Book Reviews
Indiana History: A Book of Readings. Compiled and edited by Ralph D. Gray.
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1995. xiv + 442p.; index. $39.95
cloth; $22.95 paper.)
None of the states of the Old Northwest
has more persistently embodied the
Midwestern middle-class ideal of small
towns and commercial agriculture than
Indiana. Unlike Ohio, Illinois,
Michigan, or Wisconsin, Indiana did not develop
a huge industrial center. No Chicago, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Detroit,
or
Cincinnati emerged in the nineteenth
century to counterbalance, either culturally
or politically, its overwhelmingly rural
and relatively homogeneous character.
Both Indiana's charm and its challenges
have largely followed from this anoma-
lous pattern of development. There is in
the towns and small cities of Indiana a
strong attachment to the verities of
middle-class culture-or the values of home
and family, religion and voluntarism,
and to traditional (at least since the middle
of the nineteenth century) notions of
gender and race relations. Hoosiers, for
good and ill, have largely kept faith
with their ancestors.
This steadfastness, however, has
fostered a profound tension between the claims
of tradition and the attractions of
progress. Hoosiers have tended to welcome eco-
nomic improvements such as railroads (as
long as they are not too expensive)
even as they remain wary of the social
changes they bring in their wake. The con-
stant issues of Indiana
politics-transportation, commercial development, educa-
tion, and race-have engaged residents of
Indiana in endless controversies (and
occasional violence) about how to
preserve as much of their past as possible
without sacrificing prosperity, celebrating
provincialism, or embracing intoler-
ance.
Fortune has blessed Indiana by providing
it with excellent historians. For more
than a century, the Indiana Historical
Society has preserved the records of its past
and made them easily accessible through
its many publications. Meanwhile,
dozens of scholars (both within and
without the academy) have devoted their pro-
fessional lives to chronicling Indiana's
history. An outstanding example of their
work is Emma Lou Thornbrough's The
Negro in Indiana, a section of which ap-
pears in this volume. Originally
published in 1957, the book is a model combina-
tion of careful scholarship and high
moral purpose. Few states rival Indiana in the
collective achievement of its
historians. And few have a major university press
with a strong tradition of commitment to
the publication of local and regional his-
tory.
Among the most distinguished of recent
Hoosier historians is Ralph D. Gray,
professor of history at Indiana
University-Purdue University in Indianapolis. In
this excellent volume he has collected
generous excerpts form the work of dozens
of his colleagues, living and dead.
Together, they outline and reflect on the major
issues in and characteristics of Indiana
history from the eighteenth-century world
of the Miamis and the French to the
present. Readers can learn about pioneer life,
the Civil War, the Ku Klux Klan, and a
variety of other subjects, including high
school basketball. The quality of the
history is remarkably high throughout.
Still, it in no way diminishes the
achievement of individuals to say that the book
as a whole is something more than the
sum of its parts.
Book Reviews 95
The most obvious market for this
anthology is college-level classes in Indiana
history. But it would be wonderful if it
found a wider audience. Many Americans
doubt whether the public's investment in
the labor of scholars who spend so much
of their time researching and writing in
seeming isolation is worthwhile. Let
them look for evidence in this book. For
it is the achievement of a group of dedi-
cated and highly competent scholars who
all share an interest in--and in many
cases, a genuine affection for-Indiana.
They mean to keep the Hoosier past
alive-and meaningful. We should all be
so lucky.
Miami University
Andrew Cayton
Ohio Politics. Edited by Alexander P. Lamis. (Kent: The Kent State
University
Press, 1994. xii + 417p.;
illustrations, bibliographical essay, notes, index.
$35.00 cloth; $17.00 paper.)
When it comes to meeting the needs of
those interested in the Ohio Story,
whether they be scholars or teachers,
college or high school students, reference
librarians or the general public, no
press has been more responsive over the past
two decades than that of Kent State
University and its able director, Dr. John
Hubbell. To an already impressive
shelf-long series of Ohio-related volumes there
has now been added another worthy of
inclusion with the best of the rest, Ohio
Politics, edited by Dr. Alexander P. Lamis, Associate Professor
of Political
Science at Case Western Reserve
University, with the assistance of Mary Anne
Sharkey, the politics editor of the
Cleveland Plain Dealer.
For long decades, those interested in a
comprehensive treatment of Ohio's his-
tory and government often turned
initially to A History of Ohio, written by two
Ohio State professors, Eugene Roseboom
and Francis Weisenburger, and first pub-
lished by Prentice-Hall in 1934. Revised
and brought up to date by the Ohio
Historical Society as the state's
sesquicentennial history in 1953, it was modestly
revised and updated again in 1967,
though reprints continued to appear even into
the 1980s. However, it was not until the
Kent State University Press brought out
Ohio and Its People, written by George W. Knepper of the University of Akron
in
1989, that a comprehensive treatment of
Ohio's history including the period since
World War II was finally available.
Now, through the collaborative efforts
of historian Knepper as well as those of
nine journalists and nine political
scientists, all coordinated editorially by Lamis
and Sharkey, the first comprehensive
survey of post-World War II Ohio politics
also at last has become available. With
the exception of Knepper's chapter on
historical perspective, the first half
of the book has been written by the journal-
ists, many of them statehouse bureau
chiefs of politics reporters for newspapers
such as the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the
Akron Beacon Journal, the Dayton Daily
News, the Columbus Dispatch, and the Cincinnati Enquirer.
In contrast, switching
from journalese to academese, the second
half has been written primarily by polit-
ical science professors from such
universities as Ohio State, Wright State, Kent
State, Cincinnati, Akron, and the State
University of New York (Brockport).
The titles of the chapters written by
the journalists portray their content: the
Lausche Era, 1945-1957; the
O'Neill-DiSalle Years, 1957-1963; Rhodes's First
Eight Years, 1963-1971; the Gilligan Interlude,
1971-1975; Rhodes's Second
Eight Years, 1975-1983; the Celeste Era,
1983-1991; and the Panorama of
Politics in the Voinovich Era, 1991-.
The chapters constructed by the political
96 OHIO
HISTORY
scientists are essentially topical,
including the relations of the news media with
Ohio politicians and politics; the role
played by Ohio's congressional delegation
in Washington in the postwar years;
analyses of the state's legislative, executive,
and judicial branches; the impact of
special interest groups; and elections and po-
litical parties in the 1990s.
As might be expected, heavy emphasis on
the major players in Ohio's political
life of the past half-century emerges in
this book. Frank Lausche, still our only
five-term governor; Jim Rhodes, our only
sixteen-year governor (four, four-year
terms); Vern Riffe, the Democrats'
"colossus of Statehouse politics," called by
Ralph Nader "the most powerful
floor leader in any American legislative body, in-
cluding Congress"; Dick Celeste,
Rhodes Scholar and Yale graduate who sought to
become our first "global
governor"; Stan Aronoff, the quietly effective leader of
the Senate Republicans; and current
Governor George Voinovich, emerging from
Cleveland's ethnic neighborhoods to
become the dominant figure in Ohio politics
with the retirement of Riffe and a
possible GOP vice-presidential nominee in
1996.
Some observations rising from the pages
of this book are particularly worth
remembering: "The [Ohio]
legislature functioned as a largely part-time, amateur
body for more than a century....
Nowadays, for most members being a state leg-
islator is a vocation." There is a
"new breed of independent lobbyists-the so-
called 'hired guns'-that simultaneously
represent several clients. The contract
lobbyists have elevated lobbying to a
high-tech level of expertise not seen before
in Columbus. . . . The effectiveness of
private consultants in Ohio politics is at-
tributable partly to the fact that party
leaders in the Ohio General Assembly have a
great deal of power, and several top
consultants enjoy close access to these lead-
ers."
Then ponder these "laws" of
Ohio politics: (1) "neither party has controlled the
Ohio governorship for longer than eight
years running since 1906. No other state
has even approached this regularity of
gubernatorial rotation in the twentieth cen-
tury." "... a win in 1994
would mean the GOP would have to beat the eight-year
rule in 1998." (2) "No
Republican has ever been elected president without carry-
ing Ohio." (3) "Every Ohio
governor and U.S. Senator elected since 1958 has
previously lost at least one statewide
race." Some call it the "once to meet/twice
to win" rule: witness the defeat of
Voinovich for the Senate in 1988 followed by
his two gubernatorial victories in 1990
and 1994. Mike DeWine is another who
was defeated, then won. The ultimate
example of voter tolerance for earlier re-
jected candidates is, of course, Jim
Rhodes, "who ran eleven times for three
statewide offices in thirty-six years.
