Book Reviews
Historic Contact: Indian People and
Colonists in Today's Northeastern United
States in the Sixteen Through
Eighteenth Centuries, By Robert S.
Grumet.
(Norman & London: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1995. xxx + 514p.; illus-
trations, maps, appendix, conspectus,
bibliography, index. $47.50 cloth.)
The process of cultural contact between
Europeans and North America's native
peoples has become the focus of a
growing body of recent historical and anthropo-
logical scholarship. The publication of studies including
Margaret Connell
Szasz's Between Indian and White
Worlds: The Cultural Broker; Colin Calloway's
Dawnland Encounters: Indians and
Europeans in Northern New England; and
the
republication of Emma Helen Blair's The
Indian Tribes of the Upper Mississippi
Valley and Region of the Great Lakes,
first issued in 1911 and 1912, all
attest to
increased interest in this topic among
historians of the northeastern United States
and Great Lakes regions. In Historic
Contact: Indian People and Colonists in
Today's Northeastern United States in
the Sixteenth Through Eighteenth
Centuries, Dr. Robert Grumet, an archaeologist in the National
Register Program,
Mid-Atlantic Region of the National Park
Service, has provided an overview of
historic contact from the Atlantic Coast
between Maine and Virginia westward to
the Upper Ohio Valley.
Making sense of the complex dynamics of
contact is central to our under-
standing of both early-historic and
subsequent Indian-white relationships.
"We
all need strangers," claims Grumet,
for "they furnish what family and friends alone
may not provide. Basic human
institutions such as trade, diplomacy and war . . .
trace their origins to the common human
need to deal with strangers. Although
different people handle the problem in
different ways, all people try to get what
they want while avoiding whatever is
thought or felt to be dangerous or undesir-
able" (p. 7).
Grumet has based Historic Contact upon
a National Historic Landmark theme
study on historic contact carried out by
the National Park Service between 1989
and 1993. Theme studies are used by the
History Division of the park service to
compile and evaluate information on
thematically related properties. The studies
are then utilized to provide a framework
for evaluating the national significance of
these properties. Grumet's study
examines thirty-four separate "Indian Countries"
contained within three sub-regions found
within an area roughly defined by
Volume 15 (Northeast) of the Handbook
of North American Indians. The book is
divided into three parts, one for each
sub-region. Each part opens with an
overview of the zone under discussion
and concludes with a reflection on the
course and consequences of European-Indian
contact within the area. The book
also includes a discussion of every
National Historic Landmark associated with
historic contact relations within the
region and draws its information from a di-
verse interdisciplinary perspective,
successfully integrating documentary, archae-
ological, and ethnographical data
gleaned from a variety of sources.
Historians of Ohio will perhaps be most
interested in Part 3, "The Trans-
Appalachian Region," which includes
a discussion of the Mohawk, Oneida,
Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, Upper
Susquehanna, and Upper Ohio Indian Countries
and the Niagara-Erie Frontier, and Part
2, "The Middle Atlantic Region" which ex-
amines the Munsee and Delaware
Countries. But specialist and general reader alike
92 OHIO
HISTORY
will find something of value throughout
this study. Grumet has crafted a fine tool
for historians, preservation officers,
archaeologists, and ethnologists who seek
to understand the early history of the
Great Lakes region. Historic Contact: Indian
People and Colonists in Today's
Northeastern United States in the Sixteenth
Through Eighteenth Centuries should be required reading for every student of
Ohio's frontier era.
Ohio Historical Society Larry L.
Nelson
Standing Against the Whirlwind: Evangelical Episcopalians in Nineteenth-
Century America. By Diana Hochstedt Butler. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1995. xiii + 270p.; notes,
bibliography, index. $45.00.)
Responding to scholarly neglect and
popular ignorance, Diana Hochstedt Butler
breaks new ground in this important work
on the evangelical movement within
the Episcopal Church, which at its peak
of influence in the 1840s and 1850s in-
cluded almost half the denomination's
bishops, one-third of its clergy, and an in-
determinate but certainly large number
of lay people. Herself both an evangelical
and Episcopalian, she describes the
notion that the two words are oxymoronic as
"an inexcusable case of historical
blindness" (p. viii). Deeply researched in pri-
mary sources and written with clarity
and verve, her work received the Brewer Prize
of the American Society of Church
History for 1993.
Though this is not a biography, Butler
uses the life and career of Charles P.
Mcllvaine (1799-1873) as a window onto
the evangelicals' theology, piety, ec-
clesiastical concerns, and fortunes
within their denomination. Widely regarded as
the preeminent evangelical leader,
McIlvaine served from 1832 until his death in
1873 as the Bishop of Ohio-a fact that
should enhance the book's interest for
readers of Ohio History.
Running like a leitmotiv through
the work is the tension between the two sides
of the evangelicals' identity. As
evangelicals, they believed in the necessity of
"an experiential knowledge of
God" gained through conversion, and with other
evangelicals they utilized innovative
prayer services, lay Bible study, and extem-
poraneous preaching. McIlvaine would
confirm only those who had been "born
again." As evangelicals, they
cooperated with other Protestants in the Bible and
tract societies that were launched to
Christianize America.
Yet as good "Churchmen," they
decried what they considered excesses and disor-
der in the "new measures"
revivalism of the day and asserted the teaching authority
of the church and subordination to its
discipline. For ministerial education and
missionary activities to plant churches,
they utilized denominational structures.
The key to being both Episcopal and
evangelical was to see in the English
Reformation-and in the Thirty-Nine
Articles and Book of Common Prayer-a
thoroughgoing Protestantism. Their church,
they insisted, was based on the au-
thority and infallibility of the Bible,
the doctrine of justification by faith, and a
truly biblical ministry.
The heart of Butler's analysis involves
the evangelicals' encounters with ritual-
ism (in the form, first, of the Oxford
Movement and then of Anglo-Catholicism)
and with theological liberalism. Against
the ritualists, who proffered either pa-
tristic or medieval models for church
life, they charged "apostasy of the senses,"
or "idolatry"-the substitution
of form for living faith. Against the liberals, who
followed contemporary biblical and
scientific scholarship to question traditional
Book
Reviews 93
beliefs, they
charged "apostasy of the intellect," or "infidelity"--the
substitution
of barren
rationalism for authentic Christianity.
The
evangelicals won many battles, but as a force within the Episcopal Church
they hardly
mattered by the end of the century. Growing frustration led a small fac-
tion to
withdraw in 1873 and organize the Reformed Episcopal Church. Though
most
evangelicals refrained from schism, it weakened them as did the death of
leaders,
including McIlvaine, and the spread of both ritualist and liberal ideas. In a
process
Butler describes too briefly and judgmentally, the evangelicals' heirs
themselves
became part of the liberal, Broad Church movement.
There is more
to Butler's book than the evangelical-Episcopal duality. Along
the way, she
treats the evangelicals' anti-Catholicism and millennialism, differ-
ences among
them on both theological and social issues, and their responses to
slavery and
the Civil War. Her use of McIlvaine to illustrate and focus evangelical
characteristics
and tendencies is especially deft. She acknowledges that her ap-
proach neglects
the southern branch of the Episcopal Church, the laity, and
women, and
with that, unfortunately, one can only agree.
Wright State
University Jacob
H. Dorn
Keepers of the
Covenant: Frontier
Missions and the Decline of
Congregationalism,
1774-1818. By James R. Rohrer. (New York: Oxford
University
Press, 1995. x + 201p.; notes, bibliography, index, $35.00.)
James R.
Rohrer teaches at Presbyterian Bible College in Taiwan. Keepers of
the
Covenant started as a doctoral
dissertation at The Ohio State University and is
a welcome
addition to the study of frontier religion. It is a fascinating entree on a
subject which
has elicited few works and has been neglected and virtually ignored
too long by
professional historians. In the process Rohrer has clarified many is-
sues about
Congregationalist decline in the period following the American
Revolution.
The work is incisive and beautifully written with the author display-
ing careful
scholarship and exhaustive research. Rohrer's arguments are convinc-
ing,
impressive, and crucial to the understanding of frontier religion.
On the eve of
the American Revolution the Congregationalists were the largest
religious
group in America. However, by 1830 they ranked fourth. Rohrer takes
issue with
other studies, namely Roger Finke and Rodney Stark's The Churching
of America
which gives the explanations of
Congregationalist decline. Even
though many
Congregationalists found the ideas behind Jeffersonian politics and
democracy
distasteful, Rohrer dispels the myth that Congregationalism failed to
adjust to the
democratizing culture of the western migration, and present
Congregationalist
ministers as aggressive evangelists who adapted to the egali-
tarian
demands of the early republican frontier very well.
The essence
of Rohrer's work is his presentation that Congregationalists and
other
churches had differing priorities. Even though the Congregationalists were
exceeded in
membership by Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians, it was not
their goal
simply to win large numbers. When the Puritans came to America it was
their intent
to establish pure churches, not to convert sinners. As the frontier
moved west
the Congregationalists wanted to uphold the faith of the fathers, sus-
tain the
convictions of the migrants and build up the corporate body of Christ.
Rohrer also
contends that Congregationalist ministers generally were not one-
dimensional,
highly educated and did not come from the "elite." Only twenty-
94 OHIO
HISTORY
three percent attended Yale between 1798
and 1818. Similar to the Methodist
clergy, many Congregationalists also
employed an extemporaneous preaching
style, received small wages and lived
under harsh living conditions.
It is refreshing to have this excellent
work which explains the decline of
Congregationalism. The rich detail of
the book does not detract from Rohrer's
analysis. Keepers of the Covenant should
serve as a starting point for other works
on frontier religion. With its clarity,
fine organization, and impressive documen-
tation, this book may well become a
widely used standard text on the subject of
frontier religion.
Stanford, Indiana David L. Kimbrough
The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit:
Walter Reuther and the Fate of American
Labor. By Nelson Lichtenstein. (New York: Basic Books, Inc.,
1995. xiii +
575p.; illustrations, notes, index.
$35.00.)
