Ohio History Journal

Book Reviews

 

 

 

The Abolitionists & the South, 1831-1861. By Stanley Harrold. (Lexington:

The University of Kentucky Press, 1995. x + 245p.; illustrations, notes, bibli-

ography, index. $29.95.)

 

Did the struggle to end slavery cause the Civil War? Twentieth-century theories

of the war from Charles Beard's economic interpretation to the currently fashion-

able cultural split between North and South have relegated abolitionist radicals to

the sidelines as a causative factor in the war and by implication questioned the ca-

pacity of radicals to bring about significant change in society. To Stanley Harrold

(South Carolina State), however, abolitionists should not be studied merely as ex-

emplars of aspects of northern culture but instead as people who were genuinely

interested in the South's peculiar institution and had an important role in destroy-

ing it.

In this, Harrold's second book on the abolitionist movement, he argues in topi-

cally organized, highly analytic chapters that abolitionists continued to be deeply

interested in the South, even after their initial efforts to propagandize the region

in the 1830s failed. Their newspapers and letters, he points out, continued to

carry news of antislavery agitators (Cassius Clay, John Fee, Charles Torrey, and

others) in the border states as well as indications of slave unrest. The complex

images created of these white and black southern warriors against slavery encour-

aged emotional commitment by northern abolitionists to their cause. While not

all factions of abolitionists favored the same types of actions in the South to end

slavery, various groups did sponsor Christian antislavery missions and churches,

slave liberating expeditions (long before John Brown), and the formation of free

labor communities that would literally export northern civilization to the South.

Abolitionists' experiences in such enterprises shaped their commitment to and

understanding of abolition as much or more than any worries they might have had

about social changes in the North. Their aggressiveness forced moderate antislav-

ery supporters to constantly redefine their commitment and also warned slave-

holders that the abolitionist threat was "neither distant, inadvertent, nor insub-

stantial" (p. 153). Harrold even suggests that the assumptions upon which recon-

struction of the South were based owed something to the abolitionists, who fre-

quently continued their interest in the South after the formal end of slavery.

Harrold's reinterpretation of the abolitionists does not stand alone. It comple-

ments Herbert Aptheker's 1989 study, Abolitionism:     A  Revolutionary

Movement, and recalls James L. Huston's significant 1990 article in the Journal

of Southern History, "The Experiential Basis of the Northern Antislavery

Impulse." The presence of a real abolitionist threat in the southern border rein-

forces William Freehling's vision of a divided South in The Road to Disunion

(1990). Clearly polarization, confrontation, and ideological commitment are re-

ceiving new respect from Civil War historians.

Yet a word of caution is necessary. While abolitionist media contained news

about the South and slavery, they also covered internal disputes within the move-

ment and discussions of all aspects of reform, here and abroad. To demonstrate the

dominance of one theme over another would seemingly require some form of con-

tent analysis and perhaps an analysis of where antislavery societies used their lim-

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196                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

ited financial resources. While abolitionists contributed to antislavery missions

and efforts at slave liberation, one must be struck by both the paucity and under-

funding of such efforts. Slave liberators ended up dead or imprisoned. Antislavery

missions claimed to reach thousands but with no independent confirmation of

their numbers. Free labor communities were clearly unwelcome in the South and

did not last. Were such efforts truly alarming to slaveholders or simply one piece

in a much larger picture of sectional and intrasectional political confrontation?

Was not the presence of moderate antislavery politicians holding positions of

power and respectability more crucial to a credible antislavery threat? Harrold's

study is certainly thought-provoking and his delineation of abolitionist efforts in

the South long overdue. His larger thesis, however, needs further confirmation.

 

Ohio University                                           Phyllis F. Field

 

 

Public Loyalties: The Public and Private Life of Labor Leader John Mitchell. By

Craig Phelan. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. xii + 438p.;

notes, bibliography, index. $19.95.)

 

As Craig Phelan tells it, John Mitchell's life story is the stuff of classical

tragedy. Born into the brutal world of an Illinois mining town in 1870, orphaned

at age six, consigned to the pits at twelve, Mitchell made his escape by working

his way up the bureaucracy of his union, the United Mine Workers of America

(UMWA). He capped his rise in 1898, when he was named union president. For

the next ten years, Mitchell used his position to advance both his union and him-

self. But his efforts were undermined, Phelan argues, by the narrowness of his vi-

sion and the failings of his character. His faith in the possibilities of employer-

employee cooperation led him to undercut the militancy of the UMWA's rank and

file, while his desire for social status led him to identify himself with the capital-

ist class from which he was supposed to wrench concessions.

For a period the combination worked. Mitchell established trade agreements

with a number of the industry's major producers, in the process bringing labor

peace to the vital anthracite fields of northeastern Pennsylvania. Some of the na-

tion's most powerful businessmen, particularly Mark Hanna, responded by invit-

ing Mitchell into their charmed circle. But when employers turned against the

UMWA in the mid-1900s, Mitchell could not bring himself to confront his

wealthy allies by unleashing the power of his union. By the time Mitchell re-

signed the UMWA presidency in 1908, the union was in full retreat, its trade

agreements in tatters, its membership plummeting. And Mitchell himself was

shattered, his health destroyed by too much work and too much drink.

This is a compelling story, well researched and well told. By transforming

Mitchell's life into classical tragedy, however, Phelan obscures some of the com-

plexity of turn-of-the-century class relations. The pivotal problem is Phelan's de-

cision to treat Mitchell's status seeking as a character flaw. That decision allows

Phelan to draw a sharp distinction between the conservative labor leader and the

militant rank and file. And it suggests that had the flaw not existed Mitchell and

the miners might have built a powerful, class conscious union that could have led

the fight for "economic justice" (p. 360).

Both points are problematic. Many nineteenth century workers (particularly

craftsmen, which Anglo-American miners still considered themselves to be) em-

braced bourgeois values and standards, seeing in them the respectability that in-

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Book Reviews                                                        197

 

dustrialization had taken from their labor. Such workers probably did not consider

Mitchell's dinners with Andrew Carnegie, his stylish dress, and his European va-

cations as a sign of betrayal but as a point of pride. Perhaps Mitchell should have

allied himself with the more militant faction of the rank and file, as Phelan sug-

gests. But there is little reason to believe that, had he done so, the UMWA would

have been more successful. On the contrary, a more militant UMWA probably

would have been crushed by the combined power of capital and the state, as were

those most class conscious of Progressive era unions, the Western Federation of

Miners and its successor, the Industrial Workers of the World.

Downplaying the importance of Mitchell's character flaws does not make this

story any less tragic. It simply roots the tragedy in a different, more modern, dy-

namic. In this version, Mitchell became a victim not of his own failings but of an

industrial system that could not abide a union leader who wanted nothing more

than a share of the system's bounty.

 

University of Massachusetts-Amherst                          Kevin Boyle

 

 

The Ambassadors and America's Soviet Policy. By David Mayers. (New York:

Oxford University Press, 1995. xiv + 335p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography,

index. $35.00.)

 

David Mayers offers the first comprehensive assessment of the history of

American ambassadors to Russia and the Soviet Union. Thoroughly researched

and competently written, this study will be the place to begin for anyone inter-

ested in the range and quality of American diplomacy in Moscow.

Mayers actually begins in St. Petersburg, offering two chapters on American

envoys to tsarist Russia. Given the spoils system and the absence of a profes-

sional foreign service, it is no surprise that the performance of the early ambas-

sadors was uneven. For every successful mission, say of a John Quincy Adams

(1809-1814), there was a compensating disaster, say of a Simon Cameron, who

lasted only a few months in 1862.

Outraged by the Bolshevik Revolution, Washington did not condescend to send

an ambassador from 1917 to 1933. After Franklin Roosevelt restored diplomatic

relations, William Bullitt arrived, filled with high hopes, to open the first

American mission to the USSR. He lasted less then three years before leaving dis-

illusioned, a reaction not uncommon among American envoys.

Operating under the shadow of purge trials and collectivization, American

diplomats did the best they could in the 1930s, according to Mayers. Even the no-

torious Joseph Davies, for whom Mayers offers a cautious, partial rehabilitation,

was "a more complicated figure than many people have assumed" (p. 109). Mayers

is on strong ground in arguing that Davies's worst excesses were a result of his ef-

forts to assist the Roosevelt Administration in promoting the "Uncle Joe" image

of Washington's World War II ally.

Despite the change toward a thoroughgoing demonization of the USSR with the

onset of the Cold War, Mayers credits the Moscow embassy with remaining sober.

Given the exhaustion and deprivations suffered in the death struggle with Nazism,

the postwar "Soviet threat" was an ideological rather than a direct military one.

Through his research in diplomatic records, secondary literature and interviews,

Mayers reconstructs each ambassadorship. He offers reasoned assessments of the

major issues, the quality of understanding and advice rendered from Moscow, as

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198                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

well as its reception in Washington. Sometimes the communication was good, as

between W. Averell Harriman and Harry S. Truman. At other times it was bad, as

between Charles Bohlen and John Foster Dulles.