Although he had lost three times-twice in
primaries-he did not exhaust his welcome
with the voters until 1986, when they
roundly rejected his bid for a fifth
gubernatorial term."
Are there some problem areas in this
book? Yes. You cannot involve a score of
writers without having redundancy in
what they write. An example: the charge of
Jim Rhodes against his Democratic
opponent, the incumbent Governor John
Gilligan, in the 1974 gubernatorial
campaign that Gilligan would "tax everything
that walks, crawls, or flies" must
have appeared a dozen times in as many chapters.
There are inconsistencies. Example:
references to newspapers appear in some
places with the name of the city as well
as the name of the paper italicized; in oth-
ers, only the name of the paper is
italicized.
Of far greater significance and much
more distressing to this reviewer was the
general omission of higher education as
a significant factor in the game plan of
Ohio's political leaders. Not that
higher education and politics must or should
Book Reviews 97
mix, for when they do it is usually
higher education that comes out on the losing
end, But certainly some mention should
have been made in the lengthy evalua-
tions of the four Rhodes administrations
of the very considerable role played by
the governor in the advance of higher
education in our state. Consider that Jim
Rhodes campaigned in 1962 on the pledge
that, if elected, he would assure a col-
lege campus within thirty miles
(commuting distance) of every man, woman, and
child in Ohio. Consider that, following
his election, an Ohio Board of Regents
was created in 1963 to coordinate the
most explosive developments in public
higher education in the state's history.
Consider that, under the leadership of the
first chancellor of the OBOR, Dr. John
D. Millett, master plans for the orderly de-
velopment of higher education in Ohio
were hammered out at five-year intervals,
the first in the history of the state.
Consider that, within the span of little more
than a decade, what had been a state
with six state-assisted campuses had become a
state with sixty-seven! Access and
choice in higher education for the people of
Ohio were assured, together with a
building program on all these campuses unri-
valed before or since! Then consider
that there is no detailed mention of this ex-
plosive growth, no mention of the Master
Plans for 1965 and 1970, not even
mention of the name of John Millett, and
you can appreciate the depth of the over-
sight! All of this becomes all the more
intriguing when once considers that half
of those involved in the preparation of
this book were and are professional educa-
tors on campuses primarily public and
primarily in Ohio and the omission be-
comes all the more glaring!
Be that as it may, this reviewer found
the book almost all that he had hoped it
would be, and he must conclude by
recommending its presence as a must for every
library, public and personal, in which
there is interest in Ohio and Ohioans, their
history and politics.
Miami University
Phillip R. Shriver
"Unspoiled Heart": The
Journal of Charles Mattocks of the 17th Maine. Edited by
Philip N. Racine. (Knoxville: The
University of Tennessee Press, 1994. xxxii
+ 446p.; illustrations, epilogue, notes,
works cited, index. $36.00.)
The tides of Civil War literature flow
and ebb as popular enthusiasm for that pe-
riod of our history rises and falls.
Left on the beaches are a host of diaries, letter
collections, journals and unit histories
that show us the war from the bottom up
instead of the top down, holding out the
possibility of eloquent observations that
have hitherto remained unrevealed or
perhaps rough poetry unconsciously wrought
by common soldiers. More often than not,
the observations are mundane and the
prose fractured.
"Unspoiled Heart": The
Journal of Charles Mattocks of the 17th Maine, edited
by Philip N. Racine and published by the
University of Tennessee Press as part of
Frank L. Byrne's Voices of the Civil War
series, offers an unusual combination of
the mundane and the fascinating. Charles
Mattocks was a young man fresh out of
school (Bowdoin College, where he was a
student of Joshua Chamberlain's) in
1862, when he became an officer in the
17th Maine Volunteer Regiment.
Mattocks participated in the battles of
Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, becom-
ing a major by the end of 1863. A disciplinarian
and drillmaster, he became acting
commander of the 17th Maine and then the
1st United States Sharpshooters.
Feeling that he had been given command
of the latter regiment in order to "shape
98 OHIO
HISTORY
it up," Mattocks applied his usual
"by-the-book" standards, a stance that gained
him little popularity with his men.
While in command of the Sharpshooters
during the Battle of the Wilderness,
Mattocks was captured by the
Confederates and sent first to Macon Prison in
Georgia, then to the officer's prison at
Charleston, South Carolina, and finally to
a prison at Columbia in the same state.
Prison conditions were poor, especially at
Macon, though never approaching the
suffering at Andersonville. In November
1864 Mattocks and a few other officers
made a daring escape attempt from the
prison in Columbia to East Tennessee,
only to be recaptured tantalizingly close to
their objective. Unable to maintain
their prisons, the Confederates paroled the
young Maine officer in March 1865, in
time for him to rejoin his old unit, the
17th Maine, for the Appomattox campaign
in April. During this last campaign
for the Army of the Potomac, Mattocks
won the Congressional Medal of Honor for
his bravery at the engagement at
Sayler's Creek.
Charles Mattocks was a well-educated
man, which shows in his highly literate
prose, but was no keen observer. Missing
from his diary are detailed observations
about or descriptions of comrades,
acquaintances or surroundings. The diary con-
centrates on events and conditions
rather than impressions or insights. Despite
this lack, the diary is valuable simply
because of the fascinating events of
Mattocks' life, especially his sojourn
in Confederate prisoner-of-war camps and
his escape attempt through the South,
aided by Southern slaves. Worthy of exam-
ination, too, are Mattocks' attempts to
instill discipline, as well as regimental
politics. What the diary shows best of
all is that Civil War regiments were not
mere groups of men, but extensions of
their community. The 17th Maine, full of
old friends and acquaintances, is a
Maine away from Maine for Mattocks.
A review of this book would be
incomplete without words of praise for its edi-
tor, Philip N. Racine, who provides 130
pages worth of scrupulous annotation,
identifying events and persons, as well
as providing other individuals' recollec-
tions of the same events experienced by
Mattocks. Though unfortunately the an-
notations take the form of endnotes
rather than footnotes, the achievement is no
less worthy. If other books in this
series are equally well edited, they will be trea-
sured by scholars and general readers
alike.
The Ohio State University Mark
Pitcavage
The White Earth Tragedy: Ethnicity and Dispossession at a Minnesota
Anishinaabe Reservation, 1889-1920. By Melissa L. Meyer. (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1994.
xviii + 333p.; illustrations, notes, biblio-
graphic essay, index. $40.00.)
Scholars now generally regard the
federal government's efforts, through the al-
lotment acts, to destroy native American
communal life and transform the "Indian"
into an independent, profit-minded
farmer as a mistaken policy driven by a deter-
mination to obliterate native American
cultural distinctiveness. In this provoca-
tive case study of the Anishinaabe White
Earth Reservation in Minnesota in the
crucial years 1889-1920, Melissa L.
Meyers exposes the contradiction inherent in
the policy itself. While government
"rhetoric" held up "small-scale market agri-
culture as the salvation of Indian
people," government policies in fact aided and
abetted an "expansion of market
capitalism" that drove small farmers off the land
everywhere (p. 225). The growing
impoverishment and depopulation of the White
Book Reviews 99
Earth Reservation, Meyers argues, had
little to do with the failure of native
Americans to adapt. It was instead the
result of government land policies that
opened up reservation lands to white
exploiters (the timber companies most no-
tably) and that squandered Anishinaabe
resources to help pay for a process of as-
similation that was doomed from the
outset. While some state and federal officials
exposed the fraud and corruption that
characterized land deals on the White Earth
reservation, the system itself
ultimately failed to offer any meaningful protection
of native American interests. Moreover,
divisions within the reservation commu-
nity between traditionalists and a new
group of would-be Indian petty capitalists
(the latter most often people of mixed
blood) left both groups ultimately vulnera-
ble to exploitation. A small handful of
Anishinaabe families profited from market
capitalism. But for the most part the
economic transformation led to destitution
and malnutrition on a reservation where
the traditional seasonal round was now
threatened by deforestation and
pollution, and where the transition to market agri-
culture touted by the Indian policy
"experts" proved a false hope. It is a familiar
story, and an ugly one.
