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THE NEW COMMONWEALTH, 1877- 1890. By John A. Garraty. (New York: Harper & Row, 1968. xv ?? 364p.; edi- tor's introduction, preface, illustrations, bibliographical essay, and index. $7.95, $2.25 paper.) With the welcome appearance of Profes- sor Garraty's masterful synthesis and re- evaluation of the Hayes to Harrison period of our national development, we have the most important study of these highly sig- nificant, but long neglected years since the 1930's when Ida M. Tarbell and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., wrote companion volumes covering 1878 to 1898 for the pioneering History of American Life series. Garraty's work is richly documented, evi- dences a thorough grasp of primary sources and secondary materials, and offers greater detail than Robert Wiebe's more broadly conceived and thought-provoking The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (1967). The New Commonwealth, 1877-1890 is also far better balanced in its approach than either of two other recent interpretations repre- sentative of the growing revival of interest in the 1870's and 1880's: Ray Ginger's The Age of Excess (1965)
and Fred A. Shan- non's posthumously published The Centen- nial Years (1967).
The present work estab- lishes a major turn in our historical under- standing of an era traditionally portrayed as one wholly dominated by an economic revolution, tragically handicapped ineffec- tive politicos, and cultural deprivation. This harsh appraisal is considerably soft- ened by Garraty who terms these years the time when the United States became a mod- ern nation. The New Commonwealth, a volume in The New American Nation Series, bears scant resemblance to its predecessor in the old American Nation set of the early 1900's, which concentrated heavily upon political history and foreign affairs. The |
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extent of the broadening of the concept of history during the last sixty years and the impact of issues relevant to today's society upon historical writing is clearly reflected in Garraty's organization and emphasis. In eight lengthy chapters, brimming with sta- tistics and examples, he pictures first, the social milieu, and then turns to the great forces working beneath "the glitter and the gold" of the age which transformed iso- lated, rural, agrarian, and nativist America into the urban and industrial world of the twentieth century. He stresses a growing in- stitutionalization of American life, whether the trend away from individualism toward increased reliance upon group action was in agriculture, industry, corporate develop- ment, the rise of unions, or the growth of government bureaucracy. Urbanization and immigration receive extended analysis. Fi- nally, the author includes an excellent re- visionist resume of presidential politics and changing patterns of social thought in the Gilded Age. In his massive sweep through a busy and formative age, one misses only an in-depth discussion of the cultural and artistic achievements of the time, purposely excluded because these topics will be cov- ered in a forthcoming volume by John Wil- liam Ward. In his reassessment Garraty inclines to the side of the industrial statesman rather than the robber baron thesis, cites as de- cided accomplishments the prevalence of large-scale philanthropy and the spread of mass education, and praises the achieve- ments of science and technology. He singles out great painters, like Eakins and Homer, and able architects, like Richardson and Sullivan, to counteract charges of cultural poverty. Two of his best chapters deal with political history, supposedly a topic better left alone for the period in question. He deftly explains the remarkable party equi- librium of the era, and re-ranks the Presi- dents, with Hayes and Garfield gaining in |
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stature, and Arthur, Cleveland, and Harri- son losing some ground. If the volume suffers anywhere, it is the occasional lapses from an otherwise lively style into the presentation of too many minor statistical details, as the chapter on agriculture. Illustrations, notes, and index- ing are quite adequate. The bibliography is both critical and selective and is abreast of the most recent scholarship. KENNETH E. DAVISON Heidelberg College THE RADICAL REPUBLICANS: LIN- COLN'S VANGUARD FOR RACIAL JUSTICE. By Hans L. Trefousse. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969. xiv ?? 492p.;
