Ohio History Journal

Book Reviews

 

 

 

Wilderness For Sale: The Story of the First Western Land Rush. By Walter

Havighurst. (New York: Hastings House, 1956. xii??372p.; end paper

maps, abridged bibliography, and index. $4.50.)

Mr. Havighurst, who has already given us Upper Mississippi, Land of

Promise, and other studies of the old Northwest, now adds a sparkling new

volume to his series. It is a timely and welcome book.

"The old America seems to be breaking up and moving West," said Morris

Birbeck, an English emigrant, in the year 1817. His observation gives us the

perspective in which to enjoy another dimension of this old, yet always new,

chapter of our history.

For the same view, or sense of rapid change, has been true in every decade

of our swift national growth as we have swept on from the Atlantic seaboard

to the West. We get dulled by this constant onward surge and lose our sense

of close and dependent connection with our past and our inheritance. It is a

long flight from our present preoccupation with transcontinental multi-billion

superhighway programs, the federal income tax, and air bases for atomic

bombs in the Arctic and on Subic Bay to the flatboats and oxcarts heading

into the Ohio wilderness of only some four generations ago.

The heroic vigor of this pioneering past unfolds with colorful drama under

the vivid and sensitive direction of one of our finest writers.

In its broad outline, Wilderness for Sale is the story of the acquisition of

the Northwest Territory from the Indians, and the survey, sale, and settlement

of the lands north of the Ohio and around the Great Lakes from 1795 to

1840. In detail it is the procession of stalwart and adventurous men who

moved West, laid big plans, fought the battles, cleared and cultivated the

land.

Here are Burr and Blennerhassett, Johnny Appleseed and Ann Bailey,

Lorenzo Dow and Nathaniel Massie, Wayne and St. Clair, all with blood

in their veins, driving into the wilderness for sale with a sense of destiny.

Hardship of a frontier was their lot, but they embraced it and wasted no

force on alternatives.

It is the feeling of reliving a great past that gives this book its life and

its value. The story of the negotiations with the Indians at Fort Greene Ville

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has been often told and the facts recorded. Mr. Havighurst adds a vivid touch

of warm and human re-creation of the scene itself and the men assembled

there: a glimpse of Robert McClellan, one of Wayne's scouts on the parade

ground, "one of the most athletic and active men that ever appeared on this

globe," leaping over a standing horse or a canvas-arched wagon to the

astonishment and despair of the Indian warriors.

Beside these athletic games stand the heroic and tragic figures of Tecumseh

and his twin brother, the one-eyed, hypnotic Prophet, one the statesman, the

other the religious evangelist, trying to alert their people to the dangers con-

fronting them and of their chance to stand as an Indian empire. And always,

Wayne or Harrison or Rogers to carry on the white rush into the wilderness.

This brief etching of Tecumseh is worthy of high praise.

Before the conquered lands could be possessed, they had to be surveyed.

Among the great and unsung heroes of our frontier era were the surveyors.

These men tramped the woods and swamps, endured every possible hardship,

and ran the lines which set the boundaries of the wilderness to be sold. On

their courses and distances rested the security of title in the land office deeds.

The author does well by these men.

The treatment of Harrison is admirable and relatively spacious. Mr. Havig-

hurst makes it clear why this soldier, farmer, scholar, Indian diplomat, and

champion of land office reform captured the imagination and confidence of

the people and became their passionately championed hero in 1840.

The book--and the era--closed with his death in 1841.

The old America again was, indeed, breaking up.

University of Michigan                           HARLAN HATCHER

 

Ill Feeling in the Era of Good Feeling: Western Pennsylvania Political

Battles, 1815-1825. By James A. Kehl. (Pittsburgh: University of Pitts-

burgh Press, 1956. xiii??271p.; illustrations, bibliography, appendix, and

index. $4.00.)

This volume is the sixth published within the past two decades (those of

Russell Ferguson, Philip S. Klein, Louis Hartz, Harry M. Tinckom, and

Sanford Higginbotham were earlier studies) devoted to various aspects of

the pre-Civil War political history of Pennsylvania. Professor Kehl's mono-

graph, as his subtitle indicates, deals with "Western Pennsylvania Political

Battles, 1815-1825," and deserves to be ranked in scholarly repute with its

five predecessors.

The author feels that too much emphasis has been placed on the "good

feeling" of this period--the successful end of the War of 1812, the existence

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BOOK REVIEWS          421

 

of only one national party, and so forth. "A superficial evaluation would

suggest that the whole nation was in accord with the election and re-election

of James Monroe, especially since in 1820 only one vote separated him from

being the unanimous choice of the Electoral College, a distinction held only

by George Washington." But, says Professor Kehl, if we place the national

scene beneath the microscope and examine its "state and local" parts, a

different story emerges. It is a story of factionalism, bitter animosities, op-

portunism, and personal hatreds. "Much name calling and many personal

scandals were substituted for legitimate party campaigns." And western Penn-

sylvania, in particular, "was fertile ground for this brand of politics."

The reviewer has no argument with the above information. I would sug-

gest, however, that local political history throughout the United States, im-

mediately after 1815, was of a similar nature; that these facts are well known

to historians; and that we call the period an era of good feelings not despite,

but because of this knowledge. National issues of deep and true importance

divided the people before the War of 1812--the Constitution, Hamilton's

financial plans, the alien and sedition acts, the role of the judiciary, and our

relations with England and France. Similar grave issues again began to

emerge in the 1820's and 1830's--slavery within the states and in the

territories, secessionism, workingmen's parties, westward expansion, and so

forth. Between these two waves of economic and sectional controversies this

nation rested in a trough of picayune local disagreements; we were strong,

buoyant, and optimistic, a proud and prosperous America.

Further, one might disagree--if space permitted--with another thesis of

Professor Kehl, that "state boundary lines in 1815 did represent cultural

barriers, and nowhere is this tendency more sharply demonstrated than with

the Pennsylvania-Ohio line" (p. 12). But even he is forced to admit, eighteen

pages later, that Ohio and western Pennsylvania "had the same needs and

interests."

However, these demurrers do not detract from the general excellence of

Professor Kehl's study. Not only does he describe the political machinery

and the kaleidoscopic nature of local politics in western Pennsylvania during

this decade, but he places his story in the context of geography, economic

changes, the social milieu, and the historical background. He even employs

the discipline of social psychology in explaining the role of newspaper editors

as interpreters of public policy and therefore important creators of public

attitudes. Indeed, the reviewer found such material more fascinating than

the details of "county organization," "committee system," and "election

tickets."

Ohio State University                              MORTON BORDEN

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The Chicago Historical Society, 1856-1956: An Unconventional Chronicle.

By Paul M. Angle. (Chicago: Rand McNally and Company, 1956. 256p.;

map, illustrations, and index. $7.50.)

This volume in celebration of the society's centennial is unconventional,

as the title indicates. It is also informative, dramatic, heroic, and humorous.

Paul M. Angle, director of the society since 1945, lets the contemporary

records, annual reports, committee reports, minutes, speeches, and newspaper

accounts tell the story. These are selected and arranged in a way that preserves

sufficient continuity by means of the author's short comments and narrative.

