Book Reviews
The Rise of the National Guard: The
Evolution of the American Militia, 1865-
1920. By Jerry Cooper. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1997. xviii +
246 pages; illustrations, notes,
appendices, selected bibliography, index.
$45.00.)
First line of defense or
strikebreakers-politicians or professionals-social
butterflies or warriors. In this
well-written and documented book, Jerry Cooper
traces the statutory history of the
National Guard as it evolves from the volunteer
soldiery to the quasi-professional
reserve force it is at the present.
The militia system came to the New World
with English settlers and was insti-
tuted along lines well established in
the mother country. The militia system was
particularly beneficial on the frontier
where both the population and financial re-
sources were inadequate to support all
but the most minimal numbers of full-time
soldiers. The concept of volunteering
became well established since most mili-
tary campaigns were to defend one's own
home and lasted only weeks or days.
Beginning with the American Revolution,
the need for troops who would commit
to longer periods of enlistment brought
militiamen into conflict with profes-
sional soldiers who found it hard to
fight, let alone win, wars with short-term,
poorly trained soldiers. Though better
Federal control of the militia was desired,
the Militia Act of 1792 continued the
traditional militia system and largely left it
in control of the states. The militia's
poor showing in the War of 1812 and the
Mexican War demonstrated the
inadequacies of that legislation. The
need for a
massive war machine to fight the Civil
War led both the Lincoln and Jefferson
Davis Administrations to exert more
direct control over the state militia.
Laws
providing for conscription attacked the
core of the concept of "volunteer soldier."
Following the war, Northern and Southern
states did little to reestablish the state-
controlled militia. That failure,
however, probably had more to do with a weari-
ness resulting from four years of war
rather than problems with any Federal laws.
Between the Civil War and the
Spanish-American War, most states slowly au-
thorized the creation of militia units.
While many were organized by those who
viewed them as a social activity, others
resulted from a need to control labor
strikes, prevent lynchings and aid in
natural disaster relief. Seeking a more mili-
tary image, the National Guard
Association lobbied Congress for more funding
and recognition as a military reserve
for the small standing army. Increased ap-
propriations did help with equipment,
but little had been done to professionalize
the Guard before many units were
activated for service in the Spanish-American
War. While there are impressive
exceptions, most of the units continued to fall far
short of regular Army standards during
that conflict. Congress passed the Dick Act
of 1903 to correct Guard deficiencies
noted in service from 1898 to 1899. Many
Guardsmen left the service after 1903
because they failed to meet new Federal stan-
dards for service or resented new
requirements. The Guard began to improve its
performance in evaluation exercises
especially after more Regular Army officers
were assigned as advisors. The continued
authority for states to control many as-
pects of the Guard complicated the
effort to professionalize fully the organization
until the National Defense Act (NDA) of
1916 effectively removed Governors from
all but a ceremonial role in the
organization. The NDA requirement for Federal
recognition of units and officers
greatly increased unit efficiency and effective-
Book Reviews 63
ness. The Act also allowed the
professionals in the Department of Army to absorb
Guard units intact or as
"fillers" if needed in wartime, a practice put into effect im-
mediately in World War One. When the
World War began, the Guard was made a
Federal organization, and when the war
ended, soldiers were discharged as individ-
uals, not as units.
Cooper's book traces the Guard from its
early beginnings to 1920, the period
when it embarked on a new peacetime role
as a result of the NDA. The Epilogue
only sketches developments in the Guard
until World War II. It is hoped that the
author will finish the task before him
and fully develop the story from 1920 to the
present. While The Rise of the
National Guard is easy to read, interesting and ac-
curate, one comment must be made about
its organization. Notes to chapters are
copious, but only a few of the works
cited are included in the "selected" bibliogra-
phy. Rather, readers are directed to
Professor Cooper's research guide on the
Militia and National Guard which had
been published earlier.
WVU Institute of Technology Kenneth R. Bailey
T.R.: The Last Romantic. By H.W. Brands. (New York: Basic Books, 1997. xii
+ 897p.;
illustrations, sources, selected bibliography, index. $35.00.)
Theodore Roosevelt was, without
question, one of the liveliest figures ever to
march across the American political
stage. Exuberant, engaging, exasperating-
T.R. made a powerful impression on
everyone he met and left his mark on both the
presidency and the way Americans
approached public life. T.R.: The Last
Romantic, the most recent biography of the irrepressible
President, serves its sub-
ject well. H.W. Brands, a Professor of
History at Texas A & M University, pro-
vides a vivid and vibrant account of a
man who left his mark on everyone he met.
Brands draws on a wide variety of
documentary materials and on an extensive
secondary literature as well, but aims
at the general reader rather than the profes-
sional historian. This is not a
tightly-argued analytical essay, in the tradition of
John Morton Blum's still-useful The
Republican Roosevelt, but instead an engag-
ing 800 page narrative of T.R.'s life
and times. Brands admires Roosevelt's ac-
complishments even as he records his
subject's foibles, and in the process creates
a compelling account of a fascinating
man.
Brands captures Roosevelt's expansive
personality well. He describes T.R. tak-
ing visiting dignitaries for
"scrambles" through Rock Creek, northwest of the
White House, and stick-fighting with
Leonard Wood in a form of exercise that
once broke his right arm. He recounts
Roosevelt's exploits with the Rough Riders
in the Spanish-American War that helped
revive his political career. And he
shows Roosevelt taking the same
expansive approach to public affairs, whether
seeking to build a canal through Panama
or trying to gain passage of a law regulat-
ing the canning of meat.
In the process, Brands offers a portrait
that is sympathetic even while showing
the shortcomings that sometimes
infuriated both enemies and friends. Roosevelt
was not brilliant, Brands notes, but
recognized that "lack of brilliance is rarely a
disqualification for anything" (p.
63). He developed "a tendency toward snap
judgments of people he met" and was
rarely ambivalent about anyone (p. 67). He
found it difficult to tolerate anarchy,
even the kind of emotional disorder that con-
sumed and finally killed his own brother
Elliott. When his first wife Alice died in
childbirth, T.R. shut down emotionally,
and almost never spoke about her for the
64 OHIO
HISTORY
rest of his life. Sometimes he displayed
"strange and dysfunctional behavior"
around his daughter Alice and his other
children after he remarried (p. 194). Yet in
the process he remained an effusive and
effervescent personality who captivated
everyone he met. Even Woodrow Wilson,
who disliked Roosevelt and was hated
by him, commented after a White House
meeting in 1917, "There is a sweetness
about him that is charming. You can't
resist the man. I can easily understand why
his followers are so fond of him"
(p. 782).
Brands has a real talent for
intertwining this personal portrait with the story of
Roosevelt's role in the world of public
affairs. He pays less attention to certain
stories than some historians, but never
slights any issue of importance. And in
the process he shows how T.R.'s own
strengths and weaknesses affected the most
important events of the day. Roosevelt
was, he concludes, "the most powerful and
arguably the most charismatic man in the
country," and his own strong views
about virtually everything helped guide
the nation as the Progressive Era began
(p. 477).
Roosevelt "succeeded in changing
the country," Brands concludes, and he "set
the standard for what would become
another signature of twentieth-century
America: an assumption of responsibility
for international order" (p. 813). This
book does full justice to an intrepid
leader who left an indelible stamp on his age.
Miami University Allan
M. Winkler
Politics, Race, and Schools: Racial
Integration, 1954-1994. By Joseph
Watras.
(Hamden, Connecticut: Garland
Publishing, 1997. xviii + 340p.; references,
index. $54.00.)
Politics, Race, and Schools: Racial
Integration, 1954-1994 is the second
in a
series in Studies in
Education/Politics, edited by Mark B. Ginsberg. In his mono-
graph, Watras discusses the efforts to
desegregate schools in Dayton, Ohio, from
1954 to 1994. The book is divided into
three sections. The first section places
the Dayton experience in both national
and historical context. Here the author
briefly reviews the historical basis for
equality of opportunity for African
Americans, its subsequent denial and the
efforts to overcome the Plessy decision
of 1896. Using case studies from a
variety of cities from Oakland, California, to
Boston, Massachusetts, Watras concludes
that every conceivable argument was
made in the pros and cons discussion over
racial desegregation/integration, but
few, if anyone, including religious
school educators, gave any thought as to why
America should integrate its schools.
It is within this concept that Watras
introduces the reader to the Dayton experi-
ence in Part II. He thoroughly discusses
the efforts to eliminate the de facto segre-
gated system in a community that mirrors
the nation better than most others.
Once city officials, schools
administrators, and community leaders reluctantly
admitted that Dayton had a school
segregation problem, all parties went about the
process, repeated numerous times in
cities across the nation, of trying to deter-
mine effective remedies which ran the
gamut from "solving urban problems"
through the development of model cities
programs to attempts to disperse public
housing into suburban areas. When these
and other efforts failed, Dayton turned to
the courts for remedies. The courts were
not responsive to the Dayton liberal
community's search for why racial
integrated schools should exist. Nor was the
Dayton religious community able to offer
a moral imperative for integrated
Book Reviews 65
schools. As the author suggests, no one
in a leadership position appeared willing
to confront the issue as a moral and
spiritual wrong that needed corrective action.
In part III, Watras examines curriculum,
social reform, racially desegregated
schools and the politics of caring. He
concludes that educators have not been suc-
cessful, in spite of establishing magnet
schools and multicultural curricula, in
solving the social problems caused by
segregation and poverty.
Watras is clear in his overall
conclusions that leaders in Dayton, as elsewhere,
failed to assume the moral and spiritual
leadership necessary to confront the evils
of segregation, especially segregated
education. Rather than pursuing a principled
position unequivocally in favor of
racial integration, leaders tried to please every-
one and ended up pleasing no one.
Community leaders failed to integrate the
schools because they did not want to
blend "their concern for individual freedoms
with necessary social obligations."
Watras suggests that after forty years
of trying to "integrate" the Dayton School
system, the effort failed because the
city leadership failed to ask why people
should live together and failed to value
racial integration as an end in itself.
Watras concludes, and rightly so, that
freedom flourishes in the "midst of social
obligations and benefits." Success
would have meant making a commitment to
live and grow together as the center of
Dayton educational politics.
National Afro-American Museum and
Cultural Center John E. Fleming
Cleveland's Transit Vehicles:
Equipment and Technology. By James A.
Toman
and Blaine S. Hays. (Kent, Ohio: Kent
State University Press, 1996. xiv +
271p.; illustrations. $45.00.)
Cleveland's Transit Vehicles:
Equipment and Technology is the
companion
volume to Horse Trails to Regional
Rails: The Story of Public Transit in Greater
Cleveland. In the latter work, James A. Toman and Blaine S. Hays
present an ex-
cellent textual and visual history of
public transportation development and urban
growth in metropolitan Cleveland. In Cleveland's
Transit Vehicles, the authors
focus upon the crux of the city's
transportation network, the point of direct con-
tact between riders and system. This is
a history of the hundreds of streetcars and
buses that carried millions of people
about the city over the last 138 years and the
technological development of Cleveland's
constantly evolving regional transit
system.
The book is divided into three chapters.
The first chapter, an essay by J.
William Vigrass, is an introduction to
the technological history of public trans-
portation at-large, and Cleveland's
transit system in particular. Vigrass provides
a brief but insightful discussion of
electric power, steel track, Harvard repair
shops, and trolley buses, as well as
other aspects of the city's public transporta-
tion infrastructure. Overall, the essay
provides the reader with an excellent
overview of the essential technologies
of Cleveland's transit network in the twen-
tieth century.
The second chapter dominates the
book-246 of 271 pages. This "Roster of
Cleveland's Transit Vehicles" is
the meat of the volume, a result of extensive re-
search among the official records of the
Cleveland Railway Company, Cleveland
Transit System, and Regional Transit
Authority, supplemented by additional notes
and interviews. This is as complete a
list of the streetcars, rapid transit cars,
trackless trolleys, and buses of
Cleveland's transit history that one might expect.
66 OHIO
HISTORY
The "Roster" is, however, more
than a mere list: it is a series of annotated techni-
cal profiles of the wide-range of
vehicles that carried millions of passengers
throughout the city. Furthermore, the
wealth of information about the cars and
buses is greatly enhanced by timely
historical comments from J. William Vigrass
and Robert Korach, two writers who made
careers in the transit industry.
The book ends with a "ride" on
the Detroit-Superior Bridge Subway. Recorded in
1965, Jack Ainsley's narrative is a
mental moving-picture of a trip on the subway.
His well-drawn recollection describes
the route taken, the actions of the motor-
man, the sounds of the rapid-transit car,
and the sights of the excursion. In this
most appropriate and thoughtful
conclusion to this work, Ainsley speaks to the
ultimate meeting between transit
technology and people: the "ride."
This is an excellent book written for
transit enthusiasts, or as the authors call
them, "Juice Fans." For these
ardent lovers of transit, as well as the casual reader,
Toman and Hays have compiled a wealth of
significant historical information.
Moreover, they have created a superb
reference tool for serious historians of pub-
lic transportation in Cleveland. And, as
in their first volume, the authors present
a fine selection of photographs. The
book could be enhanced with a broader dis-
cussion of the human operations of
transit technologies, such as the art of driving
a streetcar, and it would benefit from
the addition of an index. Overall, however,
there are few criticisms to raise. The
authors focus narrowly upon transit vehicles
and do a fine job of providing
comprehensive evidence for their chosen topic.
Toman and Hays are to be commended for
their efforts. Cleveland's Transit
Vehicles is an excellent book and a fine contribution to the
literature of public
transportation in Cleveland.
Wayne State University Mike
Smith
Stonewall Jackson: The Man, The
Soldier, The Legend. By James I.
Robertson,
Jr. (New York: MacMillan Publishing,
1997. xxiii + 950p.; illustrations, bib-
liography, notes, index. $40.00.)
Rather than simply adding another
military history to the bibliography of the
Civil War, James I. Robertson's
biography of Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson is a
detailed study of the famous general's
early life and wartime activities. The
au-
thor's exhaustive research unveils a
real person existing behind the Stonewall
legend, portraying a surprisingly
diverse early life.
The book is generally divided into two
stages-Jackson's prewar life and his
wartime activities. Surprisingly, the
former is by far the more interesting, detail-
ing Jackson's early tragic childhood
(death claimed his entire family with the ex-
ception of his sister), education at
West Point, service in the Mexican War and the
peacetime army, and tenure at the Virginia
Military Academy (during which
Stonewall's first wife and child and
first child from his second marriage all died).
The primary aspects of Jackson's
personality emerged at this time-his oft-noted
eccentricities (which Robertson
unconvincingly tries to demonstrate were over-
stated), his concern for his often
failing health, and, most importantly, the devel-
opment of Stonewall's devout Christian
faith. Describing Jackson's religious
personality is where Robertson truly
excels, particularly explaining the di-
chotomy of the general as a religious
warrior, a pious man who mowed down un-
armed Mexican civilians, and a slave
owner and defender of the 'peculiar institu-
tion' who operated a Sunday school for
slave children.
Book Reviews 67
The discussion of Stonewall's wartime
leadership is also well written, although
accounts are not overly detailed as
Robertson concentrates on Jackson's leader-
ship style. Battle descriptions serve as
a backdrop to demonstrate the general's
particular talent for war, especially
the elements of maneuver and surprise Jackson
had observed in the Mexican War, such as
Stonewall's famous 1862 Valley
Campaign. The second part also recounts
Jackson's relations with both superior
and inferior officers; he impressed the
former, notably Robert E. Lee, with his
measured aggressiveness while agitating
many of the latter with his demanding
standards and requirement that officers
under his command match his religious de-
votion, going as far as to appointing
the theologian Robert L. Dabney to his
staff.
The only shortcoming of Robertson's book
is its preface, in which the author
makes unsubstantiated claims. For
example, Robertson asserts Stonewall always
followed orders, yet during the Mexican
War he refused an order to retire from the
field. Furthermore, when relating the
tale years later, Jackson claimed he would
have retreated if ordered to do so,
clearly remembering the situation as he wished.
Stonewall is also portrayed as
unambitious, yet during the Mexican War Jackson
frequently requested transfers to units
likely to see battle. Shrewd financial in-
vestments in Lexington, Virginia, also
mark Jackson as financially ambitious.
The criticisms of Robertson's book are
minimal, however, and fans of Thomas
Jackson will find the work the equal or
superior to any previous biography, espe-
cially the more colorful accounts of
Stonewall's wartime exploits such as Frank E.
Vandiver's Mighty Stonewall (1957). The
depictions of Jackson's early life make
Robertson's book superior both to Burke
Davis' They Called Him Stonewall
(1954), one of the standard older Jackson biographies, and to
Byron Farwell's
more recent Stonewall, A Biography of
General Thomas J Jackson (1992). Those
military historians who find Robertson's
wartime accounts inadequate can turn to
Bevin Alexander's Lost
Victories...the Military Genius of Stonewall Jackson
(1992) or Charles Royster's The Destructive War., William
Tecumseh Sherman,
Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans
(1991). In short, Robertson has
produced
the most comprehensive and enlightening
biography of Stonewall Jackson yet
written.
University of Nebraska, Lincoln Steven J. Ramold
The Reconstruction Justice of Salmon
P. Chase: In Re Turner and Texas v. White.
By Harold M. Hyman. (Lawrence, Kansas:
The University Press of Kansas,
1997. xi + 184p.; notes, bibliographic
essay, index. $12.95 paper; $25.00
cloth.)
One of our most distinguished
constitutional historians, Harold Hyman has dis-
tilled a lifetime of learning about the
era of the Civil War into this slender volume
which lacks scholarly impedimenta.
Ostensibly the book is a study of Salmon P.
Chase's two major supreme court
decisions, in re Turner and Texas v. White, writ-
ten seemingly for a non-scholarly
audience. Hyman claims those two cases were
most important, for a time anyway,
because they summed up the War victors'
views on involuntary servitude and the
rights of states regarding contracts. But
Hyman has written much more than an
analysis of those two cases, and his book
can be read with profit by scholars and
students alike. For he has given his readers
an excellent original overview of
Chase's life, and he has described brilliantly the
68 OHIO
HISTORY
historical context behind those
momentous legal decisions.
Hyman's overview of Chase's recently
much-studied life, two biographies and a
splendid edition of his writings have
appeared during the last three years, in no
way apologizes for that Ohio
politician's at times blind ambition, sanctimonious
manner toward his peers, and
contradictory responses to the events of his times.
Hyman suggests that Chase perhaps
learned too much from his saintly and moral-
istic bishop uncle who raised him. More
particularly, he finds a consistent pattern
to his policy decisions. Hyman's claim
that Chase held to a conservative protec-
tion of property save in human beings is
borne out by that leader's political and
legal practices. That Chase generally
took a moderate stand against slavery until
the War turned him into an abolitionist
explains why during Reconstruction he
supported freedom but refused to give government
aid to ex-slaves. Self-help
marked Chase's own life, and he applied
it to all others.
If Hyman understands Chase's values and
motivation, he fails to assess either
the reality of politics or the nature of
party realignment. To say that voters during
the 1850s displayed little partisan
loyalty ignores the best recent scholarship on
the subject. But Hyman makes up for this
shortcoming with his detailed com-
ments on the economic and governance
situation of the time. He ably discusses
Chase's consistent views on hard money,
and maintains that the Secretary of
Treasury reluctantly supported printing
paper money. That Chase for a time sup-
ported strong central authority in order
to save the Union and end slavery in no
way diminished his views on the rights
of states in a federal republic. To see this
more fully, Hyman should have linked
Chase's political-economy with his many
changes in party loyalty.
But if some dysfunction exists between
the author's study of political-economic
practice and belief, he splendidly
analyzes the setting and context in which judges
made law. Hyman's study of circuit
riding as an influence on supreme court jus-
tices is quite valuable, especially
since Chase's duties in war-devastated Virginia
swayed his legal opinions. Turnover in
office, poor record keeping, and inade-
quate work conditions too influenced
legal decisions. Hyman describes that world
well, and he also discusses the
personalities of the court as representatives of local
interests who struggled with the new
world of governance they inhabited. In all,
for an understanding of the entire
operation of the legal process, the reader truly is
in the hands of an expert. Thus, the
decline of federal interference and the rise of
state authority show the contradictions
between what Chase and other justices
wanted to result from the Civil War and
what the times and their own values would
allow.
Kent State University Jon L.
Wakelyn
Custer: The Controversial Life of
George Armstrong Custer. By Jeffry D.
Wert.
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.
462p.; illustrations, maps, notes, bibli-
ography, index. $27.50.)
There is no shortage of historical
writing on George Armstrong Custer. More
books and articles have been published
on him than on any other American with
the exception of Abraham Lincoln. Jeffry
D. Wert states that the purpose of his
biography on Custer "is to present
a fresh reexamination of his life based upon re-
cent scholarship and archival
research" (p. 9). The author attempts to present a
balanced account of Custer by focusing
on his Civil War career and the eleven
Book Reviews 69
years of his life after that conflict.
