Ohio History Journal

Book Reviews

 

 

Union & Emancipation: Essays on Politics and Race in the Civil War Era. Edited

by David W. Blight and Brooks D. Simpson. (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State

University Press, 1997. x + ²³1p.; illustrations, notes, selected bibliography,

index. $35.00.)

 

Examining the impact of slavery and race on American politics and culture dur-

ing the decades surrounding the Civil War, this collection of essays is especially

useful for scholars of northern party politics in the 1850s.

In the first of three essays on partisan ideology during the late antebellum era,

Robert E. May assesses the validity of Free Soil and Republican party claims that

American presidents were tacitly permitting private military expeditions designed

to spread slavery south of the United States. May demonstrates the falsehood of

these charges by documenting numerous efforts by Presidents Polk, Taylor,

Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan to prevent southern filibustering operations. May

fails, however, to account for Pierce's recognition in 1856 of William Walker's

filibuster regime in Nicaragua. Overall, though, May's exhaustive examination

succeeds in highlighting the exaggerated, paranoiac nature of antislavery politi-

cians' rhetoric about a Slave Power conspiracy.

Michael J. McManus's study expands the portrait of antebellum Republican

party ideology that has emerged from the scholarship of Eric Foner, Michael F.

Holt, and William E. Gienapp. Throughout the late 1850s, reveals McManus, the

Wisconsin Republican party justified its opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act of

1850 by invoking the states' rights doctrine that historians typically associate

with the nineteenth-century Democratic party. The hostility toward national au-

thority that McManus discovers in the Wisconsin Republican party of the late

1850s suggests an explanation for the Republicans' willingness to endorse poli-

cies, such as congressional prohibition of slavery in the territories, that clearly

had the potential to disrupt the union. The important implications of this analy-

sis underscore the need for additional research on the pre-Civil War Republican or-

ganizations of other northern states.

Peter Knupfer illuminates the philosophy of the short-lived Constitutional

Union party of 1860. Citing the national party platform's advocacy of the union

and the Constitution, traditional historiography summarily characterizes the par-

ty's stance as an anachronistic evasion of the slavery issue without fully describ-

ing  the party's ideological perspective.  The recurring  message of the

Constitutional Union campaign, exposes Knupfer, was that the preservation of

the federal union depended on a return to a form of party politics that addressed

economic issues and excluded the sectionally divisive question of slavery.

Knupfer's insightful study would have been even more informative had it delin-

eated the party's political economic program.

The essays in this volume discuss not only electoral politics but also the policy

decisions of civil and military leaders during the Civil War era. Emphasizing the

primary role that the slaves themselves played in prompting President Lincoln to

issue the Emancipation Proclamation, Ira Berlin convincingly argues that slaves

proved to Lincoln their value to the Union war effort by fleeing to Union lines and

offering vital services to the Federal army. Berlin lucidly recapitulates the thesis

of scholars such as Vincent Harding and Barbara J. Fields, but could have offered a

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Book Reviews                                                        205

 

fresh interpretation had he demonstrated his assertion that emancipation resulted

not only from the slaves' efforts but also from the independent influence of

Lincoln and other actors such as congressional Republicans. Exploring the un-

charted territory of military policymaking toward African American soldiers dur-

ing the Civil War and Reconstruction, Brooks D. Simpson's piece proves that

General Ulysses S. Grant repeatedly pressured Confederate authorities to grant

equal treatment to black Union prisoners of war. Simpson's thorough research of

Grant's correspondence manages to shed considerable light on a topic that has

previously attracted scant scholarly attention.

Louis S. Gerteis's essay on blackface minstrelsy is heavy on plot summaries

and selections of verses but light on analysis, illuminating little about race rela-

tions and racial attitudes in nineteenth-century America. In a more trenchant study

of popular culture, David W. Blight offers a cogent reconstruction of early-twenti-

eth white America's memory of the Civil War. Treating the Battle of Gettysburg

fiftieth anniversary celebration in 1913 as a window into white Americans' histor-

ical memory, Blight concludes that the culture of sectional reconciliation and

white supremacy that had emerged during the late nineteenth century fostered a

memory of the Civil War that focused on military valor but ignored slavery, eman-

cipation, and other racial dimensions of the war.

 

The University of Virginia                               John D. Morton

 

 

Calvinists Incorporated; Welsh Immigrants on Ohio's Industrial Frontier. By

Anne Kelly Knowles. (Chicago The University of Chicago Press, 1997. xxiii +

332p.; illustrations, appendices, bibliography, index. $24.95 paper.)

 

Anne Kelly Knowles has written a book that will help historians understand the

route America followed into an industrial and urban nation by taking us off the

beaten path. Knowles finds links between industrialization, frontier settlement,

and immigration in a study of the Welsh immigrants who lived in Jackson and

Gallia counties.

Knowles has made an important contribution to our understanding of Ohio's

role in industrial development. Knowles, a geographer, integrates history and ge-

ography in her work, which stands at the intersection of immigration, regional,

and industrial history. Most importantly, Knowles' examination of Welsh migra-

tion aptly demonstrates that what might seem clear in the broad strokes of interna-

tional and national history becomes murkier upon closer examination.

The Welsh experience is summarized in the title, Calvinists Incorporated, as the

immigrants built upon their religious traditions in the making of their iron busi-

nesses. Knowles goes to the heart of several long-standing debates over the de-

velopment of class, the impact of industrialization on communities, the debate

over the existence of entrepreneurship among early settlers, and the immigrant

experience. Knowles argues that in "their economic dealings," the Welsh "could

be characterized as both family-oriented yeomen farmers and competitive en-

trepreneurs whose investments hastened the development of industrial capitalism

in their rural Ohio community. Their deeply religious values both constrained

their economic behavior and facilitated their success in the American capitalist

system" (p. xxi).

