Book Reviews
Forgotten Hero: General James B.
McPherson; the Biography of a Civil War
General. By Elizabeth J. Whaley. (New York: Exposition Press,
1955.
203p.; appendix, bibliography, and
index. $3.50.)
In view of the avid, continuing
absorption of Americans in their own
Civil War and its leading figures, it is
indeed curious that James Birdseye
McPherson has not attracted a
substantial biographer before now. Certainly
he had many attractions about him and
much to admire--a brilliant mind
(standing first in his West Point
class); a master technician (having helped
build the defense works in San Francisco
harbor and having aided Grant
engineer Vicksburg's surrender); and a
lovable, gentle personality (his
fellow officers and his soldiers spoke
only kind words of him, even before
his death). But perhaps the fact that he
died young (at thirty-six, before
his full promise had been realized) and
that his papers are scanty has
tended to discourage the prospective
biographer.
At any rate, Mrs. Elizabeth J. Whaley,
vice president of the Clyde (Ohio)
Library Board, has attempted to fill the
void. Commissioned by the Clyde
Library Board in 1941 to prepare
McPherson's biography, she has worked
at the assignment over the past fourteen
years.
The story carries McPherson from his
birth near Clyde in 1828 to his
sudden death during the battle for
Atlanta in 1864. Son of pioneer parents,
who migrated to northern Ohio from
upstate New York in the 1820's,
James McPherson experienced the usual
farm boy's upbringing. Showing
promise in school and at his store job,
he won an appointment to West
Point, where he graduated at the top of
the class of 1853. There followed
a year of teaching mathematics at the
military academy and then assign-
ments with the corps of engineers, first
at New York, where he served with
William T. Sherman, then at San
Francisco, where his task was strengthening
the Alcatraz Island fortifications. It
was here in the Golden Gate country,
still basking in the flush of the gold
rush, that McPherson enjoyed life to
456
BOOK REVIEWS 457
the full. Young, attractive in
appearance, manners, and personality, he was
naturally popular and in demand
socially. It was here, too, that McPherson
won the heart of a lovely lady from
Baltimore, Emily Hoffman, to whom
he was about to be married when the news
of Fort Sumter reached Cali-
fornia in 1861.
Returning to the East, he was assigned
the task of securing the defenses
of Boston harbor. Itching for active
service, he pressed the war depart-
ment into attaching him to General
Halleck's headquarters in St. Louis.
McPherson's rise to prominence was rapid
after he became chief engineer
with Grant's army, where his work in
connection with the capture of
Forts Henry and Donelson won for him a
major general's stars. In 1863
he took command of the Seventeenth Army
Corps in Grant's army in the
campaign against Vicksburg, against
which he helped deliver the death
blow. When Grant went East and Sherman
took command, Sherman, who
was not only fond of McPherson
personally but thought McPherson's un-
questioned ability would carry him even
beyond Sherman or Grant, placed
McPherson in command of the Army of the
Tennessee. It was during the
campaign against Atlanta that a
Confederate bullet ended McPherson's career.
Mrs. Whaley's biography leaves much to
be desired on several counts.
Although she has used McPherson's
correspondence with members of his
family and although she lists The War
of the Rebellion: Official Records
in her bibliography, she seems to have
relied most heavily on secondary
accounts for her material. What
documentation there is in the book is very
slim indeed. The story of McPherson's
military exploits in the war is left
somewhat cloudy, and although his
relations with his family are dealt with
in detail, McPherson fails to emerge as
a live personality. Interpretation as
to his place in the history of the war
is scarcely attempted.
Oberlin College DAVID LINDSEY
Labor: Free and Slave; Workingmen and
the Anti-Slavery Movement in the
United States. By Bernard Mandel. (New York: Associated Authors,
1955. 256p.; references and index.
$3.00.)
The movement to abolish slavery cut
across social, economic, and moral
lines, encompassing eventually in its
sweep problems from a wide variety
of fields in American thought. One
aspect of the antislavery controversy
that has long deserved analysis is the
impact of abolitionism on the laboring
classes during the period 1820 to 1870.
Labor itself, as an organized and
articulate group within the American
economy, was no more than beginning to
458
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
make itself felt on questions of
national import. And since slavery, as it
existed in the South, had obvious
relations with the problems of labor North
and South, it is surprising for the
student of history to note what seemed
to be a general lack of interest among
earlier nineteenth-century laboring
groups and labor leaders toward what
soon became the overweening ques-
tion of the age.
Not much, actually, has been done in the
way of research on what Dr.
Mandel terms the issue of "labor:
free and slave," as it appeared in the
early and mid-nineteenth century. The
author therefore has addressed him-
self in this study to a historical
problem of real importance. Furthermore,
he has executed it very well indeed,
drawing together from a variety of
sources--both tapped and untapped--a
great deal of relevant material, in-
tegrating and organizing it skillfully,
and evoking from it some sound and
interesting conclusions. He has, in the
best sense, accomplished a pioneering
study, one that deserves the attention
of academic specialist and historically-
minded reader alike.
The northern free laborer, during the
early decades of the controversy
over slavery, had sufficient troubles of
his own to divert his attention from
the abolitionist crusade. The annexation
of Texas and the Mexican War,
however, marked the beginning of a shift
in labor's attitude. That slavery
as a labor system might be extended into
the new western territories (or
perhaps northward too) greatly disturbed
the northern laboring man. As
abolitionists ceaselessly argued,
slavery affected the civil liberties, work
standards, wage levels, and organizing
efforts of free laborers everywhere,
and the laboring man therefore had an
important stake in any decisions
concerning its continuance and
extension. After 1850 there were more than
a million mechanics, artisans, and
skilled laborers with a vote, and their
recognition of slavery as part of a
larger "labor question" had significant
influence on political affairs.
Yet, before the laborer could become a
force in the antislavery movement,
certain basic questions had to be
answered satisfactorily. Most of all, while
labor leaders recognized the threat of
slave labor competition as it existed,
they also feared the effects on wages
and standards of freed slaves stream-
ing northward if the system were
abolished or changed--an argument as-
siduously propagated by pro-slavery
apologists. Perhaps the most interesting
portion of Dr. Mandel's study is that
which analyzes the reasons for and
the drift of labor's change of attitude,
ending with the conviction that the
"wage slavery" of the North
and the chattel slavery of the South were
indissolubly linked. How the northern
laborer, with his traditional adherence
to the Democratic party, and the
abolitionists, with their misunderstanding
BOOK REVIEWS 459
of the labor movement, finally found a
way to join forces makes fascinating
reading. The gradual emergence of bases
for cooperation between labor and
abolition culminated in the Free Soil
and Republican movements, with
significant political effects.
The plight of the southern laborer, who
competed directly with the slave,
is also well handled in Dr. Mandel's
study. The white laborer, caught be-
tween ruinous competition on the one
hand and racial prejudice on the other,
had a large stake too in any solution to
the slavery question. Nor was the
fact that a Carolina cotton mill could
save thirty percent of operating costs
by hiring slaves lost on either southern
or northern millhand. In both North
and South, as Dr. Mandel points out, the
final decision of labor on the
slavery issue pivoted on larger
questions of democracy, as well as on narrower
questions of economic self-interest. Dr.
