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Use of the above sources, plus an under- standing on the part of Miss Glad that there can be a mixture of realism and idealism, would have resulted in a more balanced treatment of Hughes as Secretary of State. EUGENE P. TRANI Southern Illinois University RICKENBACKER. By Edward V. Rick- enbacker. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice- Hall, Inc., 1967. 458p.; illustrations,
ap- pendix, and index. $7.95.) Rickenbacker's apprenticeship in tech- nics began in 1904 at the age of ten, when his father died in a construction accident and the young boy supported the family through a series of jobs in light industries around Columbus, Ohio. His career even- tually straddled both of the major trans- portation developments of the twentieth century: automotive and aeronautical. Ric- kenbacker's captivation with cars began at the stage when they were devotedly ma- chined and fitted by hand. Later, amidst the aura of dash and glamour surrounding race drivers, his approach had the assured, systematic technique of the professional. He drove his cars with a technician's appre- ciation of their capabilities and kept them running with the aid of a well rehearsed pit crew buoyed up by sprightly march tunes played from a portable phonograph. These traits of proficiency and ingenuity carried Rickenbacker into new fame as America's "Ace of Aces" in the aerial duels of World War I. As an attentive novice, he absorbed the lessons of survival by example from the astute Raoul Lufbery and, with a mechanic's aptitude to remedy balky machine guns, outlived many con- temporaries. In the postwar years, Rickenbacker at- tempted a number of enterprises including the Rickenbacker Motor Company, which floundered, and the Indianapolis Speed- way, which flourished. In the meantime, his fascination with flying persisted. After joining Eastern Air Lines in 1934 as general manager, he became its owner and president in 1938, crystallizing his future in the field of aviation. As air line com- panies reached maturity in the late thirties, |
Rickenbacker successfuly juggled the com- plex challenges of financial, corporate, and operational procedures. Faster, more com- plicated aircraft led to route extensions, higher costs, and new problems: reacting to the pressures of piloting the new genera- tion of modern transports, Eastern became one of the leaders in aviation medicine. Although Rickenbacker did not accept an active commission in World War II, he served as a technical advisor and special aide for the wartime administration. As a roving envoy of Secretary of War Henry Stimson, Rickenbacker's various wartime missions, including visits to China and Russia, comprise some of the most fascinat- ing episodes of his autobiography. He was critical of Chiang Kai-shek and the inept Nationalist regime, but was generally im- pressed by the Russian military apparatus, especially its air force. Rickenbacker stresses the corporate and financial factors of the years after 1945, a period of extremely rapid transition in air transport design and equipment. A more thorough analysis of the era's tech- nological developments would have added to the value of the account. Since parts of two chapters closely repeat his earlier books about World War I and the ordeal afloat on a raft in the Pacific in World War II, it is regrettable that he did not expand his coverage by using fresher ma- terial. Rickenbacker's narrative, like his life, is vigorous and blunt. Because of his position as a well known figure in the air line industry, this popular autobiogra- phy will also interest historians. ROGER E. BILSTEIN Wisconsin State University, Whitewater THE POLITICAL PRINCIPLES OF ROBERT A. TAFT. By Russell Kirk and James McClellan. (New York: Fleet Press Corporation, 1967. x??213p.; chronology and index. $6.95.) This short volume, written at the request of the Robert A. Taft Institute of Govern- ment and co-authored by Russell Kirk, famous Conservative, is not a "propaganda piece." On the contrary, the authors, using not only the Taft family papers, but also |
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books, monographs, popular articles and newspapers of divergent views, precisely define the political ideology of Robert Taft and suggest his influence on his times. The accurately drawn description of Taft's political ideology and the sharp delineation of his character are the best features in the book. The Senator is depicted as no "terrible simplifier" but a perceptive thinker who insisted that lib- erty is neither license nor laissez-faire. While his philosophy stressed the need for restraints on power to be accomplished by constitutionalism, responsible party opposi- tion and a strong congressional role in American government, Taft balanced this conviction with the beliefs that security and justice for all were vital -- justifying such methods of achieving them as federal aid to education, voluntary medical care, and public housing. In shorter compass but with the same