Ohio History Journal

Book Reviews

 

 

Peace Heroes in Twentieth-Century America. Edited and with an Introduc-

tion by Charles DeBenedetti. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,

1986. ²76p.: illustrations, notes, index. $22.50.)

 

The publication of this book serves to remind us of the great loss the his-

torical profession suffered in the death of Charles DeBenedetti at so young

an age. An edited work with eight chapters written by various authors, it is a

book that should have a large readership both inside and outside the acad-

emy, for though written in a popular style, the essays are well-documented

and based on solid scholarship. The lives surveyed are reminders of our

rich heritage in the recent history of peace action, a heritage far too often

overlooked in texts and classroom, where the emphasis on war and milita-

rism continues to be a dominant theme. While there is an abundance of vio-

lence in our past, there is also a strong strain of nonviolent action. Historians

should make this part of the story more visible.

While the individuals discussed in these essays are not those who held

power in the traditional sense, they all exerted influence in other, less ortho-

dox ways. Their lives and work can serve as inspiration and role models for

those who must assume their task. Jane Addams, the only woman included,

usually receives credit for her work with Hull House, but her equally impor-

tant contributions to the peace movement should also be remembered. Also

inspirational are the lives and works of Eugene Debs, A.J. Muste, Martin

Luther King, Jr., and Daniel and Philip Berrigan. Some in the peace move-

ment will find it more difficult to justify including Norman Cousins, whose

concern for effectiveness led him to purge communists from SANE, Norman

Thomas, whose critical support of World War II disappointed so many, and

Albert Einstein, who helped convince President Roosevelt that the United

States should develop an atomic bomb. In seeking role models for the peace

movement, one might ask if those who left the movement when the pressure

was on should be included. Nevertheless, Charles Chatfield's essay on Nor-

man Thomas, Harold Josephson's on Albert Einstein, and Milton Katz' on

Norman Cousins present their subjects in a very positive light. Despite the

disclaimer, these men all made important contributions to the movement for

peace and social justice.

Even a little thought on the subject of peace heroes will underscore the

many problems an editor faces in deciding which individuals to include.

Since women were so important as peace leaders, it is unfortunate that only

one was included. Dorothy Day (whose omission is deplored in the editor's

introduction), Jessie Wallace Hughan, Dorothy Detzer, and Randall Fors-

berg come to mind. Including E. Raymond Wilson or Frederick J. Libby

would have added an important element, the peace leader as lobbyist. But

this is to quibble. Happily, the biographies of many more peace leaders are

now available in Harold Josephson (ed), Biographical Dictionary of Modern

Peace Leaders.

One may also question the whole concept of emphasizing leaders in the

peace movement when so much of its activity is at the grass roots level with

• 1
 

76                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

local leadership and lacking famous name advantage. This book clearly dem-

onstrates that there have been nationally recognized leaders and that their

contributions were also essential. It is good to have those contributions

spelled out in so readable and attractive a volume. Let us hope that it will en-

courage more dissent and "inspire still greater citizen-heroism in the current

struggle to prevent nuclear war and global extinction," as Merle Curti so aptly

states it in his "Afterword," the final chapter in this timely volume.

Wilmington College                                      Larry Gara

 

 

Prodigal Sons: The New York Intellectuals & Their World. By Alexander

Bloom. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. xii + 461p.; notes, in-

dex. $24.95.

 

Alexander Bloom has written a thickly detailed chronicle of the modern

American intelligentsia. Beginning with the reorganization of the Partisan Re-

view in 1937, a group of predominantly Jewish intellectuals sought to lead de-

bates over politics and culture. Although unknown to most Americans, these

New York writers and critics came to have a decisive influence on the na-

tion's intellectual life and, to a lesser extent, national political dialogues.

The first generation of the New York set came from immigrant families of

poor-to-modest means. Because of anti-Semitic quotas at the country's pres-

tigious private universities, most of those coming of age in the 1930s had to

settle for the City College of New York. Like their outer borough neighbor-

hoods, CCNY offered a sense of community. There were common intellectual

and ideological awakenings. But then, learning had few other rewards, as

the same schools that had refused to admit them as undergraduates failed

to consider Jews for faculty positions.

Undaunted, some determined to take up cultural criticism and analysis as

free-lance writers and editors. Out of college in the early 1930s, most had

some connection with the city's Marxist literary community. It proved a

short-lived bond. In 1937, William Phillips and Philip Rahv, uneasy that

"journalism and pamphleteering were being mistaken for quality writing" (p.

63), reorganized their journal, the Partisan Review, to reflect a left-leaning but

non-Marxist "revolutionary modernism." The Review, led by such contribu-

tors as Dwight Macdonald and Clement Greenberg, would seek to identify

and champion the avant-garde and, some immodestly declared, serve as

modernity's literary priests.

The new Partisan Review provided the first of several outlets for the New

York intellectuals' shifting political outlooks as well. America's war against

Hitler dedicated most of them, after a decade of alienation, to American cul-

ture. It suddenly became fashionable to read Henry James. After the war,

most took up a "liberalism of responsibility" that accepted America's cor-

rectness in the Cold War; in new publications like Commentary and Encoun-

ter, Irving Kristol and Sidney Hook condoned the harshest treatment of

American Stalinists and fellow travelers.

At the same time, more and more from New York's Jewish intellectual

community secured academic positions. At Columbia, Lionel Trilling's appli-

cation of Freud's theories to literary criticism and descriptions of the "ad-

• 2
 

Book Reviews                                                    77

 

versary culture" influenced several generations of scholars. Joining him on

Morningside Heights was Daniel Bell, advocating a non-ideological,

problem-solving social science.

The New York intellectuals' endemic factiousness ultimately tore the group

apart. Irving Howe, decrying the group's indifference to civil liberties during

the Second Red Scare and intellectual conformity, started his own journal,

Dissent, in 1954. By the 1960s, younger New York intellectuals, divided over

black militancy and American foreign policy, founded still more magazines of

protest. Meanwhile, some of the original set from the thirties died. Others

left New York to teach at academic posts elsewhere. The children of a few

went to Washington to work in the Reagan administration.

In Prodigal Sons, Bloom achieves an admirable distance from his sources.

His first chapters, describing the upbringing and education of the first gener-

ation of New York intellectuals, are skillfully and sensitively drawn. Al-

though critical of Kristol and Hook for their position on civil liberties in the

1950s, Bloom on the whole avoids the self-righteous tone that greatly deval-

ues so many of the histories of the Second Red Scare. Bloom also recognizes

the relationship between individual circumstance and ideas, that the im-

proving position of the New York intellectuals explained some of their

thought. The "status anxiety" thesis of Seymour Martin Lipset and Richard

Hofstadter, for example, likely said more about the Jewish intellectuals' en-

try into the middle class than about Populism movement or McCarthyism.

By striving to be definitive, however, Prodigal Sons can be frustrating.

Bloom appears to have chosen to cover every literary squabble rather than

presenting a larger argument or thesis, let alone sufficiently justifying such

material's inclusion. Were the New York intellectuals that important? Or did

Bloom, in a sense, become another victim of the group's habitual conten-

tiousness? Offering a "conclusion" filling less than half a page, Bloom refrains

from weaving the kind of intellectual synthesis Richard H. Pells undertakes

in The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age (1985).

University of Wisconsin-Madison                 James L. Baughman

 

 

American Professors: A National Resource Imperiled. By Howard R. Bowen

and Jack H. Schuster. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. xiv +

³²²p.; appendices, notes, tables, bibliography, index. $24.95.)

