Ohio History Journal

Book Reviews

 

 

Ohio in the American Revolution: A Conference to Commemorate the 200th

Anniversary of the Ft. Gower Resolves. Edited by Thomas H. Smith. Volume

I of The Ohio American Revolution Bicentennial Conference Series.

(Columbus: The Ohio Historical Society, 1976. 34p.; illustrations. $2.00.)

 

Though not one of the thirteen original colonies, the Ohio country did play a

role in the revolutionary events that the American people have been

commemorating during the bicentennial. During the decade before war broke

out, the Ohio-Kentucky region was the chief dream of seaboard land

speculators, a cause of considerable inter-colonial rivalry, and a matter of

concern to every British minister from Grenville to North. Though not a general

cause of colonial discontent, British policy on the colonial West did irritate some

very influential Pennsylvania and Virginia politicians. During the war, Ohio lay

athwart the main routes between the British post at Detroit and the American

position at Fort Pitt. Though the essay by Dr. Otis Rice touches upon Ohio as a

battlefield during the War for Independence, this pamphlet, Ohio in the

American Revolution, is largely limited to that chapter in land speculation

known as Lord Dunmore's War against the Shawnee Indians in 1774. Several

things happened during that short war: an inconclusive battle between the

Shawnee and the southern wing of Dunmore's force fought at Point Pleasant on

October 10, 1774; Dunmore's invasion of the Scioto country and his imposition

of the Treaty of Camp Charlotte upon the Shawnees; the building of a rude

fortification, Fort Gower, at the mouth of the Hocking River; and the drafting of

the Fort Gower Resolves by a group of Dunmore's officers. On November 24,

1974, the Ohio American Revolution Bicentennial Commission sponsored a

scholarly conference to investigate the significance of these events. This

pamphlet prints the six papers read at Ohio University, site of the conference,

and a brief introduction by the editor.

Rice's paper provides a summary of the competing interests of Pennsylvania

and Virginia speculators in the Ohio country, as well as a narrative of the warfare

in that region. The British superintendents of Indian affairs had negotiated

treaties with the Cherokees and the Six Nations, but not with the Shawnee who

considered the Scioto area as homeland and Kentucky as hunting ground. Rice

suggests that Dunmore's aim was to secure for Virginia the lands south of the

Ohio River. But Fort Pitt was his point of departure, and much of his own

campaign was in Ohio-facts that further alarmed Pennsylvania jealousies. In a

sketch of Dunmore himself, John W. Shy describes a temperamental, violent,

flamboyant, greedy governor who had been disliked in New York and shortly

was to be cordially hated in Virginia. Though his campaign may have been

motivated partly by his desire to carve out a personal domain in the West, it was

supported by the whole colony, including such prominent speculators as George

Washington. These and most of the other papers in this volume say little of the

hapless Indians who stood in the path of this remorseless land-hunger of the

colonists. James O'Donnell provides a corrective to this in his paper, "The

Native American Crisis in the Ohio Country, 1774-1783." He outlines the

ruthless cheating of the Indian by traders, and suggests that many whites on the

frontier favored the wiping out of Indian tribes. The alternative to warfare was

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Book Reviews                                                    57

 

"Christianization," which meant cultural suicide and political subservience for

native Americans. O'Donnell suggests that much of the killing on the frontier

during the Revolution should be considered murder, rather than warfare.

The other three papers delivered at the conference deal with Fort Gower and

the Resolves adopted there on November 5, 1774. Randall L. Buchman reports

on the archaeological attempt to locate the precise site of Fort Gower. Digs at

several sites near the confluence of the Hocking and Ohio rivers were not

conclusive, though an impression was uncovered that might have been a

stockade wall. Robert Boehm narrates the course of the expedition from Fort

Pitt to the Hocking River, and discusses the factors involved in deciding to build

Fort Gower and the selection of the site. It seems clear that the fort was very

small, perhaps never completed, and of no importance in the warfare of the

period. John E. Robbins' paper is on the Fort Gower Resolves, which were

adopted by a group of Dunmore's officers at Fort Gower after their successful

expedition against the Shawnee. Those associated with the militia, and who may

have participated in meetings at Fort Gower, include Col. Adam Stephen, Maj.

Angus McDonald, George Rogers Clark, Daniel Morgan, Cornstalk, Michael

Cresap, Simon Kenton, Simon Girty, Daniel Boone, and William Crawford,

who was George Washington's surveyor in the West. The resolves express

allegiance to the King, respect for Lord Dunmore, and a determination to defend

American liberty. One sentence notes that, "It is possible, from the groundless

reports of designing men, that our countrymen may be jealous of the use such a

body would make of arms in their hands at this critical junction." This provides a

clue to the purpose of the resolves-reassurance of fellow Virginians, who might

be concerned about an independent force under the command of a royal

governor, and of Pennsylvanians, who might fear a Virginia force on the

Pennsylvania frontier. Though printed in some eastern newspapers, the resolves

had little impact on the developing revolutionary movement. But if Fort Gower

and the Resolves have little significance, Dunmore's War is an important

chapter in the history of western speculation, which is the central theme in early

Ohio history. This bicentennial pamphlet does much to illuminate this subject.

 

Cleveland State University                               John Cary

 

The French Navy and American Independence: A Study of Arms and

Diplomacy, 1774-1787. By Jonathan R. Dull. (Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 1975. xv + 437p.; maps, notes, appendices, bibliography,

index. $20.00.)

American diplomatic historians usually rely on the works of such stellar

scholars as Samuel F. Bemis, Richard B. Morris, E. S. Corwin, Richard W. Van

Alstyne, and William C. Stinchcombe to understand the development of

diplomatic negotiations during the war of the American Revolution. In this book

Professor Dull argues that the accounts provided by these scholars are too

narrowly conceived, biased, and sometimes wrong-headed.

Dull believes that a truly mature view of the war's diplomacy can be grasped

only through a sound understanding of the interaction of military preparation

and strategy, of the evolving policies and diplomatic objectives of France,

Spain, and England, and of the thinking of major statesmen such as Vergennes

and Shelburne. Dull's particular focus is on the needs and development of the

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58                                                    OHIO HISTORY

 

French navy. But he uses the French navy as a device to explore tensions within

the French government over social policy, and to demonstrate how the

questions of logistics and military strategy influenced the course of wartime

diplomacy. In this latter emphasis he writes in the tradition of Piers Mackesy.

Dull begins his story with the accession of Louis XVI in 1774 and

concludes with the death of the Count de Vergennes in 1787. Vergennes

sometimes seems the hero of this story, but if so he is a flawed one because he

failed to understand the possible implications of adding huge wartime

expenditures to France's already enormous indebtedness. His diplomatic

objectives were traditional, and by nature he was a cautious man. Nevertheless,

as Dull shows, Vergennes ultimately helped to bring social revolution to France

by involving her in the costly American Revolutionary War. Dull also argues

that Vergennes suffered from lack of imagination in not seeing that cooperation

with Britain was perhaps France's best hope to achieve commercial prosperity

and to realize her Continental objectives.

