Book Reviews
The Frontier Republic: Ideology and
Politics in the Ohio Country, 1780-1825.
By Andrew R.L. Cayton. (Kent: Kent State
University Press, 1986. xii +
197p.; map, notes, essay on
sources, index. $27.00.
The intellectual history of the early
republic has undergone considerable
revival in recent years. Led by Bernard
Bailyn at Harvard, whose The Ideo-
logical Origins of the American
Revolution (1967) was a classic when
pub-
lished, and continued by his pupil
Gordon Wood of Brown University in the
highly acclaimed Creation of the
American Republic, 1776-1787 (1969), we
have now reached the third generation of
this school with Wood's student,
Andrew Cayton. The Ball State University
professor carries the evolving po-
litical tradition of early United States
across the Appalachian chain into
Ohio. In a splendid but all too brief
study, Cayton provides an introduction
to this state's history that must be
read by everyone seeking to understand
the origins of its political tradition.
Cayton discovers a continuity in the
political debates of the new nation
and finds them divided into two camps:
the first, normally associated with
Jeffersonian Republicanism,
"emphasized the primacy of local sovereignty
and demanded the fullest expression of
democratic rights;" while the sec-
ond, which dominated Federalist thought,
sought "to bring regularity to
what they perceived to be a disordered
society" through the introduction
of "strong institutions to
arbitrate among and guide the interests of the citi-
zens of a national society marked by
increasing pluralism and economic com-
plexity" (pp. x-xi). Cayton sees
these early political clashes less in terms of
economic, ethno-cultural, or personality
conflicts and more in competing ide-
ological differences.
Unlike earlier historians of the state's
origins, Cayton does not see the con-
flict between such rivals as Arthur St.
Clair and Thomas Worthington as bat-
tles between right and wrong, but rather
as the halting attempts of honest
men seeking solutions to fundamental
issues in a pluralistic, frontier society
where there was no political behavioral
consensus. He refuses to see in the
Republicans the wave of the future, but
instead notes approvingly that "the
Federalist emphasis on designing the
world and governments to shape peo-
ple was as important in
nineteenth-century Ohio as the Jeffersonian Republi-
can insistence on democratic
elections" (p. 153). Thus he finds that both the
New England and Virginia traditions that
impacted so strongly on early state
politics made significant and continuing
contributions to Ohio's history.
For Cayton, the key event in early Ohio
politics is the Panic of 1819. It
splintered the Republican assumption of
a democratic society in natural har-
mony and reinforced the Federalist
tradition of the clash of interests. It is at
this point that Cayton divides the
Republican party into two factions-the
Old Republicans representing those
opposed to institutional power to direct
society and the moderate Republicans who
sought to avoid future panics
and social unrest by strengthening the
institutions of government. Here
Cayton makes his weakest argument, for
he does not really comprehend the
threefold division of the Republicans.
His "moderates" are really divided
160 OHIO HISTORY
into two camps, the National Republicans
(like William Henry Harrison), who
supported Federal government action to
bring social order, and the Demo-
cratic Republicans (epitomized by New
York's Martin Van Buren), who
wanted the state governments to provide
direction to economic development.
Cayton is part of a new breed of
scholars of the early Republic who em-
phasize the complexity of the political
situation. The first of these new Ohio
historians was Donald Ratcliffe whose
1976 article in Ohio History marked
the opening salvo in a series of studies
that brought the state's politics under
the umbrella of national develoments.
Reinforcing this tradition is an article
by Jeffrey P. Brown in Journal of the
Early Republic (1982) on Ohio Federal-
ism. Peter S. Onuf has provided an
effective reexamination of the origins of
the statehood movement in a 1985 Ohio
History article. It is somewhat ironic
that none of these scholars teaches in
Ohio, about whose early history they
are now the leading authorities. With
this book, Cayton has clearly become
the most prominent of the group. Despite
a brevity which assumes a knowl-
edge of the details of Ohio politics possessed
by few, The Frontier Republic
should be near the top of anyone's list
of books concerned with the origins
of political traditions in the Old
Northwest.
Bowling Green State University David Curtis Skaggs
Anthony Wayne: Soldier of the Early
Republic. By Paul David Nelson.
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1985 x + 368p.; preface, illustra-
tions, maps, notes, selected
bibliography, index. $27.50.)
In early 1792, President Washington
faced a dilemma in addition to the
complete destruction of the American
army in the Northwest Territory. The
chief executive had to find a commander
who could rebuild the army and
reestablish U.S. claims to the region
now threatened by a powerful Indian
confederacy. In his review of candidates
for the position, Washington's
unflattering appraisal of his former
Revolutionary War subordinate Anthony
Wayne as a man likely to be drawn into
tangential disputes was as unfair as it
was inaccurate. As author Paul David
Nelson explains in great detail,
Wayne's military record in the
Revolution proved his competence. In both
large and small operations-on the
battlefield and in Pennsylvania politics-
Wayne showed careful attention to
planning and execution.
Despite Washington's initial doubts,
Wayne received the appointment,
largely because of his well-known
fondness for strict discipline and aggres-
siveness. Indeed, the sobriquet
"Mad" Anthony imparted to him a reck-
lessness in war which was never
supported in fact. As Nelson repeatedly
points out, a distinction should be made
between Wayne's ardor in battle
and simple foolhardiness. Nelson
establishes that Wayne possessed a
"streak of romanticism and
dash" (p. 3) easily mistaken for empty-headed
enthusiasm.
