Book Reviews
Ohio in the American Revolution: A
Conference to Commemorate the 200th
Anniversary of the Ft. Gower
Resolves. Edited by Thomas H. Smith.
Volume
I of The Ohio American Revolution
Bicentennial Conference Series.
(Columbus: The Ohio Historical Society,
1976. 34p.; illustrations. $2.00.)
Though not one of the thirteen original
colonies, the Ohio country did play a
role in the revolutionary events that
the American people have been
commemorating during the bicentennial.
During the decade before war broke
out, the Ohio-Kentucky region was the
chief dream of seaboard land
speculators, a cause of considerable
inter-colonial rivalry, and a matter of
concern to every British minister from
Grenville to North. Though not a general
cause of colonial discontent, British
policy on the colonial West did irritate some
very influential Pennsylvania and
Virginia politicians. During the war, Ohio lay
athwart the main routes between the
British post at Detroit and the American
position at Fort Pitt. Though the essay by Dr. Otis
Rice touches upon Ohio as a
battlefield during the War for
Independence, this pamphlet, Ohio in the
American Revolution, is largely limited to that chapter in land speculation
known as Lord Dunmore's War against the
Shawnee Indians in 1774. Several
things happened during that short war:
an inconclusive battle between the
Shawnee and the southern wing of
Dunmore's force fought at Point Pleasant on
October 10, 1774; Dunmore's invasion of
the Scioto country and his imposition
of the Treaty of Camp Charlotte upon the
Shawnees; the building of a rude
fortification, Fort Gower, at the mouth
of the Hocking River; and the drafting of
the Fort Gower Resolves by a group of
Dunmore's officers. On November 24,
1974, the Ohio American Revolution
Bicentennial Commission sponsored a
scholarly conference to investigate the
significance of these events. This
pamphlet prints the six papers read at
Ohio University, site of the conference,
and a brief introduction by the editor.
Rice's paper provides a summary of the
competing interests of Pennsylvania
and Virginia speculators in the Ohio
country, as well as a narrative of the warfare
in that region. The British
superintendents of Indian affairs had negotiated
treaties with the Cherokees and the Six
Nations, but not with the Shawnee who
considered the Scioto area as homeland
and Kentucky as hunting ground. Rice
suggests that Dunmore's aim was to
secure for Virginia the lands south of the
Ohio River. But Fort Pitt was his point
of departure, and much of his own
campaign was in Ohio-facts that further
alarmed Pennsylvania jealousies. In a
sketch of Dunmore himself, John W. Shy
describes a temperamental, violent,
flamboyant, greedy governor who had been
disliked in New York and shortly
was to be cordially hated in Virginia.
Though his campaign may have been
motivated partly by his desire to carve
out a personal domain in the West, it was
supported by the whole colony, including
such prominent speculators as George
Washington. These and most of the other
papers in this volume say little of the
hapless Indians who stood in the path of
this remorseless land-hunger of the
colonists. James O'Donnell provides a
corrective to this in his paper, "The
Native American Crisis in the Ohio
Country, 1774-1783." He outlines the
ruthless cheating of the Indian by
traders, and suggests that many whites on the
frontier favored the wiping out of
Indian tribes. The alternative to warfare was
Book Reviews
57
"Christianization," which
meant cultural suicide and political subservience for
native Americans. O'Donnell suggests
that much of the killing on the frontier
during the Revolution should be
considered murder, rather than warfare.
The other three papers delivered at the
conference deal with Fort Gower and
the Resolves adopted there on November
5, 1774. Randall L. Buchman reports
on the archaeological attempt to locate
the precise site of Fort Gower. Digs at
several sites near the confluence of the
Hocking and Ohio rivers were not
conclusive, though an impression was
uncovered that might have been a
stockade wall. Robert Boehm narrates the
course of the expedition from Fort
Pitt to the Hocking River, and discusses the factors
involved in deciding to build
Fort Gower and the selection of the
site. It seems clear that the fort was very
small, perhaps never completed, and of
no importance in the warfare of the
period. John E. Robbins' paper is on the Fort Gower
Resolves, which were
adopted by a group of Dunmore's officers
at Fort Gower after their successful
expedition against the Shawnee. Those
associated with the militia, and who may
have participated in meetings at Fort
Gower, include Col. Adam Stephen, Maj.
Angus McDonald, George Rogers Clark,
Daniel Morgan, Cornstalk, Michael
Cresap, Simon Kenton, Simon Girty,
Daniel Boone, and William Crawford,
who was George Washington's surveyor in
the West. The resolves express
allegiance to the King, respect for Lord
Dunmore, and a determination to defend
American liberty. One sentence notes
that, "It is possible, from the groundless
reports of designing men, that our
countrymen may be jealous of the use such a
body would make of arms in their hands
at this critical junction." This provides a
clue to the purpose of the
resolves-reassurance of fellow Virginians, who might
be concerned about an independent force
under the command of a royal
governor, and of Pennsylvanians, who
might fear a Virginia force on the
Pennsylvania frontier. Though printed in
some eastern newspapers, the resolves
had little impact on the developing
revolutionary movement. But if Fort Gower
and the Resolves have little significance,
Dunmore's War is an important
chapter in the history of western
speculation, which is the central theme in early
Ohio history. This bicentennial pamphlet
does much to illuminate this subject.
Cleveland State University John Cary
The French Navy and American
Independence: A Study of Arms and
Diplomacy, 1774-1787. By Jonathan R. Dull. (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1975. xv + 437p.;
maps, notes, appendices, bibliography,
index. $20.00.)
American diplomatic historians usually
rely on the works of such stellar
scholars as Samuel F. Bemis, Richard B.
Morris, E. S. Corwin, Richard W. Van
Alstyne, and William C. Stinchcombe to
understand the development of
diplomatic negotiations during the war
of the American Revolution. In this book
Professor Dull argues that the accounts
provided by these scholars are too
narrowly conceived, biased, and
sometimes wrong-headed.
Dull believes that a truly mature view
of the war's diplomacy can be grasped
only through a sound understanding of
the interaction of military preparation
and strategy, of the evolving policies
and diplomatic objectives of France,
Spain, and England, and of the thinking
of major statesmen such as Vergennes
and Shelburne. Dull's particular focus
is on the needs and development of the
58 OHIO HISTORY
French navy. But he uses the French navy
as a device to explore tensions within
the French government over social
policy, and to demonstrate how the
questions of logistics and military
strategy influenced the course of wartime
diplomacy. In this latter emphasis he
writes in the tradition of Piers Mackesy.
Dull begins his story with the accession
of Louis XVI in 1774 and
concludes with the death of the Count de
Vergennes in 1787. Vergennes
sometimes seems the hero of this story,
but if so he is a flawed one because he
failed to understand the possible
implications of adding huge wartime
expenditures to France's already
enormous indebtedness. His diplomatic
objectives were traditional, and by
nature he was a cautious man. Nevertheless,
as Dull shows, Vergennes ultimately
helped to bring social revolution to France
by involving her in the costly American
Revolutionary War. Dull also argues
that Vergennes suffered from lack of
imagination in not seeing that cooperation
with Britain was perhaps France's best
hope to achieve commercial prosperity
and to realize her Continental
objectives.
