Book Reviews
Four Hours in My Lai. By Michael Bilton and Kevin Sim. (New York:
Viking, 1992. ix + 430p.; maps,
illustrations, notes on sources, notes on
text, bibliography, index. $25.00.)
On March 16, 1968, Charlie Company of
Americal Division's 11th Light
Infantry Brigade attacked the Vietnamese
hamlet of My Lai expecting to en-
counter Viet Cong forces which Army
intelligence had reported as operating
in the area. Finding no Viet Cong, and
meeting no military opposition what-
soever, U.S. troops proceeded to murder
an indeterminate number (probably
several hundred) of unresisting old men,
women, and children; accompanying
the murders were torture, mutilations,
rape, sodomy, and worse. A massacre
of the first magnitude, the whole
affair, or "incident" as the Army would pre-
fer (Army authorities insisted that it
never be termed a massacre), raised seri-
ous questions about the conduct of our
troops in Vietnam, especially their
treatment of noncombatants.
International concern for the welfare of
civilians, or noncombatants, in war
dates back to the Thirty Years War,
which saw zealous Catholic and
Protestant forces compete for which side
could commit the most homicide
and mayhem in general on largely
defenseless civilians. Appalled, such emi-
nent jurists as Grotius and Vattel
attempted to make the humane treatment,
when at all possible, of noncombatants
during war an integral part of interna-
tional law. Over time, most of the
"civilized" countries of the world honored,
with some violent exceptions, these new
rules of the game. Even in the
twentieth century when such marvelous
military innovations as high-level
aerial bombing made respect for the
welfare of civilians virtually impossible,
it was understood that killing
noncombatants intentionally was a crime
against international law for which
perpetrators could be made to answer.
German and Japanese martial folk learned
this harsh fact of life at a series of
post-World War II trials. (Some would
argue later that both sides in the war
were guilty of war crimes. Yes, but both
sides did not lose the war.)
That decent treatment of civilians was
required by rule of law, and that the
United States, a major member of the
prosecution at the postwar trials, was a
leading proponent of observance of the
law makes what happened at My Lai
all the more painful and difficult to
understand. In fact, as though to mock
the trials, some of the troops who
committed atrocities there defended their
behavior on the same grounds as had
German and Japanese war criminals.
Lieutenant William "Rusty"
Calley, the only soldier convicted for anything
that happened at My Lai, used the German
generals' defense at Nuremberg:
he was only following orders. Also making
a case for following orders was
76 OHIO HISTORY
Sergeant Kenneth Hodges, who had helped
train the men of Charlie
Company. The men, said Hodges proudly,
"had turned out to be very good
soldiers. The fact that they were able
to go into My Lai and carry out the or-
ders they had been given, I think is a
direct result of the good training they
had" (p. 55). Now, logic would
dictate that the "only following orders" ex-
cuse was equally inapplicable at
Nuremberg and My Lai. Another officer
maintained that although he was at My
Lai that day, he had seen no civilians
murdered or atrocities committed and
most certainly had given no orders that
might have caused them. But this defense
will not wash either, or at least it
did not for Japanese General Tomoyuki
Yamashita after World War II.
Yamashita explained that he had not
ordered and could not have known about
the horrid behavior of Japanese troops
at Manila in 1945. Not to be deterred,
American prosecutors judged him guilty
because, as the troops' commander,
he should have known what they
were doing.
It is an ugly, sordid picture that
Bilton and Sim paint. The men of Charlie
Company's behavior falls somewhere
between the barbarous and the bestial,
with the killings being graphically
described (by participants who were there)
like something out of a triple x-rated
Sam Peckinpah movie. The behavior of
their officers on the scene was equally
appalling as they not only made no at-
tempt to stop the killings but some,
namely Lieutenant Calley, actively di-
rected and joined in the activities. (A
girlfriend of Calley would later say, "I
know that deep down he wouldn't hurt
anyone. Just look at the way he takes
care of his pets and how gentle he
is" [p. 2]. One might also claim that Hitler
could not have been all bad because he
was fond of children and dogs.)
And finally, what must one think about
the U.S. Army's reluctance to bring
to justice anyone associated with the
killings? The results of the Army's own
investigations were either swept under
the rug or ignored when possible, and
when not were described in the language
of euphemisms which, as Martin
Van Creveld has noted, the military
often resorts to when attempting to make
the ugliness of war palatable to
civilian audiences. (The Army, as noted,
never allowed the use of the word
"massacre" to describe the incident. A
weapon-induced mass antipersonnel
neutralization would have sufficed.) All
of which brings to mind that old saw
that military justice is to justice what
military music is to music. That the
Army, aided by various politicians and
organizations sympathetic to military
causes, managed to portray My Lai in
the best possible light was a triumph in
damage control of an event that might
otherwise rank right up there with names
like Lidice and Oradour-sur-Glane.
Ohio Historical Society Robert L. Daugherty
Book Reviews
77
Campus Wars: The Peace Movement at
American State Universities in the
Vietnam Era. By Kenneth J. Heineman. (New York: New York University
Press, 1993. xvi + 348p.; tables, notes,
bibliography, index. $40.00.)
Many Americans today recall the Vietnam
era antiwar movement only as a
series of massive demonstrations held in
major cities. The war's opposition
is more accurately seen, however, in hundreds
of locales across the nation.
Historian Kenneth Heineman reveals part
of this story in a valuable new book
that focuses on four state universities;
Michigan State, Penn State, SUNY-
Buffalo, and Kent State. With most
previous research emphasizing elite uni-
versities, Heineman's study contributes
to a more complete picture of
national antiwar dissent.
Activism at the selected institutions
all predated Berkeley's Free Speech
Movement. The author's analysis of
student activists indicates that while
state schools harbored protesters that
fit the profile of activists at elite univer-
sities (overwhelmingly middle to upper
middle class, disproportionately
Jewish, and radical), most antiwar
students were nonviolent doves unaffili-
ated with formal organizations.
Heineman's belief that class and cultural
background shaped the attitudes of
student protesters is accurate but incom-
plete. He concludes that antiwar
students were more likely to be liberal arts
majors and Jewish, but his figures show
that the majority of all activists, both
antiwar and prowar, shared several
characteristics. These similarities indicate
a more complex origin of political
values than he provides.
Student radicals represented a small
minority, but their organization
permitted significant influence of
campus events. Heineman indicates this
relative strength came because students
brought up "in households which
stressed the importance of civility and
compromise, were incapable of
responding with sufficient vigor to
opponents who had been taught that
control, manipulation, and confrontation
were positive cultural attributes" (p.
272). Local chapters of national radical
groups, such as SDS, varied and
often ignored national direction, but
their ideological disputes and violent
tactics both confused and repelled most
students. This doctrinal friction is
exemplified by a gathering at Kent State
where radicals denounced moderates
for their racist action, serving vanilla
rather than chocolate ice cream (p. 231).
SDS attracted mass followings only when
national events or local issues,
particularly police forces, aroused
students. Universities, increasingly reliant
upon federal defense contracts to
finance research, themselves became targets
of protesters opposed to these links to
the military-industrial complex.
Antiwar faculty varied in number from
campus to campus, but they were
concentrated in the liberal arts and
social sciences, and most identified them-
selves as liberals rather than New Left.
Activist faculty, often younger and
untenured, were frequently fired for
their antiwar leanings.
78 OHIO HISTORY
University presidents generally handled
dissent ineffectively, less because
they capitulated to student demands than
for their inability to understand the
issues and their tendency to rely on
force to maintain order. Intense campus
and community repression of even
moderate dissent ultimately radicalized
more students than did SDS.
Campus antiwar activism often
antagonized the surrounding communities,
which at best viewed faculty and
students as outsiders and at worst saw
protesters as communist subversives.
Successful links between campus and
town were rare, though citizens showed
greater toleration for antiwar clergy
and veterans.
Public memory often links antiwar
actions with radical violence, but
Heineman reveals the extent to which
activists were victims of violence and
repression. Campus hawks, community
vigilantes, and local police fre-
quently attacked antiwar students. Doves
endured surveillance by the FBI,
state red squads, and college
administrators. Police infiltrators advocated
violent acts to undermine the popularity
of antiwar groups. Local grand
juries, state legislators, and prowar
groups like the American Legion
pressured universities to eliminate
protest and deny free speech. While
antiwar activists engaged in illegal
acts were routinely arrested, authorities
generally tolerated violence by prowar
students.
Campus Wars contains occasional repetition, and the campus moderate
ma-
jority should receive more emphasis. In
general, however, I strongly recom-
mend it as an informative addition to
the modern American peace movement.
Central Michigan University Mitchell K. Hall
Remaking America: Public Memory,
Commemoration, and Patriotism in the
Twentieth Century. By John E. Bodnar. (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1992. xiii + 296p.;
illustrations, notes, note on sources, index.
$29.95.)
Americans debate the meaning of the past
in many forums. Consider the
difficulty Coloradans are having
deciding how to commemorate the centen-
nial of "America the
Beautiful." Will Georgia's state flag include the
Confederacy's stars and bars by the 1996
Olympics in Atlanta? Historians
assign meaning to past events through
diligent research and careful writing,
but public memory is the product of
complex processes which are open to
public debate. In Remaking America John
E. Bodnar defines public memory
as the "ideas about the past that
help a public or society understand both its
past, present, and by implication, its
future" (p. 15). Public memory, like
public policy, is subject to challenges
and reinterpretation. It provides an op-
portunity to examine how American
attitudes toward the past have changed
Book Reviews
79
and how those changes reflect shifts in
American social structure. Remaking
America analyzes public memory and shows that the portrayal of
the past in
public places tells us as much about
ourselves as our forebears.
Bodnar uses two broad social groups, the
"cultural elite" and "ordinary
people," in his analysis. The
cultural elite comprises businessmen, lawyers,
and other professionals who control the
large organizations which emerged in
the late 1800s with the advent of
corporate giants like Standard Oil. Such
corporations and government
bureaucracies carried the organizational mo-
mentum into the twentieth century and
continue to shape events today. The
elite, Bodnar argues, employed the
prestige and power of its economic stand-
ing to influence public memory. Although
its wealth and influence implied
the ability to dominate the creative
process, Bodnar distinguishes between the
form and substance of public memory.
The form of public memory (parades,
monuments, statues, etc.) reflects the
dominant class's views, but ordinary
people often assign meanings contrary
to those intended by society's leaders.
Bodnar's most compelling example of
this dichotomy is the Vietnam Veterans
Memorial. Congressmen and other
members of the cultural elite wanted the
memorial to emphasize patriotism.
Most Vietnam veterans and many Americans
instead saw the memorial as a
symbol of "personal pain, grief,
and loss" (p. 7). One memorial, in other
words, had at least two meanings.
If Americans had failed to agree on the
meaning of public symbols, two
symbols in particular have proved to be
remarkably durable-pioneers and
patriots. Both became lasting symbols in
American culture by meeting the
needs of various social groups, in
settings from the local to the national level.
Readers, particularly Ohioans, will
enjoy Bodnar's accounts of how citizens
have used these symbols in different
periods of American history. The author
uses Cleveland in the early 1900s as a
local case study and the Midwest for
his regional analysis. He shows how the
cultural elite has tried unsuccess-
fully to impose its will on an equally
willful citizenry. Especially in local set-
tings, ordinary people have been able to
shape public memory to reflect their
values. But even in a national context,
as voter disaffection with "the system"
in the 1992 elections revealed, ordinary
people sometimes understand their
society differently than the elite.
Bodnar reaffirms the importance of
competing groups in shaping our past
and the memory of that past.
Predictably, not everyone will agree with
Bodnar's analysis of the divisions
within American society. It suffers, I be-
lieve, from a lack of specificity
regarding the composition of his two social
groups. A more probing look at the
shifting alliances and the effects of up-
ward mobility on attitudes would better
explain the process of creating public
memory. Nonetheless, Bodnar's broad
geographic and chronological sweep
allows the reader to draw conclusions
about how the decision-making process
80 OHIO HISTORY
works in modern America. Good history
should do that. I commend Bodnar
for showing that history has been a
vital part of our past and is a powerful
presence in today's society.
U.S. Air Force Academy Howard G. Jones, III
Emma Goldman and the American Left:
"Nowhere at Home." By Marian
J.
Morton. (New York: Twayne Publishers,
1992. xii + 183p.; illustrations,
notes, chronology, bibliographic essay,
selected bibliography, index.
$26.95 cloth; $13.95 paper.)
Marian J. Morton has given readers a
fresh perspective on the life and work
of one of the most remarkable
personalities in American and international
politics in the modern era. In Emma
Goldman and the American Left:
"Nowhere at Home," an offering in Twayne's Twentieth Century American
Biography Series, Morton provides just
what the publisher claims: political
biography that is at once even-handed
and profound.