articulation, the authors present the contours of the Senator's views on foreign policy. At times isolationist, on other occasions internationalist, Taft's en- during fundamentals were the overriding importance of the national interest: a "prejudice for peace" and a detestation of empire. The "man of the Great Tradition" in ideology, the Ohioan is said to have been a retiring, non-eloquent, sober person whose industry, honesty, courage and in- tegrity made his character truly great. While commendable for its explanation of Taft's political principles, the book has limitations. The appearance rather than the reality of critical analysis is evident. Widely known criticisms of Taft are too often regarded as "strawmen" to be demol- ished. "Criticisms" become tributes. For example, the too-honest-for-his-own-politi- cal-advancement defect is represented as a virtue. The authors' decision not to go extensively into Taft's isolationism prior to the Second World War because he was not then a dominating figure opposes the more accurate estimation of historians that the Senator was a leader -- perhaps the leader -- of American isolationists. Prob- ably the most severe indictment of the Kirk-McClellan book was written by the indexer who found no need to include either McCarthy or McCarthyism in the index. This omission of Taft's support of McCarthyism is serious because this sup- |
port denied his political credo and belied the authors' claim that "Taft's honesty and intelligence transcended the controversies of the hour." This reviewer believes that the authors felt a need to be advocates as well as historians. This weakening of the study's objectivity was unnecessary. William S. White in The Taft Story was kindly to his subject, but unlike Kirk and McClellan was as severely critical as sympathetic. The same Taft emerged from both books -- a man of political depth and high char- acter. The irony, however, is that profes- sional historians and "impartial readers" will be more inclined to recognize the Senator's deserved place among great Americans after reading The Taft Story than after ending this less critical and more pro-Taft account. DAVID JENNINGS Ohio Wesleyan University PENNSYLVANIA POLITICS, 1872-1877: A STUDY IN POLITICAL LEADER- SHIP. By Frank B. Evans. (Harris- burg: The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1966. vii??360p.; illustrations, bibliography, and index. $5.00.) It is quite appropriate that Frank Evans' Pennsylvania Politics, 1872-1877 should be brought to the attention of readers of Ohio History. Not
only were two Ohioans, Grant and Hayes, elected in the presidential elections covered by the study, but also there was a close relationship between Ohio and Pennsylvania political issues and leaders during the intervening years. Evans reveals that at their 1873 state convention Pennsylvania Democrats adopted virtually the same platform as that of the Ohio Democracy. In 1874 Democratic news- papers in Ohio joined their Pennsylvania counterparts in supporting Jeremiah S. Black as United States senator from the Keystone State. Similarly, in 1874 the "Women's Crusade," a prohibitionist move- ment originating in Ohio, moved into Pennsylvania and sparked a political battle over local option. In 1874 Democrats in both states won decisive victories, and in 1875 Pennsylvania Republicans, using tac- tics and issues similar to those used by Ohio Republicans and heartened by the |
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election of Hayes as governor of Ohio, went on to crush their Democratic opponents. Evans indicates a number of areas of cooperation and mutual concern which may prove to be fruitful subjects of investi- gation for future historians. In his numer- ous references to the two states, he also presents strong evidence for the theory that Ohio provided leadership in national politics following the Civil War. The main purpose of Dr. Evans' study, however, is not to point up the political relationships between Ohio and Pennsyl- vania. Instead, he has written a well- documented and rapidly-moving account of bitter partisan battles during a critical period of Pennsylvania's tumultuous polit- ical history. Beginning with the Liberal Republican revolt of 1872 and ending with Senator Simon Cameron's retirement from public life in 1877, Evans, in examining the factors which created a strong Repub- lican majority and a weak Democratic minority, finds that the Republicans had strong leadership, an efficient party organi- zation, a unifying political program, and a remarkable degree of party loyalty. The Democracy, on the other hand, suffered not only from its minority position in national politics but also from poor leader- ship and lack of ability to create a positive program. Covering a period of only five years, Evans takes the reader through stirring political crises. In spite of the existence of city "rings" and state machines, the voters never seemed to become complacent, partially because they were conscious of the relationship of politics both to reform and depression. In 1873-74, Pennsylvanians opposed the Republican machine of Simon Cameron by supporting first a constitu- tional convention and then by throwing the "rascals" out of state offices and out of one seat in the United States Senate. Adoption of the new constitution and Dem- ocratic victories in 1874 gave renewed con- fidence to both reformers and Democrats and led to the national prominence of such leaders as Congressman Samuel J. Randall, Speaker of the House of Representatives during the disputed election of 1876. But the Republicans seized control again in 1875 and went on to carry the state for Hayes in 1876. Dr. Evans, formerly State Archivist of |