 

Crises are not new to America's colleges and universities. A number of re-

cent studies have shown in painstaking detail difficulties and shortcomings

in American higher education. Howard R. Bowen and Jack H. Schuster in

American Professors have found crisis in the heart of the academy-its fac-

ulty. Their conclusion is that the American professoriate is an imperiled re-

source and that if adequate remedies are not undertaken there will be a seri-

ous shortage of qualified and able faculty in the nation's colleges and

universities before the end of the century.

Bowen, former president of the University of Iowa, and Schuster, professor

of education at the Claremont Graduate School, have written a useful and

well-researched book. Their study, conducted from 1982-85, is based on in-

terviews of over 500 higher education faculty and administrators at 38 repre-

• 3
 

78                                                  OHIO HISTORY

 

sentative colleges and universities. In examining the health and well-being of

the American professoriate, they found that despite the questionable prog-

nosis there were some encouraging signs. Though faculty are a complex and

pluralistic lot, they are on the whole reasonably sound and healthy. They

are also intelligent, well educated, hard working, and productive.

The Brown and Schuster survey confirms that conditions for American

faculty have worsened steadily since 1970, a fact that everyone in higher ed-

ucation already knows. Brown and Schuster observe that although matters

are not yet desperate, they are indeed serious. They see many of the prob-

lems as a kind of deferred maintenance in that adequate financial resources

have not been available to meet the needs of higher education. A steady

erosion of real earnings is a major part of the problem for faculty. The authors

observe that salaries of higher education faculty have not kept pace with

most other professional groups. A big gap now exists between salaries of fac-

ulty and those with comparable backgrounds who have gone into other em-

ployment. In addition to the decline in real income is the problem of a

deteriorating work environment. Faculty perceive a degeneration of the work

milieu. Bowen and Schuster find evidence of cutbacks in support services

and facilities. Curtailment in secretarial services, laboratory assistants, sup-

plies, equipment, and library collections have become increasingly common.

They conclude that a decade and a half of unremitting financial stringencies

have had a negative impact on the faculty and have significantly reduced

morale.

Morale problems were in evidence in all the colleges and universities sur-

veyed. Widespread variations existed among campuses, but faculty at all in-

stitutions, whether research university, comprehensive university, liberal

arts college, or community college, experienced similar kinds of morale diffi-

culties. Financial woes were often the source, but not always. Intrinsic factors

such as shifting values and increasing demands were often described as

placing additional pressures on faculty. Despite all the external and internal

demands on faculty, most believe that on the balance professional life was

still attractive. In fact, most faculty reported that if they had it to do over

they would again choose an academic career. The Brown and Schuster sur-

vey revealed that the quality of faculty life at two-thirds of the campuses sur-

veyed ranged from fair to excellent.

The authors assert that the real crisis of higher education lies in the

quarter-century ahead. The current faculty is aging, and in the next twenty-

five years the number of appointments will probably equal two-thirds or

more of the entire faculty as of 1985. If conditions in the future should some-

how cause a "flight" from academe, they argue that there would be thou-

sands of vacated positions. The great danger, Bowen and Schuster observe,

is not that the positions would be unfilled, but that there would not be quali-

fied and able replacements. They fear that there is a significant loss of inter-

est in college teaching among bright young people who are ready to embark

on professional careers. The great need, they conclude, is to find ways and

means to assess that competent faculty will in the future be available and af-

fordable in sufficient numbers.

Bowen and Schuster end their work with a prescription-one which has

an expensive price tag. They argue that higher education institutions, the

federal and state governments, and foundations must commit more financial

• 4
 

Book Reviews                                                    79

 

resources, especially in the decade following 1995 when faculty shortages

will be most acute. They suggest a four-part proposal which would provide

funding for fellowships for graduate students, faculty appointments for young

scholars, research support for young scholars, and support for personal de-

velopment of faculty in mid-career. If begun immediately this program would

initially cost $29 million a year and would rise to nearly $195 million in direct

costs by the year 2000. They estimate that as many as 15,000 persons would

be receiving incentive grants each year by the end of the century as part of a

nationwide effort to bolster faculty.

The profile of the American professoriate and the analyses of problems of

higher education faculty presented by Bowen and Schuster are more con-

vincing than their scheme to raise more dollars to attract new faculty and to

retain current ones. Nevertheless, some of the remedies they request must be

used if the faculty is to remain vibrant. Certainly institutions need to be more

ambitious and creative in providing faculty development programs.

Of the many critiques on American higher education published in recent

years, it is one of the better. Bowen's and Schuster's conclusions are inescap-

able. Those who are interested in promoting higher education must be will-

ing to provide more attention and money for what is becoming an imperiled

resource, America's professors.

Glenville State College                              Bruce C. Flack

 

 

The "Uncensored War": The Media and Vietnam. By Daniel C. Hallin. (New

York: Oxford University Press, 1986. viii + 285p; notes, bibliography, ap-

pendices, index. $22.50.)

 

As the author of this study points out, "it has come to be widely accepted

across the political spectrum that the relation between the media and the

government during Vietnam was in fact one of conflict" (p. 3). Both hawks

and doves generally believe that the media's pessimism concerning the

American mission and their transmission of graphic violence into American

living rooms helped turn the public against the war, forcing an end to Ameri-

can involvement.

Hallin, an assistant professor of political science and communications, ar-

gues that the hawks and doves are respectively incorrect in seeing the media

as either villainous or heroic; instead, as he states in his conclusion, "the

collapse of America's 'will' to fight in Vietnam resulted from a political proc-

ess of which the media were only one part" (p. 213). As late as 1967 the me-

dia generally portrayed an "idealized war," and only after Tet did they stop

"legitimizing" the conflict through references to World War II and other ele-

ments of American tradition.

In making this case, Hallin first analyzes the complete New York Times cov-

erage from 1961 through mid-1965, and then switches to a sample of network

evening news from August 1965 through the cease-fire in January 1973. He

also draws on interviews with journalists and, to a lesser extent, officials.

Hallin views this subject matter partly through quantitative methods, and

his book provides a valuable record-within the scope of the materials he

uses-of precisely how much of what was sent out to the public. He also in-

• 5
 

80                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

cludes critiques of the limitations of the premises both of modern "objec-

tive" journalism in the United States and of the post-World War II Cold War

consensus. These critiques are not original, but Hallin summarizes them suc-

cinctly, and he cogently shows how the constraining assumptions of Ameri-

can journalism and the foreign-policy establishment reinforced each other in

the fateful miscalculations regarding Vietnam.

There are two main weaknesses to Hallin's study. First, his quantitative

methods of content analysis can provide answers only to the limited ques-

tions that they actually pose. His report of the low percentage of violence ac-

tually shown in television footage may be less revealing than the incorrect

memories of people that such scenes pervaded their television sets. That the

impact of such scenes may have been far greater than their numbers is the

kind of perception that easily falls by the wayside once the "objective"

methods of social science are applied. And in this respect Hallin's study has

far more in common with the journalism he is criticizing than he seems to re-

alize.