The author, always sensitive to the
contradictions in Goldman's life and ca-
reer, traces her efforts to escape both
the bonds of Jewish culture and the ter-
rors of Romanov repression by embracing
Russian radicalism, her failed at-
tempt-with Alexander Berkman, her
life-long companion and intellectual
mentor-to kindle a revolutionary fire in
the hearts of an American labor
movement that increasingly accepted the
corporate-industrial-liberal order
emerging at the turn of the century, her
much more successful endeavors to
build bridges to the highly
individualistic "cultural left" and to fight for wom-
en's rights in the Progressive Era, her
participation in a flawed anticonscrip-
tion campaign which exposed the American
Left's vulnerability to state-au-
thorized terrorism and the suspension of
constitutional freedoms in wartime,
her exile to a Soviet Union that she
initially championed, then castigated, and
her final years as an aged minister of
revolution with a portfolio discredited in
an increasingly collectivized Western
civilization.
The author not only captures
Goldman's-and Berkman's-contribution to
the American Left, but clearly and
concisely defines the varying socialist and
anarchist intellectual traditions of the
late nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
turies. As for the Goldman-Berkman
relationship, one which spanned four
decades, Morton's portrayal makes for
fascinating reading. The author is
most effective where she juxtaposes the
statements of a young Goldman with
the reflections expressed in the
anarchist's autobiography, Living My Life.
This scholarly method tests the sources
and furnishes the reader with a truly
balanced and insightful assessment.
Although it is a splendid biography,
Morton's book is much less valuable as
an account of the American Left. This
reviewer found the treatment of
Book Reviews
81
Gilded Age labor and immigrant
radicalism-the context in which the young
Goldman must be set-to be too thin.
Recent works by Bruce C. Nelson,
Paul LeBlanc, and Richard Schneirov,
among others, demonstrate a more
complex and contradictory web of
relationships between labor and the so-
cialist-anarchist left. This growing
body of social history literature can in-
crease our understanding of the society
and culture in which these anarchist
heroes operated.
But criticism aside, Emma Goldman succeeds
as biography and should be
seriously considered for classroom use.
Kent State University Clarence E. Wunderlin,
Jr.
Weathering the Peace: The Ohio
National Guard in the Interwar Years,
1919-1940. By Robert L. Daugherty. (Dayton, Ohio: Wright State
University Press, 1992. xviii + 289p.;
illustrations, notes, bibliography, in-
dex. $39.75.)
Weathering the Peace enters the fray over the new military history by
placing the Ohio National Guard (ONG) in
its interwar setting of domestic re-
lief and police agency. Robert L.
Daugherty, editor of this journal, argues
that the Guard showed "adroit skill
at playing politics," proved useful as "a
standing military force to the
beleaguered, sadly undermanned U.S. Army,"
and performed significant
"activities as a peacetime domestic institution" (pp.
xvii-xviii).
Chapters organized by gubernatorial
administration explain ONG leader-
ship, recruitment, funding, training,
politicking, and use. Daugherty docu-
ments strong Ohio Guard numbers and
funding in a period of national mili-
tary retrenchment. Links to governors,
the General Assembly, and veterans
groups allowed Ohio's Guard to thrive.
Both Democratic and Republican
governors chose adjutant generals for
their political loyalty as well as military
experience. Numerous short biographies
of leaders such as Benson Hough,
37th Division commander, and longtime
adjutant general Frank D. Henderson
show the individuals responsible for
building the modern Ohio military.
Daugherty conducted extensive research
in governor's papers, ONG
records, newspapers, federal reports,
and military journals to reveal how civil
leaders used the peacetime Guard. Tables
detailing governors, adjutant gen-
erals, federal and state appropriations,
and armories would have assisted
readers in focusing on the narrative.
Heartening case studies of Guard disas-
ter assistance in the 1924 Lorain
tornado, the 1925 Shenandoah airship crash,
the 1928 coal strike, the 1930 Ohio
Penitentiary fire, and Ohio River floods in
1936 and 1937 reveal a military force
engaged in worthwhile humanitarian
assistance. ONG intervention in the 1924
Niles riot between the Ku Klux
82 OHIO HISTORY
Klan and the Knights of the Flaming
Circle (an Italian-American group) re-
flected nativist-new immigrant tensions.
Daugherty opens new vistas on
controversial troop deployments in the
1919 steel strike, the 1931 Hunger
march, the 1931-33 coal strikes, the 1934
Toledo Auto-Lite strike, and the Little
Steel strikes of 1937. The author ar-
gues that Guardsmen sought to fulfill
their duty without taking sides. As
Jerry M. Cooper did for federal troop
use in late-nineteenth century strikes in
The Army and Civil Disorder (1980), Daugherty clearly shows Ohio gover-
nors' failure to develop rational
policies for Guard use in labor disputes.
Civilian leadership of military forces
in a democratic republic entailed costs
as well as benefits. Politicians'
all-too-common failure to take responsibility
often led Guard officers to make policy
decisions siding with business man-
agement, leaving workers alienated from
their state's citizen-soldiers.
Daugherty follows the evidence closely,
indicating when field commanders
abused their authority and took sides.
At times, the Guard surprised business
leaders by refusing to choose sides,
while in a few instances workers saw the
troops as comrades-in-arms. In arguing
that governors played off against lo-
cal politicians and police and vice
versa, this work reveals the complexities of
state/local federalism. While
politicians vied with one another in placing
blame, the ONG served as de facto agent
of law and order, often to its own
detriment.
After 1935, the Guard's fortunes
improved, while leadership passed to
younger professionals. Prewar
mobilization set the stage for the 37th
"Buckeye" Division's Pacific
performance in World War II. Seven of seven-
teen Guardsmen who won Congressional
Medals of Honor came from the
Ohio unit. If only the author had
included one more chapter on the wartime
experience.
This narrative of the Ohio National
Guard reveals much about Americans'
distrust of military professionals and
continued support for citizen-soldiers in
peacetime. In presenting Ohio's National
Guard as part of the array of plural-
ist institutions in interwar America,
Daugherty has begun to address the chal-
lenge of the new military history. Weathering
the Peace joins a handful of
well-researched scholarly histories of
national guard forces in print.
Tennessee Technological University Patrick D. Reagan
Women, Family, and Utopia: Communal
Experiments of the Shakers, the
Oneida Community, and the Mormons. By Lawrence Foster. (Syracuse:
Syracuse University Press, 1991. xx +
353p.; illustrations, notes, selected
bibliography, index. $37.95 cloth;
$16.95 paper.)
Book Reviews
83
The 1830s and 1840s stand out as a time
of unusual social and religious
longings and innovations in America. In
virtually any inventory of that era's
most intriguing new religions, the
Shakers, Christian Perfectionists, and
Mormons appear at the top. Though each
of these movements took
communitarian form, the details of their
living arrangements-including
sexual relations-varied widely. Shakers
practiced total celibacy. The
Perfectionists' "complex
marriage" system involved multiple sexual
relationships for both men and women.
Mormons sanctioned polygamy. Yet
all three suggest that monogamous
marriage was under acute stress in the
early nineteenth century.
Lawrence Foster's overriding purpose is
to understand each group's prac-
tices in the context of its total way of
life and cluster of beliefs. Too often, he
observes, Shakers, Perfectionists, and
Mormons have appeared only as
"colorful freaks in a circus
sideshow or strange natives in some primitive
tribe" (p. 3). He is not alone in
this purpose, as one hundred pages of notes
and bibliography amply demonstrate.
Foster is especially good at explaining
why the leaders of these groups in-
troduced their distinctive sexual
features-in each case, after the group had
taken shape and against internal
opposition. Three factors run through all
three cases: the personalities and
experiences (including sexual experiences)
of the founders; the implications and
tendencies of their theologies; and group
needs, such as loyalty and cohesion. In
dealing with the founders, Foster hy-
pothesizes very tentatively that Ann
Lee, John Humphrey Noyes, and Joseph
Smith may all have been
manic-depressive personalities. But he wisely re-
jects psychological reductionism with
respect to both leaders and followers.
Foster also treats the effects of these
sexual arrangements with great sensi-
tivity. He shows that their practices
were a source of both strength and weak-
ness, depending on each group's internal
solidarity and strength of leadership
and the nature of external opposition at
a given time. His discussion of the
effects on individual participants,
especially women, is particularly illuminat-
ing. Consistently comparing the extent
to which women in these movements
experienced freedom and equality in
sexual relationships with their roles and
responsibilities in economic and
religious spheres, Foster generally accents
positive aspects of their experiences.
Mormon women, who lived in the most
complete patriarchy and who frequently
accepted polygamy only after coer-
cion, give the greatest pause, but
Foster finds compensations even for them.
If Shakers, Perfectionists, and Mormons
seem inconsistent in rearranging
the relations of men and women in some
spheres but retaining traditional
gender norms in others, Foster asserts,
it is because their vision was of a reli-
gious millennium in which all would be
in submission to the will of God.
The particularities of their social
systems rested on their understanding of
God's will and were decidedly secondary.
Not only must we not judge them
84 OHIO HISTORY
as if their principal purpose had been
social reform. We must also understand
that theirs was a reaction against an
individualism that they found personally
and socially destructive. They sought a
cooperative and communal alterna-
tive, not the individualistic freedom of
many modern feminists.
Since eight of Foster's twelve chapters
appeared previously as articles or
essays, and since the other four rest
heavily on material in his Religion and
Sexuality: Three American Communal
Experiments of the Nineteenth
Century (1981), there is little here with which close students
of these move-
ments will not be familiar. Despite
revisions made for this volume, there is
occasional redundancy, and a few
chapters diverge from his major themes. It
is useful nonetheless to have his work
brought together in this format. His
methodological and interpretive
assessments are especially valuable guides to
the state of contemporary scholarship on
these groups.
Wright State University Jacob H. Dorn
Liberalism: Old & New. By J. G. Merquior. (Boston: Twayne Publishers,
1991. xiv + 182p.; chronology, notes and
references, index. $11.95.)
Populism: Its Rise and Fall. By William A. Peffer. Edited and with an in-
troduction by Peter H. Argersinger.
(Lawrence: University Press of
Kansas, 1992. viii + 208p.;
illustrations, notes, index. $25.00.)
Liberalism has a way yet to go before it
can be stabilized in a modern
spectrum of radicalism to conservatism.
It presently means whatever a pro-
tagonist says it means, and involves no
center to which other "liberals" need
adhere. Communists in the new Russia are
termed conservatives in the New
York Times. George McGovern, as a Democratic candidate in 1972,
preferred
to call himself a Progressive, despite
his strange assortment of supporters.
President Bush has been called,
invidiously, a liberal by disappointed conser-
vatives and neo-conservatives.
The problem with Liberalism: Old
& New, by a Brazilian professor and
diplomat, is one of substance. He is
helpful in tracing "liberalism" through
the ages. He identifies such liberal
landmarks as reform in the Reformation,
in Anglo-Saxon economics and institutions,
and continuing shifts into the
present. However, he deals only with
programs, not events, and so can find
liberalism in the French Revolution
without coping with its trail of horrid
"institutions" and ghastly
massacres. A passage from any part of the book
shows his method:
The themes of progress and liber[al]ism,
so prominent in [Adam] Smith, were
substantial additions to the two earlier
formative elements in the liberal creed, rights,
and constitutionalism. Politically,
liberalism could restrict itself to the latter two. But
liberalism, besides being a political
doctrine, was also a worldview, identified with the
Book Reviews
85
belief in progress. The Enlightenment
gave liberalism the theme of Progress, chiefly
theorized by classical economics... (p.
32).
Today, we must set aside concepts of
"classical" elements if we are to
make relevant judgments respecting
parties and personalities which offer
consistency and light. Thus, recent
writings have found, and been passed on
to students, the idea that American Progressivism
was merely a gambit by
"essentially" conservative
publicists to link government with capitalism, also
invidiously perceived. A fairly recent
work established for the present
History Establishment a view of Herbert
Hoover as none other than a-typi-
cal?-Progressive. A frank view of actual
Progressivism-there is no view
of it in Merquior-may in time put the
Hoover book in the shadow as a va-
gary of our times. But meanwhile it
helps a reasonable review of the facts to
keep in mind the collapse of the USSR,
since it up to the end served as a "role
model" of justice and true
democracy for many Americans in high and low
places.
Professor Argersinger deserves kudos for
putting Peffer's Populism: Its
Rise and Fall, originally published in 1899, back into print and
giving it con-
scientious editing and an introduction.
Populism is not alone in having be-
come a vague phenomenon in a muddled
era, reduced to a few cliches about
Mary Lease and "Sockless"
Jerry Simpson. Some years ago, Populism was
attacked as irrational and even
anti-semitic, notably by Richard Hofstadter,
and received spirited rebuttal by
scholars in the field.
Indeed, there has quietly accreted a new
scholarly literature covering pro-
tagonists North and South, which
Argersinger makes available in his numer-
ous and substantive notes. Readers
interested in the area will be surprised at
how many influential politicians
Populism touched.