The New Rumley, Ohio, native was one of the
more colorful and enigmatic persons in
the nation's history during the nineteenth
century. He was as fascinating as he was
controversial. According to Wert, this
biography of Custer represents the first
full-scale monograph of his life in more
than thirty years.
In 1857, at the age of seventeen, the
Ohioan entered the United States Military
Academy. The charismatic cadet had a
knack for attracting people to him.
However, his stay at West Point was
characterized by his propensity for accumu-
lating demerits and poor academic
performance. Nonetheless, this was the begin-
ning of a military career that would
include both fame and fiasco for Custer. Upon
graduating in the class of 1861, in
which he finished last, the newly-minted lieu-
tenant began active service with the
Second United States Cavalry of the Army of
the Potomac. This was the fulfillment of
a dream for the young man.
Wert, who has published three books on
the Civil War, does a superb job of
chronicling the military career of
Custer during those four tumultuous years.
Custer distinguished himself as a
first-rate cavalry officer in several battles in the
Virginia theater. His outstanding combat
performance at First Manassas, Seven
Pines, Antietam, and on other
battlefields won him the loyalty of his subordinates
and the admiration of his superiors.
Brave and aggressive, he was elevated to the
rank of brigadier general shortly before
the battle of Gettysburg. He commanded a
brigade in that historic engagement with
aplomb. Talent combined with ambition
catapulted Custer to the rank of major
general in April 1865 at the age of twenty-
four. He understood that opportunities
for advancement in rank were much greater
in time of war.
In 1866, the Civil War veteran joined
General Winfield S. Hancock's expedition
in Kansas for the purpose of
intimidating Plains Indians. The success that the fa-
mous cavalryman had enjoyed in the War
Between the States would, however, es-
cape him in the West. He joined the
Seventh Cavalry as a lieutenant colonel, a
regiment bedeviled with internal strife.
Wert contends that "the effects of such in-
ternecine turmoil could weaken morale
and the combat prowess of units" (p. 249).
A weakness of this book is the author's
lack of an in-depth discussion of Custer's
career after the Civil War. A more
penetrating analysis of that aspect of his life
can be found in Robert M. Utley's Cavalier
in Buckskin: George Armstrong
Custer and the Western Frontier (1988).
Wert's description of the battle that
connected Custer's name to immortality is
solid. The end came for the cavalry
leader and more than 260 of his men at the bat-
tle of Little Big Horn on June 25, 1876.
In providing analysis of the controver-
sial clash, the author maintains that
the factors that motivated Custer to attack the
Indians will never be known because they
died with him on that fateful day in
Montana. Wert notes that any effort by
historians to determine Custer's motiva-
tions for leading his army to slaughter
is speculation. The allure of Little Big
Horn continues to attract the attention
of historians, scholars, and buffs. In fact,
the literature on that battle surpasses
that of Gettysburg.
By using a wide array of primary and
secondary sources including archaeological
findings, Wert has written an instructive
and very readable biography. This book
also contains brief biographical
sketches of the leading political and military fig-
ures of the period. Throughout the
narrative, the author allows Custer to speak for
himself. This volume contains several
photographs and the dust jacket is appro-
priately illustrated with a portrait of
Custer.
Kent State University Leonne M.
Hudson
70 OHIO
HISTORY
The Civil War in Appalachia:
Collected Essays. Edited by Kenneth W.
Noe and
Shannon H. Wilson. (Knoxville:
University of Tennessee, 1997. xxxiii +
284p.; illustrations, suggested reading,
figures, maps and tables, index.
$40.00.)
Stereotypically, the Civil War South was
a place where unity prevailed and all
white southerners fought together to
resist northern oppression. More realisti-
cally, historians recognize the South as
a diverse region where attitudes on the war
were profoundly shaped by geography and
the political climate it bred. Adding to
the idea that the Civil War South was
never as solid as many earlier studies have
contended, Kenneth W. Noe and Shannon H.
Wilson argue that historians have
continued to underestimate the
importance of the Appalachian region in the Civil
War. Offering readers eleven essays that
depict the Civil War South as a diverse
region where, because of its small slave
population and few members of the politi-
cally influential planter-elite,
Unionists comprised a large portion of the
Appalachian sections of Alabama,
Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina,
South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and
West Virginia. Noe and Shannon con-
tend that the mixture of Appalachians
loyal to the Federal government and those
fighting to forge a new nation created a
fascinating and diverse region where guer-
rilla warfare prevailed over more conventional
means of conflict as well as a place
where Confederate and Union deserters
desperately sought refuge, and neighbors
fought bitterly against one another.
Beginning this insightful collection of
essays on the Civil War in Appalachia,
Noe and Wilson suggest that just as the
Battle of Perryville was silenced to those
outside the valley because of wind and
geography, a condition known as an
"acoustic shadow," so too has
the importance of the region been silenced by mod-
ern-day scholars who have failed to look
beyond the four best-known campaigns
of Appalachia: Antietam, Chickamauga,
Chattanooga and Atlanta. In the first
three essays, Peter Wallenstein, W. Todd
Groce and Martin Crawford each examine
the ramifications of the region aside
from its more notorious battles.
Arguing
that Union officials understood the
importance of the region, Wallenstein ex-
plains that in 1861 Lincoln and
McClellen both believed Knoxville to be of
greater importance than Nashville. Since
the former had a large pro-Union popu-
lation, both men believed some 10,000
volunteers could easily be recruited for
service in the Union army while at the
same time Federal forces could destroy the
South's railroads linking the east and
the west. In Eastern Tennessee, residents
clearly saw the war not as one of
northern aggression, but instead as neighbor
against neighbor. In relation to this
argument, Martin Crawford demonstrates that
Unionists in East Tennessee also found
themselves in conflict with their neigh-
bors in western North Carolina where
tensions between the two groups ran high
and violence was met with counter
violence.
Just as open warfare prevailed
throughout the Appalachia region, so too did ter-
rorism present itself as a dominant
feature of the war. Both Kenneth W. Noe and
Jonathan D. Sarris reveal that although
Federal and Confederate officers in 1861
pledged to keep the war away from
civilian areas and on the battlefields, such
promises were quickly broken. Before the
end of the year, noncombatants found
their homes looted and their personal
safety threatened by military forces. Both
authors make it clear that civilians who
expressed their sympathies for either
Union or Confederate forces placed
themselves in potentially grave danger.
Descriptively written, Noe's essay
exemplifies the fact that although Southern
West Virginia may have been spared the
war's most glorious battles, its people
Book Reviews 71
suffered immensely at the hands of
terrorists. Joining Noe in offering a microview
of the war, Jonathan D. Sarris provides
a vivid narrative of precisely what the war
meant to those living in Lumpkin County,
Georgia, where tensions led to the exe-
cution of three Unionist men.
In addition to such topics as neighbors
battling one another and community
tensions worsened by exploitive military
actions, other essays explore the plight
of soldiers serving in the Appalachians.
In one of the most riveting essays in the
book, John Inscoe reveals the fate of
some twenty-five Union soldiers who es-
caped from Confederate prisons in North
Georgia only to find themselves aided by
local residents, including slaves, who
frequently led the renegade prisoners to
safety through an underground railroad.
Jan Furman joins Inscoe's depiction of
the soldiers' experience by examining
the coming of age of a fugitive slave who
joined the 13th Michigan.
Robert Tracy McKenzie, Gordon B.
McKinney and Shannon H. Wilson add to
the book's diversity by examining such
topics as the economic destruction of East
Tennessee, a failed attempt at
industrialization in Appalachia, and the creation of
Berea College and its offshoot Lincoln
Memorial University as legacies of the
war. All are well written and like the
other selections they too illuminate topics
that have not received ample attention
in spite of their importance of understand-
ing the war and the South in a truer
picture.
This is a first-rate book that deserves
careful attention by all Civil War schol-
ars. Each of the essays is thoroughly
researched and written blending narrative
and quantitative history in a highly
readable manner. The editors have done a su-
perb job including supplemental maps,
tables, figures chronologies, and illustra-
tions. Such inclusions make the book
accessible to those not already intimate
with this region and the events that
transpired during the war years. Ultimately,
this study should cause historians to
reconsider the war as it has been written and
make room for such unlikely and remote
regions as Appalachia.
University of Central Florida Anthony Iacono
The Vietnam Lobby: The American
Friends of Vietnam, 1955-1975. By
Joseph
G. Morgan. (Chapel Hill: The University
of North Carolina Press, 1997. xviii
+ 229p.; appendix, notes,
bibliography, index. $39.95.)
Much has been written about the antiwar
movement during the Vietnam War. In
contrast, little attention has been
devoted to those who supported America's
commitment to an independent,
noncommunist South Vietnam. Joseph
G.
Morgan, a history professor at Iona
College, provides a significant corrective to
this omission in The Vietnam Lobby:
The American Friends of Vietnam, 1955-
1975. It is the story of a private association that for two
decades sought to gener-
ate American support for South Vietnam.
In the end the AFV's efforts mattered lit-
tle, and in this respect its story
reflects America's larger Vietnam story. Despite a
long, wide-ranging, and costly American
attempt to influence Vietnam's future,
the fate of Vietnam ultimately would be
determined by Vietnamese.
Morgan begins his account in 1950 when a
number of clergymen, journalists,
political activists, and academics
became partisans of Ngo Dinh Diem, a
Vietnamese nationalist who they believed
offered a viable alternative to a colonial
or communist Vietnam. Once Diem became
the leader of South Vietnam in 1954-
55, they attempted to enlist American
support for his new nation, forming the
72 OHIO
HISTORY
AFV to give structure to their efforts.
Its most influential members initially in-
cluded economist Leo Cherne, political
activists Joseph Buttinger and
Christopher Emmet, General John W.
O'Daniel, political scientist Wesley Fishel,
and Harold Oram and Gilbert Jonas, two
public relations executives who were em-
ployed by Diem's regime.
During the late 1950s the members of the
AFV worked vigorously to paint a fa-
vorable picture of Diem and his South
Vietnam, writing articles, giving speeches,
sponsoring aid drives, and forging ties
with journalists, academics, and govern-
ment officials. In the early 1960s,
however, cracks began to appear in the AFV as
many members concluded that Diem's
authoritarian regime was no longer worthy
of American patronage. Some left the
association, while others called for Diem's
ouster. After Diem's assassination in
1963, the AFV rallied to the succession of
regimes that followed him and
emphatically endorsed President Lyndon B.
Johnson's escalation of the war. By this
time organizational and financial prob-
lems were seriously hindering the AFV's
work, although for a brief period in
1965-1966 the AFV enjoyed a revival
because of assistance from the White House,
which saw it as an ally in garnering
public support for the war. The Tet offensive
in 1968 had a devastating effect on the
ability of the AFV to make the case for
South Vietnam. Funding dried up; many
members quit; and others remained only
as names on letterheads. When South
Vietnam collapsed in April 1975, the AFV
was barely functioning.
Vietnam Lobby is a valuable addition to the scholarship of America's
painful
experience in Vietnam. Utilizing a broad
range of sources, including the records
of the AFV, the papers of many of its
most prominent members, presidential files,
and interviews and oral histories,
Morgan shows that the AFV at best had a
marginal influence on America's Vietnam
policy. During the 1950s, when the
AFV enjoyed considerable attention from
public figures and the media, it was
preaching to the choir, and in the early
1960s, when President John F. Kennedy
was increasing America's commitment to
South Vietnam, internal disputes mini-
mized its influence. Thereafter, the
AFV, unable to surmount its weaknesses, was
little more than an ineffectual ally of
the White House.
In summary, Morgan has performed a
useful service for students of the Vietnam
War by deftly delineating the place of
the AFV in America's failed venture in
Vietnam. He also reminds us that
organized private interest groups often have in-
fluence on American foreign policy only
to the extent that their ideas mesh with
the assumptions and exigencies of policy
makers.
Mesa Community College John Kennedy
Ohl
Ernie Pyle's War: America's
Eyewitness to World War II. By James
Tobin. (New
York: The Free Press, 1997. 312p.;
illustrations, appendix, notes, note on
sources, index. $25.00.)
Only people of a certain age recognize
the name Ernie Pyle. James Tobin's fine
biography explains who Pyle was and what
he did. For the uninformed, Tobin's
book will seem like fiction. Did daily
newspapers really once touch so many lives
that forty million people read Pyle's
column six days a week in 1944? Could there
have been a time when a newspaper war
correspondent was a genuine celebrity?
Two books of Pyle's collected columns
became best sellers during the war. One,
Here Is Your War, based on American soldiers fighting in North Africa,
became a
Book Reviews 73
successful Hollywood movie, "The
Story of G.I. Joe." Ernie Pyle had become so
well-known by 1944 that his popularity
hindered his work as a correspondent.
From his coverage of the June 6, 1944,
Allied invasion of Europe through his
death on Okinawa in April 1945, American
servicemen besieged Pyle wherever he
went for handshakes, advice, and
autographs.
Tobin sensitively blends private life
with public performance to explain Ernie
Pyle's success and popularity. Born in a
small Indiana town in 1900, a student at
Indiana University for three years, by
1923 Pyle was working for the Washington
Daily News. In the latter year he married Geraldine (Jerry)
Siebolds. The morose
Pyle and emotionally unstable Siebolds
became enmeshed in an unstable marriage
that affected Pyle's own emotional
stability until he died. Pyle became a full-time
columnist for the News in 1935,
writing about ordinary Americans coping with
the vicissitudes of the Depression. His
respectful treatment of these unsung
heroes presaged his wartime coverage
that exalted front-line soldiers.
The latter, of course, is what
justifiably won Pyle contemporary popularity and
historical significance. Tobin argues
convincingly that Ernie Pyle changed the
way newspapermen covered war by focusing
on ordinary soldiers.
He rarely wrote about general officers,
war aims, strategy, or grand tactics.
Ernie Pyle's perspective was from the
front line explaining how soldiers lived,
fought, and died. In effect, Tobin
contends, Pyle created G.I. Joe, "The downtrod-
den G.I. as suffering servant,"
doing an ugly job because it had to be done (p.
132).
Pyle also altered newspaper treatment of
war by rejecting the Victorian glorifi-
cation of war. Neither Ernie Pyle nor
his G.I.'s saw war as glorious and romantic.
Furthermore, Pyle came to believe that
his soldiers did not fight in the name of pa-
triotism or some other grand ideological
reason. On a ship carrying troops toward
the invasion of Sicily, Pyle wrote to
his readers that the invasion fleet carried
"tens of thousands of young men of
new professions, fighting for...for...well, at
least for each other" (p. 105).
American soldiers, Pyle was always most interested
in Army infantrymen, fought because they
had to and did so with grit and determi-
nation, not flamboyance or derring-do.
As Tobin notes, "This image of the G. I.
as suffering servant-coldly effective
yet warm-hearted-served in place of the
idealism of World War I" (p. 149).
Ernie Pyle's realistic yet sympathetic
picture of Americans in battle, devoid of
patriotic hyperbole, found a large,
receptive audience back home. The correspon-
dent himself seemed so ordinary,
although the heavy-drinking Pyle actually suf-
fered from depression and hypochondria.
Ernie the common man, Ernie the suf-
ferer, Ernie the gentle realist, Tobin
suggests, wrote daily letters to civilians back
home. He told them what it was like to
fight, to die, to soldier on, and in the pro-
cess became "the interpreter, the
medium, the teacher who taught America what to
think and how to feel about their boys
overseas" (p.118). Tobin enlightens us in
the same way about what motivated and
actuated Ernest Taylor Pyle, who died in
action while serving his country on
April 18, 1945.
University of Missouri-St. Louis Jerry Cooper
Selling Black History for Carter Q.
Woodson: A Diary, 1930-1933. By
Lorenzo
J. Greene. Edited with an introduction
by Arvarh E. Strickland. (Columbia:
University of Missouri Press, 1996. x +
428p.; illustrations, notes, appendix,
bibliography, index. $24.95 paper;
$49.95 cloth.)
74 OHIO
HISTORY
Arvarh E. Strickland has put together a
very interesting look at Lorenzo
Greene's diary during the 1930-1933
period. He provides an unusual look at
African Americans during the
economically and politically chaotic depression era.
The book graphically displays the harsh
economic circumstances facing many
African-American communities, while
providing a biased, yet insightful, look at
historically black universities and
colleges and their attitudes toward African-
American history. Greene's analysis of
presidents and administrators of African-
American schools and colleges is
interesting. His diary provides a good look at
the physical plants and grounds of these
schools with some analysis of the quality
of education provided by them. Clearly,
the effects of the depression were not
universally shared. In some areas
African-American communities are prospering
with little or no serious adverse
effects, while in others African-Americans find
themselves in crisis. The discrepancies
between regions are both fascinating and
confusing.
The book uses Greene's diary to
chronicle his and his three companions' lives
as they travel the country trying to
sell African-American history books, mainly
to African Americans. The
African-American History books were published by the
Association for the Study of Negro Life
and History, and were sitting in ware-
houses unsold because Blacks suffering
from the effects of the depression could
not afford them. Greene convinces Carter
G. Woodson to reduce the price of the
books and allow him to travel the
country selling them door to door, to raise
money for his education. This would also
get the books out to the public. Greene
concentrates most of his efforts on the
African-American professional class, but
uses interesting lectures to sell to
even the poorest of people.
He has mixed success trying to sell to
Black professionals because the African-
American professional class was also
suffering during the depression. Several
times he is surprised to find doctors
and lawyers who claim that they cannot afford
the books. Greene uses psychological
manipulation to play upon their racial
pride and to convince them that the
books are a necessary component of any Black
intellectual's home. The book also
explores the sometimes terse, but amiable re-
lationship between Greene and his
mentor, Carter G. Woodson. Always just below
the surface, the enmity between these
two strong-willed men is evident.
Occasionally, Greene noted disagreements
between the men.
Though he was not an overly religious
person, Greene makes several comments
about the African-American church and
the ministers who serve it. Finally,
Greene's diary provides an unusually frank
look at the morality of America's bur-
geoning African-American intellectual
youth. During his travels, Greene makes
acquaintances with several women with
whom he spends a great deal of time.
Although he writes very discreetly,
obviously he is enjoying the company of
these young ladies.
The most compelling story of the book is
the significance African Americans
placed on their history. Despite the
constraints of a depressed economy, Green
found hundreds of people ready to spend
their meager funds on African-American
history books. One of the strengths of
this work is its look at the life of a young
African-American intellectual.
Strickland's Selling Black History for Carter G.
Woodson is an excellent example of how a personal history can
provide insights
as well as official documents and fill
the gaps in official records.
University of Akron Abel A.
Bartley
Book Reviews 75
A New History of Kentucky. By
Lowell H. Harrison and James C. Klotter.
(Lexington: The University Press of
Kentucky, 1997. xvi + 533p.; illustra-
tions, appendices, selected
bibliography, index. $34.95.)
Historians ultimately are storytellers,
but only the best among us turn out sto-
ries blending art with craft as superbly
as this new but long-awaited history of the
Bluegrass state. We might have expected
as much, for two veteran historians have
told this tale of Kentucky, the first
state west of the Appalachians. James C.
Klotter is Kentucky's state historian,
director of its historical society, and author
of numerous post-1865 works on his
homeland, while Lowell Harrison, professor
emeritus at Western Kentucky University,
has lectured and published widely on his
state's antebellum history. Their
readable writing style is such that one might be-
lieve the book to be the seamless fabric
of one author, but of course it is not. The
authors evenly divide 443 pages of text,
each writing with effortless command of
fact in his main field of interest.
Sixty years have now passed since the appear-
ance of Kentucky historian laureate
Thomas D. Clark's landmark History of
Kentucky, but this new book, which will replace it, has been well
worth waiting
for.
Historians delving into Kentucky's rich
but complex past encounter an ongoing
difficulty in the state's geography or,
as the authors put it: "Kentucky's configu-
ration presents problems.... How does
one explain a state that has no northwest
[yet has] five physiographic
regions?" (p. 22.) Klotter and Harrison tacitly answer
this question throughout their book,
putting Kentucky in its geographical place
and, at the same time, offering
understanding of the decisive impact the state's
shape and regions have had on its
social, cultural, political, economic and mili-
tary history. Kentucky's wedge-shaped
40,000 square miles (the same size as
Ohio) stretches 458 miles from Virginia
to Missouri, its westernmost area closer
to Texas and Kansas than to Columbus. It
has more miles of navigable streams
than any state save Alaska; its major
one, the Ohio River, moves across its entire
northern border (p. 129). This
world-class river was a major shaker and shaper of
the state's history presented in this
book. It separated slavery from free soil, car-
ried much of Kentucky's commerce from
the days of the Spanish Conspiracy to
modern barge lines, was a major Civil
War consideration for both sides, introduced
immigrants and technology to the state,
and tangled Kentucky lawmakers with
those of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio in
almost endless disputes as to where, ex-
actly, was the north shore "low
water mark" where Virginia's and then Kentucky's
ownership of the river ended. A
settlement was finally reached in 1993, but
the au-
thors advise that "the sudden
appearance of casino riverboats escalated the stakes
involved" (p. 21).
