Ohio History Journal
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2004 pp. 31-51 |
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Copyright © 2004 by the Ohio Historical Society. All rights reserved. |
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See also: Book Notes and Books Received ALPHABETICAL
LIST OF BOOKS
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Builders of Ohio:
A Biographical History
Edited by Warren Van Tine and Michael Pierce Reviewed by David C. Hammack The Collected Works of William
Howard Taft, Vols. 5 and 6
Confronting
American Labor: The New Left Dilemma
By Jeffrey W. Coker Reviewed by Terry A. Cooney Empty Pastures: Confined Animals and the Transformation of the Rural Landscape By Terence J. Centner Reviewed by Ginette Aley European Capital, British Iron, and an American Dream: The Story of the Atlantic & Great Western Railroad By William Reynolds; edited by Peter K. Gifford and Robert D. Ilisevich Reviewed by Craig R. Semsel Follow the Blue Blazes: A Guide to Hiking Ohio's Buckeye Trail By Robert J. Pond, with a Foreword by Steven M. Newman Book Note by Steve Gordon From Blackjacks To Briefcases: A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States By Robert Michael Smith Reviewed by James E. Cebula Journal of a Voyage Around the
World: A Year on the Ship Helena (1841-1842) "Lest
We Be Marshall'd": Judicial Powers and Politics in Ohio, 1806-1812
By Donald F. Melhorn Jr. Reviewed by John E. Douglass Moral Geography: Maps, Missionaries, and the American Frontier By Amy DeRogatis Reviewed by William H. Bergmann On the Right Track: Some Historic
Cincinnati Railroads Our Common
Country: Mutual Good Will in America
By Warren G. Harding; edited by Warren G. Harding III with an introduction by Robert H. Ferrell Reviewed by Philip Payne Permission to Remain Among
Us: Education for Blacks in Oberlin, Ohio,
1880-1914 Sex Radicals and the Quest
for Women's Equality Support Any Friend: Kennedy's
Middle East and the Making of the U.S.-Israeli
Alliance To Battle for God and the Right:
The Civil War Letterbooks of Emerson Opdyke Touched with Fire: Five Presidents
and the Civil War Battles That Made Them |
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The
Collected Works of William Howard Taft. Vol. 6, The President and His
Powers & The United States and Peace.
Edited with commentary by W. Carey McWilliams and Frank X. Gerrity. (Athens,
Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2003. 200p.; $44.95.)
The fifth and sixth volumes in
The Collected Works of William Howard Taft present scholars, students, and lay readers with the most significant
post-presidential writings of the twenty-seventh U.S. president. Earlier
volumes in the edition have presented his speeches delivered between 1895
and 1908, the addresses and state papers of his administration
to February 1910, and his presidential messages
to Congress.
The fifth volume presents two valuable collections of essays, Popular Government and The Anti-trust Act and the Supreme Court, both originally published within two years after Taft left the White House in March 1913. Popular Government is comprised of ten essays: eight given as lectures by the former president at the Yale University Law School to inaugurate his Kent Professorship in the spring of 1913, and two addresses given the previous autumn to the American Bar Association. In the Yale lectures, Taft mounted a systematic assault, organized around the language in the Constitution's Preamble, against the Progressive Era movement for direct democracy. Especially troubled by the mechanisms of initiative, referendum, and recall, vital weapons in the struggle against political corruption, Taft used the lectures to continue the defense of representative government he made so vigorously in his unsuccessful bid for reelection. In his excellent commentary, editor David Potash observed that Taft desired "elucidation and development through incremental change. . . . He sought the continuance of constitutionalism, liberty under law, and representative government" (p. 14). The Anti-trust Act and the Supreme Court provided readers with Taft's post-presidential interpretation of antitrust law. Amid the early Wilsonian era debates over revision of the Sherman Act, Taft weighed in with his defense of the essentially common-law interpretation of Sherman established by Chief Justice Edward White's "rule of reason" decision in the 1911 Standard Oil case. Taft opposed any statutory revision of Sherman and wished to influence the public debate with his essays, but he was unable to forestall passage of the Clayton Act. The Anti-trust Act essays demonstrated Taft's legal conservatism: "A statute which is rendered more and more certain in its meaning by a series of decisions of the Supreme Court is more and more valuable. This furnishes a strong reason for leaving the act as it is, to accomplish its useful purpose" (p. 241). Volume 6 contains The
President and His Powers, six lectures presented
at Columbia University in 1915 that were published the following year,
and The United States and Peace, four lectures given to the New York Peace Society during the
winter of 1913-14.
The President and His Powers, like the two collections presented in the fifth volume, stemmed from the pivotal 1912 election. In these lectures, Taft offered a systematic rebuttal of Theodore Roosevelt's activist conception of the presidency. By 1912, the Bull Moose candidate believed that the president was the "steward of the people" limited in his actions only "by some express provision of the Constitution" (p. 6). In principle, Taft reversed Roosevelt's conception of the presidency, arguing that the chief executive's power must be "fairly and reasonably traced to some specific grant of power or justly implied or included within such expressed grant as proper and necessary to its exercise." Thus there was, in Taft's mind, no great "undefined residuum of power" to act for the common good (p. 6). But, significantly, Taft interpreted these expressed provisions broadly, even seeing powers accruing to the presidency that were not expressed anywhere in the Constitution, but merely inferred. He extended the president's authority to include "any obligation inferable from the Constitution" or "any duty . . . derived from the general code of his duties under the laws" (p. 70). The former president's liberal interpretation, therefore, also allowed for a strong, activist chief executive. The United States and Peace, the first of Taft's two book-length publications on foreign relations, provided readers with his conception of the Monroe Doctrine, his views on the threat that violence to resident aliens living in the United States posed to peaceful relations among nations, his desire to establish mechanisms for the arbitration of international disputes, and his embrace of the "federative trend in international affairs" (p. 183). These lectures formed the foundation of Taft's post-presidential conservative internationalism and reveal, according to editor Frank X. Gerrity, an "optimism engendered by his era's confidence in the idea of progress, an optimism tempered in Taft by lawyerly prudence" (p. 129). The fifth and sixth volumes of the Collected Works of William Howard Taft document Taft's own political philosophy, especially his defense of liberty, representative government, and the U.S. Constitution. But these volumes, with each part introduced by its editors' effective commentary, also document the transition in American progressivism, revealing the rise (or more precisely, the re-emergence) of a constitutionalist conservatism. This domestic conservatism, led by Taft, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Nicholas Murray Butler, among others, with an attendant conservative internationalism in the realm of foreign relations, acted as a counterweight to the social democratic reformism and progressive internationalism at the opposite end of the political spectrum. Historians examining Taft's thought, his administration, and this conservative turn in progressivism, will find Volumes 5 and 6 in this edition indispensable. Clarence
E. Wunderlin Jr., Kent State University
From
Blackjacks To Briefcases: A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and
Unionbusting in the United States. By Robert Michael Smith. (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press,
2003. xviii + 179p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.)
From the last third of the nineteenth
century until the present there has been a persistent resistance to collective
bargaining in the workplace by management. In From
Blackjacks to Briefcases Robert Michael Smith
shows how some managers relied on "anti-union entrepreneurs"
(p. xvi), as well as varying degrees of support from local, state and
federal authorities, to control the workplace. Utilizing an extensive
array of federal and state government reports as well as the pertinent
secondary literature Smith nicely chronicles the long history of commercial
strikebreaking in the United States.