And yet the subject seems strangely
remote, and continues to be seen as a
political failure which claimed party
status in 1892, but whose partisans
rapidly dissolved into the old parties
following the 1896 elections. Peffer,
Kansas editor, who attained the U.S.
Senate in the heat of early Populism, re-
joined the Republicans. General James
Baird Weaver, though a Populist of
substance and their spokesman in 1892,
all but faded from memory. Tom
Watson is better remembered as a subject
for C. Van Woodward's writing
than for the evil Watson wrought.
What has been lost is context, which
would show Populism as in a transi-
tional position between the agrarian
nation of antebellum decades, challenged
by the rapid rise of cities, with new
immigrants changing the character of
population and a younger generation painfully
creating what in the 1900s be-
came Progressivism.
For historians, there would be profit in
comparing the role of Populism in
this transformation with, in the 1850s,
the "Know Nothings." They provided
a transitional forum, one in which
political leaders could sort themselves out
86 OHIO HISTORY
into proslavery and antislavery
partisans before falling behind Democratic
and Republican standards.
Such perceptions would give more
direction to the clear but surface move-
ments of Populist figures like Peffer,
properly concerned for farmer's troubles
and the outmoded band and railroad
operations which plagued them. It is a
sign of history yet to be brought
up-to-date that this version of Populism gives
no space to the once recognized classic
work of John D. Hicks, The Populist
Revolt: A History of the Farmer's
Alliance and the People's Party (1931).
Students can enter into Hicks's thinking
by consulting his essay, "Some
Parallels with Populism in the Twentieth
Century," in Hicks's The American
Tradition (1955).
The Belfry Louis Filler
Ovid, Michigan
Quilts in Community: Ohio's
Traditions. By Ricky Clark, George W.
Knepper, and Ellice Ronsheim. Edited by
Ricky Clark. (Nashville:
Rutledge Hill Press, 1991. 176p.;
illustrations, index. $29.95.)
This handsome publication provides
numerous insights into the quilting
tradition as it has been practiced in
Ohio from the early days of settlement to
the present. The essays of Quilts in
Community work industriously to place
quilts into both broad and particular
historical contexts. Quilts are revealed as
not only indicative of overall cultural
and commercial trends in American so-
ciety, but also as disclosures of the
lives of individuals within specific com-
munities. These individuals and the
forces that inspired or compelled them to
produce quilts are made vivid through
the inclusion of photographs of the
quiltmakers and brief personal
histories. The biographical glimpses readily
demonstrate the value of documentation
initiatives such as the Ohio Quilt
Research Project which inspired this
book. Only through provenanced ob-
jects can material culture historians
bridge the perpetual gap between the
general and the particular in describing
the past. The book also moves be-
yond provenance to examine the values
and interpretations that have been
placed on quilts through the years since
their making. The essays success-
fully avoid falling into
"artspeak" which enthuses over the composition,
color, design, and craft exemplified in
these objects. Instead, the book af-
firms that, whatever their artfulness,
quilts are ostensibly functional objects to
keep people warm. The extensive color
illustrations of the documented quilts
enable the reader to discern the
continuities, changes, and idiosyncrasies that
have appeared in this textile art form.
Despite its many admirable qualities, Quilts
in Community has its value un-
dercut by its design and editing. On
first examination, the vibrant colors of
Book Reviews
87
the large quilt illustrations,
tastefully situated in luxurious white space, offer a
pleasing impression. Only in attempting
to read the book do the design flaws
become disconcertingly apparent. The
typefaces of the text and captions
barely differ in size, and the placement
of the captions often makes them ap-
pear to be continuations of the main
text. More troublesome, though, are the
period quotes which are inserted-seemingly
randomly-into the middle of
the text. The motivation behind these
quotes is admirable, further bolstering
the sense of context around these
quilts. And the design clearly separates
them from the text with a lined border
and bold type, making them resemble
patchwork blocks that have been stitched
into the main pattern. However,
they effectively halt the argument of
the text, interrupting it at odd junctures
with what often are, admittedly,
fascinating facts. Ultimately, though, the
physical and intellectual isolation of
these quotes makes them seem like note-
cards that someone loved too much to
jettison but not enough to integrate into
the text.
The editing likewise works contrary to
the best intents of the book. As
might be expected in a series of essays
by different authors, there is some
repetition of similar material from
section to section. Still, the division of the
essays into topical subheadings does not
always present the reader with a
clear sense of the book's overall
pattern and progression. The problem is
particularly noticeable in "From
Bolt to Bed: Quilts in Context." Within this
section can be found such awkward
subheadings as "The Relationship
Between Indigo Coverlets and Quilts in
Nineteenth-Century Ohio" and
"Rural and Urban Quiltmaking
Traditions: The Published Quilt Pattern and
Twentieth Century Style Changes."
These sound like parodies of dissertation
titles rather than concise headings for
subsections that are, respectively, four
and nine pages long. Most serious in a
book with over 200 illustrations, all
but one of the page references for
illustrations are wrong. Time after time,
the reader flips trustingly to the cited
page, only to find either that there is no
illustration with the proper number or
no illustration at all. A little investiga-
tion usually reveals the intended
photograph several pages earlier, though the
margin of error is not perfectly
consistent. This poor record of accuracy
makes reading Quilts in Community a
frustrating experience. The book offers
numerous virtues to the diligent reader,
but its liabilities make discovering
those virtues a discouraging process.
Strong Museum Christopher Bensch
America's Favorite Homes: Mail Order
Catalogues as a Guide to Popular
Early 20th-Century Houses. By Robert Schweitzer and Michael W. R.
Davis. (Detroit: Wayne State University
Press, 1990. 261p.; illustrations,
notes, glossary, bibliography, index.
$49.94 cloth; $24.95 paper.)
88 OHIO HISTORY
Robert Schweitzer and Michael Davis
identify three audiences for their
book: old house lovers; architectural
historians seeking information on pre-
fabrication and mail order housing; and
those interested in evaluating archi-
tectural styles from 1900 to 1941.
The book is organized around those
themes. Its sixteen chapters first deal
with construction techniques and style
to the end of the nineteenth century,
then treat prefabricated housing, plan
books and catalogue homes with an
analysis of the companies involved,
centering on the Aladdin Company. The
last 120 pages of the book present a
stylistic analysis of American residential
architecture in the first four decades
of the twentieth century, as illustrated in
the catalogues.
Chapters four to nine on catalogue house
companies-especially the por-
tions on the Aladdin Company-are the
most satisfying. The section is the
most complete account we have of catalogue
housing. The section uses the
rich archives of the Aladdin Company and
supplements the story with infor-
mation about five other major companies
who produced catalogue housing
during the period. The section is the
beginning point for those who wish to
understand the phenomenon.
Unfortunately, the other two sections
are less satisfying. The first three
chapters on styles and construction
methods try to deal with too much in too
little space. The information on
prefabrication, for example, is a good sum-
mary of past articles on the topic, but
adds comparatively little that is new.
The final seven chapters on
architectural styles, which take the last one-half
of the text, are the most troubling.
While an evaluation of the homes adver-
tised by the ready-built companies is an
essential part of any analysis of the
movement, the focus of the section is
blurred at best. The section is a prime
example of the tendency to over analyze
based on exterior decoration rather
than a holistic analysis.
The analysis of styles, while it
includes many standard categories, raises a
number of questions. Can the
"transitional colonial" really be classified as a
style rather than a vernacular house
type with very modest classical details?
Details like these were found on many if
not most other styles of the period.
Do we gain anything by breaking the
Jacobeathan Revival into five subcate-
gories, and why do the authors insist on
using the term "box" for American
Foursquare? They may find the term more
intellectually satisfying but the
profession seems to have finally agreed
upon "American Foursquare" for
these houses. Another approach to understand
these buildings, one with
greater potential for success, would be
to examine the floor plans for the
buildings (since most are included) to
see how they change over time and
how many of the stylistic elements are
just surface decoration over similar
floor plans. Certainly the pre-cut
nature of the designs encouraged such stan-
Book Reviews
89
dardization. Mail order housing appears
to have had a major impact on the
standardization of floor plans and the
subjugation of style to floor plans.
The photographs and illustrations are an
important part of this book. The
twelve color plates contribute greatly
as does the inclusion of plans with the
illustrations. The major weakness in the
illustrations occurs in the text of il-
lustrations from the catalogues when the
text had a colored background--a
common occurrence. The screens used to
separate the illustrations often
leave these illustrations murky. The low
point is the unreadable illustration
on page 107 showing how certain prefabs
were assembled.
The book is an important addition to the
literature on catalogue houses, es-
pecially Aladdin Houses, but should be
supplemented with other studies on
style and construction techniques.
Ohio Historical Society W. Ray Luce
Always a River: The Ohio River and
the American Experience. Edited by
Robert L. Reid. (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1991. xvi +
250p.; illustrations, notes. $35.00
cloth; $12.95 paper.)
This anthology is the major publication
of the ALWAYS A RIVER project.
Supported by the state humanities
councils of the Ohio River valley and par-
tially funded by the National Endowment
for the Humanities, this unique re-
gional effort included a conference,
seminars, and the "floating exhibit" barge
which descended the river from
Pittsburgh during the spring/summer of 1991.
Seven well-known academics and writers
contributed their expertise to this
complex, largely nonpolitical history of
one of the world's great river net-
works. Scott Russell Sanders' (English,
Indiana University) initial piece,
"The Force of Moving Water,"
is a critical cultural narrative based on con-
temporary observers from the arrival of
the "whites" through the mid-nine-
teenth century. John A. Jakle
(Geography, Illinois), in his essay "The Ohio
Valley Revisited...," also compares
and contrasts two contemporary ob-
servers, a young Englishman, Nicholas
Cresswell in 1774 and historian R. G.
Thwaites in 1894.
"Settlement and Selected Landscape
Imprints .. ." is the topic of Hubert G.
H. Wilhelm's (Geography, Ohio
University) essay. He delineates, with the
aid of eight maps, the cultural impact
of the river as a regional boundary rela-
tive to land, towns, and folk buildings.
Michael Allen (History, University of
Washington) writes about the river as an
". . . Artery of Movement." He
notes the significance of river
transport, particularly, flatboats. He then de-
velops the evolution of river technology
to the towboat/diesel era.
"River of Opportunity: Economic
Consequences of the Ohio" is Darrel E.
Bigham's (History, Southern Indiana)
essay. He analyzes the river's uneven
90 OHIO HISTORY
economic growth from prehistory to the
1780s, the mid-1800s to World War
I, and to the present. Leland R. Johnson
(historian and writer), in
"Engineering the River," tells
the familiar story of the role of the Corps of
Engineers in river clearance, 1824-74;
the canalization project, 1879-1929;
flood control, 1930s to the present; and
modernization projects (since 1955).
The final topic is an ecological
perspective of the river and its environs by
Boyd R. Keenan (Political Science,
Illinois). His focus is administrative his-
tory, particularly the role of the Ohio
River Sanitation Commission since
1935, the environmental movement since
the 1960s, nuclear and coal energy
production, regional studies to these
developments, and the need for regional
cooperation.
There is some repetitiousness, and an
occasional historical error. There is
no index or bibliography; however, the
endnotes are, usually, more than ade-
quate. There are nine illustrations, but
they are identified on pp. 247-48!
For the specialist, there is little that
is new here; nonetheless, collectively,
these essays are important. They
illustrate the complexity of the significance
of the Ohio River network over time.
This work should appeal to the general
reading public.
California University of
Pennsylvania J. K.
Folmar
An Unwanted War: The Diplomacy of the
United States and Spain Over
Cuba, 1895-1898. By John L. Offner. (Chapel Hill: The University of
North Carolina Press, 1992. xii + 306p.;
illustrations, appendix, notes, bib-
liography, index. $39.95 cloth; $14.95
paper.)
This is a careful, conventional history
of the diplomacy of the Spanish-
American War from the last year of the
Cleveland Administration through the
peace protocol of 12 August 1898. The
author, using a multi-archival ap-
proach and sensitive also to the
influence of domestic politics on foreign af-
fairs, addresses the question from the
perspectives of the Spanish authorities,
the Cuban rebels and loyalists, and the
American government.
Professor Offner falls into the
"realist" school of historians of American
foreign policy. To an extent he returns to
a traditional approach to the issues
that brought on the war and challenges
seriously much of the revisionism
which has appeared over the past two
generations. Following the lead of
David Trask and other post-revisionists,
he argues that the central long-term
foreign policy issues which brought on
the conflict were instability in Cuba
and the continued Spanish presence in
the Caribbean, while at home
American party politics played a
critical role in the actual outbreak of the
war. Avoiding grand generalizations and
broad ideological excursions, he as-
serts: "In the final analysis
Republicans made war on Spain in order to keep
Book Reviews
91
control in Washington. Expansionism,
markets and investments, the sensa-
tional press, and national security
interests were much less important in carry-
the United States into the war" (p.
ix).
