BOOK REVIEWS
James Wickes Taylor, "A Choice
Nook of Memory": The Diary of a
Cincinnati Law Clerk, 1842-1844. Edited by James Taylor Dunn. (Co-
lumbus, Ohio State Archaeological and
Historical Society, 1950. xi +
85p. Paper, $1.50.)
James Wickes Taylor, lawyer, author,
journalist, librarian, consular
officer, was an interesting figure in
the early history of Ohio, Minnesota,
and the Canadian Northwest. For fourteen
years Taylor lived in Ohio;
then he moved to Minnesota where he
resided a similar length of time;
and then for twenty-three years he was
American Consul at Winnipeg,
Manitoba. In each of these localities
Taylor took an active part in the
cultural and political life of the
community. In Ohio, he became a mem-
ber of the law firm of Salmon P. Chase;
an editor and a free-lance jour-
nalist; a member of the second Ohio
constitutional convention; state
librarian; the author of a good history
of Ohio; and helped to reform
and simplify the state's judicial code.
In Minnesota, Taylor became sec-
retary of the Minnesota and Pacific
Railway; clerk of the United States
District Court for Minnesota; and took
an active part in the discussions
preceding the first constitutional
convention of that state. From 1870
until his death in 1893, Taylor was
American Consul at Winnipeg, Mani-
toba, where he played an important part
in opening up the Northwest
and in improving the relations between
the United States and Canada.
There is a large portrait of him in the
city hall at Winnipeg.
This is the diary of young Taylor, then
twenty-three years old, of
his residence in Cincinnati in the years
1842 to 1844. It was kept at the
suggestion of his fiancee and was to be
perused by "her alone." It gives
an account of his travel westward from
New York to Ohio and his expe-
riences in the bustling metropolis of
the "Queen City of the West."
Taylor records his impressions of
Cleveland, which "equalled" his ex-
pectations, and of Columbus, which he
considered "not striking in ap-
pearance." Cincinnati disappointed
him with its narrow, dirty streets,
shabby public buildings, and sooty
atmosphere. He was shocked by the
display of French corsets revealing the
mysteries of the feminine form
in shop windows; but he critically
scrutinized such windows. He was
thrilled with Cincinnati's novel market
houses and the beauty of its sur-
452
Book Reviews 453
rounding hills and the winding river.
He gives critical, often too caustic,
pencil sketches of prominent national
and local leaders, like Dr. Lyman
Beecher, Alphonso Taft, Salmon P.
Chase, John Quincy Adams, and
others. Taylor describes the Millerite
craze, the agitation for the annex-
ation of Texas, and the abolitionist
furor, which he feared would give
Cincinnati the unenviable title of the
"mob city." The diary also con-
tains much interesting information concerning
the musical and theatrical
interests of Cincinnatians in those
days. The manuscript has been care-
fully edited; but the reviewer wishes
that some of the footnotes were more
fully documented.
REGINALD C. MCGRANE
University of Cincinnati
The Utopian Communist: A Biography
of Wilhelm Weitling, Nine-
teenth-Century Reformer. By Carl Wittke.
(Baton Rouge, Louisiana
State University Press, 1950. xii + 327p.
$4.50.)
Dean Wittke's biography of Wilhelm
Weitling, the philosophical
tailor who was one of the most
important figures in pre-Marxian social-
ism, is a companion volume to the life
of Karl Heinzen he published in
1945 (Against the Current: The Life
of Karl Heinzen [1809-1880]
[Chicago, 1945]). Although Weitling and
Heinzen were dissimilar in
their political and social beliefs,
both belonged to the radical wing of
the "Forty-eighters." To an
even greater degree than Heinzen, Weitling
had won recognition as a radical writer
and organizer before emigrating
to the United States. As in the earlier
book, however, it is in his subject's
career in America, rather than in
Europe, that the author is chiefly inter-
ested. Dean Wittke has not slighted
Weitling's work as a propagandist
among the European proletariat in the
decade 1838-48, but the major
contribution of his book consists in
the information it furnished regard-
ing Weitling's activities in the United
States in the first half of the
eighteen-fifties.
Born in Magdeburg in the puppet kingdom
of Westphalia in 1808,
Weitling was the illegitimate son of a
French soldier and a servant girl.
He was "a gifted, restless, eager
and romantic youth. . . handicapped at
every stage in his development by
grinding poverty." His formal edu-
cation was limited to elementary
schooling and he was apprenticed at an
early age to a tailor. Becoming a
journeyman tailor at eighteen, Weit-
454 Ohio State Archaeological and
Historical Quarterly
ling followed his trade in various
German and Austrian cities for ap-
proximately ten years.
