Book Reviews
Howells and the Age of Realism. By Everett Carter. (Philadelphia and New
York: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1954.
307p.; index. $5.00.)
Mr. Carter's scholarly study of William
Dean Howells and his fellow
realists is a sound, valuable chapter in
our literary and social history. It
is not a definitive biography such as
Leon Edel's Henry James or Dixon
Wecter's Sam Clemens of Hannibal, but
an intellectual portrait of Howells,
drawn by careful analysis and interpretation.
Mr. Carter sympathetically
traces the evolution of Howells'
aesthetic and ethical ideas, shows their
embodiment in his fiction and criticism,
and relates Howells to "realists"
of every stripe--J. W. De Forest, Bret
Harte, Edward Eggleston, Mark
Twain, Henry James, Hamlin Garland,
Harold Frederic, Henry Blake Fuller,
Frank Norris, Robert Herrick, James
Gould Cozzens, and others. Howells'
thinking and writing are worth this
close attention because they were rep-
resentative and influential in the
post-Civil War decades which were the
beginning of modern America, and to this
extent they are part of our
make-up today.
Mr. Carter has divided his material into
forty short essays--historical,
analytical, or interpretive--each
discussing a different part of Howells'
ideas, work, and milieu. Some of the
best of these are "Taine in America,"
"Dramatic Method and Organic
Form," "Impressionism and Realism,"
"Pragmatism and Realism," and
"Morality and Realism." Occasionally such
chopping-up of the subject seems
arbitrary or artificial. Sometimes the forty
essays overlap and repeat one another,
and they are of uneven quality. But
if a few are dull, obvious, or unhappily
academic, others are sensitive and
illuminating. Most of them are thorough,
original studies of fictional form
and method, and all of them are clear
and explicit.
In tracing the successive stages in
Howells' realism, Mr. Carter begins
by reconstructing his literary
inheritance of eighteenth-century rationality
and empiricism, then takes up the
anti-sentimental movement, in which he
early enrolled himself. When the young
Ohioan became assistant editor of
the august Atlantic Monthly in
1866, his common-sense reviews regularly
debunked the false and sentimental
mishmash of popular literature, and such
214
BOOK REVIEWS 215
anti-sentimentalism was the first stage
of the American realistic movement.
If he was against sentimentalism, the
earnest Howells was for "realism"--
by which he meant the unaffected,
truthful portrayal of normal, common-
place American life. J. W. De Forest's
fine, tough-minded Civil War novel
in 1867, Miss Ravenel's Conversion
from Secession to Loyalty, impressed
Howells by its truth to life; so did the
earthy backwoods sketching in
Edward Eggleston's crude Hoosier
School-Master in 1871. Howells' own
fiction began in 1871 with the
autobiographical Their Wedding Journey,
and for the next fifty years his
outpouring of delicate, convincing comedies
of polite manners and morals made, in
Henry James's opinion, the definitive
picture of American life, unapproachable
in its quantity and consistent ex-
cellence.
Perhaps the most valuable part of Mr.
Carter's book is his description
of the mature Howells' theory of
"critical realism." By this term Howells
meant "literature which truthfully
reports warped and maladjusted social
relationships so that men may study and
improve them." In the mid-1880's
Howells suddenly outgrew the untroubled
artistic conscience which had been
content to spin out good-natured transcripts
of domestic manners in which
"the smiling aspects of life"
predominated. His study of Tolstoy, and his
horror at the execution of the Chicago
Anarchists in 1887 turned him into
a troubled Christian-socialist critic of
economic and social injustice in Amer-
ica. Repudiating his "miserable
literary idolatries of the past," he now de-
signed his stories to subvert "the
conventional acceptations by which men
live on easy terms with
themselves," and to oblige them "to examine the
grounds of their social and moral
opinions." He preached critical realism
as a literary theory in his monthly
"Editor's Study" in Harper's from 1886 to
1892, and he practiced it in Annie
Kilburn (1889), A Hazard of New
Fortunes (1890), and The World of Chance (1893). Perhaps
Howells'
greatest usefulness to American realism
came in these years, when the bat-
tle between the realists and the
romantic idealists reached its climax. In
that crucial controversy--whose issues
and outcomes Mr. Carter slights--
Howells was the key figure.
Howells' significant work was finished
by the early nineties, but he
wrote on voluminously to his death in
1920, the "dean" of American letters,
more and more a "revered
anachronism." Mr. Carter rightly says little of
the aged Howells, but instead traces the
persistence of the Howellsian tra-
dition in the work of younger, bolder
realists and naturalists, most of whom
the broad-minded Howells encouraged. An
epilogue suggests how the ar-
tistic techniques and attitudes of
Howells' age "have stretched forward to
mingle with contemporary consciousness,
to become a part of ourselves.'
216 THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
In the growing academic interest in
Howells which began about 1940,
Professor Carter's volume (incorporating
half a dozen of his own previous
articles) is the most important single
study. Its quality is good, though it
sometimes lapses into dull labor or
small inaccuracies. The notes at the end
of the book would be much more useful if
they cited more than a few of
the related studies. The absence of
footnotes in the text will leave a general
reader unharassed by documentation, but
it is doubtful if any but professional
students will read very far into so
solid and academic a work as this. The
general reader will do best to turn to
the introduction to Rudolph and Clara
Kirk's anthology, William Dean
Howells (1950).
In 1912, on Howells' seventy-fifth
birthday, his distinguished colleague
Henry James wrote to him from England:
"The critical intelligence . . . has
not at all begun to render you its tribute.
. . . Your really beautiful time
will come." The fine Bibliography
of William Dean Howells by Gibson and
Arms in 1948, and now Mr. Carter's
perceptive, painstaking book are signs
that James's prophecy of a discerning
latter-day appreciation is coming true
for Howells-a long way from his
beginning on the Ashtabula Sentinel
102 years ago.
University of Illinois (Chicago) JAMES B. STRONKS
I Like People: The Autobiography of
Grove Patterson, Editor-in-Chief of
The Toledo Blade. (New York: Random House, 1954. viii+300p.
$3.50.)
Late in the summer of 1896, in the
downstate village of Salem, Illinois,
a lad of fourteen "stood motionless
for two hours . . . while America's
greatest orator ... set forth his
political, economic and social philosophy."
William Jennings Bryan's philosophy made
little impress on youthful
Grove Patterson, who had traveled over
twenty-five miles of dusty roads
to hear the campaign talk, but the
manner in which it was set forth ignited
some dormant embers. From that time on
the boy always wanted "to move
people emotionally by the spoken word."
Similarly, when he got his first
dollar-a-week newspaper job, he always
wanted "to write things down."
Now after seventy-three years of full
living, Mr. Patterson, editor of the
Toledo Blade, has recorded the highlights of a career devoted to
speech-
making and writing.