The second weakness is his failure to offer any suggestions for the future

other than a call for "greater openness" in the political process. As he him-

self explains earlier, the restraints of conventional journalism developed as a

response against charges of irresponsible power when the many independ-

ent, unashamedly biased newspapers of the early republic were transformed

around the turn of this century into huge corporate empires. Hallin shows

that this "objectivity" usually amounts to deference to official power, a col-

laboration with the state that breaks down only in instances such as Tet

when officials themselves are divided or otherwise at a loss to provide the

media with a coherent "story." But if the corporate media became truly in-

dependent and unrestrained from such self-imposed controls, they would

surely in time become once again a dangerous unelected and unappointed pri-

vate power. In calling for "openness" without advocating specific change in

the system itself, Hallin indulges in wishful thinking where rigorous conclu-

sions are needed.

Nevertheless, The "Uncensored War" is a persuasive study of the weak-

nesses of American journalism in Vietnam, and a significant corrective to

some mistaken assumptions about how the war was covered. Its empirical ap-

proach complements Michael Arlen's impressionistic observations in Living-

Room War (1969), and its broad scope similarly adds to Peter Braestrup's in-

tensive study of the coverage of Tet in The Big Story (1977).

The Ohio State University, Lima                      John Hellmann

 

 

 

Your True Marcus: The Civil War Letters of A Jewish Colonel. Edited by

Frank L. Byrne and Jean Powers Soman. (Kent: The Kent State University

Press, 1985. xi + 353p.; illustrations, notes, index. $19.95.)

 

The Civil War letters of Marcus Spiegel are unique and at the same time of-

ten typical of an accomplished young officer of the Union army. The German-

born Spiegel was the son of a Rabbi; he eventually settled in heavily Ger-

manic Holmes county, Ohio, and worked as a merchant before the fall of

• 6
 

Book Reviews                                                  81

 

Fort Sumter. A popular Democrat, he felt he must join the fight for the Union

although it meant a separation from his wife and children.

These letters will interest every student of the war. In his correspondence

Spiegel urged his wife, a convert from the Society of Friends, to be diligent

regarding the children and the observance of Rosh Hashanah and Yom

Kippur. Unsuspecting Jews, notably in the Shenandoah Valley and in Mem-

phis, were surprised when he greeted them. He went some distance to at-

tend services in Norfolk, Virginia. After attending Rabbi Issac M. Wise's syn-

agogue in Cincinnati, he judged it "a beauty full service, good singing . ..

and [a] fine Sermon" (p. 181). Interestingly, Spiegel dated one letter, "Christ-

mas Morning" (p. 204). He encouraged Christian devotions among his men

and was subjected to but one documented anti-Semitic comment. The suc-

cess of this young officer was made possible by the relatively open, demo-

cratic American society. He entered the service as a lieutenant and quickly

displayed every quality demanded of an officer. Spiegel rose to the rank of

colonel and commanded the 120th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. There is ample

evidence of the respect for and the genuine affection lavished on him by his

men. He also had the ego to mention their support on several occasions.

In actions that ranged from West Virginia to the Shenandoah Valley, the

Peninsula campaign and the Vicksburg operations, he and his units were

warmly praised. The vagaries of fortune were such that he missed the bat-

tles of Seven Pines, the Seven Days and Second Bull Run; after the fall of

Vicksburg he was mortally wounded while trying to make a contribution in

the bungled Red River operation of April, 1864.

An articulate person, Spiegel described individual battle tactics well. Cam-

paign hardships, the marches and countermarches and his own fits of de-

pression were candidly discussed. He was alert to opportunity and helped

his brother into a sutler's position. In early 1862 he wrote that he would not

fight to free slaves. His prejudice against blacks was evident, and he held

the common Democratic assumption that the anti-slave agitation disturbed

the once-happy slaves. Spiegel's growth was evident when he subsequently

declared that he would stay in after Emancipation to help win a final victory.

In the summer of 1863 he broke with the Peace Democrats who were so

strong in Holmes county. By February 1864 he knew that slavery ("it has

been an awful institution" [p. 321]) was gone in the South. As a humane "ab-

olitionist" he foresaw a new era for the white laborers; with firm laws the

freedman would be "an educated, well to do laborer ...." (p. 320).

This volume is well edited although the maps could have been improved.

Spiegel's letters constitute an important document from an uncommon com-

mon man. In the end, one can only guess at the direction of his political

course had he survived the conflict. One may assume, however, that his

record and his talent for leadership would have propelled him into a signifi-

cant role in the postwar community.

Ohio Wesleyan University                         Richard W. Smith

 

 

The Old Army: A Portrait of the American Army in Peacetime, 1784-1898. By

Edward M. Coffman. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. ix +

514p.; illustrations, notes, bibliographical essay, index. $35.00.)

• 7
 

82                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

Edward Coffman, a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin,

maintains that by focusing on wars and battles, previous historians of the

U.S. Army have left an enormous gap in our knowledge. Indeed the Indian

Wars of the 1790s, War of 1812, Mexican War, and Civil War collectively cov-

er only about a dozen years. What of the remaining "peaceful" years which

tally more than a century between the end of the Revolution and the

Spanish-American War? The Old Army is Coffman's effort to fill this void.

The author has synthesized a mass of both primary and secondary mate-

rial from more than a century into a genuine social history of the U.S. Army.

He used the general headings of officers, women and children, and enlisted

men to organize his volume, and employed the Civil War years to divide the

nineteenth century into two larger periods of discussion and generalization.

The initial chapter covers these topics for the early republic years before

1812. This framework allows Coffman to discuss the variety of activities of

the general rank and file such as policing, farming, drilling, training, misbe-

having, and punishment and sickness; as well as the work, training, pay, pro-

motion, dueling, and courts martial of the officers; along with the shared ex-

periences with single and married women and their children where

appropriate. For all these groups and time periods he addresses the ques-

tions of who they were, where they came from, and for the articulate, their

aspirations and goals. The gradual increase in professionalism and procedur-

al standardization within the army during the period covered in the book is

a constant and, not unexpected, recurring theme.

While some of the topics may seem mundane, Coffman's treatment of them

is certainly not. He has gleaned interesting and often entertaining tidbits and

anecdotes from a host of letters, diaries, and memoirs to produce an enliv-

ened history that is as enjoyable to read as it is edifying.

Coffman touches so many bases it is difficult to summarize his volume, but

those interested in the Ohio Valley will find several items especially worth-

while reading. In particular the author's initial chapter is, in my opinion, by

far the best overview of the Federalist military, with insightful generaliza-

tions on background, training, and experiences, available anywhere. Read-

ers interested in Ohio will also find intriguing the references to the Columbus

Barracks which place it in the larger context of late-nineteenth-century re-

cruiting.

The amount of materials digested by the author is impressive. In fact the

quantity of sources was apparently a factor in Coffman's decision to reduce

the end of his time period from 1940 down to the Spanish-American War.

Unfortunately, when referring to the Lyman Draper Manuscripts at the State

Historical Society of Wisconsin in his otherwise detailed footnotes, he does

not take advantage of Draper's precise organizational system that makes it

possible to readily locate specific documents. In addition I am sometimes

troubled by his use of statistical comparisons that are either based on an

unusually small cross-section or that seem to be utilized simply for the sake of

the numbers themselves.

Ignoring these minor irritations, The Old Army is highly recommended as

must reading for virtually any U.S. military historian. Perhaps Coffman will

bless us with a sequel to cover the rest of the period he originally intended.

 

Ohio Historical Society                           David A. Simmons

• 8
 

Book Reviews                                                    83

 

The World War II Combat Film: Anatomy of a Genre. By Jeanine Basinger.

