Ohio History Journal

Book Reviews

 

 

 

Indiana History: A Book of Readings. Compiled and edited by Ralph D. Gray.

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. xiv + 442p.; index. $39.95

cloth; $22.95 paper.)

 

None of the states of the Old Northwest has more persistently embodied the

Midwestern middle-class ideal of small towns and commercial agriculture than

Indiana. Unlike Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, or Wisconsin, Indiana did not develop

a huge industrial center.  No Chicago, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Detroit, or

Cincinnati emerged in the nineteenth century to counterbalance, either culturally

or politically, its overwhelmingly rural and relatively homogeneous character.

Both Indiana's charm and its challenges have largely followed from this anoma-

lous pattern of development. There is in the towns and small cities of Indiana a

strong attachment to the verities of middle-class culture-or the values of home

and family, religion and voluntarism, and to traditional (at least since the middle

of the nineteenth century) notions of gender and race relations. Hoosiers, for

good and ill, have largely kept faith with their ancestors.

This steadfastness, however, has fostered a profound tension between the claims

of tradition and the attractions of progress. Hoosiers have tended to welcome eco-

nomic improvements such as railroads (as long as they are not too expensive)

even as they remain wary of the social changes they bring in their wake. The con-

stant issues of Indiana politics-transportation, commercial development, educa-

tion, and race-have engaged residents of Indiana in endless controversies (and

occasional violence) about how to preserve as much of their past as possible

without sacrificing prosperity, celebrating provincialism, or embracing intoler-

ance.

Fortune has blessed Indiana by providing it with excellent historians. For more

than a century, the Indiana Historical Society has preserved the records of its past

and made them easily accessible through its many publications. Meanwhile,

dozens of scholars (both within and without the academy) have devoted their pro-

fessional lives to chronicling Indiana's history. An outstanding example of their

work is Emma Lou Thornbrough's The Negro in Indiana, a section of which ap-

pears in this volume. Originally published in 1957, the book is a model combina-

tion of careful scholarship and high moral purpose. Few states rival Indiana in the

collective achievement of its historians. And few have a major university press

with a strong tradition of commitment to the publication of local and regional his-

tory.

Among the most distinguished of recent Hoosier historians is Ralph D. Gray,

professor of history at Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis. In

this excellent volume he has collected generous excerpts form the work of dozens

of his colleagues, living and dead. Together, they outline and reflect on the major

issues in and characteristics of Indiana history from the eighteenth-century world

of the Miamis and the French to the present. Readers can learn about pioneer life,

the Civil War, the Ku Klux Klan, and a variety of other subjects, including high

school basketball. The quality of the history is remarkably high throughout.

Still, it in no way diminishes the achievement of individuals to say that the book

as a whole is something more than the sum of its parts.

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Book Reviews                                                        95

 

The most obvious market for this anthology is college-level classes in Indiana

history. But it would be wonderful if it found a wider audience. Many Americans

doubt whether the public's investment in the labor of scholars who spend so much

of their time researching and writing in seeming isolation is worthwhile. Let

them look for evidence in this book. For it is the achievement of a group of dedi-

cated and highly competent scholars who all share an interest in--and in many

cases, a genuine affection for-Indiana. They mean to keep the Hoosier past

alive-and meaningful. We should all be so lucky.

 

Miami University                                          Andrew Cayton

 

 

Ohio Politics. Edited by Alexander P. Lamis. (Kent: The Kent State University

Press, 1994. xii + ⁴¹⁷p.; illustrations, bibliographical essay, notes, index.

$35.00 cloth; $17.00 paper.)

 

When it comes to meeting the needs of those interested in the Ohio Story,

whether they be scholars or teachers, college or high school students, reference

librarians or the general public, no press has been more responsive over the past

two decades than that of Kent State University and its able director, Dr. John

Hubbell. To an already impressive shelf-long series of Ohio-related volumes there

has now been added another worthy of inclusion with the best of the rest, Ohio

Politics, edited by Dr. Alexander P. Lamis, Associate Professor of Political

Science at Case Western Reserve University, with the assistance of Mary Anne

Sharkey, the politics editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

For long decades, those interested in a comprehensive treatment of Ohio's his-

tory and government often turned initially to A History of Ohio, written by two

Ohio State professors, Eugene Roseboom and Francis Weisenburger, and first pub-

lished by Prentice-Hall in 1934. Revised and brought up to date by the Ohio

Historical Society as the state's sesquicentennial history in 1953, it was modestly

revised and updated again in 1967, though reprints continued to appear even into

the 1980s. However, it was not until the Kent State University Press brought out

Ohio and Its People, written by George W. Knepper of the University of Akron in

1989, that a comprehensive treatment of Ohio's history including the period since

World War II was finally available.

Now, through the collaborative efforts of historian Knepper as well as those of

nine journalists and nine political scientists, all coordinated editorially by Lamis

and Sharkey, the first comprehensive survey of post-World War II Ohio politics

also at last has become available. With the exception of Knepper's chapter on

historical perspective, the first half of the book has been written by the journal-

ists, many of them statehouse bureau chiefs of politics reporters for newspapers

such as the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Akron Beacon Journal, the Dayton Daily

News, the Columbus Dispatch, and the Cincinnati Enquirer. In contrast, switching

from journalese to academese, the second half has been written primarily by polit-

ical science professors from such universities as Ohio State, Wright State, Kent

State, Cincinnati, Akron, and the State University of New York (Brockport).

The titles of the chapters written by the journalists portray their content: the

Lausche Era, 1945-1957; the O'Neill-DiSalle Years, 1957-1963; Rhodes's First

Eight Years, 1963-1971; the Gilligan Interlude, 1971-1975; Rhodes's Second

Eight Years, 1975-1983; the Celeste Era, 1983-1991; and the Panorama of

Politics in the Voinovich Era, 1991-. The chapters constructed by the political

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96                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

scientists are essentially topical, including the relations of the news media with

Ohio politicians and politics; the role played by Ohio's congressional delegation

in Washington in the postwar years; analyses of the state's legislative, executive,

and judicial branches; the impact of special interest groups; and elections and po-

litical parties in the 1990s.

As might be expected, heavy emphasis on the major players in Ohio's political

life of the past half-century emerges in this book. Frank Lausche, still our only

five-term governor; Jim Rhodes, our only sixteen-year governor (four, four-year

terms); Vern Riffe, the Democrats' "colossus of Statehouse politics," called by

Ralph Nader "the most powerful floor leader in any American legislative body, in-

cluding Congress"; Dick Celeste, Rhodes Scholar and Yale graduate who sought to

become our first "global governor"; Stan Aronoff, the quietly effective leader of

the Senate Republicans; and current Governor George Voinovich, emerging from

Cleveland's ethnic neighborhoods to become the dominant figure in Ohio politics

with the retirement of Riffe and a possible GOP vice-presidential nominee in

1996.

Some observations rising from the pages of this book are particularly worth

remembering: "The [Ohio] legislature functioned as a largely part-time, amateur

body for more than a century.... Nowadays, for most members being a state leg-

islator is a vocation." There is a "new breed of independent lobbyists-the so-

called 'hired guns'-that simultaneously represent several clients. The contract

lobbyists have elevated lobbying to a high-tech level of expertise not seen before

in Columbus. . . . The effectiveness of private consultants in Ohio politics is at-

tributable partly to the fact that party leaders in the Ohio General Assembly have a

great deal of power, and several top consultants enjoy close access to these lead-

ers."

Then ponder these "laws" of Ohio politics: (1) "neither party has controlled the

Ohio governorship for longer than eight years running since 1906. No other state

has even approached this regularity of gubernatorial rotation in the twentieth cen-

tury." "... a win in 1994 would mean the GOP would have to beat the eight-year

rule in 1998." (2) "No Republican has ever been elected president without carry-

ing Ohio." (3) "Every Ohio governor and U.S. Senator elected since 1958 has

previously lost at least one statewide race." Some call it the "once to meet/twice

to win" rule: witness the defeat of Voinovich for the Senate in 1988 followed by

his two gubernatorial victories in 1990 and 1994. Mike DeWine is another who

was defeated, then won. The ultimate example of voter tolerance for earlier re-

jected candidates is, of course, Jim Rhodes, "who ran eleven times for three

statewide offices in thirty-six years. Although he had lost three times-twice in

primaries-he did not exhaust his welcome with the voters until 1986, when they

roundly rejected his bid for a fifth gubernatorial term."