It became clear during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 that local authorities could not control strikers. Employers promoted the development of National Guard units and armories and turned to private police forces like the Pinkerton National Detective Agency for help. The rapidly changing industrial milieu led to labor unrest. The introduction of armed guard mercenaries into strike situations led to extensive industrial violence. Often the mercenaries were confronted with widespread community resistance such as occurred during the Southwestern Ohio Hocking Valley coal strike of 1884, the McCormick Harvester Company strike of 1885, and the Homestead Strike of 1892. Whenever outsiders were brought in to protect property rights and management prerogatives, the violence escalated. Eventually under political pressure politicians began to denounce "Pinkertonism." By 1899 twenty-six states prohibited the "importation of armed men from neighboring territories" (p. 20). Still, the reliance on armed guard agencies persisted in the coalfields of West Virginia and Colorado. The violence escalated as the Baldwin-Felts Company introduced machine guns and armored vehicles into the anti-union struggle. It was not until 1935 that West Virginia outlawed the practice of deputizing private guards. Early in the twentieth century, with the use of armed guards on the decline, management turned to hiring professional strikebreakers to protect management's right to hire and the working man's right to work. Entrepreneurs like Paul Bergoff, who became known as the "King of the Strikebreakers," and James Farley, who specialized in transit strikes, for a fee supplied hundreds of men, and on occasion thousands, to restart struck facilities. These men became wealthy and in some quarters were viewed as heroes. Just as in the era of armed guards, the era of strikebreakers was also marked by industrial violence as local workers sought to protect their jobs. Eventually the strikebreaking firms began provoking and documenting violence in order to get court injunctions to limit the behavior of the strikers. The Great Depression and the passage of the National Labor Relations Act ushered in a new economic and governmental structure, which led to the development of new techniques to combat unionization. Industrial spying now became a seminal tool in the offensive against labor. While industrial spies had been used since the earliest days of the struggle against labor, by the end of the 1930s more then two hundred companies nationwide made undercover operatives available to management. Even in the anti-business climate of the 1930s, efforts to limit the practice failed to win congressional approval. In addition, in spite of the pro-regulatory climate of the era, in 1938 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of employers to hire replacement workers during strikes. In the aftermath of World War
II labor relations consultants, now armed with degrees in industrial psychology,
management, and labor law, became management's newest weapon in the anti-union
arsenal. Formed under the auspices of Sears, Roebuck and Company, The
Labor Relations Associates under the leadership of Nathan W. Shifferman
became the leading consulting firm. In the late 1950s Congressional scrutiny
of Shifferman's activities and his close relationship with Teamster's
Union president Dave Beck led to the passage of the Labor Management Reporting
and Disclosure Act (Landrum-Griffin Act). The new law required management
to report agreements with labor relations consultants and required unions
to "open their books." But the new labor specialists found ways
around both the Wagner Act and the Landrum-Griffin Act. By the 1970s these
specialists were increasingly in demand as management's assault on unions
speeded up. While unions developed labor education programs in order to
provide effective representation for their members, the labor consultants
offered seminars and training programs on how to defeat unionization efforts.
Smith's model is based on the premise that some management always resisted unions and it stresses the evolution of the process into dominant phases. Like all models it is not always a perfect fit. While armed guards dominated as the tool for professional union busters in the nineteenth century, many firms relied on their own strategies. Foundry men relied on non-union molders provided by their trade association during the last third of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century and Stephen Norwood points out that replacement workers were used in 40 percent of the late-nineteenth-century strikes.1 In addition, while Smith acknowledges the personnel management movement of the 1920s, he does not tell us about Harry Bennett and the Ford Motor Company "Service Department" and the 1930s General Motors-sponsored anti-union vigilante groups. In spite of the shortcomings of the model used, this book is a welcome addition to the literature of the history of labor-management relations in the United States. James E. Cebula,
University of Cincinnati
1. Stephen Norwood, Strikebreaking
& Intimidation: Mercenaries and Masculinity in Twentieth Century America
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 2002).
Confronting
American Labor: The New Left Dilemma. By Jeffrey W. Coker. (Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri
Press, 2002. xiv + 211p.; bibliography, index. $32.50.)
Confronting American Labor examines
the ideas of four intellectuals who are offered to the reader as a "cross-section
of the postwar left" (p. xi). Three of the four spent their lives
primarily as academics—sociologists Seymour Martin Lipset and C.
Wright Mills and historian Herbert Gutman—while the fourth, Sidney
Lens, moved from labor organizer to political commentator and writer.
Despite the subtitle, a "New Left dilemma" plays no central
role in the discussion. Rather, Coker defines as the question central
to his study one that he suggests prior American intellectual historians
have missed: "If during the 1930s, Old Left intellectuals came of
age expecting a proletarian-led socialist movement to challenge capitalism,
how did they view labor in the postwar era?" (p. xi).
The question invites a descriptive more than an analytical response, and that is what readers should expect to find. Each of Coker's four subjects claims a section of the book to himself, and together the four parts constitute the great bulk of the work. An introduction attempts to set the stage by providing an overview of the left, the problem of the proletariat, and the relationship of intellectuals to left politics. These are not topics easily handled for the 1930s and 1940s through broad strokes and inclusive generalization. Coker's account sketches the larger picture and sometimes fails in precision. The preliminary discussion largely ignores the contention that intellectual historians have remained unaware of how left intellectuals viewed labor after the war, and it does not really frame an argument about to unfold. Once involved one by one with his subjects, Coker capably tracks their expression of ideas and the development of intellectual careers. Lipset emerges as a scholar struggling to the end with tensions rooted in his view of the connection between labor and politics. Lipset saw American workers as exceptional in their relationship to capitalism and their participation in economic growth, yet he continued to see all labor movements as deriving in part from social class. Postwar workers and unions did not measure up to his expectations for social reform, but he could never quite leave behind belief in the possibility of a progressive class politics. C. Wright Mills, by contrast, concluded by the mid-1950s that any movement on the left in the United States could not rely on labor. Far from representing the lower classes to Mills, organized labor belonged to the controlling circles that he described as a power elite. First the white-collar middle classes and then intellectuals themselves offered greater promise of sustaining a movement on the left. Sidney Lens as labor activist gave up on the American movement as a force that would oppose capitalism and turned instead toward seeking international alliances that could stand against the Cold War forces led by the United States. In Mills and Lens, Coker emphasizes shifts toward a New Left, a left that in its political calculations placed American workers on the outside. If much of the text is workmanlike, Coker's writing comes alive in the section on Herbert Gutman. Gutman looked to the past to revive notions of an American proletariat standing in opposition to capitalism, hoping that celebrations of a radical past could inspire a future socialist movement tied to a working class. Giving full credit to Gutman's influence on labor history and his methodological contributions, Coker nevertheless draws attention to ironies and inconsistencies in his methods and his work, his reliance on theorizing to evade intellectual problems, his lack of clarity in asserting a pre-industrial working-class culture, and his penchant for generalizing to all workers from those he chose to highlight. The path Gutman blazed for labor history, Coker suggests, actually separated the academic left even further from any public influence. This final section, both lively and provocative, may be where many readers wish to direct their greatest attention. Terry A. Cooney, University of Puget Sound European
Capital, British Iron, and an American Dream: The Story of the Atlantic
& Great Western Railroad. By William Reynolds; edited by Peter K. Gifford and Robert D. Ilisevich.
(Akron, Ohio: The University of Akron Press, 2002. xviii + 258p.; illustrations,
biographies, notes, bibliography, index. $44.95.)
Conventional wisdom decreed it
should never have been built. Too many factors were against the construction
of the Atlantic & Great Western Railroad (A&GW). The railroad
was poorly financed. Other, stronger railroads along its proposed route
tried to prevent its construction. Even worse, the Civil War diverted
capital and materials that the A&GW needed if it were to be built,
forcing its backers to try their luck with European financiers and industrialists.
There were even internal problems, as officers quarreled over the management
of funds and materials.
The A&GW was a multi-state, broad-gauge railroad that connected Erie, Pennsylvania, with such Ohio cities as Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dayton, and Hamilton. It began as three separate railroads, one in each of the three states through which the A&GW was to run. The earliest of these began in eastern Ohio in 1851. Despite the difficulties mentioned above, the railroad was completed in 1864. Never a particularly successful road, the A&GW wandered in and out of bankruptcy until the Panic of 1873 finished it. The A&GW was absorbed by the Erie Railroad during the mid-1870s. It lasted less than fifteen years. If the story of the A&GW's creation is somewhat unorthodox, so is its telling in this recent book. Part of the University of Akron Press's series on Ohio History and Culture, European Capital consists of the recollections of William Reynolds, who served as president of the railroad from 1857 to 1864. Written four decades after he resigned, Reynolds nonetheless took care to make sure his account was historically accurate and not a rambling, nostalgic memoir. Whenever possible, he revisited surviving records, including annual reports, correspondence among the railroad's principals, and documents pertaining to the A&GW's construction. Although at times the reading is quite dry, sounding like a diary in places, the evidence that Reynolds marshals to back up his claims lends authority to his words. Reynolds's account serves as the core of the book, while editors Peter Gifford and Robert Ilisevich provide brief narratives at the beginning and end of the book to place the A&GW into its proper historical context. They provide a brief overview of antebellum railroading, including a review of some of the major factors that made the northern states more receptive to railroad building than those of the south. The narrative gradually comes to focus on railroading in upstate New York, western Pennsylvania, and Ohio. At the conclusion of Reynolds's story, the editors provide another short segment on the A&GW's brief life, explaining how the broad gauge road came to be absorbed by the Erie Railroad. The reader is provided with useful synopses at the beginning of each of Reynolds's chapters, as well as a chronology of the railroad's creation (1851-64) and a series of biographies of key individuals who worked on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean to turn the A&GW from a dream into a reality. Not to be missed is Gifford and Ilisevich's explanation of how Reynolds's account managed to survive neglect for over a century, and how, after at least one serious but failed attempt, it finally came to be published. European Capital provides readers with an episode of antebellum and Civil War-era railroading as told from the inside. It should prove of use to those with an interest in early American railroading, as well as the industrial development of upstate New York, western Pennsylvania and Ohio. Craig R. Semsel, Case Western Reserve University To
Battle for God and the Right: The Civil War Letterbooks of Emerson Opdyke.
