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Book Reviews The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, Volume V: April 1-August 31, 1862. Edited by JOHN Y. SIMON. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press, 1973). xxv + 458 p.; introduction, chronol- ogy, maps, illustrations, calendar, index. $15.) Like its predecessors, Volume V of the Grant Papers is skillfully edited and artfully produced by John Y. Simon and his editorial team. The "packaging" is increasingly es- sential since Grant's correspondence is thin and given to silences on issues which in- trigued his contemporaries and historians. In an army in which generals said too much (who has the courage to edit the McClellan Papers?), Grant said little, offi- cially or privately. Perhaps that is why he survived. In any event, this volume covers some of the most distressing days in Grant's Civil War career--and he met adversity with characteristic restraint. Grant's problems started with the heroic miscalculation that his Army of the Ten- nessee would not be attacked by the full force of Albert Sidney Johnston's army. Grant and Sherman were too good as offi- cers not to recognize the Confederate pres- ence around their Pittsburgh Landing posi- tion; the skirmishing started two days before the Confederate attack of April 6. But Grant was surprised by the weight and tim- ing of the Shiloh attack-and from a force he estimated at twice its actual size. Noth- ing in his papers clears him of a considerable error in judgment. The eventual defeat of Johnston's army by the evening of April 7 was only the end of one crisis. After Shiloh Grant faced a new set of opponents, only one of whom was the Confederate Army at Corinth, Mississippi. The rebels were the least of Grant's prob- lems since his army and Buell's Army of the Ohio, commanded jointly by Henry Wager Halleck, outnumbered the Confederates and ground ahead to take Corinth in early June. In the meantime, Grant's reputation plunged, diminished by the complaints of cashiered officers, rearward politicians, and |
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journalists whose grasp of Shiloh was more fanciful than tactical. Some of the critics were right, but for the wrong reasons. Grant's own response to the charges of drunkenness, absence, and negligence are sparse; he explained the battle unofficially only to his wife, father, and one Illinois con- gressman. Only Simon's notes outline the controversy because Grant ignored the charges until he suspected Halleck was eas- ing him out of his command. Halleck reas- sured Grant that his position was secure. As Grant wrote his wife, "my record in this war will bear scrutiny without writing anything in reply to the many attacks made," and he hoped his father and aides would quit publishing counterattacks in his behalf. After the capture of Corinth, Grant's at- tention turned to pacifying the western half of Tennessee and northern Mississippi, evac- uated by the rebels. It was no easy task, complicated by guerrilla raids, illicit trade, runaway slaves, and rapacious northern merchants pursuing the profits of war. Al- though Grant's staff was now more efficient in handling routine army administration, it could not cope with the byzantine politics of military occupation, and Grant's letters show that in July and August 1862, some of his hardest fights were not on the battlefield. Grapplying with the complex problems of consolidating the early summer advances, Grant felt the sting of Shiloh less and the satisfactions of command more. ALLAN R. MILLETT Ohio State University Henry Ward Beecher: The Indiana Years, 1837-1847. By
JANE SHAFFER ELSMERE. (In- dianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1973. xiii + 317p.; illustrations, bibliographical note, and index. $7.50.) Jane Elsmere, finding the treatment of Henry Ward Beecher's formative years "un- |