Mandel has done an admirable job
of marshaling evidence on and presenting
the larger picture of an important
historical problem.
Michigan State University RUSSEL B. NYE
The Frontier Camp Meeting: Religion's
Harvest Time. By Charles A. Johnson.
(Dallas: Southern Methodist University
Press, 1955. ix+325p.; preface,
prologue, illustrations, appendices,
notes, bibliography, and index. $5.00.)
Joseph H. Creighton, a
nineteenth-century Methodist circuit rider, opined,
with some degree of oversimplification,
that "if a good history of the camp-
meeting in this country were written, it
would be a considerable part of
the history of the Methodist
Church." Charles A. Johnson's readable
volume on The Frontier Camp Meeting demonstrates
the near truth of this
pronouncement. His well-balanced
appraisal of this grossly misinterpreted
institution, reveals the close
relationship between the early Methodist Church
and the camp meeting without erroneously
picturing these two distinct agen-
cies as synonymous.
Few frontier phenomena matched the
backwoods revival in provoking
controversial comment from all manner of
writers. The skeptics branded
it a wild, boisterous, often bawdy,
emotional orgy, while its champions
defended the tented grove as divinely
designed "to break down the walls
of wickedness, forts of hell."
Modern critics have often disparaged the
institution by evaluating it according
to twentieth-century standards. Few
writers have given a really accurate
account of the camp ground and its
socio-religious impact on the crude,
rapidly advancing frontier. Mr. Johnson
neither condemns nor praises, but by
synthesizing myriad interpretations,
he places the camp meeting in a more
nearly accurate historical perspective.
460 THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
His portrait of the diversified audience
is vivid and authentic. Pious church
members, rowdies, foreign observers,
stragglers, hucksters, drunks, sympa-
thetic and hostile clergymen, but
mostly, lonesome, homesick, often
frightened and superstitious
frontiersmen crowd the camp meeting benches.
The author interprets sparingly,
allowing the testimony of the camp
meeting opponent and exponent to create
the image without subjecting the
institution, the audience, or the
circuit preachers to psychoanalytic treatment.
Quotations from journals, diaries, newspapers, memoirs, and
letters of
traveling parsons, camp meeting
participants, and observers create a lively
picture of the camp meeting life-cycle,
drawn repeatedly on each new
frontier. This orphan institution of
uncertain origin, adopted by the Metho-
dists, experienced a squalling birth cry
and a lusty youth, followed by a
well-ordered maturity, a decline, and
eventual replacement by more modern
agencies, often bearing the name, but
little resembling the original.
Well organized, clearly written, this
book is sprinkled with novel illus-
trations and apt quotations, some
unfortunately buried among the notes.
Since high printing costs have
apparently forced publishers to adopt the
annoying practice of relegating notes to
the back of the book, it might have
been wise to have included more of the
evidence in the text.
In spite of careful editing, a few
relatively unimportant errors remain.
In one of the best chapters,
"Evangels of the Backwoods," the author
paints a faithful picture of the
frontier circuit riders, but attempts to make
Ohio's most famous circuiteer, James B.
Finley, even more colorful than
he was by granting him his brother's
accomplishments. It was John P.
Finley who was professor of languages at
Augusta College, Kentucky (p.
153). He also confuses the location of
the Granville Circuit, placing it in
both the "sparsely settled Michigan
Territory" and in its proper Ohio
setting (pp. 23, 139). Nevertheless, Mr.
Johnson has written an excellent
book, a distinct contribution to the
social and intellectual history of our
country.
Oberlin College PAUL H. BOASE
The Shingle Style: Architectural
Theory and Design from Richardson to
the Origins of Wright. By Vincent J. Scully, Jr. (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1955. [xvii]+181p.;
illustrations, bibliographical note,
and index. $6.50.)
This is not a book for a general reader.
It is, indeed, hardly a book for
any but a particularly specialized
reader: one interested in the details of an
architectural vogue which America
experienced during the years-Professor
BOOK REVIEWS 461
Scully could not be more specific-1872
to about 1889. The writing is
heavy with professionalized jargon:
"From the vertically boarded and bat-
tened cottages of the 40's and 50's to
the involved basketry of the houses
of the early 70's, primarily emphasis
was always given to structural and
visual multiplication of the framing
sticks." It is studded with academic
digressions. For the non-professional
interested, as the present reviewer is,
in the problem of an historical approach
which is receptive to any aspect
of American civilization which can throw
light on the whole of it, there
is a question how such a book can be
used, if at all, and by whom.
Professor Scully examines hundreds of
houses, and reviews the attitudes
and ideas of numerous architects whose
work went into the formulation of
the shingle style of wooden suburban and
resort buildings of the time.
Such publications as the American
Architect carried accounts of theoretic
approaches to current problems, and,
perhaps more important, published
the plans of relevant architectural
experiments and examples. It makes a
complicated tale. It must suffice that
several styles, notably the American
Colonial, English Queen Anne, and Japanese,
with a touch of Medieval
French, were introduced, by way of the
Philadelphia Centennial of
1876 and otherwise, to American
builders, notably Henry Handel Richard-
son, William Ralph Emerson, John Calvin
Stevens, Wilson Eyre, Bruce
Price, and the famous firm of McKim,
Mead, and White. They, and others,
proceeded to evolve a shingle style,
which, to Professor Scully, "moved more
and more toward cohesion and order in
design. It sought for basic forms,
for the essential elements of
architectural expression." By 1885, "a real
order was growing, not imposed by
codified canons but developing crea-
tively from a variety of spatial
experiments. Founded upon a sense of
materials, space, and creative
structural techniques which was essentially
inventive and original," Professor
Scully finds, the true dynamics of the
style carried over into the work which
Frank Lloyd Wright was beginning
to develop in the late 1880's.
Two points stand out for this reviewer.
One, the almost absolutely
monographic character of this work,
which provides no sense of the re-
lationship between the development of
the shingle style, in the period in-
dicated, and of other styles which the
field of architecture proliferated.
From this point of view one must use it
for such insights as it can offer
in and by itself. Thus, Professor Scully
suggests that governmental cor-
ruption in the 1870's may have turned
the architect's mind back to the
colonial age as representing "a
supposedly purer, certainly simpler, age";
and that the drive toward summer resorts
may have been a desire "to
escape spiritually from the
morass." Also: "The insistent suburban evoca-
462 THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
tion of a lost agrarian simplicity
remained a constant factor." Such analyses
help give a level of meaning to the
designs of architects and their patrons,
outside the areas of comfort and
ostentation.
