Ohio History Journal

BOOK REVIEWS

 

Refugees of Revolution: The German Forty-Eighters in America. By Carl

Wittke. (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1952. x+385p.,

index. $6.00.)

At any time Carl Wittke's Refugees of Revolution would at once take

its place as an important contribution to our knowledge of the national

history. But its appearance now is especially timely, both because the

centennial of the Revolutions of 1848 has been recently observed and

because the United States has again received many refugees of revolution.

Moreover, now that historians and others are busily at work in an effort to

interpret the meaning of the American experience to the world, this

unusually well documented and skillfully written book is bound to be

recognized as illuminating problems of acculturation, cross-fertilization of

ways of life and of values, and the continuous interrelation of the ex-

periences of the Old World and the New. Any reviewer must also call

attention to the fact that here is a book for both the specialized scholar and

the general reader. It is marked throughout by a superb control over rich

and varied material (for most of which we are indebted to Dean Wittke's

own researches), by judicious interpretations, by corrections of long es-

tablished generalizations, and by strong, lucid writing. This is not only the

first full-scoped story of the adventures of the revolutionaries who fled from

Central Europe after the tragic collapse of the upheavals of a century ago.

It will also be regarded as the definitive study insofar as any work of

historical scholarship can be definitive.

Professor Wittke, after sketching the status of German-Americans

before the Forty-Eighters came and telling with freshness and understanding

the story of the revolutions themselves, describes the response of the

German-Americans already here and of other Americans to the revolutions

and to the refugees. He then reveals the hardships and difficulties which

the newcomers faced in a strange land. We follow the fortunes of the

"Latin Farmers," who often knew more about Cicero and Vergil than they

did about plowing and harvesting; of the zealous but often tactless champions

of personal liberty and of freethought; of the political radicals, romantic and

enthusiastic, but often lacking in sensitiveness to a new scene and a new

act in their dogged determination to strengthen and extend American

democracy by liberalizing political institutions and by stimulating the

development of socialism; of the engaging Turners, with their ardor for

combining physical and esthetic and mental culture; of the journalists, phy-

311

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312      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

sicians, dentists, lawyers, pharmacists, engineers, businessmen, artists, musi-

cians, and teachers; and of the plain people-craftsmen, shopkeepers,

farmers, mechanics, brewers, jewelers, and printers. There is a memorable

chapter on the German social pattern, enlightening ones on the responses

of the Forty-Eighters to the Civil War and to Bismarck and the new struggle

for German unity. The topical-chronological organization does not give one

any detailed sense of just what a particular German-American community

was like; but the reader can readily reconstruct this for any center in which

he is interested-for Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland, Hamilton, Toledo,

and other Ohio towns as well as for St. Louis, Louisville, Milwaukee,

Davenport, and a dozen others.

Professor Wittke's main theses emerge from the material and from his

masterful presentation of it. He makes a convincing case for the importance

of the political motivation of the migrants, though he is aware that

economic factors also operated and that it is often impossible to disentangle

motives. He also presents new evidence for regarding the migration as more

extensive numerically and as more significant socially, politically, and

culturally then some previous writers in this field have held. It is clear

that the newcomers provided needed leadership to the German-Americans

and indeed to other immigrant groups at the time when nativism was

rampant. It is also apparent that the democratic zeal of the Forty-Eighters

helped make old-stock Americans more aware of the uniqueness of the

American heritage and of its meaning for the Old World. Nor can anyone

question the emphasis which Dr. Wittke puts on the cultural enrichment

not only of the older German stock but of non-German America. The

Forty-Eighters reenforced and introduced a new note into the romantic

movement in America and stimulated reactions against it as well. They made

significant contributions to music and the other arts, to scholarship, learning,

and the professions, to the graces of life, and to the development of the

economy. Nor has any writer succeeded better, and indeed, very few so well,

as Wittke in giving a sensitive and realistic picture of the process of

Americanization-of its varied aspects and several levels. There is a nice

balance between the tragic sense of failure and frustration which some

experienced and the successful personal triumphs of others.

In brief, here is a dramatic and colorful story. But it is more than that.

It is an epic and told as it should be, by a first-rate scholar and an artist of

imagination and great skill.

University of Wisconsin                                  MERLE CURTI

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Book Reviews                          313

 

Steamboat South. By Madye Lee Chastain. (New York, Harcourt, Brace and

Company, 1951. 233p., illustrations by the author. $2.50.)

This reviewer approached his task with doubt as to his competence.

Struggling through his forty-eighth year, he feared some difficulty in ad-

justing himself to the viewpoint of the junior high school set, female, for

whom this book was written.

But, even though he had never been a thirteen-year-old girl, he was

put at ease by Miss Chastain's first dozen pages. He not only read Steamboat

South from cover to cover, practically at a sitting, but he enjoyed it; if it

held his jaded old fancy, he believes it should wow the young folks.

The story opens as orphaned Amy Travis prepares to leave her foster

home in Wellsburg, on the Ohio, for residence with an aunt who lives in

Jefferson, Texas, on a tributary of the Red River of Louisiana. The time

is the winter of Lincoln's election to the presidency, on the eve of the

Civil War, and the girl's adventures-which include an unexpected detour

through New Orleans-make first class reading. Amy Travis is human, and

the rest of the cast is colorful without being the least implausible. Miss

Chastain's writing is smooth, her dialogue rings true, and her historical

setting is unostentatiously authentic. Her pen and ink illustrations add

considerably to her interpretation of the scene.

This is a book which elders interested in the history of these United

States may safely and wisely call to the attention of such juniors as they

deem worthy of entertainment and eligible for a little painless instruction

in the ways of the past.

Crawfordsville, Indiana                                 R. E. BANTA

 

Cherokee Dance and Drama. By Frank G. Speck and Leonard Broom in

collaboration with Will West Long. (Berkeley and Los Angeles, Uni-

versity of California Press, 1951. xv+106p., illustrations. $2.50.)

This attractive small monograph by an anthropologist, a sociologist, and

a Cherokee Indian ceremonial leader, describes in detail "the surviving

forms of dance and ritual as practiced among the Eastern band of Cherokees

and especially among the Big Cove group during the past two decades"

(p. 2). The study is divided into three main parts, an Introduction, the

"Repertory of Dances," and "Animal Hunting Formulas and Rites"; notes

for the three sections and a well-selected bibliography of the main sources

on the Cherokee conclude the work.

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314      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

The Introduction includes some general observations and historical

material on the Cherokee and their culture, with special reference to the

dances. The last five pages of the Introduction are devoted to the origin

of the dance songs and formulas; according to the Cherokee, all of their

songs, including all those used for dances, originated from "Stone Coat," a

monster who, when he was burned to death by the people, sang the songs

so that the people could use them thereafter for dances and in curing

disease. Two versions of the Stone Coat legend are reproduced; one is

that given by Will West Long, Speck and Broom's Cherokee collaborator,

and the other is a version obtained by James Mooney about 1890. Philo-

sophically, the Cherokee figure of Stone Coat is an interesting concept;

before his appearance on earth there was no disease, and death is believed

to have originated through him, yet when he died he gave to the people

the means for combatting the evil he had caused.

