Ohio History Journal

Book Reviews

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Bibliography of Ohio Archeology. By James L. Murphy. (Ann Arbor: Uni-

versity Microfilms International, 1977. xi + 488 p.; index. $23.75.)

 

This is the second comprehensive bibliography of Ohio archaeology. The

earlier compilation by Richard G. Morgan and James H. Rodabaugh was pub-

lished by the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society in 1947 and

contained 1351 entries. This larger volume has 3138 entries and reflects both

the striking growth of publications in the intervening years up to 1974 as well

as Murphy's additions of earlier references not listed by Morgan and Roda-

baugh. In addition, there is a complete bibliography of articles in the Ohio

Archaeologist irrespective of whether the article was on Ohio, another state or

country.

The value of the bibliography is enhanced by the annotations following many

of the references and the index which lists the reference numbers for articles

from the Abbott to the Zimmerman sites. There are remarkably few errors.

These include Schroger instead of Schorger for entry 2524; Silvergreg for Sil-

verberg for entry 2587; and Soaper for Soper in entry 2675.

One of the best examples of Hopewell acquisition and distribution of exotic

material is that of meteoric iron. The Morgan and Rodabaugh bibliography has

three entries in the index and Murphy has twenty. This reflects Murphy's list-

ing of some publications which should have been in the earlier bibliography as

much as it does references since 1947. Similar results would probably follow

other such comparisons. The index is an invaluable guide to materials from

sites, counties, prehistoric cultural units, materials and artifact types.

Murphy has amply accomplished his goal to update and supplement Morgan

and Rodabaugh's earlier work. However, one might question the inclusion of all

articles in the Ohio Archaeologist, for that journal has items on Latin America

and even Australia, but these listings can be accepted because they fall within

one of his stated goals. One suggestion provided by a colleague is that more

M.A. and Ph.D. theses on Ohio archaeology might well have been included.

One of the more estoeric references is No. 67 which "Notes Benjamin Frank-

lin's theory that Marietta earthworks were built by De Soto for pig pens".

This volume should be acquired by all Ohio libraries and those libraries that

include North America archaeology as one of their subject areas, by profes-

sional and lay archaeologists, and by students of eastern United States pre-

history. While the cost may seem somewhat high for the individual, possession

of this bibliography will save many hours of bibliographic research and should

serve to make many future papers on Ohio archaeology more comprehensive

than they normally are. This bibliography is certainly a deed well done.

 

Museum of Anthropology                                 James B. Griffin

University of Michigan

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Book Reviews                                                        451

 

The Richards Site: and the Philo Phase of the Fort Ancient Tradition. Edited

by Jeff Carskadden and James Morton. (Zanesville: Muskingum Valley

Archaeological Survey, 1977. iii + 143p.; illustrations, maps, tables, notes.

$5.00.)

 

This volume is presented as Occasional Papers in Muskingum Valley

Archaeology, Nos. 1-9, and is a collection of nine papers or reports which

resulted from studies conducted with artifacts and information derived from

two thirteenth-century Indian settlement sites of eastern Ohio. The sites, named

Philo II and Richards, were explored from 1974 to 1976 and yielded large

samples of prehistoric Indian artifacts and refuse. Much of the material has

been analyzed and the analysis forms the basis for this volume, with little discussion

devoted to the excavations.

Information given in The Richards Site is primarily relevant to Late Prehis-

toric archaeology, or the period of Indian history generally recognized by

archaeologists as occurring in the millenium prior to contact with European

traders and settlers. In the upper Ohio River Valley, Late Prehistory may be

thought of as dating between A.D. 1000 and A.D. 1675, and among the archaeo-

logically recognized manifestations during this span for the area are sites and

artifacts assigned to a Fort Ancient tradition. Although their exact ethnic iden-

tity is unknown, some evidence suggests that Fort Ancient cultural practitioners

were ancestral to the historic Shawnee.

The lead paper in The Richards Site is an introductory one by Jeff Car-

skadden, which reviews previously published information for the Muskingum

Valley, describes the discovery of Philo I, Philo II, and the Richards sites, and

interprets Late Prehistoric settlement of the area. Subsequent papers include

a discussion of radiocarbon-derived dates pertinent to Late Prehistory in the

Muskingum Valley by John Morton; reports on bone, antler, and stone indus-

tries evident at Philo II and Richards by Carskadden; description and signifi-

cance of ceramic or pottery traits observed in collections from the Richards

Site by Richard Gartley; three reports by James L. Murphy concerning his

identification of vertebrate, molluscan, and plant remains recovered at these

sites; and a preliminary report dealing with human skeletal remains from the

Richards Site authored by Richard P. Patterson.

Philo I, Philo II, and Richards are all located within a distance of seven to

ten miles downstream from Zanesville, Ohio, in the same bottoms of the

Muskingum River. Until their recent discovery they each concealed a buried

maze of refuse or storage pits and scattered masses of prehistoric debris. An

oval to circular village plan is indicated by the pattern of refuse pits and midden

concentrations at the sites, but the evidence for discrete permanent structures

is perhaps limited to a circular postmold pattern circumscribing an area nine

feet in diameter. There is no evidence that these villages were enclosed by a

stockade, as many Fort Ancient villages are known to have been. Murphy

states that faunal remains from the sites indicate that they were year-round

settlements.

Radiocarbon dates for nine samples (five from Richards, four from Philo II)

range from A.D. 1070 to A.D. 1340, but seven fall between A.D. 1230 and

A.D. 1290. Morton suggests the dates may indicate the villages were occupied

for fairly short periods of time, perhaps only a single generation each. In this

scheme the Philo II village is thought to have preceded Richards. Gartley

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452                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

believes the sites were possibly occupied successively by the same people. In

support of this hypothesis he cites similarities in ceramic and non-ceramic

traits, a contiguous radiocarbon date sequence, and identical settlement-sub-

sistence patterns.

One of the most intriguing papers is Patterson's, wherein he reports evi-

dence for the practice of cannibalism at the Richards Site. He believes the

practice was probably survival rather than preferential in nature and possibly

restricted to a brief period such as during a severe winter season.

Of particular interest to serious students of archaeology is the Philo Phase

of the Fort Ancient Tradition which is conceived and used recurrently in this

volume by Carskadden and Gartley. I feel it can be argued that the three prin-

cipal sites considered in this publication reflect a regional variation in what

has already been prescribed for the Feurt Phase.

If, as noted in the preface, this is to be but the first of a series, archaeo-

logists and students of Ohio Valley prehistory will continue to benefit from the

fine standard of reporting and quality established with this initial collection of

papers. The cost of the publication is modest, and it is an important contribution

to knowledge of the area.

 

West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey            Daniel B. Fowler

 

 

Scoouwa: James Smith's Indian Captivity Narrative. Annotated by William M.

Darlington in 1870 and John J. Barsotti. Original title: An Account of the

Remarkable Occurrences in the Life and Travels of Col. James Smith ....

(Columbus: Ohio Historical Society, 1978. 176p.; illustrations, maps, bibli-

ography, $5.95.)

 

When he was eighteen James Smith was captured by the French-allied

Caughnawaga Indians. During his captivity and after his escape Smith kept a

journal of his activities and observations which was first published in 1779; six

editions followed, including an 1870 version annotated by William M. Darling-

ton. The Ohio Historical Society has now issued an eighth edition annotated by

the Society's Associate Curator, John J. Barsotti. Smith's narrative is a standard

source for historians of the Ohio Indians and of the late colonial and revolution-

ary periods since Smith, a contemporary of the more famous frontiersmen

Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton, participated in the Seven Years' War, Pon-

tiac's Uprising, Lord Dunmore's War, the American Revolution and the opening

of America's new frontier in Kentucky.

Heeding Smith's dictate that "occurances truly and plainly stated as they

happened . . . make the best history," the publishers have retained the original

grammar and spelling, as well as Darlington's 1870 bibliographical introduc-

tion and many of his notes. Although the narrative remains useful to historians,

it is less useful to ethnohistorians. Too often, both in the narrative and the

accompanying notes, the word Indian appears as a monolithic, static term with

little effort made to distinguish between tribal cultures. We know that Smith

was adopted into the Caughnawaga tribe and some of his relations were Dela-

wares, but it is not always clear which cultural traits belong to which tribe.

This is most evident in the last part of the narrative, "On The Manners And

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Book Reviews                                                        453

 

Customs Of The Indians." The problem is compounded by Smith's frequent

mention of other Ohio Valley and Virginia Indians. This is where Barsotti

could have provided an important service, but he merely offers the reader sparse

notes which are often simplistic and occasionally patronizing. Thus regarding

Indian winter dress we are informed that "Indians seem to have been able to

withstand cold weather better than white men." Barsotti also engages in trivia

by noting that "Daniel Boone seems to be one noted frontier fighter who did not

take scalps." Finally, he would have us believe that venereal disease was one of

"the frontiersmen's gifts to the Indians." While frontiersmen may have inflicted

this disease on Indians at various times, Indians were equally guilty of passing

on a disease whose origins remain still uncertain. Barsotti's note may give the

uninformed reader the impression that veneral disease was one of the many

debilitating "gifts" which Europeans offered to American Indians.

Barsotti would have done well to consult the recent work by James Axtell

on "White Indians" and Patrick Malone on Indian military technology. He

would then have known that Indians had captives run the gauntlet not as "a

combination of torture, a test of courage and an initiation." He would have

known the significance of the ritual dunking into water and that not all tribes

were dependent on white gunsmiths.

Sccouwa: James Smith's Indian Captivity Narrative may still be read as an

informative and interesting chronicle of an eventful period in American his-

tory. And it is toward the "casual reader" that this latest edition appears directed.

The front cover offers a garish illustration of the Indianized James Smith and

interior graphics detract from the serious nature of the narrative. The book is

printed in half columns with notes appearing in the remaining halves. Barsotti

has not numbered his notes and utilizes key phrases which are not always

readily identifiable in the text.

 

Newberry Library                                   Barry Wayne Bienstock

 

Tilton Territory: A Historical Narrative. By Robert H. Richardson. (Philadel-

phia: Dorrance & Co., 1977, viii + 300 p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography,

index. $10.00.)

 

In the very broadest sense, this handsomely-designed volume is a commend-

able book. It is the detailed, 253-page treatment of the founding of an Ohio

community. While the focus is on local events, they are placed in a regional

and national context. The author is a dedicated and enthusiastic avocational

historian who spent six years in preparation of the book. On all of these counts

it represents a genre that deserves encouragement. Although subtitled "A His-

torical Narrative," this book is more properly a work of fiction and must be re-

viewed as such. The author has invented circumstances, events and conversa-

tions-following the pattern developed with such commercial success by Allan

Eckert-for which there is no substantial documentation. These inventions are

used to flesh out the record where it cannot be historically verified.