This beautifully written, meticulously
researched book raises the standard of
American labor biography to a new
height, going even beyond the one set by
Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine in
their life of John L. Lewis. This is
partly because, like Lewis, Reuther-as
president of the United Auto Workers from
1946 until his death in 1970-was
powerful enough to affect the fortunes of post-
World War II American liberalism at its
height. And it is partly because of the in-
herent drama of the auto leader's life.
Reuther was severely beaten in May 1937
when he first attempted to organize
Detroit's giant River Rouge plant, which later
became a hotbed of communist opposition
to his rule. Victim of an attempted as-
sassination by a Sicilian gangster in
April 1948, he became president of the CIO
between 1952 and 1955. Seeking to avoid
the sterile anticommunism of the Cold
War era, he clashed personally with
Nikita Khruschev over self-determination for
the people of eastern Europe. Finally,
as leader of the 1968 Alliance for Labor
Action, which sought to rejuvenate the
stagnant AFL-CIO, he was killed in a pri-
vate airplane accident before his new
campaign had time to yield results.
Most of these events have been described
before, not least in Lichtenstein's
own previous articles on auto
workers' militancy and the nature of 'Reutherism' as
a labor ideology. But the author
narrates them with insight and skill, adding much
new detail to what will long remain the
standard biography. Save perhaps in his
detailed descriptions of internal union
politics and negotiations with employers,
Lichtenstein also never fails to keep
the reader's attention, despite his five hun-
dred pages. This is no mean feat in
light of the relative sparseness of material
about Reuther's personal life. A private
family man whom few people knew inti-
mately, Reuther retreated increasingly
behind his fortified home outside Detroit af-
ter the attempt on his life. Instead,
under the slogan "teamwork in the leadership,
militancy in the ranks," he
surrounded himself with a group of able and dedicated
aides. Besides his two brothers, these
included Emil Maizey, Jack Conway, and
Leonard Woodcock, later UAW president.
After the great General Motors sit-down
strike of 1936-37, when the UAW forced
recognition from the world's largest cor-
poration, these men succeeded for a
generation in making U.S. auto workers the
most highly paid assembly line workers
in the world.
But it was only for one generation. In
the years following 1979, after Japan
challenged Detroit for auto supremacy,
the UAW lost more than half a million
members, and participated in the
concession bargaining that everywhere con-
Book Reviews 95
tributed to the decline of the AFL-CIO.
In a sad last chapter entitled "What Would
Walter Do?," Lichtenstein argues
that only a thoroughgoing reorganization of
U.S. politics in the 1940s, when
left-liberalism was at its height, might have pre-
vented this outcome. But he fails to
distinguish clearly between politics and in-
dustrial relations. Given Walter
Reuther's ambiguous record on assembly line is-
sues, the author may be right to tax him
for laying the groundwork for these mod-
ern workplace retreats, Victor Reuther's
loyalty to his brother's record notwith-
standing. Yet it is hard to see how,
short of founding a social democratic party of
the European type which might have
protected the workers better than the
Democrats have done (a course which
Reuther contemplated, but thought impracti-
cal in the U.S.), the auto workers'
leader can be blamed for the current political
weakness of American labor. That goes
beyond anything for which a single labor
leader, however powerful, can be held
accountable.
University of California, Los
Angeles John H. M.
Laslett
An American Biograph: An
Industrialist Remembers The Twentieth Century, By
Pat McNees. (Washington, D.C.: Farragut
Publishing Company, 1995. x +
341p.; illustrations, notes,
bibliography, index. $19.95.)
Through her work with the World Bank and
other development institutions, Pat
McNees perceived a need for case studies
that might provide would-be en-
trepreneurs with insights about starting
and operating successful businesses. As a
result, she produced An American
Industrialist Remembers, which presents the sto-
ries of the Joyce-Cridland Company, a
medium-sized Dayton, Ohio, firm that man-
ufactured jacks and lifts for the bus,
automobile, and railroad industries and of
Warren Webster, a long-time Dayton
native who was a central figure in the firm's
development.
The story of Joyce-Cridland is about
long-term survival in the face of substan-
tial change. Never an economic
powerhouse, the company was vulnerable to mar-
ket forces that required flexibility and
resourcefulness to succeed. From its begin-
ning in 1874, it was closely linked to
the transportation industry, which changed
dramatically during the late nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. In response to
that change, Joyce-Cridland waded into
new markets and continually adapted new
technologies to its products to remain
competitive. The company's relatively
small size enabled it to redirect its
efforts fairly rapidly. The engineering and
marketing departments were able to work
closely together, thereby making the
product design process much more
efficient than in a more complex organization.
Joyce-Cridland survived non-market
challenges, as well. In July 1944 a major
fire destroyed one of its plants and
threatened its ability to fulfill important
wartime contracts. Undaunted, company
employees resumed production within
days using machines placed outside under
tarpaulins. During the 1950s and 1960s,
a mounting antagonism between the
company's union (the United Auto Workers)
and management became unbearable. In
1972, after a prolonged strike by work-
ers, the owners moved the manufacturing
operations out of Dayton to a less mili-
tant Portland, Indiana.
Throughout its history, Joyce-Cridland
was moderately successful. Perhaps it
would have performed better if, from
1935 to 1973, its three owners had not ac-
tively managed the firm. They held such
tight control over daily operations that
middle managers could not perform their
jobs well. In addition, the owner's dis-
96 OHIO
HISTORY
parate personalities made consensus
about the direction of company growth very
difficult to achieve, sometimes causing
them to be myopic about major market
shifts and product opportunities. By the
1990s, the trio had long retired and the
firm was directed by an executive
committee that used strategic planning as the ba-
sis for decision making.
The story of Warren Webster is about
applying oneself and reaping the rewards.
Webster dropped out of school at age 14
to work in a manufacturing plant.
Through hard work, dedication, and a
certain amount of luck and good timing, he
lived a Horatio Alger dream, eventually
becoming part owner and business execu-
tive at Joyce-Cridland. He accepted risk
readily and did not let rules or tradition
inhibit his progress. He realized the
value of a practical education in the prepara-
tion of oneself for greater
responsibility, and he sought that education aggres-
sively on and off the job. His varied
work experience before coming to Joyce-
Cridland in 1925 "... made him
flexible and resourceful, able to change ap-
proaches if the work called for it"
(p. 54). Ultimately, he became a generalist who
could design a tool or a product, manage
a plant, or improve a firm's financial ac-
countability system. Those talents made
him a valuable asset at Joyce-Cridland.
Readers interested in a description of
the successes and failures of a medium-
sized American manufacturing concern and
of how market and management prob-
lems were resolved may find An
Industrialist Remembers worthwhile.
However,
those interested in a discussion of the
life of a business executive in such an orga-
nization, including his interactions
with home and community, may find the work
more enlightening.
SUNY at Buffalo
Glen E. Avery
Buckeye Schoolmaster: A Chronicle of
Midwestern Rural Life, 1853-1865. Edited
by J. Merton England. (Bowling Green:
Bowling Green University Popular
Press, 1996. xiv + 308p.; index. $24.95
paper; $49.95 cloth.)
J. Merton England has edited and
interpreted an interesting chronology of nine-
teenth century midwestern living in his
book: Buckeye Schoolmaster: A
Chronicle of Midwestern Rural Life, 1853-1865. The book is based on the jour-
nals and diaries of John M. Roberts, a
young teacher, miller, traveling book
salesman, and farmer in central Ohio.
The book is divided by ten chapters that re-
fleet significant periods of this man's
life: late childhood of fun-loving and cu-
riosity, a young adult questioning his
purpose in life, and then finally a serious
teacher and part-time farmer. Each
chapter has a short interpretive introduction.
The material for the book came from the
personal accounts of Roberts of the pe-
riod 1853-1865, with an epilogue
covering 1866 to 1914, the year of his death.
Earlier in his career England had been
shown, by a family relative, one of his sub-
ject's legal-sized journals. Having an
interest in the history of American educa-
tion, he decided upon his retirement to
transcribe portions of the journal.
However, materials loaned to him by the
family also included birthday annals, a
daily diary record, and a short travel
account. The transcription resulted in nearly
1,000 pages of manuscript. It is the
hope of England that they be available for fu-
ture scholarly research.
England's editing work is judicious and
sparing, leaving out comments on
weather and repetitious reflections,
with deletions indicated by ellipses. Although
the final product remains somewhat
repetitious, he has converted what might have
Book Reviews 97
been a cumbersome document into an
absorbing account. The subject's homilies
are revealing, as in p.61 where he
regrets that he may never go to college: "The
rugged paths of life might be softened a
little by knowing more its ways...."
Although the real strength of this book
is in the subject's words, this interest-
ing work could have been improved
structurally. The single map should have been
augmented by several locator maps.
Historical photographs of cities, such as
Cincinnati (p. 109), or structures, such
as the Ohio Female College (p. 35), would
have added more dimension (p. 53).
A liberal application of footnotes would
have helped to explain technical pro-
cesses, historical events and modes of
life, and the school books Roberts utilized.
Mill maintenance and parts mentioned
(pp. 97, 98-99) might have been clearer
with a footnote paragraph explaining
terminology. Although somewhat esoteric,
a brief exploration of the telegraph
transmission problem (p. 222) would have
been helpful. The problems faced by
those opposed to the Civil War, including
Roberts (p. 251), deserve a long
footnote including a definition of the label
Butternuts (p. 256) for the lay readers.
The mention of school books such as
Ray's Algebra (p. 109) and a grammar book by Kirkham (p. 73) should
have a
footnote listing titles, publishers, and
publisher's dates. The index is extensive,
yet some interesting subjects are left
out or not complete, such as the telegraph
and books mentioned (p. 132).
Two other areas left unstudied include
archaic phraseology and terms in the
realm of conversation and medicine.