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284 satisfactory" in existing biographies, has set herself the task of correcting that deficiency. To achieve her purpose she makes judicious use of a wide range of sources-state and local histories, newspapers, church records, directories, correspondence, reminiscences, and family papers. Her probing reveals that during the "Indiana years," from 1837 to 1847, Beecher "was a missionary, married, became a father, endured poverty and hu- miliation, persevered, survived denomi- national controversy, obtained the pastorate of a new and fashionable church in the state capital, bore suffering and tragedy, became a noted revivalist, horticulturist, and journal- ist, was active in social reforms on the city and state levels, and achieved a degree of national prominence" (p. ix). Her major concern is with "the daily circumstances of his life and the people he encountered; the ways in which he reacted to the challenges, responsibilities, disappointments, and suc- cesses which came his way; and contribu- tions ... he made to Indiana" (pp. ix-x). Readers expecting insights into Beecher's later (and better known) career or inter- pretative diversions will be disappointed; the author holds purposefully to a narrative format within the decade of Beecher's In- diana experience-two years in Lawren- ceburgh and eight in Indianapolis. She captures well the rough frontier atmos- phere, occasionally softened by the amenities. Her subject came to Indiana convinced as was his father Lyman that to plant New School Presbyterian Christianity in the West was a grand undertaking. His earliest auditors perceived that "popularity rather than power would characterize his ministry" (p. 8). He took his cue from the apostles, who, he said, "were accustomed first to feel for a ground on which the people and they stood together . . ." (p. 107). He was a pulpit preacher and spent little time visiting his flock. Nor did his wife Eunice, who seems to have hated the Indiana scene. Elsmere's treatment of Eunice Bullard, whom William McLoughlin has character- ized in a recent work "a hypochondriacal shrew who made [Beecher's] life miserable," is somewhat sympathetic. Acknowledging her sharp tongue and tendency to stretch the truth, the author points up Beecher's lack of consideration, the burdens of childbearing, |
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OHIO HISTORY the malarial "chills and ague" peculiar to
In- diana, and the camping of the elitist Beecher clan on her doorstep as provocations. She was an old woman by 1847; an observer reckoned her to be Beecher's mother when on the train to Brooklyn to begin a new life. Elsmere agrees in essence with Paxton Hib- ben, who published in 1927 a hostile biography of HWB, when he declares that Eunice understood Beecher--"his evasions, his indulgences, the essential child-like com- bination of sentimentality and shrewdness, of emotionalism and ruthlessness, that was the very essence of his power and his weakness." Although Elsemere finds Hibben "not re- liable" (p. 303) in this period, a comparison reveals little essential variance. Both con- clude that the Indianapolis church was not greatly disturbed at Beecher's leaving. Hib- ben is more speculative on this score, reasoning that HWB was welcome in the eastern metropolis (Plymouth Congrega- tional Church, Brooklyn) because, while eloquent, he posed no threat to the estab- lishment. At Indianapolis he was slow to preach on antislavery even after the Presby- tery had urged at least one sermon per year on the subject. Clifford Clark, in a recent article, consid- ers Beecher a pivotal figure in the change of American Protestantism at mid-century from an other-worldly perspective to an un- critical acceptance of the status quo. The transformation is exemplified in Beecher's Seven Lectures to Young Men, drawn from lectures in the Indianapolis church during the winter of 1843-44. They express the minister's conviction that success, like salva- tion, is available to all. The effect of his emphasis on ethical behavior rather than spiritual dedication was to blur the dis- tinction between religious and secular issues. He was becoming at this point the "contem- porary interpreter, popularizer, prophet of the ordinary" that McLoughlin depicts in The Meaning of Henry Ward Beecher (1970). Elsmere's narrative confirms McLoughlin's analysis that Beecher personsified a devel- oping mentality that "imagination was more important than intellect, the heart than the head; men are governed not so much by their rational faculties as by their feelings." While Elsmere's study offers no weighty |
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Book Reviews correctives to the ever-increasing Beecher literature, it does flesh out the formative pe- riod and contributes to Indiana history. In a scholarly and low-key treatment, the author delivers precisely what she promises in her introduction--no more and no less. RUSSELL D. PARKER Maryville College Maryville, Tenn. The Ordeal of Assimilation: A Documentary History of the White Working Class. By STANLEY FELDSTEIN and
LAWRENCE COS- TELLO, eds.