Perhaps the best aspect of Nelson's
portrait is the gradual revelation of
Wayne's mind and personality. Possessing
more ideas than his braggart sol-
dier image might suggest, Wayne's
political and constitutional views evolved
from youthful Whiggism to an entrenched
Federalist outlook. As a young
man he believed in the efficacy of
Revolutionary passion to mold an effective
Book Reviews
161
army of citizen soldiers. Niggardly
support from politicians for his starving
and ill-equipped soldiers at Ticonderoga
and Valley Forge convinced him
the army was the only remaining
repository of the Revolution's ideals. Hold-
ing to republican principle, Wayne
nevertheless turned away from a liberal
ethos to a more rigid and conservative
interpretation of civil-military rela-
tions. The discipline and hierarchy of
the army served, for Wayne, as a
model for all society. In practice the
philosophically meritorious militia dis-
gusted him; such short-term volunteers
(including notably the Kentucky mi-
litia of the 1790s) tended toward
unreliability, poor discipline, and desertion.
Because of such rough experience in camp
and combat, Wayne came to favor
an army of highly disciplined regulars,
led by officers from the elite social
and propertied classes which directed a
strong central government.
As he aged Wayne's "egotistical
military romanticism" (p. 43) also
changed. His hot-headed valor of the
1770s later hardened into an almost
pathological love of war. Seeming early
on to thrive on battle, Wayne by
war's end hungered for more, when others
had grown weary of the blood-
shed and destruction. In Nelson's
well-founded judgment, Wayne "flour-
ished . . . [on] glory, splendor, pomp,
excitement, blood hatreds, destruc-
tion, and danger. . ." (p. 172).
Outside of this military life, Wayne
demonstrated notable failures. Specu-
lation in Georgia land after the
Revolution threw him into a financial debacle
from which he almost did not recover.
Additionally, Wayne consistently
mistreated his family. Prolonged absences,
neglect of home responsibilities,
and a long-standing affair with another
woman eventually cost Wayne the
love of his wife, mother, daughter, and
sister. In his last years his son, also
long ignored, reconciled with him
somewhat. While military commandant at
Detroit, Wayne died. Appropriately, he
was buried in his most elegant uni-
form, the emblem of his heart's only
true object.
The bayonet charge at Fallen Timbers in
1794 crowned his greatest mili-
tary victory and typified his life-a
headlong lunge into peril despite the con-
sequences. Surpassing all previous Wayne
biographies and document collec-
tions, Nelson's exhaustively researched
account adds profound dimensions
to this soldier's story. Anthony
Wayne merits acclaim as a model biography.
Kentucky Historical Society James Russell Harris
The Union Cavalry in the Civil War. Volume III: The War in the West
1861-1865. By Stephen Z. Starr. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University
Press, 1985. xv + 616p.; maps,
illustrations, notes, appendix, addenda to
bibliography, index. $32.50.)
Starr finished this concluding volume of
his trilogy on the Northern caval-
ry in the Civil War just before he died
in 1985. A lengthy work that capped
his long-term interest in the cavalry, the three-volume
study has been
praised by reviewers as a major
contribution to Civil War military studies. Its
breadth of coverage and sweeping
chronological narrative lend credibility to
that assessment. Volumes one and two covered the
cavalry's operations in
the East from 1861 to Appomattox. This
volume chronicles the Western war,
including the Trans-Mississippi.
162 OHIO HISTORY
It is time to take a critical look at
this trilogy as well as this volume, lest the
generous assessments of previous
reviewers be taken too much for granted.
Starr has produced a series of books
that is valuable mainly for the Civil War
buff. This volume consists primarily of
a brief narrative of the major cam-
paigns and battles which included
cavalry operations. Much of this, not sur-
prisingly, is shallow; he could hardly
have done a thorough job of describ-
ing all cavalry actions in the
West in one volume. The generalist will like
Starr's easy style, his sensitivity for
the anecdote, and his avoidance of real
depth. The fact that this trilogy has
already achieved something like classic
status will enhance the buff's ownership
of all three volumes.
But for the professional military
historian this book is very disappointing.
The research is inadequate. Starr relied
far too heavily on the Official Rec-
ords, which, by some estimates, included only about 10
percent of all the re-
ports, dispatches, and telegrams
produced by the Union army. This is no
petty gripe, but is of real significance
in the context of what Starr wanted to
accomplish. His only organizing theme is
the growing sense among com-
manders that cavalry, to be most
effective, needed to be organized separate-
ly from the infantry and given greater
autonomy in the chain of command. At
more than one point in the narrative
Starr bemoans the fact that more infor-
mation regarding cavalry organization is
not furnished in the O.R. The 90
percent of the records that remain
unpublished but available to anyone in
the National Archives would have gone a
long way toward relieving his frus-
tration.
In addition to the O.R., Starr
relied on two or three collections of pub-
lished letters and memoirs, a smattering
of regimental histories, and only one
collection of unpublished letters. The
narrative contains only one reference to
a few muster rolls in the National
Archives, and Starr made no thorough use
of relevant secondary sources. The mass
of unpublished personal accounts
that exists for the Yankee cavalry
remain untouched, its wealth of detailed
information regarding Starr's subject
yet unused by historians except for a
few case studies here and there. Starr's
taste for the anecdote, if nothing
else, could have been satiated in these
sources.
