Book Reviews
Thomas Worthington: Father of Ohio
Statehood. By Alfred Byron
Sears. (Columbus: Ohio State University
Press for the Ohio Histori-
cal Society, 1958. viii??260p.;
end-paper illustrations, bibliography,
and index. $5.50.)
Jeffersonian republicanism (or
Jeffersonian democracy, as many prefer
to call it) is one of the great
inheritances of the American people, but it
is a difficult one to approach. From one
direction it appears to be monu-
mental, symbolized in the eloquence of
the Declaration of Independence
and the marble of a national shrine;
from a second, it is as mysterious as
the power of the ballot or the charm of
Monticello; from a third, as
complex and subtle as Jefferson himself.
The potency of this republican-
ism was not the power and majesty of the
national government, which
it sought to diminish. It existed,
rather, in the men who undertook the
responsibilities of conducting an
effective and acceptable government
among people who wanted as little
government as possible.
It is not easy to represent those
paradoxical men after a century and
a half. Professor Sears of the
University of Oklahoma tries to show us
one of them. In Thomas Worthington
(1773-1827), a man who was of
importance in both national political life
and state and local affairs and
yet was primarily a private citizen, he
brings forward a Jeffersonian
Republican who embodied their
complexity.
A Virginian of Quaker background, twice
United States Senator
and for two terms (1814-18) governor of
Ohio, a man who is properly
called the Father of Ohio Statehood,
Worthington is in many ways an
admirable subject for biographical
study. He kept an elaborate diary;
records of his life and of the lives of
those around him are abundant; and
many other personal, official, and
business records have survived. In
other ways he is exceptionally
difficult. Should he be regarded as a man
of second-rate national importance, or a
man of first-rate importance in
local and state affairs? Without benefit
of an established biographical
pattern or tradition to work in, or to
attack (except for the author's own
earlier work almost no biographical
studies exist), and against the handi-
194
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
cap of a cluster of modern theories and
historical interpretations, Sears
has solved the problem by centering his
attention on Worthington
rather than on the abstractions.
Thomas Worthington presents (without contentiousness) several broad
historical revisions. The frontier
environment is shown with fewer doc-
trinaire patterns and fewer phantoms,
more vivid detail and a more
exact structure than in most accounts.
"Western radicalism," organ-
ized in the Tammany Society (the radical
wing of the radical Jeffer-
sonian party) with Worthington as a
leader, is given new meaning in
being shown as a movement led by wealthy
and successful businessmen.
The well-known "war spirit" of
the West in 1810-12 is surely disposed
of by the full and sensible exposition
of Worthington's position: he
opposed political clamor for war but
worked for national defense, and
later he voted against the declaration
of war (voting against his party
in doing so) yet gave his full support
to the war when the government
had engaged in it. The account of land
hunger and land speculation
sheds new light on the role of the
surveyor in acquiring lands and the
effect of the large landowner on the
economic development of the com-
munity. The picture of early forms of
capitalism suggests that some
revision of current conclusions is
required, especially with respect to the
sources of capital for investment in
business and the motives that led
men to initiate manufacturing.
Worthington himself is shown in the many
facets seen by his con-
temporaries. They are offered
impartially, and the resulting picture is
often blurred; but in the final chapter
Sears resolves their contradictions
in the conclusion that the man "was
fundamentally a rugged individual-
ist." One of the most interesting
biographical contributions is the
development of new terms to represent
the Ohioan's personality. Instead
of the familiar categories drawn from
literature, the romantic child of
nature in the wilderness and the
realistic "half horse, half alligator,"
these terms introduce a hard-headed,
practical, common sense man who
was at the same time concerned about
slavery and humanitarian reform,
quickened by emotional sensibility, and
filled with piety. He is closer
to the late eighteenth century than to
the late nineteenth, and seems less
anachronistic. The character of western
Jeffersonians remains an un-
solved problem; but Sears, by discarding
the old categories based on
theory and replacing them with others
based on evidence, has moved
toward a more valid interpretation of
such men.
Readers who would like to understand the
life of Jeffersonian days will
find Thomas Worthington a
dependable exposition. Those who would
BOOK REVIEWS 195
like to understand Ohio today will also
find it illuminating. Much that
is characteristic of the modern Midwest
is made intelligible by Professor
Sears. The volume is written in a quiet,
sober style, with a refreshing
sense of humor. It is a pleasure to add
that the book is physically attrac-
tive. A worthy representation of a
distinguished man, it may be con-
sidered one of the happiest achievements
of Ohio biography.
Ohio University HARRY R. STEVENS
Thirty Thousand Miles with John
Heckewelder. Edited by Paul A. W.
Wallace. (Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 1958.
xvii??474p.; frontispiece,
folded maps, bibliographical and geographi-
cal glossary, and index. $7.50.)
In this most fascinating volume, Paul A.
W. Wallace presents about
thirty thousand miles of travel, which
cover almost sixty years in the
life of the Rev. John Gottlieb Ernestus
Heckewelder (1743-1823), the
travelogs having been written by
Heckewelder in his own hand. Next
to the Rev. David Zeisberger,
Heckewelder was the most outstanding
of the Moravian missionaries who, since
the second third of the eight-
eenth century, tried to implant the
religious and social principles of the
Moravian Church among the Iroquoian and
Algonkian Indians of
Pennsylvania, New York State, and,
later, the Ohio country. Wallace's
"Introduction: The Moravians"
(pp. 1-32) tries to give the reasons and
motivations for doing so, not only on
the part of the Moravian Church,
but especially on the part of young
Heckewelder. He was born and
raised in the church as the first-born
son of his father, David, the scion
of an old Moravian family which, the
same as the Zeisbergers, Nitsch-
manns, and others, had suffered untold
persecution and misery in
Bohemia. They were the ones who, under
the leadership of Christian
David, finally fled across the mountains
to Herrnhut in Saxony, an
estate of Nicholas Lewis Count
Zinzendorf (1700-1760), a pietist and,
strangely to say, since 1734 an ordained
Lutheran minister. It was at
Herrnhut that, shortly after 1727, they
established, under Zinzendorf's
spiritual guidance, the reorganized
Moravian Church, or, more correctly,
the reorganized Church of the Unitas
Fratrum, that is, of the "Unity of
the Bohemian (or Moravian)
Brethren."
Wallace makes it quite clear that out of
no missionary zeal but rather
as a matter of self-preservation
Zinzendorf, in 1735, dispatched a group
of Moravians to Georgia in North
America. That group of Moravians,
196 THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
containing among others the Zeisberger
family, eventually moved to
Pennsylvania, where, in the Delaware
Indian region, numerous Moravian
settlements and churches were laid out.
In 1741, with Zinzendorf him-
self present, Bethlehem was founded,
destined to become the seat of the
mother-church of the Northern Province
of the Moravian Church in
North America. As Wallace points out,
Bethlehem today is factually the
mother-church of the entire Moravian
community in the world, since
Herrnhut, although nominally still the
Moravian center, lies dormant
in Eastern Germany under the Russian
thumb.
