Book Reviews
Men of the Western Waters: The Taking
of Americas First West, 1781-
1794. By Dale Van Every. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company,
1956.
[x]??244p.; maps, illustrations,
appendices, bibliography, and index.
$4.00.)
This volume will be of great interest
both to that portion of the general
public which enjoys reading history and
also to the student who pursues
history as a vocation. It is based upon
a wide reading of the best works of
scholars in the field, and makes no
pretense of having delved into the
sources. It covers the period 1781-94,
and its scene of action is located in the
Ohio River Valley, where for over a
decade was waged one of the bloodiest
of all Indian wars in American history.
Basically, it covers the same general
period covered by Theodore Roosevelt in
his four-volume Winning of the
West and merits a place beside it.
The "Men of the Western
Waters" were the pioneers who after the
American Revolution sought a home and
wealth west of the Appalachian
highlands. It is open to question,
however, as to whether these settlers
were the "first Americans" and
whether this region was the "first West."
Long before 1781, American settlers had
opened the earliest West east
of the Appalachians.
After the Revolution ended at Yorktown,
thousands of pioneers followed
the old trails and rough pioneer roads
across the Appalachian highlands.
Many veterans received a bonus in the
form of a land grant. The prize avail-
able was well described by Franklin:
"The great country back of the Appal-
achian Mountains, on both sides of the
Ohio, and between that river and the
Lakes is now well known . . . to be one
of the finest in North America,
for the extreme richness and fertility
of the land; the healthy temperature
of the air, the mildness of the climate;
the plenty of hunting, fishing, and
fowling, the facility of trade with the
Indians; and the vast convenience
of inland navigation." Rich or
poor, the settlers all were imbued with the
spirit of land speculation. Dreaming
that even if they had to bear the scars
of the wilderness, working with horny
hands of toil, living in poverty,
BOOK REVIEWS 315
isolation, and in constant danger of
Indian attack, still they believed that
their children would enter into a rich
heritage denied to them.
During the period covered by this
volume, the western settlers felt that
the government east of the mountain
barrier was doing little for them in the
way of law and order, protection from
the Indians, and insuring a safe
outlet for their produce down the
Mississippi. Men of good and evil
reputations entered into treasonable intrigue
with the Spaniards, British,
and French. George Rogers Clark, Aaron
Burr, James Wilkinson, and many
others talked of separating the western
country from the newborn federal
union. Nothing did more to reassure the
western settlers than the crushing
victory of Mad Anthony Wayne over the
Indians at Fallen Timbers.
Kentucky and Tennessee were admitted to
the Union in 1792 and 1796.
It is estimated that more than 300,000
settlers followed the Wilderness
Road through the Cumberland Gap and
created these two states. Others
followed the roads across Pennsylvania,
Maryland, and Virginia and settled
the western areas of these states. Some
floated down the Ohio River and
helped to create the state of Ohio. By
the turn of the century, civilization
with its culture was spreading over the
land of the "Western Waters."
Ohio University A. T. VOLWILER
Kentucky Tradition. Lawrence S. Thompson. (Hamden, Conn.: Shoe String
Press, 1956. 255p.; notes and index.
$4.25.)
Kentucky is, if any place ever was, an
extra special place. Cherished as
a common hunting ground by the
Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws,
and others on the south with the
Shawnees, Delawares, Miamis, Ottawas,
and others on the north, it once
abounded in turkey, pigeon, bear, deer, hills
and verdure, as few areas ever have.
Today, looking at the region they
grasped two hundred years ago, the
whites can cherish it too. Rich in
Americana, this home of Daniel Boone and
Casey Jones; Lexington,
Domino, and Man o' War; Irvin Cobb and
Happy Chandler, bourbon and
juleps; Harlan County and Uncle Tom, is
the gateway to the North, South,
East, and West all at once. No matter
how cynical one is wont to feel
toward the "professional
regionalist," he has to admit the Kentuckian has
a right to strut and gobble.
And strut and gobble is what Lawrence
Thompson does. His Kentucky
Tradition might have been published in gold leaf by the chamber
of com-
merce rather than in offset by a
shoestring press in old Yankeeland. It is
316
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
a book bursting with local pride and
regional satisfaction. Uncritical, enter-
taining, chock full of anecdotes,
exaggerations, and explanations, it burbles
along assuring the reader that it's
great to "live in old Kentucky where we
never get the blues."
Whether one likes bluegrass or not, he
will enjoy Kentucky Tradition.
The reader gets caught up in it. There
is so much sheer life in this
potpourri of feudin' and foxin',
horseflesh and womanflesh, verse and
rime, superstition, burgoos, and jokes.
Every page is fun, and the chapter
entitled "A Handful of Kentucky
Books" opens the way to more reading
in the same wonderful subject. Actually,
there are about twenty thousand
books, brochures, and serials that deal
with the commonwealth.
However, if one steps back across La
Belle Riviere and looks at Kentucky
tradition more objectively than Thompson
wants one to, he realizes there
are criticisms that must be leveled at
the book--and at the great state.
Thompson's material is invariably
second-hand, and even though excellent
footnotes are given, the book has to be
classified as "a scissors and paste
job." In addition, what is
presented as native material (for example, Mike
Fink and the Ohio River are claimed for
Kentucky) is often just as "unique"
to Ohio, Virginia, or Tennessee or is so
universal as to be more Anglo-
American than anything else. Much of the
history of the land is exuberantly
misrepresented or ignored. Boone's
contemporaries, who made copper-hued
razor straps of their victims' skins,
who flaunted government and treaty in
their greed to grab the fertile hills,
are treated with backslaps and chuckles
as sly knaves. The primitive and idiotic
feuds that defy civilization are
passed off with, "Man born in the
wilds of Kentucky is feud of days and
full of virus." The complexities of
Kentucky's mugwump position during
the Civil War and her medieval attitude
toward the Negro are really not
discussed at all. Floyd Collins, whose
tedious death in 1925 is a perfect
example of the commercialization of
emotion, gets no mention. In short,
Thompson shows us only that side of
Kentucky that it is happy and easy
to show. He leaves off where the real
story of Kentucky begins.
Kentucky is a great state. It might
defend a claim as the most American
of the forty-eight. But it didn't become
American by being cute and
quaintly colorful. It became American by
being more grasping, more bloody,
more cruel, more tearful (as well as
more loving and laughing and drinking)
than the urbanite of today can really
believe. You realize the joy, but not
the meanness, of the struggle as you
read Kentucky Tradition. This is the
great weakness of a good book.
Denison University TRISTRAM P. COFFIN
BOOK REVIEWS 317
The Crucial Decade: America,
1945-1955. By Eric F. Goldman. (New
York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1956. ix??298??ix p.;
index. $4.00.)