The writing style that generalists will
find delightful will probably irk pro-
fessionals. I quickly became tired of
the awkward phrase "it will be noted."
His analysis, which is genuinely useful
to specialists, is too brief and
undeveloped. It could have been
condensed into a fine article. In the epi-
logue, Starr finally devotes a few pages
to an interesting and promising
discussion of differences between
Western and Eastern cavalry, what made
each work or fail. It is an all too
brief moment of insight for a historian who
had devoted so much time and effort to
his subject. This volume, as well as
the entire trilogy, falls far short of
what its subject deserves, but both will
probably remain staples of the
generalist's library for a long time to come.
Texas Tech University Earl J.
Hess
Narrow Gauge in Ohio: The Cincinnati,
Lebanon & Northern Railway. By
John W. Hauck. (Boulder, Colorado:
Pruett Publishing Company, 1986.
309p.; illustrations, appendix, roster
and timetables, index. $29.95.)
Book Reviews
163
John W. Hauck has written an
exceptionally good railroad biography. A la-
bor of love, this is a detailed account
of a marginal commuter line, which af-
ter many difficulties finally connected Lebanon with
Cincinnati. Focusing on
the problems of construction and on a seemingly endless
succession of corpo-
rate failures and reorganizations, Hauck
also elucidates some major themes in
urban and transportation history as they
apply to Cincinnati and its suburbs.
Located on the highlands between the
Great Miami and Little Miami riv-
ers, Lebanon was bypassed by early
railroads that hugged the level ground
of the river valleys. From the 1850s to
the completion of a narrow-gauge line
in 1881, Lebanon's commercial elite
worked for a rail connection with
Cincinnati, confident that such a link
would assure their city's growth and
prosperity. Hauck elucidates the many
failed projects generated by these ef-
forts in boosterism in the thirty years
after 1850.
In 1874 Lebanon interests incorporated
the Miami Valley Narrow Gauge
Railway Co. with the intent of building
a three-foot line to Cincinnati.
Narrow-gauge lines, theorists held,
could be built and operated more eco-
nomically than standard-gauge roads,
thereby allowing successful operation
in areas where traffic density could not
support a full-scale road. Short on
capital and existing traffic centers
along their intended route, the Miami Val-
ley's backers found narrow-gauge
theories particularly appealing.
The Miami Valley began construction in
1876 and failed four years later, in
part because of heavy trestling expenses
associated with the daunting task of
descending Cincinnati's rugged Deer
Creek Valley to a business-district ter-
minal site, and in part from director
chicanery. From the financial wreckage
arose the Cincinnati Northern, completed
between Cincinnati and Lebanon
in 1881, and by 1883 part of a
Boston-controlled narrow-gauge network linking
Toledo, Cincinnati and St. Louis. This
combination in turn quickly failed,
and in 1885 the renamed Cincinnati,
Lebanon & Northern was detached
and sold in bankruptcy to local
interests. From 1885 until 1896, when ac-
quired by the Pennsylvania Railroad, the
company operated an independent
suburban line, heavily dependent upon
commuter traffic.
Hauck devotes limited attention to the
narrow-gauge movement in Ohio.
Peaking at eleven hundred miles in 1884,
mileage dwindled to 162 ten years
later; companies found their inability
to interchange cars with standard-
gauge roads an obstacle greater than
whatever advantages narrow-gauge
technology conferred. The CL&N
conformed its track to standard gauge in
1894.
In the course of his narrative Hauck
nicely demonstrates how subsequent
transportation developments adversely
affected the CL&N's commuter traf-
fic. Reaching Norwood in 1891, the
electric streetcar immediately became
the transit mode of choice in the areas
between Norwood and downtown.
Deprived of its inner suburban haulage,
the railroad rebuilt its traffic in the
growing outer suburbs, only to see it
reduced by more than half after a paral-
leling interurban reached Lebanon in
1903. Traffic slowly recovered, peaking
in 1921; motor bus and private
automobile use thereafter cut so deeply into
rail use that remaining passenger
service was abandoned in 1934. In the twen-
tieth century revenues came increasingly
from freight as Norwood in particu-
lar developed as an early industrial
suburb. Today Conrail maintains those
parts of the route that warrant local
freight service.
Hauck has been both well and poorly
served by his publisher. Beautifully
produced, the book is replete with
well-chosen black-and-white photo-
164 OHIO HISTORY
graphs. On the other hand, Hauck notes
in his introduction that the pub-
lisher required that he remove from his
manuscript additional material on
the little-studied narrow-gauge movement
and delete all documentation. The
published work is therefore more of a
traditional railroad biography than
the author intended. It is, however, a
very able example of that genre.
The University of Akron Douglas V. Shaw
Common Places: Readings in American
Vernacular Architecture. Edited by
Dell Upton and John Michael Vlach.
(Athens: The University of Georgia
Press, 1986. xiv + 592p.; illustrations,
notes, readings, index. $24.95 paper;
$50.00 cloth.)
In the past two decades social
historians have shifted the focus of their in-
vestigations away from the study of
elites and toward the exprience of the
"average" population. This
same change has occurred within the specializa-
tion of architectural history as well.
In moving away from a narrow focus on
large-scale structures and buildings
designed by notable architects, investi-
gators have defined a field they have
called vernacular architecture. This
field consists of structures built by
the users themselves, dependent upon lo-
cal tradition in place of the aid of the
design professionals.
