Ohio History Journal

Book Reviews

Four Hours in My Lai. By Michael Bilton and Kevin Sim. (New York:

Viking, 1992. ix + 430p.; maps, illustrations, notes on sources, notes on

text, bibliography, index. $25.00.)

On March 16, 1968, Charlie Company of Americal Division's 11th Light

Infantry Brigade attacked the Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai expecting to en-

counter Viet Cong forces which Army intelligence had reported as operating

in the area. Finding no Viet Cong, and meeting no military opposition what-

soever, U.S. troops proceeded to murder an indeterminate number (probably

several hundred) of unresisting old men, women, and children; accompanying

the murders were torture, mutilations, rape, sodomy, and worse. A massacre

of the first magnitude, the whole affair, or "incident" as the Army would pre-

fer (Army authorities insisted that it never be termed a massacre), raised seri-

ous questions about the conduct of our troops in Vietnam, especially their

treatment of noncombatants.

International concern for the welfare of civilians, or noncombatants, in war

dates back to the Thirty Years War, which saw zealous Catholic and

Protestant forces compete for which side could commit the most homicide

and mayhem in general on largely defenseless civilians. Appalled, such emi-

nent jurists as Grotius and Vattel attempted to make the humane treatment,

when at all possible, of noncombatants during war an integral part of interna-

tional law. Over time, most of the "civilized" countries of the world honored,

with some violent exceptions, these new rules of the game. Even in the

twentieth century when such marvelous military innovations as high-level

aerial bombing made respect for the welfare of civilians virtually impossible,

it was understood that killing noncombatants intentionally was a crime

against international law for which perpetrators could be made to answer.

German and Japanese martial folk learned this harsh fact of life at a series of

post-World War II trials. (Some would argue later that both sides in the war

were guilty of war crimes. Yes, but both sides did not lose the war.)

That decent treatment of civilians was required by rule of law, and that the

United States, a major member of the prosecution at the postwar trials, was a

leading proponent of observance of the law makes what happened at My Lai

all the more painful and difficult to understand. In fact, as though to mock

the trials, some of the troops who committed atrocities there defended their

behavior on the same grounds as had German and Japanese war criminals.

Lieutenant William "Rusty" Calley, the only soldier convicted for anything

that happened at My Lai, used the German generals' defense at Nuremberg:

he was only following orders. Also making a case for following orders was

76                                                OHIO HISTORY

Sergeant Kenneth Hodges, who had helped train the men of Charlie

Company. The men, said Hodges proudly, "had turned out to be very good

soldiers. The fact that they were able to go into My Lai and carry out the or-

ders they had been given, I think is a direct result of the good training they

had" (p. 55). Now, logic would dictate that the "only following orders" ex-

cuse was equally inapplicable at Nuremberg and My Lai. Another officer

maintained that although he was at My Lai that day, he had seen no civilians

murdered or atrocities committed and most certainly had given no orders that

might have caused them. But this defense will not wash either, or at least it

did not for Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita after World War II.

Yamashita explained that he had not ordered and could not have known about

the horrid behavior of Japanese troops at Manila in 1945. Not to be deterred,

American prosecutors judged him guilty because, as the troops' commander,

he should have known what they were doing.

It is an ugly, sordid picture that Bilton and Sim paint. The men of Charlie

Company's behavior falls somewhere between the barbarous and the bestial,

with the killings being graphically described (by participants who were there)

like something out of a triple x-rated Sam Peckinpah movie. The behavior of

their officers on the scene was equally appalling as they not only made no at-

tempt to stop the killings but some, namely Lieutenant Calley, actively di-

rected and joined in the activities. (A girlfriend of Calley would later say, "I

know that deep down he wouldn't hurt anyone. Just look at the way he takes

care of his pets and how gentle he is" [p. 2]. One might also claim that Hitler

could not have been all bad because he was fond of children and dogs.)

And finally, what must one think about the U.S. Army's reluctance to bring

to justice anyone associated with the killings? The results of the Army's own

investigations were either swept under the rug or ignored when possible, and

when not were described in the language of euphemisms which, as Martin

Van Creveld has noted, the military often resorts to when attempting to make

the ugliness of war palatable to civilian audiences. (The Army, as noted,

never allowed the use of the word "massacre" to describe the incident. A

weapon-induced mass antipersonnel neutralization would have sufficed.) All

of which brings to mind that old saw that military justice is to justice what

military music is to music. That the Army, aided by various politicians and

organizations sympathetic to military causes, managed to portray My Lai in

the best possible light was a triumph in damage control of an event that might

otherwise rank right up there with names like Lidice and Oradour-sur-Glane.

Ohio Historical Society                       Robert L. Daugherty

Book Reviews                                                   77

Campus Wars: The Peace Movement at American State Universities in the

Vietnam Era. By Kenneth J. Heineman. (New York: New York University

Press, 1993. xvi + 348p.; tables, notes, bibliography, index. $40.00.)

Many Americans today recall the Vietnam era antiwar movement only as a

series of massive demonstrations held in major cities. The war's opposition

is more accurately seen, however, in hundreds of locales across the nation.

Historian Kenneth Heineman reveals part of this story in a valuable new book

that focuses on four state universities; Michigan State, Penn State, SUNY-

Buffalo, and Kent State. With most previous research emphasizing elite uni-

versities, Heineman's study contributes to a more complete picture of

national antiwar dissent.

Activism at the selected institutions all predated Berkeley's Free Speech

Movement. The author's analysis of student activists indicates that while

state schools harbored protesters that fit the profile of activists at elite univer-

sities (overwhelmingly middle to upper middle class, disproportionately

Jewish, and radical), most antiwar students were nonviolent doves unaffili-

ated with formal organizations. Heineman's belief that class and cultural

background shaped the attitudes of student protesters is accurate but incom-

plete. He concludes that antiwar students were more likely to be liberal arts

majors and Jewish, but his figures show that the majority of all activists, both

antiwar and prowar, shared several characteristics. These similarities indicate

a more complex origin of political values than he provides.

Student radicals represented a small minority, but their organization

permitted significant influence of campus events. Heineman indicates this

relative strength came because students brought up "in households which

stressed the importance of civility and compromise, were incapable of

responding with sufficient vigor to opponents who had been taught that

control, manipulation, and confrontation were positive cultural attributes" (p.

272). Local chapters of national radical groups, such as SDS, varied and

often ignored national direction, but their ideological disputes and violent

tactics both confused and repelled most students. This doctrinal friction is

exemplified by a gathering at Kent State where radicals denounced moderates

for their racist action, serving vanilla rather than chocolate ice cream (p. 231).

SDS attracted mass followings only when national events or local issues,

particularly police forces, aroused students. Universities, increasingly reliant

upon federal defense contracts to finance research, themselves became targets

of protesters opposed to these links to the military-industrial complex.

Antiwar faculty varied in number from campus to campus, but they were

concentrated in the liberal arts and social sciences, and most identified them-

selves as liberals rather than New Left. Activist faculty, often younger and

untenured, were frequently fired for their antiwar leanings.

78                                                 OHIO HISTORY

University presidents generally handled dissent ineffectively, less because

they capitulated to student demands than for their inability to understand the

issues and their tendency to rely on force to maintain order. Intense campus

and community repression of even moderate dissent ultimately radicalized

more students than did SDS.

Campus antiwar activism often antagonized the surrounding communities,

which at best viewed faculty and students as outsiders and at worst saw

protesters as communist subversives. Successful links between campus and

town were rare, though citizens showed greater toleration for antiwar clergy

and veterans.

Public memory often links antiwar actions with radical violence, but

Heineman reveals the extent to which activists were victims of violence and

repression. Campus hawks, community vigilantes, and local police fre-

quently attacked antiwar students. Doves endured surveillance by the FBI,

state red squads, and college administrators. Police infiltrators advocated

violent acts to undermine the popularity of antiwar groups. Local grand

juries, state legislators, and prowar groups like the American Legion

pressured universities to eliminate protest and deny free speech. While

antiwar activists engaged in illegal acts were routinely arrested, authorities

generally tolerated violence by prowar students.

Campus Wars contains occasional repetition, and the campus moderate ma-

jority should receive more emphasis. In general, however, I strongly recom-

mend it as an informative addition to the modern American peace movement.

Central Michigan University                        Mitchell K. Hall

Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the

Twentieth Century. By John E. Bodnar. (Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 1992. xiii + 296p.; illustrations, notes, note on sources, index.

$29.95.)

Americans debate the meaning of the past in many forums. Consider the

difficulty Coloradans are having deciding how to commemorate the centen-

nial of "America the Beautiful." Will Georgia's state flag include the

Confederacy's stars and bars by the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta? Historians

assign meaning to past events through diligent research and careful writing,

but public memory is the product of complex processes which are open to

public debate. In Remaking America John E. Bodnar defines public memory

as the "ideas about the past that help a public or society understand both its

past, present, and by implication, its future" (p. 15). Public memory, like

public policy, is subject to challenges and reinterpretation. It provides an op-

portunity to examine how American attitudes toward the past have changed

Book Reviews                                                  79

and how those changes reflect shifts in American social structure. Remaking

America analyzes public memory and shows that the portrayal of the past in

public places tells us as much about ourselves as our forebears.

Bodnar uses two broad social groups, the "cultural elite" and "ordinary

people," in his analysis. The cultural elite comprises businessmen, lawyers,

and other professionals who control the large organizations which emerged in

the late 1800s with the advent of corporate giants like Standard Oil. Such

corporations and government bureaucracies carried the organizational mo-

mentum into the twentieth century and continue to shape events today. The

elite, Bodnar argues, employed the prestige and power of its economic stand-

ing to influence public memory. Although its wealth and influence implied

the ability to dominate the creative process, Bodnar distinguishes between the

form and substance of public memory.

The form of public memory (parades, monuments, statues, etc.) reflects the

dominant class's views, but ordinary people often assign meanings contrary

to those intended by society's leaders. Bodnar's most compelling example of

this dichotomy is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Congressmen and other

members of the cultural elite wanted the memorial to emphasize patriotism.

Most Vietnam veterans and many Americans instead saw the memorial as a

symbol of "personal pain, grief, and loss" (p. 7). One memorial, in other

words, had at least two meanings.

If Americans had failed to agree on the meaning of public symbols, two

symbols in particular have proved to be remarkably durable-pioneers and

patriots. Both became lasting symbols in American culture by meeting the

needs of various social groups, in settings from the local to the national level.

Readers, particularly Ohioans, will enjoy Bodnar's accounts of how citizens

have used these symbols in different periods of American history. The author

uses Cleveland in the early 1900s as a local case study and the Midwest for

his regional analysis. He shows how the cultural elite has tried unsuccess-

fully to impose its will on an equally willful citizenry. Especially in local set-

tings, ordinary people have been able to shape public memory to reflect their

values. But even in a national context, as voter disaffection with "the system"

in the 1992 elections revealed, ordinary people sometimes understand their

society differently than the elite.

Bodnar reaffirms the importance of competing groups in shaping our past

and the memory of that past. Predictably, not everyone will agree with

Bodnar's analysis of the divisions within American society. It suffers, I be-

lieve, from a lack of specificity regarding the composition of his two social

groups. A more probing look at the shifting alliances and the effects of up-

ward mobility on attitudes would better explain the process of creating public

memory. Nonetheless, Bodnar's broad geographic and chronological sweep

allows the reader to draw conclusions about how the decision-making process

80                                                 OHIO HISTORY

works in modern America. Good history should do that. I commend Bodnar

for showing that history has been a vital part of our past and is a powerful

presence in today's society.

U.S. Air Force Academy                         Howard G. Jones, III

Emma Goldman and the American Left: "Nowhere at Home." By Marian J.

Morton. (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992. xii + 183p.; illustrations,

notes, chronology, bibliographic essay, selected bibliography, index.

$26.95 cloth; $13.95 paper.)

Marian J. Morton has given readers a fresh perspective on the life and work

of one of the most remarkable personalities in American and international

politics in the modern era. In Emma Goldman and the American Left:

"Nowhere at Home," an offering in Twayne's Twentieth Century American

Biography Series, Morton provides just what the publisher claims: political

biography that is at once even-handed and profound.