This is a brilliant interpretative study
of the last decade in America. By
weaving together perceptive analyses,
dramatic vignettes, and striking portraits
of the leading participants, Professor
Eric Goldman of Princeton University
recreates the fascination of these ten
years. He makes vivid what had become
blurred. More than that, he gives a
meaning to this era which has escaped
most of us lost in the trees of detail.
The meaning he finds is this.
Despite the befuddlement, meanness, and
spirit of McCarthyism which
have at times characterized the period
and have been the cause of black
despair, Americans have shown that they
can pull themselves together, face
and answer the important questions. By
1955 the great majority of Amer-
icans--Republicans as well as
Democrats--had accepted in domestic affairs
the Half-Century of Revolution
(Goldman's phrase) which produced the
welfare state and welfare capitalism. In
foreign policy they had come to
accept the cluster of ideas embraced by
the concepts of containment and
coexistence. It has been the achievement
of a broad consensus on these
basic questions which the author
believes to be "crucial" about "the crucial
decade."
Professor Goldman, for the most part,
has confined his history to a
narrative of the major political events,
ideas, and moods of the decade.
Even in this area the treatment is
intensive rather than extensive or in any
sense exhaustive. Nor is there any
attempt to report the social and cultural
history of the times as Mark Sullivan
and Frederick Lewis Allen do in their
histories of earlier decades. Where
attention is given to sociological data, the
models are the Lynds' Middletown or
the Kinsey Reports.
Always the author builds from the
particular to the general. He limns
memorable portraits of lesser knowns
like Clark Clifford and George
Kennan as well as the prominent:
Vandenberg, Taft, Acheson, McCarthy,
and MacArthur. There is dramatic power
in the scenes he sketches: Vanden-
berg's speech in the senate renouncing
his lifelong belief in isolationism;
Thomas Murphy's withering cross-examination
of Dr. Carl Binger, the
psychiatric expert, in the second Hiss
trial; the anguished hands of Costello
on the witness stand in the Kefauver
crime investigations; McCarthy's
stunned bewilderment when Joseph Welch
exposed him for the character
assassin that he was in the
Army-McCarthy hearings.
Professor Goldman takes delight in
pinpointing the originators of phrases
which have become part of the language.
Some are familiar. Churchill
coined "iron curtain," George
Kennan "containment." But the authors of
318
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
other phrases are less well known.
Bernard Baruch was the first to use "cold
war," Herblock originated
"McCarthyism," a reporter suggested "police
action" to describe the Korean
affair, and John Alsop, brother of the
columnists, authored
"egghead."
Sturdy analysis informs the narrative
throughout the book. Among the
examples which struck this reviewer as
especially fresh and perceptive were:
the symbolism of the Hiss case, the
ideology of the Asia Firsters, the rela-
tionship of the communist threat to the
broadening of civil rights for
Negroes, the explanation why groups of
former New Dealers became angrily
suspicious of New Dealism and supported
the "great conspiracy" charge
against the Truman administration.
There is a strong kinship between this
volume and the author's Rendezvous
with Destiny, a study of American reform since the Civil War. He uses
again some of the same ideological
concepts. The techniques of presentation
are similar. Although he has broadened
the canvas, the liberal reform
movement remains a central theme of this
latest work. As has been already
noted, Professor Goldman finds ground
for cautious optimism in 1955 in
the American acceptance of the
Half-Century of Revolution.
A principal difference, however, between
the two volumes is in the scholarly
apparatus. Unlike the earlier one, this
one lacks footnotes and critical
bibliography, though it does have an
index. A "Note on Sources" states
that the author used chiefly printed
materials, manuscript collections in a few
instances, supplemented by interviews
and correspondence with the men and
women who made the history. He used a
somewhat novel technique of
submitting to participants the part or
parts of the manuscript concerning
their activity and asked for a check on
the facts. Many errors were caught
and much valuable commentary was
received. This correspondence has been
deposited in the Princeton University
Library, where the author hopes ii
will one day become available to other
scholars.
Kenyon College LANDON WARNER
Standard Oil Company (Indiana): Oil
Pioneer of the Middle West. By Paul
H. Giddens. (New York:
Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1955. xviii??741p.;
illustrations, charts, bibliographical
note, and index. $7.50.)
Professor Giddens states that the volume
under review "is an account of
the company's growth, operations,
policies, and practices--all phases of its
business." And indeed it is. Standard
Oil Company (Indiana) is a painstak-
BOOK REVIEWS 319
ingly researched, readable, thoroughly
detailed, and colorfully described
growth of the second largest American
oil company and the fourth largest
manufacturing organization in the United
States. This study, in conjunction
with in-progress investigations into
histories of Shell, Jersey Standard, and
California Standard should provide
socio-economic analysts with much in-
formation heretofore unavailable for an
appraisal of the impact of an in-
dustry's development upon the total
economy, as well as an insight into
the characteristics and practices of men
who influenced industrial activities
in the United States.
The history begins with Indiana
Standard's organization in 1889 as
part of the Standard Oil Trust and
traces, chronologically to 1951, its
problems and their solutions in
production, marketing, and research.
The general reader of histories will be
interested in management's early
and continuing efforts to humanize the
company, but should be warned that,
in this instance, Professor Giddens
seems to have been "carried away." In
1919 Colonel Robert W. Stewart initiated
a two-pronged drive to reorient
(Midwest) public attitudes toward
bigness in business by means of in-
stitutional advertising and employee relations.
Both were surprisingly suc-
cessful: the former by widespread,
informative newspaper advertising
describing "policies, motives and
ideals" of the company and by expertly
and theatrically staged speaking
engagements involving professional, business,
and civic groups; the latter by the
establishment of a company union ar-
rangement, the Industrial Relations
Plan.
The Industrial Relations Plan was
adopted after a study by W. L.
Mackenzie King of the Rockefeller
Foundation and provided for employee
grievance machinery through a joint
general committee established at each
refinery. Grievances not settled locally
could be appealed to the president
of the company and, if necessary, to the
secretary of labor in Washington.
This employer-employee liaison, together
with stock purchase arrangements
instituted in 1921 (seventy percent of
eligible employees owned one or more
shares by 1926) and a pension plan,
resulted in reasonably peaceful relations
with labor.
Other chapters dealing with
"product" competition as distinguished from
price competition, court litigation, the
Stewart-Rockefeller struggle for
control, and company fortunes during the
boom of the twenties, the de-
pression of the thirties, and the World
War II years are equally interesting
and, in the reviewer's judgment, much
more objective.
Ohio State University DAVID M. HARRISON
320
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Arms and Men: A Study in American
Military History. By Walter Millis.
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1956. 382p.;
note on sources and
index. $5.75.)
