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The National Road. Edited by Karl Raitz.
(Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. xviii
+ 489p.; illustrations, maps, notes, references., appendices, contributors,
index. $34.95.)
A Guide to the National Road. Edited by
Karl Raitz. (Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
1996. xxiv + 394p.; illustrations, maps, notes, glossary, references,
suggested readings, contributors, index. $34.95.)
Canals, steam-powered railroads and, to a lesser degree, historic turnpikes
have long captured the attention of serious transportation historians.
In recent years legions of avocational scholars and weekend enthusiasts,
in part fueled by nostalgia, have joined on the historic bandwagon, drawing
more notoriety to these bygone byways. Perhaps because the places and
artifacts associated with these modes of transport are so tangible, and
their imagery becomes increasingly mythical, their place in American culture
and folklore can hardly be overstated.
Historic roads seem to be getting their just due. In 1993, the sesquicentennial
of the Oregon Trail generated scores of reenactments, local celebrations,
and national publicity, while recent studies of the Lincoln Highway, the
first genuine national road system, and Route 66 have explored the topic
of auto highways. By virtue of their context within the romantic iconography
of the American "west," subjects such as Route 66 and the Oregon Trail
have tended to overshadow the equally significant but lesser-known impacts
of the eastern routes, particularly the National Road. This perception
toward the National Road, or general lack of it, can be partly attributed
to the fact that there are no epic stories, no breathtaking vistas or
natural landmarks associated with the road that stir the public's imagination.
And, significantly, there have been no television documentaries.
Still, US Route 40 and its progenitor, the National Road, have been carefully
examined in academic circles for nearly a half-century. George Stewart's
pathbreaking US Route 40: Cross Section of the United States of America
documented on the eve of the interstate era the motor landscape and its
antecedents. Subsequent works include Thomas Schlereth's highly readable
US Route 40: A Road (1985) and Thomas and Geraldine Vale's US
40 Today: Thirty Years of Landscape Change in America (1983).
It is this notion of change, an ever-present companion to the landscape,
that inspired Henry Douglas, co-founder of the Pioneer America Society,
and his photographer colleague, William Barrett, to propose the idea in
the 1980s of a National Road documentary project. Generously funded through
Douglas's estate and an NEH grant, the subsequent cultural resource survey,
background research, and photographic essay laid the foundation for this
handsome two-volume set published in collaboration with the Center for
American Places in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Both volumes are organized
chronologically around two central themes: the road's landscape is a layered
cross-section, or "artifactual strata through time," and much of our nation's
history can be interpreted through these natural and manmade landscapes.
Drawing on the collective talents of a noted photo director, cartographer
and twelve scholars, mostly cultural geographers, Karl Raitz, the indefatigable
editor, and oontiibutor, skillfully leads the reader into an interpretive
Book Reviews, page 191
study and field trip of the National Road. Setting the tone for both
volumes, Pierce Lewis in his introduction suggests that the "ability to
move" was the key to success in America. Lewis traces this theme through
popular art and literature, from Huck Finn to the Grapes of Wrath.
Each major conveyance—turnpike, rail, canal—was interrelated
with the notion of mobility, a fixation that eventually manifested into
the romance with what Raitz calls the "freedom and flexibility" of the
auto (p. 316). The National Road essentially exists today as a tangible
monument to this passion for mobility.
It is Raitz and his fellow cultural geographers who give this set vitality
and thematic continuity. Raitz's aptly titled chapter, "Contentious Geography,"
carefully profiles the geology and geography of the route into the interior,
its cultural hearths and migration patterns, interwoven with the fact
that politicians, not engineers, were chiefly responsible for determining
the final route. While roads are essentially stories about engineering
and transportation, Thomas Schlereth provides a humanist perspective through
a handsome black and white portfolio of paintings and landscape art. His
essay defines the notion of road as a metaphor, including its dark and
lonely qualities. Lights, we learn, fostered night driving and, despite
their inherent dangers and ethereal effects, ultimately encouraged shoppers
and a night-life subculture.
Authors Billy Joe Peyton, Gregory Rose, and Craig Colten examine the
harsh physical challenges of road building, drawing on engineering records
in presenting a technological discussion of the road's survey and construction,
engineering, and the fascinating aspects of twentieth century reworking.
Of note to Ohio road buffs is Peyton's description of the section from
Bridgeport to Zanesville, mentioned here for being the nation's first
new road built in the macadam style.
While it can be argued the road falls short of being a "National Road,"
never reaching the South or even St. Louis, it was, states Joseph Wood,
designed, funded, and constructed by the young federal government. As
such it stands as the nation's first public works project. Envisioned
as a Jeffersonian device to spur western development, tying the east to
the west, the "Hard Road," or "Gallatin's Road," two of the road's more
telling nicknames, was ultimately taken over by newer technologies. The
most dramatic transformation has been the development of the interstate
highway system and its concomitant "consumption corridors."
Again it is change, especially technological change, that defines much
of the road's legacy. This is a dialogue that unites the text. John Jakle
provides us with traveler's impressions, narratives, and anecdotal accounts,
including observations such as Stewart's prescient lament "the billboards
ruined everything" (p. 253). Echoing Raitz's earlier account, Hubert Wilhelm
profiles the physical impacts brought by eastern settlers, notably the
linear road town, Pennsylvania Sweitzer barns, the I house, and even some
upland south incursions. Raitz segues into the twentieth century by tracing
the auto landscapes evidenced in motels, auto camps, and drive-ins, as
well as the more mundane aspects of truck traffic, four-lane bypasses,
and the notion of "America Antiqued," where entire towns have been transformed
into antique shops. Yet it is Richard Schein who brings us full circle,
arguing the interstate achieved what the National Road could not, creating
a true national transportation network. His incisive if at times unforgiving
analysis of the Interstate Highway System (IHS), particularly its exit
developments and interchanges, is the set's most provocative essay. Terms
such as "galactic cities," "guerilla suburbia," and "a-topia," unsettling
as they may sound, describe a vehicular plan that promoted individual
movement through tightly managed
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Book Reviews, page 192
central control. We are reminded of George Kennan's admonition "America's
marriage to the auto is a devil's contract," a metaphor that gives us
all pause.
Forbiddings aside, the reader is invited to follow the landscape of the
National Road through the companion work, Guide to the National Road.
At 400 pages, the book's seven essays and lively vignettes are a worthy
match for the most ardent traveler, whether in the comfort of an armchair
or as a passenger in an automobile. Motor tourism, guidebooks, and roadside
landmarks all figure into Clay's introductory observation that "travel,
not baseball, is the nation's pastime" (p. xix). The Guide is complemented
by splendid photos, all of them taken by four professional photographers,
as well as solid cartography work. Minor omissions and criticisms can
almost be overlooked in a work of this scope. Historic maps, linear town
plats, and a clearer discussion of historical archaeology were deficient,
and there were inconsistencies in the dates of Congressman Douglas's trip
(pp. 157, 238, 383). Other misdemeanors range from the erroneous routes
given for Zane's Trace to misspellings of Allegheny (p. 55) and pike (p.
453), but in the final analysis the book's merits remain foremost.
Contributors to this project, and especially Henry Douglas, would be
gratified to know this work has helped shape and direct several National
Road preservationrelated projects. Glenn Harper and others sound the call
with their message of how preservation efforts are finally bringing results.
In Ohio a comprehensive inventory of all transportation-related resources
along the National Road has recently been completed, and stabilization
work on the stone arch bridge at Blame (1830) is underway. Fragile, decaying,
and in many places all but forgotten, the vestiges of the National Road
are rapidly disappearing from our cultural landscape and, sadly, our cultural
memory. To neglect this legacy or, even worse, dismiss it as antiquarian
could well mean it will be lost to what Schein calls "the appearance of
sameness."
Stephen C. Gordon, Ohio Historical Society
The Sunday Game: At the Dawn of Professional
Football. By Keith McClellan. (Akron,
Ohio: The University of Akron Press, 1998. xi + 5O3p.; illustrations,
notes, appendices, index. $39.95 cloth; $19.95 paper.)
Near the turn of the 20th century baseball was the only professionally
organized team sport. The concept of team sports was not an important
component of American culture. European immigrants during the 1890s and
early years of the new century viewed baseball as a socializing force.
If you loved baseball, you were American. It was becoming increasingly
important to bring new arrivals into American culture. Emerging industrialization,
continued urbanization, improved communications with the telegraph and
later the telephone, the railroads, and modern journalism in local newspapers
all boosted organized sports. People sought to escape the factory floor
and the paved streets of the city to the green grass of the sport's fields
and the playground. Sports became the topic of numerous discussions, and
sports figures became heroes to be admired by both young and old.
If you ever wondered why the 1916 Cleveland Indians were 8-3-1 you should
read this book. You would discover that this team played its games between
September and December 1916, and that they were a football team, not a
baseball
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Book Reviews, page 193
team. So were the Heralds, Marines, Clabbys, Triangles, and the Panhandles.
On October 17, 1915, the Fort Wayne Friars beat the Muncie Congervilles
109-0. This sounds trivial, but it does provide insight into the early
history of professional football. This was football during its formative
years when it evolved from an independent game to a professional sport.
Professional football was first called independent football because it
was independent of college football. Initially many people opposed its
development because it broke the Sabbath in the South and violated Blue
Laws in New York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. It first developed
in the medium-sized factory cities of the Midwest. In 1903 the Canton
Bulldogs were formed to play the Massillon Tigers and the local rivalry
became intense, encouraging both teams to attract paid players from other
states. At the same time strong independent teams arose in Columbus, Toledo,
Akron, Dayton, and Cincinnati, Ohio; Detroit and Ann Arbor in Michigan;
three locations in Indiana; and in Evanston and Rock Island, Illinois.
It became common for these teams to pay former college players to suit
up for a game on Sunday. Modest admission fees were charged or the hat
was passed to regain some of the cost of paying the players. On average
players earned five dollars per game while, by contrast, the average worker
earned from five to ten dollars a week.
In chapter 2, McClellan chronicles the early history of football played
on Sundays in rivalry-conscious Midwestern towns. He explains how Sunday
football was attractive to blue-collar workers because of lower ticket
prices, the day of the contests, the rough-and-tumble guys who played,
and community pride. The author also explains the different rules, game
structure, and equipment of the game as opposed to now. The differences
between then and now are enlightening. Chapters 3 and 24 provide interesting
discussions about Native American players and their team from Altoona,
Pennsylvania, black players and the issue of the racial barriers which
stood in their way, and the reasons that some players used assumed names.
The author also chronicles some of the colorful nicknames such as Dutch,
Skeet, Nasty, and Auggie used by football players.
Chapters 5 through 28 primarily consist of detailed histories of twenty-four
teams that pioneered professional football and laid the foundation for
the National Football League. These histories provide colorful chronicles
of these early teams and form a useful reference point for information
in the future. As a student of Ohio's past I found the chapters on teams
from Canton, Massillon, and Youngstown, to name but a few, interesting.
Two of the strongest and most controversial chapters in the book, concerning
how football prepared young men for the future and the promotion and financing
of early football teams, especially during World War I, conclude the publication.
McClellan explains how football helped in the socialization of second-generation
emigrants and rural migrants to growing urban and manufacturing centers
in the Midwest. He maintains that football fostered an emphasis on teamwork,
the pursuit of common goals, and specialized assignments for the common
good of the team effort. In short, football went hand in hand with the
new era of large manufacturing firms, which required all of the above
characteristics to be successful. While this may sound somewhat simplistic,
football certainly contributed toward this ethic in turn-of-the-century
Midwest.
In the final chapter, McClellan tells us of two fundamental problems
in the evolution of professional football. The first was the dependence
on community support for an identity and the resources needed to survive.
The costs of fielding
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a competitive team continued to rise faster than income in an era when
only gate receipts provided revenue. Without the sale of licensed sportsware,
revenue from television or radio, concessions, or parking fees, it became
increasingly difficult to hold a good team together. Bidding wars for
key players ensued. McClellan also discusses the disparity inherent when
communities of vastly different sizes and revenue potential compete with
each other. The games, he contends, become uneven and unfair. The sport
becomes less interesting and less competitive. This reviewer thinks that
this discussion is out of place in this publication. Clearly, professional
football is no longer played in towns such as Akron and Massillon, Ohio,
as well as Fort Wayne, Indiana. But hundreds of former teams, in a variety
of spectator sports, no longer exist today. This evolution is natural
and is based on numerous factors, which are beyond the discussion here.
