Ohio History Journal

Book Reviews

 

 

Losing Our Souls: The American Experience in the Cold War. By Edward Pessen.

(Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1993. ²⁵⁵p.; notes, index. $24.95.)

 

Assigning responsibility for the Cold War has long been one of the indoor

sports of American scholars. Led by those favorably inclined toward American

motives in general and those of the Truman administration in particular, the ma-

jority of historians, one can safely say, have placed major blame on the Soviet

Union and Joe Stalin. Fueled by its World War II triumphs and acquisitions, as

well as its devotion to the scientific imperatives of Marxism-Leninism, an insa-

tiably expansionist postwar Soviet Union looked for new worlds to conquer, in

the bargain threatening freedom, democracy, capitalism, and everything else the

United States held dear.

Other historians and political commentators, less numerous but equally erudite,

such as Walter Lippmann, Hans Morgenthau, and, eventually, George F. Kennan,

took a more dispassionate view. They felt, with some variation, that what we de-

picted as a Moscow-directed effort to gobble up territory and spread Communism

was actually a foreign policy as much Russian as Communist; that Stalin, however

repulsive and devoted to Communism, had limited foreign policy goals; and that

the United States, by overreacting to what it saw as primarily a military threat,

simply made matters worse by assuring that there would be no diplomatic solution

to what was essentially a political problem.

Finally, and somewhat later, there emerged in reaction to the first two groups a

coterie of scholars sometimes labeled "revisionists," at other times the "New

Left." These historians, while admitting that Stalin and the Soviet Union were

flawed, placed the onus for the Cold War on the United States and capitalism. Led

by William Appleman Williams, scholars such as Gar Alperovitz, David Horowitz,

Gabriel Kolko, and Lloyd Gardner maintained that, to some degree or the other,

American foreign policy ostensibly aimed at countering a sinister Soviet threat to

freedom was actually designed to serve American capitalist interests intent on

penetrating into and controlling European markets. In short, the Cold War was

but another chapter of American economic imperialism. It is with this group that

Edward Pessen sides, in spades.

Bound to provoke both liberals and conservatives, Losing Our Souls has, as the

saying goes, its bad and good points. First of all, the bad. In his efforts to be fair

to Joe Stalin, Pessen paints a man probably not recognizable to most

Sovietologists, a despot who, although he ruled with an iron hand, was certainly

no threat to American interests and international peace. Pessen goes to great

pains in comparing Stalin to Hitler, as well as Communism to Nazism, in one case

coming up with a real wowser: "Stalin's brutal suppression of political dissenters,

for all its repulsiveness, fell a good deal short of Nazi extermination of entire eth-

nic and religious groups, not for what they had allegedly done but for what Nazi

theorists called their biological or innate inferiority" (p. 78). To ask the obvious,

when did Stalin ever exhibit the slightest compunction about killing off entire

groups-ethnic, religious, or otherwise (ten thousand or so Polish officers in the

Katyn Forest was not a bad day's work)? Moreover, were not his brutal suppres-

sions inclined to be terminal? Pessen's Stalin is not the one we encounter in the

works of such observers of the Soviet scene as George F. Kennan, Adam Ulam,

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Book Reviews                                                         89

 

Robert Tucker, and Robert Conquest. (Pessen quotes Kennan selectively and Ulam

only once. Ulam, in fact, directly rebuts the revisionist argument in both his The

Rivals and Dangerous Relations, calling it little more than a political polemic.)

In any event, to choose between Hitler's Nazism and Stalin's Communism is

something like choosing between death by strangulation or by suffocation. Does

it really make all that much difference to the victim whether he is executed in the

name of the master race, the international proletariat, or whatever ideological

fury?

Pessen also stumbles at times by comparing favorably Stalin's "realist" behav-

ior to the frenzied actions of such fanatical Cold Warriors as Harry Truman and

Clark Clifford. As Robert Maddox put it on page 7 of his The New Left and the

Origins of the Cold War, "Revisionists almost always employ a double-standard:

Russia's actions are justified or explained by reference to national security or

Realpolitik. Western actions are measured against some high ideal and found

wanting." That the Truman administration was not without sin goes without say-

ing. But to compare Stalin's behavior favorably with that of any twentieth cen-

tury statesman (for the sake of fairness we will consider Hitler) requires a leap of

imagination.

Also questionable is Pessen's flat acceptance of the revisionist claim that

Truman's primary reason for dropping the atomic bomb on Japan was to intimi-

date the Russians into behaving themselves rather than to shorten the war and

save lives. That to intimidate the Russians was another reason makes sense; that

it was the primary reason is nonsense. Here Pessen seems to forget the war in the

Pacific and how much we hated the Japanese by 1945 (see John Dower's fine War

Without Mercy). The memory of Pearl Harbor and the Bataan death march still

rankled, and virulent racism made them seem worse. Moreover, such horrible is-

land battles as Iwo Jima and especially Okinawa, battles in which both sides suf-

fered severely, provided evidence that the nearer the Allies got to Japan, the more

tenaciously the Japanese fought. What had happened on those islands led to

nightmarish estimates of what the human cost of invading Japan itself would be.

Douglas MacArthur, not prone to exaggerate such things, calculated that approxi-

mately one million people would perish on Kyushu and Honshu alone; other esti-

mates ran into the millions. Thus there was ample reason to use any weapon, in-

cluding the atomic bomb, that might make unnecessary the invasion of Japan.

(For a fine recent look at Okinawa's role in our dropping the bomb, the reader is

referred to George Feifer's Tennozan: The Battle of Okinawa and the Atomic

Bomb. For the views of one who saw the bomb as a blessing, see Paul Fussell's

Thank God for the Atom Bomb and Other Essays.) Yet on pages 100-101, Pessen

cites the view of Rufus Miles, "a long time American official," that such esti-

mates, along with the arguments that dropping the bomb might actually save

lives, were falsehoods designed to lend legitimacy to our using the bomb. In real-

ity, according to Miles (and Pessen), "American deaths," had we invaded Japan,

"almost surely would not have been more than 20,000 and probably less than

15,000 (Japanese deaths not included). These figures are at great variance with

those of most military historians, although no doubt acceptable to those con-

vinced that the bombs were actually Truman's opening shots in the Cold War.

Pessen is on surer ground when he attacks the overly zealous search for

Communists at home, what we generally term "McCarthyism," and the intimidat-

ing effect it had on any person or cause the Right deemed to be subversive, near-

subversive, or potentially subversive. Prominent and not so prominent politicos,

governmental security committees and subcommittees, state, local, and neighbor-

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hood vigilance organizations, and independent paladins of the wild yahoo all ac-

tively worked to ferret out those either part of or in league with the Red Menace.

In doing so they hyperbolized the internal threat, which was actually somewhere

between minimal and nonexistent. Much of what went on in the name of patrio-

tism would today strike one as funny, had it not been so tragic. Pessen provides

some excellent examples of red, white, and blue rib-ticklers: Indiana forced pro-

fessional wrestlers to take a loyalty oath, and Cincinnati changed the name of its

baseball team from Reds to Redlegs, to cite but two (p. 145). The list is endless,

and most cases were not funny at all, as they involved some Constitutional viola-

tion or the other resulting in victims being forcibly unemployed and socially os-

tracized.

Also sound is Pessen's depiction of the extent to which our Cold Warriors went

to combat the Communist virus abroad. Just about every foreign Communist, or

about to be Communist, or perhaps to be Communist, government was fair game

for the long arm of American governmental organizations dedicated to defending

the Free World (which included a number of countries led by unsavory right-wing

governments who, for various reasons, were enthusiastic anti-Communists).

Numerous American agencies working out of our executive branch-the CIA comes

immediately to mind-were liberally funded and operated so clandestinely that of-

ten their sponsors were not aware of their doings. They ended by giving covert

operations a bad name. The CIA, as we now know, busied itself with the type of

activities generally thought to go against the American grain. It intervened in

foreign elections, going so far as to hire mobs to demonstrate against unfriendly

candidates, sponsored right-wing speakers and seminars, and subsidized numerous

right-thinking publications. It also involved itself in numerous assassination

plots-no one knows for sure how many-against such foreign leaders as Diem,

Castro, Lumumba, and Allende. From 1967 to 1973, under the code name CHAOS,

it engaged in God knows how many covert operations against American citizens

(including drug testing and, as recently disclosed, radiation experiments), in the

bargain violating its own charter (to say nothing of the Constitution) as well as

arousing the wrath of the FBI which figured it had a monopoly on this sort of

thing (see pp. 182-187 for more of such activities). The CIA also specialized in

spreading "disinformation," in one case in Vietnam being so successful that

columnist Joe Alsop unwittingly reported its lie as genuine news (pp. 190-191).

Such activities present that age-old dilemma about this type of organization, be it

labeled CIA, KGB, or what have you: to be successful it must operate secretly; but

if it operates secretly, who knows for sure what it is up to? Perhaps, too, there is a

third horn of the dilemma-whether it really contributes to the cause of democ-

racy.

Our crusade against Communism was made simpler by our acceptance of

Christian good-bad dualism, one good God and one bad Devil (read: God-fearing

Free World v. atheistic Communism). From our point of view, the Cold War was,

in essence, a Holy War, a good versus evil contest. But the problem, which helped

keep the Cold War running, was that the Communists had a good-bad dualism of

their own: peace-loving international proletarianism versus insatiably greedy

American-led capitalism. Just switch a word here and there and both sides might

have been using the same scriptwriters. The result was an action-reaction strug-

gle, as though validating some Newtonian law (or was it just a case of my old

Manichean can whip your old Manichean). Pessen catches part of this dualism,

the mind-set in rigid antagonism to its opposite mind-set, but only part. He

seems to reserve his heavy artillery for America's heavy-handed crusaders, whom

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Book Reviews                                                         91

 

he quotes liberally, while taking only potshots at such Communist firebrands as

Stalin, Krushchev, Brezhnev, and Mao. There was enough blame to go around, and

recognition of this would have lent balance to Pessen's complaint.

Pessen is perhaps at his best in pointing out the consequences of the Cold War

we waged. Our search for security through large-scale arming led to even less secu-

rity as the Russians (and Asian cousins) simply, and predictably, replied in kind,

with the result being what appeared as a never-ending arms race which neither side

could win. Two early casualties of the war were reason and sanity. Consider the

Strangeloveian comments of two intellectual worthies contemplating the eventu-

ality of a nuclear war: Herman Kahn, commenting on our survivors of a nuclear

exchange, opined that they would "be a hardy breed, capable of wonders" (p. 201),

while William F. Buckley, a Catholic himself, replied to the activities of antinu-

clear Catholic priests by saying that they encouraged "idolatrous veneration of

human life" (p. 108). Shooting, or hot, wars in Korea and Vietnam, plus an unlim-

ited number of brushfire wars and counterinsurgency campaigns, were terribly de-

structive of human life and our environment, to say nothing of being hellishly

expensive. At home, in the name of preserving freedom, our government rou-

tinely deprived Americans of their rights as citizens, and abroad we behaved in a

manner that contradicted our own ideals of how sovereign countries should treat

other sovereign countries. Pessen comes close: we might not have lost our souls,

but we lost much.

All in all, Pessen has written a passionate, if polemical, account of what he

feels to be America's large share of responsibility for the Cold War and everything

that went with it. Losing Our Souls is a good read, but loses some of its bite be-

cause of Pessen's frequent lapses into the language of attack (much like a

Jacksonian railing against the national bank) and his Oliver Stoneish way of in-

terpreting events. He does not help his case by in several instances beginning

sentences with "It was no accident," a lead-in apt to remind the more discerning

reader of a certain angry scientific socialist who wrote in the nineteenth century.

All of which is to say that the book, although worth reading, lacks balance. It

will likely appeal most to those of a certain leftish political slant, but will make

few friends from the National Review and American Spectator crowd.

