Book Reviews
The Social Ideas of the Northern
Evangelists, 1826-1860. By Charles C.
Cole, Jr. (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1954. 268p.; bibliog-
raphy and index. $4.25.)
Charles C. Cole, Jr., has written an
objective and well-balanced account
of the relation between leading
evangelical clergymen and the reform move-
ments which characterized the several
decades before the Civil War. The
author recognizes that the evangelists
were above all concerned with the
problem of individual salvation. Their
social ideals were incidental to their
chief vocation, and they were
inordinately preoccupied with spiritual affairs.
Two factors led to their interest in
moral reform movements. Like Charles
G. Finney, they had deserted the
predestinarian tenets of Calvinism and
earnestly believed that divine grace was
available to every man. Secondly,
they were influenced by an age of
restlessness attendant upon the transition
from an agrarian to an industrial
society. Freed from the pessimism of Calvin
and buoyed up by the general optimism of
the period, they became ardent
apostles of perfectionism. Piety came to
mean benevolence. As a result, they
initiated a host of movements to raise
the level of individual lives. Temper-
ance, prison reform, rescuing women from
prostitution, Sabbath observance,
and crusades against such evils as
duelling and theaters enlisted their zeal.
Some of them, like Charles G. Finney,
were in the forefront of the anti-
slavery movement as early as the 1830's.
In all these efforts they were guided
by a vision of establishing an American
community of Protestant saints, given
to prayer meetings, concentration on
spiritual matters, abstention from
worldly frivolities, and general
righteousness.
Their preoccupation with the spiritual
and their respect for the middle-
class virtues of their parishioners
narrowed their vision and led them
staunchly to uphold conservative
political and economic doctrines. They
frowned on the democratic yearnings of
the lower classes, defended govern-
ment as divinely sanctioned, and
rejected the political teachings of John
Locke. They likewise viewed private
property as a divine institution and
usually frowned on the equalitarian
tendencies of labor.
This is not the first time a historian
has dealt with the influence of
BOOK REVIEWS 87
Charles G. Finney's teachings of
benevolence or the role of the churches in
the antislavery movement. However, this
is the first examination of the social
teachings of a representative group of
evangelists and the initial study of
their relationship to the entire program
of reform. The result is not always
pleasing to those who would like to
think that the clergy were in the fore-
front. The author has accurately
assessed their role as reformers. He is both
understanding and fair minded in his
description of the clergy's strengths
and limitations as needlers of the
public conscience.
Ohio State University PAUL A. VARG
A History of the United States Indian
Factory System, 1795-1822. By Ora
Brooks Peake. (Denver: Sage Books, 1954.
340p.; illustrations, map, ap-
pendices, bibliography, and index.
$5.00.)
By a law of 1795 the United States
government established a factory sys-
tem designed to control trade with the
Indians by furnishing them with
supplies and goods at cost. It was hoped
that as a result the Indians would
become more friendly and the necessity
of maintaining troops at frontier
forts would be reduced. If the Indians
became unfriendly, goods might be
withheld until amicable relations were
restored. The 1795 law, which was
for the year only, was renewed and
modified from time to time, so that the
factory system remained until mid-1822.
During the first year factories were
started at Colerain in the southeastern
corner of Georgia and at Tellico in
eastern Tennessee. Subsequently factories
were established from Georgia to
Michigan on the east and from Louisiana
to Minnesota on the west. Located in the
area of the Old Northwest were
John Johnston's factory at Fort Wayne,
others at Sandusky, Detroit, and
Michilimackinac, as well as several more
in Illinois and Wisconsin.
A composite picture of the factory
system, down to such details as the
furniture which the factor received from
his government allotment, is given
in this volume. The acquisition,
transportation, and sale of merchandise to
the Indians; the care and disposition of
goods received from them; and the
effect of the foreign trade policy of
the United States on the system are all
treated in some detail. Three chapters
are devoted to a critical analysis of the
factory program and the reasons for its
economic failure. Because of the
atypical character of the various
factories much of Peake's contribution is
broad generalization with many
modifications and exceptions.
There are, unfortunately, aspects of the
volume which detract from its
readability and usefulness. At least
thirteen typographical errors in one
88
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
chapter, for example, is excessive and
is indicative of less than satisfactory
editorial and proofreading work. More
than twenty pages of the text--full-
page reproductions of manuscripts from
the Office of Indian Affairs--are so
blurred in their reproduction as to
render them virtually of no value to the
reader. The National Archives are
confusingly and interchangeably called
the United States Archives. Spelling of
factory locations on the map, pre-
pared specifically for this book, is
inconsistent with spelling in the text.
Other similar solecisms appear in the
volume.
The reviewer wonders if a faded
manuscript, a misplaced decimal point,
or an omission of a decimal point--all
not infrequently encountered in fiscal
documents of such a time and
circumstance--perhaps account for the
"exorbitant prices" which
Indians paid private traders for their merchandise,
fifteen hundred dollars, for example,
for a shawl worth a dollar and fifty
cents (p. 45). The author, in listing
criticisms of record-keeping by the
factors, says dollars and cents were not
written in full, as required by law
(p. 121). This may be the explanation.
An inadvertent error in transcription
is understandable too, if such
does not occur too frequently.
The author's use of parentheses in place
of the usual editorial brackets is
confusing, especially since the volume
contains scores of quotations. It is
often difficult to know whether the
parentheses are Peake's or in the manu-
script he is quoting. Another confusing
thing in Peake's text is the frequent
repetition of facts and statements in
dealing with different aspects of the
factory system. After reading once about
beating hides and furs to rid them
of moths, for example, and finding the
same thing mentioned again else-
where, one wonders if more rewriting and
revision was not needed before
publication.
Of considerable detraction from
readability is the great number of ex-
tensive reduced-type quotations
sprinkled throughout the text. The average
number per page is high. Chapter Five,
with thirty-seven pages of text, minus
six full-page illustrations of
reproduced manuscripts, has thirty-nine of them,
some of which exceed twenty-five lines
in length. Chapter Seven, of the same
length, minus ten full-page
illustrations or reproduced manuscripts, has
thirty-five reduced-type quotations.
Thus the text is neither a satisfactory
monographic account of the factory
system nor an editing of selected docu-
ments. Necessary information in
salutations and endorsements of quoted
letters, as well as many other things,
could have been relegated to footnotes.
Many of the quotations are of such a
nature as to have been easily rendered
into the author's own words or omitted
altogether.
Without going further, revision and
tightening up of Peake's text would
BOOK REVIEWS 89
have shortened it considerably and made
it a much more readable and
valuable contribution to a field of
scholarly research in which there is a
paucity of work being done. Since there
will probably not be another work
of this extent on the same subject in
the near future, even with its draw-
backs it is a useful contribution.
Miami University DWIGHT L.
SMITH
Chance or Destiny: Turning Points in
American History. By Oscar Handlin.
(Boston: Atlantic-Little, Brown and
Company, 1955. 220p.; index. $3.75.)