(New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. xi + 373p.; illustrations,

notes, appendix, annotated filmography, bibliography, index. $30.00.)

 

Jeanine Basinger, Professor of Film Studies at Wesleyan University, has

added yet another scholarly contribution to the ever-growing library of

World War II films. Basinger's study concentrates primarily on films about

combat rather than those that feature only some combat around which a

noncombat plot revolves. She contends, convincingly, that after extensively

screening every combat film released between December 7, 1941, and August

3, 1945, she was able to discover a combat genre consisting of predictable el-

ements that occur and recur, in some variation or the other, in all true combat

films then and thereafter, whether they are set on land, sea, or air.

Although Basinger relies on numerous films in making her case for genre,

she places special emphasis on three: Wake Island, Bataan, and Air Force.

Wake Island (pp. 28-30), released in 1942, is a transitional film: "The charac-

teristics that define it are a mingling of 'old' pre-World War II and 'new'-

with 'new' being old plot deviced updated by linking them specifically to

Wake and the war." Wake Island's identifiable traits, borrowed directly or

adapted from earlier films, continue in all future combat genre films. For ex-

ample, an adversary relationship between two friends, called the "Quirt/

Flagg" relationship because it originated in What Price Glory?; conflict, even-

tually resolved, between military and nonmilitary men; the plan, thwarted

by the outbreak of war, of a character not to reenlist (this device later

cropped up in John Ford westerns); a tough commanding officer, who is

tough for the troopers own good; an illegal fistfight, after which the two pugi-

lists cooperate to hide the fight from authorities (John Wayne and Forrest

Tucker later do this in Sands of Iwo Jima). Other Wake Island traits are one

character's attachment to a little dog (repeated in Air Force); dramatic open-

ing printed works on screen, followed by dedications and references to those

who aided making the film, and voiceover narration; the "last stand" format

(used in numerous Alamo and Custer films); and the sacrificial pilot who

dives his plane into a warship (in Flying Tigers the plane is crashed into a

train).

Bataan and Air Force (both released in 1943), but especially Bataan, are

crucial to the development of the genre. Both include a mixed group of eth-

nic types (the melting pot goes to war), a person unenthusiastic or even cyni-

cal about the war (Lloyd Nolan and John Garfield played this role effective-

ly), a heroic leader who dies, and the deaths of valued group members (in

Bataan, everyone dies). Air Force is "a great film, still powerful today" (p.

44), but it is Bataan which "is clearly the seminal film . . . a film that con-

tains the primary characteristics of the genre" (p. 37). Bataan is instrumental

in providing the generic requirements for future combat films. Listed on

pages 61-62, the requirements include: the group as a democratic ethnic mix;

a hero who is part of the group, but still separate because of the demands of

leadership; the objective (delay the Japanese advance, in this case); the in-

ternal group conflicts; a generally faceless enemy; the absence of women (af-

ter opening scenes); the need to remember and discuss home, and the dan-

gers in doing so (forgetting the task at hand often results in death); and the

typical war iconography (uniforms, weapons, etc.). Additional requirements

• 9
 

84                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

are the journeying or staying nature of the genre-in a last stand (Bataan) or

journey (Air Force) they win or lose; propaganda (why they fight); events

such as writing and receiving letters, cooking and eating meals, and joking;

making use of war information the audience already has; a location in time,

place, and military service is established, aided by maps, military advisors,

and official dedications; and death. All or some of these requirements are re-

peated in the films that followed Bataan. To stress the film's importance,

Basinger concludes that Bataan does for the combat film what Citizen Kane,

obviously a far superior film, did for form and narrative.

The author goes on to evaluate or at least comment on almost every Ameri-

can combat film (and some foreign ones) made up to 1980, measuring each as

to its eligibility for membership in her genre: To what extent is it a combat

film, or merely a film which includes some combat? Tracing the genre's evo-

lution, Basinger notes that before the war's conclusion films added to their

authenticity by incorporating newsreel combat footage. After the war, Battle-

ground and Sands of Iwo Jima, both excellent combat films, included in their

casts actual veterans of the Battle of the Bulge and Iwo Jima. To Hell and

Back starred Audie Murphy himself, the hero of the book from which the

film was made. Epics such as The Longest Day and Tora! Tora! Tora! do not

receive high marks although they are more factual than the films of the early

1940s, their primary weakness being their lack of combat genre characteris-

tics established in the earlier films. Tora! Tora! Tora! is not without merit,

however; by telling the story of the Pearl Harbor attack from the Japanese

point of view, and having Japanese characters portrayed as brave, honorable

men, the film partially compensates for the blatant racism contained in earlier

World War II films.

The World War II Combat Films will appeal to general filmgoers and film

scholars alike. Basinger's prose is pleasantly unpedantic, made more enjoya-

ble by frequent humorous asides. The primary sources are the films them-

selves, and there is a comprehensive Annotated Chronological Filmography

of World War II and Korean Combat Films at the end of the book.

Ohio Historical Society                         Robert L. Daugherty

 

 

The Politics of Insurgency: The Farm Worker Movement in the 1960s. By J.

Craig Jenkins. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985. xviii + 261p.;

tables, notes, bibliography, index. $30.00.)

 

Migrant farm laborers have been among the last workers to organize be-

cause their transitory lives and low economic status have left them politically

powerless. Ethnic differences among migrant workers as well as their reluc-

tance to sacrifice low, but certain, wages in order to make potential gains

through the strike process also delayed development of a substantive agri-

cultural workers' union. Moreover, government policies such as the Bracero

and green card programs also hindered and often prevented the efforts of mi-

grant workers to organize. In addition, lax immigration enforcement along the

Mexican border enabled large numbers of illegal workers to undercut the ef-

forts of native or naturalized migrant laborers to form a union. Organizational

efforts also were hindered by the half-hearted support of the American Fed-

• 10
 

Book Reviews                                                    85

 

eration of Labor, while the activities of the Teamsters ultimately bordered

on betrayal of the farm workers' cause.

In 1962, however, the creation of the United Farm Workers Union (UFW)

marked a victory after a long-fought battle with the growers to gain union rec-

ognition, higher wages and an improved standard of living. Indeed, the cre-

ation of the United Farm Workers Union hailed a new age for migrant farm

workers in California. Although migrant workers had labored in the vine-

yards and on the truck farms in California since the late nineteenth century,

organization for purposes of collective bargaining with the growers came

slowly. Beginning with the National Farm Labor Union in 1946 and continu-

ing with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee in 1959, migrant farm

workers gained organizing and bargaining experience which led to the suc-

cessful formation of the UFW. It is more than coincidental, however, that mi-

grant farm workers did not organize on a significant scale until the 1960s. In-

deed, they were unable to do so until the political realignment of the 1960s,

based on left-of-center Democratic politics and the civil rights movement,

created a climate of public opinion that supported the farm worker move-

ment. The political adjustments of the 1960s also gave many politicians a vest-

ed interest in supporting the causes of the powerless, and the members of the

UFW reaped the rewards of that changing political perspective by forming

powerful alliances with key politicians and interest groups. During the course

of the struggle to form a union, Cesar Chevez, a political activist reared in the

migrant labor community, provided the leadership and the organizational

talents to achieve the formation of the United Farm Workers. Chevez effec-

tively used television, college students and the courts to heighten public

awareness about the plight of migrant farm workers. Primary and secondary

boycotts together with the mass media, particularly television, brought their

struggle into the homes of middle class Americans on a daily basis. In time,

the growers lost public, political and economic support and agreed to recog-

nize the UFW. By the late 1970s, however, the UFW contracts covered only

about one-third of the migrant farm workers in California, and the union has

thus far failed to make inroads into Arizona, Texas and Florida. Even so, the

UFW has substantially altered the political and economic forces that hereto-

fore controlled California agriculture.

