Book Reviews
Bougainville: The Forgotten Campaign, 1943-1945. By Harry A.
Gailey.
(Lexington: The University Press of
Kentucky, 1991. vii + 237p.; maps, illustra-
tions, notes, glossary, bibliography,
index. $27.00.)
On November 1, 1943, U.S. Marines landed
on the west coast of Bougainville, the
largest and most northerly of the
Solomon Islands. Following successes on
Guadalcanal and New Guinea, this assault
opened the last phase of the campaign to
reduce Japan's base at Rabaul and oust
Japan from the southwest Pacific.
Harry Gailey, a San Jose State
historian, provides a thorough account of the fight-
ing on Bougainville. He puts it in the
broader context of the Pacific War and allied,
mostly American, strategy, keeping the
campaign in perspective. The flow of events
reduced Bougainville to a strategic
"backwater" within six months, but fighting con-
tinued to August, 1945. This stemmed
largely from Australian forces replacing
American troops in the fall of 1944.
American planners never intended to
conquer all of Bougainville. Instead, they
sought to destroy Japan's airfields
there and establish a secure perimeter. From here,
planes could attack Rabaul constantly.
Initially viewed as preparation for an invasion,
these raids, along with those by carrier
and other land-based planes, effectively de-
stroyed Japan's stronghold and made a
landing unnecessary.
Despite problems, the early stages of
the campaign went well for the Americans.
By avoiding the main concentrations of
Japanese forces, they were able to establish a
beachhead and advance inland despite
difficult terrain. Sites for airstrips were se-
cured, and these were operational before
1944. The Japanese did not launch a major
counterattack until March, 1944, although
there was sharp fighting from the begin-
ning. By then, American control of the
air and sea, coupled with vastly superior
fighting power, doomed Japanese efforts.
Questionable tactics also cost the Japanese
dearly.
For their remaining time on Bougainville
Americans refrained from major offensive
actions, being content to keep the
isolated Japanese garrisons off balance with deep
patrols. A de facto cease fire
existed until the Australians arrived. Japanese troops
concentrated on raising food, being
totally cut off from supplies, while the Americans
made the best of life in a difficult
climate by developing extensive facilities with as
many comforts as possible.
During this lull African-American troops
went into action on Bougainville. The
Army had replaced the Marines in
December, and units of the black 25th Regiment
and 93rd Division arrived by early
spring. One company of the 93rd panicked while
on patrol when it stumbled upon some
unexpected Japanese. The incident unfairly
discredited black combat troops and
brought a virtual end to their use in the Pacific.
Gailey handles this episode with balance
and sensitivity, showing how too many saw
what they wished in what was basically a
minor failure of green troops.
Treated as very junior partners by
MacArthur, Australian Commanders decided to
take the offensive once they assumed
responsibility for Bougainville. Gailey is criti-
cal of their decision to abandon the
U.S. strategy, but the Aussies managed to drive
the Japanese to the tips of the island
by August, 1945. This resulted in literally un-
necessary casualties on both sides.
Whether these were politically or psychologically
worthwhile is not addressed directly,
though Gailey feels they were not.
When dealing with the major issues and
events, Gailey presents a fine narrative and
138 OHIO HISTORY
analysis. When turning to operations, he
delivers a blow-by-blow account worthy of
classic practitioners of the Old
Military History. On Bougainville, this too frequently
involves actions by patrols and
platoons. Yanks were on the island a scant year. At
times Gailey makes it seem much longer.
Despite the small-unit actions, this
work is an important contribution to our under-
standing of the Pacific war and how
Americans fight. Bougainville was a classic case
of limited war for specific objectives.
As such, the campaign worked brilliantly.
Would that all U.S. tropical
undertakings had so clear a focus.
Wilmington College Vinton M.
Prince, Jr.
Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.: The
Political Biography of an American Dilemma. By
Charles V. Hamilton. (New York: Atheneum
Publishers, 1991, x + 545p.; illustra-
tions, notes, index. $24.95.)
It is not unusual for discussions of the
civil rights movement to omit the presence
of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. A
career based on uninhibited outrage at American
racism and compromised by personal
self-indulgence, if not corruption, composes an
ambiguous legacy. In this extensive
biography Charles V. Hamilton seeks to place
Powell's course as a grass-roots
activist, pastor of one of the largest and most influen-
tial black churches in New York City,
and thirteen-term congressman in better per-
spective.
Powell intended to expose and rectify
the American Dilemma-a fundamental
contradiction between the ideal of
equality and the reality of racism. Reaction to
Powell's vigorous campaign depended on
one's tolerance of that dilemma. Using this
model, Hamilton contends Powell's fight
was composed of three distinct periods. In
the earliest, Powell addressed himself
to the economic and social ills of his Harlem
neighbors. The origins of his liberal
commitment are not well developed.
Nevertheless, with the Abyssinian Baptist
Church as his political base, Powell in the
1930s created a shifting set of
alliances to secure jobs for blacks in white-owned
stores and in the city's Harlem
Hospital. He attacked police brutality and apathy
among the black leaders of the city.
Ultimately Powell successfully combined protest
politics with electoral politics to gain
a seat on the city council and then in Congress.
The second stage was Powell's
congressional career from 1945 to 1960. His was a
lonely voice excoriating hypocrisy and
racism in the federal government. Southern
congressmen met with his sarcasm, and
the good intentions of northern liberals were
condemned for producing too little
progress. For blacks Powell's attacks provided
"cathartic" and
"psychological" relief and had "enormous positive consequences,
to
the soul, if not to the solution"
(p. 155). Real achievements were extremely few, but
his persistent advocacy of the Powell
Amendment, which would prohibit segregation
on federally-funded projects, attained
headlines. One of the curious twists in Powell's
career was his fragile alliance with the
Eisenhower administration. Hamilton skill-
fully explores that relationship are
well as Powell's later ones with the Kennedy and
Johnson administrations.
The culmination of Powell's career
seemingly came in the third period, the 1960s,
when the New Yorker became chairman of
the House Committee on Education and
Labor. His innate political skill and
the acquisition of power at a time of rapid
progress in civil rights offered Powell
tremendous opportunities for leadership.
Personal foibles, however, stunted his
career. The March on Washington in 1963
showed that initiative on civil rights
lay elsewhere. Powell's exclusion from Congress
Book Reviews 139
in 1967 and his electoral defeat in 1970
epitomized his abdication of responsibility.
Woven throughout the biography is
Powell's troublesome personal behavior which
irritated enemies and friends alike. As
a young preacher he advocated the practice of
Christian values in daily life and
simultaneously practiced the contrary. He was an
unreliable ally for the NAACP and other
civil rights leaders. Cynicism and oppor-
tunism too often characterized his
public behavior and his private affairs. Hamilton
concurs with Powell who accused other
congressmen of abusing committee funds and
leading less than exemplary lives.
Nevertheless, Powell "was never able to subordi-
nate his personal desires to an obvious
obligation for probity that his self-chosen role
of public leader demanded .... The
people who needed him most were deprived of
the greater leadership he could have
provided" (p. 485).
Hamilton presents the complexity of
Powell's career in a detailed and readable
fashion. Occasionally he is repetitive
and engages in puzzling digressions such as the
discussion of Eleanor Roosevelt. While
Hamilton covers Powell's relationship to the
major civil rights activists of the
1960s, scholars may wish he had explored the topic
further.
This should stand as the authoritative
biography of Powell for many years.
Hamilton's success is attributable to
extensive research and a sympathetic considera-
tion of this controversial figure.
Powell's noble goals, his successes, and his crippling
personal flaws receive fair-minded
treatment. The result is an effective portrait of a
complicated individual. Perhaps now a
new generation will better appreciate this sin-
gular politician who battled the
American racial system during a dilemma-filled life.
Cornell College M.
Philip Lucas
John Jacob Astor: Business and
Finance in the Early Republic. By John
Denis
Haeger. (Detroit: Wayne State University
Press, 1991. 365p.; illustrations and ta-
bles, notes, selected bibliography,
index. $39.95.)
Since the days of the early American
republic, the name of John Jacob Astor has
elicited mixed responses from historians
and commentators alike. Assessments of the
fur trade magnate and entrepreneur have
ranged from praise for his supposed "rags-to-
riches" ascent to condemnation of
his excessive wealth and lack of stewardship which
contradicted the democratic ideals
espoused by the American nation. In this new
biography, John Denis Haeger has
undertaken a well-documented reexamination of
Astor, presenting him as one who
"seized on new opportunities and experimented
with different strategies and
structures" (p. 41) and personified the emerging new
business leadership of the young
republic.
Haeger traces Astor's rise to fame and
fortune, beginning with his days as a
German-born salesman in New York City
exploring new markets for his brother's
musical instrument business, and
culminating with his empire of land holdings, trade
partnerships, and financial investments
in an emerging urban-centered manufacturing
economy. He portrays Astor as an
aspiring entrepreneur, possessing business acumen
and political connections and
consciously employing "modern" business strategies
and managerial practices to establish an
empire decades before the boom in "big
business."
Astor's interest in the fur trade
developed during a brief residence in London, the
center of European fur markets, and was
spurred on by promises of lucrative rewards
in North America. He established a
succession of partnerships which, Haeger claims,
initially were not intended to challenge
the entrenched British/Canadian interests but
140 OHIO HISTORY
which allowed him to make contacts
throughout the North American fur network and
to position himself in the international
market.