During the nineteenth century, when
optimistic America first began to
analyze its past, the accepted view was
that our historical development was
a record of unbroken progress.
Everything was getting bigger and better and
there was just no limit to the heights
we might attain. By the turn of the
twentieth, however, scientific history
had submitted its sobering judgment
that America's greatness, such as it
was, merely reflected the operation of
orderly scientific laws. Impersonal
factors, not native genius, destined us for
western leadership. Heroes were
de-emphasized and the importance of ac-
cident or chance occurrence was denied.
The apostles of "inevitability" did
make one concession to chance: since,
they argued, we were now declining
rather than ascending, there must have
been some turning point which
marked the peak, and that event could
have been accidental. The rise and
fall, however, remained under the
control of scientific law. Although alumni
of both of the above schools survive
today, the more popular view is to
reject determinism and acknowledge that
chance and accident do exercise a
preponderant influence on history. In
brief, this is the philosophy of Oscar
Handlin.
In eight provocative essays Harvard's
Pulitizer Prize winner has sought to
implement his theory that chance has
loomed large in the growth and direc-
tion of American civilization. To a
certain extent he succeeds. For example,
it is well shown that freakish fortune
brought about victory at Yorktown and
the purchases of Louisiana and Alaska,
all signal landmarks in our history.
From here, however, we move to shaky
ground. It is not easy to accept the
view that Upshur's violent death on the Princeton
in 1844 alone reopened
the slavery dispute by returning
Calhoun, with his belligerent demands for
Texas, to office. Nor is it easy to
believe that Theodore Roosevelt's un-
authorized cable to Admiral Dewey in
February 1898 alone got us our Far
Eastern empire and all its subsequent
headaches. The actual order to sail to
90
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Manila on April 24 was signed by Navy
Secretary Long himself with
McKinley's blessing.
And it is impossible to believe that the
Lusitania and Pearl Harbor
tragedies got us into World Wars I and
II; we would still have become in-
volved if neither had occurred.
Countless other sinkings from 1915 to 1917
and the Japanese resolve to move south
in 1941 made these wars inevitable,
despite the arguments of Beard, Barnes,
Sanborn, Chamberlin, and Tansill
to the contrary. The victory at
Gettysburg might be attributed to luck and
it might have been a turning point in
discouraging foreign recognition of
the Confederacy. It is less certain that
Gettysburg was the key turning-point
in the war itself, for in fact Union
prospects seemed more unfavorable after
Spottsylvania than they had been after
Chancellorsville.
Few can quarrel either with Professor
Handlin's belief that chance sig-
nificantly shapes and channels history,
or with his masterful literary manner,
so familiar to readers of the brilliant Uprooted.
However, not all eight
illustrations serve their intended
purpose; the theory might have benefited
from more convincing evidence.
Rio Grande College EUGENE C. MURDOCK
Pennsylvania Agriculture and Country
Life, 1840-1940. By Stevenson Whit-
comb Fletcher. (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania
Historical and Museum Com-
mission, 1955. xxii??619p.;
illustrations and index. $3.50.)
Five years ago the Pennsylvania
Historical and Museum Commission pub-
lished a 605-page history of early
Pennsylvania agriculture under the title of
Pennsylvania Agriculture and Country
Life, 1640-1840. That volume, like
its sequel under review here, was
written by Dean (Emeritus) Fletcher of
the college of agriculture of
Pennsylvania State University. The two books
are obviously the product of the labor
of many years, and, unlike some of
the compilations that pass for
agricultural history, ring true.
The second volume, like the first, is
organized on a rigidly topical basis.
Of the twenty chapters, two each are
devoted to the land, crops and crop-
ping, dairying, and a combination of
production costs, marketing, transpor-
tation, and related items; four to
various aspects of rural sociology; and one
each to labor, farm mechanization,
livestock husbandry, horticulture, govern-
ment and agriculture, farm
organizations, and agricultural education and
research. The author has avoided quite
successfully undue duplication of
subject matter from chapter to chapter,
but he has not tied together chrono-
logically the various developments. The
nearest he comes to doing so is in
BOOK REVIEWS 91
fifteen pages in the middle of the book,
where he writes of Boom and Bust
(1840-1873), Hard Times (1873-1896),
First World War Prosperity (1897-
1920), and The Great Depression
(1928-1938). If the reader is well versed
in Pennsylvania agricultural history, or
in that of some nearby state, he will
be able to establish his own horizontal
points of reference, but the average
reader would benefit greatly from an
introductory or concluding chapter of
some length emphasizing contemporaneity
of development, even if there
might be considerable overlapping of the
content of the topical chapters.
While the author has tried to deal
conscientiously with almost every
conceivable aspect of Pennsylvania
agriculture, there is some unevenness of
treatment. Thus, while there are about
seventy pages on dairying, there are
only about thirty-five on livestock
husbandry, and poultry farming gets half
of these. There are even a few blanks.
For instance, the author emphasizes
the significance of hay and grass in
Pennsylvania, and is much interested in
the mechanization of farming, but there
is no mention of one of the greatest
of all labor-saving devices, the hay
fork, even though it was introduced into
Pennsylvania before 1850. In a few cases
the developments of a long period
are telescoped into a sentence or two.
We are told, for example (p. 50),
that at the state fair in 1852 a prize
was offered for the "best portable
[i.e., horse-drawn] steam engine,"
and in the very next sentence that "vari-
ous kinds of 'Self-Propelled Farm
Engines' soon were on the market"--
"soon" meaning within, and
mostly near the end of, thirty-five years.
In a few places the author would have
benefited from technical advice,
or perhaps even from a jaundiced reading
of his own manuscript. Consider
these statements from a single paragraph
(p. 59): "With mechanical loaders
. . . it was possible to load a ton of
hay on a moving wagon . . . in five
minutes. . . . The pick-up baler . . .
picked up from windrows and baled
about two and a half tons of hay an
hour." If these assertions make sense
(which they do not), then a generation
or more of improvement in haying
machinery had culminated in the creation
of a tractor-drawn baler which
could handle only as much hay in one
hour as a hired man on a horse-drawn
wagon with a hayloader attached could
handle in twelve and a half minutes.
Actually, International Harvester agents
currently sell their line of field
balers on the basis of a claim that they
will average six tons an hour. As
for the stated speed of loading with a
mechanical loader--imagine a hay
wagon creaking slowly along a windrow,
with the hired man standing on
the slightly unsteady rack building the
load, while timothy and clover cascade
down on him at the rate of four hundred
pounds a minute! There are a few
other slips. A statement (p. 271) gives
the impression that the famous
92 THE OHIO HISTORICAL
QUARTERLY
Percheron stallion, Louis Napoleon, was
imported into Pennsylvania, whereas
he was actually imported into Ohio. It
is perhaps only an unfortunate turn of
phrase--"since 1900 many stone
fences have been removed with the bull-
dozer" (p. 70)--that leaves one
feeling that the bulldozer has been used
for upwards of half a century.
It is remarkable that the blemishes in a
work of such length are so few.
The two volumes will hereafter be
indispensable to any student of the history
of agriculture in the northern states.