Kentucky's five regions-Eastern and
Western Coal fields, central Bluegrass,
Pennyroyal and Purchase-have been
traditionally suspicious of each other. The
authors handle these sections without
bias and with unusual balance revealing in-
teracting as well as external
relationships among these often bickering enclaves.
Harrison, a western Kentuckian, gives
his region its first adequate coverage in a
Kentucky history. In short, there is a
unique entirety to this book, all pertinent
subjects falling under the facile pens
of the authors, from slave days to modern
civil rights, from Daniel Boone to
Mohammed Ali; nor are punches pulled regard-
ing any of the state's failings in race,
gender education, feuds, crime and other un-
pleasantness.
Klotter and Harrison draw on the words
of the people through letters, diaries, in-
terviews and newspapers, binding it all
together with top-flight scholarship and a
76 OHIO
HISTORY
comprehensive 46-page selective
bibliography. This book reveals what the writ-
ing of state history can be, as
witness this delightful quote as Rosemary Clooney
tells of her favorite memory of her home
state: "The memory keeps coming back
and I review it every summer. On the
drive from Augusta to Maysville, there's a
kind of meadow that drops down to the
Ohio river. On summer nights that meadow
has fireflies that almost light the
earth. I've driven my grandchildren there to
show them this, and they're filled with
as much wonder as I was when I was a child.
It's the most beautiful thing I've ever
seen" (p. 441).
I wish Ohio, just a whip stitch across
the river, had a meadow like that one and a
history like this one. Recommended for
all school college and private libraries.
University of Dayton Frank F.
Mathias
Hungarian Rhapsodies: Essays on Ethnicity, Identity & Culture.
By Richard
Teleky. (Seattle: University of
Washington Press and University of British
Columbia Press, 1997. xv + 217p.,
illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.
$18.95 paper; $35.00 cloth.)
Richard Teleky has written a book that
is valuable for anyone with a Hungarian
ancestry and valuable for anyone who
does not have the slightest idea of what it
means to be Hungarian. Comprised of
twelve distinct essays, many of which have
been published previously, Teleky
combines literature, history, travel and even a
few recipes in a fascinating blend that
helps rescue Hungarians from their normal
obscurity. (As a reflection of the
general ignorance about them, Hungarians are
often mistakenly labeled as "east
Europeans," even though Hungary is located in
central Europe, a distinct geographic
and historic region known as Mitteleuropa.)
Much like other writers who have sought
to establish a connection with their
roots, Teleky laments the bland,
assimilative aspects of North American culture.
Even though he lives in Toronto, a city
known for its ethnic diversity, Teleky
sees little difference between the
United States and Canada in this respect. His
starting point and end point is
language, since Teleky, who is third generation
himself, believes that a genuine sense
of ethnicity cannot thrive without the
knowledge of one's own language. As
Teleky embarks on his own personal effort
to master Hungarian, a Finno-Ugric
language that is notoriously difficult to learn,
he at least finds comfort in Edmund
Wilson's similar quest, made at the age of
sixty-five.
In essays ranging from a meditation on
the photography of Andre Kertesz to an
analysis of the post modernist novelist,
Peter Esterhazy, Teleky manages to write
from the heart without sacrificing
intellectual content. He beautifully captures the
richness of the architecture and
archives of Cleveland's St. Elizabeth Church built
in 1922 to serve the large Hungarian
population that then lived in the vicinity of
Buckeye Rd. on the city's east side.
Today, having lost its vital neighborhood
link, a few brave souls struggle to
preserve its history and heritage. Likewise,
Teleky describes the community role
performed by Pannonia, a bookstore located
on Toronto's Bloor St., in an old
Hungarian neighborhood that is becoming gen-
trified. And in an essay of special
interest to teachers, Teleky relates his own ef-
fort to develop a course on Central
European literature which sought to highlight
the important role that Czech and
Hungarian writers have played in each nation's
history, and a course, which
fortuitously for Teleky, he taught precisely at the
time of some of the most shattering
political changes in that region.
Book Reviews 77
Who does Richard Teleky dislike? For
one, Joe Eszterhas, the highly successful
Hollywood screenwriter who comes from
Cleveland. Why does Teleky so dislike
Eszterhas? He charges him with being a
phony and a hypocrite because of the neg-
ative portrayal of Hungarians contained
in "The Music Box," a film in which
Eszterhas made a Hungarian the central
villain even though the story was based on
the trial of John Demjanjuk, a
Ukrainian. According to Teleky, this act of be-
trayal to his own people came after
Eszterhas had written a sensitive introduction
to Susan Papp's book on Hungarians that
had been published as part of Cleveland
State University's Ethnic Heritage
series. Who knows? Maybe Eszterhas has
taken Teleky's critique to heart since
the portrayal of his own father in his latest
film, "Telling Lies in
America," is very sympathetically drawn, if no less stereo-
typical. Consistent with his inclination
to excoriate the rich and famous, Teleky
also has a brief description of the
famous Budapest restaurant Gundel's-you will
not want to go there after you read it.
Some of the essays make for breezy
reading and others, particularly on
Hungarian writers, are tough going
unless you are familiar with the works being
discussed. Teleky has certainly rescued
Hungarians from obscurity and from the
current academic fashion of labeling
groups as "Euro" or as "European-American,"
a terminology that obscures rather than
illuminates and robs groups of their dis-
tinctive history and experience. Teleky
also succeeds admirably in an essay enti-
tled"A Short Dictionary of
Hungarian Stereotypes and Kitsch" in describing the
various images of Hungarians that have
influenced films and literature. If he had
been a baseball fan, Teleky might also
have included a description of how Al
Hrabosky, a star reliever for the St.
Louis Cardinals in the mid-1970s, came to be-
come known as the "mad
Hungarian." But other than pointing to the important
role that literature has played in
Hungarian life, one does not necessarily learn
what makes Hungarian culture unique.
Nevertheless, anyone interested in learning
about this fascinating people will be
well advised to read this book, and the
University of Washington and the
University of British Columbia Presses deserve
much credit for co-publishing a work
that crosses normal academic boundaries.
Cleveland State University David J.
Goldberg
Public Worship, Private Faith: Sacred
Harp and American Folksong. By John
Bealle. (Athens: The University of
Georgia Press, 1997. xv + 308p.; notes,
references, appendices, index. $50.00
cloth; $20.00 paper.)
Twenty years have elapsed since a major
publication has come out on the Sacred
Harp and the history and culture surrounding it. Those
persons who read Buell
Cobb's The Sacred Harp: A Tradition
and Its Music (1978) will not be disap-
pointed with John Bealle's account of
the tunebook and its culture. Whereas
Cobb's publication is a fine
introduction to this fascinating aspect of American
folk culture, Bealle has a different
purpose in mind for his book. As he indicates
in the Introduction, he means "to
examine particular defining events in the dra-
matic encounter of Sacred Harp tradition
with American public culture."
Along with the Introduction the book is
organized into four chapters: "Timothy
Mason in Cincinnati: Music Reform on the
Urban Frontier"; "Sacred Harp as
Cultural Object"; "Writing
Traditions of The Sacred Harp"; "'Our Spiritual
Maintenance Has Been Performed: Sacred
Harp Revival." There are twelve appen-
dices: "Minutes of the Union
Singing as They Appeared in the Organ, February
78 OHIO
HISTORY
14, 1885"; "Annotated Outline of Joe S. James, A Brief
History of the Sacred Harp
(1904)"; "Turn-of-the-Century Editions of The Sacred
Harp;" "Footnotes from the
1911 James Revision"; "Minutes of the Fifty-sixth
United Convention";
"Constitution of the Mulberry River
Convention"; "Excerpts from the Minutes of
the 1976 Georgia State Convention";
"Minutes of the First New England
Convention" (1976);
"Conventions and State Singings in New Areas, 1976-1993;
Rivers of Delight Corpus"; "Revisions of The Sacred
Harp"; "New Songs in the
1991 Revision." There are also Notes, References and
an Index.
In the first chapter Bealle prepares the
reader for the Sacred Harp tradition. One
might wonder why this chapter's topic is
"Timothy Mason in Cincinnati: Music
on the Urban Frontier," but the
author defines the urban and rural contexts of the
Nineteenth Century in American musical
culture. One will understand after reading
it why Sacred Harp music, singing
schools, and shape notation are as Allen P.
Britton, the eminent Early American
Music historian also observes, found in rural
culture. I found the material on Lyman
Beecher, Harriet Stowe Beecher, and
Timothy Mason to be fascinating and a
reminder of the fine musical culture
Cincinnati has enjoyed from its earliest
years as a city. Its public school music
program is one of the pioneer programs
in the nation being inaugurated in 1838,
the same year Lowell Mason started the
one in Boston. I was surprised however,
to find that the author did not include
Robert Patterson's Patterson's Church
Music, a four-shape-note tunebook published in the same year
(1813) as John
Wyeth's Repository of Sacred Music,
Part II, in his listing of shape-note tune-
books published in Cincinnati,
Patterson's book contained some of the same
folk-hymns found in the Wyeth
publication and was used in the Ohio Valley and
even in Northern Illinois.
Concerning the chapter, "Sacred
Harp as Cultural Object," Bealle deals with Carl
Carmer, Donald Davidson, and George
Pullen Jackson. Jackson's publications on
various aspects of American sacred
folksong have been a standard source of infor-
mation for over 70 years. Jackson has
also been a controversial figure in this area
of American folk music; yet his
publications are the pioneer studies with which
one starts one's research in sacred
folksong. Both Carmer's and Jackson's views
of Sacred Harp culture gave a distorted
perception of it that lingered for years.
I found the material on the tunebook and
its traditions in the Chapter on
"Writing Traditions of the Sacred
Harp" to be one of the best parts of the book,
particularly the information on B. F.
White and his use of the newspaper, The
Organ, in promoting Sacred Harp music. Bealle also comments on
Joe S. James's
Brief History of the Sacred Harp (1904) and the James Revision (1911) of the
tunebook with its Scriptural Quotations
and Footnotes. Earl Thurman's The
Chattahoochee Music Convention: 1852-1952, and the late Ruth Denson
Edwards's essays on the tunebook are
briefly discussed too. Bealle concludes the
chapter with what I believe is the most
significant part of it with an excellent dis-
cussion of the use of minutes in this
musical tradition titling it, "Sacred Harp
Minutes as Native Ethnographies."
The information that these minutes of the
many singing conventions give to a
Sacred Harp singer is one of the most impor-
tant aspects of Sacred Harp culture. It
unifies the Sacred Harp singers into one of
the primary characteristics of folk
music and folk musicians according to Joseph
Hickerson-an identifiable folk group or
community. Sacred Harp singers travel
long distances to sing in the various
singing conventions because they love the
music and for the social bond that
exists between them.
In the chapter, "Our Spiritual
Maintenance Has Been Performed: Sacred Harp
Revival," Bealle documents the
revival of interest in Sacred Harp singing that be-
Book Reviews 79
gan in the late 1950s and early 1960s in
locations such as Wesleyan University in
Middletown, Connecticut; the Ark
Coffeehouse in Ann Arbor, Michigan; the
Newport Folk Festival (1964) in Rhode
Island, and the Fox Hollow Festival, in
Petersburg, New York, among some of
them. Choral organizations such as the
Word of Mouth Chorus in Plainfield,
Vermont; the Norumbega Harmony,
Wellesley College in Boston; and the
American Music Group at the University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign featured
Sacred Harp songs on their programs. The
Word of Mouth Chorus produced a songbook
with many Sacred Harp songs, The
Word of Mouth Early American
Songbook, in 1976. However, the revival
owes
more to the leadership of Hugh McGraw of
Bremen, Georgia, the Executive
Secretary of the Sacred Harp Publishing
Company, than any other person or group
of individuals. Bealle documents some of
McGraw's tireless efforts that took
Sacred Harp singing from a purely
regional phenomenon to a national recognition
of this form of American folksong. The
publication of newsletters by various
groups of singers throughout the nation
has strengthened the bond between
singers even more. Bealle also discusses
the process by which the Sacred Harp
Publishing Company revised the tunebook
and published its latest revision in
1991. It appears the revising committee
approached the matter of the latest revi-
sion in much the same spirit as Joe S.
James did in his revision of 1911. Bealle
comments regarding the James revision
that "James articulated a usable past and
infused it into the living
tradition-without displacing the presence of that living
singing tradition. For James, singing
did not represent the past. Rather, the
past-the commitment and labor of the
founders of the tradition, the spiritual
thoughts of the earliest musicians...all
were the building blocks for a richer and
more rewarding present."
I found the Appendices useful and
informative, particularly the minutes for the
conventions. I am grateful that the
author included them; they amplify and enrich
the material he has presented previously
in the book. The Notes, References and
the Index are excellent.
An issue that emerges occasionally
throughout the book regards the position
where Sacred Harp music belongs in the
context of American folk music or folk-
song. I would like to know how Bealle
defines "folksong," which is not clear to
me in the publication. Bealle
articulates well the ambiguity or discomfort that
Sacred Harp singers have towards being
considered folk musicians, rightly or
wrongly so. Bealle is forthright in
indicating the religious significance of Sacred
Harp singing to many or most of the
singers which is their concern in this matter.
One can emphasize with the Sacred Harp
singers' dilemma being placed with musi-
cians, for example, in the current
contemporary folk music movement such as the
"Four Bitchin' Babes!" Bealle
too raises the issue regarding the dominance of the
secular tradition over the sacred one in
American folksong which places the per-
formers of sacred folksong in a
perplexing situation. One cannot contest his
comments about this; it is true. The
amount of scholarly studies done on sacred
folksong pales in comparison with that
of the secular tradition. The reality that
Sacred Harp singing is mostly a literate
rather than an oral tradition also puts the
tradition in an unique place in American
folk music.
I found reading this book a rewarding
experience for a "Yankee" Sacred Harp
singer. It is also one of the finest
scholarly publications I have read. The author
has both an immense erudition and a deep
affection for the Sacred Harp and its cul-
ture. Yet I have two concerns about the
publication. One is the long first chapter
(84 pages) which precedes the heart of
the book; I wish it was a little shorter. The
second one is the omission of any
detailed discussion of the Cooper Revision
80 OHIO
HISTORY
which embraces a significant number of
Sacred Harp singers in the South. These
are not, however, major flaws in the
overall fine scholarship found in the book.
Bealle's publication evokes pleasant
memories for me of warm, humid Saturday or
Sunday afternoons in Alabama or Georgia
churches (without air conditioning)
where one enjoyed with other musicians a
folk music experience as well as a spiri-
tual one singing B. F. White's "The
Morning Trumpet" or William Walker's
"Hallelujah" and the many
other songs in the tunebook.
Ohio University
James Scholten
Houses of God: Region, Religion, and
Architecture in the United States. By
Peter
W. Williams. (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1997. xv + 321p.; illustra-
tions, indices. $34.95.)
This set of essays sprang from a 1994
photographic exhibit on the theme of re-
gionalism and religious architecture
sponsored by the Center for the Study of
Religion and American Culture at Indiana
University-Purdue University at
Indianapolis. The amalgamation of
religion, regional concepts, history, and ge-
ography creates both expected and
unexpected regions: New England; the mid-
Atlantic states; the South; the Old
Northwest; the Great Plains and the mountains;
the Spanish borderlands; and the Pacific
rim. Within this framework, Williams
uses his expertise as a professor of
religion and American studies at Miami
University to examine related themes of
denominational traditions and liturgy,
"high" and
"vernacular" architectural styles, ethnicity, and social history.
The result is a fascinating,
non-technical treatment of the built environment of
American religion from Native Americans'
kivas to the "worship centers" of mod-
ern evangelicals. In each region
Williams observes evidence of both distinctive-
ness and a national homogeneity that
reflects the multifaceted American society.
The subsection headings in the Old
Northwest chapter exemplify the comprehen-
siveness of the author's approach. He
includes early settlement patterns, the
English presence, the Welsh in Ohio, the
Germans, sectarians and utopians, eth-
nic diversity, "Hoosierdom,"
Great Lakes cities, Midwestern ethnic pluralism, ex-
periments with modernity, the coming of
the suburbs, and modern evangelicalism.
Williams has a gift for identifying
patterns and trends. He describes, for example,
the characteristics of the
"interstate temples" that have sprung up to accommodate
burgeoning conservative Protestant
congregations: large-scale auditoriums,
shopping center-like parking lots, ready
access to freeway exits, and large physi-
cal plants for educational and social
activities. Above all, he notes their rejection
of traditional ecclesiastical references
that might turn off potential suburbanite
members. His national comparisons are
equally insightful. Williams likens, as
an example, monumental Roman Catholic
churches that dominate the New Orleans
skyline to the German Catholic landscape
of western Ohio.
My primary complaint relates to the
illustrations. The halftones are extremely
muddy and the quality of the original
images is very uneven, ranging from profes-
sionally prepared Farm Security
Administration photographs to the author's snap-
shots. No plans and too-few interior
views are included to represent the author's
excellent discussion of liturgical
influences. In addition, the failure to use com-
plete, on-page descriptions and credit
lines with each illustration wastes a design
that provides ample space and relegates
this information to an appendix, signifi-
cantly reducing its utility.
Book Reviews 81
As a consequence we have a book on
architecture with the unhappy combination
of a knowing text and marginal
illustrations. Surely the University of Illinois
Press could have done better.
Ohio Historical Society David A.
Simmons
Shades of Blue and Gray: An
Introductory Military History of the Civil War. By
Herman Hattaway. (Columbia: University
of Missouri Press, 1997. xii +
281p.; illustrations, suggested
readings, glossary, index. $29.95.)
As with the work of most distinguished
historians, this study grows from its au-
thor's earlier substantial publications
which also earned him a visiting professor-
ship at West Point. The lectures which
Hattaway delivered there evidently formed
a good part of the foundation for this
book. Note for example the frequent listing
of military principles which he then
applies to individuals and events. The needs
of his original audience of student
officers presumably inspired the book's central
focus on the Civil War as an aspect of
the development of military professional-
ism exemplified by the nation's central
army school. This results in frequent ref-
erences to the West Point connections of
Civil War leaders of both sides, even to
their class rankings.
A further consequence of the author's
experience at the United States Military
Academy is that he has written his
summary military history very much from the
top down. The book stresses the
strategic and tactical decisions of leaders. This
well-balanced retelling of a generally
familiar story frequently refers to the views
of recent historians and biographers. As
might be expected of the biographer of
Stephen D. Lee, Hattaway emphasizes the
role of that Confederate general more
than some other writers might. A special
strength of this brief history is its em-
phasis on the influence upon the war of
technological innovation including trans-
portation, weaponry, and naval craft.
The treatment of civilian leadership is
largely confined to the two presidents,
with little even on the secretaries of war.
The home front is referred to mainly in
connection with morale. Readers may wish
to compare/contrast the presentation of
the issue of Southern will to win with that
in the almost simultaneously published
Gary W. Gallagher, The Confederate War
(1997).
As in previous books, Hattaway relieves
his generalizations with human inter-
est. He strikingly presents the
strengths and weaknesses of such central figures as
Robert E. Lee, characterizing the
decision for what became known as Pickett's
Charge as Lee's "worst moment of
anachronistic thinking" (p. 147). He furnishes
such memorable detail as McClellan's daughter's naming her European home
"Villa Antietam" (p. 99).
Readers of this journal may be especially interested in
the quotation which Hattaway uses to
illustrate the trend to a "hard war" from the
unit historian of the Ninth Ohio:
"Fires sometimes broke out in local Rebels'
houses. Of course we, in our innocence,
never knew how they started. In our hon-
est way we helped with rescue and
salvage.... We carried beds out-of-doors, for ex-
ample, and threw glasses and porcelain
out of windows'" (p. 90).
The material supporting the book's text
is generally adequate. There is a helpful
glossary of military terms and several
sections of "Suggested Readings" (whose
locations are not listed in the Table of
Contents). While the choice of readings is
idiosyncratic, they are the
well-considered recommendations of a leading special-
ist. The general maps are sufficient;
lacking are even sketches of the battles dis-
82 OHIO
HISTORY
cussed in detail. There are numerous
well-chosen pictures, mainly portraits.
Inevitably, there are questions of
accuracy and of balance. The caption of the
portrait of Ulysses S. Grant (p. 68) is
worded so as to confuse him with one of his
biographers. While Nathaniel P. Bank's
political career was checkered, it is
doubtful that he was "a token
Democrat" (p. 82) at the time of his politically in-
spired appointment as general. While
devoting several pages to the politically
popular topic of woman soldiers
disguised as men, the book says nothing about
the thousands of men organized into
regiments on the basis of European ethnicity.
Even more important, there is no serious
attention to the implications for morale
and politics of the fact that both sides
raised the bulk of their regiments on a state
and local basis. Indeed the treatment of
non-officers is generally one of the
book's weak sides.