Soon after its foundation, Bethlehem
became the pivotal point of that
unrivaled Moravian Indian Mission system
with its remarkable absence
of the desire just to save souls, such
as prevails in most Christian
missions. As missionaries, the Moravians
always did what was nearest
at hand. As true Christians, they had
tried in Georgia to improve the
situation of the Negro slaves by giving
them, spiritually and economi-
cally, what they themselves had. In the
North American East, they
were naturally concerned with the native
Indians, the same as they had
been in Georgia with the Negro slaves.
In principle, all their mission
stations were alike: Moravian
living-and-worship units, planted among
people less fortunate than they
themselves. Not only Christ, their "Su-
preme Elder," had taught them to
act that way, but in particular their
own bishop, Komensky (Comenius), one of
the greatest in the Moravian
fold, who, as a shining torch in the age
of enlightenment, had sown
the seeds of modern education. His
Moravians were the first to estab-
lish schools according to his
philosophy, and no Moravian mission settle-
ment was without a school. In fact,
every Moravian living-and-worship
unit, whether or not established as a
mission proper, is a mission, being
a concrete instance of Comenius' leading
educational principle: teaching
by example.
From here, the way to Heckewelder, the
traveler of thirty thousand
miles, seems longer than it really is.
At a first glance, Wallace's "Intro-
duction: The Moravians" appears
lengthy and too detailed. Reading it,
however, one sees that he had meant it
as a justification of his attempt to
present the essentially Moravian
character of the man, Heckewelder, as
well as of his travels and of his
travelogs. With that Introduction in
mind, the reader sees Wallace's
historical passages, which, throughout
the book, connect Heckewelder's travel
reports, in their proper light. It
is an idle question whether it might
have helped the book, if Wallace,
BOOK REVIEWS 197
more frequently than he did, had
referred to his Introduction in order
to demonstrate the inner necessity of
Heckewelder's travelings in the
framework of Moravian thinking and
feeling.
In his translating and editing the
travel accounts which fill the entire
productive part of John Heckewelder's
life of eighty years, Wallace (like
Heckewelder himself) excels as an
eminent reporter rather than an
expositor. Hence, his book of thirty
thousand miles of travelogs is
Wallace's natural form of a Heckewelder
biography. Being too much
of a source-bound historian, he could
not have written a better one,
and, perhaps, nobody can.
It is not the object of this review to
familiarize the public with the
often fascinating travel accounts of
Heckewelder, the Moravian mis-
sioner, the ethnologist, and the
linguist. The best and shortest way to
catch the spirit of those travelogs is
to read Wallace's fine book.
A few minor errors have crept into
Wallace's otherwise well edited
pages. The Moravian name, for instance,
of the Indian mission town,
Langundo Utenink, on the Great Beaver
River in northwest Pennsyl-
vania, ought to be written
"Friedensstadt," as it occurs in the Index,
but not "Friedenstadt," as it
is found on the folded-in map and all
throughout the text. Another error
affects this reviewer personally.
Both in the Index (p. 463, under
"Mahr, August C.") and on page 151,
and note, Mahr is credited with a book, Federal
Indian Relations, 1774-
1788, which he never wrote. The author of that publication is
Walter
Harrison Mohr of the University of
Pennsylvania (Oxford University
Press, 1933).
Finally, this reviewer wishes to stress
the regrettable fact that his
editions of the Diaries of the Moravian
Indian Mission of Schonbrunn
(1772-77), and that of Gnadenhutten (1773-77), for some time have
been
ineffectively reposing, as unprinted
manuscripts, with the Ohio Histori-
cal Society at the Ohio State Museum,
Columbus, O. Their publication,
at approximately the same time as
Wallace's excellent work on Hecke-
welder, might have been of equal benefit
to Wallace's book and, through
it, to the Diaries themselves, and, last
but not least, to the student of the
Moravians' missionary philosophy, which
is still alive in the Moravian
Church.
Ohio State University AUGUST C. MAHR
198
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
The Miami Years, 1809-1959. By Walter Havighurst. (New York:
G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1958. 254p.;
illustrations. $4.50.)
Walter Havighurst is a well-known
writer, author of ten novels and
histories, a professor of English and a
professional in every sense. (He
has published a history of a Cleveland
steel company since this book
came out.) Here is striking contrast to
the usual author of a college
history, who is typically more of a
researcher than a writer, traditionally
lacking in his command of style.
A surprisingly pedestrian account of the
beginnings of the university
gives way to a lively treatment of
Robert Hamilton Bishop, who was
nearer to being the "Founder"
of Miami than any other man. Havighurst
says significantly that "for years
returning alumni at Commencement
marched in silence past the Bishop
grave." Here was the influence that
reached farthest through the years. The
author has, of course, been able
to use the results of the researches of
James H. Rodabaugh in this
section of the book.
In the chapter entitled "Primer
from a Green World" he develops
the classic tale of William Holmes
McGuffey and his Readers. It is well
done, but almost irrelevant to the story
of Miami. McGuffey taught in
Miami for ten years. There he began the
publication of his school books
through a printer at Cincinnati at that
time. After this essay McGuffey
still remains the editor of a series of
anthologies and not, except inci-
dentally, a significant member of the
faculty of Miami University. Mc-
Guffey also taught at Cincinnati, at
Ohio University, and at the
University of Virginia; he never had
anything equaling the influence
in Miami that Bishop had.
There is impressive drama in "The
Fortunes of the Greeks," the
chapter in which is told the story of
the fraternities. In 1841 the board
of trustees expelled all students who
were known to be members of
secret societies and prohibited students
from belonging to such organiza-
tions in the future. Fifty years later,
the author notes, Miami was
known as the "Mother of
Fraternities." The rebellious spirit thus
demonstrated came to a particular crisis
in the "Snow Rebellion," in
which the classrooms in the Main
Building were filled with melting
snow and firewood, the chapel bell was
dropped in the cistern, and all
academic activities brought to a halt
for some time. It was the kind of
demonstration that gained for college
boys something of the reputation
for irresponsibility which they still
have in some quarters today.
BOOK REVIEWS 199
The book is full of neat character
sketches of the odd-balls found in
all colleges, who were loved by all
undergraduates and those perpetual
undergraduates who are called alumni
and, at the same time, are the
subjects of the mild ridicule of the
same. Here is Harry Thobe, that
"aging, agile, irrepressible
man," "a bricklayer by trade and exhibition-
ist by nature," "conspicuous
at all athletic events in his red-and-white
pants, coat, and shoes, with his red-and-white
megaphone and umbrella,"
whom Dean Brandon sought, usually
without success, to evict from the
football field. Then there was
"lean, limping, and tobacco-chewing Dad
Wolfe, the Campus watchman,"
volunteer adviser to "president, faculty,
and students," unique but a type
familiar on all campuses. Introduced
also is Fardy Devine, janitor, whose
firewood the students regularly
stole, not so much because they needed
or wanted the fuel as because
it was a part of the glorious game of
going to Miami and because they
would not want to let down an old Miami
tradition. On a different level
was Professor "Heppy" Hepburn,
who loathed coeducation, and whose
name, with perfectly appropriate
inappropriateness was chosen for one
of the women's dorms when those
undesirables were let into the uni-
versity.