Phrases such as " .. got on the cars and
sloped" (p. 61) might be
illuminated as to their origins. The Dictionary
of
Regional English might be cited to explain, or a short glossary at the
end of the
book might have helped. Perhaps future
scholarship on these papers may con-
tribute to the Dictionary. Medical terms
such as ague, flux, dropsy, quacks and
nostrums, and hydrotherapy all deserve
explanations. Perhaps a glossary could
have been modeled after one that appears
in The Journals of William A. Lindsay
(Indianapolis: Indiana Historical
Society, 1989), p.159.
These suggestions are not meant to
detract from the very good overall quality of
this book which is augmented by the
lyricism of Roberts. One is continually im-
pressed by the expressiveness of the
subject, as on p.150: "The morning is dark
and gloomy. . . . Still, there is a
great serenity about the aspect of things that
makes a sweet sadness steal over the
heart and that drives the mind back over the
bright scenes of other days" (p.
74).
One hopes that the Roberts papers will
be available for future research: for the
study of the phraseology and terms, as
well as for local community history. The
editor is to be commended for bringing
forth an interesting piece of local history.
Indiana Historical Bureau Alan
Conant
Barns of the Midwest. Edited by Allen G. Noble and Hubert G. Wilhelm.
(Athens:
Ohio University Press, 1995. xi + 295p.;
maps, illustrations, references cited,
index. $50.00.)
Barns are one of the most recognizable
features in the rural landscapes of the
midwest. This book was written by more
than a dozen historians, geographers,
writers, and historic preservationists
who set out to answer two important ques-
tions: what/where is the
"midwest" and what is a midwestern barn? The editors of
Barns of the Midwest began by noting that the midwest is a rather vague
region in
98 OHIO
HISTORY
the nation's midsection-roughly
triangular in shape-extending from the Texas
panhandle to eastern Ohio and eastern
Montana. Some readers may question the
placement of portions of the Great
Plains in the midwest, but the editors focus on a
somewhat smaller area that most people
recognize as the midwest, an area where
crops and livestock are raised without
irrigation and where the climate is severe
enough to require indoor storage or
shelter.
After identifying the region, editors
Allen Noble and Hubert Wilhelm note that
". .there never has been a
midwestern barn. The barn of the midwest was-and
is--many barns common enough to be recognizable as
midwestern." The book's
fifteen essays reveal just how diverse
midwestern barns are, for these structures
serve many functions (that is, are
dependent on the type of agricultural economy
practiced) and also reflect the complex
social history of the region. Dairy barns
and tobacco barns are included, but most
of the essays focus on those general pur-
pose structures that serve numerous
purposes, including the threshing of grain and
the housing of livestock.
In "Early Log-Crib Barn
Survivals," Warren Roberts describes the barn as an
adaptation to the rural midwestern
frontier. In "The Three-Bay Threshing Barn,"
Charles Calkins and Martin Perkins
describe the familiar three-part barn and its re-
lationship to the region's agriculture
and architecture. "Midwestern
Barns and
their Germanic Connections"
provides Ohio University professor Hubert Wilhelm
the opportunity to describe the ethnic
roots of 18th and 19th century barns and to
reflect on the development of the
standard Pennsylvania barn that diffused into
portions of the middle west, including
Ohio. In "Affordable Barns for the
Midwest: Beginnings," Lowell Soike
describes the changing function of barns
and the major inspirations for the
development of new barn designs. The chapter
"Dairying and Dairy Barns in the
Northern Midwest" by Ignolf Vogeler provides a
comprehensive overview of the
relationship between the barn and the dairy indus-
try. "Tobacco Barns and Sheds"
by Karl Raitz discusses the relationship between
tobacco crops and barn types throughout
the region, including Ohio. In "Within
the Reach of All: Midwest Barns
Perfected," Lowell Soike describes the process
by which barns were designed to reach
the greatest number of farmers through
mass production techniques and the
efforts and programs of agricultural experi-
ment stations. "Corncribs to Grain
Elevators: Extensions of the Barn" by Keith
Roe describes a wide range of related
structures that serve in the storage of grain.
"Barns of Nonorthogonal Plan,"
by Keith Sculle and Wayne Price, describes and
interprets those fascinating circular
and polygonal barns that became popular in
the late 19th and early 20th century. In
"The Modern Midwest Barn: 1900-
Present," the Ohio Historic
Preservation Office's Glen Harper and Steve Gordon
describe how modern scientific and
technologically improved barns (including
pole barns and quonset huts) developed
in the region. Travelers often comment on
barn decorations such as hex signs,
dated slate roofs, arches, and other details of
midwestern barn design, and Ohioan David
T. Stephens discusses these in the
chapter entitled "Midwest Barn
Decor." The future of barns is discussed in the brief
but informative essay entitled
"Preserving the Midwestern Barn" by Hemalata
Dandekar and Eric MacDonald. Writer Jack
Matthews then offers fascinating ob-
servations in his brief chapter entitled
"In Praise of 'Euerlastynge Barnes.'" This
book concludes with an essay entitled
"Reflections" by editors Hubert Wilhelm
and Allen Noble.
As can be seen from the above synopsis,
this book is rather comprehensive,
bringing together separate studies by
scholars. Although the chapters vary in
their focus and attention to detail, Barns
of the Midwest represents a major contri-
Book Reviews 99
bution to the historical geography of
the region. Although the book would have
been strengthened by more detailed
mapping of various barn types and construc-
tion techniques throughout the entire
region, it marks a very important step in the
interpretation of a changing-some claim
endangered-regional landscape fea-
ture. Historians, historical
geographers, architectural historians and anyone with
an interest in midwestern agriculture
will find this book to be indispensable.
The University of Texas at
Arlington Richard
Francaviglia
War in Kentucky: From Shiloh to Perryville. By
James Lee McDonough.
(Knoxville: The University of Tennessee
Press, 1994. xvii + 386p.; illustra-
tions, notes, index. $32.00.)
James Lee McDonough has succeeded in
presenting the best overview of the
least appreciated western campaign in
terms of its importance in his fine book,
War in Kentucky From Shiloh to
Perryville. McDonough has incorporated
not
only an insightful broad overview of the
Kentucky campaign but also the entire
war in the West, including earlier
campaigns such as Shiloh and Corinth. This ap-
proach is essential because Perryville
cannot be fully understood without first un-
derstanding the earlier campaigns,
especially in the Western theater. Such linkage
is important because the vast stage of
the fighting in the West often stretched for
hundreds of miles across a broad arena.
In addition, McDonough does not lose
sight of the need to tell the story of the
Kentucky campaign in the words of the
young men and boys in blue and gray. He
incorporates a large and impressive
amount of primary source material to enhance
readability and the flow of the book,
while generating reader interest. In this way,
McDonough illuminates the Kentucky
campaign on a personal and human level
seldom seen before in regard to this
little-known campaign. As important, he
does not become bogged down with all the
battle minutia of Perryville like so
many other authors today, while keeping
the narrative focused, lively, and flow-
ing smoothly.
In this excellent work, McDonough
explores the strategic importance of the
Kentucky campaign by convincingly
proving that it was one of the key turning
points of the Civil War. He also
emphasizes the strategic importance of not only
Kentucky but also the entire border of
the Upper South states, which were all-im-
portant in determining winner from loser
in the war. Civil War historians often
neglect to acknowledge the importance of
the border states of the Upper South,
Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland. This
is not the case with McDonough, who
emphasizes how the border states were critical.
Most important, McDonough places the
Kentucky campaign in the overall con-
text of the decisive struggle for the
Mississippi Valley, where the war was won and
lost. The Union's conquering of the
strategic Mississippi Valley was what really
unlocked the gates of Richmond, leading
the way to decisive victory and the end of
the war.
In short, McDonough's book is the best
modern account to date of the often
overlooked and too often ignored
Kentucky campaign; a struggle to regain not
only Kentucky but also for
possession of the vital Mississippi
Valley.
Combining scholarship with readability,
McDonough proves that the decisive
struggle for the Mississippi Valley
determined the outcome of the war.
100 OHIO
HISTORY
In refreshing contrast to the endless
writing and rewriting of the war in the east-
ern theater, and especially Gettysburg,
as a result of Ken Burn's documentaries and
Ted Turner's movie Gettysburg, McDonough's
presents an enlightened perspec-
tive which places Perryville, the
Kentucky campaign, and the West in a proper
historical perspective. While the
decisive battle of the Kentucky campaign-
Perryville-is relatively little-known,
Gettysburg has been immortalized by gen-
erations of historians because it was
the Confederate "High Water Mark" in the
East. McDonough skillfully demonstrates
that the Kentucky invasion represented
the high tide of Confederate fortunes in
the Mississippi Valley and the West.
After the seemingly endless
glorification and romanticization of Gettysburg and
the eastern theater, McDonough's work
succeeds in reminding us that in many
ways Perryville was a battle as
important and decisive as Gettysburg. Indeed, dur-
ing the all-important struggle for the
Mississippi Valley, Southern dreams reached
their zenith in Kentucky during the
"high-water of the Confederacy in the Western
Theater."
Washington, D.C. Phillip
Thomas Tucker
Citizen Sherman: A Life of
William Tecumseh Sherman. By Michael
Fellman.
(New York: Random House, 1995. xi +
486p.; notes, index. $30.00.)
William Tecumseh Sherman suffered from more
than the average vicissitudes of
life. According to the author, Sherman
responded to these conditions by project-
ing his anger. Fellman divides Sherman's
life into three major phases: the era of
humiliation, the era of transformation,
and the era of fame.
During the era of humiliation, Sherman
repressed his anger which stemmed from
a sense of inadequacy. Sherman had a
miserable childhood and early adulthood.
His father died when Sherman was nine
and his mother gave him to neighbors to
raise. Sherman never really felt
accepted by his new family and naturally suffered
from a sense of abandonment. His foster
father, Senator Thomas Ewing of Ohio,
chose Sherman's career by obtaining for
him an appointment to West Point.
Later, Sherman married his foster
sister, while continuing to labor under the influ-
ence of his foster father. Moreover,
Sherman had a dysfunctional marriage. After
he resigned from the army he failed at
various business enterprises. Back in the
army during the early stages of the
Civil War, Sherman seemed to suffer a mental
breakdown from the pressures of command.