Professor Meyer's account is
meticulously documented, richly detailed and
grounded in a thorough appreciation of
the cultural values of all of the partici-
pants. Eschewing facile stereotypes, and
avoiding the temptation to portray na-
tive Americans as passive victims, she
offers invaluable insights into the interac-
tion of ideology, economics and politics
at the reservation, state and national
levels. While her account of the cynical
ruses employed by corrupt politicians to
assist capitalists in the looting of
reservation resources will stand with the best
exposes, her work offers a sophisticated
analysis of internal divisions and con-
flicts within the Anishinaabe community
as well as within white society that pro-
vides a measure of balance and authority
often absent in studies of native American
dispossession. The White Earth
Tragedy will be required reading for students of
federal Indian policy, and for all who
are concerned with the restoration of native
American rights, for many years to come.
The University of Toledo Alfred A.
Cave
The Black Lodge in White America:
"True Reformer" Browne and His Economic
Strategy. By David M. Fahey. (Dayton: Wright State University
Press, 1994.
x + 270p.; illustrations, notes,
appendices, index. $55.00.)
Recent work has shown the importance of
white fraternal/mutual benefit soci-
eties to progressive era United States
history. Yet scholars have paid little atten-
tion to such black groups in the same
period despite large memberships. David M.
Fahey takes a useful first step in
rectifying this situation by reprinting D. Webster
Davis's posthumous hagiography, The
Life and Public Services of Rev. Wm.
Washington Browne (1910) in The Black Lodge in White America. An
introduc-
tory essay by Fahey and extensive
endnotes supplement Davis by concisely ex-
ploring the place of Browne and his
organization, the Grand Fountain, United
Order of True Reformers (UOTR), in the
history of black fraternalism.
The history of the UOTR, as Fahey
demonstrates, embodied the blending of
African American racial uplift and
fraternal organization. Working within what
had started as a temperance
organization, Browne urged members to avoid poverty
by investing what they might have wasted
on drink in life insurance and savings.
Like Booker T. Washington, Browne
eschewed class divisions in favor of racial
100 OHIO HISTORY
unity, arguing that in the UOTR and
businesses financed could be found the mutual
interests of labor and capital. Also
like Washington he avoided confronting white
racism-believing that good character and
the accumulation of wealth and prop-
erty would ensure the eventual inclusion
of African Americans in American soci-
ety.
Born a slave in 1849, Browne began work
with the UOTR in Alabama in 1874
and in 1877 was elected to the order's
highest state office-Grand Worthy Master.
Blocked by rivals when he attempted to
expand the UOTR into mutual insurance
and banking, Browne accepted in 1880 an
offer to lead the UOTR in Virginia.
There Browne carried his plans for
insurance and banking to fruition. "In less
than a decade," Fahey notes,
"Browne had revolutionized black insurance in ...
Virginia, and beyond" (p. 17).
Building on the burial insurance commonly pro-
vided by fraternal orders, he developed
plans that would pay benefits to the de-
scendants' survivors. In addition, he
pioneered actuarial soundness among black
insurance societies by basing premiums
on mortality estimates, and the cadre of
agents he trained supplied leaders to a
number of other African American insurance
societies.
Under Browne the UOTR prospered. For the
1895-96 fiscal year, just before
Browne's death from cancer, the UOTR
collected $55,000 in insurance premiums
and its savings bank claimed $2,500,000
in business since its founding in 1888.
The order also employed 250 African
Americans and ran a 150-room hotel for
blacks in Richmond.
The UOTR continued to prosper for more
than a decade after Browne's death. But
in 1910 both the insurance plan and
savings bank collapsed. The bank had in-
vested insurance premiums in a number of
businesses that failed to turn a profit and
Browne and his successors used the order
to enrich themselves (legally, if un-
wisely), diverting badly needed funds.
Thus weakened, the organization struggled
on until the early years of the
depression. Yet Fahey argues that the demise of the
UOTR and Browne's contribution to it
should not obscure the fact that for nearly
twenty-five years the order provided
African Americans with life insurance and a
bank to safeguard their savings,
employed numbers of African Americans, and fi-
nanced numerous black-owned businesses.
The Black Lodge in White America is a welcome addition to our understanding of
black life at the turn of the century.
Historians and more general readers will find
it readable and a valuable source for
further exploration of an unfortunately ne-
glected topic. We can hope that Fahey's
efforts here will lead to further study of
Browne, the UOTR, and other African
American fraternal societies.
University of Cincinnati Charles F.
Casey-Leininger
A Measure of Success: Protestants and
Public Culture in Antebellum Cleveland.
By Michael J. McTighe. (Albany, New
York: State University of New York
press, 1994. xii + 283p.; illustrations,
appendix, notes, bibliography, index.
$21.95 paper.)
Most analyses of the history and,
indeed, the current civic milieu of Cleveland,
Ohio, make mention of, or cast credit or
blame upon the community's New
England, Protestant roots. Indeed, in
this era of multicultural awareness, it has be-
come fashionable to comment on the
ironic transformation of a once religiously
Book Reviews
101
parochial community into one of the most
cosmopolitan urban centers in the
United States.
Such analyses were, for the most part,
based on a speculative historical founda-
tion, for few people, either historians
or general lay readers, had any solid idea of
the nature and influence of Cleveland's
Protestant cultural underpinnings. Michael
J. McTighe's A Measure of Success:
Protestants and Public Culture in Antebellum
Cleveland, provides, at last, a foundation for understanding this
part of the com-
munity's cultural roots. McTighe's work
is a thorough review of the development
of Cleveland's Protestant religious
community and, more importantly, an analysis
of that community's role in everyday,
public culture in Cleveland. While the
book's detailed review of the growth of
the religious establishment is extraordi-
narily valuable by itself, it is
McTighe's interweaving of Protestantism into the
civic social fabric that makes this work
a real contribution to the body of literature
on early Cleveland, Ohio, and on
religion and culture generally. Unfortunately,
McTighe, an Associate Professor in the
Religion Department of Gettysburg
College, did not live to see his study
published; much credit is due to his family
and colleagues for seeing the book
through to publication.
McTighe's study transcends the usual
subject limits observed when scholars re-
late religion to public culture in the
antebellum period. He does cover all of the
standard areas of interface, including
temperance, abolitionism, and benevolence.
But his real contribution comes in the
sections of the book that link Protestant
leadership to economic growth in this
formative period of the community's his-
tory. During 1820-1860, Cleveland
evolved from a small agricultural settlement
into a thriving mercantile community due
largely to the construction of a network
of canals and railroads that made it a
major transshipment point. And, by the end
of this period, civic attention turned
to creating the foundation for industrial de-
velopment.
McTighe places the Protestant community
in the center of this metamorphosis.
A detailed examination of church
membership locates most Protestants within the
ranks of those who had the most to gain
from the new economy. Remarks made
from the pulpit also showed a remarkable
support for the new economic "ethos"
that was developing-this despite the
challenges it raised to such basic church is-
sues as work on the Sabbath. The new
economic order also had long-term conse-
quences in redefining the ethical
teachings that governed relationships between
capital and labor and rich and poor in
the evolving urban center. McTighe demon-
strates that the Protestant community of
Cleveland was influential in increasing a
local business ethic that would
influence the community for decades to come. In
doing so, he places the city squarely in
the center of the general national devel-
opment of church-supported business
practices.
When Cleveland's Protestant community
endorsed the new urban order, it cat-
alyzed changes that would result,
eventually, in the loss of its hegemony. The
growth of the city and the displacement
produced by a largely unregulated capital-
ist society made issues such as
intemperance, poverty, and crime, much larger
parts of the civic agenda and ones which
would increasingly draw upon the re-
sources of the Protestant community.
Growth also brought demographic change-
by 1860 people of foreign birth
constituted more than 40 percent of the city's
population. As Catholic Irish and
Germans moved to the community they too be-
gan to participate in its public culture
and set the stage for the multicultural com-
munity that today still contends with
and, at times, accommodates itself with
Cleveland's New England Protestant
ethos.