The author, always sensitive to the contradictions in Goldman's life and ca-

reer, traces her efforts to escape both the bonds of Jewish culture and the ter-

rors of Romanov repression by embracing Russian radicalism, her failed at-

tempt-with Alexander Berkman, her life-long companion and intellectual

mentor-to kindle a revolutionary fire in the hearts of an American labor

movement that increasingly accepted the corporate-industrial-liberal order

emerging at the turn of the century, her much more successful endeavors to

build bridges to the highly individualistic "cultural left" and to fight for wom-

en's rights in the Progressive Era, her participation in a flawed anticonscrip-

tion campaign which exposed the American Left's vulnerability to state-au-

thorized terrorism and the suspension of constitutional freedoms in wartime,

her exile to a Soviet Union that she initially championed, then castigated, and

her final years as an aged minister of revolution with a portfolio discredited in

an increasingly collectivized Western civilization.

The author not only captures Goldman's-and Berkman's-contribution to

the American Left, but clearly and concisely defines the varying socialist and

anarchist intellectual traditions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen-

turies. As for the Goldman-Berkman relationship, one which spanned four

decades, Morton's portrayal makes for fascinating reading. The author is

most effective where she juxtaposes the statements of a young Goldman with

the reflections expressed in the anarchist's autobiography, Living My Life.

This scholarly method tests the sources and furnishes the reader with a truly

balanced and insightful assessment.

Although it is a splendid biography, Morton's book is much less valuable as

an account of the American Left. This reviewer found the treatment of

Book Reviews                                                  81

Gilded Age labor and immigrant radicalism-the context in which the young

Goldman must be set-to be too thin. Recent works by Bruce C. Nelson,

Paul LeBlanc, and Richard Schneirov, among others, demonstrate a more

complex and contradictory web of relationships between labor and the so-

cialist-anarchist left. This growing body of social history literature can in-

crease our understanding of the society and culture in which these anarchist

heroes operated.

But criticism aside, Emma Goldman succeeds as biography and should be

seriously considered for classroom use.

Kent State University                     Clarence E. Wunderlin, Jr.

Weathering the Peace: The Ohio National Guard in the Interwar Years,

1919-1940. By Robert L. Daugherty. (Dayton, Ohio: Wright State

University Press, 1992. xviii + 289p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography, in-

dex. $39.75.)

Weathering the Peace enters the fray over the new military history by

placing the Ohio National Guard (ONG) in its interwar setting of domestic re-

lief and police agency. Robert L. Daugherty, editor of this journal, argues

that the Guard showed "adroit skill at playing politics," proved useful as "a

standing military force to the beleaguered, sadly undermanned U.S. Army,"

and performed significant "activities as a peacetime domestic institution" (pp.

xvii-xviii).

Chapters organized by gubernatorial administration explain ONG leader-

ship, recruitment, funding, training, politicking, and use. Daugherty docu-

ments strong Ohio Guard numbers and funding in a period of national mili-

tary retrenchment. Links to governors, the General Assembly, and veterans

groups allowed Ohio's Guard to thrive. Both Democratic and Republican

governors chose adjutant generals for their political loyalty as well as military

experience. Numerous short biographies of leaders such as Benson Hough,

37th Division commander, and longtime adjutant general Frank D. Henderson

show the individuals responsible for building the modern Ohio military.

Daugherty conducted extensive research in governor's papers, ONG

records, newspapers, federal reports, and military journals to reveal how civil

leaders used the peacetime Guard. Tables detailing governors, adjutant gen-

erals, federal and state appropriations, and armories would have assisted

readers in focusing on the narrative. Heartening case studies of Guard disas-

ter assistance in the 1924 Lorain tornado, the 1925 Shenandoah airship crash,

the 1928 coal strike, the 1930 Ohio Penitentiary fire, and Ohio River floods in

1936 and 1937 reveal a military force engaged in worthwhile humanitarian

assistance. ONG intervention in the 1924 Niles riot between the Ku Klux

82                                                  OHIO HISTORY

Klan and the Knights of the Flaming Circle (an Italian-American group) re-

flected nativist-new immigrant tensions.

Daugherty opens new vistas on controversial troop deployments in the

1919 steel strike, the 1931 Hunger march, the 1931-33 coal strikes, the 1934

Toledo Auto-Lite strike, and the Little Steel strikes of 1937. The author ar-

gues that Guardsmen sought to fulfill their duty without taking sides. As

Jerry M. Cooper did for federal troop use in late-nineteenth century strikes in

The Army and Civil Disorder (1980), Daugherty clearly shows Ohio gover-

nors' failure to develop rational policies for Guard use in labor disputes.

Civilian leadership of military forces in a democratic republic entailed costs

as well as benefits. Politicians' all-too-common failure to take responsibility

often led Guard officers to make policy decisions siding with business man-

agement, leaving workers alienated from their state's citizen-soldiers.

Daugherty follows the evidence closely, indicating when field commanders

abused their authority and took sides. At times, the Guard surprised business

leaders by refusing to choose sides, while in a few instances workers saw the

troops as comrades-in-arms. In arguing that governors played off against lo-

cal politicians and police and vice versa, this work reveals the complexities of

state/local federalism. While politicians vied with one another in placing

blame, the ONG served as de facto agent of law and order, often to its own

detriment.

After 1935, the Guard's fortunes improved, while leadership passed to

younger professionals. Prewar mobilization set the stage for the 37th

"Buckeye" Division's Pacific performance in World War II. Seven of seven-

teen Guardsmen who won Congressional Medals of Honor came from the

Ohio unit. If only the author had included one more chapter on the wartime

experience.

This narrative of the Ohio National Guard reveals much about Americans'

distrust of military professionals and continued support for citizen-soldiers in

peacetime. In presenting Ohio's National Guard as part of the array of plural-

ist institutions in interwar America, Daugherty has begun to address the chal-

lenge of the new military history. Weathering the Peace joins a handful of

well-researched scholarly histories of national guard forces in print.

Tennessee Technological University                Patrick D. Reagan

Women, Family, and Utopia: Communal Experiments of the Shakers, the

Oneida Community, and the Mormons. By Lawrence Foster. (Syracuse:

Syracuse University Press, 1991. xx + 353p.; illustrations, notes, selected

bibliography, index. $37.95 cloth; $16.95 paper.)

Book Reviews                                                  83

The 1830s and 1840s stand out as a time of unusual social and religious

longings and innovations in America. In virtually any inventory of that era's

most intriguing new religions, the Shakers, Christian Perfectionists, and

Mormons appear at the top. Though each of these movements took

communitarian form, the details of their living arrangements-including

sexual relations-varied widely. Shakers practiced total celibacy. The

Perfectionists' "complex marriage" system involved multiple sexual

relationships for both men and women. Mormons sanctioned polygamy. Yet

all three suggest that monogamous marriage was under acute stress in the

early nineteenth century.

Lawrence Foster's overriding purpose is to understand each group's prac-

tices in the context of its total way of life and cluster of beliefs. Too often, he

observes, Shakers, Perfectionists, and Mormons have appeared only as

"colorful freaks in a circus sideshow or strange natives in some primitive

tribe" (p. 3). He is not alone in this purpose, as one hundred pages of notes

and bibliography amply demonstrate.

Foster is especially good at explaining why the leaders of these groups in-

troduced their distinctive sexual features-in each case, after the group had

taken shape and against internal opposition. Three factors run through all

three cases: the personalities and experiences (including sexual experiences)

of the founders; the implications and tendencies of their theologies; and group

needs, such as loyalty and cohesion. In dealing with the founders, Foster hy-

pothesizes very tentatively that Ann Lee, John Humphrey Noyes, and Joseph

Smith may all have been manic-depressive personalities. But he wisely re-

jects psychological reductionism with respect to both leaders and followers.

Foster also treats the effects of these sexual arrangements with great sensi-

tivity. He shows that their practices were a source of both strength and weak-

ness, depending on each group's internal solidarity and strength of leadership

and the nature of external opposition at a given time. His discussion of the

effects on individual participants, especially women, is particularly illuminat-

ing. Consistently comparing the extent to which women in these movements

experienced freedom and equality in sexual relationships with their roles and

responsibilities in economic and religious spheres, Foster generally accents

positive aspects of their experiences. Mormon women, who lived in the most

complete patriarchy and who frequently accepted polygamy only after coer-

cion, give the greatest pause, but Foster finds compensations even for them.

If Shakers, Perfectionists, and Mormons seem inconsistent in rearranging

the relations of men and women in some spheres but retaining traditional

gender norms in others, Foster asserts, it is because their vision was of a reli-

gious millennium in which all would be in submission to the will of God.

The particularities of their social systems rested on their understanding of

God's will and were decidedly secondary. Not only must we not judge them

84                                                   OHIO HISTORY

as if their principal purpose had been social reform. We must also understand

that theirs was a reaction against an individualism that they found personally

and socially destructive. They sought a cooperative and communal alterna-

tive, not the individualistic freedom of many modern feminists.

Since eight of Foster's twelve chapters appeared previously as articles or

essays, and since the other four rest heavily on material in his Religion and

Sexuality: Three American Communal Experiments of the Nineteenth

Century (1981), there is little here with which close students of these move-

ments will not be familiar. Despite revisions made for this volume, there is

occasional redundancy, and a few chapters diverge from his major themes. It

is useful nonetheless to have his work brought together in this format. His

methodological and interpretive assessments are especially valuable guides to

the state of contemporary scholarship on these groups.

Wright State University                               Jacob H. Dorn

Liberalism: Old & New. By J. G. Merquior. (Boston: Twayne Publishers,

1991. xiv + 182p.; chronology, notes and references, index. $11.95.)

Populism: Its Rise and Fall. By William A. Peffer. Edited and with an in-

troduction by Peter H. Argersinger. (Lawrence: University Press of

Kansas, 1992. viii + 208p.; illustrations, notes, index. $25.00.)

Liberalism has a way yet to go before it can be stabilized in a modern

spectrum of radicalism to conservatism. It presently means whatever a pro-

tagonist says it means, and involves no center to which other "liberals" need

adhere. Communists in the new Russia are termed conservatives in the New

York Times. George McGovern, as a Democratic candidate in 1972, preferred

to call himself a Progressive, despite his strange assortment of supporters.

President Bush has been called, invidiously, a liberal by disappointed conser-

vatives and neo-conservatives.

The problem with Liberalism: Old & New, by a Brazilian professor and

diplomat, is one of substance. He is helpful in tracing "liberalism" through

the ages. He identifies such liberal landmarks as reform in the Reformation,

in Anglo-Saxon economics and institutions, and continuing shifts into the

present. However, he deals only with programs, not events, and so can find

liberalism in the French Revolution without coping with its trail of horrid

"institutions" and ghastly massacres. A passage from any part of the book

shows his method:

The themes of progress and liber[al]ism, so prominent in [Adam] Smith, were

substantial additions to the two earlier formative elements in the liberal creed, rights,

and constitutionalism. Politically, liberalism could restrict itself to the latter two. But

liberalism, besides being a political doctrine, was also a worldview, identified with the

Book Reviews                                                  85

belief in progress. The Enlightenment gave liberalism the theme of Progress, chiefly

theorized by classical economics... (p. 32).

Today, we must set aside concepts of "classical" elements if we are to

make relevant judgments respecting parties and personalities which offer

consistency and light. Thus, recent writings have found, and been passed on

to students, the idea that American Progressivism was merely a gambit by

"essentially" conservative publicists to link government with capitalism, also

invidiously perceived. A fairly recent work established for the present

History Establishment a view of Herbert Hoover as none other than a-typi-

cal?-Progressive. A frank view of actual Progressivism-there is no view

of it in Merquior-may in time put the Hoover book in the shadow as a va-

gary of our times. But meanwhile it helps a reasonable review of the facts to

keep in mind the collapse of the USSR, since it up to the end served as a "role

model" of justice and true democracy for many Americans in high and low

places.

Professor Argersinger deserves kudos for putting Peffer's Populism: Its

Rise and Fall, originally published in 1899, back into print and giving it con-

scientious editing and an introduction. Populism is not alone in having be-

come a vague phenomenon in a muddled era, reduced to a few cliches about

Mary Lease and "Sockless" Jerry Simpson. Some years ago, Populism was

attacked as irrational and even anti-semitic, notably by Richard Hofstadter,

and received spirited rebuttal by scholars in the field.

Indeed, there has quietly accreted a new scholarly literature covering pro-

tagonists North and South, which Argersinger makes available in his numer-

ous and substantive notes. Readers interested in the area will be surprised at

how many influential politicians Populism touched.