In America, the Welsh advanced as many became land owners rather than tenant

farmers. However, they chose land similar to that of Wales and thus sacrificed

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206                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

additional opportunities as commercial farmers. In southeastern Ohio the Welsh

immigrants found the hilly land that allowed them to recreate their European farm-

ing experience. The Welsh commitment to farming did not, however, rule out in-

dustry. Knowles traces the path of the various Welsh groups through Britain and

finally to Ohio. Laborers could work in the iron industry of southeast Wales; after

immigration the farmers of Jackson and Gallia counties could draw on industrial

experience.

The Welsh competed with the American iron masters of the Hanging Rock Iron

Region by blending industry and agriculture. The Welsh raised capital for the

Jefferson and Globe iron furnaces by deeding land to the iron plantations to pro-

vide raw materials, thus providing the furnaces with wood for charcoal and clearing

farm land. In return for the land, the farmers became stockholders in the furnace

and shared in future profits. Local ministers and commercial farmers provided the

leadership for the furnace ventures and the businesses resembled the organization

of their churches.

Knowles point that the "debate over rural economic transformations has tended

to analyze social structure and conflict in terms that set economic and culture in

opposition to one another," but we "might find more examples of ways in which

culture and economy reinforced one another if we look at places where capitalism

developed in the absence of overt conflict" is well taken (p. 257). While I would

agree that historians are too often drawn to dramatic watershed events, it is not en-

tirely accurate to describe the Hanging Rock Iron Region as lacking overt con-

flict. Indeed, her research would indicate that there was less conflict at the Welsh

furnaces than in some of the other furnace communities in the area, perhaps a dif-

ference explainable by the importance of religion in the communities. Although

the Hanging Rock Iron Region lacked the same level of strikes as in the nation as

a whole, there were conflicts over community resources, company housing, and

the development of unions. Maybe this is one of the differences between urban

and rural industry?

None of this is meant to detract from Calvinists Incorporated. Knowles makes

good use of the often sparse documentation, relying on government statistics and

making extensive use of newspaper biographies and obituaries. It is her thorough

and creative use of sparse documentation that allows us to understand better the

Welsh migration to Ohio.

 

Ohio Historical Society                                  Phillip G. Payne

 

 

Kentucky: A Portrait in Paradox, 1900-1950, By James C. Klotter. (Frankfort,

Kentucky: Kentucky Historical Society, 1996. x + 424p.; notes, illustrations,

index. $38.00.)

 

Although the mystique evoked by "My Old Kentucky Home," the beloved state

song, has been enshrined in the hearts and minds of Kentuckians, the state has in

truth been a land of contrasts. In the first half of the twentieth century the

Bluegrass horse country, the Louisville metropolitan area, and the Appalachian

counties constituted three distinct sections. Each had its own historical, ethnic,

and cultural milieu and was bound to the other sections by limited ties. John Fox

Jr., and James Lane Allen, two of the state's most perceptive writers of fiction,

noted at the turn of the century a well-nigh unbridgeable gulf between the

Bluegrass aristocracy and the state's eastern mountaineers. The Louisville area

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Book Reviews                                                        207

 

appeared to be most attuned to the goals and ideals of the New South, but it, too,

retained strong ties to its past. Klotter does not impose any dominant motif upon

the various parts of the state, but he identifies important statewide patterns that af-

fected all sections and shaped their development in the half-century with which his

book is concerned.

One of Klotter's major themes lies in his contention that the first half of the

twentieth century was marked by both great challenges and golden opportunities

for Kentucky. One of the state's tragedies, however, lay in the failure of its leaders

to grapple effectively with the challenges or to seize the opportunities for much-

needed changes. Consequently, Kentucky failed to keep pace with other states,

even the Southern states, in many vital matters.

Probably no failure of Kentucky's leaders in the first half of the twentieth cen-

tury brought the state greater notoriety than their dereliction in dealing quickly

and decisively to end the violence that erupted in the state with disturbing fre-

quency. In 1900, just as the new century was near, violence reached the top level

of power with the killing of Governor-elect William Goebel in front of the state

capitol four days before he was to be inaugurated. In the Black Patch War, which

began in 1902 and raged for several years, western Kentucky tobacco growers

joined with others along the northern border of Tennessee in armed conflict with

powerful outside business interests, whom they accused of actions threatening ruin

to tobacco farmers. Later, Harlan County coal miners fought with equal intensity

against mighty coal companies that seemed bent upon reducing the miners to pe-

onage. In eastern Kentucky, an assortment of bloody feuds, , arising from clash-

ing political ambitions, business rivalries, and family vendettas, were often fueled

by copious amounts of liquor and were brought to national attention through

tabloid-type journalism. The failure of the commonwealth to maintain peace and

dignity within its borders was, in the minds of many of its citizens and other

Americans, one of the darkest stains upon its history in the first half of the twen-

tieth century.

Quite properly, Klotter devotes special attention to education, an ongoing need

in Kentucky and one of the state's most awesome responsibilities.  Sadly,

Kentucky failed to discharge that obligation in a commendable manner. By nearly

every criterion used in judging educational quality and achievement. Kentucky

ranked low among the states, and even among states of the South. As late as

1929, only one-third of its counties provided a high school for African-American

students. One report in 1943 placed Kentucky fortieth among the states in per-

centage of income spent on education. Klotter asserts that the people of Kentucky

certainly desired better educational opportunities for their children, but they bore

some culpability for their state's plight because of their unwillingness to pay for

improvement.