Pennsylvania and presently on the staff of the National Archives, has written a wel- come sixth addition in a series of studies of significant periods in Pennsylvania polit- ical history. His bibliography suggests that there are bountiful materials about the era he has studied. While he touches upon the inter-party conflicts surrounding the con- stitutional convention of 1873, it is appar- ent that he did not, and perhaps could not because of space limitations, delve deeply enough into the convention itself and the new constitution. We trust such a study and others will come later from Dr. Evans' facile pen. ALFRED D. SUMBERG American Association of University Professors, Washington, D.C. THE CENTENNIAL YEARS: A PO- LITICAL AND ECONOMIC HIS- TORY OF AMERICA FROM THE LATE 1870's TO THE EARLY 1890's. By Fred A. Shannon and edited by Rob- ert Huhn Jones. (New York: Double- day and Company, Inc., 1967. xx??362p.; bibliography and index. $6.95.) This book derives from a manuscript left by the late Professor Fred Shannon of Illinois, whose work in nineteenth cen- tury American history is well known. The manuscript and notes were rearranged and edited by one of his former students, Pro- fessor Jones of Western Reserve University. The volume covers the turbulent and changing period from the centennial year 1876 to the early nineties. Because Pro- fessor Shannon believed that political and economic history were inseparable and mutually determinant, he combined the two types to show their interpenetration. At the beginning of the book he portrays a wealthy and exuberant nation starting its second century with more problems than it understood and displaying more confi- dence than its situation would justify. "Let the new cycle shame the old!" John Greenleaf Whittier wrote in his Centennial Hymn, and
most Americans believed it would. The nation, with more factories, had more rich men but greater poverty, greater hopes but more powerful hatreds and bloodier strikes, than ever before. Professor Shannon played on this paradox to emphasize his concept of the period as one of change, of transition. |
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The book proceeds year by year with a straightforward topical narrative of the events of the twenty years covered. There are chapters on Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, and Cleveland; on financial and agrarian problems; on the farmer's revolt; the rise of labor organizations; the great conflict of labor and management; the innovations of technology, industry, and communica- tion. Each chapter is buttressed with statistical information and a summary of economic and political trends. Since Pro- fessor Shannon was never one to repress his opinions about men and movements, the book abounds with personal sentiments. The interpretation of this period of American history reflects quite accurately the author's pronounced, personalized point of view. As Professor Jones points out, Shannon was a delayed Populist, out of the unreconstructed Midwest, who saw history through the eyes of the nineties. With his Granger outlook, he never thought much of cities, business leaders, or time- serving politicians, and he felt that the United States had at hand all the necessary elements for a great forward advance, which was prevented only by entrenched political machines, mediocre presidents, reactionary courts, and paleolithic tycoons. Until these and like impediments were removed from the path of progress, the United States simply stood still. The best assessment that could be given of these years is that they provided the necessary preliminary for better things and better men to come. "The nation found itself," Professor Shannon wrote, "coming into a young adulthood that was overshadowed by problems of business and society, that were not to be solved simply by the application of salves and dosing with placebos." The period served as a kind of transition between an older and simpler society that believed it had answers to its questions, and a more sophisticated twentieth century society that, recognizing complexity, realized that the old answers had little relevance to the new questions. Since the manuscript dates from the fifties, many of its sources are more than a decade old; Professor Jones has updated the bibliography, but has wisely not at- tempted to bring the author's interpreta- tions into line with more recent scholarship of the period. It remains his, and so does |
