Ohio History Journal

Book Reviews

 

 

The Selected Letters of Charles Sumner. Volume One: 1830-1859. Edited by Beverly

Wilson Palmer. (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990. xxxvii + ⁵³⁸p.; illus-

trations, editing principles, chronology, abbreviations, list of recipients, notes.

$130.00 per set.)

The Selected Letters of Charles Sumner. Volume Two: 1859-1874. Edited by Beverly

Wilson Palmer. (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990. vii + 703p.; illustra-

tions, notes, index. $130.00 per set.)

 

 

Literary giant Henry James dubbed him the "voice of Boston," but his role and

stature in United States history extended far beyond the borders of Massachusetts, his

native state. First elected to the United States Senate in 1851, Charles Sumner served

continuously until his death in 1874 and ranked as one of the leading political leaders

of the Civil War and Reconstruction era. Perhaps more than any other Senator of the

time, his range of interests encompassed abolitionism, woman's suffrage, prison reform

and education. The National Historical Publications and Records Commission is to be

applauded for providing necessary funds to make this correspondence available to the

scholarly community.

Professor Palmer's two-volume edition grew out of an earlier microfilm project and

includes letters maintained in seventy-eight historical records repositories. The publica-

tion aptly reflects its title for these are the "selected" letters of Charles Sumner.

Included in the two volumes are approximately 900 letters of an estimated 7,000 he

authored in his lifetime. For the first time in nearly a century, we have a professional

and critically edited compilation of Sumner's letters. Prior to this, we had only Edward

L. Pierce's four-volume uncritical, flattering and poorly-cited compilation of Sumner's

correspondence published in 1893. Not only has editor Palmer made relatively few

changes to the text of the correspondence, but she has followed Sumner's concept of

writing currente celamo. Even more importantly, she has provided the repository loca-

tion for each document.

The letters are published as a two-volume set, but potential users desiring more speci-

ficity will find Volume I concerning the years 1830 to 1859, and Volume II the years

1859 to 1874. Within each volume, correspondence is further divided into such cate-

gories as Early Reform Activities, Early Senate Career, The Lincoln Years and the Civil

War, The Johnson Years and Conflicts with Grant. A correspondent index for both vol-

umes is located at the beginning of Volume I. A subject index, including individual

names, can also be found at the end of Volume II. Numbered among the recipients of

Sumner's correspondence are several prominent Ohio political figures. The most fre-

quent recipient is abolitionist Congressman Joshua Giddings, followed by ex-Governor

Salmon P. Chase, Senator John Sherman and Benjamin Wade. Letters chosen for the

publication are generally of substance, unlike documents included in many published

papers of American political leaders. Professor Palmer is to be commended for the

excellent quality of her selection.

The letters will be of inestimable value to scholars investigating the Civil War and

Reconstruction era, as well as the decade of the 1850s. Used in combination with the

recently completed Papers of Andrew Johnson and Henry Clay, a rich mother lode awaits

the researcher wishing to author new interpretations of those critical decades. The

Selected Letters are central to an understanding of the Civil War and Reconstruction and

will become the essential reference for anyone investigating that subject in depth.

 

Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives             Frank R. Levstik

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Book Reviews                                                         41

 

The Age of Doubt: American Thought and Culture in the 1940s. By William S.

Graebner. (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991. xv + 192p.; illustrations, chronology,

notes and references, bibliographic essay, index. $26.96 cloth; $12.95 paper.)

 

The decade of the 1940s has proven awkward for American historians. All too often

these years are treated as part of the rubrics of war and cold war studies, or as culturally

indistinct from the 1950s. In this volume in Twayne's excellent American Thought and

Culture Series author William Graebner argues convincingly that the 1940s were a cul-

turally coherent epoch. Differing from much of the scholarship on the topic, which has

focused quite heavily on the optimistic tone of the era (see for example William

O'Neil's American High: The Years of Confidence, 1945-1960 and John P. Diggins,

The Proud Decades: America in War and Peace, 1941-1960), Graebner views the cul-

ture of the 1940s as "a culture of uncertainty." The depression (and the threat of its

return), the war, holocaust, cold war, and the atomic bomb "held Americans in a

decade-long state of anxiety" and led them to question the basic tenets of their cul-

ture-faith in progress, the inherent goodness of humankind, even democracy itself.

While the whole decade of the forties is viewed as an "age of doubt," Graebner sees

an important cultural transition taking place around the midpoint of the decade. The

postwar world, he contends, saw a reversion "from wartime emphases on the group and

democracy to an emphasis on the individual and freedom" (p. 9). Public concerns gave

way to private consumption, and firmly held ideals were supplanted by "contingency."

The transition was evidenced in the arts as abstract expressionists abandoned the social

realism of the previous decade to focus on the self, and in the novels of Raymond

Chandler and Mickey Spillane, "with their isolated, private-eye ("I") heroes" (p. 10).

The change was evident, too, in advertisements in popular magazines of the day that

willed a public (that had been programed during the war years to produce for the good

of the nation) to consume avidly to enhance individual or family standing.

With the war won and the economy booming one might expect an optimistic tone to

have marked the immediate postwar years. But uncertainties and ambiguities pervaded

the second half of the decade even more thoroughly than the first. The explosions at

Hiroshima and Nagasaki seemed to make a mockery of moral certainties. The film noir

genre, with its emphasis on chance and chaos, as opposed to order, proved a powerful

vehicle for the uncertainties of the age. The UFO scare and the sex-crime "panic" of

1947 were further manifestations of the anxious climate. "Many Americans," the

author concludes, "found themselves in a flight from a history that offered up too many

unpleasant memories and seemed to have lost the ability to inspire faith in the future

.... Desperate for a more comforting perspective on the present [they] sought refuge in

frontier myths and bucolic reveries" (p. 68).

In The Age of Doubt Graebner succeeds in presenting an original and insightful rein-

terpretation of the 1940s that, in scope and scale, reminds this reader of Roderick

Nash's seminal work on the culture of the 1920s, The Nervous Generation: American

Thought, 1917-1930. He analyzes everything from film and T.V. shows to music,

architecture, cartoons, theater, social theory, psychoanalysis, and cybernetics, and

weaves these multifarious parts into a wonderfully coherent and highly readable syn-

thesis. This reader had hoped for a fuller discussion of the historical literature of the

period, which, while it might be viewed as stale "consensus" fare, can be seen as evi-

dence of the presence of moral absolutes and certainties in the postwar years. With its

focus on the beneficent development of democracy in America, as opposed to the

malign developments of fascism and communism abroad, mainstream American histor-

ical analysis in the postwar years can be seen as evidence of faith in the American

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42                                                           OHIO HISTORY

 

system. Or, perhaps, the rosy visions of the American past painted in the late forties are

better viewed as a thin veil for the underlying anxieties of the age. Whatever the case, it

would have been interesting had Graebner touched on this topic in relation to his broad

theme. Yet the author's scope is so wide, and his detailing so fine (amazingly so for a

text that is only 184 pages long), that he can hardly be criticized for failing to traverse

every possible avenue of investigation.

 

Hartwick College, N.Y.                                    David M. Wrobel

 

 

American Anticommunism: Combating the Enemy Within, 1830-1970. By M. J. Heale.

(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. xiv + 235p.; bibliographical

essay, index. $35.00 cloth; $10.95 paper.)

 

 

"It was the misfortune of the American Left not only to be linked-apparently-to

international revolution but also to be large enough to be noticed and yet small enough

to be crushed." So writes British historian M. J. Heale in the preface (p. xiv) to his ten

tightly written chapters surveying American anticommunism-part of The American

Moment Series edited by Stanley I. Kutler.

Heale describes the Manichaean bent of early United States polity and the promi-

nence of racial, ethnic, and religious prejudices as preconditions to anti-Red crusades.

Necessary, too, were the insecurities of individuals and groups in a fluid economic

order, weak government at all levels, and a vigilante ethic that was easily aroused. Yet,

like most recent students of the right, Heale downplays what Michael Rogin has called

"symbolic" interpretations that emphasize anticommunism's irrational, sometimes

hysterical, elements. He is a "realist" for whom anticommunists were hard-headed and

ideologically coherent.

Heale describes anticommunism's emergence in the nineteenth century in opposition

to collectivist ideas growing out of industrialization, urbanization, and the New

Immigration. The privileged orders of America-white, Christian, and male-dominated-

were behind it. They perceived that the left threatened their control of institutions that

empowered them, particularly the wage system.

The first red scare followed the Haymarket Affair of 1886. It enabled industrialists to

paint labor organizations as communist, socialism as un-American, and themselves as

the keepers of the libertarian tradition. The Big Red Scare of 1919 led to mass arrests

of immigrants, the suppression of civil liberties, and the effective destruction of the

Socialist Party. Between the World Wars, the concerns of anticommunists shifted from

foreign invasion to internal subversion. In the 1920s American anticommunism

embraced nativism, isolationism, and xenophobia to triumph as "100% Americanism."

Even labor unions repudiated the left. But the Depression of the 1930s brought the

resurgence of the Communist Party USA and the possibility, however remote, of an

anti-capitalist revolution. To meet the threat, anticommunists turned to the surveillance

state.

Anticommunism came to Washington with the critics of the New Deal and in the

Cold War became a powerful political weapon in the hands of Republicans and Dixie

Democrats. By the 1950s the biggest red scare of them all (the so-called McCarthy era)

had produced a national anticommunist consensus that circumscribed political discourse

and cultural expression and fueled a purge of respectable nonconformists from

American institutions. After the 1950s anticommunism lost focus as "the dynamics of

class and party conflict could no longer mesh with global tensions to produce a great

crusade against enemies within" (p. 201).

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Book Reviews                                                            43

 

The conspicuous merits of this work include the author's command of the volumi-

nous literature and his structured description of the historical development of domestic

anticommunism prior to the early Cold War. He reminds us that the political and cul-

tural battles of the 1940s and 1950s reflected old, deep cleavages within American

society. Even if it does not provide the taxonomy of anticommunism that we still need,

American Anticommunism is most informative and likely to be assigned reading in

advanced college courses.

 

Fairmont State College                               Charles H. McCormick

 

 

The Rough Road to Renaissance: Urban Revitalization in America, 1940-1986. By Jon

C. Teaford. (Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. x +

383p.; illustrations, tables, notes, index. $16.95 paper; $48.50 cloth.)

 

One reason why historians have traditionally had so little interest in the recent past is

that often one does not know how the story will turn out. It is refreshing, then, to see an

established scholar take on a topic as fraught with ambiguity as the history of urban

revitalization during the post-World War II era. While the subject is important in itself,

Jon Teaford's study is also useful as an example of how to approach a topic whose his-

torical evolution is not demarcated by a definite conclusion or turning point.

The study focuses exclusively on twelve major cities of the "northeastern quadrant"

of the United States. Although we tend to identify the decline of metropolises like

Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, and Cleveland with the deindustrialization of the 1970s

and '80s, Teaford shows that the process began much earlier. A number of older urban

centers had already lost population and business in the 1930s. Although the loss was not

as severe as in later years, it nevertheless represented a reversal of decades of growth

and unquestioned dominance by these metropolises. Central city business areas were

deteriorating, and industrial pollution of air and water made the cities increasingly

unattractive when contrasted with the new suburban areas, now more accessible as a

result of the growth of auto and truck transport.

Even before World War II, urban leaders recognized these problems and sought to

formulate plans to deal with them. It was not until after the war, however, that a new

group of political leaders emerged who actually carried out the first attempts at revital-

ization. New taxes (including the first city income taxes) and large bond issues

financed major improvements in water and air pollution control in the late 1940s and

early '50s. The late 1950s and early '60s were dominated by highway construction,

urban renewal, and demolition of old buildings to create more parking space in urban

centers. Ironically, these changes improved the quality of the centers, but did not stem

their decline much. Superhighways made the cities more accessible to the automobile,

but they also made it easier for the middle class to escape.

The 1960s saw the beginnings of a reaction against this "bricks and mortar"

approach to revitalization, and a new group of reform mayors attempted to shift public

policy toward a concern for human services and neighborhood preservation. This too

failed to reverse the population decline of these older cities, and during the decade after

1975 a less glamorous wave of fiscal conservatives swept into the mayors' offices,

promising a new stability based on appeal to business interests. Partly because their

modest success in rejuvenating city centers contrasted sharply with the failure of their

predecessors, this new group of leaders won greater praise from the voters, but by the

end of the 1980s they too were facing increasing problems. While population decline

had slowed considerably, the tax base of the older cities was still very shaky, and class

and racial divisions between cities and suburbs remained a serious problem.

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44                                                           OHIO HISTORY

 

The research upon which this book is based is truly impressive. Teaford is able to

show the surprisingly uniform development of both urban problems and response to

them among cities as diverse as Baltimore, Boston, and Minneapolis. While much of his

subtle analysis is persuasive, I would like to have seen more emphasis on the impact of

outside economic forces and racial change on the cities. As a study in governmental

response to economic change, however, the book achieves its purpose in masterful fash-

ion. The Rough Road to Renaissance is an accomplished piece of scholarship that

should be required reading for anyone interested in the history of urban American in the

last half of the twentieth century.

 

Temple University                                       Kenneth L. Kusmer

 

 

The Dispossession of the American Indian, 1887-1934. By Janet A. McDonnell.

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. viii + 163p.; maps, illustrations,

notes, selected bibliography, index. $20.00.)

 

 

This detailed study of the federal government's administration of its trust responsi-

bilities for Indian land in the period of allotment confirms what Angie Debo discovered

over fifty years ago (And Still the Waters Run, 1940). The further a scholar digs into

the story of how Indian policies get administered, the worse the news becomes.

The allotment policy aimed to teach Indians to become self-supporting through

farming individual properties. One might suppose that learning to manage private prop-

erty would entail having some discretion over the use and management of one's allot-

ment. Yet federal officials frequently allotted, leased, irrigated, and issued fee patents

for Indian allotments without the consent and at times over the strong opposition of

Indian owners.

Intelligent management of private property requires a reasonably predictable legal cli-

mate, in which rules governing the use and disposition of the property are fairly stable.