The major portion of the study (pp. 19-83) is devoted to the repertory

of dances among the Eastern Cherokee. Winter and summer dances, war

rites, so-called "formal rites," animal and other rites (dances), intermission

pastimes, and contests at the conclusion of the night of dancing, are sys-

tematically described, with effective diagrams of men's and women's dance

steps given. The winter dances, consisting of the Booger, or Mask, dance,

the Eagle dance, and the Bear dance; and the summer dances, consisting

of the Green Corn Ceremony and dance, and the Ball Players' dance, are

of particular interest. Because the "winter dances" are associated with times

of frost, performance of them is restricted; if danced in summer they might

affect the growth of vegetation by attracting cold and death. The "summer

dances" are, on the other hand, associated with crops, and because of this,

cannot be given in the wintertime. The remainder of the dances in the

present-day Cherokee repertory can be performed at any time, "usually on

Saturdays, at the home of a member of the Big Cove community. They are

prompted . . . by the desire for social intercourse and entertainment"

(pp. 11-12).

Both Speck and Broom saw most of the dances they describe performed,

and were fortunate in obtaining excellent photographs of dancers in cos-

tume, and of dance paraphernalia (tortoise shell leg rattles, masks, and so

forth). The series of plates illustrating the Booger dance, for example, is

excellent; so too those for the Eagle dance.

The third section of the study moves from the domain of dance to that

of the chanted formulas used in connection with hunting by the Cherokee and

is, in a sense, something of an appendix to the main part of the book.

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Book Reviews                           315

 

However, formulas and dance songs are to the Cherokee intimately con-

nected, since both types of songs derived from Stone Coat. Cherokee formulas

for curing disease have been intensively studied by James Mooney and

Frans M. Olbrechts; Speck and Broom's twelve pages of material on hunt-

ing formulas supplement the larger studies.

The need for descriptions of present-day yearly dance cycles is most

pressing for practically every American Indian tribe which keeps up its

dances-and nearly all groups do unless lack of numbers makes it im-

possible. The Speck and Broom monograph is a unique and praiseworthy

contribution, and important in that it contributes to the fulfillment of a

need for the professional student of the American Indian. For the non-

professional it is a vivid and reliable account and pictorial representation

of "Indian dances." If it deglamorizes them to some extent, it also, through

furnishing the background of legend and the "whys" and "wherefores"

of scheduling, enables the layman to appreciate better their significance and

function.

Indiana University                               ERMINIE W. VOEGELIN

 

Some Others and Myself: Seven Stories and a Memoir. By Ruth Suckow.

(New York, Rinehart and Co., 1952. 281p. $3.00.)

The local color movement has, in one way or another, dominated American

literature since the emergence of Jacksonian democracy. It has traveled a

long road from the burlesqued tales of Seba Smith's Major Jack Downing,

through the sentimentality of Bret Harte, the psychological probings of

Sherwood Anderson, and the unfeeling analyses of Sinclair Lewis; until

today, with the emergence of the United States as an imperial power, it

invariably deals with the investigation of the conflict between the nineteenth

and twentieth centuries, in a real sense with the conflict of isolationism and

expansionism. William Faulkner, Katherine Anne Porter, and a host of

southern writers have set the pattern. A local colorist writing today cannot

escape it.

Thus, it is to Ruth Suckow's credit that the seven tales which make up

the first portion of her new book, Some Others and Myself, are able to come

off with some sort of freshness and power. For even though each tale

investigates the role of a nineteenth century personality or locality as it

fights for adjustment in the world of today, none of the particular themes

appears worn-out or hackneyed.

The reason for this freshness undoubtedly lies in the fact that Miss

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316      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

Suckow has had the courage to reinterpret the same areas that Willa

Cather, Sherwood Anderson, Edgar Lee Masters, and she herself had

analyzed ten, twenty, or forty years before. And what she has found out

is of real interest today. Still present are the frustrations, the bitternesses, the

struggles to survive, but now these well-thumbed themes are revealed in

such a way as to question not only the vitality, but even the very reality of

local existence. Whether it be Auntie Bissel of New England's Riverton

and California's Hollywood, Jennie and Jessie Gruenewald of Nottingham,

or the naive Mrs. Vogel who is protected by her misunderstood daughter

from the onslaughts of life, Ruth Suckow ever stresses the Brigadoon-like

quality of rural America 1952.

The town was typical, but not according to standard. With all her training in

penetrating place characters, Mary couldn't at first make this one out. It seemed as

if they were entering, by some forgotten rear passage, an 1888 world. Neither of

them had been alive in 1888, but they both felt a haunting sense of recognition-the

same Mary thought, with which she used to look, when a child, at her grandmother's

old best shawl of silk-fringed black cashmere hanging in the walnut wardrobe of

the house in Wardens Grove, Illinois. Merrittsville had an atmosphere of faded

preservation much like the smell of moth balls and dried sweet clover in the

wardrobe hung stiffly thick with her grandmother's clothes.

Unfortunately, even though Miss Suckow succeeds in writing freshly

from exhausted subject matter, the seven tales themselves are not par-

ticularly enjoyable for casual reading. For in spite of the truth of the

New York Herald-Tribune review that states:

Miss Suckow reports American speech as accurately as Sinclair Lewis, but she

has none of the bitterness of his satire. She has the insight of Sherwood Anderson,

with none of his restless anger. She has something of Willa Cather's sense of the

sun on the soil, with neither her glamour nor her homesick retreat into the past.

the stories lack the bite of Lewis, the energy of Anderson, and the lift of

Cather. The reader finishes each one with something of the feeling of the girl

who refuses a proposal by means of the cliche, "you're everything you should

be, and I like you, but...." Perhaps the overtilled soil of American localism

can never be fully fertile again.

Of the seven, "One of Three Others," "Mrs. Vogel and Ollie," "Merritts-

ville," "Auntie Bissel," "An Elegy for Alma's Aunt Amy," "Memorial

Eve," and "Eltha," the second named is the most arresting. For this re-

viewer, "Mrs. Vogel and Ollie" is worth the entire book.

The volume concludes with a little over a hundred pages of memoir, in

which Miss Suckow traces her spiritual development and describes the

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Book Reviews                             317

 

eventual emergence of her religious philosophy. Through it the reader is

able to gain an unusual insight into a writer's personality and the background

out of which her works have risen. Through it, also, one is enabled to

see the influence a small home town in Iowa and a minister father had in

shaping that combination of nostalgia and analysis that mark the stories

included in the preceding pages.

When reading American books, particularly biographies, I have come upon towns

that in spirit at least remind me of my native town; and thus I recognize those

typical elements in what might otherwise remain in memory as wholly unique.

I have found something of my town in Lincoln's New Salem, and in the early

Springfield; in Edgar Lee Master's Spoon River Anthology, shown there in the light

of contrast between first bright beginnings and later petering out and disillusionment;

in New Litchfield, Connecticut, during the childhood of Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Many American towns have some such memories-give out some such breath of

freshness from early annals. I count it my great good fortune that I was thus able,

in early childhood, to have an actual share, childish and brief as it was, in that

central experience of American life-the experience of a fresh beginning.

All in all the book is worth while and worth reading. If not for the

reasons given by the author in this passage from page 186,

It is a moving experience to all people past youth to revisit childhood scenes-to

see what is changed, and what is unchanged. The return can bring sadness or joy,

or both intermingled.

at least to see to what point the local color movement has come and to

speculate-to what point it can go from here.