In this exceedingly well-researched monograph, the author has successfully

integrated military, diplomatic, and social history. Students of American history

will especially profit by reading this broad-gauged study. Washington, Jay,

Adams, and Franklin are seen only as minor background personalities in the

evolving Revolutionary War. Instead, such names as Vergennes, Rayneval,

Sartine, Aranda, Floridablanca, Shelburne, and D'Estaing occupy center stage

in the military and diplomatic drama that resulted in independence for the

fortunate Americans.

Finally, those who like their history spiced by an author's willingness to

evaluate critically the work of the historical actors, and fellow historians as well,

will welcome Professor Dull's monograph.

 

The Ohio State University                        Marvin R. Zahniser

 

The Book of Abigail and John: Selected Letters of the Adams Family, 1762-1784.

Edited by L. H. Butterfield, Marc Friedlander, and Mary-Jo Kline.

(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975. ix + 41lp.; illustrations, index.

$15.00.)

 

This widely acclaimed edition of letters has set in motion more popular

projects and stimulated more interest outside the profession than any single

primary source since Franklin's Autobiography. The correspondence of John

and Abigail Adams was edited for this book which was then transformed into a

television script of the "Adams Chronicles," which in its own turn was further

transfigured into an educational "package" for sale to colleges, universities, and

high schools. One result of such ballyhoo is that without reading the letters

everyone seems to know already what may be found in the Adams's

correspondence.

This reviewer has not seen the television series, but it is not too difficult to

imagine why one was created. John and Abigail Adams emerge a most attractive

couple who genuinely loved one another and made continual sacrifices of

domestic felicity in the name of American independence. As Abigail put it in

1777, "Tis almost 14 years since we were united, but not more than half that time

have we had the happiness of living together" (p. 186). There were still more

years of separation to come. The letters were all they had of one another during

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Book Reviews                                                    59

 

the revolution and they still carry great emotional power.

This is the key to their appeal: one actually can catch a living empathy for the

revolutionary past. Abigail was intelligent, full of affection, and startlingly

liberated. John comes surprisingly and even attractively to life, fretting about his

health, his abondoned family, reporting on French wines, complaining about the

more popular Franklin, offering weighty advice on a wide range of subjects, and

even posing an occasionally trivial question, "Pray how does your Asparagus

perform? &c." (p.174). Their love and mutual respect remain strong

throughout the letters, surviving occasional spats and the subsequent remorse.

To be entirely fair, however, there is much missing from these letters, at least

for the professional historian. John Adams explains the problem in an

oft-repeated complaint that "Indeed I don't choose to indulge much

Speculation, lest a Letter miscarry, and free Sentiments upon public Affairs

intercepted, from me, might do much hurt" (p. 187). Consequently, readers are

limited to social and cultural information for the most part and long for more data

on his embassies to France, the Netherlands, and England. Abigail is forced into

an equal discretion, hounded by local gossip, passing British armies, and

political intrigues in Massachusetts. Even the linens which John sent to her for

resale in paying taxes are obliquely mentioned as "small Presents .  in the

family Way" (p.260).

The specialist in American History will want this attractive edition for many of

the obscure clues it contains about behind-the-scenes machinations. College

students should read a sampling of the letters to personalize historical

abstractions. The general public will probably rest content with what the media

have done with them. What more the media can do with them remains to be seen.

Kent State University                           W. Howland Kenney

 

 

 

Sarah Winnemucca: Most Extraordinary Woman of the Paiute Nation. By

Katherine Gehm. (Phoenix: O'Sullivan, Woodside & Company, 1975. x +

196p.; illustrations, bibliography. $8.95.)

 

The term "most extraordinary woman" may sound exaggerated but it rings

true for the Paiute woman, Sarah Winnemucca, the subject of Katherine

Gehm's biography. Sarah was born during the early 1840s near Humboldt

Sink in what is now northwestern Nevada and given the Indian name

Thocmetony, meaning "shell flower." While living with the family of a stage

coach agent, Sarah and her sister assumed English names.

From an early age, Sarah evinced more interest and understanding of white

people's institutions and culture than most of the Indians. Her grandfather,

Winnemucca I, had served as a guide for Captain John C. Fremont in

1845-1846 and conveyed to his favorite granddaughter admiration for his

"white brothers' " way of life. As a child of eight or nine, Sarah lived for a

year in California with a group of Paiutes who were employed by a rancher

and later attended briefly a convent school in San Jose.

Gehm describes how quickly the influx of miners and settlers into western

Nevada caused changes in the life of the Paiute Nation, and how the

inevitable clashes brought about the establishment of a Paiute Reservation at

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60                                                    OHIO HISTORY

 

Pyramid Lake. Sarah, whose intelligence and natural gift as a linguist had

been improved through her contacts with settlers in Nevada and the Spanish

in California and her meagre education, tried to intervene when government

agents exploited her people. Later a number of Paiutes moved to the vicinity

of Fort McDermit in northeastern Nevada to avoid involvement in Indian

wars and Sarah became a post interpreter.

Eventually the Paiutes were transferred to the Malheur agency in eastern

Oregon where they were contented and prosperous as long as Sam Parrish,

the only Indian agent Sarah ever really trusted, was in charge. Sarah served

as an interpreter there and also assisted at the agency school.

During the administration of President Grant, the Department of Interior

tried to improve the quality of reservation officers by appointing persons

approved by missionary boards. Gehm explains that Parrish did not measure

up to the Board's religious standards and was soon replaced by a storekeeper,

more acceptable to the Board but less interested in the welfare of the Indians.

Sarah's job at the agency was terminated when she wrote to Washington

describing the new agent's abuse of the Indians and appropriation of their

supplies.

The experiences of Sarah and her people with Indian agents convinced

them that control by the military was preferable to agents of the Bureau of

Indian Affairs. As Sarah explained in her autobiography, Life Among the

Paiutes: Their Wrongs and Claims (1883), "The army has no temptation to

make money . . . and the Indians understand [army] law and discipline"

(p.178). She also believed there would be no Indian wars if the Indians

instead of the whites were protected by the army.

When the Bannock War broke out in 1878, Sarah offered her services to the

army as a guide, scout, and interpreter. Gehm's account of Sarah's ride of

200 miles in two days through rough and wooded country to rescue her father

and some of his followers from the Bannocks reads like a Hollywood

scenario. Later Chief Winnemucca II expressed his pride in his daughter's

accomplishments by signifying that hereafter the Paiutes would look upon

Sarah as a chieftain, a singular honor for a woman.

Following the Bannock War, orders came from Washington to send the

Paiutes, even those who had not participated in the struggle, to Yakima

Reservation, across the Columbia River. Sarah's protests to Washington

concerning the misery of the Paiutes at Yakima went unanswered and finally,

at the suggestion and help of General O. O. Howard, she took her story of

Paiute oppression to the people in San Francisco. Gehm writes that "her

lectures started a wave of sympathy for Indians . . . which government

officials could not ignore" (p.145). At length a telegram arrived inviting

Sarah, her father, and her brother, Natchez, to visit Washington in company

with a special government agent.

Washington reporters expected to interview Sarah but she abided by the

government's request not to lecture or talk to reporters. About all the

reporters could write was that the Indians were vaccinated as soon as they

arrived, Sarah was a "remarkably intelligent looking woman," and she

thought Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz was very kind (Washington

Post, Jan. 20, 22, 26, 1880).