Both Congress and the Office of Indian Affairs varied the rules affecting allotments

earnestly, frequently, and almost whimsically. Initially Indians faced a twenty-five year

trust period during which the allotment was inalienable. In 1891, Congress provided for

leasing. Bureau of Indian Affairs officials varied the maximum duration of leases cover-

ing agricultural, grazing, irrigated, and mineral lands every few years. Local superinten-

dents decided who might lease, and on what terms, though they could be quite careless

in following through to see that the lessees actually made promised improvements or

paid promised fees. Congress made general appropriations for irrigating Indian lands

beginning in 1884. Some appropriations appeared gratuitous; others required reimburse-

ment from tribal funds. In 1920 Congress decided that individual allotment owners who

used the water on dozens of completed projects would have to pay fees to reimburse

construction and maintenance costs incurred since the beginning. After thus discourag-

ing many Indian owners, Congress in 1932 canceled the "debts" of those Indians (and

numerous whites who had bought irrigated allotments) who had stuck it out.

The Burke Act of 1906 permitted "competent" Indians to foreshorten the twenty-

five-year trust period and get fee patents as soon as the Indian Affairs bureaucracy

would allow. Despite Burke's original intent, Commissioners, especially during World

War I, declared thousands of Indians "competent" who had not applied for patents.

Like leasing terms, definitions of competency varied according to the commissioners'

whims. In some years, the Secretary of the Interior approved nearly all recommenda-

tions for patents; in others, forty or fifty percent. Toward the end of his stint as

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Book Reviews                                                          45

 

Commissioner of Indian Affairs, the author of the Burke Act informed a congressional

committee that any Indian farmer who applied for a fee patent (which would make his

allotment liable to taxation and debt) thus defined himself as not competent. Most of

those who obtained patents shortly sold their land or lost it for debt or taxes. Local gov-

ernments, auto dealers, and land speculators were the Burke Act's principal beneficia-

ries. In 1927 and 1931, Congress canceled the patents delivered to the few hundred

unwilling patentees who still owned unencumbered titles.

The ordinary results of the federal government's execution of its trust responsibili-

ties are notorious-many thousands of impoverished, landless Indians dependent on

relatives or welfare for their support. Federal administration, vulnerable to political

influence at every level, did prove effective if not very efficient in transferring Indian-

owned resources to other ownership.

Cliometrics is clearly not the author's strong point. Her presentation abounds in con-

tradictory and downright puzzling figures and quantitative statements, notably those

relating to proportions of Indians and white farmers using reservation irrigation pro-

jects. The text might have benefited from more energetic editing. Hence, while

McDonnell's heavily documented study compiles a great deal of interesting informa-

tion on legislation, administration, and contemporary debates and complaints about

laws, decision, and their consequences, the reader who seeks a systematic and coherent

assessment of the impact of federal activity on Indian farming and landholding would

do better to consult Leonard A. Carlson's Indians, Bureaucrats and Land: The Dawes

Act and the End of Indian Farming (1981).

 

University of Rochester                                   Mary E. Young

 

 

American Narrow Gauge Railroads. By George W. Hilton. (Stanford, California:

Stanford University Press, 1990. xiii + 580p.; illustrations, maps, tables, notes,

index. $60.00.)

 

Periodically a book appears that is so monumental that it is clearly destined to

become a classic and the definitive work on its topic. Such a volume is this extensive

study of a limited type of railroad venture, the narrow gauge, but one which has exerted

a continuous fascination on many students of the history and technology of the iron

horse, even to the present.

George W. Hilton needs no introduction to aficionados of the railroad. A Professor

of Economics at the University of California, Los Angeles, he is the author of a number

of books on the subject. Hilton surpasses himself in this study, which combines his

skills of historical interpretation and economic analysis.

The book is divided into two parts of about equal length. The first part, consisting of

nine chapters, provides a history of the narrow-gauge movement. The first chapter sets

the stage: after discussing the development of 4' 8-1/2" gauge as the standard in

Britain, Hilton introduces Robert F. Fairlie, more remembered today for his unusual

double-ended locomotives, but who might be regarded as one of the leading advocates

of saving deadweight by reducing the size of the gauge. The concept spread throughout

the British Empire, and to other countries as well.

In the United States, a variety of gauges existed in the antebellum period, including a

number of broad gauges, but the advantages of interchange of equipment and the

increasing interrelationships among the carriers gradually resulted in the dominance of

the standard gauge. Nonetheless, a narrow-gauge boom, especially for a 3'0" width,

which lasted about a dozen years, got underway by 1872 when a convention of the

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46                                                         OHIO HISTORY

 

advocates of the narrow gauge was held in St. Louis. Proponents argued that narrow

gauges were cheaper to build, to equip, and to operate, albeit with lower speeds.

Spurred on by men such as General William Jackson Palmer, who adopted the 3'0"

gauge for his Denver and Rio Grande Railway, and Colonel Edward Hulbert, who

pushed the concept, although mostly for local economic development, and who assisted

in running a number of small gauge roads, the narrow-gauge fever spread throughout

the decade, reaching its peak in 1883 when nearly 11,000 miles were in service.

Ambitious schemes were developed, one of the most notable being the Grand Narrow

Gauge Trunk, which was to extend over three railroads from Toledo, Ohio, to Laredo,

Texas, about 1642 miles. Although many components were built, the concept failed

because of low capitalization, poor maintenance and the inability to interchange. After

the mid-1880s, decline set in, rapidly at first, and then at a slower but nonetheless

steady pace. About two-thirds of the mileage was converted to standard gauge, and the

remainder was mostly abandoned, except for the museum and tourist operations of

today and private industrial roads.

Hilton devotes separate chapters to locomotives, rolling stock, the physical plant and

characteristics, and the problem of incompatibility with standard-gauge carriers, along

with the ingenious devices invented to ease the difficulties. But, above all, Hilton

demonstrates the fallacious nature of the arguments of advocates of the narrow gauge.

The widely heralded savings which propagandists for the cause trumpeted were really

based on the primitive construction and engineering standards of the narrow gauge.

Smaller capacity cars, low speeds, the lack of innovation and the prohibitive costs of

transfer would doom the narrow-gauge experiment, something which critics pointed

out from the beginning.

The second half of the book is a comprehensive listing, state-by-state, of the approx-

imately 350 common-carrier railroads in 44 states. Each line is given a capsule history

and, where appropriate, references to more lengthy treatments. Maps and illustrations

supplement this extensive reference section.

Hilton writes in a pleasant and highly readable style. He has examined virtually

every major source, and uncovered many long forgotten, of the movement. Detailed

notes and bibliographic references follow each chapter. The publisher has also done an

outstanding job. Layout and design are excellent: paper is heavy quality and margins

are broad, often containing definitions of railroad terminology, so even the uninitiated

can easily follow the text. There are 56 maps, of uniformly high quality, which are easy

to read and interpret. Over 380 photographs clearly illustrate all phases of narrow-

gauge railroading, and reproduction is superior. A comprehensive index provides a

ready reference.

It is likely this book will stand as the best treatment the subject has received, and as a

tribute to the skills and energy of its author. The price, considering the quality, is rea-

sonable. Every library, and anyone interested in the subject of transportation, should

have a copy.

 

East Stroudsburg University                          James N. J. Henwood

 

 

We Took the Train. Edited by H. Roger Grant. (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University

Press, 1990. xxx + 175p.; illustrations, notes, index. $29.50.)

 

 

For more than 150 years, railroad travel has encouraged perceptive travelers to

define the American countryside and its inhabitants. Because the railroad traveler can

interact with fellow passengers and view the unfolding landscape more or less simulta-

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Book Reviews                                                            47

 

neously, railroad travel has provided a "natural" opportunity for commentary. Railroad

historian H. Roger Grant has selected, and excerpted, twenty-one essays by railroad

travelers. Most are previously published works, though a few are fairly obscure. While

the reprinting of such travel accounts is not new, Grant's placing this kind of literature

in chronological sequence is quite welcome: using six general categories (The Iron

Horse Arrives, America's Railroads Mature, Traveling Without Tickets, The Electric

Way, The Glory Years, Twilight of Rail Travel), Grant puts railroad travel in historic

context.

The essays range in time from the 1830s to the 1980s, and they cover everything

from embryonic lines like the Baltimore and Ohio in its horse-drawn days to the

Amtrak that dominates U.S. rail passenger service today. Each essay is introduced with

a brief overview of the conditions the traveler/essayist encountered. Grant includes

excerpts from some of the renowned novelists (Charles Dickens and Robert Louis

Stevenson), popular railroad writers (David P. Morgan and William D. Middleton), as

well as lesser-known authors. All of the essays remind us how "involved" on the one

hand, and how detached, or distant, on the other, travelers can be. Like all travelers,

train travelers face the unexpected: blizzards, wash-outs, grade crossing or pedestrian

accidents, and some of these mishaps are described in this book.

Like many travelers, train travelers are (and especially were) socially stratified: one

might have ridden in a day coach with rigid seats, a luxurious pullman car drawing

room, or even "ridden the rods" as a hobo. Sex (gender) and racial segregation was also

common during the "heyday" of rail travel. Grant includes essays covering a wide

range of rail travel options and experiences, as well as types of trains; main-line limit-

eds, branchline "doodlebugs," and electric interurbans. The long time period covered

includes the range of railway motive power: horses, steam, and diesel-electric. It

enables us to see the profound social and economic changes that have affected railroad

travel-and the American countryside.

We Took the Train is highly readable, reminding one of a collection of short stories.

Being quite succinct, Grant's overviews do not detract from the initial idea of the book:

to have contemporary travelers, not historians, tell the story of what rail travel was like.

We Took the Train is specifically recommended to railroad historians, railroad enthusi-

asts, and generally to all readers interested in the impact of travel on America.

 

University of Texas at Arlington                    Richard V. Francaviglia

 

 

Period of the Gruesome: Selected Cincinnati Journalism of Lafcadio Hearn. Edited by

Jon Christopher Hughes. (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1990.

xiv + 322p.; notes, bibliography. $45.50.)

 

Lafcadio Hearn was an eccentric, literary genius whose career began in Cincinnati

and culminated in Japan. "Period of the gruesome" is a descriptive phrase covering

Hearn's journalistic endeavors in Cincinnati and was originated by biographer George

M. Gould in 1909. Hearn's notoriety for the "grewsome" (as he liked to spell the word)

began with a series of articles covering the "Tanyard Murder" for the Cincinnati

Enquirer in 1874. His vivid, meticulous reconstruction of the crime, with graphic

detail, raised both the sale of the newspaper and Hearn's salary. Actually, Hearn's cov-

erage of the macabre, grotesque, or gruesome went back at least two years: "The Last

Of The Horse. How He Is Turned Into Soap-Fat, Fertilizer, And Prussian Blue ..." and

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48                                                          OHIO HISTORY

 

"A Wolf's Vengeance. A Butcher's 'Clean' Work Upon A Human Heart.. ." are typi-

cal titles of 1872.

During the years 1872-1877, Hearn wrote articles on dope addicts, ghosts, grave rob-

bers, rag pickers, abortionists, vivisectionists-insanity and murder in general-sub-

jects dear to the newspaper reading public then and now. This was not hack journalism

in any sense, but investigative reporting of the highest quality in a coherent, narrative

format. As listed by Mr. Hughes, Hearn managed at least 439 articles for Cincinnati

papers (not all the articles were about Cincinnati, however). Hearn's coverage of the

"underside" of Cincinnati's social and economic life-the slaughterhouse district, the

waterfront or "levee," and "Bucktown," home of southern Blacks, Mulattoes, and

Creoles-is unparalleled in nineteenth century Ohio literature. Sympathetic to the out-

casts of society, as he saw himself, Hearn did not preach but rather influenced his read-

ers by his verbose, descriptive scenes and specific details. In the so-called gruesome

stories there is often an underlying sense of humor, a very subtle humor: A good exam-

ple is "Balm of Gilead. An Afternoon At The Stink Factory. What Becomes Of Our

Dead Animals" (1875). A vast array of odors are examined and analyzed, with suitable

similes, in this tour of a fertilizer factory. This reviewer's favorite example of Hearn's

dichotomous approach is the article "Skulls And Skeletons. The Articulator Of

Skeletons" (1874), which unfortunately does not appear in Period of the Gruesome.

Humor and "grewsomeness" in pleasant alliance!

Another personal favorite, "Steeple Climbers" (1876), does not appear in the book

under review probably because it is not gruesome. Hearn was the only newspaperman

in Cincinnati who took the dare of two steeplejacks to ascend the 225 foot spire of the

Cathedral of St. Peter-in-Chains. The story is exciting, and often frightening consider-

ing Hearn was practically blind, having partial sight in only one eye, and was 5 foot 3

inches tall and of slight build; he ultimately stood on top of the cross on the spire. He

was self-conscious because of the appearance of his eyes, one was "pearl white," one

bulbous, and his stature, and avoided social gatherings as a consequence. Among his

few friends were Frank Duveneck and Henry Farny, both newspaper artists and both to

become famous in their own right. Farny drew the sketches for the "Tanyard Murder"

series. Hearn and Farny collaborated on a short-lived satiric newspaper, nine issues in

1874, entitled Ye Giglampz, "giglamps" being a slang term for spectacles, an allusion

to Hearn's thick-lensed glasses. Reproductions of these rare papers were made in 1983

in a single volume edited by Mr. Hughes, published by Crossroad Books and The

Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County (and still available at the library).

Hearn's connection to Cincinnati was tenuous: The administrator of his aunt's estate

in England had a sister in Cincinnati; encouraged to "make his own way in the world,"

Hearn was given one-way passage money to Cincinnati where he arrived in the spring

of 1869. The Cincinnati contact proved valueless. Hearn was literally destitute, and so

he lived on the street and did odd jobs until befriended by an English printer, Henry

Watkin. Watkin, an eccentric in his own right, was a follower of Charles Fourier and a

communalist and an atheist; he became Hearn's advisor and foster father.

Patrick Lafcadio Hearn was born 27 June 1850 on the Greek Island of Levkas, or

ancient Leucadia, the inspiration for his middle name. His father was Charles Bush

Hearn, a British army surgeon, his mother Rose Antonia Cassimati of the Ionian Isles.