the style -- straight narrative with inter- polated comments -- in which the editor has kept the author's tone and flavor. The book is published in behalf of Professor Shannon's doctoral students, and its pro- ceeds will help to establish a scholarship in history at Illinois. It is a fitting memo- rial to a teacher and historian whose con- tributions to understanding the American past were large, and whose influence on his students will not soon be forgotten. RUSSEL B. NYE Michigan State University THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY FRON- TIER: THE AGE OF FRENCH EX- PLORATION AND SETTLEMENT. By John Anthony Caruso. (Indianap- olis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1966. xii??423p.; maps, bibliography, and in- dex. $8.50.) John Anthony Caruso, professor of his- tory at West Virginia University, with this book completes the fourth volume of his American Frontier Series. The present work on the Mississippi Valley frontier follows the same format as others in the series with the footnotes at the end of the book along with a bibliography listing pri- mary and secondary publications. The first portion, a section of some one hundred pages, concentrates on the Indians of the Mississippi Valley, mainly the Sioux and various Algonquian tribes whose aboriginal societies were invaded by a series of French explorers and traders during the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries. Then follow skillfully written narratives of the wanderings of Jean Nicolet, Radisson and Groseilliers, Marquette and Jolliet, La Salle and Father Hennepin. There is further narration about the Missouri River ex- plorers, La Verendrye and his sons, and finally an account of the early history of Ste. Genevieve, St. Louis and other settle- ments. The book ends with an interesting chapter on the emergence of a Creole- Voyageur society. Here (page 361) the author does not hesitate to give high praise to the Creoles, or Frenchmen (he seems to use the terms interchangeably), especially in their dealings with the Indians: In their relations with the Indians they proved vastly superior to the Scotch-Irish and the Germans. While the American Frontiersman was in the |
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process of exterminating the Indian and establishing a uniform type of civilization from Maine to California, the Frenchman, eager to win his good- will, met him more than halfway. He studied his language, flattered his prej- udices, and refrained from ruffling his dignity or insulting his ancient cus- toms. The Anglo-American thought: "How shall I make that damned red- skin respect me?" The Frenchman thought: "How shall I win the Indian's heart?" The passage above is illustrative of the broad generalizations that are made in this volume without documentation. Caruso's work contrasts sharply with the multi- volumed Histories of the American Fron- tier series edited by Ray Allen Billington. Each volume in the Billington series is written by a specialist in a phase of fron- tier history; each is based upon a wide spectrum of sources and represents a synthesis of scholarship for a particular aspect of western history. Although Caruso's work is primarily addressed to the layman, the academician may also learn from him. For instance, his superb description of Indian society calls attention to the important, but neglected, role of the Indian in our early history. Traditional historians, who object to giving so much space to a discussion of Indians, might object also to the author's topical organization that calls for the repetition in all three volumes of the same material on the history of the early Mississippi Valley, or to the fact that he does not cite all of the recent historical scholarship bearing upon his subject, or that the book reflects much of the work of Francis Parkman. But it is indeed difficult to write about the early French explorers without being indebted to Parkman. The fact re- mains that Caruso has given us another gracefully written volume which is instruc- tive for both the layman and the scholar. WILBUR R. JACOBS University of California, Santa Barbara NAVAL DOCUMENTS OF THE AMER- ICAN REVOLUTION, Volume II. Ed- ited by William Bell Clark. (Washing- ton, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1966. xlii??1463p.; illus- trations, appendices, and index. $8.50.) |
