Book Reviews
The Selected Letters of Charles
Sumner. Volume One: 1830-1859. Edited
by Beverly
Wilson Palmer. (Boston: Northeastern
University Press, 1990. xxxvii + 538p.; illus-
trations, editing principles,
chronology, abbreviations, list of recipients, notes.
$130.00 per set.)
The Selected Letters of Charles
Sumner. Volume Two: 1859-1874. Edited
by Beverly
Wilson Palmer. (Boston: Northeastern
University Press, 1990. vii + 703p.; illustra-
tions, notes, index. $130.00 per set.)
Literary giant Henry James dubbed him
the "voice of Boston," but his role and
stature in United States history
extended far beyond the borders of Massachusetts, his
native state. First elected to the United
States Senate in 1851, Charles Sumner served
continuously until his death in 1874 and
ranked as one of the leading political leaders
of the Civil War and Reconstruction era.
Perhaps more than any other Senator of the
time, his range of interests encompassed
abolitionism, woman's suffrage, prison reform
and education. The National Historical
Publications and Records Commission is to be
applauded for providing necessary funds
to make this correspondence available to the
scholarly community.
Professor Palmer's two-volume edition
grew out of an earlier microfilm project and
includes letters maintained in
seventy-eight historical records repositories. The publica-
tion aptly reflects its title for these
are the "selected" letters of Charles Sumner.
Included in the two volumes are
approximately 900 letters of an estimated 7,000 he
authored in his lifetime. For the first
time in nearly a century, we have a professional
and critically edited compilation of
Sumner's letters. Prior to this, we had only Edward
L. Pierce's four-volume uncritical,
flattering and poorly-cited compilation of Sumner's
correspondence published in 1893. Not
only has editor Palmer made relatively few
changes to the text of the
correspondence, but she has followed Sumner's concept of
writing currente celamo. Even
more importantly, she has provided the repository loca-
tion for each document.
The letters are published as a
two-volume set, but potential users desiring more speci-
ficity will find Volume I concerning the
years 1830 to 1859, and Volume II the years
1859 to 1874. Within each volume,
correspondence is further divided into such cate-
gories as Early Reform Activities, Early
Senate Career, The Lincoln Years and the Civil
War, The Johnson Years and Conflicts
with Grant. A correspondent index for both vol-
umes is located at the beginning of
Volume I. A subject index, including individual
names, can also be found at the end of
Volume II. Numbered among the recipients of
Sumner's correspondence are several
prominent Ohio political figures. The most fre-
quent recipient is abolitionist
Congressman Joshua Giddings, followed by ex-Governor
Salmon P. Chase, Senator John Sherman
and Benjamin Wade. Letters chosen for the
publication are generally of substance,
unlike documents included in many published
papers of American political leaders.
Professor Palmer is to be commended for the
excellent quality of her selection.
The letters will be of inestimable value
to scholars investigating the Civil War and
Reconstruction era, as well as the
decade of the 1850s. Used in combination with the
recently completed Papers of Andrew
Johnson and Henry Clay, a rich mother lode awaits
the researcher wishing to author new
interpretations of those critical decades. The
Selected Letters are central to an understanding of the Civil War and
Reconstruction and
will become the essential reference for
anyone investigating that subject in depth.
Kentucky Department for Libraries and
Archives Frank R. Levstik
Book Reviews 41
The Age of Doubt: American Thought
and Culture in the 1940s. By William
S.
Graebner. (Boston: Twayne Publishers,
1991. xv + 192p.; illustrations, chronology,
notes and references, bibliographic
essay, index. $26.96 cloth; $12.95 paper.)
The decade of the 1940s has proven
awkward for American historians. All too often
these years are treated as part of the
rubrics of war and cold war studies, or as culturally
indistinct from the 1950s. In this
volume in Twayne's excellent American Thought and
Culture Series author William Graebner
argues convincingly that the 1940s were a cul-
turally coherent epoch. Differing from
much of the scholarship on the topic, which has
focused quite heavily on the optimistic
tone of the era (see for example William
O'Neil's American High: The Years of
Confidence, 1945-1960 and John P. Diggins,
The Proud Decades: America in War and
Peace, 1941-1960), Graebner views the
cul-
ture of the 1940s as "a culture of
uncertainty." The depression (and the threat of its
return), the war, holocaust, cold war,
and the atomic bomb "held Americans in a
decade-long state of anxiety" and
led them to question the basic tenets of their cul-
ture-faith in progress, the inherent
goodness of humankind, even democracy itself.
While the whole decade of the forties is
viewed as an "age of doubt," Graebner sees
an important cultural transition taking
place around the midpoint of the decade. The
postwar world, he contends, saw a
reversion "from wartime emphases on the group and
democracy to an emphasis on the
individual and freedom" (p. 9). Public concerns gave
way to private consumption, and firmly
held ideals were supplanted by "contingency."
The transition was evidenced in the arts
as abstract expressionists abandoned the social
realism of the previous decade to focus
on the self, and in the novels of Raymond
Chandler and Mickey Spillane, "with
their isolated, private-eye ("I") heroes" (p. 10).
The change was evident, too, in
advertisements in popular magazines of the day that
willed a public (that had been programed
during the war years to produce for the good
of the nation) to consume avidly to
enhance individual or family standing.
With the war won and the economy booming
one might expect an optimistic tone to
have marked the immediate postwar years.
But uncertainties and ambiguities pervaded
the second half of the decade even more
thoroughly than the first. The explosions at
Hiroshima and Nagasaki seemed to make a
mockery of moral certainties. The film noir
genre, with its emphasis on chance and
chaos, as opposed to order, proved a powerful
vehicle for the uncertainties of the
age. The UFO scare and the sex-crime "panic" of
1947 were further manifestations of the
anxious climate. "Many Americans," the
author concludes, "found themselves
in a flight from a history that offered up too many
unpleasant memories and seemed to have
lost the ability to inspire faith in the future
.... Desperate for a more comforting
perspective on the present [they] sought refuge in
frontier myths and bucolic
reveries" (p. 68).
In The Age of Doubt Graebner
succeeds in presenting an original and insightful rein-
terpretation of the 1940s that, in scope
and scale, reminds this reader of Roderick
Nash's seminal work on the culture of
the 1920s, The Nervous Generation: American
Thought, 1917-1930. He analyzes everything from film and T.V. shows to
music,
architecture, cartoons, theater, social
theory, psychoanalysis, and cybernetics, and
weaves these multifarious parts into a
wonderfully coherent and highly readable syn-
thesis. This reader had hoped for a
fuller discussion of the historical literature of the
period, which, while it might be viewed
as stale "consensus" fare, can be seen as evi-
dence of the presence of moral absolutes
and certainties in the postwar years. With its
focus on the beneficent development of
democracy in America, as opposed to the
malign developments of fascism and
communism abroad, mainstream American histor-
ical analysis in the postwar years can
be seen as evidence of faith in the American
42 OHIO
HISTORY
system. Or, perhaps, the rosy visions of
the American past painted in the late forties are
better viewed as a thin veil for the
underlying anxieties of the age. Whatever the case, it
would have been interesting had Graebner
touched on this topic in relation to his broad
theme. Yet the author's scope is so
wide, and his detailing so fine (amazingly so for a
text that is only 184 pages long), that
he can hardly be criticized for failing to traverse
every possible avenue of investigation.
Hartwick College, N.Y. David M.
Wrobel
American Anticommunism: Combating the
Enemy Within, 1830-1970. By M. J.
Heale.
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1990. xiv + 235p.; bibliographical
essay, index. $35.00 cloth; $10.95
paper.)
"It was the misfortune of the
American Left not only to be linked-apparently-to
international revolution but also to be
large enough to be noticed and yet small enough
to be crushed." So writes British
historian M. J. Heale in the preface (p. xiv) to his ten
tightly written chapters surveying
American anticommunism-part of The American
Moment Series edited by Stanley I. Kutler.
Heale describes the Manichaean bent of
early United States polity and the promi-
nence of racial, ethnic, and religious
prejudices as preconditions to anti-Red crusades.
Necessary, too, were the insecurities of
individuals and groups in a fluid economic
order, weak government at all levels,
and a vigilante ethic that was easily aroused. Yet,
like most recent students of the right,
Heale downplays what Michael Rogin has called
"symbolic" interpretations
that emphasize anticommunism's irrational, sometimes
hysterical, elements. He is a
"realist" for whom anticommunists were hard-headed and
ideologically coherent.
Heale describes anticommunism's
emergence in the nineteenth century in opposition
to collectivist ideas growing out of
industrialization, urbanization, and the New
Immigration. The privileged orders of
America-white, Christian, and male-dominated-
were behind it. They perceived that the
left threatened their control of institutions that
empowered them, particularly the wage
system.
The first red scare followed the
Haymarket Affair of 1886. It enabled industrialists to
paint labor organizations as communist,
socialism as un-American, and themselves as
the keepers of the libertarian tradition.
The Big Red Scare of 1919 led to mass arrests
of immigrants, the suppression of civil
liberties, and the effective destruction of the
Socialist Party. Between the World Wars,
the concerns of anticommunists shifted from
foreign invasion to internal subversion.
In the 1920s American anticommunism
embraced nativism, isolationism, and
xenophobia to triumph as "100% Americanism."
Even labor unions repudiated the left.
But the Depression of the 1930s brought the
resurgence of the Communist Party USA
and the possibility, however remote, of an
anti-capitalist revolution. To meet the
threat, anticommunists turned to the surveillance
state.
Anticommunism came to Washington with
the critics of the New Deal and in the
Cold War became a powerful political
weapon in the hands of Republicans and Dixie
Democrats. By the 1950s the biggest red
scare of them all (the so-called McCarthy era)
had produced a national anticommunist
consensus that circumscribed political discourse
and cultural expression and fueled a
purge of respectable nonconformists from
American institutions. After the 1950s
anticommunism lost focus as "the dynamics of
class and party conflict could no longer
mesh with global tensions to produce a great
crusade against enemies within" (p.
201).
Book Reviews 43
The conspicuous merits of this work
include the author's command of the volumi-
nous literature and his structured
description of the historical development of domestic
anticommunism prior to the early Cold
War. He reminds us that the political and cul-
tural battles of the 1940s and 1950s
reflected old, deep cleavages within American
society. Even if it does not provide the
taxonomy of anticommunism that we still need,
American Anticommunism is most informative and likely to be assigned reading
in
advanced college courses.
Fairmont State College Charles H.
McCormick
The Rough Road to Renaissance: Urban
Revitalization in America, 1940-1986. By
Jon
C. Teaford. (Baltimore, Maryland: The
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. x +
383p.; illustrations, tables, notes,
index. $16.95 paper; $48.50 cloth.)
One reason why historians have
traditionally had so little interest in the recent past is
that often one does not know how the
story will turn out. It is refreshing, then, to see an
established scholar take on a topic as
fraught with ambiguity as the history of urban
revitalization during the post-World War
II era. While the subject is important in itself,
Jon Teaford's study is also useful as an
example of how to approach a topic whose his-
torical evolution is not demarcated by a
definite conclusion or turning point.
The study focuses exclusively on twelve
major cities of the "northeastern quadrant"
of the United States. Although we tend
to identify the decline of metropolises like
Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, and
Cleveland with the deindustrialization of the 1970s
and '80s, Teaford shows that the process
began much earlier. A number of older urban
centers had already lost population and
business in the 1930s. Although the loss was not
as severe as in later years, it
nevertheless represented a reversal of decades of growth
and unquestioned dominance by these
metropolises. Central city business areas were
deteriorating, and industrial pollution
of air and water made the cities increasingly
unattractive when contrasted with the
new suburban areas, now more accessible as a
result of the growth of auto and truck
transport.
Even before World War II, urban leaders
recognized these problems and sought to
formulate plans to deal with them. It
was not until after the war, however, that a new
group of political leaders emerged who
actually carried out the first attempts at revital-
ization. New taxes (including the first
city income taxes) and large bond issues
financed major improvements in water and
air pollution control in the late 1940s and
early '50s. The late 1950s and early
'60s were dominated by highway construction,
urban renewal, and demolition of old
buildings to create more parking space in urban
centers. Ironically, these changes
improved the quality of the centers, but did not stem
their decline much. Superhighways made
the cities more accessible to the automobile,
but they also made it easier for the
middle class to escape.
The 1960s saw the beginnings of a
reaction against this "bricks and mortar"
approach to revitalization, and a new
group of reform mayors attempted to shift public
policy toward a concern for human
services and neighborhood preservation. This too
failed to reverse the population decline
of these older cities, and during the decade after
1975 a less glamorous wave of fiscal
conservatives swept into the mayors' offices,
promising a new stability based on
appeal to business interests. Partly because their
modest success in rejuvenating city
centers contrasted sharply with the failure of their
predecessors, this new group of leaders
won greater praise from the voters, but by the
end of the 1980s they too were facing
increasing problems. While population decline
had slowed considerably, the tax base of
the older cities was still very shaky, and class
and racial divisions between cities and
suburbs remained a serious problem.
44 OHIO
HISTORY
The research upon which this book is
based is truly impressive. Teaford is able to
show the surprisingly uniform
development of both urban problems and response to
them among cities as diverse as
Baltimore, Boston, and Minneapolis. While much of his
subtle analysis is persuasive, I would
like to have seen more emphasis on the impact of
outside economic forces and racial
change on the cities. As a study in governmental
response to economic change, however,
the book achieves its purpose in masterful fash-
ion. The Rough Road to Renaissance is
an accomplished piece of scholarship that
should be required reading for anyone
interested in the history of urban American in the
last half of the twentieth century.
Temple University Kenneth
L. Kusmer
The Dispossession of the American
Indian, 1887-1934. By Janet A.
McDonnell.
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1991. viii + 163p.; maps, illustrations,
notes, selected bibliography, index.
$20.00.)
This detailed study of the federal
government's administration of its trust responsi-
bilities for Indian land in the period
of allotment confirms what Angie Debo discovered
over fifty years ago (And Still the
Waters Run, 1940). The further a scholar digs into
the story of how Indian policies get
administered, the worse the news becomes.
The allotment policy aimed to teach
Indians to become self-supporting through
farming individual properties. One might
suppose that learning to manage private prop-
erty would entail having some discretion
over the use and management of one's allot-
ment. Yet federal officials frequently
allotted, leased, irrigated, and issued fee patents
for Indian allotments without the
consent and at times over the strong opposition of
Indian owners.
Intelligent management of private
property requires a reasonably predictable legal cli-
mate, in which rules governing the use
and disposition of the property are fairly stable.