Haeger emphasizes that Astor exhibited
his business savvy and knowledge of polit-
ical situations by capitalizing on the
declining Canadian fur trade industry, caused by
British trade laws intended to restrict
American interests. Astor bypassed the
Montreal-based companies to claim
control of the American trade, employed agents
to purchase furs from independent
traders, sought greater penetration of European
markets, and helped to open the China
trade. These activities led Astor to build his
own ships, assume greater responsibility
for managing his heavily capitalized opera-
tions, and capture larger shares of
markets abroad, all of which represented, in
Haeger's view, the modern phenomena of
vertical integration (p. 66).
President Jefferson, who saw the fur
trade as the principal arm with which to chal-
lenge British presence and undercut
their influence among Native Americans, en-
hanced Astor's role in securing the
American West. Astor parlayed his resources and
established the short-lived Astoria
settlement on the Columbia River, founded the
American Fur Company, and made
arrangements with the Russian-American
Company to transport furs to China,
thereby advancing his own business interests
while squeezing out British competition.
Besides the fur trade, Astor was heavily
involved in land speculation and real estate
development in New York City. He
invested in stocks and bonds fundamental to
transportation and financial
institutions, thereby diversifying his investments so his
capital was both productive and
protected.
Haeger presents an engrossing and
finely-crafted history of Astor's empire-building
efforts. He concludes that Astor was not
a business revolutionary who altered the
system but a shrewd entrepreneur who
"grasped the greater size and complexity of an
emerging commercial economy" and
"adopted strategies and structures that trans-
formed the fur and China trades"
(p. 284). Haeger claims that Astor experimented
with and altered corporate structures,
used government connections to limit competi-
tion and secure control of a greater
portion of the trade, and thereby produced the
capital necessary for continued growth
and profit for his ventures.
The volume unfortunately lacks maps to
assist readers in determining the extent of
fur company trading areas or the
location of trading posts. This does not, however,
detract from Haeger's well-argued
analysis. While Astor's involvement in the fur
trade and land speculation might have
characterized him as a preindustrial en-
trepreneur, Astor, concludes Haeger,
truly exhibited a "modern" business mentality
and epitomized the energy,
acquisitiveness, opportunism, and speculation common
throughout the early republic.
Indiana University-Purdue David G.
Vanderstel
University at Indianapolis
Showplace of America: Cleveland's
Euclid Avenue, 1850-1910. By Jan
Cigliano.
(Kent: The Kent State University Press,
1991. xiv + 398p.; illustrations, notes, ap-
pendices, bibliography, index. $45.00.)
Showplace of America provides a comprehensive account of the rise and fall
of
what was Cleveland's premier residential
street up until the time of World War I. Jan
Cigliano takes her readers on a trip
through time along Euclid Avenue and paints a
portrait of Gilded Age wealth and
opulence. Running four miles east from downtown
Cleveland, "Millionaires' Row"
(p. 89) became home to the city's nouveaux riche, the
Book Reviews 141
factory owners, bankers, and lawyers who
sought to create a haven for themselves
from the urban-industrial squalor
created by their own enterprises. Cigliano combines
a description of the built environment
and lifestyles of Euclid Avenue, with an analy-
sis of its development during the
nineteenth century and then rapid decline after the
turn of the century.
Euclid Avenue residents
"established a neighborhood whose purpose was to be...
the heart of the city's social,
cultural, and material life" (p. 8). During the antebellum
years several of Cleveland's leading
citizens began to build houses along the old road
to Buffalo, New York, to take advantage
of the rural countryside while at the same
time be within walking distance of their
offices. They built houses in classical styles
and surrounded their homes with
expansive landscaped gardens and lawns. By the
1860s the neighborhood came to be
compared to "grand avenues" in other cities
worldwide. Despite the public attention,
residents sought to protect their solitude
symbolized by their use of cast iron
fences which "defined the boundary between
public and private property and
protected residents from intrusion by envious
strangers and trespassers" (p. 29).
They created a community bonded together by
both its elitist tendencies and its
isolationist sentiment.
Much of the book is devoted to
descriptions of the built environment and its archi-
tects. More fascinating is the author's
analysis of the relationship between the physi-
cal characteristics of Euclid Avenue and
its social and cultural development. Not a
part of the "established
gentry," residents sought to put down roots. They built mon-
uments to their individual wealth, to
"glorify" their names, and to stand as
"unmistakable symbols of prosperity
and cultural leadership" (p. 95). In addition, a
common lifestyle and shared set of
values defined the neighborhood as a distinct
community. These included success and
affluence, a sense of social responsibility,
education, and family.
"Intermarriages, cross-family friendships, and front-porch
meanderings knit this linear
neighborhood together" (p. 232) and helped to perpetuate
its values and property from one
generation to the next. Churches, an integral part of
the street, upheld religious beliefs but
also encouraged the practice of "Sunday
parading along the Avenue" (pp.
263-64). Formal affairs, seasonal travel, and private
clubs reflected the practice of
conspicuous consumption so apparent in the building
styles along Euclid Avenue.
A recurrent theme throughout the book is
the eventual downfall of Euclid Avenue.
According to the author the "rival
interests of residential and commercial growth
prospered through the turn of the
century, competing in uneasy but happy coexistence
for many years" (p. 39). By the end
of the century, however, the balance between
these forces tipped decisively in favor
of commerce. Cigliano points to the "collective
impact of traffic and transit lines on
the Avenue, commercial development pressures,
extraordinarily high property values,
and the buildup of nearby black neighborhoods"
(p. 309) as causing the decline of
Euclid Avenue's residential nature after 1910.
Prominent families moved elsewhere, the
neighborhood's physical elegance declined,
and the "community of shared
interests that was centered around the Avenue" (p. 324)
disappeared.
The author makes extensive use of family
papers, many found in the manuscript
collections of the Western Reserve
Historical Society, in conjunction with standard
architectural records, newspapers and
periodicals. Cigliano's combination of social
and architectural history makes an
important contribution to our understanding of ur-
ban development in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries.
University of Toledo Diane F.
Britton
142 OHIO HISTORY
The Last Great Necessity: Cemeteries
in American History. By David Charles
Sloane. (Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1991. xxiii +
293p.; illustrations, tables, notes, bibliographical
essay, index. $35.95.)
The recent publication of several books
dealing with American cemeteries and
funerary art is striking evidence of the
growing scholarship and interest in designed
historic landscapes and cemetery
iconography. In The Last Great Necessity, Sloane, a
teacher at Dartmouth College and
Dartmouth Medical School, has written a lucid
investigation of cemeteries that moves
beyond being a purely descriptive account and
follows a provocative analytical
approach. The author, in charting the subject over a
period from 1796 to 1990, has organized
the text chronologically into four major
parts: The Living Among the Dead,
1796-1855; Commercialization of the Cemetery,
1855-1917; Isolating Death, 1917-1949;
and The American Way of Death, 1950-
1990. Nine chapters guide the reader
through common themes such as cultural
attitudes toward death, the perennial
dilemma of sanitation, and the transition from
churchyard to cemetery and rural
cemetery to memorial gardens. References are
generously provided throughout the text,
and over fifty maps, drawings, illustrations,
and black and white photos are
handsomely reproduced. Along with extensive notes
and a good bibliographical essay, there
is a lengthy index and several useful statistical
tables.
Expectations of discovering new
information on American cemeteries are for the
most part fulfilled. The shift from
graveyards and domestic burial grounds, both
American colonial traditions, to
cemeteries, particularly rural "gardens of graves," is
presented as an urban influence
originating in New York and New England.
Cemeteries such as the New Haven Burying
Ground (1796) separated themselves
from the church, still retaining
nonprofit and non-taxable status that had a far-
reaching impact to the present day. And
even though many colonial burial grounds
were viewed as miasmatic hazards to
urban society because of the body gases and
threats of yellow fever, seventeenth century
gravestone carvings were, as Sloane
claims, "American folk art at its
finest."
In exploring the critical link between
romanticism and the rise of the rural cemetery
movement, both of which sought to
recapture the rural values many Americans feared
had been lost, Sloane profiles several
landmark rural cemeteries, including Pere
Lachaise in Paris (1804), Mt. Auburn in
Cambridge, Massachusetts (1831), and
Cincinnati's Spring Grove (1845). These
new rural cemeteries, conceived in response
to increased vandalism, abandonment, and
overcrowding in many inner-city burial
grounds, became tourist attractions in
their own right. Rural cemeteries served as
"resting places for the living as
well as the dead." Located beyond the seedy confines
of the city, rural cemeteries were
distinguished by their simpler, cleaner landscapes,
picturesque vistas, curvilinear
roadways, and large family monuments. Founders of
these new cemeteries typically were
locally prominent civic boosters who, like
Cincinnati's Robert Buchanan, had an
avocational interest in horticulture. Buchanan,
a founder of Spring Grove, turned to the
professional expertise of Howard Daniels,
then a fledgling landscape gardener who
later described the rural cemetery as a
"peculiarly American
institution." Daniels, deserving of wider recognition, ranks
among the nation's premier nineteenth
century landscape gardeners, designing, in
addition to Spring Grove, several of
Ohio's notable rural cemeteries, including
Woodland in Dayton (1843), Green Lawn in
Columbus (1849-1851), and Woodland
in Cleveland (1852-1853).