In this exceedingly well-researched
monograph, the author has successfully
integrated military, diplomatic, and
social history. Students of American history
will especially profit by reading this
broad-gauged study. Washington, Jay,
Adams, and Franklin are seen only as
minor background personalities in the
evolving Revolutionary War. Instead,
such names as Vergennes, Rayneval,
Sartine, Aranda, Floridablanca,
Shelburne, and D'Estaing occupy center stage
in the military and diplomatic drama
that resulted in independence for the
fortunate Americans.
Finally, those who like their history
spiced by an author's willingness to
evaluate critically the work of the
historical actors, and fellow historians as well,
will welcome Professor Dull's monograph.
The Ohio State University Marvin R. Zahniser
The Book of Abigail and John:
Selected Letters of the Adams Family, 1762-1784.
Edited by L. H. Butterfield, Marc
Friedlander, and Mary-Jo Kline.
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1975. ix + 41lp.; illustrations, index.
$15.00.)
This widely acclaimed edition of letters
has set in motion more popular
projects and stimulated more interest
outside the profession than any single
primary source since Franklin's Autobiography.
The correspondence of John
and Abigail Adams was edited for this
book which was then transformed into a
television script of the "Adams
Chronicles," which in its own turn was further
transfigured into an educational
"package" for sale to colleges, universities, and
high schools. One result of such
ballyhoo is that without reading the letters
everyone seems to know already what may
be found in the Adams's
correspondence.
This reviewer has not seen the
television series, but it is not too difficult to
imagine why one was created. John and
Abigail Adams emerge a most attractive
couple who genuinely loved one another
and made continual sacrifices of
domestic felicity in the name of
American independence. As Abigail put it in
1777, "Tis almost 14 years since we
were united, but not more than half that time
have we had the happiness of living
together" (p. 186). There were still more
years of separation to come. The letters
were all they had of one another during
Book Reviews
59
the revolution and they still carry
great emotional power.
This is the key to their appeal: one
actually can catch a living empathy for the
revolutionary past. Abigail was
intelligent, full of affection, and startlingly
liberated. John comes surprisingly and
even attractively to life, fretting about his
health, his abondoned family, reporting
on French wines, complaining about the
more popular Franklin, offering weighty
advice on a wide range of subjects, and
even posing an occasionally trivial
question, "Pray how does your Asparagus
perform? &c." (p.174). Their
love and mutual respect remain strong
throughout the letters, surviving
occasional spats and the subsequent remorse.
To be entirely fair, however, there is
much missing from these letters, at least
for the professional historian. John
Adams explains the problem in an
oft-repeated complaint that "Indeed
I don't choose to indulge much
Speculation, lest a Letter miscarry, and
free Sentiments upon public Affairs
intercepted, from me, might do much
hurt" (p. 187). Consequently, readers are
limited to social and cultural
information for the most part and long for more data
on his embassies to France, the
Netherlands, and England. Abigail is forced into
an equal discretion, hounded by local
gossip, passing British armies, and
political intrigues in Massachusetts.
Even the linens which John sent to her for
resale in paying taxes are obliquely
mentioned as "small Presents . in
the
family Way" (p.260).
The specialist in American History will
want this attractive edition for many of
the obscure clues it contains about
behind-the-scenes machinations. College
students should read a sampling of the
letters to personalize historical
abstractions. The general public will
probably rest content with what the media
have done with them. What more the media
can do with them remains to be seen.
Kent State University W. Howland Kenney
Sarah Winnemucca: Most Extraordinary
Woman of the Paiute Nation. By
Katherine Gehm. (Phoenix: O'Sullivan,
Woodside & Company, 1975. x +
196p.; illustrations, bibliography.
$8.95.)
The term "most extraordinary
woman" may sound exaggerated but it rings
true for the Paiute woman, Sarah
Winnemucca, the subject of Katherine
Gehm's biography. Sarah was born during
the early 1840s near Humboldt
Sink in what is now northwestern Nevada
and given the Indian name
Thocmetony, meaning "shell
flower." While living with the family of a stage
coach agent, Sarah and her sister
assumed English names.
From an early age, Sarah evinced more
interest and understanding of white
people's institutions and culture than
most of the Indians. Her grandfather,
Winnemucca I, had served as a guide for
Captain John C. Fremont in
1845-1846 and conveyed to his favorite
granddaughter admiration for his
"white brothers' " way of
life. As a child of eight or nine, Sarah lived for a
year in California with a group of
Paiutes who were employed by a rancher
and later attended briefly a convent
school in San Jose.
Gehm describes how quickly the influx of
miners and settlers into western
Nevada caused changes in the life of the
Paiute Nation, and how the
inevitable clashes brought about the
establishment of a Paiute Reservation at
60 OHIO HISTORY
Pyramid Lake. Sarah, whose intelligence
and natural gift as a linguist had
been improved through her contacts with settlers in
Nevada and the Spanish
in California and her meagre education, tried to
intervene when government
agents exploited her people. Later a
number of Paiutes moved to the vicinity
of Fort McDermit in northeastern Nevada to avoid
involvement in Indian
wars and Sarah became a post interpreter.
Eventually the Paiutes were transferred
to the Malheur agency in eastern
Oregon where they were contented and
prosperous as long as Sam Parrish,
the only Indian agent Sarah ever really
trusted, was in charge. Sarah served
as an interpreter there and also
assisted at the agency school.
During the administration of President
Grant, the Department of Interior
tried to improve the quality of
reservation officers by appointing persons
approved by missionary boards. Gehm
explains that Parrish did not measure
up to the Board's religious standards
and was soon replaced by a storekeeper,
more acceptable to the Board but less
interested in the welfare of the Indians.
Sarah's job at the agency was terminated
when she wrote to Washington
describing the new agent's abuse of the
Indians and appropriation of their
supplies.
The experiences of Sarah and her people
with Indian agents convinced
them that control by the military was
preferable to agents of the Bureau of
Indian Affairs. As Sarah explained in
her autobiography, Life Among the
Paiutes: Their Wrongs and Claims (1883), "The army has no temptation to
make money . . . and the Indians
understand [army] law and discipline"
(p.178). She also believed there would
be no Indian wars if the Indians
instead of the whites were protected by
the army.
When the Bannock War broke out in 1878,
Sarah offered her services to the
army as a guide, scout, and interpreter.
Gehm's account of Sarah's ride of
200 miles in two days through rough and
wooded country to rescue her father
and some of his followers from the
Bannocks reads like a Hollywood
scenario. Later Chief Winnemucca II
expressed his pride in his daughter's
accomplishments by signifying that
hereafter the Paiutes would look upon
Sarah as a chieftain, a singular honor
for a woman.
Following the Bannock War, orders came
from Washington to send the
Paiutes, even those who had not
participated in the struggle, to Yakima
Reservation, across the Columbia River.
Sarah's protests to Washington
concerning the misery of the Paiutes at
Yakima went unanswered and finally,
at the suggestion and help of General O.
O. Howard, she took her story of
Paiute oppression to the people in San
Francisco. Gehm writes that "her
lectures started a wave of sympathy for
Indians . . . which government
officials could not ignore"
(p.145). At length a telegram arrived inviting
Sarah, her father, and her brother,
Natchez, to visit Washington in company
with a special government agent.
Washington reporters expected to interview
Sarah but she abided by the
government's request not to lecture or
talk to reporters. About all the
reporters could write was that the
Indians were vaccinated as soon as they
arrived, Sarah was a "remarkably
intelligent looking woman," and she
thought Secretary of the Interior Carl
Schurz was very kind (Washington
Post, Jan. 20, 22, 26, 1880).