102 OHIO HISTORY
Michael McTighe's study is therefore
doubly valuable. Through statistics and a
detailed examination of narrative
sources it finally gives readers a clear view of
Cleveland's Protestant roots and
provides confirmation of the central role that re-
ligion played in the community's
antebellum history. More critically, it is an ex-
amination of change; both of change in
public culture and of the origins of urban
change that would eventually diminish
its proponents' role in that public culture.
This book is an essential addition to
the library of anyone who seeks to under-
stand a core issue in the history of
Cleveland, Ohio, and the role of religion in the
development of urban America.
Western Reserve Historical Society John Grabowski
The Fur Trade Revisited: Selected
Papers of the Sixth North American Fur Trade
Conference, Mackinac Island,
Michigan, 1991. Edited by Jennifer S.
H. Brown,
W. J. Eccles, and Donald P. Heldman.
(East Lansing: Michigan State University
Press, 1994. xx + 536p.; illustrations,
notes, index. $39.95.)
In 1991, the Mackinac Island State Park
Commission sponsored the Sixth
North American Fur Trade Conference in
order to highlight their professional and
historic sites program located at the
crossroads of many fur trade routes: the
Straits of Mackinac between Lake
Michigan and Lake Huron. From that confer-
ence comes this collection of
twenty-eight papers which highlight the lively state
of the field of fur trade history in the
1990s. The conference involved a cross sec-
tion of disciplines including history,
literature, geography, economics, archaeol-
ogy, and anthropology; The Fur Trade
Revisited is organized thematically to re-
flect this variety. The editors make it
clear in the introduction that this collection
is designed to stimulate further study
on a wide variety of new questions and ideas
rather than to provided
"closure" or "definitive overviews" (p. 6). Most of the pa-
pers read as works in progress.
The book opens with the banquet address
of a part-Scottish, part-Cree woman
entitled "Memories of a Trapper's
Daughter." Born in 1934, Lily McAuley spent
her childhood and adolescence in the
trapping country of northern Manitoba. As
an adult, she worked for the Canadian
Parks Service. Through her story, the reader
is made vividly aware that all the
events detailed in the scholarly studies that fol-
low have a real impact on people today.
The two essays in Part One address the
Transatlantic fur trade, one from the
point of view of European entrepreneurs
faced with the task of marketing pelts at
home in the eighteenth century, and
another from the point of view of the rela-
tionship between London commission
merchants and their American suppliers.
The six essays in Part Two explore how
Native Americans adapted and changed
as they interacted with the market. This
section targets a wide variety of experi-
ences including the Lakotas of the upper
plains, the Sauks and Mesquakies of
Iowa, and the Caddoans of the coastal
areas of present-day Louisiana and Texas.
Other essays compare the experiences of
a variety of ethnic groups in western
Canada and the upper Midwest of the
United States, and another suggests the pos-
sibilities of delving into previously
unexplored records which offer insight into
the lives of the children of mixed
marriages.
The six essays in Part Three take on the
task of detailing the daily lives of
traders. One traces the path of
exploration of a coureurs de bois, three trace the ca-
reer of business and company men, one
traces the history of a multi-generational
Book Reviews 103
trading family, and another traces the
impact of the circulation of folktales among
traders.
The four essays in Part Four deal with
life at Mackinac itself. One offers a
glimpse into the trying times of
commissary during the Seven Year's War, while
another offers a glimpse into the early
nineteenth-century apprenticeship of a
young trader. The other two essays
address the Revolution's impact on the fur
trade and the role of crucifixes and
medallions in the religious interaction of
French missionaries and Native
Americans.
Part Five offers three explorations of
archaeology and material culture, ranging
from firearms to canoe portages to life
at an army fort in North Dakota. The three
essays in Part Six deal with the
Hudson's Bay Company in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. Part Seven
presents two discussions of the impact of fur
trade literature on society in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and a discus-
sion of current fur trade social
history.
A volume so large could easily become
unwieldy, but the editors clearly tried to
make this volume a pleasure to explore
and use. The endnotes appear at the end of
each article rather than at the end of
the book, and a wealth of illustrations, maps,
charts, figures, and tables kindle the
reader's interest.
Kent State University Kim M.
Gruenwald
Common Labour: Workers and the Digging
of North American Canals, 1780-
1860. By Peter Way. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1993. xvii +
304p.; illustrations, maps, tables,
notes, appendices, index. $54.95.)
Peter Way has written a solid study of
labor and especially of labor relations on
canals dug in the United States and
Canada during 1780-1860. Based primarily on
the records of companies and public
agencies building the canals, this work goes
beyond conditions of labor to other
facets of company structure and operations,
usually without losing focus. Way
suggests that the canal-building industry was
one of the first economic sectors to
make the transformation to industrial capital-
ism and as such anticipated changes in
the economy at large. He maintains that
unskilled workers experienced the shift
from a traditional economy to industrial
capitalism differently than did skilled
workers. He correctly argues that our view
of workers during this significant
change is distorted and too simplistic because
almost all studies examining them focus
on skilled workers. He is also correct
that common laborers, never controlling
their work as skilled workers did and not
having skill as a bargaining point with
employers, experienced primarily a shift
from one form of powerlessness to another.
Thus Way's study of unskilled
canallers refines our image of workers
during the process of industrialization.
However, Way's portrayal of the lives of
these workers is not completely satis-
fying, partly because his sources are
sparse. Common laborers left even less for
the historical record than did skilled
workers, which is why they are so little stud-
ied. Almost all of Way's information
about canallers comes from others, espe-
cially from company officials and
journalists. This prevents him from getting
very deep into the lives of the workers.
But, the problem also stems from Way's
intent to portray lives of unabated
misery and despair. While he mentions the
pride that canallers felt in their work
and suggests that their families and commu-
nities brought some light and comfort
into their lives, he is hardly interested in
this. Instead he chronicles the
suffering, the injuries, disease and death, and the
104 OHIO HISTORY
exploitation that led canallers to
drink, to brawling, the thievery and murder, and
ultimately to faction fights (since most
of them were Irish). He says little about
the actual work of canallers--despite
its subtitle, there is little digging in this
book-and all but ignores positive
attributes of canallers' families and communi-
ties.
The cause of workers' despair was, Way
argues, industrial capitalism. He sug-
gests that the wave of strikes that
beset the industry in the 1830s and 1840s was a
reaction to the new industrial
capitalism rather than to deprivations caused by de-
pression in the industry. In the end,
thus, Way portrays common laborers much as
other historians have portrayed skilled
craftsmen, as victims of the shift from a
personal, small-scale economic system
that recognized and protected their right to
survival (albeit paternalistcally) to
industrial capitalism, where as free laborers
they were cut loose before the forces of
the marketplace. This partly undermines
Way's insight that unskilled workers
experienced this process differently.
Common Labour is an important work that enhances our understanding of
the
canal-building era and especially of
workers in a modernizing economy. But,
Way's overly-dark portrayal misses an
important part of the story of the canallers.
Way is wrong; to recognize that these
workers possessed the human ability to
make the most of a bad situation does not
"romanticize" their rough lives, or do
them "injustice," or even
downplay the exploitation they suffered. Way deserves
credit for showing that the lives of
workers in American history were more com-
plex than the historical record so far
indicated, but he fails to show how truly
complex they were.
Southwest Missouri State University P. G. Hummasti
An American Pursuit Pilot in France:
Roland W. Richardson's Diaries and Letters,
1917-1919. Edited by Ritchie Thomas and Carl M. Becker.
(Shippensburg, Pa.:
White Mane Publishing Company, Inc.,
1994. xxvii + 198p.; illustrations,
notes, appendices, index. $24.95.)
With recent Second World War
commemorations gaining much publicity, the
diamond anniversary of the armistice
that ended hostilities in the "war to end all
wars" (November 11, 1918) slipped
by scarcely noticed in the United States. That
day, once so momentous it became a
national holiday, is now absorbed under the
more generic name of "Veterans
Day." Fortunately, a growing body of scholar-
ship continues to examine the First
World War, a conflict that has in no small
fashion shaped the twentieth century.