With the author one catches glimpses of
an Ohio and Illinois boyhood,
shares nostalgically happy days at
Syracuse University and Oberlin College,
and experiences the drama of the
newspaper world in Cleveland, Detroit,
and Toledo. One lives with him great
events of the last two generations-
BOOK REVIEWS 217
the Ohio floods of 1913, Wilson's war
message to congress, Roy Howard's
false armistice report, the Washington
Naval Conference, and all important
political conventions since 1904. One is
carried to such far reaches as Shang-
hai and Stalingrad, Buenos Aires and
Bucharest.
Across the pages of the book passes the
twentieth-century hall of fame:
Bryan, Hearst, Harding,
Churchill--"his vision penetrates commonly ac-
cepted horizons"-Radek, Mussolini,
William Allen White, Cripps--"I
wasn't too impressed with Sir Stafford's
story"--Beaverbrook, Truman,
Taft, MacArthur -- "I have never
talked with a man who was so burningly
articulate in his advocacy of human
rights" -- and many others. Further-
more, one is supplied with an ideal code
of newspaper ethics (a code, how-
ever, which this reviewer has yet to see
practiced by any midwestern news-
paper), a ten-page course in public
speaking, suggestions for a better all-
round newspaper, and some sound advice
to the young (journalists) at
heart.
In I Like People Grove Patterson
has done a pretty fair job of reminiscing,
but an incomplete one; much more might
have been said. He has whetted
the reader's appetite with tasty
side-dishes, but denied him the full meal.
If the character sketches and historic
episodes had been drawn in more
detail, the book would have possessed
greater value. Although he comments
on many famous public men of the last
half-century, he has omitted per-
haps the most famous of them
all--Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Mr. Pat-
terson has also neglected to tell us
concisely of his own political philosophy,
and we are forced to pick up a few bits
here and there--opposition to mu-
nicipal ownership and the Labor
government, support for internationalism
and Republicanism. I Like People is
difficult to follow if one prefers a sys-
tematic, chronological approach, while
for reference purposes the book suf-
fers from the absence of an index.
Had Mr. Patterson double-checked his
memory with a history book, he
might have avoided two errors in dates.
Myron T. Herrick was not defeated
for election to the Ohio governorship in
1906, as appears on page 67, but
rather in 1905. And then the Lusitania
sinking did not, of course, provoke
Wilson's war appeal to congress as is
suggested on page 111. Aside from
these items, Carl Schurz did not spell
his name "Schurtz," as on page 272.
Lastly, it is revealing to learn on page
244 that Daniel Webster, in two
hours, "disposed of South Carolina
and the secession."
The good qualities of the book should
not be submerged by this criticism.
Grove Patterson is an important person
who has done important things, and
it is fortunate that he has preserved
his recollections for posterity. The inci-
dents, anecdotes, and opinions here
related will be grist for the later writer
218 THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
of the midwestern and national scene.
Yet it is regrettable that more was not
included. From excerpts of personal
letters which the author has used, one
concludes that a well-edited volume of
Mr. Patterson's letters and papers
might be more useful than I Like
People.
Rio Grande College EUGENE C. MURDOCK
Lincoln's New Salem. By Benjamin Platt Thomas. (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1954. xiv+165+v p.; illustrations
and index. $2.50.)
Mr. Thomas is author of what has often
been called the best one-volume
biography of Lincoln, published by Knopf
in 1952. This little book on
New Salem was first published in 1934.
It is concerned with, first, the
history of the town; secondly, with
Lincoln's life there; and lastly with
the growth of the Lincoln legend and the
restoration of the town.
By itself, the book is a fine little
nugget. However, if one has read or
plans to read the full-scale Thomas
biography of Lincoln, there is no reason
to buy this book since nearly every
sentence in it appears in the biography,
and at $2.50 it is no bargain considered
as a supplement to the biography.
Cincinnati, Ohio NORMAN L.
SPELMAN
Confederate Agent: A Discovery in
History. By James D. Horan. (New
York: Crown Publishers, 1954.
xxvi+326p.; illustrations, essay on sour-
ces, bibliography, and index. $5.00.)
Thomas H. Hines's role as master spy for
the Confederate States during
the Civil War is equaled only by that of
the fictional Tommy Hambleton
in Manning Coles's novels of
international intrigue. The author of this
account of it, a New York newspaper man
who has written other books
about the American frontier and the
Civil War, tells in his foreword that he
was doing preliminary work on quite
another project when he learned
Hines's name and began to get an idea of
what schemes Hines had been
involved in. The next step was to write
people who had connections with
Hines or who had written material about
him. There were most fruitful
results from this effort, and Mr. Horan
found himself in the happy posi-
tion of having interested cooperation
from people who were able to offer
a great deal of help.
The result is a tale of high derring-do.
Hines joined the Confederate
army in Kentucky and carried on his work
through most of the northern
states for the duration of the war. It
would be difficult to outline his ac-
tivities without virtually outlining
this book. However, a few of the main
BOOK REVIEWS 219
episodes must be mentioned here: the
attempted sack of New York City
when the leading hotels were fired; the
plan to carry out a revolution in
Chicago; the attempt to capture the only
federal gunboat on Lake Erie; and
the raid on St. Albans, Vermont, which
has a grand, musical comedy air.
The intrigues were mighty in conception.
We all know that there were
no spectacular uprisings in the North,
but we do not know what uprisings
were planned. Toronto and Montreal
hotels were, as Mr. Horan points out,
like the Lisbon hotels of World War II,
with spies, counterspies, and an
attendant throng telling each other lies
and selling information, much of it
worthless or false.
If the ideas were in the grand manner,
the hopes were ill-founded and
the execution bad. The federal
government had an effective counter-spy sys-
tem, for one thing. For another-one
which the author finds striking-
spies and plotters, while they could
find plenty of accomplices in the North,
failed to assign sufficient weight to
the sentiments of the great body of
loyal northern people. This must be a
factor in all subversion to which sub-
verters are not likely to give enough
importance. In other words, there are
too many people who can't be bought or
lied to.
Cincinnati, Ohio NORMAN L. SPELMAN
The Negro in American Life and
Thought: The Nadir, 1877-1901. By Ray-
ford W. Logan. (New York: The Dial
Press, 1954. x+380p.; index.
$5.00.)
The author, head of the department of
history at Howard University,
Washington, D. C., was graduated from
Williams College and received his
Ph.D. from Harvard University. His
scholarly publications and his editorship
of the Journal of Negro History have
testified to his professional ability.
The last chapter of this volume,
"The Roots of Recovery," traces the
elements in American history that have
led to the great acceleration in the
recognition of Negro rights "since
the outbreak of World War II and es-
pecially during the Cold War with the
Soviet Union." But, most of the
book deals with the period, after
Reconstruction, when the high promise of
large civil, political, and social
rights for Negroes rapidly dimmed. Northern
opinion was weary of the sectional
controversy and eager for the fruits of the
economic development of the South, and
the South responded by progres-
sive steps toward a segregated society,
involving rigid restriction of the rights
of Negro citizens.