His parents soon abandoned him to be raised by an aunt in Ireland, Sarah Brenane of

Dublin. She sent him to school in England, then to a Catholic school in France. Hearn

did not graduate because his schooling was cut short by a mishandling of his aunt's

funds by the same man who sent him to the United States. Hearn's dislike of organized

religion and mistrust of society in general can be traced to these formative and largely

unhappy years. He was, nevertheless, intelligent and gifted in literary skills. These

• 9
 

Book Reviews                                                           49

 

skills were first put to use in Cincinnati, then refined during his travels, climaxing in

the Japanese essays. Hearn had a number of favorite authors, including Edgar Allen

Poe with whom he is often compared, Bulwer Lytton, Charles Dickens, and many

French authors, including Baudelaire and Flaubert, whom he translated into English.

Though not a social reformer, Hearn's Cincinnati does remind the reader of Henry

Mayhew's London or Jacob Riis' New York.

Hearn had long been interested in New Orleans through contact with the Creoles and

southern Blacks on the Cincinnati waterfront, and so he left Cincinnati in the fall of 1877

for the southern city, promising to write some articles for the Cincinnati Commercial to

pay for the trip. In New Orleans, Hearn continued in much the same literary vein as in

Cincinnati. He wrote about the Creole language and published a Creole cookbook. In

1883 he left New Orleans for Martinique, French West Indies, then for the next seven

years traveled between Philadelphia, New York, and Martinique. During these years,

articles were accepted by Century Magazine and Harper's Weekly. Hearn became fasci-

nated by the Orient, its customs and religions, and he finally decided to move to Japan.

The expense of the journey was covered by articles for Harper's. He arrived in Japan in

1890. Two years later, he married Setsuko Koizumi. The Koizumi family adopted him

in 1896 which allowed him to become a Japanese citizen; his Japanese name was

Koizumi Yakumo. Hearn taught English in government schools in the cities of Matsue,

Kumamoto, Kobe, and Tokyo. He died of a heart attack on 26 September 1904, leaving

a widow, three sons, and a daughter. His perceptive writings about the Japanese and

their homeland made him famous both in the East and the West. The memorial museum

at Matsue contains approximately 600 volumes by or about Hearn. One of his homes is

also maintained at Matsue. There is a major collection of Hearn material at the

University of Virginia, the Cincinnati Public Library has a manuscript collection, and

the Library of Congress has about 300 volumes by or about him.

By modern definition, Hearn was a social historian, and one of rare ability. His

Cincinnati vignettes reveal facets of daily life rarely encountered in "historical"

sources. This compendium, Period of the Gruesome, should be shelved next to the

standard Cincinnati histories to give reality to the usual sanitized accounts of urban life

of the nineteenth century. Of course, not all was "gruesome" in Cincinnati, and perhaps

the title is misleading considering the bulk of Hearn's writings, but it is apt for the

selections made by Mr. Hughes. Mr. Hughes includes an "Introduction" to Hearn's life

and writings. There is a recent biography, Wandering Ghost by Jonathan Cott (1991),

that treats Hearn's career in some detail. Hearn's widow, Setsuko, published an

account of his life in 1918, and one son, Kazuo, did likewise in 1935. Albert Mordell

first identified many of Hearn's American writings (most of the articles were not cred-

ited) in a two-volume work, An American Miscellany, published in 1924. Another col-

lection of Hearn's Cincinnati articles appears in Lafcadio Hearn, Selected Writings,

edited by William S. Johnson (1979).

 

Ohio Historical Society                                  Donald A. Hutslar

 

 

The Utopian Alternative: Fourierism in Nineteenth-Century America. By Carl J.

Guarneri. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991. xiv + ⁵²⁵p.; illustrations, notes,

bibliography, index. $32.95.)

All Things New: American Communes and Utopian Movements, 1860-1914. By Robert

S. Fogarty. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990. vii + 286p.; illustra-

tions, notes, sources, index. $34.50.)

• 10
 

50                                                         OHIO HISTORY

 

Utopia, always ill-defined, has had a rather good following, where other topics in

American history have suffered blight, ignorance, and "presentism": emphasis on cur-

rent partisan causes. Studies in "utopia" have gained also from Sixties Youth avowals,

seen as "utopianism," and from retreats to quasi-"communes," where ragged survivors

of confrontation could continue their habits, or modify them for academic ends. The

decline of American history as such, as a discipline, has been notorious. It can be

traced, for example, in The Reader's Catalog (1989), proud of its panoply of consul-

tants and record of 40,000 books in 208 categories, covering all subjects. It seems

incredible, but I have not noticed it said anywhere else that there is not there a single

reference in the Catalog to Allan Nevins.

History standards are maintained in The Utopian Alternative, which, in the hands of

a self-identified "student activist" during the Vietnam War years, undertakes to provide

"the first full-scale history of American Fourierism." To some extent it achieves its

goal. Fourierism itself left a full record of its personalities, goals, and programs, which

the author has implemented with fresh further study in archives. In addition he has

reviewed major protagonists, from Fourier himself to such American figures as Horace

Greeley, Charles A. Dana, Albert Brisbane, the Rev. George Ripley-originator of

Brook Farm-and numerous others.

Brook Farm became one of the symbols of the great antebellum movement of

reform, and of its daring break with mid-nineteenth century mores and traditions.

Emerson and other public persons of his stature had visited Brook Farm and approved

its free air of social experiment with family, education, and work. Here Hawthorne had

even attempted to break his cocoon of family-haunted vision, and given it up as offen-

sive to his own qualities. Brook Farm, too, had been captured by the Fourierites, who

imposed their quasi-Marxist "phylansteries" over Brook Farm's more individualized

living and growth. It saw its material possessions go up in a fire which signalled the

decline of the great Fourierite drive to establish its way of life as a viable alternative to

free enterprise and expansive capitalism.

It seems likely that the author of The Utopian Alternative-itself a modern con-

cept-is soliciting dialogue with other former "student activists" in his grand sweep of

Fourier enthusiasm, as it won attention in the 1840s, resulting in numerous "phalanxes"

mainly situated near established eastern cities and towns which they hoped to super-

sede.

The book follows Fourierites from their early nurture to their collapse. It strives to

understand what inspired their initiators, and the causes for their failure. They never

had enough money-one estimate of necessary resources envisioned 400 competent

and responsible persons, 1,000 acres, and $400,000; one can see the answer staring out

of these figures. The acres were there, certainly; but competent and responsible per-

sons? Four hundred of them? Assessed by whom? And $400,000-the equivalent of

many millions of dollars today. Then again, in nineteenth century financial conditions

uncircumscribed by regulatory state and federal measures.

The author himself adds up Fourierite ways to failure: debt, sickness, legal impedi-

ments, group and individual quarrels, elite and cultured persons mixed with humble

and unenlightened individuals. And religiously-inclined elements concerned for varied

spiritual impulses set side by side with atheists--one wonders how they could have

deceived themselves for a moment regarding their prospects.

John Humphrey Noyes, the genius of the Oneida Community, in his History of

American Socialisms (1870), put it that communities, however founded, succeeded or

failed according to the spiritual goals which sustained them. Since Fourierites were

meagerly supplied in religious convictions, they furnished examples for Noyes's

hypotheses, and, for today, one measure for judging the protagonists of the 1960s

youth uprising.

• 11
 

Book Reviews                                                           51

 

The Utopian Alternative is rich in personalities and social experiences and may well

inspire further adventures in academic research. Still, one hesitates to guess how

academe might take up the challenge here proposed. It is possible that this book might

prove too rich for presentists bemused by ethnic or other considerations. The stagger-

ing collapse of hopes fostered by communism at home and abroad may act to retard

work in the field.

This work admires that of Arthur E. Bestor, Jr., whose study of the Owenite New

Harmony Community of 1825 is considered definitive in the field. Bestor's Backwoods

Utopias gave authority to his American Historical Review essay of 1953, "Patent-

Office Models of the Good Society: Some Relationships between Social Reform and

Westward Expansion." This held, in essence, that the flood of utopias in the early nine-

teenth century could not be repeated. It had been a product of the wide-open frontier

which permitted all manner of social experiments. The frontier, however, was soon

"closed," closing down with it "patent-office models." The Utopian Alternative gently

dissents. It was protested at a Newberry Library Conference by Louis Filler who, in

"Pilot Plants, Utopias, and Social Reform," Community Service News (Yellow Springs,

Ohio, April 1953) pointed to numerous "utopian" experiments of patent effectiveness

extending to the then-present. The point is further carried at length in All Things New:

American Communes and Utopian Movements, 1860-1914, during which communes

proliferated, before and after the "passing of the frontier."

The author has for some time been industrious in seeking out and studying "utopian"

ventures in and out of the frontier. One of his personal landmarks was his Dictionary of

American Communal and Utopian History (1980). His new book spells out many of

the major figures and events associated with his communes. He writes less well and

evocatively than the author of The Utopian Alternative; as in his Dictionary he is

largely concerned with setting down the who, where, and when of his communes. He is

more practical-minded, as in his judgment that Brook Farm "failed." In fact, it is much

better recalled than any of the more realistically-minded experiments. And that is

because Brook Farm was a living community, foaled by religious-minded dreamers,

and giving human goals to the men, women and children who worked, but also sang,

studied, enjoyed companionship, and were profound in their connections. For that mat-

ter, the Sixties Youth have staked their ultimate status as aspiring to Brook Farm pur-

poses, rather than the Fourierites.

All Things New does not advance the much-needed definition of "utopias," old or

new. Perhaps it cannot, since, in the course of events, all things new become all things

old and subject to internal rot and simple aging.

Many of the author's figures and enterprises are significant, as "utopians," far

beyond the dates given, and the contours of the careers he indicates are puzzling. Thus,

he says nothing of Arthur E. Morgan, despite a badly focused study which wants

answer, Roy Talbert, Jr., FDR's Utopian: Arthur Morgan of the TVA. Morgan was a

"utopian" as early as 1913, when he undertook to save Dayton, Ohio, from the further

horror of flood by creating a Miami Conservancy District which was not only great in

its own right, but a first draft of his later TVA. He was a dreamer in education, in

small-town power and distinction: a social engineer who was also an actual engineer,

and whose idea of a "pilot plant"-a small model which could become a massive

reality-is unlikely to be forgotten. His books on communities, on Edward Bellamy, on

"utopias" (Nowhere Was Somewhere) are yet to receive intelligible revaluation.

Nevertheless, if one had to choose between the two above books on utopias, one

would recommend for new readers All Things New. It helps a serious reader to realize

there is a problem in matching a dream with reality. It displays a varied set of social

• 12
 

52                                                          OHIO HISTORY

 

experiments, includes a useful appendix of communal societies, and sources for further

reading.

 

The Belfry                                                    Louis Filler

Ovid, Michigan

 

 

Wampum Belts & Peace Trees: George Morgan, Native Americans, and Revolutionary

Diplomacy. By Gregory Schaaf. (Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum Press, 1990. xxiv +

278p.; illustrations, notes, bibliographic essay, appendix, index. $27.95.)

 

 

Philadelphia-born land speculator and Indian agent George Morgan (b. 1743-d.

1810) played a prominent role in executing Congressionally directed Indian policy in

the Ohio country during the American Revolution. Morgan was well suited by both

temperament and training for the task. Apprenticed while a youth in 1756 to the west-

ern fur-trading firm of Baynton and Wharton, he became a full partner in the establish-

ment in 1763. Like many of his contemporaries, Morgan speculated heavily in lands

west of the Ohio River at the close of Pontiac's Rebellion, and throughout the remain-

der of the 1760s and early 1770s was a well-known figure along the western

Pennsylvania border. Working as the land office superintendent for the Indiana

Company out of Fort Pitt at the outbreak of the Revolution, Morgan was appointed

Indian agent for the newly created middle department of the Department of Indian

Affairs where he replaced Crown appointed Alexander McKee, who was suspected of

loyalist leanings.

Well acquainted with the western tribes by virtue of his long-standing fur trade and

land interests in the territory, Morgan exerted particularly strong influence among the

Delaware, many of whom remained neutral throughout Morgan's term in the position.

Resigning his post after a series of personal disagreements with fort commander

General Lachland McIntosh in 1779, Morgan spent the remainder of his life engaged

in western land ventures and pursuing his interests in scientific agriculture.

In 1976, a previously unknown, private collection of unpublished Morgan papers

was brought to the attention of Gregory Schaaf, a history enthusiast visiting in

Southern California. The collection was a significant one, and contained among other

items Morgan's personal journal and letter book for the period April-July and

September-November, 1776, which detailed the agent's activities among the Ohio

country tribes on behalf of the Continental Congress.

Schaaf recognized the importance of the collection, and used the manuscripts as the

basis for his doctoral dissertation, completed under Wilbur Jacobs at the University of

California-Santa Barbara in 1984. Wampum Belts & Peace Trees represents an expand-

ed and revised version of Schaaf's graduate efforts.

Despite the fact that the newly discovered journal and letterbook provide an impor-

tant addition to the documentary material available for Morgan (the remainder of

Morgan's journals are available in microfilm format at the Carnegie Library,

Pittsburgh; microfilm copies of the April-July/September-November journal and letter-

book are housed at the University of California-Santa Barbara, California State

University-Chico, and with the Grand Council, Iroquois Confederacy), readers will be

disappointed in this volume.

Among the work's major shortcomings is its unsuccessful integration of the newly

found Morgan material into the broader context of pertinent primary and secondary

sources. Schaaf quite naturally derives the majority of his narrative from the April-

July/September-November journal, and where applicable augments this source with

• 13
 

Book Reviews                                                         53

 

other federal government materials, most often documents found in W.C. Ford's 34-

volume Journal of the Continental Congress, Edmund Burnett's Letters of Members of

the Continental Congress, and in the National Archives Record Group 30, "Records of

the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention." Schaaf, though, appar-

ently did not consult Paul Smith's Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789 which

contains several documents describing Morgan's activities during the period.