As his analysis unfolds, Professor
Offner reveals the complex motives of
all the players in the drama. After a
short discussion of the long civil war on
the island (1868-1878), he moves to the
policies of the Cleveland and
McKinley administrations. He shows the
continuity between administrations
and explains how, even under popular and
congressional pressure, President
McKinley and his colleagues, unwilling
to accept full Cuban sovereignty yet
determined to be rid of the Spanish,
strove to control events and pressed for
autonomy as an expedient and temporary
stage in the solution of the long-
range problem. They would use the
American military only if they concluded
there was no other politically viable
way to secure their objective. The
Spanish government, faced with discord
and possible army insurrection at
home and resistance from loyalists in
Cuba itself if they bowed to the rebels,
could only accede so far to Yankee
demands. They believed they had no op-
tion but to accept war before
surrendering Spanish sovereignty. There might
have been some hope for compromise if it
were not for exiled leaders of the
revolutionary Junta in the United States
and active fighters on the island who,
after so many years of conflict, sought
nothing less than full independence.
In such an intractable environment,
Professor Offner concludes, war became
"inevitable" (p. 236).
The war had unanticipated consequences.
"The Spanish endured national
humiliation and entered a period of
intense soul searching and regeneration;
the Cubans exchanged a vicious and
corrupt colonial rule for an insensitive
and overbearing protector; and the
United States confidently assumed the
burden of aiding and guiding reluctant
subjects, believing it could do a better
job than Spain" (p. 236). But in
the months after the peace protocol was ap-
proved, the question of Philippine
annexation deeply divided the Americans
and the issues that had sparked the
Spanish-American War were politically
redefined from an anti-colonial crusade
to imperialist expansion. And so it
went. Two generations ago H. A. L.
Fisher, the noted English historian,
wrote in his popular textbook, A
History of Europe: "Men wiser and more
learned than I have discerned in history
a plot, a rhythm, a pre-determined
pattern.... I can see only one emergency
following upon another as wave
follows wave ... only one safe rule for
the historian; that he should recognize
... the play of the contingent and the
unforeseen."
University of Cincinnati Daniel R. Beaver
The Roosevelt Presence: A Biography
of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. By
Patrick J. Maney. (New York: Twayne
Publishers, 1992. xv + 255p.; illus-
92 OHIO HISTORY
trations, notes and references,
bibliographic essay, index. $12.95 paper;
$25.95 cloth.)
Biographers have a difficult task. This
is especially so when the subject
has had so much written about him. For The
Roosevelt Presence the diffi-
culty is compounded because it tries to
be two things simultaneously. It is, on
the one hand, a short biography of
Roosevelt based on mostly secondary liter-
ature. It promises, on the other, an
"original and insightful" interpretation of
Roosevelt.
The author offers a corrective to the
"mythical" (p. 70) image of Roosevelt:
a complex man of great political skill
who single-handedly created the New
Deal. Maney asserts that Roosevelt
"may actually have been less complex
than most people" (p. xiii). He
questions FDR's political skills, claiming
Roosevelt "displayed surprising
weakness as a legislative leader" (p. xiv).
Maney also rejects the tendency to see Roosevelt's
"hand everywhere" (p.
xiii) during the New Deal and argues
that "other key players, especially
Congress," even "more than
Roosevelt, shaped domestic policy during the
1930s and 1940s." While Maney
acknowledges Roosevelt's influence on the
presidency, he argues FDR's greatness
was "specific to a particular time and
place," while Lincoln, for example,
"would have distinguished himself at al-
most any time." Maney argues that
it is difficult to imagine Roosevelt
"achieving greatness except during
the Great Depression and World War II"
(p. xiv).
The key to FDR's success was what Maney
calls the "Roosevelt pres-
ence"-his success at identifying
himself with the New Deal, his "matchless
skills as a communicator," and his
ability to create an "illusion of intimacy
between himself and the public" (p.
70). It is this last element that the author
claims transformed people's perceptions
and expectations of the presidency
and constitutes Roosevelt's "most
enduring" and "troublesome" (p. 70)
legacy. This combination of attributes,
Maney argues, was "just what the
country seemed to need" (p. xiv) in
1933.
Those familiar with the literature will
find little that is new here. First,
Maney's "mythical" Roosevelt
is largely a strawman. Few serious students
of Roosevelt still see him as a complex
planner, whose hand was
"everywhere." Most historians
instead acknowledge that FDR was an opti-
mistic improviser and a poor, and often
devious, administrator. As for
Roosevelt's political skills, the author
seems to confuse legislative and elec-
toral politics. The charge that
Roosevelt was not a great legislative leader is
not new, and Roosevelt's designation as
the "champ" (p. xiv) referred to his
skill as a campaigner, not to his skill
at legislative politics. Even in identify-
ing the traits that made up what Maney
calls the "Roosevelt presence" there is
little that is new. The difference is
that Maney is more critical of how
Book Reviews
93
Roosevelt used his skills and finds
Roosevelt's legacy more troubling than
many earlier writers.
Maney's argument that Roosevelt's skills
were suited only to a particular
period, and that this makes Roosevelt
less great, is unconvincing. While it
might be true that Roosevelt's example
does not provide "much guidance" for
the "economic problems that beset
the nation during the 1970s and after," the
same could easily be said of Lincoln,
Washington, or any other president. It
is tricky to compare presidents from
different centuries, and in this case the
comparisons are simplistic and never
fleshed out enough to be convincing.
Although Maney complains at the end that
"among presidents, alas, Franklin
Roosevelt was not a man for all
seasons" (p. 234), few historical figures es-
cape the confines of their age. In the
end, The Roosevelt Presence is more
successful as a concise and accessible
survey of Roosevelt's life than it is as
an "original" interpretation
of Roosevelt and his presidency. Maney's re-
minder that others were instrumental in
much of the New Deal, though not
new, is useful, especially to
undergraduates whose tendency might be to
simplify the relationship between FDR
and the New Deal. Likewise, his
criticism of FDR, though sometimes
unfair, provides a more critical perspec-
tive than much of the other literature.
Clarke College Michael J. Anderson
Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume One: 1884-1933. By Blanche Wiesen Cook.
(New York: Viking, 1992. xviii + 587p.;
illustrations, notes, bibliography,
index. $27.50.)
The most detailed and fully-researched
biography of one of the most influ-
ential women in our century, this volume
directly challenges previous inter-
pretations and images. In place of the
dutiful woman who served her country
by serving her husband's career-a
portrait encouraged by the self-deprecat-
ing Roosevelt herself-we find a woman
who in mid-life charted an indepen-
dent course of personal fulfillment and
public commitment to social justice,
and who, in concert with other women,
put a particular mark on American
politics.
In a riveting narrative infused with
acute analysis, historian Blanche Cook
recounts how Eleanor Roosevelt emerged
from a wealthy and privileged fam-
ily plagued with emotional instability
and alcoholism, and from a marriage
complicated by a domineering
mother-in-law and nearly devastated by her
husband's infidelity, to create a life
of her own and become an influential
politician years before FDR entered the
White House. In the 1920s, ER con-
nected with an accomplished group of New
York women carving out for
women a new role in politics through
their activism in the League of Women
94 OHIO HISTORY
Voters, the Women's Trade Union League,
the Women's Division of the
Democratic Party, and the Women's City
Club. Holding major offices in
each of these groups, ER devoted her
days and nights to public speaking,
writing, editing, and lobbying on behalf
of justice for workers, women's
rights, child welfare, peace, and public
services. At the same time she be-
came co-owner, vice-principal, and
regular teacher at the Todhunter School
for girls.
Cook presents several relationships as
crucial to ER's achievements. Her
marriage grew into one of mutual respect
and tolerance, in which both part-
ners cultivated their own interests and
circles of intimates and each affirmed
and accommodated those of the other.
While Louis Howe was close to both
Roosevelts, ER's circle revolved around
women reformers, including lesbian
couples prominent in the New York
women's network. Of particular impor-
tance were ER's intense relationships
with her bodyguard, state trooper Earl
Miller, and with AP reporter, Lorena
Hickok. Cook argues (with more telling
evidence in the case of Hickok) that
both were relationships of romance and
passion, but also makes clear that their
importance went beyond whatever
degree of sexual intimacy they
contained. Above all, the emotional support
from Miller and Hickok bolstered ER's
self-worth and fostered her determi-
nation to define for herself the purposes
of her life.
While Cook claims her subject as a
feminist and points out that ER herself
used the term, the complexities of
applying political labels and of feminism
itself are evident. ER stood aloof from
the suffrage campaign, and even in
the 1930s, she found it not
"utterly unreasonable" to expect economically se-
cure women not to take jobs from those
truly in need. Moreover, she care-
fully concealed her own political acumen
and ambition. Yet, in attempting to
create her own life and in her labors to
promote a broad feminist agenda,
Roosevelt clearly formed a vital link
between the early and later waves of
feminism.
Cook's enormous admiration for her
subject and zeal to revise the image of
ER as servant to her husband's needs
results in more emphasis on ER's self-
determination and autonomy and less on
the external forces shaping her
choices. How Roosevelt overcame the
emotional hazards of her families of
birth and marriage, for example, receives
much more attention than how the
privileged status of those families
provided her extraordinary opportunities.
Nonetheless, scholars and general
readers will find in this book a compelling
example of courage and liberation as
well as a fuller and more accurate un-
derstanding of American liberalism.
Having accompanied ER up to the
White House years, they will look
forward to the second volume.
The Ohio State University Susan M. Hartmann
Book Reviews
95
Sherman: A Soldier's Passion for
Order. By John F. Marszalek. (New
York: The Free Press, 1993. xvi + 635p.;
illustrations, notes, bibliography,
index. $29.95.)
If Life, Look, Time, and Newsweek
magazines were published during
William T. Sherman's life, he would have
appeared on their covers numerous
times. He was always at the center of
controversy, especially during the Civil
War. Today he remains a debatable figure
because of his beliefs, his actions
and his writings. He was his own man.
The scholarly interest in Sherman has
most recently been explored by John
Walters, Michael Kerr and Mary McCarthy
who were far from laudatory and
saw villainy in the decisions and
actions of this Ohio general. James Merrill
was basically sympathetic in his 1971
study of Sherman. Now some twenty
years later another look at the
red-haired Union commander in the western
theater. This time it is John F.
Marszalek, a professor of history at
Mississippi State University and author
of a previous book entitled,
Sherman's Other War, about "Cump's" battle with the fourth estate.
Professor Marszalek maintains in Sherman:
A Soldier's Passion for Order
that early life psychological
interpretations can be attached to Sherman's
Civil War decisions. He cites his
father's death at age nine, his mother's
poverty, his adoption into the wealthy
Ewing family, his business failure, and
his marriage to a neurotic wife as
evidence for later decisions. From these
experiences, Sherman is portrayed as a
man fearful of social upheaval and
one who, when given the opportunity to
become a leader, used his power to
reestablish law and order in a ruthless
fashion. The thesis throughout the
book is overdone, overworked, and
stretched very thin.
Certainly the items mentioned above
could influence one's thought pat-
terns; but there were stronger mind-sets
and experiences in Sherman's life
that developed his character. Life in
general was tough in the nineteenth
century and demanded that a person
respond in a positive manner to survive.
How about his conservative and spartan
training at West Point that began at
age 16 and ended four years later with
his standing 6th overall and 4th aca-
demically in his class? His first
military assignment-the Seminole War in
Florida-was hardly choice duty and was
like several recent military adven-
tures-frustrating and lacking civilian
leadership. The California days were
just above lawlessness, and then there
was the decade of the 1850s. The
trusted political leaders made a muddle
of things which ended in a breakdown
of democracy and arduous Civil War. I
would submit that these were ample
reasons for a thinking person to dislike
rebellion and anarchy and want to re-
store law and order.
Sherman and his views on military
tactics were ahead of the times.
Sherman's rise to prominence in the west
was based on his recognized ability
96 OHIO HISTORY
and the U. S. Grant
relationships-Thomas, Schofield, McPherson, tactics
and troop efficiency, and the dislike of
Black troops. Sherman may have had
numerous enemies elsewhere, but he was a
product of the midwest, and he
was at peace and at home with the troops
from that region and they knew it.
Sherman: A Soldier's Passion for
Order is well written and reads
smoothly, which translates to Civil War
historians having this book in their
collection. The bibliography is thorough
and an excellent beginning for addi-
tional Sherman studies. Despite the
exception to the thesis, this book will
contribute to the historical scholarship
of Sherman and his era.
Youngstown State University Hugh G. Earnhart
Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune: The Civil
War Letters of Colonel Robert Gould
Shaw. Edited by Russell Duncan. Foreword by William S.
McFeely.
(Athens: The University of Georgia
Press, 1992. xxiii + 421p.; map, illus-
trations, notes, appendix, bibliography,
index. $29.95.)