This, the second in a projected fifteen volume series depicting the influence of the sea and of sea power in the American Revolution, meets the high standards of scholarship set in the first volume. All students of the Revolution, whether pri- marily interested in naval warfare or not, will find much of interest and value in this collection. The documents are rich and varied, covering British and American strategy and tactics on the seas, the rela- tionship of naval affairs to other military and domestic concerns, problems encoun- tered by both sides, and the impact of warfare on the lives of the American people. The selection of materials is generally excellent and comprehensive. Included are documents of the Continental Congress and provincial bodies, accounts of land assaults and engagements at sea, public and private correspondence of British and American civil and military authorities, journals, diaries, and a wealth of other information. Aid for the researcher is present in an excellent index, a bibliography of printed sources and newspapers, and a list of manuscript sources. Many of the illustrations -- especially maps of towns and coastal areas in North America and England -- are useful as well as ornamental. A well organized pictorial essay entitled, "American Navigation dur- ing the Revolution," affords a good survey of equipment used aboard American ves- sels of war. The journal of the American Robert Barwick written during the Canadian cam- paign of 1775 and documents such as those describing the destruction of Falmouth, Maine, by the British serve to deliver the Revolution from the realm of abstract com- mentary to that of struggling, despairing, and hoping humanity. The broad sweep of events is tempered by the thoughts and actions, lives and deaths, of men of high or low station who were often not sure what was going on or why. One is im- pressed also by the sense of responsibility and the attitude of perseverance on both sides. Above all, these records are re- minders of the immense importance of sea power in this war. The editorial policy and format follow closely that of the first volume. The docu- ments, whether whole or in abstract, are |
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presented with original spelling, punctua- tions, and abbreviations. The type is clear and readable. In order to solve the time lapse problem, documents are divided into American and European theatres as follows: American Theatre, September 3, 1775 - October 31, 1775; European Theatre, August 11, 1775 - October 31, 1775; Ameri- can Theatre, November 1, 1775 - December 7, 1775. This somewhat artificial arrange- ment does aid in understanding the rela- tionship of strategy in the two theatres of war. Editorial commentary and annotation are held to a minimum. For the serious researcher, this is essentially a collection of primary source materials, organized chronologically, and with an index. As such it is well done, valuable, and most welcome. PAUL C. BOWERS, JR. The Ohio State University HEGEL'S FIRST AMERICAN FOL- LOWERS, THE OHIO HEGELIANS: JOHN B. STALLO, PETER KAUF- MANN, MONCURE CONWAY, AND AUGUST WILLICH, with Key Writ- ings. By Loyd D. Easton. (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1966. ix??353p.; ap- pendix and index. $7.00.) Readers willing to take their intellectual history as a series of personal adventure stories will find much to intrigue them in the parallel lives of four versatile and enterprising Ohioans. Three of the subjects emigrated to Ohio from Germany, and their sojourns, physical and intellectual, will be of particular interest to those con- cerned with the effort of German emigres, both to leave the Fatherland and to take the best of it with them. J. B. Stallo, who arrived in Cincinnati in 1839, devoted the first ten years of his life in America to teaching and studying the German language, mathematics, chem- istry, and physics. Not long after the publication of his General Principles of the Philosophy of Nature . . ., he was admitted to the Cincinnati bar. A successful lawyer and judge, Stallo was active on behalf of political reforms -- often in opposition to puritanical Yankee reformers, who had no monopoly on status anxiety in Cincinnati. In his large library and among his beer- drinking friends, he continued to pursue his interest in the philosophy of science. His summa, The Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics, was published in 1881. |
Peter Kaufmann experimented with min- isterial studies, a labor-for-labor store, utopian communitarianism, and journalism before settling down in Canton, Ohio, as a publisher of almanacs. Kaufmann used his almanacs to promote the multiple causes which caught his fancy -- including the popularization of German philosophy. August Willich, sometime Prussian army officer who battled for the Republicans in 1848 joined -- and split -- with Marx's Communist League, and went to New York in 1853 to raise a revolutionary emigre army, was recruited by Stallo to edit a German language newspaper in Cincinnati. An advocate of labor reform, cooperatives, and radical political action, Willich was an enthusiastic Republican who served as adjutant of Cincinnati's German regiment during the Civil War. "On returning to camp he would put his troops at ease, address them as 'citizens', and proceed to lecture on socialism." Moncure Conway, Virginia-born Uni- tarian minister, spent five years in Cin- cinnati. During that time he published a life of Paine, edited the Dial, and offered his pulpit to Wendell Phillips. In 1862, he sought an atmosphere more congenial to his