Denison University                                    TRISTRAM P. COFFIN

 

Lincoln and His Generals. By T. Harry Williams. (New York, Alfred A.

Knopf, 1952. xii+363p., illustrations, bibliography, and index. $4.00.)

The military position of the United States at the outset of the Civil

War was deplorable. General Winfield Scott, commander-in-chief, was

seventy-five, and physically incapacitated. Hero of the War of 1812 and

the Mexican War later, he was a magnificent monument to the past and

nearly as useless. Many of the most experienced officers in both army and

navy had joined the Confederacy. Few who had remained steadfast to the

Union had ever commanded even a brigade. Jealousies and rivalries were

widespread, and incompetency and confusion ruled the war office.

Thus President Lincoln, entirely inexperienced in military affairs, save

for a three months stint as a volunteer in the comical Black Hawk War

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318     Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

where he never engaged in a battle, was compelled to undertake the raising

and equipping of a great army, to select its generals, and to plan its

campaigns.

This book by Prof. T. Harry Williams of Louisiana State University

(not to be confused with Kenneth P. Williams, mathematics professor of

Indiana University whose Lincoln Finds a General, 1949, is probably a more

scholarly work) is not another military history of the Civil War. Rather it

is the dramatic story of Lincoln's lonely but persistent search for a winning

general-a general who would fight. It describes with clarity and in a style

that is fresh, absorbing, and often dramatic, Lincoln's methods of ferreting

out officer material, his own emergence as the ablest strategist of the Civil

War, and his influence in developing a modern command system for the

nation in the first of all total wars.

In a swift-paced account Williams describes how the harried and worried

Civil War president was forced by circumstances into the position of

becoming his own general-in-chief, and compelled during the first three

years to perform many of the functions that might today be assigned to the

joint chiefs-of-staff.

The author depicts Lincoln's heartbreaking quest for a winning general

and describes the trials and mistakes he experienced until he finally found

Generals Grant and Sherman, who shared his views and in whom he had

complete confidence.

Across the pages march one general after another whom Lincoln placed

in command of the army; how with inexhaustible patience he kept after

them to act, and sought to inspire them with the will to win, and then

had to dismiss them for one reason or another. The reader meets personally

McDowell, an unpopular know-it-all leader who proved to be an educated

prig, who went down in defeat at Bull Run; McClellan-little Napoleon-

vain, slow, irresolute-afflicted with "the slows"--a great organizer and

driller of men but a tragic failure as a fighting leader. Sadly Lincoln said

of him, "He is a great engineer but he seems to have a special talent for a

stationary engineer." Then there were handsome General Burnside of the

magnificent whiskers, who, confessing that the command of a large army

was too big for him, was whipped by Lee before he started at Fredericksburg;

"Old Brains" Halleck, a "first rate military clerk . . . who delighted to

counsel" but "hated to decide," because he lacked initiative; Fighting Joe

Hooker, a braggart who boasted loudly in his tent when under the in-

fluence of liquor, whose "strategic talent was limited to his field of vision";

George Gordon Meade, who let Lee get away after Gettysburg; John Pope,

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Book Reviews                           319

 

who had "many of McClellan's faults in reverse," being aggressive where

McClellan was cautious; Fremont, the fumbling man of destiny, who was

the western counterpart of McClellan. We also meet Generals Rosecrans,

McClernand, Banks, Sheridan, Thomas, and others, until at last Lincoln finds

his winning generals in Grant and Sherman.

McClellan had a profound contempt for Lincoln's military judgment

and regarded him as a blundering nuisance. Williams refutes the criticisms

that Lincoln was usually in error in his efforts to direct military affairs;

that he prolonged the Civil War by always "butting in" and changing the

generals; and that practically the only praiseworthy act he ever performed

in this respect was to give the supreme command to Grant and thereafter

refrain from interfering with the latter's plans and strategy.

Actually, Lincoln continued to supervise military movements even after

Grant assumed command. The correspondence between the president and

the general-in-chief was voluminous, but rarely was there a difference of

opinion. Never did Lincoln have to repeat the orders, admonitions, en-

treaties, and criticisms which filled his correspondence with McClellan,

Fremont, Burnside, Hooker, and Meade.

Lincoln and His Generals covers familiar ground already dealt with by

Brigadier General Colin R. Ballard in his recently reissued The Military

Genius of Abraham Lincoln, and by Kenneth Williams' Lincoln Finds a

General. It does not adduce many new facts. But this book is more in-

teresting to the average lay reader because it does not involve itself too

deeply in tactical detail, which makes dull reading.

Lincoln and His Generals is a basic book, an important addition to the

vast store of Lincolniana, and will probably become the most popular of

all works dealing with Lincoln and military affairs.

Columbus, Ohio                                   ALBERT A. WOLDMAN

 

The Golden Circle. By Constance Robertson. (New York, Random House,

1951. 339p., bibliography. $3.00.)

Anyone having the slightest acquaintance with Ohio history has heard of

Clement L. Vallandigham. Those who have read further, particularly in the

Civil War period, have been fascinated by the Vallandigham enigma. Was

he a traitor or a patriot? This novel demonstrates that although Vallandig-

ham's motives could be debated, those of his followers-the Knights of the

Golden Circle-could not. The Knights were violently anti-war, many of

them pro-South. But more than anything, they worshipped the great Val.

Except for a brief account of his arrest, Vallandigham himself does not

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320      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

appear in the novel. The principal characters are Vallandigham's widowed

cousin, Gina Deyo; her son, Larry; the head of the Golden Circle clan,

Asa Ormerod; and a Union espionage agent, Zachary Granger. The latter

arrived in Dayton on the day following General Burnside's arrest of

Vallandigham. Sent by Secretary of State Seward, the agent's mission was to

gather evidence on "Copperheads," "Butternuts," and Golden Circle

members.

Following Granger's progress and the traitorous activities of Larry Deyo

and Asa Ormerod, the reader finds himself present at strange and exciting

scenes. He witnesses the firing of the Dayton Journal, the Democratic state

convention of 1863, the Holmes County "rebellion," the unfolding of

plots to release Confederate prisoners, the importation of Indiana voters

into Ohio, and the inner sanctums of the Golden Circle. Also, the author

spends many interesting pages describing General Morgan's raid into

Ohio, his capture, and his escape from the Ohio Penitentiary.

To a historian one of the singular attractions of this novel is its full-scale

bibliography. With increasing frequency historical novelists have given the

reader brief, explanatory accounts of their research. These vary from

assurances that certain characters or events are "historical," to an actual

listing of a few principal books or journals in a sort of critical bibliography.

But few-if any-have presented all the material they used. One can only

surmise that their failure to do so reveals either the authors' random research

or the publishers' penury. In this novel both obstacles were overcome.

Constance Robertson admits spending three years in writing this book.

Her research substantiates that statement. With the thoroughness of a

competent historian she pored over all pertinent books, articles, pamphlets,

periodicals, newspapers, and some collections of documents. In addition,

the 'author consulted several historians specializing in the Civil War era.

One of them, Dr. Charles H. Coleman of Eastern Illinois State Teachers'

College, is engaged in writing a long-awaited biography of Vallandigham.