J. Craig Jenkins, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of

Missouri-Columbia, has written a fascinating account of the migrant workers'

efforts to organize since World War II. Jenkins skillfully analyzes the organi-

zational techniques of major and minor migrant organizations which ultimate-

ly led to the creation of the United Farm Workers Union under the leader-

ship of Cesar Chevez in 1962. Jenkins traces the major activities of each

group and notes its strengths and weaknesses as well as its successes and fail-

ures. He argues that the grassroots organizational efforts of Chevez, which

emphasized collective incentives, permanent membership and strong politi-

cal alliances, provide an organizational model for other powerless groups in

America. He does this in full recognition of the shortcomings and problems

of the UFW, and he clearly shows that the achievements of the UFW remain

tenuous.

This study will be of interest to agricultural historians as well as to sociolo-

gists. It provides a solid survey of the organizational efforts of migrant farm

workers in California to organize and bargain collectively. Whether the or-

ganizational efforts of migrant farm workers will provide a model for other

• 11
 

86                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

members of the dispossessed remains to be seen. Without a doubt, howev-

er, others besides historians and sociologists can learn a great deal from this

book.

The State Historical Society of Missouri            R. Douglas Hurt

 

 

The Breckinridges of Kentucky, 1760-1981. By James C. Klotter. (Lexington:

University Press of Kentucky, 1986. xviii + 393p.; illustrations, notes, ap-

pendices, bibliographical notes, index. $35.00.)

 

The Breckinridge family has provided illustrious leaders in government,

politics, education, religion, and social causes to Kentucky and the nation for

more than two centuries. Several, including John, the founder of the Ken-

tucky branch of the family, and John Cabell, its best known member, have

received scholarly attention from such eminent historians as Lowell Harri-

son, William C. Davis, and Frank H. Heck. James C. Klotter concentrates

upon eight members of the family, including John, the Kentucky pioneer; his

son Robert J.; his grandsons John Cabell (the son of Joseph) and W. C. P.

(the son of Robert J.); his great-grandchildren Sophonisba and Desha (chil-

dren of W. C. P.); and two later descendants, John Bayne (great-grandson of

W. C. P.) and Mary Carson (granddaughter of John Cabell).

John Breckinridge, who migrated to Kentucky from the Valley of Virginia

in 1789, laid the economic basis of the family fortune and set precedents for

devotion to public service. He acquired thousands of acres of prime Blue-

grass land and engaged in enterprises that allowed time for political leader-

ship as state legislator, attorney general of Kentucky, congressman, and Unit-

ed States attorney general. Although he introduced the famed Kentucky

Resolutions and proclaimed liberal views, he increasingly represented the

conservative elite of Kentucky, particularly in regard to slavery and state con-

stitutional issues.

Following his father's philosophy, Robert J. took a conservative position in

the Old Court-New Court controversy and the attacks that hastened the de-

cline of the Golden Age of Transylvania University, but in his nationalism and

aversion to slavery he veered away from John. As state superintendent of

public instruction, he laid a solid basis for free public schools in Kentucky.

John Cabell, the most eminent of the Breckinridges in national affairs,

served as state legislator, congressman, United States senator, vice-president

under James Buchanan, presidential candidate of the Southern Democrats in

1860, Confederate general, and secretary of war in the Confederate govern-

ment. Following the war he spent several years in exile in Cuba, various parts

of Europe, and Canada.

W. C. P. Breckinridge was noted as an eloquent congressman, but notori-

ous extramarital affairs limited his political availability. Nevertheless, he ex-

erted considerable influence as editor of the Lexington Observer and Report-

er, in which he advocated advanced social and political causes and held

that the United States had a special mission in the world. Also widely recog-

nized in the journalistic world was Desha, the editor of the Lexington Her-

ald. Desha took liberal positions on women's rights, race relations, religion,

education, and conservation. John Bayne Breckinridge served as legislator,

• 12
 

Book Reviews                                                    87

 

attorney general of Kentucky, and congressman, but he never won the gov-

ernorship of the state, to which he aspired.

Sophonisba and Mary Carson matched the Breckinridge men in achieve-

ment and distinction. Sophonisba, who earned a law degree in an era when

careers for women were limited, taught for many years at the University of

Chicago and was a pioneer in the field of social work. After serving as a nurse

in Europe in World War I, Mary Carson returned to Kentucky and in 1925 es-

tablished the Frontier Nursing Service for the benefit of people in the Appa-

lachian areas. Moreover, women who married into the Breckinridge family,

including Mary Hopkins Cabell, the wife of John, and Madeline McDowell,

the wife of Desha, often became imbued with family pride and exercised

great influence.

Klotter treats each of his eight subjects as an outstanding figure in his or

her own right. All had a deep respect for family antecedents and traditions,

strong commitments to public welfare, and boldness of action. In recapturing

their lives and assessing their contributions, Klotter has, through an empha-

sis upon family, given them a new dimension and produced a welcome addi-

tion to Kentucky and national history.

West Virginia Institute of Technology                  Otis K. Rice

 

 

Abolition's Axe: Beriah Green, Oneida Institute, and the Black Freedom Strug-

gle. By Milton C. Sernett. (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1986. xiv

+ 199p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $35.00.)

 

Professor Sernett's study is a biography of Beriah Green, but it is more

than a traditional life story. The book surveys the struggle for black freedom

and charts Green's place in the abolitionist movement. Green has been

called one of the five most important abolitionists in New York State, yet he

has remained relatively obscure to the student of American history. After six

years of painstaking research, Sernett has produced an excellent monograph

of a significant abolitionist who made a contribution as a theologian, educa-

tor and reformer of antebellum America.

Sernett divides Green's abolitionist career into three periods. The first pe-

riod was the part he played in the controversy between the colonizers and

abolitionists at Western Reserve College in the early 1830s. The next ten years

Green devoted his talent to being President of Oneida Institute, an abolition-

ist college. After the demise of Oneida Institute, Green turned to Bible poli-

tics on the issue of slavery before the national government. He urged the re-

construction of civil and human government upon the basis of a theocratic

model, but he was only "a voice in the wilderness" occupying a rampart in

the antislavery crusade. Informed readers may wish Sernett had treated the

significant period of Green's Western Reserve career more extensively, but all

will agree that the author provides a penetrating survey of Green's religious

and educational philosophy during his Oneida years.

Green presided over the founding of the American Anti-Slavery Society

and remained in contact with the important leaders of the movement

throughout the antebellum period. Sernett points out that Green's signifi-

cance in antislavery education can be judged by the fact that he educated at

• 13
 

88                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

least fourteen of the black antislavery leaders. Oneida Institute was the first

interracial educational experiment, and Green had a vision of equality and

justice at Oneida which would serve as a model for contemporary society

which he saw as encumbered by the weight of caste and class. To a great

degree, Green was a part of the Utopian Movement as well as the antislavery

movement. Sernett explains that Green's model of civil government entailed a

ruling elite made up of the clergy in a society where the masses would not

vote. Green rejected democracy because the voters had consistently failed

to rid America of slavery.