Common Places brings together twenty-three previously published
essays
in this new field. It begins with an
attempt to define vernacular architecture
and cites the importance of traditional or
"folk" practices in building that are
utilized by a particular group without
conscious thought as to design. Linked
to this is the more modern set of
building techniques and decorative devices
used by mass builders who work without
the services of design profession-
als such as architects or interior
decorators. Included as well are practices of
landscaping and town planning. The
editors admit to the loose nature of their
working definition, but maintain that
the field will define itself as future in-
vestigations proceed.
The essays that follow are grouped into
five sections. The first, entitled
Definitions and Demonstrations, presents
articles that link particular architec-
tural forms to specific social and
cultural groups. One traces nineteenth-
century housing forms through the Ohio
Valley and upper South and associ-
ates these forms with the origins of the
settlers in the New England, Middle
Atlantic, and Lower Chesapeake regions.
Other essays look in depth at spe-
cific social groups and their buildings;
the houses of German immigrants
from the Rhine in a Shenandoah Valley
settlement; so-called shotgun hous-
es of the South and the Caribbean which
can be traced back to African
forms; and the suburban bungalow of the
early twentieth century, a vernacu-
lar type rooted in popular images of how
proper family life of the period
should be lived. Two final articles
study the role of tradition in land use: one
notes the continuity of ethnic patterns
in layout and cultivation of fields in
Vermont, while the other illustrates
similar forms of courthouse squares in
the Midwest and South in the nineteenth
century.
The second section focuses more
specifically on construction techniques,
and how they can be linked to a
particular group. Common folk traditions of
construction are found in colonial Rhode
Island, in the log structures of east-
Book Reviews
165
ern seaboard and midwestern regions, in
the tools used in Indiana during its
frontier era, and in the Dutch origins
of framing techniques for barn construc-
tion in various parts of the country.
The third section, entitled Function,
looks at how buildings are used by their
inhabitants and how these uses re-
flect traditions and images prevalent
within the group. The furnishings of the
houses are treated as artifacts in
studies of the Massachusetts houses of the
colonial period and of typical hall furniture of the
Victorian era. Another es-
say uses what the editors describe as
visual archeaology in the interpretation
of photographs of circa 1900 interiors
in an attempt to link posessions with
then current ideals of what home life
should be.
Parts four and five deal with broader
topics. Part four, entitled History,
looks at four man-made environments and
traces how architecture aided the
inhabitants to achieve their social
goals. These environments include the
nineteenth-century alleys of Washington,
D.C., the seventeenth-century
farmhouse in New England, and two colonial Virginia
environments: the
plantation and the solitary house. Part
five, Design and Intention, addresses
the question of the degree to which the
craftsmen were conscious of design
issues. Examined are the brickwork on a
set of eighteenth-century houses in
southern New Jersey, the evolution of
eighteenth-century domestic planning
in the Delaware Valley, the role of
popular imagery in the architecture of late
nineteenth-century Minnesota farmhouses,
and the strength of the utilitarian
motive in vernacular architecture of the
comtemporary highway strip. Also
examined is the career of one particular
builder in late nineteenth century
who combined vernacular traditions with
current architectural fashions.
Finally, one architect contributes an
essay that maintains that the builders
were quite conscious of design, despite
their lack of formal training.
Common Places has the strengths and weaknesses natural to a
collection of
essays clustered around a set of themes.
Many of the essays stand alone as
valuable contributions to architectural
and social history, and their combi-
nation in a single volume is useful to
historian and architect alike. The histori-
an might take issue with some of the
conclusions, but the effort to define the
field of vernacular architectural
history requires such a presentation of the
current scholarship. The architect will
find the photographs and drawings
useful in undertaking any restoration
work. A complete bibliography adds to
this usefulness.
The weakness of Common Place is
the linkage of the essays around themes
such as History, Function, and Design
and Intention. Most of the essays con-
tain elements of all these themes;
indeed, any focus, whether it is on con-
struction, land use, furnishing, or some
other topic, should examine each of
these themes as an integral part of the
investigation. Perhaps a better means
of organization would have been
chronology, geography, or building type.
Scholars and architects working on Ohio
buildings will find little of specif-
ic use in Common Place. Some of
the material dealing with migration patterns
in the first essay on Folk Housing and,
tangentially, the essays on courthouse
square planning and log housing pertain
to the state. More useful is the meth-
odology presented in the essays.
Ohio Historical Society Daniel J. Prosser
166 OHIO HISTORY
Political Prairie Fire: The
Nonpartisan League, 1915-1922. By
Robert L.
Morlan. With a new introduction by Larry
Remele. (St. Paul: Minnesota
Historical Society Press/Borealis, 1985.
xii + 414p.: notes, bibliography,
new index. $10.95 Paper.)
The Nonpartisan League, 1915-22; An
Annotated Bibliography. Compiled by
Patrick K. Coleman and Charles R. Lamb.
(St. Paul: Minnesota Historical
Society Press, 1985. ix + 86p.: index.
$12.95 Paper.)
Popular, political, and scholarly
interest in the history of farm protest has
ridden the crests of generational
rediscovery of the ongoing plight of the van-
ishing family farmer in America.