In the mid-eighteen-thirties Weitling
settled in Paris, became a mili-
tant communist and one of the leading
spirits of the League of the Just,
a secret society of workers and
intellectuals. During the early eighteen-
forties he was active in Switzerland.
There he organized workingmen's
clubs, edited a workers' magazine, wrote
his best-known work, Guaran-
tieen der Harmonie und Freiheit, and served a term in prison in conse-
quence of his revolutionary
writings. After regaining his freedom,
Weitling resided briefly in London and
Brussels, and, in 1847, came to
the United States. With the outbreak of
the Revolution of 1848 he re-
turned to Germany. Though he saw no
military action in the revolution,
"he worked feverishly with his pen
to bring about the kind of revolution
of which he approved."
Of the eight chapters of the book
devoted to the European phase of
Weitling's career, the most interesting
are Chapter IV which describes
the "system" propounded by
Weitling, and Chapter VII on the relation-
ship between Weitling and Marx. In his
blue print for a new social
order, Weitling tried to show how a
balance between man's desires and
his capacity for satisfying them might
be established in a communist
state. To secure the planned economy
necessary for harmonizing capaci-
ties and desires, Weitling proposed a
complicated and somewhat authori-
tarian governmental structure. The
unique feature of Weitling's system
was his attempt to preserve a measure of
individual initiative in a com-
munist state; he sought to make it
possible for workers to satisfy their
individual desires and secure a degree
of personal freedom through labor
credit obtained from voluntary work
performed in addition to regularly
assigned tasks.
The author emphasizes that Weitling
always "insisted on morality,
ethics, and religion as a basis for
social reform," and he represents the
break between Marx and Weitling as
inevitable. Weitling was repelled
by the intellectuality and extreme
materialism of Marxism, while Marx
and Engels were contemptuous of
Weitling's propaganda efforts which
they regarded as sentimental appeals to
emotion. The difference between
Marx and Weitling
represented the clash between a master
of economics, scientific abstractions, and
Hegelian dialectics and a simple-minded
prophet of the brotherhood of man who
had no other formula for world
betterment. It marked the collision between a
champion of the class struggle
determined by scientific economic laws, and a new
Messiah who had faith in a kingdom of
love and science.
Book Reviews 455
Wittke concludes:
Marx and Engels demonstrated that they
had the intelligence, the education,
and the determination necessary to develop a system
that was destined to become
a powerful force in world affairs. Weitling lacked the
qualifications for such a
task; his head was not equal to his heart. But he saw
clearly that a system which
eschewed all considerations of morality, social ethics,
and religious emotionalism,
and frankly proceeded on the amoral
principle that the end justifies the means,
might be turned into the devil's own
philosophy leading to a new form of tyranny.
In the United States, Weitling spread
his doctrines through his news-
paper, Die Republik der Arbeiter, organized
a workingmen's league (the
Arbeiterbund), projected or participated in a number of cooperative
ventures, and became director of the
Utopian colony at Communia, Iowa.
With the failure of the last
undertaking, Weitling retired from reform,
returned to his old trade of tailoring,
married, and begat a family. In
leisure hours his inquiring mind and
hopeful spirit found outlets in
philology, astronomy, and technology. He
devised a universal language,
worked out a neo-Ptolemaic cosmography,
and invented and patented
button-hole and embroidery machines and
other sewing machine improve-
ments.
It is interesting to note that, in
contrast to his experience in Switzer-
land, Weitling encountered no official persecution
in the United States.
As a matter of fact, Weitling once
obtained a political appointment as
registrar of immigrants from Tammany
Hall.
Weitling's prominence in the European
labor movement assured him
of some prestige and support in his
first years in America, but ultimately
his manifold ventures in social and
scientific reform ended in failure.
The author is inclined to place a share
of responsibility for the failures
on Weitling himself. He was prone to
attack fields of investigation re-
quiring rigorous mental discipline and
long years of preparation with
inadequate knowledge and training. In
addition he had a certain rigidity
of mind and a Messianic complex which
made it extremely difficult for
him to recognize either his own
shortcomings or flaws in his proposals.
Nevertheless, as Dean Wittke points out,
there was a more fundamental
cause than the personal factor for
Weitling's failure as a reformer in
America. The explanation is to be found
in America, rather than in the
would-be reformer:
Weitling remained consistent in his
radical theories but his constituency
changed. His revolutionary proposals
could not thrive under the altered circum-
stances provided by the United States,
where equality of opportunity and a vigorous
climate of rugged individualism
prevailed. The sudden eclipse of Weitling's career
456 Ohio State Archaeological and
Historical Quarterly
as a radical leader in America can be
explained by several factors, but the most
important was the fact that his own
erstwhile followers and disciples ultimately
preferred American democratic methods to
an authoritarian, revolutionary program
and prospered under a system of free
enterprise.