Ritchie Thomas and Carl M. Becker, both
of Wright State University, add to that
understanding with an edited volume of
Glendale, Ohio, native Roland W.
Richardson's wartime diaries and letters to his
mother.
An American Pursuit Pilot in France is organized into six chapters, each incor-
porating a significant stage in First
Lieutenant Richardson's evolution as a mili-
tary aviator. That growth culminated in
duty as a Spad XIII pursuit pilot with the
213th Aero Squadron along the Western
Front. The volume is edited for a general
audience and begins with an extended
introduction that sets the stage by providing
background information on Richardson,
World War I, and the Air Service of the
American Expeditionary Forces.
Chronological interspersing of Richardson's let-
ters among the dairy entries facilitates
reader understanding of the aviator's expe-
rience when further combined with
amplifying endnotes and appendices.
Book Reviews
105
Especially useful appendices are the
glossary of personalities, aviation terms, and
Richardson's training and flight log.
Although an already well-read audience
may find some of the amplifications
repetitive, those unfamiliar with the
Great War era will appreciate the editors' de-
cision to include explanations of the
mundane and unclear found in Richardson's
writings. The Lafayette Escadrille, Same
Browne belt, Reserve Military Aviator
designator, and the 1918 influenza
epidemic are but a few of the terms and events
that warrant clarification for the
general readership, with Thomas and Becker often
providing secondary source citation for
more complete information. Finally, se-
lected photographs of Richardson, his
family, and Air Service colleagues serve to
personalize the volume.
Yet for all the editorial embellishment,
the reader finishes the publication still
not knowing Roland W. Richardson. Thomas
and Becker note that he was "hardly
a complex man," whose elementary
prose demonstrated "ambivalent and uncer-
tain" reasons for fighting the
Germans (p. xxvii). While the aviator was eager to
do his duty he was not obsessed with
patriotism nor was he an outspoken crusader
fighting for a new postwar world order.
The question of what motivated
Richardson to fight, since he
"really [did not] see why the Kaiser even had a war"
(p. 58), remains unanswered. Given that
all the correspondence in the volume was
addressed to Richardson's mother,
inclusion of her letters sent to France might
have offered insight into that question.
Since such homefront perceptions can
have a significant impact on the morale
of combatants, they should not be ignored
when available. Unfortunately, it
remains unclear whether or not Annis W.
Richardson's letters to her son survive.
An American Pursuit Pilot in France nevertheless provides a usefully-unadorned
account of early military aviation.
Tedious training, chronic mechanical failure,
and dismal weather were more the World
War aviator's lot than was the contempo-
rary mythology of individual aerial
chivalry. Besides adding to the annals of Ohio
aviation history, editors Thomas and
Becker deserve credit for not allowing
Richardson's diaries and letters to be
lost to posterity.
Seoul, Korea William E. Fischer, Jr.
Tom Johnson in Cleveland. By Eugene C. Murdock. (Dayton: Wright State
University Press, 1994. xi + 411p.;
illustrations, notes, appendices, bibliogra-
phy, index. $56.00.)
Thomas Loftin Johnson (1854-1911) had a
varied career as a traction magnet,
industrialist, single-tax proponent,
U.S. Congressman (1890-94), and Cleveland
Mayor (1901-09). He is best known, along
with Detroit's Hazen Pingree and
Toledo's Golden Rule Jones, as being a
big-city reform mayor; muckraker Lincoln
Steffens concluded that Johnson produced
the best-governed city in the U.S.
Johnson's early life appeared unlikely
to produce an industrialist and urban re-
former. In the 1850s, his father owned
an Arkansas cotton plantation and 100
slaves. Left penniless by the Civil War,
Col. Johnson never regained his prewar
position; young Tom left school early to
work for a Louisville street railway
owned by distant relatives who were also
members of the du Pont family.
Johnson entered the street railway
business at a critical time in that industry's
development; his career was equally
volatile. By age 18 in 1872, Johnson ob-
tained the first of a number of patents
on transit equipment; a year later he began
106 OHIO HISTORY
manufacturing fare boxes, and three
years later he purchased his first street railway
company (Indianapolis). Eventually he
had street railway franchises in eight
other cities including Cleveland,
founded companies to manufacture rails (1883),
and electric motors (1891). Murdock
notes that Johnson, the street railway opera-
tor, engaged in "unethical
methods" including stock-watering and perhaps bribery
(p. 21); he also fought Detroit Mayor
Pingree on the very issues he would come to
champion in Cleveland: the three-cent
fare and municipal ownership of street
railways.
Johnson had another side, however. As
early as 1883, he became a strong sup-
porter of Henry George and his
single-tax plan. Major consolidations in the tran-
sit industries and George's death in
1897 probably contributed to Johnson dispos-
ing of his business holdings between
1898 and 1900 and his decision to run for
Cleveland mayor. Although some scholars
have argued that Pingree more than
George influenced Johnson's career, the
book demonstrates Johnson's close ties
to George. Murdock provides an appendix
to support this contention.
The study focuses on Johnson's mayoral
years. Murdock, who is sympathetic
to Johnson, traces each political battle
chronologically and details the work of
key aides: Newton Baker, Harris Cooley,
and Edward Bemis. He documents
Johnson's efforts to gain control over
the privately-owned utilities and street
railways. To battle with Cleveland's
"privileged" interests, privately owned utili-
ties and streetcar companies, Johnson
raised their taxes, increased regulations and
sought municipal ownership. The
"interests" responded with a stream of lawsuits
and by "persuading" council
members to block his program. In the end,
Johnson's gains were relatively small
although succeeding administrations even-
tually gained much of his program.
Murdock originally completed this study
as a Columbia University Ph.D. disser-
tation under Allan Nevins in 1951. He
updated the research in the early 1980s, and
added three appendices to deal with
historiographical issues not covered in the
text. Murdock extensively researched the
daily press from those favorable to
Johnson (Press and Plain
Dealer) and those opposed (Leader and News). He also
interviewed (1949) 25 surviving figures
and used the collected papers of several
others including Johnson.
This is a valuable political biography
with much interesting material. Despite
efforts to update, however, it remains
outdated historiographically. While
Murdock provides analytical chapters on
structural and social reform, he seldom
leaves the description of political
battles to analyze Johnson's political base, his
ideology, or his opponents and their
social and institutional contexts; there is lit-
tle effort to place Johnson in a
national context. Nevertheless, the book is a well
written and extensively researched
study; it is a good case study on the problems
and limitations of Cleveland reform
government.
Cleveland State University James Borchert
Lion of the Forest: James B. Finley,
Frontier Reformer. By Charles C. Cole,
Jr.
(Lexington: The University Press of
Kentucky, 1994. xv + 271p.; illustrations,
notes, bibliographical essay, index.
$32.95.)
Charles C. Cole, Jr., has served as dean
and professor of history at Lafayette
College, president of Wilson College,
and is currently director of the Ohio
Humanities Council. Cole's work on James
B. Finley is a welcome and long-
Book Reviews 107
needed volume on one of America's most
distinguished Methodist preachers in the
West. Finley was one of the most
effective preachers and perhaps the major archi-
tect of the Methodist Episcopal Church
in frontier Ohio. Cole uses letter's, di-
aries, and many church and public
records as the sources of his work.
James B. Finley was born July 1, 1781,
when his father, a Presbyterian minis-
ter, was preaching in the Carolinas and
Georgia. As a child young Finley was ex-
posed to Indian raids and the other
hardships of frontier life. At the age of fifteen
he led a group of blacks, whom his
father had freed from slavery, out of Kentucky
into Ohio. By 1800 Finley completed
medical studies under the direction of a
frontier doctor and was admitted to
practice. However, he was not enthusiastic
about the work, preferring a life in the
woods. The following year he married
Hannah Strange against her fathers
wishes. The couple's only child, Eliza, was
born in December of that year.
In 1801 Finley attended the famous Cane
Ridge camp meeting in Kentucky and
experienced conversion. His description
of the revival in his autobiography is
probably the best account of the event.
However, Finley's conversion was in vain
as he backslid shortly after Cane Ridge.