Green was convinced that slavery was unconstitutional under a correct in-

terpretation of the general welfare clause and the preamble of the federal

Constitution. Green's understanding of the document was not unique in the

antebellum period, for Alvan Stewart, Lysander Spooner and others accept-

ed the premise that the Constitution was an antislavery document. Sernett

agrees with William Wiecek (The Sources of Antislavery Constitutionalism in

America) that the interpretation of the Constitution as an antislavery docu-

ment was not accepted in the antebellum period but contributed to the mod-

ern liberal constitutional thought in the twentieth century.

Green could not accept Lincoln's notion that preserving the union should

have a higher priority than abolishing slavery, nor Johnson's reconstruction

plan. Johnson's toleration of the Black Codes drew Green's most bitter fire.

Sernett says postwar Reconstruction furnished proof to Green that human

government could not be trusted to exercise justice and mercy.

Sernett's book is an important addition to the growing body of abolitionist

literature. The author skillfully integrates local history, Green's writings, and

secondary studies with primary sources to produce an excellent biography of

an important American. The book will be useful to the scholars of the anti-

slavery movement and the students of church history.

Morehead State University                         Victor B. Howard

 

 

Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of

Revolution. By T. H. Breen. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.

xvi + ²¹⁶p.; illustrations, notes, index. $19.95).

 

Tobacco culture touched almost every aspect of a planter's life in Virginia

during the mid-eighteenth century. It provided social cohesion, and it be-

came symbolic of their independence, skill and status and indicative of their

reliance upon British creditors. Indeed, tobacco shaped Tidewater society

and defined a planter's place in it. Invariably however, tobacco culture

brought more social prestige than wealth, and the planters, who usually sold

on consignment, were chronically in debt. When overproduction, low prices

and international economic difficulties forced creditors to demand payment,

many planters could not meet their obligations. In response to financial crises

beyond their control, the planters increasingly defined their economic prob-

lems in political terms and, by so doing, became susceptible to the constitu-

tional rhetoric of the revolutionaries during the critical decade before the

American Revolution.

T. H. Breen, Professor of History and American Culture at Northwestern

• 14
 

Book Reviews                                                    89

 

University, has written an elegant book about the relationship of tobacco to

the economic and social development of eighteenth-century Virginia. Breen

contends that tobacco culture was the preeminent force which developed

the particular mind set, that is, "mentality," of the planters. When British

merchants tightened their credit policies during the mid-eighteenth century,

the planters' world of status, honor and independence-all of which tobac-

co created-came tumbling down. Breen does not suggest that the collapsing

world of tobacco planters was the major cause of the American Revolution,

but he does maintain that the economic policies of the British tobacco mer-

chants drove the generally loyal Virginians away from the Crown at a time

when unity was needed to save the Empire from a major colonial loss.

Indeed, the collapse of tobacco farming shaped the way the planters per-

ceived the constitutional issues of the day. The planters' organized efforts to

curtail purchases in 1769 in order to reduce their indebtedness and depend-

ence upon British factors, for example, easily led to support of the non-

importation measures of the Continental Congress a few years later. By that

time, the problems of debt, tobacco and constitutionalism had merged into

an entirely larger issue which concerned the independence of the colonies.

To break with the credit system of the tobacco merchants, Breen contends,

was nothing less than a revolutionary act, and that action placed many plant-

ers on the side of those who sought political independence.

Breen has written a tightly focused study of the social, economic and psy-

chological world of the eighteenth-century tobacco planters in Virginia. The

narrative is clear and readable. The result is a substantial contribution to

knowledge. Breen intended to write an intellectual history of the tobacco

planters' world. He achieved that goal, but he also has written an excellent

agricultural history. It is high praise indeed that the agricultural history soci-

ety awarded him the Theodore Saloutos prize for publication of the best

book in that field during 1985. Breen's study will be of value to all agricultur-

al and colonial historians.

The State Historical Society of Missouri            R. Douglas Hurt

 

The Life and Times of Congressman John Quincy Adams. By Leonard L.

Richards. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. viii + 245p.; notes,

index. $19.95.)

 

In 1830 after a disastrous first term and defeat for reelection by Andrew

Jackson in 1828, John Quincy Adams won a seat in the House of Representa-

tives. He remained there representing his Massachusetts home district until

his death 18 years later. Influenced by antebellum political rhetoric and by

the Adams family itself, historical mythology has enshrined Adams in this

second career as a curmudgeonly lone eagle soaring on currents of high prin-

ciple above the political crowd. In the words of his contemporary Joshua R.

Giddings, Adams "belongs to no local district, to no political party, but to

the Nation and the people; . . . While in the House . . . he consults with no

one, takes the advice of no one, and holds himself accountable to no one but

the Nation."

In this gracefully written volume Richards, the author of the prize winning

• 15
 

90                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

Gentlemen of Property and Standing (1970), burns through the romantic fog

that has enshrouded Adams' later years. He uses the extensive Adams Pa-

pers, recent literature on the political culture of the era, and analysis of voting

patterns and party alignments to place Congressman Adams in proper context.

He asks practical questions. Why did Adams run for Congress? Was he a

typical Whig or Anti-Mason or New Englander? Why was he at odds with

both the Southern slaveholding and Boston elites?

Richards answers these and other questions persuasively. For example,

Adams confessed to posterity in his diary that patriotic duty caused him to

return to Washington. But this study describes a complex mixture of personal

and political reasons that drove Adams. He relished politics and feared to

retire lest he atrophy. Grieving over the tragic death of a son influenced him

to escape into public life. More important and central to Richards' interpreta-

tion, Adams passionately sought revenge against southern slaveholders and

their northern political allies for denying him a second term in the White

House. He saw Jackson as the creature of the hated "Slave Power" and the

national Democratic party as both protector of the slave system and enemy of

his own economic nationalism. He went to Congress keenly aware that his

constituency was the 50,000 voters of his home district, and he was careful to

serve their interests. He grasped the enormous potential social power of Anti-

Masonry in the Northeast. His conversion to Anti-Masonry served as a weap-

on against his home district opponents and a vehicle to increase his base of

support in the emerging Whig party. Even though he battled the Webster

men at home and was outspoken in House debate, his voting record indi-

cates that he was more of a party regular than most of his Whig brethren or

his Democratic opponents. His committee assignments show that from the

first he was a formidable power in the House. In short, Richards shows that

Adams was very much a politician who understood the stakes and played

the game.

Richards has a fresh perspective on Adams' part in many other important

matters, including the Bank War, abolitionism, the gag rule controversy, and

the Mexican-American War. In each case his explanation for Adams' behav-

ior is suitably complex yet focused on the theme that public figures, even

Adamses, cannot escape history or be understood apart from their times.

Those who wish to believe that Congressman John Quincy Adams was a ma-

jority of one who acted his public role in splendid isolation from tawdry

"politics" will find little to support that view here. Those who have won-

dered how a curmudgeonly, isolated Adams could win reelection to the

House again and again and exert national influence will find enlightenment in

Richards' monograph.

Fairmont State College                           Charles McCormick

 

Pearl Harbor: The Verdict of History. By Gordon W. Prange with Donald M.

Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Compa-

ny, 1986. xxxiii + 699p.; illustrations, notes, selected bibliography, index.

$19.95.)