Thus the episodes themselves are given in the words of those who participated

in them. It turns out to be far more effective than the usual method of

second-hand account by rewriting.

The history begins quietly enough with this statement: "Five prominent

citizens of Chicago decide to form a historical society. To prove that they

are in earnest, they print the invitation to the organization meeting." There

follows the letter of invitation dated April 2, 1856. But the ensuing pages

describe not only building plans, gifts, and acquisitions but also many

episodes of historic and dramatic quality: the visit to the society in 1860 of

the Prince of Wales traveling incognito as Baron Renfrew; the utter de-

struction of the society's building and collections by the Great Fire, October 9,

1871, including the original draft of the Proclamation of Emancipation;

the laying of the cornerstone of a new "temporary building" on August 12,

1877; news items giving impressions of Chicago at various periods; Queen

Marie of Romania's visit in 1926, when the society was still occupying the

old Romanesque structure that it had built in 1892 at Dearborn and Ontario

streets; the market crash of 1929, just at the time that Charles B. Pike,

president, had announced plans for raising the funds for a new building.

"The market crash leads to a depression far worse than anyone imagined on

October 25, 1929, but somehow Charles B. Pike raised money--not as much

as had been hoped, but enough for the building on which he had set his

heart. On February 10, 1932, it stood in Lincoln Park, nearing completion."

No choleric notions of historic dignity control the society's collecting pro-

gram. Magnificent museum pieces of American history have been gathered,

including relics of Columbus, Washington, and Lincoln, but there is also

"Gabby" Hartnett's baseball paraphernalia, the bat and the equipment he

used on that September day in 1938 when his home run in the Frank

Merriwell tradition put the Cubs on the way to the pennant. But the trustees

drew the line on Sally Rand's famous plumes as suitable museum objects,

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BOOK REVIEWS          423

 

and thereby a prickly exchange of newspaper interviews followed--publicity

a la mode for Miss Rand.

A variety of illustrations drawn mostly from the society's collection adds

to the interest and enjoyment of this unsual history. They include a view of

the devastated North Side taken soon after the Great Fire, portrait plates of

officers and benefactors, pictures of various ceremonies and important events

in the history of the society, and other episodes.

Mr. Angle and the Chicago Historical Society must be congratulated on

this highly appropriate publication marking the centennial celebration. In-

cidentally, it is a handsome book in printing and binding--a satisfaction, I

should think, to everybody concerned in its production.

Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio     VIRGINIUS C. HALL

 

Lincoln's Choice. By J. O. Buckeridge. (Harrisburg: The Stackpole Company,

1956. xviii??254p.; illustrations, bibliography, and index. $5.00.)

This is the story of the Spencer rifle in the American Civil War. As author

J. O. Buckeridge indicates, "it is the aim of this book to show how this

seven-shooting corps [the fifty Spencer-armed regiments with Grant and

Sherman by mid-1864] cut short the Civil War."

Christopher Miner Spencer, a Connecticut Yankee with more than his share

of Yankee ingenuity, developed a repeating rifle in March 1860. This was a

compact, clean-cut, and deadly-efficient weapon. Capable of being fired fifteen

times per minute, it was seven times faster in delivering its large-caliber

(a half inch in diameter) bullet than the best muzzle-loader of its day.

Impressively accurate, it could dispatch an enemy as far as a mile away.

Surprisingly, even after Fort Sumter, Christopher Spencer had difficulty

selling his weapon to the United States government. Obstinately suspicious

of new "jim-cracks," army ordnance preferred muzzle-loaders, which were

bigger than breech-loaders, cost less, made more noise, and used fewer bullets

per battle. In the first two years of the war, Spencer sold less than 1,500 rifles

to the government, and most of these went to the navy. Not until June 24,

1863, did the Spencer rifle come into effective military use. On that day at

Hoover's Gap in east Tennessee, Colonel John T. Wilder's "Lightning

Brigade," armed with 4,000 Spencer seven-shooters mowed down a Con-

federate onslaught with devastating fire. And a week later the overwhelming

firepower of some 3,500 Spencers helped secure Little Round Top at Gettys-

burg as a Union bastion.

In August 1863 Spencer finally made a formal demonstration of his gun

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before President Lincoln. John Hay recorded in his diary Lincoln's "shooting

with Spencer's new repeating rifle, a wonderful gun, loading with absolutely

contemptible simplicity and ease, with 7 balls & firing the while readily and

deliberately in less than half a minute. The President made some pretty good

shots." "Lincoln's choice" was the Spencer rifle. After this demonstration

back of the White House, government orders swamped the Spencer Rifle

Works in Boston until the end of the war.

After showing the Spencer rifle to be "Lincoln's choice," Buckeridge pro-

ceeds for the latter two-thirds of the volume to trace its use and effect in

the military campaigns of 1864 and 1865. Assigned principally to cavalry

units, the Spencer played a useful role at Chickamauga and in the Wilderness,

Richmond, Shenandoah Valley, and Atlanta campaigns. Clearly the author is

overly impressed with the evidence and makes extreme claims for the de-

cisiveness of the weapon--claims that can scarcely be substantiated.

This volume performs a worthwhile service in casting light upon a weapon

of significance in the Civil War. Unfortunately it is choppy and uneven in

presentation. No footnotes are offered to document the material of the text.

Memoirs and regimental histories have been relied upon for the military

events, and no reference is made to the Official Records of the War of the

Rebellion. Spencer's papers and business records provide the fresh material

in the volume. In fact, Christopher Spencer himself, who after the war de-

veloped the first automatic screw machine, so vital to a rapidly industrializing

America, would seem to deserve a full-length biography of his own.

Oberlin College                                       DAVID LINDSEY

 

John Filson of Kentucke. By John Walton. (Lexington: University of Ken-

tucky Press, 1956. xiv??130p.; illustrations, pocket map, and index. $4.00.)

Before reaching the prime of life John Filson was swallowed by the land

in which he was trying to establish himself. Acting as a surveyor for John

Cleves Symmes, who was looking over his recent acquisition of lands between

the two Miami rivers in southwestern Ohio, Filson was probably tomahawked

or shot to death by a party of hostile Shawnee Indians.

Filson was a part of the Scotch-Irish movement to the frontier. Typical of

other pioneers, he tried to establish himself through land promotion. Like

many others he was not very successful. In fact, his claims to property were

so tenuous that they virtually disappeared with his death. And, as the author

asserts, "in any calm and dispassionate appraisal of Filson one cannot say

that he was a great man" (p. 125).

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Obviously there is more to consider, because, "a man does not have to

be great to be important" (p. 126). Filson wrote a book and made a map

that are sufficient to establish his importance. The Discovery, Settlement and

Present State of Kentucke: And an Essay towards the Topography, and

Natural History of That Important Country . . . was printed in 1784 and

translated into French and German editions. It is a rare piece of Americana.

The accompanying map of the Kentucky country is even more scarce.

The book was the first one written on Kentucky and written obviously as

"a piece of promotional literature" (p. 28). The map was drawn for the same

reason--to encourage settlement. By including "The Adventures of Col.

Daniel Boon," which were related to him by the intrepid Boone himself,

Filson "not only insured the immortality of Boone, but at the same time he

created the prototype of the American hero" (p. 45).