Throughout this era Sherman re-
pressed his anger at his situation
because he felt unworthy of honor.
The Civil War, beginning with the Battle
of Shiloh, transformed Sherman's
life. In this battle, Sherman felt that
he had finally shown himself worthy of
honor. As such he no longer felt the
need to repress his feelings of anger about
his situation and began to lash out at
his enemies. Sherman enjoyed waging a de-
structive war and of all the Civil War
generals came closest to practicing total war.
The war made Sherman a national icon.
Now powerful, Sherman attempted to
assert his will in the postwar era. He ex-
pressed racist ideas about the Indians
and African Americans freely and resented
anyone's questioning these views.
Disliking civilian control of the military, he
fought Secretary of War William Belknap for control. He roamed the country
rather than stay in Washington, D.C.,
refought many Civil War campaigns with
fellow generals, thereby rupturing
several friendships, and had several affairs
which aggravated a worsening marital
situation. To make matters worse, one of
Book Reviews 101
his sons rejected his plans for his life
and became a priest. Fame carried quite a
burden for Sherman, but he no longer
repressed his anger as he had done in the era
of humiliation.
Citizen Sherman is well written and a joy to read. However, this
reviewer has
some reservations about this study. The
military historian will find many topics
ignored. The author deals with Shiloh in
just one page while Chickasaw Bluff and
Tunnel Hill receive even more limited
coverage. Occasionally small factual mis-
takes occur, such as calling George
Thomas a corps commander when he actually
commanded an army (p. 196). If readers
desire an analysis of Sherman as a tacti-
cian or strategist they will need to
refer to studies by T. Harry Williams, James Lee
McDonough, or Albert Castel.
For better or worse, Citizen Sherman demands
a comparison with John F.
Marszalek's recent Sherman: A
Soldier's Passion for Order. Both see the key to
Sherman's personality in his
dysfunctional childhood and marriage. Marszalek
interprets this as resulting in a desire
to control events and people to attain stabil-
ity, while Fellman sees it as resulting
in rage which while initially repressed even-
tually expressed itself in the Civil War
era and afterwards with a vengeance.
Marszalek captures more of the nuances
of Sherman's personality, and his writing
seems to reflect more thorough research.
Fellman, on the other hand, captures the
dramatic events but leaves some issues
unexplored.
Citizen Sherman is an excellent book, but not the final word on William
T.
Sherman. Readers will profit from this
study but would do well to compare it with
other studies of this key Civil War
personality.
Campbellsville University Damon
Eubank
Civil War Surgeon, 1861-1865:
Personal Memoirs of John H. Brinton. By
John
H. Brinton with new forward by John Y.
Simon. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1996. xxiv + 361p.;
notes, index. $14.95 paper.)
Dr. John H. Brinton's Personal
Memoirs were written for his children in 1891,
over one-quarter century after the
conclusion of the Civil War. His writing reflects
not only his own experiences as a
physician during the Civil War, but also indi-
cates his relationship with Ulysses S.
Grant, Philip H. Sheridan, John C.
Fremont, Henry W. Halleck, William A.
Hammond, C. F. Smith, John H.
McClernand, William S. Rosecrans, and
his first cousin George B. McClellan. He
was one of the first to write about a
relatively obscure Grant early in the war.
John H. Brinton was born in Philadelphia
in 1832, received an A.B. in 1850
and an A.M. in 1852 from the University
of Pennsylvania, and an M.D. degree
from Jefferson Medical College in
Philadelphia in 1852. He followed this educa-
tion with a year of clinical training in
Paris and Vienna, and hence was an ex-
tremely well-trained physician at the
time of the Civil War. He had served on the
faculty of Jefferson Medical College
briefly before he was appointed a brigade sur-
geon [rank of major] in August 1861. In
September he was ordered to report to
Gen. John C. Fremont in St. Louis where
he was to be the medical director of a ge-
ographical district.
The first action in which Dr. Brinton
was involved was the Battle of Belmont
where he was the Medical Director in the
Field with General Grant. Brinton related
some interesting stories and incidents
associated with this battle, including the
102 OHIO HISTORY
need to train some of the physicians in
the practice of surgery, and a few situations
in which he directed artillery firing.
Dr. Brinton continued on Gen. Grant's
staff through the battles of Ft. Henry and
Ft. Donelson. He again related stories
and incidents and described the somewhat
strained relationship between Grant,
Buell and Halleck. Brinton's comments
about these relationships and the other
stories were based in part upon his reading
letters he wrote and received some
twenty-five years earlier.
After the battle of Shiloh, Dr. Brinton
was assigned to work on Gen. Halleck's
staff. It was during this period that
Brinton first had contact with Captain Philip
H. Sheridan.
In June 1862, Brinton was ordered to
report to the office of Surgeon General
William Hammond in Washington, D.C. His
assignment was to develop the
Surgical History of the
War. Shortly after his move to Washington,
he was or-
dered to develop a Military Medical
Museum in Washington, D.C. In order to col-
lect materials for this museum, Brinton
visited battlefields after the battles.
Battlefields which he visited and
described his experiences included: Antietam,
Fredericksburg and Gettysburg.
In 1862, Brinton hoped to be appointed a
Medical Inspector, but commented
that these appointments involved
political considerations. Also while he
was
working in the Surgeon General's Office,
he worked with Gen. Hammond to de-
velop an Army Medical School. While
initial efforts to develop this school were
completed, it was during the period that
Dr. Hammond was replaced as Surgeon
General by Dr. Joseph Barnes.
In September 1864, Brinton was removed
from the Surgeon General's Office,
due to his close association with Dr.
Hammond, and his relationship with General
McClellan. He was assigned to Gen.
Rosecran's staff in St. Louis and was as-
signed as Superintendent and Director of
General Hospitals in Nashville. He re-
signed his army commission in February
1865 and returned to his post as a profes-
sor in the Jefferson Medical College. He
died March 18, 1907.
Dr. Haller finds Brinton a "Keen
observer of character," and Dr. Simon finds the
memoirs "remarkable for accuracy
and frankness." The reprinting of this volume
adds a useful contribution to the
literature of the Civil War.
The Ohio State University Robert W. McCormick
The Harlem Renaissance: Hub of
African-American Culture, 1920-1930. By
Steven Watson. (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1995. xi + 224p.; illustrations,
notes, sources for marginal quotations,
chronology, bibliography, index, cred-
its. $22.00.)
Steven Watson, in his The Harlem
Renaissance: Hub of African-American
Culture, 1920-1930, demonstrates through the use of group biography that
the
Harlem Renaissance was "driven not
only by the individual artists and writers who
[gave] birth to new ideas but also by
the complex nexus of editors, patrons, crit-
ics, and hostesses who introduce[d]
these ideas to the world" (p. ix). The author
achieves this with a succinct writing
style that both informs and entertains.
Numerous photographs and marginalia,
including brief quotations and definitions
of slang terms, enrich the book
throughout.
According to Watson, members of the
"Talented Tenth" acted as godparents of
the Harlem Renaissance. Charles S. Johnson, editor of the Urban
League's
Book Reviews 103
Opportunity and W.E.B. DuBois, editor of the NAACP's Crisis, among
others,
were in a unique position to publicize
young writers, artists, and entertainers
through the pages of their magazines.
Max Eastman, the radical writer and editor,
and other racially progressive Whites
also helped to publicize and support the
Renaissance by giving young Black
writers, entertainers, and artists a forum.
Socially elite Whites like Carl Van
Vechten, a young writer, helped make it
fashionable for European-Americans to be
voyeurs of, if not participants in, the
Renaissance. Such fashions encouraged
some Whites to patronize the segregated
Cotton Club and other more racially open
venues, providing crucial income to
African-American entertainers, including
Bessie Smith and Bill "Bojangles"
Robinson.
At the same time, a handful of wealthy
White patrons supported more serious
Black artists and writers. Charlotte van
der Veer Quick Mason proved among the
most influential of these patrons with
her support of the writings of Langston
Hughes and of Zora Neale Hurston's
studies of Southern Black folkways. Mason's
support proved a double-edged sword,
however, when she sought to channel
Hurston's and Hughes energies into work
that would confirm Mason's precon-
ceived notions about the nature of
African-Americans. At the same time, a handful
of wealthy African-Americans, among them
A'Lelia Walker, heir to her mother's
cosmetics fortune, also helped to
finance the Renaissance. In her Harlem man-
sion, which she dubbed the "Dark
Tower," Walker brought Harlemites together and
displayed their poetry, music, and
paintings.
All of this support and the hopefulness
of the "New Negro" that a new day in
race relations was imminent led to a
flowering of the arts and entertainment that
permanently etched itself in
African-American and, indeed, in all of American cul-
ture. It allowed such talented
individuals as Countee Cullen, Alain Locke, Hurston,
Hughes, Claude McKay, and others to be
seen as the important cultural figures that
they were.
The end of the Renaissance came, Watson
notes, with the beginning of the
Depression as money for culture and the
arts dried up. But he also argues that de-
caying personal relationships among the
artists and patrons also contributed to
its decline. As personal conflict and
financial depression deepened, the hope that
had helped nurture the Renaissance died.
Although Watson has done a nice job of
showing the internal connections be-
tween the participants in the Harlem
Renaissance and how those connections
shaped it, he largely fails to show a
connection to the rest of American society.
Such a discussion might have been
useful, for instance, in exploring the question
of how and whether the Renaissance
contributed to the loosening of race relations
in the 1930s that, in Harvard Sitkoff's
words, resulted in a "New Deal for Blacks."
Nevertheless, Watson has written an
elegant and readable work in a fresh format
that will certainly inform and captivate
the thoughtful lay person, while perhaps
stimulating new insights among scholars.
University of Cincinnati Charles F.
Casey-Leininger
Rogers Hornsby: A Biography, By Charles C. Alexander. (New York: Henry
Holt, 1995. xiv + 366p.; illustrations,
notes, bibliography, index. $27.00.)