The American business environment is still based on the principles of
capitalism and a free market economy. These principles should govern sports
as well as other aspects of life in the United States.
These personal opinions aside, this book remains a valuable one. It is
well researched, well illustrated, contains valuable appendices, and provides
an important source for future investigation on the evolution of professional
football.
William C. Gates, Ohio Historical Society
Atlas of Kentucky. Edited by Richard Ulack,
Karl Raitz, and Gyla Pauer. (Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press,
1998. xii + 316p.; illustrations, glossary, selected bibliography, sources,
contributors, index, county name overlays. $39.95.)
The Atlas of Kentucky joins two other publications of the 1990s,
the Kentucky Encyclopedia (1992) and A New History of Kentucky
(1997), to provide a modern reference library on the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
The editors and the publisher have created a very attractive volume that
can grace both the coffee table and the scholar's book shelf—no mean
combination.
Happily, this atlas is more than a collection of maps. Though the opening
chapter presents an inviting picture of mountains, rivers, caverns, and
lakes, human geography occupies the remainder of the book. Approximately
a thousand photographs, charts, graphs, and maps seek to explain what
Kentucky has been and is.
The unifying theme is a state in transition. Through statistical evidence,
though not a great deal of interpretation, the editors show the diversity
of a commonwealth poised for change. They seem to avoid making obvious—though
perhaps controversial—conclusions, but the Atlas does provide the
evidence for teachers, businessmen, or politicians to address such issues.
And it is a gold mine of such information. Detailed graphs show the production
of tobacco, corn and soybeans, coal, oil, natural gas, and many other
resources. Other graphs and charts indicate the growth of manufacturing,
particularly the automotive industry, and the decline of farming and coal
in income production and number of Kentuckians employed. The editors imply,
however, a more important influence of farming. The rural farming mentality
remains strong in the state, and that fact influences politics and planning.
The work also notes such matters as the extremes of rich and poor, high
school drop-out rates, and areas where highly educated people live. Cross-referencing
the
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Book Reviews, page 195
information on educational levels and areas with high standards of living
could help convince more young people to stay in school. It should be
no surprise that the population of the state is getting older, but the
Atlas provides those who must plan for health care and labor needs
indispensable information by showing the age distribution by county. The
Atlas mentions the tendency of many Kentuckians to leave the state
to find better jobs, a subject of particular interest to places where
"little Kentucky" neighborhoods have arisen. At the same time, recreation
draws the "Ohio Navy" to Kentucky's lakes and the westernmost area of
the state has become a haven for retirees. Those leaving for jobs pass
these arriving for fun.
Ohio readers might wish for more information on northern Kentucky and
its role in the Golden Triangle, the prosperous area bordered by Cincinnati,
Louisville, and Lexington. There the greatest change is taking place,
due in no small way to its proximity to Cincinnati and the international
airport there.
This work also pays homage to traditional Kentucky. Maps show "wet,"
"dry," and "beer only" counties as well as the statewide distribution
of season ticket holders for University of Kentucky and University of
Louisville men's basketball games. Football statistics are not included.
Some things do not change.
A few weaknesses do emerge. First, much of the information is now five
or more years old. Based on the last census, the Atlas was released
barely in time for the next one. Given the monumental task of the editors
and the publication process, the authors might consider putting the
Atlas online where yearly updating could keep it more current. Second,
for tired old eyes and perhaps younger ones too, the colors used on maps
and charts should be more distinct. This reader was forced back to the
text because some maps were almost unreadable. Finally, those interested
in faster change will be disappointed that future needs were not presented
more forcefully. The editors generally offer the research and leave interpretation
to others.
A reader always wishes for more, but that should not obscure the fact
that the Atlas of Kentucky certainly is a very welcome addition
to the literature on Kentucky. It will bring much pleasure to its readers.
Lindsey Apple, Georgetown College
Conrad Wise Chapman: Artist & Soldier of
the Confederacy. Ben L. Bassham. (Kent,
Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 1998. xvi + 328p.; illustrations,
notes, bibliography, index. $60.00.)
Kent State University art historian Ben Bassham has done a great service
in preparing this biographical analysis of the work of a truly gifted
artist. Conrad Chapman was among a very rare breed that prepared finished
oils and watercolors while serving in a Civil War army. At one point,
in fact, he was given this task as a specific military assignment. Chapman's
art was defined by the war, and he remained a "fiercely un-Reconstructed
Rebel" throughout the remaining four decades of his career.
Bassham does not treat his subject in isolation, instead beginning his
study with an analysis of the art of Chapman's father, John Gadsby Chapman,
and the art colony in Italy that provided an informal school for the young
artist. As an artist, both Chapman's greatest strength and weakness was
his ability to create artfully only that which he could physically observe,
having no romantic inclinations
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Book Reviews, page 196
towards invention. That characteristic gives his art unparalleled documentary
value in the late-twentieth century.
Despite a European upbringing, the start of the Civil War gave Chapman
an unwavering attraction to his father's native Virginia and the Southern
cause. Sneaking away from his family in Rome during the summer of 1861,
he enlisted in a Kentucky regiment. Western campaigns found him at the
Battle of Shiloh, where he was wounded, helping defend Vicksburg, and
fighting at the Battle of Baton Rouge. Transferring to a Virginia regiment,
he helped guard Richmond's back door under his namesake, General Henry
A. Wise. Throughout he took his sketchbook, pencil, and watercolors, with
which he produced numerous camp scenes, city and rural landscapes, portraits,
and vignettes of military life. He took seriously his father's suggestion
in the summer of 1862 that he might serve the Confederacy by creating
a documentary record of it.
In September 1 863 his brigade was assigned to the defense of Charleston,
South Carolina, where he would produce his most important contribution
to Civil War art. After being assigned to the staff of General Pierre
G. T. Beauregard, commandant of the forces in the city, Chapman was detailed
to use oil, pencil, and watercolor to prepare artwork that would accompany
an official history of the defense of Charleston. The assignment was unique
in the annals of Civil War art. At times fearlessly working while under
fire, he prepared interior and exterior landscapes of the array of Confederate
fortifications and batteries. Two of the more than twenty pieces of art
in Chapman's Charleston series portray actual combat scenes. One is a
view of Battery Simkins on February 25, 1864, showing Rebel artillerymen
busily replying to the Federal bombardment shown in the distance, and
another represents the exchange of fire between Fort Moultrie and a column
of Union monitors on November 16, 1863. Like the others, both are filled
with fascinating martial details and are here handsomely reproduced in
color. Several oils focus on the Confederate Navy's ill-starred attacks
on the Union blockade via submersible vessel technology. Bassham carefully
explains the theatrical nature of some of the most dramatic of the series,
such as Chapman's views of Fort Sumter, the ultimate symbol of the defiant
and dogged Confederate defense. In the process Bassham commits a small
error of interpretation. Chapman's oil The Flag of Fort Sumter October
20, 1863, shows a lashed-together, two-part flagpole that the author
suggests is the result of repairs to this regular Union target. In reality
such twopart construction, much like a ship mast, was common for fortification
flagstaffs during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
After a brief tour on a diplomatic mission and reunion with his family
in Rome, Chapman returned to America just as the war was ending. Eventually
throwing his lot in with a group of disillusioned but unrepentant Confederates
in Mexico, he produced another series of remarkable landscapes of this
"most thoroughly picturesque country." This fifteen-month experience left
him with material that he often revisited during the remainder of his
career. More important, as Bassham emphasizes, is the maturity and sophistication
of his panoramic landscapes from this period that surpassed even the best
of his Charleston series.
Nonetheless, as Chapman wandered through Italy, France, and England,
ultimately returning to Rome, his main mission remained to "try and fight
the Yankeys" through his art. Bassham expertly covers Chapman's work during
this final period. The artist had struggled with regular bouts of severe
depression throughout his life, finally resulting in a term in a mental
institution and a serious reduction in his work capacity. Chapman finally
died in 1910 while living a hand
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Book Reviews, page 197
to-mouth existence with his second wife in Hampton, Virginia.
Kent State University Press is to be commended overall for the high production
qualities of the volume. A list of plates and illustrations would have
made the volume even more useful as a catalog, and collection names are
oddly omitted from the manuscript sources in the bibliography. But these
are quibbling points in what is otherwise a first-rate production by both
author and press. It should become the standard reference for Chapman.
David A. Simmons, Ohio Historical Society
A History of the Ohio Agricultural Experiment
Station, 1882-1997. By Christopher Cumo.
(Akron, Ohio: Midwest Press Incorporated, 1997. vi + i69p.; illustrations,
notes, bibliography, index. $24.95 paper.)
In his preface, the author of this work observes that historians have
paid little attention to agricultural experiment stations because they
are taken for granted by society, because they are male oriented, and
because they benefit land owners more than agricultural laborers. This
is unfortunate because experiment stations have made significant contributions
not only to agriculture, but to the American society at large. Hence,
the author calls for a renewed interest in this phase of American agricultural
history which he hopes will lead to a broad study integrating the work
of all experiment stations with American economic and political life.
He hopes this book will serve to begin that process.
This volume follows the history of the Ohio experiment station over a
period of slightly more than a century by focusing primarily on the work
of its directors. It emphasizes their efforts to build the institution
and the many political and personal difficulties that from time to time
obstructed their work. At that level the book is quite successful. It
is based upon impressive research and it is very thorough. However, the
author devotes comparatively little attention to the science produced
by the stations and its direct contribution to agriculture. There is mention
of achievement, but very little discussion of the research and the scientists
who did it. This is a regrettable flaw in an otherwise excellent piece
of work.
Kenneth E. Hendrickson, Jr, Midwestern State University
Huey Long Invades New Orleans: The Siege of a
City, 1934-36. By Garry Boulard. (Gretna,
Louisiana: Pelican Publishing Company, 1998. 2'7'7p.; illustrations, notes,
index. $14.95 paper.)
In 1934, the uneasy truce between United States Senator Huey Pierce Long,
political strongman of Louisiana, and the Regular Democratic Organization
(RDO), the urban machine that had dominated New Orleans politics since
the late nineteenth century, came to an end. Long, in no mood to brook
opposition from the urbanites, used his political clout to declare virtual
war upon the city. 0. K. Allen, the caretaker governor of Louisiana, established
martial law in New Orleans and brought in the Louisiana National Guard
to intervene in local affairs. Long also used his imposing influence with
the state legislature to strip the city government of vital revenue and
control over essential municipal departments
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Book Reviews, page 198
including the police and fire departments. These heavy-handed tactics
ultimately proved successful. Longite candidates won at the polls in New
Orleans in 1934, many RDO stalwarts defected to the Long camp, and Mayor
T. Semmes Walmsley, leader of the Old Regulars and a focal point of the
Kingfish's wrath, resigned.
Garry Boulard presents a very readable account of this example of the
Kingfish's immense power in Louisiana. Boulard has examined many sources,
mainly newspaper files, and interviewed several surviving participants
from the era. He is clearly at his best in capturing the spirit of the
times. His narrative includes rich detail on the leading figures, society,
and culture of Louisiana during the 1930s. His description of the Roosevelt
Hotel, Huey Long's base of operations in New Orleans, and Seymour Weiss,
the hotel's owner and a trusted Long lieutenant, is particularly outstanding.
Boulard also devotes considerable attention to the life and character
of Mayor Walmsley. The image of the Crescent City chief executive that
emerges from the pages of this work is that of a noble individual who
tried to do his best in the face of harsh times and a relentless, powerful
foe. This depiction, however, is at odds with the interpretation of T.
Harry Williams, Huey Long's biographer, who viewed Walmsley as a political
incompetent who could not be trusted and eventually lost the support of
his political allies.
Boulard's characterization of Huey Long is mixed. Although the author
clearly presents the Kingfish as a ruthless political leader who used
force to impose his will upon the city of New Orleans, he also notes the
positive accomplishments that Long brought to the Pelican State. His concluding
remarks on Long and his political legacy indeed are quite laudatory.
The greatest problem with the book, however, is that despite its excellent
descriptions of the era, it adds little to historical knowledge of Huey
Long and his assault on New Orleans in 1934-1935. Other works cover the
same ground and offer stronger analyses of the Kingfish, his programs
and the phenomenon of Longism in Louisiana as well as the place of the
Old Regulars in Crescent City history. Boulard, nonetheless, has written
an appealing popular account of Huey Long's assault on the city of New
Orleans that captures the flavor of the era superbly and will undoubtedly
win the approval of numerous general readers.