This small volume is a fragmentary biography reconstructed from "ex-

tremely fragmentary sources." And fully a third (three chapters) of the book

is devoted to a discussion of Filson's Kentucke and map. The story of his

career is sketchy and presents few previously unknown facts.

The contribution which John Walton makes is a careful reexamination,

though often labored, of the controversial aspects of Filson's life--his an-

cestry, the date of his birth, whether or not he served in the American

Revolution, the date of his arrival in Kentucky, the authenticity of his book,

the circumstances of his death, and the like. As such, it is more of an exercise

in historical method than anthing else. Because of the paucity of source

material, a biographical treatment of Filson could not be otherwise. Within

these limits, nevertheless, Walton succeeds admirably.

Two other items should be noted. A welcome replica of the Filson map

is included with the book, and a rather complete bibliography can be made

from the adequate documentation contained in the footnotes.

Miami University                                 DWIGHT L. SMITH

 

Twenty-ninth Report, Society for the History of the Germans in Maryland.

Edited by Dieter Cunz. (Baltimore: Society for the History of the Germans

in Maryland, 1956. 84p.)

The Society for the History of the Germans in Maryland is the last sur-

vivor among the German-American historical societies which once flourished

in a number of American states. It was founded seventy years ago, when the

German element of Baltimore was in its flowering time, and it still has about

a hundred members. Its purpose has been the collection, preservation, and

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publication of the records of an immigrant group which made a distinguished

contribution to the cultural life of Maryland. From 1887 to 1907, the society

published annual reports; after a long lapse publication was resumed in 1939,

and five volumes have appeared since that time.

The volume under review is the society's twenty-ninth report. The lead

article is by the editor, Dieter Cunz, whose contributions to the history of

German immigration are highly respected by scholars in that field. In twenty

pages Cunz develops the history of Egg Harbor City, a "New Germany in

New Jersey," which was a nationally advertised venture in German-American

town building, sponsored by a stock company which was interested in real

estate and railroad promotion, but also wanted to provide a place of refuge

for Germans from the nativist attacks of the Knownothing era, and an at-

mosphere in which German immigrants could enjoy Teutonic Gemutlichkeit,

in all its many phases. The majority of the original settlers were farmers,

but the town quickly acquired a number of small industries. It never quite

reached a population of four thousand, but as late as 1905 it was considered

"the most German town" in the United States. Egg Harbor City supported all

the social and cultural organizations characteristic of German-American com-

munities, and at one time had four German-language papers. One survived

to World War I. By the end of the century the town was bilingual. Dr. Cunz's

article is a thorough piece of original research.

The other major article is by Klaus G. Wust, a doctoral candidate at the

Sorbonne, and deals with the German immigrants and nativism in Virginia

from 1840 to 1860. Richmond had a sizable German group, with all the

typical German institutions: theater, rifle clubs, singing societies, Turnvereine,

beer gardens, newspapers, churches, and synagogues. In 1850 the Virginia

constitutional convention published some of its documents in German; there

was a Steuben Festival in Richmond in 1857, and a Schiller celebration in

1859. When the Knownothing crusade struck the state, the Germans were in

the line of fire because some were Catholics or Jews; their views of the Con-

tinental Sunday clashed with American Sabbatarianism, and a small group of

political refugees, organized into "Red Republican" societies, had issued ring-

ing manifestoes demanding socialistic reforms and challenging the institution

of slavery. Governor Wise and the Democratic party defended the Germans,

and the nativist crusade disintegrated, but Richmond elected a Knownothing

mayor in 1855. When the crisis came in 1861, the majority of the Virginia

Germans opposed slavery as an institution, but were by no means radical

abolitionists, and they remained loyal to their adopted state during the Civil

War. Mr. Wust's study is a sound piece of scholarly investigation, which

corrects and supplements earlier accounts.

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BOOK REVIEWS          427

 

Unfortunately, other contributions in this volume can only be briefly noted.

There is a seven-page article on Einhorn and Szold, two distinguished liberal

German rabbis of Baltimore, by Eitel Wolf Dorbert, and Augustus J. Prahl

reviews the history of the Goethe societies of Baltimore and Washington, and

gives a list of the lectures before these organizations from 1932 to 1949,

which cover an amazing range of subjects and were delivered by men and

women of unusual competence. Hans-Ludwig Wagner, present pastor of the

Zion Church, has a brief article on that two-hundred-year-old German land-

mark of Baltimore. The volume closes with an "In Memoriam" of bio-

graphical sketches of Henry L. Mencken; Arno C. Schirokauer, distinguished

Johns Hopkins scholar; Herman Winkler, a German-American journalist;

Gustav Strube, first conductor of the Baltimore Symphony; and several others

who were less well known.

Western Reserve University                            CARL WITTKE

 

James Gillespie Birney: Slaveholder to Abolitionist. By Betty Fladeland.

(Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1955. xi+323p.; frontis-

piece, bibliography, and index. $5.00.)

It is always surprising how few works are written--or, at least, published;

in some cases, publishable--about our great antislavery crusade. A social

upheaval extending over thirty years, and culminating in so complex and

momentous a crisis as the Civil War, would seem to have merited not only

full-scale examination but levels of ambitious modern revaluation as well.

Actually, the original examination of antislavery and abolition was most in-

complete, thanks to their hectic and partisan status, among other factors;

and revaluation, such as it is, has been even more so.

James G. Birney, Liberty party candidate for president in 1840 and 1844,

was interesting on many counts as a personality and public figure. He has also

been better served than many of his antislavery contemporaries. He was the

subject of a valuable and frankly polemical biography by a well-trained and

perceptive son. D. L. Dumond's edition of Letters of James Gillespie Birney,

1831-1857 (1938), in two volumes, has been an influential publication in

the field in relatively recent times. Miss Fladeland's study of Birney's life

caps this aspect of antislavery affairs. It is unlikely that it will require much

more than addenda for some time to come.

At the present stage of affairs, it presents few complexities or difficulties.

The author has been meticulous, and her work in papers and printed sources

has brought up a few minor errors in other accounts. Much more important

is the present biography's concern with filling out the picture of Birney's de-

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velopment out of a conventional southern milieu as planter and lawyer,

through the growth of his religious convictions and desire to do something

for the slave. Birney made earnest efforts to help lead his section of the

country away from slavery by means of the American Colonization Society.

His turn toward active abolitionism slowly--for Birney was a moderate--but

certainly alienated him from his family and friends, until he was forced to

leave his adopted Alabama and native Kentucky for Cincinnati. He was an

object of mob violence in that city and elsewhere, and conducted himself

admirably during a difficult transition period. His background, dignity, and

talents served the American Anti-Slavery Society as well as it served him

during the "martyr age" of the 1830's. Birney was, of course, a leader in

formulating the constitutional theory of abolition, as well as the early strategy

of political abolitionism. All this, and details of his personal life, Miss

Fladeland recounts in clear, if not vibrant; prose. Birney met the predica-

ments in which his crumbling social circumstances placed him with principle

and resourcefulness. His decision to take his dearly needed inheritance in

slaves, for no other purpose than to free them, showed imagination as well

as courage. Birney will never want for admiration from those who study the

personages of antislavery.