The main sources for Dean Wittke's book
are Weitling's published
works and files of the journals he
edited in Europe and America. In
addition, the author has examined
correspondence, notebooks, account-
books, and other personal items in the
possession of the Weitling family.
For the European phase of Weitling's
career he has drawn upon the rela-
tively abundant monographic material
relating to nineteenth century
socialism; for the American period he
has consulted German language
newspapers published in New York,
Massachusetts, Illinois, and Ohio.
The chapter on the Communia colony adds
substantially to the sum
of knowledge on the always interesting
subject of America's "backwoods
Utopias." Students of social
history will find useful data in the book
regarding immigrant activities in labor
and cooperative movements of a
century ago. More broadly considered,
the lesson of Dean Wittke's book
appears to be that in propaganda, as in
many other things, the soil is
equally important as the seed. It
suggests that persons who are opposed
to "radical foreign 'isms'"
might better occupy themselves by striving
to keep open the avenues to economic
opportunity and security than in
vain efforts to suppress unpopular
ideologies by muzzling their
advocates.
ROBERT H. BREMNER
Ohio State University
Harvey Cushing: Surgeon, Author,
Artist. By Elizabeth H. Thom-
son. (New York, Henry Schuman, 1950.
347p., illustrations, bibliog-
raphy, and index. $4.00.)
This account of the life and
achievements of Dr. Gushing, who was
a native son of Ohio and the world's
most eminent neurosurgeon, is one
of a series of books in The Life of
Science Library. In keeping with the
objectives of the Library, the primary
aim of this biography is to convey
to the general reader, within a brief
compass, Dr. Gushing's contributions
to modern medical science and his
influence on this and succeeding gen-
erations. Details of his clinical
experiences, particularly with regard to
technical phases of neurosurgery and
brain pathology, are curtailed in
deference to the interests of nonmedical
readers. Rather, emphasis is
Book Reviews 457
placed on the many facets of his
personality, which Miss Thomson has
warmly and clearly portrayed. As a
result of Dr. Cushing's pride in his
forebears, especially in the three
generations of physicians immediately
preceding him, and of his meticulous way
of systematically preserving
family records, letters, diaries,
notebooks, scrapbooks, photographs, clip-
pings, case histories, and other
memorabilia, Miss Thomson had access to
voluminous source materials in compiling
this biography.
The story of his lineage and of his
boyhood and collegiate days is
vividly set forth. He was the youngest
of ten children of Betsey Maria
Williams and Henry Kirke Cushing, M.D.,
and was born in Cleveland,
Ohio, April 8, 1869, at 786 Prospect
Street (now No. 3112). He early
developed an interest in athletics and
while at Yale played on the fresh-
man and varsity baseball teams. He
received the baccalaureate degree
from Yale College in 1891 and the
degrees of M.D. and A.M. cum laude
from Harvard Medical School in 1895.
The way Dr. Cushing's interest was
sharpened in neurology and how
he arrived at the decision to specialize
on surgery of the nervous system
are interestingly brought out in the
accounts of his externeship and in-
terneship at the Massachusetts General
Hospital, where he first witnessed
a brain operation; of his residency in
surgery under Dr. William S. Hal-
stead at the Johns Hopkins Hospital,
where he early established a repu-
tation for surgical skill and
successfully performed a Gasserian ganglion
resection for the relief of facial
neuralgia; of his "Grand Tour" of the
hospitals, clinics, laboratories, and
museums of Europe from July 1900
to September 1901; and of his
investigations of the effect of intracranial
pressure on respiration and blood
pressure with Professors Kronecker
and Kocher at Berne, Switzerland. Other
far-lasting results of these
travels were his cultivation of many
European friends and the stimulation
of his interest in medical history.
Following his return to the Hopkins,
many important events tran-
spired in rapid succession, included
among which may be mentioned his
marriage on June 10, 1902, to Miss
Katherine Crowell of Cleveland,
Ohio; his acceptance of many invitations
to lecture at medical and scien-
tific societies; his preparation of
several manuscripts; his collecting of
rare books dealing with medical history;
his teaching of surgical anatomy
at the medical school; his work in the
surgical dispensary and ward; his
ventures into neurosurgery; and his
calls to other university posts.
The remainder of the account of Dr.