The author finds "a succession of
weak presidents between 1877 and
1901" (p. 12), the attitude of
leading northern newspapers and literary pub-
220 THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
lications, and the acceptance by Booker
T. Washington of a subordinate
position for southern Negroes (p. 280)
as contributing factors to the low
status of Negro rights in the latter
decades of the nineteenth century.
At times Dr. Logan seems understandably
bitter at the development of
the events which he discusses. Perhaps
he does not fully appreciate the
extent to which greater recognition of
Negro rights awaited economic
changes based on improved technology,
newer theories of the need for
wider distribution of goods, and the
restriction of immigrant labor, as well as
profound ideological changes.
Yet, the volume, based in part on a
study of newspaper and periodical
opinion, is a stimulating and important
contribution to our knowledge of
"the Negro in American Life and
Thought."
Ohio State University FRANCIS P. WEISENBURGER
The Custer Myth: A Source Book of
Custeriana. Compiled and edited by
William A. Graham. (Harrisburg:
Stackpole Company, 1953. xxii+413p.;
illustrations, maps, bibliography by
Fred Dustin, index, and end papers.
$10.00.)
The Reno Court of Inquiry: Abstract of
the Official Record of Proceedings.
Compiled and edited by W. A. Graham.
(Harrisburg: Stackpole Company,
1954. xxx+305p.; illustrations, maps,
index, and end papers. $5.00.)
Every schoolboy knows that on June 25,
1876, General George A. Custer
led five companies of the United States
Army's Seventh Cavalry in an at-
tack on an Indian encampment along the
Little Big Horn River from which
not a single soldier emerged alive. What
every schoolboy does not know is
that for almost eighty years since that
time military men, historians, and
antiquarians have been refighting the
battle of the Little Big Horn with
periodic regularity. Those who condemn
Custer as a foolhardy "glory hunter"
and those who praise him as a courageous
hero who died doing his duty
have over the years gathered and
selected evidence from the welter of ac-
counts of the disaster to support their
own interpretation of the event.
Colonel William A. Graham, U.S.A.,
Retired, has performed a valuable
service for historians and other
students of western history with the publi-
cation of these two volumes. Having
studied and written about the Custer
affair for over thirty years, Colonel
Graham now provides in The Custer
Myth the raw materials of the Custer story, which, as Graham
says, "began
in controversy and dispute" and
"has ended in Myth; a myth built, like other
myths, upon actual data and events,
magnified, distorted and disproportioned
BOOK REVIEWS 221
by fiction, invention, imagination and
speculation. The Custer known to the
average American is a Myth."
This volume succeeds extremely well in
dispelling much of the mist and
mystery that have surrounded "the
Myth." What Colonel Graham supplies
is a compilation of accounts bearing
upon the Little Big Horn battle. First
come the Indian accounts, given by the
Crow and Arikara scouts who ac-
companied Custer's force and by various
Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapahoe
warriors who participated in the
massacre. Then come the accounts provided
by army officers who served under
Custer's command-Frederick W. Ben-
teen, Edward S. Godfrey, Marcus A. Reno,
and W. S. Edgerly. Reports,
statements, articles, and letters
written by other military men, such as
Charles De Rudio, trumpeter John Martin
(the last white man to see Custer
alive) and scout George B. Herendeen are
all printed here, some for the
first time. Appended as Part IV of the
volume are several articles by Fred
Dustin, for forty years a student of
Custeriana, and Dustin's most compre-
hensive bibliography, which lists 641
items dealing with the battle of the
Little Big Horn. Graham maintains a
judicious skepticism in presenting the
controversy raging about the head of
Major Marcus A. Reno, second in
command to Custer, who has often been
condemned for failing to go to
Custer's relief.
The Reno Court of Inquiry presents Colonel Graham's abstract of the
testimony and evidence offered at the
military investigation of Reno's re-
sponsibility for the Custer tragedy,
held in Chicago in 1879. This abstract
and the materials offered in The
Custer Myth supply as comprehensive a
record of the entire Custer affair as
will probably ever be available, now
that the last of the Indian survivors of
the 1876 tragedy has died. On the
basis of the materials provided in these
companion volumes, historians are
now well supplied with the sources for
reconstructing an episode that will
always remain a mystery.
Certainly Colonel Graham offers the
scholar as well as the general reader
the "source book to end all source
books on Custer." For this service his-
torians may well be grateful.
Baldwin-Wallace College DAVID LINDSEY
Johnny Appleseed, Man and Myth. By Robert Price. (Bloomington: In-
diana University Press, 1954. xv+320p.;
foreword, illustrations, ap-
pendices, bibliography, and index.
$5.00.)
At last we have a definitive work on
John Chapman, familiarly known
as Johnny Appleseed. Robert Price has
searched for traces of this colorful
222
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
figure from Leominster and Longmeadow,
Massachusetts, to St. Charles,
Missouri. For a quarter of a century he
pursued the elusive apple-seed man,
patiently classifying his findings under
pure fancy, tradition, and indisput-
able fact. In his investigations he used
four major approaches to his sub-
ject. First, he studied all available
printed and manuscript accounts of Chap-
man and his work. Second, he examined
courthouse records, land-office
records, census reports, military
records, and New Church letters and re-
ports. Third, he interviewed members of
the Chapman family and investi-
gated the chief traditional areas of
Chapman's labors, listening to the many
stories handed down from those who had
actually known Johnny and his
nurseries. Fourth, he traveled over the
Chapman trails, actual and traditional,
in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio,
and Indiana. For his extensive travels
from the Connecticut River to the
Wabash, he should be given the honorary
title of Appleseed Bob. Mr. Price
completed his researches and wrote the
first draft of the book in 1945 while
holding a grant-in-aid from the
Library of Congress. Now we have this important
contribution to the litera-
ture of pomology, the New Church, and
folklore.
Johnny Appleseed was no illiterate
crackpot. He was intelligent enough
to read and understand the writings of
Emanuel Swedenborg, one of the
great philosophers of all time. He could
understand that the literal word
of the Bible veils its luminous inner
meaning. He possessed a certain Yankee
shrewdness about business, though some
of his business practices were
amazingly unorthodox. He invested in
wild lands and carried on an ex-
tensive nursery business.
Mr. Price has done well to emphasize the
underlying motive of Chap-
man's work. Rearing apple trees was
Chapman's way of living a life of
use, which is the supreme purpose of a
true Swedenborgian. Johnny Apple-
seed dreamed of making money enough in
the apple tree business to print
"all the works of Swedenborg and
distribute them through the western
settlements of the United States."
Having more land than money, he of-
fered to exchange land for books, which
offer the Swedenborgian book
society in Philadelphia reluctantly
declined. The excellent chapter entitled
"A Very Extraordinary
Missionary" makes John Chapman and his mission
very real.
