Ohio History Journal

Book Reviews

Proslavery: A History of the Defense of Slavery in America, 1701-1840. By

Larry E. Tise. (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1987. xix + 510p.;

illustrations, tables, notes, index. $40.00.)

It is evident that we must at some point have a meeting of minds regarding

the old anti-slavery war, not at all so that we can agree on details or even

issues, but in order to rephrase them for a new era. It is a long time since

specialists argued over the roles of New England abolitionists as compared

with westerners-that is, of the Old Northwest. It is a still longer time since

scholars assumed the Civil War to have been a war between Free Soil as

opposed to proslavery sections. Meanwhile, the non-scholar has known

without research who Garrison and John Brown were, and has not puzzled

over the fact that one was against war on principle and the other was a

committed partisan of terror.

Our own "Second Revolution" signalled by the Brown and other civil rights

Supreme Court decisions has created a substantial parity in the legal status of

the several geographic and ethnic groups, so that new questions are raised

about the role of history in our concerns. Not surprisingly, our psychological

stakes in history vary, yet we must move toward some consensus regarding the

roles played in such of our national crises as the anti- and proslavery drives

which culminated in drastic war. Consensus will not come easily, so we must

be grateful when serious efforts are made to contribute to it. Such a work is the

present one. It covers formidable ground, with considerable thoroughness. It

cannot be definitive; the subject is too large and involves too much. But it is the

most ambitious of recent writings in the field, with a thesis which can be

grasped and responded to.

It is not always recognized how fortunate we are in not having a secessionist

tradition in the Old South, nurtured by memories of heroes and many dead.

This is not true elsewhere. In Flanders, for example, there are still groups

which hate the Belgium government and endure jail in behalf of their cause.

This lack of a dissident nationalism seems partly the result of empathetic

feelings North and South. Lincoln, in his First Inaugural Address, referred to

the "mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot

grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land." Business,

travel, family, and other factors created everything from tolerance of different

attitudes to sympathy with different conditions. Lincoln's regard for Alexander

Stephens, who became the Confederate Vice-President, was not untypical.

But as important was it that both North and South harbored similar views in

some respects toward the blacks in the population. Although the North was

averse to slavery, it had been built on the enslavement of indentured servants,

often treated more harshly than blacks because they required more discipline

and had service limited by the terms of indentureship. Naive students used to

say they were in service "only" from seven to ten years, as though northern

farmers had "only" played at dominating their white chattel. Modern studies

have spelled out actual working and living conditions. The public, however,

makes all basic decisions on what it chooses to be interested in, and it has

Book Reviews                                                  169

chosen not to retain knowledge of the facts of white chattel enslavement, in

part, probably, because it has a distaste for remembering that many of its own

ancestors were slaves.

Since our "Second Revolution" of the 1960s, antislavery sentiments have

not only been succeeded by "affirmative action" sentiments. They have

required intensive concern for antebellum conditions affecting blacks, and

versions of history which suit the thesis of a black population in constant

struggle for freedom, as well as a dominant white population engaged in

suppressive actions North and South. There are notable exceptions to this

historical attitude, but the major trend controls the language of discourse.

Although Allan Nevins's massive Ordeal of the Union continues to circulate by

way of the Book of the Month Club, it presently differs from the more

professional-consensus opinion.

In sum, there has been an academic lag in encouraging new views of

proslavery and anti-slavery. No one will presently admit to proslavery views,

if only because they are patently obsolete, but that there was a proslavery party

which contributed to all but rending the Union has been too obvious to deny.

What has been needed has been a modern interpretations of the old proslavery

tendency, and this is now provided. It is desirable to consider what methods

and materials here have been applied to the subject and to what end.

The author basically proposes that proslavery was not fostered in the

southern states, but was from the beginning of settlement a dominant premise

North and South. Moreover, some of the most potent proslavery arguments

derived not from southern idealogues, but northern. The argument continues in

terms which should prove stimulating to historians who may have thought of

southerners as hard and fast in favor of slavery, and their counterparts in the

North sympathetic to freedom. The author fastens on northern clergymen as a

powerful social force which believed in the virtues of slavery. Some of

them-mainly from the Congregationalist sect-went South to preach their

gospel.

The first question lies with our author's definition of proslavery, which he

identifies wholly with "immediatism." Thus, anyone who repudiated

immediatism-that is, the need for freedom for blacks, immediately, without

compensation, without colonizing perspectives, without schemes for gradual

emancipation-in one way or another was proslavery. Seen by that definition,

not only dedicated proslaveryites but almost all sympathetic or working toward

emancipation find themselves in the proslavery column.

Tise sees the American Revolution as having created standards for antislavery

which the nation was unable to sustain. Colonization, too, after 1816, con-

tained national hopes for relieving the national bad conscience over continuing

enslavement of blacks. Tise's novel thesis is that proslavery stayed abreast of

these efforts, and was most vital, not in the South, as expected, but in the

North, mainly among clergymen, some of whom went South to carry on their

agitation favoring slavery. Tise emphasizes throughout that the South, the land

of Jefferson, was not vigorous in defending slavery; it was the proslavery

ideologues in the North-evidently representative of northern opinion, since it

persecuted true abolitionists, the "immediatists"-who foisted slavery apolo-

gies North and South, created a "counter-revolution" against Revolutionary

ideals, and then formed a "conservative republican" coalition which was not

merely racist, but proslavery.

If all this is accurate, whence came the civil war? Tise concedes that there

were nationalists below Mason-Dixon who wanted or were willing to see the

170                                                 OHIO HISTORY

Union slide, but he does not give evidence of the immensity of their effort-to

do what? To demand for decades that the governments at Washington concede

parity to the slave states in dividing the West and securing their rights to slaves

everywhere in the Union. True, then, that southerners did not need ideologies

to defend their rights to slaves forever.

And how did they treat southern citizens who were "immediatist" enough to

want no more than to express their distaste for slavery, and government which

sought to carry out national laws and ordinances? The record is there for all to

see, who are not satisfied with "ideologue" positions, but want to attach action

to them. Evidence is all but endless in all aspects. Tise will argue, yes,

abolitionist-minded people were oppressed-but oppressed North as well as

South; oppression was a national phenomenon.

But is there no difference? Consider riots here and there from Massachusetts

to St. Louis, some of which were won by the rioters, but, increasingly, won by

the speakers, pamphleteers, church critics, defiers of government writs, and

voters who turned apologists for slavery out of office, and subjected them to

public scorn. Compare such a record with that of the southern states where,

true, there was little agitation because there did not have to be. The Rev.

George Bourne, the Rev. John Rankin, and Eli Coffin were only several of the

many who were forced to leave the South for fear of the wrath of neighbors.

Lynching, public whipping, intolerable threats to families drained the South of

dissidents.

Tise mentions James G. Birney only in passing. Had he spelled out Birney's

odyssey, from distinguished slaveholder, sympathetic to Indian rights in

Alabama, he would not be able to hold North and South as uniform in

proslavery dedication. True, true, that Birney was seriously threatened in

Cincinnati, as well as in Huntsville, Alabama, and Kentucky. But he went on

to a career which at one point lost Henry Clay his anticipated Presidency.

Where below Mason-Dixon could this have happened?

Censorship of the Federal mails, suppression of the right of petition in

Congress, imprisonment and enslavement of free blacks caught in southern

jurisdiction, flouting of the Supreme Court decisions as in the notorious

instance of the Cherokees, slave-selling in the District of Columbia, capital of

both sections-here are several fields where differences between southern

proslavery and northern can be discerned. There are scores of books which

deal with aspects of these matters in depth. And still, yes, the North persisted

as basically conservative in its "counter-revolution" to Revolutionary "ide-

als." (The historian Benjamin Quarles has spelled out its limitations, the

patriots, for example, having paid off some of their solders in slaves, and the

blacks having divided into partisans of the revolutionists and of the British.)

But it is unfair to read proslavery into all aspects of law and order quarrels

involving "immediatists," into all church differences which engaged "Come-

Outers" and conservatives. Lincoln, in his great debates with Douglas, spelled

out their difference in observing that his great antagonist seemed to see no

difference between freedom and slavery. Today, we have yet to reach a

working consensus about their definition in history.

A larger area which will want spelling out is the matter of representativeness.

Tise has found pamphlets which defend slavery North and South, written in

large measure by northerners, and he offers an interesting appendix of several

hundred names of clergymen, again, largely northern, who offered defenses.

No one has ever denied that they existed or were all calculating stipendiaries.

Book Reviews                                                   171

After all, the major churches split before the Civil War into northern and

southern churches.

But how much do the careful reports and the fine portraits reproduced tell

us? Tise prints a handbill regarding Bishop Hopkins of Vermont, whose

defense of slavery in 1863 was circulated in Pennsylvania as a Democratic

Party campaign document. The handbill is a protest, signed by some 90

clergymen of Philadelphia. By then, of course, a similar disparity could have

been found everywhere in the North: a circumstance reflecting the dynamics of

public maturity on the issue, when Free Soil had become abolition, and, given

the date. all but "immediatist."

Finally, there are matters of fact. Tise highlights a number of northerners

whom he sees as dedicated to slavery, and as feeding white southern defenses

of the "peculiar institution." He makes much of Robert Walsh's Appealfrom

the Judgments of Great Britain, James Kirke Paulding, early American

novelist, a familiar of Washington Irving, and the Rev. Leonard Bacon, a

distinguished Congregationalist, among others. It must suffice here that the

presentation of these worthies is, at the very least, controversial. It must be

hoped that historians will enter into the particulars with generous readings.

The basic fact is that without taking into account the dynamics of these

personalities nothing can be known. Robert Walsh, to illustrate, did not so

much defend slavery in his Appeal as speak up for America on nationalistic

grounds; to that extent he was indeed helpful to more eager defenders of

enslavement proper. But he went on, as editor of the National Gazette and

Literary Register, to strike clear anti-slavery notes of special use to the

anti-slavery cause because, as a Catholic, he was able to reach a sect which

had fewer roots in it than others.

James Kirke Paulding's Letters from the South (1817) was an open scandal

in the field, being an anti-slavery report which Paulding, as a crass opportunist,

deliberately reversed in the 1835 edition which Tise uses. The abolitionists

viewed Paulding's turnabout with disgust, though it won him the Secretary of

the Navy post in Martin Van Buren's Cabinet.

Most remarkable is Rev. Leonard Bacon's appearance here as a proslavery

partisan. He was indeed a conservative in his earlier years of public commen-

tary, and an ardent colonizationist. But his rise to antislavery-with moderate

views which, in his Slavery Discussed in Occasional Essays from 1833 to 1846,

reached Lincoln in Illinois-culminated in his editorship of The Independent,

begun in 1848 and, by the Civil War, the leading abolitionist paper in the

country. Sufficient detail may be found in Theodore D. Bacon, Leonard

Bacon: a Statesman in the Church (1931), to make such specialized use of his

career as we see in Tise inappropriate.

It is evident that there must be come rebuilding of slavery and antislavery

bases before monographs such as we have seen in recent years can do their

best work. Slavery has had more recent historical attention than the move-

ments which enabled the country to rid itself of the system. Tise's book is the

most challenging of such works, and should receive due attention from

responsible colleagues.