More challenging is the fact that all
the private housing, and most of
the more civic building affected,
relates to the interests and affairs of a
relatively small section of the
population, the very wealthy elite. The volume
underscores how crucial it has been,
until very recent times, and still is,
in the formulation of artistic
standards, and of architecture more than of
other arts. Even to find elements of
Whitman's thought, for example, in
the work of such an architect as Louis
Sullivan, as such writers as Lewis
Mumford like to do, is no more than to
heighten our sense of the dif-
ferences which obtain in the life of the
poet, as compared with the life
of the typical architect.
To be sure, a cathedral belongs to
whoever may choose to pray within
its confines, and a bank to whoever can
afford to deposit money with it.
This line of thought did not seem to
many architects of the time involved
(nor does it seem, I think, to Professor
Scully) too profitable. "Thus far,"
wrote Dean Edgell of Harvard University
in The American Architecture
of Today (1928), "we have dwelt rather snobbishly with the
dwellings of
the well-to-do"; this, on page 149
of a 400-page book. He went on to
devote two pages of text to housing for
"people of humbler means."
Architecture is a reconciliation of
pictorial problems with space relations
as they affect the individuals using the
building. And yet, to the extent that
their concern was with a limited group
of individuals, after all, the out-
standing architects restricted the potentialities
of American architecture. One
can get some sense of how restricted
they were from a statement quoted by
Professor Scully, almost startling in
its democracy, which was set down in
1889 by the architects Stevens and Cobb:
This simple cottage at Island Point,
Vt., cost $2,300 complete. It exhibits
the most primitive elements of
architectural design. Such an authority as
James Ferguson, D.C.L., F.R.S., M.R.A.S., F.R.I.B.A.
[this is, I presume,
sarcasm], might classify it as a
specimen of "mere building," not archi-
tecture: but in our own terminology the word
"architecture" comprises in
its meaning even so primitive a
structure as this.
One departs from The Shingle Style with
a renewed sense of the in-
tentions of Louis Sullivan, and his
importance to the understanding of the
physical bases of our democracy. (I
write this while on a summer visit to
Roosevelt University, in Chicago, which
is housed in his famous Auditorium,
and with so much of his other work
immediately at hand.) One also sees
BOOK REVIEWS 463
better the problems involved in Frank
Lloyd Wright's theories and prac-
tice. Having sat and stood, and walked,
vicariously, thanks to Professor
Scully's craftsmanship, in numerous
private houses of grandeur and design,
one departs with a certain sense of
surfeit. For the knowledge and in-
vestigation involved, there is respect
and appreciation. As to the houses
proper, there is Thoreau to take into
account:
True, there are architects so called in
this country, and I have heard of
one at least possessed with the idea of
making architectural ornaments have
a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if
it were a revelation
to him. All very well perhaps from his point of view,
but only a little
better than the common dilettantism. A
sentimental reformer in architecture,
he began at the cornice, not at the
foundation.
Antioch College LOUIS FILLER
The American Frontier: Our Unique
Heritage. By Nelson Beecher Keyes.
(Garden City, N.Y.: Hanover House, 1954.
384p.; index. $3.50.)
The fascinating story of the American
frontier has been told and retold
many times. The incidents of this phase
of our history are a thousandfold
and will continue to furnish historians,
novelists, script writers, and others
with material for ages to come. Indeed,
it has been recently reported even
the Soviet press has found use, albeit
for propaganda purposes, for such
events of our frontier history as the
Sitting Bull-Custer affair.
The colorful frontier calls forth vivid
imagination which fills in details
that sometimes cannot otherwise be
furnished. The author makes it plain
that details of his "anecdotal
history" have been conjured up and em-
bellished whenever he felt it necessary.
"What follows," for example,
"while essentially fact, has had to
be decked in a bit of fancy with respect
to characters and incidents so it may
better tell a story which deserves to
be widely known" (p. 75). Such
controversial subjects as the Kensington
stone, with a detailed contemporary
contextual setting, are reported in a
straightforward manner without
authority, citation, or apology.
If the reader is not bothered by such
indiscretions on the part of the
author, nor disturbed by a carelessness
with truth which places many of
the stories recounted in the twilight
zone between fact and fiction, the
Keyes book will provide entertaining and
interesting reading for a few
hours. Although the appended forty-odd
pages of "Milestone Events
Having a Bearing on the American
Frontier" are somewhat more acceptable,
they seem to follow the precept,
"When in doubt, accept as true."
464 THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Included in The American Frontier are
dozens of tales of events and
adventurers. Across its pages pass Paul
Knutson, who led the Kensington
stone planting expedition in the
Minnesota area in mid-fourteenth century;
Black Beard, whose piracy terrorized the
Carolina coasts; Thomas Morton,
who scandalized the Plymouth fathers;
Benjamin Stokes and Edward Beach,
who borrowed the idea of the log cabin
from the Swedes; and many other
fictional and factual characters. The
coverage is very general, with a wide
selection of settings, characters,
dates, and episodes of American history
represented. The criterion for selection
appears to be "anecdotal" rather
than "frontier."
Keyes's introductory analysis of the
frontier is interesting to note. He
characterizes early footholds in the New
World as "European outposts,"
in which attempts to transplant Old
World manners, methods, and thought
were generally unsuccessful. From the
outset the survival of the fittest
environment of the American frontier
impartially culled out incompetents
and forced thought and attitude revision
on the part of the survivors. The
clash between civilization and savagery,
the efforts to tame a reluctant
wilderness, contests for possession of
the land, and the constant pursuit of
freedom were all factors, according to
Keyes, that bred "a race of men with
an inherent sense of democratic
ways" (p. 12). The two greatest con-
tributions of the frontier to the
formation of American character were "the
realistic schooling in
individualism" and "the willingness to co-operate for
group benefits." To Keyes the
frontier was "a long series of refiner's furnaces,
burning the dross from older cultures
and transmuting the remainder into
a bright new metal. ... It was in the
white heat of the frontier that
American character was patterned and
formed" (p. 12).
The author supports these ideas with
abundant evidence, but the presen-
tation of the evidence is not worthy of
the supporting role which it serves.
This is unfortunate.
Miami University DWIGHT L. SMITH
Amishland. By Kiehl and Christian Newswanger. (New York: Hastings
House, 1954. 128p.;
illustrations. $5.00.)
Folk Art Motifs of Pennsylvania. By Frances Lichten. (New York: Hastings
House, 1954. 96p.; illustrations.
$5.75.)
Amishland is a satisfying book, thoughtful, sensitive, and
beautifully
illustrated after original drawings by
the authors. The illustrations interpret
and expand the printed word and are as
fascinating as the text itself, which
BOOK REVIEWS 465
is simple, direct, rich in information,
and yet concentrated. The book can
be read in a session or two and when
laid aside leaves one saturated with
the life of the Amish people.
The title, Amishland, is well
chosen. The reader is made to feel how
the land has taken hold of a people. The
Amish, a Mennonite group, go
back to about 1693, when Jacob Ammon
broke away from the established
church. In the early eighteenth century
these Mennonites came to America
from Switzerland to settle on the rich
soil of Pennsylvania. Here, as farmers,
they followed their own precepts by
living according to the Golden Rule
and dedicating themselves to a practical
Christianity. Hard-working, God-
fearing, and conservative in manner and
dress, they have to this day retained
their own integrity. It has been
estimated that some 35,000 live today in
settlements in eighteen states and one
Canadian province, but the oldest
and wealthiest of these settlements is
in Lancaster County, the richest un-
irrigated farm land in the United
States.