Some of Klotter's most severe criticisms of Kentucky during the first half of the

twentieth century fall upon its politics. In its first decades, Presidents Theodore

Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson and other national leaders

were in the vanguard of reform movements and helped spur numerous states to ac-

tion. Kentucky, however, failed to capitalize on the reform spirit sweeping the

country and remained anchored to the old ways. Klotter places much of the blame

for the state's inertia upon Democrats who were mired down in factionalism and

die-hard Republicans. He contends that both were small-minded and concerned

only with matters of immediate interest. Moreover, he finds that even some of the

advocates of reform were lacking in zeal to introduce more democracy into gov-

ernment, make elected officials more responsible to the public, promote more

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208                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

honest and ethical governments, render better public service, control corporations

and monopolies, enact child labor legislation, enforce prohibition laws, extend

the suffrage to women, and approve other substantive changes sought by genuine

reformers.

Fortunately for Kentucky, the effects of the Great Depression, the success of

New Deal philosophy in changing the role of government in promotion of human

welfare, and the impact of World War II opened another window of opportunity and

gave the commonwealth another chance to adapt to the twentieth century.

Kentucky: A Portrait in Paradox is well researched and written with the assurance

and clarity that comes only from a proven scholar.

 

West Virginia University                                     Otis K. Rice

Institute of Tecnology

 

 

Washington's Partisan War, 1775-1783. By Mark V. Kwasny. (Kent, Ohio: The

Kent State University Press, 1996. xv + 425p.; illustrations, notes, bibliogra-

phy, index. $35.00.)

 

Mark Kwasny's Washington's Partisan War provides an answer to those stu-

dents of the Revolutionary War who may wonder how the small Continental Army

managed by itself to keep larger, better-trained British forces in check for more

than eight years. Kwasny's response: it didn't. The Continental Army was con-

stantly aided by militia forces which supplemented the strength of the regulars and

also acted independently, harassing and annoying British forces at every opportu-

nity. Ignored and often maligned by military historians who concentrate over-

whelmingly on the Continental Army, the revolutionary militias take center stage

in Kwasny's study.

That the American Revolution was a partisan war in some respects few would

deny, and historians have chronicled this type of warfare in the Southern states.

But Kwasny concentrates on an area in which conventional warfare and the

Continental Army supposedly dominated-the Central Atlantic states of New

York, New Jersey and Connecticut. There he finds that the militia played an indis-

pensable role in supporting the operations conducted by George Washington. The

militia not only supported the Army directly, but also operated independently in

small units to harass and oppose British campaigns and excursions. Moreover, it

helped to defend coastal towns and frequently launched raids and attacks against

British detachments and outposts.

Kwasny characterizes this small-unit warfare as partisan war and suggests that

such activities aided Washington's efforts considerably. Washington, Kwasny

admits, had to learn on the job how to utilize militia troops effectively, discover-

ing early in the war that it was not feasible to mobilize large numbers of militia to

augment his army directly. He learned to use them in small parties, often with de-

tachments of Continentals to aid them. At the same time, however, he conserved

Continentals  by using the militia for local defense whenever possible.

Throughout the war Washington preferred Continentals, but he learned to use mili-

tia to best advantage, one reason why he was "the great leader of the war, consis-

tent, yet willing to learn from past events."

Washington's Partisan War ably proves most of its contentions.  Readers

schooled in the traditional military histories will be impressed at the constant

flurry of small-unit actions that characterized periods of the war often thought of

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Book Reviews                                                          209

 

as static-an impression previously receivable only indirectly through such

sources as the casualty lists in Howard Peckham's The Toll of Independence.

Kwasny is less effective in demonstrating their strategic effect on the British; here

he is generally reduced to quoting postwar justifications by British generals, justi-

fications that often refer to the large amounts of militia at the rebels' disposal.

Perhaps the most striking feature of Washington's Partisan War is its depiction

of Washington's relations with the leaders of Connecticut, New York and New

Jersey. Students of the Revolutionary War are all too familiar with conflicts be-

tween the Continental Army and the Continental Congress, and between

Washington and various subordinates. But Washington and the various war gov-

ernors with whom he had to deal were able to maintain surprisingly cooperative

and unexpectedly effective relationships with each other. These relationships in-

dicate an area of wartime leadership which historians have largely neglected.

There are, however, areas which Kwasny himself neglects in his study of the

Revolutionary militia. Washington's Partisan War, first and last, is a study of

military operations. The militia are considered only in their role as soldiers and

only through the lens of military campaigns. Thus the institutional and social

mechanisms affecting militia service and mobilization-including class conflict,

compensation and equalizing the burdens of military service are simply not dis-

cussed. Nor are the effects of militia service on families and communities ex-

plored. Perhaps more surprisingly downplayed is the role that the militia played

in controlling and limiting Tory sentiment. If the militia served in a partisan war,

then this sort of very irregular warfare was definitely a part of it. Lastly, it should

be noted that the focus on Washington, while understandable, provides a peculiar

distortion to the nature of the warfare described in the study, for the more the war

was indeed a partisan war, the less it was Washington's war. Washington had lit-

tle control over small-scale operations and raids, still less over independent ac-

tion against Tories. The true leaders in partisan war are the relatively junior offi-

cers and men who remain mostly anonymous in Kwasny's study.

Despite these shortcomings, there can be no doubt that Washington's Partisan

War provides an extremely useful addition to the military history of the

Revolutionary War. No reader will be able to go back to the traditional works that

focus almost exclusively on the Continental Army without wondering where the

rest of the war went.