illustrations, bibliography, and in- dex. $10.00.) Professor Hans L. Trefousse has set out to bring together the results of recent schol- arship that has led to the rehabilitation of radical Republicans. The once-popular image of the radicals as opportunists who used the Negro to gain power and enact a commonly held economic program is shat- tered. They possessed "no unity on any- thing except opposition to the defenders of slavery or their successors." The careers of Ohioans Benjamin F. Wade and Salmon P. Chase are examined to demonstrate that radicalism was often a political liability. Radicals often rejected complete social equality for the Negro and harbored de- grading prejudices, but they struggled to overcome these views and occupied an ad- vanced position for their day in fighting for Negro rights. This admission notwithstand- ing, Mr. Trefousse all too often overlooks the radicals' faults and tends to accept their evaluation of themselves and their oppon- ents. We read nothing, for example, of the ludicrous theory employed by James Ashley to link Andrew Johnson with the assassina- tion of Abraham Lincoln. "Radical" is used as it appeared in con- temporary parlance, but Trefousse warns the reader that there were limits to the radicalism of men like William Pitt Fessen- den, and he frequently employs phrases such as "then considered a radical" and "actually a conservative." A major theme is that the friction between Lincoln and the radicals has been exaggerated and that the President, generally sympathetic to their goals, used radical agitation to move the party toward more advanced positions. |
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Though the author makes too much of Lincoln's essential agreement with the radi- cals and underestimates the significance of disagreements over timing and method, his lengthy argument provides a salutary coun- terweight to the position he attacks. Trefousse's central thesis is that the radi- cals played a vital role in stiffening the party's will and pushing it toward a pro- gram of justice for the black man. It is difficult to argue that the radicals did not see much of their program enacted or that their agitation was without value. He con- cedes that circumstances and the fact that moderates disagreed with the radicals less on principles than on their implementation contributed to the eventual acceptance of many radical demands. But by focusing too narrowly on the radicals and their views, the author often leaves the reader with the impression that nonradical Republicans were willing to abandon the Negro at al- most every juncture. The legislative suc- cesses of this period are considered radical triumphs rather than the results of con- structive conflict between radicals and mod- erates. We might ask, for example, if the Fifteenth Amendment was a "real achieve- ment" for the radicals when only two Re- publicans in the Senate and three in the House voted against it. In a work covering the period from 1850 to the mid-seventies, Trefouse necessarily deals with a multitude of controversial sub- jects, and few will accept all of his judg- ments. Many will be disappointed to dis- cover that his coverage of such major items as the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment is surprisingly thin, especially in comparison to his treatment of less consequential matters. Hans Trefousse has mined a great deal of primary material and has given us a useful and interesting work. DONALD C. SWIFT Edinboro State College THE MAN WHO MADE NASBY, DAVID ROSS LOCKE. By John M. Harrison. (Chapel Hill: University of North Caro- ina Press, 1969. xii ?? 335p.; frontispiece, bibliographic essay, and index. $8.75.) In the century since Petroleum Vesuvius Nasby, the creation of Ohio newspaperman David Ross Locke, became a national celeb- rity as the illiterate itinerant clergyman- supporter of slavery, secession, and reac- tion, only two books and comparatively few articles have appeared on Nasby and his |
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creator. Nasby as the creation obscured and ultimately merged with the man who cre- ated him. Now, for the first time, David Ross Locke emerges in John M. Harrison's book as the accomplished journalist, author, businessman, and political theorist that he was. This does not mean that Harrison's study is the book that Nasby fans have been wait- ing for; Harrison destroys too many fondly- held stereotypes as he places Nasby in his proper perspective within the context of a busy, varied, and significant life. Neverthe- less, those chapters which deal with the Nasby phenomenon are thorough and de- tailed, valuable additions to Nasby litera- ture and to the study of nineteenth cen- tury American political and social satire. But the book is not only biography of the man behind the Nasby phenomenon, as the title indicates; it is social and cul- tural history as it spans that portion of the nineteenth century in which Ohio was transformed from a frontier society to a complex modern state. Locke is portrayed as a participant in that transformation, but at the same time he emerges as symbolic of it. As the history of Ohio's growth and Locke's role in it emerge from Harrison's study, the Locke record is impressive: be- ginning as one of those itinerant news- papermen who founded Ohio's pioneer press, he went on to build the Toledo Blade, one