Edited by Glenn V. Longacre and John E. Haas. (Champaign, Ill.: University
of Illinois Press, 2003. xxxv + 332p.; illustrations, appendixes, bibliography,
index. $34.75.)
There are few collections of letters
as complete and comprehensive as that written by Emerson Opdyke during
his service in the Union Army. Opdyke and his wife Lucy, who transcribed
the letters, left historians a rare and valuable gift: commentary on the
Civil War from the perspective of an ambitious volunteer officer. Glenn
V. Longacre and John E. Haas have made these letterbooks accessible to
the general public, providing extensive notes and background information.
The result is an account of the western theater told by a citizen soldier
whose outstanding performance earned him the rank of Brigadier General.
More importantly, Opdyke's writings encompass a variety of themes essential to understanding the Civil War, making his missives both instructive and enjoyable to read. Opdyke wrote well over three hundred
letters, including detailed and lengthy accounts of the battles of Shiloh,
Chickamauga, and Franklin. He experienced some of the pivotal moments
of the war in the West during his exceptional career. He was a dedicated
soldier and stern disciplinarian who took pride in earning a good reputation.
It is also notable that Opdyke excelled at tactics and drill, despite
having no previous military training or experience. During his tenure
as captain in the 41st Ohio, and as colonel of the 125th Ohio, Opdyke
recorded his opinions about his fellow officers, including several well-known
military figures. His eagerness to critique his superiors underscores
Opdyke's understanding of the war. Although Opdyke opposed secession and
slavery, his reasons for consistently exposing himself to enemy fire and
enduring the hardships of campaigning were rooted in religion and a belief
in republican government. Like many Union soldiers, Opdyke considered
the war to be a contest between the egalitarian political system of the
North and the aristocratic slave power of the South. In March 1862, he
wrote of the Confederacy that "their leaders all desire a Kingdom,
but their crown will be of lead, presented with the compliments of five
thousand northern mudsills" (p. 20). Updyke worked his way up from
a clerk to part owner in his brother-in-law's saddle and harness store,
which explains to a large degree why he embraced the free labor ideals
expressed by the Republican Party.
Opdyke's letters also include a wealth of information about his family and friends. His sense of community and regional pride are apparent, and he often compared the regiment he commanded to other Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana units. Opdyke wrote about his fellow soldiers a lot, often informing Lucy about neighbors or relatives. Some of the references are impossible to identify because only a single name was given, but Longacre and Haas do a good job of identifying most of the people mentioned by using census records, regimental histories, and military records. This gives the book another dimension, telling not only Opdyke's story, but also that of his comrades. The personal nature of the letters can be a limitation. Since her letters did not survive, Lucy's half of the exchange is often hard to infer. Readers get only one side of the conversation, although Longacre's and Haas's notations often compensate for this deficiency. By themselves, Updyke's letters are exceptional sources that offer a bounty of information for historians. Longacre and Haas have increased the value of this collection of documents by adding notations, informative chapter introductions, and an index. Historical editing can sometimes be a thankless task, involving tracking down countless facts, references, and minutia. Longacre's and Haas's efforts will not only introduce Opdyke to a number of non-professional readers, but will also help professionals utilize this extensive source. Stephen Rockenbach, University of Cincinnati Moral
Geography: Maps, Missionaries, and the American Frontier.
By Amy DeRogatis. (New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 2003. xii
+ 242p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $24.50 paper.)
In 1795 the Connecticut Land Company
bought 2.5 million acres of land—the Western Reserve—in the
Ohio country. According to DeRogatis, the next steps were not simply to
survey and sell off the land, but to give order to the landscape and space
and to inscribe moral boundaries for settlers. Much like their Puritan
forebears, the Land Company and the Connecticut Missionary Society strove
to (re)create an idealized settlement that represented the religious and
cultural values of Congregationalist New England. In Moral
Geography, DeRogatis is much more concerned
with the relationship between religion and space than a narrative of settlement.
To get at this relationship, she employs the postmodern tool of mapping
to understand how models were used to orient bodies and spaces with religion.
She argues that "missionary societies hoped to re-create moral communities
by marking and bounding physical spaces" in an effort to retain congregants
after they moved to the frontier (p. 12). The physical spaces she describes
are as much bound to the body and behavior as they are to community and
landscape.
The connection of religion and space in the Western Reserve began early as the Land Company and Missionary Society organized centralized communities based on several New England models of settlement. These attempts often met with frustration as plans for well-ordered communities were thwarted by squatters and unruly terrain. Missionaries also found difficulty applying their "maps" to the people of New Connecticut. Settlers who were not anticlerical could choose from a number of proselytizing faiths including Methodists, Baptists and Universalists. To consolidate financial power and influence over the territory, the Connecticut Missionary Society allied itself with the Presbyterian Church in 1801 under a Plan of Union which joined the two churches throughout the Old Northwest. But over the next few decades, strife became the norm as local missionaries sparred with each other over influence and method, as debates between New Lights and Old Lights became more heated, as western missionaries criticized eastern missionary idealism and superiority, as the Presbyterian and Congregationalist churches wrestled for influence in the West, and as the region became more settled, lessening the missionaries' influence to shape the territory. The Plan of Union fell apart between 1836 and 1837 because of theological differences and competition for religious influence in New Connecticut. DeRogatis contends it was not a failure of the Plan of Union that caused the schism. Rather the founding of Oberlin acted as the catalyst because it represented the idealized vision of moral and spatial order the Connecticut Missionary Society had been trying to create for decades. The brief narrative here does little justice to the nuanced deconstruction of maps, letters, biography, and travel literature that comprises the heart of DeRogatis's work. From close readings of these texts she has skillfully teased out a language in her sources that consistently tried to impose a religious order onto the burgeoning territory and its peoples. Her approach also offers an interesting twist on the Turner thesis, revealing the undemocratic institutions and forces, not created in but transplanted to the frontier, guiding the transformation of the frontier. Still, the work is not without its weaknesses. Readers will find only a small number of connections made between the organization of space and changes in the overall demography of the Western Reserve. And there are even fewer references to how the fate of this one tract of land related to the larger territory. Neither will readers discover how settlers in the Reserve might have constructed uniquely Ohioan or western religious identities. Still, DeRogatis has suggested an attractive process by which missionizing and deliberate colonization affected religious identity and national expansion. William H. Bergmann, University of Cincinnati "Lest
We Be Marshall'd": Judicial Powers and Politics in Ohio, 1806-1812.
By Donald F. Melhorn Jr. (Akron, Ohio: The University of Akron Press.
xv + 291p.; illustrations, appendixes, notes, bibliography, index. $44.95.)
In his pivotal 1803 Supreme Court
decision, Marbury v. Madison, Chief Justice
John Marshall magisterially asserted, "It is, emphatically, the province
and duty of the judicial department, to say what the law is." Marshall's
doctrine of judicial review constitutes the cornerstone of American jurisprudence.
The political context in which Chief Justice Marshall uttered the doctrine,
though, was one that was not wholly receptive to such a declaration from
the judicial branch of government. The wave of popular sentiment that
swept the Jeffersonian Republicans into power in the "Revolution
of 1800" evinced a pronounced hostility towards the judiciary. That
hostility sprang not only from President John Adams's mid-night appointments
(of whom Chief Justice Marshall was one) but also from the punitive manner
in which Federalists used the judiciary against Republicans. With the
judiciary still in Federalist hands the Jeffersonian Republicans, upon
taking control of the government, declared war on it.
