Ohio History Journal

BOOK  REVIEWS

HAYES OF THE TWENTY-THIRD:

THE CIVIL WAR VOLUNTEER

OFFICER. By T. Harry Williams.

(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965.

xviii??324??vip; illustrations, maps, and

index. $5.95.)

I have a subjective judgment on this

book and I may as well make it now as

later: the first two chapters I liked very

much, the other fourteen I found tedious.

In Chapter I, "The Golden Years," Wil-

liams deals in a general way with the

background of Rutherford B. Hayes and

offers some very shrewd insights on his

Civil War career. Chapter II, "The Good

Colonels," describes how a Civil War regi-

ment fought, discusses the duties of a

regimental commander, and gives an en-

lightening analysis of the role of volunteer

officers. The remaining fourteen chapters

give a chronological account of Hayes's

army career. There are few, if any, living

military historians who write with greater

clarity and dexterity than T. Harry

Williams. But not even his very consider-

able gifts are sufficient to impart interest

to a series of inherently dull episodes.

Nevertheless, the West Virginia cam-

paigns did occur and it is well to have

an account of them by a reputable his-

torian. Everyone interested in the Civil

War has reason to be grateful for

Williams' industry and fortitude in un-

raveling the story.

Hayes was born in Delaware, Ohio, and

was educated at Kenyon College and Har-

vard Law School. He practiced law in

Cincinnati and became interested in poli-

tics. Like Lincoln, he was first a Whig

and then a Republican. On the eve of the

Civil War he is described as "moderately

successful, widely respected, and reason-

ably certain of a stable future." On June

7, 1861, he volunteered his services and

spent four years, almost to the day, in

the army. Entering the Twenty-Third

Ohio as a major, Hayes was promoted to

lieutenant colonel on October 24, 1861,

and in November he took command. Late

in the war Hayes commanded a brigade

and even a division, but his sense of identi-

fication was always with the Twenty-

Third. He was promoted to brigadier

general near the end of the war and even

to major general of volunteers, but the

last promotion came a year after he had

resigned his commission. He never com-

manded as a general. Williams concludes:

"History ranks him slightly above the

average among the Presidents, and by

coincidence this should be his rating as

a soldier--above the ordinary but not

among the great."

Hayes himself was frank to say that

he would rather be a good colonel than

a poor general. The Twenty-Third Regi-

ment, in which he took such pride, was

probably average--possibly considerably

better than average--as a fighting unit.

Among its commanding and ranking offi-

cers were some of the most prominent men

of Ohio and the nation, including, besides

Hayes, William S. Rosecrans, Eliakim P.

Scammon, James M. Comly, Stanley

Matthews, and William McKinley. The

204                                   OHIO HISTORY

Twenty-Third spent most of its time in

West Virginia, which, though important

as a supporting theater, was never itself

the scene of main events. "The work was

necessary to the ultimate triumph of the

Union cause," writes Williams, "but it

was small and nasty work--fighting in

pygmy battles, chasing guerrillas, patrol-

ling lonely mountain roads, repressing ci-

vilian sympathizers of the South. It was

dull routine, unexciting war . . . . Only

twice did the occupying troops in West

Virginia emerge from behind their misty

mountain barrier into the bright light

of the 'big war,' in 1862 when they fought

in the Antietam operation and in 1864

when they followed Phil Sheridan in the

Shenandoah Valley." How Hayes--and

a great many of his generation--could

regard this experience, in his own words,

as the "best years of our lives, . . . the

golden years" is something that later gen-

erations find difficult to understand.

HARRY L. COLES

Ohio State University

W. D. HOWELLS AND ART IN HIS

TIME. By Clara Marburg Kirk. (New

Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University

Press, 1965. xvi??336p.; illustrations,

appendices, and index. $7.50.)