The impact of an important cadre of
landscape gardeners like Daniels and the
popularity of the larger rural
cemeteries influenced cemetery design in many small
Book Reviews 143
northern towns, while the strong
tradition and interest in gardening allowed for
development of designed cemeteries in
southern cities and towns. This growing trend
toward professionalism in landscape
design and maintenance was epitomized by
Daniels, Algernon Hotchkiss of
Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis, and Adolph
Strauch, an Austrian-born landscape
designer who, in 1855, transformed Spring
Grove into the paradigm of the
"landscape lawn plan." In what Sloane calls the
progenitor of the modern lawn plan,
Strauch's design for Spring Grove was
innovative for its simple, spacious, and
less-cluttered look.
Master gardeners and landscapers like
Strauch established written guidelines for lot
holders and controlled the choice of
monuments, which Downing had disparagingly
referred to as objects of "status
and success." The democratization of death was
partially achieved through the use of
uniformly simple markers in the National
Cemeteries, although mausoleums and huge
monuments remained popular in most
private cemeteries. As the business of
death became more complex, the recurring
themes of professionalism and
commercialism in the burial process are examined,
from the rise of funeral homes to the
change from undertaker to mortician, and to the
development of advertising and
professional cemetery staffs. Sloane aptly states this
was only part of a trend toward urban
specialization. Before the Civil War, long-held
prejudices against cremation, both
religious and secular, prevented its adoption; by
1900 proponents began to voice their
support on scientific and societal grounds.
Cremationists argued cemeteries were
"antidemocratic institutions within a republican
society" and that cremation was
less expensive and required less land. Although the
nation's first municipally owned and
operated crematory opened in Cleveland in
1924, the author also notes cremation
has never had much of a following outside the
West Coast. In 1988, for example, 15
percent of all Americans were cremated,
ranging from a high of 38 percent in
California, Oregon and Washington, to a low of
less than 3 percent in many southern
states.
Clearly, as Sloane reiterates throughout
the text, Americans have generally held
conventional views toward death,
although, as the author is quick to point out, their
traditional attitudes have been
skillfully manipulated by entrepreneurs and
commercial advertising. Beginning with
Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale,
California (1913)-which Sloane contends
had the greatest impact of any cemetery
since Mt. Auburn-images of death and
denominational religion were removed from
cemetery landscapes. Rejecting death as
a solemn, sober occasion, the new memorial
parks and their proponents depicted it
in a setting of immortality and joy. Through a
re-emphasis on human afterlife, a new
religious symbolism emerged, as seen through
the use of white marble statuary and
smiling Christ figures. For the deceased to live
on in the memory of those living,
cemeteries were to be viewed as memorials
fulfilling what Sloane calls the
"memorial impulse." As a result, the memorial park
landscape, in sharp contrast to its
romantic Victorian predecessors, was more secular,
private, and comfortable. The impact of
the memorial parks was profound; by 1935
there were over 600 memorial parks in
the United States. The memorial parks
movement fostered creation of the Memory
Gardens Association (MGA), which
operated over 125 memorial gardens
across the country. Using gardens and
concentric arrangements of flags as
design focal points, the MGA also left a social
legacy of racial exclusion that typified
many suburban cemeteries. More problematic
for the profession was the growing
concern expressed over the cost of death and the
lack of public regulation. Critics
argued funerals fulfilled little purpose while funeral
directors capitalized on survivor guilt
and emotions. New threats to cemeteries such
as vandalism during the 1980s further
strained the limited budgets of many older,
144 OHIO HISTORY
less-profitable cemeteries. Sloane
concludes by showing how cemeteries are
becoming increasingly irrelevant to the
mainstreams of Americana life.
I have few quibbles. Sloane is clearly
most knowledgeable where he is close to the
subject of nineteenth century
northeastern American cemeteries, but lacks some depth
in probing major cemeteries in other
regions of the country, such as Graceland in
Chicago or Cave Hill in Louisville.
Minor technical flaws to this otherwise carefully
designed book are the two incorrect word
choices on page 105. All in all, this
publication is a major contribution to
American cemetery history, with several
important references to Ohio cemeteries
and landscape gardeners.
Ohio Historical Society Steve
Gordon
Engines and Innovation: Lewis
Laboratory and American Propulsion Technology.
By Virginia P. Dawson. (Washington: National Aeronautics and Space
Administration, 1991. $16.00.)
Engines and Innovation, a history of Cleveland's Lewis Laboratory, is one of
the
latest in the highly-respected NASA
History Series. Based on access to the laborato-
ry's archives (which the author deplores
as inadequate) and extensive research else-
where, the book exhibits a happy
combination of historiographic awareness and the
knowledge of when and how to bring
scientific and technical matters before lay read-
ers. Dawson's handling of the Lewis
Laboratory history also demonstrates that good
history of technology and science is not
the tracing of the inevitable and innate logic
of devices or ideas, but rather the
exploration of people, institutions, and the continu-
ing discovery of new possibilities.
Dawson engages the story at several
levels. Most importantly, Engines and
Innovations describes how the research program at Lewis reflected
an evolving series
of public priorities as interpreted by
the National Advisory Committee for
Aeronautics and its successor, NASA. The
impetus for the decision to build an
Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory at
Cleveland in 1941 was the American mili-
tary's need for improved piston-engine
power plants for fighter and bomber aircraft.
But even before World War II was over
the emphasis at the laboratory shifted to jet
engines, and a few years later attention
turned to the exotic (and dead-end) task of
creating an atomic-powered airplane, as
well as a range of more worthy aspects of
airplane and rocket propulsion. After
Sputnik the laboratory played important roles in
the Mercury program and unmanned space
flight. In the 1970s energy concerns
moved the laboratory into such areas as
automobile engines and wind power. Dawson
explains how, at each shift in
priorities, the laboratory's staff and facilities were
reallocated to respond. Often she points
out that innovative research tools-such as
wind and icing tunnels-were critical to
the advancement of knowledge.
This book is also about the diffusion of
ideas. The establishment of the laboratory
required a redeployment of staff from
NACA's Langley research center at Hampton,
Virginia. Their first mission was to
tackle major problems in engine design as identi-
fied by aircraft manufacturers, and to
share the results of their research with the aero-
nautical engineers. Then the laboratory
reversed its role, becoming a determined bor-
rower of British jet engine technology,
as well as a partner with the American devel-
opers of jet technology. Subsequently,
the space age information flows became pre-
dominately interagency and intra-agency,
although relationships with contractors
were also important. Dawson effectively
depicts Lewis as part of an ever-changing
web of idea networks.
Book Reviews 145
Finally, this work shows that the
history of Lewis Laboratory is imprinted with
politics. Its location was a political
decision (Cleveland lobbied strongly for it), in-
ternal NACA/NASA maneuvering often
shaped its programs, and Lewis itself was
shaped as those agencies grew, changed
and (ultimately) shrank in accord with na-
tional politics. Although Dawson's book
remains focused on the laboratory, she ef-
fectively portrays its connections with
these broader forces.
Engines and Innovation is a clear, complete, and unvarnished history of Lewis
Laboratory. This book provides Ohioans
and aerospace historians an excellent intro-
duction to its accomplishments.
Rockefeller Archive Center Darwin H.
Stapleton
Somewhat More Independent: The End of
Slavery in New York City, 1770-1810. By
Shane White. (Athens: The University of
Georgia Press, 1991. xxix + 278p.;
maps, tables, notes, index. $35.00.)
Lincoln, Douglas, and Slavery: In the
Crucible of Public Debate. By David
Zarefsky. (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1990. xiv + 309p.; notes,
bibliography, index. $34.95.)
Somewhat More Independent, by an Australian academic, is in several respects a
pioneer production, able to be
suggestive to a variety of American historians. The au-
thor had only brief visits to the United
States, but he continued research from home by
way of librarians, friends, New
Historians, many of whom sent materials and advice.
He sought, he says, mainly black
information about New York and environs, and
accumulated enough material by way of
censuses, tax rolls, contemporary newsprint,
and more to be able to generalize with
confidence, despite differences between North
and South slavery. Urbanized New York
was not Charleston, South Carolina, but
population statistics on Free Blacks and
slaves, for example, cut at old stereotypes.
Perhaps inadvertently, the book joins
others in finding little difference between the
sections in attitudes toward Blacks,
culturally or in terms of treatment.
The problem is one of
"Presentism." We are all against slavery today, the South
possibly a bit more fervently than
North. We also oppose rude treatment of minori-
ties, and when it is found we feel or
express indignation, though rude treatment and
pitiful cases of slave mistreatment can
be found today around the world and even at
home, to which we give limited
attention, as with enslaved children.
The late historian Richard Morris, an
expert in labor, law, and related mores, whom
our author did not consult, upset some
of his graduate students by holding that New
York slavery was part of the labor
system of the time; George Henry Evans, for ex-
ample, insisting that it affected
"white slaves" more negatively than black. Once seen
as a labor system, in historic terms,
such a leader in New York as John Jay-on whom
Morris was also an authority-who led
also its Manumission Society, and himself
owned slaves, can be seen as less a
hypocrite, and even a compassionate activist, in
driving for the abolitionist legislation
of 1799 which divided New York's past from
its then-present. Morris went further,
holding that slaves were fortunate to be in the
Jay's distinguished household during
their quasi-indentureship.
This could sound like apologetics, and
doubtless is, out of context. Since the au-
thor had no interest in abolitionist
movements, subject to bitter and malicious criti-
cism in other context, the cases of
cruelty he cites stand out in "presentist" form. In
other matter, his materials mix with
lower class "white" mores, as in cases of misce-
146 OHIO HISTORY
genation and use of prostitutes. These
even brought into view white males of higher
social status.
Although some readers of this book, like
the present reviewer, may find many of
the culled details fascinating, its
larger use to our present equalitarian movements will
depend on key enclaves for giving
visibility to Somewhat More Independent. It merits
rechecking, let us say, several years
from now.