Two errors concerning New Church history
occur in the chapter just
mentioned. William Schlatter was not the
"most eminent of the Sweden-
borgians in Philadelphia" (p. 121),
for Daniel Lammot and Jonathan Condy
were the outstanding expositors of the
faith and were so recognized in this
country and in England in the early days
of the church. Francis Bailey was
never a sponsor of the Philadelphia
society (p. 125); his work was done
BOOK REVIEWS 223
before the society was organized. At the
time of its organization he was
old, infirm, and bankrupt; he died soon
afterward.
The author weaves into the story the
history of the times and places in
which Chapman lived and worked. A map of
the Johnny Appleseed trails
and nursery sites is to be found on the
end papers.
Mr. Price presents a living man, but he
never lets the reader lose sight
of the myth, for that, too, is important
in our American heritage. John
Chapman, Man and Myth is a sincere and highly informative book about
"a singular man" who devoted
his life to sowing seeds of truth as well as
apple seeds.
Oxford, Ohio OPHIA D. SMITH
The Catholic Indian Missions and
Grant's Peace Policy, 1870-1884. By
Peter
J. Rahill. Catholic University of
America, Studies in American Church
History, XLI. (Washington: Catholic University of America Press,
1953.
xx+396p.; illustrations, maps, bibliography,
and index. Paper, $4.25;
cloth, $5.00.)
From time to time there were fundamental
changes in the policy of the
federal government towards the Indians.
These changes, in part, were ex-
perimental, with the object of finding
more feasible ways of dealing with
problems resulting from early bungling
and abuse. The "century of dishonor"
school to the contrary notwithstanding,
honest and humanitarian attempts
were frequently made to alleviate or
correct unfortunate aspects of policy
both in theory and in practice.
Such was the situation in 1870. It was
felt that Indian agents, who were
political appointees, too often turned
out to be "dishonest grafters." To
correct this, the Grant administration
launched its so-called "Peace Policy."
The government entrusted the religious
societies which had been working
with certain tribes or on the
reservations to act as agents on behalf of the
government. Thus, in some respects,
church groups became the "missionary
branch" in the Indian policy of the
government. Schools were provided for,
usually with some government support and
run by denominational groups;
such agents and traders as were needed
were appointed upon their recommen-
dations; and, in general, success or
failure was on the shoulders of these
groups. In some instances a single
denomination was responsible for a
reservation; in others it was a
cooperative venture.
Two stories are narrated in this volume.
The one concerns the Peace
Policy itself. The other, growing out of
the frustration it faced in its at-
tempt to become a participating agency
in this program, details the develop-
224 THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
ment of a Roman Catholic Indian policy
and the administrative machinery
created to put it into effect.
"Exclusive denominational
jurisdiction" was apparently the preferred
way in which the government wanted its
Peace Policy carried out. It also
appeared to be anti-Catholic, because
the Catholic Church was able to get
jurisdiction over only a few agencies
and not the many to which she right-
fully felt entitled. Previous interest
and endeavor in an area were the avowed
criteria used to determine which church
was officially assigned there. Upon
that basis the Catholic Church
undoubtedly deserved a greater share in the
responsibility of working among the
Indians.
Against considerable opposition within
the church itself the Bureau of
Catholic Indian Missions was created to
act as intermediary between the
church hierarchy and missionaries on the
one hand and the federal govern-
ment on the other. Financial
difficulties and violent attacks by the widely
read Freeman's Journal jeopardized
the bureau's existence. The valiant ef-
forts and personal sacrifices of General
Charles Ewing, an Ohioan who
headed the bureau, and his sister, Mrs.
William T. (Ellen Ewing) Sherman,
were directly responsible for its
continuation and accomplishments. In some
respects the volume is dedicated to the
work of these two people.
The Catholic Indian Missions and
Grant's Peace Policy is a good factual
account of the federal Indian policy and
the role of the churches in this
period. Since it is written entirely
from the Catholic viewpoint the reader
should also familiarize himself with the
Protestant side of the story.
Documentation is adequate and welcome.
The style is stilted but not
as much as in the usual doctoral
dissertation. The reviewer finds the frequent
use of such terms as
"redskins," "red race," "red men," "red
brethren,"
"pagan red men," and others
objectionable and misleading. This does not
detract, however, from the contribution
which this volume makes to the
growing and needed literature on the
American Indians.
Columbia
University
DWIGHT L. SMITH
Dr. J. G. M. Ramsey Autobiography and
Letters. Edited by William B. Hes-
seltine. (Nashville: Tennessee
Historical Commission, 1954. xvi+367p.;
index. $5.00.)
Any student of southern history is more
or less familiar with Dr. James
Gettys McGready Ramsey's Annals of
Tennessee. We are indebted to the
editor for a volume which contains the
Ramsey autobiography supplemented
BOOK REVIEWS 225
with letters written by Dr. Ramsey to
Lyman Draper at Madison, Wis-
consin. The autobiography is rich in
genealogical lore and replete with de-
scriptions of life in eastern Tennessee
in antebellum and Civil War days.
It is illuminating for the historian who
would know the trials of an East
Tennessee plantation owner and
practitioner of medicine who wanted, above
all, to be an historian. In his letters
to Draper, Ramsey described his trials
as an author. The autobiography should
be of great value to descendants of
the pioneers who crossed the mountains
from the Carolinas, Virginia, and
parts of Pennsylvania into the triple
state of Tennessee.
Dr. Ramsey was as proud of his ancestry
(the paternal Scotch-Irish Ramseys
and the maternal Alexanders) as he was
of his own accomplishments in
farming, railroad promotion, and
banking. He was the successful president
of the State Bank of Tennessee at
Knoxville for many years. From 1862 to
1865 he disbursed $42,000,000 as
Jefferson Davis' depositary for the Con-
federate government. He early advocated
the building of a railroad (1828)
from Knoxville to the Atlantic coast in
preference to wasting money on at-
tempts to make the Tennessee River
navigable for steamboats. He was urg-
ing the building of this railroad at the
same time that Colonel John H. James
and Dr. Daniel Drake of Ohio were trying
to persuade Ohioans to con-
nect Sandusky and Cincinnati with
Charleston, South Carolina, by rail.
Dr. Ramsey, disliking "Yankee
Merchants" and all they represented, wrote
his sentiments about them at
"Mecklenberg," his beautiful plantation named
for Mecklenberg County, North Carolina,
where, he believed, his ancestors
adopted the famous resolutions for
revolution. In 1861 he stood boldly for
"Old Mecklenberg . . . states'
rights, Southern rights, Southern independ-
ence." He was convinced that
"the Southern Confederacy" would soon
"exhibit its superior virtue and
civilization that spring from slave institu-
tions." He hated Parson Brownlow
and believed that Andrew Johnson and
John Bell of Tennessee were seduced into
Union loyalty by Lincoln's
political pie. He believed that southern
ladies were aristocrats by birth, by
virtue, by cultivated intellect, and by
wealth honestly come by and used for
the good of society. Therefore, they had
every reason, he wrote, to ignore
federal officers who "too often
discarded . . . [the] high-souled and manly
virtues" of George Washington and
all his officers, including the lieuten-
ants.