The text gives in forty-four short
paragraphs a mosaic of Amish life
as it appears to the sympathetic
authors, who are of the same Germanic
stock. They relate what the observing eye
and the helping hand have found
out about their next-door neighbor. We
are told about the children in
school, the tasks engaged in by an Amish
carpenter, how Katie Stoltzfus
bakes bread, and how carpets are woven
for home consumption; and we
are introduced to crafts like
horseshoeing and carriage making. But the
larger part of the text is given over to
the seasonal tasks and daily chores
of the farmer, who sows and hoes corn,
spears and strips tobacco, digs
potatoes, picks peaches, threshes,
milks, and chops wood. We hear of a
quilting bee, a cow sale, and a shopping
trip to New Holland. In between
these major occupations there are
charming miniatures of children playing
by the meadow stream and incidents of
courtings and weddings. No aspect
of the Amish farmer, at work and at
play, has been forgotten; all is told
simply and intimately. The reader makes
his own observations and only
occasionally the artist-writer gives
himself away by reminding us of visions
of Gothic cathedrals and Rembrandt etchings
that come to him suggested
by the sights about him.
The illustrations are important in their
own right. Many of them are
as attractive as drawings as they are
revealing of the life they interpret.
A thin-line style is used for landscape
and interior scenes, always char-
acteristic of things Amish. A thick-line
manner interprets bearded married
men, shy-looking women, or the
grandfather holding his grandchild. A
rugged simplicity has been happily fused
with refinement, thus paralleling
what seems basic in the Amish character.
466 THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
The reading of Amishland should
constitute an event in the experiences
of many people. It is hard to see why
such a book should not have a wide
distribution. We can imagine it
translated and sold abroad to let the world
know that here is a living demonstration
of our vast heritage of freedom.
The other volume, by Frances Lichten,
well known as an artist and writer
on American folk art, is of the same
large format of approximately ten by
twelve inches. The author is
particularly identified with the folk art of her
native Pennsylvania. She is not only a
competent artist and a conscientious
researcher but also writes with
freshness and originality.
The story of Pennsylvania Dutch art is
told in parallel columns of text
and illustrations. Instead of
modernizing her illustrative material, the author
adheres to the style of the originals
and thereby retains their folk art flavor.
Sources of motifs are indicated page by
page. The tulip, heart, pomegranate,
bird, urn, and floral and
conventionalized designs are discussed, analyzed,
and reproduced individually. This is
followed by a discussion of the historic
background, which gives the human side
of the art, how it came about and
what it derived from; at times fallacies
and misconceptions are pointed out.
The reproductions are large and
beautifully related to the text; they are a
source book of motifs for artists and
craftsmen. The book concludes with
practical hints to the beginner who may
have occasion to enlarge and
transfer designs.
Both volumes are the result of the happy
integration of writer and
creative artist, and they combine
literary qualities with the creative achieve-
ments of the artist for the benefit of a
wider public.
National Gallery of Art ERWIN O. CHRISTENSEN
Culture on the Moving Frontier. By Louis B. Wright. (Bloomington: In-
diana University Press, 1955. 273p.;
notes and index. $3.50.)
The six chapters of Mr. Wright's book
were delivered as Patten Foun-
dation lectures at Indiana University in
the spring of 1953. In his first
four chapters Mr. Wright discusses
civilizing influences on successive stages
of the frontier from the Atlantic
seaboard in the seventeenth century, through
the Kentucky borderland and the country
north of the Ohio in the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries, to the Pacific coast, specifically
California of the Gold Rush, in the
mid-nineteenth century. The remaining
two chapters are concerned with
spiritual and secular agencies of civilization,
particularly the Protestant churches,
the schools, and the newspaper and
book press.
BOOK REVIEWS 467
It is Mr. Wright's belief that while
much has been said about the
diversity of the American scene, too
little recognition has been given the
essential homogeneity of American
society, a homogeneity within the
Anglo-Saxon tradition "of English
law, the English language, English
literature, and British religion and
customs." Within his selected frontier
areas, he calls attention to traditions
of order rather than violence; and,
in contrast to the nativist implications
of the Turner thesis, he stresses a
humanist tradition of peculiarly English
culture transmitted and disseminated
by a composite frontier elite, which he
terms "the better element."
One advantage of the lecture is that it
permits a broad view of a broad
subject. Mr. Wright is able to discuss
the nineteenth-century doctrine of
manifest destiny as a later example of
the same kind of assurance that
sustained the English Puritans of the
seventeenth century in their attempt
to establish a New Canaan in the
American wilderness. He acknowledges
the widespread cultural influence of the
many Protestant sects that prose-
lytized the West during the nineteenth
century, and he discusses educational
institutions and the press as potent
civilizing forces. In the McGuffey readers,
for example, which sold 122,000,000
copies between 1836 and the end of
the century, Mr. Wright recognizes an
instrument for cultural uniformity
which helped "to remodel the sons
and daughters of immigrants from
foreign lands into our inherited
Anglo-Saxon pattern."
This reader, however, must question Mr.
Wright's tendency to equate
the pattern of life which developed in
this country with that of England
and to explain American expression so
largely by reference to traditions
which influenced it. That Benjamin
Franklin formed his literary style upon
the English Spectator is an
interesting documented fact; yet Franklin's
language is American and not British
English, and one must look beyond
the Spectator for an explanation
of the qualities that distinguish it as
American expression.
Moreover, although culture is the
key word of Mr. Wright's title, the
lectures do not properly distinguish
between culture in the sense of the
Anglo-Saxon tradition that our "better
element" self-consciously sought
to propagate and culture as the
complex and organic structure of the ways
of life of American society at large as
this system developed from diverse
sources under unique conditions. Where
the arts are concerned, for example,
it might be argued that more often than
not it is the popular and spon-
taneous elements in a society, rather
than the cultivated and self-conscious,
that contribute most to distinctive
expression. Modern American writers,
as Hemingway has noted, are deeply
indebted to Mark Twain for his de-
468 THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
velopment of a wonderfully plastic
medium from the dialect speech of
illiterate and semi-illiterate
frontiersmen. In American music, jazz, an ex-
pression of degraded and rejected
elements in our society, is perhaps our
most vital tradition, as even Newport
has come to recognize. The Anglo-
Saxon tradition with which Mr. Wright is
concerned is an extremely im-
portant given for the development
of American culture-and the emphasis
of his lectures is a welcome reminder of
this fact-but this tradition cannot
adequately explain that culture.
Syracuse University WALTER SUTTON
William Lloyd Garrison and the
Humanitarian Reformers. By Russel B.
Nye. The Library of American Biography,
edited by Oscar Handlin.