Sarah was permitted to describe the
Paiutes' plight to Secretary Schurz
Book Reviews
61
who promised to transfer peaceful
Paiutes to the Malheur area; his orders
were not followed. Sarah also had a
brief interview with President Hayes at
the White House where she met Mrs. Hayes
and several other women,
including Elizabeth Palmer Peabody who
indicated sympathy for Sarah's
cause.
In the fall of 1880, when President and
Mrs. Hayes traveled through the
West and visited Fort Vancouver on the
Columbia River, Sarah had an
opportunity to talk to them at greater
length. Gehm explains that Mrs. Hayes
was "deeply touched" and the
President said he "would see about it" but no
immediate help came to the Paiutes from
Washington (p.162).
Discouraged, Sarah wrote to Elizabeth
Peabody who arranged for her to
speak throughout the East. Miss
Peabody's sister, Mary Mann, wife of
Horace Mann, encouraged Sarah to write Life
Among the Paiutes. Mrs. Mann,
who edited the book, noted in the
preface that it was the "first outbreak of
the American Indian in human literature
... it is of importance to hear what
only an Indian and an Indian woman can
tell" (preface, n.p.).
Mary Mann also helped Sarah organize and
prepare a petition to Congress
asking for a restoration of the Paiutes
to the Malheur Reservation. Congress
passed the bill in 1884 but President
Arthur's Secretary of the Interior failed
to implement it. Eventually most of the
Paiutes were allowed to drift away
from the Yakima Reservation and to
settle wherever they could find
sustenance.
With Miss Peabody's help, Sarah
organized an Indian school at Lovelock,
Nevada, but left there after the death
of her second husband, a former army
lieutenant (she had divorced her first
husband earlier, also an army
lieutenant). Sarah died at her sister's
home in Montana in 1891.
Gehm terminates the story at this point,
leaving the reader with a feeling of
sadness and regret that Sarah did not
secure a permanent home for her people
in her lifetime. But Sarah lived an
exciting and active life and as for all
advocates of change there was joy in the
struggle.
Elinor Richey has called the Paiutes
probably the "most peacefully
contentious Indians in the world."
Their court battles have led to the
recovery of land around Pyramid Lake and
have prevented excessive
diminution of the lake's water. Sarah
Winnemucca "bequeathed them their
tradition of courage without
bloodshed" (Eminent Women of the West, 1975,
pp. 150-51).
Unfortunately in her effort to write for
the general public, Gehm produced
a book at too juvenile a level. The
format of the book is attractive but it is
inconvenient to use a frontispiece map
that does not include Pyramid Lake.
At times extensive use of dialogue
hinders the flow of the narrative and there
are no footnotes or index. Nevertheless,
Katherine Gehm tells an interesting
and historically correct story. The book
serves as an introduction to a study
of Sarah and the Paiute Nation and
provides some information about the
impact of Indian women upon history.
Gehm's publication is endorsed by the
Nevada American Revolution
Bicentennial Commission. A reissue of an
abridged version of Sarah's book,
Life Among the Paiutes, with its marvelous appendix, would be a fitting project
62 OHIO HISTORY
for the Nevada Commission. For a more
comprehensive treatment of Indian
policies, read Wilcomb E. Washburn's The
Indian in America (1975).
Findlay College Emily
Geer
The Philadelphia Riots of 1844: A
Study of Ethnic Conflict. By Michael
Feldberg. (Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 1975. xi + 209p.; notes,
bibliography, index. $14.50.)
Michael Feldberg's The Philadelphia
Riots of 1844 is a useful contribution
to the scholarly literature on
immigration and ethnicity, nativism, mob
violence, and urbanization. The riots
which ravaged the Kensington area of
Philadelphia in May, 1844, and the
Southwark district two months later pitted
native American Protestants against
immigrant Irish Catholics and
subsequently involved the military as
well, resulting in at least thirty deaths
and considerable property damage,
including the gutting of two Catholic
churches. Feldberg argues that broad
social and economic tensions rather
than simple religious prejudice lay at
the heart of the trouble. In the years
prior to the riots, Philadelphia's
traditional living and working patterns were
disrupted severely by industrialization
and rapid population growth. The
situation was complicated by the fact
that expanding industry relied
increasingly on unskilled, cheaply paid
Irish Catholic immigrant laborers who
not only threatened the livelihood of
many skilled artisans but also competed
with them for living space and brought
cultural baggage which differed
markedly from American Protestant
values. Seeking to reverse their decline
in status and to find a scapegoat for
the disruptions threatening their ordered
lives, a number of Philadelphians,
especially marginal members of the
professions, petit bourgeois
shopkeepers, artisans, apprentices, and
evangelical ministers, rallied to
destroy what they saw as a foreign conspiracy
against American institutions and
values. Collective violence, Feldberg
argues, was a traditional method by
which Philadelphians settled their
disputes, and, unfortunately for the
peace of the city, the Irish Catholic
laborers were equally willing to protect
their own interests with force.
In addition to viewing the riots within
this broad, multi-causational context,
Feldberg also suggests their importance
in stimulating the modernization of
Philadelphia's political and public
security institutions. Shocked by the
extensive property damage and carnage of
the riots, most of the city's elite
now firmly rejected both mob violence
and the city's traditional reliance on
citizen voluntarism to control it.
Within a few years, Philadelphia's political
subdivisions were consolidated and its
police force professionalized.
Feldberg's book is for the most part
interesting, well-written, clear, and
convincing. But it does possess a few
limitations. Since most of his evidence,
of necessity according to the author,
comes from newspapers and a few tracts
and pamphlets, many of his statements
concerning the mass of nativists,
especially the unorganized young
apprentices who led most of the violence,
are speculative. The book's analytical
framework, though effectively applied
to the Philadelphia outbursts, is not
innovative. As Feldman acknowledges,
Book Reviews
63
much of his case study rests on
theoretical underpinings provided by such
scholars as E. Digby Baltzell, David
Brion Davis, David Montgomery,
George Rude, and Sam Bass Warner, Jr.,
and, perhaps because the book is
an outgrowth of his doctoral
dissertation, the text occasionally is
overburdened with historiography which
more appropriately belongs in the
endnotes. Also, one looks for more
information on the non-Catholic,
non-Irish immigrants who joined the
nativist crusade and on the possible role
of women who, though often conspicuously
involved in riots in other
nineteenth-century American cities, were
apparently not prominent in
Philadelphia. Nevertheless, I enjoyed
reading The Philadelphia Riots of 1844.
It is an example of how well-done local
history can illuminate such broad
national and even international forces
as ethnicity, nativism, and collective
violence in modernizing cities.
Kent State University Henry B. Leonard
Slavery and the Numbers Game: A
Critique of Time on the Cross. By
Herbert G.
Gutman. (Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1975. xiv + 183p.; notes, index.
$7.95.)
In his full-length critique of Time
on the Cross, historian Herbert Gutman
finds fault with Robert Fogel and
Stanley Engerman's controversial conclusion
that enslaved Afro-Americans worked hard
for their masters because they had
internalized the "Protestant work
ethic." Fogel and Engerman built this
conclusion upon bones taken from a
classical socialization model and fleshed it
out with evidence that supposedly
showed, among other things, that slave
families were stable, that negative
labor incentives such as the practice of
whipping were unimportant in the
plantation economy, and that slaves had good
opportunities to move upward within the
slave occupational structure through
hard work. By carefully examining the
social theory and methods Fogel and
Engerman utilized to interpret their data,
and by digging into that data itself,
Gutman convinces the reader that this
"Protestant ethic" position was built out
of incomplete and irrelevant evidence,
meaningless statistical manipulations,
and misreadings of the works of other
scholars.