Sarah was permitted to describe the Paiutes' plight to Secretary Schurz

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Book Reviews                                                    61

 

who promised to transfer peaceful Paiutes to the Malheur area; his orders

were not followed. Sarah also had a brief interview with President Hayes at

the White House where she met Mrs. Hayes and several other women,

including Elizabeth Palmer Peabody who indicated sympathy for Sarah's

cause.

In the fall of 1880, when President and Mrs. Hayes traveled through the

West and visited Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River, Sarah had an

opportunity to talk to them at greater length. Gehm explains that Mrs. Hayes

was "deeply touched" and the President said he "would see about it" but no

immediate help came to the Paiutes from Washington (p.162).

Discouraged, Sarah wrote to Elizabeth Peabody who arranged for her to

speak throughout the East. Miss Peabody's sister, Mary Mann, wife of

Horace Mann, encouraged Sarah to write Life Among the Paiutes. Mrs. Mann,

who edited the book, noted in the preface that it was the "first outbreak of

the American Indian in human literature ... it is of importance to hear what

only an Indian and an Indian woman can tell" (preface, n.p.).

Mary Mann also helped Sarah organize and prepare a petition to Congress

asking for a restoration of the Paiutes to the Malheur Reservation. Congress

passed the bill in 1884 but President Arthur's Secretary of the Interior failed

to implement it. Eventually most of the Paiutes were allowed to drift away

from the Yakima Reservation and to settle wherever they could find

sustenance.

With Miss Peabody's help, Sarah organized an Indian school at Lovelock,

Nevada, but left there after the death of her second husband, a former army

lieutenant (she had divorced her first husband earlier, also an army

lieutenant). Sarah died at her sister's home in Montana in 1891.

Gehm terminates the story at this point, leaving the reader with a feeling of

sadness and regret that Sarah did not secure a permanent home for her people

in her lifetime. But Sarah lived an exciting and active life and as for all

advocates of change there was joy in the struggle.

Elinor Richey has called the Paiutes probably the "most peacefully

contentious Indians in the world." Their court battles have led to the

recovery of land around Pyramid Lake and have prevented excessive

diminution of the lake's water. Sarah Winnemucca "bequeathed them their

tradition of courage without bloodshed" (Eminent Women of the West, 1975,

pp. 150-51).

Unfortunately in her effort to write for the general public, Gehm produced

a book at too juvenile a level. The format of the book is attractive but it is

inconvenient to use a frontispiece map that does not include Pyramid Lake.

At times extensive use of dialogue hinders the flow of the narrative and there

are no footnotes or index. Nevertheless, Katherine Gehm tells an interesting

and historically correct story. The book serves as an introduction to a study

of Sarah and the Paiute Nation and provides some information about the

impact of Indian women upon history.

Gehm's publication is endorsed by the Nevada American Revolution

Bicentennial Commission. A reissue of an abridged version of Sarah's book,

Life Among the Paiutes, with its marvelous appendix, would be a fitting project

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62                                                    OHIO HISTORY

 

for the Nevada Commission. For a more comprehensive treatment of Indian

policies, read Wilcomb E. Washburn's The Indian in America (1975).

 

Findlay College                                         Emily Geer

 

 

 

 

The Philadelphia Riots of 1844: A Study of Ethnic Conflict. By Michael

Feldberg. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1975. xi + 209p.; notes,

bibliography, index. $14.50.)

Michael Feldberg's The Philadelphia Riots of 1844 is a useful contribution

to the scholarly literature on immigration and ethnicity, nativism, mob

violence, and urbanization. The riots which ravaged the Kensington area of

Philadelphia in May, 1844, and the Southwark district two months later pitted

native American Protestants against immigrant Irish Catholics and

subsequently involved the military as well, resulting in at least thirty deaths

and considerable property damage, including the gutting of two Catholic

churches. Feldberg argues that broad social and economic tensions rather

than simple religious prejudice lay at the heart of the trouble. In the years

prior to the riots, Philadelphia's traditional living and working patterns were

disrupted severely by industrialization and rapid population growth. The

situation was complicated by the fact that expanding industry relied

increasingly on unskilled, cheaply paid Irish Catholic immigrant laborers who

not only threatened the livelihood of many skilled artisans but also competed

with them for living space and brought cultural baggage which differed

markedly from American Protestant values. Seeking to reverse their decline

in status and to find a scapegoat for the disruptions threatening their ordered

lives, a number of Philadelphians, especially marginal members of the

professions, petit bourgeois shopkeepers, artisans, apprentices, and

evangelical ministers, rallied to destroy what they saw as a foreign conspiracy

against American institutions and values. Collective violence, Feldberg

argues, was a traditional method by which Philadelphians settled their

disputes, and, unfortunately for the peace of the city, the Irish Catholic

laborers were equally willing to protect their own interests with force.

In addition to viewing the riots within this broad, multi-causational context,

Feldberg also suggests their importance in stimulating the modernization of

Philadelphia's political and public security institutions. Shocked by the

extensive property damage and carnage of the riots, most of the city's elite

now firmly rejected both mob violence and the city's traditional reliance on

citizen voluntarism to control it. Within a few years, Philadelphia's political

subdivisions were consolidated and its police force professionalized.

Feldberg's book is for the most part interesting, well-written, clear, and

convincing. But it does possess a few limitations. Since most of his evidence,

of necessity according to the author, comes from newspapers and a few tracts

and pamphlets, many of his statements concerning the mass of nativists,

especially the unorganized young apprentices who led most of the violence,

are speculative. The book's analytical framework, though effectively applied

to the Philadelphia outbursts, is not innovative. As Feldman acknowledges,

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Book Reviews                                                   63

 

much of his case study rests on theoretical underpinings provided by such

scholars as E. Digby Baltzell, David Brion Davis, David Montgomery,

George Rude, and Sam Bass Warner, Jr., and, perhaps because the book is

an outgrowth of his doctoral dissertation, the text occasionally is

overburdened with historiography which more appropriately belongs in the

endnotes. Also, one looks for more information on the non-Catholic,

non-Irish immigrants who joined the nativist crusade and on the possible role

of women who, though often conspicuously involved in riots in other

nineteenth-century American cities, were apparently not prominent in

Philadelphia. Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading The Philadelphia Riots of 1844.

It is an example of how well-done local history can illuminate such broad

national and even international forces as ethnicity, nativism, and collective

violence in modernizing cities.

 

Kent State University                             Henry B. Leonard

 

 

Slavery and the Numbers Game: A Critique of Time on the Cross. By Herbert G.

Gutman. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975. xiv + 183p.; notes, index.

$7.95.)

In his full-length critique of Time on the Cross, historian Herbert Gutman

finds fault with Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman's controversial conclusion

that enslaved Afro-Americans worked hard for their masters because they had

internalized the "Protestant work ethic." Fogel and Engerman built this

conclusion upon bones taken from a classical socialization model and fleshed it

out with evidence that supposedly showed, among other things, that slave

families were stable, that negative labor incentives such as the practice of

whipping were unimportant in the plantation economy, and that slaves had good

opportunities to move upward within the slave occupational structure through

hard work. By carefully examining the social theory and methods Fogel and

Engerman utilized to interpret their data, and by digging into that data itself,

Gutman convinces the reader that this "Protestant ethic" position was built out

of incomplete and irrelevant evidence, meaningless statistical manipulations,

and misreadings of the works of other scholars.

