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Book Reviews The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, Volume III: October 1, 1861-January 7, 1862. Edited by JOHN Y. SIMON. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1971. xxv + 479p.; chronology, maps, illustra- tions, calendar, and index. $15.00.) The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, Volume IV: January 8-March 31, 1862. Edited by JOHN Y. SIMON. (Carbondale: Southern Illi- nois University Press, 1972. xxv + 520p.; chronology, maps, illustrations, calendar, and index. $15.00.) Like their subject, these volumes of Ulysses S. Grant's personal letters and military cor- respondence display more breadth as the problems related to the Civil War develop. Edited by Professor John Simon of South- ern Illinois University and his associates and sponsored by the U. S. Grant Associa- tion, the Grant Papers have already estab- lished a reputation for being skillfully edited and artfully produced. Volumes Three and Four maintain this high standard. The editors' notes, maps, and photographs are often more illuminating than Grant's cor- respondence, which runs heavily to routine military communications and tortured syn- tax. For the Civil War buff and student of the western campaigns, as well as Grant fans, the letters are still worth reading. Volume Three covers Grant's months of command of the district of Southeast Mis- souri, where, from his headquarters at Cairo, Illinois, the new Brigadier guarded the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. His post was an advanced one, a Union salient from Paducah, Kentucky, to the Missouri hamlets along the Mississippi's western shore. Columbus, Kentucky, to the south was a major Confederate position, and to the west Jeff Thompson's Missouri State Guards (keeping Missouri "neutral" in the name of the Confederacy) menaced Grant's position. Erroneously informed |
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that the rebel armies were "huge," the dis- trict commander struggled mightily with the complex job of extemporizing his force of volunteers. Much of his correspondence, therefore, deals with the tribulations of find- ing weapons, equipment, skilled officers, horses, and the time to train. Assisted only by the amateurish aides of his staff, Grant was his own commissary, quartermaster, ordnance officer, and adjutant; he had little time for strategic speculations or lengthy personal notes. The General's correspondence, however, shows how clearly Grant recognized the war's unique political character. As com- mander of a district on the ragged edge of the Union, Grant worried about runaway slaves heading North, military supplies go- ing South, and the loyalty of civilians mov- ing in both directions. Although Grant at- tempted to follow Army orders in regard to the proper respect of private property, his letters to his father show that he was ready to support confiscation, abolition, and hard war before the Lincoln administration was. Grant tired standing on the defensive. In October 1861 he wrote his wife that there was "very little doubt, but that we can hold this place. What I want is to advance." In early November Grant got his chance, turn- ing a demonstration against Belmont (a Confederate camp across from Columbus) into a real battle. The engagement had no special significance except that it allowed Grant to test his troops and stun the Con- federates. Grant never doubted the casual- ties were worth the experience. As 1862 began, the methodical, subdued, and confi- dent Grant was ready for more important operations. Volume Four of the Grant Papers covers the period which began when Department Commander Henry Wager Halleck ordered Grant to start operations in central Tennes- see. It ends on the eve of the battle of |
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Shiloh. The General's papers trace his ma- turation as a commander of large forces and fractious subordinates. They also re- veal Grant's concern for the "old reliables," such as troop indiscipline and corruption and maladministration in his supply system. An increasing amount of Grant's letter writ- ing, however, dealt with his strained rela- tions with General Halleck and the prob- lems of coordinating his moves with the Navy's gunboat flotilla and his fellow gen- erals. The Confederate forces at Fort Henry and Donelson seem to fade as threats as Grant grappled by telegraph with his departmental commander. Although not unimpressed by his successful capture of these two key Confederate defenses, Grant did not dwell on the campaign in his post- campaign correspondence, and he reveals little of his conduct of the campaign not already well known to historians. The victories at Henry and Donelson gave Grant a new set of problems--coping with his sudden fame and rapid promotion to Major General. He was obviously willing to make the adjustment, preferring these complications to the disgrace and economic hardship which had marred his life before the war. His family letters show that he was aware that there was gossip about his "health" (i.e., drinking), and he fretted about saving his military pay for less hal- cyon days. Yet, on the balance, Grant was as self-confident as his army. As he asked his wife: "Is father afraid yet that I will not be able to sustain myself? He expressed apprehensions on that point when I was made a Brigadier." Grant had no doubts that other victories and more fame lay ahead as his role in the war expanded. This attack of hubris was to cost him and his army (which shared his euphoria) dearly in the spring woods around Shiloh meeting- house. ALLAN R. MILLETT The Ohio State University The Jacksonians Versus the Banks: Politics in the States After the Panic of 1837. By JAMES ROGER