A more serious omission is Schaaf's failure to investigate Canadian sources. Fort

Pitt was under Crown control until 1772, and a strong loyalist element remained active

in the community throughout the war. A wealth of material regarding the events in

which Morgan participated is available in the collections of the National Archives of

Canada, Ottawa. Among the most important holdings are the Alexander and Thomas

McKee Papers [MG19,F16], Haldimand Collection [MG21, Add.MSS 21661-21892],

Colonial Office Records [MG11 C.O. 42], and the Brant Family Records [MG19,F6].

Likewise, it does not appear that Schaaf has utilized James Sullivan and Alexander

Flick, et. al.'s, standard source for Crown activities in the pre-Revolutionary trans-

Appalachian west, The Papers of Sir William Johnson. These omissions seriously

impair the depth of analysis that Schaaf brings to bear on his subject.

The events transpiring at Fort Pitt in the mid-1770s were as much about inter-colo-

nial rivalry as they were international politics. Pennsylvania and Virginia had been

involved in a long-standing border dispute centering on the Pittsburgh vicinity when

Morgan was first assigned to his post. Schaaf would have found Scribner and Tarter's

Revolutionary Virginia, The Road to Independence: A Documentary Record a useful

compilation to use in this study. An especially puzzling omission is the Lyman C.

Draper Collection of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Schaaf acknowledges

the collection in his bibliographic essay, yet cites only those documents published by

Louise Kellogg and Reuben Thwaites. The full range of resources in this collection,

particularly those in the Frontier Wars Series and the Pittsburgh and Northwest

Virginia Papers, are virtually indispensable to a study of this nature.

Equally worrisome is Schaaf's use of secondary materials. The author relies heavily

on Randolph Downe's valuable work on frontier diplomacy, Council Fires on the

Upper Ohio, to provide a background for his study, yet Schaaf fails to incorporate

Downe's understanding of the complex net of competing interests making up

Crown/colonial/native-American negotiations into his narrative. Further, while Schaaf

notes that the "history of colonial Indian affairs has been the subject of hundreds of

books and articles" (p. 263), he neglects to acknowledge such standard sources as Paul

F. Prucha's The Great Father, Walter Mohr's Federal Indian Relations, 1774-1788, or

Reginald Horsman's biography of Morgan's Indian Department and Pittsburgh con-

temporary, Matthew Elliott. Oddly, although he recognizes Wilbur Jacob's article

"British Indian Policies to 1783," appearing in Wilcomb Washburn's History of

Indian-White Relations, he does not mention Horsman's more germane "United States

Indian Policies, 1776-1815" appearing in the same volume.

A vast body of other works also seems to have been neglected. Robert Allen's and

Paul Stevens' definitive works on the British Indian Department, Anne M.

Ousterhaut's study of Revolutionary-era Pennsylvania, Russell Barsh's "Native

American Loyalists and Patriots: Reflections on the American Revolution in native-

American History" appearing in Indiana History, and Francis Jennings' and Peter

Marshall's essays regarding native-American participation in the War of Independence

included in Esmond Wright's anthology Red White and True Blue: The Loyalists in the

Revolution, to name but a few, would have added badly needed perspective to Schaaf's

investigation.

Wampum Belts & Peace Trees' impoverished grounding in historical sources leads

to a distressing series of errors. Frequently these errors are factual. Colonel William

• 14
 

54                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

Crawford did not lead the party that perpetrated the 1782 Gnaddenhutten massacre

(p. 203); colonial-era Indian policy did in fact recognize the principle of Indian

sovereignty over Indian lands (p. xxiii); the tribes of the Ohio-country were never unit-

ed enough in their opposition to the policies of the Continental Congress to be able to

"crush the Revolution" (p. xx).

Other errors are interpretive. Schaaf, for example, consistently devalues the signifi-

cant role played by the Moravian missionaries among the Delaware during the

Revolutionary period. Their actions were certainly equally as important as Morgan's,

and in the long run probably much more so, in promoting U.S. interests among the

tribes.

Lastly, Schaaf's narrative is informed and guided by a persistent present-mindedness

that pervades virtually the entire text. Two examples will suffice. Schaaf states that at

the opening of the Revolution, Morgan "took a stand to defend a vision of America's

future that was diametrically opposed to slavery, colonialism, and imperialism" (p. xx).

Second, Schaaf tells how Morgan, after quitting the Indian service, established a multi-

cultural model farm where he practiced "organic farming," using "natural pest controls

and fertilizers," and grew "herbal teas," all the while enforcing a strict policy of natural

resource conservation (pp. 207-208). Schaaf's Morgan, then, is a politically correct lib-

eral, whose western land ventures were not so much driven by the entrepreneurial spirit

as they were by New Age philosophy.

Unfortunately, Wampum Belts & Peace Trees is so seriously impaired on so many

levels that it cannot be recommended. Readers wishing information on Morgan's

career should consult Max Savelle's dated though reliable biography, George Morgan:

Colony Builder.

 

Ohio Historical Society                                    Larry Nelson

 

 

Protectors of Privilege: Red Squads and Police Repression in Urban America. By

Frank Donner, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. xiv + 503p.; notes,

select bibliography, index. $34.95.)

 

"All You Wanted to Know About Police Surveillance but Were Afraid to Ask"

might be an appropriate title for this eye-opening book. Ever since the Haymarket

bombing of 1886 created an anarchist scare, American police departments, under the

guise of protecting public order, have devoted a large share of their resources to spying

on and counteracting dissenters of all kinds. Frank Donner, a well-known civil liberties

attorney, in a well-written and fascinating book provides a wealth of detail concerning

what he describes as police repression in various cities, with special attention to

Chicago, Philadelphia, New York and Los Angeles. The pattern was much the same in

those and other urban centers. Labor unions were an early target of the red squads.

Spies were placed in unions and at times provocateurs would incite violence during

strikes in order to justify brutal repression and turn public sympathy away from the

strikers.

After World War I, communism joined anarchism as a perceived threat to the

American social order. Men who commanded the red squads made little distinction

between persons with a serious potential for violence and peaceful dissenters. For such

men, exposing supposed plots and subversive activity was a way to power and fame.

Democratic socialists, peace activists and civil rights workers were all viewed as part

of a communist conspiracy, and all organizations relating to them were infiltrated by

police, who also relied on the reports of paid and unpaid private informers. Local

• 15
 

Book Reviews                                                           55

 

police received training and assistance from the FBI and, after World War II, from the

CIA as well.

A network of right-wing organizations also played an important role. During the

civil rights revolution of the 1950s the Ku Klux Klan had a close relationship with the

Birmingham police, though the Klan was itself heavily infiltrated by FBI informers,

one of whom helped plan the beating of the Freedom Riders in 1961.

Besides assuming the role of guardians against subversion, the red squads were also

fiercely loyal to the city administrations under which they worked. Chicago's boss,

Richard J. Daley, used his red squad to find damaging information against opponents

and then to harass them. Philadelphia's Frank L. Rizzo, who served as police commis-

sioner and then as mayor, created what amounted to a police state in that city. Rizzo's

methods included heavy infiltration of targeted groups so as to intimidate as well as

spy, the creation of his own illegal "plumber's group," devising a number of scary

"plots"with no substance in fact, using police files to keep reporters in line, and lashing

out publicly at his critics. Finally, in 1979 the United States Department of Justice filed

a lawsuit charging Rizzo and eighteen top Philadelphia officials with condoning police

brutality. Some time later a team of federal investigators disclosed evidence of police

corruption which led to the criminal conviction of twenty-nine police officers.

Despite their power, which increased through the use of modern technology permit-

ting wire tapping and the systematic collection of dossiers on individuals and groups,

the red squads were eventually called to account. This resulted in part from making

public their activities and in part from a series of successful lawsuits. But the last chap-

ter remains to be written. There is always a new "threat" on the horizon so great that it

justifies police repression. One needs only to follow today's news to recognize the

potential which terrorism, the new buzzword, provides for repressive police activity.

Security is a huge, growing business, and only close vigilance will check the revival of

police red squads and their unconstitutional programs. This book should be read by all

who cherish the idea of a free society.

 

Wilmington College                                             Larry Gara

 

 

Regulating a New Economy: Public Policy and Economic Change in America, 1900-

1933. By Morton Keller. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990. x + 300p.;

notes, index. $27.50.)

 

 

Morton Keller's study of the regulation of business and economic activity (the first

volume of a projected trilogy which will also include books on social policy and gov-

ernment institutions) is an unusual mix of survey and interpretation. It is largely a sum-

mary of early twentieth century regulatory activity and covers anti-trust; public utility

regulation; auto, airline, telephone, radio, and other "new technology" regulations; laws

and policies relating to contracts and prices, labor relations, agriculture and natural

resources, housing and urban institutions, and foreign trade and the tariff; and monetary

and fiscal policy. Keller's research is impressive. He has read everything on these sub-

jects, including many contemporary commentaries and analyses, and he presents his

data succinctly and effectively. Regulating a New Economy is the most thorough and

readable distillation of the vast literature of early twentieth century public policy now

available.

Keller's attempts to make sense of his material are more problematic. First, he argues

that the early decades of the century were the most fruitful period for the development

of public policy because that was a time of profound economic and technological

• 16
 

56                                                         OHIO HISTORY

 

change, embracing the spread of big business, dramatic technological breakthroughs,

and the appearance of novel consumer services. Government responded, not just to

industrialism, but to a host of new activities. Second, despite the changing economic

environment, public policy was highly conservative; while business was breaking out of

its nineteenth century mold, government merely adapted and extended what had been

done earlier. Insofar as the governmental response was new, it was fragmented and con-

tradictory, reflective of an ever-growing diversity of special interests that demanded sat-

isfaction. Thus Keller finds "persistence and pluralism" (the theme of this volume and

the title of his trilogy) in every area of government endeavor. Third, whatever was done,

no matter how confused or contradictory, strongly influenced public policy initiatives

after 1930. In politics and government, it seems, momentum was everything.

Keller's views are controversial and provocative. In effect, he challenges virtually

everyone who has written about government over the last half century and explicitly

dismisses the various interpretations of the progressive period and the New Deal,

which, he argues, explain only a small part of the story. The problem with this

approach is that he does not have a more persuasive interpretation to substitute for the

ones he rejects. "Persistence and pluralism" may seem fashionable in the cynical 1990s

but it is only a slight improvement on the "one damn thing after another" school. As I

read him, Keller believes that historians have not adequately explained the history of

government intervention in the economy because they refuse to acknowledge the inher-

ently diverse and inconsistent character of what was done. The best they can do is to

admit that the pieces of the puzzle do not fit together and try to master the details.

Keller accordingly provides us with an encyclopedia, albeit a concise and readable

encyclopedia. I suspect that most readers will applaud his research, read his substantive

chapters with interest and admiration, and disregard "persistence and pluralism."

 

University of Akron                                        Daniel Nelson

 

 

Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor. By Steven Fraser.

(New York: The Free Press, 1991. xiii + 688p.; photographs, notes, index, $25.95.)

 

 

One of the great intellectual challenges facing scholars is to combine social history

and biography, creating a narrative of an individual's life while placing that person into

a broader cultural context. Providing an engaging narrative, penetrating analysis and a

coherent context seem to be impossible tasks; one or more of these components of the

social-biography often do not make it into an author's long-awaited masterpiece. Yet,

there have been noteworthy successes in this genre, most recently, Herbert Parmet's

Richard Nixon and His America (1990). Among the classics of social-biography are C.

Vann Woodward's Tom Watson, Agrarian Rebel (1938) and J. Joseph Huthmacher's

Senator Robert F. Wagner and the Rise of Urban Liberalism (1968).

Unfortunately, the book under review here, Steven Fraser's Labor Will Rule, fails as

social-biography. Moreover, its leaden prose and unnecessarily great length makes

Labor Will Rule a thoroughly unenjoyable read. Granted that most historians cannot

edit and write with the verve of Woodward or Parmet, there is still little excuse for

Fraser since he is the executive editor of Basic Books. At 575 pages, exclusive of

notes, Labor Will Rule either should have been cut by 200 pages or made into a two-

volume work. It is worth pointing out that Huthmacher, whose work also spanned the

Progressive-New Deal era, and who similarly focused on the topics of labor reform and

cultural politics, managed to do so in less than half the space Fraser ultimately claimed.

• 17
 

Book Reviews                                                         57

 

Huthmacher also avoided lapsing too frequently into the passive voice and beginning

sequential sentences with the same leads.

The author's ideological agenda, essentially warmed-over 1960s New Left cant,

a.k.a., the New Labor History as defined by David Montgomery, Melvyn Dubofsky, et

al, further diminishes the intellectual value of this work. Union organizers such as

Hillman, who in the 1930s helped to build the Congress of Industrial Organizations

(CIO), betrayed the authentic radical labor movement to the capitalists. As a conse-

quence, American workers, lacking proper (e.g., Marxist) class consciousness, became

greedy post-World War II consumers, unthinking anti-Communists and junior partners

of the racist, imperialist Power Elite. The capitalist elite, of course, began the Cold War

while its white working-class supporters increasingly voted for conservative

Republicans like Joseph McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Pat Buchanan.

Sidney Hillman deserves better of history and of historians. Against great odds,

among them anti-union employers, vast ethno-cultural differences among workers and

a deeply rooted anti-Communist political culture which interpreted even the most

minor of social reforms as subversive, Hillman's generation of labor organizers built a

great and powerful industrial union movement. As president of Amalgamated Clothing

Workers, this Lithuanian-born, former rabbinical student, worked with Steel Workers

Organizing Committee leader Philip Murray and U.S. Senator Robert Wagner to give

Americans Social Security, unemployment compensation and the 40-hour work week.

Additionally, such labor partisans laid the foundations for the federal government's

post-World War II assault on college admissions quotas which discriminated against

Catholics and Jews, the core of the CIO's membership and the base of the New Deal

Democratic majority.

But such intellectual vision and human drama Fraser does not provide. His Hillman

is a colorless bureaucrat constantly seeking to frustrate and co-opt the workers' revolu-

tionary consciousness. In that undertaking, reformist factory owners, management and

government efficiency experts and New Deal social workers, desiring to build a more

stable capitalist order and fearing labor strikes and Communist revolution, assisted

Hillman. If nothing else, Fraser could at least have given passion to Hillman's alleged

selling-out of the working class. But Fraser has chosen to depict Hillman as, in the lan-

guage of the 1960s-era Ivy League coffeehouse, a labor bureaucrat. Labor bureaucrats

are by definition wooden, banal and cold-blooded. As a consequence, so to is Labor

Will Rule.