Edward F. Haas, Wright State University
Party Spirit in a Frontier Republic: Democratic
Politics in Ohio, 1793-1821. By Donald
J. Ratcliffe. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998. xii + 336p;
maps, notes, select bibliography, index. $60.00 cloth; $23.95 paper.)
It is a small irony that an Englishman, Donald Ratcliffe of the University
of Durham, ranks among the foremost authorities on early Ohio politics.
This work will enhance that reputation. No "life and times" account, Party
Spirit in a Frontier Republic joins one of the most debated topics
of early American history, the origins of our party system (particularly
on the frontier). It acknowledges the important contributions of Richard
McCormick, Ronald Formisano, and James Rogers Sharp, who found no modem
parties in Ohio till the Second Party System of the 1820s—who believed
earlier struggles reflected an elitist, "personal" politics, as well as
tensions between New England and Virginia emigrants. But Ratcliffe disagrees.
His closely reasoned analysis suggests that partisanship
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developed earlier, and that the split between Federalists and Republicans
was critical even during the statehood movement of 1802.
In fairness, this reviewer must admit his own research in the politics
of the Ohio Valley led him to a similar belief. If lacking the formality
of eastern structures, "proto parties" evolved in Ohio (and even states
further west, if later and to a lesser extent) long before 1828. Ratcliffe
questions a "politics of deference," given voter identification, philosophy,
and even delegate conventions. Modern parties must be systematic and last
beyond any set of leaders. But missing some modern features does not equate
to "no party." Cautions Ratcliffe: "recent historiography has risked throwing
the partisan baby out with the somewhat murky systemic bathwater" (p.
4).
His thesis is stated at the book's outset, which then offers evidence
gathered in thirty years of research. It posits that Ohio politics were
democratized by the 1800s, with symbols and mechanisms lasting over a
decade; that partisanship emphasized national issues; and that these divisions
did not wholly disappear in the Era of Good Feelings, but influenced later
voting.
Ratcliffe shows Federalists and Republicans clashed in Ohio by 1796 (though
the latter reflected the ideas of Paine and the French revolutionaries
more than Jefferson's). Still, politics were not yet fought along national
lines. Opposition to powerful but flawed Arthur St. Clair was mostly a
"Country" party fighting gubernatorial vetoes. However, collapse of the
land magnates and liberalization of the suffrage (with St. Clair's approval)
led to a need to organize voters prior to an election. As Federalist defenders
of St. Clair did not share the voters' enthusiasm for statehood in 1802,
Republicans gained the upper hand. Though the two parties shared many
ideals at the constitutional convention, Republicans now dominated. Ratcliffe
points to social and religious tensions, as well as Ohioans' passionate
defense of the French—and the belief anyone pro-British was potentially
disloyal to American republicanism—as other strengths. This was more
important than settlers' origins in Virginia or New England, he argues.
But schisms developed among Republicans, over patronage and ambition
as well as regional interests. The minority Federalists "amalgamated"
with dissident Republicans to gain some influence. The response was corresponding
societies to enforce regularity; and when these were not enough, nominating
meetings or conventions (in Ohio, much earlier than previously thought).
Public suspicion of these, when arranged nominations were tantamount to
election, and a Federalist revival after 1807—due to Jefferson's
embargo—weakened the Republican apparatus. This worsened after many
Republican leaders supported the Assembly's "Sweeping Resolution" of 1810,
designed to oust certain judges. It backfired. To regain influence, some
Republicans organized Ohio's first Tammany wigwams. Solidarity worked
in some areas, but provoked strong opposition among Republicans elsewhere
(especially after demands for loyalty on issues unrelated to national
matters). Eventually popular suspicion caused Tammany's decline; Ratcliffe
likens it to later anti-Masonic fears. One thing was certain: "senior
politicians" ran their state not through deference and loyalty, but by
catering to the electorate and trumpeting their "Republicanism" (to Ratcliffe,
"populism").
Ironically, the partisan battle waned with the War of 1812. Though now
suspicious of some national leaders, Republicans loyally supported the
war (no surprise, with Indians on their doorstep). But so did most Ohio
Federalists. As the two worked together, party spirit faded. The war made
nonsense of old alignments and ended the major issue giving rise to the
First Party System—the struggle
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between Britain and France. New issues, particularly banking questions,
ripped the old parties apart in the "Era of Good Feelings," while the
Missouri crisis divided Ohio Republicans from their traditional Southern
leaders. In an epilogue, Ratcliffe shows the vote patterns of 1812-16
did not correlate with the patterns of 1828, and close allies in earlier
years found themselves on opposite sides of the Jackson fence. Yet he
offers evidence that the bias against Federalism still remained a significant
(if hardly exclusive) factor in partisan affiliation.
Ratcliffe's work is meticulously researched and footnoted, with few errors
(but see p. 46; the Land Act of 1800 didn't halve the price per acre;
it remained at two dollars, set in 1796). At times only the most careful
of readers will not miss the forest for the trees of detail. And while
he believes philosophy and partisanship overshadowed "personal" politics
by 1810, one wishes he had given more attention to kinship connections
that may have influenced these. But that is probably a separate study.
Along with research by Jeffrey Brown and Andrew Cayton, this is one of
the most important books on Ohio parties in the National period of the
last thirty years. It belongs on the shelf of every serious student of
early American politics.
Everett W. Kindig, Midwestern State University
The Papers of Andrew Johnson.
Volume 15: September 1868-April 1869. Edited by Paul H. Bergeron.
(Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1999. xxviii + 656p.; illustrations,
notes, chronology, index. $60.00.)
This volume of Andrew Johnson's papers covers the final seven months
of his presidency and one month thereafter. During the fall of 1868, Johnson
participated little in politics, including the presidential campaign and
election, in which Republican Ulysses S. Grant easily defeated Democrat
Horatio Seymour.
In his December 1868 message to Congress, however, Johnson once again
attacked Radical Reconstruction, and also, for the first time, blamed
Congress for the substantial national debt. Then, in February 1869, the
President could not resist vetoing two rather minor bills, as if to show
that his reservoir of anti-Radical venom had not run dry. Yet, during
the same month, he made virtually no comment on Congress's passage of
the Fifteenth Amendment, which he detested.
The President was also passive with respect to two other issues. In the
summer of 1868, he had sent men to look into charges of whiskey frauds
in New York, hoping, at the same time, to discover evidence against Internal
Revenue Commissioner Edward Rollins. However, some of Johnson's investigators
were corrupt, and the President chose not to remove them or Rollins. Johnson
likewise never intervened to stop the growing number of violent confrontations
among political factions in Tennessee, North Carolina, Alabama, and Louisiana.
Unbelievably, even in the twilight of his presidency, a huge number of
requests for jobs continued to arrive at the White House. Johnson did
appoint individuals, but the Senate rejected almost all of them.
Johnson refused to attend Grant's inauguration. Rather, he used the time
to move his belongings out of the White House, then stayed with a friend
for a few days and left for Tennessee. He was cheered by crowds along
the way back to Greenville. Restless, Johnson soon began a campaign to
become Tennessee's governor or United States Senator. He made a series
of well-received speeches in
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cities and towns in Tennessee and Northern Alabama. His efforts were
only slowed a bit by a bout with kidney stones and the suicide of his
thirty-five-year-old son.
The letters that came to the President display a full range of emotions
and conditions. Some of the material must have both amused and disturbed
Johnson. For example, Charles W. Woolley informed him that his spouse
had sent him "a case of 'Bourbon,' which she has locked up from me for
eleven years" (p. 360). One lady from a West Virginia village complained
that "There are but three men that can vote in this town ...and one of
those is an Idiot..." (p. 429). Again, James F. Irvin wrote, "Inclosed
you will find a notice of your Death which has proved to be a lie..."
(p. 577). One destitute woman directed a pathetic request to the President's
wife: "Mrs. Johnson if you have any Clothing you do not want to ware any
more I would thank you for them" (p. 261). Lastly, the gall and persistence
of job-seekers was nothing short of astounding. One reminded the President
that "Not only did I care for your departed son the Dr. but I embalmed
him" (p. 248). And less than a week before Grant's inauguration, another
wrote to Johnson asking, "Would you ere you quit office procure me some
humble employment..." (p. 484).
Paul Bergeron and his talented staff have again chosen a representative
and compelling array of documents to include in this volume. The introduction
and index are first-rate. Moreover, the book's footnotes are both thorough
and fascinating. The first note for a letter written by Joseph W. Pomfrey
and sent from Cincinnati, Ohio, demonstrates the staff's sound judgment
and detecting skills:
Although the writer of this letter appears to have signed
his name "Pomfret," a comparison of his handwriting with an earlier
1 866 letter of his has convinced us that the surname is actually "Pomfrey."
Moreover, we have been able to track a Joseph W. Pomfrey in southern
Ohio and northern Kentucky but have not been able to locate a Pomfret
(pp. 476-477).
This note is typical of these scholars' enviable abilities and dedication.
Gerald W. Wolff, University of South Dakota
Two Kingdoms, Two Loyalties: Mennonite Pacifism
in Modern America. By Perry Bush. (Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1998. xii + 362p.; illustrations, notes, selected
bibliography, index. $42.50.)
The Mennonites, along with the Friends or Quakers and the Church of the
Brethren, form what are frequently referred to as "peace churches." Mennonites
are historically the most isolated and conservative of the three. For
more than three centuries Mennonites held to a two-kingdom theology which
led them to emphasize a strong, personal, Bible-centered faith for their
members, coupled with acceptance of the laws and demands of the state
so long as those demands did not infringe on their consciences. They characterized
their pacifism as "nonresistance" which involved avoidance of voting or
politics, rejection of legal suits to redress grievances, and non-participation
in war. Both sexes wore plain dress, with the women also wearing prayer
caps at all times.
This all changed in the twentieth century, especially following World
War II, when many young Mennonite men had served in civilian work camps
in lieu of military service. Change in the nation at large forced change
among Mennonites,
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who had lived traditionally in rural, farming communities. With more
and more Mennonites moving to urban centers the process of acculturation
was virtually inevitable. Besides changes in location there were changes
in a way of living and even in life's expectations.
Perry Bush skillfully traces the patterns of theological and behavioral
changes both within the Mennonite community and in its relation to the
world at large. None of it was without controversy, for the Mennonites,
like other denominations, have divided into a number of groups with a
great deal of variety within each group. This book treats the change process
as it affected the two largest Mennonite groups, the Mennonite Church
or Old Mennonites, and the General Conference or more liberal Mennonites.
Peace church leaders as well as government officials were determined
that the brutal persecution of religious pacifists in World War I not
be repeated in World War II. The 1940 draft law provided for religious
conscientious objectors to do non-military work of national importance.
The result was Civilian Public Service (CPS) camps which were to be administered
by the churches, paid for by the draftee or his church, but controlled
by Selective Service. Eventually, some objectors were allowed to work
outside the camps, mostly in hospitals or other public service institutions.
Most Mennonite draftees cooperated with the CPS system, though some other
objectors engaged in protest activity or even walked out and went to prison.
By the end of the war, many young Mennonites came to feel that they had
mistakenly accepted conscription, and the church leaders agreed that they
would never again administer a forced labor program.
It was a liberal church leadership along with some who had served in
CPS that led the move to change Mennonite pacifism from nonresistance
to nonviolent resistance. The church's peace committees began lobbying
the government on such issues as nuclear weapons, civil rights, the death
penalty and the war in Vietnam. Much was done in coalitions with other
religious or secular peace organizations. Yet acculturation was not total,
for Mennonite work for peace and justice was still combined with a conservative
personal faith. In pointing out and clarifying that combination the author
places present-day Mennonite pacifism along with that of the Sojourners
and other evangelical Christian pacifists, and demonstrates that such
a combination can be a powerful force for progressive change. That contribution
makes this a very important work.
Larry Gara, Wilmington College
Life with Father: Parenthood and Masculinity
in the Nineteenth-Century American North.
By Stephen M. Frank. (Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1998. x + 24Op.; illustrations, notes, note on methods and sources,
index. $36.00.)