 

Ohio Historical Society                              Robert L. Daugherty

 

 

Red Hunting in the Promised Land: Anticommunism and the Making of America.

By Joel Kovel. (New York: Basic Books, 1994. xiv + 331p.; notes, index.

$25.00.)

 

During the nearly half-century of the Cold War both popular and elite anticom-

munism in the United States were always more than mere Anti-Communism. The

international Communist movement and the USSR were the official enemies, but

the real enemy they signified lay deep within the national psyche. So powerful

was the evil and so great was the danger of Communism when viewed from the per-

spective of anticommunist ideology that "all moral and rational comparisons dis-

appear, like light sucked in by the virtually infinite gravity of a cosmological

black hole" (p. 9). The moral abyss that resulted from what Kovel calls the black

hole effect swallowed rational analysis and national self-examination, blinded

Americans to their faults, and justified injustice and aggression at home and

abroad.

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92                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

In Red Hunting in the Promised Land, Kovel, Alger Hiss Professor of Social

Studies at Bard College (Hiss is also one of the book's dedicatees), seeks to decon-

struct the texts of the Cold War American anticommunist consensus. He has writ-

ten what is, despite seventy-two pages of notes, an impressionistic, synthetic

work buttressed by an impressive array of secondary literature and informed by left

wing Cold War revisionism, especially the work of Joyce and Gabriel Kolko.

Kovel does not pretend to a specious "objectivity" or attempt to conceal his pre-

sent-mindedness or his views on contemporary issues, including a defense of cam-

pus "political correctness." His main political aim seems to be a call for the re-

vival of an American communist (small c) movement which dares to dream of real

social change and is inspired by the divine madness of a Quixote, "which is no

mental illness but the existential courage that wills to be mad rather than to live

an empty, ungiving life" (p. 242).

His approach is to weave together the biographical narratives of various sorts

of anticommunists so as to assemble an ideology and to trace that ideology back

to the European invasion of the new world. The original "dark reds" were Indians,

not Bolsheviks or Communists. As prologue to Cold War anticommunism, Kovel

presents chapters on the Red Scare of 1919 and on outsider Father Charles

Coughlin's populist (or peasant), anti-semitic evocation of communism as the

"dark Other." But not until after World War II when the national elites made it the

ideological anchor of the security state did anticommunism smother rational dis-

course. Examples of various types (pathologies?) of elite anticommunism follow.

Some chapter titles express the spirit: "George Kennan: Anticommunism from

the Mountaintop"; "John Foster Dulles and His Terrible Swift Sword"; "J. Edgar

Hoover and the Slimy Wastes of Communism"; "Joe McCarthy: The Beast of

Anticommunism"; and "James Jesus Angelton: Anticommunism as Deception and

Paranoia."

Kovel wants "to show how Communist-hating is used opportunistically as an

instrument to secure power and wealth, but also how anticommunism comes to

signify some personal deployment of desire and fear, mediated through the gen-

dered body and/or the fortunes of kinship, as well as by various ethnic and spiri-

tual pathways" (p. 11). Where Kovel disenthralls himself from such language, Red

Hunting in the Promised Land is a rousing polemic to give heart to a disheartened

left in these reactionary times. Much of the writing is colorful, impassioned, and

richly allusive.

Certainly, among its many excesses, anticommunist ideology distorted reality.

Kovel is surely correct when he condemns the demonization of Communists by an-

ticommunists who used a special vocabulary and ideology that led to a black hole.

The trouble is that Kovel himself uses special vocabularies and ideologies of mod-

ern academic radicalism to demonize the anticommunists. If we embrace his ex-

planation, are we not in danger of slipping into the black hole from the other

side?

 

Fairmont State College                             Charles H. McCormick

 

 

A Rebel in Defense of Tradition: The Life and Politics of Dwight MacDonald. By

Michael Wreszin. (New York: Basic Books, 1994. xviii + 590p.; illustrations,

notes, index. $30.00.)

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Book Reviews                                                         93

 

From the 1930s to the 1960s, Dwight MacDonald wrote book and film reviews

for Encounter, Esquire, New Yorker, and Partisan Review. According to Michael

Wreszin's provocative, flawed biography, MacDonald was a rebel in defense of ed-

ucated, upper-class taste. Thanks to old school ties, MacDonald landed a job at

Fortune magazine, earning $10,000 a year in the midst of the Great Depression.

MacDonald soon left Fortune to live off of his wife's trust fund. Freed from the

demands of having to earn a living, he wrote Marxist critiques of the unenlight-

ened masses.

MacDonald hoped to radicalize the working class. Unfortunately, he never met

any working-class people at his cocktail parties. In 1938, the Trotskyite dis-

missed the leaders of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) as "labor bu-

reaucrats" (pp. 114, 220). MacDonald also lampooned CIO activist Sidney

Hillman, making much of his "pointed nose" and "East Side Jewish accent" (p.

72).

Wreszin argues that MacDonald transcended his anti-Semitic upbringing. The

author's evidence contradicts his claims. In 1944, MacDonald denied that the

Nazis were operating extermination camps. He also accused those who advocated

the creation of a Jewish nation of being "fascist-revisionist Jews" (p. 146). After

the Allies liberated Auschwitz, MacDonald queried, "Does the extermination of

Jews make the Jewish culture one whit more interesting?" (pp. 230-31).

MacDonald's answer was no.

Believing that sexual experimentation would liberate him from capitalist re-

pression, MacDonald hosted nude parties and had several affairs. When clothed,

he dealt with international politics. MacDonald contended during World War II

that Churchill, Hitler, and Franklin Roosevelt were interchangeable totalitarians.

Consequently, he advocated sabotage to undermine America's military mobiliza-

tion. By the 1960s, MacDonald became the darling of campus radicals, stridently

opposing the Vietnam War. Many upper-middle-class student militants appreci-

ated his view that intellectuals, not reactionary workers, were the revolutionary

vanguard.

MacDonald was unable to sustain an idea beyond 20 pages. This may explain

his jealousy of John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway. Since they were popular

and he was not, their novels must be trash. Ultimately, MacDonald succumbed to

alcoholism, being unable to write anything in the last decade of his life. Wreszin

admits that MacDonald had lost his creative spark. However, it is difficult to dis-

cern from Wreszin's biography if MacDonald ever had anything worthwhile to

contribute to America's intellectual life.

There are other problems with Wreszin's book. He mentions events and actors,

such as the Smith Act trials and Whittaker Chambers, but does not develop the his-

torical context. Wreszin assumes we share his view that Richard Nixon was a vi-

cious red-baiter. The author fails to give any reason as to why we must come to

that conclusion. Further, Wreszin chastises MacDonald for his opposition to

Stalin which, he contends, advanced the political fortunes of the Right. To

Wreszin, there are no enemies on the Left. At the same time, Wreszin refuses to

make any distinctions among the Right. All conservatives are mendacious, no-

tably Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz. Wreszin claims that such Jews were

upwardly mobile and socially insecure-they wanted to become part of the corpo-

rate Establishment which MacDonald lambasted.

Wreszin's writing requires help. He employs sequential sentence leads, contrac-

tions, split infinitives, awkward phrasing, passive voice constructions, and

prepositions at the end of sentences. Moreover, he uses irrelevant material that

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94                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

does not advance the narrative. For example, he introduces Pittsburgh socialist

Rose Stein and New York citric Tom Wolfe. After several pages of discussion that

lead nowhere, Stein and Wolfe disappear. Wreszin's ideas are thought-provoking,

but his lack of a good editor makes this biography a painful read.

 

Ohio University, Lancaster                          Kenneth J. Heineman

 

 

George Wallace:     American Populist.   By Stephan Lesher.   (Reading,

Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1994. xx + 587p.; illus-

trations, notes, index. $29.95.)

 

Stephan Lesher opens his biography of George Wallace with Cassius' famous

line to Brutus in Julius Caesar: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars, but in

ourselves." It is a particularly apt choice. Wallace, the long-time governor of

Alabama and four-time presidential candidate, made his name as a champion of

segregation and aspired to the White House by playing on white opposition to

racial equality and social reform. He therefore seems the ideal vehicle for an ex-

ploration of the dark side of American political life: the parochialism that makes

change a threat; the racism that makes justice something to be feared.

Unfortunately, Lesher does not make that theme central to his book. To be sure,

he recounts in detail Wallace's bitter defense of Jim Crow. Elected governor of

Alabama in 1962 pledging to defend "segregation now, segregation tomorrow,

segregation forever," he spent the next few years battling African-American ac-

tivists and federal authorities, in Birmingham, at the University of Alabama, and

in Selma. Lesher likewise details Wallace's slashing campaigns for president,

particularly in 1964 and 1968, when he red-baited the civil rights and anti-

Vietnam war movements, attacked welfare recipients, denounced the Supreme

Court, intellectuals, and liberal elites, and promised to end social unrest through

the vigorous application of police power. Lesher presents his narrative with style

and verve, managing to make even such thoroughly documented events as

Birmingham and Selma seem fresh. He also provides important new information

about the Segregationists' view of the African-American freedom struggle, much

of it from the sixty hours of interviews Lesher conducted with the former gover-

nor. The result is the first substantial biography of a figure who, as Lesher argues,

helped to set the agenda that continues to define American politics today.

Lesher's analysis of Wallace, however, undercuts the power of the story he tells.

A journalist who covered Wallace for southern newspapers and Newsweek, Lesher

admits to a grudging respect for and admiration of the governor. He therefore

hopes the biography will serve, in part, to rehabilitate Wallace, to show that he

was not simply the racist that he was portrayed to be by his liberal critics in the

1960s and early 1970s. To that end, Lesher underplays Wallace's racial views and

policies. He does so in two ways. Like Wallace, he repeatedly points out that in

the 1950s and 1960s racism was as pervasive in the north as it was in the south.

And he contends that despite his racist rhetoric Wallace was a populist who was in-

tent on improving the lives of the poor in Alabama, black and white, and on em-

powering the "common man" nationwide.

The argument is not convincing. Northern society was certainly shot through

with racism, but that fact does not lessen Wallace's embrace of the most virulent

form of racial thinking nor his willingness to fan the flames of anti-black terror in

the state he governed. Lesher's analysis of Wallace's political program, more-

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Book Reviews                                                         95

 

over, fails to recognize the contradiction between racism and populism. As C.

Vann Woodward noted decades ago, Jim Crow served as the primary prop for the

South's conservative political regimes, dividing the region's working class, dis-

enfranchising a significant portion fo the poor, and thus making it all but impos-

sible for southern progressives to enact the economic and social reforms that

Lesher claims Wallace supported. The linkage of racism and opposition to gov-

ernment action in the 1980s-a linkage that Wallace did so much to forge-like-

wise led not to populism but to its opposite: national and state administrations

committed to eviscerating reform and aiding the wealthy. Despite Lesher's efforts

to rehabilitate his subject, then, we are left with the inescapable fact that George

Wallace was, first and foremost, a racist whose particular political genius was rec-

ognizing that so many other Americans were as well.

 

University of Massachusetts, Amherst                        Kevin Boyle

 

 

Reconciliation Road: A Family Odyssey of War and Honor. By John Douglas

Marshall. (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1993. xiii + 296p.; illustra-

tions, notes, bibliography. $24.95.)

 

That the Vietnam war had profound effect upon America cannot be questioned. It

raised serious questions about the prowess of what was thought to be the world's

foremost military machine, and even more questions about the good sense of those

super-bright civilian strategists who, on the ill-founded assumption that there was

a military solution to every Cold War political problem, thrust that machine into

an Asian country of little strategic value. And the war, even when concluded,

would not go away; it lay there in the recesses of the American conscience, fester-

ing like some ulcerous sore that refused to stay bandaged. Until, finally, there

took place in the Persian Gulf a conflict that lent itself to the American way of

war, and which provided an enemy silly enough to stand up and fight on our terms.