An occasional fault is found, such as the author's insistence upon hanging

a Republican label on Governor Tod, and the somewhat labored elaborations

of plot to place her characters in the thick of Golden Circle activities.

However, this is an honest, scholarly novel containing few of the earmarks

which have made so many historical novels anathema to the historian. The

appearance of more such books would help remove the present stigma

which fiction reviewers have stamped upon "historical" novels.

Wright Air Development Center                      DELMER J. TRESTER

Dayton, Ohio

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Book Reviews                          321

 

Guide to the Illinois Central Archives in the Newberry Library, 1851-1906.

Compiled by Carolyn Curtis Mohr. (Chicago, The Newberry Library,

1951. xvi+210p.)

Students of history have long recognized the importance of the railroads

to the growth of the United States. Through the years, however, students

of railroad history have had to rely on national, state, and local government

documents, published reports of railway companies, newspapers and

periodicals, reminiscences, and the correspondence of prominent railway

officials. But within recent years railroad companies have made available

to scholars their unpublished records. A notable step to this end was

taken in July 1943, when the Illinois Central Railroad Company deposited

in the Newberry Library "the bulk of its central office papers from February,

1851, the date of its charter, to November, 1906, the end of the presidency

of Stuyvesant Fish." The president of the Illinois Central Railroad Company

and the librarian of the Newberry Library (quoting the Introduction to

the Guide) "realized that by making available to qualified students the

records of the principal road joining the midwest and the south, fresh light

would be thrown upon the growth of corporations and upon the social and

economic history of the region through which the road passes." The materials

deposited included "some 400,000 letters, 126 bundles or boxes of mis-

cellaneous material, and 2,000 bound volumes of account books." Although

some papers, such as those of the land and tax department and the minutes

and papers of the board, remained in the custody of the company, they

can be consulted in the general offices of the company. Such records are

designated in the Guide by asterisks.

The Guide is designed to provide the investigator with a rough indication

of the volume, bundle, or box in which a given document is likely to be

found. The compiler has divided the documents into nine main groups

as follows: letters, reports and legal documents, minutes and board papers,

securities, accounting, southern lines, land records and land companies,

other railroads, and other organizations. Within each group the documents

are classified and each classification is followed by brief descriptive notes.

Added features of the Guide are an index by decade and by type of material

for each decade, a list of incorporators, officers, and directors of the

Illinois Central, a special list of maps, and an excellent index. The documents

described in the Guide are invaluable not only for the writing of a history

of a railway system or the history of individual predecessor or lessor lines

but also for exploring various aspects of transportation.

Marquette University                               HERBERT W. RICE

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322      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

Social Evolution. By V. Gordon Childe. (New York, Henry Schuman, 1951.

viii+184p., index. $3.00.)

The subject which Professor Childe treats in this book is one of perennial

interest to social scientists. Is the concept of evolution, which is so fruitful

in the biological sciences, a valid and useful one for the student of society

and culture?

Social scientists in the latter half of the nineteenth century never doubted

that evolution was the key concept in their efforts to comprehend their

data. Long before Darwin, as a matter of fact, social philosophers such

as Bousset, Turgot, Condorcet, Hume, and Comte were formulating ideas

of orderly, natural, continuous change. However, under the powerful in-

fluence of Darwin's biological theories and Herbert Spencer's evolutionary

philosophy, sociologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and others proceeded

to apply the idea of evolution to the phenomena of religion, family, art,

technology, economics, and social organization. The writings of Tylor,

Bachofen, McLennan, Lang, Frazer, and Westermarck testify to the

prominence of the concept of social evolution. Finally, Marx and Engels

embraced the idea and succeeded in turning it into an ideological weapon

to prove the inevitable downfall of capitalism and the triumph of com-

munism.

At the turn of the century the pendulum began to swing the other way.

Evolution, as a tool for comprehending social and cultural data, suffered

an eclipse, and many a treatise on archaeology, sociology, and anthropology

proved that their authors felt that they could dispense with it altogether.

The pendulum now seems to be swinging the other way again, and

Childe's book is one bit of evidence of this trend. In his first chapter he

traces the history of the theory of social evolution, and then he proceeds to

interpret a number of archaeological sites in Europe and elsewhere, showing

that the cultures in these various places have evolved over long periods of

time. He does insist, however, that the archaeological evidence does not

support the old theory of unilinear evolution, according to which each

society recapitulates the cultural history of all others. Childe is without

an equal when it comes to investing the dry bones of archaeology with flesh

and blood, and his descriptions of prehistoric peoples always make

fascinating reading. He comes to the conclusion that the data of archaeology

vindicate the concept of cultural evolution. "Indeed," says he, "with certain

modifications the Darwinian formula of variation, heredity, adaptation,

and selection can be transferred from organic to social evolution, and is

even more intelligible in the latter domain than in the former."

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Book Reviews                            323

 

Childe's conclusions are not as novel as they might seem, for a generation

ago Prof. A. G. Keller of Yale said very much the same thing in his

Societal Evolution. Keller, however, drew his data, not from archaeology,

but from history and ethnology.

While it is doubtful that the concept of social evolution will ever regain

the central position which it formerly held, a reappraisal of the social

evolutionists is called for. Their theories were not spun from thin air; they

stimulated both speculative and concrete investigation; they insisted that

history is an interconnected affair; and their work did bring order and

meaning into the chaos of opinion which prevailed with reference to early

human history.

In judging the utility of the concept of social evolution, much depends

upon what one reads into the term evolution. The older theorists saw in

it uniform, automatic, gradual, and progressive change. Childe, in his

formulation, includes none of these features, but he does make ample room

for such processes as divergence, differentiation, convergence, assimilation,

diffusion, invention, and accumulation. Properly defined, properly restricted,

and properly applied the concept of social evolution still has value as a tool

of thought.

Ohio State University                                  BREWTON BERRY

 

The Army Air Forces in World War II. Edited by Wesley F. Craven and

James L. Cate. Vol. III, Europe: Argument to V-E Day, January 1944

to May 1945. (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1951. xxxix+948p.,

foreword, maps and charts, illustrations, glossary, and index. $8.50.)

This latest volume of the seven-volume history of the United States Army

air forces in World War II is the most thought-provoking of those so far

issued. In preparing this account of the air war in Europe from January

1944 to V-E Day, the writers had access to captured documents, interviews

with enemy military and civilian leaders, and the reports on bomb damage

of United States and British survey commissions. Some of the implications

drawn from this material are grim indeed.

For one thing, there is no adequate defense against a determined, sus-

tained air attack on an industrial center. The only deterrent to such an

attack, therefore, is an air arm capable of striking back as hard or harder

than the attacker. We have no reason to modify that conclusion today.

It is again pointed out, as it was in an earlier volume, that a proper

selection of industrial targets could have shortened the European war by

• 13
 

324      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

months. The sources of power-oil and electricity-will receive A priority

should war come again, not the ball bearing or air-frame factories. When

in 1944 the stategic bomb command shifted its heavy assaults to the oil

industry, the German war machine slowed down almost overnight.