 

At about 7:50 on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, the first wave of 350

Japanese carrier-based aircraft struck the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor

• 16
 

Book Reviews                                                    91

 

and numerous Army and Navy air stations located throughout Oahu. Ameri-

can losses were catastrophic. In less than four hours the U.S. Navy lost or

had seriously damaged eighteen warships and eighty-seven aircraft. Also

destroyed were seventy-seven U.S. Army aircraft, with 128 more being dam-

aged. American personnel losses numbered 2,403, and an additional 1,178

were wounded. Japanese losses were negligible; the fleet from which the at-

tack was launched was never even seen, much less hit. These are unassaila-

ble facts. Not so unassailable, at least in the eyes of some historians, support-

ed by lesser lights of the political and journalistic outback, are the why and

how of the attack. Why and how did a large Japanese attack force, which in-

cluded six aircraft carriers, manage to achieve complete surprise and inflict

such terrible destruction upon a military base which had every reason to ex-

pect war? Was it simply a masterstroke by Japanese naval strategists, or were

Americans themselves-primarily President Franklin D. Roosevelt and other

high-level government officials-to blame? Pearl Harbor: The Verdict of His-

tory provides what should be, one hopes (if futilely), the final answers to

such questions.

That Pearl Harbor has remained a source of controversy at all is due to the

efforts of a number of revisionist scholars and writers-some reputable, some

almost-such as Charles Beard, Charles Tansill, William A. Neumann, Wil-

liam Henry Chamberlin, Harry Elmer Barnes, John T. Flynn, George Mor-

genstern, Rear Admiral Robert A. Theobald, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel,

and, more recently, John Toland. Unlike most historians, who see whatever

American culpability there was as a series of diplomatic and military snafus,

revisionists place blame squarely on what they perceive to be the misguided,

or even treacherous, foreign policy of President Roosevelt.

Among the revisionists themselves, three separate camps can be discerned

(see pp. 36, 37). Scholars such as Neumann and Chamberlin maintained that

Roosevelt's foreign policy was intrinsically flawed in that it led inevitably to

war with Japan and the other Axis powers, a war from which only the Soviet

Union would benefit. Beard and others believed that Roosevelt maneuvered

the United States into war, but were not positive that he knew beforehand

that Pearl Harbor was to be attacked. Led by Barnes, the third group, easily

the most vociferous if not the most rational, flatly asserted that Roosevelt

and key political and military advisers actually manipulated Japan into at-

tacking Pearl Harbor. Doubling their perfidy, Roosevelt and Army Chief of

Staff George C. Marshall saw to it that Pearl Harbor was not alerted, thus

ensuring the attack's success. In the war that would follow, with its attendant

prosperity, people would forget that Roosevelt's New Deal had failed. Addi-

tionally, Roosevelt would emerge from the war as one of the world's great

statesmen (apparently it was understood that the United States would win,

Roosevelt not being so stupid as to start a war he would lose). In a word,

treacherous Americans in the highest level of government rather than the

Japanese were directly responsible for the debacle at Pearl Harbor and the

war that followed.

The authors of this text, principally Prange who did the great bulk of the

research before he died, methodically and meticulously demolish the revi-

sionists, exposing their arguments as an amalgam of loosely knit facts, conjec-

tures, potentialities, and possibilities masquerading as a plot. Prange does

point out that, conspiracy theories aside, mistakes, some breathtakingly stu-

pid, were indeed made at the top, from the White House on down to the mil-

• 17
 

92                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

itary commanders at Oahu. Most importantly, Washington evidenced no

comprehension of Japanese psychology, complacently assuming that Japan

would not dare go to war with the U.S. because it would be irrational, even

suicidal. A logical assumption (later validated by Japan's fate in the Pacific

War), but the Japanese had a propensity for acting irrationally, at least by

Western standards, a historical fact made clear to Washington by Ambassa-

dor Joseph C. Grew in Japan. Moreover, the Japanese military, fueled by the

Samurai tradition and Bushido philosophy, had a history of acting auda-

ciously against seemingly superior forces, the most famous example being a

surprise attack on the Russian Fleet at Port Arthur in 1904. Lending sub-

stance to George Santayana's famous aphorism about the importance of stud-

ying history, government officials were oblivious to the possibility that the

United States might be on the receiving end of a repeat performance. With

war in the air, Washington's messages to Admiral Husband Kimmel and

General Walter Short on Oahu could have been more explicit. But, however

imprecise the messages, Kimmel and Short too must bear heavy responsibili-

ty for the disaster because their job was to be prepared for any eventuality,

whatever the circumstances. The Army Pearl Harbor Board later put is suc-

cinctly: "It is a familiar premise of military procedure in estimating a situation

to select the most dangerous and disastrous type of attack the enemy may

make and devote your primary efforts to meeting this most serious of the at-

tacks. ... In the present instance, it was clearly recognized ... that the most

serious attack to be met by the Army and Navy was an air attack by Japan (pp.

460-61, italics in Army Board original).

Whatever the degree of American culpability, it should not be overempha-

sized. For to do so is to obscure the obvious: The Japanese Navy was pri-

marily responsible for what happened at Pearl Harbor. Admiral Isaroku

Yamamoto conceived the plan, Admiral Osami Nagano and the Naval Gener-

al Staff approved it, and Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo's task force gave it

life. Aided by American blunders, coincidence, and sheer luck, the attack

was a tactical masterpiece but, in the end, a strategic disaster. It united the

American people as nothing else could have, and perhaps its final chapter

was written by those American heavy bombers which rained near-total de-

struction down upon Japan's cities in 1945.

The book concludes with a number of lessons of Pearl Harbor, lessons

which would be profitable reading for today's defense and foreign policy es-

tablishments. That the lessons will ever be heeded is conjectural at best, for

if history teaches anything it is that history provides very few lessons, and

these few usually fall victim to the Cassandra curse-they are ignored. In any

event, Pearl Harbor: The Verdict of History is an excellent book. Thoroughly

researched, well written, and cogently persuasive, it is a worthy sequel to

Prange's earlier At Dawn We Slept.

Ohio Historical Society                         Robert L. Daugherty

 

 

FDR: A Biography. By Ted Morgan. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985.

830p.; illustrations, notes, index. $22.95.)

 

Ted Morgan's FDR is the most stimulating biography of Franklin D. Roose-

velt since Joseph P. Lash's Eleanor and Franklin (which was not "about"

• 18
 

Book Reviews                                                    93

 

FDR). But Morgan's book is hardly as perceptive about the New Deal and

World War II as, for example, the histories by William E. Leuchtenburg, Ar-

thur M. Schlesinger, Jr., James MacGregor Burns, and Albert U. Romasco.

Morgan publishes popular history by combining selective research in sec-

ondary and primary sources with a lively writing style, at once understanda-

ble and witty. Quoting Plutarch's Lives, the author suggests that what is

most important is Roosevelt personally, not his public career. Consequently,

Morgan often describes, and sometimes stretches, the connections between

FDR's temperament and his political actions.

Morgan is best at writing vignettes which give the reader mental images of

another person and reveal Roosevelt's character. Indeed, the author has a

knack for turning a phrase while recounting the telling anecdote or the sensa-

tional story, particularly concerning the sexual interests and activities of FDR,

his family, and those in his proximity. Thus, Morgan presents both sides of

the Lucy Mercer relationship in 1917-18. Was it "consummated" love? He

never indicates an answer, but he points out that Franklin had broken "the

bond of trust [with Eleanor], and it could never be repaired" (p. 208). That

conclusion is hardly a surprise. But more importantly, Morgan asserts that po-

lio spared FDR's "total" manhood, since Dr. Robert W. Lovett "specially

stated that his sexual function was 'undiminished' " (p. 256).

