167
Makers of Modern Strategy from
Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age. Edited
by
Peter Paret with the collaboration of
Gordon A. Craig and Felix Gilbert.
(Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1986. vii + 941p.; notes, biblio-
graphical notes, index. $12.95 paper;
$45.00 cloth.)
In 1943, Edward Mead Earle, assisted by
Gordon A. Craig and Felix Gilbert,
produced Makers of Modern Strategy, a
collection of essays which would
become a classic in military history.
The editors and authors felt, correctly, at
the time that a historical account of
military strategy would be especially
relevant to a country in the midst of a
world war, a country whose citizenry up
to that point had evidenced scant
theoretical interest in warfare beyond the
self-induced delusion that it was
primarily a foreign phenomenon to be avoided
at all costs. The book's success more
than fulfilled their expectations, as many
military professionals, academicians,
and other readers interested in the
history of strategy eventually accepted
its sophisticated strategic prescriptions
and proscriptions as profundity
bordering on The Word. Peter Paret and
colleagues have now updated this earlier
work, creating a sequel whose
popularity will likely outstrip that of
its predecessor.
This edition of Makers of Modern
Strategy is a skillful blending of the new
and old. Twenty-two essays are entirely
new, while seven, revised or rewritten
to some extent, have been retained from
the 1943 version. The book has five
parts: "The Origins of Modern
War," "The Expansion of War," "From the
Industrial Revolution to the First World
War," "From the First to the Second
World War," and "Since
1945." Among its roster of authors, which reads like
a Who's Who in military history, are
Peter Paret, Felix Gilbert, Gordon A.
Craig, Russell F. Weigley, Michael
Howard, Maurice Matloff, D. Clayton
James, Michael Carver, and John Shy.
The authors, not surprisingly, feel that
much can be gained from studying
strategic theories, but only if one
bears in mind that all such theories are
potentially fallible. As Peter Paret
puts it in his insightful article on Clausewitz,
"Theory can never lead to complete
understanding, which is an impossibility,
but it can strengthen and refine
judgement" (p. 193). In fact, if the book has a
leitmotif it is the authors' fealty to
Clausewitz' disdain for military theories and
principles passed off as gospel. To base
strategy on what are presented as
timeless, immutable principles of
warfare, at times in the guise of infallible
mathematical calculations, is to invite
disaster, for all such principles are
susceptible to sabotage by such
countervailing imponderables as human
capriciousness and sheer chance. Thus
the authors, in rejecting all strategic
monisms, seem to pay unacknowledged
homage to Charles Beard's caveat
(here badly paraphrased) that one should
step softly when studying history,
because things are just not that simple.
Although to single out any of the
volume's fine articles for special commen-
dation is to risk injustice to the
others, readers interested in the American way
of war will find illuminating two essays
in particular: Russell F. Weigley's
"American Strategy from Its
Beginnings through the First World War" and
John Shy and Thomas W. Collier's
"Revolutionary War." Weigley contends,
among other things, that Grant and
Sherman established parameters of
American strategy that would prevail,
not always fortunately, for a hundred
years. Grant's "reliance on
superior numbers and resources" directed against
the enemy's main force became accepted
strategy, culminating in Eisenhower's
great cross-Channel invasion and
European campaign of 1944-45 (pp. 440, 443);
168 OHIO HISTORY
Sherman's assaults on the South's war
resources and popular will, behind the
South's fighting forces, "led
toward the strategic bombing of Germany and
Japan and eventually to Hiroshima and Nagasaki (p.
443). Shy and Collier
suggest that these strategies, premised
on all warring parties fighting a
conventional war, led to "strategic
bankruptcy" when rigidly applied in
Vietnam, essentially a revolutionary war.
An American officer corps steeped in
the Grant-Sherman-Eisenhower tradition
of using maximum military force
against the enemy's forces, presumably a
mirror image of our own, approached
a revolutionary war with a strategic
mind-set rendering them incapable of
recognizing that in such a war
nonmilitary factors-the political, social,
economic, and psychological-were as
important as the military. The entire
unhappy episode was, perhaps, a case of
lessons too well learned.