This is one of the most original and
thoughtful surveys of American
military policy ever published. It
treats a subject that is often ignored in
our general histories and is all the
more welcome because the field has long
been dominated by uncritical
antiquarians or one-sided enthusiasts who have
viewed with alarm the mistakes of the
past and have used, or abused, history
to sustain preconceived doctrines. Many
of the books heretofore published
in the field have been mere tracts,
usually frenetic pleas for preparedness.
A good question that Mr. Millis poses in
various contexts is: preparedness
for what. He rejects the notion that
preparedness is some sort of substantive
entity (like life insurance) that can be
bought in various quantities at
such and such prices. He also
demonstrates that the American people,
instinctively perhaps, but nevertheless
correctly, have rejected this idea. Amid
many contradictions and inconsistencies
there has been this consistency:
historically Americans have not placed
their faith in professional soldiers,
super weapons, or grand military plans
(a la Schlieffen). Rather they have
chosen, sensibly, to take advantage of
their isolated geographical position
and have built up their manpower and
industrial potential to meet crises as
they arose. The author believes that
this has worked well enough until
relatively recently.
Mr. Millis has not attempted to write an
exhaustive military history of
the United States: very little is said
about strategy, tactics, or battles. He does,
however, have a great deal to say about
war as a reflection of American
society and the climate of opinion in
which military decisions were made.
Tracing the effects of
eighteenth-century democratic ideas, he shows how the
American and French revolutions infused
a new spirit into warfare. Armies,
which had formerly been mere tools in
the hands of monarchs or princes,
now became the living embodiments of the
national spirit and will. What-
ever blessings it might have brought
otherwise, democracy made warfare
more all-inclusive and more fearful. The
industrial revolution, which im-
proved weapons in both quality and
quantity, made the business of killing
more efficient and necessitated changes
in strategy and tactics. The great
problems of transporting, clothing, feeding,
and caring for modern armies
brought the military managerial
revolution to the United States and resulted
in far-reaching changes in organization
on the eve of World War I. The
great war and its aftermath saw the
development of still deadlier weapons:
the machine gun, the tank, the airplane,
and other mechanical devices. In
his chapter on the scientific revolution
Mr. Millis traces the development
BOOK REVIEWS 321
of radar, jet propulsion, and nuclear
weapons that has produced the present-
day dilemma, or what he calls the
"hypertrophy of war." Concluding his
survey, he examines the various efforts
since the Korean conflict to achieve
an adjustment to unprecedented
circumstances. It is interesting to note
that during this relatively brief period
the swings and gyrations of policy
have been more violent and extreme than
in all previous American history.
As noted above, this volume does not
attempt a comprehensive survey;
in fact, the research in places is
spotty and it would be possible to quarrel
with many points of detail. For example,
Mr. Millis states flatly that the
traceable military results of the
strategic bombardment of Germany were
"uniformly disappointing."
This certainly ignores the highly successful
campaign against German oil and the
pattern of bombardment that sealed
off the invasion area and made it
impossible for the Germans to get re-
inforcements into the Normandy
beachhead. But these are minor points
when one considers that the main purpose
of the book was to produce
an incisive and provocative commentary
of American military policy. One
great point is put over with
unmistakable clarity: war is no longer a viable
solution to international conflict. It
has become so destructive that it is no
longer capable of settling anything or
achieving any goal, except perhaps
the end of the human race.
Ohio State University HARRY L. COLES
Birds and Men: American Birds in
Science, Art, Literature, and Conserva-
tion, 1800-1900. By Robert Henry Welker. (Cambridge: Belknap Press
of Harvard University Press, 1955.
230p.; illustrations, selected biblio-
graphy, and index. $5.75.)
Birds have made a strong impact on men
since the dawn of human
understanding. Witness the superb cave
drawings of birds by the very
earliest known representatives of Homo
sapiens twenty-five thousand years
ago. Nor should we neglect to mention
the superb craftsmanship and intimate
knowledge of the subjects displayed in
the effigy pipes of birds carved
by Hopewell Indian artists over a
thousand years ago. There is appreciation
of birds in the earliest writings. Long
before the Christian era, Jeremiah,
the prophet, evinced a knowledge of bird
movements: "Yea, the stork
in the heaven knoweth her appointed
times: and the turtle and the crane
and the swallow observe the time of
their coming." An English poet wrote
about 1300:
Sumer is i-cumen in
Lhude sing, cuccu!
322
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Mr. Welker has performed a service and
has accomplished a bit of good
writing in detailing the history of the
relationship between Americans and
birds between 1800 and 1900. He overlaps
each limiting date a bit,
especially in paying a tribute to the
remarkable Mark Catesby, who painted
and wrote about American birds nearly a
hundred years before Audubon
--a worthwhile bonus, in my opinion.
As the title indicates, the book treats
four categories: American birds
in science, art, literature, and
conservation. The first subject for extended
treatment is Alexander Wilson, father of
American ornithology, who was
a scientist and writer of competence and
who might have become an
artist but for an early death and
economic demands during his lifetime.
It is not generally appreciated that
Wilson's American Ornithology, com-
pleted in 1814, was a work which for
coverage of an avifauna, and for
colored illustrations combined with
extensive text, had not then been
equaled, either in Europe or America.
Audubon was destined soon to publish the
most magnificent collection
of bird art ever assembled, but
Audubon's text could not excel that of the
one-time Paisley weaver for scientific
accuracy or straightforward English
prose. The author pays due tribute to
Audubon, whose "work seems
quintessentially American in its sheer
physical size, its exuberant color,
its complexity and variety and its
unbounded vitality."
Among the literary birdmen, Thoreau, of
course, heads the list, but there
are discussions of Bartram, with his
"wondrous kind of floundering
eloquence," Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Burroughs, Muir, and Bradford
Torrey. At least four nineteenth-century
American women, Olive Thorne
Miller, Mabel Osgood Wright, Florence A.
Merriam, and Neltje Blanchan,
wrote competently about birds.
In the listing of federal and state bird
books there is a serious omission,
in my opinion, in failing to mention
John M. Wheaton's Birds of Ohio,
which as late as 1927, forty-five years
after its appearance, was pronounced
by C. W. Richmond of the United States
National Museum, dean of
American bird bibliographers, still to
be a model for annotated state
bird lists.
Great bird poetry has not yet appeared
in America, in the opinion of the
author, with the possible exception of
Walt Whitman's "Out of the Cradle
Endlessly Rocking," though Bryant,
Emerson, and Wilson Flagg produced
noteworthy poems on birds.
The chapters on the development of the
conservation idea in America are
interesting and provide good source
material on social attitudes in Victorian
times. It is difficult to realize that
scarcely more than fifty years ago it was
BOOK REVIEWS 323
smart for women to decorate their
bonnets with stuffed birds, not to mention
kittens' heads!