The results were predictable. Once again, as in World War II, American firepower

reigned supreme, and, in the words of George Bush, the United States finally

kicked the Vietnam syndrome.

But Vietnam was also fought on a lower, more personal level within the United

States itself. Here it pitted, among others, hawks against doves, younger genera-

tion against older generation, realists against idealists, and, in the case of the

book being reviewed, family member against family member.

Vietnam was not Samuel L. A. Marshall at his best. By then, Marshall, often

identified as "Slam," was firmly established as an authority on small-unit behavior

in combat and military history in general. In World War II in the Pacific he intro-

duced the technique of extracting lessons from combat by interviewing troops as

soon as possible after battle. He continued this method in Europe, Korea, and

Vietnam, with a side trip along the way with the Israeli army. His findings became

books, including one in particular which would indirectly lead to his grandson's

writing this book: Men Against Fire, published in 1947. In this book Slam

maintained that, based on direct interviews, only from 15 to 25 percent of

American infantrymen in World War II fired their weapons, an assertion generally

accepted-at least it was not openly questioned-until 1989 when Harold

Leinbaugh and Roger Spiller published an article in American Heritage which chal-

lenged, in undiplomatic terms, not only Marhsall's firing percentages but also his

entire reputation as a military historian. Their conclusion: Marshall had lied

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96                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

about his after-battle interviews and a number of other incidents in his career.

This is where John Douglas Marshall, Slam's grandson, entered the picture.

When the article broke, Slam was dead (having died in 1977), but his son-John

Douglas's father-and John Douglas's younger brother were alive, and outraged.

They convinced a reluctant John that he, being a journalist for the Seattle Post-

Intelligencer (and also coauthor of Volcano: The Eruption of Mount St. Helens, a

national best seller), was the only family member capable of clearing his grandfa-

ther's name. That John agreed to do so, albeit with some misgivings, is what

makes his story worth telling; for on the face of things, considering his relation-

ship with Slam during the last years of his life, he could justifiably have begged

off on the grounds that perhaps someone else, or anyone else, had better reason to

rescue the old warrior-writer's reputation.

John Marshall and Slam had shared a fairly normal familial relationship until

that day in 1971 when John, taking a moral and political stand against Vietnam,

applied for a discharge from the Army as a conscientious objector. He attempted

to explain himself to an infuriated Slam-in a nation of hawks and doves Slam was

an eagle-in a letter, only to receive in return what must have been the ugliest let-

ter ever written by a grandfather to his grandson (David Halberstam makes much

the same point writing elsewhere). Beginning with "Dear Mr. Marshall," the let-

ter, in part, merits quoting: "That the Army seemingly prefers to give you an

honorable separation means nothing to this part of what was once your family. . .

.You are not entitled to an honorable and you are simply playing the freeloader

on the taxpayer. We [he and his wife, Cate] know why you quit. It wasn't con-

science. You simply chickened out. You didn't have the guts it takes. Vietnam or

any point of danger was unacceptable to you. You may fool the Army but you can-

not fool and fail your Family at the same time. No male among us has ever been

like that and the women, too, thank heaven, are stronger. That means you don't

belong .... You will not be welcome here again and you are herewith constrained

not to use our name as family in any connection" (p. 7). (Slam's response to his

grandson's action can be compared to that of Lucian Truscott III, a West Pointer

who served in Korea and Vietnam, to his son, Lucian IV, author of best-selling

Dress Gray. Although Lucian IV, also a West Pointer, protested Vietnam by re-

signing his commission, his father stuck by him, going so far as to express pride

that his son had the guts to stand up to an older generation. Besides, no issue was

important enough to break up the family.) Excommunicated, Marshall neverthe-

less set out in 1989 in search of his grandfather's past, taking an unpaid leave of

absence from his job to do so.

Marshall's quest, which took him over much of the country, included visits to

several libraries that house either Slam's papers or papers relating to him, and in-

terviews with numerous military historians and retired Army officers, some of

whom had known Slam personally. Militarily, Marshall's findings ruled, in gen-

eral, for Slam against his American Heritage critics. True, he at times distorted,

exaggerated, fudged, and even lied, especially about his own combat experiences:

for example, during World War I, he had not received a battlefield commission, as

he had claimed, nor had he been at the side of a buddy who was shot in the head.

Nevertheless, his writings were endorsed by such heavyweights as John Keegan

(who thought him "touched by genius," p. 32), Forrest Pogue, Martin Blumenson,

George F. Kennan, Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., Stephen Ambrose, Gen. William E.

Dupuy, Eliot A. Cohen, John Gooch, and Geoffrey Perrett. Some did question the

overall quality of his works, including Clay Blair who thought them "on the whole

somewhat sloppy" (p. 100). But is was Charles Burton Marshall, Slam's brother

• 9
 

Book Reviews                                                         97

 

and no mean observer of world affairs in his own right, who put his finger on

what, in this writer's opinion, was Slam's major weakness as a student of war: "He

was too occupied with tactical techniques and that made him receptive to the fatal

mistake of putting forces in battle without legitimizing it, recognizing there was a

need to have declared war first" (p. 218). It was this preoccupation with tactics, to

the neglect of strategic considerations, and the additional neglect of such profound

factors as the moral and political (all perhaps weaknesses typical of the autodi-

dact; Slam attended college only briefly), that blinded Slam to the views of those,

such as his grandson, who opposed America's activities in Vietnam. Marshal

Ferdinand Foch maintained that before entering war one should ask, De quoi s'agit-

il?-"What is it all about?" The question never entered Slam's mind.

John Douglas Marshall, at the end of his odyssey, has the final say on his

grandfather. Most of his flaws were personal rather than professional, writes

Marshall. Slam wrote that he should be "rated not by what I wrote, but how I

lived" (p. 280). But most of what he wrote still passes muster, while much of the

way he lived involved his hurting people, including almost every member of his

family, by being rigid, vindictive, mean, and even cruel. Slam also wrote that his

greatest compliment came from his wife, Cate (no leftish pacifist, either), who

told him, "I have never known you to be afraid of anything." The author com-

ments, rightly, "What a strange comment. . . but what an insight into his charac-

ter. ... he was still trying so hard to prove something. . . himself" (p. 281).

Well said. Slam, perhaps insecure beneath the showy surface, too often suffered

from Hemingwayitis, that compulsive urge to strut, to prove to everyone, includ-

ing himself, that he was one hell of a man. But would such a man, had he actually

existed, have written such a letter to his grandson?

The author has written an informative, touching book, recounting how he at

long last exorcised a number of demons that had haunted him. His travels and re-

search enabled him to forgive his grandfather, to appreciate the importance of

family, and to come to grips with a war that had been so damaging to his life. He

emerges from his odyssey finally at peace with himself. Now, if he had just seen

fit to add an index to his book.

 

Ohio Historical Society                               Robert L. Daugherty

 

 

Free People of Color: Inside the African American Community. By James Oliver

Horton. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993. ix + 238p.;

illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $39.95 cloth; $15.95 paper.)

 

James Oliver Horton is Professor of History and American Civilization at

George Washington University, and Director of the Afro-American Communities

Project at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History.

Horton's work brings together the diverse bits and pieces on northern African-

American communities in nineteenth century America. It is a useful synthesis.

The author begins the book with a review of previous studies concerning his

topic, then moves on to a chapter on "Blacks in Antebellum Boston." Horton

covers the migration of blacks to the city and their problems with immigrant

groups such as the Irish. He also presents the efforts of Boston's black commu-

nity to aid fugitive slaves, and the growing militancy with the passage of the

Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and the Dred Scott decision.

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98                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

Chapter Two, "Generations of Protest," surveys the activities in which African

Americans participated for mutual "support and protection." Horton also covers

the actions of early black preachers in great detail. In Chapter Three, "Links to

Bondage," Horton examines the Underground Railroad. Traditionally historians

have been influenced by the "proslavery southern press" which claims that whites

were the organizers of the Underground Railroad, ignoring black participation.

Horton shows that blacks were very involved in aiding slaves escape from the

South through their own communication and kinship networks.

The middle chapters examine gender role, national identity, and color. Horton

explores slavery's attempt to deny black manhood, and provides opinions by

Thomas R. Dew, Thomas R. R. Cobb, and Thomas Jefferson that "African

Americans were an inferior species and could not be granted freedom." With the

Dred Scott decision in 1857, which declared that African Americans were not citi-

zens of the United States, black activists such as Soujourner Truth and Frederick

Douglass continued to work at ending slavery and promoted other noble causes

such as gaining women's rights.

Horton rejects Carl Degler's position that "There are only two qualities in the

United States racial pattern. . . white or black." Variation in skin color led to spe-

cial advantages for some blacks. Mulattoes enjoyed a "middling position" be-

tween whites and blacks, because whites believed that the infusion of "white

blood" made them superior to darker blacks. Color hues led to a stratification in

black society that lingers today.

At the onset of the nineteenth century many African American could trace their

American ancestry back several generations, but most whites considered them as

non-Americans. Horton probes the "Double Consciousness" or "dual heritage"

that blacks developed. During the American Revolution some blacks joined the

British while others fought with the Americans. African Americans also distin-

guished themselves during the Civil War. By 1925 blacks were less likely to use

the word African in naming their churches and other organizations, reflecting that

their heritage had become American instead of African, even though they were de-

nied privileges such as voting or serving on juries.

Horton dispels the myth of the illiterate black. Newspapers and other written

materials existed which were an alternate news source to white printed materials.

In the final chapters, Horton displays that blacks have not been at odds with all

whites. In Buffalo, New York, they developed harmonious relationships with

German immigrants. Many interracial marriages occurred between the groups. By

1855 there were forty-eight mixed couples in Buffalo, which was in contrast to the

battles that blacks fought with the Irish and other immigrants.

The book is a brilliant and creative work that all scholars should read. It is re-

markably well written and painstakingly researched. Horton has blended several

decades of inquiry on African Americans which explains the struggles and com-

plexity they suffered in gaining a place in American society.

 

Stanford, Indiana                                    David L. Kimbrough

 

 

Indiana's African-American Heritage: Essays from Black History News & Notes.

Edited by Wilma L. Gibbs. (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1993. xix

+ 243p.; illustrations, notes, index. $27.95 cloth; $14.95 paper.)

• 11
 

Book Reviews                                                         99

 

Despite the book's caveat that "research into the history of African-

Americans . . . has been more extensive" in some other states, these essays

suggest that black history is alive and well in the Hoosier state (xvi). The 16

essays originally appeared in Black History News and Notes, a newsletter of the

Indiana Historical Society.  The contributors include academic and public

historians, graduate students and a lawyer.

Five topics provide the book's organization: Education and Culture, Women,

Cities and Rural Communities, Biographies, and Indiana African-American

History Sources. These are categories of convenience; other themes emerge from

the essays. One reflects the struggles of African-Americans to establish communi-

ties and institutions while confronting racism. In "Black Rural Settlements in

Indiana before 1860," Xenia Cord traces the settlements of North Carolina

African-Americans. She finds a link between white Quakers who manumitted their

slaves in North Carolina and moved north themselves. Although "Ohio was the

primary resettlement area," Indiana also attracted these Quakers, who with African-

Americans settled close to each other and often supported anti-slavery and under-

ground railroad activities (p. 100). Similarly, during the 1879 "Exodus," black

Hoosiers encouraged and supported black North Carolinians to escape the worsen-

ing conditions in the South (Arnold Cooper, "Rev. John H. Clay and the 1879

Black Exodus to Greencastle, Indiana").

Other essays trace the efforts to establish schools or gain access to quality edu-

cation. Not surprisingly, many of the first efforts came from religious organiza-

tions (Lori Jacobi, "More than a Church: The Educational Role of the African

Methodist Episcopal Church in Indiana, 1844-1861"). For black residents of

post-Civil War Indianapolis, school integration became the goal (Stanley Warren,

"The Evolution of Secondary Schooling for Blacks in Indianapolis, 1869-1930").