Slavery and the Numbers Game is an important work. Time on the Cross
initially received good reviews because
historians who were not familiar with
cliometric techniques and
nineteenth-century data bases were "taken in" by
Fogel and Engerman's flashy use of
cliometric catch words. When important
weaknesses in that book finally
appeared, the reaction against both treatise and
authors often approached the level of
intemperance, and even generated an
attack on the utility of the
"new" social history in some quarters. This reaction,
although understandable, has no place in
the world of scholarship. By
demonstrating that a lone historian can
adequately criticize a large scale,
cliometrically-oriented study on its own
ground, Gutman shows that there are
better ways to deal with new
methodologies than by a resort to luddism.
Slavery and the Numbers Game is written in a lively, combative way
reminiscent of David Fischer's Historians'
Fallacies. Gutman fits useful lessons
on how not to use quantifiable
data among telling blows against his targets. In
arguing, for example, that Fogel and
Engerman inappropriately utilized the
64 OHIO HISTORY
"mean" as a statistical hook
upon which to hang a faulty argument about
whippings, Gutman hangs both the fault
and the authors' abilities upon the hook,
and delivers a classical sermon on the
misuse of simple statistics at the same time
(pp. 17-34). In another place, Gutman's
discussion of the misuses of a privately
made, unreliable 1848 census of
Charleston, South Carolina, is accompanied by
a valuable discussion of
nineteenth-century censuses in general (pp.44-61).
The book is not flawless. Gutman
repeatedly castigates Fogel and Engerman
for citing evidence not readily available to the
reader, then commits the same
kind of error by citing
"forthcoming" work, in footnotes 173 and 211 on pages
130 and 147, respectively. Similarly,
numerous admonitions against the
incorrect use of quantifiable data for
assertive purposes are followed by an
inadequate two-case attack on Fogel and
Engerman's summary data dealing with
slave sexual morality (footnote 214,
p.132).
Minor shortcomings aside, however, this
is a good, solid, scholarly work. The
book deserves to be read by historians
and thoughtful lay readers alike.
State Universtiy of New York Irwin Flack
College at Oswego
Beyond the Civil War Synthesis:
Political Essays of the Civil War Era. Edited
by
Robert P. Swierenga. (Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, 1975. xx + 348p.; notes,
index. $13.50.)
Beyond the Civil War Synthesis is a selection of twenty essays first published
in Civil War History between 1964
and 1975. Edited by Robert P. Swierenga, the
volume is divided into five main parts:
historiography, grass roots politics, an
examination of Congressional roll-call
votes, "the Ethnoreligious Dimension," and
anti-slavery political ideology.
In Part I the reader discovers that Joel
H. Sibley was responsible for the term
"Civil War synthesis." He
contended that historians overemphasized sectional
patterns before the Civil War, reading
back into antebellum history something
that was not so clear at the time-the
traditional sectional approach (the Civil
War synthesis). Sibley urged historians
to emerge from that misconception and
"engage in more systematic and
complete analyses" of the voting and
motivation of political leaders. Eric
Foner defended the synthesis; Richard O.
Curry sought a consensus approach
between the "qualitative and quantitative"
methods; and Stephen B. Oates deplored
presentist influences on the writing of
history.
Part II reflected variations of
quantitative study that echo revisionist
themes, the sort of thing that Sibley
looked for in history. Articles by David E.
Meerse, Swierenga, Lawrence N. Powell,
Michael Les Benedict, and Phyllis
Frances Field explored elections and
conventions from the 1840s through the
1860s. They demonstrated the importance
of local, rather than national, issues in
electoral behavior. Leonard Tabachnik,
Richard Jensen, and August Meier
pointed out in Part IV discrimination
against foreign-born, religion, and blacks in
political patronage.
Considering the anti-slavery crusade in
Part V, Larry Gara contended that the
threat of national control by
"slave power" leaders was more important than the
moral beliefs of anti-slavery forces.
Bertram Wyatt-Brown saw the role of the
Garrisonians as nonviolent reform
leaders who effectively propagandized their
Book Reviews
65
moral sentiments across the North.
Wyatt-Brown's brilliant student, James B.
Stewart, took issue with Gara and argued
in favor of moral suasion's
effectiveness in the hands of
hard-hitting Garrisonians.
To sum up in this very oversimplified
way is to do great injustice to those who
contributed to this volume. But the
purpose of the volume, to quote Swierenga,
is to "show the 'pay-off of the New
History." By New History, the editor
means "the social scientific
reorientation" of history, which he sees as
reflecting a "fundamental"
change in "American political studies in the 1960s."
As a result, "readers will
find" in the volume "a liberal sprinkling of tables of
figures and cross tabulations, Guttman
'scales,' and social statistical
measures." Swierenga observed that
even more important "is the fact that
social theory is reflected in both the
narrative and the data manipulation."
The book, then, is an argument that
history as a social science has arrived, and
that history as a humanity is in
retreat. It would do, though, to remember that
history is both. G. R. Elton wrote some
years ago that "those who preach the
virtues of statistical, sociological, or
other 'scientific' methods are only
reviving, after an interval so short as
not quite to excuse their ignorance of the
fact, the weary argument whether history
is an art or science." We may quarrel
with the idea that the "New
History" is in fact new. Even so, this is not to deny
the value of this collection. It is a
useful volume that illustrates the variations in
social science technique as applied to
the Civil War era.
The University of Akron Robert H. Jones
John Hunt Morgan and His Raiders. By Edison H. Thomas. (Lexington: The
University Press of Kentucky, 1975. xiv
+ 120p.; illustrations, bibliography.
$3.95.)
This slim volume is yet another
narrative of the adventures of a noted
Confederate cavalryman. After a summary
account of his prewar career, it tells
of his organization of Kentucky troops,
his raids deep behind Union lines, and
his death. Of particular interest to
Ohioans are the brief reference to Morgan's
threat to Cincinnati in 1862, which
brought the "Squirrel Hunters" to the
rescue, and the more lengthy treatment
of the "Big Raid" of 1863 into Indiana
and Ohio. While the account of Morgan's
invasion, capture, imprisonment at the
Ohio Penitentiary, and escape is
traditionally romantic, the author does not
gloss over the raiders' "pillaging
and looting"-indeed, their "outright
thievery."
It would be unfair to expect significant
original contributions to knowledge
from a popularly-written, short history
published as part of the Kentucky
Bicentennial Bookshelf. Its author has,
however, added specificity to
generalizations about Morgan's
destruction of Union railroads. Thomas, the
News Bureau Manager for his subject's
principal target, the Louisville and
Nashville Railroad, has drawn upon the
reports of L & N executive Albert Fink
for precise information on Morgan's
obstructions of that line. Additional aids to
students of the period are several good
maps of Morgan's raids and well-selected
illustrations covering the early part of
his Civil War service.