Are there some problem areas in this book? Yes. You cannot involve a score of

writers without having redundancy in what they write. An example: the charge of

Jim Rhodes against his Democratic opponent, the incumbent Governor John

Gilligan, in the 1974 gubernatorial campaign that Gilligan would "tax everything

that walks, crawls, or flies" must have appeared a dozen times in as many chapters.

There are inconsistencies. Example: references to newspapers appear in some

places with the name of the city as well as the name of the paper italicized; in oth-

ers, only the name of the paper is italicized.

Of far greater significance and much more distressing to this reviewer was the

general omission of higher education as a significant factor in the game plan of

Ohio's political leaders. Not that higher education and politics must or should

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Book Reviews                                                        97

 

mix, for when they do it is usually higher education that comes out on the losing

end, But certainly some mention should have been made in the lengthy evalua-

tions of the four Rhodes administrations of the very considerable role played by

the governor in the advance of higher education in our state. Consider that Jim

Rhodes campaigned in 1962 on the pledge that, if elected, he would assure a col-

lege campus within thirty miles (commuting distance) of every man, woman, and

child in Ohio. Consider that, following his election, an Ohio Board of Regents

was created in 1963 to coordinate the most explosive developments in public

higher education in the state's history. Consider that, under the leadership of the

first chancellor of the OBOR, Dr. John D. Millett, master plans for the orderly de-

velopment of higher education in Ohio were hammered out at five-year intervals,

the first in the history of the state. Consider that, within the span of little more

than a decade, what had been a state with six state-assisted campuses had become a

state with sixty-seven! Access and choice in higher education for the people of

Ohio were assured, together with a building program on all these campuses unri-

valed before or since! Then consider that there is no detailed mention of this ex-

plosive growth, no mention of the Master Plans for 1965 and 1970, not even

mention of the name of John Millett, and you can appreciate the depth of the over-

sight! All of this becomes all the more intriguing when once considers that half

of those involved in the preparation of this book were and are professional educa-

tors on campuses primarily public and primarily in Ohio and the omission be-

comes all the more glaring!

Be that as it may, this reviewer found the book almost all that he had hoped it

would be, and he must conclude by recommending its presence as a must for every

library, public and personal, in which there is interest in Ohio and Ohioans, their

history and politics.

 

Miami University                                        Phillip R. Shriver

 

 

"Unspoiled Heart": The Journal of Charles Mattocks of the 17th Maine. Edited by

Philip N. Racine. (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1994. xxxii

+ 446p.; illustrations, epilogue, notes, works cited, index. $36.00.)

 

The tides of Civil War literature flow and ebb as popular enthusiasm for that pe-

riod of our history rises and falls. Left on the beaches are a host of diaries, letter

collections, journals and unit histories that show us the war from the bottom up

instead of the top down, holding out the possibility of eloquent observations that

have hitherto remained unrevealed or perhaps rough poetry unconsciously wrought

by common soldiers. More often than not, the observations are mundane and the

prose fractured.

"Unspoiled Heart": The Journal of Charles Mattocks of the 17th Maine, edited

by Philip N. Racine and published by the University of Tennessee Press as part of

Frank L. Byrne's Voices of the Civil War series, offers an unusual combination of

the mundane and the fascinating. Charles Mattocks was a young man fresh out of

school (Bowdoin College, where he was a student of Joshua Chamberlain's) in

1862, when he became an officer in the 17th Maine Volunteer Regiment.

Mattocks participated in the battles of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, becom-

ing a major by the end of 1863. A disciplinarian and drillmaster, he became acting

commander of the 17th Maine and then the 1st United States Sharpshooters.

Feeling that he had been given command of the latter regiment in order to "shape

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98                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

it up," Mattocks applied his usual "by-the-book" standards, a stance that gained

him little popularity with his men.

While in command of the Sharpshooters during the Battle of the Wilderness,

Mattocks was captured by the Confederates and sent first to Macon Prison in

Georgia, then to the officer's prison at Charleston, South Carolina, and finally to

a prison at Columbia in the same state. Prison conditions were poor, especially at

Macon, though never approaching the suffering at Andersonville. In November

1864 Mattocks and a few other officers made a daring escape attempt from the

prison in Columbia to East Tennessee, only to be recaptured tantalizingly close to

their objective. Unable to maintain their prisons, the Confederates paroled the

young Maine officer in March 1865, in time for him to rejoin his old unit, the

17th Maine, for the Appomattox campaign in April. During this last campaign

for the Army of the Potomac, Mattocks won the Congressional Medal of Honor for

his bravery at the engagement at Sayler's Creek.

Charles Mattocks was a well-educated man, which shows in his highly literate

prose, but was no keen observer. Missing from his diary are detailed observations

about or descriptions of comrades, acquaintances or surroundings. The diary con-

centrates on events and conditions rather than impressions or insights. Despite

this lack, the diary is valuable simply because of the fascinating events of

Mattocks' life, especially his sojourn in Confederate prisoner-of-war camps and

his escape attempt through the South, aided by Southern slaves. Worthy of exam-

ination, too, are Mattocks' attempts to instill discipline, as well as regimental

politics. What the diary shows best of all is that Civil War regiments were not

mere groups of men, but extensions of their community. The 17th Maine, full of

old friends and acquaintances, is a Maine away from Maine for Mattocks.

A review of this book would be incomplete without words of praise for its edi-

tor, Philip N. Racine, who provides 130 pages worth of scrupulous annotation,

identifying events and persons, as well as providing other individuals' recollec-

tions of the same events experienced by Mattocks. Though unfortunately the an-

notations take the form of endnotes rather than footnotes, the achievement is no

less worthy. If other books in this series are equally well edited, they will be trea-

sured by scholars and general readers alike.

 

The Ohio State University                                 Mark Pitcavage

 

 

The White Earth Tragedy:    Ethnicity and Dispossession at a Minnesota

Anishinaabe Reservation, 1889-1920. By Melissa L. Meyer. (Lincoln:

University of Nebraska Press, 1994. xviii + 333p.; illustrations, notes, biblio-

graphic essay, index. $40.00.)

 

Scholars now generally regard the federal government's efforts, through the al-

lotment acts, to destroy native American communal life and transform the "Indian"

into an independent, profit-minded farmer as a mistaken policy driven by a deter-

mination to obliterate native American cultural distinctiveness. In this provoca-

tive case study of the Anishinaabe White Earth Reservation in Minnesota in the

crucial years 1889-1920, Melissa L. Meyers exposes the contradiction inherent in

the policy itself. While government "rhetoric" held up "small-scale market agri-

culture as the salvation of Indian people," government policies in fact aided and

abetted an "expansion of market capitalism" that drove small farmers off the land

everywhere (p. 225). The growing impoverishment and depopulation of the White

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Book Reviews                                                        99

 

Earth Reservation, Meyers argues, had little to do with the failure of native

Americans to adapt. It was instead the result of government land policies that

opened up reservation lands to white exploiters (the timber companies most no-

tably) and that squandered Anishinaabe resources to help pay for a process of as-

similation that was doomed from the outset. While some state and federal officials

exposed the fraud and corruption that characterized land deals on the White Earth

reservation, the system itself ultimately failed to offer any meaningful protection

of native American interests. Moreover, divisions within the reservation commu-

nity between traditionalists and a new group of would-be Indian petty capitalists

(the latter most often people of mixed blood) left both groups ultimately vulnera-

ble to exploitation. A small handful of Anishinaabe families profited from market

capitalism. But for the most part the economic transformation led to destitution

and malnutrition on a reservation where the traditional seasonal round was now

threatened by deforestation and pollution, and where the transition to market agri-

culture touted by the Indian policy "experts" proved a false hope. It is a familiar

story, and an ugly one.