This book is not, however, without some redeeming features. Because it is so filled

with material unnecessary to both the narrative and the analysis, it is of great use to

scholars seeking minute background information on American labor history in the first

half of the twentieth century. Fraser consulted every manuscript collection seemingly

available, noting their location and giving readers a good idea of what to expect to find

in various archives. Labor Will Rule includes biographical sketches of numerous,

admittedly minor, characters; again a great help to researchers working on related top-

ics, if distracting to Fraser's audience. One might reasonably ask, though, why, among

all of the mini-biographies Fraser provides, he did not go into greater detail concerning

Hillman's long-time associate Harold Ware. As the man who headed up a Soviet spy

ring in the federal government in the 1930s, a group whose ranks included Whittaker

Chambers and Alger Hiss, Ware merits a little more coverage. His relationship with

Hillman demands explanation.

 

Ohio University at Lancaster                          Kenneth Heineman

• 18
 

58                                                         OHIO HISTORY

 

Blackcoats among the Delaware: David Zeisberger and the Ohio Frontier. By Earl P.

Olmstead. (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1991. xviii + 283p.; illustrations,

notes, appendixes, bibliography, index. $29.00.)

 

The name of David Zeisberger, who spearheaded Moravian efforts to Christianize

the Delaware Indians in the eighteenth century, is familiar to Ohio historians, but this is

the only extended study of the missionary to be published this century. Earl P.

Olmstead does not offer an orthodox biography. Zeisberger's first fifty years are skirt-

ed in a few pages, and for his death readers must turn to a chapter devoted to burials in

the Goshen mission. Rather the author employs his subject's diaries and the rich but

generally underused archives of the Moravian Church to provide a comprehensive

account of Zeisberger's work with the Delaware after 1772.

Zeisberger deserves this belated spotlight, for his was a life of largely unrequited

dedication, integrity and fortitude. As this book explains, his work, difficult in itself,

ran afoul of the political turbulence in the Ohio region. An early effort among the

Iroquois was disrupted by the French and Indian war, and although Zeisberger's first

mission villages among the Delaware briefly thrived, they were helplessly tossed

between Crown and colonies and swaying Indian loyalties during the American

Revolution. Neither side trusted the mission Indians, although they attempted to stand

aside from the war. One party of converts was massacred by American militia in 1782,

while the British correctly identified Zeisberger as a source of intelligence to the

enemy, and in 1781 forcibly removed him and his charges from the Tuscarawas River

to the Sandusky. Continuing Indian unrest after the Treaty of Paris forced Zeisberger

into Canada, and it was not until 1798 that he was able to bring some of his remaining

converts back to Ohio to found Goshen, where he lived until his death in 1808. Yet

even then efforts to expand were frustrated. One post established at Pettquotting, Ohio,

was abandoned after the site was included in a land cession of 1805, and another on the

White River, in Indiana Territory, was closed by native hostility. Zeisberger himself

lived to see his mission at Goshen reduced and demoralized.

The internal reasons for the Moravians' problems are perhaps treated too charitably.

Much of the Moravian program, as embraced in their statutes (pp. 125, 246-47), ran

counter to traditional Delaware culture, including the powers accorded the missionary

leaders, the advocacy of monotheism and monogamy, and their proscription of "hea-

then festivals." The inability of the White River Moravians to compromise on such

issues doomed them to failure long before a resurgence of Delaware nativism drove

them out. Zeisberger himself was more tactful and successful, and life at Goshen mir-

rored aboriginal practices in many ways. The case studies of individual converts, such

as Thomas White Eyes, demonstrate that Indians managed to live there while yet sub-

scribing to ideas and customs condemned by the missionaries. But as even Zeisberger

learned to his cost, when he refused to permit the burial of a suicide in Goshen, intran-

sigence did not always enhance the Moravians' ambitions.

A deeper evaluation of the Moravian impact upon the Delaware might also have

considered the relationship between the missionaries and those native prophets who

reasserted supposed traditional culture or attacked white influences. Some of these

movements, ignored in this book but currently interesting historians, originated among

the Delaware, and suggest connections with Moravians. Native prophets, such as

Papunhank, eventually found a home in Christianity; others borrowed ideas from white

preachers; and some gained impetus from reactions against the Moravians. The hostili-

ty which drove the Moravians from the White River in 1806 was originally stimulated

not by the Shawnee Prophet, as Olmstead says, but by the Delaware prophetess, Beata,

who had been baptized as a child at Zeisberger's mission of Friedenshutten.

• 19
 

Book Reviews                                                          59

 

These omissions apart, Olmstead has provided an honest, reliable and valuable book

on an important figure of frontier Ohio, and there is much incidental material of inter-

est, including careful and precise details of the Goshen community presented in appen-

dices, and a chapter on mission life that will repay the attention of scholars of Delaware

culture. It deserves a place in all serious collections dealing with the missionary effort

in North America, the Delaware, and Indian-white relations in the Old Northwest.

 

Hereward College                                            John Sugden

England

 

 

The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant. Volume 17; January 1-September 30, 1867. Edited by

John Y. Simon. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991. xxiii + 661p.;

illustrations, editorial procedure, chronology, calendar, index. $50.00.)

The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant. Volume 18: October 1, 1867-June 30, 1868. Edited by

John Y. Simon. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991. xxiv + 651p.;

illustrations, editorial procedure, chronology, calendar, index. $50.00.)

 

 

These volumes cover only eighteen months but encompass many events that were

important for both Grant and the nation. Especially significant were the controversial

issues associated with Reconstruction, including the Reconstruction Acts, the

imbroglio over Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton created by the Tenure of Office

Act, and the impeachment and trial of President Andrew Johnson. Although he loathed

politics, these problems snared Grant in the political process, first in implementing the

Reconstruction Acts, then as Secretary of War ad interim for five months (when he

also continued serving as the Army's commanding general), and finally as the

Republican Party's presidential nominee.

In mid-January 1867 Grant wrote to Lieutenant General William T. Sherman that "I

wish our political troubles were settled on any basis" (Vol. 17, p. 14). However, he

really did not want a political settlement on any basis. As implemented under Johnson,

Reconstruction afforded too little protection to the freedmen, Southern Unionists, and

Union soldiers in the South. Widespread violence against them made Grant "feel the

same obligation to stand at my post that I did whilst there were rebel armies in the field

to contend with" (Vol. 17, p. 98). The prospect of having an Appomattox in reverse

was intolerable.

As Congress struggled with Johnson for control of Reconstruction, Grant became

wedged between the legislative and executive branches in their bitter dispute. He

increasingly sided with Congress and his relationship with Johnson became acrimo-

nious. After Grant's unexpected resignation as Secretary of War ad interim, which per-

mitted Stanton to regain the secretary's office, the president accused him of

insubordination, a charge Grant rebutted with an astonishingly blunt letter to the com-

mander-in-chief. Such nasty political turmoil made Grant "exceedingly anxious to see

reconstruction effected and Military rule put to an end" (Vol. 17, p. 354), and impelled

him to become a presidential candidate against his personal inclinations. As he

explained to Sherman, "I could not back down without, as it seems to me, leaving the

contest for power for the next four years between mere trading politicians, the elevation

of whom, no matter which party won, would lose to us, largely, the results of the costly

war which we have gone through" (Vol. 18, p. 292).

Grant also had to deal with difficulties relating to Indian affairs. One thorny problem

was whether the Bureau of Indian Affairs should remain in the Interior Department or

• 20
 

60                                                          OHIO HISTORY

 

be transferred to the War Department. Grant believed it belonged in the latter so that it

would cease working at cross purposes to the Army, such as feeding and equipping

Indians the Army might have to fight. Even more troubling was whether to wage war

against the Plains Indians to keep the route to Montana open, or negotiate peace. Grant

chose peace, telling Sherman that "It is much better to support a Peace commission

than a campaign against Indians" (Vol. 18, p. 257-58).

Many letters concern the Saint Louis County acreage Grant owned. He pined to visit

the farm but duty kept him tied to Washington. The consistency with which Grant put

the welfare of the Army and the country ahead of personal pleasure is truly admirable.

Readers will experience a vicarious pleasure when, as Volume 18 ends, Grant finally

leaves for St. Louis, a happy prelude to the stressful presidential years that lay ahead.

As is standard in this series, these volumes represent the editorial craft at its best.

Professor Simon continues to merit high praise for his magnificent work.

 

University of Nebraska-Lincoln                            Peter Maslowski

 

 

The Cause That Failed: Communism in American Political Life. By Guenter Lewy.

(New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. 359p.; notes, appendix, index. $24.95.)

 

 

"A spectre is haunting Europe-the spectre of the demise of Communism," writes

Guenter Lewy, paraphrasing Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto in his introduction to

The Cause That Failed (title borrowed from Richard Crossman's The God That Failed

), his lively account of the rise and fall of Communism in America. Descriptions of

Communism's demise, in America but especially in Europe, will likely become a sepa-

rate growth industry, and Lewy's book will be a meritorious addition to the genre.

The Cause That Failed has a number of themes, but perhaps the two major ones are

(1) that American Communists, or at least those in leadership positions, slavishly fol-

lowed orders from Moscow, and (2) that Soviet Communism, with all its pseudoscien-

tific trappings, always appealed especially to American intellectuals; these

intellectuals, usually of some liberal or left-wing persuasion, spent years using double

standards in favorably comparing the Soviet system with the American system.

In stating that American Communists answered directly to Moscow, Lewy follows

the lead of a number of scholars, such as Sidney Hook, Theodore Draper, and Harvey

Klehr, who have maintained, against some professorial opposition, that the American

Communist party never operated even semi-independently. In Draper's words, "the

Comintern [read Moscow] could not be challenged; it was the repository of the infalli-

ble doctrine and the supreme court of political orthodoxy" (p. 7). An unidentified wit

put it more succinctly: "the Communist party, like the Brooklyn Bridge, was suspended

on cables-from Moscow" (p. 6). It was this servility to its masters in Moscow that, in

the eyes of many Americans, robbed America's Communist party of its legitimacy.

Many American intellectuals, as well as their European counterparts, were early

attracted to the Soviet experiment in social and economic engineering, but especially

during the 1930s (the "Red Decade," in Eugene Lyons' words) when the Soviet Union

was seen as a country successfully coping with a depression that was strangling the

United States economy and as the world's main bulwark against fascism. American

• 21
 

Book Reviews                                                         61

 

intellectuals showed their approval of the Soviet Union and their dissatisfaction with

American capitalism in the election of 1932 when some fifty-three of them signed a

statement, published in several major newspapers, endorsing the Communist candi-

dates, William Z. Foster and James W. Ford, for President and Vice President. The

signers included the following luminaries: Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos, Waldo

Frank, Erskine Caldwell, Newton Arvin, Edmund Wilson, Malcolm Cowley, Granville

Hicks, and Sidney Hook. Hook, soon to be a sharp critic of Communism, explained his

support of the Communist ticket as "an expression of protest, hope, and faith nurtured

by naivete, ignorance and illusion" (p. 42).

Then, later in the decade, in 1937-38, some intellectuals (Lenin would have called

them "useful idiots") embarrassed themselves further when they decided that Joe

Stalin's Great Purge show trials were legitimate. In this case, the decision called atten-

tion to a split among American liberals. In 1937, those who thought the trials bogus

established a Commission of Inquiry, chaired by John Dewey, to investigate whether

the wild charges made against the exiled Leon Trotsky were true. The Commission,

which exonerated Trotsky, was attacked by eighty-eight prominent intellectuals who

accused it of defaming the Soviet Union: intellectuals such as Newton Arvin, Theodore

Dreiser, Lillian Hellman (did she really, upon hearing of Hitler's attack of the Soviet

Union in 1941, charge into a roomful of friends, shouting that the Motherland had been

invaded), Granville Hicks, Henry Roth, Louis Fisher, and Max Lerner. Afterward, in

1938, 150 American intellectuals made matters worse by signing a statement published

in the Daily Worker affirming that the guilty verdicts in the notorious Bukharin trial

were correct; signers in this instance included Dorothy Parker, Jerome Davis, George

Seldes, Irving Shaw, Lillian Hellman, and Malcolm Cowley. In fairness, most of these

people later recanted, sobered by the Soviet Union's 1939 pact with Hitler's Germany.

After Pearl Harbor and America's entry into World War II on the side of the Soviet

Union, American Communists took on new prestige as they now became American

patriots as well as defenders of the Soviet Union. As for the Soviet Union itself, it still

had its faults, of course, but under Stalin's leadership was evolving steadily toward

democracy. And the great Soviet stands at Moscow and Stalingrad made the Soviets

even more admirable in the eyes of most Americans. It was a love affair that would last

only as long as Hitler's Germany posed a common threat; as the Nazi threat deteriorat-

ed, so did American-Soviet amity. With the deterioration, following a postwar pause,

came the Cold War and the beginning of the end of the American Communist party as

an organization of some influence.

By the late 1940s anticommunism here was in full swing, as a number of Soviet suc-

cesses in Europe and elsewhere led to a full-fledged Communist scare in the United

States. Ironically, the fear of Communism, especially the homegrown type, came as the

ranks of the CPUSA were already being decimated by Truman's loyalty program and

various federal, state, and local investigative committees. (Included here were a num-

ber of headline-hunting hearings held by the House Committee on Un-American

Activities. Lewy is critical of many of HUAC's antics, just as he is critical of Senator

Joe McCarthy's tactics.) Part of the anticommunist boom reflected a rift within liberal

ranks that featured some of the most rancorous political and intellectual infighting ever.

On one side were those liberals, such as Sidney Hook (himself an ex-Marxist) and

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., who saw Communism as an unalloyed threat to anything

• 22
 

62                                                          OHIO HISTORY

 

even faintly democratic, while on the other were those who, like Henry Wallace pro-

gressives, felt that Communism and Communists, however undemocratic and odious,

should be dealt with fairly. It was a bitter fight and, as Lewy notes, one that would con-

tinue for decades.