While reading this biography of Rogers
Hornsby, this writer's first impulse was
to compare him with the great Babe Ruth.
Ruth and Hornsby's careers paralleled
104 OHIO HISTORY
each other, each played against the
other in at least one World Series, and each is
in the Baseball Hall of Fame in
Cooperstown, New York. The height of their ca-
reers was in the 1920s, often considered
the golden age of American sports.
Spectator sports, especially baseball,
had enormous popular appeal during this
decade, which saw average major league
attendance rise some 50 percent over the
previous decade. Crucial to the decade's
reputation was Ruth's position as base-
ball's first national superstar and his
central role in redefining the concept of fame
in the United States.
As Alexander's biography of Hornsby
unfolds, however, one is sharply re-
minded of the differences between the
two baseball greats. The Bambino, who had
crowd appeal and a colorful personality,
which Hornsby definitely lacked, as well
as a flamboyant lifestyle foreign to
Hornsby, engaged in frequent post-season
barnstorming tours which helped make him
a national hero. Both were the pre-
mier hitters of their era. Ruth's
accomplishments are documented elsewhere and
need no recounting. Hornsby, one of the
foremost pure hitters in the game, had a
lifetime batting average of .358 in
twenty-three major league seasons (1915-
1937), with three seasons in excess of
.400. Ruth had more power and charisma,
but Hornsby was a superior hitter for
average. And, Alexander makes it clear that,
if Ruth had a colorful, outgoing
personality, Hornsby's was anything but that, as
suggested by the Hornsby quote that
introduces the book: "I have never been a yes
man.
Rogers Hornsby was born in Texas in
1896. As a boy and young man, he wit-
nessed the advent of radio, the common
use of the automobile for transportation,
and the emergence of baseball as the
national pastime. He began his major league
career with the St. Louis Cardinals in
1915. The only star baseball player on a
mediocre team during his first seven or
eight years, his playing days spanned an
era when major league baseball was
coping with the effects of the Black Sox scan-
dal in the 1920s, the use of a
"livelier" baseball, the emergence of Babe Ruth, not
only as a star but also a challenger to
baseball's hierarchy, and the outlawing of
the spitball and other trick pitchers.
Alexander astutely traces the career of this
baseball immortal from the Cardinals'
lean years to a world's championship in
1928, then on through Hornsby's waning
years as a player. Along the way he
provides enjoyable insights about the
rough and tumble nature of the game prior
to World War II.
Alexander also presents the reader with
insight into Hornsby's career as a hard-
nosed manager who loved the game of
baseball to a fault and brought resentment
and hatred upon himself because of his
unyielding conservative style. Hornsby's
outlook and methods changed little over
the years, with his outmoded style being
reflected in his adherence to set
lineups, having no pitching coaches, and his ex-
pectation that the pitcher who started
the game would finish it. His no-nonsense,
narrow-minded approach yielded some
success at the minor league level, but did
not help him or his teams rise above
mediocrity in the major leagues; nor did it
further his career as a manager.
Hornsby loved baseball. Even after his
playing days were over, he could not
bring himself to quit the game. He was
the batting coach for the New York Mets in
1962, the year before he died.
Alexander wisely sets the mood for his
biography by placing Hornsby's career
and personality within the context of
his times. He presents his subject's
"pungent vocabulary,"
conservative attitude toward Black Americans, and cold
gruff nature with the skill one expects
from a trained historian. At several junc-
tures in the biography, however, one
would have liked to have seen a more detailed
Book Reviews 105
development of how Hornsby was affected
by the times in which he lived. For ex-
ample, how events such as prohibition,
the Great Depression, or the World Wars
impacted his life and world. In
addition, perhaps because no diaries or collection
of letters exist, the reader is provided
no insight into how Hornsby or his son felt
when they realized the younger Hornsby
could not hit a baseball. One would also
like to see Hornsby's career hitting
statistics in table form included in the book.
These minor criticisms aside, all in all
this biography is well worth reading.
Alexander has done an excellent job of
re-creating Hornsby's feisty personality.
He provides interesting insight into
Hornsby the great baseball player, and
Hornsby the man, who admitted, "I'm
not a friendly fellow." This fine biography
is highly recommended for anyone
interested in the history of baseball. One does
not have to like Rogers Hornsby the man
to like Rogers Hornsby: A Biography.
Ohio Historical Society William C.
Gates
Cleveland; A Metropolitan
Reader. Edited by W. Dennis Keating, Norman
Krumholz, and David C. Perry. (Kent: The
Kent State University Press, 1995.
xi + 402p.; illustrations, contributors,
notes, bibliography, index. $35.00 pa-
per.)
Cleveland: A Metropolitan Reader is a study of Cleveland with emphasis on po-
litical economy, social development, and
history. W. Dennis Keating, Norman
Krumholz, and David C. Perry, the
editors and also contributors, contend that their
anthology presents Cleveland as an
example of American metropolitan develop-
ment in the late-twentieth century.
Although the book has a strong historical
component, its focus is clearly upon
recent political, social, economic, and ethnic
trends in Ohio's largest city.
Perry begins with an essay that stresses
the role of privatism, restructuring,
ethnicism and race in the evolution of
Cleveland and maintains that the metropo-
lis is a prime representative of
American urbanism. Carol Poh Miller and Robert
A. Wheeler follow with a historical
overview that traces Cleveland's past from
1796 to 1993. This work emphasizes the
changes in the city over time.
Edward Hill's essay seeks to examine
economic restructuring in Cleveland since
1870, but actually focuses on the recent
past. Hill argues cogently that Cleveland,
once a manufacturing giant in the nation,
has experienced important changes.
Since an economic decline in 1979,
Cleveland's industrial base has shifted
greatly. Most of the city's industrial
production-notably the steel and the auto-
mobile industry-are subject to outside
controls while those corporations that
maintain their headquarters in Cleveland
do the bulk of their manufacturing else-
where. This economic restructuring has
had an enormous impact upon poverty,
housing and urban development in the
metropolitan area, all major themes in this
book.
Mayor Dennis Kucinich's urban populism,
ownership of the Municipal Light
Company and race form the core of
sections on politics and governance. An ex-
cerpt from Frederic Howe's book Confessions
of a Reformer that examines Mayor
Tom Johnson's fight for municipal
ownership of public utilities sets the stage for
Todd Swanstrom's discussion of
Kucinich's controversy with local banks over the
retention of Muni Light and the city's
subsequent default. This dispute, a focal
point of the book, and its aftermath are
also the subject of essays by the editors,
Myron Magnet and Roldo Bartimole.
Keating, Krumholz, Perry and Bartimole ar-
106 OHIO HISTORY
gue that the issue turned upon the
question of business climate and the true power
structure of the city. In their opinion,
corporate Cleveland runs the city for the
benefit of business and to the detriment
of the people. Magnet counters that busi-
ness leaders who formed the organization
Cleveland Tomorrow essentially saved
the city from Kucinich's dangerous
approach to government. Christopher Wye
adds an essay on the history of civil
rights in Cleveland.
Edward Miggins introduces a section on
neighborhoods with a historical
overview of the various ethnic groups
that settled in Cleveland. Essays by
Charles J. Coulton and Julian Chow,
Mittie Olion Chandler and Thomas E. Bier
examine the matters of poverty, public
housing and housing dynamics as they per-
tain the Cleveland's neighborhoods.
These authors essentially discover that areas
of high poverty are spreading in
Cleveland as are the residential neighborhoods of
nonwhites, largely because employed
predominantly white persons have departed
for the suburbs with the outward
movement of many of Cleveland's industries.
A section on race and discrimination
begins with Kenneth Kusmer's essay on
the development of the Central-Woodland
community within the context of segre-
gation during the period 1870-1930.
William E. Nelson, Jr., traces the recent de-
velopment of black political power in
Cleveland from Carl Stokes to George L.
Forbes to Michael White. Keating
concludes with an essay on segregated hous-
ing.
The final section focuses on urban
planning and development in Cleveland and
returns to some of the earlier themes of
public-private partnerships. Richard A.
Shatten sings the praises of Cleveland
Tomorrow, but in two separate essays the
editors and John Metzger argue that
these alliances advance business interests
more than they do the public.
Christopher Warren's and Philip L. Clay's conclud-
ing essays on housing note the problems
that Cleveland and other larger American
cities face in the future.
Cleveland: A Metropolitan Reader is a valuable work for all who hope to under-
stand modern Cleveland and also for
those who wish to understand the present
American urban scene. Although the
editors certainly do not ignore the historical
context of Cleveland's current status,
they clearly focus on political economy, ur-
ban policy, city planning and social
trends. Those historians who have con-
tributed to this volume, nonetheless,
have done excellent work as have the other
essayists. The result is a solid piece
of scholarship.
Wright State University Edward F.
Haas
Planning for the Private Interest:
Land Use Controls and Residential Patterns in
Columbus, Ohio, 1900-1970. By Patricia Burgess. (Columbus: The Ohio State
University Press, 1995. xii + 258p.;
illustrations, notes, appendix, bibliogra-
phy, index. $59.50.)
In 1939 my grandparents, who lived in a
blue collar neighborhood on
Columbus' northeast side, had a decision
to make-where to send their only child,
Annabelle, to high school. It was an
option made possible because their house
was the same distance from "East
High," located near the downtown, as it was from
North High School, situated on Columbus'
northern edge. For Clyde and Nellie
Pryor, their choice was simple:
Annabelle would attend North because they did not
want her going to school with
"colored kids."
Book Reviews 107
This family story illustrates the
primary weakness of Burgess' book on land-use
controls in Columbus, Ohio. Burgess does
a good job chronicling the passage of
zoning laws, describing the use of deed
restrictions, and illustrating the tension
between planers and developers, but she
ignores almost completely the human
faces-like those of my
grandparents-which are present, albeit fuzzily, in her
analysis.