Mayers offers sound, if familiar, assessments of Bullitt, Bohlen, Harriman, Loy

Henderson and George F. Kennan, all of whom have been the focus of previous bi-

ographical treatment. His book makes a greater contribution by illuminating the

service of lesser known but often more effective envoys such as Llewellyn

Thompson. Based partly on the good working relationship he established with

Nikita S. Khrushchev, Thompson offered advice well grounded in Soviet realities

to both Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, the latter of which praised Thompson

for his sharp assessment of Soviet intentions in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Mayers rounds out his study with (through no fault of his own) the less well-

documented record of more recent ambassadors to the USSR. None of these men-

Malcolm Toon, Thomas Watson, Arthur Hartman, Jack Matlock and Robert

Strauss-was particularly distinguished. Although the case of the former IBM

chairman Watson, who was out of touch in Moscow, suggests the perils of amateur

diplomacy, Mayers warns against drawing sweeping conclusions. He argues that

some of the nation's most highly skilled professional diplomats, including

Kennan, were ineffective ambassadors, whereas Harriman, a prominent Democrat

and FDR political appointee, proved first-rate.

Mayers bases his generally persuasive evaluations of the American envoys on

appropriate criteria, including their competence in Russian language, knowledge

of Russian and Soviet history, toughness, and ability to comprehend and abide

"the weirdness of Soviet life" (p. 232). In an otherwise comprehensive analysis,

Mayers pays too little attention to cultural diplomacy, which played an increas-

ingly important role in U.S.-Soviet relations. Mayers lacked much of a historiog-

raphy to play off of on this subject, yet the careers of certain ambassadors,

William Standley and Thompson among them, are instructive on the role of cul-

tural exchange in East-West relations.

In the final analysis Mayers is persuasive in arguing that Washington's ambas-

sadors should be evaluated not on the basis of their predictive powers, but rather

on their ability to discern the essential flow of events in an unpredictable envi-

ronment.

 

University of Akron                                     Walter L. Hixson

 

 

"Without Blare of Trumpets"; Walter Drew, the National Erectors' Association,

and the Open Shop Movement, 1903-57. By Sidney Fine. (Ann Arbor: The

University of Michigan Press, 1995. viii + 384p.; illustrations, notes, bibliog-

raphy, index. $49.50.)

 

In the past decade, the New Labor History has been joined by a renewed interest

in the history of employers and personnel management, an approach reflected in

studies by Sanford Jacoby, Howell John Harris, or Sarah Lyons Watts. To this

field, Sidney Fine has now contributed an exhaustively researched and thoroughly

detailed history of the National Erectors' Association and its long-time commis-

sioner Walter Drew.

Fine asserts that "from 1906 until the New Deal, [the NEA] was, most conspicu-

ously, the implacable foe of structural iron workers" (p. vii). Where usually David

Parry and the National Association of Manufacturers have been in the spotlight of

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Book Reviews                                                        199

 

historians' attention, Fine claims that the NEA was especially important, because

it involved both the steel and construction industries. As a result of this position,

Fine argues, Walter Drew and the NEA "played a major role in seeking to spread the

open shop . . . to other unionized sectors of the economy" (p. vii-viii).

The nature of the construction industry provided the building trades unions with

a uniquely powerful position. Most contractors found it easier to deal with the

union, pay the union wage scale, and thereby avoid costly delays, than to insist

on an open shop. Unions, in turn, often promised not to provide workers to con-

tractors who were not member of a specified contractors association or outside the

trade jurisdiction.

Walter Drew and the NEA feared that the International Association of Bridge and

Structural Iron Workers (IABSIW) might use its leverage to force the unionization

of other branches of the steel industry and other sectors of the economy. To un-

dermine the position of the IABSIW, the NEA, for example, had members in the

construction industry place open shop clauses into their contracts with subcon-

tractors, or deny steel to companies that did not abide by the open shop.

Although the NEA certainly was an important player in the open shop move-

ment, Fine also points out that "if the NEA goal was the actual destruction of the

IABSIW, it conspicuously failed to achieve that objective" (p. 79). Union mem-

bership dropped shortly in the 1910s, but picked up again during World War I and

then during the building boom of the 1920s.

During the boom of the 1920s, NEA companies were ultimately more interested

in doing business than in pursuing the open shop agenda of Walter Drew.

"Fearing strikes in one city if they permitted open shop erection in another city,"

Fine points out, "contractors arranged for the erection on a closed shop basis for

all the steel they purchased" (p. 237), among them the largest NEA members. In

addition, this provided larger companies with a competitive edge, as "local NEA

firms that fabricated structured steel to be erected by open shop workers found it

difficult to compete with general contractors who obtained their steel from major

fabricators like [NEA members] American Bridge or McClintic-Marshall" (p. 237).

The consistent refusal to enforce the open shop, when it was of advantage to deal

with the union and, eventually, New Deal labor legislation put an end to the efforts

of the NEA.

The title, indicating that the study covers the years 1906 to 1957, is somewhat

misleading. The focus is mostly on the years until 1933. The years from 1933 to

1957 are treated only in the last, short chapter. But this is a fairly minor criticism

of an overall fine monograph that both labor and business historians will be in-

terested in reading.

 

University of Cincinnati                                  Thomas Winter

 

 

Mother-Work: Women, Child Welfare, and the State, 1890-1930. By Molly Ladd-

Taylor. (Champaign: The University of Illinois Press, 1994. x + 211p.; notes,

index. $39.95 cloth; $14.95 paper.)

 

Mother-Work is a significant contribution to the burgeoning literature describ-

ing female activism and the early welfare state in America. Focusing on the

rhetoric of maternalism and the realities of motherhood, Molly Ladd-Taylor dis-

sembles and weaves the varied strands of maternal experience across class and eth-

nic divides, voluntary organizations for private child care study and social action,

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200                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

the professionalization of reform, policy making and administration, and the im-

pact of maternal and child care programs on bureaucratic dispenser and welfare re-

cipients. Associational records, Childrens' Bureau collections, and federal, state

and local data provide the materials for this rich, nuanced and often ironic survey

of the rise and fall of maternalistic ideology and the politics of motherhood.

Ladd-Taylor's examination of the Mothers' Congress provides a much-needed

view of the women who provided the grassroots pressure for political responses to

their needs, as well as the voluntary support of programs in their communities

when legislation was implemented. Her focus on reformers and especially on the

staff of the Children's Bureau analyzes the cross-class successes and failures of

their policies. Those that stressed maternal and child care education, later embod-

ied along with minimal medical care in the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921, demon-

strated the common needs and concerns that united women. The failure to gain

working-class support for laws and later a Child Labor Amendment to abolish the

practice illustrated the inability of educated, middle and upper class reformers to

understand the gap between the imperatives of family income and the ideal of the

sole male breadwinner. In similar fashion, Mothers' Pensions (later Aid to

Dependent Children) embodied the ideal to universal home-bound motherhood but

reverted to means testing as imperious social case workers imposed biased, con-

servative definitions of "worthy" when dispensing meager welfare allocations to

widows.

The author is especially incisive in explaining the decline of the womans'

movement and maternal politics after suffrage. She agrees that decline began in

mid-1920 and that the conservative backlash and the failure of a "woman's vote"

to materialize were major causes. She expands her argument to include the interre-

lationships of these factors with the de-politicizing of maternalism. Attacks on

female activism led voluntary associations like the PTA to renounce its social

agenda and concentrate on membership and organizational growth. Both policy

successes and opposition turned reformers into professional bureaucrats defending

hard-won careers in addition to causes. Feminists played a role in undermining

motherhood by emphasizing political and economic rights and by denouncing

women's financial dependence. And finally, behavioral psychologists attacked

once unquestioned assumptions concerning mother-child emotional bonds and

care, turning "mother-love" into maternal smothering and coddling. With the cer-

tainty of maternal ideology jettisoned, the very foundation of political mother-

hood crumbled.

Ladd-Taylor looks ahead briefly to resurrected features of welfare programs in

New Deal legislation. Many of the advocates were familiar figures from earlier

battles but others were more recent proponents. In their new form, health, welfare

and child labor features were transformed as well. Here is an area that calls for fur-

ther study. But for the decades preceding the Social Security Act and the Fair Labor

Standards Act, Ladd-Taylor had done a masterful job placing women and the incipi-

ent welfare state-with all their complexities-in clear relief.

 

Case Western Reserve University                               Lois Scharf

 

 

Rutherford B. Hayes: Warrior & President. By Ari Hoogenboom. (Lawrence:

University Press of Kansas, 1995. xii + 626p.; illustrations, notes, note on

sources, index. $45.00.)

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Book Reviews                                                        201

 

It may surprise some, perhaps, to be made aware that Hayes has received the best

of remembrance, and first of all because his last home, in Fremont, Ohio, was kept

up, in his time and beyond to the very present for the use of thoughtful historians

and researchers. They included Charles B. Williams's The Life of Rutherford

Birchard Haves (1928), and the fine study of Hayes by the biographer of John P.

Altgeld (1954), Harry Barnard. The dean of American military history in his time,

T. Harry Williams, contributed Hayes of the Twenty-Third (1965), which merits

anybody's reading.

Why, then, another full-sized biography? The answer lies in the present state of

American chronicles and life, which have suffered by bad reading and special inter-

est. We need to welcome all new efforts which base their focus on sound papers

and a respect for the continuity of American life.

To be sure, Hayes was a central figure in the Disputed Election of 1876--an

event which could have touched off a continuation of the Civil War itself. But this

extraordinary event is too often passed off as a contrivance of tricky politicians

who finally give the election to Hayes over Samuel T. Tilden by one-repeat,

one-electoral vote.

Once, the glib bundling in history classes of Hayes-Garfield-Arthur-Harrison did

no particular harm. There were specialists of post-Civil War political history to

explain our continuing national concerns. But since the 1960s frauds who pre-

tended to be witty and knowing by referring to Millard Fillmore as a joke among

historical jokes, it becomes necessary to save our imperial subject from know-

nothings. "Presentism" has been a wounding factor in our educational crisis, our

blurred view of the past. The new biography of Hayes helps, by humanizing once

more the actors in the Hayes saga.