Professor Meyer's account is meticulously documented, richly detailed and

grounded in a thorough appreciation of the cultural values of all of the partici-

pants. Eschewing facile stereotypes, and avoiding the temptation to portray na-

tive Americans as passive victims, she offers invaluable insights into the interac-

tion of ideology, economics and politics at the reservation, state and national

levels. While her account of the cynical ruses employed by corrupt politicians to

assist capitalists in the looting of reservation resources will stand with the best

exposes, her work offers a sophisticated analysis of internal divisions and con-

flicts within the Anishinaabe community as well as within white society that pro-

vides a measure of balance and authority often absent in studies of native American

dispossession. The White Earth Tragedy will be required reading for students of

federal Indian policy, and for all who are concerned with the restoration of native

American rights, for many years to come.

 

The University of Toledo                                   Alfred A. Cave

 

 

The Black Lodge in White America: "True Reformer" Browne and His Economic

Strategy. By David M. Fahey. (Dayton: Wright State University Press, 1994.

x + 270p.; illustrations, notes, appendices, index. $55.00.)

 

Recent work has shown the importance of white fraternal/mutual benefit soci-

eties to progressive era United States history. Yet scholars have paid little atten-

tion to such black groups in the same period despite large memberships. David M.

Fahey takes a useful first step in rectifying this situation by reprinting D. Webster

Davis's posthumous hagiography, The Life and Public Services of Rev. Wm.

Washington Browne (1910) in The Black Lodge in White America. An introduc-

tory essay by Fahey and extensive endnotes supplement Davis by concisely ex-

ploring the place of Browne and his organization, the Grand Fountain, United

Order of True Reformers (UOTR), in the history of black fraternalism.

The history of the UOTR, as Fahey demonstrates, embodied the blending of

African American racial uplift and fraternal organization. Working within what

had started as a temperance organization, Browne urged members to avoid poverty

by investing what they might have wasted on drink in life insurance and savings.

Like Booker T. Washington, Browne eschewed class divisions in favor of racial

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100                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

unity, arguing that in the UOTR and businesses financed could be found the mutual

interests of labor and capital. Also like Washington he avoided confronting white

racism-believing that good character and the accumulation of wealth and prop-

erty would ensure the eventual inclusion of African Americans in American soci-

ety.

Born a slave in 1849, Browne began work with the UOTR in Alabama in 1874

and in 1877 was elected to the order's highest state office-Grand Worthy Master.

Blocked by rivals when he attempted to expand the UOTR into mutual insurance

and banking, Browne accepted in 1880 an offer to lead the UOTR in Virginia.

There Browne carried his plans for insurance and banking to fruition. "In less

than a decade," Fahey notes, "Browne had revolutionized black insurance in ...

Virginia, and beyond" (p. 17). Building on the burial insurance commonly pro-

vided by fraternal orders, he developed plans that would pay benefits to the de-

scendants' survivors. In addition, he pioneered actuarial soundness among black

insurance societies by basing premiums on mortality estimates, and the cadre of

agents he trained supplied leaders to a number of other African American insurance

societies.

Under Browne the UOTR prospered. For the 1895-96 fiscal year, just before

Browne's death from cancer, the UOTR collected $55,000 in insurance premiums

and its savings bank claimed $2,500,000 in business since its founding in 1888.

The order also employed 250 African Americans and ran a 150-room hotel for

blacks in Richmond.

The UOTR continued to prosper for more than a decade after Browne's death. But

in 1910 both the insurance plan and savings bank collapsed. The bank had in-

vested insurance premiums in a number of businesses that failed to turn a profit and

Browne and his successors used the order to enrich themselves (legally, if un-

wisely), diverting badly needed funds. Thus weakened, the organization struggled

on until the early years of the depression. Yet Fahey argues that the demise of the

UOTR and Browne's contribution to it should not obscure the fact that for nearly

twenty-five years the order provided African Americans with life insurance and a

bank to safeguard their savings, employed numbers of African Americans, and fi-

nanced numerous black-owned businesses.

The Black Lodge in White America is a welcome addition to our understanding of

black life at the turn of the century. Historians and more general readers will find

it readable and a valuable source for further exploration of an unfortunately ne-

glected topic. We can hope that Fahey's efforts here will lead to further study of

Browne, the UOTR, and other African American fraternal societies.

 

University of Cincinnati                       Charles F. Casey-Leininger

 

 

A Measure of Success: Protestants and Public Culture in Antebellum Cleveland.

By Michael J. McTighe. (Albany, New York: State University of New York

press, 1994. xii + 283p.; illustrations, appendix, notes, bibliography, index.

$21.95 paper.)

 

Most analyses of the history and, indeed, the current civic milieu of Cleveland,

Ohio, make mention of, or cast credit or blame upon the community's New

England, Protestant roots. Indeed, in this era of multicultural awareness, it has be-

come fashionable to comment on the ironic transformation of a once religiously

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Book Reviews                                                     101

 

parochial community into one of the most cosmopolitan urban centers in the

United States.

Such analyses were, for the most part, based on a speculative historical founda-

tion, for few people, either historians or general lay readers, had any solid idea of

the nature and influence of Cleveland's Protestant cultural underpinnings. Michael

J. McTighe's A Measure of Success: Protestants and Public Culture in Antebellum

Cleveland, provides, at last, a foundation for understanding this part of the com-

munity's cultural roots. McTighe's work is a thorough review of the development

of Cleveland's Protestant religious community and, more importantly, an analysis

of that community's role in everyday, public culture in Cleveland. While the

book's detailed review of the growth of the religious establishment is extraordi-

narily valuable by itself, it is McTighe's interweaving of Protestantism into the

civic social fabric that makes this work a real contribution to the body of literature

on early Cleveland, Ohio, and on religion and culture generally. Unfortunately,

McTighe, an Associate Professor in the Religion Department of Gettysburg

College, did not live to see his study published; much credit is due to his family

and colleagues for seeing the book through to publication.

McTighe's study transcends the usual subject limits observed when scholars re-

late religion to public culture in the antebellum period. He does cover all of the

standard areas of interface, including temperance, abolitionism, and benevolence.

But his real contribution comes in the sections of the book that link Protestant

leadership to economic growth in this formative period of the community's his-

tory. During 1820-1860, Cleveland evolved from a small agricultural settlement

into a thriving mercantile community due largely to the construction of a network

of canals and railroads that made it a major transshipment point. And, by the end

of this period, civic attention turned to creating the foundation for industrial de-

velopment.

McTighe places the Protestant community in the center of this metamorphosis.

A detailed examination of church membership locates most Protestants within the

ranks of those who had the most to gain from the new economy. Remarks made

from the pulpit also showed a remarkable support for the new economic "ethos"

that was developing-this despite the challenges it raised to such basic church is-

sues as work on the Sabbath. The new economic order also had long-term conse-

quences in redefining the ethical teachings that governed relationships between

capital and labor and rich and poor in the evolving urban center. McTighe demon-

strates that the Protestant community of Cleveland was influential in increasing a

local business ethic that would influence the community for decades to come. In

doing so, he places the city squarely in the center of the general national devel-

opment of church-supported business practices.

When Cleveland's Protestant community endorsed the new urban order, it cat-

alyzed changes that would result, eventually, in the loss of its hegemony. The

growth of the city and the displacement produced by a largely unregulated capital-

ist society made issues such as intemperance, poverty, and crime, much larger

parts of the civic agenda and ones which would increasingly draw upon the re-

sources of the Protestant community. Growth also brought demographic change-

by 1860 people of foreign birth constituted more than 40 percent of the city's

population. As Catholic Irish and Germans moved to the community they too be-

gan to participate in its public culture and set the stage for the multicultural com-

munity that today still contends with and, at times, accommodates itself with

Cleveland's New England Protestant ethos.