"Blue-eyed child of fortune"
was the phrase William James used to de-
scribe Robert Gould Shaw in 1897 at the
dedication of the Shaw Memorial on
Boston Common. In a private letter James
wrote that "poor little Robert
Shaw," because of his death in
battle leading the first regiment of African-
American troops and his unceremonious
burial in a common grave with many
of them, had become "a great symbol
of deeper things than he ever realized
himself." Russell Duncan agrees
that Shaw "never fully understood nor dedi-
cated himself to the cause for which he
became a martyr." Like countless
other volunteers he joined the army
"simply to do his duty," not to preserve
the Union or free the slaves.
Duncan opens the book with a substantial
and sensitively written biograph-
ical essay. Shaw, born in Boston in
1837, was the scion of one of New
England's richest, best-connected
(Robert had eight-five first cousins) and
most ardently abolitionist families. He
spent his childhood in West Roxbury,
Massachusetts, in the vicinity of Brook
Farm and on Staten Island. Educated
at boarding schools in New York and
Switzerland, where he showed distaste
for authority and discipline, he spent
two happy years in his teens living on
his own in Hanover, Germany, hiring
teachers and amusing himself. It re-
quired the service of a
"crammer" to get him admitted to Harvard. An indif-
ferent student, Shaw dropped out after
two years and entered his uncle's busi-
ness firm in New York. He was working
there when the war began.
Duncan presents Shaw as a dutiful son
and loving brother to his four sisters
who neither rejected nor entirely
accepted his family's enthusiasm for aboli-
tion and social reform. Robert
"found" himself as a soldier in a way he had
never been able to fit in as scholar,
reformer, or businessman. "A boy who
Book Reviews
97
could not adapt to the discipline in
civilian circles became a good soldier who
followed orders and expected the same
from others" (p. 14). Shaw's military
career extended over a period of two
years and two months. He began as a
private in the Seventh New York National
Guard, rose from lieutenant to
captain in the Second Massachusetts
Infantry, saw action in the battles of
Cedar Mountain and Antietam, became colonel
of the Fifty-fourth
Massachusetts, "the most watched
regiment of the war" because it was made
up of Northern Negroes, and died in
mid-July 1863 in an attack on Fort
Wagner near Charleston, S.C.
Duncan has arranged Shaw's letters in
chronological order in sixteen chap-
ters. He provides a brief introduction
for each chapter relating Shaw's expe-
riences to the general course of the
war. Useful and informative notes iden-
tify persons and events mentioned in the
letters. Most of the letters in the
volume are addressed to Shaw's father,
mother, and sisters and have been se-
lected from originals in the Robert
Gould Shaw Papers, Houghton Library,
Harvard University, and the printed
collection edited by Shaw's mother in
1864. Duncan also includes letters from
Shaw to friends from collections in
the Massachusetts Historical Society and
the New York Public Library. In an
appendix he lists letters not included
in this volume by date, recipient, and
collection in which they can be found.
Commissioned early in the war, Shaw
escaped the hardships and privations
experienced by many enlisted men.
"We [officers] have cots to sleep on,
much better fare, and servants in
abundance from among the men," he wrote
his mother in May 1861 (p. 101). The
positive note struck in an early letter to
his mother-"I like what I am doing
now better than anything I have tried
hitherto" (p. 105)-continues
through the correspondence. "What a blessing
that we happened to be born in this
country and century," he exclaimed in the
Spring of 1862 after a year in service.
During the late summer of 1862 when
the Second Massachusetts suffered losses
in the battles of Cedar Mountain
and Antietam Shaw recorded the grim and
gory facts of war. "A battle-field,
after all is over, brings the horrors of
war forcibly to mind" he wrote his fi-
ancee (p. 234). Recounting Confederate
and Union losses at Antietam Shaw
told his father
At last, night came on, and with the
exception of an occasional shot from the outposts,
all was quiet. The crickets chirped, and
the frogs croaked, just as if nothing unusual
had happened all day long, and presently
the stars came out bright, and we lay down
among the dead, and slept soundly until
daylight. There were twenty dead bodies
within a rod of me (p. 241).
In February 1863, against his own
inclination but in accord with his fami-
ly's wishes, Shaw accepted command of
the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts
(Colored) Regiment. During ninety days
training Shaw, although a harsh
98 OHIO HISTORY
disciplinarian, seems to have won the
respect of his troops, and overcoming
his initial prejudice, came to have a
high regard for them. In May, while on
his honeymoon, he learned that the
regiment had received marching orders.
Thereafter events moved swiftly. A week
after leaving Boston the regiment
reached Port Royal, South Carolina, and
a week after that saw its first action.
In later brushes with the enemy Shaw was
proud of his men's performance,
reporting in his last letter, "We
hear nothing but praise for the Fifty-fourth on
all hands."
Duncan comments that Shaw's prose is
eloquent, articulate, informative,
amusing and heart wrenching. It is
impossible to read these letters without
sensing the writer's devotion and
loyalty to family and friends, and sharing
the love and pride they felt for him.
The Ohio State University Robert H. Bremner
Bright Radical Star: Black Freedom
and White Supremacy on the Hawkeye
Frontier. By Robert R. Dykstra. (Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Harvard
University Press, 1993. xi + 348p.;
maps, notes, appendixes, index.
$47.50.)
Robert Dykstra has in his new volume, Bright
Radical Star, shed consider-
able light on how white Iowans dealt
with race in the years from 1833 to 1880
by skillfully interweaving a traditional
historical narrative with statistical
analysis of census records and voting
patterns. In so doing he provides a de-
tailed ethnocultural picture of Iowa's
changing political responses to race.
Blacks made up less than one percent of
Iowa's population from 1840
through 1880. But slavery along the
state's southern border, conflict over the
extension of slavery, fleeing slaves,
and white fears of excessive immigration
of blacks led Iowans and their political
leadership during the years of this
study to "devise a common polity
that...arranged the terms for interracial as-
sociation" (p. vii). As might be
expected, white Iowans moved reluctantly
toward granting black civil equality.
Indeed, when Iowa's territorial legisla-
ture first met in 1838, it crafted a
series of laws creating what Dykstra called
the "routine [legal] foundations of
white supremacy" (p. 26).
Despite the dissent of a vocal, but
tiny, abolitionist minority, the growth of
militant free soil sentiment, and the
ascendance of the Republican party, Iowa
proved unremittingly racist throughout
the antebellum period in its considera-
tion of laws bearing on the rights of
blacks. Indeed, in 1857 white Iowans
soundly rejected an amendment to their
state's constitution which would have
enfranchised black Iowans. Yet, Dykstra
argues, Iowans' increasing distaste
for slavery, slavery's threat to the
union and to reserving western land for free
white men, and the sharp contradiction
that Iowans saw between second class
Book Reviews
99
citizenship for free blacks and the
ideals of equality expressed in the
Declaration of Independence, ultimately
prepared them to accept black civil
equality. War fever and the bravery of
black troops led them to finally enact
those sentiments into law in 1868 when a
majority of both actual voters and
eligible voters repealed virtually all
racist language in the Iowa constitution
except restrictions on blacks sitting in
the state legislature. Iowans finally
removed that ban in 1880. But those who
voted for that referendum issue
consisted of barely one-quarter of
eligible voters and less than a third of those
who voted in the simultaneous
presidential election, a result that Dykstra con-
cludes indicated waning support for
racial egalitarianism.
Dykstra attributes these swings in
behavior primarily to the stands taken by
the state's political leadership. The
vast majority of Iowans, he argues, had
only weakly-formed views on racial
equality. But abolitionists and free
soilers helped make antislavery
agitation respectable within the state, a cir-
cumstance that led to the domination of
state politics by the Republican party
by 1856. During and immediately after
the Civil War racial egalitarians
gained influential leadership positions
in the Republican Party and the state
government. When the 1865 Republican
state convention wavered on the
question of extending the vote to Iowa's
blacks, forceful leadership by egali-
tarian members persuaded the party to
take a forthright stand. As a result, the
Republicans provided the political
leadership that led to the successful pas-
sage of the 1868 referendum. Weak
support for the 1880 referendum issue,
Dykstra argues, occurred because the
state's political leadership had turned
their attention elsewhere and
consequently did little to ensure that voters sup-
ported the referendum.
The lesson, Dykstra argues, of Iowa's
shift from being one of the most
racially conservative states in the
North to one of its most racially progressive
is that progress on racial issues is
possible with thoughtful and principled
leadership, something he implies is
sadly lacking in the late twentieth century
United States.
University of Cincinnati Charles F. Casey-Leininger
Of Singular Genius, Of Singular
Grace: A Biography of Horace Bushnell.
By Robert L. Edwards. (Cleveland, Ohio:
The Pilgrim Press, 1992. xi +
405p.; illustrations, notes,
bibliography, index. $24.95 paper.)
While American religious history has
increasingly turned to those outside
"the mainstream," here is a
well-researched study of a leading nineteenth cen-
tury pastor-theologian and civic leader
struggling to renew the New England
civil and religious tradition for the
new nation. Robert Edwards succeeds in
his stated purpose to provide a modern
biography of Horace Bushnell that
100 OHIO HISTORY
"general readers as well as
professionals might enjoy." This study is emi-
nently enjoyable and offers a good
overview built upon fresh research and
some creative archival sleuthing.
Edwards offers an especially good
treatment of Bushnell's many faceted
and varied career, which spanned from
1839 to his death in 1876. This in-
cludes treatments of his pastoral
ministry in Hartford, Connecticut, his influ-
ential theological development, and his
leadership in providing Hartford with
one of America's first urban parks.
Bushnell's widely discussed views on a
range of issues are also well treated.
These include such issues as education,
the American frontier, Roman
Catholicism, slavery, race, the Civil War, and
the women's movement. The book is rich
with personal anecdote and the
trivial incidents that affectionately
humanize its subject. Despite the superla-
tive claims of the title, Bushnell is
found to be a likable and forward-thinking
fellow with an unfortunate moral tick
here and there due to the limitations of
his age, most of which he overcame. Not
all would view Bushnell with such
complete affection, warts and all.
Considerable attention is also devoted
to the emergence of Bushnell's im-
pressive line of publications. Edwards
is especially gifted at clearly convey-
ing the theological creativity which
made Bushnell the father of liberal theol-
ogy in America. This work will overcome
the barrier of most readers to the
period's Christian doctrinal debates. In
each case, Bushnell's developing
thought is simply presented, set within
its immediate context, and contempo-
rary reactions are surveyed.
Specialists and theologians, however,
will be disappointed if they expect a
close or comprehensive treatment.
Edward's tendency to view Bushnell as a
man of singular genius has de-emphasized
Bushnell's sources, his role as a
popularizer of European intellectual
currents, and his relative location on the
broader stage of Christian theological
development in the nineteenth century.
Thus the reader is left unable to assess
accurately the singularity of
Bushnell's genius. Moreover, there is no
consideration of Bushnell's lasting
influence on American thought apart from
his more immediate successors.
What was Bushnell's affect on "the
critical period in American religion"?
What currency did he have with later
American religious thinkers, such as
William James, John Dewey, or Reinhold
Niebuhr? There is little attempt to
assess or adjudicate the ongoing
discussion of Bushnell. How does this New
England patriarch appear in the context
of current language theory, multicul-
turalism, or the deconstructionist
attack on systematic thought?
But Edwards's very real contribution to
scholarship should not be missed.
Bushnell's thought did not solely emerge
from the day's intellectual currents,
but also from his day-in, day-out
situation as a pastor and preacher of a real
Hartford congregation of ordinary middle
class folk. Here historian Edwards
has something important to contribute to
the specialist and theologian.
Book Reviews
101
Bushnell was among the last of the
American pastor-theologians, stubbornly
resisting calls to academia but
developing his theological innovations in dia-
logue with the emerging group of
American professional thinkers. Bushnell's
theme of Christian comprehensiveness,
his views of Christian nurture, and his
reconstruction of Christian doctrine
developed not solely from his reflections
on European thinkers or the intellectual
tensions of his day, but also from the
specific challenges of his particular
situation in the local New England pas-
torate.
Edwards has provided an accessible
biography of the father of liberal
protestantism in America and has made a
significant contribution to our un-
derstanding of him. This study will
undoubtedly improve the awareness of
another generation of scholars of this
influential American figure.
University of Dayton Steven D. Cooley
Conscience and Slavery: The
Evangelistic Calvinist Domestic Missions,
1837-1861. By Victor B. Howard, (Kent: The Kent State University
Press,
1990. xv + 263p.; notes, bibliography,
index. $27.50.)
This book is all but a reminder of
historical methods which have passed be-
fore our eyes, and faded, possibly only
for the moment. Professor Howard
has been the most conscientious of
researchers, and emerged from his studies
with a body of persons who and events
which he deemed vibrant in his thirty-
year span of history. Briefly, he has
explored antebellum developments in
Protestant sects, notably Presbyterian
and Congregationalist, concerned for
missionary work particularly among
blacks and in the slaveholding South.