For one thing, Hayes can surprise new students of our time by the variety of his

positive qualities and achievements. Some critics argued that he was handed his

opportunities, rather than won them. But so were all pioneers of the Ohio frontier

who made less of those same opportunities. Hayes was favored by a fruitful family

spread about in New England and moving westward to Ohio and further. His

mother Sophia, left a widow, was supported by her materially competent and ideal-

istic brother Sardis Birchard, who kept the family upright, and advancing through

sorrowful sicknesses and deaths. He made young Hayes a winning, able, and

thoughtful youth who starred at Kenyon College in Ohio, and at Harvard.

As a young lawyer in Cincinnati he achieved visibility with his conservative

principles of law and order, though he resisted religious conversion as a matter of

his sincere feelings. He defended criminals and runaways, and favored antislavery,

though not abolitionism. Love of family and friends was to him primary in life.

Made City Solicitor, he expanded his social principles to further Cincinnati's

growth. As he wrote his uncle: "I believe I know what true gentility, genuine

good breeding, is. Let me but live out what is within, and . .. little of what is im-

portant would be found wanting."

What was important included the Ohio and West Virginia area which, if lost by

secessionist war, would practically ensure an enduring Confederacy and enduring

slavery labor system. Hayes, with so many others loyal to the Union, had little

experience involving guns and fighting beyond hunting. His qualities earned

him-as it did others like young James A. Garfield-volunteer military rank in the

forces President Lincoln drew upon to defend this crucial area. Young Major Hayes

dedicated himself to learning military principles. Though never losing sight of

family, books, and the state of the nation, he rigidly trained his 3,000 volunteer

soldiers-and himself as officer-to learn an absolute respect for orders, whether

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202                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

they meant living or dying. It was not long before he received his lieutenant-

colonelcy, with colonelcy in prospect.

As skirmishes and war actions heated up, with Confederates trying to break

through into Ohio, Hayes and his men suffered casualties from sickness and death.

Hoogenboom's narrative style, with detail and explication, is helpful for those

who are interested, or should be. Others can learn much regarding military set-

backs, frustrating orders from high command which kept the Thirty First moving

East, South, alone and as part of the larger brigade.

To follow Hayes in his long march from Major to Brigadier General could be in-

structive on many counts. At the very first Bull's Run, which put Confederates all

but in sight of the White House, Hayes was first encouraged to think that the panic

of Federal troops would put Lincoln and his generals in more realistic mood; this

was succeeded by depression as he realized that Unionists needed hope and victo-

ries to remain loyal.

Finally, Federalists held western Virginia long enough to make it the State of

West Virginia. Ohioans, crucial to northern plans, were able to subdue the somber

pro-slavery forces in that state which had threatened the actual conduct of the war.

Hayes was among those northern commanders who held the line against brilliant

Confederates, and himself suffered serious wounds.

Ohio repaid him, first by sending him to Congress, where, as he concluded:

"The radical element is right. Universal suffrage is sound in principle." This from

a man who frankly patronized blacks as citizens and fighters, and who would not

repudiate friends who had chosen secession and the South's version of the

Constitution. Ohio went on to make Hayes Governor, and to re-elect him.

Hayes went on to reject an offered Senatorial nomination on principle, and,

once free of the Governorship, turned to investments and family health for duties.

In 1872, with President Grant thought finished by his first term mishaps, Hayes

found himself drawn back into politics. Hayes, as a former soldier, thought it nec-

essary not to desert President Grant, his former commander. He made education a

primary pursuit for the rest of his life, for whites as well as blacks.

The great crisis of 1876 drew him in, and he fought strong contenders for the

nomination. The Democrats hit upon Samuel J. Tilden, who had fought the Tweed

Ring in New York. Hayes promised reform, notably in civil service. As politi-

cians labored to secure electoral votes in the stalemate, the threat of renewed civil

war darkened.

Frustrated southerners could be readily found to close ranks for another Bull's

Run. It is generally agreed that Tilden, with a patent majority in votes, could have

taken office, had he come to Washington and fought for it. But he did not. He

hedged and was legalistic, at a time when legality was itself in question.

Democrats and Republicans quarreled behind closed doors, seeking a compromise.

Decades of research have not changed their final resolution. Hayes could have the

office, if he withdrew Federal troops from the South.

He took office, and withdrew his troops. Was this a sellout? Could Tilden have

done better? One thing is certain. Those who think that History is dull might try

to prove it here.

 

The Belfry                                                   Louis Filler

Ovid, Michigan

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Book Reviews                                                        203

 

The Salmon P. Chase Papers. Volume 2: Correspondence, 1823-1857. Edited by

John Niven, James P. McClure, Leigh Johnsen, Steve Leikin, and William M.

Ferraro. (Kent: The Kent State University Press, 1994. xxv + 489p.; chronol-

ogy, illustrations, notes, editorial procedures, bibliography, index. $35.00.)

 

The recent release of volume 2 of Ohio politician and reformer Salmon Portland

Chase's papers, correspondence from 1823-1857, nicely complements volume 1,

Chase's diaries, published just a year earlier. Happily, Chase was a better corre-

spondent than he was a diarist and most readers will find his letters more interest-

ing than his diaries-although serious researchers will surely use both.

This new volume contains only correspondence, mostly from Chase although

there are some letters to him as well. The editors have chosen to omit legal briefs

and other writings which, while important, are generally available elsewhere.

Apparently Chase's extant correspondence is fairly voluminous and the editors

were forced to be extremely selective in their choice of documents. They do not,

and perhaps they cannot, say what proportion of the available letters they chose,

but they seem to have selected missives to or from notable persons, others that

explicitly state Chase's political philosophy or describe his political activities,

and some which detail important aspects of his personal or family life.

The letters begin while Chase was a student and conclude just after his election

to a second gubernatorial term. One of the earliest letters, written on November 4,

1825, by Salmon's older brother Alexander Ralston Chase, gives Salmon some

good, solicited advice on choosing a profession. In a letter of February 8, 1830,

to his fried Charles D. Cleveland, the twenty-two year-old Salmon contemplates

changing his "fishy" name to Spencer DeCheyce or Spencer Payne Cheyce.

Generally letters during the 1820s and 1830s are quite sparse, however, merely

giving an occasional glimpse into Chase's life. Far more letters are included for

the 1840s and 1850s, reaching their greatest number in the years 1848-50.

With few exceptions Chase's correspondence from these later decades is politi-

cal and the reader can trace his successive involvement with various parties from

the Liberty and Free-Soil organizations to the Free or Independent Democrats,

whom Chase regarded as the true Democratic Party. Ultimately Chase joined the

new Republican coalition and his letters give some account of the party's early

struggles. While attempting to define or explain his political positions and prin-

ciples, Chase corresponded with such antislavery stalwarts as Charles Sumner,

Joshua R. Giddings, William H. Seward, and Gamaliel Bailey. He defined his posi-

tion as a Free Democrat in a letter to John G. Breslin of July 30, 1849, explaining

that he agreed with "the doctrines of the democracy, on the subjects of trade, cur-

rency, and special privileges," but he believed that democratic principles must

also apply to slavery (p. 251), the issue which he saw as a major political prior-

ity. While Chase himself was opposed to the Know-Nothing movement, he and

some of his correspondents discussed the probable effects of Know-Nothingism

on his political campaigns. Chase not only wanted to be senator and governor,

both offices which he held during this period, but he also wanted to be president.

Viewed as too controversial, Chase was not chosen as the Republican candidate in

1856, but the question of his potential candidacy for the 1860 election came up as

early as his letter of November 3, 1857, to his friend Charles D. Cleveland.

Among the letters pertaining to his family is the missive to Cleveland of

October 1, 1845, grieving over the death of his second wife, Eliza Ann Smith

Chase, on September 29. There are a number of letters to his third wife, Sarah

Bella Dunlop Ludlow Chase, as well as a few to his daughter Kate, one of

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204                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

September 30, 1855, being a particularly entertaining account of the difficulties

of travel he experienced during his first campaign for governor.

The editorial staff have continued their good work evident in the previous vol-

ume, briefly identifying people and explaining events and allusions as necessary.

Readers can look forward to at least one more volume.

 

University of Tennessee, Knoxville               Glenna R. Schroeder-Lein

 

 

The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant. Volume 19: July 1, 1868-October 31, 1869.

Edited by John Y. Simon. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press,

1995. xxvi + ⁶08p.; illustration, notes, chronology, calendar, index. $65.00.)

The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant. Volume 20: November 1, 1869-October 31,

1870. Edited by John Y. Simon. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University

Press, 1995. xxiii + 525p.; illustration, notes, chronology, calendar, index.

$65.00.)

 

The latest installments of The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant continue the excellent

tradition established by John Y. Simon and his editorial team. First-rate editing

and thorough indexing make these new volumes extremely user-friendly and indis-

pensable research tools. Moreover, Simon and his staff have provided an invalu-

able service to historians by making Grant's writings more accessible, eliminat-

ing the need for costly and time-consuming excursions to numerous repositories

scattered across the country.

Volume Nineteen (July 1, 1868-October 1, 1869) covers Grant's transition from

the musty barracks to the smoke-filled backrooms of Washington. The volume

opens prior to the 1868 presidential election, as Grant, then commanding general

of the Army, tended to military business and avoided as best he could the political

arena. That summer he traveled extensively and, true to his characteristic loathing

of speechmaking, dodged several public appearances. When faced with a stump

and a captive audience, he merely thanked his well-wishers and departed, seeming

more like a man searching for sanctuary than a politician seeking the highest of-

fice in the land.