The reviewer does not object out-of-hand to imaginative historical literature;

if often conveys the essence of the past more effectively than the writing of

scholarly historians. The works of Conrad Richter, Gore Vidal and A. B. Guth-

rie are among the more obvious examples of skillful representation of his-

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454                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

torical milieu independent of either the restraints or trappings of scholarship.

The form is a demanding one, however, and should be used skillfully or not at

all. It requires a combination of creative power, thematic legitimacy and an

intimate knowledge of detail. Mark Twain, in his lampoon of James Fenimore

Cooper's "literary offenses," castigated Cooper's shortcomings as an observer

and his failure to create believable characters. Richardson's "narrative," like

Cooper's romances of the frontier, simply lacks the ring of truth.

Richardson's pioneers are always valiant and virtuous. Nature and the elements

are monotonously congenial. Harvests are uniformly bounteous, larders never

fail to yield a delectable assortment of foodstuffs, and the Indians, while

consistently ruthless, treacherous and bloodthirsty, never really frighten any-

one very much. Occasional variations on this formula fail to depict with any

vitality the hardships of pioneering. There is no sweat, there are no bad smells,

and all of the characters seem to lack, in their unfailing pluck and mutual devo-

tion, any of the emotional or psychological complexity that is universally

Man's burden and inspiration. Families depart for the unsettled Indian lands

with all the panache of Boy Scouts on an overnight camp-out beyond the

freeway interchange, motivated by equal parts of optimism, patriotism and

love of adventure. No adoring wife ever doubts the wisdom of her mate or re-

grets the minor amenities she must abandon. Richter's Jary Luckett would find

no kindred spirit here.

All of this is presented in a literary style both stilted and trite:

"John Carpenter is in favor of seeking adventure and establishing a home west of the

river," said John. "I explained the good things in the western valley, and he is quite re-

ceptive to challenging the dangers that exist. I did not know before today that he had

hunted in that area for several years now. Would it be unwise if we accompanied him and

once again occupied the cabin which I know still stands?" "He is strong and

courageous," responded Susannah, as her heart beat more rapidly and she concealed her

excitement. "However, I, too, feel that our western claim provides the brightest future.

And I would tell you now, John, that, once abroad. I will remain, unless compelled by

force to return to this area."

Most readers will find this book anything but convincing. It tells us little

more about early Ohio than Thursday evening's visit from "The Waltons"

tells us about the Great Depression. The author promises a second volume

which will continue the history of Warren Township into the twentieth cen-

tury. Hopefully, this review will serve as warning against a repetition of the

flaws which so pervasively mar the first.

The Ohio Historical Society                             James K. Richards

 

 

The American Revolution and "A Candid World." Edited by Lawrence S.

Kaplan. (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1977. xiv + 169p.; notes, index.

$10.50.)

 

As those familiar with the wording of the Declaration of Independence will

recognize, the quote in the title of this volume comes from that document:

Congress presented its justification for revolution to "a candid world." The

title is apt for a collection of essays that "examine the role which the Old World

was expected to play in United States foreign affairs, measure expectations

against results, and observe the effect of the Revolutionary diplomatic experi-

• 5
 

Book Reviews                                                      455

 

ence upon the growth of American isolationism." The volume grew out of a

bicentennial conference of diplomatic historians at Kent State University in

May 1976.

Although the volume purports to deal with the single topic of American

diplomacy during the nation's first twenty-five years, in fact there are two

topics. The essays by Carl B. Cone and Alan S. Brown deal with aspects of the

British side of the revolutionary situation and David M. Griffiths examines

Russian policy. All three clearly have relevance to the diplomatic situation

but only the essays by James H. Hutson, William C. Stinchcombe, Gregg L.

Lint, and Lawrence S. Kaplan deal with American diplomacy directly.

In his essay on George III, Cone discusses the king's role in government

decision making in the revolutionary period. He concludes that George par-

ticipated in and was in complete agreement with the policies of his govern-

ment through the 1770s. Cone's work contains little that is new but it is an

interesting coordination of recent scholarship. Brown examines the moves by

the British government to conciliate the American rebels and "the milieu in

which they were produced." He argues that British statesmanship during the

revolutionary period was not as bankrupt as has often been assumed; that

within the context of British political beliefs of the time-particularly parlia-

mentary supremacy-the conciliation offers were often generous and imagina-

tive. They were impossible only in terms of what Americans hoped for and

already had. In this context it was almost impossible for a British politician

to understand the American position.

Griffiths examines the question of why Catherine the Great, a self-confessed

"Anglomaniac," failed to support Britain in the war. He finds that, like the

revolutionaries themselves, Catherine believed the opposition charges that

the government had become corrupt and that possibly the King and certainly

his ministers were seeking to subvert the balance of the constitution.

The goals of the United States are what bind together the essays dealing

directly with American diplomacy. The essays fall into two interestingly op-

posed pairs. Stinchcombe and Lint, in their essays on John Adams and the

Model Treaty and the Law of Nations, take the position that, although forced

to deviate from it on occasion, American policy was guided by more or less

idealistic conceptions of how international relations should be organized.

These essays, though, are far less persuasive than those by Hutson and Kap-

lan. Hutson's article, the most provocative in the collection, challenges the

thesis set forward by Felix Gilbert seventeen years ago that early American

diplomacy was guided by an "idealistic internationalism." He demonstrates

that while idealistic visions of what America might become had some vogue,

American leaders acted from a basis which, within the context of the times,

was both orthodox and realistic. What is more, American leaders were united

on these tenets and "concensus on foreign policy only began to erode when

Citizen Genet brought the passions of the French Revolution to American

shores in 1793."

Hutson deals largely in ideas. What he does for this period in theoretical

terms. Kaplan does in practical in his examination of the course of the Franco-

American alliance. He concludes that from almost the beginning of the Revo-

lutionary War realpolitik dominated American policy. The French alliance

(which Americans wanted in all its detail) was allowed to fade away with the

end of the war not because of any sense that America must play the idealistic

role and deal only in treaties that freed commerce, but because the implica-

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456                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

tions of the alliance "frightened American statesmen," particularly after

France and Britain went to war in 1793. American interests were better

served by accommodating Britain, and "Washington's farewell address was

simply a Hamiltonian ploy to divert the nation from the real entangling con-

nection, that of Britain."

As with any such collection, the quality of these essays varies, but on the

whole the volume is a worthwhile addition to any library on the revolution

and early national period. Indeed, the Hutson and Kaplan articles alone are

almost worth the price.

 

State University of New York at Buffalo                R. Arthur Bowler

 

 

 

Order Upon the Land: The U.S. Rectangular Land Survey and the Upper

Mississippi Country. By Hildegard Binder Johnson. (New York: Oxford

University Press, 1976. ²68p.; illustrations, figures, notes, index. $9.00

cloth; $5.00 paper.)

 

Order Upon the Land is an eclectic book that is difficult to classify. Osten-

sibly it is a historical geography of the origin and development of the rec-

tangular survey and its impact on the American settlement landscape since

1785. But the book offers much more. It discusses the concept of rectangularity

historically, the economics of grid patterns, the profession of surveying, the

artistry of "square-minded" vs. "crazy-quilt" contour farming patterns as seen

from an airplane, land and water management planning, and the role of

human "formgiving" on the cultural landscape. Hildegard Binder Johnson,

professor of history in Macalester College, is German-born and perhaps only

such a trans-cultural background enables one to perceive all these things.

North Americans, she rightly observes, accept the cadastral survey "that so

strongly affect their lines and perceptions of the landscape in the same way

that they accept a week of seven days, a decimal numerical system, or an

alphabet of twenty-six letters".

The book's organization is roughly chronological. The first part traces the

Euro-American origin of the tectangular survey in Roman antiquity, its de-

velopment in the French, Spanish, and English North American colonies, and

its culmination in the Land Ordinances of 1784 and 1785. The author finds

the precedent to the American system in the ancient Roman centuriation, a

castral survey based on the centuria or 100 squares, measures from a cen-

tern point that was laden with religious symbolism (p. 28).

The second section of the book traces the implementation of the survey

system, in the context of the major Congressiional land laws from 1796 to

1862. The focus is on the functional impact of the system in the Upper Missis-

sippi Hill Country, which is the author's home region. Readers will find here

one of the clearest descriptions anywhere in print of the cadastral survey

with its meridians, base lines, and forty-acre modules, all explained with maps

and charts. Having described the legal framework, the author demonstrates

the many ways in which the survey lines influenced subsequent historical-

geographical change, including recent suburban developments.

Given the complexity of the subject, Professor Johnson wisely chose to

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Book Reviews                                                       457

 

illustrate the influence of the surveyor's lines in one locale. She draws "be-

fore and after" pictures by describing the pre-survey occupation by lead

miners, lumbermen, farmer-settlers, and townsite speculators. Then she shows

the functional impact of the section lines on the location of fencing and road-

building activities. The influence of the survey grid is apparent to Johnson's

trained eye even in modern contour plowing patterns, watershed and wildlife

refuge areas, and in recreational parks.

The general thesis is that in unglaciated Upper Mississippi country, the

rigid survey boundaries imposed a square survey on a rounded countryside,

to the detriment of both. The "efforts of the surveyors to put a conceptual

order upon the land" created a tension with the "country's natural configura-

tion of hills and valleys." In the undulating prairie peninsula of the Midwest,

however, Professor Johnson allows that the grid lines served as an "uncon-

ditional, positive statement by enlightened rationalism" (p. 238). Whether in

tension or harmony, readers of this book will gain a deeper appreciation of

how the U. S. land survey served as a significant human influence on the

evolution of the American land.

Despite the numerous insights geographer Johnson shares with her readers

and the seventy-six photos and figures that adorn the book, non-specialists

will miss the full impact of the grid system  in the United States because

Johnson failed to provide a summary of the key ideas scattered throughout

the book. The chapter "The Balance Sheet" was perhaps meant to serve this

purpose, but its abstract philosophical discussion of the ambivalance of land-

scape aesthetics does not easily yield its rewards.

The footnotes reflect a broad array of mostly secondary sources, ranging

from cultural and historical geography, land history, and aesthetics and

symbolism, to frontier county histories and newspapers. A small sampling of

census manuscripts and abstracts of deed registers comprise the main unpub-

lished sources. There is no bibliography.