Midwestern farm protest has flowed like an
inland tide over the past one and a
quarter centuries of American history-
the Grange, the Farmers' Alliances, the
Populists, the Nonpartisan League,
the National Farmers' Union, the
Farmers' Holiday Association, and the
American Agricultural Movement. On June
19, 1985, amidst the most recent
wave of family farm foreclosures, public
television stations across the country
aired Plowing Up a Storm: The History
of Midwestern Farm Activism, spon-
sored by the Nebraska Educational
Television Network and funded by hu-
manities councils in Nebraska, Iowa, and
North Dakota. This superbly re-
searched, edited, and illustrated show
provided an accurate historical
overview of farm protest in the midwest
since the 1870s. Significantly, one
section discussed the emergence of the
Nonpartisan League (NPL) between
1915 and 1922 in North Dakota,
Minnesota, and other states. With publica-
tion of these two works, the Minnesota
Historical Society joins the growing
number of scholars, citizens, and
activists in attempting to understand the
origins, course, and consequences of
generational changes and interest in
farm protest. The late Robert P. Morlan,
a political scientist at the University
of Redlands in California, died in April
1985 just as this third printing of his
classic, standard history of the NPL
went to press. Patrick K. Coleman and
Charles R. Lamb have put together an
updated bibliography to complement
Morlan's work, to reveal locations of
recently rediscovered primary sources,
and to draw attention to younger
scholars' findings which have often revised
Morlan's traditional account.
Originally published in 1955 and
republished in 1974, Political Prairie Fire
still remains the best comprehensive
history of the early years of the NPL
with its political strength centered in
North Dakota and Minnesota. Morlan's
work with the Minnesota Democratic
Farmer-Labor party in the late 1940s
sparked his interest in the NPL's
history and led to this narrative account
that established the framework for
researching and writing the history of
the NPL. Morlan emphasized the League's
origins; its innovative use of the
direct primary; its legislative program
to aid family farmers; its condemnation
as "socialist,"
"prussianized," and "bolshevik" in the wartime mobiliza-
tion and postwar Red Scare of 1917-1920;
and its rapid decline after 1920. By
1915 farmers in western North Dakota
faced severe economic hardships
including marketing malpractices in the
inspection, weighing, and grading of
grain; exorbitant elevator storage
charges and discriminatory railroad rate
practices; and domination by bankers in
St. Paul and Minneapolis through
high interest rates and increased farm
foreclosures. Under the charismatic
leadership of Arthur C. Townley and his
Socialist veterans corps of organi-
zers using modern sales techniques, Ford
automobiles, and members' dues
Book Reviews
167
payment by postdated checks, farmers
employed the direct primary to win
control of the Republican Party in hopes
of bringing about "the New Day in
North Dakota." Following the
capture of the governorship and both houses
of the state legislature in the 1918
elections, the NPL enacted the New Day in
the 1919 legislative session. The NPL
created state-sponsored and state-
financed agencies such as the Industrial
Commission, the Bank of North Da-
kota, the Mill and Elevator Association,
and the Home Building Association.
Morlan's account delivers massive
narrative detail of these developments al-
most to the point of inundation. He
leaves summary, analysis, and discussion
of the NPL's legacy to the last in
claiming that the NPL was "the last of the
great farmers' crusades" which
"laid much of the foundation of modern
midwestern liberalism," so that the
"radicalism of 1916 is in large measure
the accepted practice of today"
(pp. 359-361).
Over the last thirty years a younger
generation of revisionist scholars inter-
ested in the social history of farm
protest has challenged parts of Morlan's
narrative. Did the NPL emerge
spontaneously in reaction to economic condi-
tions or more from the conscious
organizing work of socialists and farm
cooperative members? Why did
Scandinavian-Americans, especially
Norwegian-American farmers, play key
roles in the NPL leadership? What
role did farm women play in the daily
lives of NPL rank and file members?
What were the social origins and
financial connections of NPL opponents?
Was Townley the only significant NPL
leader? How strong were NPL chap-
ters in states other than North Dakota
and Minnesota? What was the larger
political legacy of the NPL for national
politics? Fortunately, Larry Remele,
author of articles on the NPL and
historical editor at the State Historical So-
ciety of North Dakota, provides the
readers of this reprint edition of
Morlan's work with a new introduction
which addresses these questions and
suggests new avenues for research.
Although his own research revises as-
pects of Morlan's account, Remele fairly
and accurately notes that "Until a
historian accepts the challenge of
building a new synthesis, Political Prairie
Fire will stand unequaled as the best single source of
information about the
League" (p. xxii). Sections of
Morlan's history indicate that future reseachers
might profitably examine the NPL as the
social, religious and organizational
base for what Lawrence Goodwyn has
termed for an earlier period of farm
protest the "movement culture"
to preserve and extend the democratic
promise of America. A reliance on
"democratic centralization" by NPL
leaders deserves careful examination in
its relation to rank and file member-
ship activities - this is one key issue
Morlan slights in ways that more mod-
ern scholars might find troubling.
The Coleman and Lamb bibliography
provides 1010 entries that comple-
ment Morlan's now dated list of sources
and "will help researchers to dis-
cover the answers" (p. ix) to new
questions. Coleman and Lamb arrange
entries in convenient research
categories, while including photographs and
anti-NPL cartoons from the period. Their
most helpful work comes in point-
ing to individual and organizational
papers discovered since Morlan's pio-
neering research in the 1940s. Materials
housed at the Minnesota Historical
Society, the State Historical Society of
North Dakota, the North Dakota In-
stitute for Regional Studies at North
Dakota State University, and the Uni-
versity of North Dakota Special
Collections will be particularly useful to fu-
ture researchers.