Ovid, Michigan                                          Louis Filler

172                                                 OHIO HISTORY

Salmon P. Chase: A Life in Politics. By Frederick J. Blue. (Kent: The Kent

State University Press, 1987. xiii + 420p.; illustrations, notes, bibliograph-

ical essay, index. $28.00.)

In this long needed biography Frederick J. Blue argues that historians have

too callously dismissed Salmon P. Chase's principles and accomplishments

and focused too much on his political ambitions. Blue provides a more

balanced and coherent interpretation. As a lawyer, political manager, U.S.

Senator, Governor of Ohio, Secretary of the Treasury, and Chief Justice of the

Supreme Court, Chase sincerely and persistently advocated racial equality.

This motive may not excuse all Chase's ambitions, but it does place them in

proper perspective.

Chase's early political career was entwined with family tragedy. Blue

suggests the loss of three wives and four children led Chase to sublimate his

grief into a more energetic political career. Blue is frustratingly vague on

Chase's principles as he began his political career in Ohio. That Chase

identified with the Whig party is unquestioned. Why he did so may be

attributed to his profitable business association with the Bank of the United

States in the 1830s. It does obscure, however, his ready adoption of Demo-

cratic banking views by the early 1840s.

On Chase's association with the antislavery movement Blue's analysis is

complex, impressive, and convincing. Despite his growing disgust of slavery,

Chase rejected the radical abolitionist solutions. Instead he sought a more

tempered and practical approach which anticipated the Republican Party

platform by many years. His legal defense of fugitive slaves was challenging

and satisfying, but also very risky politically.

Chase's political career was certainly not without paradox. He was willing to

adopt a compromise strategy in order to achieve some political gains for his

cause. His behind-the-scenes managing in the Liberty Party, the Free Soil

Party, and the labyrinth of Ohio politics often suggests a realistic appraisal of

the political possibilities. Ironically Chase also exhibited a talent for self-

deception, particularly when he assessed his own political future. A lack of

national organization, unskilled managers, failure to appreciate larger national

forces, and naivete doomed Chase's repeated aspirations for the presidency.

Most perplexing was his last try in 1868, when he sought the Democratic

nomination. Blue claims Chase bowed to "political reality" and "not simple

expediency" (p. 290) in moderating his stand on black suffrage and repudiating

his own record on banking and currency as Treasury Secretary. Later Blue

admits that there was no mass movement for Chase, his old reputation hurt

him, and his former support for black rights made him unacceptable. It is

therefore not clear to what political realities Chase was responding.

The Civil War witnessed Chase's greatest contributions. As Secretary of the

Treasury Chase kept Lincoln's confidence on financial matters and adjusted to

war necessities and the growth of big government. While guilty of political

favoritism, Chase's patronage policies were no different than other cabinet

officers. Fully documented is Blue's conclusion that while in command of the

Treasury Chase "produced a record of which he could be justifiably proud" (p.

171). His commitment to racial equality was a moral force that Lincoln and the

Cabinet could not ignore.

As Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Chase pursued a course designed to

augment the court's "prestige and authority" (p. 274), much of which had been

Book Reviews                                                  173

lost under Roger Taney. Despite not having practiced law for decades, Chase

quickly overcame suspicions and earned the respect of his fellow justices.

In this first biography of Chase since 1899 Blue relies heavily on Chase's

own diaries and letters to establish the continuity and patterns of his life. The

insights of recent and abundant scholarship supplement the retelling of crucial

events in which Chase played a key role. Accounts of the formation of the Free

Soil Party, the conflict in Lincoln's cabinet, and Chase's role as presiding

officer in Johnson's impeachment trial, for example, are well known and Blue

adds little.

Salmon P. Chase emerges from this biography as the complex, ambitious and

principled person that he undoubtedly was. For the most part Blue's analysis

is sympathetic, but judicious. In many ways one suspects this is a biography of

which Chase would approve. Nevertheless Chase's future critics will not be

able to ignore this well-documented and well-written perspective.

Cornell College                                    M. Philip Lucas

Ohio and Its People. By George W. Knepper. (Kent: The Kent State

University Press, 1989. xi + 508p.; illustrations, bibliography, index. $32.00

cloth; $17.50 paper.)

Recently Francis Lowenheim of Rice University rebuked Ohio historians for

not challenging an Ohio Board of Regents staff member who claimed that Ohio

"has not been a place where research was done in the past." He urged a

"revival of historical . . . consciousness in Ohio" (Cincinnati Post, January 1,

1990, 9A). George Knepper's Ohio and Its People marks a good beginning for

that revival. The first new history of the state in almost 50 years, it brings the

story up-to-date and revises previous studies by incorporating the scholarship

of the past generation. The new scholarship has provided much new wine for

old bottles. Throughout the book Ohio's history is related to national devel-

opments and the story is written with verve.

Traversing a familiar path, Knepper begins with a description of Ohio's

geography, the pre-Columbian people and the Indiana of the historic period.

Then follows the struggle for the land between the Indians, the French and the

British. "From Territory to State" reviews the early legal history of the Old

Northwest, the Indian Wars and diplomacy, and the drive for statehood.

Addressing early statehood issues, Knepper focuses on a struggle between

those who favored a common law tradition and those who favored statutory

law. Tecumseh's effort to stymie western expansion is fit into the context of the

War of 1812. War's end brought accelerated migration into the state. Examin-

ing most facets of pioneer life, the descriptions of clearing forests, agricultural

practices and early industrial development are particularly good. The pioneer

period narrative ends in 1850.

The Civil War era began the state's maturation period. Ohioans were heavily

involved with abolitionism, and ethnocultural conflicts were an integral part of

politics in the rapidly changing state. Referring to Ohio as a "trunk line" on the

underground railroad, the author urges caution in accepting claims about

support given to runaway slaves. War accelerated economic growth as Ohioans

supplied both manufactured and agricultural products to the Union armies.

174                                                 OHIO HISTORY

Ohio politicians, reflecting the state's power, played a central role in wartime

and reconstruction policies.

Leadership by Ohioans in national politics during the late nineteenth and

early twentieth centuries is attributed to the state's mirroring national changes

and the corresponding fact that Buckeye politics proved a "hard school."

Success in Ohio prepared one for national success. Political leadership

paralleled economic leadership as the state "lead the way in nearly every new

growth industry."

Progressive era reforms reflected a society in transition and a response to the

changes and disruptions wrought by rapid industrialization. The post-World

War I era brought Ohio approval of prohibition and voting rights for women,

two issues that long influenced Ohio's political rhythm. Economic issues stood

center stage during the interwar years. The failure of the corporate paternalism

of the twenties brought approval by the majority of Ohioans of federal

intervention in the economy during the depression of the 1930s. World War II

marked a fourth shift in the state's development, this time from the mature

state to contemporary Ohio. The postwar era ushered in affluence, acceptance

of activist federal leadership, and new demographic and social patterns.

In "Ohio in Transition," Knepper notes that "the history of the recent past

is chancy because the conditions ... are still evolving" and then proceeds to

analyze the late 1970s and the 1980s. He seems to have the politics right,

pointing out that diversity and a "conservative bias" keep Ohio politics highly

competitive. In his economic analysis, Knepper takes the same themes used to

explain Ohio's industrial boom of the late nineteenth century and applies them

to current economic conditions. While revealing how things changed, the

model raises questions, foremost being how significant are the categories in so

different a world?

This book is an excellent synthesis and a welcome addition to the library of

Ohio history. It fills the need for a college-level textbook and will serve

teachers and scholars as a reference tool. One wishes that more attention had

been paid to Ohio's relationship to the region and to the transformation in

federal-state relations, but perhaps that is another book. Also future editions

would benefit from a critical reading by someone more familiar with the history

of southern Ohio. One final quibble: the Ferguson Act did not prohibit public

employee collective bargaining (pp. 463-464), although it did make it illegal for

public employees to strike if the law was invoked.

University of Cincinnati                          James E. Cebula

Raymond Walters College

We Were the Ninth: A History of the Ninth Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry,

April 17, 1861, to June 7, 1864. By Constantin Grebner. Translated and

edited by Frederic Trautmann. (Kent: The Kent State University Press,

1987. xxv + ³²²p.; illustrations, chronology, poems, word list, notes,

bibliography, indexes. $24.00.)

When President Abraham Lincoln asked his countrymen to save the Union

in April 1861, among those who responded were the "Dutch devils," the

German speaking Ninth Ohio regiment of Cincinnati. These Germans from

Book Reviews                                                  175

Across the Rhine developed a fighting reputation in West Virginia, at Shiloh,

Corinth, Nashville, Chickamauga, and Missionary Ridge. In May 1864, the unit

was mustered out of Union service with about half their original number in

uniform.

In 1870, the Ninth Ohio veterans formed an association "to remember and to

remind" future generations of their contributions to the Civil War. Twenty

years later, the veterans commissioned Constantin Grebner, the much trav-

elled, German-born anthropologist and writer, to produce a history of the unit.

Not a veteran himself, and writing several decades after the event, Grebner

relied on interviews, newspapers, diaries, memoirs, and government docu-

ments to complete the book in the German language. The adventures of the

Ninth Ohio, the first German regiment in Ohio, was published first in 1897.

We Were the Ninth has limited appeal to the student of Civil War studies or

to ethnic studies. Its approach is almost hero worship and thus looses

credibility. While well written by the author, the book avoids some important

issues and events that should have been examined in telling the story of the

Ninth Ohio. Unfortunately, the book does not adequately raise or address the

issue of Colonel Gustav Kammerling's dismissal from service, the reasons for

the unit's refusal to reenlist in 1864, and the universal tendency among ethnic

regiments to lose support from the communities whence they came. The author

might have also strengthened his work by some mention of how the Ninth

avoided the political bickering that was common to other ethnic units of the

Union forces.

In conclusion, the book is not apt to add significantly to the fields of Civil

War and ethnic studies. The editor has worked the material successfully and

added color commentary to enhance the story. A combined index, a sprinkling

of meaningful maps and some appropriate pictures would have added to the

overall production of this book. A readable and interesting book for a select

group of readers.

Youngstown State University                      Hugh G. Earnhart

Brimfield and Its People: Life in a Western Reserve Township, 1816-1941. By

Edgar L. McCormick. (Grantham, New Hampshire: Thompson & Rutter

Inc., 1988. 256p.; illustrations, bibliographic notes, index. $15.95 paper.)

The recent two-decade-long interest in social history has produced a

significant number of case studies of particular communities which reveal

details of individual and aggregate lives indecipherable from a broader per-

spective. They place their findings in regional and national contexts to add new

dimensions to our understanding of the past.

Brimfield and Its People has such a narrow, township focus and provides

detailed descriptions of rural life. However, because it offers little analysis or

context, it is not one of these new case studies. Edgar McCormick has written

an interesting, and sometimes charming, almost episodic collection of essays,

vignettes and excerpts describing the people of the town of Brimfield (located

in Portage County) where he was raised and now lives. The pages are heavily

laced with selections from diaries, letters, obituaries, and reminiscences which

detail the lives of over a century of Brimfield's residents. We learn, for

instance, of house and barn raisings, of farming chores, and church and school

176                                                  OHIO HISTORY

activities. McCormick seems to delight in the accurate detail and in the names

and interrelationships of those whose letters and diaries he has uncovered.