In addition to students of history, this book can be used with great benefit

by artists, architects, surveyors, land planners and developers, and cultural

geographers. A postscript is even included for airline passengers to gain a

deeper appreciation of the American landscape from an altitude of 25,000

feet. Perhaps I should alert Mainliner Magazine.

 

Kent State University                               Robert P. Swierenga

 

 

 

Early American Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases. By Bartlett Jere Whiting.

(Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977. lxiv +

555p.; bibliographical references, appendices, indices. $20.00.)

 

When Harry Truman said Jack Kennedy "had his ear so close to the ground

he had grasshoppers in it" his proverbial phrase revealed much about both

men. For historians who hope to learn how people felt and thought, the words

they used to express themselves can provide insight-as well as being interest-

ing to students of dialect, linguistic geography, and folklore.

B. J. Whiting, Gurney Professor of English Literature, Emeritus, at Har-

vard,has been editing scholarly collections of proverbs for twenty years, such

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458                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

as his Dictionary of American Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, 1820-1880

(with Archer Taylor, 1958). His present compendium does not merely record

catchy sayings, such as those in Charles Funk's entertaining A Hog on Ice and

Other Curious Expressions (1948). Nor has Whiting restricted himself to

adages such as "a house divided cannot stand" (1704) and "politics makes

strange bedfellows" (1839). He has ranged beyond these in order to list "pro-

verbial phrases" such as "to give one the go-by" (1704), "to be in the dumps"

(1714), "to go to pot" (1721), "not out of the woods" (1776), "Philadelphia

lawyer" (1788), "the gift of gab" (1791), "to swear like a trooper" (1799),

"to a T" (1802), "to pay through the nose" (1805), "as clear as mud" (1809),

"heads I win, tails you lose" (1814), "the hair of the dog" (1820), "soft soap"

(1827), "to go the whole hog" and "tell it to the marines" (both 1830).

Arranged alphabetically, each entry gives date and source, cites variant

forms, and refers the user to previous proverb collections. Thus a typical

(short) entry reads: "S7 To be in the Saddle, a1700 Hubbard New England

182; Being contented the elders should sit in the saddle, provided they might

hold the bridle, as some have expressed it. 1756 Johnson Papers 2.529: You

are fairly in the saddle, and must make the seat easy. 1777 Smith Memoirs(II)

160: The Whiggs are fixing themselves in the Saddle. Barbour 166(2); TW

315(5)."

As for his sources, Professor Whiting has culled his proverbial phrases

while reading some one thousand books written in North America between

approximately 1700 and 1825. These include-to identify only a few at ran-

don the complete writings of Roger Williams, the diaries of Michael Wiggles-

worth and Goerge Washington, Ebenezer Cook's The Sot-Weed Factor,

John Neal's magazine The Yankee for 1829, and Travels in the Southland,

1822-1823: The Journal of Lucius Verus Bierce (1966). Among Whiting's

hundreds of authors, the two who emerged as those fondest of using prover-

bial language were Abigail and John Adams.

In his long introduction, Whiting lists sixty-four proverbs which recur most

frequently in all this early American writing. The commonest one of all turns

out to be "time is precious" (plus many variant forms), a fact which Whiting

attributes to the work ethic, which was a foundation of the early American

way of life. Other most frequent proverbs include "a word to the wise"; "of

two evils choose the least"; "to have one's labor for one's pains"; and "to

have labored in vain."

Is there a negative cast to these? Whiting, who has lived intimately with

proverbial language for decades, has concluded that the favorite sayings of

early Americans reveal something less than a sparkling outlook: "Those who

tamed the howling wilderness and founded the Republic," he suggests, "would

seem to be characterized by varying degrees of cynicism, cunning, distrust,

expedience, suspicion, self-interest, misanthropy, despair, frustration, pes-

simism, secrecy, caution, elitism, ingratitude, regional prejudice, and fur-

tiveness." He goes on to hypothesize interestingly upon the cultural implica-

tions of early Americans' proverbial phraseology. What he does not say is

how modern many of the phrases seem to us. Even at a distance they retain

the tang of real people talking.

 

 

University of Illinois at Chicago Circle                  James Stronks

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Book Reviews                                                        459

 

Frontier America, 1800-1840: A Comparative Demographic Analysis of the

Frontier Process. By James E. Davis. (Glendale, CA: The Arthur H. Clark

Co., 1977. 220p.; illustrations, tables, figures, notes, appendices, bibli-

ography, index. $15.50.)

 

The general public as well as social scientists are coming to recognize the

increasing value of demography because the statistical procedures of this

field permit us to ask questions about social change which had previously been

considered amenable only to qualitative analysis. Furthermore, quantitative

statements permit cross-areal and cross-cultural comparisons so that we may

begin to answer questions about the degree to which two otherwise dissimilar

geographic regions may be subject to the same process. Altogether, the results

of the use of comparative demographic data lead to greater understanding

of past events and the more precise prediction of future occurrences.

Frontier America, 1800-1840, approaches a particular social phenomenon

with just these perspectives. Dr. James E. Davis, of Illinois College, has

brought together and processed a widely available but little used (in just

this manner) body of information. In so doing, he provides a perspective

which places the frontier experience within the context of American demo-

graphic history. Moreover, and just as importantly, his approach permits a

rigorous comparison of the American experience with what has and is hap-

pening in other areas. It is just such comparisons which will enable us to

better understand our past and how it has shaped us.

Davis' format is that of hypothesis testing within a comparative regional

or racial context. He establishes three foci for comparison: between North

and South, between settled and frontier, and between black and white, slave

and free. He proceeds by first stating hypotheses he has gleaned from other

sources and then by testing these against his data. His conclusions are

couched in the form of whether or not the hypotheses were substantiated. It

must be stated that such an approach does not lead to the most electrifying

writing; however, almost every page has some conclusion which is important

for understanding frontier demography. Davis progresses by analyzing house-

holds, age and sex of individuals, blacks and race, occupations, and the fading

of the frontier.

All of the author's conclusions deserve attention; they provide the first in-

depth quantitative examination of the subject. Furthermore, some of these

conclusions are definitely surprising. For instance, in comparing northern

settled to frontier areas, Davis notes that the size of the pioneer household

was "either no larger or actually smaller than those in the settled sections"

(p.39). The most common household in the northern frontier areas was either

two adults and two children or two adults and one child. Birth control was

practiced "since at least the early 1800's" (p. 40), although prolonged lactation

may have been largely responsible for this. Davis strikes out at the myth of

single people moving across the landscape, or of households migrating alone;

group migration in the North, as opposed to single household migration in the

South, supported the small family. In conclusion, he says, "the demographic

characteristics of the (northern) households entering the frontier were not

radically transformed by the settlement process" (p. 68).

As the reader moves through the volume, he or she can only be impressed

with the command of material that Davis exhibits. Davis devotes a complete

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460                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

chapter to an understanding of southern households, and still another to a

North-South comparison. Southern households were different from the

northern; they were larger than those in southern settled areas and, while

the modal size was not greater, a comparatively few large households made

the difference. The southern frontier was more agrarian for a longer time

period. Davis ascribes this to several factors: the rugged terrain, lack of easy

transport, lack of machinery to replace human labor, and slavery. Without

doubt, slavery had a large impact on the "demography and dynamics of

southern migration" (p. 83).

When Davis compares the frontier North and South, however, interesting

facets of each come to light. While the northern frontier was about as frontier

in its household characteristics as the South (p. 97) and the differences be-

tween the settled areas and frontiers, especially in the North, narrowed with

the passing of time, what differences there were between the northern and

southern frontiers failed to diminish greatly. From this and other statements,

the author concludes that there is little reason to believe that household size

and composition were responsible for the American frontier personality and

society (p. 99).

The same exhaustive, extensive analysis applies to the rest of the book. Tid-

bits of information abound. Interspersed with the results of a statistical

manipulation are notes on individual events. Thus, when discussing group

migration of households, the author presents cases of "strolling houses,"

each containing a number of families. Of course, his work is heavily foot-

noted, providing much material for further research.

Fortunately, to aid the reader in pulling together this work, Davis con-

cludes with eight points. Most important are two: that a great many factors,

both demographic and otherwise, influenced population characteristics.

While frontier patterns were not grossly different from eastern ones, this may

be largely the result of counteracting trends. This leads to the second point:

the demographic composition of the nascent nation and of its sections was ex-

tremely delicate. The input of a relatively small amount of change had the

effect of drastically altering population characteristics.

The impact of this work is salutary. It provides a foundation and focus for

two kinds of studies: to continue and expand in detail particular facets of

the American pioneer scene with the knowledge of a firm context, and to con-

tinue the new thrust towards cross-cultural and cross-areal definitions and

comparisons of demographic frontiers. Thus, this volume deserves a place on

most library shelves. Furthermore, we who are the products of this process will

need to make increasing use of this work as we put our families in their social

and cultural context. Dr. Davis deserves praise for permitting this to take

place with greater precision than before.

 

Drew University                                    H. Leedom Lefferts, Jr.

 

McGuffy and His Readers: Piety, Morality, and Education in Nineteenth-

Century America. By John H. Westerhoff, III. (Nashville: Abingdon,

1978. 206p.; notes, appendix, $9.95.)

 

This uneven study of the life and work of William Holmes McGuffy offers a

• 11
 

Book Reviews                                                        461

 

brief introduction to an important and neglected topic. The author's stated

goals are to provide a historically accurate biography of McGuffy, summarize

the contents of his Readers, and reprint a representative sample of their les-

sons. He achieves a limited measure of success in all three areas.

The events of McGuffy's life are narrated without systematic interpretation,

analysis, or a sense of their relationship to the development of American edu-

cation, Protestantism, the frontier or Ohio. The author, a Professor of Reli-

gion and Education at Duke Divinity School, chooses not to call on the vast litera-

ture on early nineteenth-century America in his attempt to understand his

subject. Instead, he writes a traditional, celebrationist portrait of a coura-

geous, adventurous American. Numerous opportunities for insight are passed

over. We learn that McGuffy's education was meager, that he was thoroughly

dominated by his mother and that he married a rich, submissive woman. He

built an impressive house and was a strict disciplinarian in all phases of his

life. Westerhoff makes no attempt to explain the importance of any of these.

We see that McGuffy's strict adherence to the Protestant ethic influenced his

thought and value judgements; the author does not.