In her sixth book about the Ohio-born

"Dean of American Letters," Clara Kirk,

the doyenne of Howellsians, focuses on the

novelist's life-long interest in art. As early

as 1859, when he was a reporter in Co-

lumbus, young Howells was dropping into

the Neil House, across the square from

the capitol, to watch the sculptor Thomas

D. Jones work on a bust of Salmon P.

Chase. For the next sixty years, Howells

--whose wife, son, daughter, and brother-

in-law were artists--kept informed about

what his colleagues were doing in sculp-

ture, painting, and architecture. Appar-

ently he did not comment on music, and

it is interesting that he seems never to

have mentioned in print either of his

great fellow realists, the painters Winslow

Homer and Thomas Eakins.

The opening chapters here re-tell

Howells' career in the 1860's and 1870's,

more or less emphasizing his taste and

self-education in art (comparing them

with those of Henry James, but missing

a chance to compare them with Mark

Twain's). It is a good story, with con-

tinuity and human interest. Thereafter

the book tends to break into essays. One

chapter reports the Ruskin-Whistler dis-

pute from Howells' tolerant but middle-

brow viewpoint. Another tells of the

Chicago fair of 1893 and the meaning

Howells saw in it for his socialist criti-

cism. Another is a dry history of the

Century Club in New York, an essay

which might well have been relegated to

an appendix. There are, in fact, six ap-

pendices -- documents of varying rele-

vance to the book's subject.

Whoever chooses to write cultural his-

tory of this sort risks comparison with

the suave mastery of Van Wyck Brooks

--for example in his very readable

Howells (1959). But Professor Kirk's

method is less anecdotal than Brooks's,

and more documentary; her prose is

studded with 487 footnotes. Indeed, a prob-

lem here is her formidable knowledge of

Howells: this "brief summary," as she

calls it, could be more pointed and inter-

esting if it were shorter--more selective

and analytical. Its essays overlap (once

verbatim for half a paragraph); its long

synopses of Howells' novels do not always

come to the point; and many a paragraph

ends in hard-to-grasp generalities, for the

topic itself is general. Finally, the question

will present itself as to whether there can

be many readers who are this interested

in Howells--willing to pursue in such

detail his uninteresting ideas on art.

The most valuable passage in the book,

nevertheless, is its precis (pp. 235-238 and

245-250) of Howells' art theory--which

was conservative, unlike his progressive

social thought. For despite his long ex-

posure to the studio talk of artists,

Howells had the tastes of a cultivated

layman. Himself a rare technician and a

literary oracle, he had little curiosity about

technique or art-for-art's-sake theory out-

side of letters. His preference for repre-

sentational, story-telling art was quite of

a piece with his belief in his own realistic

mode in fiction. The "truest office" of a

painter, he wrote, is "to communicate to

BOOK REVIEWS                                 205

ordinary people the inner sense of truth."

He might have been speaking of The Rise

of Silas Lapham.

JAMES STRONKS

University of Illinois

at Chicago Circle

PULITZER'S PRIZE EDITOR: A BIOG-

RAPHY OF JOHN A. COCKERILL,

1845-1896. By Homer W. King. (Dur-

ham, N. C.: Duke University Press,

1965. xx+336p.; illustrations, bibliogra-

phy, and index. $6.50.)

This is a long-needed biography of an

important American journalist of the later

nineteenth century. This is because, al-

though he began as a small-town news-

paperman, Cockerill played an influential

role in a variety of major cities in the

United States--Dayton, Cincinnati, St.

Louis, New York--and ended his days as

a New York Herald foreign correspondent,

dying suddenly in Cairo. In this he resem-

bled that first U.S. foreign correspondent,

also an Ohioan, with the unlikely name of

Januarius Aloysius MacGahan.

Although his style would be regarded

today as more flamboyant than original,

Cockerill was a skilled, versatile, and im-

aginative writer and editor. He played a

major role in the sagas of three major

U.S. publishers: John R. McLean, Joseph

Pulitzer, and James Gordon Bennett the

younger. The author makes a case for

Cockerill having been instrumental in each

instance in helping to gain still greater

wealth for his employer but never of hav-

ing been far-sighted or shrewd enough

to have bargained for a real share for

himself.