The general returned to Galena in August 1868 and remained there until the

November elections catapulted him to the presidency. During his first months in

office he found the path toward political success strewn with obstacles seemingly

more formidable than the Army of Northern Virginia. Reconstructing the former

Confederate states remained a key issue and Grant, remembering his distasteful ex-

perience during President Andrew Johnson's battles with Congress over

Reconstruction policy, signaled his willingness to work with the legislative

branch and avoid the bitter constitutional clashes that had undermined the previ-

ous administration.

Formulating a coherent Indian policy in his first term also proved difficult as

turf wars between the War and Interior Departments and the corrupt practices of

Indian agents frustrated progress. In foreign policy Grant cast a covetous eye on

Santo Domingo and set his administration on a collision course with Congress.

He also grappled with a flood of patronage requests (several of which came from

his father) and rewarded former comrades and friends with government posts.

Some of these appointments would later haunt him and, sadly, one of his most

trusted appointees, Secretary of War John A. Rawlins, died in September, 1869,

leaving Grant without a dear friend and learned counsel.

• 10
 

Book Reviews                                                        205

 

Volume Twenty (November 1, 1869-October 31, 1870) covers the second year

of Grant's first administration. In this period he rejoiced at the ratification of the

Fifteenth Amendment which guaranteed suffrage to black males. Although he

hoped this event, one of the most important "since the nation came to life," would

signal the end of Reconstruction, within six months he was enforcing the Ku Klux

Klan Act to prevent Southern political terrorism from nullifying the new constitu-

tional rights.

Relations with Congress continued to deteriorate in this period and the presi-

dent who had initially pledged support for that august body was, by midterm, com-

plaining that "My peace is when Congress is not in session." Events abroad also

consumed Grant's attention. In March 1870 he sent the Senate his pet foreign

policy initiative, the treaty to annex Santo Domingo, arguing that, among other

supposed benefits, the new territory could accommodate the entire black popula-

tion of the U.S. "should it choose to emigrate." The Senate rejected the treaty,

however, further widening the rift between Congress and the administration.

The latest volumes of the Grant Papers follow his transformation from soldier to

statesman and illuminate his introduction-as a civilian public servant-to the

cruel world of Washington politics. Unlike 1864, however, the new president

could not elude the grasp of political forces by moving his headquarters into the

field. Despite the turbulence that marked Grant's first two years in office, the cor-

respondence in these volumes reveals a man steadfast in his devotion to protect

with the law the Union he had helped preserve with the sword.

 

The Ohio State University, Mershon Center                 William B. Feis

 

 

Fleet Walker's Divided Heart: The Life of Baseball's First Black Major Leaguer.

By David W. Zang. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995. xvi + 157p.;

notes, illustrations, bibliographic essay, index. $21.50)

Sol White's History of Colored Baseball, with Other Documents on the Early

Black Game, 1886-1936. Compiled with an introduction by Jerry Mallory.

(Lincoln:  University of Nebraska Press, 1995. lxv + ²⁸⁹p.; illustrations,

notes, index. $26.00.)

 

Handsomely produced by the University of Nebraska Press, both of these vol-

umes attest to the continuing high level of interest in the history of black base-

ball that, for the past fifteen-twenty years, has commanded the labors of numerous

researchers working both in an academic environment and as avocationally dedi-

cated members of the Society for American Baseball Research. Each volume,

moreover, treats the life of a pioneer in black (and early integrated) baseball, and

in each case the subject was a native of eastern Ohio.

David W. Zang details the life of Moses Fleetwood Walker, who was born in

1857 and raised in and around Steubenville. In recent times "Fleet" Walker has be-

come a familiar figure for students of both baseball and African-American history,

because during the 1884 baseball season he played in forty-one games (all but one

as catcher) for the Toledo franchise in the American Association--a league that

was operating for the third year as a rival to the National League. Late in that sea-

son the short-handed Toledo club also employed Welday Walker, Fleet Walker's

younger brother, as an outfielder for five games.

When the Association trimmed back from twelve to eight franchises following

that season, Toledo lost its "big league" status and Fleet Walker drifted elsewhere,

• 11
 

206                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

performing in various "minor" professional leagues where, as yet, white officials

and franchise owners had not drawn the color line. From 1885 through the 1889

season, he played for teams representing four different cities in five different inte-

grated leagues, before he and eventually every other black player found themselves

excluded from competing with whites. By the end of the nineteenth century,

"Organized Baseball" was lily white; it would remain that way until Jackie

Robinson broke the color line in 1946 with the International League's Montreal

ball club.

Zang's book is far more than a baseball biography. Meticulously researched, it

also treats Walker's student years at Oberlin College and the University of

Michigan, his career as a businessman (he operated a theater in Cadiz for eighteen

years), his efforts as an inventor (of a new artillery shell and a movie projector de-

vice), his troubles with legal authorities (he was convicted of mail theft in 1898),

and his authorship of a bitter tract on American race relations-published in 1908

as Our Home Colony--that called for the forced emigration of black Americans to

Africa. After a fascinating life, marked by frustration and heartache but also by

success in various endeavors, Walker died in 1924 in Cleveland.

An admitted "romantic," Zang has written an important book, but one that fre-

quently claims too much. Walker was a fairly light-skinned mulatto, which, Zang

insists, caused him to be particularly burdened by what W.E.B. Dubois called the

"double-consciousness" of being both black and American. Thus his "divided

heart." While it is true that not until the turn of the century did the U.S. Census

Bureau adopt the designation "Negro" for all racially mixed Americans, Zang over-

states the significance of Walker's mixed-race heritage. In practice, white

Americans have always treated persons with any African ancestry as being all

black.

Zang also consistently overwrites. Just two examples: "Ever since Sigmund

Freud dared to build a hangman's scaffolding out of the inner fears and secrets of

the human mind, biographers have been quick to spring the trapdoor on their sub-

jects. . ." (p. xiii). "Spectators would go free at the end of a game, but for the next

nine years baseball would hold Walker captive, feeding him an addictive mix of

money, excitement, and notoriety to dull the effects of rancor, futility, injury,

and, of course, division" (p. 16). Finally, Zang strives for symbolic effect that

usually does not come off, as when he ruminates on "what a huge weight [Walker's

father] was strapping to his newborn's back when he named him [Moses]" (p. 7),

and the fact that in being born on a Wednesday, Walker's troubled life was forecast

in folk sayings about "Wednesday's child."

In his excellent fifty-four-page introduction to Sol White's History of Colored

Baseball, Jerry Mallory attaches no symbolic value whatsoever to the fact that his

subject's full name was King Solomon White. Originally published in 1907 in

Philadelphia as Sol White's Official Base Ball Guide: History of Colored Base

Ball and reprinted by Camden Press in 1984 in the original typeface and pocket-

sized format, this new edition is not only more physically attractive but, thanks

to Mallory, gives us a fuller understanding of who and what "Sol" White was.

Born in 1856 in Bellaire, and at least as light-skinned as Fleet Walker, Sol

White apparently did not suffer from the "divided heart" Zang attributes to Walker.

If he did, it does not come through in his characteristically upbeat account of the

early history of black professional baseball. White played for, managed, and was

otherwise associated with many of the teams whose comings and goings he chron-

icles from the 1880s, when black players were scattered throughout Organized

Baseball, up to 1906, by which time black professionals could play only for all-

• 12
 

Book Reviews                                                        207

 

black, independently operating clubs.

Thus, writes Mallory, "Sol White was a member of a tragic generation of African

Americans, born within a few years of the Civil War" (p. li). When White and his

contemporaries reached adulthood in the eighties, white society had not yet com-

pletely embraced the racial exclusiveness that would be firmly in place within an-

other two decades. By 1906, however, segregation would be the rule in virtually

every aspect of American life, and "In no other profession," observed White, "has

the color line been drawn more rigidly than in baseball" (p. 74).

Sol White, a onetime student at Wilberforce College, put together a little book

that, as Mallory notes, "has withstood the scrutiny of subsequent historical re-

search," which "pretty much confirms White's version of most events and testifies

to his credibility and reliability as a historian" (p. lviii). Reproducing all the

photographs (and advertisements) contained in the original, the University of

Nebraska Press's new edition of White's season-by-season narrative will delight

those who have long depended on it as an indispensable source, and enlighten

those just discovering the rich history of baseball on the other side of the color

line.

 

Ohio University                                      Charles C. Alexander

 

 

The Secret Six: The True Tale of the Men Who Conspired with John Brown. How a

Circle of Northern Aristocrats Helped Light the Fuse of the Civil War. By Edward

J. Renehan, Jr. (New York: Crown Publishers, 1995. x + 308p.; illustrations,

notes, bibliography, index. $25.00.)

 

Generations of Americans have known of the Ohio abolitionist John Brown and

of his terrible deeds in Kansas and at Harpers Ferry. Yet most are only vaguely

aware of the unlikely group of five New Englanders and one New Yorker who se-

cretly conspired to supply Brown money and weapons for his raid on the federal

arsenal in Virginia in October, 1859, and at times hid him in their homes. Edward

J. Renehan, Jr., has written perhaps the first full account of their role, their mo-

tives, and their actions. It is not an especially flattering picture of the six who

appeared committed to Brown's plans but displayed a noticeable lack of courage in

denying their respective roles after the scheme collapsed.