Slavery and the Numbers Game is an important work. Time on the Cross

initially received good reviews because historians who were not familiar with

cliometric techniques and nineteenth-century data bases were "taken in" by

Fogel and Engerman's flashy use of cliometric catch words. When important

weaknesses in that book finally appeared, the reaction against both treatise and

authors often approached the level of intemperance, and even generated an

attack on the utility of the "new" social history in some quarters. This reaction,

although understandable, has no place in the world of scholarship. By

demonstrating that a lone historian can adequately criticize a large scale,

cliometrically-oriented study on its own ground, Gutman shows that there are

better ways to deal with new methodologies than by a resort to luddism.

Slavery and the Numbers Game is written in a lively, combative way

reminiscent of David Fischer's Historians' Fallacies. Gutman fits useful lessons

on how not to use quantifiable data among telling blows against his targets. In

arguing, for example, that Fogel and Engerman inappropriately utilized the

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64                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

"mean" as a statistical hook upon which to hang a faulty argument about

whippings, Gutman hangs both the fault and the authors' abilities upon the hook,

and delivers a classical sermon on the misuse of simple statistics at the same time

(pp. 17-34). In another place, Gutman's discussion of the misuses of a privately

made, unreliable 1848 census of Charleston, South Carolina, is accompanied by

a valuable discussion of nineteenth-century censuses in general (pp.44-61).

The book is not flawless. Gutman repeatedly castigates Fogel and Engerman

for citing evidence not readily available to the reader, then commits the same

kind of error by citing "forthcoming" work, in footnotes 173 and 211 on pages

130 and 147, respectively. Similarly, numerous admonitions against the

incorrect use of quantifiable data for assertive purposes are followed by an

inadequate two-case attack on Fogel and Engerman's summary data dealing with

slave sexual morality (footnote 214, p.132).

Minor shortcomings aside, however, this is a good, solid, scholarly work. The

book deserves to be read by historians and thoughtful lay readers alike.

 

State Universtiy of New York                            Irwin Flack

College at Oswego

 

 

Beyond the Civil War Synthesis: Political Essays of the Civil War Era. Edited by

Robert P. Swierenga. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1975. xx + 348p.; notes,

index. $13.50.)

 

Beyond the Civil War Synthesis is a selection of twenty essays first published

in Civil War History between 1964 and 1975. Edited by Robert P. Swierenga, the

volume is divided into five main parts: historiography, grass roots politics, an

examination of Congressional roll-call votes, "the Ethnoreligious Dimension," and

anti-slavery political ideology.

In Part I the reader discovers that Joel H. Sibley was responsible for the term

"Civil War synthesis." He contended that historians overemphasized sectional

patterns before the Civil War, reading back into antebellum history something

that was not so clear at the time-the traditional sectional approach (the Civil

War synthesis). Sibley urged historians to emerge from that misconception and

"engage in more systematic and complete analyses" of the voting and

motivation of political leaders. Eric Foner defended the synthesis; Richard O.

Curry sought a consensus approach between the "qualitative and quantitative"

methods; and Stephen B. Oates deplored presentist influences on the writing of

history.

Part II reflected variations of quantitative study that echo revisionist

themes, the sort of thing that Sibley looked for in history. Articles by David E.

Meerse, Swierenga, Lawrence N. Powell, Michael Les Benedict, and Phyllis

Frances Field explored elections and conventions from the 1840s through the

1860s. They demonstrated the importance of local, rather than national, issues in

electoral behavior. Leonard Tabachnik, Richard Jensen, and August Meier

pointed out in Part IV discrimination against foreign-born, religion, and blacks in

political patronage.

Considering the anti-slavery crusade in Part V, Larry Gara contended that the

threat of national control by "slave power" leaders was more important than the

moral beliefs of anti-slavery forces. Bertram Wyatt-Brown saw the role of the

Garrisonians as nonviolent reform leaders who effectively propagandized their

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Book Reviews                                                   65

 

moral sentiments across the North. Wyatt-Brown's brilliant student, James B.

Stewart, took issue with Gara and argued in favor of moral suasion's

effectiveness in the hands of hard-hitting Garrisonians.

To sum up in this very oversimplified way is to do great injustice to those who

contributed to this volume. But the purpose of the volume, to quote Swierenga,

is to "show the 'pay-off of the New History." By New History, the editor

means "the social scientific reorientation" of history, which he sees as

reflecting a "fundamental" change in "American political studies in the 1960s."

As a result, "readers will find" in the volume "a liberal sprinkling of tables of

figures and cross tabulations, Guttman 'scales,' and social statistical

measures." Swierenga observed that even more important "is the fact that

social theory is reflected in both the narrative and the data manipulation."

The book, then, is an argument that history as a social science has arrived, and

that history as a humanity is in retreat. It would do, though, to remember that

history is both. G. R. Elton wrote some years ago that "those who preach the

virtues of statistical, sociological, or other 'scientific' methods are only

reviving, after an interval so short as not quite to excuse their ignorance of the

fact, the weary argument whether history is an art or science." We may quarrel

with the idea that the "New History" is in fact new. Even so, this is not to deny

the value of this collection. It is a useful volume that illustrates the variations in

social science technique as applied to the Civil War era.

The University of Akron                            Robert H. Jones

 

John Hunt Morgan and His Raiders. By Edison H. Thomas. (Lexington: The

University Press of Kentucky, 1975. xiv + 120p.; illustrations, bibliography.

$3.95.)

This slim volume is yet another narrative of the adventures of a noted

Confederate cavalryman. After a summary account of his prewar career, it tells

of his organization of Kentucky troops, his raids deep behind Union lines, and

his death. Of particular interest to Ohioans are the brief reference to Morgan's

threat to Cincinnati in 1862, which brought the "Squirrel Hunters" to the

rescue, and the more lengthy treatment of the "Big Raid" of 1863 into Indiana

and Ohio. While the account of Morgan's invasion, capture, imprisonment at the

Ohio Penitentiary, and escape is traditionally romantic, the author does not

gloss over the raiders' "pillaging and looting"-indeed, their "outright

thievery."

It would be unfair to expect significant original contributions to knowledge

from a popularly-written, short history published as part of the Kentucky

Bicentennial Bookshelf. Its author has, however, added specificity to

generalizations about Morgan's destruction of Union railroads. Thomas, the

News Bureau Manager for his subject's principal target, the Louisville and

Nashville Railroad, has drawn upon the reports of L & N executive Albert Fink

for precise information on Morgan's obstructions of that line. Additional aids to

students of the period are several good maps of Morgan's raids and well-selected

illustrations covering the early part of his Civil War service.