Cushing's career may be briefly
categorized as follows: the large part
that Mrs. Cushing played in influ-
458 Ohio State Archaeological and
Historical Quarterly
encing his career and in directing the
energies of their children; his high
fervor of determination and
concentration in his specialty; his high stand-
ards of performance and almost military
discipline in his surgical staff;
his reduction in mortality in brain
operations from almost one hundred
percent to less than ten percent; his
personal interest in his patients; his
interest in the better training of
medical students; his surgical and teach-
ing career at Harvard and Yale; his
experiences as an army surgeon in
World War I; his written contributions
to clinical medicine, experimental
surgery, and medical history; his
ability as an artist to make his own
illustrations; his establishment of
medical scholarships; his great medical
library and its gift to Yale
University; his personal relations with mem-
bers of his family; his devotion to his
intimate friends; the many hon-
orary degrees, medals, and membership
in scientific societies conferred
upon him; his retirement, which Miss
Thomson succinctly terms "The
Evening Years"; and his death
which occurred on October 7, 1939.
This excellent biography of Dr. Harvey
Gushing will give the general
reader a good understanding of modern
developments in the field of
neurology and a keen appreciation of
the personality and achievements
of the man who devoted his life to
neurological surgery and its problems.
The record of his accomplishments, as
portrayed by Miss Thomson, will
surely be a source of inspiration not
only to the medical but equally to
the nonmedical reader.
LINDEN F. EDWARDS
Ohio State University
The Territorial Papers of the United
States. Compiled and edited
by Clarence Edwin Carter. Volume XVII, The
Territory of Illinois,
1814-1818, Continued. (Washington, Government Printing Office,
1950.
v + 750p. $4.00.)
The major political documents of
Illinois territory have been in
print for a generation or more. Buck, Pease,
Washburne, and Louise
Kellogg, and the Illinois, Chicago, and
Wisconsin historical societies
published so much that Professor
Carter, who seldom reprints docu-
ments, was left with materials relating
chiefly to Indian affairs, land
sales, and the use of salt and lead on
the public domain. But what he
has selected is varied and revealing
and should be of use especially to
Book Reviews 459
those following the trails blazed
through western economic history by
Paul W. Gates.
Like other parts of the West after the
War of 1812, Illinois in
1814-18 was the scene of much change in
individual fortune and in public
policy. It was in some respects still
emerging from the eighteenth cen-
tury, with French-speaking inhabitants
still struggling with American
ways, and Indians conscious that they
had been "the silly victims of
British intrigue & wickedness"
(p. 204). A petition of 1818 attributes
the poverty of Illinois to the treaty of
1783, which left the river outlets
in foreign hands (p. 567). A more
prosperous day was coming, and
Governor Edwards predicted that if the
Indians could "be kept in a good
humor for two or three years, the growth
of our population, by the
appeals it will then make to their
fears, will prevent all future danger"
(p. 399). But the growing population
complained incessantly of its
need, asking congress to grant
preemption rights or even to lower prices
of land already sold when experience
proved that bids for town lots had
been too high (pp. 457-59, 462). Some
pioneers rewarded themselves by
cutting timber wholesale on the public
lands or, more legally, cutting on
lands which they intended to abandon
after making the initial five per-
cent deposit (pp. 374-75).
The major political documents here
published include the executive
register for the territory, 1809-18 (pp.
619-672), and a pamphlet pub-
lished by the legislature in 1814
relating to a territorial law for court
sessions in the counties (pp.
55-96). The latter has been
photographed
-a novelty in the series, and a novelty
to be commended if it expedites
the work.
This volume is one of the last to appear
under the imprint of the
department of state. Professor Carter's
office moved this spring to the
national archives building-completing a
long-delayed phase of the
long process of eliminating
nondiplomatic business from the department.
Secretary Hamilton Fish got rid of his
jurisdiction over the territories
in 1873; the department has been
publishing the Territorial Papers since
1934, but as the series moves nearer to
1873 its sponsorship has seemed
less logical. If the change means
further assurance that the series will
continue for all the continental
territories (what of Alaska and Hawaii?),
historians will be grateful for it.
EARL S. POMEROY
University of Oregon
460 Ohio State Archaeological and
Historical Quarterly
Northwoods Sketches. By Chase S. Osborn and Stellanova Osborn.
(Lansing, Historical Society of
Michigan, 1949. 126p. $2.50.)
Largely reprinted from the Detroit
Free Press and elsewhere, these
brief sketches give a miscellany of
personal recollections going back as
far as the '60's in Huntington County,
Indiana, but concentrating upon
the late Chase S. Osborn's youthful
years of hunting, prospecting, game
warding, and general adventuring in the wilds
of Michigan's Upper Pen-
insula. Stellanova Osborn, his
collaborator, formerly an adopted daugh-
ter, was his longtime secretary whom he
married two days before his
death in 1949.