Nineteenth-century fathers, Stephen Frank argues in this well-written
monograph, were not the stern authority figures so often depicted in accounts
of the American family. At least in the white, northern middle class,
from which he draws the bulk of his examples, Frank demonstrates that
what "contemporaries called 'parental solicitude' was a social norm highly
prized by both sexes" (p. 2). Recognizing that paternal behavior varied
widely, the author concludes nonetheless that "enough fathers occupied
places toward the affectionate end of the
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emotional spectrum to refute stereotypes of the starched Victorian patriarch,
selfcontained and presiding remotely over his family" (p. 3). Using diaries,
memoirs, letters, personal papers, and other sources that document fathers'
experiences and beliefs, Frank considers how the changing circumstances
of fatherhood during the nineteenth century transformed both men's interaction
with their children and their understanding of the relation between parenting
and masculinity.
Opening with a brief account of fatherhood in colonial New England and
the early republic, Life with Father proceeds to discussions of
nineteenth-century advice literature about fatherhood, the extent to which
fathers participated in their children's care and upbringing, the anxieties
occasioned by the transition to fatherhood, the role of fathers' play
with their children in constructing masculine identity, and paternal relationships
with older children. Throughout the book, Frank reflects on how fathers
understood and adapted to the expanded maternal authority and influence
within the American family that emerged in the early nineteenth century.
Increasingly, he contends, men viewed the transition to marriage and fatherhood
as the culmination of their ascent to full manhood. At the same time,
fathers cast themselves in secondary parenting roles, leaving the greater
portion of their children's daily care and moral education to mothers,
whose childrearing practices they felt obliged to support. In contrast
to the colonial patriarch who supervised every detail of his children's
upbringing, nineteenth-century fathers became "a companion and play partner
to young children" (p. 115). Frank links this transition, and the "new
kind of middle-class male identity" it produced, to the gendering of home
and work during the nineteenth century: the "frolicsome father became
more acceptable perhaps because patriarchal power had become less personal
and more institutional, more tied to secular public spaces and economic
matters outside the home" (p. 136). Ironically, he notes, this heightened
emphasis on paternal play had more to do with "gendered understandings
of home as a place of feminine work and masculine leisure" (p. 137) than
with concerns about children's welfare. With this more benign role for
fathers, however, also came new anxieties. The same economic changes that
permitted the gendering of home and work made it more difficult to ensure
that children, especially sons, would be able to find suitable means of
sustaining themselves as adults. The growing tendency for sons not to
follow in their fathers' footsteps, Frank shows, generated tensions between
fathers and older sons. Similarly, fathers' relationships with older daughters
came to be shaped by the imperatives of finding them acceptable and economically
stable husbands.
Life with Father offers numerous insights into the evolution of
fatherhood in the northern middle class. It is well researched, nicely
organized, and logically argued. The book's narrow scope may disappoint
some readers, as even the author acknowledges that its conclusions hold
mainly for the northern middle class. But this should not detract from
its value, for fatherhood is a vexingly difficult topic to investigate
beyond the most literate segments of a given society. Indeed, Frank intended
his work to be "a point of departure" (p. 6) for future discussions, and
at this it succeeds admirably well. Life with Father merits the
attention of American social and cultural historians, and would make a
fine addition to advanced undergraduate or graduate courses on gender
or family history.
Scott C. Martin, Bowling Green State University
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Book Reviews, page 204
Truman Defeats Dewey.
By Gary A. Donaldson. (Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press, 1999.
270p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $27.50.)
Gary Donaldson has produced a useful, but flawed, study of Truman's famous
1948 "upset" victory over Thomas E. Dewey. He argues that this first postwar,
post-FDR election, the last "in which television did not play a significant
part" (p. 171), represented "the beginning of a new, modern political
era in American history" (p. 1). Truman, Donaldson argues, had to not
merely hold the Roosevelt coalition but shape a new one. After Republican
victories in the 1946 midterm elections, Truman, following the advice
of Clark Clifford and other "liberal" advisors of the so-called "Wardman
Park group" (p. 21), moved to the left on domestic issues to regain the
support of labor, urban liberals, and AfricanAmericans. This heralded,
according to Donaldson, "the new politics of the postwar period" (p. 121).
Truman abandoned "the old-time politics of sectionalism" (p. 121) and
largely ignored "southern interests" (p.122) to win the electoral votes
of the urban northern states.
The GOP, according to Donaldson, misinterpreted "their 1946 mandate"
(p. 149). Wrongly believing they had been elected to "remove the New Deal"
(p. 149), the Republican-controlled 80th Congress was "generally obstructionist"
(p. 149) and opposed popular programs. Yet their cooperation on foreign
policy allowed Truman to "carry into the election the mantle of international
statesman and leader of the free world" (p. 48). Politically, Donaldson
argues, this gave Truman "exactly what he wanted" (p. 48). In addition,
Truman's loyalty program and the Truman Doctrine "served to steal from
the Republicans the thunder of anticommunism" (p. 46). Even the splits
within the Democratic ranks in 1948 aided Truman. Wallace's Progressive
Party removed the stigma of communist support from the Democrats while
the Dixiecrats removed the onus of segregation, allowing mainstream liberals,
lead by the ADA, and northern blacks, to vote for Truman.
Specialists will find little that is new and some things that are annoying.
The book's topical organization makes it very repetitive. In addition,
the claim that 1948 represented a new era in American politics is overstated.
Some of the issues in 1948, especially anticommunism, had been features
of national politics since at least 1944. Although Donaldson is correct
to point out that the economic climate in 1948 differed from the depression
and that this presented different political/policy challenges, this did
not change the basic groups within the Democratic coalition. Truman, rather
than having to build or rebuild, had to continue to manage the shifting
balance within the coalition—a shifting that had begun a decade earlier
and had accelerated during the war.
The campaign itself is covered in only thirty-six of the book's 220 pages
of text. Although the dust jacket claims that "unlike earlier studies"
this work "examines the tactics of the Republican Party," relatively little
space is given to Dewey's campaign. It occupies only about eight post-nomination
pages. Donaldson does argue that Dewey did not take the offensive and
thus ran a "lethargic, issueless campaign" (p. 178) because polls predicted
he would win. However, little detail or insight is offered into any division
within the campaign organization and why a particular approach prevailed.
The coverage of both campaigns focuses on the candidates with little depth
or detail on party-level finance, organization, or tactics. Particularly
disappointing is the complete absence of any discussion of women in the
campaign. In this period both parties sought to mobilize women in different
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ways and readers would have benefited from a comparison. Some detailed
discussion of campaign finance would also have been helpful. The post-election
analysis section provides useful charts and examines the traditional explanations
for Truman's victory. In places, however, the author is confusing, as
when, in comparing 1948 and 1952, he seems to equate those voting for
a Republican candidate with "Republicans" (p. 209). The discussion of
Ohio fails to mention that in 1944 when Dewey won the state, his running
mate had been the popular Ohio governor John W. Bricker.
In the end this work is a useful overview, especially for undergraduates,
but not the definitive study of this election.
Michael J. Anderson, Clarke College
Citizen Soldiers of the War of 1812.
By C. Edward Skeen. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1999.
229p.; illustrations, bibliographical essay, index. $27.50.)
In 1989 historian Donald Hickey called the War of 1812 a "forgotten conflict,"
and if there ever was a forgotten aspect of that forgotten conflict, it
has been the role of the state militia. Thus C. Edward Skeen's Citizen
Soldiers in the War of 1812 should be a welcome addition to War of
1812 literature, but it often fails to live up to its promise.
One problem, though, is that it does not promise much; the book has "only
the modest objective of describing the federal utilization of militia
to supplement the military forces . . . surveying their performance in
general, and reviewing the operational aspects of militia participation
at the state level." Unfortunately, the federal utilization and operational
role of the militia are precisely those aspects about which most is known.
The performance of the militia at places like Queenston and Bladensburg
is only too familiar.
A considerable part of the brief study does concentrate, to its benefit,
on nonoperational subjects. Chapter 1 looks at the prewar militia, although
almost entirely from a federal perspective. Chapter 2 examines federal
mobilization of the militia at the beginning of the war, again largely
from a federal perspective. Chapter 3 studies militia organization, including
such valuable topics as time of service, substitutes, exemptions, and
health. Chapter 4 looks at the states and militia mobilization, although,
again, much of the text is written from a federal perspective.
Chapters 5 through 9 concentrate on operational matters on the Northwest
frontier, the "Atlantic Front," and in the South. Here Skeen provides
some interesting details on militia affairs in relatively little-covered
areas such as North Carolina and Maryland, but in the main he follows
the important campaigns of the war, providing an operational narrative
while focusing on the militia's (usually unsatisfactory) role. Militia
officers such as New Yorker Peter B. Porter rightly receive praise, although,
strangely, Samuel Smith of Maryland is mentioned hardly at all. One chapter
mixed in with the chapters on military operations focuses on federal-state
relations, and contains much interesting material, especially on the "state
armies" raised or proposed near the end of the war. The tenth and final
chapter provides a brief and unsatisfactory summary of the decline of
the militia after the war.
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Skeen mainly utilizes published primary sources for his narrative, as
well as various microfilm record collections (of which the most valuable
is the Records of the United States), and a few accessible newspapers.
The lack of in-depth archival research on the militia is often apparent.
The problem with relying on sources such as American State Papers,
the Annals of Congress, and the National Intelligencer is
that it is difficult to gain anything but a federal perspective from them.
Much of the state-level material consulted consists merely of governor's
messages or militia laws. Consequently Skeen's study often lacks empathy
with the problems militiamen and those who organized them faced.
Perhaps more seriously, by concentrating so heavily on major military
campaigns, Skeen overlooks the ways many, perhaps most, militiamen were
used, including minor campaigns, garrison duty, and protection against
Indian attack. Skeen discusses Fort Meigs, but neglects to mention the
mass call-up of Ohio militia to relieve it. In fact, the state of Ohio,
whose militia bore one of the heaviest burdens of the war, appears hardly
at all, save for the embarrassing surrender of Detroit. Also largely neglected
are the frontier militias. Articles and dissertations (including, it should
be admitted up front, some from this reviewer) written during the 1990s
on these subjects, as well as on the pre- and postwar militia, could have
helped shore up some of these gaps, but they were not consulted.
Although students of the War of 1812 will want to have this resource
handy, and any illumination of the still largely hidden history of the
militia is welcome, Citizen Soldiers serves more to illustrate
what still needs to be done than it does to satisfy the lack of attention.
Mark Pitcavage, Institute for Intergovernmental Research
The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism: Ordinary
Women in the Antislavery Movement. By
Julie Roy Jeffrey. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press,
1998. xii + 311p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $45.00 cloth;
$18.95 paper.)
"The great silent army of abolitionism" of this book turns out not to
have been particularly silent at all. Silence comes into play only in
the sense that historical memory has kept alive little about the lives
and work of the women whose abolitionist efforts are examined here. From
the 1830s through the 1860s, "ordinary" women, numbering perhaps in the
hundreds of thousands, devoted some portion of their lives to the antislavery
cause. Indeed, it seems safe to say that they formed the grassroots, the
rank-and-file, of that movement. Jeffrey shows us in this well-researched
and well-written monograph who they were, what they cared about, and what
they did to advance the work of the crusade.
The story of their work told here supplies us with rich and absorbing
detail, drawn largely from accounts of female antislavery organizations.
We have long known that women, particularly evangelical ones from the
Northeast and of smalltown origin, were active in a variety of reform
causes. Jeffrey's contribution in exploring their experiences, both individual
and collective, is not so much to tell us something we do not already
know in its broadest outlines. Rather, she elevates in importance the
contributions of otherwise anonymous individuals involved in a massive
social and political effort. Not coincidentally, these are women. Without
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them, it is safe to say, the Garrisons and the Grimkes would have been
nothing more than a curious historical footnote.
Jeffrey means for this to be an important contribution to women's history-to
a genre that treats of erasures and absences and proceeds to fill in the
blanks. Jeffrey has mined, and well, the fragments of institutional experience
of an important segment of women. We know more after this book about the
ways in which reform activity both fulfilled and problematized the cultural
construction of womanhood at the time.
Nevertheless and despite the excellent contribution this book makes,
I found myself wishing the author had taken more risks in interpreting
for us the significance of this story. The historiographical emplotment
she invokes here is, after all, very familiar. Where do we go after acknowledging
once again significant erasures of women from historical memory? How does
our knowledge of what goes in the blanks help us to see the world differently?
Jeffrey does a particularly good job at showing us the ways women were
in fact political animals (both in the narrower and broader constructions
of the word "politics"), largely responsible for creating a dynamic by
which a big-name movement became incorporated into the bone and sinew
of daily life for most people. What finally struck me most about the story
of these women is how important was their political work, often done in
fits and starts and not called by that name at all, to the story of abolitionism.