He has highlighted the American Home
Missionary Society, which was in-
tended to be the flying wedge into
slaveholding demesnes: a "gradualist"
solution to slavery and antislavery. It
would appeal to enslavers's religious
principles. It would carry the Gospel to
slaves, in so doing preparing them
for life as freemen and women. It was
the one sure means for preventing a
terrible civil war among compatriots.
Our author has been industrious. He has
scanned, and more than scanned,
wide ranges of sectarian newspapers,
pamphlets, and books reporting
speeches, programs, individual church
careers, conventions, and controversies
arising from slavery and antislavery
issues. Moreover, he has linked devel-
opments in AHMS affairs to national
events, showing how the Texas acces-
sion, the Mexican War, and the growing
northern sympathy with antislavery
excited partisans and affected AHMS
fortunes.
All this should have made for a valuable
panel in antislavery history. Why
it has not raises questions of method
and materials.
102 OHIO HISTORY
For one thing, not a little of the
subject matter has long since been known
and recorded by historians: conservative
attitudes North and South toward
slaves and slavery, schisms in all the
church denominations which ultimately
made them one with either southern
secessionists or northern unionists, polit-
ical compromises like that of 1850
intended to head off agitators and reassure
the larger public that was not
inevitable.
Howard has seen many of these writings,
but made no effort to link his re-
search with them. There is some question
of how they have influenced his
findings. Thus he states flatly that
abolition roused the country in the 1830s,
but failed to make institutional gains
and so gave way to politicos and others
of partisan influence. He must have read
somewhere that such a judgment is
not acceptable to numerous historians,
but nowhere does he come to grips
with their evidence and ideas.
Certainly, the nation sought-sought
desperately-for a middle way, away
from civil war. But the AHMS, on its own
evidence, did not offer it. The
AHMS attracted vigorous and talented
ministers, of the stature of George
Cheever, John G. Fee, and Leonard Bacon.
But if one wishes to know more
about them, one must look elsewhere. We
hear continuously of correspon-
dence, conventions, and positions taken
by one or another AHMS func-
tionary, but more deadly is the report
of one of them that four out of five mis-
sionaries sent into the South to serve
the slaves "became the advocates of
slavery."
The jacket of Conscience and Slavery features
a slave in chains, but the
book's text all but ignores slaves. It
offers not a single example of a domestic
mission or missionary, gone into the South
and in dialogue with a slave-
holder, to say nothing of a slave. For
its endless detail respecting sectarian
movements and personalities Conscience
and Slavery serves the profession.
For its evasion of the actual workings
of the AHMS, which reduced it from a
gradualist hope to the futile enterprise
it became, the book offers an example
of the viable and unviable in historical
method.
The Belfry Louis Filler
Ovid, Michigan
Dubious Victory: The Reconstruction
Debate in Ohio. By Robert D. Sawrey.
(Lexington: The University Press of
Kentucky, 1992. xi + 194p.; illustra-
tions, notes, bibliography, index.
$30.00.)
This immensely readable book is a
penetrating description and analysis of a
critical period of American political
history. In a fresh and original approach,
Robert Sawrey effectively undertakes the
task of clarifying the northern posi-
tion on and goals of Reconstruction by
focusing on the attitudes of politically
Book Reviews
103
active Ohioans, especially Republicans,
during the post-Civil War era. The
author maintains that Ohio was a key and
representative northern state in
terms of political, economic and
demographic development during this pe-
riod.
Drawing upon a rich array of resources
including newspapers, manuscripts,
diaries and legislative records, this
study traces the preeminent role
Reconstruction and Reconstruction-related
issues played in Ohio elections
between 1865 and 1868. Beginning with
the Ohio gubernatorial election of
1865 and ending with the presidential
election of 1868, Sawrey provides a de-
tailed and revealing account of the
highly charged debates that characterized
these election campaigns. Of crucial
concern to Ohioans and other northern-
ers in 1865 was their claim to the
North's right to determine the terms of
restoration and the assurance of the
future security of the nation through the
control of the southern planters. To
achieve this end northerners stood ready
to extend to former slaves only those
rights that would prevent southern
planters from regaining control over
these freedmen. Considered as a group,
Ohio Republicans initially supported the
end of slavery and the granting of
basic economic rights to the freedmen.
For instance, freedmen should have a
right to their own wages. Other
Republicans argued that successful
Reconstruction required giving loyal freedmen
citizenship and the vote to
prevent the disloyal planter class from
regaining political control in the South.
Still other Republicans struggled with
the idea of granting freedmen any so-
cial and political rights that
threatened white supremacy in Ohio.
By 1866 Ohio Republicans, who had
endorsed President Andrew Johnson's
Reconstruction policy until his racial
prejudice reasserted itself and influ-
enced his plans for reunion, found
themselves coming under greater influence
of "radical" elements of the
party and supporting Congressional
Reconstruction. Thus Sawrey argues that
first the Fourteenth Amendment
and then the Fifteenth Amendment emerged
as what Ohioans hoped to be
both the final term of reunion and the
action that also would remove blacks
from politics. With great reluctance
Ohio Republicans embraced a policy of
reunion that kept them in power but led
to a decline in support for
Republicans as Democrats seized upon the
emotional issue of black suffrage
and pandered to the racist attitudes of
the voters. Indeed, Sawrey attributes
the qualified success of Reconstruction
to the prevailing racial attitudes of
northerners, with few exceptions. Still
while Ohioans defeated the black suf-
frage bill in their state, the U.S.
Congress implemented a reconstruction pol-
icy that required southern states to
ratify the Fifteenth Amendment. By 1868
with President Ulysses S. Grant in the
White House and congressional recon-
struction the basic policy for reunion,
Ohio Republicans turned their attention
to economic issues and to overturning
their image as radicals.
104 OHIO HISTORY
Dubious Victory provides a fresh and balanced framework for examining
and evaluating the formation and
implementation of Reconstruction policy
between 1865 and 1868. Sawrey's analysis
of the origins and goals of the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments is
particularly refreshing and illumi-
nating. The volume is a valuable
addition to Reconstruction scholarship be-
cause it covers a previously neglected
area in Reconstruction studies, and it
complements or expands interpretations
about Reconstruction set forth in
other scholarly works in the field. This
book is also a worthy study for schol-
ars of Ohio history, constitutional law,
and race relations in America.
Wright State University Barbara L. Green
The Great Migration in Historical
Perspective: New Dimensions of Race,
Class, & Gender. Edited by Joe William Trotter, Jr. (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1991. xiv +
160p.; tables, notes, index. $29.95
cloth; $10.95 paper.)
This volume contains eight essays by the
leading historians of what might
be termed the new migration history.
Covering the period between World
War I and 1945, the essays challenge
older interpretations that often made
African-Americans appear as passive
agents rather than as active participants
in the great northward (and westward)
movement. Although dealing with a
variety of settings, all of the authors
stress the purposeful nature of the migra-
tion experience, the crucial role of
gender, kin and community, the continuing
importance of southern ties and the
various strategies that informed the deci-
sion-making process of the migrants.
Despite emphasizing the element of
choice, the essays also demonstrate the
impact of the two world wars and of
the business cycle in determining the
opportunities that would be available to
the migrants.
Joe Trotter contributes three essays.
His introductory chapter provides a
critique of the older approaches to
migration that stressed social breakdown
or ghetto formation--a context that
enables one to appreciate the significance
of the latest research. In his own
contribution dealing with African-American
miners in the Southern Appalachian coal
fields, Trotter describes the adjust-
ment of blacks to a
"rural-industrial" setting. The essay stresses ways in
which blacks in coal mining towns
retained ties to rural life, an aspect that
bears a striking resemblance to the
experience of southern white textile
workers. In a brief concluding essay,
Trotter summarizes the major points of
the contributors and indicates possible
avenues for further research.
Earl Lewis' essay which deals with
Norfolk, Virginia, also offers a glimpse
at a type of community that has often
been overlooked in migration studies.
Somewhat surprisingly, Lewis finds that
even before the massive World War
Book Reviews
105
II military buildup, Norfolk offered an
economic niche to black male workers.
The most original part of the essay
deals with the role of home visits in the
black community. By making ingenious use
of newspaper visiting columns,
Lewis establishes the multitude of ways
in which return visits allowed
Norfolk's blacks to retain ties with the
rural Virginia hinterland where many
of their family members remained.
Peter Gottlieb and James Grossman offer
a fresh perspective on the cities of
Pittsburgh and Chicago. Gottlieb's essay
on Pittsburgh focuses on the gener-
ation that migrated during the World War
I period and the early 1920s.
Challenging the stereotypical image of
an uprooted black peasantry, Gottlieb
stresses the purposeful nature of the
migration and the ways in which intact
Southern black communities provided a
"sheltering base" for those who often
moved between the South and the North.
By contrast, Gottlieb suggests that
the post-World War II migrants had fewer
options since they were literally
forced off the land, and the elan of the
first generation was replaced by a
movement of "resignation and
despair."
James Grossman is the latest historian
to examine the critical issue of black
participation in the Chicago Stockyards
Labor Council organizing drive be-
tween 1917 and 1922. Grossman argues
that the reactions of black workers
to the blandishments of both unions and
corporations were determined by a
calculation of what would best advance
the interests of the race. In
emphasizing the importance of a racial
consciousness, Grossman argues that
employment in the slaughter houses
represented a purposeful achievement of
a higher status and that unions, viewed
by many blacks as just another white
institution, could represent a threat to
these gains.
Shirley Ann Moore examines black
migration to the San Francisco Bay
area city of Richmond, California. This
city's black population grew tremen-
dously during World War II when
thousands of black migrants found em-
ployment at the Kaiser shipyards. Moore
offers an insightful look at how
black workers angered by the
discriminatory practices of their union became
involved in civil rights activity, and
how the closing of the shipyards made it
impossible to sustain the wartime
"shift upward."
In a strikingly original essay, Darlene
Clark Hine suggests how gender can
be brought into migration history.
Making use of a variety of source mate-
rials, she suggests that many black
women wished to escape both sexual ex-
ploitation by whites and domestic abuse
within their own families.
Transferring many aspects of their own
culture to new surroundings, these
female migrants played a critical role
in the "southernization of urban mid-
western culture."
The book does have a few weaknesses.
Most seriously, each author uses
the term "Great Migration" in
his or her own way, and it is not clear what
time period is covered under this
rubric. In addition, some of the essays
106 OHIO HISTORY
based on larger works need better
transitional sentences when abruptly mov-
ing from one topic to another. Despite
the sophisticated approach to history
that these essays represent, the
omission of politics and overall power rela-
tions in American society reveals the
problems inherent in an anthropological
approach to history. Nevertheless, this
book serves as a splendid introduction
to anyone desiring a guide to the latest
research in this field and would be an
excellent choice for assigned reading in
courses on African-American history
in particular.
Cleveland State University David J. Goldberg
The Papers of Andrew Johnson. Volume 10: February-July 1866. Edited by
Paul H. Bergeron. (Knoxville: The
University of Tennessee Press, 1992.
xxxii + 798p.; illustrations, notes,
appendices, index. $49.50.)
This latest volume of Andrew Johnson's
papers is replete with useful in-
formation about the President's actions
and experiences during the early
months of 1866, including newspaper
interviews. His mail overflowed with
free advice, dark warnings, seemingly
sincere appeals for favors, and unctu-
ous praise. Few bothered to send their
criticisms of the President directly to
him, but those who did were harsh, such
as Radical journalist John W.
Forney, who wrote a scathing indictment
of his former friend.
Stung by the 39th Congresses' earlier
hostile reaction to his Reconstruction
program, Johnson, during these months,
all but destroyed his chances of
working successfully with moderates in
the legislative branch. Adamant in
his state rights and racist beliefs, he
made several political blunders, including
his vetoes of the Freedmen's Bureau and
Civil Rights bills, his infamous
speech given on Washington's birthday,
and his gratuitous, procedural de-
nunciation of the Fourteenth Amendment,
which his home state of Tennessee
quickly ratified anyway. Johnson may
also have erred when he decided to
support a new political organization by
endorsing a convention of Unionists
that was scheduled to meet in
Philadelphia in August. In the end, Congress
allowed the President few victories, but
did sustain his vetoes of the Nebraska
and Colorado statehood bills.
Unabashed racism permeates the pages of
this work; Johnson's own brand
tended to be condescending. He sincerely
supported the attempts of private
groups to raise money for black education,
consistently declared himself to be
the black's best friend, and allowed
black leaders to question him in the
White House. Nonetheless, Johnson made
it clear that he believed that blacks
were inferior and should not receive
federal assistance.
Johnson also had to deal with the
multitudes, who wanted the plethora of
position's available to the President.