The analysis of the Eclectic Readers is the best available. Westerhoff con-

vincingly argues that the dominant concern in his subjects' work was the

character and nature of God, not the education of children. Indeed, he agrees

with McGuffy that education is 'merely the inculcation of Protestant values

and beliefs. Americans must be prepared for life after death, not their earthly

careers. Above all else, they must learn to fear God, obey His rules and be

grateful to Him. The worst sins are idleness, lying and an inordinate love of

money. Salvation, righteousness and piety constitute the values most often

advocated; patriotism came second.

Ninety-six pages of reprints follow 110 of text. The lessons illustrate the

themes found throughout the Readers. Westerhoff does not explain his

criteria for selection. They also exhibit an anti-urban fear, displeasure with

industrialization, and the influence of evangelical revivalism, all themes not

examined in the text. Racial and ethnic stereotypes, abundant in the school-

books analyzed by Anne Scott MacLeod and Ruth Elson Miller, do not ap-

pear. A bibliography or index is not included.

McGuffy and His Readers is the best available analysis of the life and work

of an important figure in early nineteenth-century America and Ohio. Its

publication clearly underscores the need for a sound analytical study of

McGuffy similar to Kathryn Kish Sklar's of Catherine Beecher and Jonathan

Messerli's of Horace Mann.

 

University of Southern California                     Richard M. Rollins

 

 

Happy Country This America: The Travel Diary of Henry Arthur Bright.

Edited by Anne Henry Ehrenpreis. (Columbus: Ohio State University

Press, 1978. x + ⁴⁸⁶p.; illustrations, notes, index. $19.50.)

 

As a young man of twenty-two, Henry Arthur Bright left his native England

in 1852 for a five-month tour of America. Like many other foreigners who

visited the western hemisphere in the nineteenth century, Bright kept a diary

• 12
 

462                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

of his travels that ranged from the east coast to the Mississippi River, through

Minnesota, Canada and New England.

Young Bright was a member of a well-to-do commercial family who studied

at Cambridge and who was comfortable in the highest social circles. Because of

his family's position in England he came to America fully equipped with let-

ters of introduction to influential businessmen, government officials, scholars

and religious leaders. Not surprisingly then his closest associations during

his visit were with prominent, famous people, whose names he assiduously

dropped throughout the diary. His descriptions of these people are clear,

concise and generally flattering. Unfortunately, he was less precise in describ-

the average Yankee citizen with whom he had little social contact.

Like most foreign visitors in these formative years of the United States, he

carped about the service in restaurants and hotels and recorded a generally

negative impression of waiters and clerks who served him. As he moved into

the interior of the country he was also dismayed by the habits and manners

of the frontiersmen. But like the Englishwoman, Frances Trollope, who pre-

ceded Bright to the wilderness by twenty years, he frequently succumbed to

the tall tales of Yankee backwoodsmen. While Trollope recounted a story of

an entire family being eaten by alligators that entered their Mississippi River

home, Bright accepted a story told by a Virginian about killing scores of

rattlesnakes along a trail only to come upon thousands more sunning them-

selves on a large rock.

In most cases, however, Bright proved a less naive observer, and he devoted

many pages in his diary to such social problems of the era as slavery. He per-

sonally favored African colonization for slaves, a policy which he considered

a middle-of-the-road approach between complete abolition and continued

slavery. Since he associated with several slaveholders he was not prepared

to denounce the institution completely, but he was opposed to slaveholding

on moral grounds.

A high point of Bright's tour was his visit to Canada. The most emotional

passage in the diary describes his sentiments upon arriving in that English

possession. He was excited about seeing English faces after many weeks of

looking only at Yankees and he reflected upon a then current topic

of conversation that revolved around Canadian annexation to the United States.

He concluded that such action was not imminent because Canada was in an

enviable position within the empire and could not improve its situation by

association with the Yankees.

From Canada Bright visited Niagara Falls and his entries on this magni-

ficent natural wonder are characteristic of his entire diary. He mentioned the

breathtaking sight and recounted the many attractions at the falls, but his

enthusiasm was surprisingly restrained, whereas other visitors from Europe

and Latin America were positively lyrical in their descriptions. But it was

this unemotional forthrightness, coupled with his pleasing sense of humor,

that makes the diary not only readable but valuable for those interested in

nineteenth-century America.

Anne Henry Ehrenpreis has done an excellent job of editing the diary. In

addition to an informative biographical introduction, she included countless

footnotes that identified fully the numerous names that Bright tossed about as

he recorded his experiences on this side of the Atlantic. She also explained

succintly Bright's many references to events that he heard about or that

were in the process of developing but with which he was not fully conversant.

• 13
 

Book Reviews                                                       463

 

Additionally, a sizeable number of illustrations complement the text. Finally,

Ehrenpreis enhanced the volume by including several of Bright's poems that

he wrote while traveling through America.

 

Bowling Green State University                        Jack Ray Thomas

 

 

Two Hundred Years of Sheep Raising in the Upper Ohio Area: with Special

Reference to Washington County, Pennsylvania. By Richard Beach. (Monon-

gahela, PA: Washington County Bicentennial Commission, 1976. vii + 104p.;

illustrations, tables, notes, appendices, bibliography. $2.75.)

 

Two Hundred Years of Sheep Raising is an informative and valuable book.

It is an excellent example of a meaningful and useful way a Bicentennial

Commission could use its enthusiasm and resources. The book will prove

interesting and instructive to a broad spectrum of residents of the area, local

history enthusiasts, and agriculturalists, economists and geographers, both pro-

fessional and laymen.

The upper Ohio Valley area consists of five counties: Washington in Pennsyl-

vania; Brooke and Ohio in West Virginia; and Jefferson and Harrison in Ohio.

Prior to 1840 it was recognized as a major sheep-raising region and it retains

importance, although diminished, in the sheep-raising industry today. Beach

divides the history of sheep-raising there into four major periods: growth,

1770-1850; greatest prominence, 1850-1880; decline, 1880-1950; and residual

sheep-raising since 1950.

Sheep raising started slowly in the area because in a frontier environment

sheep were less able to fend for themselves than were cattle or hogs. They were

vulnerable to wolves, bears, "varmits" and other natural enemies. Also, sheep

products were not of great value. On the frontier mutton was neither an

appreciated meat nor an easily marketable one. Wool was more important, but

the fleeces of the first sheep in the area were small or light and of an inferior

quality. Shortly after 1880 Merino sheep were introduced and there was a

dramatic improvement in the quality and quantity of the fleece. Merino wool

was "fine" as opposed to "coarse" wool, and there was a substantial price

advantage for such wool in the existing market. Based on high wool prices

and easy access to markets, a climax in the importance of sheep raising in the

area came before the Civil War. (Sale of meat was still not a major factor, and

when it became one, the Merino sheep lost their competitive edge to other

breeds.) This era was marked by the appearance of a large number of farms

devoted exclusively to sheep. There was some wool manufacturing and the

area became a leading sheep-breeding region, producing breeding stock of

Merino sheep for sale to a national market.

The decline of sheep raising after 1880 coincided with a drop in its profit-

ability. Wool dropped drastically in price and sheep were increasingly raised

for meat as well as fleece. The Merinos gave way to heavier English breeds

raised primarily in the West. The area lost its position as a producer of

breeding stock and could not compete in volume with the newly opened western

sheep-raising areas. Sheep raising returned to its pre-1850 status as a supple-

mental or incidental component of farm production rather than a primary

product.

• 14
 

464                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

Nineteenth and twentieth-century sheep-raising practices differ dramati-

cally. A hundred years ago the chief asset of a flock was the whether, the

adult castrated male sheep, which produced the heaviest fleeces and most

meat. Ewes were kept only in number sufficient to maintain the flock, while

lambs had little immediate market value and gained value only at maturity. As

a consequence of the influx of a mass Eastern European sheep-eating popu-

lation, lambs gained the greatest marketability as meat. Ewes increased in

value as lamb and wool producers. Whethers virtually disappeared from the

flock.

As a book the work has shortcomings. It is painfully and obviously a little

revised doctoral dissertation. Professional editing would certainly have

improved style and readability and might well have improved organization and

emphasis. Nevertheless Two Hundred Years of Sheep Raising is a substantial

and worthwhile addition to the literature available on the upper Ohio Valley.

University of Cincinnati                             W.D. Aeschbacher

 

Chariot of Fire: Religion and the Beecher Family. By Marie Caskey. (New

Haven: Yale University Press, 1978. xv + 442 p.; illustrations, notes, bib-

liography, index. $25.00.)

 

Lyman Beecher had so many children who did so many interesting things

that historians of nineteenth-century domesticity, education, literature, popular cul-

ture, reform, religion, and women have often written about them. Marie

Caskey, a student of American religion, is interested in "how the Beechers

responded to (i.e., accommodated their religious views to) certain demands of

their culture." Two cultural demands in particular account for the religious

changes which she describes: the rational spirit of the day, which challenged

the authority of scriptures and creeds, and the democratic spirit of America

which refused to accept a monarchical God who might be above human emo-

tion and standards of justice.

The seven Beecher siblings whom Caskey presents responded to these chal-

lenges in various ways. Edward attempted a thorough revision of Christian

theology, intending to displace the tradition of Paul, Augustine, and the Re-

formers. Charles became Edward's disciple. Since both pursued theological

efforts aimed at justifying the doctrine of original sin in an age which scorned

rigorous theology and rejected that doctrine, Caskey considers this the

"prophetic response." Catharine and Isabella championed moral reform:

Catharine's interest in female education was rooted in her belief that women

might reform the world by molding their offspring, while Isabella was active

in abolition and in women's rights. This was the "moralistic response."

Finally, Harriet, Henry Ward, and Thomas espoused the popular theological

trends of the day, which Caskey calls the "Christocentric liberal response."

Henry Ward, who considered himself an "aspostle of culture" as well as reli-

gion, helped make this less-than-rigorous formulation of the faith dominant

in Victorian America. Harriet was a disciple of Henry's; Thomas was a dis-

ciple of Horace Bushnell's.

Common threads running through the religious thought of all seven are

identified in Caskey's final chapters. All of them were drawn to spiritualism.

Isabella was unique in claiming a revelation that she was "the twin sister

of Jesus," destined to rule the world, but several of the others based peculiar

• 15
 

Book Reviews                                                      465

 

teachings on direct revelation and worked with spiritualists to communicate

with the dead. Spiritualism was much more common than historians have

realized, Caskey argues. It was an important development in a day in which

science challenged religion, because it affirmed the existence of the super-

natural and it provided a source of religious authority independent of the

Bible.