 

Institute for Intergovernmental Research                   Mark Pitcavage

 

Explicit & Authentic Acts: Amending the U.S. Constitution, 1776-1995.  By

David E. Kyvig. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996. xx + 604p.;

notes, bibliography, index. $55.00.)

 

In Explicit and Authentic Acts, Professor David Kyvig of the University of

Akron examines the substantive attempts to amend the constitutions of the United

States from 1776 to the present. The two key words in that statement are substan-

tive and attempts. Kyvig does not examine every proposed amendment to the

Constitution. Neither does he restrict his focus to amendments adopted. Instead,

Kyvig focuses on those efforts to revise the Constitution which attracted consid-

erable (widespread) support, although they may not have proven successful.

Explicit and Authentic Acts is a well researched, logically presented, and com-

prehensive work. Kyvig examines more than two hundred years of United States

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210                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

history, presenting a readable narrative and thoughtful survey of the issues of con-

stitutional revision from the Declaration of Independence to the calls for a consti-

tutional convention and amendments in the 1990s.

Kyvig has taken on an enormous task, which he has executed well. His exami-

nation, for example, of the creation and adoption of the first ten amendments is

well rooted in the sources. His presentation of the data is solid and his conclu-

sions well reasoned. Likewise, his assessment of the post Civil War amendments

demonstrates a mastery of the primary and secondary sources, a solid understand-

ing of the issues, and is an excellent overview of the constitutional changes con-

sidered and the narrower ones adopted.

Kyvig is also judicious in his inclusion of proposed amendments that did not, or

have not yet at least, met the requirements for inclusion in the fundamental law of

this nation. Kyvig examines both proposed amendments that have not to date

overcome the obstacles of congressional and state legislative super majority re-

quirements. In examining, for example, the proposed amendments restricting

child labor or guaranteeing equal protection without regard to gender, Kyvig

makes clear that the obstacles to constitutional inclusion are considerable.

Likewise, the proposed amendment to require a balanced budget, which has not yet

secured congressional approval, will face considerable difficulties if presented to

the states.

In sum, Explicit and Authentic Acts is the best kind of constitutional history. It

provides us with much data on a complex and recurring question, and encourages us

to explore in our own minds the significance of that history to the issues of con-

stitutional life today.

 

University of Texas at San Antonio                        Steven R. Boyd

 

 

The Strange Deaths of President Harding. By Robert H. Ferrell. (Columbia:

University of Missouri Press, 1996. x + 203p.; illustrations, notes, bibliogra-

phy, index. $24.95.)

 

In this short, thoroughly researched volume, historian Robert Ferrell seeks to

dismiss some of the rumors and scandals that have marked discussions of Warren

G. Harding's administration, and account for why those dark secrets have contin-

ued to mar Harding's reputation. Simply put, Ferrell contends that the twenty-

ninth president's reputation died some unseemly deaths shortly after he met with

his own, and Harding's legacy has never recovered from those blows, as evidenced

in the regularity with which he is placed last in historians' polls of the presidents.

The book's opening chapter provides a full account of Harding's death, from

cardiovascular disease, at the San Francisco Palace Hotel on August 2, 1923, and

the outpouring of public grief that accompanied the passage of his body back to

Washington, D.C. Ferrell establishes clearly enough that Harding died of a heart

attack and that the public was mightily saddened by his passing. Indeed, one sus-

pects that of twentieth century public outpourings of grief for American presi-

dents, only the deaths of Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy elicited a re-

sponse exceeding that which accompanied Harding's (but then, it is worth remem-

bering that those two and William McKinley were the only other presidents to die

in office in the present century, and the epitaph, "his death prompted more public

grief than did McKinley's" would hardly enhance a past president's legacy).

The book's next chapter traces the genesis and dissemination of the theory that

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Book Reviews                                                        211

 

Harding was poisoned, either by himself, in an effort to escape impending scan-

dal, or by his wife. The author analyzes the two works that promoted the poison

theory-Samuel Hopkins Adams' novel Revelry (1926) and Gaston B. Means's

The Strange Deaths of President Harding (1930) (from which he draws the present

volume's title)-and dismisses them and laments their enduring influence.

Chapter three takes on the allegations of Nan Britton that her child was, as her in-

fluential 1927 volume declared, The President's Daughter. This is probably the

volume's weakest chapter, since the reader is left with the sense that the president

was certainly engaged in some extracurricular activities, even if Nan Britton's

daughter was not his own. Ferrell engages in some interesting analysis and some

remarkable detective work in the chapter, but seems to be trying just a little too

hard to explode rumors of Harding's alleged infidelity (especially since such infi-

delity-with Carrie Phillips-is highlighted in the book's closing chapter).

Chapter four does a stronger job of absolving Harding of direct responsibility

for the various other scandals that marked his administration, most notably

Teapot Dome, Charles Forbes' looting of the Veteran's Administration, and

Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty's failure to effectively prosecute those

crimes. On the other matter of his connection to these scandals, however,

Harding's reputation is on shaky ground regardless of one's conclusions. If he

was unaware of these unseemly developments then he was innocent of complicity,

but was a mere dupe of his appointees, who are shown to be none too bright them-

selves in the conducting of their shenanigans.  Ferrell concludes that "[t]he

Harding scandals lacked large historical importance" and Harding knew little about

them (p. 133).

The book's final chapter, "Aftermath," is the most interesting. The author sur-

veys the historiography on the Harding administration and concludes, correctly, I

think, that Robert K. Murray's 1969 biography of Harding is the best, most bal-

anced work available. Ferrell is highly critical of the less favorable portraits pre-

sented by Clinton W. Gilbert, Henry L. Mencken, and William Allen White in the

1920s, and by Frederick Lewis Allen, Allan Nevins, Alice Roosevelt Longworth,

Mark Sullivan, and Adams (in his second Harding book) in the 1930s. Yet Ferrell

is, on occasion, almost Menckenesque in his criticism of those Harding bashers.