We tend to forget what we do not care to
recall, and need reminders that only a few
years ago Abraham Lincoln, and for that
matter George Washington, were treated al-
most as figures of fun among
journalists, and among professional historians, memo-
rable mainly as "racialists."
Public temper seems to be changing in both respects,
though how deeply cannot be said. Lincoln,
Douglas, and Slavery suggests that a
higher form of knowledge is anticipated
by such authors as Zarefsky.
Although the Lincoln-Douglas debates are
recognized as classic, in the late
Reinhard Luthin's words, they have been
"vastly more admired than read." Zarefsky,
as Dean of the School of Speech at
Northwestern University and professor of com-
munication studies, has done more than
read the speeches and report on their content.
He has studied their background of
implications and the rhetoric devices both contes-
tants for the U.S. Senate had employed.
It wants recollection that Douglas was a
national figure, and that Lincoln, in chal-
lenging him, hoped to gain wider
recognition by association with Douglas. Both em-
phasized what they willed and
interpreted evidence according to their maturing argu-
ments. Lincoln had to fend off
accusations that he was "radical," despite his numer-
ous protests that he no more than
followed the Constitution. Douglas, to win re-elec-
tion, had to separate himself from the
pro-slavery Democrats. He was also thought by
some impressed by his "popular
sovereignty" slogan able to cross over to the
Republican column in time.
What strikes the reader of the debates
over and over again are the subtleties of the
arguments, which had to be perceived in
some form not only by journalists, editors,
and innumerable spokesmen in both
parties, but by the uneducated voters, the forget-
ful, and the complex but persuaded
camp-followers, especially in the middle band of
Illinois between the pro-slavery south
of the state and the anti-slavery Chicago and
north. Douglas highlighted every Lincoln
inflexion which, Douglas noted, dulled his
opponent's passion for equality in
"Egypt" and came out more forcefully when he
orated in the north.
What always impresses is, despite
Lincoln's underdog position in the debates, how
many people in and out of the state were
drawn in by the nationally-reported debates,
eager to help Lincoln in his assertions
with information, ideas, and even words.
Correspondents urged Lincoln to be less
"defensive," to treat Douglas with less re-
spect. Lincoln's "House
Divided" speech was studied as under a microscope, by
friends and foes. He responded to both,
insisting that he did not anticipate-and cer-
tainly would not encourage-civil war. He
in his turn pounded at Douglas's "popular
sovereignty" expectations, asking
whether, given the Dred decision and threatening a
"Dred 11," a state could defy national law permitting slavery
everywhere.
A passage from Zarefsky indicates the
kind of concentration and knowledge the
debates required:
Slavery had a double meaning in the antebellum political
culture. To be sure it referred to the
institution of chattal slavery. But it
also had an older, eighteenth century meaning: subjection to
tyranny, or, in [Bernard] Bailyn's
phrase, 'the inability to maintain one's just property in
material things and abstract rights.' It
connoted loss of one's ability to control one's own
choices ... Advocates of the 'slave
power' conspiracy thesis appealed to both meanings.
Book Reviews 147
Chattal slavery was the common
self-interest of the conspirators, and their ultimate aim was the
destruction of Northern political
rights.
Lincoln's famous or notorious summing up
in his Charleston speech that he did not
favor Negro equality, and the fact that
he did not want a woman for a slave did not
mean he must take her for a wife, does
not sound well in twentieth century ears. It
does help define the world in which he
spoke, and gives and sense of his clarity and-
as time showed-potential for growth.
Lincoln's bottom line, that Douglas did not
seem to recognize the difference between
slavery and freedom, reminds us how far
the nation had advanced since John Jay's
close reading of New York's "labor sys-
tem." Zarefsky's reading of the
historical, legal, and moral arguments in the immortal
debates helps us to weigh the choices we
have today.
The Belfry Louis Filler
Ovid, Michigan
Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant
and the Politics of War and Reconstruction,
1861-1868. By Brooks D. Simpson. (Chapel Hill: The University of
North
Carolina Press, 1991. xx + 339p.; notes,
bibliography, index. $34.95.)
Scholars and historians have
traditionally studied Ulysses S. Grant by separating
the soldier from the politician, with
Appomattox being the line of demarcation. From
that picture, Grant emerged as a great
general but incompetent politician. Brooks D.
Simpson questions that prevailing view
by focusing on the interrelationship of Grant's
military and political career during the
1860s. Simpson judiciously presents a new
understanding of the historical
significance of Grant not only as a soldier but as a
statesman as well. Beginning with the
start of the Civil War in the spring of 1861 to
Grant's election as president in the
fall of 1868, Simpson superbly chronicles how the
Ohio native occupied a central position
in the nation's history at that time, both as a
military leader and as an important
political figure. Grant, like many of his Northern
contemporaries, blamed the South for
starting the conflict and believed that it would
be short. According to Simpson, General
Grant believed that the Civil War was the
expression of politics by different
means, and that Reconstruction was, therefore, the
political continuation of that conflict.
Simpson never fails to provide a
portrait of the emotional and human side of Grant.
As the war progressed and casualties
mounted, Grant became a strong advocate of
emancipation and the enlistment of black
troops in the Union army. Grant viewed the
death of slavery as a telling blow
against the Confederacy and the achievement of a
wartime policy. In leading the United
States to victory, Grant captured several
Confederate armies and endeared himself
to President Abraham Lincoln. The at-
tempts by Grant to promote racial
equality in the South brought him a tremendous
amount of frustration and
disappointment. Simpson provides a vivid description of
life in the former Confederate States
during the postbellum period. Although the war
had ended slavery, newly freed Southern
blacks found their world turned upside down
by violence, poverty, and
discrimination. Grant was of the opinion that immediate
suffrage for blacks was not as important
as protection from angry and disillusioned
whites. Grant also expressed his
displeasure with Republicans who criticized the
South for denying blacks the right to
vote while many Northern states were guilty of
the same. Believing that racism would be
an ephemeral social problem, Grant was
willing to tolerate abuses against black
citizens in return for sectional and political
148 OHIO HISTORY
harmony. Simpson points out that
"Grant would soon come to realize his error" (p.
116).
Simpson carefully examines how the
relationship between Grant and President
Andrew Johnson deteriorated over time.
Johnson's efforts to secure Grant's support
for his Reconstruction policy through
manipulation were especially annoying to the
Union general. Grant was deeply
concerned that the gains of the Civil War would be
destroyed during Reconstruction because
of Johnson's recalcitrant and uncompromis-
ing behavior. In spite of Grant's
dislike for Johnson and his approach to restoring the
nation, he treated his chief cordially.
Simpson notes, however, that Grant had a much
higher degree of respect for the office
of the president than he did for the incumbent.
Grant was motivated in part to seek the
White House in order to protect the achieve-
ments of Northern victory. This was
ironic since Grant had an aversion for politics.
Simpson concludes that Grant as a
politician understood the problems facing the
country and did his best to solve them.
Thoroughly researched and detailed in
interpretation, this volume is a noteworthy
achievement and a valuable contribution
to the military and political history of the
Civil War and Reconstruction eras. By
re-evaluating Grant from a new perspective,
Simpson erases the dividing line which
had been drawn by historians decades ago.
Kent State University Leonne M.
Hudson
Sherman: Merchant of Terror, Advocate
of Peace. By Charles Edmund Vetter.
(Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing
Company, 1992. 347p.; illustrations, notes,
bibliography, index. $25.00.)
Charles Edmund Vetter, a sociology
professor at Centenary College in Shreveport,
Louisiana, has written a book which
attempts to get behind the Sherman stereotype
and discover who the man really was and
how he came to wage war the way he did.
This is not a full-scale biography: it
covers only the years from Sherman's 1836 en-
trance into West Point to the end of the
Civil War in 1865. Professor Vetter is to be
complimented for insisting that Sherman
was a complicated individual whose major
purpose in war was not cruelty or random
destruction. Vetter argues that Sherman
waged purposeful all-out war to hasten
peace and restore the status quo ante bellum.
In the Preface, Vetter lists his five
major points of analysis: "the complexities and
diversities of the man"; "the
evolutionary development of Sherman's philosophy of
war"; "the relationship
between Sherman and Grant"; "Sherman's place in the context
of American military history in
general"; and "the sociological impact of Sherman's
military actions" (pp. 9-10).
Though Vetter uses a chronological approach, he repeat-
edly returns to these five themes to
discuss Sherman's wartime activities.
This book, like other modern studies,
shows that the old view of Sherman the brute
is inaccurate. Vetter's main conclusion,
therefore, is correct. His account, however,
is not completely satisfying.
In the book's bibliography, Vetter lists
twenty-six manuscript collections, actually
only a fraction of the existing
repositories of Sherman material. In the notes section,
however, he includes no citations to any
of the letters in these collections. A perusal
of the notes, 944 in all, shows that all
refer to printed material, a vast majority to
monographs and articles. For example 209
notes (22 percent of the total) are refer-
ences to books by only three authors:
Lloyd Lewis, James M. Merrill, and Basil
Henry Liddell Hart, Sherman biographers.
An in-depth study of Sherman's vast
correspondence shows clearly that an under-
Book Reviews 149
standing of his personal life is crucial
to understanding his behavior as a soldier.