The book is illustrated with
reproductions of bird drawings by early
workers, including a good number of
Audubon's.
This reviewer heartily approves of most
of the author's philosophy.
The book is pithily, sometimes
brilliantly, written and plentifully spiced
with wit. It makes thoughtful and
fascinating reading.
Ohio Historical Society EDWARD S. THOMAS
Yankee Reporters, 1861-65. By Emmet Crozier. (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1956. xii??441p.;
maps, notes, bibliography, and
index. $6.00.)
Within the last three years at least
four full-blown books have been
produced on the reporters who covered
the Civil War for the northern press.
Each volume covers just about the same
ground and nothing very much
new has been added to the record of the
rebellion. A reader of all of them
finds himself thinking the subject has
been beaten to death on the
typewriters.
In 1953, Bernard A. Weisberger published
Reporters for the Union; in
1954, Louis M. Starr, wrote the romantic
Bohemian Brigade; the next year,
J. Cutler Andrews turned out the stuffy
and massive The North Reports
the Civil War. And now we have Yankee Reporters, 1861-65, by
Emmet
Crozier! (We use the exclamation point
not to denote our enthusiasm at
still another book on a threadbare
subject, but to indicate our never-ceasing
amazement at the hardihood of publishers.)
This last and fourth book is, to our
somewhat jaded appetite for such
fare, the best written of the lot. While
some of the other versions of the
reportorial saga may have smelled at
times of the musty research shelf, the
stirring (to a newspaperman) perfume of
printer's ink is distinctly notice-
able when Crozier's book is opened. It
is a story of newspapermen by a
newspaperman. Maps and end papers are
informative. Crozier, a war cor-
respondent in World War II and for many
years a top-drawer journalist,
has transmitted to the printed page the
excitement of news chasing. A
combination of writing talent and
sympathetic understanding of the prob-
lems faced by the eager young men who
reported Shiloh, Antietam, and
Gettysburg has produced a readable book.
The excellent writing is indeed
the book's saving grace and perhaps the
only excuse for its publication.
Scholars are warned there is no
annotation.
324
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
The "Yankee Reporters"
described by Crozier--and those who have
gone before him in three previous
volumes--were new to the American
press scene, and military officials
scratched their heads to find a safe method
of regulating them. The majority were
Union men, but there were among
them those who preferred nothing better
than to report a Yankee licking.
Others were hardly more than personal
press agents for favored generals,
attaching themselves to a division headquarters
and peacocking around in
sash and sword.
If the Union cause had more dangerous
enemies than the New York
World, the Chicago Times, or a dozen other papers we
might mention,
history has failed to reveal it. All
through the war these bitter organs
spouted streams of venemous untruth.
Historian James G. Randall has said
the Civil War correspondent caused
"serious" injury to the northern cause.
Crozier here fails to prove his thesis
that they played a significant role
in winning the war and preserving the
Union.
In a dust-jacket statement Crozier says
he "decided first to discover the
correspondents as human beings, to show
them fighting the censors, the war
department, the generals, and each
other."
Well, it was easy. All he had to do was
thumb through the several
volumes previously published on the
subject.
Ohio Historical Society ROBERT S. HARPER
Negro Folktales in Michigan. Collected and edited by Richard M. Dorson.
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1956. xvi??247p.; illustrations,
bibliography, and indexes. $4.75.)
In Negro Folktales in Michigan, Dorson--already
well known for
Jonathan Draws the Long Bow and Bloodstoppers and Bearwalkers, studies
respectively of New England and Upper
Peninsula folklore--presents
a picture of folklore surviving the
process of acculturation. Through
interviews with informants in six
Michigan Negro communities,
he attempts to answer this question:
what has happened to Negro folklore,
especially to the traditions of
story-telling, as Negroes have left their
segregated society in the South and
accommodated themselves to new
roles in the North?
At the outset, the reviewer must
emphasize what Dorson repeatedly
suggests, that Negro folklore has, by
and large, not survived migration
northward. Though these are Negro
folktales recorded in Michigan, they
BOOK REVIEWS 325
are not folktales of the Michigan Negro.
Of sixty-nine informants from
whom Dorson elicited material, all were
southern-born and southern-reared,
except five born in Michigan, one in
Illinois, and one in Ohio; and none
of these seven was a major contibutor to
the collection. All the really good
storytellers had come from the South and
were still imperfectly adjusted
to the northern environment. The Negro
communities antedating the Civil
War yielded little: nothing to speak of
was recorded in Mecosta, in the
central sandhills; and in the old
settlement of Calvin, in southwestern
Michigan, the only sources of tales were
recent arrivals from Mississippi,
Georgia, and Tennessee, including the
best of Dorson's informants, the
late J. D. Suggs.
Of course, this loss of traditional
folklore is not peculiar to the Negro.
It is true of all groups whose cultural
roots have been cut, whether
American Indians, southern mountaineers,
Negroes, or East Europeans; if
the process seems accelerated in recent
years, one must remember that in
these years the automobile has
facilitated the breakup of the ethnic com-
munity, and the radio and the juke-box
and the television screen have
provided commercialized substitutes for
folk entertainment and folk
medicine alike. In losing his folklore,
the Negro is merely participating in
the cultural assimilation that typifies
present-day American society.
But if these general conclusions may
disappoint some folklorists, the
process of reaching them has provided
Dorson with a rich collection,
which he classifies by eleven types:
animal and bird stories; Old Marster
and John (the plantation Negro, often in
the role of trickster); Colored
Man (the free Negro, scapegoat in a
white man's world); horrors; hoodoos
and two-heads; spirits and hants;
witches and wonders; the Lord and the
Devil; preachers; liars and Irishmen;
fairy tales. Prefaced are two chapters
dealing with the communities and the
informants and with the art of
Negro storytelling; apparatus includes
bibliography and notes, an index of
informants, an index of motifs, and an
index of tale types. Thus the
serious student of folk literature may
easily evaluate each story against
the broader background of world folklore;
on the other hand, the person
who simply likes a good story can find
plenty here to his liking.
On questions of method, Dorson is highly
suggestive. He reminds us
that it is dangerous to approach the
folk culture expecting to find only
survivals or variants of previously
recorded items, even more dangerous
to look for what impresses the
investigator as quaint and curious. There
can be many objectives in the study of
folk culture: to enlarge the store of
data; to trace the affiliations of known
items; to determine regional and
social patterns of distribution; to
study a particular group of people in
326
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
detail. It is legitimate to do any of
these; in fact, some studies provide
data toward them all. But at every stage
the investigator must know what
he is doing, must work carefully with
his informants, and must seek to
understand what each bit of his data
signifies. Fortunately, this warning
is less needed today than it used to be:
linguistic geography has developed
tools for the study of folk speech, and
scientific folklorists have worked
out techniques for studying other
aspects of folk culture, without either
group destroying the romance of
discovery. For the student of folk culture
in transition, Dorson's book will be not
only illuminating in its own
right but a model which may be adapted
to many other situations.