SHARP. (New York: Colum- |
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bia University Press, 1970. xii + 392p.; graphs and maps, appendices, bibliography, and index. $12.50.) American historians have clearly recog- nized the divisive effect of Jacksonian bank- ing theory and practices on the antebellum Democratic party. In their attempts to assess the importance of this controversy, how- ever, most have focused their research on the national level or on individual states. No significant attempt has been made to relate the Jacksonians' opposition to banks by studying the interrelationships of federal and state hard-money radicals. Professor Sharp adds this dimension to Jacksonian historiography. Professor Sharp maintains that Jackson, reflecting the hard-money wing of the party, made clear in his message vetoing the bill to recharter the Second Bank of the United States his determination to curtail and reg- ulate or destroy the power of the banks. Although often futile, hard-money advo- cates continued their battle against banks, Whigs, and soft-money Democrats until the Panic of 1837. This financial collapse served as "a spiritual and political catharsis, purging the party of much of its doubt and making opposition to the banks a test of party loyalty" (p. 5). The bank issue then became "the crucible" of the party, and hard-money men set its "tone, style, and appeal." Hard-money radicals within the Demo- cratic party were not "entrepreneurs in an age of enterprise." On the contrary, most of them had an anachronistic view of so- ciety. They feared the increasing commer- cialization of the country and opposed the extension of the market system. These in- novations had created profound social and economic changes in America which could only end in disaster, as the Panic of 1837 had clearly demonstrated. They believed banks were the agents through which the transformation of society occurred, and the old order could only be restored by regulat- ing or destroying these institutions. Contrary to the interpretation advanced by Bray Hammond, Sharp believes that the demise of the Deposit Bank System only |
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marked the abandonment of the desire of hard-money radicals for federal control of banks and was not the end of the struggle against the banks. The battle "simply shifted to the states" (p. 328). At the state level, the Democrats were not always suc- cessful in pushing through legislation to regulate banking institutions, but their ef- forts made bankers more sensitive and re- sponsible to the people. The Jacksonians' attacks on banking institutions were not, therefore, negative and destructive, as Ham- mond implies. Rather, "the relatively stable and more responsible conduct of the coun- try's banks from the early 1840s to the Civil War was due in large part to Democratic sponsored bank reforms and the vigorous hard-money critique" (p. 328). Professor Sharp has written an excep- tionally provocative analysis of the impact of the post-panic banking controversy on the Democratic party, particularly in the representative chapters on Mississippi, Ohio, Virginia, and to a lesser extent New York and Pennsylvania. He has provided keen insights into the struggle within the Democratic party over banking and cur- rency policies and suggests thought-provok- ing motives for the attack on banks. Using both impressionistic evidence and statistical data, he constructed a constituency chapter for each of the representative states to deter- mine the basis of grass-root support within the party. This provides not only a basis for comparing sectional differences among Democrats, but also a basis for comparing Whig and Democratic constituencies within individual states. RICHARD T. FARRELL University of Maryland Horace Mann: A Biography. By JONATHAN MESSERLI. (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1972. xviii + 604 + xxxvii p.; illustrations, notes, and index. $15.00.) Jonathan Messerli's critical biography of Horace Mann is not necessarily the work of a revisionist, but rather it is an attempt to free Mann's reputation from a double |