While the Indiana legislature removed legal barriers to integrated education in

1869, segregation remained widespread. In Indianapolis residential segregation

produced segregated elementary schools; the battle focused on integrating high

schools. Although the courts blocked a 1927 residential segregation ordinance,

they permitted construction of a Jim Crow high school in 1929. Despite over-

crowding, Crispus Attucks High School provided "good educational possibilities"

and served as "a true community center" (p. 47). Similarly, Madame C. J. Walker

sued an Indianapolis theater that discriminated against her; she also helped estab-

lish the Walker Theater (Gloria Gibson-Hudson, "To All Classes; to All Races;

This House is Dedicated: The Walker Theater Revisited").

A third theme reflects the individual efforts of black Hoosiers to establish ca-

reers. Essays briefly trace the lives of Lillian Thomas Fox, an Indianapolis jour-

nalist (1866-1917); Charles "Buster" Hall, a "Tuskegee" trained "ace" fighter pilot

during World War II; artist-illustrator-cartoonist H. J. Lewis (1837-1891); archi-

tect Samuel Plato (1882-1957), and painter-muralist William Edouard Scott (1884-

1964).

Several essays discuss black historiography and archival collections in Indiana.

Emma Lou Thornbrough provides a valuable assessment of "The History of Black

Women in Indiana"; in separate articles Wilma Gibbs traces the development of

the Black Women in the Middle West Project (Indiana Historical Society) and re-

views the literature on Hoosier African-American History.

Overall the book is heavily weighted toward the pre-World War II period. As

Gibbs notes: "nothing has been written that addresses the population explosion

of blacks within the state after World War II" (p. 208). The essays are short, de-

scriptive accounts that are well written and interesting. Few are interpretive or an-

• 12
 

100                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

alytical; they lack comparative frameworks with which one could understand de-

velopments within Indiana and contrast them to the experiences of African-

Americans elsewhere. But the book does have much to commend itself; it is a trea-

sure-trove of interesting stories and, even more, exciting possibilities for future

research and study.

 

Cleveland State University                                James Borchert

 

 

Kenyon Cox, 1856-1919: A Life in American Art. By H. Wayne Morgan. (Kent:

The Kent State University Press, 1994.)

 

Scholarship in the history of American art has been dominated by the propo-

nents of modernism, leaving little room for the study of the numerous artists and

critics who opposed the movement. H. Wayne Morgan's second book on the con-

servative artist and critic Kenyon Cox, Kenyon Cox, 1856-1919:  A Life in

American Art, provides a close look at a man regarded as an influential enemy of

modernism. Simultaneously, the book also promotes a broader understanding of

the diverse artistic styles valued in this country at the turn of the century.

Cox, who has been passed off as stuffy and academic when not entirely ignored

by modernist scholars, was one of the most powerful voices of his day. A consci-

entious draftsman, painter, and teacher, he promoted classicism as the essential

ingredient in art. As a regular contributor to the magazines Nation, Century, and

Scribner's, Cox became widely known among the era's tastemakers for his belief

that art could be a force to maintain conservative social ideals. Morgan, therefore,

rightly considers the artist-critic within his cultural context as he conveys Cox's

"intellectual and emotional idealism" in the varied facets of the subject's life.

Morgan states that the book is intended as "a biography, not art criticism" (p.

x). As a biography it is a thorough, chronological review of Cox's life. The first

chapter, "An Unusual Young Man," examines his Ohio boyhood, poor health, po-

litical family, and early schooling. Chapters two and three record his artistic pur-

suits at the French Academy, his European travels, and a budding publishing career

in New York. The "New Relations" of chapter four refer to his increased success in

business and society, including his marriage to art student Louise King, while

chapter five reviews his rise to prominence as a leading muralist at the 1893

Columbian Exposition. Chapter six, "An Established Artist," reveals Cox busy

with commissions, exhibitions, a family, and summer retreats to Cornish, New

Hampshire. Cox's interest in classicism and the events of his "Last Years" are

clearly outlined in chapters seven and eight, reinforcing his artistic and social ide-

als to the end.

The text is well researched, sufficiently documented, and straight-forwardly writ-

ten. Morgan's unflinching evenness in presentation, however, does little to sup-

port the apparent intensity of Cox's life from his early confrontation with death to

his turbulent student days and through his heated public debates. Morgan's

strength is his ability to convey a sense of place to the reader through descriptive

details. Whether it be discussion of the Trumbull County Fairgrounds, the "up-

stairs" of the Parisian Ecole des Beaux-Arts, or the Ca' d'Oro in Venice, Morgan

clearly entices Ohioans, historians, and all travellers alike to share in Cox's expe-

riences.

By choosing to limit himself to Cox's biography and by electing not to discuss

"the formal qualities of [Cox's] pictures" (p. x) Morgan defines the boundaries of

• 13
 

Book Reviews                                                        101

 

his study. Yet, one must question if his choice is wise. Would not consideration of

Cox's work be useful in addition to the substantial review of the artist's life? And

are not these two areas so interrelated for this artist-critic that a dual consideration

is simply required for a complete understanding of this influential figure? Morgan,

I fear, has stopped short of a valuable opportunity. Nevertheless, the book serves

as an important reminder of the strength of classicism through a solid portrayal of

one of its greatest defenders.

 

The Ohio State University                                Thelma S. Rohrer

 

 

Going to Cincinnati: A History of the Blues in the Queen City. By Steven C.

Tracy. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993. xxxii + ²⁶²p.; illustra-

tions, notes, bibliography, interviews, discography, general index, song index.

$29.95.)

 

Stephen C. Tracy is himself a blues musician, as well as a writer for blues maga-

zines. As a teenager he wandered about the blues scene in Cincinnati and later in-

terviewed a number of the city's blues singers. He has tried in Going to Cincinnati

to show the relationship of the blues to urban ghettos during the 1920s and 1950s

and to sketch the blues revival of the 1960s and 1970s. What results is of more

interest to blues fans than to social historians, since much of Tracy's text is

usurped by an analysis of recordings and the circumstances under which they were

made rather than an examination of the African-American community that pro-

duced a unique music.

Although scant attention has been paid to Cincinnati as a blues center in earlier

volumes, the city has enjoyed a long and notable blues history. During the ante-

bellum years Ohio attracted Southern slaves eager to escape bondage, and

Cincinnati, a river port and manufacturing town, provided employment opportuni-

ties for African-Americans who sought freedom. Around World War I blacks mi-

grated to the city's overcrowded West End despite the squalor and injustices they

found there. Life in the West End was harsh; knifings and shootings occurred regu-

larly, while gambling, prostitution, and drugs-related problems were much in evi-

dence. Gradually an active black middle class emerged, but violence and low

health standards remained.

Cincinnati was well situated to host a variety of African-American musical

styles, and blues musicians after 1920 could be heard on the West End's street cor-

ners and in its speakeasies, bars, and nightclubs. Because river and railroad traffic

brought African-Americans from diverse locations, Cincinnati did not develop a

homogenous blues style, drawing instead from a number of sources, including

minstrel and vaudeville songs, folk tunes, and jug band music. The author con-

cludes that the history of the blues in the Queen City is largely a history of indi-

vidual performers and record labels rather than of a distinct regional style.

Blues performers in the city's West End are often obscure since official records

were sometimes casually kept. Concrete biographical information in many cases

is nonexistent. Tracy has attempted to fill in the gaps with city directories,

recording company files, and oral history, but he frequently has been forced to deal

with conflicting accounts and often relies on speculation. Samuel Jones, known

as "Stovepipe" because of the hat he wore, became a central figure on the black

music scene of the West End during the 1920s and 1930s, but information on the

singing harmonica player is random, as it is with Pigmeat Jarrett, Kid Cole, and

• 14
 

102                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

others. Kid Cole, Bob Coleman, and Sweet Papa Tadpole may be the same person,

and Coleman may have been singing from personal experience in "Sing Sing

Blues." But such uncertainties exist throughout Tracy's account.

Blues numbers in Cincinnati, as elsewhere, were filled with sexual double enten-

dre, a mixture of gaiety and sadness, denounced by religious leaders as "the devil's

music." Early West End blues singers recorded for the Gennett label in Richmond,

Indiana, and Okeh, Paramount, and Decca in Chicago. The Depression brought

hard times to the record industry, but King Records in Cincinnati during the 1950s

became the number one independent rhythm and blues label in the country, record-

ing Wynonie Harris, Earl Bostic, Ivory Joe Hunter, and others. Although King

was known for its smutty lyrics, the company infiltrated the white market and en-

joyed tremendous success with "Sixty Minute Man," "Work with Me Annie," and

later the hits of James Brown.

Steven Tracy has brought together some fascinating material; limitations of

sources in part explain his uneven text. What the historian would hope for is a

rounded narrative, full analysis, fewer vignettes, and less trivia. Unfortunately

Going to Cincinnati is another kind of book, one packed with names, lyrics, and

undigested facts.

 

Southern Methodist University                            Ronald L. Davis

 

 

FDR & Stalin: A Not So Grand Alliance, 1943-1945. By Amos Perlmutter.

(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1993. xiv + 331p.; illustrations,

notes, bibliography, chronology, index. $29.95.)

 

Amos Perlmutter, a Political Science professor at American University, argues

that Franklin D. Roosevelt's "amazing ignorance" (p. 215) of world politics led to

his appeasement of Joseph Stalin and the collapse of the prospect of a democratic

order after World War II. Concluding with a cliche, Perlmutter asserts that FDR

"helped win the war, but he lost the peace" (p. 215).

The author declares that the history of the Grand Alliance is "the story of a pres-

ident who continuously appeased Stalin," an approach that "ultimately resulted in

the abandonment of the larger victory for democracy" (p. xiv). After having acted

as a "covert agent of appeasement during the 1930s" (p. 3), Roosevelt entered into

a "perverse collaboration with Joseph Stalin" (p. 1) following U.S. entry in World

War II.

Perlmutter's central argument is that Roosevelt appeased Stalin by granting re-

peated concessions to the Soviet dictator without receiving any corresponding re-

ciprocity. "In short, FDR was a diplomatic and strategic failure" (p. 11).

This argument, which quickly devolves into a rambling diatribe, is flawed on a

number of counts. While it is well known that Roosevelt disdained grand strategy,

deferred crucial decisions to the last moment, and preferred to keep his own coun-

sel and "play it by ear"-all of which Perlmutter legitimately criticizes-it is not

true that FDR lacked a strategic objective in his role as commander-in-chief.

In fact, Roosevelt's overall objective was to secure the defeat of Nazism and

Japanese militarism while keeping American casualties to a minimum. It may well

be, as Perlmutter insists, that Roosevelt displayed a "fundamental misunderstand-

ing of Stalin and the Soviet system" (p. 65), but FDR did receive "reciprocity"

from the USSR in the form of fifty dead Soviets for every American loss of life.

Keeping casualties to a minimum was the essence of Roosevelt's strategy, a fact

• 15
 

Book Reviews                                                        103

 

that Perlmutter dismisses in his obsession with blaming everything that went

wrong in the war and postwar period on FDR.

Perlmutter invokes well-worn criticisms of the policy of unconditional surren-

der and Roosevelt's handling of the second front issue. The author approvingly

quotes George F. Kennan's observation that the United States was powerless to

prevent Soviet domination of Poland, but then states that "Roosevelt bargained

away Poland" (pp. 166-67). Perlmutter is on stronger ground when he shows that

Roosevelt rejected the argument, now known to be true, that the Soviets perpe-

trated the Katyn Forest massacre (p. 121).

Still, there is virtually no balance to Perlmutter's analysis. Roosevelt's advis-

ers are condemned as sycophants, including a description of Averill Harriman as

"the president's twin" (p. 80). Even orthodox historians such as Herbert Feis are

dismissed as "Roosevelt apologists" (p. 168). After reading this book, an other-

wise ignorant reader might conclude that the United States lost World War II and

lapsed into a prolonged state of international weakness rather than emerging from

the conflict as the world's preeminent superpower.