Both Congress and the Office of Indian
Affairs varied the rules affecting allotments
earnestly, frequently, and almost
whimsically. Initially Indians faced a twenty-five year
trust period during which the allotment
was inalienable. In 1891, Congress provided for
leasing. Bureau of Indian Affairs
officials varied the maximum duration of leases cover-
ing agricultural, grazing, irrigated,
and mineral lands every few years. Local superinten-
dents decided who might lease, and on
what terms, though they could be quite careless
in following through to see that the
lessees actually made promised improvements or
paid promised fees. Congress made
general appropriations for irrigating Indian lands
beginning in 1884. Some appropriations
appeared gratuitous; others required reimburse-
ment from tribal funds. In 1920 Congress
decided that individual allotment owners who
used the water on dozens of completed
projects would have to pay fees to reimburse
construction and maintenance costs
incurred since the beginning. After thus discourag-
ing many Indian owners, Congress in 1932
canceled the "debts" of those Indians (and
numerous whites who had bought irrigated
allotments) who had stuck it out.
The Burke Act of 1906 permitted
"competent" Indians to foreshorten the twenty-
five-year trust period and get fee
patents as soon as the Indian Affairs bureaucracy
would allow. Despite Burke's original
intent, Commissioners, especially during World
War I, declared thousands of Indians
"competent" who had not applied for patents.
Like leasing terms, definitions of
competency varied according to the commissioners'
whims. In some years, the Secretary of
the Interior approved nearly all recommenda-
tions for patents; in others, forty or
fifty percent. Toward the end of his stint as
Book Reviews 45
Commissioner of Indian Affairs, the
author of the Burke Act informed a congressional
committee that any Indian farmer who
applied for a fee patent (which would make his
allotment liable to taxation and debt)
thus defined himself as not competent. Most of
those who obtained patents shortly sold
their land or lost it for debt or taxes. Local gov-
ernments, auto dealers, and land
speculators were the Burke Act's principal beneficia-
ries. In 1927 and 1931, Congress
canceled the patents delivered to the few hundred
unwilling patentees who still owned
unencumbered titles.
The ordinary results of the federal
government's execution of its trust responsibili-
ties are notorious-many thousands of
impoverished, landless Indians dependent on
relatives or welfare for their support.
Federal administration, vulnerable to political
influence at every level, did prove
effective if not very efficient in transferring Indian-
owned resources to other ownership.
Cliometrics is clearly not the author's
strong point. Her presentation abounds in con-
tradictory and downright puzzling
figures and quantitative statements, notably those
relating to proportions of Indians and
white farmers using reservation irrigation pro-
jects. The text might have benefited
from more energetic editing. Hence, while
McDonnell's heavily documented study
compiles a great deal of interesting informa-
tion on legislation, administration, and
contemporary debates and complaints about
laws, decision, and their consequences,
the reader who seeks a systematic and coherent
assessment of the impact of federal
activity on Indian farming and landholding would
do better to consult Leonard A.
Carlson's Indians, Bureaucrats and Land: The Dawes
Act and the End of Indian Farming (1981).
University of Rochester Mary E.
Young
American Narrow Gauge Railroads. By George W. Hilton. (Stanford, California:
Stanford University Press, 1990. xiii +
580p.; illustrations, maps, tables, notes,
index. $60.00.)
Periodically a book appears that is so
monumental that it is clearly destined to
become a classic and the definitive work
on its topic. Such a volume is this extensive
study of a limited type of railroad
venture, the narrow gauge, but one which has exerted
a continuous fascination on many
students of the history and technology of the iron
horse, even to the present.
George W. Hilton needs no introduction
to aficionados of the railroad. A Professor
of Economics at the University of
California, Los Angeles, he is the author of a number
of books on the subject. Hilton
surpasses himself in this study, which combines his
skills of historical interpretation and
economic analysis.
The book is divided into two parts of
about equal length. The first part, consisting of
nine chapters, provides a history of the
narrow-gauge movement. The first chapter sets
the stage: after discussing the
development of 4' 8-1/2" gauge as the standard in
Britain, Hilton introduces Robert F.
Fairlie, more remembered today for his unusual
double-ended locomotives, but who might
be regarded as one of the leading advocates
of saving deadweight by reducing the
size of the gauge. The concept spread throughout
the British Empire, and to other
countries as well.
In the United States, a variety of
gauges existed in the antebellum period, including a
number of broad gauges, but the
advantages of interchange of equipment and the
increasing interrelationships among the
carriers gradually resulted in the dominance of
the standard gauge. Nonetheless, a
narrow-gauge boom, especially for a 3'0" width,
which lasted about a dozen years, got
underway by 1872 when a convention of the
46 OHIO
HISTORY
advocates of the narrow gauge was held
in St. Louis. Proponents argued that narrow
gauges were cheaper to build, to equip,
and to operate, albeit with lower speeds.
Spurred on by men such as General
William Jackson Palmer, who adopted the 3'0"
gauge for his Denver and Rio Grande
Railway, and Colonel Edward Hulbert, who
pushed the concept, although mostly for
local economic development, and who assisted
in running a number of small gauge
roads, the narrow-gauge fever spread throughout
the decade, reaching its peak in 1883
when nearly 11,000 miles were in service.
Ambitious schemes were developed, one of
the most notable being the Grand Narrow
Gauge Trunk, which was to extend over
three railroads from Toledo, Ohio, to Laredo,
Texas, about 1642 miles. Although many
components were built, the concept failed
because of low capitalization, poor
maintenance and the inability to interchange. After
the mid-1880s, decline set in, rapidly
at first, and then at a slower but nonetheless
steady pace. About two-thirds of the
mileage was converted to standard gauge, and the
remainder was mostly abandoned, except
for the museum and tourist operations of
today and private industrial roads.
Hilton devotes separate chapters to
locomotives, rolling stock, the physical plant and
characteristics, and the problem of
incompatibility with standard-gauge carriers, along
with the ingenious devices invented to
ease the difficulties. But, above all, Hilton
demonstrates the fallacious nature of
the arguments of advocates of the narrow gauge.
The widely heralded savings which
propagandists for the cause trumpeted were really
based on the primitive construction and
engineering standards of the narrow gauge.
Smaller capacity cars, low speeds, the
lack of innovation and the prohibitive costs of
transfer would doom the narrow-gauge
experiment, something which critics pointed
out from the beginning.
The second half of the book is a
comprehensive listing, state-by-state, of the approx-
imately 350 common-carrier railroads in
44 states. Each line is given a capsule history
and, where appropriate, references to
more lengthy treatments. Maps and illustrations
supplement this extensive reference
section.
Hilton writes in a pleasant and highly
readable style. He has examined virtually
every major source, and uncovered many
long forgotten, of the movement. Detailed
notes and bibliographic references
follow each chapter. The publisher has also done an
outstanding job. Layout and design are
excellent: paper is heavy quality and margins
are broad, often containing definitions
of railroad terminology, so even the uninitiated
can easily follow the text. There are 56
maps, of uniformly high quality, which are easy
to read and interpret. Over 380
photographs clearly illustrate all phases of narrow-
gauge railroading, and reproduction is
superior. A comprehensive index provides a
ready reference.
It is likely this book will stand as the
best treatment the subject has received, and as a
tribute to the skills and energy of its
author. The price, considering the quality, is rea-
sonable. Every library, and anyone
interested in the subject of transportation, should
have a copy.
East Stroudsburg University James N. J. Henwood
We Took the Train. Edited by H. Roger Grant. (Dekalb: Northern Illinois
University
Press, 1990. xxx + 175p.; illustrations,
notes, index. $29.50.)
For more than 150 years, railroad travel
has encouraged perceptive travelers to
define the American countryside and its
inhabitants. Because the railroad traveler can
interact with fellow passengers and view
the unfolding landscape more or less simulta-
Book Reviews 47
neously, railroad travel has provided a
"natural" opportunity for commentary. Railroad
historian H. Roger Grant has selected,
and excerpted, twenty-one essays by railroad
travelers. Most are previously published
works, though a few are fairly obscure. While
the reprinting of such travel accounts
is not new, Grant's placing this kind of literature
in chronological sequence is quite
welcome: using six general categories (The Iron
Horse Arrives, America's Railroads
Mature, Traveling Without Tickets, The Electric
Way, The Glory Years, Twilight of Rail
Travel), Grant puts railroad travel in historic
context.
The essays range in time from the 1830s
to the 1980s, and they cover everything
from embryonic lines like the Baltimore
and Ohio in its horse-drawn days to the
Amtrak that dominates U.S. rail
passenger service today. Each essay is introduced with
a brief overview of the conditions the
traveler/essayist encountered. Grant includes
excerpts from some of the renowned
novelists (Charles Dickens and Robert Louis
Stevenson), popular railroad writers
(David P. Morgan and William D. Middleton), as
well as lesser-known authors. All of the
essays remind us how "involved" on the one
hand, and how detached, or distant, on
the other, travelers can be. Like all travelers,
train travelers face the unexpected:
blizzards, wash-outs, grade crossing or pedestrian
accidents, and some of these mishaps are
described in this book.
Like many travelers, train travelers are
(and especially were) socially stratified: one
might have ridden in a day coach with
rigid seats, a luxurious pullman car drawing
room, or even "ridden the
rods" as a hobo. Sex (gender) and racial segregation was also
common during the "heyday" of
rail travel. Grant includes essays covering a wide
range of rail travel options and
experiences, as well as types of trains; main-line limit-
eds, branchline "doodlebugs,"
and electric interurbans. The long time period covered
includes the range of railway motive
power: horses, steam, and diesel-electric. It
enables us to see the profound social
and economic changes that have affected railroad
travel-and the American countryside.
We Took the Train is highly readable, reminding one of a collection of
short stories.
Being quite succinct, Grant's overviews
do not detract from the initial idea of the book:
to have contemporary travelers, not
historians, tell the story of what rail travel was like.
We Took the Train is specifically recommended to railroad historians,
railroad enthusi-
asts, and generally to all readers
interested in the impact of travel on America.
University of Texas at Arlington Richard V. Francaviglia
Period of the Gruesome: Selected
Cincinnati Journalism of Lafcadio Hearn. Edited by
Jon Christopher Hughes. (Lanham,
Maryland: University Press of America, 1990.
xiv + 322p.; notes, bibliography.
$45.50.)
Lafcadio Hearn was an eccentric,
literary genius whose career began in Cincinnati
and culminated in Japan. "Period of
the gruesome" is a descriptive phrase covering
Hearn's journalistic endeavors in
Cincinnati and was originated by biographer George
M. Gould in 1909. Hearn's notoriety for
the "grewsome" (as he liked to spell the word)
began with a series of articles covering
the "Tanyard Murder" for the Cincinnati
Enquirer in 1874. His vivid, meticulous reconstruction of the
crime, with graphic
detail, raised both the sale of the
newspaper and Hearn's salary. Actually, Hearn's cov-
erage of the macabre, grotesque, or
gruesome went back at least two years: "The Last
Of The Horse. How He Is Turned Into
Soap-Fat, Fertilizer, And Prussian Blue ..." and
48 OHIO
HISTORY
"A Wolf's Vengeance. A Butcher's
'Clean' Work Upon A Human Heart.. ." are typi-
cal titles of 1872.
During the years 1872-1877, Hearn wrote
articles on dope addicts, ghosts, grave rob-
bers, rag pickers, abortionists,
vivisectionists-insanity and murder in general-sub-
jects dear to the newspaper reading
public then and now. This was not hack journalism
in any sense, but investigative
reporting of the highest quality in a coherent, narrative
format. As listed by Mr. Hughes, Hearn
managed at least 439 articles for Cincinnati
papers (not all the articles were about
Cincinnati, however). Hearn's coverage of the
"underside" of Cincinnati's
social and economic life-the slaughterhouse district, the
waterfront or "levee," and
"Bucktown," home of southern Blacks, Mulattoes, and
Creoles-is unparalleled in nineteenth
century Ohio literature. Sympathetic to the out-
casts of society, as he saw himself,
Hearn did not preach but rather influenced his read-
ers by his verbose, descriptive scenes
and specific details. In the so-called gruesome
stories there is often an underlying
sense of humor, a very subtle humor: A good exam-
ple is "Balm of Gilead. An
Afternoon At The Stink Factory. What Becomes Of Our
Dead Animals" (1875). A vast array
of odors are examined and analyzed, with suitable
similes, in this tour of a fertilizer
factory. This reviewer's favorite example of Hearn's
dichotomous approach is the article
"Skulls And Skeletons. The Articulator Of
Skeletons" (1874), which
unfortunately does not appear in Period of the Gruesome.
Humor and "grewsomeness" in
pleasant alliance!
Another personal favorite, "Steeple
Climbers" (1876), does not appear in the book
under review probably because it is not
gruesome. Hearn was the only newspaperman
in Cincinnati who took the dare of two
steeplejacks to ascend the 225 foot spire of the
Cathedral of St. Peter-in-Chains. The
story is exciting, and often frightening consider-
ing Hearn was practically blind, having
partial sight in only one eye, and was 5 foot 3
inches tall and of slight build; he
ultimately stood on top of the cross on the spire. He
was self-conscious because of the
appearance of his eyes, one was "pearl white," one
bulbous, and his stature, and avoided
social gatherings as a consequence. Among his
few friends were Frank Duveneck and
Henry Farny, both newspaper artists and both to
become famous in their own right. Farny
drew the sketches for the "Tanyard Murder"
series. Hearn and Farny collaborated on
a short-lived satiric newspaper, nine issues in
1874, entitled Ye Giglampz, "giglamps"
being a slang term for spectacles, an allusion
to Hearn's thick-lensed glasses.
Reproductions of these rare papers were made in 1983
in a single volume edited by Mr. Hughes,
published by Crossroad Books and The
Public Library of Cincinnati and
Hamilton County (and still available at the library).
Hearn's connection to Cincinnati was
tenuous: The administrator of his aunt's estate
in England had a sister in Cincinnati;
encouraged to "make his own way in the world,"
Hearn was given one-way passage money to
Cincinnati where he arrived in the spring
of 1869. The Cincinnati contact proved
valueless. Hearn was literally destitute, and so
he lived on the street and did odd jobs
until befriended by an English printer, Henry
Watkin. Watkin, an eccentric in his own
right, was a follower of Charles Fourier and a
communalist and an atheist; he became
Hearn's advisor and foster father.
Patrick Lafcadio Hearn was born 27 June
1850 on the Greek Island of Levkas, or
ancient Leucadia, the inspiration for
his middle name. His father was Charles Bush
Hearn, a British army surgeon, his
mother Rose Antonia Cassimati of the Ionian Isles.