Vetter argues that "Sherman knew
how to keep separated... personal troubles and
public issues" (p. 180). The
contrary was actually the case. One can not fully analyze
Sherman's public life without
recognizing his relationships to his foster father
Thomas Ewing, his brother John, and his
wife Ellen. To say, as Vetter does on page
155, that "The one man whose
approval he had rapidly come to respect . . . was
Grant" is to give that general a
place in Sherman's life that Ewing more correctly
filled. Sherman admired Grant
enormously; he looked for approval from Ewing. The
Sherman in this book seems to have
little private life, whereas in reality the relation-
ship with his family was a significant
factor in his thinking and acting. Vetter says so
himself on page 62: "Who and what
he was made it possible for him to revolutionize
warfare." Unfortunately Vetter does
not pursue that insight further.
In summary, while Vetter has written a
book whose major thrust is correct, his exe-
cution is not as satisfactory as it
might have been. He would have served his readers
better had he expanded his research into
primary sources and spent a bit more time
organizing his thoughts and his prose.
Still, this book is another welcome corrective
for those Civil War buffs who continue
to stereotype inaccurately one of the major
military figures of the Civil War.
Mississippi State University John F. Marszalek
Black Troops, White Commanders, and
Freedmen During the Civil War. By
Howard
C. Westwood. Foreword by John Y. Simon.
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1992. xi + 189p.;
notes, index. $19.95.)
Students of the Civil War have profited
from the recent outpouring of excellent
books and celluloid releases about the
influence African-Americans had on our defin-
ing moment as a nation. Among the best,
Joseph Glatthaar's Forged in Battle and
William McFeely's Frederick Douglass provide
in-depth accounts of the struggles
blacks made to free themselves by
wearing blue uniforms and fighting for their own
liberation. The movie "Glory"
and Ken Burns's PBS documentary series helped non-
readers and readers toward a
"living" history of black participation in the conflict be-
gat from slavery.
Black Troops, White Commanders, and
Freedmen is--with one exception--a
compilation of ten essays that Westwood
published from 1982-1990 in four different
state historical journals, one popular
magazine, the Lincoln Herald, and Civil War
History. Commenting on the various nuances of military
emancipation, the essays
highlight the ambiguities,
inconsistencies, and forced necessities which black soldiers,
white officers, and the Lincoln
administration faced in putting black men under arms.
Drawing primarily from the collections
of the National Archives and the Library of
Congress, Westwood, a lawyer, used
several collections of legal documents rarely
employed by most historians. The value
of these essays lies in the illumination of
"new" sources and in the
directions Westwood's research might lead.
The first four essays concentrate on
Lincoln's position on black enlistments, the
actions of Union generals Grant, Butler,
Hunter, and Saxton in using black soldiers,
and the reaction of Lincoln to them.
Ofttimes military necessity clashed with political
needs. The generals found themselves
with small armies in the midst of Rebeldom.
When slaves, ex-slaves, and free blacks
offered themselves as able-bodied men, these
commanders found it in their best
interest to employ them. Lincoln, however, trying
to hold onto the loyalty of the border
states, countermanded his generals in most
150 OHIO HISTORY
cases. There is little new here.
Westwood's contention that Grant refused to use
blacks in front line combat because he
feared they might be captured is unsupported.
There is no real explanation of
Lincoln's motives and actions beyond the traditional
border-state phobia. Butler's story has
been more than twice told. Westwood's essay
on the restraints put on David Hunter
and the latitude given Rufus Saxton is a good
one. Hunter was simply too heavy-handed
for Lincoln, while Saxton effectively tip-
toed to the beat of the President's
wishes in employing black troops. Thus Saxton
succeeded.
Continuing to trace the Union's use of
blacks as soldiers, essays five through nine
examine Robert Small's bravery in
sailing the Planter out of Charleston harbor, the
tussle over black prisoners-of-war,
Sherman's famous Order 15, and two mutinies and
one execution over the issue of unequal
pay. The two chapters on the pay problems
are the strength of the collection. The
army recruited with the written pledge of equal
salaries for all soldiers, black or
white. After receiving less pay than promised, black
soldiers complained. Sergeant William
Walker of the 3rd South Carolina got several
men to join him in protesting by
stacking arms and sitting in their tents. Walker was
charged with mutiny and executed.
Company A of Rhode Island's black regiment re-
fused to answer roll call as protest to
lesser pay; most of the non-commissioned offi-
cers did prison time for their part in
this "mutiny." Westwood demonstrates that the
real issue involved power relationships
and white-black alienation more than salary
inequalities.
The last essay presents the Reverend
Fountain Brown of Arkansas, the first-and
perhaps only-person convicted of
violating Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.
In November 1863, Brown sold eight
people who had been his slaves before being
freed by the Proclamation. Brown claimed
confusion and ensnarement. His case
points out the difficulties of
transition for seceded peoples moving back into Union
concerning which nation's law has
precedent.
While specialists in Civil War history
might welcome this collection of articles into
a ready source, most of the information
is well known. Additionally, the work suffers
from repetition and stylistic problems.
A synthetic, concluding essay would have
added coherence and explanation. And
while the essays look at the African-American
experience in the Civil War, they focus
on the white actions and reactions and slight
black participation in their own
emancipation.
John Carroll University Russell
Duncan
Indiana Quakers Confront the Civil
War. By Jacquelyn S. Nelson.
(Indianapolis:
Indiana Historical Society, 1991. xvii +
303p.; tables, notes, appendixes, selected
bibliography, index. $27.95.)
This book is the result of thorough
research in Quaker and related archives, ceme-
teries, and the like in Indiana. The
core finding is that, regardless of their traditional
pacifism, Indiana Quakers were far more
involved in the Civil War than historians
have recognized.
Author Jacquelyn S. Nelson's research
documents that at the very least 21 percent
of Indiana Quaker men served in the
Union army during the Civil War. She further
estimates that the percentage could be
as high as 45 percent if complete records from
all the Indiana Monthly Meetings were
available. (By way of comparison, 62 percent
of Indiana males--15 through 49--served
in the Civil War.) Nelson further persua-
Book Reviews 151
sively argues that Quakers on the home
front were far more active in war relief pro-
grams than has heretofore been
suggested.
Nelson discusses the Indiana Quakers
confrontation with the Civil War in six chap-
ters over the first 98 pages of the
book. The chapters include "The Quaker
Background," "Quaker Military
Service," "Why Did They Fight?," "Response to
Military Life," "The Home
Front," and "Quaker Opposition to the War." The stance
taken by the author throughout might
best be described as "sympathetic objectivity."
Pages 98 to 261 are given over to
appendices A through E, which offer a summary
of some of Nelson's research data.
Genealogists particularly will be pleased with the
lists in Appendix C, "Indiana
Friends in Military Service" (pp. 107-236), and
Appendix D, "Soldiers Buried in
Quaker Cemeteries" (pp. 237-260). Both the notes
and bibliography are extensive. The
index is helpful, but covers only the first 98
pages of the book.
The author's prose over the first 98
pages is quite clear and makes interesting
reading. Here and there there is room
for a quibble or two. For example, the por-
trayal of seventeenth century Anglican
doctrine as "austere" and "unemotional" is de-
batable (p. 1). Also, a map showing
Quaker penetration in Indiana by country and
monthly meetings would be helpful to
those unfamiliar with the state. But, at base,
the book is to be appreciated for the
way in which its solid research changes our his-
torical perceptions.
Findlay College
Richard Kern
Canals for a Nation: The Canal Era in
the United States 1790-1860. By Ronald
E.
Shaw. (Lexington: University Press of
Kentucky, 1990. x + 284p.; illustrations,
notes, bibliographical essay, index.
$28.00.)
The history of nineteenth century
transportation is one of the more significant as-
pects of the "rise" of
American industry, commerce, and technology. However, the
"canal era" has received
little attention from professional historians except for spe-
cific studies of individual canals.
Professor Shaw (Miami University), in fact, au-
thored, in 1966, a volume on the Erie
Canal of which a paperback edition has just
been released by the University Press of
Kentucky.
Shaw undertakes "a survey of the
history of American canals, which would reflect
the economic studies that have
emphasized the role of government and mixed enter-
prise in canal building, as well as the
more recent emphasis on canals and the preser-
vation of republicanism in the new
American nation" (p. ix).
Initially, he describes the early
"pioneer," largely experimental, canals in eastern
Pennsylvania, on the Potomac and in the
Mohawk Valley, which failed; then, the suc-
cessful Middlesex Canal in Massachusetts
and the Santee and Cooper Canal in South
Carolina. The familiar role of the
Jefferson Administration on "improvements" is
also retraced.
Shaw eschews canal technology. Four
chapters deal with regional canal construc-
tion, politics and, particularly, the
economics of canal promotion and maintenance. In
"From the Great Lakes to the
Atlantic" he retells the familiar story of the Erie Canal,
and, briefly, the canals attempted in
Connecticut and Massachusetts where the New
Haven and Northampton, Farmington, and
Hampshire and Hampden failed. Only the
Cumberland and Oxford Canal in Maine
succeeded. The Pennsylvania and New
Jersey canals are delineated, with
emphasis upon the former's state-built network
which brought "exhilarating
triumphs, solid returns, and near bankruptcy to the state"
152 OHIO HISTORY
(p. 57). There are sketches of the
"Chesapeake and Southern Canals," particularly the
Chesapeake and Ohio and the James River
and Kanawha Canals.
Ohio is the centerpiece in the
"Canals of the Old Northwest." Here the Miami and
Erie and the Ohio and Erie, connecting
Lake Erie with the Ohio River, are described
in some detail. "Frontier"
canals included the Wabash and Erie in Indiana, as well as
those in Illinois (the Illinois and
Michigan) and Wisconsin. He concludes that "The
Northwest Ordinance of 1787 foreordained
five large states in the Old Northwest and
set the stage for long state-owned
canals" (p. 159).