Much is known about the political and jurisprudential circumstances resulting in Chief Justice Marshall's affirmation of the doctrine of judicial review. What is not well known is how the doctrine of judicial review played out at the state level of government. The single most significant contribution of Donald F. Melhorn's "Lest We be Marshall'd": Judicial Powers and Politics in Ohio, 1806-1812 is that it addresses this overlooked subject. Melhorn's study shows how problematical the doctrine of judicial review was in Ohio during the formative first decade of the state's history. In Ohio, judicial review became caught between two competing philosophies of government: one affirmed that it was the constitutional function of the judiciary to say what the law is, to exercise judicial review; the other stressed the "primacy of the legislative branch" (p. 11). The controversy over judicial review was brought to a boil by the Ohio Supreme Court's decision in the case of Rutherford v. M'Faddon (1807), which declared the Ohio Assembly's Fifty Dollar Act unconstitutional. Opponents of judicial review perceived the judiciary as inferior to the legislative branch and, led principally by Thomas Worthington, proclaimed that no such branch could void an enactment of the legislature exercising the plenary authority of the people. There thus ensued among opponents of judicial review an intense political effort to affirm the sovereign power of the people, not only with regard to the enactment, but also the adjudication of the law. In the ensuing controversy over judicial review, political and jurisprudential issues became entangled with interest and ideology. Ohioans of Federalist temperament and moderate Republicans tended to applaud the court's ruling. Radical and old Republicans were staunchly against it. Lawyers were generally conflicted over the court's ruling declaring the Fifty Dollar Act unconstitutional because it diminished the number of fee cases that might come their way. The vexing problem for Ohioans was that of agreeing on where ultimate power resided in a republican system of government, with the sovereign people as reflected in the actions of their elected representatives, or divided among the three branches of government established under the state's constitution. Asserting the sovereignty of the people's representatives, radical and old Republicans led the unsuccessful attempt in the assembly to impeach and remove the judges who deigned to usurp the power of the people by declaring unconstitutional an enactment of their representatives. Although radical and old Republican opponents of judicial review were unsuccessful in their effort to impeach and remove the Ohio Supreme Court judges who declared the Fifty Dollar Act unconstitutional, they nevertheless won a Pyrrhic victory. They succeeded in pushing through the assembly a "Sweeping Resolution," which terminated the commissions of all judges, as stipulated in the state's constitution, seven years from the date the commission for each position was originally issued. Opponents of judicial review used that law to replace by legislative fiat the judges they were unable to impeach. Their effort to assert the supremacy of the people's representatives over the judiciary ultimately failed, Melhorn argues, in part because of political opportunism but mainly because of the skill and political tack of those in the legislature and the state who supported judicial review. Moreover, the opponents of judicial review undermined their cause by turning to Tammany Society—style politics as the vehicle to push the "Sweeping Resolution" through the assembly. With secrecy as their modus operandi, Tammany Societies in Ohio were popularly viewed as representing the same kind of challenge to the sovereignty of the people as the Ohio Supreme Court represented in asserting judicial review—an exercise of power beyond the control of the people or their representatives. This misstep by radical and old Republicans, along with the intercession of the War of 1812, opened the way for the ascendancy of judicial review in Ohio. With this work, Melhorn makes an important contribution to the early legal and political history of Ohio, and does so in a way that connects that history with the larger political and legal currents of the early national period. Melhorn challenges William E. Nelson's categorical assertion that the doctrine of judicial review was not controversial at the state level of government. Melhorn's argument is made all the more convincing by his inclusion in the appendixes of "Lest We Be Marshall'd" documents showing how robust and sophisticated the constitutional arguments over the doctrine of judicial review in Ohio were. This is on the whole an incisive, well-researched, and cogently argued work. It adds a new dimension to our understanding of the role judicial review came to play in American jurisprudence. John E. Douglass, Raymond Walters College, University of Cincinnati Support
Any Friend: Kennedy's Middle East and the Making of the U.S.-Israeli Alliance.
By Warren Bass. (New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2003. 336p.;
illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $30.00.)
Warren Bass's study analyzes the
roots of the "special relationship" between the United States
and Israel, a relationship that along with access to oil established the
framework of postwar American policy in the Middle East. Bass's central
argument is that the diplomacy of John F. Kennedy proved essential in
establishing the historic partnership between Washington and Tel Aviv.
Bass's account is traditional diplomatic history: his research centers on decision-making in Washington and the book focuses exclusively on the diplomacy of a single president. Given these parameters, the research effort is exhaustive and conclusive. Certainly anyone interested in U.S.-Israeli relations during the early 1960s must now start here. The author's conclusions are another
matter, however, and like virtually everything associated with Middle
East politics—and with John F. Kennedy, for that matter—are
bound to be contentious. Though this is a scholarly work grounded in archival
evidence, Bass clearly admires both Israel and Kennedy and comes to conclusions
that are shaped accordingly.
Few would question that the Kennedy years proved consequential in this history, yet whether or not the JFK presidency "constitutes the pivotal presidency in U.S.-Israeli relations" (p. 3) can be endlessly debated. Bass makes a strong case, however, arguing that the chill that fell over the relationship after the 1956 Suez crisis gave way to a close partnership under Kennedy. Critical to cementing the special relationship was Kennedy's 1962 decision to sell Hawk surface-to-air missiles to Israel. In so doing Kennedy sided with the Defense Department over the State Department, which continued to lose influence since its original postwar opposition to recognition of Israel in the immediate postwar period. The Hawk sale served two purposes
for Kennedy: it reassured Israel in the wake of Kennedy's efforts to improve
relations with Egypt's Jamal Abd al-Nasser, while at the same time serving
to constrain Israel's drive for nuclear weapons capability. In return
for the Hawks, Kennedy pushed hard for and won Israeli permission for
U.S. inspections of Israel's Dimona nuclear power plant.
In the final analysis, Bass argues that Kennedy's diplomacy served to contain both Israel and Soviet-backed Arab nationalists about as well as could be expected, given the challenges. Bass insists that Kennedy based his decisions on national interests rather than domestic political concerns. He declares that "there is scant evidence in the documentary record that the hunt for Jewish votes ever seriously drove Kennedy's Arab-Israeli diplomacy" (p. 7). While this study is clearly written, well organized, and forcefully argued, its conclusions will remain contested. The author succumbs to the natural temptation to exaggerate the influence of his subject when he concludes that Kennedy himself proved so "pivotal" that relations between the United States and Israel "could have gone another way" (p. 6) without him. Clearly Kennedy worked hard on the relationship, yet broad-based U.S. support for Israel may well have transcended the White House and instead found its deeper roots within American culture. Unlike Douglas Little, who explores the relationship in all its complexity in American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East Since 1945 (Chapel Hill, 2002), Bass does not probe the cultural roots of the U.S.-Israeli alliance in his uncritical acceptance of a top-down model of analysis. Whether Kennedy's diplomacy succeeded can certainly be debated as well. The special relationship forged by Kennedy and maintained by Lyndon Johnson convinced Tel Aviv that Washington would not stand in the way, as it had in 1956, of an Israeli attack against its Arab enemies. The subsequent 1967 Six Day War concluded with an Israeli territorial aggrandizement that remains at the root of Middle East turmoil today. Finally, Bass acknowledges that Kennedy's efforts to contain the Israeli nuclear program failed. Inspections became a sham and the Israelis developed the nuclear capability Kennedy had been so keen to exclude from the volatile region. Meanwhile, arms sales to Israel that began with Kennedy's decision on the Hawk missiles continued to be a source of Arab anger while fueling militarization of the region. Few who have studied the now massive record of the Kennedy years would question what Bass describes as Kennedy's penchant for "crisp, savvy, and skillful" diplomacy (p. 9). Kennedy was shrewd and determined to make a difference in the world, yet the challenges he confronted—in central Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America no less than in the Middle East—often proved intractable. Success, if it came at all, usually came at a high price, and this seems true of the Middle East no less than the rest of the world. Walter L. Hixson, University of Akron Permission
to Remain Among Us: Education for Blacks in Oberlin, Ohio, 1880-1914.
By Cally L. Waite. (Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 2002. xv + 143p.;
tables, bibliography, index.)
Cally Waite has put together a
very interesting look at Oberlin College and its long history of educating
African Americans. The book provides the reader with a good general background
of education in Ohio and the difficult task of getting Ohioans to accept
the notion of higher education for African Americans. Waite attempts to
put educational issues in the main of American racial history to provide
a backdrop for understanding Oberlin's unique role in fighting for abolition
and also in providing for the social and intellectual uplift of African
Americans. It also focuses on the relationship between philanthropic whites
and African American social advancement. Waite connects abolitionism with
radical racial policy contrasting this with attitudes of ordinary Americans.
The book also traces the history of Oberlin, a small town in south-central
Ohio and the moral, religious, and educational aspirations of Oberlin
College and its faculty, staff, and administration.