In 1808 he received his second conver-
sion, and in 1809 Finley became a
Methodist preacher being received on trail by
the Western Conference. His first
preaching assignment was the Willis Creek cir-
cuit of the Muskingum district. Finley
continued as a circuit rider until he became
presiding elder of the Ohio district in
1816. Gaining converts was a challenging
job, but Finley was successful. On
occasion, he brought critics and hecklers under
control by use of his fists. From 1816
to 1821 he became a presiding elder, and
his districts embraced as much territory
as some states.
In 1820, Finley attended his first
General Conference in Baltimore, Maryland.
Seven additional times he was elected as
a delegate to the General Conference.
Finley was selected as missionary to the
Wyandot Indians the following year and
was critical of the federal government's
Indian policies. He labored for social re-
forms during his work as missionary,
declaring war against the harmful effects of
drinking and drunkenness among the
Indians. Finley also labored to create
schools for the Wyandots. He
successfully continued his work among the Indians
for six years, and from that time until
1845 he was preacher or presiding elder of
several districts.
During the 1844 General Conference in
New York, Finley played a pivotal role
in the schism of the Methodist church by
submitting a resolution that chastised
Bishop Andrew of Georgia for owning
slaves. In 1846 Finley was appointed
chaplain of the Ohio Penitentiary,
where he served three and a half years, until his
health became impaired. Finley was
superannuated in 1849 because of his health,
but did received appointments at Yellow
Springs and Cincinnati after brief recov-
eries from his illness. He died
September 6, 1857. In addition to his remarkable
preaching career Finley authored several
books. Following the publication of
History of the Wyandotte Mission at
Upper Sandusky in 1840, Finley wrote
sev-
eral additional volumes in his latter
life. Among them were Autobiography,
Pioneer Life in the West, Sketches of
Western Methodism, Life Among The
Indians, and Memorials of Prison Life.
Cole's book is a monumental work and is
recommended to the layperson as well
as scholars. The work goes far beyond a simple institutional history of
Methodism with its detailed vividness
and eloquent rhetoric. The many anecdotes
that color this sympathetic portrait of
Finley make the work enjoyable reading.
Stanford, Indiana David L.
Kimbrough
108 OHIO HISTORY
The Shipwreck of Their Hopes: The
Battles for Chattanooga. By Peter
Cozzens.
(Champaign: University of Illinois
Press, 1994. xii + 515p.; illustrations,
notes, bibliography, appendix, index.
$34.95.)
Peter Cozzens, a foreign service officer
with the United States Department of
State and a leading historian of the war
in the West, has made yet another impor-
tant contribution to the field of Civil
War historiography in the Western Theater
with his excellent The Shipwreck of
Their Hopes: The Battles for Chattanooga.
This fine work now concludes Cozzens's
impressive trilogy which places much
importance on the decisive struggle for
the Confederate Heartland before the
Atlanta Campaign of 1864: the Battles of
Stone River (No Better Place To Die),
Tennessee; Chickamauga (This Terrible
Sword), Georgia; and now Cozzens's re-
cent and perhaps his best work, The
Shipwreck of Their Hopes. In part an indica-
tion of its importance, the last volume
of the trilogy almost immediately became a
selection of the History Book Club.
However, with so much interest yet focused
on the eastern war thanks in part to the
movie Gettysburg, it is hoped that this
book will be sufficiently recognized as
an important contribution by both histori-
ans and the public.
After the hollow Confederate victory at
Chickamauga in September 1863, the
battles for Chattanooga began with
General Braxton Bragg laying siege to the key
eastern Tennessee city of Chattanooga. A
series of November battles followed,
including Orchard Knob and Lookout
Mountain-the famous "Battle Above The
Clouds"-and Missionary Ridge. With
considerable skill, Cozzens tells the dra-
matic and interesting story of yet
another decisive loss in Tennessee by the ill-
fated Army of Tennessee, the defender of
the Confederate Heartland which could
neither win decisive battles nor
successfully defend its territory.
During the summer of 1863, the decisive
loss of Vicksburg, Mississippi, first
split the Confederacy in half. The key
loss of Chattanooga opened the door for
Federal invasion deep into the vital
Confederate Heartland and yet another split-
ting of the Confederacy with the loss of
Atlanta in the following summer and then
Sherman's March to the Sea.
One of the few shortcomings is an
over-reliance on more than 100 articles from
the National Tribune. While these
articles contain much good, new material, the
fact that some of these articles were
written by aged veterans as late as 1926 makes
some of this material less than
completely reliable. Nevertheless, Cozzens has
tapped into some interesting and
little-known information in mining this infor-
mation. But this is a minor shortcoming
because Cozzens has compiled a most
impressive and a vast array of resource
material, including an extensive amount of
manuscript material from archives across
the nation. Such exhaustive research
work has allowed Cozzens to present a
thorough tactical view of the fighting on
the unit level of both sides during the
battles for Chattanooga.
Cozzens succeeds in his goal of
describing in vivid detail the story of the de-
cline of Confederate fortunes in the
West during the decisive struggle for
Chattanooga and the Confederate
Heartland. By any measure, Cozzens has made
yet another impressive and important
contribution to the historiography of the
war in the West.
United States Air Force Historian Phillip Thomas Tucker
Washington, D.C.
Book Reviews 109
Harry S. Truman: A Life. By Robert H. Ferrell. (Columbia: University of
Missouri Press, 1994. xiv + 501p.;
illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.
$29.95.)
A biographer of Harry Truman faces
difficult obstacles. Much has been written
over the years as numerous sources have
become available and his recent popular-
ity has created a Truman mythology.
Truman's lengthy post-presidential years
produced not only his memoirs but
numerous other reflections, and clarifications,
that, unfortunately, have often muddled
rather than clarified. Robert Ferrell has
written or edited eight previous works
on Truman and has obviously mined the
sources at the Truman Library. Yet this
familiarity with his subject does not trans-
late into a good biography.
The book is best for the
pre-presidential years. The Truman that emerges is
more complex and human. While Ferrell
obviously admires much about his sub-
ject he challenges some of the myths. He
argues, for example, that Truman
"grossly exaggerated" (p. 20)
the number of books he read and that, compared to
Roosevelt, Truman's knowledge of history
was "superficial." He is also good on
Truman's early political career,
reminding us that politics was the only career that
Truman was successful at and that
"Truman took pride" (p. xii) in being a politi-
cian. Ferrell does well in laying out
the sometimes complex relationship between
Truman and the Pendergast machine.
Ferrell claims that while Truman was not
simply the "organization's
servant" (p. 109), his effort to make "himself inde-
pendent was not quite as substantial as
it appeared" and Truman was forced "to
make some compromises" (p. 110).
The book fails, however, to deal
adequately with Truman's presidency. One
problem is simply coverage. The book
devotes only about 220 pages, of 400, to
the presidential years, and it is
difficult to cover the many crucial events in this
amount of space. Also Ferrell emphasizes
dramatic events at the expense of narra-
tive clarity. This problem is
exacerbated by Ferrell's extensive use of oral histo-
ries. In an attempt to use more dramatic
anecdotes Ferrell introduces people and
events that confuse, rather than
explain, events, and makes the main story more
difficult to follow.
In addition, Ferrell's account is weak
in terms of analysis. Evaluations of
Truman's actions are often simply
appended to the end of narrative sections and
sometimes have little to do with the
issue at hand. For example, Ferrell claims
that Truman's "principal
accomplishment . . . was to change the foreign policy of
the United States from abstention to
participation in the affairs of Europe and the
world" (p. 246). But later Ferrell
asks rhetorically whether Truman handled the
Soviets with "as much precision, as
much care, as his fellow citizens could have
hoped" (p. 264) and answers with a
three-page discussion of how we know more
today about the Soviets than Truman did.
Likewise, his analysis of Truman's deci-
sion to use the atomic bomb quickly
becomes bogged down in a confusing discus-
sion of casualty figures that glosses
over several important issues (pp. 210-215).
Ferrell is also overly sympathetic to
his subject. Other historical actors, espe-
cially Roosevelt, are portrayed in a
shallow one-dimensional fashion in order to
make Truman look better by comparison.
While Ferrell readily concedes that
Truman made mistakes, he tries to let
Truman off the hook by blaming others.