It is as popular history that the book
should be judged and unhappily found
unsatisfying. Its central flaw is its
failure to develop Morgan's personality and
motivation. While generalizing briefly
on these matters, the book does not
66 OHIO HISTORY
present enough evidence to allow its
readers to feel that they understand
Morgan. For instance, anyone aware of
the influence of Mexican War
experiences on Civil War commanders would vainly wish
to read more about
what Morgan actually did in that
struggle and how it affected him. The lack of
sufficient treatment of such questions
is not simply the result of space
limitations. The author finds room for
saccharine sentences about the "new
nobility" of the Bluegrass, for an
irrelevant paragraph on the origin of a tavern's
name, and for a fruitless page of debate
on whether Jefferson Davis really
attended Morgan's wartime wedding. By
omissions at the edges of his canvas,
Thomas could portray more fully his
central figure. He also could shade more
carefully the contrast between the
strengths of the bold raider and the
weaknesses-especially Morgan's lack of
discipline and neglect of elementary
security precautions-which Thomas
suggests but does not evaluate
adequately. Indeed, the author seems
unable in the present work to make up his
mind about Morgan. Having characterized
him as an historic "leader of men,"
Thomas adds, "He may not have
always led them in the right direction, but he
led them." This sentence could as
well be applied to Al Capp's Jubilation T.
Cornpone as to John Hunt Morgan. What
was Morgan really like? A popular
history should explain him more clearly
to the people.
Kent State University Frank L. Byrne
The Civil War in Kentucky. By Lowell H. Harrison. (Lexington: The University
Press of Kentucky, 1975. x + 116p.;
illustrations, notes, bibliographic essay.
$3.95.)
Lowell H. Harrison, professor of history
at Western Kentucky University and
author of numerous Civil War articles,
has provided the reader with state history
at its best. One of the more recent
additions to the Kentucky Bicentennial
Bookshelf, The Civil War in Kentucky is
a concise, scholarly, and balanced
interpretation of a most important
half-decade in Kentucky's history.
Readers should be forewarned that the
subject of the book is "the Civil War in
Kentucky" and not "Kentucky in
the Civil War." To attempt the latter topic
undoubtedly would require a series of
volumes. Limiting the study to the
military and political struggles within
Kentucky's borders, Professor Harrison's
dispassionate account of Union and
Confederate action is a tribute to his
scholarly objectivity. Military history
buffs are well served though because
two-thirds of the text is devoted to a
presentation of that aspect of the struggle.
At the outbreak of the Civil War,
Kentucky was a border state with a unique
policy of neutrality. The legacy of the
war and the aftermath of the
Reconstruction era made a profound
impact on the Commonwealth's postwar
political stance. Professor Harrison
concludes that it was "with considerable
truth that Kentucky joined the
Confederacy after the war was over."
The author has made excellent use of
available printed materials,
manuscripts, articles, and newspapers. A
minor fault with the work is the
absence of an index. Perhaps more detail
could have been provided on military
campaigns in Eastern Kentucky.
All in all, accolades are in order to
The Kentucky Bicentennial Bookshelf for
attempting to celebrate two centuries of
history and culture in the
Commonwealth, rather than simply
focusing on the American Revolution and
Book Reviews
67
the first quarter century of our
nation's history. With the publication of The Civil
War in Kentucky, the Bookshelf has made highly readable history
available at a
reasonable price. Other states would do
well to pattern their Bicentennial
publication programs on Kentucky's
model.
The Ohio Historical Society Frank R. Levstik
Freedmen, Philanthropy, and Fraud: A
History of the Freedman's Savings
Bank. By Carl R. Osthaus. (Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1976. 257p.;
illustrations, tables, appendices,
notes, bibliography, index. $10.95.)
For years historians have struggled to
come to grips with the paradox of
reform in the post-Civil War Reconstruction
era-the mixed idealism and
venality, religion and hypocrisy, which
spawned both the remarkable effort to
establish racial equality in the United
States and the corruption of the 1870s.
Nothing illustrates this paradox better
than the tragic history of the Freedman's
Savings Bank. Established in 1865 to
provide a safe repository for the savings of
newly-freed slaves and to promote thrift
and industry among them, the
institution collapsed in 1874 in a
tangle of fraud and mismanagement. In this
study, Carl R. Osthaus, assistant
professor of history at Oakland University,
chronicles the sorry tale.
Professor Osthaus describes especially
well the amazing development of the
bank into a financial giant, with
branches throughout the South and an imposing
headquarters in Washington, D.C. His
discussion of the bank's depositors is
equally impressive, and readers will be
surprised to learn the extent to which the
Freedman's Savings Bank touched the economic
lives of ordinary freedmen.
But, although Osthaus offers a more
thorough account of the transition from
prudent money management to speculation
and fraud than Walter L. Fleming
offered in his slim The Freedmen's
Savings Bank: A Chapter in the Economic
History of the Negro Race (Chapel Hill, 1927), the only previously published
monographic study of the bank, the
motivations and rationalizations of the
bank's managers remain an enigma. While
Osthaus' book is a very good, concise
study, it should have been more. The
Freedmen's Savings Bank marked the
intersection of American reform, social,
economic, and political institutions; a
study of it should be placed in the
context of the development of those
institutions. Freedmen, Philanthropy,
and Fraud is full of undeveloped
implications for such a fuller
evaluation, but readers will have to infer them for
themselves.
The Ohio State University Michael Les Benedict
The Ohio Black History Guide. Edited by Sara Fuller. (Columbus: The Ohio
Historical Society, 1975. x + 221p.;
$10.00.)
Despite their prominent place in Ohio's
history, blacks have received little
attention from most scholars and
students of Ohio. There is no current history of
blacks in Ohio, and most general
histories of the state slight black contributions.
In light of this deplorable and
long-standing tradition of neglect, The Ohio Black
68 OHIO HISTORY
History Guide represents a much needed contribution. Edited by Sara
Fuller for
The Ohio Historical Society, the book
grows out of a program developed by the
Society to document more fully the
contribution of blacks in Ohio and to provide
new materials for students of Ohio
history. Conceived as "a comprehensive
listing of source materials available
for researchers concerned with any phase of
Ohio Black history," the book was
begun in 1970 and involved a thorough search
of over 200 Ohio institutions which were
likely to hold black materials, as well as
other institutions and secondary
sources. The result is a bibliographical list of a
wide variety of materials which will be
useful to many kinds of users. It is
arranged into five sections-printed
materials, dissertations and theses,
manuscripts, government records, and
audiovisual materials. Each section is, in
turn, divided into subsections according
to the nature of the material presented.
A few suggestions may aid the editors if
ever they decide to update the book.
First, in some sections important
historical items have been omitted. The works
of George W. Williams are conspicuously
absent. Also missing is William S.
Simmons' Men of Mark: Eminent,
Progressive and Rising, a late
nineteenth-century volume containing
over 150 biographical sketches of
prominent blacks, a number of them
important in Ohio history. These omissions
of historical material are puzzling in
light of the inclusion of many items in the
printed material section which are not
strictly historical.
A second omission is that of an index.
Although, as the editors suggest, a
cumulative index may be unnecessary, some
indexing would greatly facilitate
the book's use. Since they are organized
independently, perhaps the sections
might be indexed separately to key words
and names, if not to subjects. Such
indexing might necessitate a more
sytematized annotating of the citations.
However, these suggestions do not alter
the value of the book as a resource in
a field that is greatly in need of such
materials. The Ohio Black History Guide
should prove a useful tool to those
interested in the black experience in Ohio and
Ohio history in general.
Western College of Miami University Eugene W. Metcalf
Thurber: A Collection of Critical
Essays. Edited by Charles S. Holmes.
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall,
Inc., 1974. xi + 180p.; notes,
chronology, bibliography. $6.95, cloth;
$2.45, paper.)