In 1870 Dr. Ramsey wrote to Draper that
"Our rebellion is a success . . .
it has disintegrated the union forever
and forever.... I speak deliberately."
His judgment and observation were often
faulty. He was vain and not
226 THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
always consistent in statement of fact.
The content of the newly edited
autobiography is repetitious. The book
is footnoted, amply indexed, and
very satisfactory mechanically. The
Ramsey autobiography with letters is a
definite contribution to the history of
the Jackson era and the Civil War.
Miami University WILLIAM E. SMITH
Michigan in Four Centuries. By F. Clever Bald. (New York: Harper &
Brothers, 1954. xiv+498p.;
illustrations, maps, chronology, list of gov-
ernors, bibliography, and index. $4.00.)
Dr. John M. Munson, long president of
Michigan State Normal College
at Ypsilanti, made a bequest of funds
for the writing and publishing of a
history of Michigan and a history of
education in that state. The present
volume is the result of an effort to
carry out, in a conscientious manner, the
first part of this two-fold bequest. The
author, F. Clever Bald, long as-
sociated with various Michigan
educational institutions, is now a member
of the department of history and
assistant director of the Michigan His-
torical Collections at the University of
Michigan. Thus he combines a
personal and a scholarly knowledge of the
subject which he discusses.
The last Michigan history on the
adult-reader level was that by M. M.
Quaife and Sidney Glazer, Michigan:
From Primitive Wilderness to Indus-
trial Commonwealth (New York, 1948), a volume presented in smaller
compass than that here reviewed.
Included in the new volume are chapters
on prehistoric Michigan, on the
period of French and then British
control (before 1796), and on the terri-
torial period, which ended in 1837.
Significant chapters are presented on
economic life as it developed in the
nineteenth century, with an emphasis
on the great copper, iron, salt, and
transportation industries. Later, there
is extended treatment of
twentieth-century economic life, when the automo-
bile and defense plants eventually
became a dominant part of the picture.
An interesting chapter is that on Hazen
Pingree, elected mayor of Detroit
in 1889 and governor of Michigan in
1897. A successful businessman, he
reacted against the corruption and inefficiency
of the time and paved the
way for an era of greater progressivism.
The proof-reading seems not to have been
done with proper care. Readers
will be startled to find the title pages
which introduce the periods 1837-
1860 and 1890-1920, inserted in the
wrong places. Various errors noted
include the misspelling of the name of
John G. Heckewelder (p. 85), that
of Oliver Kelley (p.303), and
that of Robert McClelland (p. 257), and of
BOOK REVIEWS 227
Calumet (p. 457). It is not correct to
say that in 1854 the long political
career of Lewis Cass "came to an
end" (p. 269), for, as the author later
points out, he served as secretary of
state under Buchanan. It was not the
Resumption Act of 1875 (p. 313), but a
supplementary one of 1878 which
fixed the outstanding greenback issue at
$346,681,016. Governor John P.
Altgeld of Illinois was hardly a leader
in twentieth-century state government,
for he had failed of reelection in 1896
and died in 1902.
Some students will regret that there is
no extended treatment of topics
like literature, music, and the fine
arts. The contribution of the volume,
however, is enhanced by a large number
of illustrations and by specially
prepared maps, but the map on page 83 is
inaccurate in giving the im-
pression that Fort Wayne is in north
central rather than northeastern In-
diana. The volume, however, is a
readable and generally accurate appraisal
of the contributions to American life of
Michigan from its earliest begin-
nings.
Ohio State University FRANCIS P. WEISENBURGER
The Indiana Gazetteer or
Topographical Dictionary. By John
Scott. Re-
printed from the original edition, 1826.
Edited with introduction by
Gayle Thornbrough. Indiana Historical
Society Publications, Volume
XVIII, Number 1. (Indianapolis: Indiana
Historical Society, 1954. 129p.;
page reproductions, separate map,
appendix, addenda, and recommenda-
tions. $1.00.)
The year 1954 marked the
sesquicentennial of the publication of Indiana's
first newspaper, the Indiana Gazette,
edited by Elihu Stout at Vincennes,
the capital of the newly created Indiana
Territory. In commemoration of
that event the state historical society
has reprinted one of Indiana's earliest
books, John Scott's Indiana Gazetteer
or Topographical Dictionary.
First published at Centerville in 1826,
this little book was designed to
furnish prospective immigrants with information
respecting the general
attractions of the new state, together
with the specific features of its towns,
post villages, counties, rivers, and
lakes. That there was real need for such
a work cannot be denied. Commencing with
John Kilbourn's Ohio Gazetteer
in 1816 (occasionally quoted by Scott
and apparently used as a model by
him), guides appeared for each of the
Ohio Valley states north of the
river and did much to arouse enthusiasm
and interest among potential settlers
in eastern communities. Obviously
propagandistic in design (as were the
others), Scott's gazetteer is filled
with descriptions of rich and fertile fields,
228
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
luxuriant forests, excellent roads,
flourishing towns, handsome buildings,
prosperous businesses, and agricultural
plenty.
Concerning one of the most promising of
these "flourishing towns,"
Birmingham in Tippecanoe County not far
from the site of the battle-
ground of 1811, Scott quotes as
"substantially correct" the following claims
of its proprietors (pp. 49-50 in the
reprint, 35-36 in the original):
It is situate on a beautiful bluff, on the
southeast side of the Wabash
river, one mile above the mouth of
Wild-cat-creek, and four below the
mouth of Tippecanoe river. No town in the state of
Indiana, can anticipate
greater prospects, considering its local
situation and natural advantages.
Lying at the head of steam boat
navigation, or as near that point as any
eligible situation for a town can be
had--no other presents itself between
that and the mouth of Tippecanoe; it
lies nearly in a direct line from De-
troit, via Fort Wayne to St. Louis, and
nearly so, between the south end of
lake Michigan and Indianapolis. There is
no doubt but a great intercourse
will soon be opened between those two
places, and this will be the point
of intersection. . . . This must become
one of the most flourishing towns in
the state of Indiana.
The reader is amused to note that the
town has long since disappeared.
That there would be other errors of
judgment as well as fact was inevitable
in this pioneer gazetteer, despite the
careful scrutiny of its editor. Atten-
tion has been given this matter in the
introduction to the present reprint.
Doubtless the most serious of these
inaccuracies was Scott's description of
the "Theakiki or Illinois
River" as lying in northwestern Indiana in Indian
country. Actually, only the Kankakee, an
eastern branch of the Illinois,
touches Indiana.