Ferrell blames controversies over such
issues as the ending of Lend Lease to the
Soviets (p. 199), the recognition of
Israel (pp. 301-312), the proposed Vinson
mission to Russia (pp. 261-263), and the
seizure of steel mills in 1952 (pp. 270-
275) on staff, advisors and bureaucrats.
The irony of this approach is that it unin-
110 OHIO HISTORY
tentionally gives the impression that
Truman was a hasty and ill-informed deci-
sion maker.
This book, although intriguing, falls
far short. Specialists will find little that
is really new and much that is
frustrating. General readers will probably find it
confusing. It should be read in concert
with other works.
Clarke College Michael J. Anderson
The CIO, 1935-1955. By Robert H. Zieger. (Chapel Hill: The University of
North Carolina Press, 1995. x + 491p.;
illustrations, notes, index. $39.95.)
Between 1935 and 1955, millions of
American workers joined industrial unions
in the Congress of Industrial
Organizations (CIO). In this long-awaited work,
Robert H. Zieger presents the history of
the CIO in a way that will delight, inform,
and provoke readers. Despite the
author's modest claim to "provide a reliable
record of the past" and to
"compel acknowledgment of the difficulty of the choices
that historical actors faced" (p.
5), The CIO will quickly become a classic work.
Zieger ambitiously traces the CIO's
entire independent existence by combining
the institutional insights of
traditional labor history with the social emphasis of
revisionist working-class history. Over
two decades, mass organizing drives cre-
ated the CIO, leaders consolidated its
economic and political influence, and post-
war political work led to bureaucratic
stagnation. In thirteen concise chapters,
Zieger deals with the CIO's founding,
the strikes of 1936-1937, maturation of
leadership and structure, 1941 as the
"year of decision," patriotic support for
World War II, postwar strikes in
1945-1946, anticommunist purges in 1949-
1950, lobbying in the early 1950s, and
the 1955 AFL-CIO merger. Exhaustive
primary research and independent reading
of secondary accounts allow Zieger to
present the most factually detailed,
insightful, and thought-provoking work on
the CIO to date.
In a well-written narrative Zieger makes
points clearly, leaving scholarly argu-
ments for footnotes tracing an entire
generation of labor historians' work. He fol-
lows the complicated dynamics of labor
leadership, rank and file militancy, and
labor law that made the organization of
the steel, auto, rubber, and electrical indus-
tries possible. While drawing heavily on
Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van
Tine's John L. Lewis
(1977) and Nelson Lichtenstein's Labor's
War at Home
(1982), he synthesizes hundreds of specialized studies to capture the diversity of
working-class life, workers' ambiguous
attitudes toward unions and politics, and
the CIO's limited view of African
American and women workers.
Several aspects of this work will
engender considerable debate. Zieger argues
persuasively that the CIO's second
president, Philip Murray, led it out of the polit-
ical impasses created by the more
charismatic John L. Lewis. Zieger's positive
portrayal of labor leaders' wartime
cooperation with government and dampening
of wildcat strikes challenges the
revisionist view of growing bureaucratic distance
between leaders and workers. Some will
take heated exception to his ultimate ap-
proval of anticommunist purges expelling
over a million workers despite the ex-
cellent records of communist-influenced
unions. Yet this work is so well docu-
mented that anyone researching the CIO
in the future will have to reckon with
Zieger's interpretations.
In a minor key, The CIO does have
a few weak spots. At points the author pre-
sumes knowledge of basic facts and
chronology in order to address more compli-
Book Reviews 111
cated issues. Yet not all readers will
know details about various strikes, institu-
tional differences between the AFL and
the CIO, and reasons for the 1955 AFL-CIO
merger. While Zieger includes southern
workers usually left out, his discussion of
Korean war mobilization remains brief
and incomplete. Some may mistakenly
criticize him for not addressing issues
of race and gender, but in light of the
paucity of secondary accounts Zieger
does an admirable job. His suggestion that
the CIO reflected the male culture of
the basic industries while overlooking grow-
ing labor force diversity hints at an
interpretation diverging from current schol-
arly fashions. Most weaknesses in this
work stem from gaps in current knowledge
rather than the author's failure to deal
with controversial issues. Good history
raises as many questions as it answers. The
CIO implicitly calls for new biogra-
phies of Philip Murray, Walter Reuther,
and David McDonald; institutional histo-
ries of the steelworkers' union, the
ClO's Political Action Committee, and a re-
vived AFL; shop floor histories of
dissident unions; and sociocultural histories of
Roman Catholic, African-American, women,
and service and white collar workers.
The CIO is a masterful work by a talented, mature scholar.
Zieger may not con-
vince on every point, but he shows
persuasively that the CIO gave new industrial
focus to the labor movement, helped with
the war against fascism, stood up to
postwar Stalinism abroad and at home,
and improved the quality of workers' lives
through collective bargaining. One hopes
this definitive history of the CIO will
be read not only by scholars and students
but also by the general public to relearn
a forgotten chapter in modern American
history.
Tennessee Technological University Patrick D. Reagan
Hugo Black: A Biography. By Roger K. Newman. (New York: Pantheon Books,
1994. xiv + 741p.; illustrations, source
notes, notes, acknowledgments, index.
$30.00.)
Roger K. Newman has favored us with an
excellent comprehensive biography of
Hugo Lafayette Black, justice of the
Supreme Court from 1937 to 1971. From be-
ginning to end this book makes it clear
that Newman, who is Research Scholar at
New York University School of Law, has
been engaged in a long labor of love.
His massive volume is a product of wide
reading and of more than two thousand in-
terviews conducted in thirty-three
states over the past quarter of a century.
Hugo Black was the most prominent lawyer
in Birmingham, Alabama, when he
was elected to the United States Senate
in 1926. During his second term he devel-
oped a reputation as a staunch supporter
of the New Deal, and President Roosevelt
was persuaded by this loyalty to make
him his first appointee to the Supreme
Court. Black began his long tenure on
the Court amidst enormous controversy be-
cause the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published
a series of articles revealing his mem-
bership in the Ku Klux Klan during the
mid-twenties. In a speech broadcast by ra-
dio to an estimated forty million
listeners (and which H. L. Mencken thought com-
parable to the Gettysburg Address in its
nobility) Black denied that he was racially
or religiously intolerant, but admitted
to his early Klan connections without ever
explaining why they existed.
Nevertheless, public outrage eventually faded and
Black's hooded past would remain, in
Newman's words, his "classical skeleton in
the closet" (p. 96).
No doubt Black's most enduring legacy
will be his constitutional philosophy
and, indeed, during the second half of
his career on the bench he was widely ac-
112 OHIO HISTORY
knowledged as the intellectual leader of
the Warren Court (1953-1969). He as-
sumed the primacy of the First Amendment
and insisted that its protection of free
speech was absolute. Justices, he
believed, ought to be bound by the original in-
tent of the Constitution's framers and
should therefore interpret their words in a
literal fashion. Black's reading of the
due process clause in the Fourteenth
Amendment convinced him that its authors
meant the Bill of Rights to apply to
the states.
For a detailed and extended analysis of
these and other aspects of Black's ju-
risprudence it is best to turn to
specialized studies such as James J. Magee's mar-
velous Mr. Justice Black: Absolutist
on the Court (1980). However, in his role as
biographer, Newman has sought to place
Black's thought in the context of his
private and public life, and he has
succeeded admirably. We can see the justice's
ideas develop through a chronological
account of his numerous Court opinions,
and his distinctive cast of mind
clarified even further through Newman's retelling
of the famous ideological feud between
Black and Felix Frankfurter.
There are numerous times within this
book when Newman is quite critical of
Justice Black. For example, he regards
Black's understanding of American history
to be ultimately self-serving. And,
except for his eloquent defense of a free press
in the 1971 Pentagon Papers case,
Newman argues that Black's last several years
on the bench were marred by an outlook
that became disturbingly conservative and
behavior that can only be described as
"bizarre" (p. 595). But framing the text are
a prologue in which Newman rather effusively
praises Black and labels him a
"great man" whose
accomplishments rank him with Franklin D. Roosevelt and
Martin Luther King, Jr., and an epilogue
(entitled "Of Hugo and Me") where he ad-
mits that Black became an
"obsession" with him. It is unfortunate, then, that de-
spite the undeniable contribution he has
made to our knowledge of Hugo Black and
his times, one leaves this biography
wondering whether Newman has maintained a
sufficient detachment from his subject.