And yet the subject seems strangely remote, and continues to be seen as a

political failure which claimed party status in 1892, but whose partisans

rapidly dissolved into the old parties following the 1896 elections. Peffer,

Kansas editor, who attained the U.S. Senate in the heat of early Populism, re-

joined the Republicans. General James Baird Weaver, though a Populist of

substance and their spokesman in 1892, all but faded from memory. Tom

Watson is better remembered as a subject for C. Van Woodward's writing

than for the evil Watson wrought.

What has been lost is context, which would show Populism as in a transi-

tional position between the agrarian nation of antebellum decades, challenged

by the rapid rise of cities, with new immigrants changing the character of

population and a younger generation painfully creating what in the 1900s be-

came Progressivism.

For historians, there would be profit in comparing the role of Populism in

this transformation with, in the 1850s, the "Know Nothings." They provided

a transitional forum, one in which political leaders could sort themselves out

86                                                  OHIO HISTORY

into proslavery and antislavery partisans before falling behind Democratic

and Republican standards.

Such perceptions would give more direction to the clear but surface move-

ments of Populist figures like Peffer, properly concerned for farmer's troubles

and the outmoded band and railroad operations which plagued them. It is a

sign of history yet to be brought up-to-date that this version of Populism gives

no space to the once recognized classic work of John D. Hicks, The Populist

Revolt: A History of the Farmer's Alliance and the People's Party (1931).

Students can enter into Hicks's thinking by consulting his essay, "Some

Parallels with Populism in the Twentieth Century," in Hicks's The American

Tradition (1955).

The Belfry                                             Louis Filler

Ovid, Michigan

Quilts in Community: Ohio's Traditions. By Ricky Clark, George W.

Knepper, and Ellice Ronsheim. Edited by Ricky Clark. (Nashville:

Rutledge Hill Press, 1991. 176p.; illustrations, index. $29.95.)

This handsome publication provides numerous insights into the quilting

tradition as it has been practiced in Ohio from the early days of settlement to

the present. The essays of Quilts in Community work industriously to place

quilts into both broad and particular historical contexts. Quilts are revealed as

not only indicative of overall cultural and commercial trends in American so-

ciety, but also as disclosures of the lives of individuals within specific com-

munities. These individuals and the forces that inspired or compelled them to

produce quilts are made vivid through the inclusion of photographs of the

quiltmakers and brief personal histories. The biographical glimpses readily

demonstrate the value of documentation initiatives such as the Ohio Quilt

Research Project which inspired this book. Only through provenanced ob-

jects can material culture historians bridge the perpetual gap between the

general and the particular in describing the past. The book also moves be-

yond provenance to examine the values and interpretations that have been

placed on quilts through the years since their making. The essays success-

fully avoid falling into "artspeak" which enthuses over the composition,

color, design, and craft exemplified in these objects. Instead, the book af-

firms that, whatever their artfulness, quilts are ostensibly functional objects to

keep people warm. The extensive color illustrations of the documented quilts

enable the reader to discern the continuities, changes, and idiosyncrasies that

have appeared in this textile art form.

Despite its many admirable qualities, Quilts in Community has its value un-

dercut by its design and editing. On first examination, the vibrant colors of

Book Reviews                                                   87

the large quilt illustrations, tastefully situated in luxurious white space, offer a

pleasing impression. Only in attempting to read the book do the design flaws

become disconcertingly apparent. The typefaces of the text and captions

barely differ in size, and the placement of the captions often makes them ap-

pear to be continuations of the main text. More troublesome, though, are the

period quotes which are inserted-seemingly randomly-into the middle of

the text. The motivation behind these quotes is admirable, further bolstering

the sense of context around these quilts. And the design clearly separates

them from the text with a lined border and bold type, making them resemble

patchwork blocks that have been stitched into the main pattern. However,

they effectively halt the argument of the text, interrupting it at odd junctures

with what often are, admittedly, fascinating facts. Ultimately, though, the

physical and intellectual isolation of these quotes makes them seem like note-

cards that someone loved too much to jettison but not enough to integrate into

the text.

The editing likewise works contrary to the best intents of the book. As

might be expected in a series of essays by different authors, there is some

repetition of similar material from section to section. Still, the division of the

essays into topical subheadings does not always present the reader with a

clear sense of the book's overall pattern and progression. The problem is

particularly noticeable in "From Bolt to Bed: Quilts in Context." Within this

section can be found such awkward subheadings as "The Relationship

Between Indigo Coverlets and Quilts in Nineteenth-Century Ohio" and

"Rural and Urban Quiltmaking Traditions: The Published Quilt Pattern and

Twentieth Century Style Changes." These sound like parodies of dissertation

titles rather than concise headings for subsections that are, respectively, four

and nine pages long. Most serious in a book with over 200 illustrations, all

but one of the page references for illustrations are wrong. Time after time,

the reader flips trustingly to the cited page, only to find either that there is no

illustration with the proper number or no illustration at all. A little investiga-

tion usually reveals the intended photograph several pages earlier, though the

margin of error is not perfectly consistent. This poor record of accuracy

makes reading Quilts in Community a frustrating experience. The book offers

numerous virtues to the diligent reader, but its liabilities make discovering

those virtues a discouraging process.

Strong Museum                                    Christopher Bensch

America's Favorite Homes: Mail Order Catalogues as a Guide to Popular

Early 20th-Century Houses. By Robert Schweitzer and Michael W. R.

Davis. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990. 261p.; illustrations,

notes, glossary, bibliography, index. $49.94 cloth; $24.95 paper.)

88                                                OHIO HISTORY

Robert Schweitzer and Michael Davis identify three audiences for their

book: old house lovers; architectural historians seeking information on pre-

fabrication and mail order housing; and those interested in evaluating archi-

tectural styles from 1900 to 1941.

The book is organized around those themes. Its sixteen chapters first deal

with construction techniques and style to the end of the nineteenth century,

then treat prefabricated housing, plan books and catalogue homes with an

analysis of the companies involved, centering on the Aladdin Company. The

last 120 pages of the book present a stylistic analysis of American residential

architecture in the first four decades of the twentieth century, as illustrated in

the catalogues.

Chapters four to nine on catalogue house companies-especially the por-

tions on the Aladdin Company-are the most satisfying. The section is the

most complete account we have of catalogue housing. The section uses the

rich archives of the Aladdin Company and supplements the story with infor-

mation about five other major companies who produced catalogue housing

during the period. The section is the beginning point for those who wish to

understand the phenomenon.

Unfortunately, the other two sections are less satisfying. The first three

chapters on styles and construction methods try to deal with too much in too

little space. The information on prefabrication, for example, is a good sum-

mary of past articles on the topic, but adds comparatively little that is new.

The final seven chapters on architectural styles, which take the last one-half

of the text, are the most troubling. While an evaluation of the homes adver-

tised by the ready-built companies is an essential part of any analysis of the

movement, the focus of the section is blurred at best. The section is a prime

example of the tendency to over analyze based on exterior decoration rather

than a holistic analysis.

The analysis of styles, while it includes many standard categories, raises a

number of questions. Can the "transitional colonial" really be classified as a

style rather than a vernacular house type with very modest classical details?

Details like these were found on many if not most other styles of the period.

Do we gain anything by breaking the Jacobeathan Revival into five subcate-

gories, and why do the authors insist on using the term "box" for American

Foursquare? They may find the term more intellectually satisfying but the

profession seems to have finally agreed upon "American Foursquare" for

these houses. Another approach to understand these buildings, one with

greater potential for success, would be to examine the floor plans for the

buildings (since most are included) to see how they change over time and

how many of the stylistic elements are just surface decoration over similar

floor plans. Certainly the pre-cut nature of the designs encouraged such stan-

Book Reviews                                                  89

dardization. Mail order housing appears to have had a major impact on the

standardization of floor plans and the subjugation of style to floor plans.

The photographs and illustrations are an important part of this book. The

twelve color plates contribute greatly as does the inclusion of plans with the

illustrations. The major weakness in the illustrations occurs in the text of il-

lustrations from the catalogues when the text had a colored background--a

common occurrence. The screens used to separate the illustrations often

leave these illustrations murky. The low point is the unreadable illustration

on page 107 showing how certain prefabs were assembled.

The book is an important addition to the literature on catalogue houses, es-

pecially Aladdin Houses, but should be supplemented with other studies on

style and construction techniques.

Ohio Historical Society                              W. Ray Luce

Always a River: The Ohio River and the American Experience. Edited by

Robert L. Reid. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. xvi +

250p.; illustrations, notes. $35.00 cloth; $12.95 paper.)

This anthology is the major publication of the ALWAYS A RIVER project.

Supported by the state humanities councils of the Ohio River valley and par-

tially funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, this unique re-

gional effort included a conference, seminars, and the "floating exhibit" barge

which descended the river from Pittsburgh during the spring/summer of 1991.

Seven well-known academics and writers contributed their expertise to this

complex, largely nonpolitical history of one of the world's great river net-

works. Scott Russell Sanders' (English, Indiana University) initial piece,

"The Force of Moving Water," is a critical cultural narrative based on con-

temporary observers from the arrival of the "whites" through the mid-nine-

teenth century. John A. Jakle (Geography, Illinois), in his essay "The Ohio

Valley Revisited...," also compares and contrasts two contemporary ob-

servers, a young Englishman, Nicholas Cresswell in 1774 and historian R. G.

Thwaites in 1894.

"Settlement and Selected Landscape Imprints .. ." is the topic of Hubert G.

H. Wilhelm's (Geography, Ohio University) essay. He delineates, with the

aid of eight maps, the cultural impact of the river as a regional boundary rela-

tive to land, towns, and folk buildings. Michael Allen (History, University of

Washington) writes about the river as an ". . . Artery of Movement." He

notes the significance of river transport, particularly, flatboats. He then de-

velops the evolution of river technology to the towboat/diesel era.

"River of Opportunity: Economic Consequences of the Ohio" is Darrel E.

Bigham's (History, Southern Indiana) essay. He analyzes the river's uneven

90                                                  OHIO HISTORY

economic growth from prehistory to the 1780s, the mid-1800s to World War

I, and to the present. Leland R. Johnson (historian and writer), in

"Engineering the River," tells the familiar story of the role of the Corps of

Engineers in river clearance, 1824-74; the canalization project, 1879-1929;

flood control, 1930s to the present; and modernization projects (since 1955).

The final topic is an ecological perspective of the river and its environs by

Boyd R. Keenan (Political Science, Illinois). His focus is administrative his-

tory, particularly the role of the Ohio River Sanitation Commission since

1935, the environmental movement since the 1960s, nuclear and coal energy

production, regional studies to these developments, and the need for regional

cooperation.

There is some repetitiousness, and an occasional historical error. There is

no index or bibliography; however, the endnotes are, usually, more than ade-

quate. There are nine illustrations, but they are identified on pp. 247-48!

For the specialist, there is little that is new here; nonetheless, collectively,

these essays are important. They illustrate the complexity of the significance

of the Ohio River network over time. This work should appeal to the general

reading public.

California University of Pennsylvania                 J. K. Folmar

An Unwanted War: The Diplomacy of the United States and Spain Over

Cuba, 1895-1898. By John L. Offner. (Chapel Hill: The University of

North Carolina Press, 1992. xii + 306p.; illustrations, appendix, notes, bib-

liography, index. $39.95 cloth; $14.95 paper.)

This is a careful, conventional history of the diplomacy of the Spanish-

American War from the last year of the Cleveland Administration through the

peace protocol of 12 August 1898. The author, using a multi-archival ap-

proach and sensitive also to the influence of domestic politics on foreign af-

fairs, addresses the question from the perspectives of the Spanish authorities,

the Cuban rebels and loyalists, and the American government.

Professor Offner falls into the "realist" school of historians of American

foreign policy. To an extent he returns to a traditional approach to the issues

that brought on the war and challenges seriously much of the revisionism

which has appeared over the past two generations. Following the lead of

David Trask and other post-revisionists, he argues that the central long-term

foreign policy issues which brought on the conflict were instability in Cuba

and the continued Spanish presence in the Caribbean, while at home

American party politics played a critical role in the actual outbreak of the

war. Avoiding grand generalizations and broad ideological excursions, he as-

serts: "In the final analysis Republicans made war on Spain in order to keep

Book Reviews                                                 91

control in Washington. Expansionism, markets and investments, the sensa-

tional press, and national security interests were much less important in carry-

the United States into the war" (p. ix).