Marietta College ROBERT LESLIE JONES
The North Reports the Civil War. By J. Cutler Andrews. (Pittsburgh: Uni-
versity of Pittsburgh Press, 1955.
x??813p.; notes, list of northern re-
porters, bibliography, index, and maps.
$6.00.)
When the South Carolina rebels arched a
pair of screaming shells into
the dawn of April 12, 1861, to begin the
bombardment of Federal-held
Fort Sumter, they "broke" the
greatest news story that had occurred up to
that time on the North American
continent. The Civil War--the "inevitable
conflict"--had begun.
The story of the four-year war that
followed is still being written. Dr.
Andrews' scholarly work concerns the
first telling of the story, the reporting
of the war by the northern press. The
subject has been covered before and
perhaps more entertainingly--certainly
with fewer words--in the sprightly
and dramatic Bohemian Brigade, but
Dr. Andrews has compiled what
amounts to the whole record. I use the
word "compile" because the book
actually is a collection of tales often
told, with just enough new ones to
spice it.
The country learned of the momentous
events at Charleston via the
"electric telegraph," a device
perfected some few years previously but used
only sparingly by a press that looked
upon it as a prohibitive expense. Even
when Sumter fell, Dr. Andrews points
out, some newspapers used the head-
line, "By Telegraph," as more impressive
than the event it was recording.
From that day on, the system of putting
fast-breaking news on the wires
was generally accepted, no matter what
expenditure was incurred. The
subsequent wartime prosperity of the
press was able to absorb the new system.
Stirred to a frenzy by the outbreak of
war, the reading public developed
overnight an insatiable appetite for new
and more news. Journalism also
was stirred. It threw off its dusty
wrappings, discarded threadbare tradition,
and entered into a new age of
newspapering. The revolution in the press
produced a new breed of newspaper man,
the war correspondent, who was
BOOK REVIEWS 93
half reporter, half soldier. There had,
of course, been war correspondents
long before the Civil War, but they now
became the big men of the staffs,
overshadowing all members of the Fourth
Estate in that day except a handful
of more virile publishers.
The reporters of the Civil War had big
stories to tell and they told them
in a manner that enthralled the reader.
They faced great personal danger--
some of them were killed in line of
duty--and they often worked under
almost impossible conditions. They had
to look after their own sustenance
and their own transportation. After they
had written their stories, they had
to get them to their papers as best they
could, some of their actions in this
respect bordering on heroics. Some overstepped
the bounds of censorship
and were arrested and driven out of camp
by irate generals who looked upon
them as spies. It was known that General
Robert E. Lee read certain disloyal
northern dailies to learn where he could
expect the next blow.
Dr. Andrews, for the most part, lets the
correspondents tell their own
stories with samples of their work. He
has, unhappily, devoted much space
to his own descriptions of campaigns,
until sometimes the purpose of the
book is lost. Editing could have made the
book a thriller.
The author, a naval intelligence officer
in World War II, obviously misses
the "feel" of his subject,
because he himself is not a newspaper man. The
book smells of the library shelf. This
does not detract, however, from its
value as a storehouse of information.
The notes, which run to great length,
are a valuable volume in themselves, and
the Bibliography presents the
catalog of a Civil War library. A list
of correspondents for the northern
press is included, and two maps show the
theater of news coverage.
Ohio Historical Society ROBERT S. HARPER
The Maumee Valley, U. S. A.: An
American Story. By Randolph C. Downes
and Catherine G. Simonds. (Toledo:
Historical Society of Northwestern
Ohio, 1955. ix??214p.; illustrations,
pupil book lists, teacher references,
and index. $3.50.)
The Maumee Valley, U. S. A. is a textbook written on the seventh and
eighth grade level for school classes
studying local history in northwestern
Ohio. The reviewer understands that the
historical research was done by
Professor Downes, of the history
department of the University of Toledo,
and that the text was written by Miss
Simonds, of Cherry School in Toledo.
Another teacher, Walter T. Bonkowski, of
Lincoln School in the same city,
prepared the illustrations and the
cover.
The volume contains the social and
cultural history of the area as well
94
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
as the usual political and economic
phases. The text is divided into ten
units, each of which contains from two
to four chapters. At the close of each
chapter one finds a vocabulary list and
a series of questions pertaining to
material in the chapter. At the
conclusion of each unit the authors have
inserted a list of unit activities, a
brief bibliography, and a list of suitable
visual aids.
One's attention is attracted to the
volume by the cover, on which is pic-
tured, in full color, the lake port, but
the illustrations in the book are not
of the same standard. Many of them are
mediocre drawings or very poor
reproductions of existing photographs or
paintings.
The vocabulary used in the text is one
that is suitable for the average
junior high pupil. The choice of words,
however, was not always the best.
The spinning wheel was not in
"constant" use in the pioneer home as stated
on page 61. Charles Dickens did not
dislike "everything" that he found in
Ohio as indicated on page 77. The
reviewer feels that it was unfortunate
that the authors coined a new term,
"Rampart Builders," to describe those
prehistoric Ohioans who built the
earthworks. They only added to an already
lengthy list of names for these people.
Several historical inaccuracies should
be noted here. Recent research, using
the Carbon 14 Test, indicates that the
mound-building Indians lived in Ohio
as early as 1000 B.C. not "about
900 A.D." as related on page 1 of this book.
The map on page 23 entitled "Ohio
in the Revolution" shows both Fort
Recovery and Fort Harmar, neither of
which was built until several years
after the close of the American
Revolution. The author of Buckskin Scout
listed on page 58 should be M. Renick,
not C. Remick.
Publications in the field of state and
local history are badly needed by
educators in Ohio. The reviewer feels,
however, that this text will never be
a significant force to create a desire
on the part of pupils to learn more
about their community history. It is not
the type of writing that a pupil will
read voluntarily, and if it is used as a
school text, it might conceivably re-
sult in more pupils concluding that
history is a dull subject.
Ohio Historical Society GEORGE F. JENNY
Manuscripts Collections of the
Minnesota Historical Society. Guide Number
2. Compiled by Lucile M. Kane and Kathryn A. Johnson. (Saint Paul:
Minnesota Historical Society, 1955.
xiii??212p.; index. $3.60.)
Twenty years ago, when its first Guide
appeared, the Minnesota His-
torical Society announced that its
manuscript holdings had grown tenfold
BOOK REVIEWS 95
in ten years. Since then, the number of
collections has quadrupled to 1,600;
their brute tonnage undoubtedly
represents a much greater increase. An
influx of these proportions could have
reduced some libraries to chaos, but
an air of cool efficiency in the new Guide
suggests that Miss Kane and Miss
Johnson still know what they have in
charge. Their guide complements
but does not supplant its predecessor,
so that both must be used. It is a good
guide, following standard practice, and
is professionally indexed.
Among those who are interested mainly in
national history, Minnesota
may bring to mind a series of agrarian
protests: the Grange, the Farmers'
Alliance, the Nonpartisan League, the
Farmer-Labor party. Quite a few
manuscript collections on these subjects
have come to the society in the past
twenty years, to take their place beside
the papers of Ignatius Donnelly.