But overall this well-written solid
history's virtues predominate. It should in-
troduce general readers to its subject.
Even those who already know much about
the Civil War can profit from the
commentary on current scholarship. Certainly
many will learn from the Prologue on the
effects of prewar developments and from
the Epilogue on the later influence of
the great conflict. Hattaway's book deserves
to find a large audience.
Kent State University Frank L.
Byrne
With Charity For All: Lincoln and the
Restoration of the Union. By William
C.
Harris. (Lexington: The University Press
of Kentucky, 1997. x + 354 p.; illus-
trations, notes, bibliography, index.
$37.95.)
Almost from the moment of the Confederate
bombardment of Fort Sumter,
President Abraham Lincoln began to
anticipate the reconstruction of the Union.
Throughout the war Lincoln adjusted to
the military and political realities that
emerged in the South, but William Harris
argues it is significant how little Lincoln
changed his policy. As the president
dealt with the Confederate states that came
under federal military control, he
pursued a straightforward process with a remark-
ably consistent set of goals.
Generations of historians have debated
what reconstruction plan this politically
astute president would have followed had
he not been assassinated. Harris argues it
is not much of a mystery if one looks at
the entirety of Lincoln's administration.
Lincoln sought the restoration of the
Union, not reconstruction, since the states
had never left the nation. "Rebel
leaders had subverted state governments," sup-
pressed Union loyalists, and deceived
the people (p. 258). The solution was to put
Southern Unionists in charge of state
governments and the federal government
should protect and nurture them in as
minimal a way as possible. Lincoln's goal
was to fulfill his constitutional
obligations to provide a republican government in
each state and later, as circumstances
and justice dictated, to guarantee the emanci-
pation of the slaves.
Most of Lincoln's goals emerged from his
dealings with Unionists in Virginia,
Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, and, to
a lesser degree, North Carolina.
Personalities and Union military
progress differed in each, and Lincoln slowly
grasped many of the complications of
restoration. Harris portrays a president who
was not reluctant to change, but policy
adjustments largely came from his reac-
tions to events in the South not the
arguments of radical Republican congressmen.
For example, emancipation is described
here as a conservative policy with primar-
Book Reviews 83
ily military goals,
acceptable since it was not a "serious violation of the principle
of local
self-government or of Southern self-reconstruction" (p. 57). Lincoln re-
mained firmly
committed to black freedom, but far less to black rights. "Black
equality was not the
central issue in wartime reconstruction" (p. 172). The
"Proclamation of
Amnesty and Reconstruction" or "Ten Percent Plan" of December
1863 further clarified
Lincoln's existing policy. This was a true restoration plan,
not a device to end
the war more quickly, and it remained the centerpiece of his ef-
forts until his
assassination. This policy, in Lincoln's opinion, worked in previ-
ously captured states
and should be applied to the remaining ones at war's end. He
was not becoming more
inclined towards the radicals, according to Harris.
There is much to
commend in Harris' study, and there are conclusions that will
be contested. The
crucial origins of Lincoln's restoration policy is partly based
on inference given the
absence of Lincoln's unequivocal articulation of his moti-
vations. Did the plan
emphasize minimal federal government activity out of his
political philosophy
or because he had neither the time nor urgency to devise a
more rigorous
reconstruction process? Historians who see the growing influence
of "radical"
Republicans will be left unconvinced.
Harris freely admits that
"Lincoln's
conservative leadership prevented a truly radical reordering of the
South when it was most
vulnerable" (p. 262). President Andrew Johnson's later
failure nicely
contrasts with Lincoln's talents, but left unanswered here is what
leverage over white
Southerners Lincoln left himself if states were readmitted and
ex-rebels and
conservative Unionists flagrantly violated black rights.
Not all will agree
with Harris' thesis, but this is as detailed and forceful an argu-
ment possible for the
conservative reconstruction policy interpretation. Harris'
careful analysis of
Lincoln's actions and speeches over his entire presidency and
his attention to
Lincoln's interaction with a variety of states make this an essen-
tial volume for Civil
War and Lincoln historians. It is well-written, well-docu-
mented, and
provocative.
Cornell College M.
Philip Lucas
Jimmy Carter:
American Moralist. By Kenneth E. Morris. (Athens: The
University of Georgia
Press, 1996. xii + 397p.; illustration, notes, bibliogra-
phy, index. $29.95.)
This is an interesting
and very unusual biography. Most studies of American
Presidents concentrate
on elections, public policy and other strictly political con-
cerns. Morris's study
is primarily concerned with Carter's personal faith and how
it related to Carter's
success as a political leader.
Morris dedicates a
considerable portion of the book to the prosperous Carter
family and Jimmy
Carter's early life in rural Georgia. Carter graduated from the
Naval Academy in 1946;
but his brief naval career ended upon the death of his fa-
ther. Carter resigned
his commission and returned to Plains, Georgia, where he
had inherited land and
a peanut warehouse. In Plains, Carter immediately became
very active in local
public service and politics. He
supported the civil rights
movement in the 1950s
and 1960s and served two terms in the Georgia state sen-
ate. After a
meticulously planned and well-organized campaign, Carter was elected
governor in 1970.
Apparently by the time he became governor Carter was already
planning his campaign
for the presidency, and, according to Morris, much of the
Carter program in
Georgia was tuned to a national audience with an emphasis upon
84 OHIO
HISTORY
Carter's commitment to moral integrity,
trust and competence. He campaigned
harder that any of his opponents in the
Democratic primaries in 1976, and his
campaign, as was the case in his earlier
Georgia campaigns, was very well orga-
nized.
Carter's single term as President was a
"catastrophe," and much of the problem,
Morris argues, was "of Carter's
making." He had a poor relationship with the
Democratic leadership in Congress, but,
says Morris, the central problem was the
lack of "an ideological
blueprint." Most of the criticism of Carter came from lib-
eral Democrats led by Senator Edward
Kennedy, and well before the end of his term
he had few friends in the Congress. In
foreign affairs Carter pursued a policy of
human rights, and he made a strenuous
effort to secure ratification of the Panama
Canal Treaty and to negotiate the Camp
David Agreement. These issues, combined
with the 1979 seizure of fifty-two American
hostages in Iran, created an image of
weakness that was effectively exploited
by Carter's Republican critics. The result
was the election of Ronald Reagan in
1980.
The book focuses on the limitations
placed on Carter's capacity to lead by his
moral values and his evangelical
Christian faith. Faith was not enough, argues
Morris: Carter lacked an ideological
framework. Thus, concludes Morris, as a
state senator and Governor of Georgia
and as President, Carter tended to present a
catalog of proposals with little sense
of priorities. Carter correctly identified the
national "malaise" in his
speech in July, 1979, but he had no intellectual basis to
form a solution. While Carter had many
very good ideas, he 'flitted erratically
from proposal to proposal and reform to
reform"; he could not articulate a "central
vision."
To place such an emphasis upon the
alleged limitation of Carter's "vision" as a
means to explain his failure as a
President is interesting, but not altogether con-
vincing. Carter's tenacity in fighting
for his energy bill and the Panama Canal
Treaty suggests that he did have a sense
of priorities, as well as a substantial
reservoir of political courage.
Furthermore, presidents since Carter have been lit-
tle or no more successful than he in
permanently counteracting the public
"malaise." Probably Carter's
failures more persuasively can be laid to his lack of
political experience, especially in
Washington, and very bad luck. There is also
reason to ponder the extent of Carter's
"catastrophe." In a comparison of his ad-
ministration with those of others who
have served since 1960, Carter's does not
look nearly so bad as it did in 1980.
Southern Illinois University at
Carbondale Howard W. Allen
Power at Odds: The 1922 National
Railroad Shopmen's Strike. By Colin J.
Davis.
(Urbana: The University of Illinois
Press, 1997. xii + 244p; illustrations,
notes, index. $49.94 cloth; $19.95
paper.)
More than 400,000 shopmen struck the
nation's railways in 1922, the largest
walkout in history. Carmen, machinists, boilermakers, sheetmetal
workers,
blacksmiths, and electricians walked out
of the shops and roundhouses protesting
wage cuts and threats to their
seniority. Over the next two years a violent struggle
ensued that led to the defeat of the
workers. Writing from a pro-labor point of
view, Colin Davis sees the strike as an
epic struggle between downtrodden workers
and railroad managers determined to
destroy their unions. He contends that the
administration of Woodrow Wilson
transferred power from the "autocratic busi-
Book Reviews 85
ness sector" to an emerging union
movement (p. 1). The Adamson Act granted
railroad laborers the eight-hour day,
and the United States Railroad Administration
sharply increased their wages, but
President Warren G. Harding reversed these
gains. An ascendant business sector,
using virulent anti-union tactics, crushed the
workers. "The State," that is
the federal government, the police, the military, and
the judiciary, abandoned Wilsonian
progressivism.
The strongest chapters analyze the shop
forces and their roles on the carriers.
They built and maintained locomotives
and cars at a time when the railroads repre-
sented the nation's major transportation
system. Davis describes the tasks they
performed, the hazards of their
occupations, and the importance of their labor. He
also shows that the shopmen were divided
over the issue of piecework and that
there were jurisdictional conflicts
between the various crafts. The shop unions
were blatantly racist, refusing access
to skilled jobs to African Americans,
Hispanics and other minorities. While
Davis describes the "camaraderie" in the
workplaces, his evidence shows deep
cracks in the labor movement. When the
shopmen struck, few members of the
"Big Four" brotherhoods supported them-
the engineers, conductors, brakemen, and
firemen refused to respect the picket
lines. And, more importantly, many
shopmen refused to join the strike.
While Davis attempts to show three great
monoliths-labor, the railroad man-
agers, and "The State"-his
evidence portrays a wide range of attitudes in the three
sectors. President Harding sought
mediation and conciliation as did Secretary of
Commerce Herbert Hoover and Secretary of
Labor John Davis. Only Attorney
General Harry M. Daugherty sought
initially to use federal power to crush the
unions. Divergent attitudes within
government at all levels raises questions about
a monolithic "State."
The study rests largely on labor union
publications and materials found in the
Labor and Management Documentation
Collection at Cornell University. Public
testimonies given before Congressional
Committees and the Federal Mediation
and Conciliation Service are often used for
management's views. While Davis
cites some older studies of the
railroads, missing are references to corporate histo-
ries published in the last two decades.
The only industry sources employed are the
Philadelphia and Reading Railroad
collection at the Hagley Museum and Library
and the Great Northern Railway papers. A
few footnotes refer to the presidential
papers of Warren Harding, but the
administration figure most frequently cited is
Attorney General Daugherty. The
arch-reactionary president of the Pennsylvania
Railroad, W. W. Atterbury, is seen as
the "voice" of management.
Thus the
sources shape the study.
It is hard to accept Davis's conclusions
given the abundance of factual errors.
All of the carriers are referred to as
"Railroads" although many, like the Santa Fe,
Southern and Great Northern were
Railways. The Chicago Great Western is the
"Chicago and Great Western,"
the Virginian is the "Virginia," (p. 150), and is the
"Minneapolis & St. Paul"
actually the Soo Line (p. 76)? Table 7 has separate en-
tries with different data for the
"Frisco" and the "St Louis & San Francisco" al-
though that is the same carrier (p.
67-68). Names of individuals are scrambled-
Fairfax Harrison served as president of
the Southern Railway, not "Felix
Harrison," Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.
served as Harding's Assistant Secretary of the
Navy, and Gifford Pinchot was governor
of Pennsylvania, not "Gifford Pinochet"
(p. 148).
While errors of facts abound, there are
questionable assertions that are even
more harmful. Davis states that the
"Progressive Movement" desired federal own-
ership of the nation's railroads (p.
144). That would come as a shock to many re-
86 OHIO
HISTORY
formers. He claims that railroad
management sought the outright destruction of
the shopmen's organizations, yet he also
notes that the presidents of several ma-
jor carriers negotiated with the unions even at the
height of the strike (p. 101).
Using the highly prejudiced report of
the Pujo Committee of 1912, Davis claims
that the "Money Trust" and
"financiers...bankrolled the nations railroads" (p.
107). It would have been a surprise to
President Harding and the Senate to know
that Attorney General Daugherty
"had appointed" Judge James H. Wilkerson to the
U.S. District Court of Illinois (p.
130). Without presenting any evidence, Davis
says that "railroad officials"
had shopman James Mero assassinated in
Sacramento, California (p. 128).
Throughout the book Davis confuses the roles
and relationships of railway owners and
railway managers. Some actions or deci-
sions were clearly the prerogative of
one or the other, but they are not inter-
changeable. The study seems to have
received little editorial attention from either
the publisher or the distinguished group
of historians who edit the series in which
the book appears.
The shopmen's strike of 1922 was a
significant part of labor's struggle for
recognition and rights prior to the
1930s. The outcome demonstrated the power of
business and its frequent ally, the
federal government. But, as the evidence clearly
shows, the workers, railroad managers,
and the Harding administration were
deeply divided from the outset of the
struggle. The monolithic structures upon
which Davis attempts to develop his
theses simply did not exist.
The University of Akron Keith L. Bryant, Jr.
Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. By
Hans L. Trefousse.
(Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1997. xiii + 312p.; illustra-
tions, notes, bibliography, index.
$39.95.)
Thaddeus Stevens has rarely received
favorable accounts of his role in Congress
during and after the Civil War. To most
he was "the incarnation of radicalism,"
while to Southerners he was "the
embodiment of aggression and vindictiveness (p.
xii). Until recently the program of
advanced Republicans like Stevens was labeled
Radical Reconstruction. Yet to many
scholars, the agenda of these Republicans
was not all that radical. Hans L.
Trefousse is one of those who regard the efforts of
Stevens and his colleagues as advanced
for their time yet not vindictive or ex-
treme. Trefousse is well-qualified as
the first Stevens biographer in thirty years,
for he has previously produced
biographies of Andrew Johnson, Benjamin Butler,
Ben Wade, and Carl Schurz, as well as studies
of Congressional Republicans, the
impeachment of Andrew Johnson, and
Lincoln's decision for emancipation. His
latest effort equals his high standards
for exhaustive research and expands signifi-
cantly on recent interpretations of
Reconstruction.
Stevens's little-known early career
revealed his life-long characteristics of
commitment and stubbornness. Born in
Vermont, he settled in the Gettysburg-
Lancaster area of Pennsylvania at
twenty-one. There he became a lawyer of skill
and power and was soon involved in state
politics. His wit and sarcasm were
quickly evident in his leadership of the
Anti-Mason movement. Born with a club-
foot, his devotion to Anti-Masonry was
partly the result of the Mason's exclusion
of "cripples." Yet his
reputation was assured with his successful advocacy of the
state's free education program.
Identified with business interests, he supported
banks and protectionism even as he
acquired iron forges.
Book Reviews 87
Trefousse details Stevens's growing
advocacy of the rights of slaves, fugitives,
and free blacks. Yet despite these
leanings, Stevens refused to endorse the Free
Soil party and was elected to Congress
in 1848 as a Whig. Returning to the House
as a Republican in 1858, he assumed a
key role on the Ways and Means
Committee. During the war he regarded
Lincoln as too cautious and never appreci-
ated the President's genius. Yet he
worked with him, especially on economic mat-
ters, and helped nudge him toward
emancipation.
Trefousse rightly puts his emphasis on
the Reconstruction years of 1865 to
1868. His account keeps the focus on
Stevens and avoids the life and times ap-
proach. He is especially successful in
countering the arguments of those who
viewed Stevens as a dictator, noting his
willingness to compromise and ability to
accept frequent defeat. Hardly the
mean-spirited, vindictive Jacobin as pictured by
critics, he was consistently charitable
and kind to the poor if not to former
Confederate leaders. He did regard the
former Confederate states as conquered
provinces. And he did want to reshape
Southern society. Through the Joint
Committee on Reconstruction he came to
view Andrew Johnson as the chief ob-
stacle to that goal and to racial
equality. He fought unsuccessfully for property
confiscation of former Confederates to
provide land for the freedmen but had his
greatest success in helping to draft the
fourteenth amendment. He was one of the
House managers of the Johnson Senate
impeachment trial although too ill to be
effective. Yet, says Trefousse,
"his legacy was one of pointing the way. It was
never one of domination" (p.
238). Trefousse concludes convincingly
that
Stevens's policies often sounded harsh,
but his efforts helped make possible the
racial progress of later years.
Hans Trefousse has written a useful if
traditional political biography and one
that gives Stevens proper and
appreciative recognition. In addition, with the
availability of Stevens's papers on
microfilm and in a two-volume published edi-
tion, the "Great Commoner" has
become more accessible to readers. Thaddeus
Stevens will unlikely ever become
likable, but he is surely more understandable
and relevant to twentieth-century
Americans.
Youngstown State University Frederick J.
Blue
War at Every Door: Partisan Politics
& Guerrilla Violence in East Tennessee,
1860-1869. By Noel C. Fisher. (Chapel Hill: The University of
North Carolina
Press, 1997. 250p.; illustrations, notes, appendices,
bibliographies, index.
$29.95.)
War at Every Door is the product of extensive research, and the list of
archival
collections consulted by the author is
impressive. The numerous footnotes, filled
with references to a wide variety of
documents and manuscript sources, provide ev-
idence of the firm foundation upon which
the author, Noel C. Fisher, has built his
conclusions. Fisher also writes with
clarity in a style that makes his work acces-
sible to a wide variety of readers. Even
when engaging in an analysis of statistical
evidence, with accompanying tables,
Fisher has integrated the material into the
text in a way that does not detract from
the more traditional narrative elements of
his story.
The book's first chapter is a
magnificently compressed description of
Tennessee politics before the war,
confirming the old adage that "all politics are
local" and showing that in East
Tennessee personal rivalries frequently superseded
88 OHIO
HISTORY
larger issues. The next two chapters
describe a region alienated from much of the
South in the debate over secession.
Initially, radical unionists refused to accept
secession as either necessary or
inevitable, but they were drawn into the war after
Tennessee left the Union. When the
Confederacy attempted to occupy the region,
the political fragmentation of East
Tennessee guaranteed both a degree of support
for the Confederates and a significant
amount of opposition from local unionists.
The richest part of the book for readers
interested in the guerrilla war is Chapter
4, "Hanging, Shooting, and
Robbing." Partisans of both sides were a constant
menace to their opponents, and few of
the inhabitants of East Tennessee were im-
mune from their wrath. As frustration
eroded the morale and patience of both the
Confederate and Union troops who
attempted to pacify the region, harsh acts of
repression increased, fueling the resistance
and leading to greater violence. The
war in East Tennessee "became
simple, primitive, and brutal" (p. 95).
Unfortunately, despite the dates
contained in the work's subtitle, War at Every
Door contains very little information on East Tennessee
after 1865, and readers
seeking a detailed survey of events
there during Reconstruction will need to look
elsewhere. The summary of the wartime
violence is so good, however, that the
book's misleading title can be
overlooked. A second problem results from the au-
thor's decision to backtrack after his
riveting survey of the guerrilla war in
Chapter 4 to focus in the next two
chapters on Confederate and Union occupation
policies. The book would be more
powerful had the material in Chapter 4 been
merged with that in the next two
chapters to highlight the relationship between
the escalating brutality of the
guerrilla war and the policies of Richmond,
Washington, and their respective
commanders in East Tennessee.
Caution in interpretation is a laudable
trait, and the mark of a good historian,
but in places some readers will wish
that Fisher had been willing to offer a few
more sweeping generalizations. Given his
meticulous research, such theorizing
would have value, but fortunately, even
without it, Fisher's volume has much to
recommend it. The book provides an
excellent summary of conflict in a highly
fragmented region where opposition to
whichever side attempted to control it was
strong enough to make occupation
difficult. The result was a bloody war within a
war, fed not only by the partisan
violence of the Civil War, but also by local po-
litical struggles, personal animosities,
and opportunistic criminality. Fisher tells
the story well, and his short, easily
read work provides an excellent starting point
for anyone interested in further study
of the Civil War in East Tennessee and an
equally good work for readers with a
passing interest in the topic who are search-
ing for a single volume to satisfy their
curiosity.
The College of Wooster John M.
Gates
Private Wealth & Public Life:
Foundation Philanthropy and the Reshaping of
American Social Policy from the
Progressive Era to the New Deal. By
Judith
Sealander. (Baltimore, Maryland: The
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.
xii + 349p.; illustrations, notes,
bibliography, index. $39.95.)
A professor of History at Bowling Green
State University, Judith Sealander has
published her third monograph on a
misunderstood and underdeveloped topic in
modern American history. She wrote Private
Wealth & Public Life in part to set the
record straight about the place of the
incorporated philanthropic foundation in
American policy history during the first
third of the twentieth century. The book
Book Reviews 89
makes an important contribution to
policy history and raises some interesting
themes that could be developed further.