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102                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

Michael McTighe's study is therefore doubly valuable. Through statistics and a

detailed examination of narrative sources it finally gives readers a clear view of

Cleveland's Protestant roots and provides confirmation of the central role that re-

ligion played in the community's antebellum history. More critically, it is an ex-

amination of change; both of change in public culture and of the origins of urban

change that would eventually diminish its proponents' role in that public culture.

This book is an essential addition to the library of anyone who seeks to under-

stand a core issue in the history of Cleveland, Ohio, and the role of religion in the

development of urban America.

 

Western Reserve Historical Society                       John Grabowski

 

 

The Fur Trade Revisited: Selected Papers of the Sixth North American Fur Trade

Conference, Mackinac Island, Michigan, 1991. Edited by Jennifer S. H. Brown,

W. J. Eccles, and Donald P. Heldman. (East Lansing: Michigan State University

Press, 1994. xx + 536p.; illustrations, notes, index. $39.95.)

 

In 1991, the Mackinac Island State Park Commission sponsored the Sixth

North American Fur Trade Conference in order to highlight their professional and

historic sites program located at the crossroads of many fur trade routes: the

Straits of Mackinac between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. From that confer-

ence comes this collection of twenty-eight papers which highlight the lively state

of the field of fur trade history in the 1990s. The conference involved a cross sec-

tion of disciplines including history, literature, geography, economics, archaeol-

ogy, and anthropology; The Fur Trade Revisited is organized thematically to re-

flect this variety. The editors make it clear in the introduction that this collection

is designed to stimulate further study on a wide variety of new questions and ideas

rather than to provided "closure" or "definitive overviews" (p. 6). Most of the pa-

pers read as works in progress.

The book opens with the banquet address of a part-Scottish, part-Cree woman

entitled "Memories of a Trapper's Daughter." Born in 1934, Lily McAuley spent

her childhood and adolescence in the trapping country of northern Manitoba. As

an adult, she worked for the Canadian Parks Service. Through her story, the reader

is made vividly aware that all the events detailed in the scholarly studies that fol-

low have a real impact on people today.

The two essays in Part One address the Transatlantic fur trade, one from the

point of view of European entrepreneurs faced with the task of marketing pelts at

home in the eighteenth century, and another from the point of view of the rela-

tionship between London commission merchants and their American suppliers.

The six essays in Part Two explore how Native Americans adapted and changed

as they interacted with the market. This section targets a wide variety of experi-

ences including the Lakotas of the upper plains, the Sauks and Mesquakies of

Iowa, and the Caddoans of the coastal areas of present-day Louisiana and Texas.

Other essays compare the experiences of a variety of ethnic groups in western

Canada and the upper Midwest of the United States, and another suggests the pos-

sibilities of delving into previously unexplored records which offer insight into

the lives of the children of mixed marriages.

The six essays in Part Three take on the task of detailing the daily lives of

traders. One traces the path of exploration of a coureurs de bois, three trace the ca-

reer of business and company men, one traces the history of a multi-generational

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Book Reviews                                                       103

 

trading family, and another traces the impact of the circulation of folktales among

traders.

The four essays in Part Four deal with life at Mackinac itself. One offers a

glimpse into the trying times of commissary during the Seven Year's War, while

another offers a glimpse into the early nineteenth-century apprenticeship of a

young trader. The other two essays address the Revolution's impact on the fur

trade and the role of crucifixes and medallions in the religious interaction of

French missionaries and Native Americans.

Part Five offers three explorations of archaeology and material culture, ranging

from firearms to canoe portages to life at an army fort in North Dakota. The three

essays in Part Six deal with the Hudson's Bay Company in the late nineteenth and

early twentieth centuries. Part Seven presents two discussions of the impact of fur

trade literature on society in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and a discus-

sion of current fur trade social history.

A volume so large could easily become unwieldy, but the editors clearly tried to

make this volume a pleasure to explore and use. The endnotes appear at the end of

each article rather than at the end of the book, and a wealth of illustrations, maps,

charts, figures, and tables kindle the reader's interest.

 

Kent State University                                   Kim M. Gruenwald

 

 

Common Labour: Workers and the Digging of North American Canals, 1780-

1860. By Peter Way. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. xvii +

304p.; illustrations, maps, tables, notes, appendices, index. $54.95.)

 

Peter Way has written a solid study of labor and especially of labor relations on

canals dug in the United States and Canada during 1780-1860. Based primarily on

the records of companies and public agencies building the canals, this work goes

beyond conditions of labor to other facets of company structure and operations,

usually without losing focus. Way suggests that the canal-building industry was

one of the first economic sectors to make the transformation to industrial capital-

ism and as such anticipated changes in the economy at large. He maintains that

unskilled workers experienced the shift from a traditional economy to industrial

capitalism differently than did skilled workers. He correctly argues that our view

of workers during this significant change is distorted and too simplistic because

almost all studies examining them focus on skilled workers. He is also correct

that common laborers, never controlling their work as skilled workers did and not

having skill as a bargaining point with employers, experienced primarily a shift

from one form of powerlessness to another. Thus Way's study of unskilled

canallers refines our image of workers during the process of industrialization.

However, Way's portrayal of the lives of these workers is not completely satis-

fying, partly because his sources are sparse. Common laborers left even less for

the historical record than did skilled workers, which is why they are so little stud-

ied. Almost all of Way's information about canallers comes from others, espe-

cially from company officials and journalists. This prevents him from getting

very deep into the lives of the workers. But, the problem also stems from Way's

intent to portray lives of unabated misery and despair. While he mentions the

pride that canallers felt in their work and suggests that their families and commu-

nities brought some light and comfort into their lives, he is hardly interested in

this. Instead he chronicles the suffering, the injuries, disease and death, and the

• 10
 

104                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

exploitation that led canallers to drink, to brawling, the thievery and murder, and

ultimately to faction fights (since most of them were Irish). He says little about

the actual work of canallers--despite its subtitle, there is little digging in this

book-and all but ignores positive attributes of canallers' families and communi-

ties.

The cause of workers' despair was, Way argues, industrial capitalism. He sug-

gests that the wave of strikes that beset the industry in the 1830s and 1840s was a

reaction to the new industrial capitalism rather than to deprivations caused by de-

pression in the industry. In the end, thus, Way portrays common laborers much as

other historians have portrayed skilled craftsmen, as victims of the shift from a

personal, small-scale economic system that recognized and protected their right to

survival (albeit paternalistcally) to industrial capitalism, where as free laborers

they were cut loose before the forces of the marketplace. This partly undermines

Way's insight that unskilled workers experienced this process differently.

Common Labour is an important work that enhances our understanding of the

canal-building era and especially of workers in a modernizing economy. But,

Way's overly-dark portrayal misses an important part of the story of the canallers.

Way is wrong; to recognize that these workers possessed the human ability to

make the most of a bad situation does not "romanticize" their rough lives, or do

them "injustice," or even downplay the exploitation they suffered. Way deserves

credit for showing that the lives of workers in American history were more com-

plex than the historical record so far indicated, but he fails to show how truly

complex they were.

 

Southwest Missouri State University                       P. G. Hummasti

 

 

An American Pursuit Pilot in France: Roland W. Richardson's Diaries and Letters,

1917-1919. Edited by Ritchie Thomas and Carl M. Becker. (Shippensburg, Pa.:

White Mane Publishing Company, Inc., 1994. xxvii + 198p.; illustrations,

notes, appendices, index. $24.95.)

 

With recent Second World War commemorations gaining much publicity, the

diamond anniversary of the armistice that ended hostilities in the "war to end all

wars" (November 11, 1918) slipped by scarcely noticed in the United States. That

day, once so momentous it became a national holiday, is now absorbed under the

more generic name of "Veterans Day." Fortunately, a growing body of scholar-

ship continues to examine the First World War, a conflict that has in no small

fashion shaped the twentieth century. Ritchie Thomas and Carl M. Becker, both

of Wright State University, add to that understanding with an edited volume of

Glendale, Ohio, native Roland W. Richardson's wartime diaries and letters to his

mother.