An episode with great reader interest is the air campaign, called

CROSSBOW, against the V-1 and V-2 rocket installations. Part of this

story has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, December 1951, with the

emphasis on German mistakes in developing the V missiles. Here, the

Allied effort to disrupt the launching of V rockets is reviewed. The failure

of CROSSBOW is one part errors of judgment, and three parts the in-

effectiveness of high-level bombing against small, isolated targets.

Many other findings of the last war, little known to the general public,

are highlighted in this volume. Attention is called to the productive capacity

of Germany, which was far greater than estimated by the experts. It

explains in part why the Luftwaffe could send planes aloft after announce-

ments that it had been mortally wounded. Another interesting conclusion

based on a study of captured documents states that German manpower was

never as completely mobilized for the war effort as in the democracies of

Great Britain and the United States.

The present volume, like the others, is well written, well edited, and

well illustrated. Together with Volumes I and II it tells the complete story

of the army air forces in Europe. The primary message is that superior

air power is an absolute essential for victory in modern war. From the

evidence presented in this volume there is no gainsaying this conclusion.

Western Reserve University                         HOWARD D. KRAMER

 

Doctors Under Three Flags. By Fannie Anderson. (Detroit, Wayne Uni-

versity Press, 1951. x+185p., illustrations and bibliography. $3.50.)

Doctors Under Three Flags is a joint publication of the Detroit His-

torical Society and the history department of Wayne University. The

author, Mrs. Anderson, a native-born Detroiter, is a member of the staff

of the medical library of Wayne University. Her training as a medical

bibliographer, her familiarity with the available source material on the

medical history of Michigan, and her evident interest in general local and

state history are all reflected in this book, the primary objective of which

is an integration of the story of medicine as practiced in Detroit with the

broader pattern of that city's history from 1701 to 1837.

The book contains a Foreword contributed by Alfred H. Whittaker,

• 14
 

Book Reviews                           325

 

M.D., to whom Mrs. Anderson acknowledges her indebtedness for his en-

couragement and professional advice relative to medical data presented

in the book.

Medical and other data are well documented, and for the benefit of

those who are interested in pursuing the subject in more detail, a rather

comprehensive bibliography is appended. An index is lacking, a feature

which to some readers might be subject to criticism.

The subject matter is well organized on a chronological basis. The

accounts of the pioneer physicians and their problems are interestingly

interwoven with the social, economic, and military conditions of the

country in general and of Detroit in particular. In addition to its other

merits this book should appeal to those medical as well as nonmedical

readers whose leisure time is limited, because it is brief and concise,

having only 185 pages divisible into five chapters, thus enabling one to

read its contents within a relatively short time.

Chapter one covers the period from the founding of Fort Pontchartrain

du Detroit by the French in 1701 to the surrender of the fort to the

British in 1760. Only four medical men served Detroit during those first

sixty years and they worked 'and lived under a military regime, receiving

their pay as officers in the French Army medical corps and caring for the

health needs of the civilians and Indians as well as the army personnel

stationed there. The professional training of medical practitioners in France

and her colonies during that era is discussed and the conjecture is made

that those who served Detroit at that time were trained as barber-surgeons,

with the exception of one who was likely educated by the apprentice

method in Montreal.

In chapter two is described life in Detroit during its occupation by the

British from 1760 to 1796, as gleaned from correspondence, journals, ledgers,

and various records. The inhabitants continued to live under a military

government and to rely for the most part on the services of military surgeons

assigned to the garrison. One of the most colorful of these surgeons was

Dr. George Christian Anthon, from whose preserved records the author

relates his medical concepts and treatment as well as the ailments of his

patients. Another available source of information drawn upon by the author

in portraying life at Detroit at that time, were the ledgers of a firm of

merchants, the Macomb brothers, who acted as fiscal agents for the

British government.

Chapter three covers the interim between the close of the Revolutionary

War and the War of 1812, during which time Detroit attained civil self-

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326      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

government and became populated with New Englanders, who mingled

with the remaining French and British already there. For the first time

medical practitioners without some government or military connections

settled in Detroit, some of whom devoted their full time to their pro-

fession, others supplemented their practice with business or political in-

terests, while a few deserted their profession for a more lucrative income.

The status of medical education during that era is discussed.

In chapter four is covered the period from 1812 to 1817, during which

time Detroit was surrendered to the British, was later recaptured, and then

experienced the aftermath of the War of 1812. From a medical point of

view the most significant features described were the epidemic diseases

prevalent in Detroit during the war and the lack of medical care, since

most of the physicians located there had been taken prisoners.

In chapter five are described the medical and other conditions in Michigan

during the interim from 1817, when it was organized as a territory, until

1837, when it became one of the sovereign states of the Union. The

medical history in Michigan Territory, as the author describes it, parallels

that in pioneer Ohio in that home remedies, patent medicines, and journals

and books devoted to the health of the family were popular, and the field

was fertile for cults and quacks to invade the region. Epidemics of smallpox

and cholera are also discussed and the development of dentistry in Michigan

during the period is described.

In reality the title of the book is a misnomer, because the emphasis

is not on individual "doctors under three flags," namely the French

Tricolor, the British Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes of the United

States. Rather the book deals primarily with the social, economic, and

medical conditions in Detroit and its neighboring settlements and with

the role which the medical profession played in the development of Detroit

during its first 136 years.

Ohio State University                              LINDEN F. EDWARDS

 

James Harrod of Kentucky. By Kathryn Harrod Mason. (Baton Rouge,

Louisiana State University Press, 1951. xxii+266p., illustrations, maps,

essay on authorities, and index. $4.00.)

James Harrod was never a great statesman, nor was he a widely pro-

claimed hero as were George Rogers Clark, Simon Kenton, Daniel Boone,

Benjamin Logan, and Isaac Shelby. He was, however, an important

pioneer in the great western movement which crossed the Appalachian

• 16
 

Book Reviews                           327

 

and settled the Kentucky country. Today, Harrodsburg stands as a monu-

ment to his efforts. James Harrod was born in Pennsylvania and was

intimately associated with those events which made the upper Ohio Valley

history so important. He was for a time a scout and fur trader, going as

far west as St. Louis and the other frontier outposts of civilization. At

the age of twenty-eight he led a party of explorers into Kentucky and

began the first settlement in that state at Harrod's Town. The outbreak

of Dunmore's War drove the early surveying and settling party out of

Kentucky, but the next year, 1775, they were back to take up their activities

where they left off.

From 1774 to 1792 James Harrod's name was a part of the saga of

pioneering in Kentucky. During the first decade he was involved in the

hot Indian struggle that went on as a part of the bigger Revolutionary

fight. As a matter of fact, Harrod saw service in all the border wars

from 1774 to 1792, and he acquitted himself well in his military duties.

The importance of James Harrod's activities in the West lay more in the

area of land speculation. He represented the Virginia interest, and helped

to form the base of operation in which the Virginians were able finally

to gain control of the western country. He was deeply engaged in the

great rivalry and dispute which developed between Richard Henderson's

Transylvania Land Company and the Virginia speculators. It was at

Harrod's Town that the movement to dispossess Henderson from his huge

land claim was organized and facilitated.

In his death James Harrod left behind a mystery which is as yet largely

unsolved. He had gone to look for the famous legendary Swift's silver

mine with the old scout Michael Stoner and a man named Bridges. Harrod

and Bridges had quarreled over a land suit, and there was some enmity

between the two men. It was Bridges who reported his death, but sub-

sequent searches never produced irrefutable evidence of this fact.