(Boston: Little, Brown and Company,
1955. 215p.; note on sources and
index. $3.00.)
The author of this book, who is head of
the English department at
Michigan State University, appears to
have done a great deal of research,
especially into the files of the Liberator,
Garrison's personal paper in op-
position to slavery, which he guided for
a generation. The absence of
footnotes reduces its value for historians,
while the "Note on the Sources"
does not mention the Liberator or
other similar sources. It does list an
unpublished dissertation at his own
college, A Study of American Antislavery
Journals. The mention in the
"Note" of Gilbert Barnes's The Antislavery
Impulse, 1830-1844 as a "plausible though perhaps over-balanced re-
evaluation of Garrison and Weld" is
intriguing, but this reviewer wonders
what an "over-balanced
re-evaluation" is.
Professor Nye points out many of
Garrison's inconsistencies; and he shows
how he frequently muddied the waters of
abolitionism. His intolerance of
any view other than his own is amply
demonstrated by quotations from the
Liberator. He spent a great deal of time and energy quarreling
with other
abolitionists who were in favor of
political action; and he denounced clergy-
men as "the deadliest enemies of
marriage [and] . . . the Bible," "a
brotherhood of thieves," who were
"the haughty, corrupt, implacable, and
pious foes of the antislavery movement"
(p. 136). While Garrison had a
legion of enemies both in the North and
in the South, he had a band of
devoted followers; many of them showed
the same devotion ascribed to
the marshals of Napoleon, and the same
willingness to change positions
shown by the faithful in following the
gyrations of the "party line" today.
Garrison had a hand in ending the
silence on the slavery question as well
as helping to prevent any solution of
the question which was not a bloody
BOOK REVIEWS 469
one. While Garrison had frequently
thundered against political action,
once the Civil War started he completely
reversed himself on this question.
Possibly this may explain why his
countrymen of succeeding generations
have been so kind to Garrison-he
supported the war president in all his
actions throughout the war. Two of
Garrison's lifelong interests down to
1860 had been opposition to political
action, and to the support of non-
resistance. Now he completely reversed
himself on each.
There are some points in the book which
one might question. We read
on page 37 that the Declaration of
Independence "guaranteed" every man
the right to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness; and on page 89
that "the national government . . .
had authority to end slavery in any state
by Federal law." This latter
statement surely implies that the thirteenth
amendment was unnecessary. The
discussion of the Compromise of 1850 is
carelessly written (pp. 152-153). After
naming seven members of the con-
gress at that time (viz., Clay, Calhoun,
Webster, Douglas, Jefferson Davis,
Seward, and Stephens) there follows this
statement: "Their hope was to
find a compromise for the highly charged
question of whether slavery
should be allowed to expand, or whether
it should be contained within the
South." Calhoun's speech in the
senate on the Clay proposals indicated that
he did not want to find a compromise;
and it is to be doubted if either
Seward or Davis had that hope. In a
discussion of a meeting of the Ameri-
can Antislavery Society in May 1850,
there is the statement, "Abolitionists
were angry, and the Compromise of 1850
held the center of attention."
At this time Clay's resolutions were before
congress, but they had not been
passed, and there was no hope in sight
that they would become law. The
"Compromise of 1850" came into
being after the death of President Taylor
when some of Clay's resolutions were
passed (some were reworded) and
signed by the new president, Fillmore.
In a previous paragraph of the same
page (153) there is the statement that
"most of Clay's suggestions were
incorporated in another bill, passed,
and signed by Fillmore into law."
Here the reviewer feels that the
historian editor of this series should have
corrected the errors of fact made by the
English professor author. Several
of Clay's resolutions were passed, but
not all on the same day, or even the
same week, or same month. Afterward they
were called, collectively, the
Compromise of 1850. The reference in the
title to the "Humanitarian
Reformers" leads one to expect more
than an incidental discussion of those
reformers.
The work is valuable, despite its
careless spots. It does give an accurate
picture of Garrison. It adds,
perceptibly, to the literature on the antislavery
movement. It does remind us that the
nineteenth century had many re-
470 THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
formers, actuated by moral urges; that
the reform movements of the nine-
teenth century covered a great many
areas; and that some Americans were
trying desperately to create a better
society.
Hiram College PAUL I. MILLER
Booth Tarkington: Gentleman from
Indiana. By James Woodress. (Phila-
delphia and New York: J. B. Lippincott
Company, 1955. 350p.; illus-
trations, bibliography, and index.
$5.00.)
As the first full-length
"official" biography of Booth Tarkington this
book will be a valuable new source in
American studies. As a critical
analysis of Tarkington's fiction it is
less useful, however, because Mr.
Woodress is determined (or possibly
obliged) to be invariably admiring of
the Hoosier as a man and artist. But the
book is primarily biography, not
criticism, and happily it is both a
sound piece of history and an appealing,
readable story.
Illustrated by a score of photographs
and by his engaging self-caricatures,
the opening chapters richly detail
Tarkington's Penrod-like boyhood in the
Indianapolis of the 1870's, his
schooling at Phillips Exeter, Purdue, and
Princeton, and his return to Indianapolis
and to five painful apprentice
years of turning out unsaleable
manuscripts. Finally in 1899 McClure ac-
cepted The Gentleman from Indiana, and
Tarkington, instantly "the most
famous young man in America," began
his long, popular, and extremely
saleable career. Besides chronicling his
marriages and family fortunes, his
career as a state representative, his
princely travels, his labors in the theater,
and other external affairs of his
industrious, comfortable life, Mr. Woodress
sensitively recovers much revealing
personal Tarkingtoniana-his collegiate
reputation, his taste in jokes, dogs,
houses, or art, his manner with women,
his opinion of the New Deal, his late
blindness, and his worth as a human
being-and it often illuminates
Tarkington the novelist.
Because his importance is chiefly
literary, Tarkington's biography rightly
deals much with his methods of work, his
maturing craftsmanship, his
esthetic theory, and his critical
repute. The book smoothly does a double
job: it tells Tarkington's own history,
but periodically stops to analyze his
writings. It deals individually with
more than sixty fictions and a score
of plays, spanning sixty years, from
adolescent pieces of the early 1880's
up to Tarkington's death in 1946.
Professor Woodress, a specialist in
American literature of that period,
finds Tarkington's "major phase" to have
been the decade 1914-1924, when he wrote
The Turmoil, The Magnificent
BOOK REVIEWS 471
Ambersons, Alice Adams, and The Midlander, and he considers Alice
Adams
to be the best single work.
As his twenty-four-page
"bibliographical postscript" attests, Mr. Woodress
has patiently reconstructed Tarkington's
record from a multitude of sources,
chief among them being the large
collection of the novelist's correspondence
and papers given to Princeton by Mrs.
Tarkington in 1951, to which Mr.
Woodress had first access. But it is
debatable whether a conscientious
bibliography justifies the absence of
footnotes. While the general reader
is freed from their nagging, the serious
student is frustrated by the scarcity
of dates in the text and by the
difficulty of learning the source of many an
assertion or quotation. And finally,
granting Tarkington's large talent and
achievement as a social historian, there
remains very good basis for the
serious critic's disappointment in him,
and this sympathetic biography would
be a sounder chapter in our literary
history if it were frank and explicit
about the Hoosier's artistic
shortcomings.