If any qualification upon the present version of affairs must be suggested,

then, it would relate not so much to the story proper as to its place in the

setting of antislavery in the 1830's and 1840's; Birney's public career ended

substantially in 1845, when he suffered his first paralytic stroke. The present

account of Birney is somewhat too monographic. It offers too little sense of

the tremendous forces of thought and personality which directed the move-

ment of the period, and to that extent offers only a limited sense of Birney's

relative contribution to his time. Although the present study, for example,

seems to recognize William Jay as a first-class antislavery figure of the time,

it expresses this regard in mere and meager phrases, and does not so much

as list Bayard Tuckerman's 1894 biography of Jay (a new one is much

needed) in the bibliography. As might be expected, Miss Fladeland does not

suffer from too high a regard for William Lloyd Garrison's qualities or

achievements; on the other hand, she does not adequately reflect a sense of

Garrison's real status or reputation, for better or worse. The author correctly

observes that "the complete history of the antislavery movement remains to

be written," and toward that worthy goal, which is hardly to be reached

except by a certain cooperativeness of scholarly effort, she has contributed a

panel of true relevance and usefulness.

Antioch College                                          LOUIS FILLER

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Lincoln Reconsidered: Essays on the Civil War Era. By David Donald. (New

York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956. xi??200??xivp.; bibliographical essay and

index. $3.00.)

This book consists of nine miscellaneous essays on the Civil War era;

only in a tenuous sense is Lincoln a unifying theme of the whole. Two of

the essays are concerned with the Lincoln legend; three are concerned with

Lincoln the politician (his management of the patronage, his relations with

the Radicals, and his political pragmatism); and one is concerned with

William Herndon's allegedly unkind treatment of Mrs. Lincoln. The three

remaining essays explore the causes for the rise of the abolition crusade, the

strategic thinking of Civil War generals, and the failure of a western

literature to emerge in the period 1820-60.

To speak candidly, it seems to this reviewer that Mr. Donald has added

little to what has already been said many times about Lincoln the politician,

Lincoln the myth, and Lincoln the symbol. This ground has already been

adequately covered by James Randall, Benjamin Thomas, Reinhard Luthin,

Lloyd Lewis, Richard Hofstadter, and others. When he moves into a "re-

consideration" of the rise of the abolitionists, the author is not exactly on

virgin territory, but at least he is dealing with an old theme from a fresh

point of view. His conclusions--that most of the leading abolitionists were

of conservative and often distinguished New England families, that they

were well educated but out of tune with the rising commercialism and

urbanism of their section, and that they were fighting a double crusade to

free the Negro in the South and restore traditional status of their class at

home--are well grounded in extensive biographical studies. Mr. Donald may

well be the first historian to have documented these interpretations and

ideas, some of which at least have been suggested by Frank L. Owsley and

Avery Craven.

In his essay on "Refighting the Civil War" Mr. Donald may push re-

visionism a bit far. For years it has been the fashion among military historians

to point out the initial advantage the South possessed in having had so many

officers in its army trained at West Point. Mr. Donald not only points out

the limitations of the training at West Point but suggests that such training

was a positive disadvantage and that the North was fortunate in having so

many of the West Point men resign at the beginning. This situation permitted

untutored and fresh minds, like Lincoln's and Stanton's, free rein in bringing

original thought to bear on the problems of modern warfare. One cannot help

wondering what these talented amateurs could have accomplished without the

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aid of McClellan, Sherman, and Grant, all of whom labored under the dis-

advantage of the West Point training.

In his last essay, "Toward a Western Literature" (in collaboration with

Frederick A. Palmer), the author explores an interesting episode in in-

tellectual history: the attempts during the pre-Civil War period of westerners

to break away from eastern influences and establish their own literature. He

shows that there was resentment against eastern domination but that the

attempts to establish a western press, a western point of view, or western

themes in literature were unsuccessful.

Whatever their limitations, these essays are well written; they are brief,

to the point, and often witty. They can be read with pleasure and profit by

layman and specialist alike.

Ohio State University                               HARRY L. COLES

 

Memoirs of American Jews, 1775-1865. By Jacob Rader Marcus. (Phila-

delphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1956. x??430p.; illus-

trations and index. $4.00.)

Dr. Marcus, who is director of the American Jewish Archives and pro-

fessor of Jewish history at Hebrew Union College, in this volume continues

his presentation of the letters and memoirs of American Jews. In addition

to the present series, the same editor has also compiled the two-volume work,

Early American Jewry, the first volume of which, published in 1951, was

concerned with the Jews of New York, New England, and Canada during

the colonial and early national period, 1649-1794. The second volume dealt

with the Jews of Pennsylvania and the South for a slightly shorter period,

1655-1790. In the present volume, the third in a series distinct from Early

American Jewry, the emphasis is on the closing years of the period from

1775 to 1865.

As in the case of the earlier volumes, much material is included that has

already been published, although some of it appeared in periodicals not now

readily available to the average reader. Rather familiar to some students at

least will be the extracts from the well-known autobiography of Samuel

Gompers, Seventy Years of Life and Labor. Also included, however, are a

number of unpublished memoirs of less well-known but interesting per-

sonalities, both men and women.

Especially interesting to students of Ohio history are extracts from the

recorded experiences of Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise of Cincinnati, Ernst Troy

(who became a garment and clothing manufacturer in the same city), and

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Alfred and Emily Seasongood, whose son, Murray, was destined to be a

Cincinnati civic leader.

The number of journals included of those who loved and served the Con-

federate cause probably gives a poorly balanced view of the extent to which

American Jews gave support to both sides in the Civil War period. Yet in

view of the overwhelmingly native Protestant make-up of the population of

the Confederate states, these reminiscences may serve to demonstrate effec-

tively the service of Jews to the southern cause.

Many of the details of war service and hardship represent very typical

experiences such as have been recounted many times. Perhaps in this in-

stance, however, there is some merit in presenting them, to show how Jews

shared in these vicissitudes of comrades in a common endeavor.

One of the perils of dealing with materials relating to immigrant or

religious groups is the understandable tendency to apologize for those who

have been lukewarm or even antagonistic toward the faith and customs of

their fathers. Dr. Marcus, however, everywhere exhibits commendable ob-

jectivity in his attitude toward those who lost interest in Judaism and even

contracted non-Jewish marriages. In this respect, those of us outside the

Jewish tradition can well take a lesson from Dr. Marcus in his steadfast

devotion to one of the great virtues of mature religion, love of truth.

Ohio State University                     FRANCIS P. WEISENBURGER

 

Teachers' Guide to Michigan History. By John Clementz and Mary F.

Noecker. (Lansing: Michigan Historical Commission, 1956. vi??42p.)

This teachers' manual is an outline integrating Michigan history with

United States history. It is based on F. Clever Bald's Michigan in Four

Centuries and five standard senior high school United States history textbooks.

Its authors are social science teachers in Central High School at Kalamazoo.

They present the manual in the hope that it may stimulate Michigan teachers

of United States history to enrich their courses by using Bald's book. The

use of Bald's book, they assert, "should serve as a means of creating greater

pride and interest in both state and country." Both Bald's book and this

Teachers' Guide are publications of the John M. Munson Fund.