Mrs. Mason has used excellent sources in the preparation of her book,

and she has written a great deal of humanity into her pages. Frankly, she

should have given the book the title "The Harrods of Kentucky," because

she writes almost as much of William, Thomas, and John as of James.

The author's approach to her subject is an intimate and somewhat narrow

one. She writes of James Harrod as performing in a circle which revolved

around him instead of against a background which was more significant

than the individual actor. There are numerous errors of fact pertaining to

Harrod's campaigning and some errors of geography. It is too bad that

• 17
 

328      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

the author did not take time to comb these out of her text. A good biography

of James Harrod has a distinct place in Ohio Valley pioneer literature.

University of Kentucky                               THOMAS D. CLARK

 

Presidential Succession. By Ruth C. Silva. (Ann Arbor, University of

Michigan Press, 1951. viii+213p., appendices, bibliography, tables of

cases, and index. $3.50.)

Apparently Gouverneur Morris, in phrasing the Constitution, slipped

on the passage providing for the presidential succession. At any rate an

indeterminate antecedent in the phrasing of the Constitution confronts us

with the problem explored by this very thorough study. In the process of

consolidating two paragraphs into one the perplexing ambiguity emerged.

One paragraph submitted to the committee of style of the convention

had provided that "in case of his [the president's] removal as aforesaid,

death, absence, resignation or inability to discharge the powers and duties

of his office, the Vice President shall exercise those powers until another

President be chosen, or until the inability of the President be removed."

If this had stood unchanged, no vice president would have ever succeeded

to the presidency. The other paragraph prescribed substantially what the

Constitution eventually provided for in case of a vacancy of both the

presidency and vice presidency.

Combining these two passages, the committee of style made the great

faux pas by providing: "In case of the removal of the president from

office, or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers

and duties of the said office, the same shall devolve on the vice president,

and the Congress may by law provide for the case of removal, death, resig-

nation or inability, both of the president and vice-president, declaring

what officer shall then act as president, and such officer shall act ac-

cordingly, until the disability be removed."

In the italicized clause what does "the same" refer to, "the said office"

or "the powers" of the office? Contemporary evidence such as The Federalist

and debates in the ratifying conventions support the latter alternative, since

they always distinguish between the president and the acting president.

Nevertheless, when President William Henry Harrison died in 1841, Vice

President John Tyler assumed the office itself and thus succeeded to the

presidency upon the advice, it is supposed, of the then secretary of state,

Daniel Webster, and this was accepted by both houses of congress. But

Ex-President John Quincy Adams, then a congressman, confided his disgust

• 18
 

Book Reviews                           329

 

to his diary: "I paid a visit this morning to Mr. Tyler, who styles himself

President of the United States and not Vice-President, which would be

correct style. It is a construction in direct violation both of the grammar

and context of the Constitution which confers upon the vice-president,

not the office, but 'the powers and duties of said office' !"

Sheer usage has been sanctioned by seven successions of vice presidents

to the presidency. Could Tyler's adviser have only foreseen the dread peril

implicit in the succession, he certainly would have hesitated. When Garfield

was shot, government was palsied during his eighty-two days of "inability"

to perform the duties of the office. The Constitution's intention that the

vice president would merely perform the duties of the office during such

"inability" could not be followed, because the established succession of the

vice president would have prevented Arthur from returning the office

to Garfield if he had recovered. The same crisis recurred during President

Wilson's prolonged "inability." Constitutionally, only the vice president

can determine when he should displace the ailing president and that has

proved too much responsibility for any human being.

Professor Silva's method is to gather every significant contemporary

opinion on each problem as it arose. But the hundreds of quotations and

views recorded result in a confusion of tongues with no consensus as to

a solution. The author is in no wise responsible for this, but she did not

manage to discover an arrangement that prevents an impression of tedious

repetition. She does however venture a solution by proposing that congress,

by a concurrent resolution, establish in principle that a vice president's

assumption of presidential duties in case of a president's inability be

limited to the period of de facto inability. She also proposes the creation

of the office of assistant president to act when there is neither a president

nor vice president, or during the disability of a president.

Ohio Northern University                         WILFRED E. BINKLEY

 

The Mysteries of Ohio's Underground Railroads. By Wilbur Henry Siebert.

(Columbus, Ohio, Long's College Book Company, 1951. xxix+314p.,

frontispiece, illustrations, maps, and index. $5.00.)

In referring to the Underground Railroad in Ohio, Prof. Wilbur H.

Siebert observed in 1895, "As one unearths section after section of the old

lines . . . and learns about the faithful service of many brave operators,

one cannot avoid the conviction that the half has not been told" (Ohio

State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, IV [1895], 63). Publica-

• 19
 

330     Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

tion of the present volume completes the telling not only of the half but,

for all practical purposes, of the whole story of underground activity in

this state.

Dr. Siebert began his lifelong research when a young history instructor

at Ohio State University in the early 1890's. Having obtained from his

students the names of parents and grandparents who had assisted in the

escape of fugitive slaves, he contacted them by mail or by personal visits

during vacations. The product of these investigations was a wealth of in-

formation which was bound into thirteen large volumes now in the Ohio

State Museum. Dr. Siebert won recognition as the authority on the subject

with the appearance of his classic The Underground Railroad from Slavery

to Freedom in 1898. This was followed several decades later by his studies

of the institution in Massachusetts and Vermont, but until now he had pub-

lished only three articles relating specifically to Ohio.

The present work is a county-by-county treatment of the Ohioans who

participated in the operation of the Underground Railroad, the places which

served as stations, and the methods used to facilitate the escape of the

fleeing Negroes. The text is sprinkled freely with names of individuals

whose role was important but who are otherwise unknown to the pages

of history. This mass of localized detail provides flesh and blood for

the body whose skeleton was the network of routes emanating from the

banks of the Ohio River and converging on several ports along Lake Erie.

Several maps offer mute evidence both of the intricacy and vast extent of

the Railroad in Ohio and of the overwhelming amount of research per-

formed by the author.

Dr. Siebert has presented the facts against the backdrop of romance and

mystery which has long enshrouded the Underground Railroad. The vision

of ghostly figures emerging under cover of darkness from a secret room

and being spirited by wagon or carriage another twenty or thirty miles

along the tortuous path to freedom will not fail to capture the imagination

of the reader. The book has popular appeal and is couched in the vocabulary

of the average reader. The historian may wish that a greater amount of

contemporary Ohio history had been included, in order to bring the anti-

slavery movement into clearer perspective.

The volume is attractively printed and bound, and offers some sixty

illustrations. From an academic standpoint, what appears to be an almost

total absence of proofreading is lamentable. From the first page of the

Foreword to the map inside the back cover, the work is afflicted with such

misspellings as "supplimented" for supplemented (p. ix), "Sendusky" for

• 20
 

Book Reviews                           331

 

Sandusky (p. xxvii), "McClean's" for McLean's (p. 21), "Sumpter" for

Sumter (p. 56), "braun" for brawn (p. 116), "Glazier" for Blazier (p.