Waite's work places Oberlin in the center of the American abolitionist movement, giving it a pivotal role in developing abolitionist debates during the antebellum period. The author uses an almost moral tone in explaining the way Oberlin dealt with the initial decision to allow African Americans into its midst along with the ramifications of educating African Americans. The careful, but controversial debate about educating African Americans was intriguing and serves as a good foundation for understanding the dynamics of Ohioans' attitudes toward racial issues. Waite contrasts Ohioan views on African American education with those of similar areas. She also uncovers some of the latent racism, which permeated much of early Ohio thought. The book tracks attitudes of Ohioans toward education and the changing nature of race relations in the Buckeye state. It puts Ohio in the main of American thought and helps explain the strange nature of Oberlin's commitment to education for African Americans. It also provides an interesting history of Oberlin College and outlines its significance to the American experience. The book has several strengths, which make it a compelling read for those interested in Ohio history, race relations, or educational issues. The writing is sharp and compelling. However, there are places where the book drifts and loses some of its focus. The constant search for competent leadership made the school continuously change focus even though the major theme continued to be religious and intellectual development for students of all races. I am not sure that the presidential searches were as important as the change in the political and racial landscape that hit the United States during these difficult times. The most powerful part of the story is the changing direction of race relations in this country and how little impact it tends to have on changing the mission of Oberlin. Although Oberlin did make some changes to fit into the developing racial norm of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the school continued to be years ahead of other areas on racial issues. The book takes the reader from slavery, through the Civil War and Reconstruction, and finally through the nadir of American race relations. This is clearly played out in miniature through this story. However, with the changing nature of race relations, Oberlin had a remarkable ability to remain focused on the notion of education and religious development. Overall, Waite has written a wonderful history of Oberlin and race relations in Ohio. It is a must-read for anyone interested in knowing more about Ohio, abolitionism, and Oberlin's history. Abel A. Bartley, University of Akron Sex
Radicals and the Quest for Women's Equality. By Joanne E. Passet. (Champaign, Ill.: University of Illinois
Press, 2003. ix + 259p.; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $39.95.)
Sex Radicals is
a deft exploration of alternatives to a patriarchal monogamous norm among
the settlers primarily of Ohio, Illinois, Indiana and northern New York
in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Importantly, this work reveals
the constitution of a variegated mass movement of sex radicalism coalescing
by dint of the spread of women's literacy combined with the mass distribution
of newsletters and communication networks linking women and men at the
frontier of settlement with each other and with political reformism back
on the East Coast.
Passet chronicles a long moment in the nineteenth century when women's status within marriage—in terms of economic dependency, legal rights and sexual freedom—came under intense scrutiny in ways that laid the groundwork for suffrage campaigns as well as other political gains of American women in the twentieth century. Passet's history is peopled by complicated, dramatic and fascinating individuals, whom she treats with a respect only tempered by infectious curiosity about their private lives and admiration for their public works and political involvement. The extremism and fervency of the critiques brought to bear on the institution of heterosexual, monogamic marriage in the nineteenth century may be surprising to the average contemporary reader or student, but what is of even more interest to the scholar is the nuanced complexity Passet brings to her analysis of these individuals' lives, ideas, and practices. Perhaps even more crucial to scholars are the links Passet is able to draw between what she terms "sex radicalism" and other sorts of radicalism—not only regarding women's rights (such links might be almost expected) but movements such as eugenicism in the 1910s and 1920s. Though she concludes that such a development represented a betrayal of authentic sex radicalism, which she argues focused on freeing both men and women from the oppressive qualities of patriarchal marriage, her evidence reveals unsettling connections between social movements to free women as individuals and social movements to control those who did not conform to predominant ideals. Unlike others whose work hints at similar connections, divisions, and/or uncomfortable alliances between feminism and eugenicist outlooks but neglects to solidify them with research, Passet follows the career arcs of many of the individuals prominent in the movement she discerns past the apex of their feminist contributions. In so doing she makes concrete what usually remains amorphous in other historical treatments of nineteenth-century reformers. Despite her decision to pass off as male-centered most of the less savory later developments such as eugenicism, Passet perceptively reveals the legacy of those who "placed discussions of sex and sexuality squarely in the public domain" to be many-headed, reminding us that similar arguments mean vastly different things under changing conditions and when wielded by different social actors. This is the kind of book—meticulously and creatively researched, nimbly written, and intently focused on women and their relationship to patriarchy—that raises genuinely important questions for historians of U.S. women, one that should generate substantial argument and discussion among scholars and graduate students of women's history and the history of sexuality. Yet there are many issues, unacknowledged by Passet, regarding women's sexual pleasure and sexual freedom within patriarchal marriage that provide opportunities for the reexamination of not only feminist but also Foucauldian analyses of pleasure, identity, and power. Her naturalization of gender abuse under patriarchal marriage begs an analysis of how certain behaviours and relationships came to be thought of as abuses of women and as restrictive of "natural" sexual pleasure or rights. If I have any critique of Passet's work it is that the origins of this change in thinking are in need of interrogating as much as where such thinking led. While I would disagree with anyone claiming that Passet overlays contemporary definitions of abuse onto the nineteenth century—surely she has identified the source of such definitions rather than simply adopted them and applied them retroactively and anachronistically—it is clear that she has accepted them as natural truths made self-evident by feminist insight rather than constructions in need of examination. Despite her aversion to the questioning of such categories, it would behoove us to pay attention to the people and contradictory political forces that Passet brings to our attention as we in the profession lurch towards a scholarship that incorporates the insights and perspectives of postmodern theorists regarding patriarchal forms of power, and organized as well as individual opposition to such. Nonetheless, rather than representing a fatal flaw at the center of this work, it is precisely because of the questions it makes possible for scholars to pose that Joanne E. Passet's new book represents a significant contribution to the history of both American women and sexuality. T. J.
Boisseau , University of Akron
Touched
with Fire: Five Presidents and the Civil War Battles That Made Them.
By James M. Perry. (New York, N.Y.: Public Affairs, 2003. xvi + 329p.
$26.00.)
Take two of the reading public's
favorite topics—the Civil War and the lives of the presidents—mix,
stir, and voila,
you have the recipe for Touched With Fire. The result should be tasty but unfortunately the ingredients
are stale, and we are dished up mostly rewarmed leftovers.
The five presidents whose hearts were touched with fire (as Oliver Wendell Holmes put it) were all Ohio born, though Ulysses S. Grant and Benjamin Harrison spent most of their lives further west, while Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, and William McKinley stayed close to home. Each was set upon the path to the White House by his Civil War exploits. The war lifted them out of their civilian ruts, revealed unsuspected capacity for leadership, stoked their ambitions for further fame and, not incidentally, provided them with a political base of Union veterans. None of the five seemed likely prospects for military glory. McKinley was an eighteen-year-old schoolboy when he enlisted as a private. Garfield was president of a small college, Hayes was a Cincinnati lawyer and Harrison a small-time Indiana politician; all three owed their commissions to political pull. Grant was the only professional soldier of the lot, but at the war's commencement he had dropped out of the army and was floundering in various ill-starred civilian enterprises. The bulk of the book narrates the wartime exploits of these future presidents. By and large they are good stories (as just about anything dealing with the Civil War must be) and are well told, but to Civil War mavens they will seem overly familiar. Each has been told and retold many times before, most recently by William H. Armstrong in Major McKinley, most thoroughly by T. Harry Williams in Hayes of the Twenty-Third, and in Harry Sievers' ponderous Benjamin Harrison: Hoosier Warrior. Some minor cavils must be registered. Perry describes Grant as "the first man in history to command more than a million men," forgetting for the moment, Napoleon. He claims that the city of Cleveland had only a dozen dwellings in 1831, but since its population was recorded at about 1,100, these houses must have been grossly overcrowded. James A. Garfield is characterized as a "notorious womanizer," which seems a bit harsh for a man with only one documented extra-marital lapse. If Perry knows of others he should disclose them. When Perry leaves the Civil War to discuss his protagonists' presidential careers, he treads upon even shakier ground. Although the outdated works of Matthew Josephson are not listed in the bibliography, their spirit permeates this book. We are back in the world where all Gilded Age politicians (except Cleveland) are corrupt spoilsmen, where all Republicans are in thrall to Big Business, where Grant is muddle-headed, Harrison a do-nothing, and McKinley a puppet on Mark Hanna's string. It is as if the scholarship of the past thirty years which has so radically transformed our view of Gilded Age politics has been preaching to the wind. Perry does list some of the key works of that scholarship in his bibliography but he doesn't seem to have digested their implications. In extenuation, it should be pointed out that Perry is a journalist, not a professional historian and, as such, his goal is to entertain rather than to edify. But since professionals seem to have dropped out of the entertainment business, and some even profess disdain for mere storytelling in order to free themselves from "the tyranny of the event," they can hardly complain if the amateurs who rush in to fill the vacuum show equal indifference to their scholarly monographs. Touched With Fire may contain no news but an old proverb tells us that is not all bad. Good stories can ripen with retelling and, since everyone has to encounter them for the first time somewhere, the novice could do worse than find them in this compact and readable form. Allan
Peskin , Cleveland State University
Ohio's
Founding Fathers. By Fred J. Milligan. (New York, N.Y.: iUniverse, Inc., 2003. xv
+ 318p.; footnotes, index of biographies. $23.95.)
There are many ways to explore
the past. Collective biographies and volumes containing a series of brief
biographies may assist scholars and the general public to understand the
careers and lifestyles of many representative individuals, as well as
major economic, religious, social, and political developments for any
era. Fred J. Milligan, the general counsel for the Ohio Historical Society
for a generation and the son of another active member of that society,
has now published a series of short biographies of fifty-five men who
helped found the Northwest Territory and the early state of Ohio.