Makers of Modern Strategy is unreservedly recommended. Perhaps the best
single volume available about strategy
and strategists, it is must reading for
those readers seeking some awareness of
the principles-some exercises in
wisdom, others unwisdom-that have
governed the conduct of war in modern
history.
Ohio Historical Society Robert L. Daugherty
No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism & the
Universities. By Ellen W. Schrecker.
(New York: Oxford University Press,
1986. ix + 437p.; notes, bibliograph-
ical essay, index. $20.95.)
For professors who like to think of
their universities as islands of academic
freedom where truth-seeking scholars
enjoy security from the storms of
prejudice and political passion that periodically
sweep the rest of American
society, Ellen Schrecker has a chilling
message: you are wrong. In this
well-done monograph, she challenges one
of the professoriates cherished
myths about itself: that the academic
community steadfastly resisted the
anti-Communist hysteria which gripped
the rest of the nation during the
McCarthy era. On the contrary, Schrecker
establishes, the universities failed
to defend their own against the
political purges of the 1940s and 1950s. "The
academy did not fight McCarthyism,"
Schrecker concludes. "It contributed to
it" (p. 340).
American universities inflicted
punishment on members of the academic
community whom congressional
investigating committees had identified as
politically suspect, she explains. The
professors and graduate students they
fired and blacklisted almost all had
been members of the Communist Party at
one time, but few if any still were, and
none had used their classrooms for
propaganda purposes. Nevertheless,
university faculties and administrations
banished them from the academy. Most
victims of this purge managed to return
to the classroom during the rapid
expansion of American higher education in
the 1960s, but their colleagues failed
to preserve or even fight for their right to
teach when McCarthyism was at its
height. Schrecker finds it "hard to escape
the conclusion that [this] failure to
protect academic freedom eroded the
academy's moral integrity" (p.
340). One might have expected the American
Association of University Professors to
lead a struggle in defense of academic
freedom for political dissidents, but it
did not. Although the AAUP took a
public stand against excluding anyone
from the academic profession merely for
Book Reviews
169
membership in the Communist Party, the
sheer incompetence of its executive
director, Ralph Himstead, prevented the
organization from doing more. It
failed, until McCarthyism had largely
subsided, to intervene in any of the many
cases in which professors lost their
jobs after invoking the Fifth Amendment
before congressional committees or
refusing to sign loyalty oaths.
Schrecker's devastating indictment of
the AAUP's performance is one of the
outstanding features of this book.
Others include excellent chapters on what
the former Communists who were fired and
blacklisted had actually done
during the period of their party
membership in the 1930s and 1940s and on how
they survived after they lost their
teaching positions in the McCarthy era.
Schrecker's fascinating account of
McCarthyism on campus rests on a solid
evidentiary foundation. Her research is
excellent. Besides examining manu-
script materials in archival
repositories around the country, she has utilized
more than thirty collections that are
still in private hands. Not content to rely
on oral histories and transcripts of
interviews done by others, Schrecker
conducted more than 130 interviews
herself. Her decision not to attempt to use
the Freedom of Information Act to obtain
FBI files on the academic victims of
McCarthyism is unfortunate, but in view
of the expense and frustrations which
pursuing that type of material usually
entail, it is certainly understandable.
Because others who had already obtained
documents from the Bureau shared
them with Schrecker, this gap in her
research does not seriously harm the
book. Besides, she forthrightly
acknowledges its existence to the reader.
Likewise, when discussing subjects (such
as the politically-motivated termina-
tions of untenured faculty members) with
respect to which she has less
evidence than would be desirable, this
author is careful to make it clear that she
is presenting not a definitive account
but merely the best one that could be
fashioned from the limited information
available.