University of Chicago RAVEN I. McDAVID, JR.
Northern Methodism and
Reconstruction. By Ralph E. Morrow.
(East
Lansing: Michigan State University
Press, 1956. ix??269p.; bibliography
and index. $5.00.)
Professor Morrow's volume is the first
comprehensive and objective
treatment of the role of the northern
Methodists in Reconstruction. Most
of the earlier writers on the churches
and Reconstruction--clerics and
religious journalists--wrote polemical
accounts to justify the policies of their
own denominations; recent scholars
(Farish, The Circuit Rider Dismounts,
Richmond, Va., 1938; Vander Velde, The
Presbyterian Churches and the
Federal Union, 1861-1869, Cambridge, Mass., 1932) have written factual
accounts, summaries of the actions and
opinions of those concerned with
the programs of the churches, but in
their attention to detail they have
ignored or lost the drama of conflict.
Morrow has brought to his book both fact
and drama. He not only
marshals the opposing opinions, the
claims and counterclaims, the tactics
and strategems of the inter-church
warfare, but he renders judgment with
convincing authority and impartiality.
His style is always readable and
engaging, sometimes exciting,
occasionally a little flippant, and now and
then strained, as, for example, in his
effort to avoid the use of "said" with
such obtrusive expressions as "snapped,"
"barked," "screamed," "gloated,"
"moaned," and
"commented" (the last having a restricted meaning not
always accorded it); it should be added,
however, that the writer has been
unusually skillful in integrating a
large number of direct quotations into
the text.
The Methodists, Professor Morrow says in
his introductory analysis,
"succeeded in institutionalizing
the gospel of revivalism." They embodied
BOOK REVIEWS 327
in their church "the minor
contradiction of a theology which placed a
premium upon individual religious
experience, and an organization which
inclined towards authoritarianism."
The results were phenomenal. At the
outbreak of the Civil War the northern
church was the largest and wealthiest
denomination in America. The enterprise
was supported by an elaborate
organization of the clergy and laymen, a
hierarchy of presiding elders and
bishops, publishing houses, church
papers, and educational institutions.
The missionary zeal of the church, which
found a ready outlet in the
patriotic crusade of the war, was
equally quick to recognize in the devastated
South a field as white unto harvest as
had been the western frontier.
In successive chapters Professor Morrow
outlines the organizational
pattern and the proposed strategems for
the conquest of the South, the
differences of opinion within the
borders of the northern church, the
changing program for the white southerners,
the evangelization and
education of the freedmen, the relations
of white to black, the church's
involvement in politics, and the growing
inhospitality of the South, white
and black.
Professor Morrow finds the motivation
for the northern church's aggres-
siveness partly in its missionary zeal,
to a considerable extent in its political
alignments (made firm by the war) and
the consequent attempt to impose
"loyalty" as a criterion of
godliness. Back of these he sees the cultural
imperialism which dominated much of
America in the nineteenth century,
the government in its expansion and in
the North-South conflict, the
churches in their missionary
enterprises. The explanation is good so far
as it goes but hardly particular enough
to explain the intensity of the
conflict or the greater ruthlessness
with which Methodists, in contrast to
other denominations, pursued their aims.
Perhaps some further explanation
may be found in the extreme
self-consciousness of the Methodists and the
bitterness growing out of the division
of 1844.
The prevailing pattern for each segment
of the study is an outline (not
formally set forth but developed with
interesting anecdote, fact, or opinion)
of the expectations of the North, the
conflicting views on policy, the actual
facts of the situation, the obstacles,
the strategems (often improvised, in-
cluding the enlistment of government
aid, the seizure of property by legal
tactics or casuistry, the traducing of
the blacks, the honest investment of
energy and funds), the results, and the
interpretation of the results, North
and South. Through it all runs Professor
Morrow's own judgment, some-
times cast in a single phrase, or a few
deft sentences, and never in-
truded, ex cathedra, on the
reader.
The Methodists in Reconstruction is the
story of a church steeped in
328
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
evangelism, proud of its numbers and its
wealth, but woefully unequipped
for the larger social problems of its
day. In the confusion of evangelism
and patriotism, religion and politics,
it resorted (as Professor Morrow ob-
serves with shrewd insight) to an
attempt at corporate conversion and to
an effort to apply Wesley's formula of
penitence and forgiveness for the
individual to the southern church, which
must repent and be forgiven for
its political sins.
The bibliography and footnotes, as well
as citations in the text, indicate
that Professor Morrow has made an
extensive investigation of sources.
The index is brief but adequate.
University of Oregon ROBERT D. CLARK
The Civil War. Vol. I, The American Iliad, As Told by Those Who
Lived
It. By Otto Eisenschiml and Ralph Newman. Vol. II, The
Picture
Chronicle of the Events. By Ralph Newman and E. B. Long. (New York:
Grosset and Dunlap, 1956. Vol. I, 719p.;
maps, bibliography, index, and
end papers. Vol. II, xiv??240p.;
illustrations, index, and end papers.
Boxed set, $10.00.)
Here is a set of books that clearly
belongs in the personal library of the
Civil War devotee. It is the product of
the ingenuity, broad experience,
and imaginative skill of Otto
Eisenschiml, well-known Civil War scholar;
Ralph Newman, proprietor of the
remarkable Abraham Lincoln Book Shop
in Chicago, originator of the Civil War
Round Table, and founder of the
Civil War Book Club; and Everette B.
Long, long-time journalist and re-
search chief for Bruce Catton's
forthcoming centennial history of the
Civil War.
The first volume is a reissue of The
American Iliad, originally published
in 1947 by Bobbs-Merrill. Here the tale
of the military campaigns from
Sumter to Appomattox is told in the
colorful, vigorous language of the
men who fought the war -- from generals
to privates. It is told also by
news correspondents, foreign observers,
government officials, and ordinary
civilians who had occasion to observe
parts of the military action. In the
main these were eyewitnesses who
recorded their accounts with an urgency
and immediacy dictated by the demands of
what they saw, heard, smelled,
and felt. Since the contacts with the
blood and grime of fighting were close,
personal, and intimate, these first-hand
testimonies of witnesses provide
the reality of being on the spot.
BOOK REVIEWS 329
A few examples will illustrate the kind
of material the book contains--
George Pickett's calm letter to his
sweetheart written just before his charge
at Gettysburg; Grant's laconic account
of his maneuvering to close the trap
on Vicksburg; a sailor's story, telling
what it was like to be inside the
Monitor during its encounter with the Merrimac; a
Confederate artillery-
man's horrifying description of the
massive slaughter of "Burnside's boys"
at Marye's Heights; a Chicago news
correspondent's view of a tense and
frightened Washington during the days of
Early's cavalry raid; and
Fitzhugh Lee's recollection of General
Lee's final act at Appomattox when
"in silence, with lifted hat, he
rode through a weeping army to his home."