One of Lewy's more interesting and provocative chapters is "The Revival of Anti-

anticommunism." Khrushchev's famous 1956 speech calling attention to Stalin's sins,

followed by his brutal crushing of the Hungarian uprising, was devastating to

America's Communist party members who had always looked to the Soviet Union for

socialist guidance. Already hit hard by recent attacks, Communist membership

declined even further, resulting in a declining fear here of Communism; it was this

reduced fear which led to what Lewy, and others, call anti-anticommunism-that feel-

ing that any attack on Communists was mindless red-baiting. Partly a reaction to

McCarthyism, anti-anticommunism was an indirect defense of Communism by people

so obsessed with McCarthy-like demagoguery that they forgot what Communism real-

ly was. Lewy takes to task people such as James W. Fulbright, Martin Luther King, Jr.,

and perhaps the most detested anti-anticommunist of all, Lillian Hellman; movies The

Front, Seeing Red: Stories of American Communists, The Romance of American

Communism, and The Killing Fields (which does not even mention Communist ideol-

ogy), all to some degree apologies for Stalinism; and books The Great Fear, by David

Cante, and No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities, by Ellen W. Schrecker,

both of which, according to Lewy, exaggerate the influence of McCarthy and other

rabid anticommunists. Lewy concludes that anti-anticommunism is pretty much limited

to the intellectual community, as it is rejected by most of the general population. And

these intellectuals must be really hard-pressed to maintain their stance now that so

much of the Communist world, including the Soviet Union itself, has expressed anti-

communist sentiments.

Lewy devotes the latter parts of his book to attacks on groups which, if not

Communistic in their own right, have tended to take views sympathetic to those of

Communists. Organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the

Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (both of which Lewy has been a member) stand

guilty of lending their services to leftist causes, while being critical of capitalist causes;

moreover, fellow travelers have served on them in positions of responsibility.

(Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, in 1940, before being expelled from the ACLU's board of

directors because she was a Communist, denied that the Soviet Union was a totalitarian

state. As evidence she argued that Stalin's 1937 Soviet constitution explicitly showed

the country to be "a socialist state of workers and peasants" and that "membership in

this party [Communist] was not incompatible with defense of the Bill of Rights. The

attempt to oust her from the board was an instance of red-baiting" [p. 151]). In 1976

the ACLU board rescinded Flynn's expulsion. Various peace organizations are also

culpable, at times advocating pacifism for America but not for the Soviet Union. Most

American peace groups have had the backing of the Soviet Union, from pre-World

War II days up through Vietnam. Other supporters of Communist causes have been the

SDS, with its infatuation with Vietnam's National Liberation Front, and the Americans

for Democratic Action which has at times voiced approval of congressmen with pro-

communist sympathies.

Lewy has written a fine book, one that should be read by all students of American

political history in general but especially those interested in the twentieth-century

• 23
 

Book Reviews                                                          63

 

journey of American Communism and its many sympathizers. While many of the Left

will quarrel with Lewy's conclusions, those of the Center and Right will find it satisfy-

ing. The Cause That Failed is a welcome addition to the growing number of histories

about those who fell prey to Communism, and would be especially valuable if read in

conjunction with such works as The Fellow-Travellers by David Caute, Political

Pilgrims by Paul Hollander, and A Better World by William L. O'Neill. Additionally, it

sells for only $24.95, cheap by present standards.

 

Ohio Historical Society                               Robert L. Daugherty

 

 

The Town That Started the Civil War. By Nat Brandt. (Syracuse: Syracuse University

Press, 1990. xix + 315p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95.)

 

I would be more willing to overlook the considerable exaggeration of Brandt's title

than I am to acknowledge the wisdom of the none-too-convincing defense of it that

prefaces his book. By beginning with an aside, he sacrifices the fast start aspired to by

writers for a general readership. This, despite its scholarly imprint, is a book for non-

specialists, and a rousing good read once the author hits his stride.

In the decade before the Civil War, the detestation of slavery was a fire in Oberlin's

civic belly. When, in September 1858, men from that Lorain County village and from

nearby Wellington rescued a runaway named John Price from the custody of slave

catchers, the flame spread. The Oberlin-Wellington Rescue did not start the war, but it

served to harden and politicize opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Thirty-

seven of the Rescuers were indicted by a federal grand jury. In his narrative of these

and subsequent events, Brandt has crafted a vivid portrayal of individual conscience at

odds with societal and political expedience.

Connoisseurs of the courtroom dramas that are a staple of contemporary fiction and

nonfiction alike will not be disappointed with the interplay of Brandt's heroes and vil-

lains. Impassioned eloquence, implacable integrity, greed, political chicanery, and fas-

cinating legal maneuvers are strong stuff, and this writer has the skill to make the most

of them. He does not overlook, for example, the fine irony in a defendant's admonition

that his friends must look after his Sunday School while he is in jail. Brandt does not

achieve, however, the sort of detachment that would win plaudits from professional

historians.

In fairness, more scholarly writers would be equally dependent upon not-always-reli-

able sources. Detailed information about the Rescue and its aftermath is largely limited

to recollections of the participants and to hardly objective contemporaneous newspaper

accounts. But Brandt is a story-teller, not an analyst, a fact made clear by his willing-

ness to repeat questionable assertions rather than to test them. One reads, as an

instance, on p. 125 that "the reason for the indictments was all too clear: They were

Republicans, they were abolitionists, they were anti-administration." The observation,

which specifically refers to the offenders from Oberlin, may have validity of a sort, but

would seem to require a documentation more trustworthy than that which the author

• 24
 

64                                                          OHIO HISTORY

 

provides; that is, a newspaper gotten up by the Oberlinites themselves, and published

from their cells in the Cuyahoga County jail.

Irritating minor errors occasionally appear. One is surprised to read (p.29) that Erie

Indians threatened settlers in the Western Reserve until the War of 1812; to find it

implied (p. 47) that Ohio's Republican Party was formed shortly after the election of

1848; and to be told (p.⁴⁴) that, in the fall of 1858, Oberlin College graduates were

serving as missionaries "in what would later be Minnesota."

None of this, I suggest, means that this is a work poorly done. It might, indeed, be

read with profit by undergraduates, who will find in it a powerful exposition of politi-

cal and civic virtue as the lively imperatives of an American era more hopeful if not

more perfect than their own.

 

Ohio Historical Society                                 James K. Richards

 

 

The Presidency of Franklin Pierce. By Larry Gara. (Lawrence, Kansas: University

Press of Kansas, 1991. xiv + 218p.; notes, bibliographical essay, index. $25.00.)

 

 

In his conclusion, Professor Gara repeats Thomas A. Bailey's comment that Pierce's

administration was "less than a success, not wholly a failure." Exactly so.

His very nomination reflected the flaws of the political system in the 1850s. Unable

to nominate a leading contender, the quarrelsome factions of the 1852 Convention

compromised on the handsome and personable Pierce. Once the choice was made, the

Democratic machine executed its drill, placing another loyalist in the White House. But

from there matters went swiftly downhill.

To some extents the disaster was not entirely Pierce's fault. A party system in col-

lapse; increasingly hostile sections; confusion regarding the federal-state relationship:

it would have taken a genius to cope with these strains. And Pierce was not that, Gara

affirms. "He was a politician of limited ability, and instead of growing in his job he

was overwhelmed by it." Even his personal life undercut his resolve. The protracted ill-

ness of his wife, and the tragic death of their youngest son, combined to leave Pierce

without a solid mooring, often distracted.

The Cabinet he assembled was loyal, but merely adequate. Pierce usually did little

more than preside over it. William Marcy, Caleb Cushing and Jefferson Davis were its

true leaders. Typically, the last was a firm advocate of a transcontinental railroad who

blasted his own hopes not merely by insisting upon a Southern route, but a particular

one at that. Gara concedes these men handled their departments honestly, making pos-

sible Pierce's later (sad) defense that at least his administration suffered no major

scandals!

A coherent program was another matter. At any rate, real power lay in Congressional

hands, unless a President was both forceful and vigorous--which, of course, Pierce was

not. (Even the administration's major legislative accomplishment, the Kansas-Nebraska

bill, was Congressional in concept and design.) Each faction in Congress pursued its

own cause: homestead laws, hospitals for the insane, Indian lands. In this cacophony of

interests, few could win acceptance, and little went as Pierce hoped. Not all was failure.

In foreign affairs Pierce and Marcy pursued a free trade, anti-monarchical policy,

marking some successes. Yet even the administration's accomplishments, such as the

• 25
 

Book Reviews                                                            65

 

Gadsden Purchase or its Central American pursuits, were undercut by the brashness of

Young America. The fault often lay with its representatives, most spectacularly the

posting of Pierre Soule to Madrid. But the disaster of the Ostend Manifesto owed as

much to administration confusion as to amateur diplomats.

Still, it was the question of slavery in the territories which brought the administration

down. Lacking a moral perspective on the matter of slavery (seen only as a matter of

"property"), Pierce did his best to protect Southern interests. Otherwise the South

would oppose the expansion he desired, and even the Union itself. Passage of the

Kansas-Nebraska bill reflected rare administration firmness, as well as Stephen A.

Douglas' political legerdemain. But its very success destroyed Pierce and the

Democratic majority in Congress. Doubtless the matter was beyond salvage after that.

Yet Pierce's simplistic and biased handling of Kansas only made matters worse.

As with many works in the American Presidency Series, this is a synthesis rather

than a reworking of original sources. Gara admits his considerable debt to Roy Nichols,

but incorporates many specialized studies written since the 1930s. Thus he demon-

strates that the Pierce Administration's "guano diplomacy" was a forerunner of later

19th Century imperialism, though Nichols' book barely made mention of it. Still, there

is little here of surprise to the specialist. The accomplishment is Gara's superb com-

mand of the social and political complexities of the 1850s, and his ability to dispose of

them in a few, broad chapters, Particularly masterful is his handling of antislavery poli-

tics, and especially its Congressmen. Despite its insight, Nichols' biography of Pierce

is beginning to show its age; there is need for a new, detailed assessment of this tragic

administration. Gara would be the last to claim he has written it. What he has produced

is an excellent sketch of Pierce's term which deserves to be on every library shelf.

 

Midwestern State University                              Everett W. Kindig

 

 

Mormons and the Bible: The Place of the Latter-day Saints in American Religion. By

Philip L. Barlow. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. xxix + 251p.; illustra-

tions, notes, index. $32.50.)

 

 

This study is a volume in the Religion in America series. It is written for easy read-

ing by Philip L. Barlow, an Assistant Professor of Theological Studies at Hanover

College and the Associate Editor of the Journal for Scientific Study of Religion.

The author takes a serious look at the role of the Bible in the life and beliefs of the

Mormon religion. He makes an excellent case for his view that the best understanding

of the religious essence of Mormonism will come when we seek to understand the

Bible's place among Latter-day Saintism, rather than looking for it in the many other

aspects of church behavior which have been the subject of study for so many years.

While one might have expected Barlow to concentrate on some particular aspect, or

perhaps a generation, of biblical usage, he has chosen rather to "cut a narrow swath

through the whole of Mormon history, . . . (therefore) to explore the use made of the

Bible by a series of key individuals.. " (xiii). These leaders include B.H. Roberts,

• 26
 

66                                                         OHIO HISTORY

 

Joseph Fielding Smith, William H. Chamberlin, J. Reubin Clark, Bruce R. McConkie,

and Lowell L. Bennion.

Affirming that Joseph Smith, Jr., shared with his era a strong literal, as well as a his-

torical and inspirational, view of the Bible, Professor Barlow proceeds to introduce us

to the degree to which Smith provided additional scripture-as well as building a reli-

gious organization-around restored biblical methods, the most significantly of which

appears to be the prophetic process (p. 11).

The book stresses the influence of the Bible on Joseph's thinking and writing,

54,000 words and phrases parallel the Book of Mormon and the King James Version

(p. 27), as well as the influence of Mormon leaders through the more than a century

and a half of growth.

I would have appreciated more consideration of the impact and relationship between

the biblical roots of the movement, and the Inspired Version which is, for the RLDS at

least, considered Joseph Smith, Jr.'s, interpretation of the Bible. But that is left for

another work.

In Chapter Five Barlow deals with the significance of the King James Version,

focusing on the fact that this version, more than most, is supportive and loyal to the

divine essence of the Jesus Christ. The impact of this upon the Mormon community,

especially in the growing affirmation of the their primary Christian nature (p. 181),

becomes more and more evident in his discussions.

The bottom line, I believe, is that Mormonism of the Latter-day Saint variety (he

barely acknowledges any other variety) is composed of Bible-believing Christians,

though he does accept the fact that they are somewhat different in this identification.

The extent of this difference, as well as the changing relationship between the Bible

and the influential thinkers of Mormonism, is the subject of the well-documented and

warmly written study.

One of the obvious side pleasures of this work is that Barlow provides a brief, but

very interesting, overview of the role of the Bible in America.

Barlow takes a moment at the beginning to provide the reader with a rather interest-

ing analysis of what is usually seen as the objective approach, claiming for himself a

"soft" objectivity, and allowing that anyone approaches such a historical view with

built-in prejudices and expectations. Identifying his own Mormon tradition and his lib-

eral tendencies, he does a good job of approaching the subject, and its related topics,

with an open, honest, and exemplary manner.

 

Temple School Center, World HQ                           Paul M. Edwards

 

 

Menninger: The Family and the Clinic. By Lawrence J. Friedman. (New York: Alfred

A. Knopf, 1990. xix + 472p.; illustrations, notes, bibliographical note, index.

$29.95.)

 

 

Menninger: The Family and the Clinic traces the origin and development of one of

the premier psychiatric institutions in North America. The Menninger Clinic became a

psychiatric hospital at the time when psychoanalytic psychiatry, the "new psychiatry,"

promised definitive treatment, if not cure. What began as a medical partnership

between Karl Menninger and his father, Charles, a homeopathic physician, emerged as

an enterprise that overpowered the professional aspirations of both the father and

Karl's younger brother, Will, and the second generation of Menninger sons as well.