121), "Brethern" for Brethren (p. 162), "manuel" for manual and "con-

fregations" for congregations (p. 253), and (on the map) "Kelly's Island"

for Kelleys Island, "Freedonia" for Fredonia, and "Bourneyville" for

Bourneville. Perhaps the most flagrant example is to be found on page 287,

where the name Hulburt appears also as "Hulbert" and "Hurlburt." The

omission of periods after such abbreviations as Mr. is permissible but

should be consistent. Errors in punctuation and in the use of italics are

not infrequent. In footnotes, the technician will object to the use of

seriatim (pp. 9, 71, and 135), apparently for passim, and the indiscriminate

use of op. cit. together with the names of authors and titles. The author has

committed few factual errors, among them placing West Liberty in Knox

County rather than Logan (p. 149) and having John Brown executed at

Charleston, rather than Charles Town, Virginia (p. 299).

These deficiencies, however, will not impair the usefulness of the book for

students of local history and, within its natural limits, the antislavery move-

ment. The notable point is that in this volume Dr. Siebert, now an

octogenarian with a long-standing reputation as an authority on the

Underground Railroad and on the Loyalists of the Revolutionary period,

has compiled and set down a multitude of facts which, but for him, would

have been irretrievably lost.

Ohio State Archaeological                               JOHN S. STILL

and Historical Society

 

Military Life in Dakota: The Journal of Philippe Regis De Trobriand.

Translated and edited by Lucile M. Kane. (St. Paul, The Alvord Memorial

Commission, 1951. xxv+395p., illustrations and map. $7.50.)

The curious fate which historical manuscripts are likely to undergo is

illustrated by the narrative of General De Trobriand. His manuscript

journal, kept during his Dakota sojourn from 1867 to 1869, slumbered in

the obscurity of family possession until 1926, when his daughters, moved by

filial devotion and the desire to contribute to the history of the region in

which it was written, privately printed at Paris a somewhat imperfect copy

of the journal as a 400-page octavo volume entitled Vie Militaire Dans Le

Dakota, Notes et Souvenirs. So limited was its distribution, however, that

fifteen years later such institutions as the University of Chicago, the

Nebraska State Library, and the Wisconsin State Historical Library lacked

• 21
 

332      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

copies; while only a single review notice of the book was ever published-

in 1933, seven years late-and the extensive catalogs of the Manuscript

Division of the Library of Congress contained "no entry whatever" con-

cerning the narrative.

Thus the daughters' objectives in publishing the journal remained un-

realized, since a book unknown and unread is for all practical purposes

nonexistent. In 1941, therefore, the Lakeside Press of Chicago selected

Vie Militaire Dans Le Dakota for reprinting (in English translation) as its

annual Lakeside Classics volume. But the scope of the Classics volumes

compelled the omission of extensive sections of the original, and the editor

(the present reviewer) therefore selected for inclusion as much as possible

of the data dealing with the life and activities of the Indians, rigidly ex-

cluding all else-scientific and botanical observations, routine military

details, hunting expeditions, and so forth.

Thereby somewhat over one-half of the contents of Vie Militaire became

accessible to American readers in an edition of several thousand copies.

Now, ten years later still, the Alvord Memorial Commission has wisely

published the entire journal, from a fresh translation of the original

manuscript made and edited by Miss Lucile Kane, under the competent

oversight of Grace Lee Nute, chairman and general editor of the commission.

General De Trobriand was the son of one of Napoleon's generals and

the descendant of a line of soldiers who for five hundred years had served

"anywhere in Christendom or out of it where fighting was going on." The

general, however, studied law, held a civil appointment, and in 1841 visited

America. Eventually he made New York City his home, where in the fifties

he became a familiar member of the leading literary and social circles of

the time.

When the Civil War opened he was appointed colonel of a French regi-

ment raised in New York, and served throughout the war, attaining the

brevet rank of major general. Upon the reduction of the army following

the close of the war he was retained as colonel of the Thirty-first In-

fantry, and in this capacity was sent to Dakota in the summer of 1867.

His journal records his experiences and observations of the two ensuing

years. A thorough cosmopolitan, successful in both military and civil life,

and a familiar figure in the literary circles of both the Old World and the

New, he was eminently qualified to depict the wild life of the upper

Missouri area in the decade before its final conquest by the white man. An

artist as well as an author, his busy pencil preserved scores of pictures of

the life around him which has now vanished from earth. Ten of these are

• 22
 

Book Reviews                           333

 

reproduced in the present volume. Almost the only regret concerning it is

that it was not feasible to include many more of them and to reproduce

them on a larger scale than the format of the volume permits. In pub-

lishing the journal in its entirety the Alvord Memorial Commission has

made a notable contribution to the sources for midwestern American history.

Highland Park, Michigan                              MILO M. QUAIFE

 

Origins of the New South, 1877-1913. By C. Vann Woodward. (Vol. IX,

A History of the South, edited by Wendell H. Stephenson and E. Merton

Coulter. Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, The Littlefield

Fund for Southern History of the University of Texas, 1951. xvi+542p.,

illustrations, critical essay on authorities, and index. $6.50.)

Few periods in American history are so badly misunderstood as the

early era of the New South from the victory of Hayes to the accession of a

southern president in 1913. Yet the monographs and articles depicting the

social-economic changes have long been available. Professor Vann Woodward

has integrated the entire historical structure and adds his own keen ob-

servations as to the nature of the class transformation that took place in

these years. To the reviewer, it seems unfortunate that he has scrapped the

descriptive term for the dominant class, the Bourbons, in favor of a heavily

political term, the Redeemers, which suggests a stable union of economic con-

servatives and all others favoring white supremacy and the end of carpetbag

rule.

Dr. Woodward's chief contribution is his explanation of the controversial

political deal of 1877 between the Whiggish-minded southern Democrats

and the conservative industrial-minded Republicans for the withdrawal of

northern troops from the South. This came as no single "Wormley House

Bargain" but involved a variety of economic ties such as the granting of

railroad subsidies, internal improvements, the use of the patronage power,

and the benefits to be derived from the Democratic control of the house.

This story has been told at length by the same author in Reunion and

Reaction.

The volume goes beyond its predecessor in depicting the specific con-

sequences after 1877 of the victory of the commercial-industrial class with

their program of reaction and retrenchment. Although the Wade Hamptons

and Wattersons did not completely disfranchise the Negro-this was un-

necessary wherever they could march him to the polls in their own behalf-

they did end any radical dream of social equality among the races in the

• 23
 

334      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

South. The economies of the new rulers meant a major setback for the in-

cipient public school movement, converted the prisons into an "American

Siberia," and made the Negroes and poorer classes dependent upon the

uncertain largess of philanthropy for their educational and social emancipa-

tion. These rulers united with their economic counterparts in the Northeast

to bring the Industrial Revolution to the South, especially the "mills to

the cotton."

The dominion of the Redeemers was challenged repeatedly and finally,

in 1890, with success by the Populist and Tillmanite opposition. The new

rulers, symbolized by the "demogogues," did enact a good deal of social

legislation that had been long overdue. As late as 1894 the only child labor

law on the books of the leading southern textile states was one in Alabama

and even that was repealed in deference to the wishes of a Massachusetts

firm that had set up a large mill in the state. Northern unions won some

minor victories of organization in the South, whose labor has usually been

depicted rather inaccurately as "docile." For the Negro, barred from the

cotton mills because of the rigid racial policy set up, there were only mild

gains; even the white mill hands did not enjoy the major improvement in

economic status that the textile revolution had promised.