Yet it is not the occasional florid
phraseology nor the infrequent inaccura-
cies that impress the reader but rather
the rich fund of information respect-
ing the vigorous development of an
infant frontier state. Of particular at-
traction to the historian is the lengthy
commentary by Robert Owen con-
cerning his "New Harmony"
experiment. Many will also find interest in
the description of the Miami Reserve, guaranteed
to that tribe by the treaty
of St. Mary's in 1818, and described by
Scott as containing "the largest body
of good land in the state," a
portent of its inevitable seizure by white men.
The descriptions of Indianapolis and its
origins and of Fort Wayne (includ-
ing comment on the old fort, which was
still standing) are valuable, while
an appendix listing the principal roads
of the state and the communities
which they served will be of interest to
the historian concerned with the
development of transportation in midwest
America. All in all, here is good
BOOK REVIEWS 229
history. The Indiana Historical Society
should be complimented on reprinting
a meritorious and significant work.
Kent State University PHILLIP R. SHRIVER
Newton D. Baker and His Books. By Willis Thornton. (Cleveland: Press of
Western Reserve University, 1954.
iv+85p.; frontispiece and biblio-
graphy. $3.50.)
In the course of a long public career
Newton D. Baker served with dedi-
cation first the city of his adoption,
Cleveland, and then the nation. His
children in disposing of his books and
papers recognized this double alle-
giance. They deposited in the Library of
Congress their father's offical
papers and correspondence, files which
commence with his appointment as
secretary of war in March 1916, and
carry though his tenure on the Perm-
anent Court of Arbitration and on the
Law Enforcement Commission. But
his personal library of three thousand
books they decided should remain in
the city as a gift to the library of
Cleveland College, an institution of which
he had been a lifelong trustee and whose
adult education program he had
helped to found.
It was this bequest in the spring of
1952 which prompted this volume.
Its content is a selection from the
marginal and flyleaf notations Baker
entered in some four hundred of these
books. Willis Thornton, newspaper-
man, lecturer in journalism, and Baker
admirer, has organized these notes
into a coherent pattern, tying them
together with unobtrusive commentary.
There is a special appropriateness in
presenting a study of Baker with this
particular focus, for he was eminently a
bookish man. Despite the excep-
tionally heavy demands of his public
service and private law practice he
made time for browsing in bookstores and
for reading. Books were his con-
stant companions. He approached them
with eagerness and enthusiasm and
expected them to give his something in
return. His library reflects the
natural interest a public servant would
have in government, politics, and
men. Histories, biographies, and
political commentaries predominate. But
there are as well over a hundred volumes
of poetry, as many Greek and
Latin classics, which he could read in
the original, collections of oratory,
novels new and old, small sections on
drama, religion, philosophy, and
education, and garden and nature books.
Baker's taste and curiosity ranged
widely. There are over 250 inscribed
presentation copies, books written by
officers and privates who served under
Baker in the first world war, journal-
ists, historians of the war era, and
contemporaries in public life. An inter-
230
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
esting sidelight is the number which
acknowledge Baker's help in writing
or in other ways.
The main body of this slim, concentrated
volume is devoted to the se-
lections from Baker's book annotations.
These give an impressionistic,
though nonetheless significant, portrait
of Baker's mind and character, and
as well provide pointed observations on
events and personalities he knew
first-hand. Many of the most interesting
comments are devoted to his war-
time service and associates--valuable
historical notes on the American ex-
pedition into Russia in 1919, Wilson's
and Lansing's views on the Peace,
British and French war leaders, the army
rifle controversy, the selection
of Pershing, and the price-fixing of
coal in 1917. These in themselves re-
veal Baker's honesty, frankness, and
fairness--in short, his "character," a
quality on which he set great score. In
commenting upon Allan Nevins'
Grover Cleveland, Baker noted that
someone should do a Plutarchian
contrast, really to tell the story. Cleveland
with common sense and character but with
few other advantages or gifts;
Lodge with every advantage of birth, environment, education
and gifts many
and brilliant; but literally without
character. Their careers contrasted would
make anybody more interested in
character than in culture. (p. 53)
Again these same qualities are displayed
in Baker's scrupulousness in
acknowledging his own limitations and
avoiding comment or speculation
on those matters he did not know. When
others indulged in these practices,
he could be scathing in his
condemnation; compare his strictures on Colonel
Robert R. McCormick's The Army of
1918 (pp. 33-34). Baker's Victorian
standard of morals appears in his
revulsion to the realism of the novels
about the first world war. Of Erich
Remarque's The Road Back, which he
labeled "the most powerful and
dreadful book of the war," he wrote,
"Every appetite and passion and
vice is pictured at its worst and there are
pages which I could not read aloud even
to myself" (p. 29). Strong in his
own religious faith, he had little
sympathy for controversial literature in
this area. His preference for a life of
action rather than contemplation is sup-
ported by his lack of interest in
philosophical books. His conservative,
though far from reactionary, views on
some economic issues find expres-
sion in his comments on organized labor.
Although this picture must be
supplemented by a reading of all the no-
tations as well as material from other
sources, notably Baker's letters, this
text limns with sure strokes the
essential features of Baker's mind and
spirit.
Kenyon College LANDON
WARNER
BOOK REVIEWS 231
Steam Power on the American Farm. By Reynold M. Wik. (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1953.
xii+288p.; illustrations, ap-
pendix, bibliography, and index. $5.00.)
Steam Power on the American Farm is a valuable contribution to a spec-
ialized phase of the history of
agriculture. It deals to some extent with the
use of steam engines in connection with
sugar-cane processing and cotton
ginning, and describes the contribution
of steam ploughing to sod breaking
on the Great Plains, but it is centered
on the "portable" and then the
"traction" engine as part of
the threshing rig common throughout the United
States and Canada for over three
quarters of a century. It bears an impression
of definitiveness, for the gasoline
tractor and the combine have now become
so ubiquitous that it is possible to
drive a thousand miles through grain
country in late summer and never once
see an old-fashioned threshing out-
fit in operation.
The writer of a book on the subject of
farm machinery may be so much
interested in compiling statistical
material and in refighting old patent-in-
fringement suits that he loses sight of
what should be his objective. The
author, however, though he does give
adequate consideration to statistics
and the technical evolution of the
portable and the traction engine, is funda-
mentally interested in relating the
engines to the development of agricul-
ture in its broader setting. He
emphasizes, therefore, the operational pro-
lems of the threshermen, the credit and
other difficulties of the manufac-
turing companies, and the sociological
aspects of the industry, particularly in
so far as it concerned the migratory
workers who "followed the threshing"
on the Great Plains. (In this
connection, it might be suggested that the
author's dreary picture of the life of
the migratory harvest hands should be
modified in the light of an article
which has appeared since his book was
published. This is Frank Croft's
"Remember Those Harvest Excursions?"
which appeared in Macleans Magazine, Volume
LXVII, September 1, 1954.)
The book is written almost entirely from
source materials. These include
not only the ordinary agricultural
periodicals but also the specialized journals
catering to the threshermen, and the
records of several traction-engine manu-
facturing companies. Part of the
information was obtained through inter-
views with old-time threshermen,
including some of the author's relatives.