of the nation's great newspapers. A rabid as well as influential Republican, he nevertheless put reason above radical- ism in the crucial years of reconstruction; a firm believer in the capitalistic philosophy of his time, at the same time he advocated advances in the franchise, education, labor organization, and an increasingly open so- ciety that were anathema to many of his contemporaries. Above all, his life and career were characterized by a compassion for those who, victimized by poverty and circumstance, provided the inspiration for his most famous creation. The David Ross Locke who emerges from Harrison's detailed, sympathetic, and entirely admirable study is not the proto- type of Nasby who so many superficial earlier treatments insist was the real Locke; instead Locke emerges as he was, a builder and a believer in the American ideal and potential in an age that needed both. The result is a vivid portrait of a multi-faceted man who made substantial contributions to making both potential and ideal a reality attainable for increasingly greater numbers of Americans. |
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Harrison's study is perhaps not defini- tive; there are still some questions un- answered about details of the Locke story. But it will stand as definitive for a good many years to come. DAVID D. ANDERSON Michigan State University EARLY AMERICAN WINTERS, II (1821- 1870). By David M. Ludlum. (Boston: American Meteorological Society, 1968. ix ?? 257p.; maps, charts, source guide, and indices. $10.00.) The purpose of this the second mono- graph on early American winters, as with the first, is to give a chronological account of extreme winters. It is replete in meteoro- logical details of such winters in the eastern United States. Volume I covered the period 1604-1820, and Volume II extends the his- torical record through 1870, the year that the Federal weather service was authorized and the systematic collection of weather data became widespread. The author accom- plishes his purpose with accounts of winter extremes in the Northeast, South, and Mid- west, and winters of the Civil War. Of special interest is the Winter Anthology. This collection of articles from various con- temporary newspapers covers splendid, spectacular, or terrifying spells of weather and includes extracts from Thoreau's Wal- den and
Whittier's Snowbound. Much of the weather data has been com- piled from carefully kept records by many newspaper editors, the diaries and letters of other citizens, as well as from the re- ports of several government offices in Wash- ington. Many variations of extreme weather are described, from a warm spell in central Pennsylvania when on February 11, 1827, peach trees were in full bloom and people were mourning that sleighs were no longer in demand and lamenting that the "merry- making times in winter" were gone, to cold spells in January, 1821, the coldest ever known in New York City. The Hudson River froze so solidly that people crossed on the ice from New Jersey to Manhattan; on the 25th the temperature was 14 be- low, among the coldest mornings in New York City's recorded history, early or mod- ern. The records give accounts of deep snow preventing mails and stages from getting through for days; of horses dying of the exertion; of destruction when ice broke up |
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on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers; of the Susquehanna River ice bridge, when rails were laid across the ice to transport cars and passengers which would have been fer- ried across in milder weather. In contrast to Pennsylvania's lack of one winter's sleighing, another year gave north- ern Ohio 100 days of continuous sleighing, prompting competing sleigh rides where 466 four-horse teams plus many single sleighs and 6,524 people took part, news of which reached even to the London Times. The first use of the word "blizzard" to denote a severe snowstorm with high wind is reported in a newspaper story in April 1870, at Estherville, Iowa. (The local base- ball club considered the term pointedly suggestive and promptly renamed its base- ball team "The Northern Blizzards." We read of snowstorms as early as Sep- tember and as late as July in New Eng- land; of spells of freezing cold and loss of crops as far south as New Orleans; and of Civil War battles helped or hindered on either side by the winter weather condi- tions. Not a book to hold one's continuous and undivided attention, Early American Win- ters brings
together for ready reference the many scattered accounts of past extreme winter weather conditions of special in- terest to the weatherman and the historian. The volume contains a lengthy bibliograph- ical guide to the sources of winter data by state, an index of places by state affected by severe winter conditions, and an index of persons responsible for the original weather records drawn upon and, therefore, becomes a significant addition and valuable guide to the early history of American weather. ROBERT M. BASILE The Ohio State University HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY. By Ivor Noel-Hume. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1969 xiii ?? 355p.; subject index to bibliography and general index. $10.) The application of archaeological tech- niques to historic sites in the United States has been gaining in interest and momen- tum since the pioneer work began in Wil- liamsburg. Mr. Noel-Hume's book should be of great interest and value to any per- son or group contemplating the explora- tion of an historic site, and will be valuable |