radical antislavery views, so left for Boston. These four men were friends. Apparently all four read Hegel, or at least approved of some of his views. Stallo is the only member of the "group" for whom formal philosophy was a major concern, and the only one to give serious attention to the systematic exposition of specifically Hegelian ideas. Kaufmann spoke favorably of Hegel and of the dialectic; to describe his syncretistic religious views as either "dialectical" or "Hegelian" involves a more hospitable definition of both those terms than this reviewer would accept. Conway and Willich were more interested in Hegel's disciples than in Hegel himself, and far more interested in social action than in theory. To imply that this group of four men constituted a group comparable to the St. Louis Hegelians in the field of formal philosophy is to exaggerate. Purists in the study of the history of ideas and their diffusion will probably not find Easton's analysis particularly rewarding. MARY YOUNG The Ohio State University |
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DANIEL E. MORGAN, 1877-1949: THE GOOD CITIZEN IN POLITICS. By Thomas F. Campbell. (Cleveland: Press of Western Reserve University, 1967. ix??196p.; illustrations, bibliography, and index. $5.50.) If historians of modern American politi- cal reform are to reduce their disagreement over the progressive movement, they will require many more biographical studies. But the motivation of minor progressive leaders may prove as difficult to investigate as that of Daniel E. Morgan. An Oberlin and Harvard law graduate of Welsh ances- try who first entered Republican politics in 1908 in Tom Johnson's Cleveland, Mor- gan compiled no substantial file of revealing letters and private papers through four decades of service as councilman, charter reviser, state senator, city manager, party county chairman, and judge. Nor was he a glamorous figure highlighted in other men's views and reminiscences. For a dissertation upon this "good citizen in poli- tics," Thomas F. Campbell of the depart- ment of history at The Cleveland State University had to rely principally upon newspaper and official records. The result is a detailed account of chiefly public efforts at municipal reform in the first half of this century. The larger questions are often left unanswered. The most obvious example of this com- bination of minute detail and significant omission is the treatment of the 1911-1913 period. The third chapter traces Morgan's losing campaign for election as city solicitor in 1911, the fourth takes up his part in revising Cleveland's charter in 1913. Along the way it is noted that Morgan was also one of the "governing triumvirate" in the Bull Moose party in Cleveland in 1912, but of his reasoning in deserting the regular Republicans, or even of his contribution to that crucial presidential campaign, virtu- ally nothing is said. Since he removed himself from partisan politics for fifteen years thereafter, the 1912 election was a decisive point in his career. Despite the niggardliness of sources, more extended analysis is called for. Campbell quite properly subordinates Morgan's personal life to his political activities, yet his legal practice poses other important questions. Who were Morgan's clients, and what cases did he argue at |
the bar? Did his early despair at pursuing the profession reflect the kind of status anxiety that Hofstadter has postulated in The Age of Reform? By what process did he develop the progressive views of the law he enunciated as judge on the Eighth Dis- trict Court of Appeals after May 1939? Again, the dearth of intimate sources on this scholarly, dispassionate lawyer inhibited scrutiny, yet further work in legal records might have yielded some fruitful results. By diligent research Campbell has gathered enough facts to make a compre- hensible if sometimes dull story of reform battles on the urban frontier. In particular, he has demonstrated how a public-spirited citizen, who made "a better judge than a campaigner," preserved his moderately progressive attitude through the 1920's, to emerge as a reform Republican responsive to the challenges of depression and war. If politics rewarded unassuming leaders for responsible devotion to the bono publico, Daniel Morgan would have risen to more prominent positions following his capable performance as state senator (1929-30) and Cleveland city manager (1930-31). But circumstances combined with temperament to confine his scope, until appointment to the Court of Appeals closed out an honor- able career. Judicious in interpretation and carefully composed, this volume evinces the scholarly approach that its subject always espoused. It is to be hoped that the author will turn the same talents to more promising investi- gations. The Press of Western Reserve University did an excellent job of publish- ing, one illustration of which is that the footnotes are put at the bottom of the page. G. WALLACE CHESSMAN Dension University |
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