Some promising political papers have
come in--those of Frank B. Kellogg,
for example. On the other hand, the
society has had to content itself with
just one reel of microfilm of Senator
Moses Clapp's papers.
The society has expanded more in the
field of economic history. The
massive records of several massive
businesses should have much to tell
about the land-lumbering-immigration
combination that opened up large
tracts of Minnesota. The material on
iron mines is sparse by comparison.
All of this economic development may be
seen through the other end of the
telescope by consulting the various
manuscripts pertaining to the Indian
reservations and their relations with
the white men.
As far as one can tell from a guide,
there seems to be little trash; Minne-
sota has apparently been willing and
able to say "No." The acquisitions
show discretion and ingenuity.
Historical societies may profit by noting
certain types of manuscripts brought in
by the Minnesota staff: the papers
of several labor unions and organizers,
the records of the Minneapolis
Better Business Bureau for 1912-25, and
the registers of the Episcopal
Diocese of Minnesota for 1845-1939.
Whenever it can, the society fills in
gaps in its resources by a widespread
copying program. Dr. Grace Lee Nute,
formerly the manuscripts curator,
traveled widely about the country and to
France and England in quest of
papers relating to the Minnesota area.
The society now has the records of
the United States Office of Indian
Affairs for 1836-85 for the Northwest,
on seventy-three reels of microfilm. It
has, too, photostats, microfilms, and
typescripts of the papers of the
American Fur Company. Although the bulk
of the originals are at the New-York
Historical Society, the rest lie scattered
about in six other libraries (one of
them private)--a striking instance of
the value of the program.
96 THE OHIO
HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Professor Theodore C. Blegen, formerly
superintendent of the society,
notes in the Foreword that the
collection "has grown, not like Topsy, but
as the result of considered collecting
policy and strategy."
Ohio Historical Society JOHN WEATHERFORD
American Indians Dispossessed: Fraud
in Land Cessions Forced upon the
Tribes. By Walter Hart Blumenthal. (Philadelphia: George S.
MacManus
Company, 1955. 200p.;
appendix, bibliography, and sources for treaties.
$3.75.)
This small book presents only the
highlights of the long and involved
story of the taking over by the whites
of the lands of the Indians. Illegal
encroachments by speculators and
overeager settlers, frauds and bribery in
negotiations, inadequate compensation,
failure to carry out promises, and
ill-advised or unfriendly legislation,
all these and other wrongs are illus-
trated by selected episodes, ranging
from the Walking Purchase of colonial
days, through the trek of the Cherokees
over the Trail of Tears, and down
to the passage of the Tongass act (1947)
regarding lands in Alaska. Par-
ticular attention is paid to treaties,
since it was through these agreements
that right of occupancy was normally
terminated prior to 1871. Altogether
there is some discussion of land
dealings with about forty tribes or bands
(not an exact count, since there is no
index). As to Indian lands in Ohio,
there are brief statements regarding the
treaties of Fort Stanwix, Fort Mc-
Intosh, Fort Harmar, and Greenville. In
the last chapter, the heading,
"Aftermath: Vindication at Long
Last," is exemplified by reference to two
recent laws: the Indian reorganization
act of 1934 and the Indian claims
commission act of 1946.
There is much in this narrative that
should help win sympathy for the
dispossessed aborigines; it is factual,
and the author's indignation at their
spoliation is vigorously expressed. But
however much the careful reader may
share this feeling, he might not be
willing to subscribe to all parts of this
particular indictment. Its effectiveness
is weakened by inaccuracies-too
numerous to list here--in facts, page
references, and quotations, and by other
indications of a lack of precision in
statement. It is not a balanced account
in which the good is set equally
alongside the bad in the record. Although
it is admitted that some treaties were
above reproach (p. 184), the good ones
receive little attention. Facts are
omitted which, had they been presented,
would have thrown a more favorable light
on an official policy that was not
all evil, at least not in its purposes.
For example, there is almost nothing
BOOK REVIEWS 97
about the partial compensation offered
to many tribes in the form of grants
for the support of schools, erection of
mills and shops, employment of
teachers, physicians, farmers, and
mechanics, provision for agricultural im-
plements, tools, seed, and livestock. To
be sure, the execution of these
promises was faulty; but in making them
the government recognized its
responsibility to contribute to the
civilization of the natives and to help them
adjust to a new and possibly better way
of life on their reduced holdings.
In conclusion, the author says that
although "the occupation of the con-
tinental expanse by white settlement was
inevitable," the means used were
largely discreditable, and that
"the integrity and honorable dealings were
mostly on the part of the redmen."
University of Colorado COLIN B. GOODYKOONTZ
Ohio's Western Reserve: The Story of
Its Place Names. By David Lindsey.
(Cleveland: Press of Western Reserve
University and Western Reserve
Historical Society, 1955. vii??111p.;
illustrations, bibliographical note, and
index. $2.50.)
The Western Reserve, lying in the
northeastern corner of Ohio, nearly
encompasses twelve of the state's
eighty-eight counties. It extends from the
Pennsylvania state line west to Sandusky
Bay and lies north of the forty-
first parallel, five of the counties
bordering on the south shore of Lake Erie.
The author has included also parts of
Ottawa and Ashland counties that were
in the historic Western Reserve, and
parts of Summit and Mahoning coun-
ties that were not, for the sake of
completeness. He has limited the study to
inhabited places--cities, townships, and
villages--and does not account for
the names of rivers, lakes, or other
geographic features except as they bear
upon populated communities.
Professor Lindsey has taught history at
Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea
for a decade. When he came to Ohio he
was struck by the repetition of New
England names like New London, New
Haven, Boston, and Plymouth in the
Western Reserve area. A search, starting
out of personal curiosity, led him
to seek data on the origin of these
place names in various libraries in the
region. He consulted newspaper editors
and informed local inhabitants, as
well as county histories and other
published works. The latter are listed in
a bibliographical note.
The names are arranged alphabetically by
chapters, a chapter for each of
the twelve main counties. The
attractiveness of the book is enhanced by
the use of illustrations in black and white
done by Professor Howard Oagley,
98
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
a colleague at Baldwin-Wallace. Its
usefulness as a reference tool is improved
by the repetition of a diagrammatic
outline map of the Reserve at the head
of each chapter. The location of the
particular county covered by the chapter
is set forth in solid black.
The author presents an interesting
account of the beginnings of the
Western Reserve as Chapter I, affording
him the opportunity to explain the
origin of many of the names appearing in
the succeeding chapters. The last
chapter is entitled, "Names in
Retrospect." It is an excellent essay on the
subject of choosing a place name.
Choosing a name, writes Lindsey, is a
problem that plagues all kinds of people,
"from new parents to dog owners
and real estate promoters." Names
are convenient handles for identifying
persons and places; but more than that,
they are "expressions of the whole
range of human nature, the loves, fears,
desires, hates, hopes, aspirations,
discouragements of men."