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to anyone interested in preserving sites and materials relating to man's culture. The author, director of the department of archaeology at Colonial Williamsburg, points out that historical archaeology re- quires specialized knowledge different from that usually applied to prehistoric "digs." The excavator of the historic site will un- cover many artifacts which can be precisely identified and closely dated through the study of written records. Their location, within the stratification of the site assumes great importance and can often confirm or deny conclusions drawn from documentary research. The ability to identify such ma- terial makes it mandatory that the excava- tor have a thorough background in the his- tory of the site and objects of the period in question. Often, historians or specialists in various fields of study must be called upon to assist the technician in the inter- pretation of the site and related artifacts. Mr. Noel-Hume draws upon his expe- rience in providing information about and guidelines for each step of site excavation. Each phase is discussed thoroughly, and the emphasis on pre-excavation planning and organization touches many points which are often ignored or forgotten. He devotes considerable space to a discussion of the different types of excavation which can be utilized and the reasons for his adoption of a grid system composed of ten foot squares separated by two foot balks. He also provides a corresponding numbering system which will insure proper and ade- quate location of any artifact or feature found within the site. While some archae- ologists may disagree with certain aspects of the author's techniques, and prefer to use their own systems for numbering and iden- tifying, the book does provide a complete guide for the beginner and is easily under- stood. Additional chapters briefly describe some specialized types of sites and the particular problems or requirements for proper ex- ploration. House and domestic sites, bur- ials, manufacturing sites, forts or military camps, and marine or underwater loca- tions all present different situations to the excavator. Burials, which must be uncov- ered with delicate, painstaking care, re- quire very different techniques from those used in excavating an early iron furnace, with its heavy stones, masses of iron and slag, and heavy equipment. Useful sections on mapping, drawing and photographing objects and all phases of the "dig" are presented, together with information on the treatment of a variety |
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of artifacts, their study and storage. The end product of a well organized explora- tion should be the compilation of material in such a way that it will convey the in- creased knowledge of the site to the gen- eral public as well as to other scholars, whether it takes the form of publications or eventual restoration. Mr. Noel-Hume concludes a fine work with a comprehensive critical bibliography. To aid the readers, who presumably will be interested in a variety of materials, the bibliography is broken into categories such as architecture, buttons, tools and weapons, aiding quick reference. If any brief words could describe the author's admonitions to the reader, they might be: be careful and thorough in your work. Throughout the book, the need for careful, detailed work is stressed, emphasiz- ing that historical archaeology is as de- manding an art as prehistoric archaeology. Ivor Noel-Hume has made a significant contribution in the form of an interesting and informative monograph which sets for- ward goals to be sought by anyone who seeks to explore an historic site. JOSEPH M. THATCHER The Ohio Historical Society |
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CORRECTION: Review appearing in the Winter 1969 issue of Ohio History Re: FOR THE UNION: OHIO LEAD- ERS IN THE CIVIL WAR. Edited by Kenneth W. Wheeler. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1968. viii ?? 497p.; end notes and index. $10.00.) It has recently been called to my atten- tion by Dr. Donald W. Curl of Florida At- lantic University that there were two mis- statements in my recent review of For The Union: Ohio Leaders in the Civil War. Due to a misinterpretation on my part of both the preface to this book and of a statement made in a book review in an earlier issue of Ohio History, I concluded that several of the essays in For the Union had previously been published and so stated in the review; whereas in fact none of the essays had ever been published be- fore. Furthermore, I attributed the author- ship of the first essay on Vallandigham to the editor, Kenneth W. Wheeler, when it was, of course, written by Frank L. Klem- ent. I am eager to correct both errors and want to thank Dr. Curl for bringing them to my attention. ROBERT W. TWYMAN Bowling Green State University |