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Book Reviews                                                          67

 

The power that drove the enterprise was a function of family dynamics and the matriar-

chal imperative that the primary obligation was to the family. This family hegemony,

according to Friedman, combined with the Menninger interpretation of Freud's psycho-

analytic theories, accounts for the individual behaviors of the Menninger brothers, Karl

and Will, in the building of the enterprise and in their private relationships with indi-

viduals.

Friedman analyzes in incisive detail the dynamics of family and institutional rela-

tionships. Will and Karl believed that the clinic would function best when both the pro-

fessional and private behavior of their employees was governed. Personal relationships

between unmarried staff were prohibited, and the spouses of married staff were not

even permitted to come onto the hospital grounds. In this regard, however, the

Menningers did not follow their own standards.

When Will Menninger became Clinical Director of the hospital in 1930, he attempt-

ed to develop a treatment program that combined psychoanalytic ego psychology with

the scientific certitude of internal medicine. He posited that "As medications are pre-

scribed for specific results, . . . psychiatric therapy could be prescribed for specific

results as well. .. " (p. 65). He developed a complex program prescribing both therapy

and staff behaviors in administering the therapy. This program demanded a level of

control of the professional staff that could be maintained only through the autocratic

leadership that came easily to the Menninger brothers.

Over the years, the stature of the institution and the efforts of Karl Menninger

attracted some of the most productive psychiatric thinkers. Some were strong leaders

who challenged the Menninger brothers' autocracy in managing their departments and

professional lives. One such leader was David Rapaport. Although Rapaport was

already on the staff of the State mental hospital, he was recruited by Karl as a part of

the emigre recruitment program. Rapaport was a Budapest psychologist trained in psy-

choanalysis and an expert in psychological testing. Rapaport assembled a group of

research oriented psychologists who soon made clinical and experimental research a

source of prestige for the institution. Rapaport established the Menninger School of

Clinical Psychology, which placed the Menninger Foundation in a position to benefit

substantially from National Institute of Mental Health and Veterans Administration

grant programs for training clinical psychologists.

The clinical psychologists, under Rapaport's leadership, became an important part of

the treatment team at a time when the role of the psychologist as clinician was being

challenged by the American Psychoanalytic Association. Friedman notes that

Rapaport s group was "in the forefront of perhaps the most fundamental transformation

of the psychological profession in twentieth-century America" (p. 236).

Rapaport was the first to depart significantly from the Menninger brothers' idea of a

staff associate. Will placed the value of Rapaport to the institution over his irreverence

for the Menninger hegemony. Conflict was inevitable between Karl and Rapaport,

because they both claimed the same rightful position in matters of intellectual territory

and institutional leadership. Rapaport finally left, taking several key members of his

outstanding department with him.

Gradually, the personal leadership of the Menningers was attenuated by the

inevitable requirement for bureaucratic procedure in so large an organization. Will was

more adaptable, but Karl never accepted the passing of the old way. This state of

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68                                                         OHIO HISTORY

 

affairs intensified Karl's rivalry with his brother and his capricious interference in

administrative matters. This led in 1965 to what Friedman characterized as "the palace

revolt." The four major department heads demanded that the lines of authority be

defined, and that Will be specified as the immediate superior. When Will Menninger's

oldest son, Roy, was elected administrator in 1967, the "family spirit" had largely dissi-

pated. And while Friedman concludes that the Menningers still had substantial influ-

ence over the organization, the need for jealously guarded family power was no longer

generic to the functioning of organization.

The Menninger Clinic rose to national prominence mainly because of missionary

spirit and entrepreneurship rather than distinctive therapeutic results. Friedman quotes

a Menninger psychiatrist's observation that "psychiatric poverty" had fostered the

Clinic's initial growth, but other institutions soon developed therapeutic programs

founded upon psychoanalytic theory, so the Menninger Clinic was no longer unique.

The Menninger Foundation responded to this and other challenges by program devel-

opment. The introduction of the psychotropic drugs in the mid-1950s did not lend itself

to mere expansion of services, but required an entire reassessment of psychodynamic

psychiatry.

This is a book about the genesis, growth and development of an institution, and is

thereby a book about people. The only flaw in the narrative is the inclusion of gossipy

details about the Menninger brothers' relationships with women that were, in the final

analysis, irrelevant to the history of the institution. What the book reveals about the

treatment of mental illness is that, despite the attempt by the Research Department to

assess therapeutic outcome of psychoanalytic therapy, the results of the research were

equivocal. The growth changes that came about were not founded upon new scientific

discovery, but upon institutional self-interest. In that regard, the Menninger Clinic

made its major contributions in the development of the mental health professions and

the institutional delivery of psyciatric care.

 

Saint Leo College, Tidewater Center                       Janet Colaizzi

 

 

Fortress America: The Corps of Engineers, Hampton Roads, and the United States

Coastal Defense. By David A. Clary. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia,

1990. xiv + 222 p.; notes, bibliography of primary sources, index. $35.00.)

Military Fortifications: A Selective Bibliography. Compiled by Dale E. Floyd. (New

York: Greenwood Press, 1992. Bibliographies and Indexes in Military Studies,

No. 4. xxii + 360 p.; index. $59.50.)

 

 

In the United States today, technology lies at the heart of debates over national

defense. This has been especially true since 1983, when President Reagan introduced

the public to the Strategic Defense Initiative. "Experts," often with diametrically

opposed viewpoints, have come forward offering testimony on whether the "Star

Wars" concept was technologically feasible.

As David Clary has clearly demonstrated, the controversy over national defense is

practically as old as the nation itself. Using coastal defense as his theme and Hampton

Roads, Virginia, as his case study, he explores the technical, bureaucratic, and

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Book Reviews                                                            69

 

legislative history of American coastal fortifications from the 1790s to World War II.

Throughout his story, the "experts" are the men of the U.S. Army's Corps of

Engineers.

One of the early military threats to U.S. national security came from the French navy

in the 1790s and resulted in the completion of what became known as the "First

System" of coastal defense, a series of earthen star forts that eventually eroded away.

More importantly, it also saw the authorization of a Corps of Artillerists and Engineers

and the establishment of a military academy at West Point. According to Clary, once

created, the Corps of Engineers saw themselves as "the best military brains" and

viewed their mission as creating scientifically-engineered fortifications. The author

suggests that the Corps' overemphasis on theory and their dearth of practical battlefield

experiences left them technologically behind-the-times. Once these men developed the

"Third System of American Defense" in the 1820s, focusing, under the guidance of

French engineer Simon Bernard, on the methodical erection of masonry fortifications,

subsequent chief engineers found it impossible to move beyond simplistic modifica-

tions to this basic program. Clary found that by the 1880s the engineers were still advo-

cating a coastal defense whose technological approach was more than sixty years old.

The author paints a picture of engineers' continued emphasis on a structural defense in

the late nineteenth century, while others, most notably artillerists, saw a future in high-

tech weaponry. Eventually Congressional reluctance to appropriate the sufficient funds

for such structures and the Corps' ongoing inflexibility cost them the primacy in

coastal defense, a position assumed by the Navy, a Coast Artillery Corps formed in

1907, and the Quartermaster Department. Even the Corps of Engineers' response to the

needs for coastal defense during World War II is represented as "decidedly old-fash-

ioned."

Clary's engineer-bashing would seem to have merit, but too often he falls into the

habit of using only the pronoun "they" or "the Corps" and fails to give personal quotes

or specifics that would support his accusations. There are also times when the criticism

would have been strengthened by offering his own realistic suggestions on what alter-

natives the Corps might have taken, not offered from hindsight, but with the knowledge

available at the time.

Apart from his polemic, Clary has provided a valuable and highly readable historical

overview of America's coastal fortifications. Given Dale Floyd's interest in U.S.

coastal defense (he published the only bibliography on the subject in 1985), it is sur-

prising that his new bibliography on Military Fortifications does not include Clary's

volume. The publishing dates of both volumes would suggest, however, that Clary's

book was not readily available.

What Floyd has provided is the first general English-language annotated bibliogra-

phy on military fortifications throughout the world. It is a pleasure to learn of the writ-

ings on African, Asian, Pacific, and European structures, as well as those in the

Americas, and numerous opportunities for comparative studies quickly come to mind.

The compiler admits to only limited knowledge of foreign languages, and the largest

sections, understandably therefore, deal with North America and the British Isles.

Presumably by labeling the bibliography "selective," Floyd intended to foil the

inevitable criticisms of omission. He obviously has meant to be nearly comprehensive

in time period, including material on prehistoric through World War II fortifications,

but falling short of Vietnam. Unfortunately, there are some entries for which the anno-

• 30
 

70                                                           OHIO HISTORY

 

tation does not make clear the relevant time period. But I am more disappointed at the

failure to include site-specific historic archaeological reports that over the years have

done much, particularly in North America, to increase our knowledge of military forti-

fications.

More fundamentally, I am puzzled by the publisher's long-standing use of typescript

to reproduce these bibliographies. Computer software offers many design possibilites

for a manuscript of this type, and it is hard to imagine that Greenwood Press has not

adopted what in the late-twentieth century is so widely available. The compiler's lack

of literary polish in many of the annotations combines with the typescript reproduction

to give the volume an unfinished quality. This is unfortunate, since the information in

the volume is very useful, but these matters of outward appearances may lead buyers to

wonder whether it is worth their sizable investment.

 

Ohio Historical Society                                  David A. Simmons

 

 

Army of the Manifest Destiny: The American Soldier in the Mexican War, 1846-1848.

By James M. McCaffrey. (New York: New York University Press, 1992. xvi +

275p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $45.00.)

 

 

The United States' war with Mexico from 1846 to 1848 has been called its most

immoral conflict, a war for territorial aggrandizement, and a war of ideological domi-

nation. The historiography of the conflict is filled with these and similar themes, major

issues of history. Yet wars are fought by common soldiers, ordinary men who, amid the

sweat, mud, hilarity, inanity, boredom, pain, and terror of the campaign, write letters

and journals recording their own understanding of why and how they fought.

Sometimes innocent of transcendent themes, but often marked by keen insight, these

forgotten passages can bring new awareness to readers of future generations. Bell Irvin

Wiley began the study of ordinary American soldiers with his Civil War histories of

Billy Yank and Johnny Reb, and was followed by such scholars as Reid Mitchell,

James I. Robertson, Jr., and Gerald F. Linderman. James M. McCaffrey continues in

this genre with his story of the life and experiences of ordinary United States soldiers

in the war with Mexico.

McCaffrey teaches history at the University of Houston-Downtown. Army of the

Manifest Destiny is his second book, following This Band of Heroes: Granbury's

Texas Brigade, C.S.A. Drawing from an extensive search of primary sources in domes-

tic archives, he has produced a well-crafted and eminently readable collection of the

soldiers' own tales and yarns tied together by a chronological sketch of the war.

McCaffrey portrays the volunteers in this war as idealistic young men caught up in

patriotic fervor generated by ardent politicians and a partisan press, as youths with

visions of glory, with perhaps a sense of republican virtue, who were smitten by the

romance of foreign adventure and dedicated to avenging their brethren who had died

for Texas independence. The short and successful campaign meant that the United

States did not resort to military conscription as it had in the Revolution and in the War

of 1812, and that the tension between drafted men and other soldiers so prominent a

decade and a half later during the Civil War was absent from the army in Mexico. But

the Mexican War was fought by a larger proportion of U.S. regular soldiers than

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Book Reviews                                                           71

 

perhaps any other until the Gulf War, and McCaffrey documents the rivalry between

them and the volunteers. Regular enlisted men were, on average, from more humble

origins than volunteers, were more likely to be foreign-born, and were led by more

authoritarian officers. But these are matters of degree, and McCaffrey points out that,

by and large, the two types of soldiers shared a common viewpoint on most matters.

Quick victories in all major battles, a short campaign, and the replacement of volunteer

regiments by regulars as the volunteers' enlistments expired, served to keep intra-ser-

vice tensions from sapping the morale of the expeditionary force.

McCaffrey also describes the cockiness of the troops that began at the recruiting

muster and continued throughout the conflict. Patriotism and a sense of national superi-

ority coupled with battlefield success left the American soldier generally contemptuous

of his opponent. Racism and ethnocentrism colored not only the American's view of

the Mexican soldier, but of the Mexican people as well. Soldiers stole from and swin-

dled civilians, and generally caroused when they could. Some, whether from military

discipline or self-discipline, behaved civilly, even courteously. McCaffrey acknowl-

edges that others, particularly the Texans, committed atrocities that were a black mark

on the American army in Mexico, though he concludes that the overall behavior was

"no worse than average in comparison to other nineteenth-century armies" (p. 210).

The reader seeking a discussion of the political, diplomatic, and even most military

issues of the Mexican war should look elsewhere. Domestic politics, the desire to cre-

ate new slave states, the concept of Manifest Destiny, California and the Pacific ports,

British meddling, even the effectiveness of the American logistics tail, artillery, and

generalship are ignored or given scant mention. The reader is offered little insight on

Mexican war aims, on the paralyzing effect of Mexican domestic travails, or on the

Mexican soldier. In a book of only 210 pages, the author might have favored his reader

with a bit more bone on which to hang the flesh of his account. The editors are to be

questioned for their choice of featureless cartoons in place of maps and, as the only

other illustrations, four stark photographs of muskets that relate only tangentially to the

book's theme.

But these minor matters do not detract from a successful study. McCaffrey has given

us a lively and informative account of the life of the ordinary soldier in this distant con-

flict. In doing so he has identified many common threads in the outlook and experience

of American soldiers in all wars.

 

The Ohio State University                              Thomas C. Mulligan

 

 

In Joy and In Sorrow: Women, Family, and Marriage in the Victorian South. Edited by

Carol Bleser. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. xxviii + 330p.; illustra-

tions, notes, appendix, index. $24.95.)

 

Those who wish to understand the texture of family life in the nineteenth-century

South confront a daunting task, for the essential and obvious themes of race, class,

region and gender are so tightly interwoven that analytical unraveling often destroys

the relationships among them that constitute the pattern of the fabric. Attempts to trace

through narrative the outline of a biography or a family's history-at least in the space

of an essay-tend to focus on one theme at the expense of the others. The fact that

• 32
 

72                                                           OHIO HISTORY

 

slavery and the Civil War throw inexorable but irregular shadows over Southern family

life makes the work even harder. However difficult to accomplish, the project is neces-

sary to attempt, for how we regard Southern family life influences our reading of the

history of the South as well as the histories of race, class and gender relations in

America.