It is easy to forget: not in particular because they were women, but because
the work they did (the type assigned to women, even today) involved mundane
and thankless efforts that usually did not create a splash. In our contemporary
culture, where celebrity rules and where resources and power flow to the
already famous, it can sometimes be difficult to imagine that anyone "ordinary"
really has the power to make a difference. By believing that they could
effect change in the world, these women did so—though perhaps not
exactly in the ways they imagined. To think that their tale only says
something to and about women would be to ghettoize a story with much larger
implications.
Mary Kupiec Cayton, Miami University
The History of Wisconsin.
Volume IV: The Progressive Era, 1893-1914. By John D. Buenker.
(Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1998. xviii + 734p; illustrations,
notes, essay on sources, appendix, index. $40.00.)
During thirty years teaching American history to some 7,000 college students,
Robert M. "Fighting Bob" La Follette was ever a favorite subject of mine
and of my students. The author of this excellent and thoroughly researched
study of Wisconsin progressivism is well aware of this weakness among
Clio's followers, stating that "Fighting Bob' remains the most celebrated
figure in Wisconsin history. Most historians are highly sympathetic to
La Follette's professional goals"—in spite of their legendary character—"and
are inclined to love him for the enemies he made, even if for nothing
else" (p. 490).
Professor John D. Buenker has published five books and many articles
on the Progressive period during nearly three decades of teaching U.S.
history at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside at Kenosha, but this comprehensive,
balanced, and well-written book, one of six volumes, may be his best yet.
He believes that
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although the La Follette years were largely the culmination of struggles
begun in the 1890s, it probably took a uniquely charismatic chief executive
to carry these struggles to a successful conclusion. In short, this lengthy
book gives La Follette his due, but significantly "Fighting Bob" does
not really enter the story until chapter 10. The first 431 pages reveal
in detail the complex process of adaptation and growth of a progressive
Republican movement to which La Follette was a conspicuously late convert.
The greatest value of this work, then, is not so much what Buenker has
to say about the well-known La Follette, but what he reveals of the rise
of a potent mixture of middle-class intellectuals, new-style academics,
of populists and socialists, idealogues and utopians, political mavericks
and ordinary men and women of conscience, all of whom united behind a
belief that "progress" was not some inevitable Darwinian phenomena the
bankers and industrialists held it to be, but much more a product of conscious
human definition and manipulation. Progressives they soon became, dedicated
to the Wisconsin Ideal, "a broad emotive descriptor for a general attitude
or approach to public policy—not a set of carefully enunciated precepts"
(p. 569). Simply stated, they held that in the complex modern world, people
and government needed experts to work in their behalf.
The driving force for change was provided by several distinct but interacting
groups. Some University of Wisconsin professors got the ball rolling,
led by Charles R. Van Hise, Richard T. Ely, and John R. Commons. They
promoted higher education as a benefit to the public and to officers of
state government. Their university grew from thirty-five faculty members
in 1887 to 700 in 1914, certainly one measure of their success!
Another group consisted of trade unionists, urban Socialists, and rural
Grangers. Out of this mixture emerged the statewide Wisconsin State Federation
of Labor (WSFL). Even though Socialists were involved, the WSFL steadily
improved the lot of workers within the capitalist system. Its remarkably
forward-looking legislative agenda reveals the goals of most Progressives:
a state income tax, universal suffrage, safety and sanitation laws, government
work relief for the unemployed, payment of wages in cash, abolition of
child labor, free compulsory education, an eight-hour day, sanitary inspection
of shop and home, employer liability, abolition of sweatshops, and the
establishment of postal savings banks. In spite of this admirable platform,
major farm organizations, especially the powerful Dairymen's Association,
were indifferent to labor; thus labor legislation, 1911-1913, passed only
by exempting agricultural workers.
Another important group were the civil servants led by Charles McCarthy
of the Legislative Reference Library where many Progressive bills were
written, usually with the objective of protecting the public interest.
The best-known group, of course, was the loose coalition of progressive
Republican politicians led by La Follette. It was they who brought about
an active, interventionist state government and an executive branch willing
and able to spearhead reform. La Follette, who was governor, 1901-1906,
and his allies (the Half-Breeds or Progressives) successfully challenged
the Republican old guard (the Stalwarts). "Fighting Bob's" most lasting
achievement, states Buenker, came in his revamping of the tax structure,
followed next by his well-known impact on the political system.
Governor James 0. Davidson served as a bridge between La Follette and
Governor Francis McGovern (1911-1915). McGovern brought most of La Follette's
program to fruition, making Wisconsin the most progressive state in America.
Factionalism gradually eroded the triumphant movement, but its legacy
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is still with us, or, as Buenker puts it: "It is true that Wisconsinites
seldom agreed about what, exactly, the Wisconsin Idea was; but they were,
and seemingly remain, adamantly convinced of its existence, its uniqueness,
and its importance" (p. 610). And so is this reviewer, who recommends
this fascinating trip through some very important state history to interested
readers and libraries everywhere.
Frank F. Mathias, University of Dayton
New Englanders on the Ohio Frontier: Migration
and Settlement of Worthington, Ohio.
By Virginia E. McCormick and Robert W. McCormick. (Kent, Ohio: The Kent
State University Press, 1998. xi + 356 p.; illustrations, appendices,
notes, bibliography, index. $39.00 cloth; $17.10 paper.)
During Ohio's frontier period New Englanders worked their leaven in settlements
at Marietta, the Connecticut Western Reserve, and as this study richly
demonstrates, at Worthington, nine miles north of Columbus.
The Worthington settlers organized the Scioto Company (not to be confused
with William Duer's Scioto venture) in 1803 with forty-one original members,
three-fourths of whom were drawn from Granby and Simsbury in Connecticut
and Blandford in Massachusetts. After James Kilbourn, their president,
made an exploratory journey, they purchased some sixteen thousand acres
along and near the Whetstone River, a tributary of the Scioto. Kilbourn
selected "an eightthousand-acre New England-style town site" on the river
and shaped almost every phase of Worthington's growth. He was the community's
"charismatic leader."
Kinship relationships were central to settlement, and this study was
preceded by Virginia McCormick's 1995 geneological book on Scioto Company
Worthington descendants. This account is notable for both its unusual
breadth and its documentary detail. It describes the varied skills of
craftsmen in the Worthington Manufacturing Company (in which Kilbourn
held the largest number of shares), a trading and manufacturing company
which flourished in the boom years 1816-1818 but collapsed in the depression
of 1819. It also examines the pervasive influence of St. John's Episcopal
Church, which was marked by bitter conflict between the rector, Rev. Philander
Chase, and Kilbourn, ending in the departure of Chase who later helped
to found Kenyon College. The Episcopal Church was part of Kilbourn's community
vision, but it gave way to socially and religiously divisive congregations
of Methodists and Presbyterians.
The Worthington Academy, founded as early as 1811 , embodied a transplanted
New England educational experience, and it was followed by an abortive
effort to establish Worthington College in 1819, and then a medical college
which lasted from 1830 to 1839. The Methodists chartered the Worthington
Female Seminary in 1839. The McCormicks conclude that "during the decade
of the 1830s, education became the chief economic enterprise of the village"
(p. 253). Other organizations flourished, including a Masonic Lodge, a
working men's guild, a philological society, and a literary society.
Describing Worthington's frontier period, the McCormicks note that "its
brevity was remarkable." Village population reached nearly 600 in 1 820
with several hundred more on surrounding farms, but an outflow began in
the 1820s. The National Road and the Ohio and Erie Canal brought commercial
goods in surprising variety and selection. After two or three decades,
better homes had
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stoves, carpets, and comfortable household furnishings. At incorporation
in 1835, Worthington established a village council form of government,
part of its "genetic heritage" from New England.
Kilbourn's dominance in the life of Worthington, which claims a major
share of the McCormicks' attention, was touched by irony. They write that
"the dominance of his leadership was also the weakness that prevented
the fledgling village from becoming a great city" (p. 268). He lacked
the resources and skills to acquire the site for the state capital, a
prize won by Columbus in 1812. Yet proximity to the capital left Worthington
as a market town that still "preserved the essence of the community's
New England character." When Kilbourn was elected to Congress in 1 812
he still attempted the "micromanagement" of Worthington affairs.
A major strength of this volume is the successful effort to relate local
facets of community growth to the literature of frontier development.
But accompanying this is a degree of detail, especially in inventories
of goods, that might have been strengthened by more careful selection.
This history of Worthington offers unusual depth of research on local
history as it gives fresh testimony to the influence of New Englanders
in Ohio.
Ronald E. Shaw, Oxford, Ohio
Wheels of Fortune: The Story of Rubber in Akron.
By Steve Love and David Giffels. (Akron, Ohio: The University of Akron
Press, 1999. xiv + 359p.; illustrations, notes, index. $49.95 cloth; $22.95
paper.)
In their Wheels of Fortune Steve Love and David Giffels present
a compelling account of the rise, maturation, and decline of the rubber
industry in Akron. This volume is the result of a 1996 decision by the
Akron Beacon Journal to publish a year-long weekly series of articles
on the history of Akron's rubber industry; Wheels of Fortune is
a collection of twenty-seven of those articles. Staff writers for the
Akron Beacon Journal, Love and Giffels have crafted an account
that should be of interest to both the general public and scholars. Ohioans
will learn much about the city that was once the "rubber capital of the
world," and scholars will learn a great deal about the transformation
of America's rubber industry. Illustrated with numerous well-chosen photographs,
this handsomely produced volume is the most comprehensive account of the
development of Akron's rubber industry currently available.
Based on some 350 interviews, along with considerable research in the
relevant primary and secondary written sources, Wheels of Fortune
deals with the history of rubber in Akron from the human point of view.
Readers will meet in this volume's pages everyone from tire builders to
chief executive officers, women as well as men, African-Americans as well
as Caucasians—as the lives of people shine through in this account.
With over half of the book devoted to the years after World War II, the
decline of Akron's rubber industry is particularly well documented, especially
the human costs of the factory closings. By the same token, while the
development of the large rubber companies—Goodyear, B.F. Goodrich,
Firestone, and General Tire—dominate the story told in Wheels
of Fortune, some space is given to the history of smaller firms—Mohawk
Rubber, Cooper Tire and Rubber, and the like. Although lacking exact footnotes,
this study provides notes to each chapter which will be of help to those
seeking further information.
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While a valuable addition to our knowledge of Akron's rubber industry,
Wheels of Fortune is not a definitive history. More descriptive
than analytical, this volume consists of loosely connected essays—the
original newspaper articles—arranged in roughly chronological order.
Themes, and continuity, among the chapters are difficult to find. Inevitably
some topics receive more complete coverage than others. Labor matters
and the social life of Akronites loom large, sometimes at the expense
of such topics as the evolution of corporate decision making and the development
of industry structure, especially in the period before World War II. Thus,
while chapter 6 provides an excellent look at tire building, certainly
one of the best I have encountered, chapter 4, an account of the construction
of Stan Hywet Hall for the Seiberling family, seems unnecessary to me.
Still, Wheels of Fortune is an enjoyable and valuable book to read; spritely
written, it makes history come alive. The questions it raises should spur
additional research and writing on an important part of Ohio's past.
Mansel Blackford, The Ohio State University
A Cleveland Legacy: The Architecture of Walker
and Weeks. By Eric Johannesen. (Kent,
Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 1999. viii + 200p.; illustrations,
appendix, bibliographical notes, notes, index. $45.00.)
From his office at the Western Reserve Historical Society, Eric Johannesen
actively worked to promote the preservation of historic architecture for
nearly two decades. Although generally busy preparing forms for the statewide
inventory of historic properties and nomination forms for the National
Register of Historic Places, he occasionally assumed the role of archivist.
In 1975 he was involved in acquiring the records, 450 linear feet of files
and photographs and 250 cubic feet of rolled drawings, of the Walker and
Weeks architectural firm from Cleveland. Johannesen began an intense study
of the collection in 1984 and concluded that it merited a scholarly study
and that he would produce it. He finished a manuscript shortly before
his untimely death in 1990, the publication of which was taken up by his
colleagues at the historical society.