As his analysis unfolds, Professor Offner reveals the complex motives of

all the players in the drama. After a short discussion of the long civil war on

the island (1868-1878), he moves to the policies of the Cleveland and

McKinley administrations. He shows the continuity between administrations

and explains how, even under popular and congressional pressure, President

McKinley and his colleagues, unwilling to accept full Cuban sovereignty yet

determined to be rid of the Spanish, strove to control events and pressed for

autonomy as an expedient and temporary stage in the solution of the long-

range problem. They would use the American military only if they concluded

there was no other politically viable way to secure their objective. The

Spanish government, faced with discord and possible army insurrection at

home and resistance from loyalists in Cuba itself if they bowed to the rebels,

could only accede so far to Yankee demands. They believed they had no op-

tion but to accept war before surrendering Spanish sovereignty. There might

have been some hope for compromise if it were not for exiled leaders of the

revolutionary Junta in the United States and active fighters on the island who,

after so many years of conflict, sought nothing less than full independence.

In such an intractable environment, Professor Offner concludes, war became

"inevitable" (p. 236).

The war had unanticipated consequences. "The Spanish endured national

humiliation and entered a period of intense soul searching and regeneration;

the Cubans exchanged a vicious and corrupt colonial rule for an insensitive

and overbearing protector; and the United States confidently assumed the

burden of aiding and guiding reluctant subjects, believing it could do a better

job than Spain" (p. 236). But in the months after the peace protocol was ap-

proved, the question of Philippine annexation deeply divided the Americans

and the issues that had sparked the Spanish-American War were politically

redefined from an anti-colonial crusade to imperialist expansion. And so it

went. Two generations ago H. A. L. Fisher, the noted English historian,

wrote in his popular textbook, A History of Europe: "Men wiser and more

learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a pre-determined

pattern.... I can see only one emergency following upon another as wave

follows wave ... only one safe rule for the historian; that he should recognize

... the play of the contingent and the unforeseen."

University of Cincinnati                         Daniel R. Beaver

The Roosevelt Presence: A Biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. By

Patrick J. Maney. (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992. xv + 255p.; illus-

92                                                  OHIO HISTORY

trations, notes and references, bibliographic essay, index. $12.95 paper;

$25.95 cloth.)

Biographers have a difficult task. This is especially so when the subject

has had so much written about him. For The Roosevelt Presence the diffi-

culty is compounded because it tries to be two things simultaneously. It is, on

the one hand, a short biography of Roosevelt based on mostly secondary liter-

ature. It promises, on the other, an "original and insightful" interpretation of

Roosevelt.

The author offers a corrective to the "mythical" (p. 70) image of Roosevelt:

a complex man of great political skill who single-handedly created the New

Deal. Maney asserts that Roosevelt "may actually have been less complex

than most people" (p. xiii). He questions FDR's political skills, claiming

Roosevelt "displayed surprising weakness as a legislative leader" (p. xiv).

Maney also rejects the tendency to see Roosevelt's "hand everywhere" (p.

xiii) during the New Deal and argues that "other key players, especially

Congress," even "more than Roosevelt, shaped domestic policy during the

1930s and 1940s." While Maney acknowledges Roosevelt's influence on the

presidency, he argues FDR's greatness was "specific to a particular time and

place," while Lincoln, for example, "would have distinguished himself at al-

most any time." Maney argues that it is difficult to imagine Roosevelt

"achieving greatness except during the Great Depression and World War II"

(p. xiv).

The key to FDR's success was what Maney calls the "Roosevelt pres-

ence"-his success at identifying himself with the New Deal, his "matchless

skills as a communicator," and his ability to create an "illusion of intimacy

between himself and the public" (p. 70). It is this last element that the author

claims transformed people's perceptions and expectations of the presidency

and constitutes Roosevelt's "most enduring" and "troublesome" (p. 70)

legacy. This combination of attributes, Maney argues, was "just what the

country seemed to need" (p. xiv) in 1933.

Those familiar with the literature will find little that is new here. First,

Maney's "mythical" Roosevelt is largely a strawman. Few serious students

of Roosevelt still see him as a complex planner, whose hand was

"everywhere." Most historians instead acknowledge that FDR was an opti-

mistic improviser and a poor, and often devious, administrator. As for

Roosevelt's political skills, the author seems to confuse legislative and elec-

toral politics. The charge that Roosevelt was not a great legislative leader is

not new, and Roosevelt's designation as the "champ" (p. xiv) referred to his

skill as a campaigner, not to his skill at legislative politics. Even in identify-

ing the traits that made up what Maney calls the "Roosevelt presence" there is

little that is new. The difference is that Maney is more critical of how

Book Reviews                                                  93

Roosevelt used his skills and finds Roosevelt's legacy more troubling than

many earlier writers.

Maney's argument that Roosevelt's skills were suited only to a particular

period, and that this makes Roosevelt less great, is unconvincing. While it

might be true that Roosevelt's example does not provide "much guidance" for

the "economic problems that beset the nation during the 1970s and after," the

same could easily be said of Lincoln, Washington, or any other president. It

is tricky to compare presidents from different centuries, and in this case the

comparisons are simplistic and never fleshed out enough to be convincing.

Although Maney complains at the end that "among presidents, alas, Franklin

Roosevelt was not a man for all seasons" (p. 234), few historical figures es-

cape the confines of their age. In the end, The Roosevelt Presence is more

successful as a concise and accessible survey of Roosevelt's life than it is as

an "original" interpretation of Roosevelt and his presidency. Maney's re-

minder that others were instrumental in much of the New Deal, though not

new, is useful, especially to undergraduates whose tendency might be to

simplify the relationship between FDR and the New Deal. Likewise, his

criticism of FDR, though sometimes unfair, provides a more critical perspec-

tive than much of the other literature.

Clarke College                                 Michael J. Anderson

Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume One: 1884-1933. By Blanche Wiesen Cook.

(New York: Viking, 1992. xviii + 587p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography,

index. $27.50.)

The most detailed and fully-researched biography of one of the most influ-

ential women in our century, this volume directly challenges previous inter-

pretations and images. In place of the dutiful woman who served her country

by serving her husband's career-a portrait encouraged by the self-deprecat-

ing Roosevelt herself-we find a woman who in mid-life charted an indepen-

dent course of personal fulfillment and public commitment to social justice,

and who, in concert with other women, put a particular mark on American

politics.

In a riveting narrative infused with acute analysis, historian Blanche Cook

recounts how Eleanor Roosevelt emerged from a wealthy and privileged fam-

ily plagued with emotional instability and alcoholism, and from a marriage

complicated by a domineering mother-in-law and nearly devastated by her

husband's infidelity, to create a life of her own and become an influential

politician years before FDR entered the White House. In the 1920s, ER con-

nected with an accomplished group of New York women carving out for

women a new role in politics through their activism in the League of Women

94                                                 OHIO HISTORY

Voters, the Women's Trade Union League, the Women's Division of the

Democratic Party, and the Women's City Club. Holding major offices in

each of these groups, ER devoted her days and nights to public speaking,

writing, editing, and lobbying on behalf of justice for workers, women's

rights, child welfare, peace, and public services. At the same time she be-

came co-owner, vice-principal, and regular teacher at the Todhunter School

for girls.

Cook presents several relationships as crucial to ER's achievements. Her

marriage grew into one of mutual respect and tolerance, in which both part-

ners cultivated their own interests and circles of intimates and each affirmed

and accommodated those of the other. While Louis Howe was close to both

Roosevelts, ER's circle revolved around women reformers, including lesbian

couples prominent in the New York women's network. Of particular impor-

tance were ER's intense relationships with her bodyguard, state trooper Earl

Miller, and with AP reporter, Lorena Hickok. Cook argues (with more telling

evidence in the case of Hickok) that both were relationships of romance and

passion, but also makes clear that their importance went beyond whatever

degree of sexual intimacy they contained. Above all, the emotional support

from Miller and Hickok bolstered ER's self-worth and fostered her determi-

nation to define for herself the purposes of her life.

While Cook claims her subject as a feminist and points out that ER herself

used the term, the complexities of applying political labels and of feminism

itself are evident. ER stood aloof from the suffrage campaign, and even in

the 1930s, she found it not "utterly unreasonable" to expect economically se-

cure women not to take jobs from those truly in need. Moreover, she care-

fully concealed her own political acumen and ambition. Yet, in attempting to

create her own life and in her labors to promote a broad feminist agenda,

Roosevelt clearly formed a vital link between the early and later waves of

feminism.

Cook's enormous admiration for her subject and zeal to revise the image of

ER as servant to her husband's needs results in more emphasis on ER's self-

determination and autonomy and less on the external forces shaping her

choices. How Roosevelt overcame the emotional hazards of her families of

birth and marriage, for example, receives much more attention than how the

privileged status of those families provided her extraordinary opportunities.

Nonetheless, scholars and general readers will find in this book a compelling

example of courage and liberation as well as a fuller and more accurate un-

derstanding of American liberalism. Having accompanied ER up to the

White House years, they will look forward to the second volume.

The Ohio State University                       Susan M. Hartmann

Book Reviews                                                   95

Sherman: A Soldier's Passion for Order. By John F. Marszalek. (New

York: The Free Press, 1993. xvi + ⁶³⁵p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography,

index. $29.95.)

If Life, Look, Time, and Newsweek magazines were published during

William T. Sherman's life, he would have appeared on their covers numerous

times. He was always at the center of controversy, especially during the Civil

War. Today he remains a debatable figure because of his beliefs, his actions

and his writings. He was his own man.

The scholarly interest in Sherman has most recently been explored by John

Walters, Michael Kerr and Mary McCarthy who were far from laudatory and

saw villainy in the decisions and actions of this Ohio general. James Merrill

was basically sympathetic in his 1971 study of Sherman. Now some twenty

years later another look at the red-haired Union commander in the western

theater. This time it is John F. Marszalek, a professor of history at

Mississippi State University and author of a previous book entitled,

Sherman's Other War, about "Cump's" battle with the fourth estate.

Professor Marszalek maintains in Sherman: A Soldier's Passion for Order

that early life psychological interpretations can be attached to Sherman's

Civil War decisions. He cites his father's death at age nine, his mother's

poverty, his adoption into the wealthy Ewing family, his business failure, and

his marriage to a neurotic wife as evidence for later decisions. From these

experiences, Sherman is portrayed as a man fearful of social upheaval and

one who, when given the opportunity to become a leader, used his power to

reestablish law and order in a ruthless fashion. The thesis throughout the

book is overdone, overworked, and stretched very thin.

Certainly the items mentioned above could influence one's thought pat-

terns; but there were stronger mind-sets and experiences in Sherman's life

that developed his character. Life in general was tough in the nineteenth

century and demanded that a person respond in a positive manner to survive.

How about his conservative and spartan training at West Point that began at

age 16 and ended four years later with his standing 6th overall and 4th aca-

demically in his class? His first military assignment-the Seminole War in

Florida-was hardly choice duty and was like several recent military adven-

tures-frustrating and lacking civilian leadership. The California days were

just above lawlessness, and then there was the decade of the 1850s. The

trusted political leaders made a muddle of things which ended in a breakdown

of democracy and arduous Civil War. I would submit that these were ample

reasons for a thinking person to dislike rebellion and anarchy and want to re-

store law and order.

Sherman and his views on military tactics were ahead of the times.

Sherman's rise to prominence in the west was based on his recognized ability

96                                                  OHIO HISTORY

and the U. S. Grant relationships-Thomas, Schofield, McPherson, tactics

and troop efficiency, and the dislike of Black troops. Sherman may have had

numerous enemies elsewhere, but he was a product of the midwest, and he

was at peace and at home with the troops from that region and they knew it.

Sherman: A Soldier's Passion for Order is well written and reads

smoothly, which translates to Civil War historians having this book in their

collection. The bibliography is thorough and an excellent beginning for addi-

tional Sherman studies. Despite the exception to the thesis, this book will

contribute to the historical scholarship of Sherman and his era.

Youngstown State University                       Hugh G. Earnhart

Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune: The Civil War Letters of Colonel Robert Gould

Shaw. Edited by Russell Duncan. Foreword by William S. McFeely.

(Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1992. xxiii + 421p.; map, illus-

trations, notes, appendix, bibliography, index. $29.95.)

"Blue-eyed child of fortune" was the phrase William James used to de-

scribe Robert Gould Shaw in 1897 at the dedication of the Shaw Memorial on

Boston Common. In a private letter James wrote that "poor little Robert

Shaw," because of his death in battle leading the first regiment of African-

American troops and his unceremonious burial in a common grave with many

of them, had become "a great symbol of deeper things than he ever realized

himself." Russell Duncan agrees that Shaw "never fully understood nor dedi-

cated himself to the cause for which he became a martyr." Like countless

other volunteers he joined the army "simply to do his duty," not to preserve

the Union or free the slaves.

Duncan opens the book with a substantial and sensitively written biograph-

ical essay. Shaw, born in Boston in 1837, was the scion of one of New

England's richest, best-connected (Robert had eight-five first cousins) and

most ardently abolitionist families. He spent his childhood in West Roxbury,

Massachusetts, in the vicinity of Brook Farm and on Staten Island. Educated

at boarding schools in New York and Switzerland, where he showed distaste

for authority and discipline, he spent two happy years in his teens living on

his own in Hanover, Germany, hiring teachers and amusing himself. It re-

quired the service of a "crammer" to get him admitted to Harvard. An indif-

ferent student, Shaw dropped out after two years and entered his uncle's busi-

ness firm in New York. He was working there when the war began.

Duncan presents Shaw as a dutiful son and loving brother to his four sisters

who neither rejected nor entirely accepted his family's enthusiasm for aboli-

tion and social reform. Robert "found" himself as a soldier in a way he had

never been able to fit in as scholar, reformer, or businessman. "A boy who

Book Reviews                                                   97

could not adapt to the discipline in civilian circles became a good soldier who

followed orders and expected the same from others" (p. 14). Shaw's military

career extended over a period of two years and two months. He began as a

private in the Seventh New York National Guard, rose from lieutenant to

captain in the Second Massachusetts Infantry, saw action in the battles of

Cedar Mountain and Antietam, became colonel of the Fifty-fourth

Massachusetts, "the most watched regiment of the war" because it was made

up of Northern Negroes, and died in mid-July 1863 in an attack on Fort

Wagner near Charleston, S.C.

Duncan has arranged Shaw's letters in chronological order in sixteen chap-

ters. He provides a brief introduction for each chapter relating Shaw's expe-

riences to the general course of the war. Useful and informative notes iden-

tify persons and events mentioned in the letters. Most of the letters in the

volume are addressed to Shaw's father, mother, and sisters and have been se-

lected from originals in the Robert Gould Shaw Papers, Houghton Library,

Harvard University, and the printed collection edited by Shaw's mother in

1864. Duncan also includes letters from Shaw to friends from collections in

the Massachusetts Historical Society and the New York Public Library. In an

appendix he lists letters not included in this volume by date, recipient, and

collection in which they can be found.

Commissioned early in the war, Shaw escaped the hardships and privations

experienced by many enlisted men. "We [officers] have cots to sleep on,

much better fare, and servants in abundance from among the men," he wrote

his mother in May 1861 (p. 101). The positive note struck in an early letter to

his mother-"I like what I am doing now better than anything I have tried

hitherto" (p. 105)-continues through the correspondence. "What a blessing

that we happened to be born in this country and century," he exclaimed in the

Spring of 1862 after a year in service. During the late summer of 1862 when

the Second Massachusetts suffered losses in the battles of Cedar Mountain

and Antietam Shaw recorded the grim and gory facts of war. "A battle-field,

after all is over, brings the horrors of war forcibly to mind" he wrote his fi-

ancee (p. 234). Recounting Confederate and Union losses at Antietam Shaw

told his father

At last, night came on, and with the exception of an occasional shot from the outposts,

all was quiet. The crickets chirped, and the frogs croaked, just as if nothing unusual

had happened all day long, and presently the stars came out bright, and we lay down

among the dead, and slept soundly until daylight. There were twenty dead bodies

within a rod of me (p. 241).

In February 1863, against his own inclination but in accord with his fami-

ly's wishes, Shaw accepted command of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts

(Colored) Regiment. During ninety days training Shaw, although a harsh

98                                                  OHIO HISTORY

disciplinarian, seems to have won the respect of his troops, and overcoming

his initial prejudice, came to have a high regard for them. In May, while on

his honeymoon, he learned that the regiment had received marching orders.

Thereafter events moved swiftly. A week after leaving Boston the regiment

reached Port Royal, South Carolina, and a week after that saw its first action.

In later brushes with the enemy Shaw was proud of his men's performance,

reporting in his last letter, "We hear nothing but praise for the Fifty-fourth on

all hands."

Duncan comments that Shaw's prose is eloquent, articulate, informative,

amusing and heart wrenching. It is impossible to read these letters without

sensing the writer's devotion and loyalty to family and friends, and sharing

the love and pride they felt for him.

The Ohio State University                        Robert H. Bremner

Bright Radical Star: Black Freedom and White Supremacy on the Hawkeye

Frontier. By Robert R. Dykstra. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard

University Press, 1993. xi + 348p.; maps, notes, appendixes, index.

$47.50.)

Robert Dykstra has in his new volume, Bright Radical Star, shed consider-

able light on how white Iowans dealt with race in the years from 1833 to 1880

by skillfully interweaving a traditional historical narrative with statistical

analysis of census records and voting patterns. In so doing he provides a de-

tailed ethnocultural picture of Iowa's changing political responses to race.

Blacks made up less than one percent of Iowa's population from 1840

through 1880. But slavery along the state's southern border, conflict over the

extension of slavery, fleeing slaves, and white fears of excessive immigration

of blacks led Iowans and their political leadership during the years of this

study to "devise a common polity that...arranged the terms for interracial as-

sociation" (p. vii). As might be expected, white Iowans moved reluctantly

toward granting black civil equality. Indeed, when Iowa's territorial legisla-

ture first met in 1838, it crafted a series of laws creating what Dykstra called

the "routine [legal] foundations of white supremacy" (p. 26).

Despite the dissent of a vocal, but tiny, abolitionist minority, the growth of

militant free soil sentiment, and the ascendance of the Republican party, Iowa

proved unremittingly racist throughout the antebellum period in its considera-

tion of laws bearing on the rights of blacks. Indeed, in 1857 white Iowans

soundly rejected an amendment to their state's constitution which would have

enfranchised black Iowans. Yet, Dykstra argues, Iowans' increasing distaste

for slavery, slavery's threat to the union and to reserving western land for free

white men, and the sharp contradiction that Iowans saw between second class

Book Reviews                                                   99

citizenship for free blacks and the ideals of equality expressed in the

Declaration of Independence, ultimately prepared them to accept black civil

equality. War fever and the bravery of black troops led them to finally enact

those sentiments into law in 1868 when a majority of both actual voters and

eligible voters repealed virtually all racist language in the Iowa constitution

except restrictions on blacks sitting in the state legislature. Iowans finally

removed that ban in 1880. But those who voted for that referendum issue

consisted of barely one-quarter of eligible voters and less than a third of those

who voted in the simultaneous presidential election, a result that Dykstra con-

cludes indicated waning support for racial egalitarianism.

Dykstra attributes these swings in behavior primarily to the stands taken by

the state's political leadership. The vast majority of Iowans, he argues, had

only weakly-formed views on racial equality. But abolitionists and free

soilers helped make antislavery agitation respectable within the state, a cir-

cumstance that led to the domination of state politics by the Republican party

by 1856. During and immediately after the Civil War racial egalitarians

gained influential leadership positions in the Republican Party and the state

government. When the 1865 Republican state convention wavered on the

question of extending the vote to Iowa's blacks, forceful leadership by egali-

tarian members persuaded the party to take a forthright stand. As a result, the

Republicans provided the political leadership that led to the successful pas-

sage of the 1868 referendum. Weak support for the 1880 referendum issue,

Dykstra argues, occurred because the state's political leadership had turned

their attention elsewhere and consequently did little to ensure that voters sup-

ported the referendum.

The lesson, Dykstra argues, of Iowa's shift from being one of the most

racially conservative states in the North to one of its most racially progressive

is that progress on racial issues is possible with thoughtful and principled

leadership, something he implies is sadly lacking in the late twentieth century

United States.

University of Cincinnati                  Charles F. Casey-Leininger

Of Singular Genius, Of Singular Grace: A Biography of Horace Bushnell.

By Robert L. Edwards. (Cleveland, Ohio: The Pilgrim Press, 1992. xi +

405p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $24.95 paper.)

While American religious history has increasingly turned to those outside

"the mainstream," here is a well-researched study of a leading nineteenth cen-

tury pastor-theologian and civic leader struggling to renew the New England

civil and religious tradition for the new nation. Robert Edwards succeeds in

his stated purpose to provide a modern biography of Horace Bushnell that

100                                                 OHIO HISTORY

"general readers as well as professionals might enjoy." This study is emi-

nently enjoyable and offers a good overview built upon fresh research and

some creative archival sleuthing.

Edwards offers an especially good treatment of Bushnell's many faceted

and varied career, which spanned from 1839 to his death in 1876. This in-

cludes treatments of his pastoral ministry in Hartford, Connecticut, his influ-

ential theological development, and his leadership in providing Hartford with

one of America's first urban parks. Bushnell's widely discussed views on a

range of issues are also well treated. These include such issues as education,

the American frontier, Roman Catholicism, slavery, race, the Civil War, and

the women's movement. The book is rich with personal anecdote and the

trivial incidents that affectionately humanize its subject. Despite the superla-

tive claims of the title, Bushnell is found to be a likable and forward-thinking

fellow with an unfortunate moral tick here and there due to the limitations of

his age, most of which he overcame. Not all would view Bushnell with such

complete affection, warts and all.

Considerable attention is also devoted to the emergence of Bushnell's im-

pressive line of publications. Edwards is especially gifted at clearly convey-

ing the theological creativity which made Bushnell the father of liberal theol-

ogy in America. This work will overcome the barrier of most readers to the

period's Christian doctrinal debates. In each case, Bushnell's developing

thought is simply presented, set within its immediate context, and contempo-

rary reactions are surveyed.

Specialists and theologians, however, will be disappointed if they expect a

close or comprehensive treatment. Edward's tendency to view Bushnell as a

man of singular genius has de-emphasized Bushnell's sources, his role as a

popularizer of European intellectual currents, and his relative location on the

broader stage of Christian theological development in the nineteenth century.

Thus the reader is left unable to assess accurately the singularity of

Bushnell's genius. Moreover, there is no consideration of Bushnell's lasting

influence on American thought apart from his more immediate successors.

What was Bushnell's affect on "the critical period in American religion"?

What currency did he have with later American religious thinkers, such as

William James, John Dewey, or Reinhold Niebuhr? There is little attempt to

assess or adjudicate the ongoing discussion of Bushnell. How does this New

England patriarch appear in the context of current language theory, multicul-

turalism, or the deconstructionist attack on systematic thought?

But Edwards's very real contribution to scholarship should not be missed.

Bushnell's thought did not solely emerge from the day's intellectual currents,

but also from his day-in, day-out situation as a pastor and preacher of a real

Hartford congregation of ordinary middle class folk. Here historian Edwards

has something important to contribute to the specialist and theologian.

Book Reviews                                                 101

Bushnell was among the last of the American pastor-theologians, stubbornly

resisting calls to academia but developing his theological innovations in dia-

logue with the emerging group of American professional thinkers. Bushnell's

theme of Christian comprehensiveness, his views of Christian nurture, and his

reconstruction of Christian doctrine developed not solely from his reflections

on European thinkers or the intellectual tensions of his day, but also from the

specific challenges of his particular situation in the local New England pas-

torate.

Edwards has provided an accessible biography of the father of liberal

protestantism in America and has made a significant contribution to our un-

derstanding of him. This study will undoubtedly improve the awareness of

another generation of scholars of this influential American figure.

University of Dayton                              Steven D. Cooley

Conscience and Slavery: The Evangelistic Calvinist Domestic Missions,

1837-1861. By Victor B. Howard, (Kent: The Kent State University Press,

1990. xv + 263p.; notes, bibliography, index. $27.50.)