The Guide is divided into six units. They are: (1) New World Modi-

fications to Old World Traditions; (2) The Formation of a New Nation;

(3) How We Changed from an Agricultural to an Industrial Nation; (4)

The Steady Growth of American Democracy; (5) Development of American

Culture; and (6) American Participation in World Affairs. The details of

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432     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

the outline are accompanied by references to the corresponding pages in

Bald's book. Each unit contains the page references to the appropriate section

of the five standard high school textbooks. This shows that the idea really

is to help teachers gear Michigan history into general United States history.

This is as it should be.

Each unit contains appropriate end matter, that is, bibliographical sug-

gestions to both fiction and non-fiction. There are also suggestions for audio-

visual aids, including maps, films, kinescopes, and film strips. Thus the idea

is to provide the average teacher, who knows more or less about local

Michigan history, to obtain facilities for the building of an adequate knowl-

edge, and for an interesting technique of presentation to high school students.

The basic purpose of the booklet is to help teachers to help themselves.

The success of the public school effort to gear local history into national

history depends on a happy union of facilities and the ability, as well as the

desire, of teachers to make the most of these facilities. We must accept the

fact that local history tends not to be generally well enough known to

teachers to enable them do the job of integration of the local and the

national. It is these simple gadgets of textbooks and outlines and aids that

help make that integration possible. More power to competent scholars like

Bald and competent school teachers like Clementz and Noecker for creating

bonds of good will and workable facilities to promote a worthy cause.

Historical Society of Northwestern Ohio        RANDOLPH C. DOWNES

 

Hoof Beats to Heaven: A True Chronicle of the Life and Wild Times of

Peter Cartwright, Circuit Rider. By Sidney Greenbie and Marjorie Barstow

Greenbie. (Penobscot, Maine: Traversity Press, 1955. xx??623p.; illus-

trations and index. $6.00.)

Autobiography of Peter Cartwright. Introduction, bibliography, and index by

Charles L. Wallis. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1956. 349p. $3.75.)

Speaking at the jubilee celebration in 1869 to honor his fiftieth consecutive

year as a presiding elder of the Methodist Church, Peter Cartwright

reminisced nostagically about his boyhood adventures in "dark and bloody"

Kentucky. "I have no language to describe to you the situation of this fron-

tier country. I could tell you a thousand tales that you would not believe of

the scenes through which I have traveled."

Hoof Beats to Heaven, the first of a projected three-volume biography of

Peter Cartwright, quite successfully fills this language void. The task is

difficult, partly because the eighty-four-year-old backwoods preacher, dis-

playing a rare touch of modesty, misrepresents his own skill as raconteur.

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BOOK REVIEWS           433

 

Any biography of this eccentric, colorful itinerant faces the stimulating task

of surpassing the Autobiography of Peter Cartwright, first published in 1856,

now reprinted by the Abingdon Press with an introduction, bibliography, and

index by Charles L. Wallis, minister of the College Church and professor of

English at Keuka College, Keuka Park, New York.

Hoof Beats to Heaven covers barely the first sixty pages of the Cartwright

Autobiography, a large book (over 500 pages in the original edition). With

particularly powerful, telling force, Mr. and Mrs. Greenbie employ a narra-

tive style to dramatize this frontier saga. Yet, in spite of the novelistic

approach, the authors maintain that their account rests on well-authenticated

sources and careful documentation. Even so, the reader may suspect that

this work, like Cartwright's Autobiography, contains more filler than fact,

and no small amount of crystal gazing. The bibliography and sources em-

ployed by Mr. and Mrs. Greenbie, currently available to "any scholar sin-

cerely seeking to check on our research," will be revealed with the publication

of the final volume.

The chronicle begins in 1783 with a sketch of the courtship, marriage,

and migration of the circuit rider's parents to Amherst County, Virginia,

where two years later Cartwright was born, unattended, during an outlaw

raid. He was scarcely six years old when his father caught the Kentucky

fever, and moved his family to the military tract of that new Canaan which

John Filson described as "flowing with milk and honey." The Cartwrights

soon discovered that this terrestrial paradise was a haven for murderers,

fugitives, horse thieves, highway robbers, and counterfeiters, and the center

of an undeclared war between the "Rogues" and the vigilantes known as

the "Regulators."

Greatest value of this volume lies in the vividness with which the authors

portray the barbaric conditions invariably interwoven with great mass migra-

tions, particularly to an unbroken wilderness, cut off from churches, schools,

and adequate government. In an area generally neglected by contemporary

historians, the authors picture accurately the role played by the Methodist

circuit rider, the Baptist farmer-preacher, and the Presbyterian schoolmaster

in helping to bring order out of frontier chaos. The Methodists receive

primary emphasis in their additional endeavors to reconcile a democratic

gospel with a dictatorial church government, their indefatigable race to keep

abreast of the westwardbound pioneer, their adoption of the camp meeting

as the most efficacious frontier agency for socio-religious propagation, and

their successful bid for the mind and heart of a wild, spirited youth destined

to become the West's most picturesque preacher.

Doctrines, techniques, and preaching methods typical of the Methodists,

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434     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Baptists, Presbyterians, and the mushrooming religious "isms" which

flourished in this primitive country form a substantial part of the narrative.

But since this volume ends just as Peter Cartwright starts on his sixty-nine-

year peregrination as a Methodist preacher, those wishing to continue the

story may now turn to the centennial edition of the Autobiography.

The publishers are to be congratulated on making this frontier classic

more readily available. For sheer entertainment it is hard to surpass. Although

Cartwright's pugilistic encounters have often been exaggerated, he was a

heavy-fisted, keen-witted, sharp-tongued exponent of muscular Christianity.

The Autobiography abounds in racy stories of his successful bouts with the

"rowdies," his victorious assaults against all rival denominations, his per-

ceptive judgment of slaveholders and abolitionists, and his eulogies on

"Ancient Methodism." Indeed, Cartwright's vivid pictures add much to our

understanding of political, social, and religious changes on the frontier during

the first half of the nineteenth century.

The centennial edition of the Autobiography is in another sense a keen

disappointment. Though it contains a short introduction, a useful index, and

a bibliography, careful footnoting could have added immeasurably to the

book's value. Those characters and events which today are meaningless

names deserve a more lively resurrection. Moreover, illustrations and maps

would have increased the interestingness of the volume; even the old circuit

rider's portrait, used as frontispiece in the original edition, is omitted. For

these additions we shall have to await volumes two and three of Hoof Beats

to Heaven.

Oberlin College                                        PAUL H. BOASE

 

Civil War on Western Waters. By Fletcher Pratt. (New York: Henry Holt

and Company, 1956. 255p.; illustrations, maps, notes on bibliography, ap-

pendix, and index. $3.50.)

One of the first objectives of the Union after the outbreak of the Civil

War was control of the Mississippi River, from St. Louis to the gulf, and

its navigable tributaries. The greater part of the prize lay within territory

enemy to the Union, and for that reason the North had to take the offensive

for successful conquest.

The Union saw the looming river-war as an amphibious action; the South

saw the defense of the river as a holding action in the European manner, the

streams held by troops behind batteries and strategically placed fortifications.