The extracts are generally brief,
balanced, and well chosen. The editors
have woven them together with a minimum
of connecting comment,
sufficient to tie the story of the war
together and keep it moving. All in
all, the outcome is effective in
presenting a vivid narrative of the war.
The second volume is considerably more
than just a collection of war
photographs, despite its title, The
Picture Chronicle. Authors Newman and
Long provide a month-by-month, and in
places practically day-by-day,
description of the military activity
during the war. The pictures, which are
extremely well reproduced, go much
beyond simply illustrating the text.
They supply a magnifying glass and a
backward-looking telescope through
which mid-twentieth century Americans
can see: the terrain and the buildings
that Federal and Confederate soldiers
fought over, such as rugged Lookout
Mountain and Gaines' Mill; the machines
and hardware of destruction that
they employed, such as the giant mortar
on the railroad flat car near
Petersburg; and the horrible
effectiveness of their efforts, such as the gutted
city of Columbia. The photographs are
drawn chiefly from the Brady-Miller,
Barnard, and Gardner photographic
histories of the war. In addition, the
authors have performed several other
useful services for their readers. This
volume includes a section giving brief
biographical sketches of the principal
military and civilian leaders, North and
South; a bibliography of some
eleven pages listing volumes required
for a "basic Civil War library"; and
a catalog of the major military units on
both sides, together with their
generals, theaters of operation, and
major battles.
Taken together, the two volumes provide
a dramatic, exciting, colorful
view of the military aspects of
"the American Iliad." With the Civil War
rapidly approaching its centennial, both
the historian and the general reader
will welcome the appearance of this set
of volumes.
Los Angeles State College DAVID LINDSEY
330
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
The Origins of the American Party
System: Three Essays. By Joseph
Charles. (Williamsburg, Va.: The
Institute of Early American History
and Culture, 1956. vii??147p.; index.
$2.50.)
This posthumous book consists of
selected chapters from the author's
doctoral dissertation, "Party
Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy." A quota-
tion from H. A. L. Fisher, "the
play of the contingent and the unforeseen,"
is a suggested key to this interpretation
of the extraordinarily complex
forces that determined the origin of our
party system. Beard's conclusions
are neither followed nor challenged in
this fresh and comprehensive re-
examination of the pertinent evidence.
Jefferson has long been criticized for
his inconsistencies, but Hamilton
may have outdone him in this respect. We
find, among other things, this
paragon of sound finance proposing what
would have amounted to an issue
of "greenbacks" in 1798. Was
Washington a tired old man deferring
inordinately to Hamilton? How much did
he understand the things done
in his name? Federalists dwelt privately
on his deficiencies, but at the time
of Washington's death letters were on
the way to Mt. Vernon imploring
him to run again in 1800 and save the party
from certain defeat.
Assumption of state debts is found to
have created a new alignment
differing from that on the ratification
of the constitution. It shattered the
harmony of the first congress and
created the Pennsylvania-southern liaison
that fortified Jeffersonian Democracy.
Evidently assumption was delayed
until some congressmen could make the
most of the opportunity. Disinter-
ested congressmen were evenly divided,
which enabled the speculators
in congress to tip the scales for
assumption. This issue stimulated the op-
position at the same time that it
started the disintegration of the Federalist
combination.
By and large the Federalists knew what
they wanted, while the Jeffer-
sonians knew what they did not want. It
may astonish some to learn that
Jefferson's early efforts at building a
party generally failed, and that, instead
of leading the opposition from the
beginning, the spontaneous movement
matured and then adopted Jefferson as
its leader. Indeed it was Jefferson's
idea to let the Federalists commit
political suicide.
It is a curious fact that President
Adams' policies so closely resembled
Jefferson's that high Federalists
consequently distrusted Adams, who at
one time threatened to resign and turn
the presidency over to Vice President
Jefferson. So much at variance with
Hamilton had Adams been in 1790 that
he asked whether speculators were to
constitute our nobility. Unlike
Lincoln, President Adams let his
theories instead of events shape his policies.
BOOK REVIEWS 331
It was because the Jeffersonians
controlled the lower house in 1794
that the Federalists turned to the
treaty power of the Federalist senate
to control commercial policy through
Jay's Treaty. The intense opposition
to the treaty started Republican
caucuses and thereby party organization.
After the XYZ Affair it was the land tax
of 1799 and the alien and sedition
laws with the draconian enforcement of
them that spelled the ruin of the
Federalist party.
Ohio Northern University WILFRED E. BINKLEY
William Tecumseh Sherman and the
Settlement of the West. By Robert G.
Athearn. (Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1956. xix??371p.;
illustrations, bibliography, and index.
$5.00.)
It is a new William Tecumseh Sherman who
emerges from Robert G.
Athearn's study of the Ohio-born
general's post-Civil War career.
Sherman the destroyer becomes Sherman
the empire builder, but Athearn
contends that a clear consistency
emerges in Sherman's career when seen
in the light of his overriding, lifelong
passion to bring to a successful
culmination the complete development of
the nation.
Sherman from 1865 to 1883 was
successively in command of the
military division of the Missouri
(comprising most of the Great Plains
and Rocky Mountain areas) and general of
the army. As such, he figured
prominently in clearing the way for
railroads and telegraph lines and
subsequently for the advancing white
settlers who poured into the West
in this period. This meant "dealing
with" the Indians, however, and in
what is possibly the major contribution
of the book, Athearn, using Sherman
as a convenient organizational device,
ties together the widely scattered
Indian fighting of the sixties and
seventies and relates it to its central
purpose, the settlement of America's
last unsettled frontier.
A sympathetic picture of Sherman emerges
from the study. Sherman's
thankless job was to keep peace in the
West during the very period when
vengeful red men were being driven out
of the last of their ancestral
homes, often by the worst variety of
fraud, trickery, and deceit. Un-
fortunately the peace-conscious post-war
congresses were unwilling to
authorize adequate forces or vote
adequate supplies for such a task. Many
congressmen were convinced that the
Indians should and could be pacified
without the necessity for fighting, and
Sherman was forced to bear the
cross of such critics along with
continual carping by eastern humanitarians,
who thought every Indian was a noble
savage and should be treated as such.