An American Pursuit Pilot in France is organized into six chapters, each incor-

porating a significant stage in First Lieutenant Richardson's evolution as a mili-

tary aviator. That growth culminated in duty as a Spad XIII pursuit pilot with the

213th Aero Squadron along the Western Front. The volume is edited for a general

audience and begins with an extended introduction that sets the stage by providing

background information on Richardson, World War I, and the Air Service of the

American Expeditionary Forces. Chronological interspersing of Richardson's let-

ters among the dairy entries facilitates reader understanding of the aviator's expe-

rience when further combined with amplifying endnotes and appendices.

• 11
 

Book Reviews                                                     105

 

Especially useful appendices are the glossary of personalities, aviation terms, and

Richardson's training and flight log.

Although an already well-read audience may find some of the amplifications

repetitive, those unfamiliar with the Great War era will appreciate the editors' de-

cision to include explanations of the mundane and unclear found in Richardson's

writings. The Lafayette Escadrille, Same Browne belt, Reserve Military Aviator

designator, and the 1918 influenza epidemic are but a few of the terms and events

that warrant clarification for the general readership, with Thomas and Becker often

providing secondary source citation for more complete information. Finally, se-

lected photographs of Richardson, his family, and Air Service colleagues serve to

personalize the volume.

Yet for all the editorial embellishment, the reader finishes the publication still

not knowing Roland W. Richardson. Thomas and Becker note that he was "hardly

a complex man," whose elementary prose demonstrated "ambivalent and uncer-

tain" reasons for fighting the Germans (p. xxvii). While the aviator was eager to

do his duty he was not obsessed with patriotism nor was he an outspoken crusader

fighting for a new postwar world order. The question of what motivated

Richardson to fight, since he "really [did not] see why the Kaiser even had a war"

(p. 58), remains unanswered. Given that all the correspondence in the volume was

addressed to Richardson's mother, inclusion of her letters sent to France might

have offered insight into that question. Since such homefront perceptions can

have a significant impact on the morale of combatants, they should not be ignored

when available. Unfortunately, it remains unclear whether or not Annis W.

Richardson's letters to her son survive.

An American Pursuit Pilot in France nevertheless provides a usefully-unadorned

account of early military aviation. Tedious training, chronic mechanical failure,

and dismal weather were more the World War aviator's lot than was the contempo-

rary mythology of individual aerial chivalry. Besides adding to the annals of Ohio

aviation history, editors Thomas and Becker deserve credit for not allowing

Richardson's diaries and letters to be lost to posterity.

 

Seoul, Korea                                      William E. Fischer, Jr.

 

Tom Johnson in Cleveland. By Eugene C. Murdock. (Dayton: Wright State

University Press, 1994. xi + 411p.; illustrations, notes, appendices, bibliogra-

phy, index. $56.00.)

 

Thomas Loftin Johnson (1854-1911) had a varied career as a traction magnet,

industrialist, single-tax proponent, U.S. Congressman (1890-94), and Cleveland

Mayor (1901-09). He is best known, along with Detroit's Hazen Pingree and

Toledo's Golden Rule Jones, as being a big-city reform mayor; muckraker Lincoln

Steffens concluded that Johnson produced the best-governed city in the U.S.

Johnson's early life appeared unlikely to produce an industrialist and urban re-

former. In the 1850s, his father owned an Arkansas cotton plantation and 100

slaves. Left penniless by the Civil War, Col. Johnson never regained his prewar

position; young Tom left school early to work for a Louisville street railway

owned by distant relatives who were also members of the du Pont family.

Johnson entered the street railway business at a critical time in that industry's

development; his career was equally volatile. By age 18 in 1872, Johnson ob-

tained the first of a number of patents on transit equipment; a year later he began

• 12
 

106                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

manufacturing fare boxes, and three years later he purchased his first street railway

company (Indianapolis). Eventually he had street railway franchises in eight

other cities including Cleveland, founded companies to manufacture rails (1883),

and electric motors (1891). Murdock notes that Johnson, the street railway opera-

tor, engaged in "unethical methods" including stock-watering and perhaps bribery

(p. 21); he also fought Detroit Mayor Pingree on the very issues he would come to

champion in Cleveland: the three-cent fare and municipal ownership of street

railways.

Johnson had another side, however. As early as 1883, he became a strong sup-

porter of Henry George and his single-tax plan. Major consolidations in the tran-

sit industries and George's death in 1897 probably contributed to Johnson dispos-

ing of his business holdings between 1898 and 1900 and his decision to run for

Cleveland mayor. Although some scholars have argued that Pingree more than

George influenced Johnson's career, the book demonstrates Johnson's close ties

to George. Murdock provides an appendix to support this contention.

The study focuses on Johnson's mayoral years. Murdock, who is sympathetic

to Johnson, traces each political battle chronologically and details the work of

key aides: Newton Baker, Harris Cooley, and Edward Bemis. He documents

Johnson's efforts to gain control over the privately-owned utilities and street

railways. To battle with Cleveland's "privileged" interests, privately owned utili-

ties and streetcar companies, Johnson raised their taxes, increased regulations and

sought municipal ownership. The "interests" responded with a stream of lawsuits

and by "persuading" council members to block his program. In the end,

Johnson's gains were relatively small although succeeding administrations even-

tually gained much of his program.

Murdock originally completed this study as a Columbia University Ph.D. disser-

tation under Allan Nevins in 1951. He updated the research in the early 1980s, and

added three appendices to deal with historiographical issues not covered in the

text. Murdock extensively researched the daily press from those favorable to

Johnson (Press and Plain Dealer) and those opposed (Leader and News). He also

interviewed (1949) 25 surviving figures and used the collected papers of several

others including Johnson.

This is a valuable political biography with much interesting material. Despite

efforts to update, however, it remains outdated historiographically.  While

Murdock provides analytical chapters on structural and social reform, he seldom

leaves the description of political battles to analyze Johnson's political base, his

ideology, or his opponents and their social and institutional contexts; there is lit-

tle effort to place Johnson in a national context. Nevertheless, the book is a well

written and extensively researched study; it is a good case study on the problems

and limitations of Cleveland reform government.

 

Cleveland State University                                James Borchert

 

 

Lion of the Forest: James B. Finley, Frontier Reformer. By Charles C. Cole, Jr.

(Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1994. xv + ²⁷1p.; illustrations,

notes, bibliographical essay, index. $32.95.)

 

Charles C. Cole, Jr., has served as dean and professor of history at Lafayette

College, president of Wilson College, and is currently director of the Ohio

Humanities Council. Cole's work on James B. Finley is a welcome and long-

• 13
 

Book Reviews                                                       107

 

needed volume on one of America's most distinguished Methodist preachers in the

West. Finley was one of the most effective preachers and perhaps the major archi-

tect of the Methodist Episcopal Church in frontier Ohio. Cole uses letter's, di-

aries, and many church and public records as the sources of his work.

James B. Finley was born July 1, 1781, when his father, a Presbyterian minis-

ter, was preaching in the Carolinas and Georgia. As a child young Finley was ex-

posed to Indian raids and the other hardships of frontier life. At the age of fifteen

he led a group of blacks, whom his father had freed from slavery, out of Kentucky

into Ohio. By 1800 Finley completed medical studies under the direction of a

frontier doctor and was admitted to practice. However, he was not enthusiastic

about the work, preferring a life in the woods. The following year he married

Hannah Strange against her fathers wishes. The couple's only child, Eliza, was

born in December of that year.

In 1801 Finley attended the famous Cane Ridge camp meeting in Kentucky and

experienced conversion. His description of the revival in his autobiography is

probably the best account of the event. However, Finley's conversion was in vain

as he backslid shortly after Cane Ridge. In 1808 he received his second conver-

sion, and in 1809 Finley became a Methodist preacher being received on trail by

the Western Conference. His first preaching assignment was the Willis Creek cir-

cuit of the Muskingum district. Finley continued as a circuit rider until he became

presiding elder of the Ohio district in 1816. Gaining converts was a challenging

job, but Finley was successful. On occasion, he brought critics and hecklers under

control by use of his fists. From 1816 to 1821 he became a presiding elder, and

his districts embraced as much territory as some states.