His parents soon abandoned him to be
raised by an aunt in Ireland, Sarah Brenane of
Dublin. She sent him to school in
England, then to a Catholic school in France. Hearn
did not graduate because his schooling
was cut short by a mishandling of his aunt's
funds by the same man who sent him to
the United States. Hearn's dislike of organized
religion and mistrust of society in
general can be traced to these formative and largely
unhappy years. He was, nevertheless,
intelligent and gifted in literary skills. These
Book Reviews 49
skills were first put to use in
Cincinnati, then refined during his travels, climaxing in
the Japanese essays. Hearn had a number
of favorite authors, including Edgar Allen
Poe with whom he is often compared,
Bulwer Lytton, Charles Dickens, and many
French authors, including Baudelaire and
Flaubert, whom he translated into English.
Though not a social reformer, Hearn's
Cincinnati does remind the reader of Henry
Mayhew's London or Jacob Riis' New York.
Hearn had long been interested in New
Orleans through contact with the Creoles and
southern Blacks on the Cincinnati
waterfront, and so he left Cincinnati in the fall of 1877
for the southern city, promising to
write some articles for the Cincinnati Commercial to
pay for the trip. In New Orleans, Hearn
continued in much the same literary vein as in
Cincinnati. He wrote about the Creole
language and published a Creole cookbook. In
1883 he left New Orleans for Martinique,
French West Indies, then for the next seven
years traveled between Philadelphia, New
York, and Martinique. During these years,
articles were accepted by Century
Magazine and Harper's Weekly. Hearn became fasci-
nated by the Orient, its customs and
religions, and he finally decided to move to Japan.
The expense of the journey was covered
by articles for Harper's. He arrived in Japan in
1890. Two years later, he married
Setsuko Koizumi. The Koizumi family adopted him
in 1896 which allowed him to become a
Japanese citizen; his Japanese name was
Koizumi Yakumo. Hearn taught English in
government schools in the cities of Matsue,
Kumamoto, Kobe, and Tokyo. He died of a
heart attack on 26 September 1904, leaving
a widow, three sons, and a daughter. His
perceptive writings about the Japanese and
their homeland made him famous both in
the East and the West. The memorial museum
at Matsue contains approximately 600
volumes by or about Hearn. One of his homes is
also maintained at Matsue. There is a
major collection of Hearn material at the
University of Virginia, the Cincinnati
Public Library has a manuscript collection, and
the Library of Congress has about 300
volumes by or about him.
By modern definition, Hearn was a social
historian, and one of rare ability. His
Cincinnati vignettes reveal facets of
daily life rarely encountered in "historical"
sources. This compendium, Period of
the Gruesome, should be shelved next to the
standard Cincinnati histories to give
reality to the usual sanitized accounts of urban life
of the nineteenth century. Of course,
not all was "gruesome" in Cincinnati, and perhaps
the title is misleading considering the
bulk of Hearn's writings, but it is apt for the
selections made by Mr. Hughes. Mr.
Hughes includes an "Introduction" to Hearn's life
and writings. There is a recent
biography, Wandering Ghost by Jonathan Cott (1991),
that treats Hearn's career in some
detail. Hearn's widow, Setsuko, published an
account of his life in 1918, and one
son, Kazuo, did likewise in 1935. Albert Mordell
first identified many of Hearn's
American writings (most of the articles were not cred-
ited) in a two-volume work, An American
Miscellany, published in 1924. Another col-
lection of Hearn's Cincinnati articles
appears in Lafcadio Hearn, Selected Writings,
edited by William S. Johnson (1979).
Ohio Historical Society Donald A.
Hutslar
The Utopian Alternative: Fourierism
in Nineteenth-Century America. By Carl
J.
Guarneri. (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1991. xiv + 525p.; illustrations, notes,
bibliography, index. $32.95.)
All Things New: American Communes and
Utopian Movements, 1860-1914. By
Robert
S. Fogarty. (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1990. vii + 286p.; illustra-
tions, notes, sources, index. $34.50.)
50 OHIO
HISTORY
Utopia, always ill-defined, has had a
rather good following, where other topics in
American history have suffered blight,
ignorance, and "presentism": emphasis on cur-
rent partisan causes. Studies in
"utopia" have gained also from Sixties Youth avowals,
seen as "utopianism," and from
retreats to quasi-"communes," where ragged survivors
of confrontation could continue their
habits, or modify them for academic ends. The
decline of American history as such, as
a discipline, has been notorious. It can be
traced, for example, in The Reader's
Catalog (1989), proud of its panoply of consul-
tants and record of 40,000 books in 208
categories, covering all subjects. It seems
incredible, but I have not noticed it
said anywhere else that there is not there a single
reference in the Catalog to Allan
Nevins.
History standards are maintained in The
Utopian Alternative, which, in the hands of
a self-identified "student
activist" during the Vietnam War years, undertakes to provide
"the first full-scale history of
American Fourierism." To some extent it achieves its
goal. Fourierism itself left a full
record of its personalities, goals, and programs, which
the author has implemented with fresh
further study in archives. In addition he has
reviewed major protagonists, from
Fourier himself to such American figures as Horace
Greeley, Charles A. Dana, Albert
Brisbane, the Rev. George Ripley-originator of
Brook Farm-and numerous others.
Brook Farm became one of the symbols of
the great antebellum movement of
reform, and of its daring break with
mid-nineteenth century mores and traditions.
Emerson and other public persons of his
stature had visited Brook Farm and approved
its free air of social experiment with
family, education, and work. Here Hawthorne had
even attempted to break his cocoon of
family-haunted vision, and given it up as offen-
sive to his own qualities. Brook Farm,
too, had been captured by the Fourierites, who
imposed their quasi-Marxist
"phylansteries" over Brook Farm's more individualized
living and growth. It saw its material
possessions go up in a fire which signalled the
decline of the great Fourierite drive to
establish its way of life as a viable alternative to
free enterprise and expansive
capitalism.
It seems likely that the author of The
Utopian Alternative-itself a modern con-
cept-is soliciting dialogue with other
former "student activists" in his grand sweep of
Fourier enthusiasm, as it won attention
in the 1840s, resulting in numerous "phalanxes"
mainly situated near established eastern
cities and towns which they hoped to super-
sede.
The book follows Fourierites from their
early nurture to their collapse. It strives to
understand what inspired their
initiators, and the causes for their failure. They never
had enough money-one estimate of
necessary resources envisioned 400 competent
and responsible persons, 1,000 acres,
and $400,000; one can see the answer staring out
of these figures. The acres were there,
certainly; but competent and responsible per-
sons? Four hundred of them? Assessed by
whom? And $400,000-the equivalent of
many millions of dollars today. Then
again, in nineteenth century financial conditions
uncircumscribed by regulatory state and
federal measures.
The author himself adds up Fourierite
ways to failure: debt, sickness, legal impedi-
ments, group and individual quarrels,
elite and cultured persons mixed with humble
and unenlightened individuals. And
religiously-inclined elements concerned for varied
spiritual impulses set side by side with
atheists--one wonders how they could have
deceived themselves for a moment
regarding their prospects.
John Humphrey Noyes, the genius of the
Oneida Community, in his History of
American Socialisms (1870), put it that communities, however founded,
succeeded or
failed according to the spiritual goals
which sustained them. Since Fourierites were
meagerly supplied in religious convictions,
they furnished examples for Noyes's
hypotheses, and, for today, one measure
for judging the protagonists of the 1960s
youth uprising.
Book Reviews 51
The Utopian Alternative is rich in personalities and social experiences and may
well
inspire further adventures in academic
research. Still, one hesitates to guess how
academe might take up the challenge here
proposed. It is possible that this book might
prove too rich for presentists bemused
by ethnic or other considerations. The stagger-
ing collapse of hopes fostered by
communism at home and abroad may act to retard
work in the field.
This work admires that of Arthur E.
Bestor, Jr., whose study of the Owenite New
Harmony Community of 1825 is considered
definitive in the field. Bestor's Backwoods
Utopias gave authority to his American Historical Review essay
of 1953, "Patent-
Office Models of the Good Society: Some
Relationships between Social Reform and
Westward Expansion." This held, in
essence, that the flood of utopias in the early nine-
teenth century could not be repeated. It
had been a product of the wide-open frontier
which permitted all manner of social
experiments. The frontier, however, was soon
"closed," closing down with it
"patent-office models." The Utopian Alternative gently
dissents. It was protested at a Newberry
Library Conference by Louis Filler who, in
"Pilot Plants, Utopias, and Social
Reform," Community Service News (Yellow Springs,
Ohio, April 1953) pointed to numerous
"utopian" experiments of patent effectiveness
extending to the then-present. The point
is further carried at length in All Things New:
American Communes and Utopian
Movements, 1860-1914, during which
communes
proliferated, before and after the
"passing of the frontier."
The author has for some time been
industrious in seeking out and studying "utopian"
ventures in and out of the frontier. One
of his personal landmarks was his Dictionary of
American Communal and Utopian History
(1980). His new book spells out many
of
the major figures and events associated
with his communes. He writes less well and
evocatively than the author of The
Utopian Alternative; as in his Dictionary he is
largely concerned with setting down the
who, where, and when of his communes. He is
more practical-minded, as in his
judgment that Brook Farm "failed." In fact, it is much
better recalled than any of the more
realistically-minded experiments. And that is
because Brook Farm was a living
community, foaled by religious-minded dreamers,
and giving human goals to the men, women
and children who worked, but also sang,
studied, enjoyed companionship, and were
profound in their connections. For that mat-
ter, the Sixties Youth have staked their
ultimate status as aspiring to Brook Farm pur-
poses, rather than the Fourierites.
All Things New does not advance the much-needed definition of
"utopias," old or
new. Perhaps it cannot, since, in the
course of events, all things new become all things
old and subject to internal rot and
simple aging.
Many of the author's figures and
enterprises are significant, as "utopians," far
beyond the dates given, and the contours
of the careers he indicates are puzzling. Thus,
he says nothing of Arthur E. Morgan,
despite a badly focused study which wants
answer, Roy Talbert, Jr., FDR's
Utopian: Arthur Morgan of the TVA. Morgan was a
"utopian" as early as 1913,
when he undertook to save Dayton, Ohio, from the further
horror of flood by creating a Miami
Conservancy District which was not only great in
its own right, but a first draft of his
later TVA. He was a dreamer in education, in
small-town power and distinction: a
social engineer who was also an actual engineer,
and whose idea of a "pilot
plant"-a small model which could become a massive
reality-is unlikely to be forgotten. His
books on communities, on Edward Bellamy, on
"utopias" (Nowhere Was
Somewhere) are yet to receive intelligible revaluation.
Nevertheless, if one had to choose
between the two above books on utopias, one
would recommend for new readers All
Things New. It helps a serious reader to realize
there is a problem in matching a dream
with reality. It displays a varied set of social
52 OHIO
HISTORY
experiments, includes a useful appendix
of communal societies, and sources for further
reading.
The Belfry Louis Filler
Ovid, Michigan
Wampum Belts & Peace Trees:
George Morgan, Native Americans, and Revolutionary
Diplomacy. By Gregory Schaaf. (Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum Press,
1990. xxiv +
278p.; illustrations, notes,
bibliographic essay, appendix, index. $27.95.)
Philadelphia-born land speculator and
Indian agent George Morgan (b. 1743-d.
1810) played a prominent role in
executing Congressionally directed Indian policy in
the Ohio country during the American
Revolution. Morgan was well suited by both
temperament and training for the task.
Apprenticed while a youth in 1756 to the west-
ern fur-trading firm of Baynton and
Wharton, he became a full partner in the establish-
ment in 1763. Like many of his
contemporaries, Morgan speculated heavily in lands
west of the Ohio River at the close of
Pontiac's Rebellion, and throughout the remain-
der of the 1760s and early 1770s was a
well-known figure along the western
Pennsylvania border. Working as the land
office superintendent for the Indiana
Company out of Fort Pitt at the outbreak
of the Revolution, Morgan was appointed
Indian agent for the newly created
middle department of the Department of Indian
Affairs where he replaced Crown
appointed Alexander McKee, who was suspected of
loyalist leanings.
Well acquainted with the western tribes
by virtue of his long-standing fur trade and
land interests in the territory, Morgan
exerted particularly strong influence among the
Delaware, many of whom remained neutral
throughout Morgan's term in the position.
Resigning his post after a series of
personal disagreements with fort commander
General Lachland McIntosh in 1779,
Morgan spent the remainder of his life engaged
in western land ventures and pursuing
his interests in scientific agriculture.
In 1976, a previously unknown, private
collection of unpublished Morgan papers
was brought to the attention of Gregory
Schaaf, a history enthusiast visiting in
Southern California. The collection was
a significant one, and contained among other
items Morgan's personal journal and
letter book for the period April-July and
September-November, 1776, which detailed
the agent's activities among the Ohio
country tribes on behalf of the
Continental Congress.
Schaaf recognized the importance of the
collection, and used the manuscripts as the
basis for his doctoral dissertation,
completed under Wilbur Jacobs at the University of
California-Santa Barbara in 1984. Wampum
Belts & Peace Trees represents an expand-
ed and revised version of Schaaf's
graduate efforts.
Despite the fact that the newly
discovered journal and letterbook provide an impor-
tant addition to the documentary
material available for Morgan (the remainder of
Morgan's journals are available in
microfilm format at the Carnegie Library,
Pittsburgh; microfilm copies of the
April-July/September-November journal and letter-
book are housed at the University of
California-Santa Barbara, California State
University-Chico, and with the Grand
Council, Iroquois Confederacy), readers will be
disappointed in this volume.
Among the work's major shortcomings is
its unsuccessful integration of the newly
found Morgan material into the broader
context of pertinent primary and secondary
sources. Schaaf quite naturally derives
the majority of his narrative from the April-
July/September-November journal, and
where applicable augments this source with
Book Reviews 53
other federal government materials, most
often documents found in W.C. Ford's 34-
volume Journal of the Continental
Congress, Edmund Burnett's Letters of Members of
the Continental Congress, and in the National Archives Record Group 30,
"Records of
the Continental Congress and the
Constitutional Convention." Schaaf, though, appar-
ently did not consult Paul Smith's Letters
of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789 which
contains several documents describing
Morgan's activities during the period.