It is as popular history that the book should be judged and unhappily found

unsatisfying. Its central flaw is its failure to develop Morgan's personality and

motivation. While generalizing briefly on these matters, the book does not

• 10
 

66                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

present enough evidence to allow its readers to feel that they understand

Morgan. For instance, anyone aware of the influence of Mexican War

experiences on Civil War commanders would vainly wish to read more about

what Morgan actually did in that struggle and how it affected him. The lack of

sufficient treatment of such questions is not simply the result of space

limitations. The author finds room for saccharine sentences about the "new

nobility" of the Bluegrass, for an irrelevant paragraph on the origin of a tavern's

name, and for a fruitless page of debate on whether Jefferson Davis really

attended Morgan's wartime wedding. By omissions at the edges of his canvas,

Thomas could portray more fully his central figure. He also could shade more

carefully the contrast between the strengths of the bold raider and the

weaknesses-especially Morgan's lack of discipline and neglect of elementary

security precautions-which Thomas suggests but does not evaluate

adequately. Indeed, the author seems unable in the present work to make up his

mind about Morgan. Having characterized him as an historic "leader of men,"

Thomas adds, "He may not have always led them in the right direction, but he

led them." This sentence could as well be applied to Al Capp's Jubilation T.

Cornpone as to John Hunt Morgan. What was Morgan really like? A popular

history should explain him more clearly to the people.

 

Kent State University                              Frank L. Byrne

 

 

The Civil War in Kentucky. By Lowell H. Harrison. (Lexington: The University

Press of Kentucky, 1975. x + 116p.; illustrations, notes, bibliographic essay.

$3.95.)

 

Lowell H. Harrison, professor of history at Western Kentucky University and

author of numerous Civil War articles, has provided the reader with state history

at its best. One of the more recent additions to the Kentucky Bicentennial

Bookshelf, The Civil War in Kentucky is a concise, scholarly, and balanced

interpretation of a most important half-decade in Kentucky's history.

Readers should be forewarned that the subject of the book is "the Civil War in

Kentucky" and not "Kentucky in the Civil War." To attempt the latter topic

undoubtedly would require a series of volumes. Limiting the study to the

military and political struggles within Kentucky's borders, Professor Harrison's

dispassionate account of Union and Confederate action is a tribute to his

scholarly objectivity. Military history buffs are well served though because

two-thirds of the text is devoted to a presentation of that aspect of the struggle.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Kentucky was a border state with a unique

policy of neutrality. The legacy of the war and the aftermath of the

Reconstruction era made a profound impact on the Commonwealth's postwar

political stance. Professor Harrison concludes that it was "with considerable

truth that Kentucky joined the Confederacy after the war was over."

The author has made excellent use of available printed materials,

manuscripts, articles, and newspapers. A minor fault with the work is the

absence of an index. Perhaps more detail could have been provided on military

campaigns in Eastern Kentucky.

All in all, accolades are in order to The Kentucky Bicentennial Bookshelf for

attempting to celebrate two centuries of history and culture in the

Commonwealth, rather than simply focusing on the American Revolution and

• 11
 

Book Reviews                                                   67

 

the first quarter century of our nation's history. With the publication of The Civil

War in Kentucky, the Bookshelf has made highly readable history available at a

reasonable price. Other states would do well to pattern their Bicentennial

publication programs on Kentucky's model.

 

The Ohio Historical Society                       Frank R. Levstik

 

 

Freedmen, Philanthropy, and Fraud: A History of the Freedman's Savings

Bank. By Carl R. Osthaus. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976. 257p.;

illustrations, tables, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. $10.95.)

 

For years historians have struggled to come to grips with the paradox of

reform in the post-Civil War Reconstruction era-the mixed idealism and

venality, religion and hypocrisy, which spawned both the remarkable effort to

establish racial equality in the United States and the corruption of the 1870s.

Nothing illustrates this paradox better than the tragic history of the Freedman's

Savings Bank. Established in 1865 to provide a safe repository for the savings of

newly-freed slaves and to promote thrift and industry among them, the

institution collapsed in 1874 in a tangle of fraud and mismanagement. In this

study, Carl R. Osthaus, assistant professor of history at Oakland University,

chronicles the sorry tale.

Professor Osthaus describes especially well the amazing development of the

bank into a financial giant, with branches throughout the South and an imposing

headquarters in Washington, D.C. His discussion of the bank's depositors is

equally impressive, and readers will be surprised to learn the extent to which the

Freedman's Savings Bank touched the economic lives of ordinary freedmen.

But, although Osthaus offers a more thorough account of the transition from

prudent money management to speculation and fraud than Walter L. Fleming

offered in his slim The Freedmen's Savings Bank: A Chapter in the Economic

History of the Negro Race (Chapel Hill, 1927), the only previously published

monographic study of the bank, the motivations and rationalizations of the

bank's managers remain an enigma. While Osthaus' book is a very good, concise

study, it should have been more. The Freedmen's Savings Bank marked the

intersection of American reform, social, economic, and political institutions; a

study of it should be placed in the context of the development of those

institutions. Freedmen, Philanthropy, and Fraud is full of undeveloped

implications for such a fuller evaluation, but readers will have to infer them for

themselves.

 

The Ohio State University                      Michael Les Benedict

 

 

The Ohio Black History Guide. Edited by Sara Fuller. (Columbus: The Ohio

Historical Society, 1975. x + 221p.; $10.00.)

 

Despite their prominent place in Ohio's history, blacks have received little

attention from most scholars and students of Ohio. There is no current history of

blacks in Ohio, and most general histories of the state slight black contributions.

In light of this deplorable and long-standing tradition of neglect, The Ohio Black

• 12
 

68                                                    OHIO HISTORY

 

History Guide represents a much needed contribution. Edited by Sara Fuller for

The Ohio Historical Society, the book grows out of a program developed by the

Society to document more fully the contribution of blacks in Ohio and to provide

new materials for students of Ohio history. Conceived as "a comprehensive

listing of source materials available for researchers concerned with any phase of

Ohio Black history," the book was begun in 1970 and involved a thorough search

of over 200 Ohio institutions which were likely to hold black materials, as well as

other institutions and secondary sources. The result is a bibliographical list of a

wide variety of materials which will be useful to many kinds of users. It is

arranged into five sections-printed materials, dissertations and theses,

manuscripts, government records, and audiovisual materials. Each section is, in

turn, divided into subsections according to the nature of the material presented.

A few suggestions may aid the editors if ever they decide to update the book.

First, in some sections important historical items have been omitted. The works

of George W. Williams are conspicuously absent. Also missing is William S.

Simmons' Men of Mark: Eminent, Progressive and Rising, a late

nineteenth-century volume containing over 150 biographical sketches of

prominent blacks, a number of them important in Ohio history. These omissions

of historical material are puzzling in light of the inclusion of many items in the

printed material section which are not strictly historical.

A second omission is that of an index. Although, as the editors suggest, a

cumulative index may be unnecessary, some indexing would greatly facilitate

the book's use. Since they are organized independently, perhaps the sections

might be indexed separately to key words and names, if not to subjects. Such

indexing might necessitate a more sytematized annotating of the citations.

However, these suggestions do not alter the value of the book as a resource in

a field that is greatly in need of such materials. The Ohio Black History Guide

should prove a useful tool to those interested in the black experience in Ohio and

Ohio history in general.

 

Western College of Miami University              Eugene W. Metcalf

 

 

Thurber: A Collection of Critical Essays. Edited by Charles S. Holmes.

(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1974. xi + 180p.; notes,

chronology, bibliography. $6.95, cloth; $2.45, paper.)

 

Charles S. Holmes, whose Clocks of Columbus is the best biography of James

Thurber to date, has brought together a generous sampling from forty-five years

of critical writing about Thurber's life and work. Such luminaries as W. H.