In 1820, Finley attended his first General Conference in Baltimore, Maryland.

Seven additional times he was elected as a delegate to the General Conference.

Finley was selected as missionary to the Wyandot Indians the following year and

was critical of the federal government's Indian policies. He labored for social re-

forms during his work as missionary, declaring war against the harmful effects of

drinking and drunkenness among the Indians. Finley also labored to create

schools for the Wyandots. He successfully continued his work among the Indians

for six years, and from that time until 1845 he was preacher or presiding elder of

several districts.

During the 1844 General Conference in New York, Finley played a pivotal role

in the schism of the Methodist church by submitting a resolution that chastised

Bishop Andrew of Georgia for owning slaves. In 1846 Finley was appointed

chaplain of the Ohio Penitentiary, where he served three and a half years, until his

health became impaired. Finley was superannuated in 1849 because of his health,

but did received appointments at Yellow Springs and Cincinnati after brief recov-

eries from his illness. He died September 6, 1857. In addition to his remarkable

preaching career Finley authored several books. Following the publication of

History of the Wyandotte Mission at Upper Sandusky in 1840, Finley wrote sev-

eral additional volumes in his latter life. Among them were Autobiography,

Pioneer Life in the West, Sketches of Western Methodism, Life Among The

Indians, and Memorials of Prison Life.

Cole's book is a monumental work and is recommended to the layperson as well

as scholars.  The work goes far beyond a simple institutional history of

Methodism with its detailed vividness and eloquent rhetoric. The many anecdotes

that color this sympathetic portrait of Finley make the work enjoyable reading.

 

Stanford, Indiana                                     David L. Kimbrough

• 14
 

108                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

The Shipwreck of Their Hopes: The Battles for Chattanooga. By Peter Cozzens.

(Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1994. xii + 515p.; illustrations,

notes, bibliography, appendix, index. $34.95.)

 

Peter Cozzens, a foreign service officer with the United States Department of

State and a leading historian of the war in the West, has made yet another impor-

tant contribution to the field of Civil War historiography in the Western Theater

with his excellent The Shipwreck of Their Hopes: The Battles for Chattanooga.

This fine work now concludes Cozzens's impressive trilogy which places much

importance on the decisive struggle for the Confederate Heartland before the

Atlanta Campaign of 1864: the Battles of Stone River (No Better Place To Die),

Tennessee; Chickamauga (This Terrible Sword), Georgia; and now Cozzens's re-

cent and perhaps his best work, The Shipwreck of Their Hopes. In part an indica-

tion of its importance, the last volume of the trilogy almost immediately became a

selection of the History Book Club. However, with so much interest yet focused

on the eastern war thanks in part to the movie Gettysburg, it is hoped that this

book will be sufficiently recognized as an important contribution by both histori-

ans and the public.

After the hollow Confederate victory at Chickamauga in September 1863, the

battles for Chattanooga began with General Braxton Bragg laying siege to the key

eastern Tennessee city of Chattanooga. A series of November battles followed,

including Orchard Knob and Lookout Mountain-the famous "Battle Above The

Clouds"-and Missionary Ridge. With considerable skill, Cozzens tells the dra-

matic and interesting story of yet another decisive loss in Tennessee by the ill-

fated Army of Tennessee, the defender of the Confederate Heartland which could

neither win decisive battles nor successfully defend its territory.

During the summer of 1863, the decisive loss of Vicksburg, Mississippi, first

split the Confederacy in half. The key loss of Chattanooga opened the door for

Federal invasion deep into the vital Confederate Heartland and yet another split-

ting of the Confederacy with the loss of Atlanta in the following summer and then

Sherman's March to the Sea.

One of the few shortcomings is an over-reliance on more than 100 articles from

the National Tribune. While these articles contain much good, new material, the

fact that some of these articles were written by aged veterans as late as 1926 makes

some of this material less than completely reliable. Nevertheless, Cozzens has

tapped into some interesting and little-known information in mining this infor-

mation. But this is a minor shortcoming because Cozzens has compiled a most

impressive and a vast array of resource material, including an extensive amount of

manuscript material from archives across the nation. Such exhaustive research

work has allowed Cozzens to present a thorough tactical view of the fighting on

the unit level of both sides during the battles for Chattanooga.

Cozzens succeeds in his goal of describing in vivid detail the story of the de-

cline of Confederate fortunes in the West during the decisive struggle for

Chattanooga and the Confederate Heartland. By any measure, Cozzens has made

yet another impressive and important contribution to the historiography of the

war in the West.

 

United States Air Force Historian                  Phillip Thomas Tucker

Washington, D.C.

• 15
 

Book Reviews                                                       109

 

Harry S. Truman: A Life. By Robert H. Ferrell. (Columbia: University of

Missouri Press, 1994. xiv + 501p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.

$29.95.)

 

A biographer of Harry Truman faces difficult obstacles. Much has been written

over the years as numerous sources have become available and his recent popular-

ity has created a Truman mythology. Truman's lengthy post-presidential years

produced not only his memoirs but numerous other reflections, and clarifications,

that, unfortunately, have often muddled rather than clarified. Robert Ferrell has

written or edited eight previous works on Truman and has obviously mined the

sources at the Truman Library. Yet this familiarity with his subject does not trans-

late into a good biography.

The book is best for the pre-presidential years. The Truman that emerges is

more complex and human. While Ferrell obviously admires much about his sub-

ject he challenges some of the myths. He argues, for example, that Truman

"grossly exaggerated" (p. 20) the number of books he read and that, compared to

Roosevelt, Truman's knowledge of history was "superficial." He is also good on

Truman's early political career, reminding us that politics was the only career that

Truman was successful at and that "Truman took pride" (p. xii) in being a politi-

cian. Ferrell does well in laying out the sometimes complex relationship between

Truman and the Pendergast machine. Ferrell claims that while Truman was not

simply the "organization's servant" (p. 109), his effort to make "himself inde-

pendent was not quite as substantial as it appeared" and Truman was forced "to

make some compromises" (p. 110).

The book fails, however, to deal adequately with Truman's presidency. One

problem is simply coverage. The book devotes only about 220 pages, of 400, to

the presidential years, and it is difficult to cover the many crucial events in this

amount of space. Also Ferrell emphasizes dramatic events at the expense of narra-

tive clarity. This problem is exacerbated by Ferrell's extensive use of oral histo-

ries. In an attempt to use more dramatic anecdotes Ferrell introduces people and

events that confuse, rather than explain, events, and makes the main story more

difficult to follow.

In addition, Ferrell's account is weak in terms of analysis. Evaluations of

Truman's actions are often simply appended to the end of narrative sections and

sometimes have little to do with the issue at hand. For example, Ferrell claims

that Truman's "principal accomplishment . . . was to change the foreign policy of

the United States from abstention to participation in the affairs of Europe and the

world" (p. 246). But later Ferrell asks rhetorically whether Truman handled the

Soviets with "as much precision, as much care, as his fellow citizens could have

hoped" (p. 264) and answers with a three-page discussion of how we know more

today about the Soviets than Truman did. Likewise, his analysis of Truman's deci-

sion to use the atomic bomb quickly becomes bogged down in a confusing discus-

sion of casualty figures that glosses over several important issues (pp. 210-215).

Ferrell is also overly sympathetic to his subject. Other historical actors, espe-

cially Roosevelt, are portrayed in a shallow one-dimensional fashion in order to

make Truman look better by comparison. While Ferrell readily concedes that

Truman made mistakes, he tries to let Truman off the hook by blaming others.