The "Canal Network" deals with
canal engineers (with an emphasis upon New
Yorkers and their influence); canal
labor (particularly Irishmen); and travelers' ac-
counts, including seven women. Shaw also
contends that canals "hold a conspicuous
place in the spirit of reform that
spread across the nation between 1820 and 1860" and
"contributed to the educational
impulse of the period" (p. 191). He concludes that
"Canals brought new basins, new
towns, and new cities" (p. 197).
The final and best chapter is "The
Canal Era in Politics and Economic
Development." Here Shaw examines in
each state the banking problems, land grants,
and, again, local and state politics.
Shaw uses and quotes from dozens of
secondary sources; hence, there is little that
is new here. In addition, he is
uncritical of these sources or his topic. Inexplicably,
there are no maps in the narrative for
the "pioneer" canals, New England, the deep
South, or Illinois and Michigan. Yet
there is a map on the inside of both book covers
for most of those areas.
More serious, however, is evidence of
shoddy scholarship. For example, a limited
check of a few of the endnotes indicate
that in chapter 1, he cites his Erie work in
endnote 20 (p. 238) as having used pp.
14-21; then in endnote 22, he cites pp. 15-21;
and yet again in endnote 23, p. 20. The
latter citation does not contain the quote indi-
cated in the text. This is also true in
chapter 2, endnotes 9, 33, and 34. In chapter 3,
endnote 1, he cites Louis Hunter's
entire volume on Steamboats on the Western
Waters, and indicates the wrong page numbers for two more
sources (McCall and
Haites, et. al.), (p. 243). There
are endnotes that only partially substantiate the narra-
tive. Too, there are gaps in the text
for which there are no endnotes, e.g., p. 55, the
two-paragraph comment concerning the
important Cumberland and Oxford Canal in
Maine.
Repetitiousness abounds. It seems
impossible that an assistant editor at the
University Press of Kentucky would not
have noticed on pp. 67-68 that Shaw writes
the Western Division of the Main Line
"began at Pittsburgh in 1827 and moved east-
ward along the Monongahela [a factual
error] and Allegheny . . . to Johnstown."
Then, two sentences later, in the same
paragraph, he writes: "The 104 mile canal line
here . . . began on the Monongahela
River and ran eastward to Johnstown" (p. 68).
There is a useful nine-page
bibliographical essay of secondary sources and an
eleven-page index. Finally, there is no
mention of the canal associations and gov-
ernments whose primary functions are to
preserve (for the public) what is left of our
canal heritage.
California University of
Pennsylvania J. K.
Folmar
Immigrants on the Land: Agriculture,
Rural Life, and Small Towns. Volume 4:
American Immigration and Ethnicity. Edited by George E. Pozzetta. (New York:
Garland Publishing, Inc., 1991. xiv +
396p.; illustrations, notes. $60.00.)
Book Reviews 153
In the introduction to the twenty-volume
collection of essays, American
Immigration and Ethnicity, editor George E. Pozzetta quotes Oscar Handlin,
"Once I
thought to write a history of the
immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the
immigrants were American history." Immigrants
on the Land, the fourth of the
Garland Press series, highlights the
diversity of immigration and ethnicity in relation
to American agricultural history.
Pozzetta's concerns for twentieth century immigra-
tion and labor history are apparent in
this distinctive collection representing the expe-
rience of small proprietary and tenant
farmers as well as sharecroppers and rural la-
borers in several regions of the United
States. Individual essays examine immigration
and ethnicity in the context of social
and economics developments as well as pro-
cesses within ethnic enclaves, families,
kinship networks, and neighborhoods of adap-
tation to American and specific regional
and historical conditions.
I found that the organization of the
seventeen essays in alphabetical order by author
obscured both the development of
immigration scholarship over time and some signif-
icant connections between studies. Two
articles, for example, provide overviews of
immigration history vis-a-vis American
agriculture; in Theodore Saloutos, "The
Immigrant Contribution to American
Agriculture" and Robert P. Swierenga,
"Ethnicity and American
Agriculture," both authors discuss streams of ethnic settle-
ment, cultural continuity and adaptation
in patterns of farming as well as immi-
grant/ethnic contributions to
agricultural innovation. The two selections also point to
a repetitive reliance on Benjamin Rush
and J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur's com-
ments on ethnicity and farming (pp.
288-89 and 357-58).
Several essays examine aspects of
European migration to the Upper Midwest and
Great Plains states. John C. Hudson
traces Canadian, German, German-Russian and
Scandinavian migrations and influences
on the cultural geography and economy of
North Dakota between 1874 and 1915, and
Frederick C. Luebke's essay deals with
similar patterns of settlement across
the Great Plains. In "White Eagles in the North
Woods," Richard H. Zeitlin examines
the less well-developed history of rural settle-
ment, social institutions and cultural
patterns related to the massive waves of Polish
immigration in the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. Ann M. Legreid and
David Ward look at conflicts and
tensions within Norwegian Lutheran communities
through data on church membership and
religious schisms. Robert C. Ostergren
makes a comparative analysis of the
impact of economic conditions, social relation-
ships and cultural patterns in the
regions of origin on settlement patterns and ethnic
communities in South Dakota. Murray W.
Nicolson also uses a comparative method
to argue that rural Irish Catholics
shared in a distinctive culture that had emerged in
and spread from the Irish ghettos of
Toronto.
The anthology's greatest strength is in
its selection of essays exploring non-
European immigration, ethnic groups and
rural labor patterns. Terry G. Jordan exam-
ines the interactions between ethnic
minorities and the host/dominant group in Texas
between 1836 and 1986, suggesting that
at different times northern Anglo migrants
shared, to some extent, the ethnic group
experience of European and Mexican immi-
grants, Amerindians, and
African-Americans in relation to the southern Anglos. The
earliest essay in the collection, Robert
L. Brandon's "The End of Immigration to the
Cotton Fields" (1946), discusses
the failure of efforts to attract Italian immigrants to
the post-Reconstruction South. Brandon's
essay analyzes the fascinating concerns
and interactions of planters, local
politicians, railroad interests and Italian politicians
in the context of southern economic
developments. Because Brandon presents the
planter perspective on African-American
labor without analytical commentary on ei-
ther strategies to maintain white
economic ascendancy or the racial stereotyping that
supported Jim Crow segregation, this
article is best read in relationship to other stud-
154 OHIO HISTORY
ies of sharecropping and segregation.
Pozzetta's essay, "Foreigners in Florida: A
Study of Immigration Promotion,
1865-1910" and Jean Ann Scarpaci's "Immigrants
in the New South: Italians in
Louisiana's Sugar Parishes, 1880-1910," complement
the Brandfon essay. Scarpaci analyzes
the experience of Italian immigrant laborers in
the context of a specific crop and
locale, while Pozzetta looks both at efforts to pro-
mote Florida as a destination for
Italian, Chinese, and Japanese immigrants as agricul-
tural laborers and at the ensuing
economic, cultural and religious tensions.
The Pacific coast is represented in
three essays. Theodore Saloutos provides on
overview of immigration patterns up to
1940. Sucheng Chan examines changing pat-
terns of work among Chinese immigrants
in rural counties of California between 1860
and 1890, including manual labor such as
mining, tenant farming, paid farm labor, in-
dustrial labor and domestic service as
well as entrepreneurs, professional, artisans and
merchants. Robert Higgs, "Landless
by Law: Japanese Immigrants in California to
1941," analyzes the impact on
Japanese American assimilation and economic status in
relation to both economic and legal
discrimination against Japanese under the
California Alien Land Law and other
restrictive legislation.
Pozzetta's introduction, which along
with the list of supplemental reading is the
same for each volume of the series,
emphasizes the significance of gender as a strand
in immigration history: "The
broader challenge has been to reveal how women con-
fronted the multiple dilemmas posed by
migration, and, more generally, to insert the
issue of gender into the wider
interpretations of the immigrant experience." However,
the selection of essays for Immigrants
on the Land slights interpretations focused on
the intersections of gender, immigration
and ethnicity which are, however, well de-
veloped in volume twelve of the series, Ethnicity
and Gender: The Immigrant
Woman. An introduction specific to each volume rather than
Pozzetta's generic in-
troduction could guide the reader to
examine relationships between essays. In addi-
tion, some repetition could have been
omitted in favor of even greater development of
the themes of comparative analysis,
non-European immigration and rural labor pat-
terns that make this volume so
rewarding.
Miami University-Middletown Marjorie L. McLellan
The Dragon and the Cross: The Rise
and Fall of the Ku Klux Klan in Middle
America. By Richard K. Tucker. (Hamden, Connecticut: Archon/The
Shoe String
Press, 1991. xi + 224p.; illustrations,
appendix, notes, bibliography, index. $27.50.)