Unfortunately, McCormick uses some of these sources uncritically. He often

quotes a reminiscence recorded in a county history sixty or seventy years after

the event with the same credibility as a diary entry. At other points, his

narrative summarizes a collection of family letters with no apparent general

goal. In the chapter "News From Home," a brief paragraph introduces twenty

pages of excerpts from a series of letters sent from Brimfield to a son in the

California gold fields. There is no text and no analysis here. One wonders not

only what McCormick thinks but also what has been deleted. Another four

chapters of the work use the extensive two-volume diary of Andrew K. B.

Richards. Unfortunately, we do not know if Andrews or the others are typical

of Brimfield itself or if they are simply residents described in records which

survive. In fact, we are never sure if Brimfield township was a coherent

community.

His two chapters on the Civil War depart somewhat from the format since

they rely on letters home from soldiers and describe conditions on the

battlefield and in the war rather than conditions in Brimfield. Nonetheless,

they do successfully convey the anguish and suffering of the war by the sons

of Brimfield.

Rarely does McCormick comment on whether the experience of these

soldiers or of other people in his work is typical of the Western Reserve, the

Midwest, or the nation. The lack of footnotes and the limited, Brimfield-

dominated bibliographic notes suggest he was not concerned with a broader

perspective. While not precisely antiquarianism, the work more closely

approximates a chronologically-based description of aspects of individual lives

gathered from a rich, if limited, collection of primary sources. Typically, most

chapters lack conclusions and end when the source they summarize ends.

Moreover, the chronology is not particularly balanced since it is so dependent

on sources.

There is some analysis of institutions in the first three chapters, and there are

elements of a social history here. The generational shifts of occupations and

the ebb and flow of migration are suggestive. The township population seems

to parallel the rest of the Reserve.

While overriding themes are not often present, the later portions of the work

(which describe some of McCormick's own childhood context) seem to lament

the passing of a rural township way of living. However, earlier chapters

suggested rural life had changed a great deal from 1820 to 1900. The demise of

the first generation of leaders, the migration of many to the west, the influx of

new migrants, and the changing fortunes of religious bodies in Brimfield all

suggest a township (but perhaps not a community) in constant flux.

Brimfield and Its Neighbors is interesting reading for the detail and charm of

its people. It is not a history.

The Cleveland State University                    Robert A. Wheeler

Grand Plans: Business Progressivism and Social Change in Ohio's Miami

Valley, 1890-1929. By Judith Sealander. (Lexington: The University Press of

Kentucky, 1988. viii + 263p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.

$26.00.)

Book Reviews                                                   177

Grand Plans is a welcome addition to the mounting literature on the

Progressive Era. Professor Sealander correctly observes that the majority of

work has focused on national and urban Progressivism. This study of the

Miami Valley provides us "a day in the country," a look at Progressivism in a

region with a substantial rural component. Investigations of this type are

particularly valuable as they permit an examination of the more forgotten

environments in which reform took place during the period.

The author has chosen to examine the "hard" side of Progressivism, the

particular contributions of business leaders, though she is quick to note that

these practical reformers had their social and religious gospel sides as well.

Professor Sealander identifies and studies in depth four events or movements

from the early twentieth century history of the Miami Valley: (1) the welfare

programs introduced at National Cash Register, Dayton's dominant industry;

(2) flood relief following the March, 1913, disaster and the ensuing establish-

ment of the Miami Conservancy District; (3) the birth and early development

of the city manager form of government in Dayton; and (4) the educational

innovations at Moraine Park School, the Dayton public schools, and Antioch

College reflective of the influence of the Progressive business community.

In each of these areas of Progressive activity the business leadership moved

in an efficient, uplifting, albeit undemocratic, fashion. Each reflected the

business Progressive's faith in scientific management (Taylorism), the utiliza-

tion of experts, and employment of the business model to disparate facets of

life. Each featured the attainment of worthy Progressive ends without apparent

concern about the equity of the means. John Patterson dispensed reasonable

welfare benefits to the workers at National Cash Register, but only because his

ruthless business instincts convinced him that such policy would heighten

efficiency and forestall damaging strikes. Flood relief in 1913 was a mixture of

self-interest and humanitarianism. The prime movers of the subsequent Miami

Conservancy District, Edward Deeds and Arthur Morgan, likewise typified the

Pattersonian paradigm of an "arrogant willingness" to manipulate the lives of

others to achieve a public good which they themselves defined. The city

manager governmental structure in Dayton brought efficiency and economy

but with a substantial reduction in democracy. The absence of proportional

representation or municipal ownership of utilities effectively emasculated the

power of all but a small coterie of leading businessmen. Professor Sealander

makes the point most forcefully that the notable achievements of the Miami

Valley reformers were the products of widely diverse motives, some more

noble than others.

I have very few criticisms to make about this engaging historical work. I

would have liked to have seen more background about Progressivism in the

State of Ohio. Explanatory and causal links might have been established with

important Progressive antecedents at various other Ohio venues. I think the

book would have been more successful without the lengthy discourse on the

educational innovations. This section did not seem to fit with the others and

was slightly inappropriate chronologically. Finally, I would have preferred that

the author cast a wider net in examining the contributions of business leaders.

To be sure, Patterson, Deeds, Morgan, and Kettering were the major person-

alities, but what were the lesser luminaries thinking and doing?

Grand Plans is an extremely well-written and meticulously researched piece

of work. The notes are copious and lend much to the reader's understanding.

The bibliography is one of the most complete I have seen on the subject and

178                                                 OHIO HISTORY

will be a valuable resource for scholars working in the area. Professor

Sealander has made a first-rate contribution to the study of Ohio during this

critical formative era.

John Carroll University                      Richard K. Fleischman

A Photo Album of Ohio's Canal Era, 1825-1913. By Jack Gieck. (Kent: The

Kent State University Press, 1988. xx + 310p.; notes, illustrations, appen-

dix, index. $35.00.)

Everything about this book speaks of quality, from the front cover of the dust

jacket to the last page of the index. Profusely illustrated with more than 500

photographs, woodcuts, metal engravings, salt prints, daguerreotypes, and

other examples of early graphic arts from archival collections across the state,

it is more than a photo album, it is a treasure trove of Ohioana.

From the author's preface, with its highly informative lesson on the

chemistry of early canal-era photography, through George Knepper's thought-

ful introductory perspective on the economic and social significance of Ohio's

canals in nineteenth century America, the reader is introduced to thirteen

beautifully illustrated chapters whose titles define their content: A Desperate

Need; Construction: The Men and the Means; Hydraulics and Operation;

Aqueducts, Culverts, and Slackwaters; The Boats: Naval Architecture of

Another Kind; The Ohio & Erie Canal; The Miami & Erie Canal; Feeder

Canals; The Canalers and Their Families; Entrepreneurs, Opportunists, and

Characters; Effects; The Decline; The End-With a Bang!

Each chapter begins with a short, topical, interpretive essay; each illustra-

tion is accompanied by an explanatory link with that interpretation. The

author, Jack Gieck, is both avocational historian and professional engineer-a

former president of The Canal Society of Ohio as well as former assistant

director of Firestone's Central Research Laboratories in Akron. He brings the

best of both his interests to the enlightenment of the reader in clear and

delightfully readable prose.

The reader, in turn, is tantalized by a glossary of intriguing canal terms,

many peculiarly Ohio in origin: Portage Summit, Licking Summit, Loramie

Summit, Maumee Sidecut, Black Hand Gorge Slackwater, Brimstone Corners,

Crosby's Ditch, Sandy & Beaver, Big Tunnel, Little Tunnel, Deep Cut. To

these are added spillway, race, lift lock, weigh lock, lock mill, line boat, state

boat, feeder canal, lateral canal, hydraulic canal, river lock, lock sill, whaler

gate, sluice gate, sweep, wicket, and locktender, among others. To the fancier

of Ohio place names, try these of canal era origin: Canal Winchester, Canal

Fulton, Canal Dover, Canal Lewisville, Lockbridge, Lockbourne, Lockville,

Lockington, Lockport, Lockland, Lock Seventeen (now simply Seventeen,

Ohio), Bonner's Lock, Rockcut Towpatch, Port Jefferson, Port Washington,

Millersport, Groveport, Campbellsport, Webbsport, Nashport, Millport, Stock-

port, Eagleport, Gaysport, Luke's Chute, Grand Lake St. Mary's, Buckeye

Lake, Portage Lakes, and even Akron (meaning the "high place" from the

Greek akros-the "City at the Summit").

Published in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of The Canal Society of

Ohio with the support of the Ohio Humanities Council and the GAR Founda-

Book Reviews                                                  179

tion, this is a book which should find a wide and enthusiastic reception among

general public and professional historians alike.

Miami University                                  Phillip R. Shriver

The Organic City: Urban Definition and Neighborhood Organization 1880-

1920. By Patricia Mooney Melvin. (Lexington: The University Press of

Kentucky, 1987. xii + 227p.; figures and tables, notes, bibliographic essay,

index. $25.00.)

Patricia Mooney Melvin's book is a provocative work which describes an

obscure portion of American urban history: the innovative struggle of Wilbur

Phillips to establish neighborhood government in America's industrial cities.

Phillips, an early 20th century social reformer, promulgated "social unit

theory" as method for organizing local government. He envisioned the nation

"as a grand union of neighborhoods" which could be connected together to

create policy for the nation as a whole. According to the Phillips' vision,

neighborhoods formed the basic units of government, and neighborhood

residents could be organized to plan and implement delivery of local services.

The result would be a "working democracy" in which citizens would have

direct control over the making of decisions that affected their lives.

Phillips' social unit plan was fraught with controversy. Cincinnati's Mohawk-

Brighton social unit organization (MBSUO), the only application of the

concept, was an initial success after its creation in 1918. The basic units of the

organization-block councils, citizens' councils, and occupational councils-

formed, and the social unit began to attack the problems of health services in

the Mohawk-Brighton neighborhood. Business people, professional workers,

blue-color ethnics all worked together democratically and developed a system

of preventative health care which lowered the rate of infant mortality in the

neighborhood and generally improved the health of the community's adult

residents.

After World War I, the MBSUO came under attack. City officials, who had

supported public subsidies for the organization's projects, as well as the

MBSUO's private benefactors, grew alarmed at what they perceived as the

organization's socialist tendencies. Furthermore, social workers and social

work organizations opposed the plan because it gave too much power to the

recipients of social services, as opposed to allowing trained experts (i.e. social

workers) the right to administer the services according to their point of view.

By 1920, the project had lost its public financing, and private funding had dried

up.

Thus, Melvin's book describes an interesting history, somewhat forgotten or

perhaps only dimly remembered, of early neighborhood government and

neighborhood politics. The story provides an important perspective from

which to evaluate recent efforts, rooted in the Great Society programs of the

1960s, to create neighborhood organizations to develop, administer, and

control programs for the delivery of local services.

In fact, a major shortcoming of Melvin's work is that she fails to connect

Phillips' work to the relatively recent attempts at neighborhood self-rule,

including such efforts as neighborhood community action agencies, neighbor-

hood school boards, and neighborhood revitalization projects. After describing

180                                                 OHIO HISTORY

the disolution of Phillips' National Social Unit Organization, the book ends

without projecting the impact that Phillips or his work might have had on later

efforts at neighborhood organization.

Melvin also fails to appreciate the radical nature of Phillips' social unit plan.

Indeed, the MBSUO did succeed in establishing a system of free delivery of

medical services to the neighborhood's predominantly working class residents.