Charles S. Holmes, whose Clocks of
Columbus is the best biography of James
Thurber to date, has brought together a
generous sampling from forty-five years
of critical writing about Thurber's life
and work. Such luminaries as W. H.
Auden, E. B. White, Dorothy Parker,
Malcolm Cowley, and Peter De Vries are
represented-along with a number of
Thurber "specialists," including Holmes
himself. Taken together, the editor
tells us, these commentators have
established two approaches to
Thurber-the psychological and the humanistic.
The first is a dark view which
"focuses on Thurber as a man writing to exorcise a
deep inner uncertainty." The second
sees Thurber rather as a man whose work
recovers "values to live by in the
modern world."
The editor might have added a third way
of taking Thurber-the Ohio
approach. "The clocks that strike
in my dreams are often the clocks of
Columbus," said Thurber when
accepting a medal from the Ohioana Library
Book Reviews
69
Association in 1953. The essays in this
volume bear out E. B. White's belief that
this graceful remark was deeply
revealing. Whether Thurber came to terms with
Ohio in his art only by getting out of
Ohio in real life, the critics cannot agree any
more than they agree upon the answers to
similar questions about Mark Twain,
the displaced Midwesterner with whose
career Thurber's is most often
compared. The critics concur by and
large, however, in proclaiming the most
successful of Thurber's writings to be
those imaginative recreations of
Midwestern life he achieved in
retrospect from the distancing East. My Life and
Hard Times, by this estimate, is Thurber's single greatest book.
Although Thurber's serious art is
finally beginning to receive serious critical
attention, the essays in this volume
only begin the process, as Professor Holmes
readily concedes. Such brilliant
insights as Malcolm Cowley's perception that
Thurber's humorous fantasies are like
the poetry of dreams are not always
thoroughly worked out. Too often the
analyses of Thurber's humor demonstrate
once again how difficult humor is to
analyze. The new essay on his style is
pedantic, and essays of any sort on Thurber's drawings
are scarce. (Perhaps the
most intelligent thing anyone has said
about those cockeyed men, women, and
dogs was Dorothy Parker's observation
back in 1932 that they look like unbaked
cookies.)
Still this is a collection to savor. It
makes the case convincingly for Thurber's
"importance as an interpreter of
modern life." And Ohio readers will not object
to being reminded that Thurber could
lapse into boosterism: "I have always
waved banners and blown horns for Good
Old Columbus Town . . . and such
readers as I have collected over the
years are all aware that half my books could
not have been written if it had not been
for the city of my birth."
The Ohio State University Thomas Cooley
The Reaffirmation of Republicanism:
Eisenhower and the Eighty-Third
Congress. By Gary W. Reichard. (Knoxville: The University of
Tennessee
Press, 1975. xv + 304p.; notes,
appendices, bibliography, index. $14.95.)
The central thesis is expressed
succinctly in the title; these were two years of
reaffirmation of traditional
Republicanism. The evidence refutes any notion that
during the 1950s the liberal
presidential wing of the party triumphed over the
conservative congressional wing to usher
in an era of Liberal or New
Republicanism. It is wrong to view
Eisenhower as the ideological heir of
Wendell Willkie, since even the
President admitted becoming more
conservative during his second term.
Eisenhower openly opposed some New
Deal programs, and his acceptance of
others represented a concession to
inevitability rather than to a
liberalizing spirit. The changes he brought about in
his party's attitude toward foreign
affairs are significant, but even these pale
when the author reminds us that it had
become virtually impossible for any party
to ignore America's world position.
The author balances his demolition of
the Liberal Republican hypothesis with
a sincere effort to describe the
programs submitted to the Congress. In the
process he reveals an Eisenhower who
recognized, played, and enjoyed his part
as a legislative and political leader.
During these years Eisenhower opened the
way for more dialogue between himself
and Congress through various formal
and informal bodies. He might have been
politically naive at first, but he learned
70 OHIO HISTORY
what he needed to know. After all, no
man is likely to move from one gold bar to
five gold stars without having picked up some expertise
in the arts that a political
leader must master.
The author gives equal attention to the
men in Congress who considered
Eisenhower's programs. By scaleogram
technique Reichard studied all nine
of the new Republican Senators and
forty-two of the fifty new Republican
Representatives in the new Congress as well
as the thirty-nine Senators and 171
residual Republicans in the House. He
chose to study only four policy
areas-foreign affairs, fiscal and
economic, welfare, and power and resources
development. In each of these areas he
examined Republican members
according to period of entry into
Congress, geographic region from which they
were chosen, and (in the House) district
type. They were scaled in foreign affairs
in five categories ranging from strong internationalist
through uncommitted to
strong nationalist, and in the other
three categories in classifications ranging
from strong liberal through uncommitted
to strong conservative. The results are
spelled out even for those of us who do
not understand quantification in nineteen
tables and eleven appendices.
The book is a significant contribution
to the body of literature that studies a
president's relations with one of his
congresses by means of roll-call votes and
other statistical devices. For the more
conservative historian there is an
extensive bibliography to show that the
author has done his homework at the
appropriate presidential archives and
oral history projects.
Kent State University William F. Zornow
Coal-Mining Safety in the Progressive
Period: The Political Economy of Re-
form. By William Graebner. (Lexington: The University Press
of Kentuc-
ky, 1976. xii +244p.; tables, notes,
bibliographical note, bibliography of
primary sources, index. $16.75.)
The 1975 Frederick Jackson Turner Award
of the Organization of American
Historians went to this study of the
coal-mining safety movement by an assis-
tant professor of history at State
University College, Fredonia, New York. A
well-researched and carefully composed
monograph that grew out of a disser-
tation at the University of Illinois, it
maintains the standard of quality that has
marked this scholarly prize. And though
the area investigated may appear
narrow and technical, closer examination
reveals important implications for
the Progressive movement generally.
Graebner entered upon his exploration
believing that the creation of the
United States Bureau of Mines could be
treated as "another Progressive
triumph," an example of "a
thoroughly modern institutional response to in-
dustrial dislocation." He emerged
several years later more impressed at how
"economic and political
decentralization produced the ineffectual politics of
coal-mining safety." Instead of
triumph he found failure, or at least enough of
failure to raise serious doubts about
the adequacy of the reform methods of
that era. By his final reckoning,
Progressivism was "profoundly conservative
in methodology" and "only
hinted at the nationalism of the New Deal."
After an introduction that summarizes
his thesis, Graebner devotes succes-
sive chapters to the upsurge of
"national reform" that established the Bureau
of Mines following disasters at
Monongah, West Virginia (1907), and Cherry
Book Reviews
71
Illinois (1909); the largely educational
(non-regulartory) efforts of the Bureau
to promote mine safety; state
legislative advances in West Virginia, Ohio,
Illinois, and Pennsylvania measured
against limited state enforcement and
fruitless attempts at uniform
legislation; charges of "miner carelessness" and
suggested remedies not realized; and
finally to "operators as victims" of an
intensely competitive industrial
structure and system. A concluding chapter
considers the ways in which his research
confirms or questions historical in-
terpretations of the era.
The economic competition which Graebner
deplores was a distinguishing
characteristic not of anthracite (which
he largely leaves alone) but of the
bituminous coal industry. He does not
describe here (see his article in Busi-
ness History Review 48:49-72) that industry's structure in any detail, but
his
evidence indicates that the larger
companies did introduce the most advanced
safety measures and systems, apparently
regardless of the competitive situa-
tion. It would be pertinent to any judgment to know
what proportion of min-
ers was employed by the bigger firms, for the small
operators gave mine in-
spectors the most trouble. Moreover, it
is not clear what feasible alternatives
reformers had: legalization or prior
approval of trade agreements affronted
too many antitrust advocates, whereas
nationalization of the industry was a
radical step only proposed by the United
Mine Workers (UMW) in World
War I to curb waste of resources.