Because the volume reflects the sources
used, it tends to emphasize de-
velopments in the region of the Great
Plains. The consequence is that the
reader who is interested in threshing as
it was carried on elsewhere, say in
eastern Canada or the country bordering
the lower Great Lakes, will derive
232
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
some false impressions. It is quite
true, for example, that threshing from the
shock was "the most common practice
wherever small grain was grown ex-
tensively" (p. 119), but a vast
amount of grain was produced in the areas
mentioned as part of a program of
general farming, even though the typical
farmer might have no more than a day and
a half or two days' threshing.
The lucky few here who opened the season
had their threshing done from the
shock, but the rest could not take
chances on the weather. Accordingly, they
hauled their grain to the barn or a
nearby stack. Their threshing was done in
the barn or beside it, with the straw
being blown into a mow for bedding or
stacked in the barnyard. There was no
real labor problem, for neighbors
exchanged work. In some localities the
owner of the farm, by a kind of con-
vention, commonly built the straw stack.
This was the meanest chore of all,
particularly when the grain was smutty
or when the crop consisted of barley
or peas or when a practical joker was
manipulating the blower. The engineer
was of course an oracle to his small-boy
audience, as he was elsewhere, but
the farmers judged him according to his
ability to maneuver the separator
up the ramp of a bank barn and on to the
barn floor without dislodging a
few dozen sheaves or barking a mow log.
The book is well organized and cearly
written, though it does have one
sentence (p. 9) which is not to be
commended--"The effective use of cotton
gins demonstrates that new ginning
machines were often of little value unless
the source of power to operate them was
adequate." There are only a few
mistakes, and these are on the borders
of the subject. For example, Water-
town, New York, is located in the Mohawk
Valley (p. 18), and the Cana-
dian provinces of Alberta and
Saskatchewan are born at least three years pre-
maturely (p. 98). It is a tribute to the
author's workmanship that a critical
reading of his study should produce
nothing worse than such minor items
as these.
Marietta College ROBERT LESLIE JONES
A Hundred Pennsylvania Buildings. By Harold E. Dickson. (State College,
Pa.: Bald Eagle Press, 1954. [113p.]
$6.50.)
"This is essentially a sample-book
of buildings in Pennsylvania. It deals
with a hundred structures of varied
kinds and styles, ranging from early
colonial times up to the middle of this
century, illustrated and analyzed
as characterful and representative
specimens. . . . It is the author's hope that
in an informal and not too arduous way
the reader might sense the nature
BOOK REVIEWS 233
and general development of the principal
forms of architecture in the region
called Penn's Woods."
Professor Dickson, in a critical
introduction to A Hundred Pennsylvania
Buildings, has best analyzed the scope of his work in the
statement quoted
above. What he has undertaken to do he
has done well. His book is attrac-
tively illustrated, and many of the
photographs are of his own taking. His
historical writing is scrupulous in
pointing out stylistic time lags and the
changes in buildings caused by later
additions and alterations. His style is
easy and informative, and it is part of
the pleasure of reading this book that
the text has been organized and trimmed
to fit on the page with the ap-
propriate illustration.
Admitting a certain lack of logic in
adopting the arbitrary boundaries of
a state as limits for a study of
architecture, Professor Dickson has this to
say: "Nonetheless a great deal may
be gathered from an all-time regional
survey of any of our states, or even of
much smaller units. Main trends in the
architectural development of the nation
as a whole may be demonstrated in
works chosen from the restricted area,
even when in some instances finer
examples are to be looked for elsewhere,
while variants peculiar to the
region may receive special
emphasis."
A study of Ohio architecture would
support this statement, duplicat-
ing the main trends evident in A
Hundred Pennsylvania Buildings. Ohio
lacks the colonial architecture which is
so well illustrated in this book, in-
cluding strong and attractively simple
buildings of early Swedish and Ger-
man origin, but in turn Ohio has gained
from Chicago as a center of arch-
itectural development the early
skyscraper, which was America's peculiar
contribution to world architecture, and
two of the extremely sensitive de-
signs of Louis H. Sullivan, who is
probably an immortal in the history of
architecture.
It is the modesty of motive and
assertion which is the chief disappointment
of A Hundred Pennsylvania Buildings. Professor
Dickson has not selected
an architectural heritage of
Pennsylvania for our regard and defense against
decay and demolition. The Allegheny
County buildings in Pittsburgh by
the first great American architect of originality
and international reputation,
H. H. Richardson, are given scant
illustration and dispassionate description,
though their proposed demolition would
be a national architectural loss. Too
often, especially in the latter half of
the nineteenth century, Professor Dick-
son's examples seem chosen as
representative rather than characterful. More
interior photographs should have been
used to give to the organization of
space the importance it has in
architectural design.
234 THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
There is need for many books on the
architectural heritage of America.
These books should not be conceived
solely as a record of our heritage, for
they are a poor substitute for actual,
existing structure. They must arouse our
attention and our regard, quickening a
sensitivity which has been dulled by
the ugliness and lack of logic of most
of our cities and our buildings, so that
we as individuals and as a public,
preserve what we have of architectural
merit and acquire the taste which will
add to that heritage.
Ohio State University PERRY E. BORCHERS, JR.
By These Words: Great Documents of
American Liberty, Selected and Placed
in Their Contemporary Settings. By Paul M. Angle. (New York, Chicago,
and San Francisco: Rand McNally &
Company, 1954. iv+560p.; illu-
strations, appendix, (sources of
documents), and index. $5.95.)
In this attractive book Paul M. Angle,
well-known Lincoln authority, pre-
sents a selection of important documents
in American history. To make
these "sources" meaningful and
alive, he has written brief introductions
recreating the scene in which each originated
and describing the people who
participated in drafting the documents.
In his skillful fashion he thus offers
a volume of documents which may be read
as a pleasant excursion into our
nation's past. No attempt has been made
to make this a complete collection;
rather it is a vivid and readable story.
From the brief "Mayflower
Compact" of 1620 to the glowing words
of Eisenhower's Inaugural Address, Mr.
Angle traces the rise and spread of
American democratic thought and
individual liberty. Typical selections-
many of them edited for easier
reading-include the words of Roger Wil-
liams, Peter Zenger, James Otis, George
Washington, Thomas Jefferson,
Andrew Jackson, John Brown, Abraham
Lincoln, John Peter Altgeld, Wood-
row Wilson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and
Franklin D. Roosevelt. Also re-
printed among the forty-six documents
are such vital documents as the
Declaration of Independence, the
Constitution, the Monroe Doctrine, and
the Four Freedoms. Illustrations by
Edward A. Wilson help create the
proper atmosphere for these impressive
records.
Certainly every reader of this volume
will take justifiable pride in this
heritage of writings and speeches, for
"by these words a people established
a nation, maintained a republic, and
demonstrated that men could govern
themselves . .. in dignity, harmony,
freedom."