At the end of the book Schrecker
provides a detailed discussion of the
sources she used to write it. This
exceptionally perceptive bibliographical
essay is well worth reading for its own
sake. Besides the usual comments on
primary and secondary sources, it
includes such fascinating tidbits as the
revelation that the government revoked
the security clearance of Harvard
professor Samuel Stouffer (a Republican
and regular consultant to the military)
because he directed the acclaimed Fund
for the Republic study, Communism,
Conformity and Civil Liberties
(1955).
Although outweighed by strong points,
such as the bibliographical essay, this
book does have some weaknesses. These
include a few minor factual errors
(for example, the number of Justices who
participated in the Supreme Court's
Dennis decision is wrong). Also, Schrecker makes greater use
of the personal
pronoun "I" than is usually
considered appropriate in scholarly writing. Her
style is otherwise good, though, and the
content of this book is excellent. No
Ivory Tower is must reading for students of McCarthyism.
California Western School of Law Michal R. Belknap
Book Reviews
Life, Journals, and Correspondence of
Rev. Manasseh Cutler, LL.D.: Volume
I. By William Parker Cutler and Julia
Perkins Cutler. (Athens: Ohio
University Press, 1987. xii + 524p.;
notes. $40.00/set.) Volume II. By
William Parker Cutler and Julia Perkins
Cutler. (Athens: Ohio University
Press, 1987. iv + 495p.; notes,
appendices, index. $40.00/set.)
Manasseh Cutler was a community builder
of the first rank during a very
formative era in our nation's history.
To mark the Centennial of the Northwest
Ordinance, his grandchildren published a
compendium of his papers to applaud
Cutler's achievements. Their foremost
goal was to gain recognition for Cutler,
his New England principles and his
Federalist persuasion. Combining the roles
of editors, biographers and historians
intermittently, they sought to counter a
prevailing Jeffersonian and Democratic
bias to the history of our republic's
first west. Cutler, as a pivotal
director of the Ohio Company of Associates in
1787-1788, was the architect of key
aspects of the Northwest Ordinance and
hence the architect for the five new
states that would evolve from the territory.
At the Bicentennial of the Ordinance,
Ohio University Press has printed the
twin volumes and thus provides us with
further perspective on the rich life of
a remarkable man. It is now more clear than in 1888
that in addition to his Ohio
enthusiasms (the ancient Indian mounds
at Marietta, magnificent black walnuts
and sycamores on the Muskingum, the
initial charter for Ohio University),
Cutler simultaneously created two other
types of communities. From 1771 to
1823 he led his congregation and town of
Ipswich hamlet (later Hamilton),
Massachusetts, through a half decade of
turbulence. All the while through a
correspondence network that stretched
from New England to the Carolinas,
and from Sweden to Hindustan, he
tirelessly pursued myriad scientific
curiosities. Where his grandchildren
might focus on his political achievements
in 1787-1788, now his versatility as
community booster and enlightened
polymath are equally attractive.
The editing of these volumes, as pointed
out by Lee Nathaniel Newcomer in
1960 (MVHR 47:88-101), is not up
to the standards of current practice. A
variety of materials from Cutler's pen
are combined with a potpourri of public
papers, Ohio Company records and
commentaries from Cutler's contemporar-
ies. These are but selections from more
than 75 volumes located chiefly at
Northwestern University. The grandchildren
censored as they edited, blended
narrative with documents and, one third
of the way through the second
volume, replaced a chronological
approach with chapters of correspondence
passing to and from Cutler's desk. For the modern
reader this approach is
distracting. If the Ohio University Press had wished to
make a scholarly
contribution, at least it could have
offered a more complete index.
Cutler's journals are the gems at the
core of this collection. They are of two
types as they cover 1765-1823, with only
nine years missing. By and large they
record the pace and prospects of the
usual life of an unusual pastor (e.g., "June
30, 1800. About Town. Wrote to General
Putnam. Completed the Charter for
the University." II, 38.). At other
times, such as his 1787 trip to New York and
Philadelphia, the diaries are rich in
detail. In the Bicentennial we are obliged to
Cutler for his evocative descriptions of
turtle frolics and steam engines in