In its way this is a biography also of

the cities where Cockerill flourished, espe-

cially Cincinnati, St. Louis, and New

York. It depicts likewise many other con-

temporary American journalists, not only

the publishers mentioned above, but others

such as that strange figure Lafcadio

Hearn. In so doing it portrays them in

other than the usual dimensions.

The first two-thirds of the book seems

livelier, better organized, and better

written than the last. And despite the

author's thorough documentation, the work

has too many unforgivable if minor er-

rors: Loudon for Loudoun County, Vir-

ginia; Major General William S. Rosen-

crans for Rosecrans; Clerment County,

Ohio, for Clermont; the Ohio Sentinel as

the first newspaper in the Northwest

Territory instead of the Centinel of the

North-Western Territory; Samuel Menary

instead of Medary as the editor of the

Ohio Statesman; confusion as between

Bickham (correct) and Bickman of the

Dayton Journal. Oddly, most of the lapses

cited occur in the early pages of the book.

Even to those who know something

about him, the one incident that stands

out in Cockerill's life was the shooting

affray in which he killed a man in St.

Louis. For this he was exonerated, but

the affair continued to throw something

of a cloud over the remainder of his

career in this country. This biography

adequately and properly portrays him for

the many-sided and influential newspaper-

man that he was.

JAMES E. POLLARD

Ohio State University

THE BUCKEYE ROVERS IN THE

GOLD RUSH: AN EDITION OF TWO

DIARIES. Edited with an introduction

by Howard L. Scamehorn. (Athens,

Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1965.

xxiv??195p.; illustration and maps.

$5.00.)

The Buckeye Rovers of 1849, composed

of Athens County gold seekers with some

later additions, are unique in having two

diarists to record their story. The diary

of J. Elza Armstrong is a brief, daily

summation but strangely omits most of

June. It ends in the Sierras on September

14. The original was given to the Ohio

Historical Society by a grandnephew in

1949.

The John Edwin Banks diary, evidently

written for his family, is an unbroken,

detailed account of the trek, and unlike

most Forty-Niner diaries, continues

through the California years, but at weekly

intervals, until Banks took ship for home

in June 1852. In family possession, it es-

caped listing in Dale Morgan's bibliogra-

phy in The Overland Diary of James A.

Pritchard (1959). It filled three books,

206                                     OHIO HISTORY

but the one covering most of 1851 has

been lost. Banks, more mature than Arm-

strong, was a man of wide interests, very

observant, reflective and introspective, and

given to moralizing. His account is re-

markably detailed, considering the cir-

cumstances.

In spite of hardships and some dissen-

sions, the Rovers reached California safely

and in reasonable time, and even continued

their close relations in the diggings. Most

of them seemed to have returned home

with modest fortunes in their pockets.

The diaries have been divided into eight

chronological divisions with the daily en-

tries paired for purposes of comparison.

The editor has provided an introduction,

an epilogue, and a brief explanatory para-

graph for each division. The notes, 155

in all, unfortunately, are at the back. A

map of the California Trail and two of

the gold-rush regions are helpful. There

is no index. Some minor changes in spell-

ing, punctuation, and sentence structure

have been made in the interests of clarity.

The editor and the Ohio University Press

are to be commended for providing a re-

vealing double addition to a much-worked

field.

EUGENE H. ROSEBOOM

Ohio State University

THE OLD LAND AND THE NEW:

THE JOURNALS OF TWO SWISS

FAMILIES IN AMERICA IN THE

1820's. Edited and translated by Rob-

ert H. Billigmeier and Fred Altschuler

Picard. (Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press, 1965. ix??281p.; notes

on translation, introduction, illustra-

tions, and index. $5.75.)