To his credit the author traveled to Moscow to conduct research in the Soviet

Foreign Ministry Archives in 1989. Some of the material he unearthed supports

his contention that the Roosevelt Administration displayed an over-eagerness to

accommodate its Soviet ally. But this material, limited in quantity, is suggestive

rather than definitive, and is not well integrated into the text. Instead, the trans-

lated Foreign Ministry documents are appended to the book.

Perlmutter's book is also marred by errors and sloppy scholarship. The head of

the State Department's European Affairs Division who trained U.S. diplomats as

Soviet specialists was Robert F. Kelley not "George Kelly" (p. 67). General

Patrick J. Hurley was an Oklahoma corporation lawyer, not a "Texas millionaire"

(p. 197). The author thanks his editor for doing "a superb job of sorting out and

clarifying my messy footnotes" (p. xi), but even a cursory examination finds

footnotes missing; an entire book cited with no page reference to specific infor-

mation; and a book alluded to in the text without full citation. The author also

displays a penchant for long block quotations of only tangential relevance. The

book is nicely illustrated with photographs, but even this feature is marred by

Perlmutter's addition of childish one-liners, invented statements attributed to the

pictured statesmen that suggest Roosevelt's desire to undermine Western interests

while appeasing the Soviets.

There are worthy features in almost any work, but one has to search for them

here. Perlmutter's book is a blanket condemnation of Roosevelt, often hoary and

derivative in argument, and frequently sloppy in presentation.

 

University of Akron                                     Walter L. Hixson

 

 

Ben Nighthorse Campbell: An American Warrior. By Herman J. Viola. (New

York: Orion Books, 1993. xiii + 321p.; illustrations, index. $24.00.)

 

"By any standard of measurement, Ben Nighthorse Campbell is a remarkable in-

dividual. His is a fascinating story that deserves to be told (ix)." The opening

sentences in the preface of Herman Viola's biography of the first Native American

United States Senator promise an intriguing look into the life and work of this

country's "highest ranking" Indian. Readers should not be faulted for also expect-

ing this story to present a uniquely informed examination of the complexities and

• 16
 

104                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

injustice of race relations between America's indigenous peoples and the U.S.

government. Unfortunately, Viola's book never seems to realize its potential.

At most, Ben Nighthorse Campbell: An American Warrior is a warmly senti-

mental, although clearly uncritical, account of the life of a relatively enigmatic

personality as seen through the eyes of loyal, devoted admirers. At the outset,

Viola achieves some degree of poignancy compelling the reader to read on as he

shares a description of the Campbell family's distress from the period of his fa-

ther's alcoholic irresponsibilities toward the family to his tuberculosis-striken

mother's resignation with the need to place "Benny" and his sister in a Catholic

orphanage. At its worst, the book is a relatively uninteresting promotion for the

sport of judo. However, for most of the pages which follow the chapter on

Campbell's boyhood school days, the book falls prey to dullness and tedium.

Just as one senses promise in the possibilities of the book's shedding some

light on the various ways in which life's hardships help to shape one's character,

disappointment soon follows. While the various indiscretions of Campbell's

youth and young adulthood call out for reconciliation with the principled person

he had become, neither the author nor his subject invest much in examining the

impact of those early years in creating the extraordinary person that nearly every-

one interviewed reveres. In many ways, the reader is left pondering how it was

that he had transcended the shallowness of his previous life; perhaps, even

whether he had successfully done so. In fact, one of Viola's statements about

Campbell's perseverance is discomfiting due to what might appear to be blatantly

sexist assumptions. The author in discussing the eventual suicide of Campbell's

sister concludes that "Sadly, Alberta seems to have crumbled under the same pres-

sures that made Ben strong" (p. 11). Such a statement fails to acknowledge that

the experience of a nonwhite woman growing up in an abusive, low-income

household might somehow be qualitatively different than that of her younger

brother. Campbell's exploits and apparent views toward women chronicled in the

book serve to reinforce the sexist interpretation.

While the presentation of many seemingly sincere accolades from longtime

friends adds to the charm of Campbell's story, Viola appears to unnecessarily

overstate the reactions of new acquaintances and associates to Campbell in his

role as U.S. Congressman. An example of this embellishment appears in Viola's

claim that "one person who was pleased with Ben's victory was Colorado Senator

Gary Hart" (p. 203). The evidence he cites in support of this conclusion is a con-

gratulatory letter from Hart wherein he indicates that he "will look forward to

working with you on issues of concern to southwestern Coloradians. Please keep

in touch." A stretch of that kind was not necessary to convince the reader of

Campbell's ability to affect a wide array of individuals.

What may have been more insightful is Viola's examination of the extents to

which many whites responded to Campbell, as they have to many Americans who

publicly identify with their Indian heritage, in a predictably stereotypical fashion.

This is probably best illustrated by the reference to another Colorado politicians'

reaction to Campbell's upset win in his bid for a congressional seat. "Gushed

Governor Richard Lamm, a fellow Democrat whom Campbell later was to defeat in

his bid for a Senate seat: 'He's such a unique individual. My God! He just sings

depth and commitment"' (p. 203). Since no foundation is laid or justification of-

fered for such a response, the reader might have cause to wonder why a seasoned

politician would be moved in that fashion other than being intrigued by the pres-

ence of the "noble primitive."

• 17
 

Book Reviews                                                        105

 

What arguably may be the most interesting part of Viola's book is the chapter

entitled "Roots." This may be the best the book has to offer for much the same

reasons that Alex Haley's monumental work of the same name was so widely read.

It is here that the young Campbell comes to know himself through his increasing

acquaintance with Native culture, a classic human interest story of sizable propor-

tion. The reader becomes a witness to Campbell's transformation culturally from a

young person uncertain about his ethnic heritage to one whose primary focus be-

comes his Indian identity. It is also here that the book becomes less a public

viewing of a "home movie" and more a piece of scholarship in the way that the au-

thor chooses to educate his audience about the history of the genizaros, a class of

people who were "ethnically Indian but culturally Spanish" (p. 107) and descended

from kidnapped Indian children sold to and adopted by Spanish families and other

genizaros in the Southwest.

On the whole, Herman J. Viola's book is a minimally to moderately interesting

tale, unfortunately not woven in language and imagery as colorful as the jewelry

crafted by Campbell himself. There is little culturally or historically compelling

about this book the way some might say Mary Crow Dog's Lakota Woman is.

However, for true judo enthusiasts, it may well be a must read.

 

Kenyon College                                            Ric S. Sheffield

 

 

The Murder of James A. Garfield: The President's Last Days and the Trial and

Execution of His Assassin. By James C. Clark. (Jefferson, North Carolina:

McFarland & Company, Inc., 1993. x + 185p.; illustrations, notes, selected

bibliography, index. $24.95.)

 

"Shot by a disappointed office seeker." So James A. Garfield, the twentieth

president of the United States, is usually remembered. In his fourth month in of-

fice, Garfield was gunned down by Charles Julius Guiteau, in fact more a delusion-

ary psychopath than an office seeker. In a straight-forward narrative, James C.

Clark has given us a concise account of the shooting, the subsequent medical

treatment of Garfield, the President's death eighty days later, and the trial and exe-

cution of Guiteau.

James C. Clark resides in Orlando, Florida, where he is editor of the Orlando

Sentinel. Clark is also the author of Last Train South (McFarland & Co., 1982),

an account of the flight of the Confederate government from Richmond at the end

of the Civil War, and Faded Glory (Praeger, 1985), a collection of sketches about

the lives of American presidents after they left office.

Shortly before 9:00 A.M. on Saturday, July 2, 1881, President Garfield took the

short carriage ride from the White House to the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad

Depot at Pennsylvania Avenue and Sixth Street, intending to escape from swelter-

ing Washington for a summer vacation. He was in good spirits, having just scored

a major political victory over Roscoe Conklin and the New York, or "Stalwart,"

wing of his Republican Party. The President had progressed but a few steps into

the station when Guiteau emerged from a side entrance and began shooting with a

small revolver; one bullet struck Garfield's arm, one or more went wild, and one

entered the President's back, four inches from his spine and just above his waist.

Charles J. Guiteau suffered an abusive and lonely childhood in Illinois and went

on to a life of failure, alienation, and mental instability. He failed in college and

business school, was expelled from John Humphrey Noyes' Oneida Community,

• 18
 

106                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

and failed as a husband, being both abusive and unfaithful to his wife. Admitted to

the bar in Illinois, Guiteau became a crooked lawyer specializing in debt collec-

tions and bail transactions, and he systematically swindled whomever he came in

contact with. Thinking he could win a government job by campaigning for a suc-

cessful candidate, he went on the stump for Garfield in 1880, without the sanction

of the candidate or the Republican Party, and he failed at that as well. But with

Garfield's victory, Guiteau deluded himself that he was owed a government job.

When his relentless pestering of White House clerks and others in the administra-

tion brought only rebuffs, Guiteau's unstable mind became convinced that Garfield

was the cause of his misfortune, and he hatched his scheme to kill the President.

Clark is at his strongest in describing Garfield's ensuing medical care. In spite

of considerable knowledge of the treatment of gunshot wounds gained by

American physicians during the Civil War, and in spite of the nascent body of

knowledge about antisepsis championed by Joseph Lister and his disciples, the

actions of the President's physicians-including continuous probing of the wound

with their bare fingers in a futile attempt to locate the bullet-contributed to the

eventual death of their patient. Clark describes the professional jealousy among

the attending doctors, between allopaths and homeopaths, and among the leading

physician, Dr. D. W. Bliss, and all others expressing an interest in the case.

Clark also describes the attempts by, Alexander Graham Bell and his colleagues to

locate the bullet with electromagnets, and heroic, if ineffective, attempts to cool

the President's White House sickroom with primitive forms of air conditioning.

In September, President Garfield died of a massive systemic infection. He was

fifty years old, and had been in robust good health when he was shot.

Guiteau was brought to trial for murder in November. Unable to attract experi-

enced defense counsel because of his poverty, the notoriety of his case, the over-

whelming evidence against him, and his own repulsive personality, Guiteau was

defended by his brother-in-law George Scoville, a lawyer with little experience in

criminal cases. Guiteau insisted on participating in his own defense, further alien-

ating the court and the jury with his egotistical, intemperate, and often incoherent

outbursts. The jury took only an hour to decide Guiteau's fate. He was convicted

on January 26, 1882, and hanged on June 30.

The reader seeking an understanding of Garfield, his times, and his presidency

should consult Allan Peskin's, Garfield (Kent State University Press, 1978).

Charles E. Rosenberg's The Trial of the Assassin Guiteau (The University of

Chicago Press, 1968) remains the authoritative source on Guiteau, the shooting,

and the trial. But Clark's telling of the tale is a good short read and is well docu-

mented. It is a suitable supplementary reading assignment for a class on the

Gilded Age.

 

The Ohio State University                            Thomas C. Mulligan

 

 

The Mysteries of the Great City: The Politics of Urban Design, 1877-1937. By

John D. Fairfield. (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 1993. xi +

320p.; illustrations, notes, index. $58.50.)

 

In recent years, the Urban Life and Urban Landscapes Series, edited by Zane L.

Miller and Henry D. Shapiro, has emerged as the premier series in urban history.

The book under review maintains that reputation by providing a fascinating intel-

lectual and political history of the development of the modern metropolitan form

• 19
 

Book Reviews                                                        107

 

associated with the industrial city. John Fairfield's book joins a growing list of

recent urban histories by scholars such as Eric H. Monkkonen and John M.

Findlay that reject social or technological forces as the main shaper of metropoli-

tan America. For Fairfield, "the new metropolitan form and the social order that

embodied it were primarily the result of conscious, political decisions" (p. 3).