Admittedly, the focus was narrow; and superficially at least, free medical care

did not appear to threaten local business interests. Yet the result, though local,

was the creation of socialized delivery of medical services. Although Melvin

contends that social workers had the most to lose from the MBSUO's success,

such an interpretation is simply too literal. Business interests, along with their

political surrogates, such as Cincinnati Mayor John Galvin, would have faced

considerable loss of power were the MBSUO to tackle problems directly vital

to the local political economy, such as transportation services, utility rates, or

economic development in the neighborhood. In fact, one could argue that

Mayor Galvin and his political supporters, as well as the wealthy benefactors,

correctly interpreted the radical nature of the social unit plan and cut funding

as a means of protecting their own class interests.

Melvin does not clearly define the degree of class conflict that might have

prevailed, not only in Cincinnati but in the persona of Wilbur Phillips. On the

one hand, Phillips appears to have been a fairly astute bureaucratic politician

who understood the limits of what he could achieve. But he also appears to be

a somewhat idealistic social reformer who was out of touch with practical

politics. In other words, Phillips was a complex historical figure; and Melvin

gives us little insight into his personality, political style, or world view. The

reader puts down the book sensing Phillips' importance but not having a clear

understanding of who he was.

Here, the problem is with Melvin's approach. She has written a careful

description of early efforts at developing neighborhood organization. And it is

a good and interesting read, which, when accompanied by inspection of the

bibliographic essay, will give the interested scholar some ideas for further

research into the subject of neighborhood society and organization. Yet, the

book would have been much more satisfying had it been more strictly a

biography of Wilbur Phillips. Such an effort, though ambitious, would have

given some philosophical muscle to the ideological and class dimensions of the

story.

The Ohio State University, Lima                      William Angel

The Hopewell Site: A Contemporary Analysis Based on the Work of Charles C.

Willoughby. By N'omi B. Greber and Katharine C. Ruhl. (Boulder, Colo-

rado: Westview Press, 1989. xxix + 334p.; tables, figures, appendixes,

references cited, index. $38.50 paper.)

There are at least 20,000 locations where pre-European people left evidence

of their occupation within the state of Ohio from about 11,000 B.C., to the

nineteenth century. Of all these sites the one located on the farm of Captain M.

C. Hopewell, Ross County, Ohio, in the last decade of the nineteenth century

is preeminent. This is because of the size and complexity of the earthworks,

Book Reviews                                                  181

the number of burial mounds, and the material evidence recovered from them

of the life style and practices of the people who lived there. The Hopewell

name was given in the early 1900s to all of the sites in Ohio with similar artifact

forms, earthworks and burial procedures, from about the beginning of the first

century A.D., to the end of the third century, a span of 300 years. In addition,

the term Hopewellian is now employed to refer to contemporary societies with

analogous cultural patterns, from the eastern Plains states to the Appalachians

and from the Great Lakes and southern Ontario to the Gulf of Mexico. It is not

far from the truth to assert that almost every school child in Ohio for decades

has been exposed to a presentation of the achievements of these prehistoric

Ohioans.

The volume under review is an effort to recognize the major contribution to

the analysis and interpretation of Hopewell culture made by Charles C.

Willoughby of the Peabody Museum at Harvard University. In the planning for

the World's Columbian Exposition in 1892 in Chicago, Professor F. W.

Putnam, Director of the Peabody Museum, was placed in charge of the

Anthropology exhibits. He chose Charles Metz, M.D., of Cincinnati, an avid

excavator of prehistoric sites, to be responsible for collecting exhibit material

in the southern Ohio area. Warren King Moorehead was hired in 1891 to

excavate under the general direction of Dr. Metz. Moorehead, in late October

1891, began the Hopewell site excavations which continued until January 1892.

The materials collected were shipped to Harvard, and from there to Chicago

for the exposition. Following the exposition they were returned to the Peabody

Museum. Willoughby was a young artist protege of Putnam's and prepared his

drawings of artifacts, observations on their production techniques, and his own

replications of them before the collection was again shipped back to Chicago

to the newly established Field Museum of Natural History. Finally, in 1922,

the Field Museum published a report on The Hopewell Mound Group of Ohio,

with Warren K. Moorehead as the author. The report was a compilation of

Moorehead's notes, those of his excavation party, and Willoughby's drawings

and observations. The report was put into shape for publication by Ralph

Linton who was on the Field Museum staff at that time and who gave that

information to me in the early 1930s.

This volume emphasizes the major role that Willoughby has in our current

understanding of Ohio Hopewell culture. It is an admirable critique of

archaeological field work, museum curatorial practices, and the influences of

personalities and individuals' character in the conduct of prehistoric research.

The senior author, Dr. N'omi Greber of the Cleveland Museum of Natural

History, has devoted many years to excavations and museum studies of Ohio

Hopewell. This experience and knowledge is evident in the notes on the several

chapters, in the "Perspectives on Willoughby and the Hopewell Site," in

Chapter 7 of the book, with Katharine Ruhl, and endnotes, as well as the

Introduction, the first part of Chapter 2, and other sections. Katharine Ruhl

has been studying the copper artifacts of the Ohio Hopewell people for some

years. Her major contribution to this volume is in the sections of Chapter 4

identified by her initials. The several contributions by Greber and Ruhl add to

our knowledge of the behavior of the occupants and builders of the Hopewell

site, and correct some erroneous ideas of other archaeologists in identifying

raw materials and the location whence they came.

Greber's painstaking investigating work produces instance after instance

where the individuals who have preceded her in reports on the Hopewell site

182                                                  OHIO HISTORY

have made errors that impede precise understanding of what they found, or did

not find, or should have found. The sections contributed by the several authors

are identified by their initials in parenthesis. By the time a reader has read

several pages it is possible to forget who wrote what is being read. If the several

authors could have had a different type assigned to their contributions, it would

have been helpful.

This reviewer has had a rather long association with Hopewell studies and

this volume is not without fault in a number of ways. There is careless

proofreading, wrong identification of figure numbers, misuse of common

archaeological terms, and misspelled names of professionals. How is it

possible to misspell E. G. Squier's name "Squire" at least as often, in the

many citations for example, as it is spelled correctly?

In the discussion of the construction features of Mound 25 on pages 41-46 the

empty prepared floors on the east and west ends of the mound are called

"plazas," but that term has consistently been used for decades in reference to

the central open areas enclosed within two or more pyramidal mounds

supporting corporate buildings of the much later Mississippian period.

My reading of Moorehead's several accounts of his excavations at Hopewell

Mound 25 and H. C. Shetrone's account of 1926 indicates that there were not

only spatially separated sub-groupings among the burials, and that some of

these were covered by smaller mound constructions, but that there were single

and multiple separated burials or other activities within the subgroups, and that

these were earth covered and later covered by additional layers of earth, before

the final cappings were added. This is also recognized in the statement on page

42 and in the whole section B, of Chapter 2. In the analysis and interpretation

of the burial and living societal structure a rather short period of time, not exact

contemporaneity, but not hundreds of years is favored on page 57.

But in the discussion of the great obsidian caches in Mound 11 and Altar 2

of Mound 25 on pages 191-194, the hydration dating of about 300 years for the

time period of the flaking done on 19 pieces out of hundreds of worked obsidian

debris from Shetrone's Mound 11 is accepted. This flint knappers cache can be

assumed, I think, to be the result of making the hundreds of finished knives and

spears from Altar 2. Another view could be that that it suggests hydration

dating is an imperfect chronometric art, for the 300 years time span of the dates

would require 12 generations of knappers to chip and carefully preserve the

fragments so as to be buried in one big mass. Such a long time span would also

not be congruent with an apparent desire for what would also have to be an

almost 24-hour continuous construction of Mound 25 in order to recognize

"social contemporaneous" burial practices. For the use of space within

Mound 25, it is said on page 58, "favor shorter rather than longer estimates of

the time span during which the two (or more) structures were in use." I would

favor the view that the very large obsidian deposit in Altar 2 of Moorehead, in

Mound 25 with many hundred of finished and fired specimens, was put there

within, say, ten to fifteen years of the chipping debris in Mound 11. Also, the

cremated individuals in the same mound should be regarded as closely

associated with the acquisition, ownership and manufacture of the Mound 25

specimens. The complexity of Mounds 25 and 23 with multiple burials and

building stages would suggest that the entire Hopewell site was occupied for

between 100 to 200 years.

The several sections by Greber in which she analyses the excavation

strategies, burial groupings, social use of space and time, her endnotes for the

Book Reviews                                                  183

several chapters, comments on the artifacts, and her Chapter 7 are particularly

valuable because of her long participation in Hopewell studies. In these

sections she comments more freely on her interpretation of the meaning of

much of the Hopewell populations activities. Her emphasis on Willoughby's

major contribution to reporting on the Hopewell site collections is well taken.

Moorehead made the first extensive excavations at the Hopewell site, but it

was Willoughby whose painstaking work on the collections formed the solid

part of the 1922 Field Museum report. It is too bad that this volume honoring

his contribution could not have been published in his lifetime. His good work

has lived after him.

Smithsonian Institution                            James B. Griffin

The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. Compiled and edited by David D. Van

Tassel and John Grabowski. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.

lv + 1127p.; maps, tables, index. $35.00.)

The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History is an extraordinary volume. More

than six years in preparation, it includes contributions by over 250 scholars. A

local advisory board and a national advisory board of noted urban historians,

a staff and an editorial review committee encompass another fifty individuals.

Corporations, foundations, individuals, and associations who donated funds to

the Encyclopedia fill an entire two-column page. Some 170 interpretive essays

were prepared on such selected topics as bridges, crime, economy, gay

community, industry, municipal ownership, public health, railroads, sports,

and streets. Chronological and topical essays with a historical overview of

Cleveland from 1796 to 1987 were prepared as an introduction to the specific

entries. Coordinating such disparate authors, subjects and donors was no mean

accomplishment for co-editors Van Tassel and Grabowski and their staff.

There is much of value in the volume. The editors seem to have embraced

the latest definition of urban studies with its heavy emphasis on social history.

Along with separate articles on such topics as child care, contributors have

striven to incorporate a discussion of social issues where appropriate, such as

Dennis Harrison's entry on "labor." Much original material on Cleveland

history is thus presented. Accompanying the articles on geology, politics,

population, and transportation are series of new maps of the city. A twenty-

three-item subject guide at the back covers a wide range of general headings,

ranging from "architecture" to "women and women's issues." The lengthy

index makes it possible to locate the extensive coverage of important topics

like "Muny Light," which have no separate entry but are contained within

other larger articles. Even though the editors decided to omit separate

biographical entries for living persons like Carl Stokes, the index enables the

user to find the more than twenty other references to him and his political life.

Other editorial decisions are less beneficial. Perhaps the most serious

omission is the authors' names on the vast majority of entries. Apparently the

preparation of "general entries" with "basic factual information" was as-

sumed to be non-interpretive. Any experienced biographer recognizes that

even the writing of an outline often requires interpretive thought, especially

when constrained by the size of an encyclopedia entry. It would, therefore, add

184                                                  OHIO HISTORY

to the value of the volume to know who was making these decisions

throughout.

Many agonizing meetings must have been held to decide what to include and

omit. Articles on the recent history of topics like the aerospace industry are

especially welcome, but puzzling is the lack of a general synthesis of the iron

and steel industry in the city. Admittedly there are specific corporate histories

that address the subject, but there is not even a cross reference to these entries.