This volume comprises the journals,

translated into English, of Johannes

Schweiger and Johann Rutlinger early im-

migrants from Switzerland, who originally

published the accounts in their native land

in 1823 and 1826, respectively. The two

men had been friends in the Toggenburg

region of Canton St. Gallen before they

migrated to the New World. Each was

an acute observer, and each wrote with

vivid detail. The records tell of the trip

down the Rhine and across the Atlantic,

of initial impressions of New York City

and Baltimore, and of later experiences

and observations in Philadelphia and Lan-

caster, Pennsylvania, Middleton, Mary-

land, and other places. An explanatory

introduction is provided by Dr. Robert

H. Billigmeier of the sociology department

of the University of California, Santa

Barbara, who collaborated with Fred A.

Picard in the task of translation and

editing. The latter, a native of St. Gallen,

is director of cultural activities at the

College of Idaho. Hans Erni, a well-known

Swiss artist, has illustrated the work with

a number of sketches.

The Rutlinger account is of special

interest to Ohioans because on the author's

journey to the New World a fellow trav-

eler was a Separatist from Wurttemberg

named Vetter, a member of the Zoar Com-

munity, who had returned twice to the

German state to gather money for their

people and to take new recruits to the

colony in Ohio. Later, Rutlinger, with his

wife and daughters (as the editors point

out), located on a farm in Columbiana

County, Ohio, near Petersburg, and then

at New Middletown. There Rutlinger died

in 1856. The volume is a carefully edited

presentation of the experiences of two

observant Swiss immigrants.

FRANCIS P. WEISENBURGER

Ohio State University

THE STRUGGLE FOR EQUALITY:

ABOLITIONISTS AND THE NEGRO

IN THE CIVIL WAR AND RECON-

STRUCTION. By James M. McPherson.

(Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University

Press, 1964. xii??474p.; bibliographical

essay and index. $10.00.)

Much attention has been paid to the

abolitionists prior to the Civil War, but

this is the most comprehensive study yet

made of their activities and significance

during the period between 1860 and the

adoption of the fifteenth amendment as a

part of the constitution in 1870.

The author carefully identifies the var-

ious groups of abolitionists and explains

their temperamental and ideological dif-

ferences over the matters in controversy,

1860-70. Phillips and Garrison, not always

BOOK REVIEWS                              207

in agreement, are featured among the

numerous personalities that receive atten-

tion. How some of these individuals recon-

ciled or rationalized conflicting views,

such, for instance, as nonresistance or pac-

ifism with support of war or initial favor

of secession with later support of the

Union, is a phase interestingly analyzed.

The central theme of the monograph is

the pressure which the abolitionists exerted,

under circumstances far more favorable

than prior to 1861, to secure liberty for

the slave and then equality for the freed-

men. This pressure showed itself in many

ways, among which were vigorous criti-

cism of Lincoln's cautious policy in re-

gard to slavery; insistence that Negro

soldiers be used on a basis of equality

with whites and that a freedmen's bureau

be established; support of confiscation of

lands for freedmen and of federal aid to

education for them; and, finally, a demand

for civil and political equality for the two

races. The abolitionists established educa-

tional and religious agencies to function

among the southern Negroes, and con-

stantly carried on a campaign against un-

equal treatment of the races in the North

as well as in the South. They strongly

denounced the refusal of the northern

states, with a few exceptions, to grant

suffrage to the Negro at a time when

congress was making that principle com-

pulsory in the South.

Dr. McPherson, who is very sympathet-

ic to the group which he has so exhaus-

tively studied, credits them with much

influence in the establishment of the equal-

itarian principles of the decade of the

1860's. He grants, however, that military

and political considerations played the

major role in establishing these principles,

and that the latter were the result more

of expediency than of conviction. Yet the

abolitionists, according to the author, im-

parted an impulse which, though not

accepted by the post-Civil War generation,

North or South, laid in part the moral

foundations of the civil rights movement

of today.

One might wish, in this generally well-

rounded monograph, further clarification

of the confiscation act of July 1862, and

of the part played by abolitionists in

Union Leagues in the South. Good evi-

dence is presented that, if the southern

states had ratified the fourteenth amend-

ment, their representatives would have

been admitted to congress, but some signif-

icant evidence to the contrary is neglected.

HENRY H. SIMMS

Ohio State University