Morlan's Political Prairie Fire serves
as the NPL analogue history to John
168 OHIO HISTORY
D. Hick's classic The Populist Revolt
(1931) - both works are the place to
start. For previously unavailable
primary sources and innovative studies and
interpretations by younger historians of
the NPL, the Coleman and Lamb
bibliography deserves not only praise
but the best compliment of heavy use
by reseachers. The Minnesota Historical
Society should be congratulated
and thanked for riding the latest crest
of scholarly interest in midwestern
farm protest in such well-wrought style
through publication of these two fine
works. Now that we have a more
sophisticated understanding of nineteenth
century farm protest, perhaps we can
look forward to more scholarly atten-
tion to such twentieth century
post-Populist protest movements as the Non-
partisan League and its sometime
competitor, the Farmers' Union.
Tennessee Technological University Patrick D. Reagan
Daniel Drake, M.D.: Frontiersman of
the Mind. Edited by Charles D. Aring,
Albert Barnes Voorheis, and Cory Oysler.
(Cincinnati: Crossroads Books,
1985. xxviii + 60 p.; illustrations,
biographical sketch. $9.50.)
An excellent biographical sketch of
Daniel Drake (1785-1852) that intro-
duces this slim volume makes it clear
that Drake was among the most tireless
professors and physicians of his day, or
anyone's day for that matter.
As a founder or co-founder, Drake has
among his accomplishments the
University of Cincinnati, the Medical
College of Ohio, two schools for the
blind, three medical journals, a
teaching hospital, a circulating library, and a
medical society or two. And, in fact, he
even gets credit for suggesting the
buckeye as the state emblem for Ohio. As
an author, Drake's busy pen
turned out at least 692 manuscripts and
publications according to a bibliogra-
phy published by H. D. Shapiro and Z. L.
Miller, Physician to the West
(1970), with the most important being
his classic Systematic Treatise: On the
Principal Disease of the Interior
Valley of North America, as They Appear in
the Caucasian, African, Indian (2 vols. 1850, 1854). As a professor and physi-
cian, Drake received his M.D. from the
University of Pennsylvania (where
Benjamin Rush was one of his
professors), began practice in Cincinnati, and
then embarked on a teaching career that
found him alternately at The
Cincinnati College, the Medical College
of Ohio, Transylvania University in
Lexington, and The Louisville Medical
Institute, and then took him back to
the East for one year at Jefferson
Medical College in Philadelphia.
This volume, however, provides still
another side to Drake, that of orator,
for which he was also renown. It
consists of three convocation or valedictory
addresses delivered in 1827 at the
Medical Department of Transylvania
(where Drake was one of the original
five members of the first faculty of med-
icine West of the Allegheny Mountains);
in 1835 at the Department of the
Cincinnati College (founded by Drake,
who was also its first President); and
in 1840 at the Louisville Medical
Institute (where Drake held the Chair for
Clinical Medicine and Pathological
Anatomy). In all of these addresses
Drake powerfully, eloquently and often
humorously exhorts young medical
graduates to respect their profession
and carry on its best traditions, not the
least of which in Drake's firm opinion
was to constantly keep an open mind,
and always be prepared to grow as both
scientist and humanist.
Book Reviews
169
This work was born of a search conducted
by the Committee for the Bi-
centennial of Daniel Drake for
unpublished materials by or about Drake to
mark the occasion. Those now-published
materials were discovered in the
History of the Health Sciences Library
and Museum of the University of
Cincinnati and printed on fine quality paper with very
few of the production
errors that too frequently characterize
an effort of this sort. In my opinion its
only flaw lies in the absence of a few
pages discussing Drake's most important
written work. His thoughts on the course
of Asiatic Cholera in Cincinnati at
the beginning of the decade of the 1830s
are certainly worth a few words,
while his acute observations on the
geography and ethnicity of disease that
established him as an authority who was
frequently cited in contemporary
medical journals are worth a great deal
more than a few words. This aside,
the volume represents a fine tribute to
a great man.
Bowling Green State University Kenneth F. Kiple
The Hoosier Politician: Officeholding
and Political Culture in Indiana,
1896-1920. By Philip R. VanderMeer. (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press,
1985. xii + 256p: illustrations, tables,
appendix, bibliography, index.
$19.95.)
Regardless of new approaches to the
study of history - and in spite of pe-
riodic detractors - the study of American political
history remains a major
area of scholarship. Over the years, however, trends
have shifted. Examina-
tion of important or significant
political leaders gave way to research on party
structuring, or on voter analysis, or on
the impact of local issues in
determining election results or party strength. All
have added to an under-
standing of American political life. And
in their vein, Philip R. VanderMeer
has put together a thorough and
informative assessment of members of the
Indiana General Assembly from 1897-1919. What he has
constructed is pri-
marily a collective biography of 1,127
legislators. Thus, while many studies
over the last several years have focused on voter
behavior, VanderMeer's
work looks at this large, but selective,
group of elected state officials. Fur-
thermore, using the methods and ideas of
the "new political history"
school, he strives to define the
"political culture" of Indiana.
The conclusions that VanderMeer drew
from his research are interesting.