Their cumulative impact (in conjunction with more scandals that have surrounded

the Harding Papers) have, he contends, stacked the historiographic odds against

the Harding legacy.

Ferrell concludes that in more recent decades historians have failed to examine

Harding's presidency with the care they afford to other topics and other presidents.

Perhaps so; yet the most logical solution to the lamentable legacy of Warren G.

Harding would, one suspects, be a full-scale re-examination of the achievements of

his life and his administration. Ferrell has done an excellent job of explaining

why Harding has been so maligned by journalists and historians, but much more

will need to be done for Harding to be promoted from the rank of "weakest presi-

dents." Perhaps Ferrell himself will undertake this task.

 

Widener University                                      David M. Wrobel

 

 

The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat. By Earl J. Hess.

(Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1997. xii + 244p.; illustra-

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

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212                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

Civil War veteran Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., once declared that he and his fel-

low Billy Yanks had shared the "incommunicable experience of war." Such senti-

ments are often dismissed as the special pleadings of self-justification. But Earl J.

Hess's new analysis lends a considerable measure of credence to the chief justice's

rhetoric. The Union Soldier in Battle offers a well-grounded interpretation of the

Civil War battle experience, Northern combatants' strategies for coping with the

shock of their engagements, and veterans' postwar attitudes.

Employing a broader base of letters, diaries, and memoirs than some recent, po-

litically correct tomes on soldier morale, Hess reconstructs battle as a vivid, sur-

real, and "comprehensive physical experience of the senses" (p. 47). Thus, Yanks

at Gettysburg understood the sights, sounds, smells, and other elements like fear

and determination on a visceral level far removed from rational discourse. In a

profound way the essence of battle, then and now, truly is incommunicable.

Abstractions of language necessarily diminish the totality of sensations which

Hess catalogues. For the soldier and the civilian full comprehension of battle is

elusive.

But Billy Yank found a way. For most of 1861 America battle was an alien and

withering ordeal. Hess determines, however, that the Northern soldiers' "loss of

innocence . . . did not necessarily bring disillusionment" (p. 197). Instead, the

soldier generally integrated battle's sordid, chaotic strangeness into a mindset

which enabled him to withstand the cumulative traumas. And Hess excels in de-

scribing Billy Yank's combination of ideology, adventurism, cultural norms,

comradeship, and romanticism.   With Michael Barton (1981) and Gerald F.

Linderman (1987), Hess locates courage as the center of this internal universe.

(Also orbiting nearby were manliness, religion, and honor, all propelled by po-

tent moral fervor.)

Yet Hess goes further and emphatically underscores the importance of Unionist

ideology. For the boys in blue such tenets "linked the military struggle to funda-

mentally important goals" worth all the blood and gore (pp. 98-99). What helped

the soldier to hold on was faith in the cause and the surrogate family of his com-

pany or regiment. The intimate bonds of these small, rough, but comprehensible

groups formed a kind of collective will which supported the individual and equated

the fates of unit and nation. The timelessness of the patterns identified by Hess re-

inforces his case.

Years after Appomattox but still in the clutches of the dark, youthful romanti-

cism which linked patriotism and death, Union veterans published war memoirs.

The vast majority, Hess maintains, still saw the war in stoic terms, as a dirty job

but one they performed willingly. Here, Hess directly challenges Linderman's

"modernist view of war" (p. 197). Hess acknowledges that the picture of the sol-

dier as victim might accurately characterize recent conflicts, but this cynicism

misinterprets the Civil War. On the contrary, Hess insists, ideology, patriotism,

and religion were taken more seriously by the premodern army and society of

1861-1865 than by "their twentieth-century counterparts" (p. 198). Although the

impact of such verities on our present age is hard to deny, Hess correctly observes

that Civil War soldiers' muzzle-loading weapons, transportation mostly by foot,

heavily Napoleonic methods, and other orthodoxies separated them from truly

modern warfare. In battle they fell back on conventional war making, values, and

social supports. In old age they tried to shape their legacy within the old parame-

ters.

Hess's brief for the premodernism and continuity of the Northern soldier ethos

is compelling. His interpretation and the soldier analyses of Reid Mitchell (1988,

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Book Reviews                                                        213

 

1993) and James M. McPherson (1994, 1997) together reintroduce us to Billy

Yank and the fullness of his character. Moreover, to paraphrase a well-known

Illinois politician, such works show how increased devotion to the Northern sol-

dier's cause could have arisen from one of his great battlefields.

 

Kentucky Historical Society                          James Russell Harris

 

 

Ironclad Captain: Seth Ledyard Phelps and the U.S. Navy, 1841-1864.  By Jay

Slagle. (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 1997. xvi + 449 p.; il-

lustrations, glossary, notes, bibliography, and index. $35.00.)

 

"The sight of the mangled and dying men which met my eye as I boarded the

ship was sickening." So did Ulysses S. Grant describe casualties among the crew

of a Union gunboat which had engaged a Confederate battery on the Mississippi

during the Civil War (Memoirs, 1, 397). One skipper of U.S. Navy ironclads in

that war whose crew suffered similar casualties was Seth Ledyard Phelps, an ambi-

tious and skilled regular officer who excelled at riverine operations.

Jay Slagle, the great-great grandson of Seth Phelps, has produced a biography

of his ancestor taken in large part from a substantial private collection of Phelps'

letters held by the family. He has also consulted corroborating contemporary ac-

counts and modern historiography.