At the risk of being accused of nitpicking, it is worth noting several fairly

important production problems. Compressing enough material for at least two

volumes into one resulted in extremely fine, even eye-straining, print. There

was also an unfortunate frequency of blurred pages in this review copy.

All told, however, The Encyclopedia is too well-done and Cleveland is too

important a city to not recommend the book for both individual and institu-

tional use throughout the state and Midwest.

Ohio Historical Society                           David A. Simmons

The Female Frontier: A Comparative View of Women on the Prairie and the

Plains. By Glenda Riley. (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1988. x +

299p.; illustrations, appendixes, notes, notes on the sources, index. $25.00.)

In The Female Frontier: A Comparative View of Women on the Prairie and

the Plains, Glenda Riley studies the role of pioneer women of the Western

frontier for the period 1815 ("when the effects of the War of 1812 combined

with other factors to propel westward migration into prairie regions") to 1915

("when most of the Plains districts contained too many people to continue to

be considered frontier zones by the United States Bureau of Census"). Noting

that scholars from Turner on, like contemporary observers, "concentrated

more upon the political and economic features of the West than on the

establishment of home, family, and culture in a new land," she finds informa-

tion about frontierswomen so skimpy and incidental that such notions as do

emerge are often myths and stereotypical images, not founded wholly in error,

but so distorted as to frustrate understanding, and indeed to smother interest.

To facilitate a more enlightened approach to the subject of women's activities

and contributions, Riley offers the concept of a "female frontier" to supple-

ment the list of "frontiers" her predecessors have found fruitful for analyzing

the West in American History.

Whereas the "farming frontier," the "mining frontier,", etc., developed in

close relationship to the economic and political circumstances of region and

era, of place and time, the "lives of frontierswomen were affected only

secondarily by the occupations of the men in their families." A ranch wife

might deliver a calf; a homesteader's daughter might help in the fields. But for

the most part "frontierswomen's responsibilities, life styles, and sensibilities

were shaped ... by gender considerations...." Pioneer women typically

cared for others, helped their family breadwinners, and worked, usually as

volunteers, to foster social reform and cultural uplift. Riley finds her general-

izations true for married women, and for divorcees, widows, and spinsters.

Her thesis holds up for frontier Jews, Orientals, blacks, and European

immigrant minorities, as well as for women whose race, religion, or ethnic

Book Reviews                                                  185

origin reflected the largest national population groups. Some of this book's

most interesting materials concern the great diversity of gender-related jobs

women were paid to do. Yet even those gainfully employed outside their homes

accepted, in addition, the customary female roles. In early prairie and plains

settlements, as elsewhere on the frontier, economic success and public service

brought family status. No amount of stratification, however, altered the

tendency of women, regardless of class, to set their priorities in line with

society's expectations, and their own.

Riley's conclusions about gender-determination come as no surprise; they

are indeed pretty much what one would expect. The historic pattern of

women's gender-appropriate function is so well set in the human social fabric

that even the limited modifications of quite recent years have brought the

resulting social dislocations to the forefront of national attention. The value of

Riley's work, then, is in the volume of detail she presents to fill in outlines so

universally perceived as to be taken for granted. She has found fresh materials

in numerous conventional history collections, and in countless unpublished

sources as she has set about to reconstruct the roles and concerns of pioneer

women, from their own words as much as possible.

A domestic history whose organization must often be shaped by itemized

examples from everyday life, whose style is sometimes pedestrian, and whose

conclusions depend on copious quotations from the sources, this publication

carries a burden that often falls upon a social history: it is so saturated with

minutiae that its importance is not immediately apparent. The value must be

seen as much greater than the sum of its many parts. Furthermore, the

organization of much of the material as a comparison of prairie women and

plains women, while justified, presents little opportunity to make the book

more arresting. With settlement of the two areas overlapping in time, and the

two geographic categories not always sharply defined, there are few striking

contrasts. A balanced presentation must record the similarities alongside the

differences. However, if conditions intrinsic to the subject at hand pose special

problems of authorship for Riley, they also underwrite the validity of her

thesis.

Glenda Riley's professional standards are high all around, with footnotes

voluminous, photographic reproductions (thirty-three of them) well chosen,

index and appendixes useful. Her scholarship is especially notable for her

detachment from her subject; she avoids the tiresome adversarial approach

that damages so much of the output when the history of women and minorities

is studied.

La Grange, Illinois                           Dorothy Forbis Behen

Threshing in the Midwest, 1820-1940: A Study of Traditional Culture and

Technological Change. By J. Sanford Rikoon. (Bloomington: Indiana Uni-

versity Press, 1988. xiii + 214p.; illustrations, notes, appendixes, bibliogra-

phy, index. $35.00.)

This is not only the story of threshing covering from the early 19th century

to the eve of World War II, but an analysis of a mechanical process involving

the community experience. A rural sociologist and historian at the University

186                                                  OHIO HISTORY

of Missouri, J. Sanford Rikoon has traced out a niche in our agricultural past

which has sociological implications for rural America within recent times.

Wheat, rye, oats and barley were processed following harvest in which the

grainheads were separated from the stalks. A traditional method utilized the

grain flail consisting of two stout wooden sticks joined together by a leather

thong or short metal chain link. Farmers spread the grain on a hard surface,

such as the barn floor, and systematically beat loose the grainheads. An

alternate method of separation was treading by which farm draft animals were

walked back and forth over the spread grain. According to his research, wheat

and rye responded well to flailing while oats and barley were usually treaded.

As early as the 1820s, mechanical horse-powered devices began replacing

flailing or treading. Rikoon's study pinpoints adoption of this new method

occurring in the older settled areas of the Midwest between 1825 and 1860,

while other areas of the region turned to the mechanical thresher usually

between 1860 and 1880. In Ohio, progressive although not necessarily rich

farmers were the first to adopt the devices on farms near large cities such as

Cincinnati. Adoption of mechanical threshing devices had an impact on earlier

farming patterns. Previously farmers threshed daily with hand flails and fed

fresh residual straw to livestock. The mechanical thresher accomplished the

task all at once, creating a spoilage problem since many barns did not have

adequate space for proper storage of straw for later feed-out to livestock.

A major technological change with mechanical threshers occurred between

1890 and 1925 when steam power models replaced the older horse-powered

units. Threshing output expanded tremendously; and after 1925, flexibility and

ease of operations were further augmented by the adoption of combustion-

powered engines replacing the cumbersome steam-powered threshers. But

whether horse, steam or combustion engine-powered threshers were used, the

mechanical process with its greater cost and reliance on complicated equip-

ment fostered a strong sense of community cooperative effort with the local

"threshing rings."

These "rings" were associations made up of neighboring farmers who

contracted to bring in an outside thresher, deciding the cost, the order by

which the mechanical thresher would proceed from one farm to the next, and

the amount of labor each member was to render, as the entire threshing

operation moved from farm to farm until finally completed. As Rikoon shows,

each local ring association usually had bylaws governing all the members'

compliance, including the traditional harvest meals served to the threshing

crews.

By 1940, these colorful cooperative associations fell into disuse. Rikoon

discusses several key factors for their demise. A major factor was the adoption

of the small, multi-purpose gasoline tractor with the pull-type combine. Now

farmers could use their own equipment according to personal schedules.

Tractors were moreover only a fifth of the cost of the steam-powered threshing

rigs and required much less labor, particularly of a joint or cooperative nature.

Rikoon concludes, almost with a nostalgic sense of longing, that the threshing

rings of 1880-1940 constituted the last true cooperative rural activity and a

sense of agricultural community. This is an important study of a mechanical

agricultural process and sociological changes within the rural Midwest. Solidly

researched and gracefully written, it will remain as a classic and definitive

treatment of the subject.

Texas A & M University                               David E. Schob

Book Reviews                                                    187

The Maverick War: Chennault and the Flying Tigers. By Duane Schultz. (New

York: St. Martin's Press, 1987. 335p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography,

index. $18.95.)

In the dark, early days of World War II in the Pacific, the United States

suffered a series of devastating defeats at the hands of the Japanese. Pearl

Harbor, Wake Island, Bataan, Corregidor, then the entire Philippine Islands-

the list was a litany of humiliations. In China, however, the picture was

different. There a handful of maverick American volunteer flyers, led by

perhaps the biggest maverick of all, General Claire Lee Chennault, made life

miserable for the Japanese, and in the bargain created a legend-the Flying

Tigers.

Duane Schultz recounts the epic of the Tigers, and it is a story far removed

from that told by John Wayne and Dennis Morgan movies, newspapers, and

magazines which portrayed them as "wholesome, clear-eyed lovable American

boys fighting for God and country," or, as Clare Boothe Luce described them

in The New York Times, the "most wonderful bunch of kids that ever drew the

breath of life" (pp. 85-86). The kids ranged in age from twenty-one to

forty-three and, as a group, often made life just about as difficult for Chennault

as they did for the Japanese. They drank, they brawled, they shot up friendly

towns with their pistols, and some dabbled in the black market for personal

profit. To say that they were a discipline problem would be to understate the

case. The AVG, as the American Volunteer Group was generally known,

existed for eight months prior to being absorbed into United States air forces.

During that time, Chennault discharged twenty-two pilots and forty-three

ground crewmen for disciplinary reasons, in all approximately one in four of

the AVG.

But they could fly and fight, or at least they could once Chennault had

trained them in his own version of fighter tactics. They fought in pairs, and

pilots such as Greg Boyington, Bob Neale, Ed Rector, Arvid Olson, and David

"Tex" Hill eventually were shooting down, according to Tiger statistics,

fifteen Japanese planes for every one they themselves lost. By the end of 1941

the AVG, now dubbed the "Flying Tigers," was the darling of the American

press which had accorded it legendary status.

But the story ended on a rather sour note. By spring 1942 both pilots and

planes were wearing out, and the pilots, their morale low because of increas-

ingly dangerous missions, mutinied. Chennault kept them fighting, but his

relationship with his pilots was never the same. When their year's enlistment

period ended in July 1942, only five pilots and twenty-two ground crewmen of

an original AVG contingent of 250 men accepted induction into the Army Air

Corps. The U.S. Army rewarded those who refused induction, including some

pilots who had voluntarily served an extra two weeks, by refusing to fly them

home; the Army also pressured Pan American Airways, then under contract to

the Army, to do the same. Like Ulysses, the pilots were left to wander home

as best they could, with many paying their own way back on slow boats from

China.

The Maverick War, a pleasure to read, is more likely to appeal to general

readers then scholarly ones. The book is well worth the price, but the definitive

work on the Tigers remains to be written.

Ohio Historical Society                         Robert L. Daugherty

188                                                 OHIO HISTORY

The Papers of Henry Clay. Volume 9: The Whig Leader, January 1, 1837-

December 31, 1843. Edited by Robert Seager, II and Melba Porter Hay.

(Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1988. xi + ⁹69p.; notes,

calendar of unpublished letters, name and subject index. $50.00.)

As this volume begins, Clay takes the offensive against the Democrats after

the Whig debacle of 1836. Believing that "no measure of relief can be

conceived which does not comprehend a Bank of the U.S.," the Kentuckian

launches a savage attack on the Specie Circular and the Sub-Treasury. Nor

does he forget to toss barbs at preemption and graduation. Antislavery puts

Clay at a disadvantage, however. Letters from Lewis Tappan and John C.