Much emphasis is placed on the forest
setting of the university,
through which the "slant walk"
proceeds through a century and half
of pranks, romance, study, the division
of Civil War days, the abnormal
Students' Army Training Corps and the
V-12 of a later war. It is this
that makes so tragic the "Death of
the Elms," though the chapter that
bears this title devotes only one brief
paragraph to the matter indicated
by its heading. Demonstrating the kind
of problem that college adminis-
trators often have to face was the legal
suit in which a freshman girl
called in the law to prove that the
university could not deprive her of
her equal right to public education
merely because she flunked! One
pioneering venture in which apparently
Miami still takes pride was the
hiring of an "artist in
residence"--Percy MacKaye--who exhibited to
the students of his time the creative
mind in action.
Largely lacking in this history are what
the literary critics often
choose to call "the paraphernalia
of scholarship." There are no foot-
notes, no bibliography, no index. There
are two pages of acknowl-
edgments.
Oberlin College ROBERT
S. FLETCHER
200
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
The Stark County Story. By Edward Thornton Heald. Volume IV,
Part 2, The Suburban Era, 1917-1958. (Canton,
Ohio: Stark County
Historical Society, 1958. xvi??850p.;
illustrations, maps, bibliography,
and index. Set, Part 2 and Part 3,
$15.00.)
This is the fifth of six units in the
series on Stark County being pre-
pared by Mr. Heald, who is the historian
of the Stark County Historical
Society. It is Part 2 of Volume IV,
which covers the county's story
from 1917 to the present. Part 1 is
entitled Free People At Work,
1917-1945, and Part 3 will be called The American Way of Life. Part
1
emphasizes Canton and its industry, Part
2 the suburbs, the rural areas,
and county-wide government and social
organizations. Part 3 will relate
the political history, diagnose the
automobile era, and develop the
story of social and religious
organizations. The chapters of Part 2 are
numbered from 302 to 370, and are listed
in the table of contents as
scripts. This means, according to the
title page, that they were broad-
cast over WHBC-WHBC-FM, and rearranged
and edited as a county
history. Each chapter heading contains
the date or dates of the broad-
casts, which cover the years from 1952
to 1958. In a bibliographical
note it is stated that the radio
broadcasts "have been a cooperative
project, in which more than 500
different persons have contributed their
thoughts, time and energy in interviews,
checking the correctness of
script copies, and verifying same to
bring up to date for manuscript."
The reason for calling this book The
Suburban Era is that the popu-
lation not included in the cities
(Canton, Massillon, and Alliance)
became, during the period involved,
larger than any single city. How-
ever, the author admits that the
combined city population is about fifty-
nine percent and is unable to state what
percentage of the remainder
would be classified as village or
agricultural. However, it is demon-
strated that the non-city area is
growing much faster than the city areas.
The material is divided into eight
sections: "County Government and
Operations"; "Rural";
"City-County Operations"; "Wars, Veterans,
and Armed Services"; "Civic
and Social"; "Medical and Dental";
"Unusual Persons"; and
"Industrial." The treatment is mostly by
offices and organizations, for example,
county commissioners, Molly
Stark Hospital, Agricultural Extension
Service, volunteer fire depart-
ments, patriotic organizations, the Red
Cross, Stark County Medical
Society, the Alliance Manufacturing
Company.
Tremendous effort has gone into the
preparation of this work. The
main sources of information in the
current volume have been interviews
BOOK REVIEWS 201
and newspapers. In a special reference
section, the sources are given for
each chapter, including the newspapers
by date and item, and the persons
interviewed by name. Significant
chapters include those on the consoli-
dation of the county schools, the Amish,
liquor control, and crime and
the police record. The latter makes use
of FBI Uniform Crime Reports,
which relate Stark County statistics to
those of other cities in the
nation.
Full judgment and evaluation of the coverage
of this work, as well as
of its utility for educational purposes,
especially in the state and local
schools and colleges, must be reserved
until Part 3 of the present work
is published. It is obvious that the job
of interpreting twentieth century
local history is not easy. Four of the
six units in the Stark County
Story are devoted entirely to the years since 1900.
Historical Society of Northwestern
Ohio RANDOLPH C. DOWNES
The Heritage of the Middle West. Edited by John J. Murray. (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1958.
xiv??303p.; illustrations and
index. $4.00.)
The Middle West, a nation's heartland,
is explored in this collection
of twelve essays by specialists, each of
whom puts emphasis not upon
contemporary characteristics but upon
various facets of the region's
heritage. Although the middlewestern
section of the nation is not always
crisply defined, a careful survey of the
volume indicates that the Middle
West is made up of the states of Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa,
Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, Kansas,
Nebraska, and the Dakotas.
These are the areas, at any rate,
enumerated in a final essay contributed
by Walter Johnson.
Actually, after a rather sweeping survey
called "Inheritance from the
Old World," based primarily upon
secondary sources, many of the
contributors not only restrict
themselves to a specific topic but also limit
their discussion to segments or portions
of the Middle West. Albert
Schmidt, for example, does not extend
his discussion of the small college
from Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, and other
states into Minnesota, Missouri,
Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. It is
curious also that Mr. Schmidt
should confine his discussion only to
the Protestant liberal arts college,
for it is most surely true that the
educational heritage of the Middle West
was more than Protestant. Sidney E.
Mead, discussing the search for
God, also gives scant credit to
contributions made by non-Protestant
202 THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
denominations. This reviewer is neither
Irish nor Catholic, but he is not
unmindful, as an historian, that some of
the rich threads woven into
the tapestry of the Middle West were the
work of Catholics and Jews
and non-conformers and just plain
heretics.
It is, of course, impossible to discuss
in detail each of the essays
which form this stimulating attempt to
interpret middlewestern back-
grounds. Of the twelve, four seem to
stand out as worthy of serious
consideration. These are Ray A.
Billington's "The Garden of the World:
Fact and Fiction"; Paul Sharp's
"From Poverty to Prosperity"; Arthur
E. Bestor's "The Search for
Utopia"; and John T. Flanagan's "A Soil
for the Seeds of Literature."
Billington's comments upon land policy
are provocative, Sharp's economic
analysis is sharply corrective in places,
Bestor's explanation of the waves of
communitarianism offers fresh
information, and Flanagan's chapter is
really a survey of regional litera-
ture from the 1840's until past the time
of the great depression of the
1930's. Each of these contributions,
regardless of whether or not one
agrees with every opinion expressed, is
well organized, close reasoned,
and adequately documented.
The Ohioan, scanning some of the results
of the Coe College Con-
ference on the Heritage of the Middle
West as they appear on the pages
of this book, will find many and various
references to his state and his
region. The Iowan will find much more,
but, curiously enough, neither
the Buckeye nor the Hawkeye will find a
clear summary of his heritage.
The pieces seem to be present, but the
pattern appears vague. This dis-
jointedness may be due to the lack of a
single theme which runs through
the entire book, to the built-in weakness
which always is present when
several authors contribute, to a failure
on the part of some contributors
to understand the heritage of the
region, and to the failure on the part of
others to know the area's history.