The result was a river war, the like of which had never been seen. There

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BOOK REVIEWS          435

 

hadn't even been a warship on the Mississippi, except for a small craft below

New Orleans in the War of 1812. The Union moved as quickly as possible

against a sea of tradition to construct a fleet capable of waging a brand new

kind of warfare. The South built such craft as it was capable of producing

with limited facilities, but relied mainly on strengthened bastions.

The river flotilla turned out in the Union shipyards deserves the much

abused adjective "unique." It could wage war on sandbars, hidden river

snags, entrenched infantry, shore batteries, enemy shipping if it found any,

and even cavalry.

The river navy fought numerous engagements of its own and it supple-

mented every major army movement in the area. It also was the workhorse

of the river campaigns, transporting troops and supplies. Its men died in

considerable number while the infantry won the glory and the headlines.

Fletcher Pratt rescues a share of the glory in this long overdue account

of a most vital phase of the Great Conflict. Here, in his Civil War on

Western Waters, is the story of the fantastic array--the rams, the turtles,

the torpedoes, the mortars, the ironclads, and the tinclads--that made up the

river navy. Each craft is described as to appearance, construction, armament,

personnel,  and career, thanks to a valuable appendix. The men who built,

sailed, and manned these ships are rescued from an undeserved obscurity.

Names of men like Eads, Ellet, Pook, Polk, Walke, Tift, Hollins, Van Dorn,

and many others peek through pages dominated by the Farraguts, the Footes,

and the Porters. A then undistinguished naval lieutenant makes his ap-

pearance--George Dewey.

Naval actions give the book a fast pace. There was the battle of Belmont,

a Dunkirk-like action where the naval forces won their first victory over

land forces; Head of Passes, where the Confederates broke the northern

embargo on European traffic; the dramatic siege of New Orleans; Memphis

and Island No. 10; the unrelenting shelling of Vicksburg by the mortars;

and on and on. After reading Pratt one might find himself believing the

Union gunboats won the field for Grant at Shiloh; small wonder the South

stuck to the name Pittsburg Landing in designating that bloody test of

armies.

The fear-spreading invasion of southern Indiana and Ohio by the hard-

riding rebel raider John Morgan in the summer of 1863 brought the

patrolling Ohio River gunboats to quick and decisive action. They followed

Morgan all the way up the river, trading shots now and then, and the gunboat

Moose, Lieutenant Commander Leroy Fitch, messed up his crossing attempt

in the shallows just below Buffington Island, an action that had a direct result

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436     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

on his capture. Not only that, the Moose also captured a couple of pieces of

horsedrawn artillery! There is nothing like it since the French horsemen

captured the Dutch fleet frozen in the ice. Fitch got his cumbersome gunboat

to the scene at Buffington by jumping it across Sand Creek bar with an

ingenious arrangement by which the craft fairly walked on stilts.

It was by such a course that the day finally dawned when a rhapsodic

Lincoln could tell his countrymen, "The Father of Waters once more flows

unvexed to the sea."

While a bibliography is listed, though casually, the text is not annotated.

The author says footnotes would be only an "obstruction to the reader." He

also states that "they stand in the original manuscript, and if anyone wishes

to question the author by letter as to where he got the authority for a given

statement, he will be happy to reply." Mr. Pratt's death, which coincided with

the book's publication, makes this statement erroneous.

Ohio Historical Society                           ROBERT S. HARPER

 

Every House a Frontier: Detroit's Economic Progress, 1815-1825. By Floyd

Russell Dain. (Detroit: Wayne University Press, 1956. vii??168p.; frontis-

piece, bibliography, and index. $3.50.)

As its subtitle indicates, this book is an economic history of Detroit during

the decade following the War of 1812. Even more, it is a reflection of the

economic development of the whole region about the western end of Lake

Erie and as such has considerable value and interest to students of Ohio's

history. Submitted as a master's thesis to the Wayne University history de-

partment in 1943, its publication was made possible by the Detroit Edison

Fund established in that department to promote work in local history. Both

the university and the company are to be commended for this undertaking,

for Mr. Dain's thesis is a real gem, evidencing painstaking research of doc-

toral quality combined with readability oftimes lacking in many scholarly

works.

Though Detroit was 114 years old in 1815, the little frontier military post

and fur-trading center seemed to be breathing its last. Captured and re-

captured by the opposing forces during the war just ended, it had seen its

populace scattered, its livestock decimated, its buildings gutted, and its com-

merce almost completely disrupted. Of its remaining population of less than

a thousand, the great majority were Canadian French, uneducated and

illiterate, skeptical of American ways and institutions, and evidencing little

aptitude for agriculture or industry, while about the city were roving bands

of impoverished Indians dependent upon it for charity. Relying on the

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BOOK REVIEWS          437

 

eastern communities for its manufactures and on Ohio for its foodstuffs, with

its specie all but gone and primitive barter, due bills, cut money, and scrip

coming into vogue, without a voice in the national congress to work for

federal aid, with no newspaper to publicize the area's problems, with the

hinterland unsurveyed and regarded as too swampy for farming, with in-

adequate communication with eastern markets owing to a dearth of shipping,

and without a roadway connecting it to the Ohio settlements, Detroit ap-

peared to be a city without a future in 1815.

Within a decade, however, all this had changed. Mr. Dain relates the

economic salvation of the city and surrounding territory in this period through

such diverse innovations as schooners and steamboats, belated federal aid in

harbor improvements (1823) and road construction (1824), and the open-

ing of the hinterland to settlement (1818). In addition, stress is placed on

the contributions of the Detroit Gazette after July 1817, of the Bank of

Michigan after 1819, and the influx of ambitious "Yankee" farmers and

tradesmen. The most important change, however, occurred with the com-

pletion of the Erie Canal in 1825, which provided this and other western

lake ports access to eastern markets without the necessity of lengthy and

expensive land transit and frequent transfers of cargo, and at the same time

considerably reduced the price of imported merchandise.

It was with this change that one of the most critical periods in Detroit's

history came to an end. Its inhabitants "had witnessed the deliverance of

Detroit from many of the economic bonds which had thwarted its develop-

ment for more than a century, and, could they have but known, they had seen

the foundations laid for the great metropolis of the future."

Kent State University                            PHILLIP R. SHRIVER

 

The American Lyceum: Town Meeting of the Mind. By Carl Bode. (New

York: Oxford University Press, 1956. xii+275p.; frontispiece, biblio-

graphical note, and index. $5.00.)

Mr. Bode's book says little of the later lyceum which continued into the

1900's, but deals almost entirely with its more earnest decades before the

Civil War. The early lyceum owed a great deal to the devotion of Josiah

Holbrook, a Yale man who founded many chapters, beginning with Millbury,

Massachusetts, in 1826. By 1829 the movement had spread to a hundred

New England towns, and by 1834 it had branched out into most other states

and had flowered in perhaps three thousand local groups. Out in Ohio there

were at least sixty chapters as early as 1845, Cincinnati's dating from 1831.

These earliest lyceums often met in church basements and their favorite

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438     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

fare was a lecture-demonstration by a local professor of geology or physics,

or some practical philosophizing by a popular preacher. Lyceums often set

up public libraries, then rare, and gradually widened their province to de-

bates, discussions, and readings. Usually managed by respected citizens, and

meeting in the church, they offered socially-approved adult education and

moral uplift--all for $1.50 per season.