Fairfield sees the form of the new city ultimately tied to speculative interests, cor-

porate elites, and a "reform" tradition more closely associated with what he charac-

terizes as a realist approach to city development rather than an alternative republi-

can and idealistic vision of the urban future.

The book focuses on three cities-New York, Chicago, and Cincinnati-in its

examination of the two visions. According to the author, the idealistic approach

to the city emerged in the mid-nineteenth century, and was personified by vision-

aries such as Henry George and Frederick Law Olmsted. These men, through the

single tax and park development, emphasized creating a more humane city and

making it more compatible with republican ideals.

Due to a changing intellectual environment that Fairfield claims was at least as-

sociated with the labor turbulence of the late 1870s and 1880s, and the emergence

of a powerful business civic elite, a realist perspective became the dominant ap-

proach to the city with its emphasis on the inevitability of the urban form, and a

concern with promoting social efficiency and social control. If Henry George,

with his emphasis on the role of political choices had characterized the earlier ap-

proach, sociologist Robert Park, who minimized the significance of political

choice in urban development and championed the importance of natural urban pro-

cesses in creating the modern city, represented the new realist approach. The

irony of this all, according to the author, occurred during the Depression, when the

government finally showed interest in an urban policy and published Our Cities:

Their Role in the National Economy. Although Fairfield observes that document

reflected a realistic approach to urban policies, he also believes it went beyond

that and suggested some radical alternatives to realistic urban planning-particu-

larly in regard to its suggested taxation and labor policy. However such provi-

sions never were undertaken, in large part for lack of a constituency since most ur-

ban residents had bought into the realist approach to city development. Indeed,

Fairfield argues that social scientists and professional planners-urban experts-

had failed to cultivate a mass constituency, and therefore contributed to the atro-

phy of democratic politics, as well as the malaise of urban America, by their ac-

ceptance of the realist approach to the city.

There is a lot to be said for this book. It is clearly written and argued, impres-

sively documented, and imaginatively conceived and executed. Fairfield should be

applauded for reintroducing political actions back into the discourse about urban

form and development during this time period. But the author has not completely

exhausted the power of ideas and perception in his examination of the shaping of

the industrial city, and might have offered additional insight by identifying shared

assumptions both traditions held about the city itself. A discussion about what

proponents of both traditions thought the city was, as well as what it could be,

might have further helped unravel the mystery of the new metropolitan form. Such

criticism aside, this is a valuable work not only for urban historians, but for all

students of modern United States history.

 

University of Texas at Arlington                      Robert B. Fairbanks

• 20
 

108                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

Pride and Solidarity: A History of the Plumbers and Pipefitters of Columbus,

Ohio, 1889-1989. By Richard Schneirov. (Ithaca: Cornell University/ILR

Press, 1993. x + ¹⁸⁹p.; illustrations, appendix, bibliography, index. $14.95

paper; $35.00 cloth.)

 

Although the subtitle states that this work is a history of plumbers and pipefit-

ters, in reality it is a history of Columbus Local 189 of the United Association of

Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry of the

United States and Canada. The book was written at the request of the union's lead-

ership to help apprentices understand the dynamics of being a trades person as

well as a union member. The book teaches them that during the past century, the

craft orientation of the trades and union membership have presented special chal-

lenges.

Founded in the 1890s, Local 189 adopted early a militant stance regarding

higher wages, reduced workdays, and plumbing codes for the city of Columbus.

After making important gains, the union settled into a comfortable relationship

with employers through the "exclusive agreement" under which certain employers

hired only union workers, who agreed to work only for those employers. During

this period of stability, collective bargaining was common, the local became in-

stitutionalized, and the leadership became more professional.

From the 1930s through the 1960s, Local 189 gained substantially in member-

ship and economic benefits, helped by the Wagner Act of 1935, World War II, and

the economic growth of Columbus. However, the union's power declined during

the 1970s and 1980s as the political environment turned against organized labor

and as large commercial construction projects in Columbus drew union workers

away from residential and light commercial work, leaving many opportunities for

nonunion firms. In addition, the exclusionary tactics used in the hiring hall in

previous decades and the high wages industry-wide caused a number of qualified

plumbers and pipefitters, especially blacks and women, to avoid the union com-

pletely. Not until the mid-1970s, when the courts forced Local 189 to modify its

hiring hall practices, did minorities and women begin to make inroads into the

Local.

As craftsmen, plumbers and pipefitters had much in common with employers:

they sought to maintain high work standards and to complete projects in a timely

fashion. As union members, they sometimes alienated employers over issues of

wages, safety, and control of hiring. Ironically, employers often acquiesced to

union demands to keep wage levels high to attract the most skilled workers. They

also gave the union a fair amount of control over hiring so workers would not have

to be kept on company payrolls during slack times.

Because written documents about the union are scarce, Schneirov relied heavily

on oral interviews to reconstruct the Local's past. Early in the book he offers a se-

ries of vignettes depicting a trades person's typical work day. He even provides a

glimpse into a union meeting. Later, he includes six fairly lengthy interviews

with current and past members of Local 189, who discuss their jobs and union ex-

periences. Since he intends the book to be a resource primarily for apprentices,

Schneirov includes no notes. Instead, he provides, at the end of the book, a chap-

ter-by-chapter survey of sources used.

Although Schneirov discusses the union's past weaknesses and current difficul-

ties with some candor, his pro-union attitude is very apparent. He sometimes

makes derogatory remarks about nonunion firms and their workers that cannot be

easily verified. He also communicates his distaste through such phrases as "Like a

• 21
 

Book Reviews                                                       109

 

metastasizing cancer, the nonunion sector expanded during the 1960s, ..." (p.

113). Despite these problems, he has created a readable, interesting, and informa-

tive look at the heritage and workings of an important local union.

 

Syracuse University, Utica College                           Glen Avery

 

 

Way Up North in Dixie: A Black Family's Claim to the Confederate Anthem. By

Howard L. Sacks and Judith Rose Sacks. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian

Institution Press, 1993. xi + 259p.; illustrations, notes, index. $24.95.)

 

Imagine the scene: a University of Mississippi football game, tens of thou-

sands of loyal Ole Miss athletic fans, stars and bars unfurled, and the band strikes

up the familiar strains of "Dixie." With drunken enthusiasm, the crowd joins in

the Confederate anthem. This embarrassing display annoys Southern white liber-

als, infuriates many African Americans, and confirms the reactionary image of the

deep South in the eyes of the nation. Now, however, two scholars ask, does it

make a difference if the song was composed by an African American woman?

In Way Up North in Dixie, Howard L. Sacks and Judith Rose Sacks offer an ex-

tended meditation on American popular culture. Their central problem-the oral

tradition in a central Ohio African American community which claims that "Dixie"

was composed by members of the musically talented Snowden family of Mount

Vernon rather than the white minstrel Daniel Decatur Emmett, to whom it is usu-

ally attributed-becomes an instructive vehicle for this essay which skillfully

employs anthropology, folk lore, genealogy, history, and musicology to illumi-

nate the sources of mid-nineteenth century American popular culture.

Early in the nineteenth century, Thomas Snowden and Ellen Cooper had sepa-

rately migrated with white families from Maryland, where Snowden and Cooper

had been slaves, to Knox County in central Ohio. There, they were married in

1834, bought a farm homestead, and eventually became the parents of three sons

and six daughters. By the 1850s, Thomas Snowden and his children were supple-

menting their farm income as traveling musicians. After his death in 1856,

Thomas Snowden's two surviving sons, Benjamin and Lewis, and five surviving

daughters continued to travel and perform under the supervision of their mother,

Ellen Cooper Snowden. The Snowden's minstrel band featured two fiddles, a dul-

cimer, a banjo, a triangle, and castanets or "bones." Its repertoire featured such

sentimental ballads of mid-nineteenth century American popular culture as "Annie

Laurie," "Home, Sweet Home," and "My Old Kentucky Home."

Traditionally, the composition of "Dixie" has been attributed to the white min-

strel, Dan Emmett, who first published it in 1860. In a black graveyard in Mt.

Vernon, Ohio, however, the headstone over two graves reads:

 

Ben   Lew

Snowden

THEY TAUGHT "DIXIE" TO DAN EMMETT

 

The gravestone does not claim authorship of "Dixie" for Dan Emmett's two young

black friends, Ben and Lew Snowden, who were only 20 and 12 years old in 1860.

By a close reading of the oldest available text of its lyrics, however, Howard and

Judith Sacks make a strong circumstantial case that "Dixie's" South was not

Jefferson Davis' Mississippi, but Thomas Snowden's and Ellen Cooper's

• 22
 

110                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

Maryland. Moreover, the Sacks argue, its imagery is less that of a man's world

than a woman's. Their evidence suggests that Ellen Cooper's memories were the

inspiration for the creation of "Dixie."

Imagine the scene: a University of Mississippi football game, tens of thou-

sands of loyal Ole Miss athletic fans, stars and stripes unfurled, and the band

strikes up the music. A quartet composed of Jesse Helms, Louis Farrakhan, Coretta

Scott King, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg leads the crowd in singing the familiar

strains of "Dixie." With drunken enthusiasm, the throng roars its approval. Let

the people say: "Amen."

 

Antioch College                                           Ralph E. Luker

 

 

The Antislavery Debate: Capitalism and Abolitionism as a Problem in Historical

Interpretation. Edited by Thomas Bender. (Berkeley: University of California

Press, 1992. x + 325p.; notes, index. $14.00 paper.)

Race and the Rise of the Republican Party, 1848-1865. By James D. Bilotta.

(New York: Peter Lang, 1992. 524p.; notes, bibliography, index. $75.95.)

 

The Antislavery Debate is more illuminating of our history as a discipline than

it is of antislavery. We are invited to join the discussion at a high academic level,

in a time in which preparatory courses are required for high school graduates at col-

leges. The authors, John Ashworth, a Britisher in American Studies, Thomas

Haskill of Rice University, and the editor take off from David B. Davis's The

Problem of Slavery in the Age of the Revolution (1975). But they must cope, too,

with his earlier study, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (1966).

What, then, is the problem of abolition in this arrangement? Is antislavery the

same as abolition? It is well known that many slave-holders regretted the system

which fed them and gave them power. Yet antislavery sentiments obviously differ

from abolitionist deeds.

Davis finds paradoxes in the "age of revolution," which praised freedom while

tolerating slavery. In fact, we not only accept slavery as a traditional way of life

before antislavery emerged as an on-going slogan and goal. We accept slavery to-

day in numerous areas around the world, while maintaining our dream of freedom

and desire to further it.

Basically, the authors juxtapose intention and self-interest. Davis made much

of Quakers who, though affluent, appeared to rationalize their wealth by advocat-

ing free labor. Yet "free" labor often meant poverty and dark oppression to large

classes of workers who toiled in mills and mines at starvation wages.

Slaveholders justified their own system with these dreary facts, forcing anti-slav-

ery advocates to quarrel among themselves with respect to programs which ad-

vanced, or were claimed not to advance, "freedom." William Lloyd Garrison had

more to fear from some classes of Bostonians than from far away slaveholders.

And here our contestants can make a case for "conceptualizations" which might

reveal the true weight of such figures as Garrison. His cause attracted the respect of

some wealthy Boston figures, and he might therefore appear as "consciously or

unconsciously" a justifier of their wealth and social position. Our contestants

make much of the "conscious or unconscious" argument. But what about poor

Garrisonians whose religion and meager holdings told them that freedom was a

mockery when it tolerated enslavement?

• 23
 

Book Reviews                                                        111

 

Haskell challenges Davis's emphasis on class interest since it puts the gentle

Quaker in the class of the cruel factory owner. He finds evocative Antonia

Gramasci's "concept" of hegemony. I will not pursue it here since it no more than

points to something we may or may not approve, but which we might despise if

examined. Say "All power to the People," and find it thrilling until someone

comes up with "Gulag," and one sees what "concepts" can do, when facts are lost.