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historical jeopardy where it has been placed by past hagiographers and by scholars who have interpreted his work too narrowly. Messerli broadens the scope of Mann's ca- reer as a reformer in the first half of the nineteenth century and identifies his in- volvement in other reform movements as a logical extension of his commitment to education. Also, the author argues that Mann's historical role in the creation of common and normal schools must be viewed with wider vision and that his achievements in that field should not be confused with the problems facing public education today. Mann's career, although varied, was given direction through the single purpose of education. Following his graduation from Brown in 1819, where, agreeing with one of his classmates, he "never had so much as a peep at the genitals of original- ity" (p. 48), and from the James Gould law school in Litchfield, Connecticut, he began to practice law in Dedham, Massachusetts. Active in local Republican party politics, he was elected to the Massachusetts General Court in 1827. He won recognition for sponsoring a bill concerning state respon- sibility for the care of the mental hospital in the United States. He became active in the American Colonization Society and in the temperance movement. In 1833, Mann was elected as a Whig to the Massachusetts senate and three years later was elected president of that body. After sponsoring a bill for state supported education, he was elected secretary of the newly created board of education in 1837. While in this capacity he earned the reputa- tion as the father of the public and normal school systems in the country. Mann re- turned to politics when, upon the death of John Q. Adams, he filled the ex-President's unexpired term in the House of Representa- tives, and in 1850 won a full term of his own. In 1850 he was the Free-Soil party's unsuccessful candidate for governor. The same year he accepted an appointment as president of Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, a small school founded by the Convention of the Christian denomina- tion to be administered on a liberal policy. |
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He died in Ohio in 1859. Messerli's biography not only details Mann's work, but more importantly probes into the underlying principles and the psy- chological factors that affected his basic attitudes. Mann had an unabating belief in the idea of progress and in the perfectibilty of mankind and society's institutions. As- sured that America was a new model for a virtuous world, he envisioned voluntary associations of reasoning and moral men through which the millenium would be reached. This principle he applied to gov- ernment, to the abolition of slavery, to the temperance movement, and to education. The state, moreover, could help encourage perfectibility with positive republican action to create conditions for social institutions to ensure morality and human happiness. It is the portrayal of Mann himself and the vistas through which he observed his own work that make this book important. At first driven by ambition to achieve finan- cial and social success, Mann accepted the materialism of his age as his measure. How- ever, upon the untimely death of his first wife, Charlotte Messer, Mann brushed aside materialism and wealth and accepted in its stead the principles of self-sacrifice, self- piety and martyrdom--an attitude some- times touching on monomania--in order to labor for a moral society. At times a pathetic figure, Mann felt assured that he was right while battling against what he be- lieved to be evil forces in society--whether sectarianism or self-interest--and strug- gled to establish a public educational system and teacher-training schools. Though these two institutions, run and managed by en- lightened and moral men, a social common- alty could be achieved that would ensure uniformity in a growing pluralistic society; thus a moral society would be created. One result of the public school system, accord- ing to Messerli, was the establishment of an educational bureaucracy not foreseen by Mann, filled with educationist sub-elites who were equipped with their own educa- tionese. They created a system that allowed masses of children to be educated "in lock- step fashion with less intellectual effort, albeit with far more drudgery and bore- |
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dom" (p. 341). This long biography, 589 pages of text, is well written, though at times the reader bogs down in detail and minutiae. Although the descriptive narrative which recounts his vacation trips to the Ohio Valley or to Europe, along with the pictures drawn of the New England countryside as Mann traveled from town to town, can be excused as a way to locate Mann in his own age, how important is it to the general under- standing of Mann's career for Messerli to inform the reader that "A short visit by Alexander Metcalf Fisher, now teaching at Yale, Mann failed to mention in his letters home" (p. 60)? THOMAS H. SMITH Ohio University Invisible Immigrants: The Adaptation of English and Scottish Immigrants in Nine- teenth-Century America. By CHARLOTTE ERICKSON. (Coral