Perhaps, as Billington points out, fact
is too frequently confused with myth. It
may be that the poet could better
express the heritage than the
politician. It could be that a series of con-
ference papers do not always make a book
even if they are printed and
bound as a volume.
These observations, it must be
understood, do not lessen the fact that
this collection is stimulating,
informative, and of value to the general
reader. If it asks more questions than
it answers, this is good. If it will
provoke others to investigate the many
meanings of the Middle West, it
will have more than accomplished its
purpose.
University of Minnesota PHILIP D. JORDAN
BOOK REVIEWS 203
The Revolutionary Journal of Baron
Ludwig von Closen, 1780-1783.
Translated and edited with an
Introduction by Evelyn M. Acomb.
(Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press for the Institute of
Early American History and Culture,
1958. xxxviii+392p.; illus-
trations, biographical directory,
bibliography, and index. $7.50.)
Baron von Closen was an officer in the
Royal Deux-Ponts regiment of
France and served General Rochambeau as
aide-de-camp during the
campaign against Yorktown. Von Closen
arrived at Newport, Rhode
Island, in July 1780, and left America
for the West Indies in December
1782. Because of the baron's command of
English, which enabled him
to make his way the faster through
unfamiliar countryside, Rochambeau
frequently chose him to take important
messages to Washington, to De
Grasse, and to other leaders. His many
missions, in addition to side
trips taken for pleasure whenever
circumstances allowed, enabled von
Closen to see a good deal of the country
between Virginia and New
Hampshire. His was a lively, inquiring
mind, the range of his interests
including everything from the flora and
fauna of the states to methods
of sugar refining in Santo Domingo-to
say nothing of the charms of
pretty women at a host of balls and
parties. He comments upon the
treatment of slaves, the character of
American troops, local customs,
crops and livestock, the condition of
roads and taverns, and the horrors
of sea travel.
Nonetheless, the journal is a soldier's
creation. Rarely does he expa-
tiate for more than a page without a
sense of guilt. The day-to-day
chronicle must not be lost sight of. As
one would expect, he had a
consuming interest in strategic
considerations, both for battles in which
he took part and for those fought prior
to his arrival. The siege at York-
town is meticulously detailed, even to
the precise assignment of each
French regiment day by day. Von Closen's
fair-minded attitude toward
the defeated Cornwallis, whom he met,
and the courtesies generally
extended to captured enemy officers,
remind one sadly of the gallantry
permissible in earlier and simpler wars.
Disappointingly, his glimpses of the
life and times in city and country
are just that. His descriptive passages
lean heavily on stock phrases;
distinctions become blurred until one
thumbnail sketch is pretty much
like another. Occasionally the reader is
refreshed with a vivid picture-
Washington waving his handkerchief from
the shore in his excitement
over the arrival of De Grasse in
Chesapeake Bay or the stammering
New York sheriff seeking to make
Rochambeau his prisoner because
204
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
the general refused to pay damages for
wood cut on private property.
There is material of historical
significance, such as the feverish corre-
spondence between Rochambeau and De
Grasse concerning sea support
at Yorktown, the criticism of Rochambeau
for ordering embarkation
before it was certain that Charleston
had been evacuated, and other
matters. But this is a book to be mined
rather than read.
For the editor this work has obviously
been a labor of love. Not only
did she confront a text written in
archaic French, but one that had been
transcribed years ago for the Library of
Congress by none too sure a
hand. The original journal and all
supporting documents were lost in
a fire. Diligently the editor tracks down
allusions, corrects here a faulty
date, there an exaggerated statement of
the numbers slain in battle. She
has added a biographical directory,
identifying well over two hundred
persons mentioned in the journal, and a
thorough bibliography, particu-
larly useful for its listing of
published letters, memoirs, and papers of
the period.
Marietta College ROBERT J. TAYLOR
The Sanilac Petroglyphs.
Introduction, by Robert T. Hatt; The
Petro-
glyphs, by Darrel J. Richards; and An Archeological Survey
of the
Petroglyph Site, by Mark Papworth. Cranbrook Institute of Science,
Bulletin Number Thirty-six. (Bloomfield Hills, Mich.: Cranbrook
Institute of Science, 1958. 48p.;
references. $1.50.)
Petroglyphs and pictographs occur in
almost every part of the western
hemisphere. Their study by professional
and amateur archaeologists
and interested laymen has contributed
much to our knowledge of this
form of prehistoric Indian art. During
recent years we have seen nu-
merous reports which range from simple
descriptions to fantastic theories
of the origin of the figures and symbols
and equally fantastic interpreta-
tions of them. This study of the Sanilac
Petroglyphs, as one of the
authors states, is concerned both with description
and origin.
The "stone" is located in
Greenleaf Township, near the northern
edge of Sanilac County, Michigan. It was
first observed about 1872
and has been subject to some study from
that time to the present. While
the stone has been defaced by the
engraving of names and dates and the
addition of two figures, it is believed
that the glyphs are late prehistoric
Indian in origin; the authors, however,
do not rule out the possibility
of early historic Indian derivation.
BOOK REVIEWS 205
The glyphs are divided into ten groups:
human figures, outlines of
human hands and feet, zoomorphic
figures, bird forms, animal tracks,
simple cup sculptures, spirals, club
elements, rake-like elements, and
mythical animals.
Archaeological survey and test
explorations of the immediate area
for cultural remains revealed nothing in
the form of prehistoric artifacts
or indications of the existence of a
camp or village site. It is regrettable
to note that permission was not granted
to investigate a small area of
fire-cracked stones and chips of broken
rocks near the stone, which might
have shed some light on the origin of
the carvings.
This study is well written and
illustrated with fine maps, photographs,
and line drawings. Despite its lack of
detailed analysis, it is another fine
contribution to a much neglected area of
Indian art.
Ohio Historical Society RAYMOND S. BABY
A Yankee's Odyssey: The Life of Joel
Barlow. By James Leslie
Woodress. (Philadelphia: J. B.
Lippincott, 1958. 347p.; illustrations,
notes on the sources, appendix, and
index. $5.95.)
This Yankee was born in Redding
Township, Connecticut, in 1754
and died of pneumonia in Zarnowiec,
Poland, in December 1812, another
victim of the great retreat from Moscow.
How he rose from penniless
farm boy to United States ambassador to
the court of Napoleon is the
odyssey related by Professor Woodress in
this graceful and scholarly
biography of Joel Barlow. Another
interesting and influential American
has been rescued from unmerited
obscurity.
Most Americans remember Barlow, if they
remember him at all, for
his part in William Duer's plan to sell
land options to unsuspecting
French settlers who made the abortive
colony at Gallipolis, Ohio. But
Barlow was a school teacher, chaplain in
Washington's army, poet, and
lawyer before he was briefly an agent
for the Ohio Company and the
Scioto Associates. Nevertheless, it was
as agent for Duer that he left
the United States for France in 1788,
not to return for seventeen years.
In Paris with Jefferson and Gouverneur
Morris he witnessed the fall
of the Bastille and joined in the
excitement of the new revolution for
human rights. He was a friend of Tom
Paine and like him had become
a deist and a pamphleteer; in one of his
best essays, "Advice to the
Privileged Classes," he ably
answered Burke's Reflections. This address
and his verse-satire, "The
Conspiracy of Kings," put the evil eye on
206
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Leopold of Austria, who expired March 1,
1792, and on Gustavus III
of Sweden, who was assassinated the same
month; Louis XVI and
Marie Antoinette perished the next year.