The problem I find with this courtesy-filled "debate" is that the "concepts" it

furthers move away from our actual experience. Garrison, properly dressed and

with family, for all his courage, might readily be seen as an unconscious propo-

nent of dark capitalism. Indeed, Garrison did not interest himself in post-Civil

War labor's often searing efforts to organize. But his talented associate Wendell

Phillips did, and his efforts in labor's behalf have been well-remembered, even

among our debaters.

The key fact worth remembering is that they may be themselves subject to

"conscious or unconscious" support of "class" interests, perhaps of that class

which shook the campuses during the 1960s, and which surely contributed to the

drive which all but closed down education as discipline, while groping for new

freedoms in "victimless crime" and euphoria. I say contributed: I do not suggest

that youth leaders were responsible alone for our social and intellectual difficul-

ties.

But look closely at our receptivities. In 1944 a black, educated Trinidadian, Eric

Williams, found great connections in his Capitalism and Slavery, and was re-

warded with appreciation in academe by white and black historians. He ultimately

became Prime Minister of his small country. Whence sprang his basic "concept?"

What were his motives? No one asks such a question of such a person as Williams.

If professors ask harder questions, they can contribute more to the challenges of

our education, and to the modernization of classical history.

If The Antislavery Debate is long on theory and short on actual events and per-

sonalities, it cannot be said of Bilotta's Race and the Rise of the Republican

Party, a hard-earned doctorate which spells out individuals and programs from

Conscience Whigs through Free Soilers to highly active Republicans'-all this to

discover attitudes toward race among the proponents of a new party.

It is not surprising to discover distinctions between abolitionists of the

Garrison type which put antislavery before politics, and partisans like Ohio

Representative Joshua R. Giddings who longed for abolitionist victory, but muted

his passion among the constituents he needed to win elections. He differed funda-

mentally from Martin Van Buren, the Free Soilers' presidential candidate in 1848,

who cared nothing for the enslaved, but led eastern constituents whose hunger for

free land in the west prejudiced them against slavery extension into the territories.

From hindsight it is easy to demand full, immediate emancipation for blacks and

equality from the beginning. But would that have advanced Republicanism or

saved the Union? It must always be remembered that Southern disunionists did not

need to win the war-they needed only to keep federal troops from winning it.

Hence Lincoln watched anxiously while Ohio legislators debated whether to

provide a state budget for raising troops to defend the Union, and support them in

battle. It is not always recalled that it took a stiff legislative fight in Ohio to gain

this minimum. It took still more to combat southern armies in Kentucky and

Missouri, without which, Lincoln held, the union would sink.

Bilotta's work is far from alone in the field. One should glance at, for example,

Roland Stromberg's 1952 Republicanism Reappraisal to remind oneself of a time

when a critical work did not think it had to deal with race at all. The T. R. Frazier-

• 24
 

112                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

edited The Underside of American History, published in 1971, broke ground in

criticism of racism, as, the same year, did George Sinkler's The Racial Attitudes of

American Presidents.

Still, Bilotta's work achieves all but definitiveness in tracing not only blatant

racism in Republican attitudes but callousness toward black oppression, insensi-

tivity to their human rights, and blunt derogation of their potential as a race. It

modifies the dark record to find-as others have-upright protests by Republicans

with much to lose against anti-black bigotry, against colonization schemes,

though often well-intended, against antislavery half-measures. But they serve

only to highlight the compulsive prejudice his researches have culled.

I cannot forbear to note Bilotta's misconstruence of James Russell Lowell's

Biglow Papers, one of the glories of our literature, as a sad reflection of our loss of

poetry in the present era. Those writings were once understood to include irony,

sarcasm, metaphors, and other qualities of art. The author catches Lowell in ap-

parently seeing the slaves as "swine," though it contradicts his other view of

Lowell as a "romantic realist." We will be a long time putting our Intellectual

house in order.

We have yet to have a satisfactory work which traces racism among blacks, sep-

arating it into the two categories of just response to oppression, on one side, and

the mere envy or malice which finds its source in human nature, rather than in race.

 

The Belfry                                                   Louis Filler

Ovid, Michigan

 

 

The Gettysburg Soldier's Cemetery and Lincoln's Address: Aspects and Angles.

By Frank L. Klement. (Shippensburg, Pennsylvania: White Mane Publishing

Company, 1993. xv + 276p.; illustrations, map, endnotes, appendices, index.

$30.00 cloth; $19.95 paper.)

 

Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address of November 19, 1863, was a memo-

rable episode of his presidency. Frank L. Klement, a leading historian of the Civil

War era, has recreated the activities of that event in his admirable work, The

Gettysburg Soldiers' Cemetery And Lincoln's Address. He reexamines the story of

the Gettysburg dedication through the eyes of participants and witnesses and skill-

fully incorporated their words into the narrative. The essays in this book sparkle

with new insights and knowledge, vivid descriptions, and fascinating details

about that solemn occasion. In his introduction, Steven K. Rogstad reviews the

relevant literature on Gettysburg and places Klement's study within the historical

context of the period.

Klement begins with a biographical sketch of David Wills, a Gettysburg attor-

ney who conceived the idea to dedicate a portion of the famous battlefield as the

Soldiers' National Cemetery. Supported by Governor Andrew G. Curtin of

Pennsylvania, Wills made plans for the historic celebration that included inviting

Edward Everett and President Abraham Lincoln to participate in the program.

Wills tapped Everett, an intellectual and one of the foremost orators of his day, to

deliver the main address. Lincoln's part in the program called for him to make "a

few appropriate remarks." Wills was assisted by Ward H. Lamon, the president's

bodyguard, who served as the program's master of ceremonies.

The author provides an excellent discussion of two themes that share a common

connection to the larger story of the soldiers' cemetery project. He highlights

• 25
 

Book Reviews                                                      113

 

Ohio's active role in the dedication ceremonies and President Lincoln's extempo-

raneous oration. Governor David Tod of Ohio encouraged politicians, journalists,

and ordinary people to attend the ceremonies in the neighboring state to pay trib-

ute to the many Ohio soldiers who had been killed in battle there. Following the

dedication ceremonies, Governor Tod sponsored "an Ohio program" at the local

Presbyterian church. Among the luminaries in attendance were Lincoln and the

Secretary of State, William H. Seward.

One of the more interesting aspects of Lincoln's visit to Gettysburg was his

impromptu speech to the enthusiastic crowd outside Wills' home on the night of

November 18. Commonly referred to as "Lincoln's First Gettysburg Address," it

disappointed his listeners. The brief speech was unimaginative and poorly deliv-

ered, but the stage had already been set to give the president an opportunity to re-

deem himself in less than twenty-four hours.

The focal point of the book is Lincoln's two-minute Gettysburg Address to

which Klement devotes considerable attention. He dispels two long-standing

myths associated with the preparation of and the crowd's reaction to Lincoln's

recitation. Klement offers compelling evidence to refute the belief that Lincoln

hastily composed his remarks on the back of an envelope while aboard the train

bound for Gettysburg. According to Klement, the historical evidence clearly

shows that Lincoln wrote the first eight sentences of the speech in Washington on

White House stationary and completed the last sentence while a guest at the home

of Wills on the eve of the dedication program. Furthermore, Lincoln confided to

friends that he had written most of the speech several days before the Gettysburg

trip. Klement maintains that Lincoln wrote six copies of the Gettysburg Address

himself.

Klement also destroys the myth that Lincoln's speech was disastrous and fell on

the audience like "a wet blanket." The author notes that newspaper accounts of the

occasion reveal that the listeners showed their approbation by interrupting

Lincoln five times with applause. The author concludes that "it is high time these

two myths were laid to rest and the slanderous statement that Lincoln went to

Gettysburg unprepared be again discredited" (p. 89). An obvious motif of this

work is the importance of speech-making in the nineteenth century, a time in

which Americans expected great orations from their political leaders.

Superbly illustrated with photographs and a map of the Gettysburg grounds, this

volume also contains several appendices including Reverend Thomas H.

Stockton's Invocation, Edward Everett's oration and other pertinent documents re-

lated to the dedication ceremony. The centerpiece of the front cover of the dust

jacket is a photograph of the Soldiers' National Monument combined with a small

portrait of Abraham Lincoln. Prodigiously researched and brilliantly presented,

this volume is a must read for anyone wanting to know more about the events as-

sociated with President Lincoln's visit to Gettysburg and his immortal speech.

 

Kent State University                                 Leonne M. Hudson

 

 

The Salmon P. Chase Papers. Volume 1: Journals, 1829-1872. Edited by John

Niven, James P. McClure, Leigh Johnsen, William E. Ferraro, and Steve Leikin.

(Kent: The Kent State University Press, 1993. lxxvii + 789p.; illustrations,

notes, index. $35.00.)

• 26
 

114                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

Salmon Portland Chase (1808-1873) practiced law in Ohio and became involved

in state and national politics, variously as a member of the Whig, Liberty, Free-

Soil, Independent Democratic, and Republican parties.  He held office as

Cincinnati city councilman, U.S. Senator, and Ohio governor. Although unsuc-

cessful in his presidential aspirations, Chase filled national posts as Secretary of

the Treasury (1861-64) and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (1864-73).

It is well known that Chase was involved in numerous significant historical

events such as defending fugitive slaves in court cases, serving as a member of

Lincoln's cabinet during the Civil War, and presiding over the impeachment trial

of Andrew Johnson. For this reason the reader is likely to expect a great deal from

Chase's journals, most likely more than he or she will find. Rather than a coher-

ent, detailed view of Chase's involvement in Ohio and national politics, the reader

will discover a collection of tantalizing fragments, stories that break off in mid-

action, and sizable doses of tedium (for example, days on which the sole entry is a

list of letters Chase wrote).

The perhaps frustrating contents of this book are not the fault of the editors,

who have done excellent work identifying people, explaining legal cases, and

tracing Chase's activities. Rather, the problem lies with Chase, who was not a

consistent diarist. The editors explain this inconsistency in their fine biographi-

cal and methodological introduction, but its true implications are not really clear

to the reader until he or she has been left hanging in the middle of a story. Chase

apparently kept a diary when he felt like it, when he was not too busy to do so, or

when he was in one of his self-improvement moods. Consequently, to give a few

examples, in 1849 Chase skips from January, when the Ohio state legislature was

not yet considering the election of a U.S. Senator, to March 6 when he took his

seat in Washington, D.C. Chase does recount his gubernatorial campaign of 1857

in some detail, indicating where he went, how long he spoke, who he saw, and

where he stayed. This flurry of writing is followed by no entries whatsoever for

1858, four for 1859, and none for 1860. He does not have any entries for 1861

until December 9. While Chase's Civil War entries are among his best, they are

nonetheless sporadic, and only two entries in 1868 even refer to the preliminaries

of Johnson's impeachment trial.

In addition to being inconsistent in his entries, Chase was not writing to be

read by anyone else; otherwise he would not, in his last years, so scrupulously

have told how many times he got up during the night for eliminatory purposes.

Abbreviations abound (elucidated where necessary and possible by the diligent ed-

itors) and many entries tend to be fragmentary.

The reader who finds little account of Chase's political maneuvers will find out

more about Chase personally, especially during the prewar years as he struggles

for spiritual growth and other types of self-improvement, often expressing frustra-

tion over his failure to accomplish certain goals.  His surviving daughters,

Catherine (Kate) and Janet (Nettie), appear with some frequency, and in the earlier

parts of the diary his three short-lived wives are sometimes mentioned.

Although the reader may be somewhat disappointed by the contents and omis-

sions of these journals, the editors have performed a useful service in gathering,

transcribing, and publishing in one place these fragmentary sources. The true

value of these journals will probably only be realized when they can be used in

conjunction with Chase's correspondence, which the editors are no doubt prepar-

ing for press as rapidly as possible.