The author has several brief but striking chapters upon the social and

cultural trends of the South. His handling of literature is deft and shows a

keen perception of the underlying social issues. While the dominant role

of race in southern history is never neglected, there is some tendency to

deal with the Negro as a passive individual rather than as a direct par-

ticipant in many of the issues affecting him. Measured by the previous

volumes of the series, this is easily one of the very best and should be

influential in changing the textbooks which carry on the old stereotypes of

the Land of Cotton. At almost all points, the author's analytical method

illuminates old issues as well as expanding the details of new social, economic,

and political problems; hence, there is a fresh, stimulating quality throughout.

Western Reserve University                              HARVEY WISH

 

Crusaders for American Liberalism. By Louis Filler. (Yellow Springs, Ohio,

The Antioch Press, 1950. xvi+422p. $4.00.)

This volume, first published in 1939 and reissued in 1950, has long been

recognized as the most comprehensive history of the muckraking movement.

In the introduction to the new, but unrevised, edition the author states

modestly that "a thorough appraisal of muckraking achievement is still

• 24
 

Book Reviews                           335

 

in the future." When and if such a work is undertaken, it will very likely

build on the foundation laid by Mr. Filler in his book. Meanwhile Crusaders

for American Liberalism remains both a valuable guide to the literature of

muckraking and a suggestive interpretation of the significance of the

movement.

To this reader, at least, the most controversial sentence in a book that is

full of them (the author obligingly puts many in italics) is the opening one in

the first chapter. "Muckraking came suddenly, unexpectedly, upon the

American scene." This statement gets the book off to an awkward start; to

explain it the author has to devote considerable space to stressing the

uniqueness of muckraking which he might more effectively have given to

revealing the close relationship between the reform literature of the Pro-

gressive era and that of the eighteen-eighties and nineties. It is true, as

Mr. Filler shows, that muckraking differed from much of the earlier-

and later-social criticism in that it dealt with concrete rather than abstract

issues. Nevertheless it seems to the reviewer that a better case can be

made for the view that muckraking was a popularization of tendencies ap-

parent before 1900, than for the thesis that it was a sudden and unexpected

innovation.

The gist of the story that Mr. Filler tells is as follows: Muckraking began

in 1901 with Josiah Flynt's The World of Graft; it reached its zenith in

1906 with the publication of David Graham Phillips' "The Treason of the

Senate"; after 1906 its focus shifted from exposure to reform. The author

maintains that muckraking was still "free, virile, and aggressive" in 1910

(p. 341) but it had ceased to be a major influence before the outbreak of

the war. In his opinion muckraking was destroyed in part by the war, in

part by desertions from its ranks, and in large measure by the pressure of

"organized, citable, reactionary interests" (p. 390).

The strongest portion of the book lies between Chapters V and XXVIII.

Here Professor Filler rescues numerous writers, editors, articles, periodicals,

and books from the undeserved oblivion they might have suffered had he

not indicated their significance to later students. These chapters contain

careful analyses of the writings of journalists and novelists who contributed

to reform causes, as well as deft characterizations of the editorial policies of

the many different magazines that engaged, for longer or shorter periods,

in muckraking.

Mr. Filler states that his intention in writing Crusaders for American

Liberalism was "to conduct an inquiry into the democratic process in

America during modern times" (p. ix). The point that emerges from his

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336      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

book is that the core of muckraking, as of liberalism itself, was a factual

approach to social problems. Muckraking was nothing more, and nothing

less, than an attempt to ascertain the truth about perplexing economic and

political questions and to prescribe reforms on the basis of factual knowl-

edge. It is not surprising, although it is unpleasant to record, that powerful

groups were so afraid of the truth that they felt compelled to suppress the

muckraking magazines. Nor is it to be wondered at that many of the

original muckrakers were incapable of continuing indefinitely the arduous

search for information. Liberalism ever needs fresh recruits to take the

places of the veterans whose strength is spent. What is disturbing to those

who, like Mr. Filler, are concerned about the democratic process is the com-

parative eclipse which has overtaken the factual approach in the past forty

years. It is one of the misfortunes of our epoch that passion and prejudice

and fear make liberalism suspect at the very time when we most need the

guidance its method offers.

Ohio State University                             ROBERT H. BREMNER

 

The Early Histories of St. Louis. Edited by John Francis McDermott. (St.

Louis, St. Louis Historical Documents Foundation, 1952. xi+171p., illus-

trations, maps, and index. $4.00.)

"This volume is not a history of St. Louis nor a compilation of descrip-

tions of the town, but a collection of the first historical sketches of the

founding and the early years of the town which are based upon primary

sources: the papers and statements of its original citizens. Its purpose is

to bring into one place all such extant accounts." In this literary nutshell

the editor has summarized succinctly the aim and structure of The Early

Histories of St. Louis.

Within the limits which he has set himself, Professor McDermott has

done well. Utilizing to advantage the experience derived from editing or

compiling seven other works on the St. Louis and Missouri Valley regions,

he has produced a small but compact volume which is pleasing in style and

format, and unmarred by typographical errors. Seven accounts are included,

three of them representative of the French element in early cosmopolitan

St. Louis (Auguste Chouteau, two, and Nicollet), three from the American-

English side (Paxton, Beck, and Primm), and the anonymous "Creole."

None are long, and indeed the letter of "A Creole" is so brief-barely

exceeding the length of this review-and unexceptional in content that

one may be pardoned for wondering why it was included at all.

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Book Reviews                            337

 

Despite the high quality of workmanship displayed by the editor, it is

doubtful if in this instance the cake was worth the candle. The Early

Histories of St. Louis falls between two stools. For the close student of

urban history mere excerpts like these will seem altogether too brief. He

will immediately feel compelled to inspect the original records from which

they were taken; nor are these exceptionally difficult of access, one selection

even having been reprinted from the Congressional Record. On the other

hand, the intelligent layman is likely to find the accounts repetitious, tedious,

and restricted largely to political and military events. Probably he will not

go much further than Professor McDermott's excellent introductory essay

and his brief list of "selected references," which comes before the "early

histories" instead of modestly sharing, with the index, the uncut pages at

the book's end-an innovation which certainly merits approbation.

But does this book not raise a larger question which the historical pro-

fession would do well to consider? All over the civilized world the United

States is reputed to be a nation which sets high store upon breaking into

print, and which regards quantity as of at least equal importance with

quality, so far as publications are concerned. Particularly are we viewed

critically at the present moment when the skyrocketing cost of newsprint-

merely an annoyance in this country-has become a matter of life or death

to foreign publishers. It is shocking to see the pitifully few sheets which

comprise a London daily in this Year of Our Lord 1952; it is embarrassing

to be told that the entire daily press of France absorbs only as much newsprint

as does the New York Daily News. Would professional historians not be

wise to consider the problems of publication in a much broader context?

How much scholarly cake, even very well-made cake, can we afford, when

our brethren are wondering about the bread supply itself?

Ohio University                            FREDERICK D. KERSHNER, JR.

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