Osborn's life spanned the transition
from the unrestricted shooting
of frontier days (nine bears in eleven
days on one occasion, and on a-
other three bears in three minutes) to
modern conservation, which Os-
born, both as state game and fish warden
of Michigan and later as Pro-
gressive Republican governor, 1911-12,
was largely influential in bringing
about. The chief value of these Northwoods
Sketches will be in the nos-
talgic glimpses of the final years in
the passing of Wisconsin's and
Michigan's primeval Indian and wildlife
border.
Although these glimpses include little
that can be called history,
they do give a diverting variety of
personal anecdote. There is also a
little here and there that belongs to
the loosely defined world known as
folklore. The Osborns collaborated some
years back in a couple of
volumes entitled Hiawatha, With the
Original Indian Legends and School-
craft--Longfellow--Hiawatha. In Northwoods Sketches they comment
upon "Windigo Land," tell how
to construct the ancient Ojibway pack,
and give other occasional bits of north
country lore. They show con-
siderable familiarity with the writings
of Henry R. Schoolcraft, Alex-
ander Henry, and other authors who have
recorded or utilized the history
and superstitions of this Michigan
region. But they allude to a "Willa
Catherwood" who must be a synthesis
of Willa Cather (never interested
in the Straits country, so far as I
know) and Mrs. Mary Hartwell Cather-
wood, whose short stories of Mackinac
include the classic literary adapta-
tion of the Windigo theme.
Chase S. Osborn is said to have made a
fortune from iron ore dis-
coveries in Canada, Lapland, Africa, and
Latin America. This last of
his books is a sort of rapid prospecting
for riches in pleasant personal
reminiscence.
ROBERT PRICE
Otterbein College
Book Reviews 461
Bank Note Reporters and Counterfeit
Detectors, 1826-1866. By
William H. Dillistin. (Numismatic Notes
and Monographs, Number 114.
New York, American Numismatic Society,
1949. vi + 175p., illustra-
tions. $3.50.)
Adequately secured bank notes acceptable
in all parts of the country
were a relatively late development in
American history. The First Bank
of the United States (1791-1811) and the
Second (1816-36) were de-
signed to provide a national currency,
but both became involved in party
politics in turn and passed out of the
picture. Between 1811 and 1816
and again from 1836 to Civil War days,
state banks dominated the scene
and the country wallowed in a mire of
notes, some good, some fair, and
many plainly bad. A reasonable degree of
order was at length attained
with the issue of greenbacks in 1862 and
1863, passage of the National
Bank Act of 1863-64, and the imposition
of a ten percent tax on all state
bank notes. Thus, one of the legacies of
the epic struggle between the
states was a national currency, part
greenback and part national bank
note, which restored public confidence
in paper money and greatly
stimulated business.
Note issuing was at its height in the
early 1860's when sixteen hun-
dred banks put out bills of face value
varying from $1 to $500, given
institutions at times employing several
different designs for a particular
denomination. The number of varieties
current ran to several thousand
and the bills passed at varying rates,
discount resting upon the stability
of the bank emitting a given note and
the institution's distance from the
point at which it was tendered. The
situation naturally lent itself to
chicanery, and large numbers of bills
issued by defunct institutions,
bogus ones bearing the names of
nonexistent banks, and counterfeits
galore of sound ones were in
circulation. No merchant or bank clerk
could cope with such chaos, and bank
note reporters and counterfeit
detectors appeared to meet an urgent
need.
Reporters quoted the actual value of
each operating bank's notes at
metropolitan points. Detectors listed
bogus and wildcat issues, recorded
broken bank bills, and described the
distinguishing characteristics of
forgeries. Both appeared in newspapers
at the outset, but ultimately, as
lists grew longer, they were combined,
were published by enterprising
individuals at periodic intervals, and
enjoyed wide circulation since they
were indispensable to bankers and
tradesmen alike. The leading one
came to be Thompson's Bank-Note
Reporter, published monthly in New
462 Ohio State Archaeological and
Historical Quarterly
York and the predecessor of the American
Banker, America's only daily
banking newspaper.