The Walker and Weeks collection, covering the period from 1911 until
1949, includes more than 400 designs. As might be expected, after briefly
introducing Frank R. Walker (1877-1949) and Harry E. Weeks (1871-1935)
and the firm's method of operating, Johannesen organized his study according
to structural type. Representative designs of residences, banks, commercial
buildings, public buildings, and institutional buildings are discussed,
followed by a treatment of the firm's planning and engineering consultation.
A separate chapter deals with the sometimes surprising work done by the
firm after Weeks's death in 1935. An appendix, comprising nearly a quarter
of the book's length, catalogues the firm's designs according to the dates
of their creation.
Johannesen's chronicle emphasizes designs he considered the firm's most
important and influential. Walker himself seemed to have enjoyed designing
residential architecture, creating a number of stylistically eclectic
country estates and a group of mansions near University Circle for leading
Cleveland businessmen. The combination bank/office building was obviously
important for a firm that called itself "Bank Architects and Engineers,"
and the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland (1921) was their "undisputed
crown." It evoked "the ideals of
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Book Reviews, page 212
the early-twentieth-century American Renaissance" by combining lavish
materials with high craftsmanship. The "vertical lines and setback masses"
of the towering Old National City Bank in Lima, Ohio (1925), uncharacteristically
placed the firm in an architectural vanguard. The design for the William
Taylor and Son Company store (1929), although it was never built, provided
a climax for the firm's high-rise commercial towers with its emphasis
on stepped-back building blocks instead of architectural detail. Walker
and Weeks's successful competition for the Cleveland Public Library (1916,
1919-23) helped to build their reputation for public-building design,
especially since it became a national model for library buildings. The
nation's first all-polychrome terra cotta building was Walker and Weeks's
Euclid Avenue First Baptist Church (1924). Cleveland's Severance Hall
(1929-30) was an "architectural triumph" for the firm because of the skillful
resolution of design issues arising from competing uses and site challenges
to which were added innovative color lighting systems. The firm's engineering
creations also exemplify its premier work. Notable were the Guardians
of Traffic pylons erected on the Lorain-Carnegie (Hope) Bridge (1929)
and the slender, concrete-arch War Memorial Bridge in Belgium (1927).
During the time that I knew and worked with Eric Johannesen, he often
said that a historic structure spoke for itself. In a real sense, he allowed
Walker and Weeks to do their own career chronicle by his systematic description
of their designs. But even a descriptive work can reveal the author's
preservation ethic and aesthetic sensibilities. There were occasions when
he felt compelled to excuse or justify designs that would today probably
receive adverse reviews, such as the firm's remodeling of the Cleveland
Arcade's facade (p. 121). Nor was Johannesen loath to criticize the firm
where he thought appropriate, such as when rationalizing the weak classicism
of their 1930 Cleveland Board of Education building (p. 73). His criticisms
are, nonetheless, those of an enthusiast and are clearly tempered. Not
a word is mentioned in the four-page discussion of Severance Hall about
its notoriously bad acoustic qualities, a feature that, in part, led to
big-dollar renovation only recently completed. Overall it is clear that
the author agreed with Walker and Weeks that a timeless meaning—"a
permanent expressive value"—can be found in architectural styles.
And for Johannesen and other preservationists, historic properties convey
their meaning far better than "many younger buildings avowedly designed
to be 'relevant' to their times" (p. 111).
Producing a postmortem volume created some interesting challenges for
the publisher, since editorial give-and-take and rewriting were precluded.
When the author's original text gave a vague reference to another book,
an endnote could be inserted to clarify the matter, as was done when Johannesen
referred to the McAlester volume on American residential architecture
(p. 27). But when the author alluded to what for some may be an obscure
Greek architecture reference (p. 78), no further explanation was provided.
Nor is an explanation possible for the distinction in the catalog appendix
between "demolished" and "destroyed." Western Reserve staffers John Grabowski
and Drew Rolik, who saw the book to fruition, are to be commended for
the variety of illustrative material chosen from the collection for the
book. But the failure to use either locations in the captions or textual
cross references weakens the relationship with and utility of the illustrations.
Nonetheless, Eric Johannesen would have been delighted to have had the
final word on such a major Cleveland architectural firm.
David A. Simmons, Ohio Historical Society
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Book Reviews, page 213
A Man of Distinction Among Them: Alexander McKee
and the British-Indian Affairs along the Ohio Country Frontier, 1754-1799.
By Larry L. Nelson. (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 1999.
xv + 262p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $35.00.)
The Ohio country in the eighteenth century was a place where Native American,
European, and colonial-American societies interacted in unpredictable,
often contradictory ways. Entire tribes suddenly switched alliances when
it seemed to be to their advantage; at other times individual communities
of Indians went off on their own, defying their tribal leadership. As
the Europeans battled one another, they frequently acted with duplicity
towards their Indian allies and contemptuously towards their own colonists.
British colonists, and later independent Americans, exhibited a healthy
fear of the local tribes, at the same time they viewed their own government
(and even those of other colonies) with suspicion as they endeavored to
settle what they saw as open country. Moreover, all of these groups remained
on a permanent war footing, fully expecting an imminent outbreak of violence
directed towards them. They were not disappointed.
This is a challenging area of historical inquiry. We need a seasoned
guide who can explain the trail as we go and prepare us for the pitfalls
that await us. Larry Nelson, in his first book, A Man of Distinction
Among Them, provides us with just this sort of guidance. The subject
of his study is Alexander McKee, a British Indian agent whose knowledge
of, and respect for, native peoples earned him great affection from the
region's tribes. A protégé of renowned British agent George
Croghan, he demonstrated an intimate knowledge of local tribal languages
and customs that allowed him to converse comfortably with the Indians
in their native tongues. He worked hard to maintain this connection, even
living among them and maintaining permanent lodgings in at least one village.
Such cultural assimilation gave McKee unparalleled influence with Ohio
tribes, allowing him to successfully promote British policy throughout
the region. This earned him the steadfast gratitude of the Crown. Later,
when the American Revolution forced Loyalist McKee to flee north to Upper
Canada, he cashed in on this relationship. McKee used his contacts and
fame to effortlessly transform himself into a member of the landed gentry,
where he moved freely in the highest circles there.
The study of such a complex character, set against the turmoil of the
Ohio country, would be too much for a less-skilled historian. Nelson's
strength rests on his ability to weave a cogent presentation based upon
a thorough investigation of all relevant resources. He has made use of
wide-ranging manuscript collections, unpublished sources, and government
documents, along with important published works, to create a broad historical
context. And Nelson is always careful to keep his reader aware of just
how McKee fit into the changing cultural and political Ohio country of
the 1700s. He is particularly successful in explaining the intricacies
of Native American culture—such as cross acculturation (chapter 1)
or the land ownership issue (p. 39), which can make this topic nearly
impenetrable for the uninitiated.
There are a few problems that mar several passages in the book. Most
of these are of an editorial nature. None of them are major. There is
some confusion in chapter 6 caused by the unexplained references to Sandusky,
Lower Sandusky, and Upper Sandusky. These were three locations along the
Sandusky River that require some explanation to avoid misunderstandings.
This problem is exacerbated by the map on page 91 , where Lower Sandusky
is called just Sandusky. In chapter 4 there
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Book Reviews, page 214
is the interchangeable use of French and Indian War and Seven Years War.
This was the same conflict, known by the former name in the colonies and
the latter in Europe. Finally, in chapter 8, there is no mention of improved
training given to Wayne's troops before the Battle of Fallen Timbers,
which helps explain why they were so successful at that battle. Fortunately,
these concerns are minor when compared to the overall quality of Nelson's
book.
Nelson has introduced us to a pivotal historical figure whose influence
in the Ohio country of the late eighteenth century is difficult to overestimate.
It is unlikely that events in that region would have unfolded as they
did without McKee's involvement. We are indeed fortunate that someone
with Nelson's understanding and capabilities is the one to bring us this
story.
Bruce Bowlus, Tiffin University
Soliloquy of a Farmer's Wife: The Diary ofAnnie
Elliott Perrin. Edited by Dale B. J.
Randall. (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1999. xxix + 384p.; illustrations,
appendices, notes, research sources, index. $39.95 cloth; $19.95 paper.)
Newspapers in 1918 flashed bold headlines—Americans fighting in
Europe, an influenza epidemic devastating towns and cities nationwide.
Although these national crises touched Anne Perrin's life, they were not
the motivation for this Ashtabula County farm wife to keep a diary. Her
son and daughter presented her with a small journal to record events during
a once-in-a-lifetime winter in Florida where her husband Bert was exploring
the possibility of moving his orchard and truck-farming operation. Family
ties in Ohio apparently played a role in their decision against moving,
but readers are given little reason, beyond the possible frugality of
wasting empty pages, why Annie continued her diary for the remainder of
the year.
The daily lives of common people deserve and are receiving increasing
attention from social historians, but Annie Perrin's sparse notations
of a single year of housekeeping tasks, neighborly visits, and family
activities would offer little enlightenment to casual readers. It is the
skillful editorial treatment by her grandson, a professor of English and
Drama at Duke University, that provides important historical context for
Annie's record. This book is actually more of a duet than a soliloquy,
employing the somewhat unusual but effective technique of presenting diary
entries and explanatory notes as separate columns on each page. This works
very well for the text, less well in the introduction where it is confusing
to encounter multiple explanations—the editorial introduction, endnotes,
and illustration captions—interspersed on the same page.
Randall's exhaustive research in contemporary resources—particularly
the local newspapers that carried notices of Perrin family activities
as well as those of neighbors who are noted in the diary—enriches
this book beyond measure. Interpretations of baking a "war cake" or collecting
peach pits provide meaning about substitutions for rationed ingredients
and burning fruit stones into carbon for gas masks that a casual modem
reader would miss entirely. This volume is richly illustrated not only
with posed photographs but with informal snapshots of family members at
work and play, and magazine and newspaper advertisements that vividly
portray the movie Bert and Annie saw at the Majestic or the Rayo lamps
that lighted their home.
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This is a richly detailed examination of early twentieth-century family
life. Readers should be aware that the Perrins began their married life
in Cleveland and did not operate a typical Ohio livestock and grain farm,
but a fruit and vegetable enterprise suited to its Lake Erie proximity.
Although the chronicled year falls between the 1910 and 1920 enumerations,
one wishes the editor had utilized agricultural census data as well as
population censuses to illuminate the Perrin neighborhood. Bert Perrin's
monthly trips to Cleveland to collect property rentals leave readers wondering
about the proportion of family income this represented, and whether there
might be a partition suit in common pleas court for his father's estate
that would reveal more about the family's property status beyond the farm
where they lived.
Randall's interpretation of Anne Perrin's diary certainly deserves the
attention of vernacular historians, and there are items that suggest further
opportunities for academic research—such as the family practice not
to attend church but to abstain from household and farm work and regularly
use the Sabbath to entertain or visit family, even in the midst of harvest.
This book may be most valuable, however, as a model to the thousands of
genealogists who have inherited letters, diaries or autobiographies from
ancestors who lived "ordinary" lives. It eloquently demonstrates the historical
value and personal satisfaction of researching beyond names and dates
to create vividly detailed pictures of our ancestors's everyday lives.
Virginia McCormick, Worthington, Ohio
Citizens of Zion: The Social Origins of Camp
Meeting Revivalism. By Ellen Eslinger.
(Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1999. xxi + 306p.; illustrations,
notes, bibliographic essay, index. $38.00.)
Camp meetings and the Second Great Awakening are not new topics, but
Ellen Eslinger offers a new approach-an emphasis on social science theory-as
well as a new thesis. She argues that early camp meeting revivals, particularly
the 1801 Cane Ridge Presbyterian gathering in Kentucky, produced "qualities
of morality, egalitarianism, and unity" that became central to the development
of a Christian, capitalist, republican society in the West (p. 241). Early
settlers on Virginia's Kentucky frontier, who were undisciplined by economic,
political, or social institutions, came together in a spirit of comunitas
at what gradually developed into formal camp meetings. By probing Presbyterian
sacramental occasions, Methodist quarterly conferences, and Baptist association
meetings, Eslinger unearthed egalitarian and ecumenical alterations to
the civilization of America's wild West.
She used social science theory in her investigation. Emile Durkheim defined
religion as "primarily a system of ideas with which the individuals represent
to themselves the society ... and the obscure but intimate relations they
have with it." To Eslinger "conversion" is a "rite of passage" from one
social status to another, and camp meetings were "remarkably successful
at eliciting spiritual transformations" (p. xvii). Camp meeting ritual
was a "cycle of adjustment," that followed Victor Turner's 4-stage model:
1) a breach of norm; 2) a crisis that 3) requires redress; and 4) leads
to "either reintegration or the recognition of irreparable schism" within
a community. By studying camp meeting ritual,
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Book Reviews, page 216
Eslinger finds the maturing of "contemporary values, anxieties, and relationships."