University of Illinois (Chicago)
JAMES B. STRONKS
Wisconsin Heritage. By Bertha Kitchell Whyte. (Boston: Charles T. Bran-
ford Company, 1954. 327p.;
illustrations, selected bibliography, and index.
$6.50.)
In her brief preface the author quotes
Professor Carl Russell Fish as
once having said, "Only by a study
of local history can we hope really to
understand the development of human
society." To this she adds: "Adhering
to that theory, I have, for many years,
been interested in collectors' items
large and small which are fast
disappearing from the Wisconsin scene.
Yet a review of such memorabilia can
give a broad outline of the back-
ground of the state, a backward glance
at the home-spun period of our
history and at some of the charming or
useful things which gave color and
interest to the lives of our pioneer
grandfathers."
Having here stated her thesis, Mrs.
Whyte proceeds in the first three
words of her initial chapter to refer to
her work as "a collector's notebook."
It is exactly that. Consisting of random
jottings on antique pieces, personal
reminiscences, short biographical
sketches (seemingly for nearly every person
she mentions), lengthy quotations, and a
host of illustrations of the items
she is describing, her
"notebook" is obviously primarily antiquarian rather
than historical in nature. In an effort
to give a degree of coordination to
the whole, the author has divided her
work into sixteen chapters, the
headings of which quite aptly summarize
the nature of the contents: "Early
472 THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Taverns in Wisconsin"; "Wade
House at Greenbush, Wisconsin"; "Old
Gristmills"; "Old Sawmills,
Windmills, and Other Mills"; "Cobblestone
Houses"; "Old Miners' Houses
at Mineral Point"; "Octagonal Houses and
Barns in Wisconsin"; "Covered
Bridges"; "Wisconsin Lumber Era"; "Quaint
Gravestones and Historic Markers";
"Shop Signs and Store Fronts"; "Old
Wrought Iron and Cast Iron";
"Wisconsin Potteries and Glass Works";
"Norwegian Heirlooms in
Wisconsin"; "Ralph Warner and Cooksville";
and "The Disappearing Horse."
There may be some explanation for this
sequence. If so, it is not readily
apparent to this reviewer. Nor is it ex-
plained why Norwegian heirlooms are
considered to the exclusion of those
of German, Irish, Swedish, English, or
other national origin.
Mrs. Whyte's antiquarian interests run
the gamut from cigar store Indians
to barber poles, from genealogical
charts to old beer bottles, from epitaphs
on tombstones to old-fashioned waffle
irons, from cast-iron stoves to old
logging tools. While for the most part
the great majority of the items she
describes are Wisconsin products, on
occasion her collector's interest runs
away with her and she permits products
of "foreign" origin to creep into
the pages of her "Wisconsin
Heritage." For example, she devotes four
paragraphs to penny banks (though
admitting that none were manufactured
in Wisconsin) (p. 219), and allots no
less than one full page to pictures
of a particularly choice penny bank in
her own private collection!
Fortunately for the historian there are
a number of admirable features
to be found in the book. The chapter on
the "Wisconsin Lumber Era" is
an excellent treatment of that subject.
The five-page glossary of logging
terms in vogue in this era is
invaluable. The chapters on early taverns,
gristmills, and potteries and glass
works contain much significant material
for students of American social and
economic history.
All readers will delight in the plethora
of fine pictures, illustrations, and
diagrams, and in the frequent evidences
of the wit and humor of the author.
Kent State University PHILLIP R. SHRIVER
Our Yankee Heritage: New England's
Contribution to American Civilization.
By Carleton Beals. (New York: David
McKay Company, 1955. 311p.; end
paper map. $4.00.)
Carleton Beals has indeed an honored
place in American letters as a
producer of colorful works on Latin
America, based on first-hand experience
and information. His most recent book, Our
Yankee Heritage, is a product
of his recently aroused interest in his
present home of Connecticut.
BOOK REVIEWS 473
Beals presents the contributions of the
Yankee, chiefly the Connecticut
Yankee, to the American way through a
series of biographical sketches of
prominent political, intellectual, and
industrial figures. Many of these
sketches are exceptionally readable and
effective, such as those of Thomas
Hooker of New Haven; Roger Sherman,
"the one man in America who
had helped shape and who had signed
every great document of war and
independence, of peace and government,
from the first days of the First
Continental Congress"; President
Ezra Stiles of Yale, the "first Perfectionist";
Captain Robert Gray, whose exploits in
the Pacific Northwest are alive with
color; and most especially of Roger
Williams and Emerson, the "Golden
Harvest" of New England.
The minor errors which mar the work
throughout seem to be largely the
result of inadequate proofreading, as
witness: The Thirty-Nine Articles
become the Thirty-Seven Articles (p.
33); one hundred weight becomes one
hundred eight (p. 102); Loudoun becomes
Loudon (p. 118); James Otis
finds himself John (p. 125); Manasseh
Cutler's Christian name is spelled
Manassah (p. 115); and General William
Tryon becomes Tyron not once
but four times, on pages 191 and 193. A
tenet is a tent (p. 182); the
rubber tree is labeled Hevia
brasilensis instead of Hevea brasiliensis (p.
258); and the fugitive slave law is set
in 1854, with Webster pushing its
passage two years after his death. Most
phenomenal is the feat of the sloop
Lady Washington, which rounded Cape Horn and later crossed the Pacific
at nine tons burden (p. 209). An
odd paragraph appears on page 120
relating events of 1664 as if they
occurred in 1764.
There are numerous questionable
statements. General Gage is described
as a "heavy handed militarist"
(p. 132); there were no blue laws in New
Haven (p. 83); England was destroying
American democracy in order to
prevent New World industry and control
all its trade (p. 131); and from
1766 "all trade to and from Europe
and the colonies would have to pass
through British ports" (p. 125).
All western land claims are impliedly
ceded by 1781 (p. 159); the
"Federal" government was "afraid to put arms
back into the hands of the
veterans" during Shays' Rebellion (p. 162);
Arianism and other doctrines are
dismissed as "balderdash" (p. 179); and
American shipping prior to the
Revolution is dismissed as "limited largely
to coastal trade" (p. 227).
Beals's interpretation of the uprising
against English authority, presented
in the chapters on the Sons of Liberty
and on Robert Sherman, should please
the most chauvinistic and arouse once
more the specters of Perfidious Albion
and of George Bancroft. On this subject
a serious question might arise as to
474 THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
whether Beals should have strayed from
his Latin American interests. Still,
the book may serve for popular
consumption as excellent propaganda for
certain embattled American verities.