A more serious omission is Schaaf's
failure to investigate Canadian sources. Fort
Pitt was under Crown control until 1772,
and a strong loyalist element remained active
in the community throughout the war. A
wealth of material regarding the events in
which Morgan participated is available
in the collections of the National Archives of
Canada, Ottawa. Among the most important
holdings are the Alexander and Thomas
McKee Papers [MG19,F16], Haldimand
Collection [MG21, Add.MSS 21661-21892],
Colonial Office Records [MG11 C.O. 42],
and the Brant Family Records [MG19,F6].
Likewise, it does not appear that Schaaf
has utilized James Sullivan and Alexander
Flick, et. al.'s, standard source for Crown
activities in the pre-Revolutionary trans-
Appalachian west, The Papers of Sir
William Johnson. These omissions seriously
impair the depth of analysis that Schaaf
brings to bear on his subject.
The events transpiring at Fort Pitt in
the mid-1770s were as much about inter-colo-
nial rivalry as they were international
politics. Pennsylvania and Virginia had been
involved in a long-standing border
dispute centering on the Pittsburgh vicinity when
Morgan was first assigned to his post.
Schaaf would have found Scribner and Tarter's
Revolutionary Virginia, The Road to
Independence: A Documentary Record a
useful
compilation to use in this study. An
especially puzzling omission is the Lyman C.
Draper Collection of the State
Historical Society of Wisconsin. Schaaf acknowledges
the collection in his bibliographic
essay, yet cites only those documents published by
Louise Kellogg and Reuben Thwaites. The
full range of resources in this collection,
particularly those in the Frontier Wars
Series and the Pittsburgh and Northwest
Virginia Papers, are virtually
indispensable to a study of this nature.
Equally worrisome is Schaaf's use of
secondary materials. The author relies heavily
on Randolph Downe's valuable work on
frontier diplomacy, Council Fires on the
Upper Ohio, to provide a background for his study, yet Schaaf fails
to incorporate
Downe's understanding of the complex net
of competing interests making up
Crown/colonial/native-American
negotiations into his narrative. Further, while Schaaf
notes that the "history of colonial
Indian affairs has been the subject of hundreds of
books and articles" (p. 263), he
neglects to acknowledge such standard sources as Paul
F. Prucha's The Great Father, Walter
Mohr's Federal Indian Relations, 1774-1788, or
Reginald Horsman's biography of Morgan's
Indian Department and Pittsburgh con-
temporary, Matthew Elliott. Oddly,
although he recognizes Wilbur Jacob's article
"British Indian Policies to
1783," appearing in Wilcomb Washburn's History of
Indian-White Relations, he does not mention Horsman's more germane "United
States
Indian Policies, 1776-1815"
appearing in the same volume.
A vast body of other works also seems to
have been neglected. Robert Allen's and
Paul Stevens' definitive works on the
British Indian Department, Anne M.
Ousterhaut's study of Revolutionary-era
Pennsylvania, Russell Barsh's "Native
American Loyalists and Patriots:
Reflections on the American Revolution in native-
American History" appearing in Indiana
History, and Francis Jennings' and Peter
Marshall's essays regarding
native-American participation in the War of Independence
included in Esmond Wright's anthology Red
White and True Blue: The Loyalists in the
Revolution, to name but a few, would have added badly needed
perspective to Schaaf's
investigation.
Wampum Belts & Peace Trees' impoverished grounding in historical sources leads
to a distressing series of errors.
Frequently these errors are factual. Colonel William
54 OHIO
HISTORY
Crawford did not lead the party that
perpetrated the 1782 Gnaddenhutten massacre
(p. 203); colonial-era Indian policy did
in fact recognize the principle of Indian
sovereignty over Indian lands (p.
xxiii); the tribes of the Ohio-country were never unit-
ed enough in their opposition to the
policies of the Continental Congress to be able to
"crush the Revolution" (p.
xx).
Other errors are interpretive. Schaaf,
for example, consistently devalues the signifi-
cant role played by the Moravian
missionaries among the Delaware during the
Revolutionary period. Their actions were
certainly equally as important as Morgan's,
and in the long run probably much more
so, in promoting U.S. interests among the
tribes.
Lastly, Schaaf's narrative is informed
and guided by a persistent present-mindedness
that pervades virtually the entire text.
Two examples will suffice. Schaaf states that at
the opening of the Revolution, Morgan
"took a stand to defend a vision of America's
future that was diametrically opposed to
slavery, colonialism, and imperialism" (p. xx).
Second, Schaaf tells how Morgan, after
quitting the Indian service, established a multi-
cultural model farm where he practiced
"organic farming," using "natural pest controls
and fertilizers," and grew
"herbal teas," all the while enforcing a strict policy of natural
resource conservation (pp. 207-208).
Schaaf's Morgan, then, is a politically correct lib-
eral, whose western land ventures were
not so much driven by the entrepreneurial spirit
as they were by New Age philosophy.
Unfortunately, Wampum Belts &
Peace Trees is so seriously impaired on so many
levels that it cannot be recommended. Readers
wishing information on Morgan's
career should consult Max Savelle's
dated though reliable biography, George Morgan:
Colony Builder.
Ohio Historical Society Larry
Nelson
Protectors of Privilege: Red Squads
and Police Repression in Urban America. By
Frank Donner, (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1990. xiv + 503p.; notes,
select bibliography, index. $34.95.)
"All You Wanted to Know About
Police Surveillance but Were Afraid to Ask"
might be an appropriate title for this
eye-opening book. Ever since the Haymarket
bombing of 1886 created an anarchist
scare, American police departments, under the
guise of protecting public order, have
devoted a large share of their resources to spying
on and counteracting dissenters of all
kinds. Frank Donner, a well-known civil liberties
attorney, in a well-written and
fascinating book provides a wealth of detail concerning
what he describes as police repression
in various cities, with special attention to
Chicago, Philadelphia, New York and Los
Angeles. The pattern was much the same in
those and other urban centers. Labor
unions were an early target of the red squads.
Spies were placed in unions and at times
provocateurs would incite violence during
strikes in order to justify brutal
repression and turn public sympathy away from the
strikers.
After World War I, communism joined
anarchism as a perceived threat to the
American social order. Men who commanded
the red squads made little distinction
between persons with a serious potential
for violence and peaceful dissenters. For such
men, exposing supposed plots and
subversive activity was a way to power and fame.
Democratic socialists, peace activists
and civil rights workers were all viewed as part
of a communist conspiracy, and all
organizations relating to them were infiltrated by
police, who also relied on the reports
of paid and unpaid private informers. Local
Book Reviews 55
police received training and assistance
from the FBI and, after World War II, from the
CIA as well.
A network of right-wing organizations
also played an important role. During the
civil rights revolution of the 1950s the
Ku Klux Klan had a close relationship with the
Birmingham police, though the Klan was
itself heavily infiltrated by FBI informers,
one of whom helped plan the beating of
the Freedom Riders in 1961.
Besides assuming the role of guardians
against subversion, the red squads were also
fiercely loyal to the city
administrations under which they worked. Chicago's boss,
Richard J. Daley, used his red squad to
find damaging information against opponents
and then to harass them. Philadelphia's
Frank L. Rizzo, who served as police commis-
sioner and then as mayor, created what
amounted to a police state in that city. Rizzo's
methods included heavy infiltration of
targeted groups so as to intimidate as well as
spy, the creation of his own illegal
"plumber's group," devising a number of scary
"plots"with no substance in
fact, using police files to keep reporters in line, and lashing
out publicly at his critics. Finally, in
1979 the United States Department of Justice filed
a lawsuit charging Rizzo and eighteen
top Philadelphia officials with condoning police
brutality. Some time later a team of
federal investigators disclosed evidence of police
corruption which led to the criminal
conviction of twenty-nine police officers.
Despite their power, which increased
through the use of modern technology permit-
ting wire tapping and the systematic
collection of dossiers on individuals and groups,
the red squads were eventually called to
account. This resulted in part from making
public their activities and in part from
a series of successful lawsuits. But the last chap-
ter remains to be written. There is
always a new "threat" on the horizon so great that it
justifies police repression. One needs
only to follow today's news to recognize the
potential which terrorism, the new
buzzword, provides for repressive police activity.
Security is a huge, growing business,
and only close vigilance will check the revival of
police red squads and their
unconstitutional programs. This book should be read by all
who cherish the idea of a free society.
Wilmington College
Larry Gara
Regulating a New Economy: Public
Policy and Economic Change in America, 1900-
1933. By Morton Keller. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1990. x + 300p.;
notes, index. $27.50.)
Morton Keller's study of the regulation
of business and economic activity (the first
volume of a projected trilogy which will
also include books on social policy and gov-
ernment institutions) is an unusual mix
of survey and interpretation. It is largely a sum-
mary of early twentieth century
regulatory activity and covers anti-trust; public utility
regulation; auto, airline, telephone,
radio, and other "new technology" regulations; laws
and policies relating to contracts and
prices, labor relations, agriculture and natural
resources, housing and urban
institutions, and foreign trade and the tariff; and monetary
and fiscal policy. Keller's research is
impressive. He has read everything on these sub-
jects, including many contemporary
commentaries and analyses, and he presents his
data succinctly and effectively. Regulating
a New Economy is the most thorough and
readable distillation of the vast
literature of early twentieth century public policy now
available.
Keller's attempts to make sense of his
material are more problematic. First, he argues
that the early decades of the century
were the most fruitful period for the development
of public policy because that was a time
of profound economic and technological
56 OHIO
HISTORY
change, embracing the spread of big
business, dramatic technological breakthroughs,
and the appearance of novel consumer
services. Government responded, not just to
industrialism, but to a host of new
activities. Second, despite the changing economic
environment, public policy was highly
conservative; while business was breaking out of
its nineteenth century mold, government
merely adapted and extended what had been
done earlier. Insofar as the
governmental response was new, it was fragmented and con-
tradictory, reflective of an
ever-growing diversity of special interests that demanded sat-
isfaction. Thus Keller finds
"persistence and pluralism" (the theme of this volume and
the title of his trilogy) in every area
of government endeavor. Third, whatever was done,
no matter how confused or contradictory,
strongly influenced public policy initiatives
after 1930. In politics and government,
it seems, momentum was everything.
Keller's views are controversial and
provocative. In effect, he challenges virtually
everyone who has written about
government over the last half century and explicitly
dismisses the various interpretations of
the progressive period and the New Deal,
which, he argues, explain only a small
part of the story. The problem with this
approach is that he does not have a more
persuasive interpretation to substitute for the
ones he rejects. "Persistence and
pluralism" may seem fashionable in the cynical 1990s
but it is only a slight improvement on
the "one damn thing after another" school. As I
read him, Keller believes that
historians have not adequately explained the history of
government intervention in the economy
because they refuse to acknowledge the inher-
ently diverse and inconsistent character
of what was done. The best they can do is to
admit that the pieces of the puzzle do
not fit together and try to master the details.
Keller accordingly provides us with an
encyclopedia, albeit a concise and readable
encyclopedia. I suspect that most
readers will applaud his research, read his substantive
chapters with interest and admiration,
and disregard "persistence and pluralism."
University of Akron Daniel
Nelson
Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and
the Rise of American Labor. By Steven
Fraser.
(New York: The Free Press, 1991. xiii +
688p.; photographs, notes, index, $25.95.)
One of the great intellectual challenges
facing scholars is to combine social history
and biography, creating a narrative of
an individual's life while placing that person into
a broader cultural context. Providing an
engaging narrative, penetrating analysis and a
coherent context seem to be impossible
tasks; one or more of these components of the
social-biography often do not make it
into an author's long-awaited masterpiece. Yet,
there have been noteworthy successes in
this genre, most recently, Herbert Parmet's
Richard Nixon and His America (1990). Among the classics of social-biography are C.
Vann Woodward's Tom Watson, Agrarian
Rebel (1938) and J. Joseph Huthmacher's
Senator Robert F. Wagner and the Rise
of Urban Liberalism (1968).
Unfortunately, the book under review
here, Steven Fraser's Labor Will Rule, fails as
social-biography. Moreover, its leaden
prose and unnecessarily great length makes
Labor Will Rule a thoroughly unenjoyable read. Granted that most
historians cannot
edit and write with the verve of
Woodward or Parmet, there is still little excuse for
Fraser since he is the executive editor
of Basic Books. At 575 pages, exclusive of
notes, Labor Will Rule either
should have been cut by 200 pages or made into a two-
volume work. It is worth pointing out
that Huthmacher, whose work also spanned the
Progressive-New Deal era, and who
similarly focused on the topics of labor reform and
cultural politics, managed to do so in
less than half the space Fraser ultimately claimed.
Book Reviews 57
Huthmacher also avoided lapsing too
frequently into the passive voice and beginning
sequential sentences with the same
leads.
The author's ideological agenda,
essentially warmed-over 1960s New Left cant,
a.k.a., the New Labor History as defined
by David Montgomery, Melvyn Dubofsky, et
al, further diminishes the intellectual
value of this work. Union organizers such as
Hillman, who in the 1930s helped to
build the Congress of Industrial Organizations
(CIO), betrayed the authentic radical
labor movement to the capitalists. As a conse-
quence, American workers, lacking proper
(e.g., Marxist) class consciousness, became
greedy post-World War II consumers,
unthinking anti-Communists and junior partners
of the racist, imperialist Power Elite.
The capitalist elite, of course, began the Cold War
while its white working-class supporters
increasingly voted for conservative
Republicans like Joseph McCarthy,
Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Pat Buchanan.
Sidney Hillman deserves better of
history and of historians. Against great odds,
among them anti-union employers, vast
ethno-cultural differences among workers and
a deeply rooted anti-Communist political
culture which interpreted even the most
minor of social reforms as subversive,
Hillman's generation of labor organizers built a
great and powerful industrial union
movement. As president of Amalgamated Clothing
Workers, this Lithuanian-born, former
rabbinical student, worked with Steel Workers
Organizing Committee leader Philip
Murray and U.S. Senator Robert Wagner to give
Americans Social Security, unemployment
compensation and the 40-hour work week.
Additionally, such labor partisans laid
the foundations for the federal government's
post-World War II assault on college
admissions quotas which discriminated against
Catholics and Jews, the core of the
CIO's membership and the base of the New Deal
Democratic majority.
But such intellectual vision and human
drama Fraser does not provide. His Hillman
is a colorless bureaucrat constantly
seeking to frustrate and co-opt the workers' revolu-
tionary consciousness. In that
undertaking, reformist factory owners, management and
government efficiency experts and New
Deal social workers, desiring to build a more
stable capitalist order and fearing
labor strikes and Communist revolution, assisted
Hillman. If nothing else, Fraser could
at least have given passion to Hillman's alleged
selling-out of the working class. But
Fraser has chosen to depict Hillman as, in the lan-
guage of the 1960s-era Ivy League
coffeehouse, a labor bureaucrat. Labor bureaucrats
are by definition wooden, banal and
cold-blooded. As a consequence, so to is Labor
Will Rule.