Oddly enough, but scant attention has
been given counterfeit notes
in the study of American economic
history. Their effect on business must
have been striking, for there were no
less than four thousand varieties
in circulation by 1859, and new ones
were then appearing at the rate of
ten a week. Here is a fascinating subject
deserving careful study, and
early workers in the field will be
richly rewarded. The present volume,
discussing some fifty reporters and the
location of known files in twenty-
eight United States libraries not
including our own, is not only a fasci-
nating study in itself, it is a
delightful introduction to the larger subjects
of paper money and counterfeit bills in
our country and should be known
to all students of American economic
development. It is admirably
written, is easily understood, and its
excellent illustrations of forged,
spurious, altered, and raised notes add
greatly to reader interest.
LOWELL RAGATZ
Ohio State University
Beginnings of Literary Culture in
the Ohio Valley: Historical and
Biographical Sketches. By William H. Venable. (New York, Peter
Smith, 1949. xv + 519p., reproduced 4
pages to 1 by micro-offset
process. $7.50.)
One of the most important volumes in
Ohio historiography during
the past sixty years has been Venable's Beginnings
of Literary Culture
in the Ohio Valley. Until 1925, when Ralph Leslie Rusk's Literature of
the Middle Western Frontier appeared, Venable's volume was the standard
literary history of the early West.
The Beginnings of Literary Culture was
the high point in a long
career of teaching and writing. Born
near Waynesville, Ohio, in 1836,
Venable was educated at the Normal
School at Lebanon. He taught
school in Indiana, and in 1862 went to
Cincinnati as the science teacher
in Chickering Institute. After more than
twenty-five years in that school,
he became a teacher of English at Hughes
High School. Later he became
head of the department of English
literature at Walnut Hills High School.
In 1872 he produced a School History
of the United States, a text for
public school use.
The Beginnings of Literary Culture represents
more than twenty
years of work. Analyzing the newspapers
and periodicals published in
Book Reviews 463
the West, studying the books and
pamphlets issued in the valley, and
performing research in various
manuscript collections, Venable was able
to make a distinct contribution to the
cultural history of Ohio and the
valley. He investigated the reports of
travelers and studied the work of
previous historians; he made a survey of
the pioneer press in Kentucky,
Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, as well as
the allied business of book making,
especially in Lexington and Frankfort,
Louisville, Cincinnati, and other
towns.
Early periodical literature, including a
list of periodicals published
in the Ohio Valley, 1803-60, is given a
full chapter, as is a study of the
libraries of the region. Other chapters
concern education, religion and
the sectarian conflicts of the early
West, political orators and the lecture
platform, and poets and fiction writers.
The last eight chapters are de-
voted to the lives and influences of
eight outstanding figures in the cul-
tural history of the Ohio Valley: Dr.
Daniel Drake, "The Franklin of
Cincinnati"; Timothy Flint,
geographer, writer, and missionary; Judge
James Hall, noted author and editor;
George Dennison Prentice, jour-
nalist; Edward Deering Mansfield, author
and editor; William Davis
Gallagher, poet and editor; Amelia B.
Welby, poet; and Alice Cary, poet.
In this edition the publisher has
produced an experimental volume,
attempting to make the Venable book
available to the reader at a rela-
tively modest figure. Venable's book was
published in 1891 and is long
since out of print. Occasionally a copy
may be found in the lists of a
rare-book dealer. The edition under
review may be criticized for its
small type-size. The reproductions of
the original pages by the micro-
offset process have reduced the type to
about five or six point.
JAMES H. RODABAUGH
Ohio State Archaeological
and Historical Society
With Various Voices: Recordings of
North Star Life. Edited by
Theodore C. Blegen and Philip D. Jordan.
(Saint Paul, Itasca Press,
1949. xxiv + 380p., index.
$5.00.)
The Land Lies Open. By Theodore C. Blegen. (Minneapolis, Uni-
versity of Minnesota Press, 1949. x +
246p., end papers, illustrations,
acknowledgments, and index. $3.00.)
Rainy River Country: A Brief History
of the Region Bordering
Minnesota and Ontario. By Grace Lee Nute. (St. Paul, Minnesota His-
464 Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly
torical Society, 1950. xiii + 143p.,
illustrations, bibliography, maps,
and index. $2.00.)
These three volumes on Minnesota history
by outstanding profes-
sional historians are proof of the
continuing interest in state and regional
history and illustrate the substantial
contributions possible in this field.
The North Star State, embracing
waterways which are parts of three
great drainage basins and blessed by
nature with resources of amazing
riches and variety, has had a history
that is anything but provincial in
character. At first furs, later wheat,
lumber, and ore, tied its economic
life to that of the outside world and
drew within its borders a strange
mixture of nationalities which made its
cultural heritage complex and
singularly rich. The writers of these
volumes are well aware of the sig-
nificance of their region in its
relationship to the outside world. By
stressing the lines of interaction to
show both what Minnesota has given
and what she has received, they have
placed the history of a great state
in its proper setting and demonstrated
the values present in carefully
done regional studies.