Ohio State University EVERETT WALTERS
BOOK REVIEWS 235
The Growth of Major Steel Companies,
1900-1950. By Gertrude G. Schro-
eder. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press,
1953. 244p.; appendix, selected
bibliography, and index. $5.00.)
Miss Schroeder's monograph traces the
development of our twelve largest
steel companies with the primary
objectives of discovering whether there
are particular patterns of growth in the
industry, why rates of growth vary
from firm to firm, and what the more
important factors promoting or re-
tarding growth are. She brings to her
study a degree of economic analysis
not often found in industrial history,
particularly in the sense that she forges
her own analytical tools rather than try
to adapt customary concepts to the
peculiar problems of the steel industry.
For example, students of economic
and business history will be interested
in the following: "total additions
to gross property account," a tool
employed to avoid depreciation and fixed
asset abandonment problems in an
appraisal of the relative importance of
internal and external expansion;
"operating profitability," a measure of the
relative efficiency in the use of fixed
production assets; and "firm income,"
year to year variations in surplus
before disbursements for interest, dividends,
and taxes.
One of the most informative aspects of
the study is found in the impact
of particular individuals upon the
direction of specific firm development.
For example, Judge Gary feared justice
department action and, as a conse-
quence, advocated slow expansion to
avoid possible penalty for his promotion
of "cooperative competition";
Bethlehem's Charles Schwab wished to give
the lie to the charge of trading on
Carnegie's reputation; George Verity of
Armco actively encouraged research and
experimentation, a program which
led to the continuous wide strip mill
("probably the most revolutionary in-
novation in steel technology since the
development of the open-hearth pro-
cess"); Isaac Scott, Wheeling Steel
Company, indicated to stockholders
that "it is not the desire or
intention of your management to pioneer";
Crucible lacked vigorous and
enterprising management (twelve presidents
and thirty-one vice presidents in fifty
years).
In summary, the work under review
reexamines the often covered history
of the "big three" and sheds
much new light on the "smaller independents."
Conclusions as to the role of new firms,
growth patterns in the major as
contrasted with smaller organizations,
technological pioneering, location
factors involved in growth, and
financial and dividend policies will be of
appreciable value to members of the
industry as well as to academicians.
Ohio State University DAVID M. HARRISON
236 THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
George Mercer Papers Relating to the
Ohio Company of Virginia. Com-
piled and edited by Lois Mulkearn.
(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh
Press, 1954. xxxviii+731p.;
illustrations, chronology of communications,
annotations, bibliography, and index.
$10.00.)
The familiar story of the Ohio Company
of Virginia is retold in docu-
mentary form in this handsome volume.
But it is more than a collection of
records of the first Ohio Valley land
company. Both the papers themselves
and the scholarly annotations of the
editor reveal much about the trans-
Allegheny frontier in the middle years
of the eighteenth century, including
such matters as Indian diplomacy and
trade, Anglo-French rivalries, Pennsyl-
vania-Virginia contentions and
jealousies, and land speculations and settle-
ment projects involving important
figures on both sides of the Atlantic.
The Ohio Company was organized in 1747
by a group of prominent Vir-
ginians to obtain a grant of land in the
upper Ohio Valley with the object
of establishing settlements there. The
French and Indian War, which its
activities helped precipitate, and
changing circumstances blasted its hopes,
but it lasted officially until 1771, and
some of its members continued their
efforts to get land grants from Virginia
in the Revolutionary period.
George Mercer, its agent, or lobbyist,
in London after 1763, came into
possession of the company's official
papers and was also the recipient of
letters and documents from his father,
John Mercer, a shareholder, and other
Virginia members. The history of this
Mercer collection is shrouded in
mystery until it was acquired by a
manuscript dealer from some unknown
source and sold in 1876 to William
Darlington. It is now in the Darlington
Memorial Library of the University of
Pittsburgh. These Mercer papers
and a pamphlet, The Case of The Ohio
Company, obtained from the Rufus
King Collection of the New York
Historical Society, are printed in full in
this volume. The Case pamphlet is
in reduced facsimile. It was prepared
originally by John Mercer but was
revised, enlarged, and printed in England
by George Mercer in 1770 for
presentation to the Board of Trade and other
officials. It was acquired later by
Rufus King, American minister to England.
Mrs. Mulkearn's remarkably careful
editing is evidenced by the two fifths
of the volume devoted to commentary and
annotations. The latter, 818 in
number and justifiably placed at the end
because of their length, explain
individual items only once, at the first
citation, merely repeating the number
of the note whenever the item recurs in
a later document. For example,
George Croghan is carefully explained in
Note 78, which number is then
attached to all later mentions of his
name. This device eliminates repetitious
statements in the notes but frequenty
breaks up the numerical sequence of
BOOK REVIEWS 237
note numbering in the texts of the
documents, especially in the later pages.
A useful chronology of communications
gives the dates of origin of docu-
ments and their variants and enclosures.
An extensive bibliography of other
materials consulted also has a calendar
of communications. The seal of the
company, here delineated for the first
time, is used as the frontispiece and
is stamped on the binding.
Many of the documents are valuable apart
from their connection with the
Ohio Company, for example, the journals
of Christopher Gist, with their
descriptions of the Ohio Valley in
1750-52, and an amazingly lengthy
letter of John Mercer to his son George,
which is a revealing account of
plantation life in Virginia in the
1760's.
The printing of all documents in
extenso has resulted in a good deal of
repetition. One encounters Gist's
journals in four different places, with
three of the texts of the first journal
complete. The minutes of the Logs-
town negotiations of 1752 appear four
times, to cite another example. This
is not a criticism but a note of
congratulations to the editor that a page-saving
commercial publisher was not in the
picture to order deletions and con-
densations. The scholar may be certain
that nothing of historical value has
been overlooked, and what is equally
important, gone unexplained. As Dr.
R. W. G. Vail comments in the foreword,
the scholarship of the editing is the
equivalent of more than one doctorate.
Ohio State University EUGENE H. ROSEBOOM
Communication
To THE EDITOR OF THE QUARTERLY:
The review of The Papers of Sir
William Johnson Vol. XI in the January
1955 issue of The Ohio Historical
Quarterly is much appreciated. However,
I would like to correct the impression
which is given in the last paragraph.
The reviewer writes: "The sources
of all the excellent illustrations are not
identified, however; and occasional
cross references to the preceding volumes
and other works like the Documentary
History of New York would have
been helpful to the researcher." On
the contrary, the sources for all of the
12 illustrations are given in the list
of illustrations, and in most cases below
the illustrations; and cross references
are given to preceding volumes of the
Johnson Papers and to Documents Relative to Colonial History of New
York, and to other works, where letters or documents are
mentioned in
the text. This has been the policy of
the present editor in both volumes X
and XI, and in volume XII which is to
follow.
University of the State of New
York MILTON W. HAMILTON
Division of Archives and History