Whittier make it painfully clear that antislavery men, while admiring Clay, will

not support a slaveholder in 1840-much less one presiding over the American

Colonization Society. Seeing abolition as a threat to the Union, Clay defiantly

speaks to the question in 1839, before the U.S. Senate. Reaffirming his support

for colonization, the Great Compromiser denounces wholesale emancipation

and warns of the racial clash that would follow. (It was this speech that led Clay

to remark that he'd rather be right than be President.) If it gratified "moder-

ates," the speech angered antislavery men and threatened the Whig coalition

in such states as New York and Ohio. This, as much as the memory of his

defeat in 1832, prompted Thurlow Weed and William Seward to look for

another presidential candidate. Not grasping these realities, Clay believed

himself the frontrunner (and Webster his main rival) until the Spring of the

Harrisburg convention.

Clay is aggrieved by the nomination of William Henry Harrison, but

faithfully rallies behind the ticket. He even abstains from patronage recom-

mendations, lest he offend the sensitive Ohioan. When Tyler succeeds Harrison,

however, the difficulty is not offices, but principle. Tyler soon opposes most

Whig measures, including a National Bank designed to meet his concerns (a

strategy Clay thought unwise anyway). By 1842 Clay holds Tyler in greater

scorn than any other public figure, always excepting Jackson. Of course Clay's

staunch defense of favorite Whig policies makes him the party's logical

nominee. A chastened Webster, in Coventry for his Tyler flirtation, grudgingly

supports him. Even the New Yorkers, whose boomlets for Scott and McLean

have played out, accept Clay's nomination as inevitable by 1843. Now the only

question concerns his running mate. Referring to 1844, but making a comment

relevant for other years too, Clay observes that "no Candidate for the V.P. will

add much, if any strength to the Candidate for the first office; but a bad

selection might be of great prejudice." He predicts a victory in 1844 that will

outshine even that of 1840. Yet as the book closes, the nagging problem of

antislavery returns, this time in tandem with the issue of Texas. (Clay's

correspondence barely mentions annexation prior to 1844, casting further

doubt on the legend that he and Van Buren discussed the issue, and struck a

bargain, during the latter's visit to Ashland in 1842.) Meanwhile, local returns

testify to the Liberty Party's increasing influence on close elections.

The editors dealt with an enormous amount of papers from these years,

probably too many for one volume. But the series must be finite. Given that

constraint, one can hardly fault their decisions as to which letters deserved to

be printed in full, and which summarized-though the latter necessarily lose

something in the process. Only Senate speeches of major importance are

summarized at length; the rest are briefly noted. Here, too, the selection was

Book Reviews                                                   189

judicious. And though the format copies that of previous volumes, the

reviewer's impression was that the annotations for each document in this

volume were more extensive than those in the last. Certainly they followed the

subtle twists and turns of state politics, and elections, clearly and meticulous-

ly-to the great benefit of the reader. In all respects this is an impressive

achievement, a work of the highest quality. It deserves to be in any serious

collection on the Jacksonian era.

Midwestern State University                       Everett W. Kindig

The Buildings of Main Street: A Guide to American Commercial Architecture.

By Richard Longstreth. (Washington, D.C.: The Preservation Press. 1987.

149p.; illustrations, glossary, further reading, information sources, index.

$8.95 paper.)

The National Trust for Historic Preservation's decade-old Main Street

program owes much of its success to a growing appreciation of America's

distinctive commercial architecture, a result, no doubt, of the popularity of the

historic preservation movement and the nostalgic imagery of Walt Disney.

Longstreth's glove-compartment size guidebook describes the types of archi-

tecture that developed along America's commercial streets during the last 150

years. Among architectural historians, Longstreth is known for his general

mistrust of purely stylistic interpretations of architecture, and his interest in

building form rather than ornamentation. Therefore, instead of emphasizing

architectural styles, such as Victorian Italianate or Art Deco, the author offers

a typology of Main Street buildings based on structural systems and massing,

that is form. It is this typology that is one of this guidebook's greatest

strengths and one of its weaknesses.

Longstreth's rather academic "compositional types" derive from studies of

vernacular architecture, and are based on the relationship between the design

of the first floor, or street level, and the treatment of roof line and/or windows

above. The author regards the proportions of the building's facade as the major

diagnostic element in classifying Main Street architecture. Twelve types are

discussed in detail. Some, like the "two-part commercial block," are among

the most common and appear throughout almost every time period and in

almost every style. Others, such as the "Temple Front," are more rare, but are

nevertheless significant because of their association with important functions

such as banking.

Bridging so many time periods and covering so many archetypes,

Longstreth's typology is interesting and functional, but it does not adequately

treat the impact of style (which the dictionary defines as a distinctive or

characteristic mode of presentation, construction, or execution in any art, such

as architecture) on building form. In Ohio, for example, differences between

the "Federal" central hall commercial structures and the narrow, urbanized

facades of the "Victorian" period mark one of the great transitions in

streetscape development, yet in this guidebook's functional system they are

considered to be the same type (the familiar "two part commercial block")

simply because both have a first floor devoted to retailing and an upper story

which serves other purposes.

190                                                  OHIO HISTORY

Although other architectural guides have treated the architectural design of

Main Street buildings for more limited geographic areas, such as Indiana, this

is the first to systematically tackle the entire country. Because virtually all the

major building types seen in the U.S. are illustrated in this guidebook, it will

have broad appeal. The morphology of Main Street commercial architecture is

a complicated subject, and this guidebook will provide a rational system for

those who need to simplify it. In keeping with its visual emphasis, this

guidebook is amply illustrated with good quality, but rather small, black and

white photographs. Ohio examples are found scattered throughout the various

sections, a testimony to the diversity, richness, and long chronology of the

Buckeye State's commercial architecture.

It is hoped that this work will lead to other, more design-oriented guidebooks

on this subject. Those who want to learn to read the streetscape of American

towns and cities should recall that building facades are only one of the elements

that comprise streetscape, which is really a tapestry of stylized architectural

forms in relationship to one another, and to the open spaces, or voids, around

them. Longstreth's nation-wide approach, while commendable, should not

obscure the fact that American commercial streetscapes still have very rich, if

somewhat subtle, regional identities. Because The Buildings of Main Street

deals with ordinary structures around us that reveal so much about the popular

culture, it will go a long way toward educating Americans, and visitors to this

country, in a new vocabulary of the commonplace.

Ohio Historical Society                         Richard Francaviglia

Central State University: The First One Hundred Years, 1887-1987. By

Lathardus Goggins. (Kent: The Kent State University Press for Central

State University, 1988. xii + 181p.; illustrations, notes, index. $30.00.)

In writing the history of Central State University's first one hundred years,

Lathardus Goggins proposed in his preface to show CSU's: (1) role as a

pioneer institution in the higher education of Black Ohioans; (2) contribution to

education; (3) effect on students; (4) influence on racial development in Ohio;

(5) development since the split with Wilberforce University; and (6) six

presidents and their impact on the institution. The author's goals were

ambitious for such a slender volume.

The book is written from the perspective of top administrators. His narration

provides a good summary of the objectives and accomplishments of each of

CSU's six presidents, from Charles Wesley to the current President, Arthur

Thomas. Two heroes emerge, Wesley as founder of modern-day Central State

University and Lionel Newsom, who was instrumental in guiding the Univer-

sity through the years of rebuilding following the destruction caused by the

1974 tornado. Those who are familiar with the institution will soon realize that

Goggins provides a balanced account of the role of these men in the

development of the institution. While he provides glimpses of both the positive

and negative impact of their administrations, the reader will find a desire for

additional information and more in-depth analysis.

Four-fifths of the text is devoted to the period from 1951 to 1987, years

generally described as the period of expansion, instability and rebuilding. The

years from 1896 to 1930 are ignored. The years from the origins through the

Book Reviews                                                  191

early growth of Wilberforce University, the parent institution, are informative

and deserve more attention. Certainly the author should have have given more

attention to student life. One tends to lose sight of the fact that students are the

central focus of the institution, and one searches in vain for a good description

of campus life during the early years of the institution and wonders about the

differences between lives of students in the Normal and Industrial Department

and the lives of Wilberforce University students. Since W.E.B. DuBois served

on the faculty of Wilberforce, an examination of the DuBois papers may have

shed some light on the development of his subsequent opposition to Booker T.

Washington and the rise of industrial education. The last decade of the

nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century were pivotal

years in the growth of both industrial and liberal arts education. The Wilberforce

experience was unique in combining both within one institution, supported by

state and private funding. Yet, Goggins notes the historic significance of a

religious institution in a state that legally did not deny black access to state

institutions of higer education.

In moving from the combined Normal and Industrial Department to Central

State College and finally to Central State University, Goggins does make the

case for CSU's substantial contribution to the education of black and non-

black Ohioans. Similar to the other predominantly black public colleges, CSU

faced the same limitations imposed by inadequate financial resources to carry

out its educational mandate. In spite of inadequate resources, CSU achieved its

goal of identifying, accepting, and graduating students who were not always

prepared for college entrance. Prior to the time when remediation became

popular, CSU, as other black colleges, made tremendous strides in responding

to the unique needs of what is known today as the educationally disadvantaged

students. From Wesley to Thomas, the mission of CSU has always been clear:

to educate blacks to enable them to make a positive contribution to the state of

Ohio and to the nation. While one may wish additional documentation, it

remains clear that CSU has fulfilled its mission as a a unique institution in Ohio

history.

National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center  John E. Fleming

Utah's Historic Architecture, 1847-1940: A Guide. By Thomas Carter and

Peter Goss. (Salt Lake City, Utah: University of Utah Press, 1988. 192p.;

illustrations, glossary, bibliography. $36.00.)

Utah's Historic Architecture, 1847-1940, A Guide is not, as the name might

suggest, a history of the state's architecture or a field guide to buildings of

particular architectural merit in the state. It is instead a survey manual for Utah

Architecture. Its usefulness, however, goes far beyond the Beehive State. The

book is among the first survey manuals to include a section on building forms,

incorporating much of the most recent research on building forms and

vernacular architecture, along with the more traditional section on styles. The

two sections are, in fact, given the same amount of space. The section on

building types not only includes residential types, but follows Richard

Longstreth's recent typology for commercial and public structures, and makes

a pioneering effort at categorizing apartment buildings and hotels. Industrial

structures are the only major omission.

192                                                 OHIO HISTORY

Each of the sections on residential types contains a particularly helpful

introductory drawing representing the idealized building type. These are

followed by from two to twelve examples, illustrated with photographs and

plans. The book contains over sixty floor plans, most of which were drawn for

this book. The fifteen residential building types discussed include the expected

single-cell, Hall-Parlor, and shotgun, but also include the pair house, a

distinctive Scandinavian house form found in the state. Specialists will likely

question the inclusion of temple form and period cottage. The former appears

to be more an orientation than a house type, and the latter might more properly

be included in the period revival section under the stylistic classification.