He was made a citizen of the
French Republic in recognition of his
advisory pamphlets addressed to
the convention and stood unsuccessfully
for a seat in the national assem-
bly when Savoy was annexed (here he
wrote "Hasty Pudding," a
bucolic poem the world could have
survived without). Sickened by the
execution of his friends the Girondins,
and fearing for his own safety,
yet he outfaced the committee in behalf
of Miranda and Paine. For
Paine, then in jail, he secured the
publication of his Age of Reason.
In 1793 he entered into a partnership to
furnish the French government
with supplies, an enterprise which took
him to Hamburg for eighteen
months, during which time he was able to
greatly augment a small
fortune he had gradually built up as
commercial agent for various Ameri-
can exporters in the prior five years.
Barlow became an employee of the state
department in 1795, when
Pickering sent him as consul to Algiers.
Here after twenty months he
secured treaties with Algiers and
Tripoli by very skillful, if chicane,
diplomacy.
After the failure of the XYZ embassy and
Monroe's recall, Barlow
was a sort of self-appointed ambassador
to France, but represented the
Jeffersonian minority rather than the
Adams administration. He wished
to avert war with France, for he had
come to see that all wars are funda-
mentally economic, and he hoped to
maintain commercial relations with
all the states of Europe and hence the
peace. He predicted that the only
workable European state system had to be
a federated "United States of
Europe," buttressed by freedom of
the seas in both peace and war; he
proposed a world court to adjudicate
disputes and force compliance by
economic boycotts (sanctions).
In 1800 Barlow and wife lived with
Robert Fulton and helped finance
and design his first submarine and
steamboat. Disillusioned with
Napoleon in 1804, he returned to the
United States, where he was an
unofficial advisor of his friends
Jefferson and Madison. He was an
earnest advocate of free public
education and had Senator George Logan
introduce a bill for the establishment
of a national university, where all
the arts and sciences would be taught;
although the bill failed to pass, it
laid the groundwork for George
Washington University. He favored
universal military training, reliance on
the militia, low taxes, and peace.
Barlow brought home from Europe a fine
library and was widely
read in history and politics. Jefferson
and Madison encouraged him to
BOOK REVIEWS 207
spend his leisure years writing a
history of the United States rather
than in refurbishing his Vision of
Columbus into the Columbiad, a judg-
ment with which the author and this
reviewer firmly agree. But Barlow
thought of himself as America's Homer
and he hoped his lengthy poem
would prove an Iliad. In a very real
sense, throughout his life, his major
energies were wasted on this clumsy
creation. Occasional flashes of
genius and passages of real beauty are
not enough to redeem it from
worse than mediocrity.
After the passage of Macon's bill in
1810, President Madison sent
Barlow as ambassador to France. He was
to settle the spoliation claims,
secure an official and public
repudiation of the Berlin and Milan decrees,
and perhaps a commercial
treaty--stipulations Napoleon was not much
interested in at the time. But when the
French foreign minister asked
him to come to Wilna to negotiate a
settlement, since Napoleon would
winter there, he made the
fourteen-hundred-mile trip in his own carriage.
But Napoleon did not winter in Wilna and
sixteen days after Barlow's
arrival he was caught in the great
ebb-tide from Moscow. Pneumonia
killed him at Zarnowiec, a martyr to
duty and the cause of American
peace.
This is a distinguished biography,
thoroughly researched, ably written,
and illuminated by copious quotations
from, and stimulating observations
concerning Barlow. It is the only full
biography of this character and
fills out the story only partially told
by Charles B. Todd (Life and
Letters, 1886), Theodore A. Zunder (Early Days, 1934),
and various
articles chiefly concerned with him as a
"wit."
If Woodress knows more about Barlow's
personal life than he tells,
his omissions are regrettable. His felicitous
married life with Abraham
Baldwin's sister Ruth perhaps kept him
from the fleshpots enjoyed in
Paris and Europe by Gouverneur Morris
and other Americans on the
continent. Did he have no frailties or
vices? Perhaps none save vanity.
But he had a powerful mind, was a
sincere friend, a devoted husband, and
a real patriot. He was a bitter foe of
slavery but did not live long enough
to be called an abolitionist.
The author is associate professor of
English at San Fernando Valley
State College, Northridge, California,
and has taught at Duke, Butler,
and Grinnell College. He was once a
rewrite editor for the United
Press. He should be teaching history.
University of Oklahoma ALFRED B. SEARS
208
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Altgeld's America: The Lincoln Ideal
Versus Changing Realities. By
Ray Ginger. (New York: Funk and Wagnalls
Company, 1958.
vi??376p.; note on sources and index.
$4.95.)
Altgeld's America is an ambitiously conceived book on an interesting
and important subject. One of the
hazards of such undertakings is the
likelihood that reviewers, including
those sympathetic to the author's
point of view and intention, will dwell
on the shortcomings rather than
the virtues of the work. There is much
in this volume that will be of
interest and value both to students and
general readers; and yet the
author has accomplished less than he
seems to have intended. What he
has done is to recount episodes in and phases
of Chicago's civic, business,
political, intellectual, and artistic
life from the Haymarket bomb of 1886
to the failure of the campaign for
municipal ownership of the street
railways about twenty years later. As
the title suggests, the author had
something broader in mind. He tells us
in the Prologue that the book
is not the story of Chicago alone; for
it tells of how industrialism came
to the world, arm in arm with the search
for profit, and of the trouble the
marriage made, and of how people of noble
purpose labored to overcome
these troubles.
The material presented simply does not
bear out this claim.
The author is not content to say that
many of the people he writes
about admired Lincoln. "From the
Civil War to 1900, Abraham Lincoln
dominated the visions of the good
society," he asserts; during those
decades "the social realities that
had shaped the Lincoln ideal were being
chipped away, and the ideal itself was
being twisted beyond recognition."
This seems to be the thesis of the book.
It is repeated several times but
not critically examined or thoughtfully
developed. The author has
attempted to think through to the deeper
meaning of his subject, but (in
the opinion of the reviewer) his
reasoning and intuitions are not vigor-
ous or sharp enough to be convincing.
Mr. Ginger is at his best in describing
living and working conditions
of the poor, the grafting of the
"Gray Wolves," and the practical ideal-
ism of the Hull House group. He is less
successful in dealing with the
national elections of 1896 and 1900; and
for some reason his treatment
of the street railway struggle fails to
arouse interest. Although Ginger
is to be commended for his attempt to
relate intellectual, literary, and
architectural figures to the movement
for social reform, he is better at
BOOK REVIEWS 209
narrating events and sketching
personalities than in analyzing ideas.
The comments on architecture, in
particular, seem derivative.
The flow of the narrative is
interrupted, often at crucial moments, by
"scenes" that read like
newspaper feature stories. These are probably
intended to make the story come to life,
but their effect is just the
opposite. They may be true but they
don't sound like it.