Brown's pre-raid activities and the actual events leading to his execution have

been chronicled by numerous popularizers and historians, the best account of

which is Stephen Oates's sympathetic biography. In contrast, the Secret Six have

received relatively little attention other than as individuals, and Renehan provides

an effective group portrait. With no obvious leader, they included the wealthy

New York philanthropist Gerrit Smith, Unitarian minister Theodore Parker, social

reformer and educator Samuel Gridley Howe, merchant George Luther Stearns,

writer and clergyman Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and author-educator Franklin

Sanborn. All came to abolitionism before 1850 from prosperous and privileged

places in society and all came to believe that only armed conflict could end slav-

ery. Parker, Howe, and Higginson were part of the Massachusetts efforts in the

early 1850s to prevent the extradition of those alleged to be fugitive slaves. All

were won to Brown by his Kansas crusade and several of the group supported the

activities of the New England Emigrant Aid Company.

Each of the Six contributed financially with varying degrees of willingness to

Brown's Harpers Ferry plans. Yet when faced with possible federal charges for

• 13
 

208                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

their role each denied participation in the plot and several fled the country to avoid

testifying and possible arrest. Despite their substantial egos they became masters

of denial of their respective roles even to each other. Higginson alone refused to

flee, first hoping to rescue Brown from his Charlestown jail and then after his exe-

cution to save the remaining participants from a similar fate. Yet in later years,

no longer facing a loss of their own freedom, those still alive remained passionate

defenders of Brown and made valiant attempts to care for his family.

Readers are never sure exactly how Renehan feels about Brown and the Secret

Six. He falls into the familiar trap of viewing Brown as "a mad man who would

lead all who marched with him to certain death" (p. 164), an interpretation which

only Oates succeeds in avoiding. Yet Renehan at times also shows grudging admi-

ration for Brown and his co-conspirators. Perhaps he reflects the ambiguity felt

by many who abhorred slavery at the time and later. Still, one wishes for a more

compassionate view of those so dedicated to emancipation, however achieved.

Renehan writes an engaging and exciting account of events before and after

Harpers Ferry. Occasionally he falls into cliches as in describing Brown's failing

wool business as "good as bust" (p. 27), but for the most part he writes well. His

research successfully delved into the letters and diaries found in archives from New

England to Kansas. In places the extensive quotations form the letters of the Six

and others are unnecessarily lengthy. Nonetheless, the result is a thorough and

accurate description of the role of a group which has until now remained somewhat

elusive.

 

Youngstown State University                              Frederick J. Blue

 

 

Nowhere to Run: The Wilderness, May 4th & 5th, 1864. By John Michael Priest.

(Shippensburg, Pennsylvania: The White Mane Publishing Company, Inc.,

1995. xvii + 316p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95.)

 

By the spring of 1864 the nature of the Civil War, and the character of the

armies on both sides, had changed significantly. Three years of bloodletting had

altered not only the way in which troops fought but also their views of the war, of

death, of their officers, and of civilians. Nowhere to Run, John Michael Priest's

account of the first day of the fighting in the Wilderness, skillfully captures the

moods of the soldiers on both sides and their experience of combat. Priest's pur-

pose is to write the story of this battle from the perspective of common soldiers

and company officers. The major players in most accounts of this battle-

Generals Ulysses S. Grant, George Meade, Robert E. Lee, J.E.B. Stuart, and A.P.

Hill-are hardly seen at all, and only a few officers at the rank of colonel or above

enter Priest's narrative.

Nowhere to Run is composed of dozens of fragmentary sketches of the fighting,

culled primarily from regimental histories, diaries, and letters. The narrative

roughly follows the chronology of the battle, but it moves rapidly from place to

place, tracing the actions, emotions, and impressions of dozens of different units

and individuals. Among the incidents that Priest shows the reader are Union regi-

ments camping among the corpses and wreckage of the previous Battle of

Chancellorsville; fires igniting the cartridge boxes of the wounded and inflicting

new, horrible wounds; Union sharpshooters killing Confederates attempting to re-

trieve their wounded comrades from between the lines; regiment after regiment

stepping into the tangled terrain of the Wilderness and losing their cohesion and

• 14
 

Book Reviews                                                        209

 

direction; and Northern and Southern troops passing each other unaware on a road

late at night. Priest vividly, and often graphically, portrays the chaos and confu-

sion of battle, the terrifying firepower of Civil War weapons and the carnage that

resulted, the fear, rage, and courage of the soldiers, and the bizarre occurrences that

were a part of every Civil War battle. Priest also possesses an excellent grasp of

Civil War tactics, and he describes with precision the new methods of fighting

that had developed by this time: the employment of greater numbers of skirmish-

ers and more dispersed formations; the practice of assaulting in short rushes rather

than in long steady advances; and the increasing tendency of troops on both sides

to fight either behind breastworks or from a prone position.

Readers should be warned that an appreciation of Nowhere to Run requires a prior

understanding of the major features of the Battle of the Wilderness, for Priest in-

cludes no discussion of the battle's strategic context, the maneuvers of the armies,

or the reasons for the Union defeat. To his credit, Priest clearly states at the outset

the parameters of his work and refers readers to Edward Steere, The Wilderness

Campaign (now superseded by Gordon Rhea, The Battle of the Wilderness, May 5-

6, 1864) for an operational account. Readers may also find the complete lack of

variation in Priest's narrative structure to be somewhat tedious and confusing.

Nonetheless, Priest writes with directness, imagination, and sympathy, and he

succeeds in recreating the sights, sounds, and smells of a battle and confining the

reader's view to that of an ordinary solder. Nowhere to Run is also attractively

produced, and the text is accompanied by no fewer than forty-five outstanding

maps and twenty-nine well-chosen photographs. Though Nowhere to Run should

not be the first work that anyone reads on this great clash, its alternative perspec-

tive is valuable.

 

Columbus, Ohio                                               Noel Fisher

 

 

Making a Place for Ourselves;  The Black Hospital Movement, 1920-1945. By

Vanessa Northington Gamble. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

xviii + 265p.; illustrations, notes, index. $45.00.)

 

In this book, Vanessa Northington Gamble has contributed significantly to our

knowledge of an important chapter in the history of American medicine. The au-

thor chronicles the 20th century movement led by the National Medical

Association (NMA) and the National Hospital Association (NHA) to upgrade medi-

cal and educational programs at black hospitals. The movement was grounded in

the understanding that the future of the black medical profession was linked to im-

proving the quality of healthcare services delivered at these hospitals. Operating

in a profession shaped by segregation and discrimination, black practitioners

struggled to make a place for themselves within American medicine. Gamble

shows how black medical leaders, hoping to establish large, modern facilities,

championed the values of scientific medicine and accepted the prospect of closing

the prototypical, small black community hospitals that usually lacked training fa-

cilities. This carefully-researched           of the black hospital movement in the

wider context of black community development and the varying pressures exerted

by white institutions.

Focused on three communities-Tuskegee, Chicago, and Cleveland-the book

tells us much about the interaction of the black hospitals with the federal govern-

ment and white philanthropy. Following the Civil War, healthcare for blacks was

• 15
 

210                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

of concern to the larger white society if for no other reason than self-protection

but this care was to be provided on a segregated basis. By 1920 the basis for mod-

ernization of the black hospital was established as the number of black physicians

rose from 900 in 1890 to about 3,500 in 1920. The preference of many blacks of

this era for black-operated facilities was rooted in a not irrational fear that blacks

in a white hospital would be used for unwarranted medical experimentation. Black

hospitals could only survive if they adapted to contemporary standards of hospital

technology and accreditation. Among prime leaders of the reform movement were

the physicians Midian O. Bousfield, Peter Marshall Murray, John A. Kenney and

H. M. Green. In the face of opposition from physicians associated with the

NAACP these leaders argued that the development of quality black institutions

would further eventual acceptance into the medical mainstream. In support of their

position they pointed to the woeful, if not nonexistent, care provided blacks in

most white hospitals. Blacks of the middle class as well as poor blacks were af-

fected by the existing system. A persistent schism came into being between

physicians committed to integration and those who believed they must build a

base of strong black institutions. The division was not absolute as the differing

factions united in the 1920s struggle to place African Americans in charge of the

Tuskegee Veterans Hospital. The black community won this struggle. The

Tuskegee institution became a modern, well-equipped facility, accredited by the

American College of Surgeons.

Gamble provides an interesting discussion of the relations between the black

hospital and white philanthropy. The assistance furnished by philanthropists was

facilitated by the circumstance that black migration to the cities left no doubt that

health conditions among African Americans was of national concern. Sadly

enough, society's response to the health needs of black people was made depen-

dent upon the health concerns of white people. In some instances, as that of the

activities of the Duke Endowment, philanthropic activity was shaped by racism,

proceeding from the premise that no black physician was capable of running a

hospital. Such a philanthropic leader as Abraham Flexner linked an interest in

healthcare for blacks to the health status of white Americans, at the same time urg-

ing that the practices of black physicians be limited to black patients. The

Rockefeller-founded General Education Board, a major source of support for medi-

cal education, assumed, Gamble writes, the intellectual inferiority of African

Americans.

Making a Place for Ourselves sheds light on such topics as the Provident

Hospital Project in Chicago and the campaign in Cleveland to open the municipal

hospital to black nurses and interns. At Provident, there was a protracted effort to

link the hospital with the University of Chicago and although the university,

even with its enormous resources, failed to provide adequate support, the affilia-

tion played a role in making possible the professional survival of black physi-

cians and offering access to various fields of specialty training. In Cleveland the

black community combined the demand for equal treatment at the City Hospital

with support for the establishment of a quality black-led facility.