The entries vary in length. Some are
limited to two or three lines, merely
giving the reason why the place got the
name it has today. In other cases,
where information was obtainable, the
author has given the date of found-
ing and the name of the founder or the
first settler of the community. En-
tries in other cases occupy half a page,
some fifteen or twenty lines in length,
delineating in considerable detail a
romantic incident which may have de-
cided the name of the town. Logically
arranged as a reference work, the
volume contains sufficient historical
lore to provide much of interest and
entertainment for the casual reader.
Firestone Library and Archives WILLIAM D. OVERMAN
Civil War on the Western Border,
1854-1865. By Jay Monaghan. (Boston:
Little, Brown and Company, 1955.
x??454p.; bibliography and index.
$6.00.)
Jay Monaghan attempts a unified picture
of the civil conflict in Kansas,
Missouri, and closely related areas from
the time of the passage of the
Kansas-Nebraska act in 1854 to the close
of the Civil War. He sees the
geographic area as a unit. He views the
eleven years of strife as a continuous
time unit, the actual Civil War simply
picking up and projecting the fighting
that was already under way on the Kansas
frontier during the 1850's.
In fact, the material presented divides
into two main segments: the pre-
war period, which occupies about
one-third of the book; and the war years,
which fill the latter two-thirds. The
1854-61 period, although covered in
BOOK REVIEWS 99
fewer pages, is painted with a broader
brush than the later period, in the
sense that the author ties together in a
tightly woven fabric the threads of
politics, economics, social conditions,
geographic rivalry, news reporters'
hysterical exaggerations, and
developments on the national scene. Herein
march the contending forces of
free-state emigrants and Missouri border men,
the colorful, restless figures of
prophet-like John Brown, rabble-rousing Jim
Lane, ambitious David Atchison, and
energetic Jefferson Buford, along with
a host of others. The bushwacking
parties, the massacres, the pillaging of
towns like Lawrence, the politicians'
unavailing efforts to choke off the con-
flict--all form the background. The
Kansas conflagration threw many sparks
into the emotional fire already
smoldering farther east and helped push the
nation over the brink into civil war.
After Lincoln's election and the
consequent secession, the efforts of the
Unionists to hold Missouri and of
southern sympathizers to take Missouri
out of the Union led to a fraternal
conflict on "the western border" that
became even bloodier than the preceding
struggle over Kansas. After de-
picting the fight to keep Missouri in
the Union in 1861, Monaghan pro-
ceeds to trace in intricate and
fast-moving detail the military campaigns
waged in the western theater for the
remainder of the war. The engagements
at Jefferson City, Wilson's Creek, Pea
Ridge, and Prairie Grove, and the
climactic battle of Westport are pictured
in vivid fashion. The swift, cruel
guerilla raids under the notorious
Charles Quantrill and others flash across
the pages. The intriguing figures of
Nathaniel Lyon, John C. Fremont, Frank
Blair, Jr., James Blunt, Samuel Curtis,
Tom Ewing, Jr., Thomas Hindman,
Sterling Price, Jo Shelby, and Alfred
Pleasanton appear in rapid sequence
of military move and counter-move. All
in all, the story is a fascinating one,
told with vigor, color, and precision.
The author's prodigious research is
clearly evident throughout the work.
The thirty-five tightly printed pages of
bibliography list all conceivably rele-
vant materials, from manuscripts and
contemporary newspaper reports to the
most recent journal articles. Exception
may be taken to the somewhat loose
use of the vague phrase, "the slave
power," in relation to the Kansas struggle.
The inclusion of maps detailing the
military campaigns would have been ex-
tremely helpful. Taken altogether, this
volume achieves a high standard of
thorough historical research and
effective writing and should prove its use-
fulness to both the general reader and
the historian.
Oberlin College DAVID LINDSEY
100
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
The Federalism of James A. Bayard. By Morton Borden. (New York: Co-
lumbia University Press, 1955. 256p.;
bibliography and index. $4.00.)
Delaware, first state to ratify the
federal constitution, became a steady
supporter of the new national government
and of the Federalist party, which
shaped its initial policies and put them
into practice. After the party suf-
fered disastrous defeat in the election
of 1800, Delaware continued, in the
face of a healthy Republican opposition,
to give majority support to the
Federalists until after the War of 1812.
Since James A. Bayard was the
leading Federalist of Delaware, his
career in state and national politics is
worthy of detailed study, in terms of
both the man and the peculiar political
environment in which he lived.
Mr. Borden has done well by his subject
on both counts. This is not a
biography, but the author has given
enough of Bayard's background and
early life, of his character and
personality, so that he relives his role in the
political maneuvers and controversy of
the period. (His environment has
been described in detail recently by
John Munroe in Federalist Delaware,
1775-1815). While Bayard was a man of eminence in his own state, in
the
national house of representatives and in
the senate he was not among the
first rank. It is the second-rate
members, however, whom we need to know
more about. In Bayard's party it is the
High Federalists who have com-
manded the interest of historians and even
John Adams has not been given
the hearing he deserves. As a moderate,
Bayard made a substantial contri-
bution to the movement for tempering the
extremists of his party. Mr.
Borden shows how a moderate could have
good reason to support Hamil-
tonian measures on some occasions and
the ideas of Adams on others; but
Bayard was a man of convictions, which
on crucial issues determined his
actions at the expense of personal and
opportunist considerations. The author
has shed much needed light on the
election of 1800-1801 and thereby
divested it of some of the plots and
rumors long associated with this
"revolution."
The second half of the book deals with
the period of Republican su-
premacy down to Bayard's death in 1815.
He was minority leader of a party
steadily losing ground and
disintegrating, so much so that this portion of
the narrative is almost entirely one of
anticlimax. Nevertheless, Bayard's
federalism is ably sustained by the
author as the main theme and again the
moderate position of the man from
Delaware is seen as delaying the wreck
of the party by the extremists. If we
can put aside our hindsight view of its
dissolution, we can better appreciate
the author's assessment of Bayard's
loyalty to the Federalist party, his
well-considered opposition to Republican
BOOK REVIEWS 101
foreign policy, and his refusal to
truckle to the elements of disunion among
the Federalists. It is not an easy task
to treat constructively the phenomena
and attendant circumstances of political
decline. Mr. Borden's book, even
beyond the limits of his subject,
provides a companion piece to the oft told
story of Republican ascendancy. In one
sense Bayard's political role was
pathetic and futile; in another sense it
was positive in supplying the oppo-
sition, always needed, to the party in
power. Almost every issue which
Bayard supported during his national
career was won by his opponents, but
the reader gains a heightened respect
for the man and his efforts from Mr.
Borden's work.
Institute of Early American History
and Culture LESTER J. CAPPON
Red Scare: A Study in National
Hysteria, 1919-1920. By Robert K.
Murray.
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1955. xiv??337p.; illus-
trations, note on sources, and index.
$4.75.)
Heywood Broun once wrote about a woman
who heard the verdict of
guilty imposed by the court on Sacco and
Vanzetti, and cried out in anguish:
"It is death condemning life."