Burgess argues that private developers
used restrictive convenants to regulate
land-use on plats they developed. By
specifying requirements on building height,
lot size and set-backs, developers
controlled what sort of housing would be built
in a particular subdivision and where
commercial development could occur, if at
all. When Columbus and the surrounding
suburbs enacted zoning codes, the result-
ing public ordinances simply ratified
these restrictions. Near Columbus' down-
town, zoning codes and variances were drafted
at the behest of property owners,
creating mixed and more intense use in
older neighborhoods and transforming
them into places where the poor and
minorities lived, the kind of people my
grandparents feared. City-wide or
community-wide planning did not occur, and
zoning substituted as a technique to
honor the desires of property owners and
commitments made by private developers,
hence the title of the book.
To illustrate this analysis Burgess uses
ameba-like maps, which are practically
useless for the reader who has never
lived in Columbus. She mentions important
topographical and political
features-Alum Creek, the Olentangy River, the State
Capitol-but these features are not
present on the maps, causing the reader to
speculate on their location (or to rush
for a city atlas).
A more bothersome problem lies with Burgess' approach. Her argument is
clear, but rather than analyzing the
politics that created Columbus' shape, she cen-
ters her text around a chronicle listing
and describing zoning ordinances and pat-
terns of deed restriction. Although she
occasionally mentions the names of de-
velopers, she ignores the political
relationships that existed between real estate
interests and city officials. Cities
have been built in response to alliances, so-
called growth coalitions, between
business leaders and politicians, but seldom
does Burgess describe the relationships
or the deal-making that led to the land-
shape that Columbus eventually took.
Zoning involved political maneuvering,
some of it highly controversial, but
politics, sadly, is missing from this book.
This problem is especially troubling
when Burgess tries to deal with matters of
race. Taking a somewhat legalistic view,
she claims there is no evidence that
planners, city officers, and developers
used zoning to keep blacks out of white
neighborhoods. Of course not. Burgess
has not even considered the sociopoliti-
cal circumstances that confronted
postwar Columbus, which like all northern
cities had to come to grips with black
immigration. Nor has she investigated the
decision-making that produced highly
segregated housing. Maybe officials and
developers did not intend zoning as tool
of racial exclusion, but its effect certainly
worked out that way, as my family story
indicates. Without more detailed atten-
tion to politics, Burgess understates
the human struggle that produced a segregated
city and leaves the reader with the
unconvincing claim that the result was not in-
tentional.
The book has potential. Burgess
skillfully chronicles land-use development
and zoning ordinances, but as written
her hook is like a poorly developed photo-
graph: the basic outline is present, but
human faces gathered therein are only
faintly visible.
The Ohio State University-Lima William D. Angel, Jr.
108 OHIO HISTORY
Samuel Medary and the Crisis: Testing
the Limits of Press Freedom. By Reed
W.
Smith. (Columbus: The Ohio State
University Press, 1995. ix + 200p.; illustra-
tions, notes, bibliography, index.
$45.00.)
In this study of Samuel Medary,
politician and journalist who scorned the
Lincoln administration, Reed Smith
portrays him testing the "limits of press free-
dom." Smith, though acknowledging
that Medary, a Peace Democrat, was not
"broad-minded enough ... to grow
intellectually or to change his opinions," be-
lieves that he "played a role in
helping broaden the ability of the First Amendment
to protect the opposition press."
Smith's research is solidly rooted in primary
sources, largely contemporary
newspapers, and the relevant secondary works.
Born in 1801 in Montgomery County in
Pennsylvania and nurtured on Quaker
doctrines and Jeffersonian concepts of
agrarian democracy, Medary moved to
Bethel, Ohio, in 1825. There he was a
teacher-Smith does not say in what kind
of school he taught-but soon turned to
politics, holding a number of local of-
fices. In 1828, along with Thomas
Morris, one of the state's first prominent anti-
slavery politicians, he began
publication of the Ohio Sun, a newspaper advancing
Jacksonian precepts among "plain
farmers and mechanics." After winning elec-
tion to the General Assembly in 1834 and
1836, he moved to Columbus, where he
published the Ohio Statesman, a
vehicle for his full-throated support of
Jacksonian democracy and the Democratic
party in Ohio. Rewarded by Democrats
with the post of supervisor of public
printing in Ohio, he used his office to be-
come an important leader and spokesman
for the party.
Late in the 1840s, he assumed the
primary role in the state in calling for a con-
vention to revise the state
constitution. Smith implies that he was a delegate to
the convention-"Medary and the
other delegates wanted political change" (p.
50)-but he lost his bid for election to
a local Whig. Nonetheless, the delegates
adopted many of his proposals designed
to protect the "agrarian social order"
against the inroads of industrialism. He
continued to be active in the Democratic
party in the 1850s, finding himself
caught, though, between the Buchanan and
Douglas wings. He owed this appointment to territorial governorships of
Minnesota and Kansas to Buchanan's
attempts to appease Douglas. He served in
the positions satisfactorily but without
great distinction.
Returning to Ohio from Kansas as the
secession crisis mounted, Medary began
publication of a weekly newspaper, the Crisis,
intending to give in it full play to
what he believed to be the proper function
of a journalist in a democracy: he would
speak to his readers' intelligence in a
reasoned discussion of issues from a partisan
perspective--a rather quixotic mission.
A states' rights and pro-slavery man, he
censured the abolitionists for
threatening the integrity of the Union and urged the
Lincoln administration to call a
convention of the states to effect compromise be-
tween North and South. Once war began,
he called on Peace Democrats-the
Copperheads-to oppose the administration
by all peaceful means at their dis-
posal. He persistently denounced
Lincoln's use of conscription and measures for
emancipation. Particularly, though, he
excoriated the administration for the sup-
pression of Copperhead newspapers in and
outside of Ohio for supposedly ob-
structing the war effort by discouraging
enlistments in the army and encouraging
desertions. He damned Unionists and the
administration for abetting civilian at-
tacks on Copperhead newspapers
(surprisingly, Smith does not allude to the vio-
lence in Dayton that resulted in the
death of a Copperhead editor). Railing at the
arrest of Copperhead editors, he became
a crusader for the unrestricted right of all
Book Reviews 109
newspapers to voice their opinions. He himself was arrested in 1864 for
"conspiracy against the Union"
but never came to trial.
According to Smith, Medary was a
theoretician who believed that he could use
the Crisis to shape public
opinion in support of his views. On the other hand, he
argues that Clement L. Vallandigham,
perhaps the most prominent of all
Copperhead politicians, was an activist
who engaged in confrontational politics
to stay the course of the Lincoln
administration. Readers may not easily discern
the distinction between
their approaches. Medary,
though supporting
Vallandigham in his bizarre campaign for
the Ohio governorship in 1863, feared
that "Val" was not
sufficiently concerned about Lincoln's suppression of civil lib-
erties, emphasizing as he did that the
Union could not subdue the rebels. Smith
repeats, incidentally, the old canard
that Lincoln telegraphed Vallandigham's suc-
cessful opponent, "Glory to God . .
. Ohio has saved the Union."
Medary died on the eve of Lincoln's
reelection in 1864, believing, says Smith,
that the government had subverted the
freedom of the press. Though admitting
that "it is impossible to determine
one man's contribution to the development of
freedom of the press," Smith
ascribes primacy among all Copperhead editors-
over 150-in vindicating that freedom.
Where such men as Wilbur Storey of the
Chicago Times and Manton Marble of the New York World stand in
the pantheon
Smith does not say. Smith's Medary is
especially interesting set against the
Vallandigham that Frank Klement defined
in his study The Limits of Dissent:
Clement L. Vallandigham & The
Civil War (1971). Like Medary, he was
inflexi-
ble and unyielding in his condemnation
of the Lincoln administration; but neither
Klement nor other historians have seen
him as a champion of free speech.
Readers interested in the perennial
issue of freedom of speech and press during
war will find Smith's study useful and
provocative. They will also find in it a brief
but worthwhile explanation of the way in
which the press reported the Civil War
and politics of the day.
Wright State University Carl M.
Becker
An Artist of the American
Renaissance: The Letters of Kenyon Cox, 1883-1919.
Edited by H. Wayne Morgan. (Kent, Ohio:
The Kent State University Press,
1995. xiv + 197p.;
illustrations, notes, index. $35.00.)
Kenyon Cox, turn-of-the-century painter
and critic, worked primarily in a realis-
tic manner but tended to treat his
figures, particularly nudes, in an idealized, clas-
sical fashion. The strong draftsmanship
and tasteful balance of his compositions
made him a popular muralist. Most of his
commissions were for government
buildings such as the Library of
Congress, various statehouses and capitols, but he
also created murals for the World's
Columbian Exhibition and for Oberlin College.
Cox's criticism reflects the strong
opinions of a man deeply committed to raising
the aesthetic tastes of the American
public. He championed art that adopted a clas-
sical ideal but was a strong opponent of
modernism, particularly the abstract
painting of the European avant-garde.
Born in Warren, Ohio, in 1856, Cox grew
up in Cincinnati. His father, Jacob
Dolson Cox, was involved in politics on both
the state and national level, and his
mother, Helen Finney Cox, was the daughter
of Charles Grandison Finney, founder of
Oberlin College. The Cox family did not
view art as an ideal career path, but
seem to have been supportive nonetheless.
110 OHIO HISTORY
An Artist of the American Renaissance
is the sequel to editor H. Wayne
Morgan's previous work, An American
Art Student in Paris: The Letters of
Kenyon Cox, 1877-1882 (Kent State University Press, 1986). An Artist of
the
American Renaissance begins with Cox's arrival in New York City in 1883 and
continues until his death in 1919.
Morgan has divided the book into three chap-
ters, which reflect major periods in
Cox's life, beginning each chapter with a
short summary of the years in question.
These summaries are drawn from a more
comprehensive introduction with which
the book begins. This introduction out-
lines the course of Cox's life and
career and proves to be a helpful and even neces-
sary addition. Although the letters are
arranged chronologically, the reader will
notice that there are occasionally large
gaps of time between one entry and the
next. Morgan's synopsis will help to
guide the reader through these voids.