This book is not, however, without some
redeeming features. Because it is so filled
with material unnecessary to both the
narrative and the analysis, it is of great use to
scholars seeking minute background
information on American labor history in the first
half of the twentieth century. Fraser
consulted every manuscript collection seemingly
available, noting their location and
giving readers a good idea of what to expect to find
in various archives. Labor Will Rule includes
biographical sketches of numerous,
admittedly minor, characters; again a
great help to researchers working on related top-
ics, if distracting to Fraser's
audience. One might reasonably ask, though, why, among
all of the mini-biographies Fraser
provides, he did not go into greater detail concerning
Hillman's long-time associate Harold
Ware. As the man who headed up a Soviet spy
ring in the federal government in the
1930s, a group whose ranks included Whittaker
Chambers and Alger Hiss, Ware merits a
little more coverage. His relationship with
Hillman demands explanation.
Ohio University at Lancaster Kenneth Heineman
58 OHIO
HISTORY
Blackcoats among the Delaware: David
Zeisberger and the Ohio Frontier. By
Earl P.
Olmstead. (Kent: Kent State University
Press, 1991. xviii + 283p.; illustrations,
notes, appendixes, bibliography, index.
$29.00.)
The name of David Zeisberger, who
spearheaded Moravian efforts to Christianize
the Delaware Indians in the eighteenth
century, is familiar to Ohio historians, but this is
the only extended study of the missionary
to be published this century. Earl P.
Olmstead does not offer an orthodox
biography. Zeisberger's first fifty years are skirt-
ed in a few pages, and for his death
readers must turn to a chapter devoted to burials in
the Goshen mission. Rather the author
employs his subject's diaries and the rich but
generally underused archives of the
Moravian Church to provide a comprehensive
account of Zeisberger's work with the
Delaware after 1772.
Zeisberger deserves this belated
spotlight, for his was a life of largely unrequited
dedication, integrity and fortitude. As
this book explains, his work, difficult in itself,
ran afoul of the political turbulence in
the Ohio region. An early effort among the
Iroquois was disrupted by the French and
Indian war, and although Zeisberger's first
mission villages among the Delaware
briefly thrived, they were helplessly tossed
between Crown and colonies and swaying
Indian loyalties during the American
Revolution. Neither side trusted the
mission Indians, although they attempted to stand
aside from the war. One party of
converts was massacred by American militia in 1782,
while the British correctly identified
Zeisberger as a source of intelligence to the
enemy, and in 1781 forcibly removed him
and his charges from the Tuscarawas River
to the Sandusky. Continuing Indian
unrest after the Treaty of Paris forced Zeisberger
into Canada, and it was not until 1798
that he was able to bring some of his remaining
converts back to Ohio to found Goshen,
where he lived until his death in 1808. Yet
even then efforts to expand were
frustrated. One post established at Pettquotting, Ohio,
was abandoned after the site was
included in a land cession of 1805, and another on the
White River, in Indiana Territory, was
closed by native hostility. Zeisberger himself
lived to see his mission at Goshen
reduced and demoralized.
The internal reasons for the Moravians'
problems are perhaps treated too charitably.
Much of the Moravian program, as embraced
in their statutes (pp. 125, 246-47), ran
counter to traditional Delaware culture,
including the powers accorded the missionary
leaders, the advocacy of monotheism and
monogamy, and their proscription of "hea-
then festivals." The inability of
the White River Moravians to compromise on such
issues doomed them to failure long
before a resurgence of Delaware nativism drove
them out. Zeisberger himself was more
tactful and successful, and life at Goshen mir-
rored aboriginal practices in many ways.
The case studies of individual converts, such
as Thomas White Eyes, demonstrate that
Indians managed to live there while yet sub-
scribing to ideas and customs condemned
by the missionaries. But as even Zeisberger
learned to his cost, when he refused to
permit the burial of a suicide in Goshen, intran-
sigence did not always enhance the
Moravians' ambitions.
A deeper evaluation of the Moravian
impact upon the Delaware might also have
considered the relationship between the
missionaries and those native prophets who
reasserted supposed traditional culture
or attacked white influences. Some of these
movements, ignored in this book but
currently interesting historians, originated among
the Delaware, and suggest connections
with Moravians. Native prophets, such as
Papunhank, eventually found a home in
Christianity; others borrowed ideas from white
preachers; and some gained impetus from
reactions against the Moravians. The hostili-
ty which drove the Moravians from the
White River in 1806 was originally stimulated
not by the Shawnee Prophet, as Olmstead
says, but by the Delaware prophetess, Beata,
who had been baptized as a child at
Zeisberger's mission of Friedenshutten.
Book Reviews 59
These omissions apart, Olmstead has
provided an honest, reliable and valuable book
on an important figure of frontier Ohio,
and there is much incidental material of inter-
est, including careful and precise
details of the Goshen community presented in appen-
dices, and a chapter on mission life
that will repay the attention of scholars of Delaware
culture. It deserves a place in all
serious collections dealing with the missionary effort
in North America, the Delaware, and
Indian-white relations in the Old Northwest.
Hereward College
John Sugden
England
The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant. Volume 17; January 1-September 30, 1867. Edited
by
John Y. Simon. (Carbondale: Southern
Illinois University Press, 1991. xxiii + 661p.;
illustrations, editorial procedure,
chronology, calendar, index. $50.00.)
The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant. Volume 18: October 1, 1867-June 30, 1868. Edited
by
John Y. Simon. (Carbondale: Southern
Illinois University Press, 1991. xxiv + 651p.;
illustrations, editorial procedure,
chronology, calendar, index. $50.00.)
These volumes cover only eighteen months
but encompass many events that were
important for both Grant and the nation.
Especially significant were the controversial
issues associated with Reconstruction,
including the Reconstruction Acts, the
imbroglio over Secretary of War Edwin M.
Stanton created by the Tenure of Office
Act, and the impeachment and trial of
President Andrew Johnson. Although he loathed
politics, these problems snared Grant in
the political process, first in implementing the
Reconstruction Acts, then as Secretary
of War ad interim for five months (when he
also continued serving as the Army's
commanding general), and finally as the
Republican Party's presidential nominee.
In mid-January 1867 Grant wrote to
Lieutenant General William T. Sherman that "I
wish our political troubles were settled
on any basis" (Vol. 17, p. 14). However, he
really did not want a political
settlement on any basis. As implemented under Johnson,
Reconstruction afforded too little
protection to the freedmen, Southern Unionists, and
Union soldiers in the South. Widespread
violence against them made Grant "feel the
same obligation to stand at my post that
I did whilst there were rebel armies in the field
to contend with" (Vol. 17, p. 98).
The prospect of having an Appomattox in reverse
was intolerable.
As Congress struggled with Johnson for
control of Reconstruction, Grant became
wedged between the legislative and
executive branches in their bitter dispute. He
increasingly sided with Congress and his
relationship with Johnson became acrimo-
nious. After Grant's unexpected
resignation as Secretary of War ad interim, which per-
mitted Stanton to regain the secretary's
office, the president accused him of
insubordination, a charge Grant rebutted
with an astonishingly blunt letter to the com-
mander-in-chief. Such nasty political
turmoil made Grant "exceedingly anxious to see
reconstruction effected and Military
rule put to an end" (Vol. 17, p. 354), and impelled
him to become a presidential candidate
against his personal inclinations. As he
explained to Sherman, "I could not
back down without, as it seems to me, leaving the
contest for power for the next four
years between mere trading politicians, the elevation
of whom, no matter which party won,
would lose to us, largely, the results of the costly
war which we have gone through"
(Vol. 18, p. 292).
Grant also had to deal with difficulties
relating to Indian affairs. One thorny problem
was whether the Bureau of Indian Affairs
should remain in the Interior Department or
60 OHIO
HISTORY
be transferred to the War Department.
Grant believed it belonged in the latter so that it
would cease working at cross purposes to
the Army, such as feeding and equipping
Indians the Army might have to fight.
Even more troubling was whether to wage war
against the Plains Indians to keep the
route to Montana open, or negotiate peace. Grant
chose peace, telling Sherman that
"It is much better to support a Peace commission
than a campaign against Indians"
(Vol. 18, p. 257-58).
Many letters concern the Saint Louis
County acreage Grant owned. He pined to visit
the farm but duty kept him tied to
Washington. The consistency with which Grant put
the welfare of the Army and the country
ahead of personal pleasure is truly admirable.
Readers will experience a vicarious
pleasure when, as Volume 18 ends, Grant finally
leaves for St. Louis, a happy prelude to
the stressful presidential years that lay ahead.
As is standard in this series, these
volumes represent the editorial craft at its best.
Professor Simon continues to merit high
praise for his magnificent work.
University of Nebraska-Lincoln Peter Maslowski
The Cause That Failed: Communism in
American Political Life. By Guenter
Lewy.
(New York: Oxford University Press,
1990. 359p.; notes, appendix, index. $24.95.)
"A spectre is haunting Europe-the
spectre of the demise of Communism," writes
Guenter Lewy, paraphrasing Karl Marx's Communist
Manifesto in his introduction to
The Cause That Failed (title borrowed from Richard Crossman's The God That
Failed
), his lively account of the rise and
fall of Communism in America. Descriptions of
Communism's demise, in America but
especially in Europe, will likely become a sepa-
rate growth industry, and Lewy's book
will be a meritorious addition to the genre.
The Cause That Failed has a number of themes, but perhaps the two major ones
are
(1) that American Communists, or at
least those in leadership positions, slavishly fol-
lowed orders from Moscow, and (2) that
Soviet Communism, with all its pseudoscien-
tific trappings, always appealed
especially to American intellectuals; these
intellectuals, usually of some liberal
or left-wing persuasion, spent years using double
standards in favorably comparing the
Soviet system with the American system.
In stating that American Communists
answered directly to Moscow, Lewy follows
the lead of a number of scholars, such
as Sidney Hook, Theodore Draper, and Harvey
Klehr, who have maintained, against some
professorial opposition, that the American
Communist party never operated even
semi-independently. In Draper's words, "the
Comintern [read Moscow] could not be
challenged; it was the repository of the infalli-
ble doctrine and the supreme court of
political orthodoxy" (p. 7). An unidentified wit
put it more succinctly: "the
Communist party, like the Brooklyn Bridge, was suspended
on cables-from Moscow" (p. 6). It
was this servility to its masters in Moscow that, in
the eyes of many Americans, robbed
America's Communist party of its legitimacy.
Many American intellectuals, as well as
their European counterparts, were early
attracted to the Soviet experiment in
social and economic engineering, but especially
during the 1930s (the "Red
Decade," in Eugene Lyons' words) when the Soviet Union
was seen as a country successfully
coping with a depression that was strangling the
United States economy and as the world's
main bulwark against fascism. American
Book Reviews 61
intellectuals showed their approval of
the Soviet Union and their dissatisfaction with
American capitalism in the election of
1932 when some fifty-three of them signed a
statement, published in several major
newspapers, endorsing the Communist candi-
dates, William Z. Foster and James W.
Ford, for President and Vice President. The
signers included the following
luminaries: Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos, Waldo
Frank, Erskine Caldwell, Newton Arvin,
Edmund Wilson, Malcolm Cowley, Granville
Hicks, and Sidney Hook. Hook, soon to be
a sharp critic of Communism, explained his
support of the Communist ticket as
"an expression of protest, hope, and faith nurtured
by naivete, ignorance and illusion"
(p. 42).
Then, later in the decade, in 1937-38,
some intellectuals (Lenin would have called
them "useful idiots")
embarrassed themselves further when they decided that Joe
Stalin's Great Purge show trials were
legitimate. In this case, the decision called atten-
tion to a split among American liberals.
In 1937, those who thought the trials bogus
established a Commission of Inquiry,
chaired by John Dewey, to investigate whether
the wild charges made against the exiled
Leon Trotsky were true. The Commission,
which exonerated Trotsky, was attacked
by eighty-eight prominent intellectuals who
accused it of defaming the Soviet Union:
intellectuals such as Newton Arvin, Theodore
Dreiser, Lillian Hellman (did she
really, upon hearing of Hitler's attack of the Soviet
Union in 1941, charge into a roomful of
friends, shouting that the Motherland had been
invaded), Granville Hicks, Henry Roth,
Louis Fisher, and Max Lerner. Afterward, in
1938, 150 American intellectuals made
matters worse by signing a statement published
in the Daily Worker affirming
that the guilty verdicts in the notorious Bukharin trial
were correct; signers in this instance
included Dorothy Parker, Jerome Davis, George
Seldes, Irving Shaw, Lillian Hellman,
and Malcolm Cowley. In fairness, most of these
people later recanted, sobered by the
Soviet Union's 1939 pact with Hitler's Germany.
After Pearl Harbor and America's entry
into World War II on the side of the Soviet
Union, American Communists took on new
prestige as they now became American
patriots as well as defenders of the
Soviet Union. As for the Soviet Union itself, it still
had its faults, of course, but under
Stalin's leadership was evolving steadily toward
democracy. And the great Soviet stands
at Moscow and Stalingrad made the Soviets
even more admirable in the eyes of most
Americans. It was a love affair that would last
only as long as Hitler's Germany posed a
common threat; as the Nazi threat deteriorat-
ed, so did American-Soviet amity. With
the deterioration, following a postwar pause,
came the Cold War and the beginning of
the end of the American Communist party as
an organization of some influence.
By the late 1940s anticommunism here was
in full swing, as a number of Soviet suc-
cesses in Europe and elsewhere led to a
full-fledged Communist scare in the United
States. Ironically, the fear of
Communism, especially the homegrown type, came as the
ranks of the CPUSA were already being
decimated by Truman's loyalty program and
various federal, state, and local
investigative committees. (Included here were a num-
ber of headline-hunting hearings held by
the House Committee on Un-American
Activities. Lewy is critical of many of
HUAC's antics, just as he is critical of Senator
Joe McCarthy's tactics.) Part of the
anticommunist boom reflected a rift within liberal
ranks that featured some of the most
rancorous political and intellectual infighting ever.
On one side were those liberals, such as
Sidney Hook (himself an ex-Marxist) and
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., who saw
Communism as an unalloyed threat to anything
62 OHIO
HISTORY
even faintly democratic, while on the
other were those who, like Henry Wallace pro-
gressives, felt that Communism and
Communists, however undemocratic and odious,
should be dealt with fairly. It was a
bitter fight and, as Lewy notes, one that would con-
tinue for decades.