Bethany College Bruce R. Kahler
Government, Politics, And Public
Policy In Ohio. Edited by Carl
Lieberman.
(Akron, Ohio: Midwest Press
Incorporated, 1995. xii + 277p.; tables, notes,
index. $44.95 cloth; $24.95 paper.)
This very useful volume provides a
selection of essays on contemporary Ohio
politics and government policy. It could
perhaps be described as a handy reference
for those with a need to have knowledge
about government in contemporary Ohio.
The first section of the book
concentrates on the political "Environment." Here
the reader can find a brief overview of
Ohio constitutional history and recent eco-
nomic and demographic statistics about
Ohio. This section of the book also in-
cludes a useful summary of recent
political trends in Ohio. Like other East North
Central states, Ohio is a two-party
state with a large electoral vote, so politics
there has been highly competitive in the
recent past (as well as the more distant
past).
Section II focuses on the pressures for
government action. It includes a chapter
which analyzes the results of public
opinion polling in Ohio to identify some of
the basic attitudes about government and
government policy, and another substan-
tial chapter concentrates on the role
played by lobbyists and other interest groups
in Ohio politics. This chapter argues
that members of the state legislature gener-
Book Reviews
113
ally view lobbyists favorably since
lobbyists often provide very useful informa-
tion on issues before the legislature.
It also notes that the initiative and the refer-
endum, two reforms highly touted in the
Progressive era as a way to prevent pow-
erful interest groups from dominating
legislatures, have in fact often become ef-
fective procedures by which powerful
interest groups achieve their policy objec-
tives. Section II also includes a
chapter devoted to the political parties, the legal
structure regulating the parties,
valuable information on Ohio Democratic and
Republican party finances and a
discussion of some of the ways that state laws in
Ohio discriminate against minor parties,
a practice found in most of the United
States.
In Section III the book examines the
Ohio legislature by delineating the major
characteristics of its members and
presenting important information about them
such as: why they chose to serve, their
previous political experience, ideology,
and the outline of party leadership. It
also discusses the legislative committee
structure and a variety of other
important topics relative to the state legislature.
This section also provides a chapter on
the office of governor and a discussion of
the administrations of Governors Richard
Celeste and George Voinovich.
Section IV includes essays on public
policy in Ohio. The first chapter is a pre-
sentation of "a holistic and integrative-based
approach to policy planning." A
second essays examines policy toward
public higher education in Ohio. It points
out that until the 1960s higher
education policy in Ohio originated at the univer-
sity level, but in Ohio, as in many
other states, legislatures have gradually in-
creased their control. In 1963 the Ohio
legislature established the Ohio Board of
Regents with a responsibility to devise
a master plan for the state and make bud-
getary recommendations for the entire
public higher educational system. Another
major chapter focuses on Ohio policy on
crime. This chapter provides the number
of reported crimes and the crime rate in
Ohio (which declined, 1977 to 1991). It
also includes data on drug abuse,
juvenile crime, number of inmates in Ohio pris-
ons and the rate of incarcerations per
100,000 inhabitants (which increased, 1982
to 1992).
Those who are well informed about Ohio
government and politics may find at
least some of the portions of this book
rather elementary, but on the whole it is a
worthy effort. It provides a substantial
body of useful data on Ohio and can be rec-
ommended as a brief handbook of Ohio
government.
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale Howard W. Allen
Letters to Delegates to Congress,
1774-1789. Volume 21: October 1,
1783-
October 31, 1784. Edited
by Paul H. Smith and Ronald M. Gephart.
(Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress,
1994. xxxi + 861p.; illustrations, ed-
itorial method and apparatus, chronology
of congress, list of delegates to
congress, notes, index. $41.00.)
During the time-frame covered by this
latest hefty installment of this ongoing
and important series, the Treaty of
Paris acknowledging the independence of the
United States is ratified. Since the
whole goal of the American Revolution had
been to somehow transform independence
declared from the mother country into
independence acknowledged by the
mother country, one might initially think that
a strong case could now be made that the
Americans had at last "arrived." But as
practically every delegate to Congress
understood only too well, nothing could
114 OHIO HISTORY
have been farther from the truth.
Perhaps we should not be surprised. After all,
even weighty matters like declaring
independence, waging wars, and establishing
new nations are all eminently human
enterprises; and we humans seem to have
great difficulty at arriving at
meaningful, satisfying, or final destinations. That
literary lioness Gertrude Stein once
commented cleverly and artfully upon the
whole phenomenon of ever really
"getting there." The problem, said she, is that
one no more than gets "there"
before one realizes that "there's no there there."
Clearly, there's no "there"
here, not in these thirteen troubled and troubling
months running from October 1, 1783,
through October 31, 1784. For starters,
the years-old problem of the delegates'
attendance (or, better put, their too fre-
quent non-attendance) continues
unabated. Just keeping enough state delegations
together to constitute a quorum proves
to be exasperatingly difficult. This particu-
lar volume, like several of its
predecessors, contains numerous letters from the
president of Congress to the truant
states. The addressees may vary, but the mes-
sage is invariably the same: Please send
delegates and as soon as possible! There
is the fear that not enough delegates
can be assembled even to ratify the peace
treaty itself before the deadline for
ratification expires.
Even after the quorum is met and the
treaty ratified, vexatious problems persist.
Clearly, there is in 1783 and 1784 what
this reviewer has elsewhere referred to as
the problem of "the two Europes:
the-Europe-over-there and the-Europe-over-
here." The Europe-over-there may or
may not enter into treaties of amity and
commerce, but without such
regularization of trade the fragile American economy
has precious little chance of recovering
from wartime disruptions and reverses.
The-Europe-over-here borders (and
potentially threatens) the new nation on the
north, the west, and the south. Then there
are the persistent money questions-
the national debt, the fiscal crisis,
woefully insufficient revenue-ticking like so
many time-bombs. Perhaps an impost could
help raise some of the necessary
money, but it is at best controversial
and thought by some to be downright uncon-
stitutional. Perhaps the sale of western
lands could also help ameliorate the situa-
tion. Perhaps, perhaps. Now that
Virginia has relinquished her expansive claims
to be transmontane region, there are
also questions having to do with the political
organization of that vast territory.
Finding a permanent seat for the Congress is
still so controversial that it remains
unresolved. The problems go on and on and
on.
There is no principle of inevitability
guaranteeing that any of these problems
will be quickly or neatly resolved. Only
time will tell. As for now, the problems
seem to be sufficiently numerous and
sufficiently grave as to lure Thomas
Jefferson off his beloved little
mountain and back into Congress. For Jefferson
this constitutes a significant change of
mind; for, after his depressingly unhappy
experience as governor of Virginia from
1779 to 1781, he had sworn off politics
forever. At one point in this volume,
Jefferson and his good friend James
Madison are engaged in a kind of role
reversal as they continue what the late
Adrienne Koch called their "great
collaboration." For now it is Jefferson who is in
Congress and Madison who is not, and
thus it is Jefferson who must now keep
Madison well informed as to what is (and
is not) going on. As the index clearly
indicates, Jefferson's role in this
twenty-first act of this continuing saga is very
great, but this stint of his as a
legislator will be fairly brief. For Jefferson will
soon be in Europe as an American
minister plenipotentiary trying to assist John
Adams and Benjamin Franklin in their
efforts to secure those all-important trade
treaties.
Book Reviews 115
Little children, off on some journey
with their parents, often inquire: "Are we
there yet?" In these years of our
Lord 1783 and 1784, the United States is a little
child. The youthful nation has set off
on an arduous republican course, and obvi-
ously she is not "there" yet.
There is much, much more for the Jeffersons and
Madisons of the world to do. Like every
volume in this series, this one brings to-
gether in one place invaluable resources
relating to the meager, uncertain begin-
nings of the greatest nation that ever
was. Every volume contains its own inher-
ent drama. Every volume both informs us
and whets our appetite for more. And all
the volumes together are adding up to a
tale more complicated and engrossing than
any mere work of fiction could ever be.
Stories this good and stories this impor-
tant simply cannot be made up.
Marquette University Robert
P. Hay