My favorite job application came from
Book Reviews
107
one Thomas Fitzgerald: "E. G. Webb
Assessor for the first (1st) District of
Pennsylvania is dead. Can I have the
place?" (p. 651). The number of appli-
cants increased when Johnson ordered
that veterans were to be favored in ap-
pointments and promotions. At the
highest level, policy differences led three
Cabinet officers to quit during these
months, indicating genuine turmoil
within the executive branch.
Problems in the South also occupied some
of Johnson's attention. The
President was pressed to parole or ease
the situations of imprisoned ex-
Confederate leaders and those ostensibly
involved in the Lincoln assassina-
tion plot. The wives of Jefferson Davis,
Clement C. Clay, and Samuel Mudd,
for example, importuned Johnson on
behalf of their spouses on several occa-
sions, but gained, at best, relatively
minor concessions. The President also
received much information about the
tardy Texas Reconstruction Convention
and subsequent elections and about the
troubled elections and later race riot in
New Orleans.
When Congress recessed at the end of
July, Johnson's influence was wan-
ing and his accomplishments were few.
Most of his woes were of his own
making. Still, he also seems to have
been a bit unlucky. This volume con-
tains a fitting symbol of his position
in July 1866 and his future prospects.
The President responded to Queen
Victoria's July 27 telegram, which con-
gratulated Johnson on the fact that the
Atlantic Cable was, at last, finished.
Johnson, however, had not received the
Queen's message until July 30 be-
cause, somewhere along the line, the
cable had gone dead.
Editor Paul Bergeron and his staff have
done an admirable job in selecting
documents from among the thousands that
are available. Bergeron's intro-
duction, though brief, sets the scene
perfectly for the huge amount of material
that follows it. The work contains a
wonderfully helpful index, and its anno-
tated endnotes are essential tools for
grasping the significance of the primary
material. One can only marvel at the
staff members' ability to locate data
about some of the truly obscure
individuals, whose names appear in the doc-
uments; even when forced to guess, these
scholars are shrewd. Historians of
the Reconstruction period will benefit
immensely from having access to this
book, just as they have from the
availability of other volumes in this impor-
tant series.
University of South Dakota Gerald W. Wolff
The Wheeling Bridge Case: Its
Significance in American Law and
Technology. By Elizabeth Brand Monroe. (Boston: Northeastern
University Press, 1992. xvi + 268p.;
illustrations, maps, notes, table of
cases, bibliography, index. $45.00.)
108 OHIO HISTORY
Elizabeth Monroe suggests that previous
legal historians have missed the
mark. Following the lead of pioneering
legal/economic historian Willard
Hurst, all have assumed that during the
nineteenth century, the American le-
gal system worked to "multiply the
productive power of the economy."
Through statutory and judge-made laws,
public policies allowed private cor-
porations to "release creative energy"
by constructing such structures as
bridges that benefited society as a
whole.
The role played by American law in the
historic development of transporta-
tion in the Ohio Valley should serve as
a case in point. If Hurst's model was
correct, then the federal and state
governments' support of internal improve-
ments through legislatively enacted and
judicially reviewed laws facilitated
the completion of overland
transportation systems. First canal and steamboat
promoters and then railroad men were the
beneficiaries of this system,
thereby releasing their "creative
energies" to the betterment of the Ohio
Valley in general. But as Monroe points
out, this model ignores the serious
and, at times, vicious competition
between various modes of transportation.
Steamboat men were loath to give up
their earlier favored status just because
a newer, faster technology (railroads)
was loudly whistling its own request for
governmental backing. Even
transportation historians of long-standing, like
George Rogers Taylor, ignored the legal
aspects of this competition.
Revisionist Monroe uses the Wheeling
Bridge case to correct this bias.
After an introduction to the federal and
state legal history of internal im-
provements, she sets the stage for the conflict
between Pennsylvania and
Pittsburgh (representing steamboat
owners) and Virginia and Wheeling
(coming in on the side of land-based
transportation interests). The bulk of the
volume is devoted to chronicling the
details of the litigation itself.
The Wheeling Suspension Bridge spans the
eastern leg, the main shipping
channel, of the Ohio River between the
downtown and the sizable residential
neighborhood on Wheeling Island.
Designed by Charles Ellet and completed
in October 1849, its length, in excess
of 1009 feet, was the world record at
that time. Because the bridge is today,
despite its age, used by commuters on
a daily basis, it still ranks as a
noteworthy structure of international repute.
In August 1849, even before the bridge
was finished, the state of
Pennsylvania began legal measures to
have it declared a public nuisance that
demanded "abatement." The
state argued that the amount of clearance be-
tween the bridge deck and the water
limited the size of boats and ships on the
Ohio River. This, they claimed, impeded
traffic on Pennsylvania's public
works system, both water and rail, that
was then transhipped down the Ohio.
The case was first heard by the entire
U.S. Supreme Court early in 1850.
Although questions of jurisdiction were
raised and the matter was several
times referred to outside experts for
their opinions, in February 1852 the ma-
jority of the court ruled in favor of
Pennsylvania, decreeing that the bridge ei-
Book Reviews
109
ther be removed or elevated. Within the
year the case had attracted the atten-
tion of Congress, who felt the court had
overstepped its bounds, and in
August an act was passed declaring the
bridge lawful and designating it a fed-
eral "post road." Thus the
matter might have rested, except that in the sum-
mer of 1854 the deck of the bridge was
destroyed by a windstorm. Before the
bridge company could recreate its
original design, Pennsylvania filed a re-
quest with the Supreme Court for an
injunction against the reconstruction be-
fore a hearing determined the rebuilt
structure's configuration. Since the
court would not be in session until
December, the request was granted. The
company simply ignored the injunction
and proceeded with the rebuilding,
which was completed in November.
Pennsylvania responded by demanding a
contempt of court ruling against the
company and its officers. When the
court finally met, a majority concluded
that since ultimate questions on the
legality of the bridge had already been
settled by Congressional action, "there
must be an end of litigation."
All this is covered in great detail by
Monroe. Hers is, in fact, the most
complete treatment of this important
litigation to date, analyzing all the legal
arguments presented, judicial reasoning,
and Congressional debates surround-
ing it. The reference to technology in
the subtitle introduces the final chapter
in which she explains the development of
a federal policy for bridges over
navigable waters in the wake of the
Wheeling case. She demonstrates how
the federal government's desire to
balance the competing interests of water
transport and railroads continued into
the twentieth century. Instead of ac-
commodating the needs of the newer
overland technology, as previous histo-
rians had suggested, the maintenance of
river navigation seemed to be the
overriding concern throughout the
period.
Monroe is at her best when discussing the
intricacies of litigation and con-
stitutional law. Less satisfying is her
treatment of technological issues.
While she provides ample context and
historiographic treatment of the legal
history of the Wheeling Bridge case, she
devotes far less space to illuminating
relevant technological matters. One
example will suffice. Government engi-
neers were reluctant to use the
precedent set by a suspension bridge, regard-
less of its length, to establish
standards for railroad bridges crossing the Ohio
River. Despite the great success of John
Roebling, Ellet's rival in the original
Wheeling Bridge design competition, in
building a combined high-
way/railroad suspension bridge over the
Niagara River gorge in 1855, sus-
pension bridges were still widely
believed to lack the rigidity necessary for
the pounding action of locomotives. That
is why the minimum distance be-
tween bridge piers in the Ohio River was
not governed by the extraordinary
span of the Wheeling Bridge but by the
size of the largest metal through truss.
Monroe correctly points out that as
metal truss technology became more
sophistocated, this length increased and
was duly noted in federal regulations.
110 OHIO HISTORY
The rationale for using a truss length
as a standard instead of a suspension
bridge is what Monroe failed to
incorporate.
Those seeking an in-depth analysis of
the legal history surrounding mid-
nineteenth-century internal improvements
and constitutional debates over the
commerce clause will find it here. Those
after an equally complete treatment
of related technological issues are
likely to be disappointed.
Ohio Historical Society David A. Simmons
The Communists: The Story of Power
and Lost Illusions, 1948-1991. By
Adam B. Ulam. (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1992. xiii + 528p.;
notes, index. $27.50.)
"The simultaneous collapse of an
empire and the ideology that engendered
it is unprecedented in modern
history," writes Adam Ulam, the author of a
number of works dealing with the Soviet
Union (Expansion and Coexistence
is this writer's personal favorite).
Fascism and National Socialism owed their
demise to military defeat, but the
Communism of the Soviet Union, its fellow
European Communist states, all under
Soviet domination or heavy influence,
and China simply disintegrated without a
war while the USSR was one of the
world's two superpowers and China was a
major power. Nor were there even
popular uprisings or violent
revolutions. It all happened peacefully and
quickly, as though to contradict a Jeane
Kirkpatrick profundity. Professor
Ulam has taken for himself the task of
explaining how this happened, how
what we knew as world Communism
collapsed with barely a whimper.
Much of what Ulam writes is conjecture,
as it must be until the dictates of
glasnost and perestroika throw open
ex-Soviet and Chinese archives (the
Soviets perhaps, the Chinese not in the
near future). But Ulam conjectures
well, as one would expect, and in the
bargain provides plausible explanations
for the postwar behavior of the evil
empire[s].
Perhaps the most significant myth, and
the lifeblood of American Cold
Warriors, that Ulam corrects is that of
the Communist monolith, with that
awesome leviathan, the USSR, functioning
as its nerve center, sending out
commands and signals to its various
junior partners in political crime. If
there ever was such a postwar
arrangement, it lasted only until Yugoslavia
and Tito, "the first heretic,"
decided to secede in 1948. This was the first
crack in World Communism's unity, says
Ulam.
On the heels of Tito's defection there
occurred an event which, on the face
of things, was postwar Communism's
greatest coup-the triumph of Mao's
forces in China. But Mao, before the
fifties were out, would be a Tito on a
larger scale, and the Sino-Soviet bloc,
which actually lasted a relatively short
time, ended by proving little more than
that politics had made estranged bed-
Book Reviews
111
fellows. That there was no Sino-Soviet
collaboration, no "Marxist-Leninist
internationalism," was obvious by
the early sixties as USSR-China relations
deteriorated to a mutual name-calling
contest replete with all those terms so
meaningful to leftish true believers:
capitalist roaders, running dogs of impe-
rialism, right-wing deviationists,
left-wing deviationists, Trotskyists and
Trotskyites, bourgeois reactionary
falsehood-the list is endless. By the early
seventies both the Soviet Union and
China sought accommodation with the
U.S. and the West, making it obvious to
all but the most hardened right-
wingers that they were motivated
primarily by their national interests rather
than some Marxist-Leninist blueprint for
world revolution.
Ulam also does an excellent job of
analyzing the policies of the various
Soviet and Chinese leaders since 1948,
as well as explaining how
Communism, namely the Soviet Union,
managed to get from 1948, perhaps
its peak year, to where it is today.
From the sinister Stalin, the "genius leader
of all progressive mankind," as
Soviet sycophancy had it, to Khrushchev's
policy of bluff and bluster, which
masked his search for detente with the West
(Ulam agrees with Sidney Hook that
Khrushchev's de-Stalinization program
was discontinued because it would have
exposed many Party members who
had participated in destroying the
innocent), on to Brezhnev's gerontocratic
rule, which featured government of, by,
and for the Party oligarchy, Ulam
touches a number of bases. He concludes
with Gorbachev and Yeltsin, argu-
ing that Gorbachev originally set out to
reform the system, state and society,
only to discover that there was no such
animal as reform Communism: "Real
democratization of the Communist
regime," Ulam points out correctly,
"would almost inevitably lead to
its eventual dissolution." Gorbachev and
other Communists "who urged
far-reaching reforms were the gravediggers of
Marxism-Leninism." Yeltsin,
suffering no such illusions, understood that the
Soviet system needed changed, not
reformed. (Dimitri K. Simes reached
much the same conclusion about Yeltsin
in a recent issue of Foreign Affairs.)
Ulam has written a marvelous account of
the collapse of an ideology
which, despite its humane promises, had
in actual practice served as little
more than a justification for
authoritarian-totalitarian government.
Communism was indeed, to borrow an
earlier title, The God That Failed, and
Ulam's authoritative explanation of the
failure is must reading for those who
would know just why and how it happened.
Ohio Historical Society Robert L. Daugherty
Letters of Delegates to Congress,
1774-1789. Volume 18: September 1,
1781-July 31, 1782. Edited by Paul H. Smith, Gerard W. Gawalt, and
Ronald M. Gephart. (Washington, D.C.:
Library of Congress, 1991. xxix
112 OHIO HISTORY
+ 749p.; editorial method and apparatus,
acknowledgments, chronology of
Congress, list of delegates to Congress,
illustrations, notes, index. $37.00.)