One of Lewy's more interesting and
provocative chapters is "The Revival of Anti-
anticommunism." Khrushchev's famous
1956 speech calling attention to Stalin's sins,
followed by his brutal crushing of the
Hungarian uprising, was devastating to
America's Communist party members who
had always looked to the Soviet Union for
socialist guidance. Already hit hard by
recent attacks, Communist membership
declined even further, resulting in a
declining fear here of Communism; it was this
reduced fear which led to what Lewy, and
others, call anti-anticommunism-that feel-
ing that any attack on Communists was
mindless red-baiting. Partly a reaction to
McCarthyism, anti-anticommunism was an
indirect defense of Communism by people
so obsessed with McCarthy-like
demagoguery that they forgot what Communism real-
ly was. Lewy takes to task people such
as James W. Fulbright, Martin Luther King, Jr.,
and perhaps the most detested
anti-anticommunist of all, Lillian Hellman; movies The
Front, Seeing Red: Stories of
American Communists, The Romance of American
Communism, and The Killing Fields (which does not even
mention Communist ideol-
ogy), all to some degree apologies for
Stalinism; and books The Great Fear, by David
Cante, and No Ivory Tower:
McCarthyism and the Universities, by Ellen W. Schrecker,
both of which, according to Lewy,
exaggerate the influence of McCarthy and other
rabid anticommunists. Lewy concludes
that anti-anticommunism is pretty much limited
to the intellectual community, as it is
rejected by most of the general population. And
these intellectuals must be really
hard-pressed to maintain their stance now that so
much of the Communist world, including
the Soviet Union itself, has expressed anti-
communist sentiments.
Lewy devotes the latter parts of his
book to attacks on groups which, if not
Communistic in their own right, have
tended to take views sympathetic to those of
Communists. Organizations such as the
American Civil Liberties Union and the
Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy
(both of which Lewy has been a member) stand
guilty of lending their services to
leftist causes, while being critical of capitalist causes;
moreover, fellow travelers have served
on them in positions of responsibility.
(Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, in 1940, before
being expelled from the ACLU's board of
directors because she was a Communist,
denied that the Soviet Union was a totalitarian
state. As evidence she argued that
Stalin's 1937 Soviet constitution explicitly showed
the country to be "a socialist
state of workers and peasants" and that "membership in
this party [Communist] was not
incompatible with defense of the Bill of Rights. The
attempt to oust her from the board was
an instance of red-baiting" [p. 151]). In 1976
the ACLU board rescinded Flynn's
expulsion. Various peace organizations are also
culpable, at times advocating pacifism
for America but not for the Soviet Union. Most
American peace groups have had the
backing of the Soviet Union, from pre-World
War II days up through Vietnam. Other
supporters of Communist causes have been the
SDS, with its infatuation with Vietnam's
National Liberation Front, and the Americans
for Democratic Action which has at times
voiced approval of congressmen with pro-
communist sympathies.
Lewy has written a fine book, one that
should be read by all students of American
political history in general but
especially those interested in the twentieth-century
Book Reviews 63
journey of American Communism and its
many sympathizers. While many of the Left
will quarrel with Lewy's conclusions,
those of the Center and Right will find it satisfy-
ing. The Cause That Failed is a
welcome addition to the growing number of histories
about those who fell prey to Communism,
and would be especially valuable if read in
conjunction with such works as The
Fellow-Travellers by David Caute, Political
Pilgrims by Paul Hollander, and A Better World by William
L. O'Neill. Additionally, it
sells for only $24.95, cheap by present
standards.
Ohio Historical Society Robert L.
Daugherty
The Town That Started the Civil War. By Nat Brandt. (Syracuse: Syracuse University
Press, 1990. xix + 315p.; illustrations,
notes, bibliography, index. $29.95.)
I would be more willing to overlook the
considerable exaggeration of Brandt's title
than I am to acknowledge the wisdom of
the none-too-convincing defense of it that
prefaces his book. By beginning with an
aside, he sacrifices the fast start aspired to by
writers for a general readership. This,
despite its scholarly imprint, is a book for non-
specialists, and a rousing good read
once the author hits his stride.
In the decade before the Civil War, the
detestation of slavery was a fire in Oberlin's
civic belly. When, in September 1858,
men from that Lorain County village and from
nearby Wellington rescued a runaway
named John Price from the custody of slave
catchers, the flame spread. The
Oberlin-Wellington Rescue did not start the war, but it
served to harden and politicize
opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Thirty-
seven of the Rescuers were indicted by a
federal grand jury. In his narrative of these
and subsequent events, Brandt has
crafted a vivid portrayal of individual conscience at
odds with societal and political
expedience.
Connoisseurs of the courtroom dramas
that are a staple of contemporary fiction and
nonfiction alike will not be
disappointed with the interplay of Brandt's heroes and vil-
lains. Impassioned eloquence, implacable
integrity, greed, political chicanery, and fas-
cinating legal maneuvers are strong
stuff, and this writer has the skill to make the most
of them. He does not overlook, for
example, the fine irony in a defendant's admonition
that his friends must look after his
Sunday School while he is in jail. Brandt does not
achieve, however, the sort of detachment
that would win plaudits from professional
historians.
In fairness, more scholarly writers
would be equally dependent upon not-always-reli-
able sources. Detailed information about
the Rescue and its aftermath is largely limited
to recollections of the participants and
to hardly objective contemporaneous newspaper
accounts. But Brandt is a story-teller,
not an analyst, a fact made clear by his willing-
ness to repeat questionable assertions
rather than to test them. One reads, as an
instance, on p. 125 that "the
reason for the indictments was all too clear: They were
Republicans, they were abolitionists,
they were anti-administration." The observation,
which specifically refers to the
offenders from Oberlin, may have validity of a sort, but
would seem to require a documentation
more trustworthy than that which the author
64 OHIO
HISTORY
provides; that is, a newspaper gotten up
by the Oberlinites themselves, and published
from their cells in the Cuyahoga County
jail.
Irritating minor errors occasionally
appear. One is surprised to read (p.29) that Erie
Indians threatened settlers in the
Western Reserve until the War of 1812; to find it
implied (p. 47) that Ohio's Republican
Party was formed shortly after the election of
1848; and to be told (p.44)
that, in the fall of 1858, Oberlin College graduates were
serving as missionaries "in what
would later be Minnesota."
None of this, I suggest, means that this
is a work poorly done. It might, indeed, be
read with profit by undergraduates, who
will find in it a powerful exposition of politi-
cal and civic virtue as the lively
imperatives of an American era more hopeful if not
more perfect than their own.
Ohio Historical Society James K.
Richards
The Presidency of Franklin Pierce. By Larry Gara. (Lawrence, Kansas: University
Press of Kansas, 1991. xiv + 218p.;
notes, bibliographical essay, index. $25.00.)
In his conclusion, Professor Gara
repeats Thomas A. Bailey's comment that Pierce's
administration was "less than a
success, not wholly a failure." Exactly so.
His very nomination reflected the flaws
of the political system in the 1850s. Unable
to nominate a leading contender, the
quarrelsome factions of the 1852 Convention
compromised on the handsome and
personable Pierce. Once the choice was made, the
Democratic machine executed its drill,
placing another loyalist in the White House. But
from there matters went swiftly
downhill.
To some extents the disaster was not
entirely Pierce's fault. A party system in col-
lapse; increasingly hostile sections;
confusion regarding the federal-state relationship:
it would have taken a genius to cope
with these strains. And Pierce was not that, Gara
affirms. "He was a politician of
limited ability, and instead of growing in his job he
was overwhelmed by it." Even his
personal life undercut his resolve. The protracted ill-
ness of his wife, and the tragic death
of their youngest son, combined to leave Pierce
without a solid mooring, often
distracted.
The Cabinet he assembled was loyal, but
merely adequate. Pierce usually did little
more than preside over it. William
Marcy, Caleb Cushing and Jefferson Davis were its
true leaders. Typically, the last was a
firm advocate of a transcontinental railroad who
blasted his own hopes not merely by
insisting upon a Southern route, but a particular
one at that. Gara concedes these men
handled their departments honestly, making pos-
sible Pierce's later (sad) defense that
at least his administration suffered no major
scandals!
A coherent program was another matter.
At any rate, real power lay in Congressional
hands, unless a President was both
forceful and vigorous--which, of course, Pierce was
not. (Even the administration's major
legislative accomplishment, the Kansas-Nebraska
bill, was Congressional in concept and
design.) Each faction in Congress pursued its
own cause: homestead laws, hospitals for
the insane, Indian lands. In this cacophony of
interests, few could win acceptance, and
little went as Pierce hoped. Not all was failure.
In foreign affairs Pierce and Marcy
pursued a free trade, anti-monarchical policy,
marking some successes. Yet even the
administration's accomplishments, such as the
Book Reviews 65
Gadsden Purchase or its Central American
pursuits, were undercut by the brashness of
Young America. The fault often lay with
its representatives, most spectacularly the
posting of Pierre Soule to Madrid. But
the disaster of the Ostend Manifesto owed as
much to administration confusion as to
amateur diplomats.
Still, it was the question of slavery in
the territories which brought the administration
down. Lacking a moral perspective on the
matter of slavery (seen only as a matter of
"property"), Pierce did his
best to protect Southern interests. Otherwise the South
would oppose the expansion he desired,
and even the Union itself. Passage of the
Kansas-Nebraska bill reflected rare
administration firmness, as well as Stephen A.
Douglas' political legerdemain. But its
very success destroyed Pierce and the
Democratic majority in Congress.
Doubtless the matter was beyond salvage after that.
Yet Pierce's simplistic and biased handling
of Kansas only made matters worse.
As with many works in the American
Presidency Series, this is a synthesis rather
than a reworking of original sources.
Gara admits his considerable debt to Roy Nichols,
but incorporates many specialized
studies written since the 1930s. Thus he demon-
strates that the Pierce Administration's
"guano diplomacy" was a forerunner of later
19th Century imperialism, though
Nichols' book barely made mention of it. Still, there
is little here of surprise to the
specialist. The accomplishment is Gara's superb com-
mand of the social and political
complexities of the 1850s, and his ability to dispose of
them in a few, broad chapters,
Particularly masterful is his handling of antislavery poli-
tics, and especially its Congressmen.
Despite its insight, Nichols' biography of Pierce
is beginning to show its age; there is
need for a new, detailed assessment of this tragic
administration. Gara would be the last
to claim he has written it. What he has produced
is an excellent sketch of Pierce's term
which deserves to be on every library shelf.
Midwestern State University Everett W.
Kindig
Mormons and the Bible: The Place of
the Latter-day Saints in American Religion. By
Philip L. Barlow. (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1991. xxix + 251p.; illustra-
tions, notes, index. $32.50.)
This study is a volume in the Religion
in America series. It is written for easy read-
ing by Philip L. Barlow, an Assistant
Professor of Theological Studies at Hanover
College and the Associate Editor of the Journal
for Scientific Study of Religion.
The author takes a serious look at the
role of the Bible in the life and beliefs of the
Mormon religion. He makes an excellent
case for his view that the best understanding
of the religious essence of Mormonism
will come when we seek to understand the
Bible's place among Latter-day Saintism, rather than looking for it in
the many other
aspects of church behavior which have
been the subject of study for so many years.
While one might have expected Barlow to
concentrate on some particular aspect, or
perhaps a generation, of biblical usage,
he has chosen rather to "cut a narrow swath
through the whole of Mormon history, . .
. (therefore) to explore the use made of the
Bible by a series of key individuals..
" (xiii). These leaders include B.H. Roberts,
66 OHIO
HISTORY
Joseph Fielding Smith, William H.
Chamberlin, J. Reubin Clark, Bruce R. McConkie,
and Lowell L. Bennion.
Affirming that Joseph Smith, Jr., shared
with his era a strong literal, as well as a his-
torical and inspirational, view of the
Bible, Professor Barlow proceeds to introduce us
to the degree to which Smith provided
additional scripture-as well as building a reli-
gious organization-around restored
biblical methods, the most significantly of which
appears to be the prophetic process (p.
11).
The book stresses the influence of the
Bible on Joseph's thinking and writing,
54,000 words and phrases parallel the Book
of Mormon and the King James Version
(p. 27), as well as the influence of
Mormon leaders through the more than a century
and a half of growth.
I would have appreciated more
consideration of the impact and relationship between
the biblical roots of the movement, and
the Inspired Version which is, for the RLDS at
least, considered Joseph Smith, Jr.'s,
interpretation of the Bible. But that is left for
another work.
In Chapter Five Barlow deals with the
significance of the King James Version,
focusing on the fact that this version,
more than most, is supportive and loyal to the
divine essence of the Jesus Christ. The
impact of this upon the Mormon community,
especially in the growing affirmation of
the their primary Christian nature (p. 181),
becomes more and more evident in his
discussions.
The bottom line, I believe, is that
Mormonism of the Latter-day Saint variety (he
barely acknowledges any other variety)
is composed of Bible-believing Christians,
though he does accept the fact that they
are somewhat different in this identification.
The extent of this difference, as well
as the changing relationship between the Bible
and the influential thinkers of
Mormonism, is the subject of the well-documented and
warmly written study.
One of the obvious side pleasures of
this work is that Barlow provides a brief, but
very interesting, overview of the role
of the Bible in America.
Barlow takes a moment at the beginning
to provide the reader with a rather interest-
ing analysis of what is usually seen as
the objective approach, claiming for himself a
"soft" objectivity, and
allowing that anyone approaches such a historical view with
built-in prejudices and expectations.
Identifying his own Mormon tradition and his lib-
eral tendencies, he does a good job of
approaching the subject, and its related topics,
with an open, honest, and exemplary
manner.
Temple School Center, World HQ Paul M. Edwards
Menninger: The Family and the Clinic.
By Lawrence J. Friedman. (New York:
Alfred
A. Knopf, 1990. xix + 472p.;
illustrations, notes, bibliographical note, index.
$29.95.)
Menninger: The Family and the Clinic traces the origin and development of one of
the premier psychiatric institutions in
North America. The Menninger Clinic became a
psychiatric hospital at the time when
psychoanalytic psychiatry, the "new psychiatry,"
promised definitive treatment, if not
cure. What began as a medical partnership
between Karl Menninger and his father,
Charles, a homeopathic physician, emerged as
an enterprise that overpowered the
professional aspirations of both the father and
Karl's younger brother, Will, and the
second generation of Menninger sons as well.