The stylistic section examines thirty-five styles, organized into six roughly

chronological groups from "Classical Styles, 1847-90" to "Modern Styles,

1930-40." Each of the thirty-five sections includes a short introduction which

lists the characteristics of the style and usually notes the style's history and

when and where it was constructed in Utah. These sections also benefit from

a number of fine photographs. Most of the sections deal with standard stylistic

categories. Specialists may question one or two specific styles such as

"Victorian Eclectic" which is so broad that it loses any real descriptive ability,

or "PWA Modern," a very limited category. The distinction used between

Richardsonian Romanesque and Romanesque Revival, based to a significant

degree on whether the building was constructed of stone or brick, is also open

to question. It would exclude some of Richardsonian's own buildings from the

Richardsonian Romanesque category.

In keeping with its design as a survey manual, the book contains a glossary

of architectural terms designed to provide the reader with a basic general

architectural vocabulary. The terms, and illustrations ranging from arch types

to brick bonds, are more designed to accompany a survey form than provide

information on structures or issues raised by the text. The bibliography

provides a good introductory bibliography for house types, general philosophy,

styles, and good bibliography on Utah architecture.

The book is a handsome paperback. The large format, excellent illustrations,

and floor plans together with its essays and bibliography make this work

arguably the best study so far on Utah architecture. On the other hand, the

large format seems more useful for coffee table examination or library research

than field work. The hefty price seems certain to limit the wide circulation a

survey manual should have, and the lack of correlation with a specific

inventory form makes it impossible to tell whether it contains sufficient

information to complete the Utah state inventory form. The book makes a

substantial contribution to both survey methodology and Utah architecture,

but unfortunately may still fall short of its stated mission of being a completely

adequate survey manual for survey work in Utah.

Ohio Historical Society                               W. Ray Luce

George Rapp's Years of Glory: Economy on the Ohio 1834-1847. Oekonomie

am Ohio: George Rapp's Third Harmony. A Documentary History. Com-

piled and edited by Karl J. R. Arndt. (New York: Peter Lang Publishing,

Inc., 1988. xxxi + 1163p.; illustrations, index. $193.00.)

Book Reviews                                                  193

The Harmony Society was one of the more successful religious communal

societies in the United States in the 19th century. In his lifetime pursuit of the

history of this organization, Karl Arndt has created a huge corpus of written

history and compiled documents worthy of a Carlyle or Gibbon, of which Years

of Glory is the seventh documentary history. So far, these works collectively

cover the period from before the founding of the Society in about 1785 to the

end of 1847. Years of Glory covers a period from the death of Frederick Rapp

(1775-1834), who was the adopted son of the founder and the business leader

of the Society, until the death of the founder of the Society, George Rapp

(1757-1847).

This is a very significant period in the Society's history. When the Harmony

Society moved back to Pennsylvania (1824-25) members developed an "out-

ward" mentality. They created the equivalent of a small intellectual German

court 18 miles north of Pittsburgh, with a museum, symphony orchestra, a

public press, attempts to appeal to public opinion, and more. This ended with

their schism in 1832. Very subtly through Years of Glory the Society is looking

more and more inward. The museum is closed down, the printing press is

unused, the symphony orchestra is abandoned, George Rapp does not distrib-

ute his book of thoughts written in English, and no new members, for all intents

and purposes, are taken in during the period of this book.

This contraction is seen in more subtle ways in the documents in this work.

The days of almost unlimited expansion of the textile industry, which had once

been a model in Western Pennsylvania, ends with the death of Frederick; and

they made less and less cloth and yarn, and the mills were almost closed down

at the end of this period. Many of younger members had left during the schism,

and the mean age of Society members grew by one year each year, so that the

average age of the members was well into the fifties when the book ends.

Yet it was a fruitful period for the Society. Members survived the schism and

the economic difficulties of the period in better shape than when they started.

If the mills made less cloth, the Society's economic base was secure, and even

expanded. They were changing from a manufacturing base to an entrepeneurial

one that was to lead them to the ownership of several railroads and investments

in the petroleum business and finance after the Civil War. They retained the

respected place they had in the business affairs of Western Pennsylvania.

George Rapp was recognized as a powerful man and a patriarch, and every

Whig politician and social reformer of any stature paid a duty call on him and

went away impressed.

This is a documentary history, not a compilation of documents. Arndt's

thesis is that George Rapp had stood in the shadow of his adopted son

Frederick. Frederick Rapp's death freed his father, who could now handle the

mundane affairs of the Society without hindrance. Frederick Rapp in his

lifetime had been recognized as a genius in what we would now call manage-

ment. He handled all the business affairs of the Society, and was the one who

had taken the small fulling mill of the Society and made it into a huge vertical

textile manufacturing operation. It is easy to contrast the worldly Frederick

Rapp, who was so influential in business affairs of the upper Ohio Valley, with

an otherworldly George Rapp.

Yet there is no evidence that George Rapp was not in charge of all the affairs

of the Society, nor of any conflict between father and son. Arndt, in an earlier

work, documents only one instance of George Rapp's irritation at Frederick.

This was when Frederick went off leaving him with no cash and no way to write

a check, something that would irritate a saint.

194                                                 OHIO HISTORY

Out of this one incident Arndt builds a rivalry between father and son. None

of this is borne out in the documents printed so far, or in this book, or in any

other documents that I have read. Nor is their any evidence that George Rapp

was "freed" of any controls. If Frederick had "freedom" it was the freedom

that his father's confidence in him allowed. On the death of Frederick Rapp,

Romulius L. Baker (1793-1868), who was to become head of the Society at the

death of George Rapp, was made business head of the Society. Baker moved

easily into Frederick Rapp's place as head of business affairs and was allowed

the same degree of independence that Frederick enjoyed. George Rapp, as he

had always done, before and after Frederick Rapp's death, continued to run

the Society.

Even in a book of this length, some documents have to be left out. Arndt

achieves a fairly good balance between the business affairs of the Society, their

dealings with the rest of the world, and what little is documented about the

inner workings of the organization. One of the classes of documents that is

severely restricted involves the wool and textile trade. This would have made

another volume of this size, but would have been of interest to Ohio readers as

a great deal of it had to do with business in the state.

The documents are arranged chronologically by year, with a brief forward to

each year. Almost all the documents have an editorial comment. Scholars,

however, are going to find this book frustrating. The scholarly apparatus of

citations of the source of the documents is totally lacking, and one will not find

the editorial comments of the type found in most compilations of this sort.

Even the type of document (autograph letter, copy, etc.) is not mentioned.

Several published documents are printed in the book. But in a book where

space is at a premium, these surely could have been cited in a footnote and

other more important documents put in their place.

The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, which holds most of

the documents printed here, is not mentioned once; or if it is, I cannot find it.

Some documents are listed without being printed. A large number of the

translations from German are only excerpts, and some of the German

documents are not translated at all. There is no bibliography, even of Arndt's

extensive works on the Society; the index is not very useful; there is no list of

the documents. Scholars will find Robert M. Dructor, comp., Guide to the

Microfilmed Harmony Society Records 1786-1951: In the Pennsylvania State

Archives (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission,

1983) useful in trying to track down the documents in Years of Glory. Since no

sources are listed, scholars who cannot find a document in Dructor will not be

able to check its accuracy or compare it with related documents.

This is too bad. The series started off well with The Indiana Decade, two

volumes (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1975, 1978). Although Arndt

is listed as the editor of Indiana Decade, the book was actually edited by Gayle

Thornbrough and Dorothy Riker who turned out a top-notch scholary work.

None of the other six volumes, including Years of Glory, have made an attempt

at this high standard.

Scholars in Ohio history are going to find much information in Years of Glory

on business affairs in the upper Ohio River valley and the eastern tier of

counties that is not available elsewhere. I always wonder why publishers price

a book like this so high. The $195 price will limit its sales to just a few large

libraries that simply must have this book. However, a huge communitarian

history market will not be able to afford the book. With all its faults, Years of

Book Reviews                                                    195

Glory is a monumental piece of scholarship, and anyone dealing in a

communitarian and Harmony Society history is going to have to read it.

Landis Valley Museum                                 Daniel B Reibel

Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789. Volume 15: April 1, 1780-

August 31, 1780. Edited by Paul H. Smith, Gerard W. Gawalt, and Ronald

M. Gephart. (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1988. xxix + 678p.;

editorial method and apparatus, acknowledgments, chronology of Congress,

list of delegates to Congress, illustrations, notes, index. $37.00.)

This valuable series continues, and so does the saga it documents. Given the

time-frame of the series, 1774 to 1789, we are now approaching the midpoint of

our story. Indeed, in these spring and summer days in the year of our Lord

1780, we are only one more year and some months away from that glorious

victory at Yorktown that will lead in due course to the formal recognition of

American independence. During those spring and summer days of 1780

themselves, however, it would have been exceedingly hard to persuade many

delegates to Congress that so happy a time lay such a short distance ahead in

the American future. On the contrary, many delegates wondered if there was

for this nation now struggling for its very life any future worth having at all.

And, alas, many wondered repeatedly and out loud.

As has been noted by reviewers before, this series will be used mainly as a

reference work by specialists researching a particular delegate or some episode

or another transpiring during the 1770s or 1780s. The hundreds of letters in

Volume 15, like the more than 22,000 documents collected for this multivolume

project as a whole, shed new light upon literally scores of people and scores of

topics. There is, in truth, information here on many disparate subjects, some of

them highly important, some of them decidedly less so (although often still

interesting in their own way). We learn, for instance, that in this era of runaway

prices one could pay $320 to $330 for a pair of leather breeches. One member

of Congress tells us in some considerable detail about how he has just had an

ailing horse bled. One Rhode Island delegate uses the ship of state metaphor

effectively as a way of conveying his alarm about the terrible storms now

buffeting the nation. Another delegate from the same state is more given to the

use of whimsey and satire.

But these little bits and pieces aside, these documents are also fascinating for

the general themes they reveal when taken as a group. On the basis of the

documents contained in the volume under review, one could do a short

monograph or even a highly dramatic screenplay on the subject of "Doom and

Gloom in Congress in 1780." Most of the delegates were openly fearful, and

most of their fears were well grounded in the hardest of realities. For Congress,

it seems, lacked virtually everything it needed to fight a successful war-

namely, soldiers, money, and supplies. The nation's coffers contained no cash,

and the country was fast running out of credit both at home and abroad. It had,

in fact, reached a most embarrassing and unenviable position for debtors in any

age-that is, needing to ask for new loans just to pay the interest on the old

ones. As a consequence of all this, the war effort had bogged down, and it was

doubtful whether the army could be cranked up sufficiently to mount a spring

and summer offensive that had much chance of success. Some even thought

196                                                 OHIO HISTORY

the army might have to be disbanded shortly. "Our Allies look to us for an

active Campaign lest Negotiation should take us at a Disadvantage with an UTI

POSSIDETIS; But I fear it will be a Campaign of PALLIATIVES, EXPEDI-

ENTS and BOTCHES" (p. 19). Such were the words of James Lovell of

Massachusetts in early April. Such were the fears of many over the next

several months. And they proved to be remarkably prophetic words and fears

as well. For in the very last letter in this volume, President Samuel Huntington

of Congress is writing to George Washington to apprise the latter of "the

disagreeable Intelligence of the total Defeat of the Army" under the command

of General Horatio Gates in the South (p. 640).

In textbookish renditions of American history and often in academia's

lecture halls, one is informed that French intervention on the rebellious

Americans' side helped to turn the Revolution around after the Franco-

American Treaty of 1778. But as of August 31, 1780, this war is a long way from

being turned around, and nobody knows that better than the vexed and

troubled delegates to Congress. One of the everlasting virtues of this series of

books, then, will be its contribution toward saving us from these simplistic,

textbookish accounts of our nation's Revolutionary past.