Sealander's findings show that the early
private foundations were less powerful
than their detractors have maintained; they
represented neither "the driving
force behind revolutions in human betterment"
nor "evil threats to
democracy" (p. 2). She concludes: "In a pluralistic political
system characterized by divided power,
rarely was just one entity a policy's sole
author, and almost always the impact of
implemented policies confounded predic-
tions" (p. 242). One common tie she
identifies throughout the disparate programs
she covers was the philanthropic,
progressive commitment to employing
"disinterested experts"
(usually social scientists) in the policy making process.
Sealander supports her conclusions
(foreshadowed as eight premises in the first
chapter) by analyzing how seven
philanthropic institutions approached a handful
of policy issues not usually identified
by policy historians. These included
"saving" rural America,
promoting vocational and parent education programs, re-
designing child welfare and juvenile
programs, controlling American vices, and
encouraging physical and moral health.
She has employed research from a variety
of sources, ranging from personal papers
to the records of foundation programs,
both public and private. The latter,
alas, have been underutilized by both social
and political historians, having been
opened only within the last generation.
Sealander is one of only a few
historians interested in how the philanthropic
world has shaped American social history,
and she clearly shows how previous
scholars have overemphasized the
significance of these foundations in fomenting
change. But her thematic approach
undermines chronological continuity as the
reader is constantly pulled back and
forth between 1900 and 1932. Indeed, Private
Wealth & Public Life reads more like a social history than political
history. We
learn little about the
"corporateness" of the seven foundations (that is assumed, p.
2). She found "a complex structure
of connections between the Commonwealth
Fund, the Rosenwald Fund, the Russell
Sage Foundation, and four of the seven
much larger and much richer Rockefeller
philanthropies" (p. 23), but she does not
clearly delineate that structure,
instead emphasizing the "personal" (as opposed to
"corporate") connections
throughout the various case studies. Sealander under-
plays another intriguing point: Most of
the social programs began with the idea
that a private-public partnership was
intended, if not from the very beginning,
certainly after it had had some time to
mature. There is, then, a sense that the
scions of capitalism who funded these
philanthropies (such as the Rockefellers)
did indeed see a place for government in
the political-social-economy of the U.S.
Similarly, there is throughout an
implied but not fully developed criticism of the
emergence of the social sciences as a
driving force behind the foundations.
Another significant theme that Sealander
raises, and occasionally mentions in
case studies but does not develop fully
throughout, was the large number of women
involved in promoting the foundations'
programs.
In conclusion, we learn in Private
Wealth & Public Life some of the detail about
policy developments before 1932 that
have not been the mainstay of political or
social historians, even if we do not
learn much about how the philanthropies actu-
ally worked. Sealander has furnished,
nonetheless, a monograph that scholars of
the story after 1932 will have to deal
with; and she has raised some interesting is-
sues that can be developed further in
the pre-1932 era.
The Ohio State University William R.
Childs
90 OHIO
HISTORY
Daniel Webster: The Man and His Time.
By Robert Remini. (New York: W. W.
Norton & Co., 1997. 796p.;
illustrations, notes, bibliography, index, $39.95.)
At the outset of this massive biography,
Robert Remini laments that non-histo-
rian friends, trying to recollect Daniel
Webster, assumed his subject to be the man
who authored the dictionary. No one
would have misidentified Daniel Webster in
his own day. His nationalistic oratory,
which gave a young nation a sense (albeit
distorted) of its history, his arguments
in important constitutional cases, and his
lifetime of service in Congress and
cabinet made him a household name. Sadly, al-
though benefiting from the new edition
of the Webster papers and Remini's life-
time of research in the primary sources
of the Jacksonian Era, this new biography
will probably not spark a new enthusiasm
for Webster. By choosing to tread,
however skillfully, well-worn paths, Remini
fails to engage Webster in new or dif-
ferent ways. The Webster in this
biography remains remote from the interests and
understandings of most readers in the
late twentieth century.
Remini crafts Webster's life from the
pieces left behind: Webster's carefully
edited speeches, his recollections of
his early life provided to campaign biogra-
phers, his letters and papers, and
anecdotes recalled by friends and enemies or re-
ported in the press. Indeed, his
"life and times" reflects the "times" primarily in
its attention to primary sources, and
the revolutionary social and economic
changes of the era are only a dim
background. He proceeds chronologically
switching skillfully between Webster's
public and private life. Webster's illustri-
ous law career, the source of his
considerable income and important initially for
his fame, is especially well developed.
He provides illustrations (mostly por-
traits), a chronology of Webster's life,
a genealogy of his family, and a brief bib-
liographical essay.
Like many contemporaries and some
previous biographers, Remini interprets
Webster as a man with two personalities,
"one cold, proud, untrustworthy, power-
and money-mad; the other heroic,
majestic in mind and speech, truth-seeking and
statesmanlike" (p. 613). He clearly
believes Webster's willingness to borrow
money and indifference to repaying it to
be unusual and especially important in
judging him. Like Webster's Democratic
opponents too, he sees Webster as an
outdated Federalist increasingly out of
step with a rising American democracy.
While a careful political writer and
speaker, Webster was, in Remini's view, an in-
effective politician. In a lifetime of
seventy years, Webster is credited with little
personal change or growth.
In the nineteenth century world view,
great men shaped events and personal
character traits shaped the great men.
Sources from that era generally reflect this
understanding. One wonders, however,
whether Webster was a Jekyll and Hyde or
whether idealists of the era simply
could not reconcile themselves to successful
politicians who were less than perfect.
Was Webster exceptional in being pillo-
ried by his opponents and some
exasperated former friends or was this merely part
of the emerging political culture? Are
there insights lurking in Webster's personal
recollections about his life which
reflect his own self-image or how he hoped to
influence others' perceptions of him?
Was Webster, who represented the most
rapidly modernizing state in the union,
truly an Old Fogy, out of step with his
times, or should his increased campaign
stumping be seen as an acceptance of new
methods and a new world order? Could one
understand his particular political prob-
lems better in terms of his personality
or within the context of an analysis of the
political institutions and party system
within which he operated? Remini is reluc-
tant to move beyond a traditional and
narrow life and times and unfortunately loses
Book Reviews 91
thereby whatever new insights might be
brought to his subject by textual analysis
of Webster's personal writings,
psychological probing, political theorizing, or
placement of Webster more firmly in the
broader social and cultural history of the
era.
Ohio University
Phyllis Field
Sumner Welles: FDR's Global
Strategist. By Benjamin Welles. (New
York: St.
Martin's Press, 1997. xii + 437p.;
notes, illustrations, bibliography, index.
$35.00.)
President Franklin Roosevelt was
notorious for bypassing the State Department
on critical foreign policy matters and
relying instead on individuals with ties to
him personally. One of the more
controversial of these presidential confidants
was Sumner Welles, an eminently
qualified professional diplomat whose career
eventually met an untimely and sordid
end. Sumner Welles: FDR's Global
Strategist, written by Welles's eldest son, Benjamin, is the first
complete biogra-
phy of this notable figure. Benjamin
Welles employs his father's voluminous
personal papers, FBI files, and
extensive interviews with former associates and
friends to write an enlightening and
balanced study.
It becomes clear from early in this book
that Welles's life was defined not only
by his involvement in international
relations, but also by his upper class up-
bringing and his destructive personal
foibles. Born to privilege, he was educated
at Groton and Harvard. A classmate and
friend of Eleanor Roosevelt's brother,
Hall, Welles was a page at her wedding
to Franklin. Welles himself married within
his class and, after choosing a career
in diplomacy, traveled to foreign assign-
ments in a style befitting his
status. He built a baronial mansion
outside
Washington, D.C. In some ways, his life
story reads like a study of the culture of
America's turn of the century
aristocracy.
During the 1920s, his skillful handling
of crises in Honduras and the Dominican
Republic quickly established his
reputation as an authority on Latin America. But
until Roosevelt became president,
Welles's career languished. Roosevelt tapped
this family friend and loyal Democrat
first as ambassador to Cuba, then assistant
secretary of state for Latin American
affairs, and finally as undersecretary in 1937.
Welles's ambitious aspirations to be
secretary of state were never realized, but his
close relationship with the president
placed him in the inner circle of policy mak-
ers. Often his influence exceeded that
of Secretary of State Cordell Hull, who re-
sented this challenge to his authority.
Welles, whose views on international
affairs largely paralleled those of the
president, was instrumental in policy
formulation before and during World War II.
At first he concentrated primarily on
Latin America. He was an outspoken advo-
cate of the Good Neighbor Policy. After
Roosevelt's 1937 "quarantine speech,"
however, he became a global strategist.
Roosevelt sent him to Europe to try to
avert a world war. Welles also played a
major role in drafting the Atlantic Charter,
the "peak" of his career
according to the author. Once war came, Welles con-
tributed substantially to major policy
decisions, including the effort to create a
Jewish homeland in Israel and especially
planning for a postwar United Nations
organization.
Yet at the height of his influence, his
indiscretions brought him down.
Benjamin Welles forthrightly discusses
the personal weaknesses that had plagued
92 OHIO
HISTORY
his father since college, particularly
his alcoholic excesses and bisexuality.
Welles escaped serious repercussions
from these failings until a 1940 incident on
a train returning to Washington from the
funeral of House Speaker William
Bankhead. In a drunken stupor, Welles
propositioned a railroad porter. Roosevelt
defended Welles and tried to cover up
the episode, but William Bullitt, long
Welles's political rival, allied with
the disgruntled Hull to keep the incident alive
and eventually in the public eye. Under
pressure, Roosevelt accepted Welles's res-
ignation in 1943. Welles spent his
remaining years writing and lecturing on for-
eign policy issues.
Benjamin Welles has written a
sympathetic, yet honest, biography of his fa-
ther. The work reveals little that was
not already known about Welles's career, and
one would wish that there had been more
substantial analysis of Welles's views
and recommendations. Nevertheless, this
is a valuable work that accentuates
Welles's important place in American
foreign policy formulation.
St. Louis University T. Michael
Ruddy
Vietnam Shadows: The War, Its Ghosts,
and Its Legacy. By Arnold R. Isaacs.
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1997. xii + 236p.; bibliographi-
cal essay, notes on sources, index.
$25.95.)
"By God," President George
Bush declared at the end of the Gulf War, "we've
kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for
all." Popular opposition to the failed
humanitarian operation in Somalia in
1993 and the drawn-out debate two years
later over intervention in Bosnia
demonstrate that-the former president's eu-
phoric comments aside-Vietnam continues
to overshadow American foreign pol-
icy. The furor that followed the
publication of former Defense Secretary Robert
McNamara's apologia, In Retrospect, likewise
shows that the war divides
Americans today almost as sharply and
bitterly as it did in the late 1960s and early
1970s.
Arnold Isaacs seeks to understand why
the conflict continues to dominate for-
eign policy and divide Americans in his
fine new survey of the war's lasting con-
sequences, Vietnam Shadows: The War,
Its Ghosts, and Its Legacy. He offers no
overarching thesis. Rather, he explores the conflict's legacy in
a series of
loosely related chapters that include a
review of the shabby treatment received by
returning veterans, an accounting of the
government's inability to escape the
Vietnam Syndrome, a brief discussion of
Vietnamese refugees who fled to the
United States after the communist
victory, and an assessment of the war's impact
on the generation that came of age in
the 1960s.
Isaacs' chilling examination of the
POW-MIA myth-the notion that Hanoi
continues to hold American prisoners of
war-is the strongest section of the
book. He neatly explodes this persistent
fable by demonstrating that it was born
in emotion rather than fact, that it was
nurtured by shameless hucksters looking to
exploit grieving relatives for a fast
buck, and that it has been kept alive by credu-
lous journalists and opportunistic
politicians. More important, Isaacs suggests
persuasively that the POW-MIA myth
symbolizes something larger in American
society: a subconscious effort by the nation to recover "some vital
piece of
America's vision of itself-trust,
self-confidence, social order, belief in the
benevolence and ordained success of
American power-which had disappeared in
the mountain mists and vine-tangled
jungles of Vietnam" (p. 136).
Book Reviews 93
Isaacs' assessment of the Vietnam War's
effects on U.S. diplomacy is another of
the book's strengths. Victory in Desert
Storm and the limited success of the
Bosnia mission aside, he demonstrates
persuasively, American foreign policy re-
mains caught between the impulse to use
force to achieve national objectives and
the contradictory desire to avoid
"any intervention that seem[s], however re-
motely, to foreshadow a repetition of'
Vietnam (p. 66). He suggests, in fact, that
the Gulf War reinforced the Vietnam
Syndrome by creating the unrealistic expecta-
tion that future conflicts could be
fought without loss of life. Combined with the
legacy of Vietnam, Desert Storm has thus
produced a political environment in
which the American people will support
only bloodless military interventions.
The weaknesses in Isaacs' work stem
largely from the absence of a unifying the-
sis. Though his focus on topics related
to one another by the war lends coherence,
Isaacs' failure either to connect the
chapters or to draw a larger conclusion regard-
ing the conflict's legacy makes Vietnam
Shadows more a collection of loosely re-
lated essays than a work of interpretive
force. The chapter covering Vietnamese
refugees resettled in the United States
and the one dealing with the way American
colleges teach the war, moreover, are
brief overviews of topics that deserve to be
explored more thoroughly. These, however, are minor criticisms. Vietnam
Shadows is an engaging, even-handed, well-written book that
should prove valu-
able to scholars, the educated public,
and, especially, younger Americans seeking
to understand the Vietnam War and its
many ambiguous legacies.
University of Kentucky Robert J.
Flynn
John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, A
Private Life. By Paul C. Nagel. (New
York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1997. xi + 432p.;
illustrations, sources, index. $30.00.)
To transform John Quincy Adams from a
"grumpy old man" into a complex and
often likeable person is no easy task.
Yet that was precisely what Paul Nagel set
out to do and he has done it very well.
Subtitled A Public Life, A Private Life, this
biography provides no new light on the
first part but a great deal on the second.
The result is a picture of a man whose
deepest ambitions were not to enter public
service but rather to make major
contributions to literature and science, to work
quietly in his garden, and to plant
trees.
The diary which Adams kept for seventy
years would alone give him a special
place in American historical writing.
Nagel and others have described it as the
"most important, valuable
historical and personal journal kept by any prominent
American." Yet poetry was Adams's
first love. He wrote poems during much of his
life, including some erotic verse to his
wife. His translation from the German of
Christoph Martin Wieland's Oberon, reprinted
in 1940, is now recognized as a
classic. He was one of the first
Americans to promote German studies in the
United States. He gave countless
lectures and orations throughout his lifetime
which attracted large audiences and
widespread acclaim.
Nagel found that Adams's reputation as a
misanthrope came from prolonged pe-
riods of serious mental depression.
There were other factors as well. Resentment
of his domineering mother, Abigail
Adams, plagued him as long as she lived. His
desire to please his father even when it
meant pursuing a career in law and politics
kept him from devoting all his time and
energy to his primary interest, study and
writing. There was also a contempt for
those who opposed him, and an inability
to forgive. Even after Andrew Jackson's
death, for instance, Adams called him a
94 OHIO
HISTORY
"hero, a murderer, an
adulterer."
During his eight terms in Congress, John
Quincy Adams used his skill for bitter
invective in the cause of freedom of
petition. His long struggle to end the gag
rule, which forbade the House from
accepting petitions dealing with slavery, en-
deared him to many of his earlier
critics. He made other contributions to political
efforts against slavery by defending the
Amistad Africans, and by opposing the
annexation of Texas and the Mexican War.
Yet his strong love of the Union pre-
vented his joining the abolitionists.
In Nagel's book Adams appears as a real
person, often likeable and fun loving.
He and his wife, for example, were known
for their popular Washington parties.
But it was with his grandchildren that
his human qualities really came to the fore.
He liked to read, sing and even play
with them, and they loved him for it. In his
later years, especially, crowds
responded warmly to the ex-president who had
turned congressman. In retrospect, his
numerous diplomatic assignments and term
as secretary of state under Monroe
overshadowed his failed presidency.
It is a joy to read this positive
biography of John Quincy Adams. Although the
book is based on exhaustive research, it
contains no footnotes. The writing itself
is so good that it sometimes obscures
questions which might puzzle the reader.
One such instance is Adams's connection
with the Anti-Masonic movement. It is
not clear just how much of that party's
philosophy Adams accepted, nor what at-
traction it may have held for him.
Perhaps this work portrays Adams more favor-
ably than he deserves. Nevertheless,
Nagel has tempered the myth of a cold, iras-
cible John Quincy Adams with a far more
likeable human being. The thousands
who mourned his passing in 1848 attest
to the validity of Nagel's thesis.
Wilmington College Larry Gara
Mixed Harvest: The Second Great
Transformation in the Rural North, 1870-1930.
By Hal S. Barron. (Chapel Hill: The
University of North Carolina Press, 1997.
xiv + 301p.; illustrations,
notes, note on sources, index. $49.95 cloth; $18.95
paper.)
In the 1920s and 30s, anthropologists
and sociologists depicted urban and rural
life as polar opposites with urban
society the more dynamic. They, and more re-
cent modernization theorists, projected
traditional rural society's dramatic de-
cline. Historians similarly viewed the
emergence of big business, bureaucracy,
and mass markets as destructive; the
populist movement represented farmers' "last
hurrah."
In contrast, Hal Barron traces the
second great transformation's impact on the
rural North (1870-1930) and finds a much
more complex process. Instead, rural
northerners negotiated the sweeping
changes "in ways that were marked by resis-
tance as well as accommodation and by
change as well as continuity," thus influ-
encing both the debates and the outcomes
(p. 16). They sought "to maintain au-
tonomy in an increasingly corporate and
translocal society and to preserve an
older vision of the virtues of agrarian
life that was bounded by the local commu-
nity" (p. 243). Even by 1930,
"the rural North remained a society of family
farms" with family enterprise as
the dominant economic organizational form and
the rural community's main component (p.
13).
Rural northerners also incorporated
important "great transformation" elements.
By 1930, farmers had organized as
producers and small businesses into interest
Book Reviews 95
groups that transcended the local
community. They embraced new technologies,
especially the automobile, radio and
motion picture, to move beyond their proxi-
mate communities and engage the consumer
mass market. Thus, rural northerners
"continued to believe in the
importance of individual freedom and the primacy of
the local community," but they
incorporated aspects of central organization and
the mass market into their behavior (p.
152).
Barron divides his book into three
parts: Citizens, Producers and Consumers;
each provides two case studies of
specific conflicts between rural and ur-
ban/modern life to determine the nature
and extent of change. As "citizens," rural
northerners confronted efforts at
"road" and "educational" reform; both pitted a ru-
ral ideology of local home rule,
self-reliance, independence and frugality against
more centralized, professional and
bureaucratic decision-making. Farmers acqui-
esced to road construction when state
and federal governments assumed the cost,
but resisted progressive educational
reform and school consolidation. As
"producers" rural northerners
confronted the emergence of large corporate giants
that controlled transportation and
markets by organizing; in the 1920s the New
York State Dairymen's League transformed
itself into a giant corporate monopoly
while midwest grain farmers organized
local co-operative grain elevators to con-
trol markets and prices. As
"consumers" rural northerners entered consumer culture
and "constructed a new translocal
rural society and culture, which remained distinct
from and, at times, opposed to the more
urban mainstream" (p. 194).
Mixed Harvest provides a sophisticated analysis of the complex
dialectical pro-
cesses of change and continuity. It
draws on a wide range of primary and sec-
ondary sources including local
histories, reminiscences and oral histories, the
agricultural press, government reports
and studies by rural sociologists, agricul-
tural and home economists. The book is not without problems, however.
Although aware of considerable
diversity, Barron lumps together into the "rural
north" a landscape that varied
significantly in geographic, economic, political,
social, ethnic and racial makeup. This
is not an ethnography of rural ideology;
the study samples but it does not
penetrate to the heart of rural culture or explain
how various northern farmers integrated
these conflicting elements into a world
view. Nor does it provide a clear
synthesis of the new emerging rural culture.
Barron may overstate the extent of
change since folklorists reported some Illinois
farmers in the 1930s still planting by
moon phase. There is no comparative
framework to contrast change in other
rural areas. Still, this is a fine study for its
ability to deal with continuity and
change and show rural northerners' historical
agency.
Cleveland State University James
Borchert
The Kennedy Obsession: The American
Myth of JFK. By John Hellmann. (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1997.
xvi + 205p.; illustrations, notes, in-
dex. $29.50.)
Thirty-five years after his
assassination, despite energetic deconstruction and
the lurid light of postmortem scandal,
John F. Kennedy's undiminished popularity
fascinates and astounds. Stirring
disparate emotions, the JFK mystique is the na-
tion's Rorschach test; from the myriad
of conflicting images we discern what sat-
isfies.
Now, John Hellmann, professor of English
on the Lima campus of The Ohio
96 OHIO
HISTORY
State University, has evaluated an array
of cultural images, matched them to those
formulated by and for JFK, and found the
president in life and death a "great hero of
our cultural mythology," an image
configured according to well known "hero
tales." Utilizing what he labels as
a cultural analysis, Hellmann blends anecdotal
evidence from prominent JFK biographies,
leavens with literary criticism of
books by and about JFK and his times,
and lightly seasons with anthropological
nomenclature and psychoanalytical film
theory.