Ritual "reflects reigning social reality" and "shapes it" (pp. xviii-xix).
Eastern influences created frontier religion and civilization. Camp meetings
were not products of frontier ideas, as Frederick Jackson Turner and historians
of frontier religion claimed. Revivals at colleges and in Scotch-Irish
areas of Eastern states brought New Light Presbyterianism to the frontier
as a modified form of Calvinism (pp. 188-189). Presbyterians no longer
held that an angry God condemned sinners by limiting his son's atoning
death to an "elect" few.
Whereas Old Light Presbyterians had emphasized God's predestination,
New Light advocates moved toward the Arminian belief that saving grace
was for all who had faith in Christ's atonement for sin. Eslinger writes
that Arminianism made humans "agents of their own eternal destiny" (p.
214). This is too Unitarian a doctrine for Jacobus Arminius or John Wesley.
Arminians, in 1610, asserted that the Holy Spirit brings people to faith,
but they may resist this grace and lose their salvation. Camp meetings
developed an ecumenical doctrine, without creed, that moved even "deists
and doubters" toward God by grace through faith (p. 220).
This is not an Ohio history, but it deals with Ohio Valley settlements
and immigration to Ohio from the East or Kentucky when land was cheaper
than it was in the more-developed areas of Virginia's frontier. Camp meeting
revivalists, clergy and lay, moved to Ohio for religious, political, and
economic reasons. And Eslinger covers Ohio Indian incursions into Kentucky
when Ohio provided less booty for the raiders.
Dr. Eslinger, associate professor of history at DePaul University, has
written a well-researched, superbly footnoted and indexed book that places
camp meeting ritual in the context of America's frontier drama where emerging
revivalism, republicanism, capitalism, and egalitarianism connect. She
reinforces the challenges to earlier historians' frontier thesis. Students
of religion and civilization will welcome this history of evangelical
Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, and Christian sects, and the ties it
makes between religion and other aspects of American civilization in the
West.
Norman H. Murdoch, University of Cincinnati
A Few Small Candles: War Resisters of World
War II Tell Their Stories. Edited by
Larry Gara and Lenna Mae Gara. (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University
Press, 1999. xiii + 207p.; illustrations, selected further readings. $28.00.)
Larry and Lenna Mae Gara have put together an important collection of
memoirs which further our understanding of an important chapter in U.S.
history. This collection offers the stories of ten men (one of whom is
the co-editor, Larry Gara) who served prison time for "war resistance"
(p. xii) during World War II. The editors remind us in the introduction
that although much has been written about the home front during the war,
"little ... has focused on conscientious objectors" and "even less" (p.
xii) is known about the stories of the nearly six thousand Americans who
went to prison. These memoirs, specifically written for this volume, are
intended to help illuminate this "virtually ignored" (p. xii) aspect of
the war.
The book is largely successful in its purpose. The memoirs are well written
and each chapter includes both a photograph and short biography of each
man. The beautiful design of the volume, by Diana Dickson, contributes
to its appeal. The decision to
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Book Reviews, page 217
solicit pieces specifically for this work means that a number of significant
resistors, including Bayard Rustin who is mentioned in nearly all the
memoirs in this volume, had died before this project was undertaken. However,
the pieces selected give the volume a great deal of unity. In fact, one
of the book's basic arguments—that war resisters during WWII often
went on to participate in and influence the activism of the postwar period—is
obvious in the bios of those selected. Most of the men whose stories are
here carried their wartime experiences with them in their postwar careers
as activists, writers, publishers, and professors.
The value of this volume lies not only in the glimpses it offers into
the challenges of prison life: the struggles one faced with family, friends,
fellow inmates, the system, as well as society as a whole, but in the
glimpses these stories offer into the inner struggles these men went through.
Their dedication to principles and the deepening of those ideals throughout
their struggles is important to gaining a more thorough understanding
of the so-called "good war." For those interested in Ohio history, four
of the writers have connections to the state. Two began their interest
in peace activism at Antioch College, while two others, including co-editor
Larry Gara, went on to long teaching careers at other Ohio colleges.
Some things would have enhanced the volume. The choice of memoirs means
that there is a certain amount of repetition. Although the ten men do
differ somewhat in their background, none are African-American. Jehovah's
Witnesses who, we are told, made up perhaps one-third of those imprisoned,
are also missing. Those unfamiliar with the topic would have benefited
from a more thorough introduction, and an index would have also made the
volume easier to use as source material.
In the end, however, these are minor quibbles. Specialists as well as
general readers will find this volume useful. Those teaching courses in
the history of World War II, as well as peace studies, philosophy, and
religious studies, will want to consider using this book. It is a valuable
addition to our understanding of this period.
Michael J. Anderson, Clarke College
Don Carlos Buell: Most Promising of All.
By Stephen D. Engle. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press,
1999. xvii + 476p.; illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $45.00.)
Don Carlos Buell was one of the most important men to ascend to high
command during the first year of the Civil War. Appointed commander of
the Department of the Ohio by his friend George B. McClellan in November
1861, Buell quickly frustrated McClellan and antagonized President Abraham
Lincoln by his resistance, rooted in legitimate concerns about the logistical
nightmare such an operation would entail, to pushing into Unionist East
Tennessee during the fall and winter of 1861-62. In April 1862, Buell's
timely arrival at Shiloh helped turn the tide of battle, and he subsequently
participated in the capture of Corinth. After Corinth, Buell was directed
to march a force eastward to Chattanooga. However, the slowness and deliberateness
of his movements (he never reached Chattanooga) and his rigid adherence
to a limited war policy alienated soldiers and politicians at a time when
both were demanding a more vigorous approach to the war. Buell's
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career finally ended when, after turning back the Confederate invasion
of Kentucky in the fall of 1862, he failed to pursue Braxton Bragg's army
with the vigor the Lincoln administration demanded.
Despite the importance of his operations and the fact that no other general,
with the exception of McClellan, so thoroughly embraced the North's early
war policy of conciliation, Buell has not received the attention he deserves
from students of the Civil War. In Don Carlos Buell: Most Promising
of All, Stephen D. Engle not only offers the first major biography
of the general, but an appealing, insightful, and exhaustively researched
work as well. Future scholars will be hard pressed indeed to find a source
that can provide insights into Buell's operations and character that Engle
has not uncovered and scrutinized. Engle also deserves praise for producing
a balanced and objective book distinguished by neither the visceral disgust
or excessive sympathy for his subject that have marred many studies of
controversial Civil War generals. Engle convincingly demonstrates that
Buell had significant flaws as an officer, but also clearly presents and
does not underestimate the operational challenges the general faced and
the exceedingly difficult people he had to work with.
There are a few minor problems. The end of 1861 was not "a time when
Democrats generally opposed the president's path to victory" (p. 120).
Lincoln's commitment to a limited war at that time, which he reiterated
in his December message to Congress, actually placed him more in line
with Democrats like Buell than with many members of his own party. Moreover,
although clearly familiar with works by Brooks Simpson and Mark Grimsley
that demonstrate Ulysses S. Grant remained sanguine of the prospects for
a short war after Shiloh, Engle still asserts that battle "persuaded Grant
that only total conquest would end the conflict." (p. 233) Finally, although
unlikely to deter serious scholars, many Civil War enthusiasts will find
$45.00 too much to pay for a study of the decidedly unheroic Buell. Hopefully,
the publisher will soon issue a more reasonably priced paperback edition
so that Engle's superb work can reach the large audience it deserves.
These problems, however, are more than offset by the extraordinary skill
with which Engle has crafted this long-needed study. Buell has long been
among the "most promising of all" subjects for a leading scholar of the
Civil War to tackle. Unlike the general, who fell far short of expectations,
Engle's book fulfills its promise. Informative, superbly written, and
with fine attention to detail, it is essential reading for anyone seeking
to understand the effort to fight the Civil War as a limited war and the
failure of Union arms in 1862.
Ethan S. Rafuse, University of Missouri-Kansas City
Discontented America: The United States in the
1920s. By David J. Goldberg. (Baltimore,
Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. xii + 2l0p.; bibliographical
essay, index. $42.50 cloth; $15.95 paper.)
As part of the Johns Hopkins University Press "American Moment" series,
David J. Goldberg's Discontented America is in a class by itself.
Goldberg provides an engaging, nicely written narrative and draws upon
a variety of secondary and primary sources to create an outstanding historical
synthesis. Discontented America is certainly the first book from
the "American Moment"
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Book Reviews, page 219
series that I consider balanced enough to be assigned to students.
Although series editor Stanley Kutler, in his introduction to Discontented
America, contends that this book is meant to challenge "the mythic
allure of the 'Roaring twenties'," readers should ignore his straw man.
Few contemporary historians depict the 1920s as a prosperous, contented
"Jazz Age." Indeed, over thirty years ago William Leuchtenburg and Arthur
Schlesinger, Jr., described the 1920s as an era of "false prosperity"
and mounting social unease.
If Goldberg's book was, as Kutler described it, simply revisionist history
of a period in need of no revising, then there would have been little
point to publishing it. Fortunately, Goldberg does more than attack straw
men. Discontented America delves deeply into the class, ethnic,
racial, and religious politics that divided citizens in the decade following
World War I. Goldberg also demonstrates how the divisions of the 1920s
paradoxically established the foundation for the New Deal and the Congress
of Industrial Organizations in the 1930s.
Goldberg's chapters on the Ku Klux Klan revival, the decline of union
labor, and immigration restriction are notable for their detail, prose,
and balance. I particularly appreciated the fact that the author, after
detailing the managerialinspired repression of organized labor, provided
accounts of labor violence directed against "scabs" and local company
officials.
Similarly, while Goldberg chronicles a sorry tale of racial discrimination,
he makes it clear that Catholics of Eastern European descent had their
own vale of tears to endure. Goldberg is also honest enough to note that
corporations did not hesitate to replace Eastern European steelworkers
with black strikebreakers. Additionally, the author recounts that a number
of middle-class African-American civic leaders made common cause with
management against Slavic Catholic workers.
In sum, Goldberg presents a complex portrait of class and ethno-cultural
interactions that has too often disappeared from post-sixties American
historiography. Histories of the United States that depict all blacks
as hapless victims and all whites (especially blue-collar Catholics) as
racist junior partners in the white power structure are dishonest, but
sadly all too common. I can only hope that Discontented America
marks a new era in the historical profession; an era in which professors
are free to challenge undergraduates and make them squirm when necessary.
Kenneth J. Heineman, Ohio University-Lancaster
The American Mayor: The Best & The Worst
Big-City Leaders. By Melvin G. Holli.
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999. xi + 2l0p.;
illustrations, appendices, notes, index. $47.50 cloth; $18.95 paper.)
Over the course of his career Melvin Holli has produced a significant
body of literature on the history of Chicago and American urban politics
more generally. The present work is a worthy extension of that work. It
insists that big city mayors should be considered, along with United States
presidents and state governors, the most important executive officers
in the nation; and it provides a systematic ranking of the best and worst
mayors of the larger cities of the United States. Ranking American presidents
has intrigued many historians since World War II, and there are several
such polls ranking presidents in print. Holli has now given us a comparable
assessment of big city mayors.
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Book Reviews, page 220
The rankings of mayors of the larger cities is based upon a questionnaire
which Holli distributed to a group of historians and other social scientists
who have an expertise in urban history and politics. He mailed 160 questionnaires;
he received a response from sixty-nine, a return rate of 43 percent. Well
over half of the respondents ranked Fiorello La Guardia, mayor of New
York from 1934 to 1945, first. The next nine, following La Guardia in
order, were names familiar to those acquainted with urban politics: Tom
L. Johnson (Cleveland), David Lawrence (Pittsburgh), Hazen S. Pingree
(Detroit), Samuel M. Jones (Toledo), Richard J. Daley (Chicago), Frank
Murphy (Detroit), Daniel Hoan (Milwaukee), Tom Bradley (Los Angeles),
and Josiah Quincy (Boston). Only Quincy, Boston's mayor from 1 823 to
1828, held office before the 1890s, and seven of the ten governed during
the twentieth century. This is not surprising since the city did not become
a major player on the American political scene until late in the nineteenth
century. It is perhaps not essential to itemize those ranked as the ten
worst mayors, but surely it will not come as a great surprise to learn
that Chicago's own William H. "Big Bill" Thompson was ranked by the experts
in Holli's study as the worst of all, although Frank Hague of Jersey City
and James Walker of New York City were not far behind (or it is above?).