Auden, E. B. White, Dorothy Parker, Malcolm Cowley, and Peter De Vries are

represented-along with a number of Thurber "specialists," including Holmes

himself. Taken together, the editor tells us, these commentators have

established two approaches to Thurber-the psychological and the humanistic.

The first is a dark view which "focuses on Thurber as a man writing to exorcise a

deep inner uncertainty." The second sees Thurber rather as a man whose work

recovers "values to live by in the modern world."

The editor might have added a third way of taking Thurber-the Ohio

approach. "The clocks that strike in my dreams are often the clocks of

Columbus," said Thurber when accepting a medal from the Ohioana Library

• 13
 

Book Reviews                                                   69

 

Association in 1953. The essays in this volume bear out E. B. White's belief that

this graceful remark was deeply revealing. Whether Thurber came to terms with

Ohio in his art only by getting out of Ohio in real life, the critics cannot agree any

more than they agree upon the answers to similar questions about Mark Twain,

the displaced Midwesterner with whose career Thurber's is most often

compared. The critics concur by and large, however, in proclaiming the most

successful of Thurber's writings to be those imaginative recreations of

Midwestern life he achieved in retrospect from the distancing East. My Life and

Hard Times, by this estimate, is Thurber's single greatest book.

Although Thurber's serious art is finally beginning to receive serious critical

attention, the essays in this volume only begin the process, as Professor Holmes

readily concedes. Such brilliant insights as Malcolm Cowley's perception that

Thurber's humorous fantasies are like the poetry of dreams are not always

thoroughly worked out. Too often the analyses of Thurber's humor demonstrate

once again how difficult humor is to analyze. The new essay on his style is

pedantic, and essays of any sort on Thurber's drawings are scarce. (Perhaps the

most intelligent thing anyone has said about those cockeyed men, women, and

dogs was Dorothy Parker's observation back in 1932 that they look like unbaked

cookies.)

Still this is a collection to savor. It makes the case convincingly for Thurber's

"importance as an interpreter of modern life." And Ohio readers will not object

to being reminded that Thurber could lapse into boosterism: "I have always

waved banners and blown horns for Good Old Columbus Town . . . and such

readers as I have collected over the years are all aware that half my books could

not have been written if it had not been for the city of my birth."

 

The Ohio State University                           Thomas Cooley

 

 

The Reaffirmation of Republicanism: Eisenhower and the Eighty-Third

Congress. By Gary W. Reichard. (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee

Press, 1975. xv + 304p.; notes, appendices, bibliography, index. $14.95.)

 

The central thesis is expressed succinctly in the title; these were two years of

reaffirmation of traditional Republicanism. The evidence refutes any notion that

during the 1950s the liberal presidential wing of the party triumphed over the

conservative congressional wing to usher in an era of Liberal or New

Republicanism. It is wrong to view Eisenhower as the ideological heir of

Wendell Willkie, since even the President admitted becoming more

conservative during his second term. Eisenhower openly opposed some New

Deal programs, and his acceptance of others represented a concession to

inevitability rather than to a liberalizing spirit. The changes he brought about in

his party's attitude toward foreign affairs are significant, but even these pale

when the author reminds us that it had become virtually impossible for any party

to ignore America's world position.

The author balances his demolition of the Liberal Republican hypothesis with

a sincere effort to describe the programs submitted to the Congress. In the

process he reveals an Eisenhower who recognized, played, and enjoyed his part

as a legislative and political leader. During these years Eisenhower opened the

way for more dialogue between himself and Congress through various formal

and informal bodies. He might have been politically naive at first, but he learned

• 14
 

70                                                    OHIO HISTORY

 

what he needed to know. After all, no man is likely to move from one gold bar to

five gold stars without having picked up some expertise in the arts that a political

leader must master.

The author gives equal attention to the men in Congress who considered

Eisenhower's programs. By scaleogram technique Reichard studied all nine

of the new Republican Senators and forty-two of the fifty new Republican

Representatives in the new Congress as well as the thirty-nine Senators and 171

residual Republicans in the House. He chose to study only four policy

areas-foreign affairs, fiscal and economic, welfare, and power and resources

development. In each of these areas he examined Republican members

according to period of entry into Congress, geographic region from which they

were chosen, and (in the House) district type. They were scaled in foreign affairs

in five categories ranging from strong internationalist through uncommitted to

strong nationalist, and in the other three categories in classifications ranging

from strong liberal through uncommitted to strong conservative. The results are

spelled out even for those of us who do not understand quantification in nineteen

tables and eleven appendices.

The book is a significant contribution to the body of literature that studies a

president's relations with one of his congresses by means of roll-call votes and

other statistical devices. For the more conservative historian there is an

extensive bibliography to show that the author has done his homework at the

appropriate presidential archives and oral history projects.

Kent State University                            William F. Zornow

 

 

Coal-Mining Safety in the Progressive Period: The Political Economy of Re-

form. By William Graebner. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentuc-

ky, 1976. xii +244p.; tables, notes, bibliographical note, bibliography of

primary sources, index. $16.75.)

The 1975 Frederick Jackson Turner Award of the Organization of American

Historians went to this study of the coal-mining safety movement by an assis-

tant professor of history at State University College, Fredonia, New York. A

well-researched and carefully composed monograph that grew out of a disser-

tation at the University of Illinois, it maintains the standard of quality that has

marked this scholarly prize. And though the area investigated may appear

narrow and technical, closer examination reveals important implications for

the Progressive movement generally.

Graebner entered upon his exploration believing that the creation of the

United States Bureau of Mines could be treated as "another Progressive

triumph," an example of "a thoroughly modern institutional response to in-

dustrial dislocation." He emerged several years later more impressed at how

"economic and political decentralization produced the ineffectual politics of

coal-mining safety." Instead of triumph he found failure, or at least enough of

failure to raise serious doubts about the adequacy of the reform methods of

that era. By his final reckoning, Progressivism was "profoundly conservative

in methodology" and "only hinted at the nationalism of the New Deal."

After an introduction that summarizes his thesis, Graebner devotes succes-

sive chapters to the upsurge of "national reform" that established the Bureau

of Mines following disasters at Monongah, West Virginia (1907), and Cherry

• 15
 

Book Reviews                                                     71

 

Illinois (1909); the largely educational (non-regulartory) efforts of the Bureau

to promote mine safety; state legislative advances in West Virginia, Ohio,

Illinois, and Pennsylvania measured against limited state enforcement and

fruitless attempts at uniform legislation; charges of "miner carelessness" and

suggested remedies not realized; and finally to "operators as victims" of an

intensely competitive industrial structure and system. A concluding chapter

considers the ways in which his research confirms or questions historical in-

terpretations of the era.

The economic competition which Graebner deplores was a distinguishing

characteristic not of anthracite (which he largely leaves alone) but of the

bituminous coal industry. He does not describe here (see his article in Busi-

ness History Review 48:49-72) that industry's structure in any detail, but his

evidence indicates that the larger companies did introduce the most advanced

safety measures and systems, apparently regardless of the competitive situa-

tion. It would be pertinent to any judgment to know what proportion of min-

ers was employed by the bigger firms, for the small operators gave mine in-

spectors the most trouble. Moreover, it is not clear what feasible alternatives

reformers had: legalization or prior approval of trade agreements affronted

too many antitrust advocates, whereas nationalization of the industry was a

radical step only proposed by the United Mine Workers (UMW) in World

War I to curb waste of resources.