Gables, Florida: Univer- sity of Miami Press, 1972. vi + 531p.; illustrations and index. $17.50.) Of the approximately 650,000 Europeans that arrived in the United States between July 1, 1881 and June 30, 1882, more than eighty percent were "old" immigrants from Germany, Scandinavia and the British Isles, while of the 1.2 million Europeans arriving in 1906-07, more than eighty percent were "new" immigrants from southeastern and eastern Europe. Shortly after World War I, when American historians first began to turn to immigration history, the "old" im- migrants received most of the attention of scholars, such as Carl Wittke and Marcus Hansen. It was not until the end of World War II that the "new" immigrant began to absorb the serious attention of historians, and in recent years he has been the subject of countless studies. Indeed, "new" immi- grants have so subordinated "old" immi- grants that rare is the announcement of the publication of an "old" immigrant history. This alone would make the appearance of Charlotte Erickson's detailed study of
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immigrant (English and Scottish) adapta- tion in nineteenth century America an event of interest. But the source material, the analysis of the sources, and the challenging of accepted hypotheses make it more than merely a refreshing diversion from reading about Italians, Jews, and Blacks. Letters of twenty-five families are in- cluded in the book, grouped according to whether the individuals found jobs in agri- culture, industry, or in professional, com- mercial and clerical occupations. While some passages in the letters were cut in Dr. Erickson's editing, the nature of the mate- rial omitted is always indicated. The letters occupy about 350 pages of the text, giving the reader opportunity to feel the depth and breadth of understanding provided by com- plete accounts. The decision to retain all original spellings adds a little confusion but provides a strong sense of the educational levels of the immigrants. From these English and Scottish letters emerges evidence which challenges standard hypotheses explaining American immigra- tion. Some of the challenges are explicit and noted in the analysis; others are only implicit in the letters themselves. Two al- ternatives to popular stereotypes are quickly apparent. First, it is everywhere assumed that as the earliest members of the nine- teenth century mass immigration settled in America, letters from them began to pour across the ocean containing favorable, even exaggerated, accounts of life in the new world; but these private letters in fact rarely encouraged emigration. Their liet motif was "I will not encourage anyone to come." Second, the letters were often sent home by these immigrants to plead for financial as- sistance, not, as with the stereotype of the Irish, Polish and Italian letters, to send money or free passages to America. Additionally, at least two other correc- tions to current hypotheses emerge from the letters. Mid-nineteenth century emigration is usually seen as a migration of families, not of individuals. While this has been re- cently challenged for German-Jewish immi- gration, Charlotte Erickson's reflections are particularly perceptive for English and Scottish groups as well. She notes that ship- |
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loads of men, women, and children were often mistaken, even in published records of the eighties, for family migration. But these passengers, as later letters suggest, were often from many split families-- "young men on their own, along with the wives and children of other emigrants, pre- sumably already established in America." This evidence may also necessitate a re- evaluation of common notions about "new" immigrant family patterns. Finally, Mrs. Erickson joins Professor Stephan Thernstrom and other "new" urban historians in challenging older superficial observations about the immobility of im- poverished immigrants. Erickson's collec- tion supports the contention that the poor were the most mobile, as the search for a job and then the search for another job kept these men, both in terms of employment and location, immensely mobile. They were, she rightly notes, tramps. Even without these thoughtful percep- tions, Invisible Immigrants makes visible valuable studies of an important social movement. It will be an indispensable tool, both as a primary source book and a his- tory, for the student of nineteenth century American social and immigration history. MARC LEE RAPHAEL The Ohio State University A Guide to the Manuscripts and Archives of The Western Reserve Historical Society. By KERMIT J. PIKE. (Cleveland: The West- ern Reserve Historical Society, 1972. xviii + 425p.; index. $10.00.) The true richness of the Western Reserve Historical Society's eleven hundred manu- script collections now stands revealed. This tastefully produced guide provides succinct and informative descriptions of almost every collection, and, as my own experience has taught, is the essential companion for anyone who wishes to delve into this inval- uable historical material. Unfortunately the guide has some of the shortcomings all too common in publica- |