Ferrell blames controversies over such issues as the ending of Lend Lease to the

Soviets (p. 199), the recognition of Israel (pp. 301-312), the proposed Vinson

mission to Russia (pp. 261-263), and the seizure of steel mills in 1952 (pp. 270-

275) on staff, advisors and bureaucrats. The irony of this approach is that it unin-

• 16
 

110                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

tentionally gives the impression that Truman was a hasty and ill-informed deci-

sion maker.

This book, although intriguing, falls far short. Specialists will find little that

is really new and much that is frustrating. General readers will probably find it

confusing. It should be read in concert with other works.

 

Clarke College                                        Michael J. Anderson

 

 

The CIO, 1935-1955. By Robert H. Zieger. (Chapel Hill: The University of

North Carolina Press, 1995. x + 491p.; illustrations, notes, index. $39.95.)

 

Between 1935 and 1955, millions of American workers joined industrial unions

in the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). In this long-awaited work,

Robert H. Zieger presents the history of the CIO in a way that will delight, inform,

and provoke readers. Despite the author's modest claim to "provide a reliable

record of the past" and to "compel acknowledgment of the difficulty of the choices

that historical actors faced" (p. 5), The CIO will quickly become a classic work.

Zieger ambitiously traces the CIO's entire independent existence by combining

the institutional insights of traditional labor history with the social emphasis of

revisionist working-class history. Over two decades, mass organizing drives cre-

ated the CIO, leaders consolidated its economic and political influence, and post-

war political work led to bureaucratic stagnation. In thirteen concise chapters,

Zieger deals with the CIO's founding, the strikes of 1936-1937, maturation of

leadership and structure, 1941 as the "year of decision," patriotic support for

World War II, postwar strikes in 1945-1946, anticommunist purges in 1949-

1950, lobbying in the early 1950s, and the 1955 AFL-CIO merger. Exhaustive

primary research and independent reading of secondary accounts allow Zieger to

present the most factually detailed, insightful, and thought-provoking work on

the CIO to date.

In a well-written narrative Zieger makes points clearly, leaving scholarly argu-

ments for footnotes tracing an entire generation of labor historians' work. He fol-

lows the complicated dynamics of labor leadership, rank and file militancy, and

labor law that made the organization of the steel, auto, rubber, and electrical indus-

tries possible. While drawing heavily on Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van

Tine's John L. Lewis (1977) and Nelson Lichtenstein's Labor's War at Home

(1982), he synthesizes hundreds of specialized studies to capture the diversity of

working-class life, workers' ambiguous attitudes toward unions and politics, and

the CIO's limited view of African American and women workers.

Several aspects of this work will engender considerable debate. Zieger argues

persuasively that the CIO's second president, Philip Murray, led it out of the polit-

ical impasses created by the more charismatic John L. Lewis. Zieger's positive

portrayal of labor leaders' wartime cooperation with government and dampening

of wildcat strikes challenges the revisionist view of growing bureaucratic distance

between leaders and workers. Some will take heated exception to his ultimate ap-

proval of anticommunist purges expelling over a million workers despite the ex-

cellent records of communist-influenced unions. Yet this work is so well docu-

mented that anyone researching the CIO in the future will have to reckon with

Zieger's interpretations.

In a minor key, The CIO does have a few weak spots. At points the author pre-

sumes knowledge of basic facts and chronology in order to address more compli-

• 17
 

Book Reviews                                                       111

 

cated issues. Yet not all readers will know details about various strikes, institu-

tional differences between the AFL and the CIO, and reasons for the 1955 AFL-CIO

merger. While Zieger includes southern workers usually left out, his discussion of

Korean war mobilization remains brief and incomplete. Some may mistakenly

criticize him for not addressing issues of race and gender, but in light of the

paucity of secondary accounts Zieger does an admirable job. His suggestion that

the CIO reflected the male culture of the basic industries while overlooking grow-

ing labor force diversity hints at an interpretation diverging from current schol-

arly fashions. Most weaknesses in this work stem from gaps in current knowledge

rather than the author's failure to deal with controversial issues. Good history

raises as many questions as it answers. The CIO implicitly calls for new biogra-

phies of Philip Murray, Walter Reuther, and David McDonald; institutional histo-

ries of the steelworkers' union, the ClO's Political Action Committee, and a re-

vived AFL; shop floor histories of dissident unions; and sociocultural histories of

Roman Catholic, African-American, women, and service and white collar workers.

The CIO is a masterful work by a talented, mature scholar. Zieger may not con-

vince on every point, but he shows persuasively that the CIO gave new industrial

focus to the labor movement, helped with the war against fascism, stood up to

postwar Stalinism abroad and at home, and improved the quality of workers' lives

through collective bargaining. One hopes this definitive history of the CIO will

be read not only by scholars and students but also by the general public to relearn

a forgotten chapter in modern American history.

 

Tennessee Technological University                      Patrick D. Reagan

 

 

Hugo Black: A Biography. By Roger K. Newman. (New York: Pantheon Books,

1994. xiv + 741p.; illustrations, source notes, notes, acknowledgments, index.

$30.00.)

 

Roger K. Newman has favored us with an excellent comprehensive biography of

Hugo Lafayette Black, justice of the Supreme Court from 1937 to 1971. From be-

ginning to end this book makes it clear that Newman, who is Research Scholar at

New York University School of Law, has been engaged in a long labor of love.

His massive volume is a product of wide reading and of more than two thousand in-

terviews conducted in thirty-three states over the past quarter of a century.

Hugo Black was the most prominent lawyer in Birmingham, Alabama, when he

was elected to the United States Senate in 1926. During his second term he devel-

oped a reputation as a staunch supporter of the New Deal, and President Roosevelt

was persuaded by this loyalty to make him his first appointee to the Supreme

Court. Black began his long tenure on the Court amidst enormous controversy be-

cause the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published a series of articles revealing his mem-

bership in the Ku Klux Klan during the mid-twenties. In a speech broadcast by ra-

dio to an estimated forty million listeners (and which H. L. Mencken thought com-

parable to the Gettysburg Address in its nobility) Black denied that he was racially

or religiously intolerant, but admitted to his early Klan connections without ever

explaining why they existed. Nevertheless, public outrage eventually faded and

Black's hooded past would remain, in Newman's words, his "classical skeleton in

the closet" (p. 96).

No doubt Black's most enduring legacy will be his constitutional philosophy

and, indeed, during the second half of his career on the bench he was widely ac-

• 18
 

112                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

knowledged as the intellectual leader of the Warren Court (1953-1969). He as-

sumed the primacy of the First Amendment and insisted that its protection of free

speech was absolute. Justices, he believed, ought to be bound by the original in-

tent of the Constitution's framers and should therefore interpret their words in a

literal fashion. Black's reading of the due process clause in the Fourteenth

Amendment convinced him that its authors meant the Bill of Rights to apply to

the states.

For a detailed and extended analysis of these and other aspects of Black's ju-

risprudence it is best to turn to specialized studies such as James J. Magee's mar-

velous Mr. Justice Black: Absolutist on the Court (1980). However, in his role as

biographer, Newman has sought to place Black's thought in the context of his

private and public life, and he has succeeded admirably. We can see the justice's

ideas develop through a chronological account of his numerous Court opinions,

and his distinctive cast of mind clarified even further through Newman's retelling

of the famous ideological feud between Black and Felix Frankfurter.

There are numerous times within this book when Newman is quite critical of

Justice Black. For example, he regards Black's understanding of American history

to be ultimately self-serving. And, except for his eloquent defense of a free press

in the 1971 Pentagon Papers case, Newman argues that Black's last several years

on the bench were marred by an outlook that became disturbingly conservative and

behavior that can only be described as "bizarre" (p. 595). But framing the text are

a prologue in which Newman rather effusively praises Black and labels him a

"great man" whose accomplishments rank him with Franklin D. Roosevelt and

Martin Luther King, Jr., and an epilogue (entitled "Of Hugo and Me") where he ad-

mits that Black became an "obsession" with him. It is unfortunate, then, that de-

spite the undeniable contribution he has made to our knowledge of Hugo Black and

his times, one leaves this biography wondering whether Newman has maintained a

sufficient detachment from his subject.