Ohio State University ROBERT H. BREMNER
Henry Knox: General Washington's General. By North Callahan.
(New York and Toronto: Rinehart and
Company, 1958. xi??404p.;
frontispiece and index. $6.00.)
North Callahan's biography of Henry Knox
is, from a literary point
of view, a free-flowing, enjoyable bit
of prose. With the exception
of intruding fragmentary details into
the very readable text, the narra-
tion goes smoothly.
Perhaps of the many outstanding figures
of our late colonial and
early national history, Henry Knox has
been the one most passed over
by historians and biographers. Certainly
this cannot be attributed to
a lack of material on the subject's life
and works. Few men were so
continually in the public eye and in the
public service. Likewise, one
cannot say that Henry Knox, all 380
pounds of him, was not colorful
and impressive. Yet he has been
by-passed until this present biograph-
ical attempt.
This reviewer, at least, is left
frustrated upon having completed a
reading and re-reading of the Knox
biography. He has been pleased
with the style of the volume and its
easy, informal, and warming
presentation. However, error is piled
upon error, mistake upon mistake,
until, finally, the reader begins to
wonder how much is truth and how
much leaves truth to be desired.
It would be folly, indeed, to attempt to
list the variety of errors seen
by this reviewer alone, but a few should
suffice to support the point:
On page 216 appears the following
statement: "Among the original
members [of the Society of the
Cincinnati] . . . were . . . Clark of
the Lewis and Clark expedition. . .
." William Clark was born in
1770 and did not enter the military
service until 1792 during the Indian
Wars. The man Knox asked to find a house
for him in Philadelphia (p.
282) was Samuel Hodgdon, not Hodgson. Hodgdon was
commissary
general of military stores, 1781-84, and
quartermaster general, 1791-92.
The Fort Knox referred to (p. 288) was
located near Vincennes in the
210
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Northwest Territory, and is not to be
confused with the armored train-
ing center now located in Kentucky.
However, the reviewer is particularly
embarrassed over the errors
in Chapter 18--"The Indian
Troubles." The author, in the "Acknowl-
edgements" section, cites this
reviewer as having furnished him with
materials dealing with this period of
Knox's life and works. Therefore
it is most distressing to find that
there is more error here than fact,
Of course, anyone having consulted an
historical atlas will realize that
St. Clair's defeat did not take place
"near the Miami Village" (p. 320);
that Wayne did not "in the spring of 1794 . . .
[move] his legion to
Greene, Ohio" (p. 325) but, rather,
in October 1793 moved northward
from his camp at Hobson's Choice and
established a post he called Fort
Greene Ville (present Greenville, Ohio);
that Fort Recovery (p. 325)
is hardly "above Cincinnati"
(it was the post that Wayne built in De-
cember 1793 on the site of St. Clair's
defeat); that Wayne could not
have "taken possession of the post
at Grand Claire" (p. 326), for
"Grand Claire" was called
Grand Glaize and no post existed there
until Wayne, in August 1794, built Fort
Defiance; and so forth.
Because of the errors in those areas
with which the reviewer is
closely acquainted, he has the feeling
that the treatment of other phases
of Knox's life might be also fallible.
That so much time, so much re-
search, and so much good literary
ability appear to have gone to waste
is indeed a pity.
Anthony Wayne Parkway Board RICHARD C. KNOPF
The Americans: The Colonial
Experience. By Daniel J. Boorstin.
(New York: Random House, 1958.
vii??434p.; index. $6.00.)
Rhode Island and the American
Revolution, 1760-1776. By David S.
Lovejoy. (Providence: Brown University
Press, 1958. 256p.; map,
bibliographical essay, and index.
$4.50.)
There is no preface, introduction, or
conclusion that clearly sets
forth the purpose or scope of Boorstin's
book. In the absence of such
guides the jacket hails the volume as
"the first major interpretation of
American History since Turner,
Parrington, and Beard." Presumably
what Turner was to the frontier,
Parrington to intellectual history,
and Beard to the economic
interpretation, Boorstin will be to the new
conservatism. The uniqueness of American
experience and the con-
trast between ideals and actuality are
the main themes in this new
BOOK REVIEWS 211
synthesis of American history. We are
told that there are two volumes
to follow.
The first part of the book, entitled
"The Vision and the Reality,"
examines the ideas and aspirations that
motivated four main groups of
settlers and the effects of the American
environment on these ideas.
Although much of the material is
familiar, it has been arranged in
such manner that fresh comparisons and
contrasts emerge. The main
groups treated are the Puritans of
Massachusetts, the Quakers of Penn-
sylvania, the trustees of Georgia, and
the planters of Virginia. Hardly
any mention is made of the Dutch in New
York, the Germans in
Pennsylvania and elsewhere, the planters
of the Carolinas, or the
Scotch-Irish all along the frontier. Perhaps
these other groups did
not fit into the author's scheme of
examining the effects of the new
world environment on old world ideas. In
assessing the relative merits
of these early settlements the author
seems to apply a strictly pragmatic
test: those experiments are most to be
admired which were most
successful in modifying ideas in
accordance with realities. So tested, the
Quakers come off very poorly. The author
regards them as having a
mulish determination for martyrdom and
an unquenchable thirst for
moral perfection, neither of which they
were willing to compromise
to meet American conditions. The
trustees of Georgia he regards as
wholly unrealistic and unbending in
their attempts to establish a utopia
in the new world. The Virginians come
off fairly well, since they were
willing "to transform as they
transplanted." But taking a squint beyond
the colonial era the author warns that
"the virtues of the 18th Century
Virginian would seem to be vices."
Only the sturdy Puritans of New
England receive an unqualified bill of
health. "They were concerned
less with the ends of society than with
its organization and less with
making the community good than with
making it effective, with insuring
integrity and self restraint of its
leaders, and with preventing its gov-
ernment from becoming oppressive"
(p. 30).
Abandoning this sectional approach,
Boorstin, in the remainder
of his volume, examines such topics as
American ways of thought,
education, law and the legal profession,
medicine and the medical pro-
fession, science and scientists,
publishing and reading habits, and war-
fare and diplomacy. Having a better
grasp of European history than
many American historians, he is able to
make incisive comparisons and
thus to bring out what was unique in
American development. His
observations on law, education, and
science seem to this reviewer par-
212
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
ticularly good. Comments on agriculture
and warfare, on the other
hand, add little to what has been said
often before.
Paying scant attention to either
internal or external political struggles,
Boorstin compares American and European
development and finds the
Americans delightfully self-reliant but
immature in most fields. Focus-
ing on politics in a single state,
Lovejoy discovers that the Americans
had reached a remarkable degree of
political maturity by the time of
the Revolution. During the years 1760 to
1776 the freemen of Rhode
Island were engaged in what Carl Becker
described as the two-fold
struggle over home rule and who should
rule at home. The question of
who should rule at home involved a long
struggle between the Ward
and Hopkins factions for control of the
state government. According
to the author this factional division
was based on geography and eco-
nomic interests. The Hopkins faction was
supported by the northern
towns with Providence as the center,
while the Ward faction drew
its strength from the southern towns,
chiefly Newport. Both factions
were interested in promoting economic
interests, but just what these
interests were and why they should have
clashed are a little vague.