For example, he found that most
lawmakers during these years, regardless of
party, could be considered amateur
politicians. They were not active in
seeking offices prior to their election
to the General Assembly, and most did
not serve many terms or attempt to gain
other office. At the same time,
though, most had been active in party
work, if not as candidates for offices.
Indeed, VanderMeer ascertained that the
party system was strong in Indiana
- both during the Gilded Age and in the Progressive Era
covered by his
study. Individual charisma and personal
ambitions were not factors
propelling most legislators into
political contests. Then too, VanderMeer de-
veloped a generalized image of a typical
member of the General Assembly: a
man of "middling" origins,
generally well rooted in his residence, middle
class in social standing, better than
average education for the times, and a
member of voluntary community
associations. These observations, and oth-
170 OHIO HISTORY
ers, provide insights into the political
culture of Indiana for the twenty-some
years covered by VanderMeer. Yet, by
1919 it became clear that the set of
values and attitudes by which Hoosier
voters and politicians had operated
for so many years was changing. In
particular, the professionalization of politi-
cal careers and the national emphasis of
political campaigns had effect in
Indiana as they did in other states.
In all, Philip R. VanderMeer has
produced an almost exhaustive, system-
atic examination of members of the
Indiana General Assembly during a peri-
od of American history when political
activism and reform efforts flourished.
However, the purpose of his
investigation was not to analyze the successes,
failures, or effectiveness of the
Indiana General Assembly: its objective was
to delineate the characteristics of
these lawmakers in order to draw some
conclusions about the political culture
of the times. He clearly succeeded. Of
course, the validity of his work is
circumscribed by its scope - members of
the General Assembly. Large
generalizations about Indiana or Midwestern
politics and political ways cannot be
drawn from this study, only extrapo-
lated for supposition. What is now
needed is for other enterprising historians
to complete similar studies on political
life and politicians in other states for
the same period. Then, perhaps, an
encompassing interpretation of political
culture(s) for the Progressive Era may
be developed.
Marshalltown Community College Thomas Burnell Colbert
The Fortress in the Age of Vauban and
Frederick the Great 1660-1789. Seige
Warfare Series, Volume II. By
Christopher Duffy. (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1985. xv + 318p.; maps,
illustrations, glossary, bibliography,
indices. $50.00.)
The idea that the vast American forests
and frontier molded and shaped
the national character was itself
historic when Frederick Jackson Turner ar-
ticulated his frontier thesis before the
annual meeting of the American His-
torical Association in 1893. Turner was
the first prominent professional histo-
rian to put the concept into words and
is thus given credit for it; but since
then many American historians and the
lay public have embraced the idea
that European institutions were
automatically transmogrified in the American
frontier shortly after they hit the
eastern shore. Nowhere was this more true,
according to this line of thought, than
with military tactics. The assertion
that the European regular army was
"lost" in the North American woods
has in time obtained the status of holy
writ in American historiography.
As an English scholar, Christopher Duffy
has a different, and I think more
factual, point of view. Duffy views
military affairs in 18th century North
America in its proper context, as an
extension of European struggles for land
and thrones. Specifically he focuses on
the European world of fortress de-
sign and seige warfare from the age of
Louis XIV in the late 17th century to
the eve of the French Revolution. His
final chapter summarizes the history of
seiges in the European colonial empires
in India, the West Indies and North
America.
This is Duffy's third major excursion
into the history of fortress warfare. A
senior lecturer in the Department of War
Studies of the Royal Military Acade-
Book Reviews
171
my at Sandhurst, his first volume on the
topic was published in 1975 under
the title Fire and Stone. It
dealt with the technical aspects of positioning, de-
signing, erecting, defending and
attacking "artillery fortifications." His sec-
ond volume was produced in 1979 and is
actually the companion to the pres-
ent work. Seige Warfare: The Fortress
in the Modern World 1494-1660
addressed the earlier chronology and included sections
on little appreciated
topics such as oriental military engineering.
In his latest history Duffy strives to
integrate the history of fortress warfare
into the military and political history
of the period, an age of almost relentless
conflict. The role of fortresses and
seiges in the struggles between the Bour-
bon, Hapsburg and Hohenzollern families
for control of various national
thrones is examined. Duffy's intent is
not to provide the definitive descrip-
tion of any of these seiges or
fortresses, but to pull together information and
make observations on fortress warfare as
practiced by late-17th and 18th
century Europeans. The
"standard" for this era was established by
Sebastien Le Prestre de Vauban of Louis
XIV's court. But Duffy does not
limit his discussion to the great French
school of engineering, as he also
treats less well-remembered
practitioners of the military arts such as the
Dutchman Menno van Coehoorn, Sweden's
Erik Dahlberg and Augustin
Ehrensvard and Spain's Jorge Prospero
Verboom. In so doing he demon-
strates that an important factor in
Vauban's successes and fame was his
seemingly unlimited support from his
government, something that few other
engineers enjoyed.
Duffy is clearly a Francophile, so that
his comments on the work of other
nations often sound a trifle pejorative.