The essays in this collection, which were first presented--at a focused conference held

at Clemson University in 1989, bring to their task a variety of tools. Through biogra-

phy (individual, family and collective), legal history, intellectual history, synthesis, and

textual analysis, the contributors probe both the ideal and the reality of family life

among groups located in various niches of Southern social structure.

Although-quite understandably-no single contribution is successful in integrating

all the themes that run through the topic, the volume as a whole accomplishes much in

illuminating both the conditions faced by Southern families and the tactics they adopt-

ed to deal with them. Peter Bardaglio's essay explores the contradictory forces behind

Southern appellate decisions in incest cases: the need to defend the patriarch's position

versus the need to safeguard vulnerable family members from the patriarch's sexual

abuse. When the force of patriarchy prevailed (as it often did), the courts provided no

protection for girls. In examining Virginia slave families and postbellum black and

white sharecropping families, respectively, Brenda Stevenson and Jacqueline Jones

delineate the crushing impact of planter exploitation and oppression. Some patriarchs

were psychologically devastated by the Civil War-at least in comparison to their

wives-as Virginia Burr and the team of Carol Bleser and Frederick Heath demon-

strate in the cases of separate planter families. For others, the war was a shaping but not

destructive influence, as Sarah Woolfolk Wiggins shows in her sensitive pioneering

exploration of father-son relations in the Gorgas family. Many readers will find three

essays particularly provocative: Catherine Clinton uses evidence of sexual exploitation

to argue that "Southern dishonor" should replace "honor" as an analytical tool for

understanding the planter class, an argument consistent with the findings of other

essays in this volume; James Roark and Michael Johnson re-analyze Carter Woodson's

data to buttress their claim for a higher incidence of slaveholding among free blacks

than Woodson was willing to accept; and Bertram Wyatt-Brown compares the themes

of three nineteenth-century women writers of the Percy family with those employed by

their twentieth-century male kin to suggest the lingering power of a family history of

"dependency and self-dissolution."

The volume's success is limited in two ways: the planter class and the institutions it

created receive the bulk of the contributors' attention; and, although most of the essay-

ists seem to regard the South as distinct in the behaviors under examination, the collec-

tion (with the exception of Eugene Genovese's portrait of family ideology) contains no

sustained comparison with ideal or actual family life in the North or elsewhere.

Nevertheless, some threads in the complex and obscure patterns of Southern family life

can now be traced with less difficulty than before this book's publication. It deserves a

wide audience.

 

Huron College                                            Jack S. Blocker Jr.

University of Western Ontario

• 33
 

Book Reviews                                                            73

 

From the Ward to the White House: The Irish in American Politics. By George Reedy.

(New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1991. ²¹²p.; illustrations, appendix, bibliogra-

phy, index. $22.95.)

 

Americans today are in the middle of a reassessment of the fellow citizens they elect

to office and the institutions of those offices. The pervasive feeling is that something

has gone wrong. Our politicians, who used to be us, upon their election join a self-

perpetuating, isolated, and dollar-dominated elite. They change from us to them. These

elected officials have all become bums, susceptible to moral degradation, re-electionitis,

and spiritual decay, while at the same time serving in institutions not giving the country

what it needs, policy solutions at the local, state, and national levels. Right now, politi-

cians seem eminently expendable.

Mr. Reedy, LBJ's former press secretary, has, in From the Ward to the White House,

written a very short political history of the United States, focusing on the rise and

decline of the Irish as an influence in American political life. In doing this, he reminds

us that there was a time when politicians did matter and that politics could be used to

alleviate economic or social ills. Politicians and politics were not expendable. Of

course, Mr. Reedy is looking at only one part of the complex picture of American poli-

tics and political history, but his charm of delivery keeps the pages turning even though

his narrow viewpoint is evident from the beginning.

The Irish approach to American political history in From the Ward to the White

House is neither a specialized monograph nor narrative history. It is a series of short

essays arranged chronologically, from the political history of Ireland to the on-going

savings and loan crisis. While the essays range widely over subjects as diverse as the

origins of politics in Ireland to personal anecdotes of growing up in Chicago, Mr.

Reedy does attempt to keep a focus on the role of the Irish political boss. It is in these

discussions that he revisits the subjects of politics as a profession of upward mobility (a

broad conception) and politicians as agents of social and economic alleviation.

Eventually, politics ceased to the be the only vehicle for Irish upward mobility as the

passing generations made it possible for identities to change from being Irish in

America to being an American of Irish descent. Immediately, as the New Deal brought

issues of jobs, welfare, and economics to the federal level for solution, the bosses lost

their clout as agents of alleviation.

Mr. Reedy's style is down to earth and folksy. He has peppered his essays with per-

sonal observations. The result is an enjoyable, if quirky, look at American politics, a

thing now so loathsome in American life.

 

Cleveland State University                                Michael V. Wells

 

 

A Question of Character: A Life of John F. Kennedy. By Thomas C. Reeves. (New

York: The Free Press, 1991. xv + 510p.; illustrations, notes, index. $24.95.)

Promises Kept: John F. Kennedy's New Frontier. By Irving Bernstein. (New York:

Oxford University Press, 1991. ix + 342p.; illustrations, notes, index. $24.95.)

• 34
 

74                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

The debate over the character of John Fitzgerald Kennedy and the nature of his pres-

idency continues apace. Thomas Reeves and Irving Bernstein now have joined the fray

with substantial books which differ markedly in both approach and interpretation.

Reeves's biography devotes as much attention to Kennedy's pre-presidential years as

to his presidency and focuses on Kennedy's private life and its intersection with public

policy. Bernstein concentrates his attention on the domestic policies pursued during

Kennedy's thousand days in office and virtually ignores the private sphere. He is not

interested in determining who JFK was but rather in assessing the achievements of the

Kennedy administration in the domestic policy domain.

The Reeves and Bernstein books do have one feature in common. Each is designed

to combat a particular school of interpretation regarding the Kennedy presidency.

Reeves battles vigorously to combat the favorable portrait of Kennedy initially painted

by the so-called "Camelot School"--led by such "court historians" and Kennedy aides

as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., James MacGregor Burns and Theodore Sorensen. Bernstein

explicitly seeks to disprove the argument of the subsequent Kennedy revisionists---rep-

resented by such works as Henry Fairlie's The Kennedy Promise: The Politics of

Expectation and Bruce Miroff's Pragmatic Illusions--that JFK's words simply were

not matched by deeds. Rather ironically, given their conflicting interpretations, both

Reeves and Bernstein succeed to some extent.

Reeves, an accomplished historian with biographies of Chester Arthur and Joseph

McCarthy to his credit, aims to get at the truth behind the Kennedy image and myths.

He attempts to elucidate the real John Kennedy and to explicate the implications of

Kennedy's character on his presidential conduct. In the early chapters he explores

Kennedy's family background, his education and career prior to the presidency. This

investigation allows him to reveal convincingly the substantial disjuncture between the

Kennedy image and reality. He demonstrates with apparent relish the manipulation and

money which manufactured JFK's ill-deserved reputations as "the hero, the intellectu-

al, visionary leader, [and] family man" (p. 414).

A constant theme in the Reeves account is the manipulative skill of Joseph Kennedy

and the domineering influence which he exercised over his son's career. The elder

Kennedy's plots and payments on his son's behalf are all duly noted, but Reeves sug-

gests that the Kennedy patriarch influenced his son most significantly by passing on to

him his moral code or, as Reeves would have it, the lack of one. In a damning but per-

suasive criticism Reeves asserts that JFK's "sense of right and wrong had been largely

shaped by his father and was grounded primarily in a power- and pleasure-seeking

ethic" (p. 245). Reeves conclusion, which is similar to that offered by Garry Wills in

his The Kennedy Imprisonment, emerges after extensive details are supplied of

Kennedy's rather sleazy and exploitative sexual affairs and his lack of any clear pur-

pose and convictions in his pre-presidential political career. JFK, whose compulsive

womanizing continued throughout his presidency, is presented as a man without a

"moral center" who lacked "a reference point beyond self-aggrandizement" (p. 415).

Reeves draws heavily on the work of historians like Herbert Parmet, Doris Kearns-

Goodwin and Richard Whalen in framing his account. More surprisingly, he also relies

rather heavily on expose/gossip-type works by the likes of Judith Exner, Kitty Kelley,

Letitia Baldridge and Traphes Bryant, although he appears to have utilized such works

• 35
 

Book Reviews                                                            75

 

with care and discrimination. Except for some oral history interviews, Reeves' account

draws little from the source of the Kennedy Presidential Library and he complains at

times at the lack of access to certain Kennedy family papers.

While Reeves' account is heavily dependent on the work of others, he nonetheless

clarifies some important aspects of the Kennedy story. He explores the issue of JFK's

constant battle with Addison's disease and the cover-up regarding his health. He con-

firms both the essential role of Theodore Sorensen in Kennedy's rise of power and the

key advisory role played by Robert Kennedy across a broad range of issues during the

Kennedy presidency. The technical accomplishment of the 1960 presidential campaign

is duly acknowledged, and the campaign's capacity not only to counter the "religious

issue" but also to exploit it is nicely explained.

Reeves's treatment of the Kennedy presidency, however, is disappointing. Those

familiar with Parmet's J.F.K.: The Presidency of John F. Kennedy or specific works by

Carl Brauer on Civil Rights, Trumbull Higgins on the Bay of Pigs, and Raymond

Garthoff on the Cuban Missle Crisis will find little here regarding policy formulation

and implementation with which they are not familiar. Reeves hurriedly and at times

superficially assesses Kennedy's performance in both foreign and domestic affairs and

finds him wanting in both areas. Kennedy is portrayed as a president lacking a coherent

domestic agenda and unwilling to take the lead on civil rights. In foreign policy

Reeves's JFK, intent on avoiding the appearance of being "soft," engaged in virulently

anti-communist rhetoric and authorized a major military buildup as well as permitting

the Bay of Pigs fiasco and deepening the American commitment in Vietnam. But

Reeves is forced to praise Kennedy's "leadership and conduct" during the Cuban

Missile Crisis. Furthermore, in a concession that weakens his major thesis, Reeves

admits that, at least by the end of 1962, there was "more to [JFK's] character . . . than

the pursuit of power and pleasure" (p. 392). Kennedy now revealed moral purpose and

growing maturity, particularly through his concern to reduce the dangers of nuclear

war--a concern concretely manifested in the Limited Test Ban Treaty.

The difficulty for Reeves is that his picture of Kennedy's growth in office undercuts

his argument that Kennedy's undoubted character flaws severely damaged his presi-

dential performance. Perhaps there is a case to make on this score but Reeves does not

make it effectively. He desperately wants to prove that Kennedy's personal limitations

and vulnerabilities ruined his presidency but, aside from some mentions about JFK's

lack of moral qualms in authorizing assassination attempts and the fear of blackmail

from J. Edgar Hoover inhibiting his commitment to Civil Rights, little substantiation is

offered.

Irving Bernstein is determined to substantiate his case that Kennedy was "a very suc-

cessful President" (p. 7), at least in terms of domestic policy. Bernstein portrays JFK

"emerging as a President of great stature when a mindless assassin in Dallas cut his life

short" (p. 298). A renowned labor historian, Bernstein has written an earnest book but

one which is benign to the point of being uncritical in its evaluation of the Kennedy

presidency. He readily provides excuses for the meager Kennedy legislative achieve-

ments-his need to "grow into his job" (p. 298), powerful congressional opposition

from the conservative coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats, and an uncer-

tain political mood in the country foremost among them. But Bernstein asserts that JFK

would have obtained all his major proposals-civil rights, tax reduction, aid to

• 36
 

76                                                          OHIO HISTORY

 

education, and Medicare-had he lived. The Kennedy promises, in short, were well on

their way to being kept. Such an assertion tends to ignore the legislative skill Lyndon

Johnson demonstrated in actually obtaining these measures, and ultimately it cannot be

proved.

Nonetheless, Bernstein's book is valuable. While his overall interpretation is uncon-

vincing, his detailed investigations reveal much about specific policy developments in

the Kennedy administration. He has mined the archival sources at the Kennedy Library

more effectively than has Reeves, although his practice of consolidating his notes does

not make his sources easily accessible. Across a range of issues Bernstein provides

helpful descriptions of the political context in which Kennedy had to operate, the sig-

nificant players within the bureaucracy and the Congress, and the role of major pres-

sure groups. He reveals a feel for the trials and tribulations of the policy-making

process which is missing from Reeves's more judgmental study. His account of the for-

mulation of the Kennedy economic policy under the influence of the Keynesians led by

Walter Heller and James Tobin is well done, as is his review of the debates involved in

framing policies in the education and health-care areas. These are important subjects to

which Reeves pays minimal attention.

In the crucial area of civil rights the differing interpretations of Reeves and Bernstein

are well displayed. Both acknowledge the limited achievements of Kennedy in this area

as of late 1963 but, whereas Reeves attributes this to failures of moral leadership and

political will, Bernstein argues that it resulted mainly from a deliberate and justifiable

tactical decision to pursue executive actions first and only then legislation. Surely there

is some truth in each case.

In vivid contrast to Reeves, Bernstein steers well clear of John Kennedy's private

life. In his analysis it was apparently irrelevant to his actions as president. Except for a

brief examination of the establishment and operation of the Peace Corps, Bernstein

gives little attention to foreign policy. This is understandable in a book devoted to

domestic policies, but perhaps it should be accounted for prior to pronouncing the

Kennedy presidency successful or otherwise. Also Bernstein fails to provide a sense of

the relative importance which JFK accorded to domestic and foreign affairs.

Unfortunately, neither Reeves nor Bernstein includes a bibliography in his book.

Reeves work is marred by annoying typographical errors, such as on page 372 where

Great Britain is described as a Cuban ally! Finally, this also can be said with certainty

of both books-they are not the last word on John Kennedy or his presidency.

 

University of Notre Dame                       Wilson D. Miscamble, C.S.C.

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