Marquette University                                 Robert P. Hay

American Rubber Workers & Organized Labor, 1900-1941. By Daniel Nelson.

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. ³³9p.; illustrations, notes,

bibliographical notes, index. $32.50.)

Daniel Nelson has produced an unusually complex portrait of the efforts of

rubber workers to organize in the years between 1900 and 1941. Trained as a

business and labor historian, he is uncomfortable with the worker culture-

worker control models utilized by such labor historians as Herbert Gutman and

David Montgomery. Rather he places the worker and owner within the

changing economic, technological, organizational and political climates. He

assays their strengths and weaknesses as each tried to adjust to the vicissitudes

of the marketplace.

Nelson organizes his material chronologically, beginning each chapter with

the general conditions affecting the rubber industry and then discussing the

workers' responses. He also alternates consideration of Akron as the central

focus of the rubber industry and the home of the Firestone, Goodrich and

Goodyear companies with that of the outlying districts. Through this approach

he produces a portrait of a gradually evolving system of dealing with employee-

employer conflict.

In order to improve their situation, workers organized continuously through-

out the period, oftentimes with the support of an outside union, such as the

IWW, the AFL or the CIO, but sometimes on their own. Even though the

rubber companies did not accord union recognition, for the most part, until the

1930s, the workers often gained their demands as a result of the desire of the

owners to create a stable and more loyal work force. Thus, Nelson suggests a

measure of continuity within the era rather than the discontinuity of the

cyclical theory applied by liberal historians to politics and labor relations.

Skeptical of the traditional portrait of a stark decline in the 1920s of a unionism

bought off by the welfare capitalism of owners, such as Frank Seiberling and

Book Reviews                                                   197

Harvey Firestone, Nelson delineates the decade as bringing an expansion of

benefits and power for rubber workers, especially because of the Industrial

Assemblies and Factory Councils established by Goodyear and U.S. Rubber.

The owners often had to make concessions, according to Nelson, rather than

risk an "alienated company union."

In the place of alternating cycles of politics as an explanation of union

successes and failures, Nelson offers a congeries of factors affecting the

persistence of worker efforts to strike and to unionize. The factor having the

greatest effect, according to Nelson, was the economic cycle. Simply put,

workers were more likely to organize and to succeed during the up cycle.

Another crucial factor was the type of company. Larger, multi-dimensional,

vertically integrated companies were more likely to seek accord with workers.

Location in the South, however, even for divisions within the larger compa-

nies, adversely affected the reception of workers' efforts to organize. At

Goodyear's Gadsen, Alabama plant, for instance, incredibly violent reactions

stymied organizers, such as Sherman Dalrymple. Finally, government assis-

tance correlated highly with the growth of unions during World War I and the

New Deal.

In Nelson's book there are no heroes or villains, only "human drama" with

all the limitations that implies for both management and labor. Management

attitudes toward labor and unions ranged from the openness of Cyrus Ching of

U.S. Rubber to the outright rejection and rough tactics of S.T. Campbell,

president of the Aetna Rubber Company. While sympathetic to workers and

unions, Nelson suggests that workers failed at times to understand either the

broader economic context of the rubber industry or the implications of their

demands. Akron workers, for instance, received significantly higher wages and

benefits than those of outlying firms; yet, its workers were the most militant,

employing the sitdown strike even before the auto workers. Without passing

judgment, Nelson traces the fact that the major companies, even as early as the

1920s, reacted by beginning the decentralization of the industry. The implica-

tion is obvious given the decay of the Akron rubber industry in the 1980s.

In general, Nelson's book is a well-researched, invaluable account of worker

organizations within the rubber industry. It serves as a balance to those who

might over-romanticize management or labor. I would raise a minor question,

though, about the extent to which the Ku Klux Klan could be classified as a

worker organization. Admittedly, numerous workers joined, but usually as

Protestants rather than as workers. Overall, Nelson has produced an important

and creditably written book, but it does at times overwhelm the reader with too

many names or strike details. The analytical framework becomes subordinate

in some instances to the material.

Youngstown State University                       William D. Jenkins

The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant. Volume 15: May 1-December 31, 1865. Edited

by John Y. Simon. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press,

1988. xxv + 691p.; illustrations, editorial procedure, chronology, calendar,

index. $47.50.)

The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant. Volume 16: 1866. Edited by John Y. Simon.

(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988. xxvi +635p.; illus-

trations, editorial procedure, calendar, index. $47.50.)

198                                                 OHIO HISTORY

These volumes begin with Grant at the apex of his military career and end

with him becoming an important political figure in the dispute over Recon-

struction policy between the Congress and President Andrew Johnson. In these

twenty months Grant dealt with many tasks ranging from the mundane to the

momentous. Among the mundane duties was writing recommendations - for

applicants to West Point, men seeking appointments as army sutlers, former

Confederates who desired presidential amnesty, Southern Unionists seeking

reimbursement for wartime property losses, and Union officers who deserved

promotions.

More significant matters demanded Grant's attention. Both national borders

had the potential for spawning serious international disputes. During the Civil

War, Napoleon III had established Maximilian as Emperor of Mexico, and

supported him with an army. Grant believed the French-sponsored regime had

aided the Confederacy despite official French neutrality. Detesting this viola-

tion of the Monroe Doctrine, he regretted that the United States had not

invaded Mexico to drive the French out immediately after the Confederacy

collapsed, and despised Secretary of State William S. Seward for preventing

vigorous action against the Imperialists. The commanding general persistently

advocated greater aid to the anti-Imperialist forces and did what he could to

further their cause, including telling a general to disobey a law that hindered

weapons from reaching them. When the French agreed to withdraw, Grant

doubted that Napoleon III would honor the promise. On the northern border,

Grant was equally angry with the British. When the Fenians threatened to

invade Canada, Grant reluctantly issued orders to prevent it. He wrote that

"neither the British Government or the Canadian officials gave themselves

much trouble to prevent hostilities being organized against the United States

from their possessions." Still, "two wrongs never make a right and it is our

duty to prevent wrong on the part of our people" (vol. 16, p. 108).

Another vital task involved demobilizing the Union Army's approximately

1,000,000 volunteers, who were returned to their homes with astonishing

rapidity, and reorganizing the regular army. The postwar peacetime army

authorized by Congress in mid-1866, although bigger than the prewar army,

was none too large because as settlers streamed westward Indian hostilities

increased. Grant was sympathetic to the Indians yet believed that whites

deserved protection even if they provoked the violence.

Grant, however, did not have the manpower to provide adequate protection

because of a third momentous issue: the necessity for an occupation force in

the former Confederacy. Grant's initial optimism about sectional reconciliation

waned as the South's intransigence intensified, aided, Grant believed, by

President Johnson. Fearing renewed insurrection, Grant recommended against

giving arms to southern militia units, rejected the request of Texas authorities

for permission to raise volunteers (ostensibly to fight Indians), quietly ordered

all surplus arms removed from southern posts, and strove to protect loyal

inhabitants and the occupation army, even though this meant opposing the

commander-in-chief and siding with Congress.

Along with his official duties, these volumes provide insight into Grant's

private side. He wrestled with personal business matters, and accepted gifts

from grateful citizens, including a house, a library, and $105,000! Although he

supposedly had little love for West Point, he went there to visit his old

professors and got an appointment to the academy for his son. Grant could also

display a wry humor. "I suppose," he wrote, "a man out of debt would be

unhappy. I never tried the experiment myself however" (vol. 15, p. 372).

Book Reviews                                                    199

Scholars have come to expect the highest standards from Simon and his

associates, and they will not be disappointed. Both volumes are splendid

examples of editorial craftsmanship and continue to reveal a man who was

more fascinating than most historians assumed when this project began.

University of Nebraska-Lincoln                      Peter Maslowski

History of Academic Freedom in Ohio: Case Studies in Higher Education,

1808-1976. By Erving E. Beauregard. (New York, Bern, Frankfurt, Paris:

Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 1988. xii + 300p.; appendixes, notes, bibliog-

raphy, index. $39.50.)

As with earlier historical studies of academic freedom in America, this book

concentrates on violations of freedom, and the record is rather sordid. From

the beginning of American educational institutions, teachers have been ha-

rassed and often dismissed for their views, or what others have perceived to be

their views. Most of Ohio's early colleges were closely connected to religious

denominations, and much infringement of the freedom to teach involved

accusations of religious unorthodoxy or, worse yet, of a secular emphasis in

the classroom. Religion continues to restrict the freedom of some teachers.

One Ohio college requires faculty, staff and students to agree to a doctrinal

statement as the price of admission or employment. Restrictions on teachers

have also involved charges of communism, unorthodox economic theory,

disloyalty during time of war, and unacceptable politics. Some academic

freedom cases involved nothing more than personality squabbles in depart-

ments or between faculty and administration.

Professor Beauregard's approach is encyclopedic, and the result is as much

a reference book as a monograph. The author's practice of following first

mention of an individual with a list of that person's degrees and work

experience interrupts the narrative flow. Nevertheless, the book is a gold mine

of information.

The book's assumption is that absolute academic freedom is vital to a

meaningful education and to a democracy. Professor Beauregard is a passion-

ate defender of academic freedom and gives no quarter to those who would

limit it. Among the villains are governing boards, dictatorial presidents,

legislators, outside pressure groups, donors, and the press. And the damage

they have inflicted on individuals and institutions is great. Very few Ohio

institutions have escaped one or more violations of academic freedom.

The author's broad view of academic freedom includes a concern for

administrators as well as classroom teachers, jobs that were often combined. A

number of Ohio college presidents were dismissed for their religious or

economic views. For Ohio's teachers, academic institutions were full of booby

traps, with some surprising results. Even liberal colleges like Oberlin and

Antioch have such skeletons in their closets. Despite the book's comprehen-

siveness, the record is incomplete. Nearly any Ohio academician could provide

additional examples which have never received public notice. Where possible,

Beauregard has outlined the later careers of those involved in academic

freedom cases. Some, like Arthur Schlesinger, Sr., went on to illustrious

careers, while others, like Scott Nearing, left the academic world entirely.

200                                                  OHIO HISTORY

Despite the emphasis on the darker side of academic life, there are some

encouraging exceptions. President Charles H. Wesley of Central State Univer-

sity resisted pressure to fire pacifist Ralph Templin and used the occasion to

praise Templin's contributions to the university. Similarly, Bluffton College

President Lloyd L. Ramseyer rejected demands that he dismiss an instructor

whose opposition to the draft resulted in a criminal trial. Apparently neither of

those institutions suffered from their strong stand for academic freedom.

Several appendixes add to the book's usefulness as an important reference

work. Appendix A lists eight pages of Ohio academic freedom cases. Others

reprint the Cedarville College Doctrinal Statement which, according to

Beauregard, outlaws academic freedom; the speech of an Ohio State Univer-

sity professor supporting Gandhi's campaign for the freedom of India, a speech

which led to his dismissal; and the nefarious Ohio State loyalty oath.

A lengthy and inclusive bibliography attests to the solid research on which

the book is based. Professor Beauregard has given us a treasure house of facts

and interpretations for anyone concerned with teaching and the larger question

of the freedom to teach.

Wilmington College                                       Larry Gara