Beals uses his biographies to support
his conclusions that the Yankee heritage
is one of majority rule, free enter-
prise, religious toleration, civil
liberties, ingenuity, free public education,
mass production leading to a higher
standard of living for all, faith in the
individual, and a belief in "our
freedoms and our progress under peace and
law." This heritage should protect
us against "the latest breed of demagogues
who have tried to set aside long-tested
individual and democratic rights,
who have substituted trickery and false
slogans for the habits of fair play
and justice."
Bowling Green State University VIRGINIA B.
PLATT
History of Nebraska. By James C. Olson. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1955. xii+372p.; illustrations,
selected readings, and index. $5.00.)
All historically minded persons in the
United States are well aware of
the Kansas-Nebraska act of 1854, which
established the new territories of
Kansas and Nebraska and set in operation
a chain of circumstances cul-
minating in the Civil War. Emphasis,
however, has not always been given
to the fact that, after the sectional
bitterness and the bloody conflict had
passed, two of the great states of the
Middle West, Kansas (1861) and
Nebraska (1867), had emerged as a sequel
to the act of 1854. Nebraska
as a state, of course, comprised only
slightly more than a fifth of the area
included in Nebraska Territory.
The volume here reviewed is a fitting
scholarly contribution to a recog-
nition of the centennial of Nebraska's
establishment as a territory. The
author, Dr. James C. Olson, is well
equipped for this exacting undertaking
in the field of historical writing.
Superintendent of the Nebraska State
Historical Society and associate
professor at the University of Nebraska, he
is the author of various articles in
historical journals and of a biography of
J. Sterling Morton (Lincoln, 1942), a powerful Democratic figure in nine-
teenth century Nebraska and the founder
of Arbor Day.
The book "is the first
comprehensive and authoritative history of the
state for adult readers, and the first
one-volume history by a professional
historian." A definite balance has
been attained in the attention devoted to
the geographical background, Indian
culture, early explorations, and the
beginnings of settlement, on the one
hand, and more recent political,
BOOK REVIEWS 475
economic, and cultural factors on the
other. Eleven of the twenty-seven
chapters deal largely with the period
prior to the establishment of statehood.
The present reviewer fully comprehends
the author's regret "that much
of the basic research upon which sound
synthesis must be based still re-
mains to be done" in Nebraska state
history, as in that of many other
states (Preface, ix). Doubtless this is
a factor in the lack of emphasis on
the history of the last thirty-five years,
although this period receives con-
scientious attention.
The author does not refrain from making
incisive judgments when such
are called for, and the weaknesses and
the occasional corrupt dealings, as
well as the virtues, of Nebraska leaders
are indicated. Cultural factors are
given due consideration and are properly
related to the agricultural basis
of the state's economy. Dr. Olson has
emphasized this agrarian foundation
of Nebraskan life, for Grand Island, the
third largest city-after Omaha
and Lincoln-in 1950 had only 22,682
inhabitants.
The illustrations are well chosen and
are admirably clear. The volume
seems to be remarkably free from errors,
though a cross reference to page
261 on that very page and a mention of
La Follette's "success" (p. 303)
rather than his substantial vote in the
presidential election of 1924 in
Nebraska might be corrected in a later
edition.
The book will be a helpful aid to
Nebraskans who wish to learn ob-
jectively about their state's past. It
is also a significant contribution to the
intelligent reader's knowledge of an
important state. Even for scholars it
may clarify many details of regional
history.
Ohio State University FRANCIS P. WEISENBURGER
The Web of Victory, Grant at
Vicksburg. By Earl Schenck Miers. (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955.
xiv+320+xiip.; bibliography, notes on
sources, and index. $5.00.)
Earl Schenck Miers, whose earlier
volume, The General Who Marched
to Hell, traced in vivid fashion Sherman's campaign through
Georgia and
South Carolina, has here set himself the
task of retelling in full detail the
story of the Vicksburg campaign. But
further, he has endeavored to show
the evolution of Ulysses S. Grant as a
"man of success," as the general for
whom President Lincoln had been
searching for so many futile, bloody
months after the guns had boomed over
Charleston harbor in April 1861.
The story of Vicksburg's capture,
covering the first seven months of
476 THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
1863, is told colorfully and skillfully
in three major sections. Part One
pictures Grant in the days of
preparation for the closing of the ring on
Vicksburg. In striking detail there
flash across the pages the problems of
river transportation on the Mississippi,
the Yazoo, and adjacent bayous, the
difficulties of approach, and the human
complications caused by such am-
bitious, troublesome officers as General
John A. McClernand, whose bride
accompanied the expedition. But in prime
focus stands the stubby, slightly
stooped, 135-pound figure of Grant, of
whom one soldier protested, "Hell,
he's no general," while another
remarked, "That fellow don't look like he
had the ability to command a regiment,
much less an army."
But the soldiers' opinions would change
under the dazzling rapidity with
which Grant maneuvered his troops south
and east of Vicksburg, slashing
across Mississippi, winning a succession
of triumphs at Port Gibson, Ray-
mond, Jackson, Champion's Hill, and
Black River Bridge that would carry
the Union forces to the outskirts of
Vicksburg. Part Two, which Miers
catchily entitles "The Moth and the
Flame," covers these developments.
The final section carries the story
through the forty-seven days of the siege
of the city. The full impact of almost
constant bombardment on the city's
inhabitants, the dwindling supplies and
the resulting privations, the spec-
tacular blowing up of Fort Hill, the
ultimate realization that no help was
coming from General Joseph E. Johnston,
and the final desperate ac-
ceptance of surrender by a dazed and
grudging General John C. Pemberton-
all come to life under the deft touches
of Miers' pen.
In the preparation of this volume the
author has combed the pertinent
manuscript sources, notably an
unpublished biography of McClernand and
reporter Sylvanus Cadwallader's
"Four Years with Grant" in the Illinois
State Historical Library. The latter
produced a full-dress account of Grant's
uproarious drunk during his personal
excursion to Sartartia, the disastrous
effects of which were warded off by
Cadwallader, who had to play the role
usually assumed by the devoted, watchful
General John A. Rawlins. Miers
has also used judiciously the
appropriate contemporary newspapers and
periodicals and of course the
indispensable Official Records, plus other pub-
lished works, especially William T.
Sherman's and Charles A. Dana's
memoirs.
What emerges here is a brilliant account
of the Vicksburg campaign, well
told, giving full treatment of Grant's
military skill. The volume fully de-
serves its selection by the History Book
Club, as well as the attention of
the historian and the general reader.
Oberlin College DAVID LINDSEY
BOOK REVIEWS 477
Eventful Years and Experiences:
Studies in Nineteenth Century American
Jewish History. By Bertram Wallace Korn. (Cincinnati: American Jewish
Archives, 1954. ix+249p.; index. $4.00.)
Interest in and knowledge of American
history as a whole can be greatly
sharpened and enriched by a study of the
history of a single strand. The
story of the Jews in America, or of
probably any other immigrant group
for that matter, illuminates the pattern
of our national story to a degree
that is often very rewarding.