With Various Voices brings together in one volume the story of
Minnesota as told by those who
participated in it. It begins with accounts
by Pierre Radisson and Father Louis
Hennepin and ends with Governor
John Lind's message to the legislature
in 1899, though James J. Hill's
story of the Great Northern spans the
years 1873-1912. The editors hope
to produce a second volume eventually to
cover the period since 1900.
The difficult problem of selection has
been handled with admirable judg-
ment and the result is a volume of which
the state may well be proud.
Most of the accounts are contemporary or
near contemporary, some are
reminiscences, and in a few cases, such
as the introduction of Grimm
alfalfa, steamboating on the Minnesota,
and the naming of Minneapolis,
historical articles have been used to
provide a better coverage than indi-
vidual documents would give, a deviation
readily forgiven after one has
read the articles.
The fifty-four selections are arranged
under eleven topics designed
to cover all the major aspects of
Minnesota's history to 1900. While
color and human interest have been
emphasized, the editors have not
hesitated to incorporate heavier diet
such as James J. Hill's account of
his railroad empire, LeGrand Powers'
defense of trade unions, Senator
Cushman K. Davis' analysis of
governmental problems, and Governor
Lind's message of 1899, which covers
twenty-six pages, an undue pro-
portion in terms of reader interest.
Editorial introductions to the various
Book Reviews 465
topics supply essential information
about the writers. The chief criticism
this Ohio reviewer would venture is that
a map of Minnesota should have
been included, especially for the
pioneer period. The obscurity of many
early place references would thus be
removed. But this is a minor flaw
in an altogether excellent book. Ohio
might well produce such a volume
to commemorate one hundred and fifty
years of statehood, just as Min-
nesota has done for its centennial year.
Theodore C. Blegen's The Land Lies
Open consists of a series of
chapters, really essays, arranged under
two general headings, "Channels
to the Land" and "People on
the Land." The first group deals with
explorers and trail blazers of the upper
Mississippi Valley, though
DeSoto is included and LaSalle dismissed
with a brief reference. This
section ends with a chapter on the
discovery of the source of the Mis-
sissippi. These sketches deal with
figures for the most part quite familiar
to those who have studied the American
West, but, except for DeSoto
and Marquette and Jolliet, not well
known to the general reader for
whom the book was written.
Part II, the longer section, fits more
nearly into the author's concept
of grass roots history, as it deals with
everyday people. Some have local
significance; others are merely typical
of some aspect of Minnesota's
development. The individual biographical
approach is dropped for the
most part, and chapters have such
headings as "The Land Takers," "Yan-
kees on the Land," and
"Pioneers of the Second Line." Some of the essays
are reprints or revisions of articles
and papers prepared for special occa-
sions, and two are original documents
with editorial introductions. Con-
sequently they do not present a
connected or integrated account of
"People on the Land." The
longest (and the only one with footnotes),
entitled "A State University Is
Born," deals with the origins of the
University of Minnesota and combines
careful scholarship and good
writing. Mrs. Grout's diary
("Westward in a Covered Wagon") is unique
in that it pictures a westward trek
through the eyes of a housewife who
made it. "The Land Takers"
pays tribute to the pioneer farmers and to
the later apostles of diversification in
agriculture as well. On the whole,
railroads, lumber, and ore get slight
space in this book, but the reader
will have no regrets. The common man was
not the moving force in
these fields as he was in tilling the
land.
Dr. Grace Lee Nute's Rainy River
Country is offered by the Minne-
sota Historical Society as a companion
volume to her earlier The
Voyageur's Highway, which dealt with the Ontario-Minnesota borderland
466 Ohio State Archaeological and
Historical Quarterly
eastward from Rainy Lake. The present
study covers the Rainy River
country including both Rainy Lake and
Lake of the Woods. It is not
only a history of the region as such but
deals with the river as part of a
great waterway of westward expansion.
Rainy River was a vital link in
the water route from Lake Superior to
the interior of Canada. In the
days of the fur trade, no river played a
more important role.
After touching upon the prehistoric and
Indian inhabitants, the
author actually begins her account with
the Verendrye and their trading
posts and carries her story down to the
present day, writing with colorful
brevity and a keen appreciation of her
subject and its relationship to the
broader canvas of Canadian-American
history. With the vast amount of
source materials available, especially
for the era of the fur trade, Dr.
Nute might have been forgiven for
writing a much longer book. The
urge to incorporate all that has been
uncovered-the common affliction
of the amateur and not a few
professional historians-is certainly not in
evidence here. Quotations are brief,
pointed, and chosen with skill.