In the 1940s hospital segregation was given a lease on life by the federal Hill-

Burton Act. Under this act funds were used to build segregated hospitals. It was

only in the 1960s with enactment of the Civil Rights Act and rulings by the

Department of Health, Education and Welfare that it became firmly established that

hospital segregation was contrary to law. The focus now had to shift to enforce-

ment of national policy, with that enforcement still often lax and incomplete.

In this book we have an incisive, illuminating treatment of the interrelated

• 16
 

Book Reviews                                                        211

 

themes of the 20th century challenge to hospital racial segregation and the needs

of African Americans to survive and safeguard their health within an either de jure

or de facto segregated national healthcare system. The historically black hospi-

tals may be, as the author suggests, on the brink of extinction, but they furnished

a proud record of achievement and served as a necessary bridge to the future.

Blacks required protection against the working of a racist healthcare system and

such protection as existed was offered by the black hospitals.

 

University of Cincinnati                                  Herbert Shapiro

 

 

The Sacred Fire of Liberty; James Madison & the Founding of the Federal

Republic. By Lance Banning. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995. x +

543p.; illustrations, appendix, notes, index. $35.00.)

 

James Madison, asserts Lance Banning, carried a consistent constitutional vi-

sion from his service in the Virginia Assembly and the Confederation Congress

through the 1787 Philadelphia Constitutional Convention and the ratification

battles that followed, the crafting of the Bill of Rights, the increasingly partisan

conflicts of the 1790s, and the balance of his long career. Banning repeatedly

points out that his reading of Madison's constitutional thought as unwavering

puts him at odds with many scholars who have viewed Madison as shifting from an

unqualified nationalism in the 1780s to a defense of state rights thereafter.

Although he perhaps belabors this historiographical point, in The Sacred Fire of

Liberty Banning, a professor at the University of Kentucky, provides a thorough,

fascinating, and persuasive assessment of the extraordinary Virginian who, the au-

thor convincingly affirms, stood "preeminent among the men who shaped, ex-

plained, and won an overwhelming mandate for the nation's fundamental law" (p.

1).

Banning presents Madison as steadfastly committed to a national republic of de-

fined and limited powers. Coming of age in the midst of the American revolution,

Madison from his college days at Princeton manifested an intense commitment to

republicanism. Also early on he showed a strong concern for the protection of

minority religious and speech rights against majoritarian impositions.

Moreover, Madison maintained a deep interest in the welfare of his native

Virginia. These became his priorities during his service in the Virginia assembly

and Confederation Congress. Madison came to view a large diverse republic con-

taining a multiplicity of political views and religious faiths as the best means of

protecting minority rights while achieving representative government and, not

coincidentally, best serving Virginia's economic and western land interests.

Banning illuminates these priorities in Madison's approach to the 1786

Annapolis convention and his crafting of the Virginia Plan for a strong central

government, but one with checks on majoritarianism, that set the agenda at

Philadelphia.

Through the 1787 Constitutional Convention, the subsequent writing of the

Federalist papers, and the 1788 Virginia ratifying convention Madison gained a

better understanding of how best to achieve his fundamental goals. His struggle to

secure a large republic tended to overshadow what Banning regards as his equally

strong desire to circumscribe the authority of that government. In discussing the

Bill of Rights, Banning masterfully elucidates his thesis. Madison's apparent

change of heart between the Philadelphia and Virginia conventions on the need for

• 17
 

212                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

a bill of rights represents not a basic shift in direction but rather an evolving tac-

tical understanding of how to achieve his state's ratification of the Constitution

and, above all, an acknowledgment of his commitment as a democratically-chosen

representative to serving the preferences of his constituents. During the First

Congress Madison's actions leading to the adoption of the Bill of Rights demon-

strated his sustained commitment to the protection of minority rights and limited

federal authority, particularly through the First, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments.

The battles that erupted during the Washington and Adams administrations fur-

ther spawned the view of Madisonian inconsistency. Banning maintains, how-

ever, that Madison had never been in the camp of the Hamiltonian unrestrained na-

tionalists and thus was not altering his stance. Not even in the Virginia and

Kentucky resolutions of 1798 did he act as an anti-Unionist but rather as a defender

of minority speech against overbearing majoritarianism. Though Banning does

not examine Madison's secretaryship of state or his presidency, his thesis would

gain further support from Madison's 1816 call for a constitutional amendment to

sanction federal internal improvements. A large republic to carry out tasks be-

yond the capacity of states but one operating within enumerated powers so as not

to grant too much license to a mere majority remained central to Madison to the

end of his public life. The balance he struck represents the very core of American

constitutionalism. Anyone contemplating contemporary as well as early national

American government will find valuable insights in this thoughtful book.

 

University of Akron                                       David E. Kyvig

 

 

Liberty and Equality 1920-1994. Volume 4: Liberty in America 1600 to the

Present. By Oscar and Lilian Handlin. (Scranton, Pennsylvania: Harper/Collins

Publishers, 1994. xviii + 363p.; note on sources, notes, index. $30.00.)

 

Oscar Handlin, the influential Harvard historian, and Lilian Handlin have com-

pleted the final installment of a four-part series on the forces that have either nar-

rowed or expanded people's ability to act since 1600. In understanding American

history through the lens of liberty, the Handlins demonstrate a gift for weaving

together the story of our country from the significant and mundane occurrences in

society.

That liberty anchors the American experience is a point well made in this vol-

ume. Less satisfying is the juxtaposition of equality beside liberty in the decades

after 1920. The Handlins show how postwar affluence enabled formerly excluded

groups to participate in the mainstream, albeit with a token presence. Early in

their preface, the authors frame the debates about liberty and equality as a matter of

whether liberty will win out or be abrogated to some degree. The Handlins' eager-

ness to define expansion of equality as a cancer on liberty, however, seems more

political than scholarly in this age of affirmative action rollbacks.

Whether the central historical tension after 1920 can be understood as a zero-

sum game between "liberty" and "equality" is a problematic proposition, particu-

larly if we examine the experience of African-Americans in this country during the

1920-1994 period. Consider that Southern Blacks were not inspired by songs

about liberty or equality while risking their lives in the Civil Rights Movement.

Rather, words from the old Negro spiritual-"Free At Last, Free At Last, Thank

God Almighty, We're Free At Last"-and the labor favorite-We Shall Overcome,

We Shall Overcome, We Shall Overcome Someday, Deep In My Heart, I Do

• 18
 

Book Reviews                                                      213

 

Believe, That We Shall Overcome Some Day"-carried the day in the Black church.

These are songs of freedom, a freedom at the crossroads of liberty and equality.

The Handlins might have thought more about the African-American struggle,

thus enriching the equality theme of the book. For example, I am surprised that

Liberty and Equality attempts a grand social, political, and cultural history of

equality in the 20th century without reference to the works of Derrick Bell, Patricia

Williams or Harold Cruse. Professor Daniel Farber has written that, at times, little

seems new in the affirmative action debate. In recycling the equality of opportu-

nity/equality of results debate, the Handlins are open to Farber's critique.

Having read Liberty and Equality, I would leave the reader with two final impres-

sions. First, the book is quite effective on the liberty theme underlying the

American journey into the postwar age. I came away impressed with the Handlins'

wealth of knowledge and power of interpretation. The Handlins have made a con-

vincing case.

Second, I found this book difficult to read at times because of my knowledge and

concern about the social history of racial minorities. Beginning with the work's

preface, the Handlins' position about the danger posed to liberty by an expansive

notion of equality is quite clear. The authors are thus committed to explaining

their theory of juxtaposition between liberty and equality rather than exploring

the condition of intersection amongst liberty and equality, particularly for

African-Americans. On these matters of race, the book disappoints.

 

California Western School of Law                                                Winkfield Twyman, Jr.

 

 

Women in Cleveland:  An Illustrated History.                               By Marian J. Morton.

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. xvi + 245p.; illustrations, in-

dex. $29.95 paper; $39.95 cloth.)

 

This work by Marian Morton (number four in The Encyclopedia of Cleveland

History:  Illustrated Volumes series) chronicles the history of the women of

Cleveland from the first known white settlers James and Eunice Kingsbury in 1796

to the current year of 1996. Late eighteenth-century Cleveland was little more

than malarial swamps near the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, occasionally fre-

quented by Amerindians (Delawares, Chippewas, Ottawas, and Senecas). When the

early settlers could, many moved to the higher ground of Newburg Township. The

trend of abandoning the city for the suburbs would, of course, be repeated in the

mid-twentieth century.

Cleveland's bicentennial inspired this text. In 1896 the city formed the

Cleveland Centennial Commission to commemorate the city's centennial. A

product of this endeavor was the Memorial to the Pioneer Women of the Western

Reserve (edited by Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham), written by 216 historians,

in seven volumes, to tell the story of women in the area and their vital role in the

Western Reserve's history.  The Woman's Department of the Centennial

Commission left this greeting to be opened at Cleveland's bicentennial: "TO

WOMEN UNBORN[,] 1896 SENDS GREETING TO 1996[.] We of today reach forth

our hands across the gulf of a hundred years to clasp your hands. We make you

heirs to all we have and enjoin you to improve your heritage" (p. 236). Looking

from that midpoint, to the past and to the future, one finds a city built by women,

with (or more often without) the recognition they truly deserve.