In the lyceum's second period, from about 1845 to the Civil War, it

became less resolutely educational and more entertaining, and gradually

crystallized into a season of formal lectures by imported experts. Beginning

about 1855 there was a strong demand, especially in the Middle West, for

eastern celebrities, some of whom Mr. Bode vividly sketches in a new light--

as platform personalities. Among the star performers there was the spell-

binding preacher Henry Ward Beecher, who squeezed the local committees

for high pay, and the incandescent abolitionist Wendell Phillips, who would

charge no fee at all if he could speak against slavery. There was the dashing

traveler Bayard Taylor, be-scimitared and swathed in Arab draperies, and the

urbane wit, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, cynically tailoring his clever

material to the increasingly light-minded lyceum audiences. And there was

the greatest of the lecturers, Ralph Waldo Emerson, enormously esteemed

from Concord to Keokuk, well paid--but not so well understood. In

Emerson's important case, and in Henry Thoreau's, Mr. Bode, a professor

of English at the University of Maryland, expertly shows the lyceum's effect

upon literature, for in the process of writing, the lecture manuscript, with

its awareness of a live audience, could be an experimental middle step be-

tween the transcendental journal and the published essay.

Mr. Bode gives nearly half of his book to two state-by-state surveys of

lyceum activity, one for 1825-45 and another for 1845-65, surveys which

are--perhaps unavoidably--more conscientious than interesting. As for Ohio,

again, which led all states but Massachusetts and New York in lyceum vigor,

a wealth of information exists, much of it garnered in 1951 in David Mead's

Yankee Eloquence in the Middle West: The Ohio Lyceum, 1850-1870. That

storehouse of facts was criticized in this magazine (October 1951) for being

short on interpretation, but the same cannot be charged against the present

volume. Mr. Bode steadily makes clear the broader meaning of his bushels

of lyceum data and all the pertinent social history with which he fills in the

background. And yet he fails to be explicit enough about the way in which

the lyceum was "peculiarly American," or the extent to which it bore out

Josiah Holbrook's large claim in 1826 that the lyceum could "do more for

the general diffusion of knowledge, and for raising the moral and in-

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BOOK REVIEWS          439

 

tellectual taste of our countrymen, than any other expedient which can

possibly be devised."

University of Illinois (Chicago)                  JAMES B. STRONKS

 

The Development of American Petroleum Pipelines: A Study in Private

Enterprise and Public Policy, 1862-1906. By Arthur Menzies Johnson.

(Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press for the American Historical

Association, 1956. xiii??307p.; illustrations, maps, bibliography, and index.

$4.50.)

On the face of it, a history of pipelines in the oil industry sounds dull.

But this study by Professor Arthur Johnson of the United States Naval

Academy, which was selected for publication by the Beveridge Award Com-

mittee of the American Historical Association, is a brilliant example of the

way in which a seemingly prosaic subject can be quarried to yield rich rewards.

The author chose to investigate pipelines because their importance as com-

petitive weapons in the intra-industry rivalries in oil, so long obscured, was

a challenge to the historian to uncover. Then, too, he was fascinated by the

larger implications of his subject. By tracing the relationship of private

enterprise to public policy in the development of petroleum pipelines he could

show in microcosm what was happening throughout American industry in

the post-Civil War era.

Professor Johnson belongs to the new school of investigators of busi-

ness history. He is free from the preconceptions of either the muckrakers

or the apologists for the trusts. His study disentangles the realities from the

web of emotionally colored charges and countercharges which enmeshed the

early histories of the oil industry. This is not to say, however, that he writes

without convictions or without making explicit value judgments. In general

he is an advocate of government regulation by administrative decisions

pragmatically arrived at.

The study begins in 1862 with the construction of the first successful

gathering pipeline near Oil City, Pennsylvania, and ends in 1906 with the

first national legislation to regulate interstate pipelines. In between lie the

multitude of decisions by private industry and public-policy makers which

determined the framework of the problem when it finally emerged on the

national stage. The scene of conflict was the Pennsylvania, or Appalachian,

oil field. The Lima-Indiana and Mid-Continent fields, opened later, merely

repeated the battle first fought in Pennsylvania. The major actors were the

independent oil producers, the oil-transporting railroads--the New York

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440     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Central, Erie, and Pennsylvania--and the Standard Oil combine. The key

factors in the problem were "clearly that pipelines were an innovation in

petroleum transportation, they were more efficient than other overland oil

carriers, they performed a function with which the general public had no

direct contact, and they were developed in a free enterprise economy. The

last fact was the controlling one" (p. 251).

It is a major thesis of the author that the Standard group could not have

exercised the whip hand it did over both producers and railroads had it not

acquired monopoly control over the oil pipelines. He more or less implies

that this control was more decisive in the rise of the oil trust than its

overwhelming dominance of the refinery end. However, he does seem to

appreciate that the two went hand in hand.

There are certain ironies in the story. The innovations in oil transportation

by pipeline were all made by others, yet Standard enjoyed the greatest profit

from them. The officers of the oil trust themselves were slow to see the

decisive advantage of pipelines as competitive weapons. One of the key links

in its first pipeline network was purchased from the Pennsylvania Railroad

at the latter's insistence and not at the desire of Standard, whose principal

interest was in acquiring the railroad's refineries. But once the oil combine

had complete control of the underground carriers, it made the most of the

advantage it had stumbled upon, extorting from the railroads now vulnerable

to the competition of this new form of transportation rebates of twenty cents

per barrel on all oil shipped over their lines. The rail lines had awakened

too late to the opportunity they had cast away and were prisoners of

Standard in oil shipments.

The independent oil producers, also at the mercy of Standard Oil, fought

back with a variety of weapons, which were only mildly effective. Their

answer to Standard's pipeline monopoly was a demand for "a free pipeline

law" (finally granted in 1883) and legislation against railroad discrimina-

tions. Pennsylvania oil men were important voices in the agitation for

national railway legislation, 1878-87. No demand, however, came for regu-

lation of pipelines by the national government until 1905. In Pennsylvania

a punitive bill designed to cripple Standard rather than to regulate pipelines

in any fair manner met defeat. The producers were ineffective in arousing

the public, which remained apathetic because of its ignorance. Moreover,

they were never faithful champions of the public interest, always ready

to sacrifice that interest whenever it conflicted with their own self-interest.

They were willing to cooperate with the enemy when by so doing they

could raise the price of crude oil. Or they were equally willing to adopt the

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BOOK REVIEWS          441

 

techniques of the trust when that seemed advantageous. A group of in-

dependents, for example, organized a pipeline-rail transportation system

which successfully competed with Standard's. Once successful they were as

much opposed to pipeline regulatory legislation as was the oil trust.

The chapter devoted to the pipeline amendment to the Hepburn act of

1906 is most illuminating not only of this bill in particular but of the

legislative process in general. The amendment was directed against Standard,

which writers like Lloyd and Tarbell had made the convenient symbol of

the dangerous concentration of economic power, and was adopted as a

counterweapon against the oil octopus. But, in addition, the attack on

Standard was part of President Theodore Roosevelt's larger strategy to ob-

tain more effective regulation of railroad rates. Thus the pipeline amendment

was primarily the product of political rather than economic considerations.