Hellmann concludes that JFK's
image-"an electrifying complex of fused de-
sires"-is best understood as a
cultural construct, an amalgam of the following:
JFK's liberating youthful enamoration of
heroic adventure fantasies; his admira-
tion of the English aristocratic
lifestyle; his own writings, Why England Slept
(JFK's "self making") and Profiles
in Courage (JFK's "liminal" experience); sto-
ries about him, particularly John
Hersey's account of the PT-109 adventure,
"Survival," which Hellmann
labels an "allegorical tale of transformation"; the im-
agery of tough, respected males drawn
from Hemingway's novella The Old Man
and the Sea and from Hollywood's typecast leading men of the late
1950s and early
1960s (Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, and
James Stewart); and, of course, his father's
desires and public relations efforts.
Relying largely on the methods and
reasoning of literary criticism, Hellmann
sees Kennedy's presidency unfolding like
a "cinematic narrative." Where previous
presidents, according to Hellmann, were
father figures, JFK was a romantic hero to
the country, the "nation's romantic
lover, the object of our projected fantasies,"
an erotic obsession. At the end of a
love affair, Hellmann suggests in an arresting
passage, there comes disillusion when
the lover discovers that the beloved is a
real person with many faults. In death,
however, JFK was transfigured into "an ob-
ject of religious longings."
All of this is fascinating and
evocative, written in an engaging style. Yet it
fails to persuade. Not everyone
engrossed by the JFK mystique sees him as
Hellmann does. Historians, in fact,
likely will see Hellmann's analysis as mere
elaboration upon the Camelot tale placed
before us by the president's widow. In
sum, Hellmann's static comparison of JFK
to selected heroic images drawn from
the mass culture of the late-1950s and
early-1960s lacks pervasive explanatory
power. After all, JFK won election by an
extremely narrow margin over Richard
M. Nixon, who, despite abundant
differences in style, appealed to most of the
same impulses within the electorate as
JFK. Moreover, no president's image fits
altogether within the province of the mass
culture; thus, a fuller comprehension of
the JFK image also dictates analyzing
variables within the political culture, then
and now.
Further complicating matters is JFK's
Janus-like personality, his facility for
deception and his penchant for being perceived
one way and acting another.
Hellmann is least helpful on the discord
between heroic images of JFK and mass
culture's contemporary absorption with
depictions of JFK as the cynical hypocrite
and sexual libertine. The book closes
without a forceful restatement of the thesis
or a dramatic coda, leaving much to
question about JFK the man and the image.
Temple University James
W. Hilty
Pickett's Charge in History &
Memory. By Carol Reardon. (Chapel
Hill: The
University of North Carolina Press,
1997. x + 285p.; illustrations, notes, bib-
liography, index. $29.95.)
Book Reviews 97
Pickett's Charge in History &
Memory is an original, insightful, and
often en-
tertaining work that explores the way in
which one version of the Battle of
Gettysburg triumphed over others and
became embedded in our national history
and myth. Reardon offers readers a
provoking discussion of the intellectual, polit-
ical, and cultural obstacles to
developing accurate accounts of this battle. She also
traces the ways in which the meaning of
Gettysburg changed over time and in
which it was employed for varying
symbolic purposes. Finally, Pickett's Charge
considers the sometimes sordid ways in
which participants quarreled over the facts
of this battle.
As Reardon shows, the sources on which
accounts of this (and other) battles de-
pend suffer from numerous weaknesses.
Most soldiers saw only a small part of the
fighting, and therefore tended to focus
on the events that concerned them and on
the battle's most sensational aspects.
Newspaper accounts were little better.
Most reporters lacked the ability and
time to describe accurately the strategic and
tactical complexities of a battle, and
the major Richmond papers, upon which
other publications depended, slanted
their coverage toward Virginia units.
Reardon, therefore, asserts that history
and memory were often dangerously far
apart, and shows that accounts of
Gettysburg differ widely on a number of funda-
mental issues, including the length of
the pre-assault artillery bombardment, the
tactical formation of the assaulting
force, and the precise parts played by different
Northern and Southern units.
Reardon then traces the ways in which
the meaning and symbols of Gettysburg
changed in the decades following the
war. Initially many soldiers did not see the
battle as a turning point in the war.
But later, as Southerners sought to understand
their defeat and create heroes,
attention focused increasingly on this engagement.
The particularly heavy losses that the
Confederacy suffered partly drew Southern
attention, but so did the drama and
visual power of the fighting. The spectacle of
three divisions advancing in clear view
into a withering Union fire seemed to
epitomize the high standards of courage,
commitment, loyalty, and self-sacrifice
that Southerners espoused. Northerners, too, paid increasing
attention to
Gettysburg, perhaps because this rare
victory in the East was followed by the deci-
sive Northern advances of 1864. But
Gettysburg also became a symbol of recon-
ciliation between the North and South,
as veterans began to meet at the battlefield
to reminisce and publicly bury sectional
enmity.
Finally, during this same period
Gettysburg became the focus of an historical
and literary war among Southerners
themselves. Veterans from General George
Pickett's, General Isaac Trimble's, and
General James Pettigrew's divisions quar-
reled over which had broken first under
Union fire, which had advanced furthest,
and which was to blame for the failure
of the assault. Soldiers, officers, and the
public also carried on a dispute over
whether General Robert E. Lee, General James
Longstreet, Pickett, Trimble, or
Pettigrew bore the greatest blame for the South's
defeat. But in the end Pickett's
veterans, and Lee's partisans, won these debates,
and the view of the Confederate assault
as "Pickett's Charge" became firmly estab-
lished. In part this was because publishers
such as the Southern Historical Society
Papers favored accounts from Virginia
veterans; in part it was also because the pic-
ture of dashing Pickett and his gallant
Virginians as the flower of the army and the
South was so appealing that it could not
be displaced. Thus the Pickett-centered
version continued into the twentieth
century, as evidenced by popular accounts,
novels, movies, and cultural symbols.
Reardon's work ranges far afield from
traditional military history, and not all
readers will find her musings on the
nature of history compelling or convincing.
98 OHIO
HISTORY
But readers with an interest in how
historical accounts are developed, and the ways
in which they can be manipulated for
many purposes, will find Reardon's work re-
warding.
Columbus, Ohio Noel Fisher
The Senator and the Sharecropper's
Son: Exoneration of the Brownsville
Soldiers. By John D. Weaver. (College Station: Texas A&M
University Press,
1997.
xxii + 271p.; illustrations, notes, appendix, bibliography, index.
$29.95.)
In August 1906 men of the 25th Infantry,
stationed in Brownsville, Texas, were
accused of shooting at several citizens
of Brownsville, Texas. Several months
later all 67 members of this
African-American battalion were discharged without
honor for refusing to confess their
guilt. In 1970 John Weaver published the first
detailed account of this perversion of
justice. Subsequently several members of
Congress worked to rectify the wrong.
Weaver's new book, which promises to de-
scribe the exoneration of the
Brownsville soldiers, provides little new informa-
tion and is a major disappointment.
Weaver chose to approach the incident
through brief biographies of several of
the key individuals: Joseph B. Foraker
[a Republican Senator from Ohio and the
soldiers' defender], Theodore Roosevelt,
and William H. Taft. The author de-
scribed their early lives, their
education, their entry into politics, and the women
they married. Into this narrative he
also wove the experiences of African-
American leaders, including William Du
Bois and Booker T. Washington, and that
of Dorsie Willis, a young Black who
joined the army early in this century. These
lives all intersected around the
Brownsville affray. On the evening of August 13,
1906, a group of eight to ten
individuals walked through the streets of the border
town shooting into buildings. They
killed one man, wounded another and then
disappeared. From the beginning most
whites believed that the shooters came
from the 25th Infantry. The Army
investigated and came to the same conclusion.
When no soldier admitted his guilt,
Roosevelt ordered that all of them be dis-
charged without honor. Weaver described
how this action affected the lives of the
individuals he focused on including
Foraker, who staked his political career on
getting them exonerated and failed, and
Willis, one of those discharged men, who
eventually became a barber in Minneapolis.
The author concluded the book with a
description of the successful effort in
the 1970s to get compensation for Willis,
the only survivor of the 167 men who
were discharged in 1906.
What is the purpose of this book? It is
unclear. Weaver provided no new infor-
mation about the Brownsville shooting.
Most of this book is a superficial his-
tory of the period from 1850 to 1920,
focused on the individuals who played a role
in the Brownsville incident. Weaver's
account of the lives of Roosevelt, Taft,
Wilson, Washington, and DuBois was based
on secondary sources. A reader would
be better served reading the biographies
that Weaver relied on rather than his dis-
tillation. Only his accounts of Foraker
and Willis were grounded in primary
sources, but added little to the overall
impact of the book. Small incidents, such
as the fact that Taft's military advisor
went down with the Titanic, were described
in some detail, but what their
significance was to the overall narrative was unclear.
If readers are interested in a full
account of the Brownsville incident, they will still
need to read Weaver's 1970 book. The
only new material in this work was pro-
Book Reviews 99
vided in the brief Afterward. Finally,
Weaver again asserted that the citizens of
Brownsville were really responsible for
the shooting and framed the soldiers.
However, he again makes no effort to
demonstrate the truthfulness of this charge
which he really did not prove in his
early volume.
This book is not a history of the
Brownsville incident of 1906; nor is it a biog-
raphy of any of the people who were
caught up in the events; nor is it a history of
the exoneration of the soldiers. A
reader would be best served looking elsewhere
for information on the Brownsville
Incident and the exoneration of the African-
American soldiers accused of this crime.
Ohio University Marvin
E. Fletcher
The Papers of Andrew Johnson. Volume 14: April-August 1868. Edited by Paul
H. Bergeron. (Knoxville: The University
of Tennessee Press, 1997. xxxi +
590p.; illustrations, notes, chronology,
appendices, index. $49.50.)
This volume of Andrew Johnson's papers
deals with the five months from April
through August 1868, which featured the
President's trial before the Senate. To
gain acquittal, Johnson showed good
sense and wooed certain moderate
Republicans. Some moderates also balked
at the thought that Radical Senator
Benjamin Wade would replace Johnson.
Moreover, Chief Justice Salmon Chase
made several rulings in Johnson's favor.
All of these factors combined to per-
suade enough moderate Republicans to
allow the President to escape removal.
After the trial, Johnson concentrated on
becoming the Democratic presidential
nominee in 1868. Just before the
convention met in July, Johnson helped his
chances by issuing yet another amnesty
proclamation and announcing before vot-
ing began that he would accept the
nomination if offered. However, the conven-
tion selected Horatio Seymour instead.
Adding to Johnson's woes during these
months were the relentless importuni-
ties of federal job-seekers and problems
in the South. Several ex-Confederate
states completed the political process
Congress had imposed. As a result,
Congress passed laws over the
President's vetoes allowing seven former
Confederate states back into the Union;
Radicals were dominant in all of them.
However, Texas, Virginia, and
Mississippi were still outside the Union. In July,
Congress decided to keep those states
from voting in the 1868 election. Ever
consistent, Johnson vetoed that law as
well, and Congress again set it aside.
In the South, informants peppered the
President with news about unsavory elec-
tion practices, the arbitrary removal of
officials, and even violence. Johnson was
very concerned with these reports. But
after losing the nomination, the President
was in no position to save the South. By
August, the public tended to ignore
Johnson and focus on the Seymour-Grant
campaign. The President's ability to ac-
complish anything had all but
disappeared.
Beyond these larger issues, this
collection also offers interesting material about
small matters related to both Johnson
and those who wrote him. There is, for ex-
ample, a letter from a man demanding
that the President repay him for money the
man had used to help arrange Johnson's
acquittal. One also wonders why the
President continued to support the
infamous Alexander Cummings for the position
of Commissioner of Internal Revenue.
Some letters are poignant. Alexander
Cooke asked Johnson to brevet his son
William for past military service.
William received his promotions, but
unfortunately was attached to the Seventh
100 OHIO HISTORY
Cavalry and died at the Battle of Little
Bighorn a few years later. Again, Lucinda
Pless, a poor mother of five, requested
that the President pardon her husband, an
ex-Confederate soldier, whom she
believed to be in prison. Her spouse, however,
had died in an Illinois penitentiary
five years before. Other offerings, on the other
hand, inspire laughter. For example, one
job-seeker wrote Johnson saying: Can't
say that I would ever vote for you for
President again...I write to you because I am
acquainted with no one. . . that would
be so likely to wield the influence you do-
not withstanding Congress is against
you.... I am anxious to get a place that will
support me until the people and the
Country get over the effects of the war when I
will...let some one else fill the
offices (p. 405-406). For some reason, Johnson
never appointed him to any position.
Paul Bergeron and his staff have assembled
an instructive and representative group
of documents from the massive amount
available. Bergeron has prepared a very
helpful introduction for this critical pe-
riod of Johnson's presidency. Moreover,
his staff has produced a comprehensive
index and marvelous footnotes that
identify a huge number of history's more
shadowy figures, events, and dates. One
can only applaud the consistently high
quality of this and other volumes in the
series.
South Dakota School of Mines and
Technology Gerald W. Wolff
Cleaning Up the Great Lakes: From
Cooperation to Confrontation. By
Terence
Kehoe. (DeKalb: Northern Illinois
University Press, 1997. xi + 250p.; illustra-
tions, notes, bibliography, index.
$32.00.)
Terence Kehoe's outstanding history of
the United States's efforts to clean up
the Great Lakes provides a perceptive
analysis of the nationwide transformations
in environmental policy which took place
in the 1960s and 1970s. Prior to that
time, he argues, water pollution control
was primarily a state responsibility, and
the eight Great Lakes states based their
pollution-control programs on a system of
voluntarism and informal cooperation, in
which their own technical experts-the
state sanitary engineers-attempted to
balance conflicting interests within an at-
mosphere of "cooperative
pragmatism," where legal action was rarely initiated.
Even when industrial pollution reached
intolerable levels in the 1950s, state offi-
cials continued to bargain with the
dischargers, in an effort to improve overall wa-
ter quality without pushing the
polluters so hard that litigation was required or that
firms would relocate to states with
fewer restrictions. The nascent environmental
movement, with its confrontational
style, began to break down this arrangement
in the 1960s and thereafter, when
water-pollution control programs became na-
tional in orientation, open to public
participation, and focused on regulatory en-
forcement, which the courts routinely
used to resolve conflicts.
Locally based activists, like Cleveland's
Citizens for Clean Air and Water, be-
came some of the loudest advocates for
the federal government stepping in with
stricter waste treatment requirements
and tougher environmental law enforcement.
Kehoe marks the spring of 1965 as a
turning point, when "intensive media cover-
age at both the local and the national
level had made Lake Erie a national symbol
of the nation's pollution problems"
(p. 63). The Water Quality Act, which was
passed later that year, placed the
ultimate authority over interstate water quality in
the hands of the federal government.
This was followed in 1966 with the Clean
Water Restoration Act, which increased
the levels of federal construction grants
for sewage treatment facilities. The key
piece of legislation, however, was the
Book Reviews 101
Federal Water Pollution Control Act
Amendments of 1972, which set up a system
of national discharge permits. To make
this radical departure in U.S. water pollu-
tion regulation more palatable to
skeptics, states were allowed to administer the
national permit program within their
borders if they so desired. This the Great
Lakes states did. Nevertheless, federal
oversight ensured a level regulatory play-
ing field across the states, thereby
correcting the variations in pollution-control
standards that had been fueled by
interstate economic rivalries.
The Great Lakes, of course, are shared
by Canada and the United States, and an
environmental-industrial history of the
region offers a marvelous opportunity for
comparative studies. Unfortunately,
Kehoe restricted his analysis to the American
side. He also paid but limited attention
to the evolution of pollution-control
technologies. Nor did he carry his story
much beyond the mid 1970s. Kehoe did
observe, however, that during the past
two decades, water pollution control policy
has been characterized by an ongoing
controversy over the scientific evidence as-
sociated with various toxic wastes and
the most appropriate means of addressing
their health risks. While he points to
how the federal pollution abatement efforts
in the United States (and Canada) have
led to dramatic improvements in the water
quality of the Great Lakes, even as the
lakes continue to absorb serious levels of
contaminants (especially from non-point
source pollution), he leaves it to others
to detail the history of this more
recent story.
Although Cleaning Up the Great Lakes is
not as comprehensive as it might be,
it nevertheless makes valuable
contributions to the regional history of the
Midwest, notably in the area of
federal-state regulatory interactions.
More
broadly, it is an important study of
environmentalism and federalism in the United
States. Anyone interested in the
environmental and industrial history of Ohio in
the twentieth century cannot afford to
miss this book.
National Museum of American History Jeffrey K. Stine
Smithsonian Institution
Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the
Hollywood Blacklist. Edited by Patrick
McGilligan and Paul Buhle. (New York:
St. Martin's Press, 1997. xx + 776p.;
illustrations, notes, selected
bibliography, index. $35.00.)
The House Committee on Un-American
Activities was a featured player in the early
Cold War American anticommunist drama.
In 1947 and in 1951-1952 the commit-
tee held public hearings to expose
Communists in the motion picture industry,
who, it was claimed, were infecting
popular entertainment with subversive ideas.
To "clear" themselves with the
committee witnesses were expected to admit to be-
ing Communists and give the names of
others. Among the first to come before the
committee, the so-called "Hollywood
Unfriendly Ten" militantly refused to discuss
their political views on First Amendment
grounds. Cited, tried, and convicted for
contempt of Congress, they went to
prison after the Supreme Court declined to
hear their appeal. At the second round
of hearings "cooperative witnesses" named
colleagues as Communists. Other
"unfriendly witnesses" refused, but managed to
avoid contempt charges by invoking Fifth
Amendment protection against self-in-
crimination. Still others dodged the
committee's subpoenas. In the end hundreds
of suspected Communist Hollywood
professionals were blacklisted by the studios.
To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the
first HUAC Hollywood hearings, in Tender
Comrades film industry historian-biographer McGilligan and
historian of the Left
102 OHIO HISTORY
Buhle have collected retrospective
interviews with thirty-six, mostly lesser-
known blacklisted persons. The fourth in
McGilligan's Hollywood "backstory"
collections, the book's title derives
from the allegedly subversive 1943 film col-
laboration of Hollywood Ten figures
screenwriter Dalton Trumbo and director
Edward Dmytryk (neither interviewed for
the book). Among those interviewed are
character actors and directors, but most
are screenwriters, practitioners of a craft
notorious for cliques, jealousies, and
insecurities. Under the thumbs of directors
and producers, screenwriters felt
exploited and unappreciated. Almost all in Tender
Comrades were or had been Communists and many were left-wing
members of the
seriously conflicted Screen Writers
Guild. They tended to be idealists, often from
politically radical families, who had
been drawn to Communism during the
Depression or the wartime
American-Soviet alliance. They
identified with
America's minorities and economically
deprived. Yet they were indifferent
Marxists-Leninists and, as their film
credits demonstrate, less devoted to over-
throwing capitalism than to advancing
their careers. Those searching for fanatical
revolutionaries in America should look
elsewhere. Anyway the collective nature
of studio movie-making and the hegemony
of mass entertainment values made
hash of individual contributions and
were enough to frustrate the most fervent
Communist ideologue.
Becoming unemployable in Hollywood was a
hardship for all, but it damaged
the careers of some more than others. A
few continued to write for the studios,
"fronted" by sympathetic
colleagues. Denied movie roles, Jeff Corey improvised
a distinguished career as an acting
teacher. Others worked, some quite success-
fully, in films in Mexico or Europe or
in television or the theater on the East
Coast and discovered that life away from
Hollywood could be rewarding and enrich-
ing. Interestingly, one, Norma Barzman,
concludes that gender discrimination as
much as her political activity stunted
her screen-writing career(p. 28). As one
might expect, most of the group are
unrepentant, regard fellow victims of the
blacklist as comrades, and remain unforgiving
toward colleagues-turned-inform-
ers, who, according to Jules Dassin, put
"career before honor"(p. 213).
Despite an informative introduction, so
many interviews (conducted by ten dif-
ferent interviewers) arranged
alphabetically produce a disjointed read. To learn the
story, one should consult Victor S.
Navasky, Naming Names (1980) and Nancy
Lynn Schwartz, The Hollywood Writers'
Wars(1982). That said, careful annota-
tion and indexing make Tender
Comrades a rich source of eyewitness accounts re-
plete with anecdotes, opinions, and
insider gossip. As they speak about a now
dimly remembered time, these targets of
the blacklist articulate a powerful coun-
terpoint to fashionably nostalgic
rhapsodies about the 1950s.
Gaithersburg, Maryland Charles H. McCormick
A Journey Through the West: Thomas
Rodney's 1803 Journal from Delaware to
the Mississippi Territory. Edited by Dwight L. Smith and Ray Swick. (Athens:
Ohio University Press, 1997. xiii
+280p.; illustrations, maps, notes, bibliog-
raphy, index. $44.95.)