Federalism was the other major obstacle
for the bituminous-coal-mine
safety movement. What the federal
government did for safety in interstate
commerce or the territories were not
"obvious precedents" for regulation
within the states, nor could reformers
in or outside the Bureau of Mines have
ignored then-accepted constitutional
limits. The uniform-legislation alterna-
tive was "patently idealistic"
yet surely inevitable for that day; indeed, one
might argue that reformers generally had
to experience frustration and failure
with such solutions before they could
move to more "unconstitutional" in-
tervention under the New Deal.
Though Graebner's strictures on
Progressive reformers are too severe, his
administrative history offers a needed
check to facile generalizations about
interest groups in national politics.
And though in places he accepts New Left
interpretations too readily, his
detailed evidence on business leaders often
raises questions on that score. He
rightly claims a place for bureaucracy in
reform ranks; I hope he will extend his
studies of the Bureau of Mines and the
UMW.
The index is excellent, as is the
editing.
Denison University G. Wallace
Chessman
The 103rd Ballot: Democrats and the
Disaster in Madison Square Garden. By
Robert K. Murray. (New York: Harper
& Row, 1976. xiv + 336p.; illustra-
tions, notes, bibliography, index.
$10.95.)
Nineteen twenty-four marked a watershed
in the history of American polit-
ical conventions. Previously both major
parties usually took several ballots to
choose a presidential candidate unless
an incumbent was being renominated.
In 1924 the Democratic National
Convention, which had needed forty-six bal-
72 OHIO HISTORY
lots to nominate Wilson in 1912 and
forty-four to select Cox in 1920, spent
sixteen exhausting days in New York
City's Madison Square Garden taking a
numbing 103 ballots to choose John W. Davis. Not only
did the Democrats
tear their party apart over deeply divisive issues, but
they performed this rite
of self-destruction for a nationwide radio audience
listening to the first con-
vention broadcast in its entirety. His
party having so vividly demonstrated its
discord, Davis could attract less than
29 percent of the popular vote in that
fall's three-way contest with Coolidge
and LaFollette. Thereafter, the pattern
by which parties resolved differences
and selected leaders changed. Few con-
tests in either party, regardless of
intensity, lasted more than one ballot after
1924, and none more than six.
Robert K. Murray suggests that the 1924
convention was not a total disas-
ter for the Democrats. Rather, says
Murray, fundamental political and social
problems were being worked out; a new
consensus would emerge eight years
later with the election of Franklin D.
Roosevelt. Most of Murray's tale is
familiar: the platform battle over
whether to condemn by name the Ku Klux
Klan; the nomination struggle between
William G. McAdoo, Alfred E. Smith,
and a host of favorite sons; the
deafening demonstrations for Smith by
Tammany-packed galleries; the fatigue of
endless roll calls; and the eventual
compromise choice of "the barefoot
boy from Wall Street." Murray's princi-
pal contribution lies in emphasizing the
convention's larger context: the
longer-range competition between the
emerging new immigrant, heavily
Catholic, largely urban population of
the North and old-stock, Protestant,
abstemious, conservative Americans of
the South and West. They differed
over immigration restriction, religion,
and prohibition as well as the symbolic
Klan. As have others, Murray sees the
lesson of 1924 being that each side had
come to hold a veto power in Democratic
affairs. Once parochialism was
overcome and both elements accommodated,
a process achieved with
Roosevelt's nomination in 1932, the
Democrats became the dominant party
because they reflected the complexity of
modern American society better
than the Republicans.
Despite sensitivity to underlying issues
and long-term change, Murray for
the most part offers an old-fashioned
descriptive narrative drawn from tradi-
tional sources and focused upon major
poltical personalities. The stubborn-
ness of McAdoo, the cultural limitations
of Smith, William Jennings Bryan's
fumbling quest to recapture past power,
the idiosyncracies of the minor can.
didates, and the maneuvering of the
contenders provide the heart of Murray's
story. One looks in vain for any
sophisticated analysis of the delegates or the
process by which they were selected.
Certain crucial questions, although
raised, are not probed. How did media
coverage affect behavior? Did rura
delegates act differently because the
convention met in New York? How did
Roosevelt, Smith's nominator and floor
manager, become identified eigh
years later (when two-thirds of the
delegates were the same) as anti-Smith?
Murray's efforts to attract a popular
audience are evident in his sprightly
style, excellent photographs, and scanty
notes. Yet while relating an exciting
story of political conflict, he retains
perspective. The result is a book which
fulfills Mencken's dictum about
political conventions being "as fascinating as
a revival or a hanging."
University of Akron David E.
Kyvig
Book Reviews
73
The Conservative Intellectual
Movement in America: Since 1945. By
George
H. Nash. (New York: Basic Books, 1976.
xv + 463p.; illustrations, notes,
bibliographical essay, index. $20.00.)
Historians have long been forced to get
their accounts of what Peter
Viereck labelled "the new
conservatism" from chroniclers either hostile or
patronizing; with Nash's book, they need
no longer do so. For many intellec-
tuals, this ideology, as the Burkean
scholar, Raymond English, commented in
1952, was "the forbidden
faith," and only in recent times has it gained popu-
lar political appeal. Nash's book, based
on a doctoral dissertation completed
at Harvard in 1973, presents a
fascinating "who's who" of individuals, or-
ganizations, and periodicals that go
under its broad ideological umbrella.
From Nash we learn that modern
conservatism emerges from three quite
different strains: (1) classical
liberalism, as represented in the writings of
Ludwig von Mises, Albert Jay Nock, and
Frank Chodorov; (2) traditionalists
such as Russell Kirk and Richard M.
Weaver; and (3) militant anti-
Communists such as James Burnham,
Whittaker Chambers, and Frank S.
Meyer. Such varied doctrines first found
a common outlet in 1955 when Na-
tional Review was founded, and in 1957 when the more scholarly Modern
Age
was born. Ideological conflicts were
never absent from such a disparate and
uneasy coalition, and it took the
organizational genius of William F. Buckley,
Jr., and the intellectual dexterity of
Meyer to offer cohesion. Even then vari-
ous groups either defected or were
expelled: Ayn Rand and Max Eastman
over the mainstream's pronounced theism;
Murray Rothbard and Karl Hess
over its strident Cold War posture; and
L. Brent Bozell over medieval Roman
Catholic perspectives.
Beginning in the early 1970s, a host of
"liberal" scholars began to question
forced integration, detente with the
Soviets and the Chinese People's Repub-
lic, the student revolution, "black
power," and Great Society programs. Na-
tional Review started to feature such "liberal" authors as
Nathan Glazer,
Sidney Hook, and Seymour Martin Lipset,
thus helping to formulate a new
"vital center." With James
Buckley now Senator from New York and Ronald
Reagan involved in a major bid for the
Presidency, the movement had come a
long way from the time when isolated
scholars corresponded with each other
over passages from Nock or the tomes of
the southern Agrarians.
Nash has relied upon a host of
interviews, manuscript collections (including
the papers of William F. Buckley and
Russell Kirk), and scholarly and popu-
lar journals ranging from Partisan
Review to the Individualist. Giving us an
intellectual tour de force, he writes
well, summarizes arguments clearly and
fairly, and presents a good balance of
ideas, personalities, and associations.