332
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Western demands were frequently just the
opposite. Athearn tells well
and with valuable documentation the
story of the campaign for Indian
extermination which formed a prominent
theme of western journalism in
the period. Sherman was also exasperated
by the frequent ruse of economi-
cally beleaguered western farmers
sounding the wolf cry for protection from
raiding Indians purely in hopes of
attracting large bodies of troops and
then selling them supplies at high
prices. He was also forced to contend
with overeager demands for Indian
slaughter by promotion-seeking sub-
ordinate officers desirous of gaining
popular acclaim. Such annoyances,
which would have caused a lesser man to
lose all perspective, Sherman
took with calm resoluteness, due,
Athearn claims fairly convincingly,
to his vision that in the end it would
all add up to his desired American
empire.
If the study warrants any criticism, it
might be on the basis of style.
Breezy in spots, and written with
colorful western language, the work,
in others, assumes a great knowledge of
background information and fre-
quently borders on the tedious in its
attention to detail. However, in seeking
to portray effectively the peace-making
role of a great war hero, Athearn
well accomplishes his purpose.
Ohio State University PAUL L. MURPHY
Political Party Patterns in Michigan.
By Stephen B. and Vera H. Sarasohn.
Wayne State University Studies,
Political Science, No. 2. (Detroit: Wayne
State University Press, 1957. x??76p.;
appendices and notes. $1.75.)
Students of pressure politics will find
in this booklet a brief analysis
of the part that pressures have played
in the development of the two major
parties in Michigan. Written originally
as a Columbia University doctoral
dissertation by Stephen Sarasohn, it was
prepared for publication by his
wife after his death. A foreword by
Professor David Truman is included.
Currently, each major party in Michigan
is dominated by a faction
interested more in policy than in
patronage. In the Republican party this
faction is composed of the automobile
manufacturers. In the Democratic
party it is the United Automobile
Workers who are in the saddle. This
control has been accomplished "by
winning convention domination in the
major counties and pouring money and
effort into the primaries." As the
authors point out, these factions
"are blessed with financial resources,
organizational ability, public relations
technique, and, particularly the
UAW-CIO, with a reservoir of campaign
and delegate personnel." This
has not always been the picture in
Michigan.
BOOK REVIEWS 333
At the beginning of the twentieth
century Michigan was a one-party
state with the Republicans in control.
The Democrats were weak and torn
apart by bitter intra-party struggles.
In the past, patronage played a greater
part in Michigan politics than it does
today, although economic interests
have not been completely absent.
It would hardly be correct to say that
this development in Michigan is
typical. Rather, Michigan is probably
unique, in that two powerful economic
interests connected with a single
industry are competing for power there.
However, this point will not be fully
clarified until similar studies have
been completed in other states. Such
studies are needed--studies that get
behind party organization into the pressures
that motivate organizational
activity.
Ohio State University E. ALLEN HELMS
A History of Minnesota. By William Watts Folwell. Vol. I. Revised edition.
(St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society,
1956. xx??533p.; illustrations,
maps, appendices, and index. $6.50.)
As the state of Minnesota nears its
centennial in 1958, it is well that
its historical society has undertaken
the reprinting of Volume I of William
Watts Folwell's four-volume A History
of Minnesota, which was first
published in 1921 and has long been out
of print. Aside from minor
corrections and the addition of new maps
and illustrations, the reprint is
fundamentally identical with the
original edition.
Essentially narrative rather than
interpretive, this volume chronicles the
development of Minnesota from the period
of French exploration in the
seventeenth century to the coming of
statehood in 1858. Across its pages
there pass such eminent explorers as
Marquette and Jolliet, Groseilliers and
Radisson, Du Luth, La Salle, Hennepin,
Carver, Pike, Schoolcraft, and
Nicollet. Behind them came the men that
spelled the end of Sioux and
Chippewa dominance of the area about the
headwaters of the Mississippi--
soldiers of the young American Republic
at Fort Snelling after 1819; fur
traders; then miners; next lumbermen;
and finally, farmers.
Folwell is at his best as he relates the
gradual removal of the red man
from most of the Minnesota scene,
1837-55, through a succession of treaties
with the white man not unlike those
which stripped him of land claims
elsewhere on the North American
continent. The author also gives attention
to territorial politics, culminating in
the holding of TWO conventions
(one by Democrats, the other by
Republicans) in 1857 for the purpose of
devising a constitution for the proposed
state of Minnesota.
334
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Ohioans will be particularly interested
in the early chapters on French
and British exploration, linking our own
area's early history with what
Folwell styles "Minnesota
East"--that part of Minnesota lying east of
the Mississippi River and thus at one
time part of the Northwest Territory.
They will also be interested in the role
of Samuel Medary, famed Buckeye
journalist and the last territorial
governor of Minnesota, whose decision
it was to submit to congress the constitution
devised by the Democratic
convention of 1857.
All in all, Folwell's volume evidences
good historical writing. Heavily
documented, it is nonetheless quite
readable and a credit both to the author
and his state.
Kent State University PHILLIP
R. SHRIVER
Henry Clay and the Art of American
Politics. By Clement Eaton. The
Library of American Biography, edited by
Oscar Handlin. (Boston:
Little, Brown and Company, 1957. 309p.;
note on the sources and
index. $3.50.)
It seems fitting that the volume on
Henry Clay in the new Library of
American Biography should be written by
a professor of history at the
University of Kentucky. Ashland, Clay's
famous plantation, lay near
Lexington, the home of the university;
in this city Clay's remains lie
buried. This was but a frontier
environment when the young lawyer arrived
from Virginia in the late 1790's, but
for the noted Kentuckian it was
always home. Clay was a successful,
progressive farmer. In 1829, during
a brief lull in his public career, he
wrote: "My attachment to rural
occupations every day acquires more
strength, and if it continues to increase
another year as it has the last, I shall
be fully prepared to renounce
forever the strife of public life."
Through his long and varied political
career Clay became the prototype
of the successful American politician.
His gifts for leadership began with
a remarkably engaging personality. He
was pre-eminently the orator in a
day when oratory was in fashion. If his
speeches lacked the verbiage of
Webster's and the logic of Calhoun's,
they were immensely pleasing to
his audiences. There was something
distinctly American in Clay's political
character. He was not well read, active
rather than contemplative. He was
a good party man, but his opinions were
not absolute. His detachment ruled
out a rancorous spirit. Clay played
politics by the rules. He was ever
the pleader for Kentucky's special
interests, whether seeking outlets for
BOOK REVIEWS 335
her products in the War of 1812, tariff
protection for her hemp, or a strong
federal internal improvements and
banking program for her rising industry
and commerce. In his famed American
System of 1824 Clay was merely
nationalizing Kentucky's demands in his
bid for the presidency.