In the central germ of its meaning, that cry
has great symbolic value. The history of
the United States in the twentieth
century has been witness at once to the
phenomenal expansion of material
production and to serious challenges in
the patterns of distribution. The
democracy has displayed great dynamism
in its constant adaptation of the
national product to the national
welfare. But that buoyancy, pumped into the
body politic by the bold thought of
reformers or the effective action of trade
unions, has yielded counterattack and
suppression by men, whether sincere
or not, with a stake in an unchanging
social order. The conflict continues,
and in a democracy there can be no final
tally. But one thing emerges clearly
from the past--that reason is the
midwife of social progress and hysteria the
mark of reaction.
It is the special merit of Professor
Murray's sober and significant book
that he has described one prolonged
outburst of national hysteria, in extended
detail, the period of the 1919-20
"Red Scare." In a brief introductory survey
of the American political and social
milieu of 1919, Dr. Murray has isolated
those factors of postwar economic
dislocation, such as inflation and rapid
demobilization, which, in the absence of
governmental responsibility, were
bound to create conflict between capital
and labor. The industrialist of 1919,
fattened up on the profits of war,
insisted upon normalcy, by which he meant
102
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
"freedom from governmental
regulation, from labor unions, from public
responsibility--the freedom of laissez
faire" (p. 9).
But when conflict occurred, it was
unfortunately impossible to confine it to
a competition between the rational
claims of each side. In its emotional en-
forcement of conformity, the war had
already forged instruments, both
formal, like the sedition and espionage
laws, and informal, like community
pressures on jobholders, which self-styled
patriots could manipulate to de-
stroy their opponents. Legitimate
criticism could be silenced during the war
by equating it with treason; social
protest could be discredited during the
postwar period by equating it with
Bolshevism. Courageously surveying the
rubble thus strewn across the land, the
author sadly concludes, "Civil liberties
were left prostrate, the labor movement
was badly mauled, the position of
capital was greatly enhanced, and
complete antipathy toward reform was
enthroned" (p. 17).
In several chapters Dr. Murray describes
the actual centers of the radical
movement in the United States and the
growth of the patriotic defense
against it. American radicalism, in
large measure home grown before the
war and nurtured in the soil of social
iniquity, had suffered severe blows in
wartime. "By 1919 it was definitely
unwise for a person to declare openly
that he was a wobbly" (p. 31). But
the techniques against social and
political radicalism were intensified
when potential danger to the established
order seemed realized in a Bolshevik
Revolution that not only abolished the
regime of property in Russia but also
spawned Communist movements every-
where. The Communists in the United
States might be only a handful, but
they were as good a pretext for assorted
causes as if they had been a
hundredfold more: "Every ambitious
politician, overzealous veteran, anti-
union employer, super-patriotic
organizer, defender of white supremacy, and
sensational journalist jumped into the
fray, using the issue of radicalism as a
whipping boy for their own special
purposes" (p. 58).
It was in application to the labor
question that the "patriotic defense"
performed its most vital service to the
great industrialists at the expense of
desperately needed advances for workers.
Unmasking the true ideological
character of many patriotic societies,
the author tells us that their real motives
"were not always the publicly
declared ones, since patriotism was definitely
tied to the security of private property
and more specifically to the mainte-
nance of economic conservatism" (p.
85). Thus, when the policemen struck
in Boston in 1919 to improve deplorable
working conditions; when steel
workers sought to change the sixty-nine
hour week and $1,466 annual wage
into something decent through union
activity; when coal miners, subject to
BOOK REVIEWS 103
rigid wage controls since September
1917, tried to effect the much-needed
raise, it was useful for employers,
newspapers, publicists, and patriotic or-
ganizations to poison the public mind
with cries of radicalism. Summing up
the difference between real and alleged
reasons for the strikes, Murray de-
clares: "Still, the real issue was
never radicalism and even the dosed versus
the open shop struggle involved the
simple and much more basic question
of union versus no union" (p. 165).
The factual outline of these tragic
events is a twice-told tale, to which the
author contributes largely an orderly
progression. Yet he spotlights certain
aspects of public behavior in greater
detail than usual--the red thread of
violence, the neurotic resort to force,
the near blood-lust in traditionally
tranquil sectors of the American
community. Public intolerance toward
teachers of independent mind sometimes
reached fever pitch. The hunting
down of suspected radicals, as happened
in such classic fashion after the Cen-
tralia clash of Armistice Day, 1919, was
extreme transcendence of the law.
And the story of the fate of one Wobbly,
Wesley Everest, "emasculated by one
of his kidnappers in an orgy of brutal
sadism" (p. 186), was extreme re-
jection of moral restraint. The
governmental counterpart of private brutality
came like a terrible swift sword in the
raids of Mr. Palmer and the state
laws on criminal syndicalism.
Of the many virtues of Dr. Murray's
book--the careful weighing of so
many public and private documents, the
intelligent sense of organization, the
clear (though hardly brilliant) writing,
the incisive comments on the use and
abuse of ideology--not the least is his
willingness to write on the subject of
witch-hunting at the very moment when
that phenomenon has become far
more widespread than before. And in
confronting the subject, he has re-
tained as his touchstone of measurement
the basic principles of the Bill of
Rights.
But precisely because Red Scare deals
honestly with a subject of such con-
tinuing interest, its shortcomings are
to be genuinely regretted. Within the
confines of Dr. Murray's analysis, that
amorphous force, "public opinion,"
plays a major role. As too frequently
happens, a selection of the nation's
newspapers constitutes for the author
the reflection of public opinion. In
fact, of course, papers reflect the
opinions of men who control them, and any
measurement of their influence upon a
reading public would require at least
the sampling techniques of modern public
opinion experts. Furthermore, in
discussing the role of various
organizations and societies, Dr. Murray has
permitted them to remain shrouded in
anonymity. It would have been a
contribution of the highest order if he
had revealed the names, careers,
104
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
background, and hence motivations of the
key figures in the major red-
hunting groups.
Outside the confines of his analysis,
however, there are certain questions
that might well have been confronted by
the author. How old and how per-
manent are the restrictions on the
traditional civil liberties? Is it not perhaps
wishful thinking to view 1919-20 or
1946-55 as moments of irrationality
before reason is restored? Is
restriction upon the open society, certainly as
old as the first immigration
exclusionism at the turn of the century, perhaps
endemic now in our society? Dr. Murray
might well have assumed the re-
sponsibility of discussing the shifting
course of the American theory of civil
liberties. Beyond that, he might
profitably have drawn some hypotheses from
allied social studies to probe into the
conditioning factors which have yielded
inhumane outbursts among ordinarily
decent men and women. What factors
of role, status, and bureaucratization
have produced such signs of aggression?
And how can most men and women recover a
sense of security? Until these
questions have been posed and some
answers attempted the full value of
studies such as Red Scare will be
in part submerged.
Ohio State University HARVEY GOLDBERG
Henry George. By Charles Albro Barker. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1955. xvii??696p.; frontispiece,
notes on the sources, and index.