Seth Phelps was a native of Chardon, Ohio, who entered the Navy as a midship-

man in 1841, at age 17. Learning his profession at sea on square riggers, the

young man first saw service suppressing the slave trade off Africa where he wrote

with youthful arrogance, but with a keen eye for observation, of African-American

expatriates in Liberia.  He was patrolling the Central American coast when

William Walker was filibustering in Nicaragua, and he served on blockade duty in

the Caribbean during the Mexican War. These were the years when Phelps ma-

tured, mastered his craft in both sail and steam, and married. This is also when

Phelps grew to resent the ossified promotion system of the Navy and what he saw

as an officer corps top-heavy with tenured incompetents blocking advancement of

bright younger men like himself.

The Civil War brought Phelps to the Mississippi and its tributaries, command-

ing ironclads. He bombarded forts, ran supplies to the Army, and provided com-

munications to troops ashore. He fought Confederate ironclads, maintained con-

trol of rivers, and captured enemy ships. Phelps was one of the first naval officers

to conduct raids deep into Confederate territory along the Cumberland and

Tennessee Rivers. He broke up Confederate musters, intimidated enemy towns,

and aided Unionists in western Tennessee. Given temporary command of small

flotillas, he loaded soldiers and conducted joint amphibious operations deep in

Dixie, keeping the Confederates guessing where he would strike next. For a time

in 1863, he was in temporary command of the Mississippi Squadron, operating

between Cairo and Vicksburg.

But this was Phelps' personal high-water mark. Ambitious for promotion and

permanent command of the Mississippi Squadron, he lobbied aggressively, often

depreciating his competitors. He was also harsh with subordinates, earning cen-

sure from his superior. With few political connections and an abrasive manner,

Phelps incurred the displeasure of Secretary of the Navy Giddeon Wells. Command

of the squadron went to a rival and Phelps pinned his hopes on command of the

USS Eastport, a large, powerful, but slow ironclad recently refurbished by the

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214                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

Navy after its capture by Phelps from the Confederates. But the Eastport was

jinxed, technically unreliable despite Phelps' considerable skills, and missem-

ployed by the Navy in the disastrous Red River campaign where her deep draft and

cumbersome handling eventually forced Phelps to abandon and destroy her, barely

avoiding capture. Bitter over the loss of the Eastport, at his failure of promotion,

and despairing of his career, Phelps resigned in 1864 to pursue the life of a busi-

nessman and diplomat.

What emerges from Slagle's account is a portrait of a brave, bold, and techni-

cally masterful officer who gave distinguished service to his country in a career

that spanned more than twenty years. But the picture is also of an arrogant man,

ambitious, contemptuous, and sometimes conniving, who quit in a fit of pique be-

fore the war was over.

This is not a definitive history of river warfare during the Civil War, but it does

not claim to be. This an engaging and lively account of one man's experiences in

the war that reads like an adventure yarn, yet Slagle is true to his sources. The ex-

tensive quotations from private manuscripts will be useful to researchers. This is a

good read, suitable for both the general reader and the scholar.

 

The Ohio State University                            Thomas C. Mulligan

 

 

Temperance & Racism: John Bull, Johnny Reb, and the Good Templars. By David

M. Fahey. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1996. xii + ²⁰⁹p.;

notes, appendix, bibliography, index. $39.95.)

 

David M. Fahey's study of the Independent Order of Good Templars (IOGT), a

fraternal temperance society, is an important addition to the scholarship of frater-

nal societies, the temperance movement, women's history, and African American

history. His voluminous primary sources include correspondence, newspapers,

Templar records, photographs, and other data gleaned from numerous repositories

in the United States, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere.

Founded in the "burned-over district" of New York in 1852, the Templars were

largely concentrated in the northern United States and Ontario until after the Civil

War. Southerners began to join in the postwar era as growing concerns about the

evils of drink permeated the entire country. By the 1870s Templar lodges had

spread throughout the world, with their greatest strength in England and the

British Isles. In 1902 the group changed its name to the International Order of

Good Templars to reflect this internationalism. Fahey focuses upon the United

States and England during the 1870s- 880s, however, with occasional references

to other countries.

Fahey argues that the most unique feature of the IOGT was "universalism, which

in theory welcomed into membership all teetotalers committed to prohibition" (p.

2). Although a few lodges in the North operationalized the doctrine in the 1850s,

admitting both women and blacks on an equal basis with white men, universalism

became a major issue in the postbellum United States. Templar lodges continued

to welcome women as members-although usually without offering them parity

with men-but rarely did those in the U.S. admit blacks. Those in the Old South

barred African Americans altogether or only admitted them into segregated lodges.

By contrast, the English and other Europeans generally favored recruiting

additional black members. The issue of black membership in the IOGT undermined

the organization, eventually resulting in the great schism of 1876-1887. Other

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Book Reviews                                                        215

 

conflicts, particularly those relating to the respective power of the United States

and English contingents within the international body, also contributed to this

break.

Fahey indicates that two major contingents   developed in the  1870s.

Kentuckian John J. Hickman led a faction dominated by an Old South credo which

denounced equalitarian social relations between the races, and therefore opposed

blacks as members. Englishman Joseph Malins, a former abolitionist, headed a

contingent which argued for inclusion of blacks. Significantly, the Hickmanites,

initially strong only in the American South, had gained the support of northern

white Templars by the mid-1870s; thus, they were a majority in the United States.

Malinites dominated in England and the rest of Great Britain. After eleven years of

fighting, the two groups reconciled in 1887, with the former adversaries agreeing

to accept segregated black lodges.