Explanations of outside developments
that affected the region are confined
to essentials. The involved
Anglo-American boundary problem is con-
densed admirably with the assistance of
a map of the international
boundary at Lake of the Woods. Chapters
with such headings as "Eternal
Pines," "Grasses," and
"Gold" cover the evolution of the region's eco-
nomic life. Lumbering, farming, mining,
fishing, railroads, and the
transformation wrought by the great dam
at International Falls are the
major topics after settlement begins.
More attention to social life would
have presented a better rounded picture.
Churches and schools do not
appear in the index, though missionary
efforts among Indians, half-
breeds, and lumberjacks get some space.
In the final chapter, "Today in the
Borderlands," the objective his-
torian at times is transformed into the
enthusiastic press agent for a
region that is indeed a vacationist's
paradise. The resort owners might
well send reprints of this chapter to
prospective customers, and better
still, place a copy of the book in every
cabin. Their guests would get
good history, entertaining reading, and
probably the urge to drive along
Route 11 or over on Canadian 70 to see
where the history was made.
The book has numerous illustrations
(mostly photographs), iden-
tical maps in the front and back covers
of rivers, lakes, and portages,
several small maps, and a bibliography
eight pages in length. There are
no footnotes. A modern map would have
been helpful in showing roads,
Book Reviews 467
towns, national parks and forests,
Indian reservations, and other points
of interest.
EUGENE H. ROSEBOOM
Ohio State University
The Forty-Eighters: Political
Refugees of the German Revolution of
1848. Edited by A. E. Zucker. (New York, Columbia University
Press,
1950. xvii + 379p.,
frontispiece, illustrations, bibliographical notes,
appendix, and index. $4.50.)
In 1948 historical societies in the
United States gave appropriate
recognition to the centennial of the
revolution of 1848 by means of
which political idealists in various
European states had endeavored to
achieve the goals of democracy and
national unity. Now, in the volume
under review, a group of authors
present a series of scholarly contribu-
tions devoted to the
"Forty-Eighters," refugees from the German phase
of the revolution, who, defeated and
disappointed, sought new oppor-
tunities in the United States.
Following a preface by the editor, A. E.
Zucker, head of the foreign language
department, University of Maryland,
and an introduction by Arthur D.
Graeff, known especially for scholarly
studies relating to the Pennsylvania
Germans, Carl J. Friedrich of the
department of government, Harvard
University, presents a thoughtful
summary of "The European
Background." Then, Oscar Handlin, also
of Harvard, sketches "The American
Scene" to which the refugees came,
and Mrs. Hildegard B. Johnson, a
specialist in geography, treats their
"Adjustment to the United
States." Augustus J. Prahl of the department
of foreign languages, University of
Maryland, discusses "The Turner,"
the German idealists who sought to
develop "a sound mind in a sound
body." Individuals who had come to
the United States before 1848 had
been affiliated with the movement in
the German states, but no Turner
organizations existed in the United
States until Friedrich Hecker, arriving
in 1848, led in the founding of such a
society in Cincinnati, and similar
Turnvereine were soon established in various other cities.
Francis X. Braun, department of German,
University of Michigan,
and Lawrence S. Thompson, director of
libraries, University of Kentucky,
cooperate in a discussion of "The
Forty-Eighters in Politics." Eitel W.
Dobert, department of foreign
languages, University of Maryland, dis-
cusses "The Radicals" or
"lunatic fringe" among the refugees. Ella
468 Ohio State Archaeological and
Historical Quarterly
Lonn, long professor of history at
Goucher College and author of the
authoritative Foreigners in the
Confederacy, was well prepared to con-
tribute the account in this volume of
"The Forty-Eighters in the Civil
War."
The final contribution is a sketch of
"Carl Schurz," who more than
any other Forty-Eighter represented
"its idealism and its ideals, its vigors
and independence, its youthful buoyancy
and optimism," according to
the author, Bayard Quincy Morgan, head
of the department of German,
Stanford University. In this account
some statements will be criticized
by historians who will not wholly agree
that "Douglas was the avowed
and uncompromising champion of the slave
system" (p. 231) or that the
record of Andrew Johnson's
"administration proves that Schurz was only
too well advised in feeling uneasy"
when he had learned of Johnson's
nomination for the vice presidency (p.
237).
A very valuable appendix, prepared by
Professor Zucker and cov-
ering almost ninety pages, is devoted to
a "Biographical Dictionary of
the Forty-Eighters."
FRANCIS P. WEISENBURGER
Ohio State University