Federalism was the other major obstacle for the bituminous-coal-mine

safety movement. What the federal government did for safety in interstate

commerce or the territories were not "obvious precedents" for regulation

within the states, nor could reformers in or outside the Bureau of Mines have

ignored then-accepted constitutional limits. The uniform-legislation alterna-

tive was "patently idealistic" yet surely inevitable for that day; indeed, one

might argue that reformers generally had to experience frustration and failure

with such solutions before they could move to more "unconstitutional" in-

tervention under the New Deal.

Though Graebner's strictures on Progressive reformers are too severe, his

administrative history offers a needed check to facile generalizations about

interest groups in national politics. And though in places he accepts New Left

interpretations too readily, his detailed evidence on business leaders often

raises questions on that score. He rightly claims a place for bureaucracy in

reform ranks; I hope he will extend his studies of the Bureau of Mines and the

UMW.

The index is excellent, as is the editing.

 

Denison University                              G. Wallace Chessman

 

 

The 103rd Ballot: Democrats and the Disaster in Madison Square Garden. By

Robert K. Murray. (New York: Harper & Row, 1976. xiv + 336p.; illustra-

tions, notes, bibliography, index. $10.95.)

 

Nineteen twenty-four marked a watershed in the history of American polit-

ical conventions. Previously both major parties usually took several ballots to

choose a presidential candidate unless an incumbent was being renominated.

In 1924 the Democratic National Convention, which had needed forty-six bal-

• 16
 

72                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

lots to nominate Wilson in 1912 and forty-four to select Cox in 1920, spent

sixteen exhausting days in New York City's Madison Square Garden taking a

numbing 103 ballots to choose John W. Davis. Not only did the Democrats

tear their party apart over deeply divisive issues, but they performed this rite

of self-destruction for a nationwide radio audience listening to the first con-

vention broadcast in its entirety. His party having so vividly demonstrated its

discord, Davis could attract less than 29 percent of the popular vote in that

fall's three-way contest with Coolidge and LaFollette. Thereafter, the pattern

by which parties resolved differences and selected leaders changed. Few con-

tests in either party, regardless of intensity, lasted more than one ballot after

1924, and none more than six.

Robert K. Murray suggests that the 1924 convention was not a total disas-

ter for the Democrats. Rather, says Murray, fundamental political and social

problems were being worked out; a new consensus would emerge eight years

later with the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Most of Murray's tale is

familiar: the platform battle over whether to condemn by name the Ku Klux

Klan; the nomination struggle between William G. McAdoo, Alfred E. Smith,

and a host of favorite sons; the deafening demonstrations for Smith by

Tammany-packed galleries; the fatigue of endless roll calls; and the eventual

compromise choice of "the barefoot boy from Wall Street." Murray's princi-

pal contribution lies in emphasizing the convention's larger context: the

longer-range competition between the emerging new immigrant, heavily

Catholic, largely urban population of the North and old-stock, Protestant,

abstemious, conservative Americans of the South and West. They differed

over immigration restriction, religion, and prohibition as well as the symbolic

Klan. As have others, Murray sees the lesson of 1924 being that each side had

come to hold a veto power in Democratic affairs. Once parochialism was

overcome and both elements accommodated, a process achieved with

Roosevelt's nomination in 1932, the Democrats became the dominant party

because they reflected the complexity of modern American society better

than the Republicans.

Despite sensitivity to underlying issues and long-term change, Murray for

the most part offers an old-fashioned descriptive narrative drawn from tradi-

tional sources and focused upon major poltical personalities. The stubborn-

ness of McAdoo, the cultural limitations of Smith, William Jennings Bryan's

fumbling quest to recapture past power, the idiosyncracies of the minor can.

didates, and the maneuvering of the contenders provide the heart of Murray's

story. One looks in vain for any sophisticated analysis of the delegates or the

process by which they were selected. Certain crucial questions, although

raised, are not probed. How did media coverage affect behavior? Did rura

delegates act differently because the convention met in New York? How did

Roosevelt, Smith's nominator and floor manager, become identified eigh

years later (when two-thirds of the delegates were the same) as anti-Smith?

Murray's efforts to attract a popular audience are evident in his sprightly

style, excellent photographs, and scanty notes. Yet while relating an exciting

story of political conflict, he retains perspective. The result is a book which

fulfills Mencken's dictum about political conventions being "as fascinating as

a revival or a hanging."

 

University of Akron                                 David E. Kyvig

• 17
 

Book Reviews                                                   73

 

The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America: Since 1945. By George

H. Nash. (New York: Basic Books, 1976. xv + 463p.; illustrations, notes,

bibliographical essay, index. $20.00.)

Historians have long been forced to get their accounts of what Peter

Viereck labelled "the new conservatism" from chroniclers either hostile or

patronizing; with Nash's book, they need no longer do so. For many intellec-

tuals, this ideology, as the Burkean scholar, Raymond English, commented in

1952, was "the forbidden faith," and only in recent times has it gained popu-

lar political appeal. Nash's book, based on a doctoral dissertation completed

at Harvard in 1973, presents a fascinating "who's who" of individuals, or-

ganizations, and periodicals that go under its broad ideological umbrella.

From Nash we learn that modern conservatism emerges from three quite

different strains: (1) classical liberalism, as represented in the writings of

Ludwig von Mises, Albert Jay Nock, and Frank Chodorov; (2) traditionalists

such as Russell Kirk and Richard M. Weaver; and (3) militant anti-

Communists such as James Burnham, Whittaker Chambers, and Frank S.

Meyer. Such varied doctrines first found a common outlet in 1955 when Na-

tional Review was founded, and in 1957 when the more scholarly Modern Age

was born. Ideological conflicts were never absent from such a disparate and

uneasy coalition, and it took the organizational genius of William F. Buckley,

Jr., and the intellectual dexterity of Meyer to offer cohesion. Even then vari-

ous groups either defected or were expelled: Ayn Rand and Max Eastman

over the mainstream's pronounced theism; Murray Rothbard and Karl Hess

over its strident Cold War posture; and L. Brent Bozell over medieval Roman

Catholic perspectives.

Beginning in the early 1970s, a host of "liberal" scholars began to question

forced integration, detente with the Soviets and the Chinese People's Repub-

lic, the student revolution, "black power," and Great Society programs. Na-

tional Review started to feature such "liberal" authors as Nathan Glazer,

Sidney Hook, and Seymour Martin Lipset, thus helping to formulate a new

"vital center." With James Buckley now Senator from New York and Ronald

Reagan involved in a major bid for the Presidency, the movement had come a

long way from the time when isolated scholars corresponded with each other

over passages from Nock or the tomes of the southern Agrarians.

Nash has relied upon a host of interviews, manuscript collections (including

the papers of William F. Buckley and Russell Kirk), and scholarly and popu-

lar journals ranging from Partisan Review to the Individualist. Giving us an

intellectual tour de force, he writes well, summarizes arguments clearly and

fairly, and presents a good balance of ideas, personalities, and associations.