Students of frontier life have long
valued the colorful and detailed descriptions
of travel accounts. Thomas Rodney's
journal is typical of that genre. Rodney's
earthy descriptions of taverns, roads,
river folk, squatters, Indians, hunting, and
the dangers of water navigation are what
make his journal one of the most detailed,
Book Reviews 103
if least known, travel accounts of the
early nineteenth century. It will be better
known hereafter thanks to the Ohio
University Press and the scrupulous annota-
tions of the editors. Summary accounts
of Rodney's western sojourn have been
previously provided by his biographer,
William Baskerville Hamilton, and in a
few published sketches of his life.
Thomas' letters to his son, Caesar Augustus
Rodney, give a fuller account of the
trip and have been published in the
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and
Biography. Notwithstanding this atten-
tion, the complete journal of the trip
is published here for the first time. A
Journey Through the West will be read for pleasure and profit by students of the
American frontier and those who would
master the mechanics of good historical
editing.
The editors are particularly well suited
for this collaboration. Dwight L. Smith
is Professor Emeritus of History at
Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He for-
merly taught the history of the Old
Northwest and the history of the American
frontier, and the depth of his
bibliographic knowledge in those fields is equaled by
few. Ray Swick, the historian of the
West Virginia State Park System, is based at
Blennerhassett Island Historical State
Park. A former student of Smith, his famil-
iarity with Rodney's journal stems from
his years of research on the history of
Harman Blennerhassett and
Blennerhasett's Island. Rodney's journal contains the
most detailed account of Blennerhassett
Island and its owner that is known to ex-
ist. The illustrations and maps
accompanying this volume make Rodney's jour-
ney more intelligible to modern readers
and give a glimpse, however fragmentary,
of the lost world experienced by Rodney.
More importantly, the editors' numer-
ous and scholarly annotations correct
Rodney's confused geography at several
points of his narrative and
significantly amplify and supplement it at others.
Thomas Rodney (1744-1811) was a man of
irrepressible ambition and enthusi-
asm with a proclivity for
self-laudation. A veteran of the Revolutionary War, a
public office holder in Delaware, and a
member of the Continental Congress, his
life became inextricably interwoven with
the history of the Revolutionary Era and
Early Republic. President Jefferson
appointed him a land commissioner and terri-
torial judge in the newly formed
Mississippi Territory in 1803. Rodney
and a
small party set out for the
"Misisipi" overland from Dover, Delaware. They trav-
eled across southern Pennsylvania to
Sideling Hill and thence to Wheeling in pre-
sent-day West Virginia. After a brief
stay at Wheeling, they began the second leg
of the journey by flat boat, the Iris,
down the Ohio River to Gallipolis and
Cincinnati, Ohio; Louisville to
Henderson, Kentucky; Henderson to Cave in
Rock, Indiana; and Cave in Rock to the
mouth of the Ohio. The last stretch of
their water-borne adventure was down the
Mississippi to the St. Francis River,
Louisiana Territory, and from there to
their journey's end at the seat of territorial
government in Washington, Mississippi
Territory. Those who seek descriptions
of wilderness landscapes, river travel,
frontier societies, prehistoric earthworks,
natural curiosities, and the meaning of
life according to Rodney will find much to
reward them in consulting these pages.
It is, simply said, a good read made more
so by the annotations of the editors.
Rodney's animated descriptions of the
man-made and natural curiosities en-
countered in his travels exemplify the
value contained in many of his reflections
on and explanations of what he observed.
At Cincinnati, Ohio, and again at
Louisville, Kentucky, he described
prehistoric earthworks and at "Big Bone Lick"
reported upon the natural history of the
site and that most of the bones had been
carried away by the time of his visit.
The earthworks at Cincinnati once covered
the upper plain of the city and were
often described before their piecemeal destruc-
104 OHIO
HISTORY
tion. Rodney inspected "the old
supposed fortifications" just to the west of the
Courthouse at Cincinnati on the morning
of October 8, 1803. His peculiar or-
thography stands uncorrected in his
account of that visit, in keeping with the edi-
tors' preference.
They appear indeed similar in age and
workmanship to those mounds in this country called
Indian mounds, but are supposed by some
to be the work of nations, anteceedent to the present
Indian tribes. and all these are known
to be burying places from the human bones found in
them and frequently Indian trinkets
which shews that these are the works of the Indian only,
but perhaps of nations more advanced in
the arts than the present tribes; but I can find no
traces of those origional white
inhabitants which I have no doubt once inhabited this country
unless these works are the only remains
of the extent of their knowledge and that they were
buried in that distrucktion which put an
end to the mamoth tribe of beasts (p.107)
That casual observation captures the
Mound Builder-Indian dichotomy in popular
thought that was not fully laid to rest
until the close of the nineteenth century.
Even though Rodney, like many of the
more informed travelers, matter-of-factly
attributed the prehistoric mounds and
earthworks of the Ohio Valley to the ances-
tors of historic Indian peoples, he also
postulated the presence of prehistoric
white inhabitants. The oft-made assertion that early observers
attributed the
mounds to non-Indian peoples, while true
in some instances, can be woefully in-
correct in others. His statement that
all mounds were burying places was another
popular misconception, since not all
mounds contained bones.
Limitation of space does not allow
further sampling or comment on this fine
volume. It is in bringing forth primary
materials such as this that the historians'
craft shines brightest. The editors have
produced a first-rate example of historical
editing that allows us to vicariously
share Rodney's experiences. In the process,
they have made an important contribution
to the sources relating to a significant
time and place in the history of the
American frontier. Thomas Rodney would be
pleased, both with the editing of his
journal and the new place he has found in pos-
terity. That is, as a self-proclaimed
man of destiny, where he most wanted to be.
Eastern Illinois University Terry A.
Barnhart
Sherman Minton: New Deal Senator,
Cold War Justice. By Linda C. Gugin
and
James E. St. Clair. (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1997. xx +
370p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95.)
This is a balanced and scholarly study
of the political career of Sherman
Minton, Senator from Indiana and Supreme
Court Justice. Minton, a product of ru-
ral southern Indiana, graduated in 1915
at Indiana University and the Indiana
University Law School a year later. In
1916 he opened a law practice in New
Albany, Indiana, served as an infantry
captain in the United States Army during
World War I, and practiced law until his
election to the Senate in 1934.
Minton's political ambitions emerged
almost immediately after the war when in
1920, and again in 1930, he ran
unsuccessfully for Congress in the Democratic
primary. His ultimate success seems to
have resulted from his prominence in the
American Legion where he held several
state-level offices and distinguished him-
self as a convention orator. He allied
himself with another Legionnaire, Paul V.
McNutt, and played a major role in
McNutt's election as governor of Indiana in the
Democratic landslide of 1932. With
McNutt's support, Minton was elected to the
Book Reviews 105
United States Senate in 1934.
Minton served one term in the Senate in
the 1930s. He was a loyal member of
the New Deal coalition; he supported
even the most controversial New Deal mea-
sures. Minton acquired a reputation as
an aggressive, highly partisan Democrat
who used a no-holds-barred, oftentimes
personal, approach in dealing with
Republican critics of New Deal measures.
He became closely associated with a
group the authors called the "New
Deal bitterenders," and, to his later advantage,
he became friends with Harry Truman, who
also had been elected in 1934. In 1940
Minton failed in his bid for reelection.
Soon after his defeat Minton was
appointed to the Seventh Circuit Court of
Appeals by President Roosevelt. After Harry Truman became President at
Roosevelt's death, in 1949 Minton became
one of Truman's "cronies" he ap-
pointed to the Supreme Court. Minton,
the authors argue, reacting to the activist
Supreme Court in the 1930s which had
obstructed the Roosevelt administration
and the will of Congress, believed that
the "Court should be extremely reluctant to
intervene in the prerogatives of the
elected branches of government." Thus he was
one of three on the Court to support
President Truman's seizure of the steel mills
in 1952. He was also "more inclined
to subordinate individual rights to govern-
ment policies promoting order and
security." Minton gave his wholehearted sup-
port to the efforts by the Truman
administration and the majority in Congress to
suppress what was perceived to be the
"Communist conspiracy" (p. 225). While
he firmly supported an end to racial
segregation, Minton otherwise stood opposed
to the Court's shift under Chief Justice
Earl Warren to a more activist stance, par-
ticularly in decisions concerning
individual rights. Primarily due to his health,
Minton resigned from the Supreme Court
in 1956.
The authors rightly make no claims of
greatness for Sherman Minton. In his
one term in the Senate he played the
role of a loyal New Deal partisan, and no im-
portant legislation bears his name. But
they show convincingly that Minton was
well respected by Harry Truman and many
of his Democratic colleagues. They in-
sist that most students of the Supreme
Court have "not dealt kindly, or fairly" with
Minton's tenure on the Court. His
critics, they insist, have "an undeniable liberal
bias." While the authors do not
insist that Minton was a great Justice and agree
that by the 1950s he was out of tune
with the Court majority, they make a con-
vincing case that he was competent and
worthy of a book-length study.
Southern Illinois University at
Carbondale Howard W. Allen
The Yankee West: Community Life on
the Michigan Frontier. By Susan E.
Gray.
(Chapel Hill: The University of North
Carolina Press, 1996. xii + 227p.; illus-
trations, maps, appendices, tables,
notes, index. $39.95 cloth; $18.95 paper.)
In The Yankee West: Community Life on
the Michigan Frontier, Susan Gray,
assistant professor of history at
Arizona State University, examines the creation
of three townships on the antebellum
southwestern Michigan frontier, namely
Richland, Climax, and Alamo, all in
rural Kalamazoo County. All were formed in
the 1830s and had reached generally
similar levels of population (about 2,000 in-
dividuals) by 1880. Those moving into
these communities were also creating a
larger cultural region, a demographic
zone that Gray calls the "Universal Yankee
Nation." This area was spread
westward from New England through upstate New
York, Ohio's Western Reserve, across
southern Michigan, northern Indiana and
106 OHIO HISTORY
Illinois, and into southern Wisconsin
and southeastern Minnesota by New
Englanders who used their traditional
values and institutions as a template to cre-
ate their new lives in the West. Yankees
and non-Yankees alike saw migrants
from New England as "cultural
imperialists," claims Gray. "Where there were
Yankees, there would be New
England" (p. 2).
The persistence of these traditional
values and institutions in the face of new
circumstances and opportunities in the
Midwest is the central question that this
book examines. The answer is somewhat
ambiguous. According to Gray, early
settlers readily abandoned tradition to
further their economic and social aspira-
tions. However, the settlers' failure to
sustain tradition occurred without these
early pioneers acknowledging the
fundamental contradiction between their new
economic ends and their old social
means. "They were not confused," writes the
author, "but their objective was
fundamentally ambivalent: to create traditional
rural communities of unlimited potential
for economic growth. They wanted more
of the same, only better" (p. 15).
Gray successfully documents the
establishment and evolution of such central
cultural and economic institutions as
religion, agriculture, trade, and patrimony.
She does so by skillfully exploiting a
variety of both standard regional studies and
local archival sources. The Yankee
West makes a substantial contribution to our
understanding of the complex social and
cultural forces at work during the
Midwest's late-settlement era. The book
is an excellent effort that points out the
value of local studies for illuminating
issues of broad regional or national impor-
tance, one that will be of interest to
students of the Old Northwest.
Ohio Historical Society Larry L.
Nelson
Wild Justice: The People of Geronimo
vs. the United States. By Michael
Lieder
and Jack Page. (New York: Random House,
1997. xi + 318p.; notes, index.
$25.95.)
Michael Lieder, attorney, and Jake Page,
writer and sometime editor of
Smithsonian, have taken the occasion of the Chiricahua Apaches'
attempts to re-
cover damages from the United States for
unlawful imprisonment, unauthorized
land-taking, reservation mismanagement,
and irresponsible accounting of the
trust funds to launch a telling critique
of the workings of the Indian claims process
since the passage of the Indian Claims
Act of 1946. Their analysis of politics,
case law, and attorney strategies goes
far beyond the Chiricahua cases to encom-
pass a thoughtful and instructive
examination of the impact of the Claims Act on
American "justice" and on the
litigating tribes.
Some of their arguments are familiar.
The Claims Commission Act contem-
plated an investigative commission that
would in unbiased fashion examine both
the legality and the fairness of the
United States' historic dealings with any identi-
fiable Indian group who brought a case.
Instead, the Commission operated essen-
tially as a court of first resort, and
the Justice Department maintained a consis-
tently adversarial stance toward the
claims of the tribes. So narrowly did early
Commissioners construe tribal claims
that the Court of Claims repeatedly reversed
them on significant rulings. In part,
the early attitude of the Commissioners can
be explained by the character of the
appointees. Presidents paid political debts
rather than seeking experts, or even
persons well-acquainted with Indians or
Indian law.
Book Reviews 107
Beyond these familiar criticisms, the
authors contend that the adversarial atti-
tudes the Justice Department adopted
cost both government and tribes in time and
money. Clearly the advocates of
negotiated settlements, the authors point out oc-
casions when attorneys offered
settlements smaller than they eventually won. The
negotiating tribes of Maine, on the
other hand, working outside the Claims
Commission process, won better
settlements than most of those with similar
claims who went through the Commission.
Lieder and Page also point out, that by
the time the Commission enjoyed an
appointee-a former secretary for the Court
of Claims, a woman with a law degree-who
thoroughly understood the laws in-
volved, the Court of Claims had begun to
construe the claimants' contentions
more narrowly and less generously.
Some of the problems with claims cases
were technical, and more or less soluble
by legal fiction. How does one determine
the fair market value of aboriginal occu-
pancy rights to lands remote from any
market? Should that value reflect mineral
resources not developed, perhaps not
"discovered" by non-Indians at the time of
taking? The authors argue that the
Commission and the Court of Claims essen-
tially developed doctrines that would
fulfill the terminationist intent of the Claims
Commission by giving most claimants at
least something for property wrongly
taken and funds and resources
outrageously mismanaged, but not allow compensa-
tion in principal and/or interest that
would constitute a serious drain on the federal
budget.
The deeper problem with intercultural
adjudication lay in the fact that the values
and the Justice systems of the
participants differed. The Commission and the
Courts could hold the United States
responsible under its own laws (if not to those
laws' more generously expressed intents)
but they could not conceivably adminis-
ter "Indian" justice. How can
an appraiser estimate the value of the sacred Black
Hills, or the sacred Blue Lake?
According to what criteria, and with what kind of
compensation in mind, might a tribe
define, lot alone sue for, the destruction of
its culture? The Lakota's refusal to
take the court-awarded compensation for the
Black Hills dramatizes such problems,
but offers no solution.
Intercultural application of the Golden
Rule may prove unachievable but the au-
thors suggest that bargaining and
mediation might have achieved cheaper and
fairer justice than the adversarial
process associated with the Commission. In
many cases, perhaps. That the Lakotas
and their South Dakota neighbors might
have proved as "reasonable" as
the Penobscots and Mainiacs under federal pres-
sures one may reasonably doubt.
University of Rochester Mary
Young
Border Life: Experience and Memory in
the Revolutionary Ohio Valley. By
Elizabeth Perkins. (Chapel Hill and
London: The University of North Carolina
Press, 1998. xv + 253p.; maps,
illustrations, tables, appendices, notes, index,
bibliography. $45.00)
Border Life: Experience and Memory in
the Revolutionary Ohio Valley by
Elizabeth Perkins, Davidson Professor of
History at Centre College in Danville,
Kentucky, and former curator with the
Kentucky Historical Society, is an original
and important work, one that marks the
emergence of a new generation of frontier
studies.
Perkins has set out to recapture the
inner intellectual and emotional worlds of
108 OHIO HISTORY
ordinary backcountry residents living in
the Ohio Valley during the frontier era;
"to view the backcountry . . . up
close-through the eyes of common settlers as
they reflected upon their own
experiences"(p. 2). In so doing, she hopes to con-
tribute "a greater appreciation for
vernacular history-the means by which
Americans have woven their own personal
stories into the larger narratives of na-
tional and even international
history" (p. 176). To do so, she has turned to a col-
lection of over three hundred oral
interviews conducted in the second quarter of the
nineteenth century by the Presbyterian
minister John Dabney Shane, and now
housed in the Lyman C. Draper Collection
of State Historical Society of
Wisconsin. Shane collected these
interviews in Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania,
Indiana, and Illinois over the course of
two decades. According to Perkins, the
Shane materials "provide not only a
vividly detailed picture of everyday life on an
American frontier, but also a window
into the intimate perceptive universe of or-
dinary settlers"(p. 2).
Much of this work focuses on the
interactions of the region's Euroamerican set-
tlers with native peoples and one
another. Intercultural contact in this sense has
become a common theme in recent frontier
studies, and historians as varied as
Colin Calloway, Gregory Nobles, Richard
White, and Michael McConnell have
treated the topic extensively. But
Perkins significantly advances this discussion
by her willingness and ability to
integrate gender, class, regional affiliation, and
nationality along with ethnicity in her
consideration of "intercultural."
Throughout the work, Perkins devotes
separate chapters to settlers' interactions
with the region's native peoples; a
discussion of how frontier residents sorted out
questions of cultural identity, and an
examination of "micro-politics" in back-
woods Kentucky during the Revolutionary
War era. Lastly, Perkins looks at the
process by which border residents
constructed their own personal and collective
histories of their frontier experiences,
and the consequences of that process for
modern-day historians.
There is much to admire in this book.
Perkins has made a significant advance in
our understanding of the frontier, and
to the theoretical and methodological
framework within which this type of
investigation may take place. This is a su-
perb study, one to be read by every student
of the Ohio frontier.
Ohio Historical Society Larry L.
Nelson
A Wampum Denied: Procter's War of
1812. By Sandy Antal. (East Lansing:
Michigan State University Press, 1997.
xv + 450p.; illustrations, notes, ap-
pendix, bibliography, index. $27.95
paper.)
In the revival of scholarship concerning
the War of 1812, Sandy Antal's study
of the war along the Detroit frontier
and western Lake Erie is an enormously im-
portant, but controversial contribution.
His detailed archival research, logical ar-
guments, effective narrative, and
nuanced conclusions will make it must reading
for generations trying to revise or
expand upon this effort.
Antal has three principal arguments.
First, as befits his title, is the story of the
Great Wampum presented to the Great
Lakes tribes after the Seven Years' War as a
token of the British intent to keep
their promises with the Indians. In late 1811
Tecumseh presented this to British
Indian agent Matthew Elliott in hopes of reviv-
ing the old partnership between the
native Americans and the British. At the core
of Tecumseh's desires was the creation
of an Indian barrier region between Great
Book Reviews 109
Lakes and the Ohio River. The second
element involves Canadian revanchists
who sought the restoration of the
enlarged Quebec of 1774 to the British govern-
ment. Supported by fur traders and
Indian Department officials, many British mili-
tary and governmental officials became
co-opted by the colonial leadership into
supporting these measures. These two
efforts meshed closely and were at the core
of British strategy; a strategy that
often placed the redcoats in alliance with the
natives at the outer fringes of the
clash between the British and American empires
on the Great Lakes.
Antal's third and dominant theme is the
defense of Henry Procter's conduct as
the commander of the British Right
Division headquartered at Amherstburg, Upper
Canada (modern Ontario). Procter, who
rose from lieutenant colonel to major gen-
eral in a few short months, 1812-13, has
been vilified by American, Canadian, and
British officials, citizens, and
historians for nearly two centuries.
Key to understanding the first two
themes is the importance of the Indians to the
victories at Mackinac, Detroit, and
Chicago in the summer of 1812. Buoyed by
his easy victories and determined to
revise the Peace of Paris boundaries of 1783,
General Sir Isaac Brock proclaimed his
achievements "ceded Michigan to the arms
of his Britannic Majesty." Without
authorization from London, this declaration
obligated His Majesty's government to an
expansionist policy just when
Napoleon opened his Russian campaign,
the approaching winter season elimi-
nated the possibility of reinforcing
Canada for months, and the Americans were
launching counterattacks along the Great
Lakes frontier. Inept American generals,
militia reluctance to cross
international boundaries, and failure to secure naval
control of Lakes Erie and Ontario,
contributed to a successful defense of the
Canadas, but at the cost of Brock's
life. The latter event left the defense of the
western portion of Upper Canada to
Colonel Procter.
The British and their native allies
found themselves frustrated by the American
defense of the Maumee River line in the
fall of 1812. The following January
Procter produced his greatest triumph,
the routing of an American advance party at
the River Raisin, modern Monroe,
Michigan. This victory became marred by
Procter's leaving a number of prisoners
in the hands of the Indians, many of whom
were executed by their guards. This
event, known to Americans as the "River
Raisin massacre," constitutes a
turning point in British fortunes in the Lake Erie
basin and left Procter's reputation
sullied. "War propaganda aside, this was the
worst example of Native misconduct while
acting in concert with a British force
during the war," concludes Antal
(p. 180). Nonetheless, the former Canadian
armed forces officer excuses the British
commander. Even though Procter was
aware of "Native savagery" (p.