$9.50.)
"He was a saintly man; he walked
with angels," a friend said of Henry
George. Another close associate
commented, "His [George's] ability and
his courage; his honesty, independence
and intellectual power were those of
a leader of men." The delineation
of these two facets of George's character
is a major theme of this biography by
Charles A. Barker, professor of
American history at Johns Hopkins
University. Henry George, the saint and
visionary, gave courage and
steadfastness to Henry George, the propagandist
and leader of men, carrying him in the
end to martyrdom. He led an ex-
traordinarily active life. Only once was
he able to devote a stretch of un-
interrupted time to writing--to being a
closet philosopher. And it was then
that he produced his major work, Progress
and Poverty. After its publi-
cation in 1879 he dedicated the
remainder of his life to propagating its
several ideas. He wrote more books, he
lectured, he edited newspapers, he
ran for public office. Professor Barker
is more tolerant of George's political
and polemical activities, with one
exception, than was Albert J. Nock, whose
essay on George condemned them all as
futile. The exception occurred in the
BOOK REVIEWS 105
last decade of George's life when he
dispersed his energies. He lectured (in
lengthy "open letters")
Herbert Spencer for his apostasy on the land ques-
tion and Pope Leo XIII for obliquely
censuring the idea of common land-
ownership in the encyclical, Rerum
Novarum. George allowed himself to be
swept up in the campaign of 1896. To
these he sacrificed what he hoped to
be his great work, The Science of
Political Economy, which might better
have been left unpublished.
Another object of the author has been a
favorite of George's other biog-
raphers: to rescue him from some of his
overzealous disciples who would
limit him to a fiscal reformer, a single
taxer. George Geiger, Nock, and now
Barker decry this tendency. The present
biographer's particular contribution
is to trace with meticulous care the
origin and growth in George's thought
of other ideas besides land-value
taxation. Henry George was the advocate,
Barker reminds us, of free trade, of
better conditions for labor, and of public
ownership of services which are natural
monopolies, such as railroads, tele-
graph, water, gas, and the like. Such
reforms George continued to support in
defiance of disciples who narrowed the
fight to what Barker calls "the single
tax limited." Nevertheless,
George's acceptance of "water and gas" socialism
did not make him a socialist. He
rejected the materialistic determinism of
socialist philosophy. His own teachings
from first to last were a blend of
Christian ethics and economics, an
affirmation that man is capable of so
ordering the economy as to assure his
moral progress on earth.
There is another minor revision to which
Barker attends. He corrects
Nock's picture of the extreme poverty of
the George family when Henry
was a boy. At most, the family
experienced genteel deprivation rather than
catastrophic want. It was not childhood
penury but the severe economic ups
and downs he suffered during his first
years in California that made him
acutely conscious of the problem of
poverty among his fellow workers. From
this experience dates his concern with
the question of poverty; his famous
vision in New York in a later year
merely confirmed him in his purpose.
The author exercises commendable restraint
in evaluating the influence of
George. Although the "Prophet of
San Francisco" was not without honor in
his own country, he was more influential
in England than at home. J. A.
Hobson wrote in 1897 that George had
"a more directly formative and edu-
cative influence over English radicalism
of the last fifteen years than any
other man" (p. 416). But the same
cannot be said for his effect on American
radical thought. Barker's investigations
of George's influence on the three
progressive leaders in 1912, La
Follette, T. Roosevelt, and Wilson, led to
negative results. However, as Barker
points out, George had a striking im-
106
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
pact on certain state leaders of the
progressive era, George L. Record of New
Jersey, William S. U'Ren of Oregon, and
Tom L. Johnson of Ohio. The
last is given the most fulsome
appreciation because he was probably the
most dynamic of George's disciples. The
story of political Georgism in Ohio
is well sketched, though a footnote
should be added. The story does not end
with Johnson's defeat in 1909. At the
Ohio Constitutional Convention of
1912 there were seven single-taxers who
played a role all out of proportion
to their numbers. One was president of
the convention--Herbert Bigelow.
As a group they were among the foremost
advocates of constitutional amend-
ments which advanced the cause of
Georgism in taxation and public owner-
ship of utilities.
Professor Barker's biography is an
important contribution to the literature
on Henry George. It takes its place
beside the philosophical study by Geiger,
the brilliant, provocative essay by
Nock, the basic documentary biography by
the son, Henry, Jr., and the moving
personal testimonial by the daughter,
Anna George De Mille. In place of
footnotes there are extensive notes on
the sources at the back of the book. The
index is excellent. The publishers
were unusually economical with
photographs, allowing only one.
Kenyon College LANDON WARNER
A Goodly Heritage: Earliest Wills on
an American Frontier. By Ella Chal-
fant. (Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 1955. xiii??239p.; il-
lustrations, bibliography, appendices,
and index. $3.00.)
Here is an unpretentious little volume
which is decidedly out of the
ordinary. For some time now the American
Association for State and Local
History, with other groups, has endeavored
to do all it can to stimulate a
more active and broad interest in
precinct-level history. We have been told
ever and anon, most recently at the St.
Louis meetings of the Mississippi
Valley Historical Association, that
local records are an unexploited treasure
trove of materials for the social and
intellectual historian. Most of us didn't
quite believe it. Gravestones and court
records seem too stereotyped and
depersonalized to justify considerable
expenditures of valuable-or at least
valued--time. Miss Chalfant, working in
the Allegheny County office of the
register of wills, has given us the lie,
and in so doing has pointed her finger
along a pathway of action which many of
us could tread with profit.
Utilizing documents from the first fifty
years of Pittsburgh history, Miss
Chalfant has organized her materials,
case by case, arranged in such cate-
gories as oldest wills, dictated and
holograph wills, slavery and indentures,
religion and education, women, and the
mercantile fabric of Pittsburgh. For
BOOK REVIEWS 107
the most part she allows the wills to
speak for themselves with a minimum
of coaching from the sidelines, although
she holds a dose rein upon ver-
bosity and redundance. As a result, the
story is not overtold or oversold in
the fashion which we of the twentieth
century have come to regard as
commonplace.
What does Miss Chalfant have to say?
There is no plot and there are no
startling new discoveries. But she
manages to bring to life the realities of
American social history in terms of
human beings, beings with names. We
learn that social change not only has
affected the indefinite "they"--this much
we always accepted--but that we
ourselves and our friends were also willing
participants in that process. We learn
that whether or not human nature is
the same in every age and dime, the ways
of human existence have been
most emphatically different.
First of all, this was the age of
craftsmanship, when the skilled laborer
of hand manufacture--the farmer, the
smith, the miller, and the shoemaker--
performed the function of our modern
machines. Land was the central factor
in economic life, both for short-term
and long-term investment purposes.