The majority of the letters presented
here are of a personal nature-directed to
his parents, wife and close friends-and
are most concerned with human interest
matters such as Cox's health, his daily
tasks, what he had for breakfast, etc. When
read consecutively these letters are
rather repetitive in content, but they do pro-
vide an inside view into the life of a
New York artist at the turn-of-the-century.
Cox's reputation for conservative, even
stodgy and narrow-minded opinions is
supported by comments like "Berlin
is the most coldly pompous and disagreeable
place I ever saw. German art and German
architecture are abominable, and I find I
don't like the German nature much
either" (p. 105). On the other hand, Cox did
have a sense of humor-a fact overlooked
in the history books-which is reflected
in his remembrances of the high-spirited
amusements pursued on his overseas
crossings or in how he teases his future
wife about his sitting in the moonlight
with another woman, who turns out to be
his sister. In addition to personal mate-
rial these letters are peppered with
comments directly concerning his art, his aes-
thetic theories and the actual practice
of making paintings, like his discussion of
the nude in art done for the benefit of
his concerned mother. A survey of his artis-
tic position is completed by the
inclusion of letters to other artists, critics and
newspaper editors. By today's standards
Cox's paintings have been deemed tech-
nically competent but lacking in
vitality and innovation. His letters, while they
do confirm that as a person he was much
like his art, also render a more complete,
well-rounded and human picture of Kenyon
Cox than can be provided by his murals
alone.
The Ohio State University Nora C.
Kilbane
On Board the USS "Mason":
The World War II Diary of James A. Dunn. Edited by
Mansel G. Blackford. (Columbus: The Ohio
State University Press, 1996.
xxxix + 130p.; illustrations, notes,
bibliographic note. $26.95.)
The USS "Mason" was a
Destroyer Escort on convoy duty in the Atlantic during
the last year of World War II.
James Dunn was one of her signalmen, and, disre-
garding Navy policy, he kept a diary
while at sea. His diary is significant because
Dunn was an African-American with two
years of college, and the "Mason" was the
largest ship with a predominantly black
crew. Following the release of Mary
Kelly's 1995 book and documentary Proudly
We Served: The Men of the USS
"Mason, " Dunn contacted the editor, who is the son of the
"Mason's" skipper and
a historian at Ohio State. This volume
is the result of their collaboration, with
Book Reviews 111
Blackford providing "only light
editing" (p. xxx). There is also a historical in-
troduction by University of Texas
sociologist John Butler.
Born in West Virginia in 1913, Dunn
spent his youth in Columbus, Ohio, where
he was the first African-American to
earn All City honors in football. He finished
school in West Virginia and attended
West Virginia State for two years before go-
ing to work in a steel mill and
marrying. He was drafted in 1942 and joined the
Navy. A good student with a love of
English, he became a signalman and was as-
signed to Newport, Rhode Island. His
wife joined him, and he hoped to spend the
war there on shore duty. The only blacks
serving at sea then were mess men.
Because of his proficiency, however, he
was assigned to the "Mason" when the
Navy decided to send a black crew to
sea, albeit with white officers and petty offi-
cers.
Dunn's account of the
"Mason's" voyages shows the numbing routine of con-
voy duty, punctuated by bad weather,
dangerous seas, and moments of great
beauty. Between June 1944 and May 1945
Dunn and his mates made two voyages
to Britain and three to Oran. They
matured as a crew and performed very well in
both their primary and symbolic roles.
Dunn also provides a touching personal
picture of his relationship with his
wife, Jane. Parts of his diary are written as let-
ters to her, particularly during 1945.
While race made the "Mason"
significant, much of Dunn's diary could have been
written by anyone with his education
tossing about on a DE. Nevertheless, he
makes it clear that the crew knew
exactly why their ship was important and worked
hard to make her a success. Dunn
complains intermittently about the petty offi-
cers, all of whom were white initially,
plus some sailors who curried favor with the
officers. Dislike of noncoms transcends
race, but was certainly exacerbated by it
on the "Mason." By 1945 the
"Mason" played an increasingly prominent role in
her convoys, much to the surprise of
crews on other ships and the delight of her
men.
While fascinating, Dunn's account leaves
one wishing for more. It is a "sea di-
ary," starting with the
"Mason's" first convoy and ending with her last. There is
nothing about his training or the last
months of the war. The men of the "Mason"
feared being sent to the Pacific, but
his last entry is May 23, 1945.
Blackford has edited this diary for
general readers. Scholars would appreciate
more biographical information on the
recurring characters-age, religion, educa-
tion-than he provides. His family
connection to the story, however, enriches
the work substantially. It must be
noted, however, that Hampton Institute is NOT
"modeled on the Tuskegee
Institute" (p. 75).
Enlisted men's accounts of their war
experiences are always valuable. This vol-
ume is especially so because of the
reporter's education, maturity, and special cir-
cumstances. The "Mason" was a
mere DE, but she was also a vitally important
Icebreaker. Dunn, in a touchingly modest
way, speaks eloquently for his ship-
mates. Blackford carries on his father's
work equally well. On Board the USS
"Mason" deserves to be read widely and closely.
Wilmington College Vinton M.
Prince, Jr.
Cinderella of the New South: A
History of the Cottonseed Industry, 1855-1955.
By Lynette Boney Wrenn. (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press,
1995. xxiv + 280p.; illustrations,
notes, bibliography, index. $38.00.)
112 OHIO HISTORY
In the decades surrounding the turn of
the century a rapidly growing market for
its oil made cottonseed the
"Cinderella of the New South." As late as 1870 cotton-
seed was generally seen as a nearly
worthless by-product of the cotton industry.
Forty years later cottonseed crushing
was, in terms of the value of it products (oil,
cake/meal, hulls and linters), the third
largest industry in the South. On the local
level, crushing mills dominated the
economy of hundreds of small Southern towns
and, since cottonseed was traditionally
exempt from liens, it provided many
marginal farmers with the only hard cash
they received for their crop. Oddly
enough, cottonseed's remarkable
transformation from a troublesome stepchild of
King Cotton into the basis for one of
the most profitable industries in the South is
a subject almost entirely overlooked by
historians until now. Lynette Boney
Wrenn's extensively researched and
well-organized study goes a long way toward
filling this gap.
Boney begins her story before the Civil
War, when cottonseed accumulated
around gins "like sawdust piles
around lumber mills" (p. xv). Since only a small
amount of seed was needed to plant next
year's crop, the rest became a potential
nuisance. Some was used as animal feed
or fertilizer, most was simply dumped.
The rotting seed produced a sour,
unhealthy smell. If overfed to non-cud-chewing
animals cottonseed could be fatal. Wrenn
tells us how a handful of ginners and
brokers, faced with mounds of useless
seed, led in developing markets for cotton-
seed oil. Corporate researchers, such as
David Wesson, quickly took over the task
and before century's end cottonseed oil
was well established as an additive in vari-
ous cooking oils, lard, margarine, and
soaps. In 1911 Proctor and Gamble made a
major breakthrough with the introduction
of Crisco, the first all-vegetable short-
ening sold to American consumers. The
name was short for crystallized cotton-
seed oil.
The industry changed as it grew. Prior
to the mid-1880s mills were small and
the industry fragmented. As demand
increased and economies of scale became pos-
sible in transportation and refining,
consolidation occurred. By World War One
the industry was dominated by a handful
of refiners and manufacturers who had in-
tegrated backward to gain reliable
supplies of oil and seed. As a result of this and
the general migration of cotton
production to the southwest and far west, cotton-
seed became less of a Southern industry
during the twentieth century. It declined in
the 1930s due primarily to inadequate
supplies of seed and competition from rivals
such as soybeans.
Although Wrenn promises coverage of the
industry's evolution from the 1850s
through the 1950s, the vast bulk of the
book is concerned with the cottonseed's
heyday between the 1870s and the 1920s.
Here Wrenn offers detailed chapters on
every important aspect of the industry
from buying and selling cottonseed; its ef-
fects on the local economy; the crushing
and refining of the oil; the overall orga-
nization of the industry; and its
complex relationship with the government.
Throughout, Wrenn consistently focuses
on the industry as a whole. Her vast re-
search is anchored in trade association
records, reports, and publications as well as
industry-wide government investigations
and reports. This perspective allows
Wrenn to cover much ground effectively,
but her top-down perspective gives a
somewhat distant view of what actually
went on in the crushing mills, research
labs and processing plants. Nonetheless,
by giving the reader a good understand-
ing of the contours of the industry her
book fills a significant need for both south-
ern and business historians.
Southwest Missouri State University Thomas S. Dicke
Book Reviews 113
Opening America's Market: U.S.
Foreign Trade Policy Since 1776. By
Alfred E.
Eckes, Jr. (Chapel Hill: The University
of North Carolina Press, 1995. xxii +
402 p.; illustrations, notes,
bibliography, index. $34.95.)
Since the 1930s, a small group of
foreign policy experts, academic intellectu-
als, and lobbyists representing foreign
manufacturers have systematically under-
mined the American manufacturing economy
and American economic prosperity in
order to achieve an elusive vision of
peace, national security, and international
prosperity through free trade. So
concludes Alfred E. Eckes, Jr., in his examina-
tion of two hundred years of American
trade policy. Eckes has developed consider-
able first-hand experience in the trade
policy arena, having spent most of the
1980s as a member of the U. S.
International Trade Commission, an agency
charged with determining the effect of
imports on American industries. As such,
Eckes is very much aware that this work
merits a wider readership than that of aca-
demic historians and economists. One
goal of this work is to demonstrate to gov-
ernment officials the evolution and
impact of foreign trade policies, particularly
since the 1930s. Another goal is to
debunk several of what the author considers to
be popular misconceptions concerning the
impact of free trade. Although the au-
thor maintains that he has no overt
ideological bias in favor of either free trade or
protectionism, his overall protectionist
leanings are clearly evident in this work.
In the first three chapters, Eckes
traces trade policy from 1776 through the
1920s. Eckes claims that high tariff
barriers allowed the United States to become
a global economic power during the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
but he barely mentions other, more
significant factors, including America's posi-
tion as the world's largest unified market
and the exploitation of technologies that
were particularly conducive to scale
economies.