 

Bethany College                                           Bruce R. Kahler

 

 

Government, Politics, And Public Policy In Ohio. Edited by Carl Lieberman.

(Akron, Ohio: Midwest Press Incorporated, 1995. xii + 277p.; tables, notes,

index. $44.95 cloth; $24.95 paper.)

 

This very useful volume provides a selection of essays on contemporary Ohio

politics and government policy. It could perhaps be described as a handy reference

for those with a need to have knowledge about government in contemporary Ohio.

The first section of the book concentrates on the political "Environment." Here

the reader can find a brief overview of Ohio constitutional history and recent eco-

nomic and demographic statistics about Ohio. This section of the book also in-

cludes a useful summary of recent political trends in Ohio. Like other East North

Central states, Ohio is a two-party state with a large electoral vote, so politics

there has been highly competitive in the recent past (as well as the more distant

past).

Section II focuses on the pressures for government action. It includes a chapter

which analyzes the results of public opinion polling in Ohio to identify some of

the basic attitudes about government and government policy, and another substan-

tial chapter concentrates on the role played by lobbyists and other interest groups

in Ohio politics. This chapter argues that members of the state legislature gener-

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Book Reviews                                                     113

 

ally view lobbyists favorably since lobbyists often provide very useful informa-

tion on issues before the legislature. It also notes that the initiative and the refer-

endum, two reforms highly touted in the Progressive era as a way to prevent pow-

erful interest groups from dominating legislatures, have in fact often become ef-

fective procedures by which powerful interest groups achieve their policy objec-

tives. Section II also includes a chapter devoted to the political parties, the legal

structure regulating the parties, valuable information on Ohio Democratic and

Republican party finances and a discussion of some of the ways that state laws in

Ohio discriminate against minor parties, a practice found in most of the United

States.

In Section III the book examines the Ohio legislature by delineating the major

characteristics of its members and presenting important information about them

such as: why they chose to serve, their previous political experience, ideology,

and the outline of party leadership. It also discusses the legislative committee

structure and a variety of other important topics relative to the state legislature.

This section also provides a chapter on the office of governor and a discussion of

the administrations of Governors Richard Celeste and George Voinovich.

Section IV includes essays on public policy in Ohio. The first chapter is a pre-

sentation of "a holistic and integrative-based approach to policy planning." A

second essays examines policy toward public higher education in Ohio. It points

out that until the 1960s higher education policy in Ohio originated at the univer-

sity level, but in Ohio, as in many other states, legislatures have gradually in-

creased their control. In 1963 the Ohio legislature established the Ohio Board of

Regents with a responsibility to devise a master plan for the state and make bud-

getary recommendations for the entire public higher educational system. Another

major chapter focuses on Ohio policy on crime. This chapter provides the number

of reported crimes and the crime rate in Ohio (which declined, 1977 to 1991). It

also includes data on drug abuse, juvenile crime, number of inmates in Ohio pris-

ons and the rate of incarcerations per 100,000 inhabitants (which increased, 1982

to 1992).

Those who are well informed about Ohio government and politics may find at

least some of the portions of this book rather elementary, but on the whole it is a

worthy effort. It provides a substantial body of useful data on Ohio and can be rec-

ommended as a brief handbook of Ohio government.

 

Southern Illinois University at Carbondale             Howard W. Allen

 

 

Letters to Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789. Volume 21: October 1, 1783-

October 31, 1784.   Edited by Paul H. Smith and Ronald M. Gephart.

(Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1994. xxxi + 861p.; illustrations, ed-

itorial method and apparatus, chronology of congress, list of delegates to

congress, notes, index. $41.00.)

 

During the time-frame covered by this latest hefty installment of this ongoing

and important series, the Treaty of Paris acknowledging the independence of the

United States is ratified. Since the whole goal of the American Revolution had

been to somehow transform independence declared from the mother country into

independence acknowledged by the mother country, one might initially think that

a strong case could now be made that the Americans had at last "arrived." But as

practically every delegate to Congress understood only too well, nothing could

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114                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

have been farther from the truth. Perhaps we should not be surprised. After all,

even weighty matters like declaring independence, waging wars, and establishing

new nations are all eminently human enterprises; and we humans seem to have

great difficulty at arriving at meaningful, satisfying, or final destinations. That

literary lioness Gertrude Stein once commented cleverly and artfully upon the

whole phenomenon of ever really "getting there." The problem, said she, is that

one no more than gets "there" before one realizes that "there's no there there."

Clearly, there's no "there" here, not in these thirteen troubled and troubling

months running from October 1, 1783, through October 31, 1784. For starters,

the years-old problem of the delegates' attendance (or, better put, their too fre-

quent non-attendance) continues unabated. Just keeping enough state delegations

together to constitute a quorum proves to be exasperatingly difficult. This particu-

lar volume, like several of its predecessors, contains numerous letters from the

president of Congress to the truant states. The addressees may vary, but the mes-

sage is invariably the same: Please send delegates and as soon as possible! There

is the fear that not enough delegates can be assembled even to ratify the peace

treaty itself before the deadline for ratification expires.

Even after the quorum is met and the treaty ratified, vexatious problems persist.

Clearly, there is in 1783 and 1784 what this reviewer has elsewhere referred to as

the problem of "the two Europes: the-Europe-over-there and the-Europe-over-

here." The Europe-over-there may or may not enter into treaties of amity and

commerce, but without such regularization of trade the fragile American economy

has precious little chance of recovering from wartime disruptions and reverses.

The-Europe-over-here borders (and potentially threatens) the new nation on the

north, the west, and the south. Then there are the persistent money questions-

the national debt, the fiscal crisis, woefully insufficient revenue-ticking like so

many time-bombs. Perhaps an impost could help raise some of the necessary

money, but it is at best controversial and thought by some to be downright uncon-

stitutional. Perhaps the sale of western lands could also help ameliorate the situa-

tion. Perhaps, perhaps. Now that Virginia has relinquished her expansive claims

to be transmontane region, there are also questions having to do with the political

organization of that vast territory. Finding a permanent seat for the Congress is

still so controversial that it remains unresolved. The problems go on and on and

on.

There is no principle of inevitability guaranteeing that any of these problems

will be quickly or neatly resolved. Only time will tell. As for now, the problems

seem to be sufficiently numerous and sufficiently grave as to lure Thomas

Jefferson off his beloved little mountain and back into Congress. For Jefferson

this constitutes a significant change of mind; for, after his depressingly unhappy

experience as governor of Virginia from 1779 to 1781, he had sworn off politics

forever. At one point in this volume, Jefferson and his good friend James

Madison are engaged in a kind of role reversal as they continue what the late

Adrienne Koch called their "great collaboration." For now it is Jefferson who is in

Congress and Madison who is not, and thus it is Jefferson who must now keep

Madison well informed as to what is (and is not) going on. As the index clearly

indicates, Jefferson's role in this twenty-first act of this continuing saga is very

great, but this stint of his as a legislator will be fairly brief. For Jefferson will

soon be in Europe as an American minister plenipotentiary trying to assist John

Adams and Benjamin Franklin in their efforts to secure those all-important trade

treaties.

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Book Reviews                                                       115

 

Little children, off on some journey with their parents, often inquire: "Are we

there yet?" In these years of our Lord 1783 and 1784, the United States is a little

child. The youthful nation has set off on an arduous republican course, and obvi-

ously she is not "there" yet. There is much, much more for the Jeffersons and

Madisons of the world to do. Like every volume in this series, this one brings to-

gether in one place invaluable resources relating to the meager, uncertain begin-

nings of the greatest nation that ever was. Every volume contains its own inher-

ent drama. Every volume both informs us and whets our appetite for more. And all

the volumes together are adding up to a tale more complicated and engrossing than

any mere work of fiction could ever be. Stories this good and stories this impor-

tant simply cannot be made up.

 

Marquette University                                       Robert P. Hay

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