Metallic money was scarce, and little of
it was minted in the United States;
coins in common usage around Pittsburgh
between 1790 and 1812 included
pounds, livres, florins, rix-dollars,
rials, milreis, crowns, rupees, taels, and
pagodas. So scarce was specie that a
bequest of sixty-six cents (1809) or
"two milled Spanish dollars"
(1798) was considered to be a legacy rather
than a joke. With cash so hard to come
by, barter and commodity money
like whiskey were in daily commercial
usage. As for the American standard
of living, it was far different in those
days. Luxuries included docks, looking
glasses, feather beds, cutlery, and
articles of clothing, as the wills and testa-
ments show dearly. Many will be
surprised at the reminder that Pennsylvania
was still a land of slaves and slave
sales as late as 1800. White indentured
servants and children bound out as
apprentices furnished a competing source
of cheap labor.
The Pittsburgh wills show the general
acceptance at this time of the
patriarchal family in all its ugly
authoritarianism. The husband disposed of
the future of wife and children as a
matter of course. It was common to de-
prive a wife of her inheritance if she
chose to remarry; apparently frontier
husbands did not like this idea at all.
But they showed no such antipathy to
educating the children, and in wills
after 1800 there are frequent provisions
to take care of this matter--a reasonable
education, that is, not to exceed the
rule of three, the rule of five, or the
"Lattin language"! Books were prized,
enough to be inventoried in early wills,
and included religious philosophers
like Swedenborg, as well as a surprising
number of works in French. One
108
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
may wonder if these were actually read,
in so rude a social context, or if
they served only as parlor
ornamentation. For illiteracy was certainly great.
Dictated wills were usual, and contained
much bad spelling and grammatical
improvisation. Word signs analogous to
that used by Columbus and "X"
marks often served in lieu of
signatures. Will-makers frequently displayed
their personalities in poetry or satire,
in sharp contrast to the well-ordered
formality and correctness of wills
today.
Occasionally politics creeps into the
phraseology. "By the laws of Nature
nearing my latter days" leads us to
suspect that the natural rights theory had
deep meaning to at least one frontier
American. With it, the doctrine of
states rights was usually associated,
and references to "true allegiance" to the
"free and independent State"
of Pennsylvania come as no surprise. The itch
to move west crops up in another will,
where the executors are enjoined to
"lay out my childrens money for
land in Caintucke or some other new
country." Others show traces of the
fierce Federalist-Jeffersonian rancor which
brought death on the duelling fields
even to distant Pittsburgh.
Such was our western world in the early
national period, Ohio no less
than western Pennsylvania. Miss
Chalfant, the Buhl Foundation of Pitts-
burgh, and the University of Pittsburgh
Press can share credit for a difficult
job well done. There are very few errors.
However, the surprising statement
on page 92, repeated on the page
following, that "the Missouri Compromise
prohibited slavery entirely in
Pennsylvania and other states" is contrary to
the logic of the Tallmadge amendment
controversy, and incorrect as a repre-
sentation of fact. Also, calling the
Forks of the Ohio region "our country's
richest historical field," while it
cannot be classified as an error, will cer-
tainly bring many demurrers. Otherwise
the literary job is an artistic one,
revealing sensitive feeling and a deft
touch. The double cover with a plat
of early Pittsburgh folded inside is an
unusual feature. Local records are
certainly worthwhile, but no laymen can
enjoy them without careful shep-
herding by a loquacious and competent
guide. The bare bones of local history
must be clothed with flesh to meet the
standards of beauty set by our times.
Ohio University FREDERICK D.
KERSHNER, JR.
Machines of Plenty: Pioneering in
American Agriculture. By Stewart H.
Holbrook. (New York: Macmillan Company,
1955. 246p.; illustrations,
bibliography, and index. $4.00.)
To a list of titles related to
lumbering, the iron and steel industry, and
assorted historical subjects, Stewart
Holbrook has added Machines of Plenty,
BOOK REVIEWS 109
which bears upon one of the major
aspects of the mechanization of agri-
culture. An interesting volume, it
should hold considerable appeal for the
public as well as for students of
agricultural development during the past
century.
Holbrook's "machines of
plenty" are the threshing machines which revo-
lutionized farming in the fifty years
before 1900, with secondary recognition
accorded to gasoline tractors, combines,
and other relatively recent inno-
vations. Although many names filter
through the pages of his book and al-
though he concedes (somewhat tacitly,
perhaps) the importance of inventors
themselves, the author singles out one
man as his principal character. "Hero"
would be more appropriate, were this a
work of fiction. This individual was
a manufacturer, Jerome Increase Case,
whose name has long been known the
world around. Migrating from New York to
Wisconsin in 1842, the twenty-
three-year-old Case combined personal
experience in farming, ingenuity,
foresight, integrity, and a measure of
luck, and emerged, by the time of his
death a half-century later, one of the
world's leading producers of farm
machinery. Much of his success he owed
to his shrewd choices in the ac-
quisition of patent rights, to his
receptiveness to new ideas, and to his
capacity for organization, but equally
important was the reputation he earned
for honesty and reliability. Case came
West to sell six "ground hog"
threshers, primitive machines by later
standards but nevertheless a vast im-
provement over the flail. He had already
decided to settle in Wisconsin,
where the potential for an experienced
thresherman appeared to be the
greatest. After a brief period at
Rochester, where his enlightened tinkering
resulted in an efficient thresher-separator
device, Case moved to nearby
Racine. In 1848 he began production of
the first of a long line of farm
machines, which were eventually to
include not only threshers and separators
but steam engines, tractors, and many
others.
The development of these remarkable
machines, together with additional
factors which any balanced appraisal
must recognize (for example, improved
transportation and the flood of
immigration), made possible exploitation of
the almost endless expanse of land in
the West and wrought a basic and far-
reaching change in the nation's economy.
Where, one hundred years ago,
eighty-five percent of Americans lived
and worked on farms, today the pro-
portions have been precisely reversed. This
revolution has at the same time
increased production and the number of
farms, and has given the farmer
infinitely more leisure time and greater
economic and social stature.
Of the book's eighteen chapters, seven
are devoted almost exclusively
and four others largely to J. I. Case
and his company. In the absence of any
110
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
explanation, the reader may be puzzled
by this overwhelming emphasis on
one man. Without questioning Case's
tremendous importance, one wonders,
with some frustration, whether Case so
far overshadowed all of his con-
temporaries in this field that his story
is, in fact, the story of the trans-
formation in farming. This is the
inference in Machines of Plenty. We may
assume that Case is the central figure,
at least in part, because the records of
his company were at the author's
disposal while others may not have been.
Although there is no indication that the
J. I. Case Company in any respect
sponsored the volume, neither is there
any obvious reason for recounting the
firm's history right down to 1953.
The remaining chapters cover a variety
of absorbing topics, among them
"bonanza" farming in the West,
farm life, a capsular survey of the de-
velopment of smaller farm equipment
(cultivators, seeders, and the like),
and the swindles perpetrated by "con
men" who preyed on farmers. The
seventeen photographic reproductions
are, for the most part, fascinating and
they complement the text very well. The
complete absence of citations will
be distressing to the scholar, but even
this need not prohibit his enjoyment
of this extremely readable account of an
interesting and significant phase of
American history.
Ohio Historical Society JOHN S. STILL