In addition to spiritualism, all of the Beecher siblings shared a similar

concept of God, who they saw as more a father than a king. Several of

them agreed that, like a father, he suffered pain when His children strayed.

A corollary to this idea was that the church was a "family of God" rather

than a holy nation as the Puritans had held.

The changes which the various Beechers championed are explained in part by

their common familial background. Lyman taught them all very early to beatify

Roxanna, his first wife. Spiritualism came easily because they grew up communing

with her spirit and perceiving that she was active in each other's lives. Lyman

molded them into a family which was also an active community of God's

messengers. All of the functions which Christians expect of the church were

performed for them by their family. Hence, familial imagery suited their

ecclesiology. But above all, Lyman was a father who spoke for God. At least three

of his children wrote to him at crucial points in their conversion experiences, and he

responded not in the voice of a father or even a minister but in the voice of God!

Moreover, Lyman disciplined his children with his own tears; he suffered when they

erred. Their picture of God the Father was colored by their experience of Lyman,

their father.

A full chapter is devoted to Lyman, his presidency of the Lane Theological

Seminary in Cincinnati and his heresy trial. The author offers a chapter apiece on

seven of his eleven children. Some chapters are better than others. Isabella, for

example, is presented as a "moralist" with the focus upon her reform activities.

However, the cryptic references to spiritualism in this chapter became clear only

after reading a full discussion of spiritualism later in the book. Charles is called a

"prophet," but the chapter on him focuses upon his conversion experience (for

which Caskey has unusually rich sources) rather than upon whatever activities were

prophetic. Edward's chapter, like the others, treats the individual's life and thought,

but his unfamiliar and complex theology cannot be described so briefly.

Notwithstanding the somewhat uneven treatment given to the various

Beechers, Caskey has made a significant contribution to American religious

history. Her case for the significance of spiritualism is provocative. The com-

mon threads she finds running through diverse religious ideas enhance our

understanding of the nineteenth century. Her depiction of the relationship

of theology to everyday life is a welcome supplement to other studies of the

decline of Calvinism.

 

The Ohio State University, Newark                     Richard D. Shiels

 

 

American Apocalypse: Yankee Protestants and the Civil War, 1860-1869. By

James H. Moorhead. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978. xiv +

²⁷⁸p.; notes, bibliography, index. $17.50.)

 

In a thorougly researched and gracefully written intellectual history,

• 16
 

466                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

Moorhead focuses on the attitudes of the northern clergy toward the Civil

War and Reconstruction. His main contention is that a majority of Protes-

tants, specifically those of the Baptist, Congregationalist, Methodist, and

Presbyterian denominations, "accepted the apocalyptic character of the strug-

gle and described it in language suggestive of the ultimate crisis in world

history." The outcome of such a perspective was to cloak northern nationalism

in religious garb and to apply moral imperatives to the complex racial and

socioeconomic problems of post bellum America.

For the ministry,the war to preserve the Union developed into a crusade.

As Julia Ward Howe's popular "Battle Hymn of the Republic" indicated, the

distinction between church and state, between the sacred and the secular had

blended together. Evangelical Protestants saw the war as God's retribution

on a sinful people. To regain divine favor, Americans would have to undergo

a bloody expiation, and, if they proved worthy, they could remake the nation

into a model Christian republic that would be an example to the world. In

brief, clerics provided Union nationalism with a religious legitimacy that

justified the fratricidal struggle and sanctioned northern hegemony over the

South.

By defining national identity in apocalyptic terms, evangelical Protestants

provided simplistic solutions to the difficult problems of Reconstruction. When

military necessity compelled the abolition of slavery, the clergy rationalized

emancipation as heaven's will and argued that the free men needed only

minimal civil liberties, moral enlightenment, and hard work to overcome two

centuries of enslavement. As Henry Ward Beecher characteristically put it,

"Educate men to take care of themselves, individually and in masses, then

let the winds blow." Northern ministers opposed redistribution of the land

to the ex-slave because it was a violation of moral industry. The consequence

of such muddled social thought was the institutionalization of a new post-

war servitude throughout the South.

Moorhead has made a convincing case for the significant influence of

evangelical thought on America from 1860 to 1869. The definition of Ameri-

can identity and purpose in apocalyptic terms during the Civil War served to

solidify the Union against the Confederacy, but the failure to realize such a

grandiose result made it all too easy to escape the persistent problems posed

by Reconstruction and to encourage new crusades against rum and Roman-

ism.

 

The University of Connecticut                    Lawrence B. Goodheart

 

 

 

Building for the Centuries: Illinois 1865 to 1898. By John H. Keiser. (Urbana:

University of Illinois Press, 1977. xvi + 386p.; appendix, bibliography,

index. $12.50.)

 

Illinois is fortunate in having sevaral fine state histories, including recent

works by Richard Jensen and Robert Sutton; John H. Keiser's Building for

the Centuries now augments that list. Dr. Keiser, a Professor of History and

Vice President of Academic Affairs at Sangamon State University, begins

his story with Lincoln's funeral cortege and traces the social, economic, and

• 17
 

Book Reviews                                                      467

 

political developments in the state through John Peter Altgeld's administra-

tion in the 1890s. The death of the Great Emancipator on Good Friday, 1865,

was initially greeted by a mixture of shock by his friends and stone-hearted

carping by his opponents. "Blackguard, buffon, unconscionable opportunist,"

said his enemies. But after the "phantasmagoria of crepe and black rose,"

Lincoln grew in stature to become the plaster saint we know today, the savior

of the nation.

Keiser writes of an Illinois in 1865 on the hinge of history and of Lincoln's

world as the "world we have lost." At the time Illinois had 2.1 million peo-

ple, ranking fourth most populous among the states, was preindustrial and not

yet bureaucratized. The Union Stockyards had been incorporated but the

Elgin Watch Company and the Pullman Car Company were still in the plan-

ning stages. The state's largest industry was agriculture, and agrarian mores

and life-style dominated.

Culturally, Illinois was at the "McGuffey Reader" phase, writing senti-

mental prose, with the theatrical arts confined to traveling circuses and

minstrel shows. Bible-toting, psalm-singing horny-handed sons of the soil

were the arbiters of culture. But the winds of change were soon to be felt.

Within the short span of one generation, Edgar Lee Masters, Carl Sandburg,

Vachel Lindsay, Harriet Monroe, Theodore Dreiser, and Henry Blake Fuller

were ushering in a fin de siecle literary renaissance. The flowering of this

culture also saw the phoenix-like rise from the ashes of the 1871 Chicago fire

of the revolutionary Chicago school of architecture, a lasting monument to

the American urban tradition. A galaxy of luminaries such as William

LeBaron Jenny, John Wellborn Root, Dankmar Adler, Louis Sullivan, Daniel

Burnham, and Frank Lloyd Wright created the modern skyscraper in the

sooty canyons of the Loop or, in the case of Wright, worked in the more salu-

brious suburbs where he gave birth to the prairie school of design.

Keiser draws his volume to a close with the assertion that Lincoln would

not have recognized the Illinois of 1900 in which cities dominated the coun-

tryside and where Chicago, with its 1.6 million, accounted for 35 percent of

the state's people. Illinois had more than doubled its population to over 4.8

million; the state payroll had tripled to 18,900 workers, and the budget had

undergone manifold increases. Meanwhile farm workers, as a share of the

employed, had declined from 50 percent to 25 percent, while industrial out-

put by value had pushed Illinois to the third ranked industrial state in the

nation. Meat packing and stockyards symbolized Chicago and Illinois which

then accounted for one third of the nation's product.

Keiser's colorful, sprightly style brightens this competent and knowl-

edgeable synthesis of Illinois history in the middle period.

 

University of Illinois at Chicago Circle                Melvin G. Holli

 

 

Money and Capital Markets in Postbellum America. By John A. James.

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978. xv + 293p.; notes, tables,

figures, appendices, bibliography, index. $16.00.)

 

The years between the end of the Civil War and the outbreak of World War

I saw the emergence of a modern American economy. This was a period of

• 18
 

468                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

far-reaching structural change in both the composition and location of eco-

nomic activity. The share of agriculture in total commodity output continued

to fall while that of manufacturing rose as the process of industrialization,

already well under way before its interruption by the Civil War, entered a

phase of capital deepening attendant upon the spread of urbanization, large-

scale production, and the railroad net. In addition, important regional shifts

in manufacturing and in the distribution of the labor force took place, espe-

cially from the East to the Midwest. These and other structural changes cre-

ated new and larger demands upon the financial system. As John James well

observes in this important book, economic growth requires not only the ac-

cumulation of capital but also mechanisms for its transfer from areas of plenty

to sectors and regions in need.

During the antebellum period serious obstacles to the interregional mobil-

ity of capital existed of which the chief evidence took the form of substantial

interregional differences in interest rates. These differentials continued in the

postbellum period and contemporaries looked upon them as an indication of

the misallocation of financial resources-with the prohibition of interstate

branch banking often being blamed for the problem. After the mid-1880s,

however, a remarkable convergence of regional interest rates occurred and

a national capital market emerged. (While James' analysis focuses on short-

term capital he calls attention to the work of Lance Davis, who has shown

the same process of convergence in the long-term market, although at a slower

pace.) The main problem James sets for himself in this book is that of ex-

plaining the development.

Chapters of remarkable erudition show conclusively that, despite the ab-

sence of interstate branch banks, a system of correspondent banks func-

tioned well as channels of interregional capital movements. So too did the

growth of an open market for commercial paper. Yet interest rates continued

to vary, in the main because of the existence of local monopoly power.

What eroded this power and brought about the regional convergence of rates

was an increase in the number of state banks. Despite early postwar growth

in national banks and corresponding decline in the number of state-chartered

institutions the latter enjoyed distinct advantages, especially the existence of

lower minimum capital requirements and the ability to make real estate loans.

The number of state banks began to grow partly in response to the spread

of deposit banking but in the later postbellum years mainly because of their

advantage in capital requirements and more liberal incorporation laws.

James' description and explanation of the rise of a national capital market

in postbellum America is the most persuasive treatment of that subject ever

undertaken. It is the product of a first-rate mind, skilled in ecometric

analysis that is not permitted to obtrude upon the clear narrative line, and

extraordinarily rich in knowledge of the historian's conventional sources.

One of the finest "new economic histories" yet to appear, it points unmis-

takably to the direction in which future work in that vein must move, viz.,

one that is rooted in the institutional sources of the historian and in the

analytical tools of the economist, but bears fruit in a study intended for his-

torians generally. The latter will not find this an easy book, but as Spinoza

once said, "All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare."