This book is all but a reminder of historical methods which have passed be-

fore our eyes, and faded, possibly only for the moment. Professor Howard

has been the most conscientious of researchers, and emerged from his studies

with a body of persons who and events which he deemed vibrant in his thirty-

year span of history. Briefly, he has explored antebellum developments in

Protestant sects, notably Presbyterian and Congregationalist, concerned for

missionary work particularly among blacks and in the slaveholding South.

He has highlighted the American Home Missionary Society, which was in-

tended to be the flying wedge into slaveholding demesnes: a "gradualist"

solution to slavery and antislavery. It would appeal to enslavers's religious

principles. It would carry the Gospel to slaves, in so doing preparing them

for life as freemen and women. It was the one sure means for preventing a

terrible civil war among compatriots.

Our author has been industrious. He has scanned, and more than scanned,

wide ranges of sectarian newspapers, pamphlets, and books reporting

speeches, programs, individual church careers, conventions, and controversies

arising from slavery and antislavery issues. Moreover, he has linked devel-

opments in AHMS affairs to national events, showing how the Texas acces-

sion, the Mexican War, and the growing northern sympathy with antislavery

excited partisans and affected AHMS fortunes.

All this should have made for a valuable panel in antislavery history. Why

it has not raises questions of method and materials.

102                                                OHIO HISTORY

For one thing, not a little of the subject matter has long since been known

and recorded by historians: conservative attitudes North and South toward

slaves and slavery, schisms in all the church denominations which ultimately

made them one with either southern secessionists or northern unionists, polit-

ical compromises like that of 1850 intended to head off agitators and reassure

the larger public that was not inevitable.

Howard has seen many of these writings, but made no effort to link his re-

search with them. There is some question of how they have influenced his

findings. Thus he states flatly that abolition roused the country in the 1830s,

but failed to make institutional gains and so gave way to politicos and others

of partisan influence. He must have read somewhere that such a judgment is

not acceptable to numerous historians, but nowhere does he come to grips

with their evidence and ideas.

Certainly, the nation sought-sought desperately-for a middle way, away

from civil war. But the AHMS, on its own evidence, did not offer it. The

AHMS attracted vigorous and talented ministers, of the stature of George

Cheever, John G. Fee, and Leonard Bacon. But if one wishes to know more

about them, one must look elsewhere. We hear continuously of correspon-

dence, conventions, and positions taken by one or another AHMS func-

tionary, but more deadly is the report of one of them that four out of five mis-

sionaries sent into the South to serve the slaves "became the advocates of

slavery."

The jacket of Conscience and Slavery features a slave in chains, but the

book's text all but ignores slaves. It offers not a single example of a domestic

mission or missionary, gone into the South and in dialogue with a slave-

holder, to say nothing of a slave. For its endless detail respecting sectarian

movements and personalities Conscience and Slavery serves the profession.

For its evasion of the actual workings of the AHMS, which reduced it from a

gradualist hope to the futile enterprise it became, the book offers an example

of the viable and unviable in historical method.

The Belfry                                             Louis Filler

Ovid, Michigan

Dubious Victory: The Reconstruction Debate in Ohio. By Robert D. Sawrey.

(Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1992. xi + 194p.; illustra-

tions, notes, bibliography, index. $30.00.)

This immensely readable book is a penetrating description and analysis of a

critical period of American political history. In a fresh and original approach,

Robert Sawrey effectively undertakes the task of clarifying the northern posi-

tion on and goals of Reconstruction by focusing on the attitudes of politically

Book Reviews                                                  103

active Ohioans, especially Republicans, during the post-Civil War era. The

author maintains that Ohio was a key and representative northern state in

terms of political, economic and demographic development during this pe-

riod.

Drawing upon a rich array of resources including newspapers, manuscripts,

diaries and legislative records, this study traces the preeminent role

Reconstruction and Reconstruction-related issues played in Ohio elections

between 1865 and 1868. Beginning with the Ohio gubernatorial election of

1865 and ending with the presidential election of 1868, Sawrey provides a de-

tailed and revealing account of the highly charged debates that characterized

these election campaigns. Of crucial concern to Ohioans and other northern-

ers in 1865 was their claim to the North's right to determine the terms of

restoration and the assurance of the future security of the nation through the

control of the southern planters. To achieve this end northerners stood ready

to extend to former slaves only those rights that would prevent southern

planters from regaining control over these freedmen. Considered as a group,

Ohio Republicans initially supported the end of slavery and the granting of

basic economic rights to the freedmen. For instance, freedmen should have a

right to their own wages. Other Republicans argued that successful

Reconstruction required giving loyal freedmen citizenship and the vote to

prevent the disloyal planter class from regaining political control in the South.

Still other Republicans struggled with the idea of granting freedmen any so-

cial and political rights that threatened white supremacy in Ohio.

By 1866 Ohio Republicans, who had endorsed President Andrew Johnson's

Reconstruction policy until his racial prejudice reasserted itself and influ-

enced his plans for reunion, found themselves coming under greater influence

of "radical" elements of the party and supporting Congressional

Reconstruction. Thus Sawrey argues that first the Fourteenth Amendment

and then the Fifteenth Amendment emerged as what Ohioans hoped to be

both the final term of reunion and the action that also would remove blacks

from politics. With great reluctance Ohio Republicans embraced a policy of

reunion that kept them in power but led to a decline in support for

Republicans as Democrats seized upon the emotional issue of black suffrage

and pandered to the racist attitudes of the voters. Indeed, Sawrey attributes

the qualified success of Reconstruction to the prevailing racial attitudes of

northerners, with few exceptions. Still while Ohioans defeated the black suf-

frage bill in their state, the U.S. Congress implemented a reconstruction pol-

icy that required southern states to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment. By 1868

with President Ulysses S. Grant in the White House and congressional recon-

struction the basic policy for reunion, Ohio Republicans turned their attention

to economic issues and to overturning their image as radicals.

104                                                 OHIO HISTORY

Dubious Victory provides a fresh and balanced framework for examining

and evaluating the formation and implementation of Reconstruction policy

between 1865 and 1868. Sawrey's analysis of the origins and goals of the

Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments is particularly refreshing and illumi-

nating. The volume is a valuable addition to Reconstruction scholarship be-

cause it covers a previously neglected area in Reconstruction studies, and it

complements or expands interpretations about Reconstruction set forth in

other scholarly works in the field. This book is also a worthy study for schol-

ars of Ohio history, constitutional law, and race relations in America.

Wright State University                            Barbara L. Green

The Great Migration in Historical Perspective: New Dimensions of Race,

Class, & Gender. Edited by Joe William Trotter, Jr. (Bloomington:

Indiana University Press, 1991. xiv + 160p.; tables, notes, index. $29.95

cloth; $10.95 paper.)

This volume contains eight essays by the leading historians of what might

be termed the new migration history. Covering the period between World

War I and 1945, the essays challenge older interpretations that often made

African-Americans appear as passive agents rather than as active participants

in the great northward (and westward) movement. Although dealing with a

variety of settings, all of the authors stress the purposeful nature of the migra-

tion experience, the crucial role of gender, kin and community, the continuing

importance of southern ties and the various strategies that informed the deci-

sion-making process of the migrants. Despite emphasizing the element of

choice, the essays also demonstrate the impact of the two world wars and of

the business cycle in determining the opportunities that would be available to

the migrants.

Joe Trotter contributes three essays. His introductory chapter provides a

critique of the older approaches to migration that stressed social breakdown

or ghetto formation--a context that enables one to appreciate the significance

of the latest research. In his own contribution dealing with African-American

miners in the Southern Appalachian coal fields, Trotter describes the adjust-

ment of blacks to a "rural-industrial" setting. The essay stresses ways in

which blacks in coal mining towns retained ties to rural life, an aspect that

bears a striking resemblance to the experience of southern white textile

workers. In a brief concluding essay, Trotter summarizes the major points of

the contributors and indicates possible avenues for further research.

Earl Lewis' essay which deals with Norfolk, Virginia, also offers a glimpse

at a type of community that has often been overlooked in migration studies.

Somewhat surprisingly, Lewis finds that even before the massive World War

Book Reviews                                                 105

II military buildup, Norfolk offered an economic niche to black male workers.

The most original part of the essay deals with the role of home visits in the

black community. By making ingenious use of newspaper visiting columns,

Lewis establishes the multitude of ways in which return visits allowed

Norfolk's blacks to retain ties with the rural Virginia hinterland where many

of their family members remained.

Peter Gottlieb and James Grossman offer a fresh perspective on the cities of

Pittsburgh and Chicago. Gottlieb's essay on Pittsburgh focuses on the gener-

ation that migrated during the World War I period and the early 1920s.

Challenging the stereotypical image of an uprooted black peasantry, Gottlieb

stresses the purposeful nature of the migration and the ways in which intact

Southern black communities provided a "sheltering base" for those who often

moved between the South and the North. By contrast, Gottlieb suggests that

the post-World War II migrants had fewer options since they were literally

forced off the land, and the elan of the first generation was replaced by a

movement of "resignation and despair."

James Grossman is the latest historian to examine the critical issue of black

participation in the Chicago Stockyards Labor Council organizing drive be-

tween 1917 and 1922. Grossman argues that the reactions of black workers

to the blandishments of both unions and corporations were determined by a

calculation of what would best advance the interests of the race. In

emphasizing the importance of a racial consciousness, Grossman argues that

employment in the slaughter houses represented a purposeful achievement of

a higher status and that unions, viewed by many blacks as just another white

institution, could represent a threat to these gains.

Shirley Ann Moore examines black migration to the San Francisco Bay

area city of Richmond, California. This city's black population grew tremen-

dously during World War II when thousands of black migrants found em-

ployment at the Kaiser shipyards. Moore offers an insightful look at how

black workers angered by the discriminatory practices of their union became

involved in civil rights activity, and how the closing of the shipyards made it

impossible to sustain the wartime "shift upward."

In a strikingly original essay, Darlene Clark Hine suggests how gender can

be brought into migration history. Making use of a variety of source mate-

rials, she suggests that many black women wished to escape both sexual ex-

ploitation by whites and domestic abuse within their own families.

Transferring many aspects of their own culture to new surroundings, these

female migrants played a critical role in the "southernization of urban mid-

western culture."

The book does have a few weaknesses. Most seriously, each author uses

the term "Great Migration" in his or her own way, and it is not clear what

time period is covered under this rubric. In addition, some of the essays

106                                                OHIO HISTORY

based on larger works need better transitional sentences when abruptly mov-

ing from one topic to another. Despite the sophisticated approach to history

that these essays represent, the omission of politics and overall power rela-

tions in American society reveals the problems inherent in an anthropological

approach to history. Nevertheless, this book serves as a splendid introduction

to anyone desiring a guide to the latest research in this field and would be an

excellent choice for assigned reading in courses on African-American history

in particular.

Cleveland State University                        David J. Goldberg

The Papers of Andrew Johnson. Volume 10: February-July 1866. Edited by

Paul H. Bergeron. (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1992.

xxxii + 798p.; illustrations, notes, appendices, index. $49.50.)

This latest volume of Andrew Johnson's papers is replete with useful in-

formation about the President's actions and experiences during the early

months of 1866, including newspaper interviews. His mail overflowed with

free advice, dark warnings, seemingly sincere appeals for favors, and unctu-

ous praise. Few bothered to send their criticisms of the President directly to

him, but those who did were harsh, such as Radical journalist John W.

Forney, who wrote a scathing indictment of his former friend.

Stung by the 39th Congresses' earlier hostile reaction to his Reconstruction

program, Johnson, during these months, all but destroyed his chances of

working successfully with moderates in the legislative branch. Adamant in

his state rights and racist beliefs, he made several political blunders, including

his vetoes of the Freedmen's Bureau and Civil Rights bills, his infamous

speech given on Washington's birthday, and his gratuitous, procedural de-

nunciation of the Fourteenth Amendment, which his home state of Tennessee

quickly ratified anyway. Johnson may also have erred when he decided to

support a new political organization by endorsing a convention of Unionists

that was scheduled to meet in Philadelphia in August. In the end, Congress

allowed the President few victories, but did sustain his vetoes of the Nebraska

and Colorado statehood bills.

Unabashed racism permeates the pages of this work; Johnson's own brand

tended to be condescending. He sincerely supported the attempts of private

groups to raise money for black education, consistently declared himself to be

the black's best friend, and allowed black leaders to question him in the

White House. Nonetheless, Johnson made it clear that he believed that blacks

were inferior and should not receive federal assistance.