Soon thereafter the nature of American
politics began to change from
a struggle between business and
democracy to one between the sections over
slavery and slavery extension. Clay was
caught in this drift; it eventually
transformed him from a politician to a
statesman. If his view toward
everyday economic and social life was
aristocratic and local, that toward
the Union was national. If Andrew
Jackson assured his defeat in the first
struggle, his political artistry and
ability to live with defeat brought him
renown in the second. Clay understood
the role of political parties in re-
solving the conflicting interests of a
great, sprawling nation. Behind his
success as a compromiser was a basic
political realism. He wrote on one
occasion: "It is a rule with me,
when acting in either a public or a private
character, to attempt nothing more than
what there exists a prospect of
accomplishing." While he lived he
revealed to American politics the role
of compromise and demonstrated the truth
that when politicians could no
longer resolve their differences within
party organizations the Union would
cease to exist.
Professor Eaton treats Henry Clay with
the sympathy he deserves. If
Clay's career was lacking in perfection,
it was also devoid of cant. The
book's organization is topical rather
than chronological. This does not
always permit a composite picture of
Clay's development to maturity and
old age, but it is an organization that
lends itself well to the limitations of
space. And the man that emerges from the
pages is a complete Clay--a
human being in search of success and
pleasure, achieving more than his
share of both. The narrative is clear,
precise, and eminently readable. This
brief volume is a worthy addition to the
growing library of Clay biography.
University of Illinois NORMAN A. GRAEBNER
Laissez Faire and the General-Welfare
State: A Study of Conflict in
American Thought, 1865-1901. By Sidney Fine. (Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan Press, 1956. x??468p.;
bibliography and index. $7.50.)
Sidney Fine, who is associate professor
of history at the University of
Michigan, has written a sober, precise
case study of the two concepts, laissez-
faire and the general-welfare state, as
they appeared in American thought,
1865-1901. He uses the term,
"laissez faire," to embrace the arguments
336
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
of those who accepted the necessity of
government but wished to confine
its functions to narrow limits; and the
term, "general-welfare state," to
include the counter-arguments of those
who believed that the state should
exert its power positively to promote
the general welfare. In each instance
the terms refer to an attitude toward
government, not to a specific program.
Although the exhaustive examination of
these concepts is the author's
principal purpose, he has two subsidiary
intents. One is to show that
even in these years when the ideology of
laissez faire enjoyed a pre-
dominance, there was a wide gap between
theory and practice. The legisla-
tive record reveals that the state and
federal governments were compelled
by the changing character of the
American economy and society to assume
various functions not approved by the
advocates of the negative state. The
author's other aim is to re-emphasize
that the period was a seed-time for
the germination of ideas which came to
fruition in the era of progressivism,
the New Deal, and the Fair Deal. A final
chapter documents this growth in
key areas of reform.
The great merit of this essay is the
broad range of writers included and
the thoroughness with which the thought
of each has been combed for his
contribution to the ideology and program
of one concept or the other.
Among the partisans of laissez faire
reviewed are social Darwinists, profes-
sional and popular economists,
sociologists, political scientists, businessmen,
clergymen, lawyers, and judges. The
author dearly establishes their
ideological spectrum. At one extreme
were the disciples of Herbert Spencer,
who came closest to the ideal of
"anarchy plus the constable." At the other
were the businessmen, whose version of
laissez faire was essentially a
rationalization of the status quo, namely
government-sponsored favors for
them but a vigorous denial of government
intervention to regulate them
or to benefit other groups.
On the other side, Professor Fine has
arrayed the champions of the
general-welfare state: ministers of the
social gospel, the new-school
economists, sociologists, political
scientists, pragmatists, and social re-
formers of all kinds. They range from
the neo-classic economists like
John Bates Clark, who were only willing
to allow the government a bit
of additional power, to Edward Bellamy, whose
utopian Nationalism en-
visioned the state directing the entire
economy.
Some of these sketches are notably good.
For example, he has presented
the full compass of Henry George's
program (a good deal more than the
single tax), likewise the breadth of
Henry Demarest Lloyd's beliefs (more
than anti-monopoly). Many of us will
find rewarding the author's firm
BOOK REVIEWS 337
analysis of the leading members of the
new school of economics, Richard
T. Ely, Henry C. Adams, and Simon N.
Patten; of the sociologists, Lester
Ward, E. A. Ross, and Albion Small, who
rejected Spencerian determinism
and the social Darwinists' version of
laissez faire. It will surprise some
to find Woodrow Wilson in this period
listed among the advocates of the
general-welfare state, but Professor
Fine makes a persuasive case for so
doing.
While all of the summaries are
competent, some lack freshness, notably
the chapters on the laissez-faire views
of American businessmen, lawyers,
and judges or the attitude of the
ministers of the social gospel toward the
general-welfare state. Furthermore, it
should be remarked that the author
is much more concerned with what these
men said rather than with why
they said it. Finally, the detailed
analysis and organization tends to destroy
the claim that this is "a study of
conflict" in any dynamic sense.
There is a very helpful index and an
extensive bibliography. The foot-
notes are comprehensive but seem
frequently to have been abused as a
space-saving device to crowd significant
material into fine print.
Kenyon College LANDON
WARNER
Book Reviews
Men of the Western Waters: The Taking
of Americas First West, 1781-
1794. By Dale Van Every. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company,
1956.
[x]??244p.; maps, illustrations,
appendices, bibliography, and index.
$4.00.)
This volume will be of great interest
both to that portion of the general
public which enjoys reading history and
also to the student who pursues
history as a vocation. It is based upon
a wide reading of the best works of
scholars in the field, and makes no
pretense of having delved into the
sources. It covers the period 1781-94,
and its scene of action is located in the
Ohio River Valley, where for over a
decade was waged one of the bloodiest
of all Indian wars in American history.
Basically, it covers the same general
period covered by Theodore Roosevelt in
his four-volume Winning of the
West and merits a place beside it.
The "Men of the Western
Waters" were the pioneers who after the
American Revolution sought a home and
wealth west of the Appalachian
highlands. It is open to question,
however, as to whether these settlers
were the "first Americans" and
whether this region was the "first West."
Long before 1781, American settlers had
opened the earliest West east
of the Appalachians.
After the Revolution ended at Yorktown,
thousands of pioneers followed
the old trails and rough pioneer roads
across the Appalachian highlands.
Many veterans received a bonus in the
form of a land grant. The prize avail-
able was well described by Franklin:
"The great country back of the Appal-
achian Mountains, on both sides of the
Ohio, and between that river and the
Lakes is now well known . . . to be one
of the finest in North America,
for the extreme richness and fertility
of the land; the healthy temperature
of the air, the mildness of the climate;
the plenty of hunting, fishing, and
fowling, the facility of trade with the
Indians; and the vast convenience
of inland navigation." Rich or
poor, the settlers all were imbued with the
spirit of land speculation. Dreaming
that even if they had to bear the scars
of the wilderness, working with horny
hands of toil, living in poverty,