Milligan, who learned during this project that he was descended from the brother of one of his subjects, traces in this volume the lives of the thirty-five men who served as delegates to Ohio's first Constitutional Convention, plus twenty others who were significant early territorial and state leaders. All were white males of English, Scots-Irish, and occasionally German ancestry, as indeed were most white American men in that period. Several of his subjects were born in Europe, and some had Americanized family names. Milligan's subjects came from diverse backgrounds. Some of these men inherited considerable wealth and status that led to quick prominence in their new frontier homes, while others were essentially self-made leaders. Overall the founders came from each of the new nation's major regions, and they settled in widely scattered parts of frontier Ohio that reflected the diverse cultural zones of the new state. While all of these men were active in the politics of the Northwest Territory or early Ohio, they had varying fates thereafter. Some became obscure, and several moved on to newer frontiers. A number of men lost much of their property during this era's tumultuous economic shifts, while others remained socially and politically prominent, and in some cases became or remained wealthy. The brief biographies in this volume illustrate a number of features of life in early Ohio. Many men and women married at young ages and often raised large numbers of children. Marriages were sometimes broken by the early death of a spouse. Religion clearly played a very important role for a large share of the Protestant families described in this book. The Revolutionary War, Indian wars, and War of 1812 all played crucial roles in shaping this frontier community. Many of Milligan's subjects shared a common interest in democratic politics and county-based government, although some preferred a much more centralized system of government. Most of these men shared an interest in obtaining federal land laws that would make it easier for ordinary families to acquire land. However, they were sharply divided by other issues such as slavery, civil rights for free blacks, national politics, and by sharp local struggles for political power and regional predominance. The strength of this volume lies in the wealth of details it provides about fifty-five prominent individuals. Milligan makes fewer comparisons between his characters than he could have included in a collective biography, and this is not a comparative statistical study about their lives. Milligan uses a range of primary and secondary sources. However, historians of Ohio will readily be able to suggest additional sources that could also have been consulted. This book would clearly have been strengthened by tight editing. Milligan spells the name of the Northwest Territory's first governor as St. Clair, Saint Clair, and Sinclair in different chapters. George Tod's name is also rendered Todd, Thomas Hutchins is also rendered Hutchinson, William Branch Giles is also called William Brown Giles, and so forth. There are more spelling variations in the footnotes, with Linda Elise Kalette's name never spelled correctly and Donald J. Ratcliffe also spelled Ratlciffe on several pages. Perhaps the most serious editing error, on page 171, states that Chillicothe had almost 12,000 residents in 1801. If these errors can be addressed in a second printing of Ohio's Founding Fathers, this volume will help many Ohioans to learn more about founders of their state who may be little known to them at the present moment, and it will certainly help them to understand many aspects of life in a rapidly changing and diverse frontier society. Jeffrey P. Brown, New Mexico State University Our
Common Country: Mutual Good Will in America. By Warren G. Harding; edited by Warren G. Harding III with
an introduction by Robert H. Ferrell. (Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri
Press, 2003. viii + 142p.; index. $14.95 paper.)
Our Common Country is
a collection of speeches that Warren G. Harding gave following his election
to the presidency in November 1920 that were originally published in 1921
under the same title. The great-nephew of the 29th president, Warren G.
Harding III, has edited the volume for a contemporary audience. The volume
is clearly an attempt to rehabilitate the tarnished image of President
Harding. Harding has a reputation as one of the worst presidents to occupy
the White House. Among the scandals associated with his administration
were the Teapot Dome oil scandal, the embezzlement at the Veteran's Bureau,
and the corruption at the Justice Department. Harding's personal life
also became the source of scandal and rumor; Harding's mistresses and
those who claimed to have been his mistresses are among the most well-known
in history.
The revisionist theme can be found in the nephew's preface and historian Robert Ferrell's introduction. Harding III describes his namesake as a "man of strong personal, business, and political values and a remarkable ability to achieve" (p. vii). Harding compares his great uncle to Abraham Lincoln, arguing that they were both "charged with preserving the nation" (p. vii). In Harding's case the threat came in the form of a nation divided over the issue of joining the League of Nations. Harding the nephew tells readers that "today there is a striking resemblance to this earlier time when the American nation was forced to evaluate itself and its role in the world" (p. viii). Robert Ferrell, in his introduction, ably provides the context for Harding speeches, recounting the turmoil that dominated the United States after World War I and the collapse of Woodrow Wilson's administration. Ferrell is a good choice to write the introduction. His Strange Deaths of President Harding (University of Missouri Press, 1996) was the last academic treatment of Harding. In it, Ferrell offered a mildly revisionist interpretation of Harding as he correctly points out that many of the scandals surrounding Harding's legacy are disputable or have been inflated with time. In his introduction, Ferrell goes further in his reexamination of Harding, writing that Harding "was a remarkable president" (p. 4). Ferrell continued that it "was after this hardworking, intelligent, one might as well say inspired—as the addresses illustrate—president died that the slanders, for their several reasons, assaulted his reputation" (p. 5). Ferrell echoes the sentiments of Harding's great-nephew, writing that Harding's speeches have a "remarkable relevance to the country at the present time" (p. 1). So do Warren G. Harding's words rise to the expectations laid out in the preface and introduction? The answer is a qualified yes. In his day Harding was known for his ability to give a crowd-pleasing speech. This ability, which Harding referred to as blovating, was disliked by intellectuals and pundits and they have won the historical argument. Historians often echo the very quotable dismissals of Harding rhetoric as a way of partially justifying Harding's poor place in history. Many of the speeches are mundane or clichéd, however they are understandable and not the rambling "Gamalielese" one might expect to find. Indeed, the assertion that Harding's words are relevant to today's troubled world remains vague praise rather than an argument that would have done much to rehabilitate Harding's battered reputation. Some form of annotation or commentary would have gone a long way to proving the continued relevancy. Still, Harding's own words do much to dispel the idea that he could not speak in clear and intelligible English. Part of Harding's charisma was his delivery, but one can read these speeches and appreciate that Harding did take the nation's troubles seriously, even if one does not necessarily agree with him. Phillip Payne, St. Bonaventure University Builders
of Ohio: A Biographical History. Edited by Warren Van Tine and Michael Pierce. (Columbus, Ohio:
The Ohio State University Press, 2003. xi + 338p.; illustrations, lists
for further reading, index. $24.95 paper.)
Builders of Ohio offers
two dozen substantial short essays (8-15 pages each) on notable figures
in Ohio's history from eighteenth-century British trader George Croghan
to Carl Stokes, Cleveland's first African American mayor, and Dave Thomas,
founder of the Wendy's hamburger stands. The result is a very useful volume
that will no doubt find its way into many libraries and onto many lists
of "required" or "recommended" readings. A short review
must limit itself to a few observations on the overall scheme and to general
comments on the individual essays.
Builders of Ohio is clearly designed to fit into college courses on Ohio history, and it will certainly be useful for that purpose. In its selection of "builders" the work suggests chronological and thematic scope for such a course. It includes: one colonial-era figure; one Native American and three European Americans from the Revolutionary and pre-state periods; four individuals who were most active in the antebellum period; Democrats Clement Vallandigham and George H. Pendleton from the Civil War and Reconstruction eras; industrialist B. F. Goodrich, Cleveland labor leader Michael Foran, and African Methodist Episcopal bishop Benjamin Arnett from the last decades of the nineteenth century; Tom Johnson, Ohio State University president William Oxley Thompson, Cleveland women's rights leader Florence E. Allen, African American leader Jane Edna Hunter, suburban tree-care pioneer Martin Davey, and Columbus labor leader George Denucci for the first third of the twentieth century; and Republican leaders John W. Bricker and James A. Rhodes of the middle third. Overall, the editors sought "honest" accounts of people who "struggled to come to terms with opportunity" (pp. vii, ix). Most of "builders" included were quite successful, at least for a time, but several failed, and others struggled against injustice with mixed success. The editors emphasize state politics on the ground that "it is only through their common citizenship that Ohioans are bound together as Ohioans" (p. ix). They also emphasize that the biographies they include are not of the most famous Ohioans. They did not include Pete Rose or Neil Armstrong, William Dean Howells, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, or Sherwood Anderson, and they excluded William McKinley, Ulysses S. Grant, and many others "who have played important roles in national affairs" (p. viii). To a considerable extent, this collection successfully integrates current preoccupations with race, class, and gender into a well-established approach to Ohio's political history. Alternative approaches might have paid fresh attention to Mark Hanna and others who built Ohio's long-dominant Republican Party, or to a wider range of the state's business figures, or to the leaders and followers who have given such varied life to its diverse Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish traditions, or to the changing fortunes of its great and almost-great public and private institutions in health care, education, and the arts. But this is just to suggest that Van Tine and Pierce are entirely correct to emphasize the appeal of the biographical approach. The solid individual essays, by twenty-four different hands, are written in clear, straightforward language without elaborate stylistic flourishes. Each author writes with sympathy (as well as with a critical perspective) for his or her subject, and each allows the story to carry itself. Most of the authors have faculty or graduate student connections with Ohio colleges and universities, especially Ohio State. The editors hope that this volume will "bring the work of academic historians to a wider audience" (p. viii). Their volume certainly deserves to do that. David C. Hammack, Case Western Reserve University Journal
of a Voyage Around the World: A Year on the Ship Helena (1841-1842).