As a seven-year-old living in rural
Iowa, Richard Tucker had his first glimpse of
the "mysterious robed and hooded
figures, with their flaming crosses on the bluffs
overlooking the Mississippi River"
(p. ix). Years later in Indiana while working at his
first full-time job for the Indianapolis
News, his curiosity was pricked again when he
came across a news story concerning
David Curtis Stephenson, the former 1920s
Grand Dragon of the Indiana Knights of
the Ku Klux Klan who had been denied pa-
role from the Indiana State prison where
he was then serving a life sentence for sec-
ond degree murder. Retired from
professional journalism (he worked also for the
Baltimore Sun), Tucker returned to his native Iowa where his
long-standing interest in
the Klan and its most notorious
midwestern leader, Stephenson, led him to write The
Dragon and the Cross. Why had the Klan become by the early 1920s such a force
in
Indiana and throughout "Middle
America"? How had Stephenson, a salesman of coal
and manufactured goods, twice divorced
by the time he arrived in Indiana in 1923, a
man of already questionable moral and
ethical behavior (especially regarding women
Book Reviews 155
and alcohol), and of limited formal
education, become the most powerful political in-
fluence in Indiana politics by the
mid-1920s? And, following Stephenson's convic-
tion for the rape and second-degree
murder of a young state employee, Madge
Oberholtzer, why had the Klan declined
so quickly from a membership of over a
quarter of a million to less than a few
thousand bitterly divided leftovers?
These and other questions form the basis
of this thoughtful account of the life of
David Stephenson and the Klan
"movement" he led during the 1920s. Although uti-
lizing a number of personal memoirs as
well as standard Klan works such as David
Chalmers' Hooded Americanism, this
is not primarily a work of original research.
What Tucker discovers about the KKK and
of its appeal to many within and outside
of Indiana (Stephenson's career began,
by the way, in Columbus, Ohio, and, in the
twenties, he had a summer "White
House" at Buckeye Lake) is consistent with that of
other scholars and writers. But it is
Tucker's focus upon Stephenson, the interweav-
ing of Stephenson's personal skills in
public speaking, organization, and ruthless self-
purpose with the Klan's capabilities of
tapping in to the social, cultural, and political
uncertainties of many midwestern lives
at the time, which gives this clearly-written
account its special importance.
As others, Tucker shows how the
Stephenson Klan built its power out of the pre-
vailing social issues which emerged from
the era of postwar disillusionment, decline
of progressive reform, and complex
economic and cultural changes in American life
in the 1920s. Fear of African-Americans,
Jews, Catholics, and immigrant labor; de-
bate over prohibition and prostitution;
disagreements about public schools and reli-
gious teachings; a perceived erosion of
family life; and political corruption were the
breeding ground for the KKK's "100
percent Americanism" and its celebration of a
lily-white, Christian, and temperate
America. Appealing to certain Protestant groups,
to the "joiner" mentality of
many Americans, and, for some, to a love affair with ritual
and regalia, Stephenson and the KKK
assumed for many a legitimate alternative to
what they often believed was the
unraveling of their lives and their country. So strong
was that appeal, so powerful were
Stephenson's skills, that by 1925 the Klan had
helped elect a KKK supporter as
governor, a majority, pro-Klan Republican legis-
lature, a mayor of Indianapolis, and
countless other state and local public officials.
No wonder that Stephenson could proclaim
that he was "the law" in Indiana.
It is sobering to note that it was only
after Stephenson's overwhelming arrogance
which led him to force Madge Oberholtzer
into a violent relationship thus making
public his private lechery, alcohol
abuse, and immoral lifestyle that his and the Klan's
power ultimately collapsed. Although he
does not explore the matter to the extent
that he might, Tucker's study raises the
obvious question about how long Stephenson
and the Klan might have maintained their
hold on state power had the Oberholtzer af-
fair not occurred. By the time of his
trial, Stephenson's power and popularity were so
great that he was beginning to see
himself as an American Mussolini, his hero, look-
ing beyond Indiana and the midwest to
the nation and the White House.
In its final chapters, The Dragon and
the Cross pursues the histories of Stephenson
and the Klan into the present. Having
served thirty years in prison, Stephenson was
paroled in 1956, married twice more,
convicted at the age of seventy of physical as-
sault of a sixteen-year-old girl, and
died in anonymity in Jonesboro, Tennessee, in
1966. Tucker explores the rebirth of the
KKK in the 1950s and 1960s and the David
Duke era and reflects on some of the
underlying social forces which during the 1980s
and 1990s have fed the rise of the
Radical Religious Right. Some of his observations
are perceptive and he concludes that the
1920s were a special time, distinct from even
the 1950s and 1960s Klan days (primarily
because of the power and success of the
civil rights movement), and it is unlikely
that a Stephenson-styled nativistic racism
156 OHIO HISTORY
could have today the broad appeal it had
in the "roaring twenties."
Perhaps-but finally what this story
tells us again is how despicable individuals
like David Stephenson with their
considerable skills of salesmanship, charming per-
sonality, and single-minded ambition,
can tap into the deep, underlying insecurities
and fears of a people and turn them into
bigots capable of inflicting enormous physi-
cal and emotional violence on those
"others" whom they have come to hate. It may
be true that the KKK has finally become
an organization so infamous that it can no
longer enlist supporters outside of a
small minority of alienated Americans. But
other, more "respectable"
public leaders and organizations are still capable of appeal-
ing to existing sources of national
discontent, doubt, and to those with a continual
need to find simple answers-and
scapegoats-for our complicated and imperfect
lives. In that sense alone, Robert
Tucker's The Dragon and the Cross deserves to be
read and reflected upon by all of us
today.
Denison University John
B. Kirby
Citizen Klansmen: The Ku Klux Klan in
Indiana, 1921-1928. By Leonard J.
Moore.
(Chapel Hill: The University of North
Carolina Press, 1991. xiv + 359p.; tables,
maps, figures, notes, bibliography,
index. $34.95.)
Leonard Moore is uncomfortable. He
agrees that the Klan represented an outburst
of white ethnic nationalism, but finds
it hard to understand why the state of Indiana,
where the number of immigrants and
blacks was small compared to surrounding Great
Lake states, should have become one of
the leading centers of Klan activity nationally.
Equally confusing for Moore is the fact
that the Klan did not directly attack ethnic or
black communities, nor pass
discriminatory legislation during its control of the
Indiana state assembly. Thus, Moore
concludes that it is necessary for historians to
examine a broader social and economic
context in order to understand the extent of
Klan popularity in Indiana.
From the fact that few wealthy, elite
Indianans joined the Ku Klux Klan in the
1920s, Moore has constructed a new
interpretation of the rise of the Klan in that era.
Less concerned with providing a
narrative account of Klan activities (there exists no
such full-blown effort in print by a
historian), Moore argues that the Klan represented
a people's movement fostered by a sense
of powerlessness politically. The main cul-
prit was the business community,
especially those elements representing modern in-
dustry. Moore suggests that with the
decline of voting that occurred nationally be-
tween the 1880s and 1920s, wealthier
businessmen had gained a measure of control
over local cities, especially in
Indiana. These businessmen were also distancing
themselves from the rest of the
community by intermarriage, the placement of their
housing, the building of country clubs
and private schools, and the formation of busi-
ness clubs, such as Rotary and the
Chamber of Commerce. In Moore's words this
business elite was attempting to impose
a "new definition of community, one that
emphasized business success as a city's
most fundamental unifying principle." The
rest of the population, having grown up
with a different sense of community with
more face to face interaction and more
shared control, banded together in the Klan to
reassert traditional community values.
Thus, the Klan, according to Moore, was less a
reaction to the growth of immigrant
neighborhoods than a response to a changing
social order.
Moore's study rests on the availability
of Klan numbers in each county, and on
Klan rosters from the cities of
Indianapolis and Richmond and from Wayne County.
Book Reviews 157
Moore confirms the already-stated
generalization from studies of Klan membership
lists in Colorado and northeast Ohio
that Kluxers came from all social strata with an
edge toward the middle class. Through
quantitative analysis Moore rejects what he
labels as the "radical" thesis
of historians of the 1960s that "economic and residential
competition with the growing populations
of blacks and immigrants nearby" caused
lower middle-class white and blue-collar
men to join the Klan. Instead he asserts that
the Klan represented a wide swath of
Indiana society upset with the social and eco-
nomic changes begot by modernization and
with their lack of political power. It was
then a people's movement concerned with
"promoting the ability of average citizens
to influence the workings of society and
government."
Moore's book has all the trappings of
the school of new social history. He is very
concerned about placing the history of
the non-elite, average person in a broader so-
cial and economic context, but in so
doing he has mistaken the envelope for the letter.
In this well-written book Moore does not
present convincing evidence that a business
elite had gained political control over
Indiana communities, nor that Klan members
saw themselves as correcting an
imbalance caused by the business elite. The regres-
sion analysis that he uses to discredit
the nativist goals of the Klan is suspect because
he does not offer the reader a chart
detailing the linkage between all the variables
compared. There is also no indication of
the robustness of the regression when cer-
tain variables are held constant. In
short, Moore asks a lot of good questions and of-
fers some stimulating answers, but more
evidence is needed if this interpretation is to
become a standard.
Youngstown State University William D. Jenkins
Natural Allies: Women's Associations
in American History. By Anne Firor Scott.
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
1991. xii + 242p.; illustrations, notes, ap-
pendix, index. $29.95.)
In 1912, the National Municipal League
commissioned Mary Ritter Beard to study
women's civic reform efforts. Beard (and
the League) discovered "literally thousands
of municipal reforms and community
improvements carried out by women's clubs"
(p. 151). Just as contemporaries seldom
acknowledged the contributions of organized
women, only a handful of women's
historians have bothered to study this phe-
nomenon. Synthesizing this scholarship,
Anne Firor Scott presents a compelling case
for the centrality of women's
associational activities in the shaping of American so-
cial and political history from the
1790s through 1920. Women's associations have
been, as Scott puts it, "literally
everywhere" (p. 2). Operating from the left, right and
everywhere in between, they added a
public dimension to the roles of women-white
and black, rich and poor-and transformed
American life.