Holli provides a useful biographical essay on each of the top ten mayors
with his own assessment of the importance of the contribution of each.
He includes a useful essay on leadership theory, and an especially important
chapter on the career patterns of big city mayors. For the latter, Holli
extended his database to include all mayors from the fifteen largest cities
from 1820 and 1980 listed in the Biographical Dictionary of American
Mayors, 679 altogether. He defined the "success mayors" as those "who
leaped from city hall to national prominence and national office." He
found that the city that produced the most successful mayors was Cleveland
with seven. Detroit was second, followed by San Francisco and Boston.
New York and Philadelphia mayors, despite the population size and long
history of these two cities, ranked low in the number of upwardly mobile
mayors. Holli speculates that Cleveland's location in Ohio has something
to do with the successful political careers of its mayors. Ohio, Holli
argues, between the Civil War and 1920 produced far more than its share
of national leaders; it was, even more than Illinois, a "microcosm of
the nation."
This is, in sum, a most informative, thoughtful and welcome study of
a muchneglected institution in the American political system. Those interested
in urban history, in particular, will find it a necessary addition to
their library.
Howard W. Allen, Southern Illinois University
Steelworker Alley: How Class Works in Youngstown.
By Robert Bruno. (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1999. x
+ 222p.; illustrations, notes, appendix, bibliography, index. $45.00 cloth;
$16.95 paper.)
A colleague of mine, a historian, once gave me this advice about writing
history: "Listen to the silences." This is what Robert Bruno did when
he asked steelworking families, salt-of-the-earth folks like his mother
and father, to tell their stories about work and family life in the steelworker
neighborhoods of postwar Youngstown, Ohio. They were people who had been
silent until Bruno and his tape recorder came along, and some, like Walter
Donnely, an African-American
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Book Reviews, page 221
steelworker, were genuinely touched by Bruno's effort. "Before today
I had never talked or even thought about my mill years," Donnely stressed
at one point during his interview (p. 165).
Bruno's purpose is to challenge conventional wisdom, which holds that
America's workers were absorbed into the middle class as they participated
in the country's postwar economic growth. Not so, Bruno demonstrates.
First of all life was never all that prosperous for the steelworkers in
Youngstown. If they were not fighting management in a series of strikes,
which forced many workers to sell their homes if a stoppage dragged too
long, they were raising families on wages which produced material comfort
yet carried them only from paycheck to paycheck. Furthermore, all steelworkers
knew that they were dependent on the company, a point dramatically underscored
on "Black Monday" (19 September 1977) when Youngstown Sheet and Tube declared
that it was shutting down its mills.
In addition, Bruno tells us, Youngstown's steelworkers maintained a solid
affinity for each other. Being a union member was an important element
in steelworker identity, separating him and his family from the foremen
and the plant managers who did not earn their living with their hands.
Steelworkers poured steel together, lived next to one another, bowled
in the same leagues, stood as godfathers for each others' children, and
helped one another during hard times. Their sons attended the same schools,
played on the same Little League fields, and eventually found jobs in
the mills, working alongside uncles and brothers and fathers. (Bruno himself
spent his summers doing menial work in the plant where his father worked
as a millwright.) When they voted in local elections, they voted for fellow
steelworkers. The result is a vivid picture of unmistakable class identity.
Bruno's steelworkers did not necessarily share a Marxist interpretation
of class, however. They were not anti-capitalists, nor did they dispute
management's right to make decisions regarding plant operations. Rather
their sense of class derived from the structure of collective bargaining
in which workers did not challenge management's ownership rights and,
in return, expected jobs with good wages and reasonable benefits. It proved
a Faustian bargain, as the events of Black Monday emphasized, but by then
it was too late to correct the imbalance in power that had organized worker
lives.
Bruno centers his analysis around interviews with retired steelworkers
and their wives, contemporaries of his parents, and consequently his chapters
are filled with nostalgic accounts taken at face value—tales of company
picnics, bowling leagues, and Christmas parties, all replete with stories
of workers helping workers. But this is the difficulty with oral history:
People tend to romanticize their consciousness of an event, glossing over
ugly details. The problem vexingly presents itself as Bruno grapples with
the issue of race. He acknowledges the presence of segregated housing
and the fact that African-American workers were relegated to lower status
(and lower-paying) jobs. Yet the workers whom he interviewed were reluctant
to discuss racial tensions. African Americans expressed resentment, claiming
that the union did not stand up for them, then shrugging as one worker
did when he lamented that while the union might have been "flawed by racism,"
it did fight management (p. 54). As for the white workers, they shrugged,
too, claiming that segregation in housing did not signify any racist attitude,
because once inside the mill, workers had to work cooperatively to get
their jobs done. Consequently, Bruno concludes that "race did not necessarily
hinder a worker's identification with class" (p. 36). This claim papers
over the bonafide racial
unfairness which Bruno describes but never examines fully. The superficial
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Book Reviews, page 222
treatment of race is particularly odd, given the time frame of Bruno's
analysisthe 1960s and 1970s, when his subjects were at the prime of their
work life. What did they think about Martin Luther King, LBJ, and school
busing? More importantly, how did they view the Civil Rights Era's impact
on their own lives? Bruno never asks.
This is a regrettable weakness, for otherwise Bruno has admirably demonstrated
his thesis. It's too bad race composes a silence he should have been listening
tomore acutely at least.
William Angel, Ohio State University-Lima Campus
To Die in Chicago: Confederate Prisoners at
Camp Douglas 1862-65. By George Levy.
(Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing Company, 1999. 446p.; illustrations,
chronology of events, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95.)
George Levy, a legal studies professor at Roosevelt University in Chicago,
wrote that his study on Camp Douglas "describes the reaction of the citizens
and Confederates as thousands of prisoners of war were dumped here after
Union victories in the West" (p. 18). To Die in Chicago, originally
published in 1994, was recently reprinted with new information on death
rates during the first half of 1863 in addition to including more contemporary
accounts, creating a stockpile of sources. "In this book," Levy continued,
"I try to go beyond statistics and probe the feelings and experiences
of these men in an alien climate, often without sufficient food, clothing,
shelter, or medical care" (p. 18). The author achieves that goal by weaving
these themes into his narrative, but he does so at the expense of interpretation
and methodology.
The micro-monograph begins with the introduction of Camp Douglas as a
rendezvous for training Union soldiers. It was located on a 300-acre site
near property owned by Stephen A. Douglas, hence its name. Camp Douglas
was built in the southeast section of the city about four miles from downtown,
near Lake Michigan for water, and by the Illinois Central railway for
logistics. As war progressed and captives accumulated, Camp Douglas was
converted into a prison for Confederates. However, not long after it began
incarcerating Southerners, an exchange system was established between
the adversaries. In September 1862, with Confederates gone, Camp Douglas
was utilized for paroled Union prisoners awaiting exchange.
The turn into 1863 saw the collapse of the exchange system and the reintroduction
of Camp Douglas as a prison. Besides detailing deprivations suffered by
prisoners, Levy investigates their social life, the guard force, prison
management, escapes, punishment, and burial records. The author also included
some unique topics uncommon in other stockades, such as blacks that were
held prisoner, plus five women and a child who followed a family member
into confinement. But it became apparent Camp Douglas was no place for
women, children, or for that matter anyone who valued his life. Deaths
soared at the pen, to the point that the University of Chicago, located
across the street, had to temporarily close. Levy argued the stockade
became "a slum that rivaled the worst streets and alleys in Chicago" (p.
144). Southerners could do little to escape their fenced-in community,
forcing them to live in rickety housing, wear shoddy clothing, and eat
rats to supplement meager diets. "Survival at Camp Douglas
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Book Reviews, page 223
depended upon many factors," Levy believed, including "Finding friends
and forming groups for mutual aid, protection, and conversation" (p. 59).
Evidently, many prisoners were not admitted into such groups as the death
rate reached 15 percent. Although the mortality rate at Elmira Prison
in New York was higher at 24 percent, the greater volume of Chicago inmates
created the largest prisoner burial ground in the North—of the 27,000
men confined in Chicago, about 4,039 perished.
Unfortunately, To Die in Chicago has its shortcomings. No convincing
thesis compliments the narrative, which could also be improved; spelling
and punctuation errors appear in the text and in the endnotes. Better
discretion might have been made in word selection—for example, it
was small wonder that Prison Commissary William Hoffman survived the war
since he "suffered much heartburn trying to get the prison fund going"
(p. 57) and "almost had a stroke when he learned of the laundry and the
flush toilets" (p. 200). Furthermore, detailed maps would have benefited
the reader. Despite these lapses, Levy dedicated a large amount of research
to his study resulting in a most comprehensive look at the Chicago prison;
it remains a welcome addition to prison camp historiography.
Michael P. Gray, New Egypt H.S., New Jersey
Patriotic Toil: Northern Women and the American
Civil War. By Jeanie Attie. (Ithaca,
New York: Cornell University Press, 1998. xiii + 294p.; illustrations,
notes, bibliography, index. $37.50.)
Traditional images of American women in war are usually ones of great
sacrifice and selflessness. Except perhaps during the Vietnam War, women
are generally remembered in United States history as supporting their
men during times of conflict, filling in for them at the workplace, volunteering
as nurses, and praying for peace. Wars have also been seen as important
events in the history of feminism, empowering women and weakening traditional
notions of gender.
Jeanie Attie's engaging new book Patriotic Toil looks closely
at the celebrated depiction of self-sacrificing northern women during
the Civil War and probes the reality and consequences of their wartime
efforts. Women did contribute generously of their time, money, and household
labors to answer the demands of political and military leaders. But Attie
discovers that another battle raged on the Union homefront over antebellum
notions of gender. This vast national crisis redefined what was believed
to be women's instinctual proclivity toward charity into very political
behavior. Women's volunteerism played a vital role in creating and sustaining
a new Union identity that boasted moral superiority over the Confederate
South. But the demands of this long and costly war on women's charity
also highlighted the contradictions of antebellum gender conventions that
defined women's labor as unpaid and thus less important than that of men.
Attie traces the gendered definition of United States citizenship to
the Revolution when women became custodians of public virtue. She argues
that this resulting ideology of separate spheres was a carefully constructed
compromise that recognized woman as political if subordinate citizens
with unique functions. However, this compromise proved to be a fragile
one, especially in light of increased white male suffrage during the Jacksonian
period. Civil war suddenly and quickly brought this ideology into sharp
relief.
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Book Reviews, page 224
In order to explore this challenge to the ideology of separate spheres,
Attie focuses on the United States Sanitary Commission's relationship
with northern women. The resulting account of the USSC's wartime history
is not a positive one. There were problems getting the goods to the soldiers
at the front and in 1863 the Christian Commission arose to challenge the
Sanitary Commission's efforts and charitable image. There were also problems
caused by the leaders themselves and their stubborn refusal to allow women
to play supervisory roles in the organization. The USSC's continued demands
for donations and its centralization made women resentful. Even when women
successfully organized local fairs to raise large amounts of cash for
the USSC, male leaders insisted that they lacked money. In fact, the Sanitary
Commission's elite male leaders did seem intent on exploiting women's
contributions in order to promote their own economic and political agendas
rather than simply support the war. Leaders like Henry Whitney Bellows,
George Templeton Strong, and Frederick Law Olmstead emerge from this narrative
as largely manipulative, distrustful of women and self-promoting.
When northern victory finally came, Attie finds little rejoicing among
the men and women of the Sanitary Commission. Both female volunteers and
male leaders all seemed disillusioned and wearied by the experience. Women
were ambivalent that peace came—their activism, although limited
and devalued, was no longer needed at all. Bellows, Strong, and Olmstead
were bitter and resentful, believing that they had wasted their time and
energy on the USSC.
In the end, Attie maintains that although the Civil War did shake traditional
gender roles and challenge assumptions about women's work, it did not
lead to a radical transformation. That transformation would come sixty
years and a few more wars later.
Readers interested in the reality behind patriotic rhetoric will not
be disappointed by this carefully researched, deft study of a fascinating
aspect of the northern home front during the American Civil War.
Lesley J. Gordon, University of Akron
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