By Thomas Worthington King, edited by Steven E. Kagle. (Columbus, Ohio:
The Ohio State University Press, 2003. xxx + 264p.; illustrations, appen-dixes,
notes, bibliography, index. $59.95.)
Thomas Worthington King of Chillicothe,
Ohio, was many things: a dutiful son and family man, amateur naturalist,
student of the classics, grandson of Ohio's first United States senator,
and, above all, a proud Harvard man. After graduation King took a position
at a mercantile firm in Philadelphia, establishing himself in a tedious
daily routine: "my life is all the same—rise at 8 go to counting
house at 8 1/2 stay until 3. Get my dinner, go back at 4 1/2 until 6.
get tea & etc." (p. 245). A year or so later, the twenty-one-year-old
clerk welcomed the opportunity to represent his employers on a lengthy
commercial mission to their offices in China. Upon his departure aboard
the packet ship Helena
in October 1841, King commenced to keep a diary of his experiences at
sea and at ports in South America and the Far East. King's journal entries,
recording what he termed "the most important epoch of [his] life" (p.190), are presented
in full in this volume.
A densely written combination of sea journal, travelogue, and intellectual exercise, King's diary provides a singular and revealing view into the world of an educated American abroad. Like hundreds of personal narratives kept by seafaring men during the Age of Sail, King's copybooks detail the minutiae of weather and course changes, shipboard discomforts and privations, and the stifling boredom and "eunnyie" that often characterized daily life on long sea voyages (p.171). At the same time, King's academic background and status as a non-crewmember differentiated him from his shipmates aboard the Helena. Without the responsibilities of a mariner to keep him busy, King was free to spend hours reading and reflecting upon the many books he brought to occupy himself. By the time he next set foot on American soil at the end of 1842, King had packed three notebooks with his commentary on the people and places he had seen, as well as his views on politics, literature, history, morality, and the pleasures of smoking his favorite cigarettes and cigars. Replete with detailed observations, witty turns of phrase, and thoughtful searches for meaning in new experiences, King's writings are informative and entertaining. Editor Steven Kagle does an excellent
job of fleshing out the details of King's life in his notes and introduction
to the text. Divided into several brief sections, the introductory chapter
includes a short segment on diary-keeping in the nineteenth century, a
biographical sketch of King, basic details about the China packet Helena and its voyage, and
a physical description of the original manuscript itself. Armed with this
information, along with more than two hundred explanatory endnotes, the
reader is provided with an intimate understanding of the inner world of
Thomas Worthington King.
There are some aspects of King's life and writings that merit greater attention than they receive in this volume. Only a single scant paragraph examines the period following the end of King's journey in 1842, four brief sentences that summarize the next nine years before his death in 1851 at the age of only thirty-one. How King made his living for most of that span, the cause of his untimely demise, and, most importantly, how the experiences recorded in his diary affected the course of his life, are not explained. In fact, the most serious flaw of the book is the way it neglects to place the diary and its author in a sufficiently broad context. The influences that shaped Thomas Worthington King and his attitudes—nineteenth-century middle-class values and mores, Ohio's regional culture, the academic and social environment at Harvard University, and the crucial political events of his time—are not examined. The book does not discuss or cite the voluminous scholarly literature on sea journals and maritime life, although King's writing took place almost exclusively at sea. King's diary entries make several references to vital contemporary issues such as slavery, women's rights, and democracy, but without sufficient historical background the importance of King and his observations is diminished. The diary of Thomas Worthington
King is highly recommended for anyone seeking insight into the experiences
and attitudes of an educated nineteenth-century American. However, the
editor's desire to present King's narrative almost solely on its own terms
will require readers to turn elsewhere for more contextual information.
Michael Sokolow, Kingsborough Community College, The City University of New York Empty
Pastures: Confined Animals and the Transformation of the Rural Landscape.
By Terence J. Centner.
(Champaign, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2004. 189p.: illustrations,
notes, appendixes, index. $35.00.)
"When I grew up," Terence
J. Centner notes in Empty Pastures: Confined
Animals and the Transformation of the Rural Landscape,
"dairy farmers had a name for every cow. . . . But small herds of
dairy cows no longer exist. The farms where they lived have been replaced
by farm factories producing milk" (p. 31). Evolutionary changes
in both farming and business practices, especially apparent in animal
agriculture over the past forty years, have led to the consolidation and
specialization of farm enterprises. American farms look and act differently
today. Many are characterized by huge animal feeding operations (AFOs)
which facilitate much of the U.S.A.'s animal production. Changes have
begat consequences, and of these the degradation of the environment and
the reorganization of the rural landscape are the most profound. Our pastures
have been emptied by the confinement facilities, and the economic forces
that brought this about have also precipitated a series of undesirable,
unsafe, unhealthy, and irresponsible circumstances for everyone, including
the animals.
Centner, a professor of agriculture and applied economics at the University of Georgia who also holds a law degree, believes that agriculture has a broader responsibility to society than simply producing food; it must personify good stewardship of natural resources in the present for the future to inherit. Gracefully weaving in discussions of his own intergenerational farm heritage as counterpoints to current farm practices, Centner carefully explains the emergence of AFOs and the largest of these, the concentrated AFOs (CAFOs). Both involve the aggregation of thousands of animals at production facilities that tend to be congregated in certain regions such as hogs in eastern North Carolina and cattle feedlots in the Texas panhandle. Matters of scale transcend the operation, from the facilities to inputs to animal wastes, the latter representing a specific threat to public health. Centner is equally concerned about the quality of life for confined animals, contending that they "suffer excessively" in AFOs and CAFOs. He describes a visit to a farrowing (hog-growing) facility to illustrate the harshness of their existence as well as the relationship between farmer and large agricultural firm which exemplifies the vertical integration in animal agriculture that emerged first in the broiler industry during the 1930s. Centner constantly reminds the reader that the public has a vested interest in agriculture and in what transpires in the countryside. He notes that the byproducts that devolve from animal food production "make polluters of our farms" in their impact upon water, soil, and air quality (p. 76). Animal production, Centner argues, cannot be separated from environmental issues (p. 94), and he urges more conscientious farming and environmentally friendly legislation. But he situates ultimate accountability and enforcement with vigilant citizens. He points out that various environmental statutes include citizen-suit provisions whereby a citizen can seek regulatory action where it should be occurring. The study concludes with Centner's own well-conceived suggestions for revitalizing the rural landscape, along with contact information for regulatory agencies and how to obtain state regulations pertaining to CAFOs. This is an important, well-articulated assessment about the transformation of a major agricultural activity and its attendant consequences on the environment, farming, and rural landscapes. Centner's clear prose and empowering information make this a good read and a reminder that citizens can hold those who use and profit from our shared natural resources accountable to the laws that protect them. Empty Pastures is highly recommended for courses in agricultural and rural history and would fit well with the broader context of twentieth-century agriculture in R. Douglas Hurt's Problems of Plenty: The American Farmer in the Twentieth Century (New York, 2003) and that of rural history in David B. Danbom's Born in the Country: A History of Rural America (Baltimore, 1995). Ginette Aley, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University On
the Right Track: Some Historic Cincinnati Railroads. By John H. White Jr. (Cincinnati, Ohio: The Cincinnati Railroad
Club, Inc., 2003. 160p.; illustrations, time line, bibliography, index.
$36.95.)
In On
the Right Track, John H. White Jr., a prominent authority on the history of
North American transportation, discusses various aspects of railroading in his hometown of
Cincinnati, Ohio. White selects from previously published essays those
accounts that relate directly to the "Queen City." In the process
he expands or revises these pieces accordingly. The eight essays offer
fascinating coverage and range from discussions of the first steam locomotives
in the region to development of the prototype of the modern intermodal
freight container, a "magic box," successfully fashioned by
local visionary Benjamin Franklin Fitch. But the core of the book consists
of historical sketches of several commuter-type carriers that began suburban
service during the post-Civil War period. These include the Cincinnati
Northwestern Railway, the Cincinnati & Westwood Railroad, and the
Columbia & Cincinnati Street Railroad. White demonstrates the need
for such small steam-powered carriers before the automobile and the all-weather
road. And, he notes appropriately, the key role that real-estate promoters
played in development of these now long-abandoned pikes. While the suburban
railroads may not have been money machines, land sales often became brisk.