Johnson also had to deal with the multitudes, who wanted the plethora of

position's available to the President. My favorite job application came from

Book Reviews                                                 107

one Thomas Fitzgerald: "E. G. Webb Assessor for the first (1st) District of

Pennsylvania is dead. Can I have the place?" (p. 651). The number of appli-

cants increased when Johnson ordered that veterans were to be favored in ap-

pointments and promotions. At the highest level, policy differences led three

Cabinet officers to quit during these months, indicating genuine turmoil

within the executive branch.

Problems in the South also occupied some of Johnson's attention. The

President was pressed to parole or ease the situations of imprisoned ex-

Confederate leaders and those ostensibly involved in the Lincoln assassina-

tion plot. The wives of Jefferson Davis, Clement C. Clay, and Samuel Mudd,

for example, importuned Johnson on behalf of their spouses on several occa-

sions, but gained, at best, relatively minor concessions. The President also

received much information about the tardy Texas Reconstruction Convention

and subsequent elections and about the troubled elections and later race riot in

New Orleans.

When Congress recessed at the end of July, Johnson's influence was wan-

ing and his accomplishments were few. Most of his woes were of his own

making. Still, he also seems to have been a bit unlucky. This volume con-

tains a fitting symbol of his position in July 1866 and his future prospects.

The President responded to Queen Victoria's July 27 telegram, which con-

gratulated Johnson on the fact that the Atlantic Cable was, at last, finished.

Johnson, however, had not received the Queen's message until July 30 be-

cause, somewhere along the line, the cable had gone dead.

Editor Paul Bergeron and his staff have done an admirable job in selecting

documents from among the thousands that are available. Bergeron's intro-

duction, though brief, sets the scene perfectly for the huge amount of material

that follows it. The work contains a wonderfully helpful index, and its anno-

tated endnotes are essential tools for grasping the significance of the primary

material. One can only marvel at the staff members' ability to locate data

about some of the truly obscure individuals, whose names appear in the doc-

uments; even when forced to guess, these scholars are shrewd. Historians of

the Reconstruction period will benefit immensely from having access to this

book, just as they have from the availability of other volumes in this impor-

tant series.

University of South Dakota                        Gerald W. Wolff

The Wheeling Bridge Case: Its Significance in American Law and

Technology. By Elizabeth Brand Monroe. (Boston: Northeastern

University Press, 1992. xvi + 268p.; illustrations, maps, notes, table of

cases, bibliography, index. $45.00.)

108                                                OHIO HISTORY

Elizabeth Monroe suggests that previous legal historians have missed the

mark. Following the lead of pioneering legal/economic historian Willard

Hurst, all have assumed that during the nineteenth century, the American le-

gal system worked to "multiply the productive power of the economy."

Through statutory and judge-made laws, public policies allowed private cor-

porations to "release creative energy" by constructing such structures as

bridges that benefited society as a whole.

The role played by American law in the historic development of transporta-

tion in the Ohio Valley should serve as a case in point. If Hurst's model was

correct, then the federal and state governments' support of internal improve-

ments through legislatively enacted and judicially reviewed laws facilitated

the completion of overland transportation systems. First canal and steamboat

promoters and then railroad men were the beneficiaries of this system,

thereby releasing their "creative energies" to the betterment of the Ohio

Valley in general. But as Monroe points out, this model ignores the serious

and, at times, vicious competition between various modes of transportation.

Steamboat men were loath to give up their earlier favored status just because

a newer, faster technology (railroads) was loudly whistling its own request for

governmental backing. Even transportation historians of long-standing, like

George Rogers Taylor, ignored the legal aspects of this competition.

Revisionist Monroe uses the Wheeling Bridge case to correct this bias.

After an introduction to the federal and state legal history of internal im-

provements, she sets the stage for the conflict between Pennsylvania and

Pittsburgh (representing steamboat owners) and Virginia and Wheeling

(coming in on the side of land-based transportation interests). The bulk of the

volume is devoted to chronicling the details of the litigation itself.

The Wheeling Suspension Bridge spans the eastern leg, the main shipping

channel, of the Ohio River between the downtown and the sizable residential

neighborhood on Wheeling Island. Designed by Charles Ellet and completed

in October 1849, its length, in excess of 1009 feet, was the world record at

that time. Because the bridge is today, despite its age, used by commuters on

a daily basis, it still ranks as a noteworthy structure of international repute.

In August 1849, even before the bridge was finished, the state of

Pennsylvania began legal measures to have it declared a public nuisance that

demanded "abatement." The state argued that the amount of clearance be-

tween the bridge deck and the water limited the size of boats and ships on the

Ohio River. This, they claimed, impeded traffic on Pennsylvania's public

works system, both water and rail, that was then transhipped down the Ohio.

The case was first heard by the entire U.S. Supreme Court early in 1850.

Although questions of jurisdiction were raised and the matter was several

times referred to outside experts for their opinions, in February 1852 the ma-

jority of the court ruled in favor of Pennsylvania, decreeing that the bridge ei-

Book Reviews                                                  109

ther be removed or elevated. Within the year the case had attracted the atten-

tion of Congress, who felt the court had overstepped its bounds, and in

August an act was passed declaring the bridge lawful and designating it a fed-

eral "post road." Thus the matter might have rested, except that in the sum-

mer of 1854 the deck of the bridge was destroyed by a windstorm. Before the

bridge company could recreate its original design, Pennsylvania filed a re-

quest with the Supreme Court for an injunction against the reconstruction be-

fore a hearing determined the rebuilt structure's configuration. Since the

court would not be in session until December, the request was granted. The

company simply ignored the injunction and proceeded with the rebuilding,

which was completed in November. Pennsylvania responded by demanding a

contempt of court ruling against the company and its officers. When the

court finally met, a majority concluded that since ultimate questions on the

legality of the bridge had already been settled by Congressional action, "there

must be an end of litigation."

All this is covered in great detail by Monroe. Hers is, in fact, the most

complete treatment of this important litigation to date, analyzing all the legal

arguments presented, judicial reasoning, and Congressional debates surround-

ing it. The reference to technology in the subtitle introduces the final chapter

in which she explains the development of a federal policy for bridges over

navigable waters in the wake of the Wheeling case. She demonstrates how

the federal government's desire to balance the competing interests of water

transport and railroads continued into the twentieth century. Instead of ac-

commodating the needs of the newer overland technology, as previous histo-

rians had suggested, the maintenance of river navigation seemed to be the

overriding concern throughout the period.

Monroe is at her best when discussing the intricacies of litigation and con-

stitutional law. Less satisfying is her treatment of technological issues.

While she provides ample context and historiographic treatment of the legal

history of the Wheeling Bridge case, she devotes far less space to illuminating

relevant technological matters. One example will suffice. Government engi-

neers were reluctant to use the precedent set by a suspension bridge, regard-

less of its length, to establish standards for railroad bridges crossing the Ohio

River. Despite the great success of John Roebling, Ellet's rival in the original

Wheeling Bridge design competition, in building a combined high-

way/railroad suspension bridge over the Niagara River gorge in 1855, sus-

pension bridges were still widely believed to lack the rigidity necessary for

the pounding action of locomotives. That is why the minimum distance be-

tween bridge piers in the Ohio River was not governed by the extraordinary

span of the Wheeling Bridge but by the size of the largest metal through truss.

Monroe correctly points out that as metal truss technology became more

sophistocated, this length increased and was duly noted in federal regulations.

110                                                OHIO HISTORY

The rationale for using a truss length as a standard instead of a suspension

bridge is what Monroe failed to incorporate.

Those seeking an in-depth analysis of the legal history surrounding mid-

nineteenth-century internal improvements and constitutional debates over the

commerce clause will find it here. Those after an equally complete treatment

of related technological issues are likely to be disappointed.

Ohio Historical Society                         David A. Simmons

The Communists: The Story of Power and Lost Illusions, 1948-1991. By

Adam B. Ulam. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1992. xiii + 528p.;

notes, index. $27.50.)

"The simultaneous collapse of an empire and the ideology that engendered

it is unprecedented in modern history," writes Adam Ulam, the author of a

number of works dealing with the Soviet Union (Expansion and Coexistence

is this writer's personal favorite). Fascism and National Socialism owed their

demise to military defeat, but the Communism of the Soviet Union, its fellow

European Communist states, all under Soviet domination or heavy influence,

and China simply disintegrated without a war while the USSR was one of the

world's two superpowers and China was a major power. Nor were there even

popular uprisings or violent revolutions. It all happened peacefully and

quickly, as though to contradict a Jeane Kirkpatrick profundity. Professor

Ulam has taken for himself the task of explaining how this happened, how

what we knew as world Communism collapsed with barely a whimper.

Much of what Ulam writes is conjecture, as it must be until the dictates of

glasnost and perestroika throw open ex-Soviet and Chinese archives (the

Soviets perhaps, the Chinese not in the near future). But Ulam conjectures

well, as one would expect, and in the bargain provides plausible explanations

for the postwar behavior of the evil empire[s].

Perhaps the most significant myth, and the lifeblood of American Cold

Warriors, that Ulam corrects is that of the Communist monolith, with that

awesome leviathan, the USSR, functioning as its nerve center, sending out

commands and signals to its various junior partners in political crime. If

there ever was such a postwar arrangement, it lasted only until Yugoslavia

and Tito, "the first heretic," decided to secede in 1948. This was the first

crack in World Communism's unity, says Ulam.

On the heels of Tito's defection there occurred an event which, on the face

of things, was postwar Communism's greatest coup-the triumph of Mao's

forces in China. But Mao, before the fifties were out, would be a Tito on a

larger scale, and the Sino-Soviet bloc, which actually lasted a relatively short

time, ended by proving little more than that politics had made estranged bed-

Book Reviews                                                 111

fellows. That there was no Sino-Soviet collaboration, no "Marxist-Leninist

internationalism," was obvious by the early sixties as USSR-China relations

deteriorated to a mutual name-calling contest replete with all those terms so

meaningful to leftish true believers: capitalist roaders, running dogs of impe-

rialism, right-wing deviationists, left-wing deviationists, Trotskyists and

Trotskyites, bourgeois reactionary falsehood-the list is endless. By the early

seventies both the Soviet Union and China sought accommodation with the

U.S. and the West, making it obvious to all but the most hardened right-

wingers that they were motivated primarily by their national interests rather

than some Marxist-Leninist blueprint for world revolution.

Ulam also does an excellent job of analyzing the policies of the various

Soviet and Chinese leaders since 1948, as well as explaining how

Communism, namely the Soviet Union, managed to get from 1948, perhaps

its peak year, to where it is today. From the sinister Stalin, the "genius leader

of all progressive mankind," as Soviet sycophancy had it, to Khrushchev's

policy of bluff and bluster, which masked his search for detente with the West

(Ulam agrees with Sidney Hook that Khrushchev's de-Stalinization program

was discontinued because it would have exposed many Party members who

had participated in destroying the innocent), on to Brezhnev's gerontocratic

rule, which featured government of, by, and for the Party oligarchy, Ulam

touches a number of bases. He concludes with Gorbachev and Yeltsin, argu-

ing that Gorbachev originally set out to reform the system, state and society,

only to discover that there was no such animal as reform Communism: "Real

democratization of the Communist regime," Ulam points out correctly,

"would almost inevitably lead to its eventual dissolution." Gorbachev and

other Communists "who urged far-reaching reforms were the gravediggers of

Marxism-Leninism." Yeltsin, suffering no such illusions, understood that the

Soviet system needed changed, not reformed. (Dimitri K. Simes reached

much the same conclusion about Yeltsin in a recent issue of Foreign Affairs.)

Ulam has written a marvelous account of the collapse of an ideology

which, despite its humane promises, had in actual practice served as little

more than a justification for authoritarian-totalitarian government.

Communism was indeed, to borrow an earlier title, The God That Failed, and

Ulam's authoritative explanation of the failure is must reading for those who

would know just why and how it happened.

Ohio Historical Society                        Robert L. Daugherty

Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789. Volume 18: September 1,

1781-July 31, 1782. Edited by Paul H. Smith, Gerard W. Gawalt, and

Ronald M. Gephart. (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1991. xxix

112                                               OHIO HISTORY

+ 749p.; editorial method and apparatus, acknowledgments, chronology of

Congress, list of delegates to Congress, illustrations, notes, index. $37.00.)