Evolving from benevolent associations to
aid impoverished women, white and
black women's organizations broadened
their scope to include related social problems
and became central to the antebellum
moral reform movement. In the process, orga-
nized women created vital and
long-lasting community institutions. Scott emphasizes
that associational activity also
stretched the boundaries of women's separate sphere.
From the start, the work had a political
dimension as white, middle-class women used
the benevolent association to acquire
greater property rights. Experiences in the
moral reform movement produced, as Scott
puts it, a "new right of woman activist"
(p. 57), increasingly willing to
challenge traditional notions of women's roles in order
to bring about real social change. Scott
sees the Civil War as a watershed for orga-
158 OHIO HISTORY
nized women who, because of the social
significance of their war work, "would never
be quite the same again" (p. 74)
and who were propelled to greater political activity in
later reform efforts.
The chapters on women's associational
activities in the Progressive Era are nothing
short of groundbreaking. They
convincingly illustrate that organized women in large
part were responsible for
"inventing progressivism" through the ameliorative reform
efforts of "municipal
housekeeping" and more radical activism in the quest for social
justice (p. 141). In so doing, women
activists continued to challenge separate spheres
of ideology.
Scott's survey, while formidable, points
the way to future scholarship. Others will
be prompted to consider how
associational activities may have reinforced traditional
notions of women's separate sphere while
promoting women's consciousness of their
oppression. The distinctions and
similarities between the organized activities of black
and white women, and of women of
different religious backgrounds, also require
sharper analysis. Scott neglects the
divisions among women and tends to dismiss the
paternalistic aspects of white,
middle-class reform. Curiously, Natural Allies offers
little insight into the relationship
between men's and women's associational activities,
except to suggest that such work
occupied different places of meaning in their indi-
vidual lives. Others will want to
delineate the differences in motives, mechanisms or
objects of men's and women's
organizations, and perhaps challenge Scott's implica-
tion that they were fundamentally
similar (at one point, she states that "women had
simply caught the prevailing contagion
for organization" [p. 17]). The task of extend-
ing Scott's synthesis beyond suffrage
also awaits future scholars. But, above all,
Natural Allies points up the opportunities for further research on the
local level, so
that a top-down approach may be
eschewed.
Still, Scott has effectively synthesized
the existing scholarship and supplemented it
with her own research in archives from
Massachusetts to California. What emerges is
a complex of activity in which women
from varying backgrounds exerted significant
influence in American society and
politics. Natural Allies will prove useful not only
to women's historians, but to
specialists in the eras it treats, as well as to sociologists
and political scientists. Written in a
remarkably accessible style, Natural Allies
should also benefit activists, male and
female, searching for a better understanding of
the historical context of their own
work.
The Ohio State University Eric
Karolak
Neither Ballots nor Bullets: Women
Abolitionists and the Civil War, By
Wendy
Hamand Venet. (Charlottesville: The
University Press of Virginia, 1991. xii +
210p.; illustrations, notes, essay on
sources, index. $25.00.)
In 1915, John Jay Chapman remembered his
grandmother, the antislavery activist
Maria Weston Chapman, in a striking way
(quoted by Wendy Hamand Venet in
Neither Ballots nor Bullets ). "She entered a room like a public person," he
wrote;
"she was a doughty swordsman in
conversation, and wore armor" (p. 4). To say such
a thing in the antebellum era would have
been an unthinkable insult to a lady, whose
very womanhood was defined in part by
her exclusion from the aggressive and politi-
cal arena of the public sphere. Venet,
in her study of women abolitionists during the
Civil War, looks at how women's
political activism during that conflict began to
change the kinds of public activity in
which women-including the elder Chapman-
engaged, and with what results.
Book Reviews 159
Venet's claims for her work, a revised
version of her doctoral dissertation, are
rather modest. In her preface, she
expresses an interest in exploring the achievements
of the abolitionist-feminists in an
understudied portion of their careers. She suggests
that hers is a study designed to provide
a denouement to the familiar story of antebel-
lum abolitionism. Yet her book does more
substantial work than she intimates.
Although the monograph is not organized
around a clearly articulated argument that
binds it together, the group portrait
that gradually emerges over the course of Venet's
narrative is that of women who move, in
different ways, from an activism based
principally on moral suasion to one
laying claim to a stake in politics. That is to say,
Venet looks at the ways in which the
involvement in the Civil War of these women
catalyzed their movement from an almost
apologetic participation in the public sphere
to an open and triumphant one.
That the Civil War should have led to
new avenues for activism in the lives of radi-
cal women should not be surprising. The
war merged moral and political questions
into a single overriding cause for many
of the era. In so doing, it opened the door for
women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan
B. Anthony, and Anna E. Dickinson to
advocate the direct involvement of women
in politics for the sake of promoting the
great moral entity that the Union
represented--or could represent, in its most altruistic
incarnation. Through public oratory and
polemical essays-tools that had been used
in the abolitionist cause for a
generation-as well as through direct political or-
ganizing, women laid the basis for the
interest-group politics that the National
Women's Suffrage Association would
embody after the War.
In telling the story of abolitionist
women's increasing involvement in issues like the
presidential campaign of 1864, the
propaganda campaign to sway England's support
to the Union, and the Women's National
Loyal League, Venet provides vivid portraits
of a host of characters who played a
variety of public roles in their support of a moral
cause as they understood it. Harriet
Beecher Stowe, best known as the avatar of
domestic abolitionism, appears as an
increasingly politicized feminist and political
propagandist. The striking "Joan of
Arc" of the abolitionist movement, Anna E.
Dickinson, illustrates the new
possibilities for media celebrity among women. And
Elizabeth Cady Stanton emerges as a
canny, self-conscious politician, who modified
her own rhetorical strategies to move
cautious audiences toward radical conclusions.
The strength of these women's lives and
words carries this narrative along. If
Venet sometimes falls short of
communicating clearly the overall scheme and signifi-
cance of her venture, she has a knack
for choosing illustrative incidents and quotations
that themselves are bursting with
implicit significance. Neither Ballots nor Bullets
asks us to turn our attention to the
experience of activist women in a period where, for
the most part, historians have not seen
much happening in terms of feminist
organization and growth. As Venet
demonstrates, the assumption that the Civil War
put a damper on feminism is one worth
questioning.
Miami University Mary
Kupiec Cayton
Book Reviews
Bougainville: The Forgotten Campaign, 1943-1945. By Harry A.
Gailey.
(Lexington: The University Press of
Kentucky, 1991. vii + 237p.; maps, illustra-
tions, notes, glossary, bibliography,
index. $27.00.)
On November 1, 1943, U.S. Marines landed
on the west coast of Bougainville, the
largest and most northerly of the
Solomon Islands. Following successes on
Guadalcanal and New Guinea, this assault
opened the last phase of the campaign to
reduce Japan's base at Rabaul and oust
Japan from the southwest Pacific.
Harry Gailey, a San Jose State
historian, provides a thorough account of the fight-
ing on Bougainville. He puts it in the
broader context of the Pacific War and allied,
mostly American, strategy, keeping the
campaign in perspective. The flow of events
reduced Bougainville to a strategic
"backwater" within six months, but fighting con-
tinued to August, 1945. This stemmed
largely from Australian forces replacing
American troops in the fall of 1944.
American planners never intended to
conquer all of Bougainville. Instead, they
sought to destroy Japan's airfields
there and establish a secure perimeter. From here,
planes could attack Rabaul constantly.
Initially viewed as preparation for an invasion,
these raids, along with those by carrier
and other land-based planes, effectively de-
stroyed Japan's stronghold and made a
landing unnecessary.
Despite problems, the early stages of
the campaign went well for the Americans.
By avoiding the main concentrations of
Japanese forces, they were able to establish a
beachhead and advance inland despite
difficult terrain. Sites for airstrips were se-
cured, and these were operational before
1944. The Japanese did not launch a major
counterattack until March, 1944, although
there was sharp fighting from the begin-
ning. By then, American control of the
air and sea, coupled with vastly superior
fighting power, doomed Japanese efforts.
Questionable tactics also cost the Japanese
dearly.
For their remaining time on Bougainville
Americans refrained from major offensive
actions, being content to keep the
isolated Japanese garrisons off balance with deep
patrols. A de facto cease fire
existed until the Australians arrived. Japanese troops
concentrated on raising food, being
totally cut off from supplies, while the Americans
made the best of life in a difficult
climate by developing extensive facilities with as
many comforts as possible.
During this lull African-American troops
went into action on Bougainville. The
Army had replaced the Marines in
December, and units of the black 25th Regiment
and 93rd Division arrived by early
spring. One company of the 93rd panicked while
on patrol when it stumbled upon some
unexpected Japanese. The incident unfairly
discredited black combat troops and
brought a virtual end to their use in the Pacific.
Gailey handles this episode with balance
and sensitivity, showing how too many saw
what they wished in what was basically a
minor failure of green troops.
Treated as very junior partners by
MacArthur, Australian Commanders decided to
take the offensive once they assumed
responsibility for Bougainville. Gailey is criti-
cal of their decision to abandon the
U.S. strategy, but the Aussies managed to drive
the Japanese to the tips of the island
by August, 1945. This resulted in literally un-
necessary casualties on both sides.
Whether these were politically or psychologically
worthwhile is not addressed directly,
though Gailey feels they were not.
When dealing with the major issues and
events, Gailey presents a fine narrative and