 

Columbia University                                       Stuart Bruchey

• 19
 

Book Reviews                                                      469

 

Appalachia on our Mind: The Southern Mountains and Mountaineers in the

American Consciousness, 1870-1920. By Henry D. Shapiro. (Chapel Hill:

University of North Carolina Press, 1978. xxi + ³⁷⁶p.; notes, bibliography,

index. $16.00.)

Henry Shaprio's book constitutes an unembarrassed exercise in American

intellectual history. It deals not with the socio-economic "reality" of Appala-

chia but with the changing "perceptions" of it and the way these perceptions

altered behavior and determined action. According to Shapiro, Americans of

the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries embarked on an effort to

understand the diversified character of their "civilization"; in particular,

they sought to understand and explain for themselves what Shapiro calls

the "otherness" of certain "deviant" and "abnormal" groups and minorities

which existed outside the mainstream of American national culture and

which threatened to undermine the supposed homogeneity and unity of

that culture. Unlike other ethnic and religious minorities, however, the

Appalachian mountaineers represented a unique specie of "otherness":

isolated from the modern, urban centers of American life, they nevertheless

shared with most Americans a similar religious, ethnic, and pioneer heri-

tage. The American effort to understand them, therefore, included a con-

frontation both with the diversity and with the "roots" of American culture

itself.

The book is composed of ten chapters that focus on different phases in

the perceptual and organizational approach to the "otherness" of Applachia.

In the first chapter Shapiro discusses the local colorists of the 1870s and 80s or

the first group to "discover" Applachia. Local colorists transformed Appalachia

into a picturesque and very marketable fictional commodity; at the same time,

they established the tone for later responses to this region by describing it as an

"isolated," "peculiar," and "backward" region set apart from the rest of Ameri-

ican life. As such, they prepared the way for the next phase, the "nationalist"

phase, which Shapiro analyzes in chapters two and three. This phase included

organized attempts on the part of Protestant missionaries to remove Appa-

lachian "otherness" and "isolation" by bringing the mountaineers back into

the national "current" of American culture. Missionaries pursued this work,

moreover, within the conventional framework of nineteenth-century reform.

They retained a respect for the traditional pioneer individualism embodied in

Appalachian life and continued to rely on individual reform measures (i.e.,

conversion, uplift, and education) to "modernize" the region.

In the most important chapters of his book (four through ten) Shapiro

examines the last and most complicated phase in the American approach to

the "problem" of Appalachian "otherness": the regionalist-pluralist phase.

Formulated in the period 1890 to 1920, during a time of intensive capitalist

development in the South, this phase found both southern cotton manufac-

turers and northern Progressives (social scientists, settlement-house workers,

and health reformers) competing for influence within Appalachia. For their

part, the Progressives discarded both the nationalist and individual reform

approach to Appalachia. Influenced by environmentalist theory and by an

increasing regard for the worth of indigenous folk culture, they came to

accept Appalachian "otherness" as a "legitimate" expression of a "dis-

crete region" with important craft and folk traditions. At the same time,

• 20
 

470                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

however, they attacked pioneer individualism-an attack shaped by what they

perceived to be the "lawlessness," "feuding," and fierce competitive spirit

of the mountaineers-and replaced the older reform emphasis on individual

change with an emphasis on the need to create harmonious, local communities

and cooperative neighborhoods within Appalachia based on the "real-life"

requirements of mountain society. The regionalist-pluralist approach, there-

fore, allowed the Progressives to rationalize Appalachian society without

supposedly destroying the underlying uniqueness of the region.

Unlike the Progressives, the manufacturers had no commitment to the

regional integrity of Appalachia. They believed that the most effective way

to "modernize" it would be to transport the mountaineers-including women

and children-to the factories in the southern mill towns. The Progressives

objected to this exploitation and helped to pass child labor laws in the South

to stop it. In important ideological ways, however, the southern capitalists

and Progressives agreed. Both groups attacked the poverty, the health condi-

tions, the lack of community harmony and order, and the individual "isola-

tion" and violence of Appalachian society. The only difference between them

(and a difference that tended to obscure the convergence of positions) lay

in the fact that the Progressives wanted to integrate the mountaineers into

a corporate, capitalist system from within Appalachia itself, while the capi-

talists preferred to remove them to the mill towns.

Shapiro's discussion of this uneasy alliance represents a major contribu-

tion to the history of the Progressive period. The chapters dealing with it, in

fact, surpass in quality the rest of the book. Chapters six, seven, and eight,

especially, offer the reader a superb discussion employing abstract analysis,

institutional and economic data, and biographical detail in sustained and well-

proportioned balance. Unfortunately, Shapiro dates the emergence of this

ideology too late (it crystallized in the 1870s); he does not speculate about the

almost equal role men and women played in its formation-speculation justi-

fied by his evidence; and he fails to develop successfully the historical signifi-

cance of the alliance itself. Other problems plague this book as a whole: too

much vague abstraction and repetitive analysis; too much emphasis on per-

ception and not enough on the causes for perceptual shifts; and, most im-

portant, the absence of a clear historical picture of the mountaineers and

the Progressives, a discussion of which would have illuminated with greater

depth the meaning of intellectual change. These problems aside, however,

Shapiro has written a book that adds considerably to our knowledge of the

period.

 

Wesleyan University                                   William R. Leach

Middletown, Connecticut

 

 

From Main Street to State Street: Town, City, and Community in America.

By Park Dixon Goist. (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1977. 180p.;

notes, bibliography, index. $12.50.)

 

The orientation of Park Dixon Goist as a scholar-teacher of American Studies

is evident in the structure and approach of this "study of the various mean-

ings attached to 'town,' 'city,' and 'community' in America culture from

• 21
 

Book Reviews                                                      471

 

1890 to 1940." Within this time frame, Professor Goist discusses materials

from six areas: literature, advertising, sociology, social work, journalism,

and city planning.

The reader is not surprised when the study begins by considering literary

figures, for there have been numerous literary treatments of the city. Booth

Tarkington, Zona Gale, Sherwood Anderson, Sinclair Lewis, and Floyd Dell

are presented as believing in the small town as the chief source of community.

More surprising is the treatment of the early automobile which, despite its

contribution to mobility, in Professor Goist's opinion, also strengthened the

maintainance of community through its early "middle landscape" image in ad-

vertising. Part One of the book concludes with Middletown, the study by Robert

and Helen Lynd, which found that, in 1929, industrialization and urbaniza-

tion had brought an "eclipse of community" to their symbolic Middletown.

The end of Part One leaves the reader at the point at which most urban studies

end, with the town "community" destroyed.

It is Part Two which is most original in its contribution. It first considers

three individuals who could find no community in cities: Hamlin Garland,

Theodore Dreiser, and Henry Blake Fuller. Garland and Dreiser see the

city as a stage for separate, individualized struggle while Fuller sees a social

shift from an existent upper-class community in Chicago to a fragmented

"anticommunity."

The remaining five chapters of Part Two consider a varied group of social

workers (Jane Addams and Jacob Reis), journalists (Hutchins Hapgood and

Ernest Poole), sociologists (Robert Park), city planners (Charles M. Robin-

son and John Nolen), and regionalists (Lewis Mumford), for whom "com-

munity was a flexible concept which provided a way of adapting to the

city."

Some came originally from small towns. Jane Addams was born in the

northern Illinois village of Cedarville and spent her girlhood in the small

city of Freeport where she felt the tension between the equality of village

life and the rather aristocratic tastes of her stepmother. At Hull House she

attempted to create and sustain community in an urban environment. Jacob

Reis also came from a small town, Ribe in Denmark. Throughout a turbulent

career, Reis met "the challenge of changing urban conditions primarily on

the basis of values frequently equated with nonurban areas." Both Addams

and Reis saw the urban neighborhood as a locale for social interaction and

the sharing of common ties-characteristics of an earlier town environment.

Professor Goist sees them as predecessors of recent neighborhood organizers.

Other individuals he considers were themselves urban born. Time and

space do not permit detailed review of all, but each, including the famous

Robert Park, is presented in a new dimension. Whatever their geographic

and/or ethnic origins or professional orientations, all sought the same desir-

able qualities of life, those provided by community. Thus, a seemingly dis-

parate group is given unity by a shared search within an urban environment.

In a brief "afterword," Professor Goist moves the analysis into the 1970s

where in T.V., fiction, sociology, and city planning he traces what he calls

"one of the truly important cultural dialogues in America." The reader is left

with a sense of new awareness through this multifaceted exposition.

 

Bowling Green State University                          Alma J. Payne

• 22
 

472                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

Behold! the Polish-Americans. By Joseph A. Wytrwal. (Detroit: Endurance

Press, 1977. xi + 667p.; maps, notes, bibliography, index, appendix. $15.00.)

 

Wytrwal's latest study of Polish-American origins, adjustment, and con-

tributions is a challenge to readers accustomed to more concise social his-

tories. Encyclopedic in scope, the book is a more interpretative elaboration

than his earlier compilations of Polish American contributions and contribu-

tors (America's Polish Heritage, 1961; Poles in American History and Tradi-

tion, 1969; Poles in America, 1969). Behold! the Polish Americans recognizes

achievements of an extraordinary number of persons, ranging from Polish

workers at Jamestown to Polish American veterans of Vietnam. However,

Wytrwal supplements the earlier studies by seeking generalizations from a

broad range of archival data. For example, in a description of the limited rep-

resentation of Polish American clergymen in the Roman Catholic hierarchy,

he cites approximately fifty press reports (generally, from Detroit area pa-

pers) as well as other documentary sources.

Polish American adjustment cannot be explained adequately without some

reference to preconditions of Polish history prior to the several periods of

immigration to the United States. The first two chapters provide an extensive

and explicit overview of such background influences. This portion of the

book introduces a recurrent theme-religious influences associated with Po-

lonian adjustment-which is critical of traditional Catholic Church practices

and of the treatment of Polish Jews. In a separate chapter, "Polish-Jewish

Relations in America," Wytrwal balances a partial admission of responsibil-

ity for the World War II holocaust with detailed evidence of efforts by in-

dividual Poles to rescue Jews from Nazi persecution. Although the chapter

concentrates upon the treatment of Polish Jews rather than upon alleged or

real Polish-American anti-Semitism, it illustrates the author's concern for

inter-group relations between Polish Americans and other minorities-speci-

fically, the Blacks, Indians, and Irish. Unfortunately the analysis of the Irish

is restricted to the context of their domination within the Catholic hierarchy.