Discussion of the schism dominates the book, accounting for four of its six

chapters; the major portion of a fifth also is devoted to the subject. Some readers,

probably academicians with a strong interest in associationism and related topics,

will find the intricacies of the trans-Atlantic conflict fascinating. Others may find

the details of the ideological and personality conflicts, as well as the numerous

compromise proposals, less compelling.

A few questions need further discussion. Fahey speaks of the militancy of the

Templars, but does not sufficiently amplify the point. What militant actions did

they take, and what were their consequences? Indeed, what impact did the group

have upon the larger society? One also wonders why the Templars were less suc-

cessful than other voluntary associations in maintaining their numerical strength

among blacks. Fahey's explanation is unsatisfactory in that he maintains that

African Americans' poverty, low educational levels, and dearth of leaders were the

major obstacles. But these factors apply equally to all black voluntary associa-

tions, fraternal and otherwise, yet many lasted for years, including into the pre-

sent era.

 

Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville          Shirley J. Portwood

 

 

Charles G. Finney and the Spirit of American Evangelicalism. By Charles E.

Hambrick-Stowe. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing

Co., 1996. xvii + 317p.; illustrations, bibliographic essay, index. $15.00 pa-

per.)

 

Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe in Charles G. Finney and the Spirit of American

Evangelicalism presents an in-depth analysis of the evangelicalist's place in

nineteenth century religious development and thought. The author takes his read-

ers on a journey of Finney's religious and ministerial career beginning with his

conversion in 1821. Through this approach, a clear picture emerges of Finney's

preaching style which he perfected in western New York. Hambrick-Stowe utilizes

the career of Finney to explore American evangelicalism and concentrates on

other elements of the nineteenth century including reform and education. In this

volume, Hambrick-Stowe dissects Finney's theological development and explains

his debt to various strands of Protestantism including Calvinism and Wesleyanism

and also positions him in the Old School-New School divide. The author connects

Finney's religious thought with Jonathan Edwards, Samuel Hopkins, Timothy

Dwight, and other key figures in American Protestantism. This book enhances our

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216                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

understanding of the maturation of Finney as both a theologian and a preacher. As

one of the leading ministers of the antebellum period, his influence was felt from

the East Coast, where he attracted large audiences, to the evangelical community

of Oberlin, Ohio.

Although Hambrick-Stowe completely deals with Finney's religious growth,

more attention might have been given to his stance on reform. While the author

cogently conveys the importance of disinterested benevolence in Finney's

preaching, he might have included more information on the methods Finney em-

ployed to encourage his followers' participation in reform activities, especially

during his early career in the burned-over district and New York City.

Additionally, Hambrick-Stowe needs to provide more thorough discussion on the

role of women in Finney's ministry and in nineteenth century revivalism.

In detailing the growth of Finney's career, greater attention to Finney's rela-

tionship with his wife Lydia, including her role in his ministry, and his relation-

ship with his children, could have been provided. The author does a fine job of

defining the part played by Finney's second wife, Elizabeth, in extending his min-

istry to England and Scotland. Furthermore, Hambrick-Stowe solidly deciphers

the Oberlin sanctification doctrine and other complex issues.

One of the noticeable strengths of this biography is Hambrick-Stowe's sweep-

ing interpretations of nineteenth century culture with emphasis on Finney as a ma-

jor figure during the Jacksonian era. The author portrays the famous evangelical-

ist as displaying some key elements identifiable with Jacksonian America such as

Finney's emphasis on the individual's role in salvation and his entrepreneurial

spirit in establishing his ministerial career. However, the author makes a power-

ful case against labeling Finney as a Jacksonian Democrat. Finney saw a major

difference between Jacksonians and himself as he did not live his life pursuit of

self-interest, which he classified as sinful, but instead dedicated his life in labor

for God. "Jacksonianism  was for Finney the apotheosis of sin" (p. 92). He did

not support Jackson, nor did he promote politics as an avenue for change. He be-

lieved that the way to change society was through the conversion of people's

hearts.

With such interpretations the biography provided enjoyable, insightful reading

and should interest any scholar concerned about American Protestant development

and Finney's place in it. By using a wide array of manuscript collections and pub-

lished sources, Hambrick-Stowe has written an admirable account of Finney's role

in the religious development of the United States. Also, the volume includes sev-

eral illustrations that afford another glimpse into Finney's life. Hambrick-Stowe

makes a significant contribution to the literature on Finney with the publication

of this book and adds to our knowledge of the religious and social forces at work in

nineteenth century America.

 

Cuyahoga Community College                          Catherine M. Rokicky

 

 

The Evangelical War against Slavery and Caste: The Life and Times of John G.

Fee. By Victor B. Howard. (Cranbury, New Jersey: Susquehanna University

Press, 1996. ²62p.; notes, bibliography, index. $41.50.)

 

The book's main arguments are that John Fee's zeal was directed at both slavery

and race prejudice, and that the basis of his reforming zeal was evangelical faith.

The "life and times" approach of the author is both chronological, giving the

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Book Reviews                                                        217

 

reader a sense of development and movement in Fee's thinking and activities, and

also analytical, comparing Fee's positions with that of others involved in anti-

slavery religion and Kentucky politics.  Drawing on primary and secondary

sources on Kentucky and antebellum reform, Howard portrays a reformer whose

moral intensity burned as strongly as that of William Lloyd Garrison, but who

shared political instincts with Liberty Party members who agreed that moral pur-

pose needed to be implemented through political, legislative power.

Fee's associations with leading reform politicians like Cassius Clay, Salmon

Chase, and Gerrit Smith make obvious the potential importance of Fee's work.