Though differing on internal questions,
these factions were united on
resistance to parliamentary taxation.
After tracing the story of resistance to
British measures the author
concludes that Rhode Island supported
and fostered the Revolutionary
movement because the people had attained
a high level of political
maturity and felt that control of their
government meant not only
freedom to manage their own affairs but
also the protection of property
interests which they considered to be in
jeopardy. Acknowledging
that he has been much influenced by the
studies of Sir Lewis Namier
in the field of British politics in the
same period, the author is inclined
to minimize or rule out ideals and
principles. In attempting thus to
fit the case of Rhode Island into the
Namier mold, the author, in the
opinion of this reviewer, gives too
little weight to a tradition of freedom
and a sense of mission that animated the
Revolutionary generation. By
the time of the break with England there
had grown up in America
the firm conviction that this country
represented something precious
and unique in the history of mankind,
and that the benefits of this
heritage must be nourished, developed,
and extended. The Founding
Fathers were neither wild-eyed idealists
nor unrealistic fanatics, but
their faith was firm and their hope
eternal.
Ohio State University HARRY L. COLES
BOOK REVIEWS 213
Cities and Camps of the Confederate
States. By Fitzgerald Ross.
Edited by Richard Barksdale Harwell.
(Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1958. xxii??262p.;
illustrations, appendix, and index.
$4.50.)
This is the Confederacy during the
latter half of 1863 and the early
months of 1864 as seen by Fitzgerald
Ross. Ross was born in England
and educated in Germany. He had served,
just prior to his visit to
the United States, both as a private
soldier and as an officer in the
Austrian Hussars.
While in the South, Ross came to know
Lee, Longstreet, Stuart,
and the other Confederate leaders. He
traveled with them, lived in their
camps, shared their experiences. He was
present at Gettysburg, at the
shelling of Charleston, at Chicamauga,
and at Fredericksburg. He
became acquainted, too, with Jefferson
Davis and with the planter aris-
tocracy. Unfortunately he had "no
opportunity of seeing ... the private
houses of the poorer people." In
his circles the South was a land of
plenty. He lists menus for camps and for
city hotels and boarding
houses, and remarks, "I never saw
such profusion, and, I might say,
waste." This when the South was
supposed to be in severe want.
There is material here aplenty for the
historian of whatever special
interest. Ross discusses food and drink,
armaments and ammunition,
manners and morals, generosity and
rapacity, planters and slaves,
countryside and city, prison and fort,
and the horrors of the battlefield
and its glories. Little escaped his
attention during his brief stay in the
Confederacy, and his word pictures,
though mere sketches, are sharply
drawn.
The annoying feature of Ross's book is
his openly intense prejudice
against everything northern. "Most
Northern newspapers make it a
rule never to tell the truth if they can
help it." As to the crime of
breaking up plantation Negro families by
sale, "The few cases . . . have
almost invariably taken place when
Northern creditors . . . have insisted
upon their pound of flesh." The
northern soldiers are drunkards,
ruffians, and thieves who have
"wreaked their wrath on women and
children in the South wherever they had
an opportunity." The southern
troops, however, are well disciplined
teetotallers and "as cheerful and
good natured a set of fellows as I ever
saw . . ., never pushing or
insolent."
Ross never misses a chance to hurl an
insult at the North and every-
thing that it represents. His is a true
love affair with a South which
he found congenial. He left the United
States, after a brief stay in
214
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
northern parts, full of hope and
confidence for his southern friends, and
convinced that Grant, after
Chancellorsville, Spotsylvania, and Cold
Harbor, had done nothing more than
succeed in "spoiling a large
army with greater celerity than any
other general of modern times."
Fortunately a masterful job of editing
has corrected Ross's errors,
supplied identifications where
necessary, cited corroborative or con-
tradictory accounts, and furnished
antidotes, when needed, to lessen
the effects of Ross's venom. He has
accomplished this without inter-
rupting the narrative. Mr. Harwell is to
be congratulated on bringing
to our attention a personal account,
originally published in 1865 in
Edinburgh and London. In these days of
reawakened Civil War inter-
est it is a book that can be of
considerable value to historians if
judiciously used.
Ashland College GERALD W. MACKELLAR
Drums in the Forest. Decision at the
Forks, by Alfred Procter James,
and Defense in the Wilderness, by
Charles Morse Stotz. (Pittsburgh:
Historical Society of Western
Pennsylvania, 1958. viii??227p.; end-
paper maps, illustrations, bibliography,
glossary, and index. $3.50.)
Drums in the Forest is the title of a volume which, in fact, consists
of two monographs: Decision at the
Forks, by Alfred Procter James, the
background and story of the Forbes
campaign against Fort Duquesne
in 1758; and Defense in the
Wilderness, by Charles Morse Stotz, a
scholarly study of the frontier defenses
built on the site of present-day
Pittsburgh. Unlike many such anniversary
works (this one marks
the two hundredth anniversary of the
founding of Pittsburgh in 1758),
Drums in the Forest is a valuable historical contribution as well as a
commemorative volume.
Mr. James's Decision at the Forks offers
little new to the student of
early American and frontier history.
Beginning with a short discussion
of the "Amerinds," the author
traces the history of the various elements
which vied for position in the
"West." Interestingly, though perhaps
too strongly, he ties the European march
of seventeenth and eighteenth
century imperialism to the struggle on
the frontier (though admittedly
this was a part of a world-wide
"competition for empire"). In short
sections he summarizes the developments
which led to the struggle,
particularly between the British and
French, for control of the "West."
He ends his succinct discussion with the
British control of "The Forks"
in 1758, concluding that "the most
lasting effect of the decision at
BOOK REVIEWS 215
the Forks of the Ohio, was the breach in
the dam against settlement,
a final result of which was the eager
and later quick occupation of
the entire Ohio Valley."
One can take little issue with Mr.
James's presentation except on a
few points of emphasis. Yet this drawing
together of bits and pieces
into a recognizable and intelligent
whole gives Decision at the Forks
a firm place among the writings on the
history of the frontier.
Charles Morse Stotz's Defense in the
Wilderness is a thorough, de-
tailed, yet highly readable account of
the frontier forts which formed the
nucleus around which modern Pittsburgh
grew and flourished. Pro-
fusely illustrated, however, it is more
than just a description of five
posts and their relation to the contest
of the French and English for the
possession of the frontier. Rather, it
is an intriguing story of military
engineers and military engineering
principles and methods. Tracing
the history of military engineering from
its modern inception at the
end of the Middle Ages, Mr. Stotz
summarizes the developments in
fortifications from the turreted castle
to the frontier post, defining
terms, showing reasons for changes in
methods and design, and detail-
ing some of the seeming minutiae which
meant, in fact, so much in
assessing the strength and/or weakness
of any particular fortification.
Having reviewed the development of
fortifications, the author then
discusses, in detail, the plans and
construction of the five forts erected
at The Forks: Fort Prince George, Fort
Duquesne, Mercer's Fort,
Fort Pitt, and Fort Fayette. In each he points out the inherent
strengths and weaknesses and supports
his arguments with facts, figures,
and illustrations.