Good-sized histories make up the bulk of the chapters: "Pioneering Women,"

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214                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

"Defining Woman's Sphere," "Saving the City," "Going to Work," "Entering the

Professions," "Cultivating the Arts," "Winning the Ballot," "Meeting the

Challenges," and "Opening Doors." There are shorter essays on growing up,

sports and recreation, marriage and family, work, fashion, clubs and associations,

and growing old. But, since this is an illustrated history, the photographs are the

main focus. Here one will find a photo of Councilman Lawrence O. Payne's (all

female) basketball team from 1935; the eight young African-American ladies in a

team pose, looking smart and proud in their matching uniforms reading "PAYNE

FOR COUNCIL" (p. 92). There is the image of a women's military unit marching

on Public Square during a victory parade in 1945 (p. 115). From that same era are

also two "Rosie the Riveter"-type women working at the Cadillac Tank Plant,

wearing welder's goggles, open-neck work shirts, and overalls (p. 202).

In the chapter on "Winning the Ballot," one finds a float in a 1914 suffrage pa-

rade designated "The Suffragist Arousing her Sisters." On the float is a trumpet-

blowing suffragette with others in various states of repose at her feet, all being

awakened to the cause (p. 173). One learns about Zelma W. George, an African-

American woman appointed by President Eisenhower as a delegate to the United

National General Assembly.

 

George's appointment to her visible position was part of the United States' effort

to win the support of nonwhite Third World nations in the Cold War against

Communism. (The United States did not score points in that battle when George,

while serving as UN Delegate, was not permitted to sit in a segregated Florida air-

port.) (pp. 214-215).

 

There are many, many other memorable photos: a tough-looking midwife holding

her horse in 1910 (p. 66), everybody's favorite witch-Margaret Hamilton-in a

very non-witchy pose in 1929 (p. 169), Jane Edna Harris Hunter, lawyer and

founder of the Phillis Wheatly Association, in 1930 (p. 32), the beautiful soprano

Rachel Walker Turner during a London performance in 1897 (p. 167), and the list

goes on. Not every photo is of stellar quality. Some are not very remarkable and

one may question their inclusion. Perhaps in another hundred years, they will

look different in people's eyes.

The text, while very good, is not in the same vein as Morton's early work, "And

Sin No More: Social Policy and Unwed Mothers in Cleveland, 1855-1990" (Ohio

History, Volume 103/Summer-Autumn 1994). The earlier text was geared to a

more scholarly audience. Morton's other works are Emma Goldman and the

American Left:   "Nowhere at Home" and First Person Past:     American

Autobiographies (coedited with Russel Duncan). Morton is professor of history at

John Carroll University and is a native Clevelander. Recommended.

 

Historical Society of Pennsylvania                           Lee Arnold

 

 

Remember Laughter: A Life of James Thurber. By Neil A Grauer. (Lincoln:

University of Nebraska Press, 1994. xxii + 294p.; illustrations, notes, bibliog-

raphy, index. $20.00.)

 

Neil A. Grauer's biography of James A. Thurber, Remember Laughter, is a popu-

lar account of the writer's life. Thurber died in 1961 and, as Grauer writes, his

work meets the test for "durability and remain in print three decades after his

• 20
 

Book Reviews                                                        215

 

death" (p. xvi). Thurber is remembered for his stories of dominating women and

the daydreams of weak men, with the best known example being "The Secret Life

of Walter Mitty." The story was adapted into a movie and has become a recurrent

story in popular culture. Thurber won international fame for his writing and his

cartoons. His greatest fame came from his work for The New Yorker under the edi-

torial guidance of Harold W. Ross.

Thurber grew up in Columbus, Ohio, and attended the Ohio State University.

Although Thurber never graduated from The Ohio State University, he did take his

first steps down the path of journalism and writing while on the campus. Thurber

enjoyed some undergraduate success writing for The Lantern and the Sundial, both

student papers. A mainstay of Thurber's work was the small town yokel. Much of

the inspiration for his later autobiographical My Life and Hard Times came from

his experiences living at 77 Jefferson Avenue in Columbus. Another source of in-

spiration was Thurber's family. As Grauer notes, the Thurber family tree had "its

own quirky offshoots, mostly oddball aunts whose bizarre traits would later pro-

vide their grandnephew James with the grist for a seemingly inexhaustible supply

of anecdotes about eccentric relatives" (p. 2). As might well be expected, James

Thurber's liberal use of his family and friends in his writing produced tension and

conflict. Grauer's description of Thurber's family indicates that they might well

have been justified in their concern over how they would be remembered.

While Ohio proved a constant source of inspiration for Thurber, it was in New

York that he flourished. Thurber moved to Greenwich Village and eventually be-

came a reporter for the Evening Post. He failed as an active reporter of news and

began writing features. Soon, Thurber was writing for The New Yorker, where he

came under the guidance of Elwyn Brooks White and Harold W. Ross. The rela-

tionship with Ross was crucial to Thurber's career and development as a writer.

Ross was the founder of The New Yorker. This relationship eventually culminated

in Thurber's controversial memoir The Years with Ross. Many felt that Thurber

was unfair to Ross in the book and it cost Thurber his friendship with White.

The strength of Grauer's biography is his obvious admiration of Thurber and his

work. Grauer's book is full of charming and well-written accounts of Thurber and

his various acquaintances. Grauer's account of Thurber's growing blindness is

nicely told, showing Thurber's determination to continue working despite his in-

creasingly intense bouts with depression.

Remember Laughter is intended for a popular audience as Grauer avoids current

intellectual and academic trends. Notably missing form the work is the use of lit-

erary criticism techniques. Grauer's admiration Thurber helps to explain some of

the weak points of the book, which includes a tendency to pull back into qualifica-

tions rather than fully exploring his topic. Grauer offers this description of

Thurber: "Thurber, although given to moodiness, could be a charming, sociable

drinker who was interested in many things and delighted in arguing about all of

them" (p. 38). This description contrasts with Grauer's later acknowledgment that

Thurber evolved into "a dedicated heavy drinker, prone to bursts of anger and com-

bativeness" (p. 50).

The most obvious example of Grauer's ambivalence is when he deals with

Thurber's misogyny in his stories and cartoons. Such character traits in Thurber

are usually qualified or explained away, as in the introduction where Grauer writes

that perhaps "an equally remarkable aspect of the enduring quality of Thurber's

work has been its continuing popularity despite the undeniable misogynist tinge

to much of his writing, and the widely circulated, uncontested tales of his private

misanthropy" (p. xvi). He introduces Thurber's affair with Ann Honeycutt but cuts

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216                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

away before developing the theme. Thurber's difficulties with his first wife, and

not his affairs with mistresses, are casually given as the reason for Thurber's nega-

tive depiction of women. But the question remains, were Thurber's wives really so

domineering that they stood as the source of his inspiration? Reading this ac-

count of Thurber's life, it was easier to pity him rather than to find his behavior

objectionable or worthy of deeper understanding. Grauer opens a discussion of

Thurber's dislike of Hollywood movie people during the 1930s because they

tended to be Jewish, but in the next paragraph informs the reader that whatever

"anti-Semitism Thurber may have harbored appears to have been exorcised by the

Holocaust" (p. 79).

However, Remember Laughter remains a good introduction to Thurber's life.

Grauer correctly points to Thurber's artistic accomplishments as a writer and a car-

toonist. Given the relatively short length of the book, Grauer does a remarkable

job of covering Thurber's life. Grauer has produced a fine popular biography.

Scholars of Thurber may find the book to be a bit on the light side, but Remember

Laughter is still a book worth reading. Grauer allows readers to revisit Thurber

and, perhaps, to remember works they had read but forgotten.

 

The Institute of Industrial Technology                   Phillip G. Payne

 

 

The General's General: The Life and Times of Arthur MacArthur. By Kenneth Ray

Young. (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1994. xv + 400p.; illustrations,

notes, bibliography, index. $32.95.)

 

Kenneth Ray Young fills an important niche in the biographical literature of

military leaders with The General's General. There are countless books on lesser

military figures, yet Arthur MacArthur has been largely ignored. As Young sees it,

this is partly because there is a lack of good source material for MacArthur. There

is another reason as well. For decades, those writers interested in the MacArthurs

have focused on Arthur's son Douglas. But Arthur deserves his own study. He rose

to become the Army's ranking general, and his career included significant service

in the Civil War, the frontier army, and the Philippine Islands. Although Young's

treatment of MacArthur's Civil War experience reveals little that is new, his study

of MacArthur as a frontier officer and in Southeast Asia helps flesh out our under-

standing of the Army and America's colonial policy at the dawn of the Twentieth

Century.

After a perfunctory examination of MacArthur's childhood, Young recounts the

future general's exploits as a teenage officer in the Civil War. MacArthur's ac-

tions in the Battles of Murfreesboro and Franklin receive special attention, as

does his heroic action at Missionary Ridge. Relying on previous scholarship to

aptly place MacArthur into the broader context of wartime operations, Young does

not uncover much new, although his account does suggest something of

MacArthur's growth and transition into manhood.

Young begins to shine when he turns his attention to MacArthur's frontier days,

which stretch to the 1890s. Young places MacArthur's career against the canvas

of the late Nineteenth Century frontier army, and in the process fills out one per-

son's experience with-and role in-many important developments. As a vora-

cious reader and conscientious student of war, MacArthur was a part of the rising

tide of military professionalism after the Civil War. He attended early service

schools at Fort Leavenworth, and delivered a few scholarly papers. Young also re-

• 22
 

Book Reviews                                                        217

 

counts MacArthur's part in Army reforms at frontier posts; MacArthur was instru-

mental, for instance, in setting up post exchanges.