In fact, Morgan makes important points about Roosevelt the person. For ex-

ample, one is struck by how much space the author devotes to FDR's years

as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Morgan uses four chapters (100 pages in a

text of 774 pages), concluding with a brief chapter on the Newport homosex-

ual scandals of 1920-21. But the author justifies his emphasis by arguing that

the young Roosevelt was shaped as a man long before his Governorship or

Presidency. The Wilson Administration, when he worked with, around, and

against Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels, made Franklin a seasoned political

administrator. Still, he was dedicated mainly to self-advancement. Ironical-

ly, stress arising from the Newport scandals probably helped bring about

FDR's bout with polio in 1921 as well as many previous illnesses. And polio

transformed him, Morgan concludes, "from a shallow, untested, selfishly

ambitious and sometimes unscrupulous young man into the mature figure we

know as FDR" (p. 258).

Thereafter, Morgan advances interesting but unsurprising accounts of

Roosevelt's years as New York Governor, chief impresario of the New Deal,

and leader of the Allied coalition during the war. With "Life in the White

House," for instance, the author highlights the "zany Hellzapoppin" (p.

406) atmosphere of Roosevelt's White House and recounts dramatic inci-

dents from the lives, and marital problems, of the President's daughter Anna

and his five sons. Little is new about this rendering of presidential children

living in a "fishbowl." But Morgan argues that FDR carried on a "compan-

ionship" with beautiful Dorothy Schiff, although the evidence came from

the author's correspondence with her. Also, Morgan concludes that Eleanor,

a "highly visible decoy" who drew criticism away from her husband, did

not have a consummated love affair with Lorena Hickok (p. 451). This is no

surprise. Oddly enough, Morgan chooses not to reintroduce Lucy Mercer

Rutherfurd to FDR's life until 1944, although others, including Lash in his

authoritative biography, have shown that Lucy became a dinner guest at the

White House as early as 1941.

• 19
 

94                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

Regardless, Morgan's lively style and characterizations of Roosevelt domi-

nate the book. Such passages include the 1933 split of NRA and PWA which

later seemed like a "brilliant stroke," but which was "seat-of-the-pants

thinking on FDR's part, forced on him by the erratic personality of Hugh

Johnson" (p. 390); the 1935 Hundred Days' legislation as "less a carefully

thought-out second New Deal than an improvised response to a set of pres-

sures" (p. 426); FDR's secret, almost casual, memo to FBI director J. Edgar

Hoover which began investigations of "subversive" activities in the 1936

campaign (p. 439), investigations which Hoover apparently only increased

but never ceased; the President's negative reaction to increased "flak" (in-

cluding the rumor he had syphilis) during the 1937 Supreme Court reorgani-

zation fight, which showed his "vindictiveness" (pp. 480-482); the discus-

sion of Pearl Harbor and "Magic" code-breaking "as 'the curse of having

the data,' " which illustrated FDR's sound instincts about Japan's direction

of attack, despite contrary evidence (pp. 604-614); and the President's "sol-

dier's death," articulated in class the next morning by Harvard historian

Paul H. Buck (pp. 766-767).

Whatever its flaws, Ted Morgan's FDR combines perceptive personal in-

sights with traditional interpretations. To write a good one-volume biography

about the greatest American of the 20th century is no small achievement. But

historians who want more on Roosevelt's early motivations and achieve-

ments should compare Morgan's book with recent studies by Kenneth S.

Davis, FDR: The Beckoning of Destiny, 1882-1928 (1972) and FDR: The New

York Years, 1928-1933 (1985), and Geoffrey C. Ward, Before the Trumpet:

Young Franklin Roosevelt, 1882-1905 (1985).

Virginia Western Community College                 James E. Sargent

 

 

"Entangling Alliances With None": American Foreign Policy in the Age of

Jefferson. By Lawrence S. Kaplan. (Kent: The Kent State University Press,

1987. xvii + 230p.; notes, index. $24.00 cloth; $14.50 paper.)

 

In the 1987 summer of our foreign policy discontent, this collection of so-

phisticated essays about foreign policy in the early republic makes for in-

structive reading. These well-written pieces span 30 years of Professor Kap-

lan's thinking about U.S. foreign relations, in particular those associated with

Great Britain, France, and Latin America during the Federalist and Repub-

lican eras. The theme of all the essays is clearly indicated by the title of the

work, and it is one present foreign policy managers perhaps should ponder.

Professor Kaplan demonstrates that early American foreign policies and dip-

lomatic instructions attempted to maintain the independence of a country en-

dangered by the titanic struggles of the Napoleonic wars and buffeted by

the enthusiasms of Latin America liberation. This independence was, how-

ever, one that recognized that foreign affairs could not be avoided and one

that held true to the political ideology of the administration in office.

Professor Kaplan examines the Anglophile and Francophile learnings of

the opposing Federalist and Republican politicians in the context of foreign

policy decisions. In this examination, Kaplan treats fully the Anglophilia and

Francophilia so associated with Hamilton and Jefferson, but he does so in a

• 20
 

Book Reviews                                                  95

 

way that demonstrates that, while they existed, these philias did not serve

to place the United States in the position of a client state for either Great

Britain or France. They also did not cause the U.S. entanglement in the af-

fairs of the two early 19th century super powers. Both Hamilton and Jefferson

recognized the importance of keeping the U.S. free from European machina-

tions, but at the same time, they were aware that national commercial needs

and at times national pride (e.g., because of impressment) dictated that the

United States could not ignore other countries. Hamilton and Jefferson could

wax ideological and sometimes wrap their ideologies up in the Union Jack or

the Tricolor, but they were careful to use these wrappings to advance U.S.

interests separately packaged in the Stars and Stripes. This is Professor

Kaplan's thesis, and those who would simplify foreign policy history by

identifying Hamilton and Jefferson (or Federalists and Republicans) as co-

conspirators of Britain and France respectively should note it. This is not, as

Professor Kaplan notes in a succinct bibliographic essay, a new thesis in

American diplomatic history.

The thesis is continued in an essay on Latin American independence. Pro-

fessor Kaplan again looks at how the force of an idea was manipulated by

U.S. foreign policy managers to prevent a hasty involvement in the affairs of

the colonies or provisional governments trying to break with Spain. The

American Revolution and its following political documents (U.S. and state

constitutions) were shining examples to Latin American anti-colonials. The

idea of freedom as supported by U.S. institutions helped shake the South

American continent. The enthusiasm generated infected some prominent

U.S. politicians, such as Henry Clay, so much that they wished to immedi-

ately recognize provisional governments and involve the U.S. in Latin Ameri-

can affairs. It was James Monroe and John Quincy Adams who slowed this

process and adroitly used the enthusiasm for the U.S. republican heritage

(exhibited both north and south of the border) to push for Latin American

independence while at the same time avoiding the entanglements Clay and

others might have rushed into.

Read and reflected upon, Professor Kaplan's book, one by a specialist for

specialists, demonstrates that strong beliefs can be held and used to support

foreign policy objectives without excess political fallout. There was a time

when our institutions could be honored and our foreign policy interests ad-

vanced at the same time without sacrificing political principles. Kaplan's es-

says show us that this occurred during the early 19th century; their read-

ing by appropriate officials might allow this to be repeated in the late 20th

century.

Cleveland State University                        Michael V. Wells

• 21