Portraits ranging from F. E. Hayek to
Irving Kristol are deftly drawn, the
thought of a Willmoore Kendall or a
Richard M. Weaver skillfully sum-
marized, references rich and detailed.
There is a difference, however, between
a good book and an excellent one,
and it lies in possessing a critical and
analytical sense. Nash seldom shows
this. One gets little picture of the
strengths and weaknesses, points of percep-
tion and points of fallacy, within the
various schools of conservatism. Far too
often Nash summarizes an argument, gives
the response of liberal and con-
servative critics, and then moves on. The
real questions go unanswered, al-
though we surely have enough scholarship
to make serious evaluations. Did
the thought of John Dewey attempt to
"soften us up for the Red push"
74 OHIO HISTORY
(Eliseo Vivas)? Was liberalism "the
ideology of Western suicide" (Burn-
ham)? Must America be a
"semi-closed society" (Viereck)? Is the State a
"professional criminal class"
(Nock)? Did "Gnostic politics" lead to the
"surrender" of China to
communism (Eric Voegelin)? In short, to what ex-
tent were conservatives engaged in
responsible intellectual history and social
commentary, and to what degree were they
using such doctrines as social
cohesion and the higher law to bludgeon
ideological opponents? To answer
such questions, and to answer them with
a sophistication worthy of an Otis L.
Graham, Jr., or a John P. Diggins, more
thought and less celebration is needed.
New College of the Justus D.
Doenecke
University of South Florida
Prophets with Honor: Great Dissents
and Great Dissenters in the Supreme
Court. By Alan Barth. (New York: Vintage Books, 1975. xiv +
254p.;
notes, appendices, index. $2.95 paper.)
"A dissent in a court of last
resort," as Charles Evans Hughes once
observed-and as Alan Barth reminds his
reader-, "is an appeal to the
brooding spirit of the law, to the
intelligence of a future day when a later
decision may possibly correct the error
into which the dissenting judge
believes the court to have been
betrayed" (p.3). More than once history has
vindicated far-sighted jurists who have
spoken out, sometimes alone, against
the decisions of their colleagues. It is
such men whose prescience Alan Barth
celebrates in Prophets with Honor, a
collection of essays about famous
dissents by United States Supreme Court
Justices, all of whom embodied
views that eventually became the law of
the land. Barth describes the cases
which gave rise to these notable
opinions and the developments which en-
abled their authors to achieve ultimate vindication.
Felicitously written, his book brings
alive some fascinating stories. It
should do well in the classroom market
for which Barth apparently designed
it. But specialists in constitutional
history, while appreciative of the
appendices-in which the author has
included the full text of eight minority
opinions-may find this work disappointing.
Barth's selection of great dissents is
less representative than it might be. As
he readily admits (pp.xii-xiii), his
interest is in individual rights and liberties.
Every essay deals with a case in which
those were at issue. While all of the
dissents that Barth examines are worthy
of inclusion, and while some, such
as John Marshall Harlan's in Plessy
v. Ferguson and Harlan Stone's in
Minersville School District v.
Gobitis, are classics, one can say the
same of
others he ignores. Oliver Wendell Holmes'
protest in Lochner v. New York
against writing the philosophy of laissez-faire
into the Constitution and
Stone's pointed reminder to the anti-New
Deal majority in United States v.
Butler that, "Courts are not the only agency of
government that must be
assumed to have the capacity to
govern," are equally famous, and the
dissents of Justices Field and Bradley
in the Slaughterhouse Cases,
embodying as they did ideas which would
dominate American law for at least
a generation after 1873, were as
prescient as any of those which Barth
discusses. His book would be better
balanced had he included a few such
Book Reviews
75
opinions on economic questions, rather
than restricting it to civil rights and
liberties.
Prophets with Honor suffers from inadequate research, as well as limited
scope. In going beyond the opinions of
the Supreme Court into the Records
and Briefs, Barth has done more digging
than many constitutional scholars.
But he has made no use of judicial
manuscripts and has overlooked, to the
detriment of his work, some highly
relevant secondary sources, such as C.
Vann Woodward's article on Plessy v.
Ferguson in John Garraty's Quarrels
That Have Shaped the Constitution. Barth's footnoting is erratic, sometimes
leaving the reader in doubt about the
exact source of even direct quotations,
and his text contains several factual
errors. Finally, the last chapter, an
argument for broad construction of the
Constitution, while a fine essay in its
own right, has only a tenuous connection
with the rest of the book.
Prophets with Honor is an enjoyable work, and students of constitutional
history can learn much by reading it. But teachers who
assign this book
should not do so without giving their
classes at least a few words of warning.
University of Texas at Austin Michal R. Belknap
Chautauqua: A Center for Education,
Religion, and the Arts in America. By
Theodore Morrison. (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1974. viii
+ 351p.; illustrations, bibliography, index.
$10.50.)
To elderly midwesterners, the word
"Chautauqua" means a big tent in the
city park. But those travelling shows
were unrelated to the true, original
Chautauqua Institution on Lake
Chautauqua, in New York state. What
Professor Morrison has written is a
history of this real Chautauqua center,
which began 100 years ago as a summer
"assembly" for the training of Sunday
school teachers, and grew bigger, more
varied, and less religious every year.
It continues today, a 700-acre summer
school and festival of the arts.
Chautauqua was started in August 1874 by
John Vincent, later to become a
Methodist bishop, and Lewis Miller, an
Ohioan from Stark County who was
an inventor (the Buckeye Mower and Reaper)
and Akron manufacturer.
Chautauqua's lectures filled a need;
from the start it drew as many as 4,000
Sunday school teachers daily. Its
"curriculum," however, soon broadened
into science and the languages-a secular
shift to a more general audience
(and the need for gate receipts). By the
1880s Chautauqua's success in educa-
tion was due in part to a second Ohioan,
a walking dynamo named William
Rainey Harper, born in New Concord and a
teacher at Denison, who later
would become first president of the
University of Chicago.
Chautauqua's widest influence on
American society, however, was not in
its classrooms and concerts on Lake
Chautauqua, but through its
correspondence courses throughout the
hinterland. By 1891, for example,
there were 180,000 Americans enrolled in
its program of guided reading of
solid books. This was a balanced
four-year course of home study and written
lessons which spread the ideal of adult
education in decades when many
citizens could not attend high school.
It gave them, and their children, an
outlook or attitude toward books and
education which, without question,
contributed constructively to shaping
middle-class Protestant America. In
76 OHIO HISTORY
time, home-study enrollment was over
300,000 annually, and some 10,000
local discussion circles had been
organized, half of them in towns smaller
than 3,500, where the library and
bookstore were sometimes nothing to brag
about.
We ought certainly to have a history of
an institution so influential and so
American as Chautauqua. Unfortunately,
histories of institutions often make
rather deadly reading. Morrison is
interesting when he can be specific, but he
has to "cover" so thick an
accumulation of Chautauqua's "bewildering
variety of activities" that he is
regularly forced into loose, hence dim,
generalities. Against him, too, is the
perverse fact that no one can write
vividly about something altogether
decent, wholesome, and tame-which is
Chautauqua in a nutshell.
The book is physically handsome (though
marred by bad copy editing), and
is brightened by 171 charming photos of
the civilized little enclave on Lake
Chautauqua.
University of Illinois at Chicago
Circle James Stronks