(Garden City, N. Y.: Anchor Press, 1974. xxiii + 485p.; index. $4.95.) Ethnicity is one of this nation's most impor- tant issues. Within the last fifteen years, in- creasingly perceptive and skilled historical investigations into the powerful influence and impact of ethnic identity, community, behavior, and values have provided greater understanding of America's socioeconomic and political development. Such studies and primary resource collections are sorely needed, especially for explaining the rela- tionship between class and ethnic identity. Professors Feldstein and Costello have as- sembled a lengthy compilation that, if the title were believed, provides a wealth of in- formation with which to examine this pro- foundly important dimension of American history. Unfortunately, such is not the case. Neither Ohioans interested in learning about the state's or its cities' ethnic and economic dynamics, nor persons desiring a national, or general understanding of these influences will profit from the book. The thrust of this collection is, essentially, a sympathetic reverie about the challenges and difficulties of immigrants in American history. While of some value in this respect, it is, nevertheless, questionable whether an- other description of such things is necessary, especially when nothing new is added and the picture is presented simplistically. The dedication to Oscar Handlin is telling, and the documents appear to be little other than an unnecessarily long collection of footnotes for all that are absent from Handlin's The Uprooted. |
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285 Ohio's experiences were apparently in- significant. In terms of quantity, references to Ohio, its cities and peoples occupy merely seven of 485 pages. Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Youngstown, to note but the three most obvious of Ohio's many "immigrant cities," have rich histories for the discerning scholar's investigation. Ohio was one of the nation's major centers of immigration, its cities equal to any others in terms of the di- versity and significance of immigrant peo- ples' lives. Yet, to the editors, New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago were the important immigrant cities. The immigrant experience they describe is one comprised of "alien hordes from Eu- rope" (p. 389) who entered America in "waves" (pp. 120, 121). Immigrants uni- formly lived in ghettoes (Part I, section 3, B, 2); their children were a "second generation problem" suffering from a cultural conflict with their parents a la Marcus Lee Hansen (pp. 396-397) and suffering because their parents were unable to care for them (p. 207); they experienced a breakdown in fam- ily (pp. 360, 379); and so on ad nauseam. Clearly, Professors Feldstein and Costello were not interested in sophistication and, tragically, perhaps not even aware of the ex- cellent analytical work done in the last fif- teen years. Nowhere do they deal effec- tively with ethnicity as a concept or a process. Ethnicity and political behavior, for example, certainly is more complex than the manipulations of ward heelers; they should have read, at least, John Allswang's A House for All Peoples. What are immigrant and ethnic commu- nities? The ghetto and "Old World Traits Transplanted" are not adequate explana- tions; the work of scholars such as Rudolph Vecoli, Tamara Hareven, and Carol Grone- man, and Howard Chudacoff's provocative article on Omaha would be helpful reading for them. Throughout the book, ethnic is used synonymously with immigrant con- cerning identity, values, behavior; such non- sense has long been discarded. Moreover, the nature of the second generation's iden- tity and relationship to the first generation is not as clear as they would have the reader believe; Vladimir Nahirny and Joshua Fish- man's perceptive article written in 1965 chal- lenges their "Hansen-esk" thesis.
Strangely, |
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286 in addition, the compilation ends its consid- eration with the second generation. Finally, why are all ethnics blue collars? Has socio- economic mobility been so limited for all groups, are there so few exceptions? What has been the role of ethnicity in this situa- tion? This, again, is simply too naive to be of use in understanding class and ethnicity. The collections' final section is the best. Resources are drawn from scholars and ac- tivists who are well-known for their work. For example, Irving Levine, Monsignor Geno Baroni, and Barbara Mikulski discuss the dimensions of the "new ethnicity" and its relationship to politicoeconomic in- fluences. One section of seven, however, is a very meager return for the reader. Many years ago, the pioneers of American immigration history, such as Theodore Ble- |
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OHIO HISTORY gen, Carl Wittke, and Marcus Lee Hansen, demanded that Americans recognize and consider the significance of immigration in the development and character of American society. Their insights were a challenge and direction for historians. Professors Feld- stein and Costello have not effectively re- sponded to that challenge, neither have they provided new or more sophisticated insights with which the field can grow. Immigrants' difficulties and achievements, native-born American insensitivities and hostilities are but small parts of the nation's immigration, ethnic, and economic history. Reveling fur- ther on these "ordeals" adds little to our understanding. DANIEL E. WEINBERG Case Western Reserve University |