Mr. Stotz, an architect by profession
with an avid interest in historical
structures, has made, in Defense in
the Wilderness, a major contribu-
tion to our knowledge and understanding
of defensive works; and,
though he confines most of his
discussion of frontier forts to those at
The Forks, one easily makes the
transition to other contemporary
structures of a similar nature.
One might also note that Mr. Stotz
includes a section on garrison
gardens and their management which adds
an interesting sidelight to
military life on the frontier.
Both monographs are fully annotated. The
glossary of "Selected
Definitions of Fort Terms" which
accompanies the Defense study,
though not quite as complete as this
reviewer would wish, adds clarity
to the reading of an interesting volume.
216 THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Drums in the Forest not only offers stimulating reading, but achieves
a high degree of scholarly
accomplishment, which makes it a useful
tool of reference for the historian of
the frontier.
Anthony Wayne Parkway Board
RICHARD C. KNOPF
The Health of a Nation: Harvey W.
Wiley and the Fight for Pure
Food. By Oscar E. Anderson, Jr. (Chicago: University of
Chicago
Press, 1958. ix+332p.; illustrations,
bibliography, and index. $6.00.)
Few Americans know the long,
hard-fought struggle waged to provide
them with pure food and drugs. They
take for granted that the flour
they purchase is clean, that the coffee
they brew is not cut with chicory,
that the cosmetics they use do not
contain harmful ingredients, that the
flavoring extracts are not diluted,
that the medicines they swallow are
pure. And fewer consumers, purchasing
bakery goods or flavorings or
drugs, ever have heard of Harvey
Washington Wiley, Hoosier-born
chemist, who fought and hammered and
badgered until in 1906 a not-too-
eager congress passed the first federal
pure food and drugs act.
This book is the first full-length
biography of Wiley, the individual
who the author suggests was a sort of
knight in shining armor who,
battling terrific odds, finally
succeeded in replacing falsehood with truth
and patent drugs with those properly
compounded. In large measure,
this is correct, but it must also be
understood, as Mr. Anderson points
out, that a pure food and drug law
would have come had Wiley never
come to Washington in 1883 as chief
chemist of the United States De-
partment of Agriculture. In a thousand
communities throughout the
land and in many states, statutes of a
pure-food-and-drug nature already
were on the books, and it took no
"poison squad" such as the one Wiley
set up to determine the deleterious
effect of certain food preservatives
upon the human body.
The nub of this pleasant excursion into
biography is not so much the
impact of Wiley upon improper
practices, but the influence of a dedicated
scientist upon many areas of thought.
Mr. Anderson, it seems to this
reviewer, makes a much more positive
contribution when he is describing
the relations of a fairly young
scientist to sugar and politics; when he is
charting the development of the
chemical division of the department of
agriculture to food and science; when
he is reporting the fascinating
contents of Bulletin 13, which
discussed foods and food adulterants;
when he sketches Wiley's period of
disappointment during the admin-
istration of J. Sterling Morton as the
department's new secretary; when
BOOK REVIEWS 217
he delineates change and progress during
the administration of Secre-
tary James Wilson.
In 1912, weary from a successful attempt
to vindicate himself from
charges of maladministration, Wiley
resigned after twenty-nine years of
service. The web of circumstances, some
of Wiley's making and others
not, give interesting insight into
politics during the Taft administration.
Perhaps, as the author suggests, the
scientist had become too much the
reformer. Perhaps, as the author does not
suggest, Wiley's personality
had not mellowed with the years.
After retirement, this man who had
helped, along with so many others,
to bring a bit of significant
legislation into being, continued as a faculty
member of George Washington University.
After 1914 he left this
post to become director of Good
Housekeeping's bureau of foods, sani-
tation, and health, a position he held
until 1930. He lectured on the
Redpath Chautauqua circuit, published a
book on nutrition, and wrote
a set of school readers. He busied
himself during the Wilson adminis-
tration, continued to work to
"liberalize" the pure food and drug law
from restraints he felt had been placed
upon it, and still rode the nervous
steed of reform. He won friends, but had
many enemies. He died in
1930 just twenty-four years to the day
after the pure food and drug
bill went into law.
This book, clear, plain, honest,
recounts bits of humanitarian history
that could be better known than they
are. The volume contains much
new information, based upon papers not
available until recently, that
give insight into the workings of the
agricultural department. The con-
tributions of Wiley are well set
forth--yet, for some reason, the man,
as shaped and interpreted by Mr.
Anderson, seems more like a refrig-
erated shade than a warm-blooded human
being. Pathetically, he does
not even come alive when he is treated
as a passionate reformer.
University of Minnesota PHILIP D. JORDAN
Messages and Papers Relating to the
Administration of Noah Noble,
Governor of Indiana, 1831-1837. Edited by Dorothy Riker and Gayle
Thornbrough. Indiana Historical
Collections, Volume XXXVIII.
(Indianapolis: Indiana Historical
Bureau, 1958. viii??645p.; illus-
trations, appendix, and index. $6.00.)
The present volume is another step in
the publication of the messages
and papers of the governors of Indiana.
The project was initiated in
1922-24 by the Indiana Historical
Commission (predecessor of the
218
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
present Indiana Historical Bureau), when
three volumes were issued,
two dealing with the papers of the
territorial governors and one with
those of the state administrations
before 1825. After about three decades
the program was revived, with the
publication in 1954 of the messages
and papers of James Brown Ray, governor
from 1825 to 1831. (See
review in the Ohio Historical
Quarterly, LXIV [1955], 102-104.)
Noble, a native of Kentucky, was elected
governor as a National Re-
publican in 1831 (for a three-year term)
and was reelected three years
later. His life and work, interestingly
summarized in a forty-eight page
introduction, was to come to a
relatively early end by his death in
February 1844, at the age of fifty.
The Messages and Papers are
gathered largely from the printed house
and senate journals, from contemporary
newspapers, and from manu-
script sources, including some presented
to the Indiana State Library by
Noble's granddaughter in 1931.
Although probably a stronger political
leader than his predecessor,
Governor Ray, Noble was not a vigorous
executive. He, however,
enjoyed great personal popularity, and
his love of extensive hospitality
(the dining rooms of the two leading
hotels in Indianapolis being secured
for one dinner) helped to create a
gracious atmosphere in the society
of the frontier commonwealth.
Of special interest to Ohioans are the
arrangements made during this
period between Ohio and Indiana for the
building of the Wabash and
Erie Canal through the Maumee Valley of
Ohio. The program of inter-
nal improvements resulted in the
creation of a large state debt, and
with the coming of the panic of 1837,
blame was placed upon Noble's
shoulders, although citizens had earlier
shown great enthusiasm for the
program, and Noble made personal
sacrifices to do his part in coping
with the difficulties.
The published materials include much
that is of interest to students
of American political and social
history, as the problems of denomina-
tional influences in the state college
and conditions in state prisons are
among those dealt with in the volume.
The editing has, in general, been done
with imaginative intelligence
and painstaking accuracy, and the
publication is a distinct credit to
those involved in its production.
Ohio State University FRANCIS P. WEISENBURGER