Book Reviews 67
The power that drove the enterprise was
a function of family dynamics and the matriar-
chal imperative that the primary
obligation was to the family. This family hegemony,
according to Friedman, combined with the
Menninger interpretation of Freud's psycho-
analytic theories, accounts for the
individual behaviors of the Menninger brothers, Karl
and Will, in the building of the
enterprise and in their private relationships with indi-
viduals.
Friedman analyzes in incisive detail the
dynamics of family and institutional rela-
tionships. Will and Karl believed that
the clinic would function best when both the pro-
fessional and private behavior of their
employees was governed. Personal relationships
between unmarried staff were prohibited,
and the spouses of married staff were not
even permitted to come onto the hospital
grounds. In this regard, however, the
Menningers did not follow their own
standards.
When Will Menninger became Clinical
Director of the hospital in 1930, he attempt-
ed to develop a treatment program that
combined psychoanalytic ego psychology with
the scientific certitude of internal
medicine. He posited that "As medications are pre-
scribed for specific results, . . .
psychiatric therapy could be prescribed for specific
results as well. .. " (p. 65). He
developed a complex program prescribing both therapy
and staff behaviors in administering the
therapy. This program demanded a level of
control of the professional staff that
could be maintained only through the autocratic
leadership that came easily to the
Menninger brothers.
Over the years, the stature of the
institution and the efforts of Karl Menninger
attracted some of the most productive
psychiatric thinkers. Some were strong leaders
who challenged the Menninger brothers'
autocracy in managing their departments and
professional lives. One such leader was
David Rapaport. Although Rapaport was
already on the staff of the State mental
hospital, he was recruited by Karl as a part of
the emigre recruitment program. Rapaport
was a Budapest psychologist trained in psy-
choanalysis and an expert in
psychological testing. Rapaport assembled a group of
research oriented psychologists who soon
made clinical and experimental research a
source of prestige for the institution.
Rapaport established the Menninger School of
Clinical Psychology, which placed the
Menninger Foundation in a position to benefit
substantially from National Institute of
Mental Health and Veterans Administration
grant programs for training clinical
psychologists.
The clinical psychologists, under
Rapaport's leadership, became an important part of
the treatment team at a time when the
role of the psychologist as clinician was being
challenged by the American
Psychoanalytic Association. Friedman notes that
Rapaport s group was "in the
forefront of perhaps the most fundamental transformation
of the psychological profession in
twentieth-century America" (p. 236).
Rapaport was the first to depart
significantly from the Menninger brothers' idea of a
staff associate. Will placed the value
of Rapaport to the institution over his irreverence
for the Menninger hegemony. Conflict was
inevitable between Karl and Rapaport,
because they both claimed the same
rightful position in matters of intellectual territory
and institutional leadership. Rapaport
finally left, taking several key members of his
outstanding department with him.
Gradually, the personal leadership of
the Menningers was attenuated by the
inevitable requirement for bureaucratic
procedure in so large an organization. Will was
more adaptable, but Karl never accepted
the passing of the old way. This state of
68 OHIO
HISTORY
affairs intensified Karl's rivalry with
his brother and his capricious interference in
administrative matters. This led in 1965
to what Friedman characterized as "the palace
revolt." The four major department
heads demanded that the lines of authority be
defined, and that Will be specified as
the immediate superior. When Will Menninger's
oldest son, Roy, was elected
administrator in 1967, the "family spirit" had largely dissi-
pated. And while Friedman concludes that
the Menningers still had substantial influ-
ence over the organization, the need for
jealously guarded family power was no longer
generic to the functioning of
organization.
The Menninger Clinic rose to national prominence
mainly because of missionary
spirit and entrepreneurship rather than
distinctive therapeutic results. Friedman quotes
a Menninger psychiatrist's observation
that "psychiatric poverty" had fostered the
Clinic's initial growth, but other
institutions soon developed therapeutic programs
founded upon psychoanalytic theory, so
the Menninger Clinic was no longer unique.
The Menninger Foundation responded to
this and other challenges by program devel-
opment. The introduction of the
psychotropic drugs in the mid-1950s did not lend itself
to mere expansion of services, but
required an entire reassessment of psychodynamic
psychiatry.
This is a book about the genesis, growth
and development of an institution, and is
thereby a book about people. The only
flaw in the narrative is the inclusion of gossipy
details about the Menninger brothers'
relationships with women that were, in the final
analysis, irrelevant to the history of
the institution. What the book reveals about the
treatment of mental illness is that,
despite the attempt by the Research Department to
assess therapeutic outcome of
psychoanalytic therapy, the results of the research were
equivocal. The growth changes that came
about were not founded upon new scientific
discovery, but upon institutional
self-interest. In that regard, the Menninger Clinic
made its major contributions in the
development of the mental health professions and
the institutional delivery of psyciatric
care.
Saint Leo College, Tidewater Center Janet Colaizzi
Fortress America: The Corps of
Engineers, Hampton Roads, and the United States
Coastal Defense. By David A. Clary. (Charlottesville: University Press
of Virginia,
1990. xiv + 222 p.; notes, bibliography
of primary sources, index. $35.00.)
Military Fortifications: A Selective
Bibliography. Compiled by Dale E.
Floyd. (New
York: Greenwood Press, 1992.
Bibliographies and Indexes in Military Studies,
No. 4. xxii + 360 p.; index. $59.50.)
In the United States today, technology
lies at the heart of debates over national
defense. This has been especially true
since 1983, when President Reagan introduced
the public to the Strategic Defense
Initiative. "Experts," often with diametrically
opposed viewpoints, have come forward
offering testimony on whether the "Star
Wars" concept was technologically
feasible.
As David Clary has clearly demonstrated,
the controversy over national defense is
practically as old as the nation itself.
Using coastal defense as his theme and Hampton
Roads, Virginia, as his case study, he
explores the technical, bureaucratic, and
Book Reviews 69
legislative history of American coastal
fortifications from the 1790s to World War II.
Throughout his story, the
"experts" are the men of the U.S. Army's Corps of
Engineers.
One of the early military threats to
U.S. national security came from the French navy
in the 1790s and resulted in the
completion of what became known as the "First
System" of coastal defense, a
series of earthen star forts that eventually eroded away.
More importantly, it also saw the
authorization of a Corps of Artillerists and Engineers
and the establishment of a military
academy at West Point. According to Clary, once
created, the Corps of Engineers saw
themselves as "the best military brains" and
viewed their mission as creating
scientifically-engineered fortifications. The author
suggests that the Corps' overemphasis on
theory and their dearth of practical battlefield
experiences left them technologically
behind-the-times. Once these men developed the
"Third System of American
Defense" in the 1820s, focusing, under the guidance of
French engineer Simon Bernard, on the
methodical erection of masonry fortifications,
subsequent chief engineers found it
impossible to move beyond simplistic modifica-
tions to this basic program. Clary found
that by the 1880s the engineers were still advo-
cating a coastal defense whose
technological approach was more than sixty years old.
The author paints a picture of
engineers' continued emphasis on a structural defense in
the late nineteenth century, while
others, most notably artillerists, saw a future in high-
tech weaponry. Eventually Congressional
reluctance to appropriate the sufficient funds
for such structures and the Corps'
ongoing inflexibility cost them the primacy in
coastal defense, a position assumed by
the Navy, a Coast Artillery Corps formed in
1907, and the Quartermaster Department.
Even the Corps of Engineers' response to the
needs for coastal defense during World
War II is represented as "decidedly old-fash-
ioned."
Clary's engineer-bashing would seem to
have merit, but too often he falls into the
habit of using only the pronoun
"they" or "the Corps" and fails to give personal quotes
or specifics that would support his
accusations. There are also times when the criticism
would have been strengthened by offering
his own realistic suggestions on what alter-
natives the Corps might have taken, not
offered from hindsight, but with the knowledge
available at the time.
Apart from his polemic, Clary has
provided a valuable and highly readable historical
overview of America's coastal
fortifications. Given Dale Floyd's interest in U.S.
coastal defense (he published the only
bibliography on the subject in 1985), it is sur-
prising that his new bibliography on Military
Fortifications does not include Clary's
volume. The publishing dates of both
volumes would suggest, however, that Clary's
book was not readily available.
What Floyd has provided is the first
general English-language annotated bibliogra-
phy on military fortifications
throughout the world. It is a pleasure to learn of the writ-
ings on African, Asian, Pacific, and
European structures, as well as those in the
Americas, and numerous opportunities for
comparative studies quickly come to mind.
The compiler admits to only limited
knowledge of foreign languages, and the largest
sections, understandably therefore, deal
with North America and the British Isles.
Presumably by labeling the bibliography
"selective," Floyd intended to foil the
inevitable criticisms of omission. He
obviously has meant to be nearly comprehensive
in time period, including material on
prehistoric through World War II fortifications,
but falling short of Vietnam.
Unfortunately, there are some entries for which the anno-
70 OHIO
HISTORY
tation does not make clear the relevant
time period. But I am more disappointed at the
failure to include site-specific
historic archaeological reports that over the years have
done much, particularly in North
America, to increase our knowledge of military forti-
fications.
More fundamentally, I am puzzled by the
publisher's long-standing use of typescript
to reproduce these bibliographies.
Computer software offers many design possibilites
for a manuscript of this type, and it is
hard to imagine that Greenwood Press has not
adopted what in the late-twentieth
century is so widely available. The compiler's lack
of literary polish in many of the
annotations combines with the typescript reproduction
to give the volume an unfinished
quality. This is unfortunate, since the information in
the volume is very useful, but these
matters of outward appearances may lead buyers to
wonder whether it is worth their sizable
investment.
Ohio Historical Society David A.
Simmons
Army of the Manifest Destiny: The
American Soldier in the Mexican War, 1846-1848.
By James M. McCaffrey. (New York: New
York University Press, 1992. xvi +
275p.; illustrations, notes,
bibliography, index. $45.00.)
The United States' war with Mexico from
1846 to 1848 has been called its most
immoral conflict, a war for territorial
aggrandizement, and a war of ideological domi-
nation. The historiography of the
conflict is filled with these and similar themes, major
issues of history. Yet wars are fought
by common soldiers, ordinary men who, amid the
sweat, mud, hilarity, inanity, boredom,
pain, and terror of the campaign, write letters
and journals recording their own
understanding of why and how they fought.
Sometimes innocent of transcendent
themes, but often marked by keen insight, these
forgotten passages can bring new
awareness to readers of future generations. Bell Irvin
Wiley began the study of ordinary
American soldiers with his Civil War histories of
Billy Yank and Johnny Reb, and was
followed by such scholars as Reid Mitchell,
James I. Robertson, Jr., and Gerald F.
Linderman. James M. McCaffrey continues in
this genre with his story of the life and
experiences of ordinary United States soldiers
in the war with Mexico.
McCaffrey teaches history at the
University of Houston-Downtown. Army of the
Manifest Destiny is his second book, following This Band of Heroes:
Granbury's
Texas Brigade, C.S.A. Drawing from an extensive search of primary sources in
domes-
tic archives, he has produced a
well-crafted and eminently readable collection of the
soldiers' own tales and yarns tied
together by a chronological sketch of the war.
McCaffrey portrays the volunteers in
this war as idealistic young men caught up in
patriotic fervor generated by ardent
politicians and a partisan press, as youths with
visions of glory, with perhaps a sense
of republican virtue, who were smitten by the
romance of foreign adventure and
dedicated to avenging their brethren who had died
for Texas independence. The short and
successful campaign meant that the United
States did not resort to military
conscription as it had in the Revolution and in the War
of 1812, and that the tension between
drafted men and other soldiers so prominent a
decade and a half later during the Civil
War was absent from the army in Mexico. But
the Mexican War was fought by a larger
proportion of U.S. regular soldiers than
Book Reviews 71
perhaps any other until the Gulf War,
and McCaffrey documents the rivalry between
them and the volunteers. Regular
enlisted men were, on average, from more humble
origins than volunteers, were more
likely to be foreign-born, and were led by more
authoritarian officers. But these are
matters of degree, and McCaffrey points out that,
by and large, the two types of soldiers
shared a common viewpoint on most matters.
Quick victories in all major battles, a
short campaign, and the replacement of volunteer
regiments by regulars as the volunteers'
enlistments expired, served to keep intra-ser-
vice tensions from sapping the morale of
the expeditionary force.
McCaffrey also describes the cockiness
of the troops that began at the recruiting
muster and continued throughout the
conflict. Patriotism and a sense of national superi-
ority coupled with battlefield success
left the American soldier generally contemptuous
of his opponent. Racism and
ethnocentrism colored not only the American's view of
the Mexican soldier, but of the Mexican
people as well. Soldiers stole from and swin-
dled civilians, and generally caroused
when they could. Some, whether from military
discipline or self-discipline, behaved
civilly, even courteously. McCaffrey acknowl-
edges that others, particularly the
Texans, committed atrocities that were a black mark
on the American army in Mexico, though
he concludes that the overall behavior was
"no worse than average in
comparison to other nineteenth-century armies" (p. 210).
The reader seeking a discussion of the
political, diplomatic, and even most military
issues of the Mexican war should look
elsewhere. Domestic politics, the desire to cre-
ate new slave states, the concept of
Manifest Destiny, California and the Pacific ports,
British meddling, even the effectiveness
of the American logistics tail, artillery, and
generalship are ignored or given scant
mention. The reader is offered little insight on
Mexican war aims, on the paralyzing
effect of Mexican domestic travails, or on the
Mexican soldier. In a book of only 210
pages, the author might have favored his reader
with a bit more bone on which to hang
the flesh of his account. The editors are to be
questioned for their choice of
featureless cartoons in place of maps and, as the only
other illustrations, four stark
photographs of muskets that relate only tangentially to the
book's theme.
But these minor matters do not detract
from a successful study. McCaffrey has given
us a lively and informative account of
the life of the ordinary soldier in this distant con-
flict. In doing so he has identified
many common threads in the outlook and experience
of American soldiers in all wars.
The Ohio State University Thomas C.
Mulligan
In Joy and In Sorrow: Women, Family,
and Marriage in the Victorian South. Edited
by
Carol Bleser. (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1991. xxviii + 330p.; illustra-
tions, notes, appendix, index. $24.95.)
Those who wish to understand the texture
of family life in the nineteenth-century
South confront a daunting task, for the
essential and obvious themes of race, class,
region and gender are so tightly
interwoven that analytical unraveling often destroys
the relationships among them that
constitute the pattern of the fabric. Attempts to trace
through narrative the outline of a
biography or a family's history-at least in the space
of an essay-tend to focus on one theme
at the expense of the others. The fact that
72 OHIO
HISTORY
slavery and the Civil War throw
inexorable but irregular shadows over Southern family
life makes the work even harder. However
difficult to accomplish, the project is neces-
sary to attempt, for how we regard
Southern family life influences our reading of the
history of the South as well as the
histories of race, class and gender relations in
America.