The real heart of the book, however,
concerns events that occurred after 1930.
In that year Congress passed the
Smoot-Hawley tariff, a measure that has since
been blamed for stifling international
trade and contributing to the severity of the
Great Depression. Eckes convincingly
exonerates Smoot-Hawley, arguing that its
rates were not significantly higher (and
in some cases were actually lower) than
earlier U. S. tariffs and that few
nations either protested or retaliated against
Smoot-Hawley.
During the Cold War, the State
Department saw free trade as a means to
strengthen the capitalist nations of the
world. By reducing tariff barriers, often
without similar concessions from other
nations, the United States successfully
stimulated the manufacturing bases of
nations in western Europe and the Pacific
Rim. This foreign policy emphasis
coincided with the views of academic
economists, whose theories indicated
that global free trade would be in the best in-
terest of all nations.
Because few foreign countries signed
truly reciprocal tariff-reduction agreements
with the United States during this
period, and because many of these nations em-
ployed far more experienced and
effective trade negotiators than did the United
States, trade agreements proved
increasingly detrimental to the U. S. manufactur-
ing base. In analyzing the deleterious
effects of American trade policy, it is evi-
dent that one weakness of the book lies
in its thoroughness-a discussion of the
reversals suffered by the clothespin,
edible gelatin, and briar (tobacco) pipe indus-
tries (among others) bespeaks
impressively meticulous research, but additional in-
formation on the steel, electronics,
automobile, and machine tool industries
might prove more useful.
114 OHIO HISTORY
While most trade agreements included
provisions that allowed the federal gov-
ernment to increase tariffs or provide
assistance to adversely affected industries,
American presidents were usually more
receptive to foreign policy concerns, and
so did not invoke those options for the
protection of American firms. Richard
Nixon did far more than any of his
predecessors to mitigate the impact of free trade
on American industries, but Watergate
limited his effectiveness and, in any case,
most of the damage had already been
done.
The decline of American manufacturing is
certainly an important subject. This
book presents a thoroughly researched,
well-written, and entirely plausible sce-
nario to explain at least some of that
decline.
The Ohio State University Albert J.
Churella
Women of the Far Right : The Mothers'
Movement and World War II. By Glen
Jeansonne. (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1996. xix + 264p.; il-
lustrations, notes, bibliographic essay,
index. $29.95.)
What did Franklin D. Roosevelt, Albert
Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi, John
Dewey, and members of the YWCA, YMCA,
and the NAACP have in common?
Elizabeth Dilling, one of the
"Mothers" discussed by Glen Jeansonne in Women
of the Far Right, produced "spider-web" lists that targeted all
of them as
Communistic.
Jeansonne's previous studies focus on
right-wing political figures such as
Leander Perez and Gerald L. K. Smith; in
this book he turns his attention to female
political activity. The author both
criticizes and admittedly "dislikes" his sub-
jects, but contends that "balanced
history" requires study of both heroes and vil-
lians. Although there is cause for
criticizing the women of the "Mothers'
Movement," Jeansonne's dislike for
his subjects results, at times, in diversionary
attempts to understand their
motivations. Nonetheless, this important book illu-
minates a little-known chapter in
history; it is sure to disturb the reader.
The women involved in this sizeable
movement were "motivated by a complex
mixture of maternal love and fanatical
prejudice" (p. 1). The mixture, fueled by
isolationist and antiwar sentiments, and
by an extreme fear of "godless" commu-
nism, exploded in virulent
anti-Semitism. The "Mother's Movement" emerged in
late 1939 on the West Coast, and quickly
spread across the United States. Several
larger groups flourished in the Midwest.
Chapter Eight, which examines groups
such as the Cincinnati "Mothers of
Sons Forum," will appeal to the reader inter-
ested in Ohio history. Mothers of Sons
mobilized, as did many of the groups stud-
ied, to protest Lend-Lease, the
peacetime draft, immigration, and "Jewish propa-
ganda." The "Mothers"
accepted the Nazi belief in a worldwide Jewish-Communist
conspiracy. Elizabeth Dilling wrote, for
example, The Octopus (1940), an anti-
Semitic diatribe which conflated
Jewishness and Communism. Chapter Five in-
troduces Catherine Curtis, host of the
1930s New York radio program, "Women
and Money." Curtis' words make it
clear that at least some "Mothers" acted in de-
fense of their class status and
privilege. She issued a call to mobilize to protect
the capitalist system and thus the
"supremacy" of the U.S. It is evident that eco-
nomic factors contributed to the
"Mothers" support of Hitler's Germany as a bul-
wark against anticapitalist Communism.
Jeansonne suggests that the Mothers
first allegiance was to their ideology and
not to their gender. Their ideology,
however, had much to do with their socio-
Book Reviews 115
economic privileges,
factors that are not closely examined in this study. In at-
tempting to analyze
the Mothers' "gender consciousness," the author strays into a
discussion of feminism
and concludes that they were not feminists, a claim with
which there should be
little argument. Jeansonne also places the Mothers beyond
the borders of
"mainstream conservatism," callling them "bigots, extremists,
and
reactionaries" (xii).
Irrationality, however, does not preclude membership in
mainstream
conservatism, as the author himself indicates. He reports on move-
ment connections with
prominent figures such as Henry Ford, honored by Hitler
and financial backer
of Communist "witch-hunts." And, the Chicago Tribune cov-
ered the movement
extensively. The Mothers were not quite as anomalous as
Jeansonne suggests.
Their politics were not formulated in a vacuum, but had roots
in the interwar period
when "foreigner," Socialist, and Communist became catch-
words for a particular
brand of "Americanism."
This book makes a
significant contribution to the scholarship on twentieth-
century politics,
particulary women's political activity.
Professor Jeansonne's
extensive research has
opened the door on a little-explored chapter in history, and
has provided scholars
with a solid base for further research. The characters intro-
duced in Women of
the Far Right may be difficult subjects, but they are also in-
triguing.
The Ohio State
University
Marilyn E. Hegarty
Undaunted Courage:
Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the
American West. By Stephen E. Ambrose. (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1996. 51lp.; maps,
illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $27.50.)
In this stimulating
volume, the epochal event of the Lewis and Clark Expedition
from St. Louis to the
Pacific is approached through a biography of Meriwether
Lewis and the
sponsorship of Thomas Jefferson.
Captains Meriwether
Lewis and William Clark led a "Corps of Discovery" sent
by Thomas Jefferson in
1804, a year after the Louisiana Purchase, to find a water
passage up the
Missouri River to the Pacific, and hopefully to discover headwaters
of the Missouri north
of 49°. Their incredible journey took them to the origins of
the Missouri at Three
Forks in present-day Montana, across the Continental
Divide at Lemhi Pass,
over the Bitterroots, down the Clearwater and Snake Rivers,
and down the Columbia
to the Pacific in 1805. They wintered near the mouth of
the Columbia and
returned in 1806. On the return the company divided; Clark re-
traced the route
through Three Forks while Lewis crossed to the north and explored
the Marias River
before he rejoined Clark where the Yellowstone River enters the
Missouri.
Particularly fresh
here is the detail on Jefferson's sponsorship of the expedi-
tion, including
Jefferson's quest for knowledge about the upper regions of
Louisiana, his
geopolitical ambitions, and his contrasting attitudes toward blacks
and Indians. Lewis
emerges as his protege. With this genesis for the expedition,
Ambrose follows almost
mile by mile the experiences of Lewis, Clark, and the
company of 25 enlisted
men, the hunter Drouillard, Clark's slave, York, the inter-
preter Charbonneau,
and Sacagawea, the Shoshone woman who was indispensable
for their success.
Ambrose believes Lewis
the perfect choice to lead the expedition. Lewis knew
the waters of the
western country as an Army paymaster; he was Jefferson's private
116 OHIO HISTORY
secretary and lived in the President's
House: he shared his mentor's interest in
botany, natural science, and geography,
and learned to take observations for lati-
tude and longitude. Lewis persuaded
William Clark, younger brother of George
Rogers Clark, to share the command,
insisting on equal authority between them.
The account of the expedition has
episodes of gripping suspense. The reader
feels the tension of encounters with the
Sioux and Blackfeet Indians, and there is
palpable relief at the crucial
assistance of tribes such as the Shoshone (one of
whose chiefs was Sacagawea's brother)
and the Nez Perce who guided them in the
Bitterroots. There was slow toil moving
the keelboat up the Missouri but extreme
risk in challenges such as running the
rapids of the Columbia. The struggle cross-
ing the Bitterroots was "one of the
great forced marches in American History."
Food shortages were met by eating
horses, dogs, and roots. Faithful to Jefferson's
instructions, Lewis regularly took
celestial observations for latitude and longi-
tude, and described in his journal new
plants, birds, and animals. The fate of his
journals shadows this account. Clark
recorded rivers and other features for the first
map of the route to the Pacific.
Ambrose's writing is highly judgmental,
and especially critical of Lewis's ex-
ploration of the Marias River. His style
is colloquial and earthy, sometimes even
crude. But engaging images abound: the
men so often dancing, music on the fid-
dle of Private Cruzatte, and Clark
doctoring the company and the Indians.
Yet Lewis had to report to Jefferson
that a water passage to the Pacific did not
exist. In an unfortunate decision,
Jefferson nominated Lewis to be governor of the
Louisiana Territory where
Lewis's career and personal
life foundered.
Overwhelmed by administrative problems,
Lewis suffered from heavy drinking,
malaria, and what Jefferson called bouts
of "hypocondria." They contributed to
his untimely death on the Natchez Trace
in 1809 at the age of 35 enroute to
Washington to defend his accounts.
Ambrose is convinced it was suicide.
Stephen E. Ambrose has given the vision
of Jefferson, the leadership of Lewis
and Clark, and the endurance of their
little company a fresh and absorbing vitality.
Oxford, Ohio Ronald E. Shaw