 

University of Tennessee, Knoxville               Glenna R. Schroeder-Lein

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Book Reviews                                                        115

 

Paul Revere's Ride. By David Hackett Fischer. (New York: Oxford University

Press, 1994. xviii + 445p.; notes, bibliography, maps, illustrations, appen-

dices, index. $27.50.)

 

David Hackett Fischer, Warren Professor of History at Brandeis University and

author of the widely acclaimed Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America,

has provided a deftly written and thought-provoking essay about one of the most

well-known incidents in American history. Even those of us who were not required

to memorize Longfellow's stirring verse celebrating the event in elementary

school can describe the incident with some accuracy. Warned by a prearranged

lantern signal issued from the steeple of the Old North Church (one if by land, two

if by sea) during the dead-of-night on April 18th, 1775, Paul Revere, a Boston sil-

versmith and engraver, rode throughout the Massachusetts countryside. His mis-

sion was to awaken the slumbering citizenry and warn them of a preemptive

British strike against Patriot arms and munitions stored in rural Middlesex

County. Though captured before completing his rounds, Revere's alarm had been

enough to alert the region's "Minutemen." Assembled under arms to meet the ad-

vancing British force, they were able to defend their property at Lexington and

Concord and inflict heavy casualties upon the English detachment as it retreated to

Boston Harbor.

In Paul Revere's Ride, Fischer joins a widening circle of recent historians in-

cluding Michael Kammen and John Bodnar who are examining the intersection of

public memory and academic history. The story of Revere's journey is nearly uni-

versally known by Americans, claims Fischer, but when they "repeat it to their

children, they are not certain which parts of the tale are true, or if any part of it ac-

tually happened" (p. xiv). Despite this unlikely combination of both familiarity

and ambiguity, Fischer's study is the first book-length examination of Revere's

critical role in the events that began the American Revolution.

Fischer builds his book around the organizing principle of contingency.

Contingency, "something that may or may not happen," says the author, "permits

us to "study historical events as a series of real choices that living people actually

made." Within this context, the coming of the Revolution becomes "a series of

contingent happenings, shaped by the choices of individual actors within the con-

text of large cultural processes" (p. xv).

Fischer defines the values that shaped the choices made in April 1775 by draw-

ing intimate portraits of both Revere and General Thomas Gage, the commander in

chief of British forces in America. A thoughtful, well-intentioned Whig, Gage

viewed himself as a "fair-minded and moderate man, a friend of liberty and a de-

fender of the "'Common rights of Mankind'" (p. 31). In Revere, we find more

than the common mechanic of popular perception. He thought of himself as "both

an artisan and a gentleman," believing "passionately in the rule of law." He was,

writes Fischer, "Tocqueville's American archetype, the venturous conservative,

consumed with restless energy and much attracted to risk, but never questioning

the great ideas in which he always believed" (p. 15).

Both men shared much with the other. Each was a product of a common British

heritage. For Gage "the rule of law meant the absolute supremacy of that many-

headed sovereign, the King-in Parliament." But for Revere, it meant "the right of

a free born people to be governed by laws of its own making. Both were highly

principled men, but their principles were worlds apart. The ideas they shared in

common were the ethical foundation stones of English-speaking society. Their

differences were what the American Revolution was about" (p. 33).

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116                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

Values shaped choices and choices suggested action. In Fischer's narrative,

Revere's midnight ride is seen as a collective effort. One of several riders that

evening, Revere's mission succeeded because of careful planning, skillful intelli-

gence gathering, and coordinated execution. In each Revere had played an active,

critical role. Fischer has drawn from an impressive array of documentary and arti-

factual evidence to defend his conclusions. Within the appendices readers will find

genealogies, accounts and analysis of the military encounters of April 19th, and a

detailed historiography of Revere's famous journey. Throughout, the prose is ex-

citing and the text bristles with ideas.

Paul Revere's Ride is an outstanding contribution to our understanding of the

Revolutionary era by one of America's foremost colonial scholars.

 

Ohio Historical Society                                    Larry L. Nelson

 

 

Thomas Jefferson: A Life. By Willard Sterne Randall. (New York: Henry Hold

and Company, Inc., 1993. xix + 708p.; notes, bibliography, index. $35.00.)

 

Convinced that other biographies of Jefferson have been "flawed," largely as

the result of a misreading and/or misdating of critical sections of Jefferson's

Literary Commonplace Book, Willard Sterne Randall seeks to set the record

straight. Stressing the importance of Jefferson's early legal career, Randall con-

tends that Jefferson's involvement in a series of court cases in the 1760s helped

him to formulate his anti-slavery views, his opposition to the Church-State rela-

tionship in Virginia, intensify his doubts about the validity of the English legal

system, heighten his disillusionment with hereditary privileges, and foster his

growing affinity for natural rights theory.

Devoting considerable attention to Jefferson's "Herculean" efforts to rewrite the

laws of Virginia during the Revolution, Randall argues that Jefferson's undertak-

ing led to sweeping legal and judicial reforms and "a radical legislative revolution"

that became "a model for other states." Randall enthusiastically concludes that

Jefferson, "in his legal laboratory atop Monticello, invented the United States"

(p. 306). In a defense of Jefferson's wartime record as Governor, Randall dis-

misses charges of cowardice, that were directed at Jefferson while Governor, as un-

deserved and politically motivated. Jefferson simply lacked the authority and re-

sources to defend a virtually indefensible state; nevertheless, Randall observes, he

managed to make military decisions that helped to secure the west for the new na-

tion (pp. 334-339).

Devoting a large section of this biography to the five years Jefferson spent in

Europe as a diplomat, Randall characterizes this period as a "watershed" during

which time Jefferson embraced the notions of free trade, a new model diplomacy,

and developed a "sophisticated world view that was to lead him to found the

Democratic Party. . ." (pp. 367-368).

Randall discusses Jefferson's private life at length, defends him against the

charge of misogamy, gives all of the details of his affair with Maria Cosway,

whom, we are told, he loved, and finds Jefferson innocent of seducing the slave

girl Sally Hemmings and fathering her children. Fawn Brodie's thesis is dismissed

as "preposterous" (p. 476). Randall also details Jefferson's lifelong opposition

to slavery, but shies away from judging his failure to attack slavery vigorously af-

ter 1789, or free his own slaves, and concludes that by 1789 Jefferson "evidently

had decided the time was not ripe to openly defy the slave system. . . and reopen

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Book Reviews                                                        117

 

the debate over emancipation at a time when the new government was so unstable"

(p. 494). Indeed, Randall partially explains Jefferson's other inconsistencies,

particularly during his Presidency, by describing him as a "pragmatic-realist" who

"had to rationalize his fondest principles to achieve his greatest victories" (pp.

565-565).

Although Randall describes Jefferson's Presidency as "innovative" (p. 552), he

devotes only one chapter (thirty-five pages) to it; indeed less than 20 percent of

the book is devoted to Jefferson after 1789. Randall's Jefferson is a well-written,

readable biography intended essentially for a general audience, and is at its best

when dealing with Jefferson's pre-Revolutionary legal career or his post-

Revolutionary diplomatic experiences in Europe. Those readers looking for a

comprehensive, critical analysis of Jefferson's career after 1789 will have to look

elsewhere.

 

Wright State University                                  Harvey Wachtell

 

 

Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789. Volume 20: March 12-September

30, 1783. Edited by Paul H. Smith, Gerard W. Gawalt, and Ronald M. Gephart.

(Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1993. xxix + 791p.; editorial method

and apparatus, acknowledgements, chronology of Congress, list of delegates to

Congress, illustrations, notes, index. $39.00.)

 

This is a continuation of a great editorial project which was begun in 1970 and

which has brought together copies of more than 22,000 widely dispersed docu-

ments. Those who have kept abreast of the work of the project since its inception

know that the publication of each and every volume is nothing short of an intel-

lectual event. This is true for two primary reasons. First, each volume makes in-

dividual documents much more accessible than they formerly were, which is prov-

ing to be a great boon to scholars in many fields. And, second, each volume taken

as a whole constitutes a serious challenge to all of us as historians and to our old

perceptions of the revolutionary period. Things are immensely more complicated

back there than our interpreters and our interpretations have thus far made them

seem. The old theories are losing their power to persuade. The old paradigms can-

not hold all the facts that are emerging as each new installment of these papers

comes off the press. Some major revisionism will soon be in order.

One is struck again and again with what we might term "the sheer ongoingness

of it all." The would-be nation seems never to be quite out of the woods. And that

is true even in this year of our Lord 1783, which, as every schoolchild knows, is

supposed to be the year of the peace. As the curtain opens on this particular part

of the never-ending drama, the delegates are all abuzz with the good news from

overseas. At last the war for independence is apparently about to end. A prelimi-

nary treaty between the new United States and Great Britain has been agreed upon.

Even so, not everyone in Congress is entirely happy. For example, John Francis

Mercer, a fiery young delegate from the proud Old Dominion, opines that the terms

as he reads them are simply not good enough. Our negotiators have licked

Britain's boots, he says; and, besides, they have gravely insulted our French al-

lies, who may now decide to turn against us. This imaginative and worried

Virginia delegate even sees a scenario in which France would league herself with

Britain, so that these two great powers of Europe could divide up America between

them! There is some talk in Congress of recalling America's peace commission-

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118                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

ers, reinstructing them, perhaps even chastising them in some way. Alexander

Hamilton of New York, however, warns against such a course of action.

Even when subsequent reports from Europe indicate that Mr. Mercer has clearly

overreacted, there is still plenty to worry about in this year of something less than

perfect peace. To begin with, the dissatisfaction within the army is great. Both

officers and men show their contempt for a Congress that seems woefully unable

to adequately reward those who, at great personal sacrifice, have just defended the

liberties of the people. Rarely in history's annals has there been such a notable

instance of republican ingratitude! Such is the charge. There is the famous crisis

produced by defiant officers at Newburgh, New York, in mid-March. But in some

ways this pales in comparison to the crisis in Philadelphia three months later. It

seems that on Saturday, June 21, mutinous troops surrounded Congress and de-

manded immediate action on the weighty question of compensation. Members of

Congress, refusing to act under duress, promptly left the house chamber, passing

without serious incident through the ranks of the mutineers. Rumors that muti-

neers planned to seize individual delegates at their lodgings the next night proved

to be unfounded. Nonetheless, the delegates went ahead with plans to leave the

unsafe "city of brotherly love." They reconvened in tiny Princeton, New Jersey,

on June 26; and, despite that town's supposed inadequacy as a seat of government,

the delegates were still there at the end of September.

Now the bickering over a permanent seat for Congress becomes itself a major

distraction. Congress has voted that an equestrian statue of His Excellency

General Washington be created and that it be located at whatever place Congress

finally agrees upon as its permanent home. But where will that be? As it turns

out, this equestrian statue will never be completed. And right now, nationhood it-

self, like the statue, remains unfinished. Charles Thomson, the secretary of

Congress, has great fears of internal convulsions. James McHenry and others

agree that the Union is extremely fragile. There remains the all-important matter

of the staggering national debt; but, under the circumstances, the revenue question

seems utterly intractable. Oftentimes, the state delegations actually in attendance

number only eight, although the votes of nine of the thirteen states are required for

passage of nearly all important matters. For his part, Alexander Hamilton tells

Nathanael Greene that he intends to get out of public service altogether and to fo-

cus instead upon making his own fortune. Things are admittedly very bad, but

there are no realistic prospects right now of solidifying the national system. So

Hamilton believes.

Thus in this year of its acknowledged independence, the nation is beset with a

myriad of problems. Is the present really this bad, the future really this uncertain?

It is so very hard to know for sure. This volume ends with question marks. Now

we readers are truly addicted, as though to some more than ordinary soap opera.

We await the next installments and all the plots and subplots that these volumes

invariably bring.

 

Marquette University                                       Robert P. Hay

• 31