Our written histories, especially our more textbookish accounts, are often

far too neat. Blessed with retrospection and possessed of 20/20 hindsight, we

professional historians have the advantage of knowing how any given event

in the past actually turned out; and it now seems that the event in question

was almost fated to turn out that way. Our view of the American Revolution,

like our view of much of the past, suffers at times from what might be termed

this inordinate and even deceptive retrospection. We need to do more with

Revolutionary history-in-the-making, with flesh-and-blood people experienc-

ing a "reality" that is not headed toward a certain predestined end but rather

one that is seen as more open-ended and characterized by much complexity

and much uncertainty.

As this particular volume opens and as this highly dramatic series of events

continues to unfold, some good news is admittedly circulating among the del-

egates for a change. Colonel John Laurens, just returned from his mission to

France, has brought back large supplies of arms, ammunition, and clothing.

Even more important, he has brought an amount of specie that is "almost

equal to our wishes" (p. 9). The delegates are happy about this turn of events,

but many of them sense that America's ultimate fate is still very clearly

hanging in the balance. French assistance is grudging at times. Much of the

aid for the year 1781 has taken the form of loans, not outright gifts; and the

French allies are given to pointing out that the American rebels run the risk of

becoming too dependent on France. It is American independence that is at is-

sue, after all. The Americans should do more to help themselves! From the

Old World troubling reports continue to come, some of them conceivably por-

tentous for the long-range future of the Franco-American alliance itself.

Rumor has it that Britain has made it a precondition for European peace that

France formally dissolve her alliance with King George's rebellious

American subjects. Britain has also supposedly said that those American

colonies which the mother country has subjugated, especially the ones in the

South, may never be acknowledged as independent. Then there is always the

possibility that Britain will refuse to deal with all the colonies as one nation,

but will instead insist on making a separate peace with each one of them.

Among the delegates there is much anxiety about all of this, despite the suc-

cess of the Laurens mission.

Even after the defeat of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown in October 1781,

there is talk among the delegates about the form that next year's American

campaign will have to take. Thus our twentieth-century perception that ev-

erything is pretty well over after Yorktown is manifestly not the perception of

the delegates back there late in 1781 and early 1782. From the vantage point

Book Reviews                                                 113

of December 1781, Virginia delegate Joseph Jones doubts that Britain will

give in yet. Instead, she "will strain every nerve to raise the supplies for an-

other year" (p. 252). In the first week of February 1782, New Jersey's Elias

Boudinot is of the conviction that "Peace is yet many Years off' (p. 324).

Two weeks later, Boudinot is still of the same opinion: "There is not the least

prospect of Peace, or scarcely a possibility of it-on the other hand, every

Measure is adopting in England to send over a large body of Hanoverians and

some English Regimt. early in the Spring" (p. 346). The British are still com-

ing, the British are still coming! And the Hanoverians may well be coming

too!

Given all this uncertainty-much of it of a decidedly post-Yorktown vari-

ety-perhaps we might conclude by raising anew the question with which we

began. Just what is the "real" history of the American Revolution, or of any

other subject for that matter? Is it the "objective" account of how things all

turned out that we historians, imbued with our impeccable hindsight, seek to

fashion? Or is it that vastly more subjective, complicated, muddled, and

vexatious reality that real people live through? The volumes in this valuable

series present us with more the latter than the former picture; and they will

eventually permit enterprising and creative historians to capture this

Revolutionary drama-in-the-making, with all of its hopes and fears, successes

and setbacks. When this intellectual event transpires, it will be a great day

indeed for American historiography.

Marquette University                                Robert P. Hay

Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789. Volume 19: August 1, 1782-

March 11, 1783. Edited by Paul H. Smith, Gerard W. Gawalt, and Ronald

M. Gephart. (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1992. xxx + 827p.;

editorial method and apparatus, acknowledgments, chronology of Congress,

list of delegates to Congress, illustrations, notes, index. $35.00.)

As the Bard of Avon said long ago, all the world is a stage, including this

Congressional world of late eighteenth-century America. The players upon

this particular stage are many, and as they play out their respective roles they

typify quite a range of human emotion and behavior. Looking upon the dele-

gates to Congress in this light both humanizes them and makes far more dra-

matic the complex and important story that their letters continue to tell.

In just the first hundred pages of the volume at hand there are thousands of

lines and literally scores of plots and subplots. When the curtain opens, we

are more than nine months removed from the great victory at Yorktown; and

many delegates are speculating as to when the real peace will come. "Don't

Affairs look approaching towards a Peace?" asks Jonathan Jackson of

114                                                OHIO HISTORY

Massachusetts. "It appears to me they do" (p. 12). But John Taylor Gilman

of New Hampshire wonders. So do others, convinced that Britain's "pride &

lust of domination which on her part first originated the present war" have not

yet abated (p. 23). Even if peace negotiations were to proceed in earnest, who

could be certain that France would not put her own interests and those of her

Spanish allies ahead of America's? Arthur Lee of Virginia, for one, fears that

France might well support Spain's claims to the vast lands extending from the

Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River. What then would become

of Virginia's dream of westward expansion, and what would become of

America's future?

Momentous issues of war and peace, however, are not the only questions

before the house or the only things on the delegates' minds. For example,

there is apparently some movement out in Virginia's "Kentucky country" to-

wards separate statehood, but who is to decide when a new state is to be cre-

ated-the legislature of the existing state that claims the western territory or,

contrariwise, the Congress? There is quite a furor about this matter, and dur-

ing the course of the debate some rather strong anti-Virginia sentiment clearly

emerges. For example, Thomas McKean, from tiny little Delaware, boldly

announces that he "is not afraid of Virginia" (p. 97) and that he never wants

to see any one state lord it over the others! John Witherspoon of New Jersey

goes even further when he says that he could conceive of a situation in which

one state had become so powerful (and potentially dangerous) that the other

states, invoking "the law of necessity and of self-preservation" (p. 99), might

have to divide the offending state into two or more separate and smaller juris-

dictions!

So there is grave concern as to what turn politics might take abroad and

there is as well considerable political contention right here at home. Politics

aside, there are, as always, the much more personal things in the lives of the

delegates. In one rather short letter to Anne, his spouse, Benjamin

Huntington of Connecticut waxes eloquent on the theme of God's mercy, al-

ludes in a jocular way to his own corpulence, complains mightily of gouging

merchants, and earnestly longs for home. Without using our modern word

"depression," David Howell of Rhode Island nonetheless confides that he

suffers greatly from it. In a letter to the Quaker Moses Brown, Howell pours

out his soul: "You know I always was subject to be low Spirited. I feel so

much of it at times now as utterly disqualifies me for all business....and hav-

ing no particular friend here to whom my difficulties are known to converse

freely with, I am the more overcome. Never did tears flow more freely from

my eyes than since I have been in this City" (p. 24).

In this first hundred pages, then, and in the seven hundred pages that fol-

low, all of these dramatis personae are playing out their roles. Without any

one of them, our drama would be somehow incomplete. But the person who

Book Reviews                                                  115

is clearly about to emerge as the star of this performance is James Madison.

Frail of frame but with an intellect that is powerful and penetrating and with

an utter commitment to public life and to the public interest, Madison is obvi-

ously being schooled in finance, in the economic basis of politics, and in the

need for a stronger central government. In the index to this volume, there are

by far more references to Madison than to any other delegate, thus bespeaking

the increasingly significant role that he is playing. We observe Madison's

oral and written articulation of the issues, his keeping notes of a given day's

proceedings, and his attempts to convey to confidants back home in Virginia

an accurate sense as to just what is transpiring in Congress. Indeed, we see in

all of this nothing less than a prefiguration of the great role that he will one

day play as "the father of the Constitution."

Here, in sum, we have the bit parts and the great parts and all the parts in

between, just as we do in any performance. What this important nineteenth

volume of this important series manifestly is not, then, is a mere compilation

of the dusty letters of dead men. It is, instead, one more act from a living

pageant about the nation's beginnings. The pageant continues, and this re-

viewer, among others, eagerly anticipates the scenes that are yet to come. For

what we are beholding is both entertaining and educational, and not even the

most seasoned frequenter of the theater could possibly ask for more than that.

Marquette University                                 Robert P. Hay

A Country Between: The Upper Ohio Valley and Its Peoples, 1724-1774. By

Michael N. McConnell. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992. xii

+ 357p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $40.00.)

More than half a century has passed since the publication of Randolph C.

Downes's classic study of the Ohio Indians, Council Fires on the Upper

Ohio, and thirty years since Erminie Wheeler Voegelin's extensive reports for

the Indian Claims Commission were issued as Indians of Ohio and Indiana.

Neither achieved as much recognition as they deserved, but the greater ap-

preciation of Indian history today should ensure a strong reception for this

new reappraisal of the native pioneers, principally Delawares, Shawnees and

Mingoes, who quit their homes in New York and Pennsylvania to colonize

the upper Ohio from the 1720s. McConnell's achievement is an impressive

one. Expanding his doctoral dissertation, itself a useful contribution, he re-

constructs the interplay of Indian and white cultures that formed 18th century

Ohio from a wide trawl of documentary and archaeological sources and with

a great deal of skill and detachment. The result is a well-written, judicious

and thoughtful study supplying an essential perspective to our understanding

of the colonial period.

116                                                OHIO HISTORY

McConnell persuasively describes how these Indians fashioned new identi-

ties in the west, influenced by fresh relationships with each other and their

occupation of a strategic area coveted by both French and British expansion-

ists. One trend, the increasing cohesion between disparate villages of Indians

sharing a language and culture, was evidenced in the attempts of the

Delawares to coalesce on the Muskingum in the 1770s, but more significant

still was the development of a collective regional consciousness. Threatened

from without, Ohio Indians from different ethnic groups established a loose

confederacy to present a united front and concerted policy. Although British

officials then, and many scholars since, have insisted that the Ohio Indians

were mere dependents of the Iroquois Confederacy in New York, McConnell

shows that this was patently not the case. Iroquois spokesmen for the Ohio

confederacy, such as Tanaghrisson, came not from New York but a splinter

group on the Allegheny, which in 1747 joined other Ohio Indians in forming

a new council fire at Logstown to assert their independence of Onondaga.

Far from controlling the Ohio Indians, the Iroquois Confederacy resented

their autonomy, and the Confederacy's inability to direct affairs on the Ohio

was one reason for its eagerness to cede doubtful land claims in the area in

1768.

Temporarily, their confederacy enhanced the significance of the Ohio

Indians. In 1747 they fashioned an alliance that included several native

groups and the British and extended from the Miami to Philadelphia and from

the Ohio to Lake Erie. But although the Indians wrung occasional conces-

sions from the British, ultimately the forces dividing them, both cultural and

political, proved to be too powerful. In 1752 to 1754 Tanaghrisson's efforts

to coordinate resistance to the French invasions were unsuccessful, and in

1774 the Shawnees and Mingoes went to war against the Virginians with little

support from neighboring Indian people. McConnell's portrait of the experi-

ences of these communities, and their attempts to preserve the territory upon

which their merging regional identity depended, is painted in subtler shades

than in many histories. Indian actions were seldom straight forward, but

swung between varied cross-currents. Some responded to religiously-inspired

nativism that condemned the contamination of Indian cultures by white influ-

ences, and others were motivated by a desire for the trade goods and contacts

that spawned such influences. Some Indians feared the French, while others

saw the British as the greater danger, and many were moved by the interests

of the village, kinfolk or individual ambition. It is a rich mixture, and

McConnell's treatment of it is appropriately sophisticated and close-grained.

There is little to fault in this book. Not all scholars will be convinced by

McConnell's reconstruction of the engagement at Bushy Run in 1763, and the

author is throughout stronger on the Delawares and Mingoes than the

Shawnees. McConnell, along with other historians, probably exaggerates the

Book Reviews                                                 117

significance of the massacres of 1774 and the intrigues of John Connolly's

Virginians in the outbreak of war with the Shawnees. As the author realizes

(p. 274), the Shawnee had been promoting an alliance to defend Kentucky for

years, and while they were not ready for war in 1774 their patience was

reaching an end. Justifiably notorious as Connolly and Greathouse's activi-

ties were, they probably preempted a conflict that was already inevitable, and

have received an undue emphasis. However, such quibbles apart, Michael

McConnell's is a fine piece of research and obligatory reading for all inter-

ested in the early history of Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Hereward College                                     John Sugden

England