In the past, reaction to such domination produced schisms, such as that in-

volving Polish National Catholics and persistent bitterness among many

Polish Roman Catholics. However, much of the interaction-antagonistic or

cooperative-between Polish Americans and their Irish neighbors, foremen,

and political representatives occurred outside the church.

The description of relations with Blacks and Indians accentuates positive

adjustment. The author refers to Kosciuszko's decision to use a legacy to free

slaves, to Count Adam Gurowski's efforts to advance the status of Blacks dur-

ing the Civil War era, then to more recent examples of acceptance, ranging

from the adoption of Black children by Polish Americans to the recent for-

mation of the Black-Polish Conference in Detroit. Similarly, harmony be-

tween Polish Americans and Indians is supported by a large number of spe-

cific examples. It well may be that Polish Americans had more frequent contact

with Lithuanians or Slovak neighbors than with American Indians; however,

Indian-Polish relationships generally are omitted from descriptions of Po-

lonian adjustment and Wytrwal's effort to supplement the literature is com-

mendable.

Less acceptable are residues of Wytrwal's earlier books which summarize

Polonian patriotism in critical periods of American history. These contribu-

• 23
 

Book Reviews                                                        473

 

tions include participation of Poles in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War,

and as volunteers during World War I. More recent service-in World War II,

the Korean conflict, and Vietnam-is listed and such statistics, particularly the

detailed lists of servicemen, leave little doubt as to Polish American loyalty

and patriotism. As in his previous works, Wytrwal compares adjustment and

attainment of first, second, and third-generation Polish Americans. Despite

a rather curious rejection of both the "melting pot" and the "cultural plural-

istic" hypothesis of ethnic adjustment, Wytrwal offers an intelligent and sub-

jective analysis of variation in assimilation. He refers to Hansen's Law

(though not by name) to describe generational differences in ethnotropism.

A very brief chapter on Polish cultural heritage emphasizes retention of

customs and traditions, but the topic deserves more exposition in so exten-

sive a study of Polonian culture. Although there have been more specific

studies of Polish-American labor relations, such as Victor R. Greene's The

Slavic Community on Strike (1969), Wytrwal's description is both detailed

and appropriate.

Because it is not concise, Behold! the Polish Americans might easily be

viewed as a comprehensive, or at least a definitive analysis. Certainly a book

of some 670 pages cannot be termed a superficial examination of anything.

However, in view of the increased attention given to Polonian community

life by sociologists, political scientists, and ethnic historians, this reader was

puzzled by the limited reference to formal, scholarly studies, such as Irwin

Sanders and Ewa Morawska's Polish American Community Life (1975),

Helena Lopata's The Function of Voluntary Associations in an Ethnic Com-

munity "Polonia" (1954), and Neil Sandberg's Ethnic Identity and Assimila-

tion: The Polish American Community (1974). A number of similarly approp-

priate analyses of Polish Americans are available but not entirely accessible.

Thus, Wytrwal's fine publication is a valuable resource for ethnic historians

and others interested in the evolution of American Polonia.

 

State University College                                Eugene Obidinski

Oneonta, New York

 

Woodrow Wilson: The Years of Preparation. By John M. Mulder. (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1978. xv + 304p.; illustrations, notes, bibli-

ographical essay, index. $16.50.)

 

John M. Mulder's analysis of Woodrow Wilson's career before he became

governor of New Jersey in 1910 is the fourth scholarly volume on this phase

of Wilson's life. After Arthur S. Link's Wilson: The Road to the White House

(1947) came Henry Bragdon's examination of Wilson: The Acadamic Years

(1967) and George C. Osborn's Woodrow Wilson: The Early Years (1968).

Mulder has the advantage of the abundant sources that the Papers of Wood-

row Wilson project have published, and his account is the most reliable and

comprehensive yet assembled. Link will remain indispensable for Wilson's

political apprenticeship, but Mulder will be a standard work for its subject's

life before he occupied public office.

The connecting thread of Mulder's study is Wilson's religious ideas, espe-

cially the covenant theology that his Presbyterian heritage imparted to him.

• 24
 

474                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

Wilson employed "this covenant mode of thinking," the author says, "to

understand his life and ambitions, his relationship with his wife and American

society, and he did so usually without specific reference to God" (p. xiii).

Mulder sometimes pushes his argument hard, and it seems on occasion, as in

the discussion of Wilson's "compact" (p. 90) with his wife, that the influence

of the covenant is invoked rather than demonstrated. For the most part, Mul-

der is convincing, and the religious side of Wilson here receives rich and per-

suasive treatment.

Among the intriguing interpretations that Mulder advances is a fresh view

of Wilson's relations with his father. Joseph Ruggles Wilson was not simply

the dominant presence in his son's early life. After the failure of his own

religious and educational career, the elder Wilson found in his son's ascent

psychological compensation for his own shortcomings. In the celebrated

educational controversies at Princeton, Mulder is also perceptive about how

the alumni helped make Wilson president, provided him early support, and

then proved a source of opposition in the quadrangle and graduate school

fights. Though the author makes these points obliquely, he raises real ques-

tions about the long-range impact of Wilson's tenure on Princeton. Wilson's

physical difficulties, especially the strokes of 1896 and 1906, are carefully

integrated into the record of his professional activity and personal life.

If the book has a flaw it is the tendency to make Wilson a somewhat pas-

sive figure, whose career develops in response to opportunities derived from

intellectual achievements, changes in his health, or the imperatives of cove-

nant theology. An equally plausible thesis is that Wilson had his eye on the

presidency of the United States from college onward and fretted at his slow

progress toward prominence. The constant round of speech-making and writ-

ing in his academic life, the occasional forays toward public service, the ad-

vocacy of reforms in politics that would favor his special talents, all reveal a

Wilson with a close appreciation of the main chance. As friends and political

enemies later discovered, Wilson could be ruthless and did not blink at stretch-

ing the truth or covering up errors in his own behalf.

Mulder is appropriately critical of Wilson's actions, and he underscores

the strain of racism that is often overlooked in the intoxication with the fu-

ture president's moral cadences. Still, there is in this interesting and useful

book more than a trace of a Wilsonophilic posture that the record belies.

Mulder has skillfully outlined the roots of Wilson's accomplishments as a pol-

itician and world statesman. He also reminds his readers, as every account of

Wilson's early life does, that the tragic outcome of this career owed much to

failings of character and personality that made Wilson a great man but not a

very likeable one.

 

University of Texas at Austin                             Lewis L. Gould

 

America by Design: Science, Technology, and the Rise of Corporate Capital-

ism. By David F. Noble. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977. xxvi + ³⁸⁴p.;

notes, index. $12.95.)

 

Thornstein Veblen had a penchant for stating obvious truths that were often

overlooked. "Industry is carried on for the sake of business," he wrote in

The Theory of Business Enterprise (1904), "and the progress and activity of

• 25
 

Book Reviews                                                     475

 

industry are conditioned by the outlook of the market, which means pre-

sumptive chance of business profits." In short, Veblen placed pecuniary in-

terests at the heart of modern business organization and this business dom-

ination of industry, he asserted, clashed with the development of technological

processes since one stressed profit, the other more efficiency. But Veblen be-

lieved that the pecuniary interests of business might be changed by the de-

sires of technicians (engineers of various types) for efficiency and maximum

production. These experts would serve the community's interests and ignore

pecuniary considerations. Of course, this technologist's utopia was visionary

and never realized, for as Veblen himself later unhappily recognized, the

engineers were thoroughly subservient to business interests.

The theme that the business interests and the engineers shared commercial

(pecuniary) values is central to David Noble's first-rate study. Like Veblen,

only in greater detail, Noble finds that the engineering professionals helped

to organize the industrial production processes to serve capitalist efficiency

(profits) rather than community efficiency (increased production). Science and

technology, Noble cogently observes, served the corporate interests.

In his examination of the role played by engineers in both building and

serving the corporate order, Noble reexamines many questions raised by Veb-

len over a half century earlier: how and why did large science-based (chemical

and electric) industries achieve standardization of tools and measurements;

how did these industries monopolize patents to avoid competition; what

role did the colleges play in training the future leaders of industry; how were

the college curricula influenced by the dictates of the corporations; what

were the perceptions of engineers and why did they complacently serve the

god of capital? Noble carefully answers all of these questions and many

others in his well-researched book.

America by Design is not easy reading. Noble exactingly uncovers the

connections between industry and government, industry and the colleges,

technology and production, and engineers and corporate considerations.

Such an examination necessitates careful but often tedious analyses of vari-

ous agencies and corporations. However, the careful reader will be rewarded

with an understanding of the development of corporate capitalism in the

twentieth century that brings together, amends, and updates the fine work of

Loren Baritz, Harry Braverman, Stuart Ewen, Carol Gruber, Edwin Layton,

James Weinstein, Katherine Stone and a host of other historians.

Many readers may mistakenly assume Noble to be a Marxist historian.

Certainly such lines as "Modern technology, as a mode of production specific

to advanced industrial capitalism, was both a product and a medium of ad-

vanced capitalist development" (p. 31-32) suggests as much. But Noble's roots

are tied to Veblen more than Marx and the fine radical tradition (shared by

Noble's dissertation advisor Christopher Lasch) of unmasking bourgeois as-

sumptions. As social criticism Noble's book is superb, but as readers will note

from Noble's all-too-brief epilogue, this critique of capitalism is not placed

in an overall framework-a framework that most Marxists would readily

provide. This is to Noble's credit. He is part of a new synthesis that is occur-

ing in the historical profession that ties together the social criticism of Veblen

and a non-deterministic Marxism. Noble's Veblenesque account should be

read and compared with Harry Braverman's revisionist Marxist work, Labor

and Monopoly Capital, to see how two authors, beginning with different

theoretical mindsets, reach basically the same radical conclusions. In this

• 26
 

476                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

sense, Noble's work is a challenge to both traditional bourgeois and Marxist

historiography. It is a welcome addition to a growing body of literature.

 

The Ohio State University                              George B. Cotkin

 

 

Unemployment in History: Economic Thought and Public Policy. By John

A. Garraty. (New York: Harper & Row, 1978. xii + 273p.; notes, index.

$15.00.)