172), Antal argues the British commander left the
prisoners, whose safety he pledged
before their surrender, in Indian custody antic-
ipating they would "fall back"
into advancing American general William Henry
Harrison's hands (p. 177). Antal's failure
to condemn Procter's conduct here and
with prisoners taken during the first
siege of Fort Meigs unfortunately sullies this
book and its often important insights.
Sometimes Antal's military conclusions
are questionable. It is hyperbole to ar-
gue that the Northwest Army was
"shattered" (p. 232) with the defeat of part of a
relieving force across the river from
Fort Meigs (in modern Maumee, Ohio).
Harrison did not advance because of this
setback; rather he was under orders from
the Secretary of War not to advance
until Oliver Hazard Perry secured Lake Erie.
Throughout the spring and summer of 1813
the rising power of the United States
vis-a-vis the British in the western
Lake Erie region became increasingly obvious.
The failure of the second siege of Fort
Meigs and the decisive repulse of the assault
110 OHIO
HISTORY
on Fort Stephenson (Fremont, Ohio)
produced "an adverse effect on the esprit de
corps of [Procter's] Right Division while widening the rift
between the allies" (p.
260). Harrison picked up native warriors
while Procter lost them. Moreover,
there was growing discontent among his
own troops. None of his officers re-
ceived a promotion in the summer 1813
list, even though Procter found himself a
major general. Antal has discovered
numerous personality conflicts between the
officers of the 41st Regiment of Foot
that illuminate his analysis.
Following Perry's victory, Procter found
himself "hopelessly ensnarled" in the
"web of an incoherent
strategy" (p. 328). On the one hand he was to defend the
Great Wampum pledge to the Indians, on
the other he knew his military presence
along the Detroit River was doomed. The
consequence was despair, delay, and de-
feat. Procter's after-action report
maligned his redcoats for the defeat at the battle
of the Thames (October 5, 1813). Had he
assigned his loss more to the over-
whelming manpower and firepower
advantage of his opponent, one might be more
lenient on the British general. This
reviewer cannot fully accept Antal's conclu-
sion that "Procter was not only
neglected but disgracefully used" (p. 377), even
though one cannot deny that his
superiors court martialed him to cover their own
faults.
Readers will find Antal's battle
descriptions and analysis quite good and often
revisionist. His illustrations clarify
many details, but his reproduction of com-
puter generated maps makes them fuzzy in
print. This is a book that must be in
any library wanting a closer look at the
war in the west. It is a much needed anti-
dote to John Richardson's anti-Procter War
of 1812 (1842) which has dominated
the historiography of the British Right
Division for over a century-and-a-half.
Bowling Green State University David Curtis Skaggs
Shifting Fortunes: The Rise and
Decline of American Labor, from the 1820s to the
Present. By Daniel Nelson. (Chicago, Illinois: Ivan R. Dee,
Inc., 1997. x +
181p.; notes on sources, index. $22.50.)
Daniel Nelson, author of several
important works in labor and business history
including Managers and Workers (1975)
and American Rubber Workers and
Organized Labor ( 1988), draws on a career of scholarship to craft a new
framework
for analyzing the history of organized
labor in America. The end result stands as
Nelson's rejoinder to the current trend
of linking labor movement developments
to cultural and ideological factors and
their structural and biographical manifesta-
tions.
For Nelson, forces external to the labor
movement have been of greater signifi-
cance in shaping long-term fluctuations
in union density (union membership as a
percentage of nonagricultural
wage-earning labor force) than have internal factors
such as the character of the membership
and leadership. Nelson builds his synthe-
sis around the interaction of three
factors. First, he demonstrates how the workers
"who were most likely to organize,
organize successfully, and spearhead the orga-
nization of other, less fortunate
workers were those who worked with little direct
supervision, who planned and executed
their work on the basis of technical
knowledge, experience, and common
sense" (p. 9). Second, Nelson contends that
"regardless of occupation or
industry, union membership will grow only when
workers are convinced that the benefits
of membership outweigh the potential
costs. Many workers who favor a
collective voice when the cost is low become
Book Reviews 111
less enthusiastic as the prospect of
reprisals, especially discharges or plant clos-
ing, grows" (p. 11). And finally
Nelson argues that "environmental factors
strongly influence workers' assessments
of their options at any given time. Three
are crucial: the overall performance of
the economy...the extent and effectiveness
of economic regulation, and the
employer's business goals" ( p. 12).
Nelson's efforts to look at the rise and
decline of American labor from a differ-
ent focus than is currently in vogue
produce numerous significant insights. His
examination of union membership figures
for the 1920s, for example, reveals that
the Jazz Age was not as lean for labor
as historians too often depict. Rather he
shows that although "aggregate
membership fell after 1920, the total never de-
clined below the level of 1917, which
had been a record high at the time.... Nor
did any major union disappear" (p.
98). Some unions, such as those in the build-
ing trades, actually prospered, while
the membership losses that did occur were
heaviest in manufacturing where worker
autonomy was traditionally low.
Nelson's last chapter on "The
Decline of American Labor" is equally astute. He
dates the roots of the decline back to
the immediate post World War II years and
places heavy emphasis on a changing
political environment and a sophisticated
employer offensive. This chapter would
make an excellent reading for any class
on Recent U.S. History.
Still, as a whole, Nelson's stab at a
new interpretation is not completely satis-
fying. Part of the problem is inherent
in the brevity of the book, which is shaped
by the requirements of the Ivan R. Dee American
Way Series. Chapters end with-
out adequate summation and the book
lacks a final conclusion that revisits the
opening hypothesis. Novices to labor
history will likely need to supplement
Shifting Fortunes with a more traditional text, for much is referred too
but not
fully explained. Advanced students will
be surely provoked by Nelson's argu-
ments but frustrated at their weak and
inconsistent development. The labor ac-
tivist will be dismayed that Nelson's
model empowers government and manage-
ment to shape labor's development while
limiting the ability of unions to control
their destinies.
The Ohio State University Warren Van
Tine
Spoilsmen in a "Flowery
Fairyland": The Development of the U.S. Legation In
Japan, 1859-1906. By Jack L. Hammersmith. (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State
University Press, 1998. xiv + 368p.;
illustrations, notes, appendix, bibliogra-
phy, index. $49.00.)
When Commodore Perry's armada of modern
warships steamed into Japanese
coastal waters in 1853, the American
role in setting the course of the "opening" of
Japan seemed to destined for
pre-eminence. Townshend Harris's negotiations for a
commercial treaty, concluded in 1858,
apparently bore out that promise. Yet
shortly the American Civil War and its
aftermath distracted attention from Asia
and the U.S. diplomatic missions to
Japan never regained their early prominence
in the nineteenth century.
In the eleventh volume in the Kent State
University Press "American
Diplomatic History" series, Jack
Hammersmith explores the fate of American
diplomatic representatives in Japan from
the establishment of the first legation in
1859 until the appointment of the first
Ambassador in 1906. Hammersmith takes
this story from the perspective of the
Americans and his conclusions likewise fo-
112 OHIO HISTORY
cus on evaluating the effectiveness of
the legation in fulfilling three diplomatic
objectives: 1) making a presence for the
U.S. in Japan, 2) transmitting useful in-
formation on Japan to Washington, 3)
following Washington's instructions, and
4) responsibly exercising autonomous
diplomatic authority in appropriate cir-
cumstances. His concern does not lie in
exploring the demise of American influ-
ence in Japan, although some of what he
has to say bears on this issue. Likewise,
he is not concerned with assessing
systematically the impact of American foreign
policy on Japanese history, although
again, some of his analyses do explore this
issue, especially in the early chapters.
Given Hammersmith's argument that the
legation leadership was comprised
largely of amateurs who got their posts
as much as patronage as anything else, and
given that he concludes that the members
of the legations were in some sense al-
ways "spoilsmen," readers may
be surprised that his conclusions on each of the
above points are quite positive. Mining
an extensive array of collected papers of
the principals concerned, their
presidents, government publications, English lan-
guage papers published in Japan, and
some translated Japanese materials,
Hammersmith builds a detailed chronicle
in support of his conclusions.
Chapter I is, naturally, devoted to
Townshend Harris who, after negotiating a
commercial treaty, was appointed the
first minister to Japan in 1859. A great deal
of less epoch-making work remained to
establish a firm foundation for a Western-
style diplomatic representation in
Japan: establishing a more suitable residence,
assuring the implementation of the
treaty terms by a less-than-enthusiastic Japan,
and so forth. Yet even here, under the
leadership of one of the indisputable pio-
neers of the Western diplomatic corps,
readers may be surprised at the degree to
which Harris deferred to his British
counterpart, Rutherford Alcock.
Robert Pruyn, the Civil War period
emmisary, faced a number of the same issues
as had Harris, but what most intrigues
me about his tenure is the apparent link be-
tween his diplomatic posture and the
location of his residence. While in Edo
(modern Tokyo), he seems more
sympathetic to Japanese positions vis-h-vis his
European counterparts; when he is forced
to move to Yokohama and live in prox-
imity to a number of other Western
diplomats, he becomes more suspicious of
Japanese intent.
As in the United States, Japan in the
1860s was increasingly unstable and vio-
lent. Japanese baronial daimyo as well
as the Tokugawa shogun sought to pur-
chase foreign military technologies to
boost their own power. Pruyn and his suc-
cessor, Robert Van Valkenburgh (minister
from 1866-69), spent no small amount
of time on such negotiations. Both men
also participated in negotiations for the
opening of new treaty ports.
Such routine negotiations were rudely
interrupted on January 31, 1868, when
the Shogun was forced from Osaka Castle
by his opponents, commencing the
Meiji Restoration that brought Japan its
first truly centralized national govern-
ment. From the outset, the Shogun sought
American assistance in the form of
temporary refuge on an American vessel.
Within hours, the Shogun was on his
way in one of his own ships.
Nonetheless, Western diplomats could not be char-
acterized as strongly pro-Shogun, and
they had little resistance to accepting rela-
tions with the challengers despite the
attacks of some of their ranks on two
Frenchmen.
The number of ports with U.S.
representation had grown sufficiently by the time
of Charles DeLong's arrival in 1869,
that problems of staffing, chains of com-
mand, and other bureaucratic issues took
on a new dimension. Native Ohioan John
A. Bingham arrived in Japan in 1873, and
sought to steer a more independent
Book Reviews 113
course for American policy toward Japan,
and became one of the early advocates of
fairer treatment for Japan. Such efforts
evolved in a broader context of efforts to
resurrect American economic concerns in
Japan that had been sacrificed to British
interests in earlier treaty revisions-a
focus of later ministers as they undertook
revision of the Unequal Treaties in the
last decades of the nineteenth century.
Each chapter presents a brief biography
(except for Chapter 8, which treats two
ministers), followed by discussions of
key personal and professional issues during
their tenures in Japan. Almost without
exception events of a personal nature-ad-
ventures, misfortunes-are woven into the
narrative, and sometimes, as with
Richard Hubbard, personal growth rather
than diplomatic accomplishments be-
come the standard of evaluation. The
study clearly concentrates on the heads of
the U.S. legation and its strengths lie
in the personal, biographical details and the
sense of professional life in the
diplomatic community that it conveys.
The personal dynamics of the legation in
Tokyo, between the legation and U.S.
representatives in other cities, and the
relationship between the U.S. representa-
tives and other foreign diplomats
provide the consistent central theme, examining
how responses were coordinated and
constructed locally rather than undertaking
detailed analysis of negotiations with
the Japanese. Yet even from both the
broader perspective of understanding the
overall operation of the U.S. diplomatic
corps or its operation in Japan, one
wonders if the focus on ministers is entirely
appropriate, especially when other,
apparently subordinate diplomatic representa-
tives apparently acted with a
substantial degree of autonomy. For example, during
the Shimonoseki negotiation of the
treaty ending the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-
5, minister Edwin Dun (an Ohioan) is all
but silent, while Henry Denison was in
the thick of things. In this and other
instances, the ministers do not seem domi-
nant in representing the U.S.,
suggesting the need for a systematically broader in-
vestigation if we are to understand the
effectiveness and functions of the nine-
teenth century American diplomatic
corps. Under the circumstances, some overall
evaluation of the degree to which the
legation leadership made an impact on think-
ing in Washington and the degree to
which that impact might have increased as
communications improved and became more
reliable remain as issues to be ex-
plored.
While descriptions of the diplomatic
compounds and beautification campaigns
convey a sense of life in the diplomatic
corps, they reinforce a sense of diplomatic
corps isolation from Japanese, both in
general and from their representatives in
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Individual Japanese rarely populate these narra-
tives. Were they absent from the memoirs
and official records? Was the lack of
language facility among the staff so
complete that no one engaged Japanese repre-
sentatives and subjects officially or
unofficially to any significant degree?
In assessing ministers' effectiveness in
making a presence for the U.S. in
Japan, transmitting useful information
on Japan to Washington, and responsibly
exercising autonomous diplomatic
authority in appropriate circumstances, some
reference needs to be made to materials
from the Japanese side. How can one as-
sess the degree to which useful
information about Japan was transmitted to
Washington, without some assessment of
what information on key issues was
available to transmit? How can any
historian assess the degree to which a diplo-
mat acted responsibly without knowing
the degree to which the diplomat's opin-
ions and pronouncements were based on
accurate knowledge about circumstances
in Japan? Even for someone not trained
in Japanese, there are ways to begin to
explore such issues in selected cases by
consulting with Japanese diplomatic his-
tory specialists, identifying
potentially insightful scholarship and documents,
114 OHIO HISTORY
and having them translated or
summarized. I hope that Professor Hammersmith
will take advantage of such
opportunities in the future.
The Ohio State University Philip C.
Brown
Frontier Indiana. By Andrew R.L. Cayton. (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1996. xii + 340p.; illustrations,
essay on sources, index. $35.00.)
Andrew Cayton's study of cultural
interaction and accommodation in the Old
Northwest from 1700 to 1850 is an
excellent summary of many of the new themes
and interpretations that have appeared
in frontier history in the last decade. The
author uses the organizing device of
biographies, individual and collective, to ex-
plore the worlds of French, native
American, English, and United States settle-
ment in the region, territory, and early
state of Indiana. His choices of individuals
vary from the familiar, such as Jean-Baptiste
Bissot, Sieur de Vincennes;
Tenskwatawa, the Shawnee prophet; and
Jonathan Jennings, first governor of the
state; to the unexpected, including
Little Turtle, John Francis Hamtramck, and
Anna Tuthill Symmes Harrison. Cayton's
collective choices range from the resi-
dents of early Vincennes to the members
of the Miami nation. Together these se-
lections have the effects of pushing the
start of the frontier experience far back
into the eighteenth century, while
moving the survival of the frontier mindset
well into the nineteenth.
Cayton's approach in each chapter is to
introduce an individual or group
through the texts that survive to
document their actions and experiences, espe-
cially as these relate to others with
whom they made contact. Then the author pre-
sents short, clear summaries of recent
academic interpretations that invite us to
look at the biographical subjects in new
ways. Particular stress is placed upon the
paradigms of accommodation,
republicanism, and improvement. The first, ac-
commodation between different cultural
norms and practices, is developed in the
context of French and Miami affairs, and
then applied to provide contrasts with
the very different approaches of later
English speakers in the area. The second,
republicanism as a political and social
paradigm, becomes a vehicle for viewing
the distinctive Virginia world of George
Rogers Clark, and its later adaptations by
the Symmes and Harrison families. The
third, agrarian and internal improvement,
with its close early relationships to
the real and prospective use of slave labor,
becomes a basis for contrasting William
Henry Harrison with his rival, Jennings,
and for incorporating a discussion of
such later improvers as Calvin Fletcher.
Occasionally, particularly in the
chapter on George Croghan, one wishes for a
tighter linkage between the sections on
the subjects' lives and on their times.
Much more often it is a creative update
of a traditional approach to historical
study.
Cayton is clearly hoping to develop a
popular audience for his book, and incor-
porates a number of stories and
narratives designed to carry the reader more easily
through the arguments and analysis. The
author is particularly adept at describing
the physical and built environments, at
incorporating the military and political
fights which illustrate the breakdown of
accommodation, and at personalizing the
inarticulate residents of Vincennes and
the Indian towns of the region. Cayton
also strives to involve the women of the
region wherever possible, although the
paucity of primary sources sometimes
overcomes him. Well over half of the chap-
ter on Anna Harrison, for example, is
really a retelling of her husband's career as
Book Reviews 115
soldier and governor of the Indiana
Territory. Perhaps the best chapter deals with
Little Turtle. Here the conflict of
accommodation and republicanism is clearest,
the linkage of the subject and his
people most clearly drawn, the innovative use of
traditional print sources most striking,
and the dramatic narrative of struggle most
starkly linked to the author's themes.
It's the best part of a significant work that
will entertain popular readers and
undergraduate instructors alike.
Butler University
George W. Geib
American Farms: Exploring Their
History. By R. Douglas Hurt. (Malabar,
Florida: Krieger Publishing Company,
1996. xiii + 165 p.; illustrations, ap-
pendix, bibliographical essay, index.
$24.50.)
Twenty years ago, prompted by the
public's growing interest in family and
community history, David Kyvig,
currently professor of history at the University
of Akron and the 1997 winner of the
Bancroft prize, and Myron Marty, Dean of the
College of Arts and Science at Drake
University, began collaborating on a series
of family and community histories, first
as principal authors and subsequently as
editors for the American Association for
State and Local History's well received
"Nearby History Series."
Returning to this popular topic once again, this time for
Krieger Publishing Company's Exploring
Community History Series, Kyvig and
Marty have enlisted the skills of fellow
historians to help empower people by
showing them how to research and
evaluate topics such as schools, homes, places
of worship and business, and, in so
doing, learning the importance of their own
community history.
R. Douglas Hurt's American Farms:
Exploring Their History is worthy if for no
other reason than it is the first
guidebook devoted to the historical investigation
of individual farmsteads. Traditional
agricultural studies typically have cast a
wider net and examined the broad social,
political and economic factors that influ-
ence the myriad aspects of rural life
and farm productivity. Hurt's examination,
geared toward professional as well as
avocational historians, is long overdue, one
might think, given America's love affair
with farms. Arguably no aspect of
America's cultural landscape has a more
deeply ingrained history, and certainly
none more enduring, than the farm.
Professor Hurt brings impressive
credentials to his readers. Currently editor of
Agricultural History, the leading academic journal in the field, Hurt
possesses the
hands-on experience of a museum curator,
having served in that capacity for two
Midwestern state historical societies.
As a first-rate scholar, Hurt has an exten-
sive list of publications ranging from a
history of the Dust Bowl to several previ-
ously unexamined aspects of rural life,
especially as they relate to the Midwest.
Hurt's approach to understanding the
history of farms employs most of the cus-
tomary archival records, both primary
and secondary, along with histories hidden
in the human mind as captured through
oral interviews. Such accounts can be in-
valuable when researching a population
that traditionally may not have kept writ-
ten records. In compiling a reliable
interview Hurt shows us how to prepare for the
interview and the techniques needed to
obtain the information.
The local historian's investigative net
must also include photos, maps and arti-
facts, the latter including implements
and farm equipment. Given the inherently
physical demands of farm labor, the
discussion of farm artifacts is especially wel-
come. Estate inventories, estate sales
notices and personal account books help
116 OHIO
HISTORY
provide the number and type of
implements used on a farm. As an artifact itself, it
frequently is the farmstead that may be
most telling. Ethnicity, crop and livestock
production, and cultural traditions were
reflected in the arrangement, plan and ar-
chitecture of farm buildings. Cultural
geographers, notably Pierce Lewis, Henry
Glassie and the University of Akron's
Allen Noble, have documented how barns
serve as tangible indicators of climate,
crop preference and settlement patterns.
Hurt acknowledges the significance of
material culture and takes the reader through
a brief discussion of American barn
types and outbuildings. He concludes with es-
says outlining the principal research
materials and writing techniques prospective
writers should consider.
Not intended to be the definitive
history of American farms, Hurt's study entices
local historians, whether beginners or
seasoned professionals, to discover their
nearby agrarian roots. Eminently
readable and generously illustrated, American
Farms is as relevant to Oregonians as it is to Ohioans.
Scholars may lament the
absence of footnotes, but the reader is
given an extensive bibliographical essay as
well as a list of suggested readings at
the conclusion of each chapter. Loss of
prime agricultural farmland, coupled
with sprawl development and megafarming,
have raised the public's awareness of
farmland preservation and by extension rapid
changes in rural life. Indeed America's
farms, for Native Americans as well as ev-
ery immigrant population, lie at the
root of our national soul. This methodologi-
cal guide to researching, writing and
interpreting meaningful farm histories is yet
another welcome volume in the Exploring
Community History Series.
Ohio Historical Society Stephen C.
Gordon