Portraits ranging from F. E. Hayek to Irving Kristol are deftly drawn, the

thought of a Willmoore Kendall or a Richard M. Weaver skillfully sum-

marized, references rich and detailed.

There is a difference, however, between a good book and an excellent one,

and it lies in possessing a critical and analytical sense. Nash seldom shows

this. One gets little picture of the strengths and weaknesses, points of percep-

tion and points of fallacy, within the various schools of conservatism. Far too

often Nash summarizes an argument, gives the response of liberal and con-

servative critics, and then moves on. The real questions go unanswered, al-

though we surely have enough scholarship to make serious evaluations. Did

the thought of John Dewey attempt to "soften us up for the Red push"

• 18
 

74                                                    OHIO HISTORY

 

(Eliseo Vivas)? Was liberalism "the ideology of Western suicide" (Burn-

ham)? Must America be a "semi-closed society" (Viereck)? Is the State a

"professional criminal class" (Nock)? Did "Gnostic politics" lead to the

"surrender" of China to communism (Eric Voegelin)? In short, to what ex-

tent were conservatives engaged in responsible intellectual history and social

commentary, and to what degree were they using such doctrines as social

cohesion and the higher law to bludgeon ideological opponents? To answer

such questions, and to answer them with a sophistication worthy of an Otis L.

Graham, Jr., or a John P. Diggins, more thought and less celebration is needed.

 

New College of the                              Justus D. Doenecke

University of South Florida

 

 

Prophets with Honor: Great Dissents and Great Dissenters in the Supreme

Court. By Alan Barth. (New York: Vintage Books, 1975. xiv + 254p.;

notes, appendices, index. $2.95 paper.)

 

"A dissent in a court of last resort," as Charles Evans Hughes once

observed-and as Alan Barth reminds his reader-, "is an appeal to the

brooding spirit of the law, to the intelligence of a future day when a later

decision may possibly correct the error into which the dissenting judge

believes the court to have been betrayed" (p.3). More than once history has

vindicated far-sighted jurists who have spoken out, sometimes alone, against

the decisions of their colleagues. It is such men whose prescience Alan Barth

celebrates in Prophets with Honor, a collection of essays about famous

dissents by United States Supreme Court Justices, all of whom embodied

views that eventually became the law of the land. Barth describes the cases

which gave rise to these notable opinions and the developments which en-

abled their authors to achieve ultimate vindication.

Felicitously written, his book brings alive some fascinating stories. It

should do well in the classroom market for which Barth apparently designed

it. But specialists in constitutional history, while appreciative of the

appendices-in which the author has included the full text of eight minority

opinions-may find this work disappointing.

Barth's selection of great dissents is less representative than it might be. As

he readily admits (pp.xii-xiii), his interest is in individual rights and liberties.

Every essay deals with a case in which those were at issue. While all of the

dissents that Barth examines are worthy of inclusion, and while some, such

as John Marshall Harlan's in Plessy v. Ferguson and Harlan Stone's in

Minersville School District v. Gobitis, are classics, one can say the same of

others he ignores. Oliver Wendell Holmes' protest in Lochner v. New York

against writing the philosophy of laissez-faire into the Constitution and

Stone's pointed reminder to the anti-New Deal majority in United States v.

Butler that, "Courts are not the only agency of government that must be

assumed to have the capacity to govern," are equally famous, and the

dissents of Justices Field and Bradley in the Slaughterhouse Cases,

embodying as they did ideas which would dominate American law for at least

a generation after 1873, were as prescient as any of those which Barth

discusses. His book would be better balanced had he included a few such

• 19
 

Book Reviews                                                   75

 

opinions on economic questions, rather than restricting it to civil rights and

liberties.

Prophets with Honor suffers from inadequate research, as well as limited

scope. In going beyond the opinions of the Supreme Court into the Records

and Briefs, Barth has done more digging than many constitutional scholars.

But he has made no use of judicial manuscripts and has overlooked, to the

detriment of his work, some highly relevant secondary sources, such as C.

Vann Woodward's article on Plessy v. Ferguson in John Garraty's Quarrels

That Have Shaped the Constitution. Barth's footnoting is erratic, sometimes

leaving the reader in doubt about the exact source of even direct quotations,

and his text contains several factual errors. Finally, the last chapter, an

argument for broad construction of the Constitution, while a fine essay in its

own right, has only a tenuous connection with the rest of the book.

Prophets with Honor is an enjoyable work, and students of constitutional

history can learn much by reading it. But teachers who assign this book

should not do so without giving their classes at least a few words of warning.

 

University of Texas at Austin                    Michal R. Belknap

 

 

Chautauqua: A Center for Education, Religion, and the Arts in America. By

Theodore Morrison. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1974. viii

+ 351p.; illustrations, bibliography, index. $10.50.)

 

To elderly midwesterners, the word "Chautauqua" means a big tent in the

city park. But those travelling shows were unrelated to the true, original

Chautauqua Institution on Lake Chautauqua, in New York state. What

Professor Morrison has written is a history of this real Chautauqua center,

which began 100 years ago as a summer "assembly" for the training of Sunday

school teachers, and grew bigger, more varied, and less religious every year.

It continues today, a 700-acre summer school and festival of the arts.

Chautauqua was started in August 1874 by John Vincent, later to become a

Methodist bishop, and Lewis Miller, an Ohioan from Stark County who was

an inventor (the Buckeye Mower and Reaper) and Akron manufacturer.

Chautauqua's lectures filled a need; from the start it drew as many as 4,000

Sunday school teachers daily. Its "curriculum," however, soon broadened

into science and the languages-a secular shift to a more general audience

(and the need for gate receipts). By the 1880s Chautauqua's success in educa-

tion was due in part to a second Ohioan, a walking dynamo named William

Rainey Harper, born in New Concord and a teacher at Denison, who later

would become first president of the University of Chicago.

Chautauqua's widest influence on American society, however, was not in

its classrooms and concerts on Lake Chautauqua, but through its

correspondence courses throughout the hinterland. By 1891, for example,

there were 180,000 Americans enrolled in its program of guided reading of

solid books. This was a balanced four-year course of home study and written

lessons which spread the ideal of adult education in decades when many

citizens could not attend high school. It gave them, and their children, an

outlook or attitude toward books and education which, without question,

contributed constructively to shaping middle-class Protestant America. In

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76                                                  OHIO HISTORY

 

time, home-study enrollment was over 300,000 annually, and some 10,000

local discussion circles had been organized, half of them in towns smaller

than 3,500, where the library and bookstore were sometimes nothing to brag

about.

We ought certainly to have a history of an institution so influential and so

American as Chautauqua. Unfortunately, histories of institutions often make

rather deadly reading. Morrison is interesting when he can be specific, but he

has to "cover" so thick an accumulation of Chautauqua's "bewildering

variety of activities" that he is regularly forced into loose, hence dim,

generalities. Against him, too, is the perverse fact that no one can write

vividly about something altogether decent, wholesome, and tame-which is

Chautauqua in a nutshell.

The book is physically handsome (though marred by bad copy editing), and

is brightened by 171 charming photos of the civilized little enclave on Lake

Chautauqua.

 

University of Illinois at Chicago Circle           James Stronks

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