Our written histories, especially our
more textbookish accounts, are often
far too neat. Blessed with retrospection
and possessed of 20/20 hindsight, we
professional historians have the
advantage of knowing how any given event
in the past actually turned out; and it
now seems that the event in question
was almost fated to turn out that way.
Our view of the American Revolution,
like our view of much of the past,
suffers at times from what might be termed
this inordinate and even deceptive
retrospection. We need to do more with
Revolutionary history-in-the-making,
with flesh-and-blood people experienc-
ing a "reality" that is not
headed toward a certain predestined end but rather
one that is seen as more open-ended and
characterized by much complexity
and much uncertainty.
As this particular volume opens and as
this highly dramatic series of events
continues to unfold, some good news is
admittedly circulating among the del-
egates for a change. Colonel John
Laurens, just returned from his mission to
France, has brought back large supplies
of arms, ammunition, and clothing.
Even more important, he has brought an
amount of specie that is "almost
equal to our wishes" (p. 9). The
delegates are happy about this turn of events,
but many of them sense that America's
ultimate fate is still very clearly
hanging in the balance. French
assistance is grudging at times. Much of the
aid for the year 1781 has taken the form
of loans, not outright gifts; and the
French allies are given to pointing out
that the American rebels run the risk of
becoming too dependent on France. It is American
independence that is at is-
sue, after all. The Americans should do
more to help themselves! From the
Old World troubling reports continue to
come, some of them conceivably por-
tentous for the long-range future of the
Franco-American alliance itself.
Rumor has it that Britain has made it a
precondition for European peace that
France formally dissolve her alliance
with King George's rebellious
American subjects. Britain has also
supposedly said that those American
colonies which the mother country has
subjugated, especially the ones in the
South, may never be acknowledged as
independent. Then there is always the
possibility that Britain will refuse to
deal with all the colonies as one nation,
but will instead insist on making a
separate peace with each one of them.
Among the delegates there is much
anxiety about all of this, despite the suc-
cess of the Laurens mission.
Even after the defeat of Lord Cornwallis
at Yorktown in October 1781,
there is talk among the delegates about
the form that next year's American
campaign will have to take. Thus our
twentieth-century perception that ev-
erything is pretty well over after
Yorktown is manifestly not the perception of
the delegates back there late in 1781
and early 1782. From the vantage point
Book Reviews
113
of December 1781, Virginia delegate
Joseph Jones doubts that Britain will
give in yet. Instead, she "will
strain every nerve to raise the supplies for an-
other year" (p. 252). In the first
week of February 1782, New Jersey's Elias
Boudinot is of the conviction that
"Peace is yet many Years off' (p. 324).
Two weeks later, Boudinot is still of
the same opinion: "There is not the least
prospect of Peace, or scarcely a
possibility of it-on the other hand, every
Measure is adopting in England to send
over a large body of Hanoverians and
some English Regimt. early in the
Spring" (p. 346). The British are still com-
ing, the British are still coming! And
the Hanoverians may well be coming
too!
Given all this uncertainty-much of it of
a decidedly post-Yorktown vari-
ety-perhaps we might conclude by raising
anew the question with which we
began. Just what is the "real"
history of the American Revolution, or of any
other subject for that matter? Is it the
"objective" account of how things all
turned out that we historians, imbued
with our impeccable hindsight, seek to
fashion? Or is it that vastly more
subjective, complicated, muddled, and
vexatious reality that real people live
through? The volumes in this valuable
series present us with more the latter
than the former picture; and they will
eventually permit enterprising and
creative historians to capture this
Revolutionary drama-in-the-making, with
all of its hopes and fears, successes
and setbacks. When this intellectual
event transpires, it will be a great day
indeed for American historiography.
Marquette University Robert P. Hay
Letters of Delegates to Congress,
1774-1789. Volume 19: August 1,
1782-
March 11, 1783. Edited by Paul H. Smith, Gerard W. Gawalt, and Ronald
M. Gephart. (Washington, D.C.: Library
of Congress, 1992. xxx + 827p.;
editorial method and apparatus,
acknowledgments, chronology of Congress,
list of delegates to Congress,
illustrations, notes, index. $35.00.)
As the Bard of Avon said long ago, all
the world is a stage, including this
Congressional world of late
eighteenth-century America. The players upon
this particular stage are many, and as
they play out their respective roles they
typify quite a range of human emotion
and behavior. Looking upon the dele-
gates to Congress in this light both
humanizes them and makes far more dra-
matic the complex and important story
that their letters continue to tell.
In just the first hundred pages of the
volume at hand there are thousands of
lines and literally scores of plots and
subplots. When the curtain opens, we
are more than nine months removed from
the great victory at Yorktown; and
many delegates are speculating as to
when the real peace will come. "Don't
Affairs look approaching towards a
Peace?" asks Jonathan Jackson of
114 OHIO HISTORY
Massachusetts. "It appears to me
they do" (p. 12). But John Taylor Gilman
of New Hampshire wonders. So do others,
convinced that Britain's "pride &
lust of domination which on her part
first originated the present war" have not
yet abated (p. 23). Even if peace
negotiations were to proceed in earnest, who
could be certain that France would not
put her own interests and those of her
Spanish allies ahead of America's?
Arthur Lee of Virginia, for one, fears that
France might well support Spain's claims
to the vast lands extending from the
Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi
River. What then would become
of Virginia's dream of westward
expansion, and what would become of
America's future?
Momentous issues of war and peace,
however, are not the only questions
before the house or the only things on
the delegates' minds. For example,
there is apparently some movement out in
Virginia's "Kentucky country" to-
wards separate statehood, but who is to
decide when a new state is to be cre-
ated-the legislature of the existing
state that claims the western territory or,
contrariwise, the Congress? There is
quite a furor about this matter, and dur-
ing the course of the debate some rather
strong anti-Virginia sentiment clearly
emerges. For example, Thomas McKean,
from tiny little Delaware, boldly
announces that he "is not afraid of
Virginia" (p. 97) and that he never wants
to see any one state lord it over the
others! John Witherspoon of New Jersey
goes even further when he says that he
could conceive of a situation in which
one state had become so powerful (and
potentially dangerous) that the other
states, invoking "the law of
necessity and of self-preservation" (p. 99), might
have to divide the offending state into
two or more separate and smaller juris-
dictions!
So there is grave concern as to what
turn politics might take abroad and
there is as well considerable political
contention right here at home. Politics
aside, there are, as always, the much
more personal things in the lives of the
delegates. In one rather short letter to
Anne, his spouse, Benjamin
Huntington of Connecticut waxes eloquent
on the theme of God's mercy, al-
ludes in a jocular way to his own
corpulence, complains mightily of gouging
merchants, and earnestly longs for home.
Without using our modern word
"depression," David Howell of
Rhode Island nonetheless confides that he
suffers greatly from it. In a letter to
the Quaker Moses Brown, Howell pours
out his soul: "You know I always
was subject to be low Spirited. I feel so
much of it at times now as utterly
disqualifies me for all business....and hav-
ing no particular friend here to whom my
difficulties are known to converse
freely with, I am the more overcome.
Never did tears flow more freely from
my eyes than since I have been in this
City" (p. 24).
In this first hundred pages, then, and
in the seven hundred pages that fol-
low, all of these dramatis personae are
playing out their roles. Without any
one of them, our drama would be somehow
incomplete. But the person who
Book Reviews
115
is clearly about to emerge as the star
of this performance is James Madison.
Frail of frame but with an intellect
that is powerful and penetrating and with
an utter commitment to public life and
to the public interest, Madison is obvi-
ously being schooled in finance, in the
economic basis of politics, and in the
need for a stronger central government.
In the index to this volume, there are
by far more references to Madison than
to any other delegate, thus bespeaking
the increasingly significant role that
he is playing. We observe Madison's
oral and written articulation of the
issues, his keeping notes of a given day's
proceedings, and his attempts to convey
to confidants back home in Virginia
an accurate sense as to just what is
transpiring in Congress. Indeed, we see in
all of this nothing less than a
prefiguration of the great role that he will one
day play as "the father of the
Constitution."
Here, in sum, we have the bit parts and
the great parts and all the parts in
between, just as we do in any
performance. What this important nineteenth
volume of this important series
manifestly is not, then, is a mere compilation
of the dusty letters of dead men. It is,
instead, one more act from a living
pageant about the nation's beginnings.
The pageant continues, and this re-
viewer, among others, eagerly
anticipates the scenes that are yet to come. For
what we are beholding is both
entertaining and educational, and not even the
most seasoned frequenter of the theater
could possibly ask for more than that.
Marquette University Robert P. Hay
A Country Between: The Upper Ohio
Valley and Its Peoples, 1724-1774. By
Michael N. McConnell. (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1992. xii
+ 357p.; illustrations, notes,
bibliography, index. $40.00.)
More than half a century has passed
since the publication of Randolph C.
Downes's classic study of the Ohio
Indians, Council Fires on the Upper
Ohio, and thirty years since Erminie Wheeler Voegelin's
extensive reports for
the Indian Claims Commission were issued
as Indians of Ohio and Indiana.
Neither achieved as much recognition as
they deserved, but the greater ap-
preciation of Indian history today
should ensure a strong reception for this
new reappraisal of the native pioneers,
principally Delawares, Shawnees and
Mingoes, who quit their homes in New
York and Pennsylvania to colonize
the upper Ohio from the 1720s.
McConnell's achievement is an impressive
one. Expanding his doctoral
dissertation, itself a useful contribution, he re-
constructs the interplay of Indian and
white cultures that formed 18th century
Ohio from a wide trawl of documentary
and archaeological sources and with
a great deal of skill and detachment.
The result is a well-written, judicious
and thoughtful study supplying an
essential perspective to our understanding
of the colonial period.
116 OHIO HISTORY
McConnell persuasively describes how
these Indians fashioned new identi-
ties in the west, influenced by fresh
relationships with each other and their
occupation of a strategic area coveted
by both French and British expansion-
ists. One trend, the increasing cohesion
between disparate villages of Indians
sharing a language and culture, was
evidenced in the attempts of the
Delawares to coalesce on the Muskingum
in the 1770s, but more significant
still was the development of a
collective regional consciousness. Threatened
from without, Ohio Indians from
different ethnic groups established a loose
confederacy to present a united front
and concerted policy. Although British
officials then, and many scholars since,
have insisted that the Ohio Indians
were mere dependents of the Iroquois
Confederacy in New York, McConnell
shows that this was patently not the
case. Iroquois spokesmen for the Ohio
confederacy, such as Tanaghrisson, came
not from New York but a splinter
group on the Allegheny, which in 1747
joined other Ohio Indians in forming
a new council fire at Logstown to assert
their independence of Onondaga.
Far from controlling the Ohio Indians,
the Iroquois Confederacy resented
their autonomy, and the Confederacy's
inability to direct affairs on the Ohio
was one reason for its eagerness to cede
doubtful land claims in the area in
1768.
Temporarily, their confederacy enhanced
the significance of the Ohio
Indians. In 1747 they fashioned an
alliance that included several native
groups and the British and extended from
the Miami to Philadelphia and from
the Ohio to Lake Erie. But although the
Indians wrung occasional conces-
sions from the British, ultimately the
forces dividing them, both cultural and
political, proved to be too powerful. In
1752 to 1754 Tanaghrisson's efforts
to coordinate resistance to the French
invasions were unsuccessful, and in
1774 the Shawnees and Mingoes went to
war against the Virginians with little
support from neighboring Indian people.
McConnell's portrait of the experi-
ences of these communities, and their
attempts to preserve the territory upon
which their merging regional identity
depended, is painted in subtler shades
than in many histories. Indian actions
were seldom straight forward, but
swung between varied cross-currents.
Some responded to religiously-inspired
nativism that condemned the
contamination of Indian cultures by white influ-
ences, and others were motivated by a
desire for the trade goods and contacts
that spawned such influences. Some
Indians feared the French, while others
saw the British as the greater danger,
and many were moved by the interests
of the village, kinfolk or individual
ambition. It is a rich mixture, and
McConnell's treatment of it is
appropriately sophisticated and close-grained.
There is little to fault in this book.
Not all scholars will be convinced by
McConnell's reconstruction of the
engagement at Bushy Run in 1763, and the
author is throughout stronger on the
Delawares and Mingoes than the
Shawnees. McConnell, along with other
historians, probably exaggerates the
Book Reviews
117
significance of the massacres of 1774
and the intrigues of John Connolly's
Virginians in the outbreak of war with
the Shawnees. As the author realizes
(p. 274), the Shawnee had been promoting
an alliance to defend Kentucky for
years, and while they were not ready for
war in 1774 their patience was
reaching an end. Justifiably notorious
as Connolly and Greathouse's activi-
ties were, they probably preempted a
conflict that was already inevitable, and
have received an undue emphasis.
However, such quibbles apart, Michael
McConnell's is a fine piece of research
and obligatory reading for all inter-
ested in the early history of Ohio and
Pennsylvania.
Hereward College John
Sugden
England