 

The best part of this unique and wide-ranging book is the section on the

Great Depression. The first half of the volume, covering unemployment from

ancient times through the 1920s, wavers uncertainly among the history of

economic doctrines, descriptions of plans for relief, and recountings of con-

ditions among the poor. But with the 1930s the focus sharpens. Here we are

given benefit of Garraty's sure grasp of comparative, historical and social

scientific knowledge. In by far the most directly human segment of the book

he perceptively summarizes relevant sociological, psychological, and histori-

cal accounts of the nature and repercussions of unemployment in the western

world in the 1930s. Garraty's view of the behavior of the unemployed in the

United States serves as a healthy corrective to the polemical view of the

same subject recently put forth by Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Clow-

ard in Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail (1977).

In addition, Garraty examines both activist and academic efforts to deal

with the bewildering phenomenon of mass joblessness in the Depression.

These two chapters reveal a scholar at work on an important subject, un-

daunted by national boundaries, demands of language, or disciplinary juris-

dictions.

Garraty's discussion of the Keynesian revolution follows. The author pro-

vides a brief but helpful summary of the central ideas of the General Theory.

He surveys implementation of Keynesian policies in western countries in the

1950s and 1960s. In the final chapter Garraty departs from his role as his-

torian to become a social commentator, giving broad gauge advice on ap-

proaches to current economic dilemmas.

In his capacity as contemporary observer, Garraty assesses the various

devices that modern western economic managers have used in their efforts

to achieve full employment within a context of price stability. He suggests

that, given the current state of economic intelligence, the goal may well be

illusory. Garraty perceives inflation as this generation's most serious peril,

while acknowledging the correctness of Keynes' view that unemployment

and underutilization of capacity were the principle enemies in the 1930s. He

wonders if we have not too easily dismissed the much-maligned classical econ-

omists' concerns about the deleterious side effects of "artificial" efforts to

cope with unemployment. He calls, without much confidence, for work-shar-

ing as a means of alleviating joblessness until a new generation of economists

and policymakers can forge new doctrines and programs with which to man-

age the economies of our complex societies in a time of diminishing re-

sources and rising expectations.

The first half of the book is given over to a survey of various approaches

taken in the West to the problems of poverty and idleness. Although Garraty

• 27
 

Book Reviews                                                       477

 

eventually focuses attention on the late eighteenth and the nineteenth cen-

tury, and although he devotes considerable attention to British Poor Law re-

lief and to the classical economists, he does examine a wide variety of theories

and proposals. With the twentieth century, however, the ideological spec-

trum narrows. He stays largely within the mainstream of modern liberal

academic economics. Marxist theory, barely glimpsed as part of Garraty's

survey of the nineteenth century, slips from sight.

Unemployment in History is to be commended for the author's ambitious

effort to treat such a large theme. Garraty's acquaintance with the political

economies of western countries provides American historians with a useful

comparative dimension. His explication of Keynes' central ideas and his vivid

chapters on the 1930s, which draw in part on his imaginative recent article

comparing the New Deal and National Socialism, put readers in his debt.

But Garraty's tacit acceptance of the boundaries of legitimate debate

established by mainstream economists robs his treatment of the post-World

War II period of vigor and limits the force of his policy suggestions. The pro-

vocative analyses of recent trends offered by such diverse and penetrating

radicals as Michael Harrington, David Gordon, and James O'Connor are

nowhere mentioned.

Notes are put in their rightful location at the bottom of the page. There is,

alas, no bibliographical essay. Harper & Row giveth and taketh away.

 

Wayne State University                                  Robert H. Zieger

 

Media-Made Dixie: The South in the American Imagination. By Jack Temple

Kirby. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978. xviii +

203; illustrations, notes, essay on sources, index. $9.95.)

 

Jack Kirby's study deals with the variant images of the American South

and its people in the twentieth century, mainly as those images have come

through in three media: fiction, motion pictures, and television. Rejecting

the pyramidal model for understanding the movement of historical knowledge

and awareness, Kirby offers as an alternative model the circular flow of in-

formation (and misinformation) among academic historians, popularizers

of history, and literate middle-class society generally. The professional his-

torian, for all his training and effort at scholarly detachment, remains part

of the general population, thus to some extent partaking of the symbols and

myths of popular culture. And it is preeminently popular culture with which

Kirby is concerned. Whether an item has sold well, has been successful at

the box office, or has had good ratings determines its significance for Kirby's

purposes.

Beginning with chapters on the achievements of filmmaker D. W. Griffith

and popular historian Claude G. Bowers in fashioning a new, sympathetic

version of the Old South, slavery, and the ex-Confederacy under Reconstruc-

tion, Kirby goes on to deal with southern imagery in seven overlapping divi-

sions. In the late 1920s and through the 1930s, at the same time that novelists

like Erskine Caldwell and William Faulkner, as well as sociologists, econo-

mists, and photojournalists, were revealing an "embarrassing New South" of

poverty-stricken, pathetic sharecroppers, the myth of the Grand Old South

was coming to full flower, especially in the novel and movie Gone with the

• 28
 

478                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

Wind. The "visceral South," a land of violence and sensuality portrayed

most vividly in W. J. Cash's The Mind of the South and the plays of Tennessee

Williams, was a prominent feature of dramatic culture in the forties and

fifties. Meanwhile a more "mellow" image of southern folksiness (as shown

in the portrayal of stockcar racers and liquor runners) and of white South-

erners able to rise above the region's prevalent racial antagnonisms (such

as the father and lawyer who is the protagonist in Harper Lee's To Kill a

Mockingbird) extended into the sixties. The "devilish South" of racial

viciousness also received much treatment, as in the film The Defiant Ones

and William Styron's "Meditation on history," The Confessions of Nat

Turner.

By the 1970s, Kirby suggests, the general improvement of southern race

relations and the South's economic surge had prompted a variety of images

of peaceful coexistence, sometimes even cooperation and friendship, between

blacks and whites within a framework of agrarian and small-town simplicity.

The country music boom, films like Conrack and Walking Tall, and most of

all the long-running television series "The Waltons" were emblematic of this

change. In his concluding chapter Kirby speculates on whether there is any

remaining South in the traditional sense, or whether the rest of the country

has not adopted much of southern stereotypy as a model of what it would

like to be-if only it could. The sensational success of the television mini-series

Roots, which almost completely reversed the traditional view of slavery, and

the election of Jimmy Carter to the presidency are the main evidence Kirby

offers for the passing South.

Kirby's book treats material that is inescapably appealing. Readers will

find some of his categorizations, juxtapositions, and interpretations ques-

tionable, but all will find portions of his book that fascinate and delight them.

What Kirby has to say on many matters is unhappily brief; a bigger book

would have enabled him to develop some of his themes more effectively and

perhaps also would have made it possible for him to treat radio and comic

strips, both of which were central to American popular culture from the

thirties until well into the fifties. In a study like Media-Made Dixie, there

should be some place for "Lum and Abner," "Senator Claghorn," "Ozark

Ike," "Snuffy Smith," and "Lil' Abner." Kirby might also have done

something with the novels of T. S. Stribling and Elizabeth Maddox Roberts

and the wit and wisdom of two very different southern syndicated newspaper

columnists, Harry Golden and James J. Kilpatrick. But if one wishes Kirby

had done more, one must also acknowledge that what he has done is a great

deal.

Ohio University                                   Charles C. Alexander

 

 

Cold War Political Justice: The Smith Act, the Communist Party, and Amer-

ican Civil Liberties. By Michal R. Belknap. (Westport: Greenwood Press,

1978. xiv + 322p.; notes, bibliographical essay, index. $16.95.)

 

After World War II, the United States government used the Smith Act of

1940 to launch a series of remarkable prosecutions of American Communist

party leaders for conspiracy to teach or advocate the violent overthrow of

the government. While similar actions were taken in the Union of South Af-

rica and in most of the military dictatorships of the world where the Commu-

• 29
 

Book Reviews                                                      479

 

nist parties were long proscribed, the United States was one of the two capi-

talist countries with representative institutions and civil liberties which

enforced such blatantly anti-democratic measures in peacetime (the other,

West Germany, had a very different political heritage and was in a very

different political situation in regard to the cold war and the Communist

party).

The federal government's Smith Act prosecutions were only one weapon

in an arsenal used by the various state authorities, usually in active collabor-

ation with media opinion makers, businessmen, clergymen, and conservative

trade unionists to repress both the Communist party and the much broader

left-wing movement of which it had been the organizing core in the 1930s

and the 1940s. In Cold War Political Justice, Michal R. Belknap has come

forth with the first major scholarly monograph on the Smith Act trials.

Belknap's work, however, is superficial, cliche-ridden, and naively mired in

the crude anti-Communist political prejudices that he seeks to analyze criti-

cally. His knowledge of Marxist-Leninist theory and the history of the Com-

munist movement in the twentieth century corresponds to a high school civics

textbook. His treatment of domestic politics in the United States and the

development of the Cold War derives from college level studies, but he usu-

ally treats these secondary sources like a graduate student writing a book re-

view or a historiographical essay. The result is a work that tries to be aca-

demic in content and popular in style without achieving either the thorough-

ness and sophistication of a good academic work or the intelligence,

imagination, and sytlistic grace of a good popular work.

Belknap is contemptuous of Communists as self-seeking propagandists and

would-be totalitarians subservient to the Soviet Union. He is critical of the

Smith Act, except as a vehicle to support his rather narrow thesis that the

act played an important role in the postwar "collapse" and "suicide" of the

CPUSA. This orientation leads to logical contradictions and colossal insen-

sitivity both to the plight of Communists and other left-wingers caught in

the repression and to the larger political context. Thus the protests and dem-

onstrations of the Smith Act defendants and their attorneys are often treated

by Belknap more negatively than the antics of Judge Harold Medina and

the prosecution's battery of professional informers. Communists are regularly

referred to as "Stalinists," popular front organizations as "party puppets,"

and Communist party support for the government's use of the Smith Act

during World War II against members of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers

party is described in the following terms: "Stalinists had also endorsed the

prosecution of the Socialist Workers, whom they considered anti-Soviet and

hence worthy of extermination." Finally, the bar associations, who staunchly

supported the whole litany of repressive legislation of which the Smith Act

was such a significant part, are praised for their courageous defense of the

right of Communist party defendants to adequate counsel(!) as the worst

of the repression began to recede in the middle 1950s.

In conclusion, the most valuable part of Belknap's work is his footnotes

to unpublished primary sources. These may assist other scholars-those who

are not ritualistic followers of either the old Cold War line on American

Communism or camp followers of the Carter Administration's present anti-

Communist Cold War revival-to deal in an intelligent and sophisticated way

with the history of the Smith Act trials. Belknap has certainly failed to do so.

Rutgers University                                  Norman Markowitz

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