Young is at his best when writing about MacArthur's time in the Philippines at

the turn of the century. As a soldier, MacArthur helped conduct what was in fact

America's first limited was in Southeast Asia, and his operations could have served

as a model for America's other Southeast Asian wars. As the Military Governor of

the Philippines, MacArthur championed policies of compromise and conciliation

within the context of colonial rule as a first step toward self-government for the

Islands. Although some scholars may take exception to this portrait of MacArthur

as a benevolent governor, Young represents a sound interpretation. In the end,

Young argues MacArthur presented a forward thinking ideal for American colonial

policy, an ideal later adopted by Douglas MacArthur in both the Philippines and

Japan decades later.

Arthur MacArthur's personal papers were destroyed in Manila during World War

II, and as a result Young's source material is somewhat restricted. There is virtu-

ally no treatment of MacArthur as a youngster, and throughout the book there is

little about the private MacArthur and his personal relationship with his son

Douglas. But Young has command of the collateral and secondary sources, and he

smartly fleshes out MacArthur's public life at every stage. Moreover, Young does

a nice job of both treating Arthur as an autonomous historical figure and offering

some insight into Douglas' life. This is a nicely written and thoughtful book, a

work that specialists and general readers alike should find enlightening.

 

Bowling Green State University                           Thomas Hughes

 

 

Crete and James: Personal Letters of Lucretia and James Garfield. Edited by John

Shaw. (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1994. xxi + 397p.; il-

lustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $34.95.)

 

Over the course of their five-year courtship and twenty-three-year marriage

(1853-81), Lucretia Randolph and James A. Garfield often lived apart, as James

pursued an education and then a career in politics, first in Columbus and later in

Washington. During his frequent and extended absences the couple maintained a

lively and surprisingly frank correspondence. As many as twelve hundred of their

exchanges have survived and are today housed at the Library of Congress. From

this voluminous collection John Shaw, an emeritus professor of English at Hiram

College, has drawn and annotated some four hundred of the most revealing letters.

"My basis for selection," he writes, "has been the inherent interest in the topics

discussed and a regard for the continuity of the marital relationship. I wish the let-

ters, above all, to tell a story of a marriage" (p. vii).

Lucretia met her future husband when they were children at the Geauga Academy

in Chester, Ohio. Quite by chance, they both subsequently went to study at the

Western Reserve Eclective Institute in Hiram, a newly founded Disciples of Christ

school now known as Hiram College. There, in November 1853, the twenty-one-

year-old James first expressed a romantic interest in the bright and articulate

classmate exactly his age. Three months later they were engaged.

Marriage, however, would have to wait until James completed additional educa-

tion at Williams College and then established himself in a profession. The geo-

graphical separation that was to characterize their lives as young adults began in

summer 1854 when James headed east to Massachusetts. Their ensuing correspon-

• 23
 

218                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

dence, at first formal and restrained, warmed as the months passed; it would be an-

other year, however, before James could bring himself to address her as "Crete."

After graduating from Williams in August 1856, James returned to teach in the

Hiram institute, where he was soon named director. A breech obviously occurred

in his relationship with Crete, who accepted a teaching position in Cleveland

thirty miles away. James spoke openly of his affection for Rebecca Selleck, a

woman he had met at Williams. "Rebecca is a good and noble girl, in many as-

pects far my superior but she loves you no better than Crete," a wounded Lucretia

wrote (p. 90). Depressed and decidedly unenthusiastic, James apparently felt, after

a five-year courtship, that he had no choice but to marry Crete. His prospective

in-laws worried that he might leave their daughter standing at the altar. Jokingly,

perhaps, Crete sent the groom an invitation.

Despite their marriage in November 1858, the couple often lived apart. This

separation continued following James's election in 1860 to the state senate in

Columbus and his entrance into the Union army the following year. For his ser-

vice in eastern Kentucky Garfield was promoted to brigadier general. Plagued with

an assortment of recurring maladies, he agreed in fall 1862 to stand for election to

the United States House. His wife, ever-supportive, agreed to his candidacy,

though she lamented, "I don't know but politics is to be the death of you yet" (p.

146). As Ohio's newest congressman headed to Washington-typically, alone-

Crete calculated that in five years of married life they had lived together only

twenty weeks.

At home in Hiram, Crete suffered at least one miscarriage and then the devastat-

ing loss of their beloved daughter Eliza ("Trot"), age three. She also heard rumors

of her husband's infidelity. In May 1864, James wrote from Washington to reas-

sure her. "The story is wickedly and maliciously false," he declared, "and I have no

doubt it has been manufactured in the interest of some one who wants my place

here" (p. 207). Yet within weeks James returned to Ohio to confess his affair with

Lucia Gilbert Calhoun, a widow twenty years of age.

Crete forgave him-but made immediate plans to move to Washington. Living

together at last, they now corresponded only sporadically, usually when one or the

other was traveling. These letters offer poignant and convincing evidence that

James came, albeit belatedly, to reciprocate fully the love his wife had so long ex-

hibited. "Were every tie that binds me to the men and women of the world sev-

ered," he wrote Crete in 1867, "and I free to choose out of all the world the sharer

of my heart and home and life, I would fly to you and ask you to be mine as you

are" (pp. 242-43). Trained in the classics, he must have delighted in punning

"'All roads lead to Rome' says the old proverb. In the Directory of my life all roads

lead to Crete" (p. 341).

In March 1881, Lucretia and James Garfield moved with their five children into

the White House. Six months later he was dead, the victim of an assassin's bullet.

Crete returned to Ohio, where she lived a widow for thirty-seven years. At her

death in 1918, she was buried in Cleveland beside the former president.

This expertly edited collection provides a fascinating glimpse into the dynam-

ics of a mid-Victorian marriage. Scholars of the Gilded Age, women's history, and

first ladies cannot afford to miss this insightful volume.

 

Kentucky Historical Society                       Thomas H. Appleton, Jr.

• 24
 

Book Reviews                                                        219

 

From Pearl Harbor to V-J Day: The American Armed Forces in World War II. By D.

Clayton James and Anne Sharp Wells. (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, Inc., 1995. xii +

227p.; illustrations, notes, index. $24.95.)

 

In just over two hundred pages, James and Wells boldly set out to examine "the

strategy, logistics, high command, operations, and home-front aspects of the

American armed forces: during World War II" (p. xii). They largely achieve this

daunting goal in impressive fashion. The book is divided into four parts: mobi-

lization and planning, European operations, hostilities in Asia, and a concluding

overview. A narrative description of combat operations forms the heart of the

book, treating European affairs first from early 1942 to German surrender. It then

assesses the war in the Pacific from December 7, 1941, to Japanese surrender.

Lesser theaters where Americans served, China-Burma-India, for example, are dealt

with perfunctorily. Others, such as the Aleutian Islands, are virtually ignored.

James and Wells also discuss, sometimes only briefly, such key issues as prewar

planning, the German submarine challenge, strategic bombing, Army-Navy

strategic rivalry in the Pacific, the Allied use of military intelligence, and the im-

pact of the war on the American home front. Close cooperation between Britain

and the United States receives special attention. James and Wells conclude that

the Anglo-American team outperformed the Axis powers in four areas: effective

combined command, vastly superior logistics, sounder strategic formulation, and

excellent intelligence collection and assessment.

The authors, in sum, attempt to tell the American military role in this massive

global conflict while briefly analyzing the crucial strategic, logistical, manage-

rial, and technological challenges all belligerents faced. Their description of the

part American armed forces played in fighting the war is the best part of the book.

James and Wells provide a succinct general treatment of the war that proceeds from

a quick assessment of grand strategy through to concise campaign descriptions.

Unavoidably the campaign narratives assume a high command perspective that

only occasionally goes below the army or fleet command level.

One must be impressed by the authors' ability to summarize the history of

mankind's largest war, a war that has generated a massive literature, without drain-

ing it of meaning or content. James and Wells never temporize nor condescend.

As part of the American Ways Series published by Ivan R. Dee, From Pearl Harbor

to V-J Day is clearly intended for undergraduate students but it would serve well any

general reader unfamiliar with the history of World War II. This reviewer has al-

ready used the paperback edition in class to good effect.

It seems unfair to chastise the authors for lapses given their achievement of en-

compassing World War II in such a small space. Nonetheless there are problems.

A book this short lacks the luxury of putting the reader in a foxhole, a pilot's seat,

in an LST, or the boiler room of a destroyer. Unfortunately, the authors attempt to

encapsulate the war experience of enlisted personnel. They do so tersely and pro-

duce a weak chapter that neither informs nor matches the book's overall narrative

drive. James and Wells depict an average soldier/sailor/marine/airman, possibly

overseas, possibly in combat, who is most likely to be white but might be black,

Native American, or Japanese-American, or even perhaps female.

Lesser weaknesses include confining the Soviet Union to the periphery of their

discussion, downplaying the sometimes bitter Anglo-American strategic dis-

agreements, and bypassing American mobilization efforts from late 1939 through

late 1941. Surprisingly, the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan is dis-

pensed with in a three sentence paragraph. Finally, small, highly generalized

• 25
 

220                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

maps make it difficult for the reader to follow campaign descriptions.

These criticisms are not intended to detract from the success James and Wells

have achieved in presenting a succinct and informative history of America's mili-

tary efforts in World War II.

 

University of Missouri-St. Louis                              Jerry Cooper

• 26