The essays in this collection, which
were first presented--at a focused conference held
at Clemson University in 1989, bring to
their task a variety of tools. Through biogra-
phy (individual, family and collective),
legal history, intellectual history, synthesis, and
textual analysis, the contributors probe
both the ideal and the reality of family life
among groups located in various niches
of Southern social structure.
Although-quite understandably-no single
contribution is successful in integrating
all the themes that run through the
topic, the volume as a whole accomplishes much in
illuminating both the conditions faced
by Southern families and the tactics they adopt-
ed to deal with them. Peter Bardaglio's
essay explores the contradictory forces behind
Southern appellate decisions in incest
cases: the need to defend the patriarch's position
versus the need to safeguard vulnerable
family members from the patriarch's sexual
abuse. When the force of patriarchy
prevailed (as it often did), the courts provided no
protection for girls. In examining
Virginia slave families and postbellum black and
white sharecropping families,
respectively, Brenda Stevenson and Jacqueline Jones
delineate the crushing impact of planter
exploitation and oppression. Some patriarchs
were psychologically devastated by the
Civil War-at least in comparison to their
wives-as Virginia Burr and the team of
Carol Bleser and Frederick Heath demon-
strate in the cases of separate planter
families. For others, the war was a shaping but not
destructive influence, as Sarah Woolfolk
Wiggins shows in her sensitive pioneering
exploration of father-son relations in
the Gorgas family. Many readers will find three
essays particularly provocative:
Catherine Clinton uses evidence of sexual exploitation
to argue that "Southern
dishonor" should replace "honor" as an analytical tool for
understanding the planter class, an
argument consistent with the findings of other
essays in this volume; James Roark and
Michael Johnson re-analyze Carter Woodson's
data to buttress their claim for a
higher incidence of slaveholding among free blacks
than Woodson was willing to accept; and
Bertram Wyatt-Brown compares the themes
of three nineteenth-century women
writers of the Percy family with those employed by
their twentieth-century male kin to
suggest the lingering power of a family history of
"dependency and
self-dissolution."
The volume's success is limited in two
ways: the planter class and the institutions it
created receive the bulk of the
contributors' attention; and, although most of the essay-
ists seem to regard the South as
distinct in the behaviors under examination, the collec-
tion (with the exception of Eugene
Genovese's portrait of family ideology) contains no
sustained comparison with ideal or
actual family life in the North or elsewhere.
Nevertheless, some threads in the
complex and obscure patterns of Southern family life
can now be traced with less difficulty
than before this book's publication. It deserves a
wide audience.
Huron College Jack S. Blocker Jr.
University of Western Ontario
Book Reviews 73
From the Ward to the White House: The
Irish in American Politics. By George
Reedy.
(New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1991.
212p.; illustrations, appendix, bibliogra-
phy, index. $22.95.)
Americans today are in the middle of a
reassessment of the fellow citizens they elect
to office and the institutions of those
offices. The pervasive feeling is that something
has gone wrong. Our politicians, who
used to be us, upon their election join a self-
perpetuating, isolated, and
dollar-dominated elite. They change from us to them. These
elected officials have all become bums,
susceptible to moral degradation, re-electionitis,
and spiritual decay, while at the same
time serving in institutions not giving the country
what it needs, policy solutions at the
local, state, and national levels. Right now, politi-
cians seem eminently expendable.
Mr. Reedy, LBJ's former press secretary,
has, in From the Ward to the White House,
written a very short political history
of the United States, focusing on the rise and
decline of the Irish as an influence in
American political life. In doing this, he reminds
us that there was a time when
politicians did matter and that politics could be used to
alleviate economic or social ills.
Politicians and politics were not expendable. Of
course, Mr. Reedy is looking at only one
part of the complex picture of American poli-
tics and political history, but his
charm of delivery keeps the pages turning even though
his narrow viewpoint is evident from the
beginning.
The Irish approach to American political
history in From the Ward to the White
House is neither a specialized monograph nor narrative
history. It is a series of short
essays arranged chronologically, from
the political history of Ireland to the on-going
savings and loan crisis. While the
essays range widely over subjects as diverse as the
origins of politics in Ireland to
personal anecdotes of growing up in Chicago, Mr.
Reedy does attempt to keep a focus on
the role of the Irish political boss. It is in these
discussions that he revisits the
subjects of politics as a profession of upward mobility (a
broad conception) and politicians as
agents of social and economic alleviation.
Eventually, politics ceased to the be
the only vehicle for Irish upward mobility as the
passing generations made it possible for
identities to change from being Irish in
America to being an American of Irish
descent. Immediately, as the New Deal brought
issues of jobs, welfare, and economics
to the federal level for solution, the bosses lost
their clout as agents of alleviation.
Mr. Reedy's style is down to earth and
folksy. He has peppered his essays with per-
sonal observations. The result is an
enjoyable, if quirky, look at American politics, a
thing now so loathsome in American life.
Cleveland State University Michael V.
Wells
A Question of Character: A Life of
John F. Kennedy. By Thomas C. Reeves.
(New
York: The Free Press, 1991. xv + 510p.;
illustrations, notes, index. $24.95.)
Promises Kept: John F. Kennedy's New
Frontier. By Irving Bernstein. (New
York:
Oxford University Press, 1991. ix +
342p.; illustrations, notes, index. $24.95.)
74 OHIO
HISTORY
The debate over the character of John
Fitzgerald Kennedy and the nature of his pres-
idency continues apace. Thomas Reeves
and Irving Bernstein now have joined the fray
with substantial books which differ
markedly in both approach and interpretation.
Reeves's biography devotes as much
attention to Kennedy's pre-presidential years as
to his presidency and focuses on
Kennedy's private life and its intersection with public
policy. Bernstein concentrates his
attention on the domestic policies pursued during
Kennedy's thousand days in office and
virtually ignores the private sphere. He is not
interested in determining who JFK was
but rather in assessing the achievements of the
Kennedy administration in the domestic
policy domain.
The Reeves and Bernstein books do have
one feature in common. Each is designed
to combat a particular school of
interpretation regarding the Kennedy presidency.
Reeves battles vigorously to combat the
favorable portrait of Kennedy initially painted
by the so-called "Camelot
School"--led by such "court historians" and Kennedy aides
as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., James
MacGregor Burns and Theodore Sorensen. Bernstein
explicitly seeks to disprove the
argument of the subsequent Kennedy revisionists---rep-
resented by such works as Henry
Fairlie's The Kennedy Promise: The Politics of
Expectation and Bruce Miroff's Pragmatic Illusions--that JFK's
words simply were
not matched by deeds. Rather ironically,
given their conflicting interpretations, both
Reeves and Bernstein succeed to some
extent.
Reeves, an accomplished historian with
biographies of Chester Arthur and Joseph
McCarthy to his credit, aims to get at
the truth behind the Kennedy image and myths.
He attempts to elucidate the real John
Kennedy and to explicate the implications of
Kennedy's character on his presidential
conduct. In the early chapters he explores
Kennedy's family background, his
education and career prior to the presidency. This
investigation allows him to reveal
convincingly the substantial disjuncture between the
Kennedy image and reality. He
demonstrates with apparent relish the manipulation and
money which manufactured JFK's
ill-deserved reputations as "the hero, the intellectu-
al, visionary leader, [and] family
man" (p. 414).
A constant theme in the Reeves account
is the manipulative skill of Joseph Kennedy
and the domineering influence which he
exercised over his son's career. The elder
Kennedy's plots and payments on his
son's behalf are all duly noted, but Reeves sug-
gests that the Kennedy patriarch
influenced his son most significantly by passing on to
him his moral code or, as Reeves would
have it, the lack of one. In a damning but per-
suasive criticism Reeves asserts that
JFK's "sense of right and wrong had been largely
shaped by his father and was grounded
primarily in a power- and pleasure-seeking
ethic" (p. 245). Reeves conclusion,
which is similar to that offered by Garry Wills in
his The Kennedy Imprisonment, emerges
after extensive details are supplied of
Kennedy's rather sleazy and exploitative
sexual affairs and his lack of any clear pur-
pose and convictions in his
pre-presidential political career. JFK, whose compulsive
womanizing continued throughout his
presidency, is presented as a man without a
"moral center" who lacked
"a reference point beyond self-aggrandizement" (p. 415).
Reeves draws heavily on the work of
historians like Herbert Parmet, Doris Kearns-
Goodwin and Richard Whalen in framing
his account. More surprisingly, he also relies
rather heavily on expose/gossip-type
works by the likes of Judith Exner, Kitty Kelley,
Letitia Baldridge and Traphes Bryant,
although he appears to have utilized such works
Book Reviews 75
with care and discrimination. Except for
some oral history interviews, Reeves' account
draws little from the source of the
Kennedy Presidential Library and he complains at
times at the lack of access to certain
Kennedy family papers.
While Reeves' account is heavily
dependent on the work of others, he nonetheless
clarifies some important aspects of the
Kennedy story. He explores the issue of JFK's
constant battle with Addison's disease
and the cover-up regarding his health. He con-
firms both the essential role of
Theodore Sorensen in Kennedy's rise of power and the
key advisory role played by Robert
Kennedy across a broad range of issues during the
Kennedy presidency. The technical
accomplishment of the 1960 presidential campaign
is duly acknowledged, and the campaign's
capacity not only to counter the "religious
issue" but also to exploit it is
nicely explained.
Reeves's treatment of the Kennedy
presidency, however, is disappointing. Those
familiar with Parmet's J.F.K.: The
Presidency of John F. Kennedy or specific works by
Carl Brauer on Civil Rights, Trumbull
Higgins on the Bay of Pigs, and Raymond
Garthoff on the Cuban Missle Crisis will
find little here regarding policy formulation
and implementation with which they are
not familiar. Reeves hurriedly and at times
superficially assesses Kennedy's
performance in both foreign and domestic affairs and
finds him wanting in both areas. Kennedy
is portrayed as a president lacking a coherent
domestic agenda and unwilling to take
the lead on civil rights. In foreign policy
Reeves's JFK, intent on avoiding the
appearance of being "soft," engaged in virulently
anti-communist rhetoric and authorized a
major military buildup as well as permitting
the Bay of Pigs fiasco and deepening the
American commitment in Vietnam. But
Reeves is forced to praise Kennedy's
"leadership and conduct" during the Cuban
Missile Crisis. Furthermore, in a
concession that weakens his major thesis, Reeves
admits that, at least by the end of
1962, there was "more to [JFK's] character . . . than
the pursuit of power and pleasure"
(p. 392). Kennedy now revealed moral purpose and
growing maturity, particularly through
his concern to reduce the dangers of nuclear
war--a concern concretely manifested in
the Limited Test Ban Treaty.
The difficulty for Reeves is that his
picture of Kennedy's growth in office undercuts
his argument that Kennedy's undoubted
character flaws severely damaged his presi-
dential performance. Perhaps there is a
case to make on this score but Reeves does not
make it effectively. He desperately
wants to prove that Kennedy's personal limitations
and vulnerabilities ruined his
presidency but, aside from some mentions about JFK's
lack of moral qualms in authorizing
assassination attempts and the fear of blackmail
from J. Edgar Hoover inhibiting his
commitment to Civil Rights, little substantiation is
offered.
Irving Bernstein is determined to
substantiate his case that Kennedy was "a very suc-
cessful President" (p. 7), at least
in terms of domestic policy. Bernstein portrays JFK
"emerging as a President of great
stature when a mindless assassin in Dallas cut his life
short" (p. 298). A renowned labor
historian, Bernstein has written an earnest book but
one which is benign to the point of
being uncritical in its evaluation of the Kennedy
presidency. He readily provides excuses
for the meager Kennedy legislative achieve-
ments-his need to "grow into his
job" (p. 298), powerful congressional opposition
from the conservative coalition of
Republicans and southern Democrats, and an uncer-
tain political mood in the country
foremost among them. But Bernstein asserts that JFK
would have obtained all his major
proposals-civil rights, tax reduction, aid to
76 OHIO
HISTORY
education, and Medicare-had he lived.
The Kennedy promises, in short, were well on
their way to being kept. Such an
assertion tends to ignore the legislative skill Lyndon
Johnson demonstrated in actually
obtaining these measures, and ultimately it cannot be
proved.
Nonetheless, Bernstein's book is
valuable. While his overall interpretation is uncon-
vincing, his detailed investigations
reveal much about specific policy developments in
the Kennedy administration. He has mined
the archival sources at the Kennedy Library
more effectively than has Reeves,
although his practice of consolidating his notes does
not make his sources easily accessible.
Across a range of issues Bernstein provides
helpful descriptions of the political
context in which Kennedy had to operate, the sig-
nificant players within the bureaucracy
and the Congress, and the role of major pres-
sure groups. He reveals a feel for the
trials and tribulations of the policy-making
process which is missing from Reeves's
more judgmental study. His account of the for-
mulation of the Kennedy economic policy
under the influence of the Keynesians led by
Walter Heller and James Tobin is well
done, as is his review of the debates involved in
framing policies in the education and
health-care areas. These are important subjects to
which Reeves pays minimal attention.
In the crucial area of civil rights the
differing interpretations of Reeves and Bernstein
are well displayed. Both acknowledge the
limited achievements of Kennedy in this area
as of late 1963 but, whereas Reeves
attributes this to failures of moral leadership and
political will, Bernstein argues that it
resulted mainly from a deliberate and justifiable
tactical decision to pursue executive
actions first and only then legislation. Surely there
is some truth in each case.
In vivid contrast to Reeves, Bernstein
steers well clear of John Kennedy's private
life. In his analysis it was apparently
irrelevant to his actions as president. Except for a
brief examination of the establishment
and operation of the Peace Corps, Bernstein
gives little attention to foreign
policy. This is understandable in a book devoted to
domestic policies, but perhaps it should
be accounted for prior to pronouncing the
Kennedy presidency successful or
otherwise. Also Bernstein fails to provide a sense of
the relative importance which JFK
accorded to domestic and foreign affairs.
Unfortunately, neither Reeves nor
Bernstein includes a bibliography in his book.
Reeves work is marred by annoying
typographical errors, such as on page 372 where
Great Britain is described as a Cuban
ally! Finally, this also can be said with certainty
of both books-they are not the last word
on John Kennedy or his presidency.
University of Notre Dame Wilson D. Miscamble,
C.S.C.