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tions of this kind. The section of "General Collections" is excessively large, for many of the entries could have been arranged into separate sections for church and society rec- ords, business papers, and so on. Also, the collections within each section are arranged according to order of acquisition, which is meaningless to the researcher and far less useful than a simple alphabetical arrange- ment. The result is that it is difficult to find one's way round the guide and turn up a required item quickly. Some compensation is provided by the reasonably full, seventy-page index. How- ever, the entries under each index heading are not differentiated, so that the main entry cannot be distinguished from the incidental references. And the danger exists in some cases that the hasty user might well mistake a minor collection for a well-known major collection of the same name. One irreparable flaw arises from the com- mon archivists' assumption that all collec- tions are equally worthy of mention. Any- thing called a collection, however small, gains a few lines when, in reality, it might not be worth one-thousandth part of a major collection which receives less than a two-page notice. While collections contain- ing fewer than ten items earn at least a mention, some important correspondents who contributed more than ten items to a major collection are completely omitted. For example, the Society possesses the largest known holding, outside the Library of Congress, of the papers of John Porter Brown (1814-1872). An Ohioan, Brown spent forty years as the United States dip- lomatic agent at Constantinople and helped to formulate early American policy in the Middle East. Yet, because the fifty letters of his owned by the Society are part of the Elisha Whittlesey Papers, the guide gives him far less notice than it would have had they formed a separate collection. In fact his name is not even mentioned. Such omissions impair the usefulness of the guide and undermine confidence in it, but they cannot destroy the value of the commendable service performed by Mr. Pike in making this valuable stock of mate- rial more widely known. The range is truly |
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surprising--from twentieth century for- eign affairs to slavery and women's history. There are papers not only of New Eng- landers like Isaac Backus and William Pitt Fessenden, but even of the Confederate General Braxton Bragg. Military history is in fact particularly strong, notably of the Civil War and also of the Revolutionary and two world wars. The greatest strength of the Society's col- lections remains, as expected, in local his- tory. Records of the early settlement and development of northeastern Ohio have been unusually well preserved. As in time local history becomes urban history, so the guide reveals much valuable material for the study of Cleveland, even though recent accessions in black and ethnic history had to be omitted. Simply to read the guide is a stimulus to research; it suggests to this reader, for example, the need and oppor- tunity for good work on the history of reli- gious life, education, and social welfare in Ohio. DONALD RATCLIFFE University of Durham, England Open Shelves and Open Minds: A History of the Cleveland Public Library. By C. H. CRAMER. (Cleveland: Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1972. x + 279p.;
illus- trations, notes, and index. $9.95.) This one hundred year survey of the Cleve- land Public Library is one of great interest. The first fifteen years, 1869 to 1884, were uninspiring; but the long years, 1884 to 1938, with William Howard Brett and Linda A. Eastman at its head, were out- standing. This was a period during which the Cleveland Public Library was generally considered by the library profession and by the informed public to be foremost in its comprehensiveness. It offered city-wide ser- vice to everyone who could benefit from the printed and recorded word. Barriers of dis- tance, of language, of age and physical han- dicap, of limited education and poverty were overcome, and access to the library's re- |
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sources was made easy and inviting. Few other libraries could offer a comparable ref- erence service. In the breadth, friendliness and efficiency of its service to all elements of the Cleveland population, it was a continuing inspiration for the entire library profession. The years after 1938 to 1969 were less happy, and there still are serious problems of financial support and areas of responsi- bility difficult to resolve. There has been a failure to adjust to new conditions and to take steps to coordinate the many separate, overlapping and competing libraries in Cuy- ahoga County. A comparison with the his- tory of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County reveals to this reviewer |
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both the outstanding greatness of the Brett- Eastman period and the wastefulness and absurdity of the present Cuyahoga County multi-library situation. The author, who is not a librarian, is on the faculty of the Case Western Reserve University and is not fully at home in the history of public library service and what is and has been done in other notable public libraries, such as those of Baltimore, Cin- cinnati, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, New York City, Washington, D.C., and others. CARL VITZ Former Librarian of Public Library of Cincinnati |