Howard describes how Fee worked with Clay in forcing Kentucky legislators to

consider proposals for the abolition of slavery in the state, and with Gerrit Smith

to implement American Missionary Association (AMA) missionary work among

Kentucky slaves and slaveholders. This work is all the more impressive when, as

Howard demonstrates, Fee accomplished it in the face of threatening, sometimes

violent opposition.

When the narrative falters, it seems due in part to an excess of enthusiasm for

Fee. Howard asserts that Fee "was the most important and influential reformer to

wage war against slavery in the South during the nineteenth century" (p. 19).

While Howard shows Fee displaying great moral courage, the reader is left wonder-

ing why Howard judges Fee more influential than Cassius Clay, arguably his clos-

est associate. Readers who want a clearer picture of Fee in relationship to other

southern abolitionists should better turn to Stanley Harrold's Abolitionists & the

South, 1831-1861 (Lexington, 1995), which judges Clay "the most influential" of

southern abolitionists (p. 128). Harrold too sees John Fee as an important figure,

but mostly in Kentucky, arguing that "Fee's churches served as the core of the Free

Soil, Republican, and Radical Abolition party organizations" in Kentucky and

that Fee and Clay carefully coordinated his free church services with Clay's politi-

cal rallies.

Howard's book documents the constant traveling, preaching, writing, and orga-

nizing against mob violence which Fee's abolitionism entailed. Perhaps most

impressive is the stamina of Fee. His mission to end race prejudice began in the

1840s with the planting of free churches, those who excluded neighborhood

slaveholders, and became a crusade which lasted through the Civil War years. Fee

and his associates organized meetings and distribution of religious and political

tracts in Kentucky. How many counties were targeted and how broad were Fee's

free church associations is less clear, since there is no chart or map marking free

church and AMA meetings or associates. Since both free churches and tract distri-

bution required financing from outside the state, Howard is at least correct in sug-

gesting that Fee's contacts outside of Kentucky were extensive.  Whether these

contacts enabled Fee to influence fellow members of the American Missionary

Association, the tiny Abolition Party, or even the Free Soil Party remains unclear.

What is clear is that the AMA provided the most important and long-lasting sup-

port for Fee and other free church organizers.

Newspapers in other states covered Fee's activities, for example, when Fee trav-

eled to antislavery and political meetings in neighboring Ohio and occasionally

as far east as Boston. These contacts deserve further study, since they suggest that

Fee and the AMA were at the center of a sustained attack on slavery that was both

church-centered and interregional, qualities which characterized the Garrisonian

abolitionists only in the very early years of organizing. To assess the breadth and

depth of the influence exerted by Fee and the AMA, especially outside of

Kentucky, future scholars will need to examine closely the membership and activi-

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218                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

ties of reform societies, political and religious, in the communities (many of them

in Ohio) targeted for preaching or tract distribution by Fee.

By covering the entire span of Fee's long life, Howard demonstrates the conti-

nuity between antebellum work in founding free churches and fighting slavery and

Fee's efforts, beginning before the war and continuing until his death, to create

settlements, churches, and schools, most notably Berea College, which were free

of the old racial "caste" system. What is lost is a clear sense of which of Fee's

projects are major and minor. Only by turning to an earlier book of Howard's,

Black Liberation in Kentucky (1983), does one get a clear sense that blacks, not

Fee, initiated many of the religious and political meetings held for Kentucky

blacks during the war, and that he was not a leading organizer.

Despite the rich detail incorporated into this biography. Fee remains a some-

what elusive figure. Howard describes Fee as a poor public speaker (p. 29), and yet

the reader can also infer that Fee was a popular speaker, judged by contemporaries

to speak with "considerable power and eloquence" (p. 66). Placing Fee in the

scholarly taxonomy used to classify abolitionists into either political or moral re-

formers is also impossible, since most scholars present the moral reformers as

synonymous with the radicals in Garrison's circle and the more conservative re-

formers as those who pressed for change through political parties and legislatures.

Howard is obviously using a different rubric when he labels Fee a "conservative"

for emphasizing "moral suasion" to convert slave holders (p. 68). In another con-

text Howard employs a different classifying scheme, showing Fee as no longer

conservative, perhaps even radical, in demanding "immediate emancipation" and

"political rights and social equality for blacks." Howard quickly shifts his view-

point again, arguing that "Fee was not a revolutionist," but someone who kept

within "constitutional means for ending slavery" (p. 138).

Howard's difficulty in painting a clear portrait of Fee's position is understand-

able, given the variety of antislavery views and strategies voiced in his world.

Perhaps Howard would have been wise to avoid placing Fee on a continuum from

"conservative" to "revolutionary" and instead follow Harrold's scheme of describ-

ing southern abolitionists in a dynamic relationship with northern reformers,

sometimes being influenced, other times influencing a northern organization's

course of action.

Opponents of abortion have presented themselves as the moral heirs of aboli-

tionists, and in judging John Fee and the AMA, the temptation is to see his activ-

ity, so deeply rooted in theological and church commitments, as the moral equiva-

lent of its modern cousin, the Christian Coalition. One clear difference, however,

was that Fee's passion and political activity crossed social and racial barriers ac-

cepted by the vast majority of his contemporaries; he aimed to overcome these

barriers by creating free churches and schools where all could worship and learn.

During his lifetime, and especially during his wartime and postbellum years, Fee

presided over these interracial "free churches," and Berea College welcomed both

black and white students. After Fee's death, however, state laws and social pres-

sures forcibly whitened Berea, undoing most of Fee's work and making it that

much more difficult for scholars, much less a general reader, to read and compre-

hend the nature of John Fee and his many associations.

 

Ohio Wesleyan University                 Deborah Bingham Van Broekhoven

• 15