It was thrown into the struggle over the railroad bill with little preparation

and without much thought of its consequences. An immediate protest from

the independent oil producers against the application of the "commodities

clause" to the pipelines, was sufficiently strong to force its deletion. The pro-

vision that all pipelines were common carriers was accepted at the time with

little opposition, though Standard afterwards challenged it unsuccessfully in

the courts. However, this new weapon of federal regulation proved in-

effective against Standard. This public-policy decision came too late "to

change the place that private enterprise and inadequate public policies on the

state level had given pipelines in the petroleum industry" (p. 251).

The author writes with precision and sturdy logic, hammering home his

points with cumulative summaries of his arguments chapter by chapter and

in a final "Conclusion." The completeness of the scholarly paraphernalia is

most welcome: footnotes, bibliography, index, maps, and illustrations.

Kenyon College                                     LANDON WARNER

 

Mathew Brady: Historian With a Camera. By James D. Horan. (New York:

Crown Publishers, 1955. xix??244p.; illustrations, source notes, bibli-

ographies, picture index, and index. $7.50.)

James D. Horan, from whose facile pen have come such varied works as

Confederate Agent, King's Rebel, and Out in the Boondocks, has in this

volume essayed the definitive biography of Mathew Brady, the great photog-

rapher. Despite the "wealth of newly uncovered material" alluded to on the

jacket (letters, family Bible, studio register, and first-hand information), the

story of Brady's life remains somewhat less than complete. What emerges is,

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442     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

instead, an incohesive accumulation of items about Brady which the author

has attempted to tie together in a narrative, bridging the gaps with an account

of pertinent contemporary events and of developments in the field of photog-

raphy. To compensate for the paucity of material and to round out the picture,

he has focused his attention also on men like Alexander Gardner and Timothy

O'Sullivan, associates of Brady, about whom, it turns out, even less is known.

Although he examined newspapers, magazines, trade journals, unpublished

collections of letters, and unpublished personal journals, Mr. Horan concludes

that "Brady and his men remain shadowy figures obscured by the mists of

time."

Even Brady's birth is shrouded in mystery (he apparently was born in

New York State in 1823 or 1824), but he became interested in photography

almost at its inception and by mid-century he was one of the best-known

photographers in the world. Of this there is ample evidence, for in the de-

cades that followed, Brady's camera was trained upon virtually every promi-

nent American as well as other noted figures. His achievements were ex-

traordinary, the awards and honors he received too numerous to recount. He

is best known, of course, for his magnificent coverage of the Civil War, a

project that was physically hazardous and financially ruinous. Succeeding

generations owe an incalculable debt to the man who, despite a seemingly

unappreciative government, was so dedicated to his work that he persisted in

it, although eventually driven to bankruptcy and deprived of many of his

historically priceless plates. He disappeared so completely into oblivion that

the world in general was surprised in 1891 when a New York reporter

learned by accident that Brady was still alive and interviewed him. The tragic

denouement came on January 15, 1896, when the almost legendary photog-

rapher died, lonely and penniless. His personal effects at the time consisted

of two threadbare frock coats, a few worn shirts, a broken satchel, a beautiful

ivory-handled cane, and a ring given him by the Prince of Wales. Belated

recognition of a sort came with his interment in Arlington National Cemetery

among so many of his famous subjects.

The remainder of the book is an album of photographs, many of them

reproduced by special permission from the Brady-Handy negatives acquired by

the Library of Congress in 1954 and currently under a ten-year restriction.

The library purchased this collection for $25,000 from Brady's only living

heirs, two grandnieces, whose father, Levin Handy, for years operated his

uncle's Washington studio and subsequently won renown for himself. The

bulk of Brady's negatives otherwise are in the Brady Collection in the

National Archives, the Brady Collection in the Library of Congress, and the

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BOOK REVIEWS          443

 

restricted Frederick Hill Meserve Collection in the New York Historical

Society.

It is far easier for a reviewer to criticize the choice of photographs than it

was for the author and his wife to make their selection from the thousands

of significant plates. Nevertheless, a certain degree of dissatisfaction is in-

escapable. They were probably justified in limiting to a handful the number

of Civil War photographs, which have already received extensive circulation,

but some of the alternatives used are of little consequence or are of poor

quality. Many, on the other hand, are extremely worthwhile, especially those

whose subjects died so early in the photographic era that few likenesses of

them could possibly have been made. Ohioans are well represented, either

in individual portraits or as the central figures in group pictures. There are

nine photographs of Grant (and four related ones, that is, his family,

inauguration, and so forth), four of Custer, two each of Stanton, Chase,

Sheridan, W. T. Sherman, Kate Chase, and Garfield, and one each of Phoebe

Cary, John Brown, Clement L. Vallandigham, General William S. Rosecrans,

the Beecher family (including Harriet Beecher Stowe), Ben Wade, Whitelaw

Reid, George H. Pendleton, Alphonso Taft, Hayes, Edison, and McKinley.

The reader may well be disillusioned by the discovery that of the more

than 500 illustrations (as asserted on the front of the jacket) only 82 photo-

graphs can positively be attributed to Brady. In over 200 other instances the

credit line reads, "Probably by Brady," "By Brady or . . .[the name of another

photographer]," and, most frequently, "By Brady or assistant." Most of the

remaining 139 photographs are credited to various other photographers. The

total number nearly reaches 500 if the illustrations in the text are included,

most of which are reproductions of newspaper articles, manuscripts, and the

like. Nothing is to be gained by laboring this particular point further, but'

it is disappointing to find so much that is not Brady in a book ostensibly

about him alone. Whether Brady trained the photographers (as was some-

times the case) or not, it hardly seems reasonable to include such irrelevant

photos as the series of eighteen taken by Gardner in Kansas after the

Civil War.

The large format of the volume (9" x 12") made it possible to print

several photographs on a page without impairing their detail. The average

page bears from two to four pictures, with a few carrying as many as eight or

nine. By the same token, the ninety pages of text would be at least doubled

in a book of normal size.

The photographs are numbered consecutively and identified in captions.

The last-minute addition and deletion of a number of photographs disrupted

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444     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

the numerical sequence, and, instead of re-numbering the entire group, the

author was content to publish them with some numbers deleted and the letters

a, b, or c added to others. Perhaps it is picayunish to find fault with this,

but it does seem a little slipshod in a book to the preparation of which so

much time was devoted. In addition, several minor errors and other evidence

of carelessness suggest inadequate proofreading and/or extreme haste. All the

instances noted are relatively trivial, yet they are irritating to the reader be-

cause they could have been avoided.

With the facts relative to Brady's life one can scarcely quarrel, for Mr.

Horan knows more about them than anyone else. When information is

lacking, he reconstructs the circumstances (sometimes at considerable length,

especially in the case of Civil War battles and such major events as Johnson's

impeachment and trial) and conjectures about Brady's actions. The extent to

which the author is obliged to base the story upon speculation and supposition

is likely to remind the reader of a frank comment written by James Anthony

Froude, the imaginative English historian of the nineteenth century. Re-

ferring to his biography of St. Neot, Froude confessed, "This is all, and

perhaps rather more than all, that is known of his life."

Ohio Historical Society                                JOHN S. STILL

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