We have in the book under review a
collection of eight papers dealing
with aspects of the history of the Jews
in the United States, largely in the
middle years of the nineteenth century,
but telling no connected story. The
work will appeal most to the specialist,
but a non-specialist, particularly
if he is a Gentile, will gain from it
helpful insights into aspects of our
nation's history.
In the paper, "American Jewish Life
in 1849," the needs that the Jews
had to meet before a nation-wide
American Jewish community could
emerge are set forth. Summarized, they
boil down to what the author calls
"lines of communication," that
is, a press that would reach a majority of
the Jews, an "effective
organizational union of American Jewish congre-
gations," trained leadership
(properly educated rabbis) on the local level,
and development of a Jewish educational
system, including textbooks and
teachers. The similarity between the
needs of the Jews at the mid-point
of the last century and the needs of
other immigrant groups at corre-
sponding periods in their respective
developments is clear.
The opening essay, "Jewish
'Forty-Eighters' in America," after defining
the term "Forty-Eighters" to
mean persons who felt compelled to leave
Europe because of their personal
participation in the revolutions, declares
that only forty Jews of that description
have come to light after exhaustive
research. Probably because of the
brilliance of a few outstanding members
of this group, the author seems to
think, the Jewish "Forty-Eighters" as a
whole have received more prominence than
they deserve.
Another study, "The Know-Nothing
Movement and the Jews," shows
that movement to have been as little
concerned with the Jews as the latter
were with it. The reasons for these
attitudes are fairly obvious in view of
the numerical unimportance of the Jews
in the United States at that time
and their natural resentment at
prejudice. Strangely enough, the Civil War
a decade later saw the growth of no
little anti-Semitism.
Other studies show the difficulties that
led to the demise of the first
rabbinical seminary; the steps leading
to the first time the opening prayer
478 THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
in congress was delivered by a rabbi;
Judah P. Benjamin's indifference to
his Jewish heritage; the editorial
policy in respect to the Civil War of
Isaac Mayer Wise, the great
rabbi-journalist of Cincinnati, and finally,
the rather meager response the Jews gave
to the sectarian needs of the
four thousand or more Jewish servicemen
in the Spanish-American War.
Ohioana Library WALTER RUMSEY MARVIN
Mr. Dooley: Now and Forever. Created by Finley Peter Dunne; selected,
with introduction and commentary, by
Louis Filler. American Culture
and Economics Series, No. 4. (Stanford,
Calif.: Academic Reprints, 1954.
xviii+299p.; illustrations. $3.75.)
In the period from 1893 to 1926, Finley
Peter Dunne wrote over seven
hundred dialect essays in which
"Mr. Dooley" set forth his philosophy
over the bar of his saloon on Archer
Avenue in Chicago to various un-
offending customers, principally
"Mr. Hennessy." They are important be-
cause it seems probable that no single
American writer ever exercised as
much political power as Dunne did for a
few years through these popular
essays. Of these essays about one-third
were later gathered together and
published in book form. These for the
most part represent the best of the
essays, although there are some
exceptions. Professor Louis Filler has
selected forty-one of these from the
books and added introductory notes
that recall the incidents discussed, so
that the contemporary references in
the essays are clear to the reader.
The greatest disappointment in the
collection is the failure to go outside
of the books and select from some of the
essays not republished in that
form. It would add greatly to the value
of the group if it included a sample
from those published after 1910,
especially the series published in Liberty
in 1926.
The book is manufactured by
reproductions from the exact page of the
original book so that many of the essays
are in different type and make-up
from the others. Presumably this cuts
the cost of manufacture and makes
possible reprints that otherwise would
not be published.
University of Missouri * ELMER ELLIS
Gilbert Stuart. By James Thomas Flexner. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1955. 192p.; bibliography and index.
$2.50.)
There are few Americans who have not
tasted the essence of liberty and
free government through the Gilbert
Stuart portrait of George Washington
BOOK REVIEWS 479
which hangs in many of the school rooms
of America. How the irre-
sponsible, spendthrift, and dissipative
Stuart could portray such a splendid
character likeness of the first patriot
of our country is intelligently and
effectively related in James Flexner's
brief book on the life of Gilbert Stuart.
Flexner ably traces in his amusing
fashion the early poverty-stricken life
of Stuart; how Dr. William Hunter, the
leading physician of Newport,
Rhode Island, was instrumental in
starting Gilbert Stuart, at a very early
age, on a career of portraiture that was
eventually to bring him fame and
fortune, the latter to be squandered in
a hopeless and chaotic fashion.
He follows him through his eventful
relationship with the Pennsylvania-
born artist Benjamin West in London, and
shows how Stuart at forty years
of age secured the long-awaited
opportunity of painting the renowned
Washington. So sure was he of himself by
this time that he boasted he
could "make a fortune by Washington
alone."
Stuart's chief interest was portrait
painting, and portrait likenesses he did
with remarkable skill. Beyond this
scope, he was mediocre. A contemporary
critic wrote that he "seldom fails
of a likeness, but wants freedom of pencil
and elegance of taste"; another
praised him for "a tolerable likeness of
the face," but when it came to the
figure "he could not go below the fifth
button."
This small but compact volume is highly
recommended for the reader
who enjoys a greater insight into the
background of well-known artists.
Ohio Historical Society DARD HUNTER, JR.
Book Reviews
Forgotten Hero: General James B.
McPherson; the Biography of a Civil War
General. By Elizabeth J. Whaley. (New York: Exposition Press,
1955.
203p.; appendix, bibliography, and
index. $3.50.)
In view of the avid, continuing
absorption of Americans in their own
Civil War and its leading figures, it is
indeed curious that James Birdseye
McPherson has not attracted a
substantial biographer before now. Certainly
he had many attractions about him and
much to admire--a brilliant mind
(standing first in his West Point
class); a master technician (having helped
build the defense works in San Francisco
harbor and having aided Grant
engineer Vicksburg's surrender); and a
lovable, gentle personality (his
fellow officers and his soldiers spoke
only kind words of him, even before
his death). But perhaps the fact that he
died young (at thirty-six, before
his full promise had been realized) and
that his papers are scanty has
tended to discourage the prospective
biographer.
At any rate, Mrs. Elizabeth J. Whaley,
vice president of the Clyde (Ohio)
Library Board, has attempted to fill the
void. Commissioned by the Clyde
Library Board in 1941 to prepare
McPherson's biography, she has worked
at the assignment over the past fourteen
years.
The story carries McPherson from his
birth near Clyde in 1828 to his
sudden death during the battle for
Atlanta in 1864. Son of pioneer parents,
who migrated to northern Ohio from
upstate New York in the 1820's,
James McPherson experienced the usual
farm boy's upbringing. Showing
promise in school and at his store job,
he won an appointment to West
Point, where he graduated at the top of
the class of 1853. There followed
a year of teaching mathematics at the
military academy and then assign-
ments with the corps of engineers, first
at New York, where he served with
William T. Sherman, then at San
Francisco, where his task was strengthening
the Alcatraz Island fortifications. It
was here in the Golden Gate country,
still basking in the flush of the gold
rush, that McPherson enjoyed life to
456