This latest book by "Jack" White is delightful. Not only are the essays well-researched and engagingly written, but they contain a variety of outstanding illustrations, including informative maps. The audience for this work should be extensive, attracting railroad enthusiasts and those interested in Cincinnati-area history. An added bonus is a time line of important events in the railroad history of Cincinnati, extending from the 1830s to the present. If there is a weakness, it involves a few typographical errors. Fortunately, the book contains both a helpful bibliography and a usable index. H. Roger Grant, Clemson University The
River Home: A Memoir.
By Dorothy Weil. (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2002. xi + 247p.;
illustrations. $24.95.)
In this honest and clearly written
memoir, Dorothy Weil tells the story of
how her family struggled to survive the Great Depression while living
and working on and along the Ohio and Missouri rivers and how the river
experience shaped her life. In the process, she reflects on how family
conflicts brought confusion and how familial love trumped the troubled
relationships. Much of the family conflict she attributed to a clash of
cultures between her father, who hailed from the Kentucky hills, and her
mother, a well-bred Cincinnati girl. Along the way, she relates specific
incidents in her life to very large historical themes.
An established novelist, documentary script writer, and director, the author reconstructs dialogue between her family members based upon recollections and reminiscences which plausibly capture the essence of the family conflicts. Throughout she relies upon oral histories from veterans of life on the river, her mother's scrapbooks, recollections of close and distant family members, and notes taken when conversations "were still ringing clearly in ny ear" (p. xi). The result is a highly readable and masterly detailed book that should satisfy the historian as well as the general reader. The hard times of the depression era are revealed through vignettes of childhood traumas and family crises, as well as the strategies used to cope with these events. Evictions from apartments, losses of jobs, the loss of pets, repossessed cars, and temporary friends were all part of "our nomadic life" (p. 42). When her father failed at various sales jobs "he turned once again to the river" (p. 29)—from Omaha (where Weil was born) to Louisville to Cincinnati. The Coomer family's limited diet, shabby clothing, and family quarrels all reflect well the working class struggles during the hardscrabble depression years. Dorothy's struggles in school, her mother's softening the hard edges that her children had to deal with, and the frustration emitted by her father in various ways are all woven together in the narrative. Social historians will find Weil's gradual awakening to the problems of racism and class in the era during and after World War II to be rewarding reading, especially the way she dealt with these issues in grade school in Cincinnati's East End, living at the Cincinnati Yacht Club, at Withrow High School, and at the University of Chicago, which she attended on scholarship. The desolate existence in the new suburban tracts of the 1950s for a newly married, intelligent, and talented woman is depicted in a painfully honest and courageous way. After the death of her father Weil, like her father so often did, returned to the river in the 1980s. She wrote and co-produced "TV IMAGE," a series of award-winning television documentaries about life on the Ohio River. She also used Cincinnati, a river city, as the source of and backdrop for more of her creative activities as an artist and writer. Her documentary Beautiful River: Rediscovering the Ohio was part of the 1992 multimedia Always the River project.
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| BOOK NOTES | ||
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A
Guide to Cincinnati's Historic Firehouses. Photography by Charles Brooks (Evansville, IN: M.T.
Publishing Co., Inc., 1989, 2003. 104p.; illustrations.)
Firefighting is riding
a renaissance of public interest. Yet long before September 11, 2001,
America's volunteer and professional firefighters were valiantly responding
to those at the end of the callboxes. As early as 1853 Cincinnati became
the nation's first professional fire department with horse-drawn steam
pumpers. A Guide to Cincinnati's Historic Firehouses is aptly dedicated to the professional firefighters of the
Queen City. First published in 1989 and revised in 2003, the hardbound
volume is chronologically arranged by the station's date of construction
with name of architect, architectural style, vital statistics, and a brief
accompanying history. Extensive interior and exterior photographs visually
document each of the 26 active and 31 inactive firehouses. Readers learn
an act of the Ohio Legislature in 1888 authorized the issuance of bonds
for acquisition of sites and construction. In Cincinnati a building boom
ensued during the period 1888-1890, leaving the city with a remarkable
collection of solidly built architectural gems. The book concludes with a brief profile of the modern firefighter.
Steve Gordon
Ohio Historical
Society
Follow
the Blue Blazes: A Guide to Hiking Ohio's Buckeye Trail.
By Robert J. Pond, with a Foreword by Steven M. Newman. (Athens: Ohio
University Press, 2003. 299p.; appendixes, bibliography, maps, illustrations.)
Robert Pond aptly
notes "Some of society's greatest discoveries originated during a
walk." Sage advice indeed, for while following the blue blazes—a
series of vertical marks painted on trees, utility poles, and specially
designed Coronite signs along Ohio's Buckeye Trails—you can experience
landmarks, historical sites, quaint villages, major cities, and yes, even
good health. It was in 1959 that the Ohio Department of Natural Resources
proposed a trail so that Ohioans could learn about the landscape. The
present Buckeye Trail, the longest loop trail in the country, is the only
one to encircle a major portion of the state, some five hundred miles
from Lake Erie to the Ohio River. This geographically organized paperback
is amply illustrated with excellent maps and featured hikes. So get out
and hike!
Steve Gordon Ohio Historical
Society
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| BOOKS RECEIVED | ||
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The following books were received
by Ohio History and may be of interest to our
readers.
NEW PUBLICATIONS
Herbert
Woodward Martin and the African American Tradition in Poetry.
By Ronald Primeau. (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 2004.
xiv + 238p.; illustrations, appendix, notes, index.)
Methodists
and the Crucible of Race, 1930-1975.
By Peter C. Murray. (Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri
Press, 2004. xix + 266p.; illustrations, works cited, index.)
An
American Epic of Discovery: The Lewis and Clark Journals.
The abridgment of the definitive Nebraska
edition, edited and with an introduction by Gary E. Moulton. (Lincoln,
Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. lviii + 413p.; index.)
One
Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before Lewis and Clark.
By Colin G. Calloway. (Lincoln, Neb.:University
of Nebraska Press, 2003. xvii + 631p.; illustrations, notes, selected
bibliography, index.)
"Negro
President": Jefferson and the Slave Power.
By Garry Wills. (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin
Company, 2003. xiv + 274p.; notes, index.)
Animal
Sacrifice & Religious Freedom: Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v.
City of Hialeah.
By David M. O'Brien. (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 2004.
xii + 196p.; appendix, glossary, chronology, bibliographic essay, index.)
20
Good Reasons to Study the Civil War. By John C. Waugh, with a foreword by Jim Lehrer. (Abilene,
Tex.: MacWhiney Foundation Press, McMurry University, 2004. 96p.)
The
Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications.
By Paul Starr. (New York, N.Y.: Basic Books, 2004. xii + 484p.; notes,
index.)
PREVIOUSLY REVIEWED, NOW
IN PAPERBACK Way
Up North in Dixie: A Black Family's Claim to the Confederate Anthem.
By Howard L. Sacks & Judith Rose Sacks. (Champaign, Ill.: University
of Illinois Press, 200. xxv + 259p.; illustrations, appendix, notes, index.)
Dear
Brother: Letters of William Clark to Jonathan Clark.
Edited and with an introduction by James J. Holmberg; Foreword by James
P. Ronda. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, in association with
the Filson Historical Society, 2002. xxx + 322p.; illustrations, appendixes,
sources cited, index.)
OTHER REPRINTS The
Antislavery Movement in Kentucky. By Lowell H. Harrison. (Lexington, Ky.: The University Press of Kentucky, 1978 and 2004. 137p.; notes, index.)
The
Mound-Builders.
By Henry Clyde Shetrone with a new introduction
by Bradley T. Lepper. (Tuscaloosa, Ala.: The University of Alabama Press,
2004. xliv + 508p.; illustrations, bibliography, index.)
The
Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past. By John Lewis Gaddis. (New York, N.Y.: Oxford University
Press, 2002. xii + 192p.; illustrations, notes, index.)
Domestic Tyranny: The Making of American Social Policy against Family Violence from Colonial Times to the Present. By Elizabeth Pleck. (Champaign, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1987 and 2004. xxxi + 273p.; illustrations, notes, index.) REVISED EDITIONS Congress
from the Inside: Observations from the Majority and the Minority
(Third Edition). By Sherrod Brown. (Kent,
Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 2004. xx + 324p.; illustrations,
index.)
William
McKinley and His America. By H. Wayne
Morgan. (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 2003. viii + 488p.;
illustrations, notes, bibliographical essay, index.)
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