And yet among the most intriguing as-
pects of the volume are the descriptions
of the development of specific for-
tress and seige characteristics by each
nation or military leader. The Ger-
mans and Russians receive the most
disparagement. The former are noted for
their "general backwardness in
fortress warfare" (p.22), and the "Musco-
vite" seiges are described as so
typically "muddled" (p.245) that they were
often forced into bloody frontal
assaults. Even an absolute monarch like
Frederick the Great was less successful
than one might expect. While he was
himself "enlightened" in
engineering matters and developed his own style of
fortification (p. 138), Frederick's
lackluster seiges reflected an ineptitude in
personally dealing with his own engineer
corps. Americans in the Revolution
are characterized as "enthusiastic
diggers" (p.280), reflecting their whole-
hearted adoption of European fortress
warfare techniques, although Duffy
indicates that there is contradictory
evidence on the genuine opinion French
officers held on the execution of the
seige at Yorktown in 1781.
This brings me back to my original point
of departure. The British and
French fortifications and seiges in
North America were not, in Duffy's opin-
ion, a consequence of any innovations in
fortress warfare, but simply another
application of methods and techniques
learned in Europe. No evidence ex-
ists, for example, to suggest that the
construction of Fort Dusquesne at
Pittsburgh under the direction of the
French Francois Le Mercier or the
British efforts by General John Forbes
to capture it incorporated any princi-
ples except those familiar and acceptable
to old European masters like
Vauban. In fact, Duffy's study suggests
that, the legendary nature of the
American forests and terrain
notwithstanding, the officers who went to spe-
cial lengths to transport their European
artillery and followed European tac-
tics in North America were indeed the
most successful in seige warfare dur-
172 OHIO HISTORY
ing the colonial period. The Fortress
in the Age of Vauban is therefore of
enormous value to the student of
American military history. Duffy has laid
the groundwork for a comprehensive
survey to determine if the national
characteristics he has identified can be
seen throughout the fortifications
built by the various nations in North
America. The handsome production,
which includes sharp photos and excellent
line drawings, makes it a
worthwhile investment, although its
price may make it inaccessible to all but
the most serious student.
Ohio Historical Society David A. Simmons
Slavery and Rice Culture in Low
Country Georgia, 1750-1860. By Julia
Floyd
Smith. (Knoxville: University of
Tennessee Press, 1985. xiv + 266p.; notes,
illustrations, appendices, bibliography,
index. $19.95.)
Agriculture and slavery on the tidewater
plantations of Georgia was differ-
ent from that found in the cotton lands
of the upland South. Along coastal
Georgia the planters emphasized rice
production and used slaves who were
knowledgeable about that farming
practice. Rice cultivation not only re-
quired large landholdings, which Crown
policy supported with unlimited
grants to planters and the headright
system, but it also necessitated an abun-
dant and skilled labor supply. In the
absence of sufficient free, white labor,
the planters generally held more than
100 bondsmen for their work force.
These slaves usually received better
care than did the bondsmen on the cot-
ton plantations. Environmental and
technological limitations, however, pre-
vented rice farming from becoming more
than a specialty crop in the
antebellum South. By 1860, only 30,000
acres of rice were under cultivation.
Still, rice plantations were large,
averaging more than 400 acres; they also
were extensively capitalized at between
$50,000 and $100,000 each. Overall,
rice cultivation not only was a
profitable farming venture, but it also shaped
the cultural development of coastal
Georgia in a fashion that was distinct
from other portions of the South.
Julia Floyd Smith, professor emerita of
history at Georgia Southern
College, has written an excellent survey
of the growth and development of
the slave culture in coastal Georgia
from the introduction of tidal flow rice
cultivation and slavery in 1750 to the
eve of the Civil War. She finds that rice
plantations were isolated, specialized
and efficiently managed farming enter-
prises. Rice plantations provided
adequate profits and high status for the lo-
cal, absentee owners. The isolation of
the tidewater plantations, however,
prevented the acculturation of the
coastal slave population with bondsmen in
the interior. As a result, blacks in
lowland Georgia became culturally distinc-
tive. They retained their African
cultural identity to a far greater extent than
slaves did elsewhere in Georgia or the
South. The retention of their own lan-
guage, which they creolized with English
to produce the still extant Gullah
dialect, is a major example of their
cultural uniqueness.
Smith ranges widely over the culture of
tidewater Georgia. She clearly ex-
plains the complicated and demanding
process of rice cultivation, based on
the task system, from planting to
marketing. Rice production, however, is not
her only concern. She also provides a
good introduction to the organization
Book Reviews
173
of the rice plantations by discussing
the slave trade, daily maintenance and
health care, Christian religious
development and the use of overseers and
drivers. Smith also analyzes slave
resistance and the position of free blacks in
Georgia society. The end product is a
fine study of black and white culture
on the rice plantations of lowland
Georgia.
Overall, Smith has written a smooth
narrative about slavery in the rice
producing area of Georgia. Most of her
account, however, is not new. Few ag-
ricultural or southern historians will
find fresh insights about rice cultivation
or slavery. Rather, Smith's primary
contribution to scholarship is to provide
an excellent synthesis of both subjects.
Historians will need to add this
study to their library collections for
general reference purposes. Although
the book suffers from some problems of
repetition and organization, and
while the term "Negro" is
rather dated, Smith has made a worthy addition
to the history of American agriculture,
slavery and the South. Moreover, this
is an excellently produced book, and the
notes are at the bottom of the page
where they should be.
The State Historical Society of
Missouri R. Douglas Hurt
Pedagogue for God's Kingdom: Lyman
Beecher and The Second Great Awak-
ening. By James W. Fraser. (Lanham, Maryland: The University
Press of
America, 1985. 237p.; notes,
bibliography, $12.75 paper; $26.00 cloth.)
The purpose of this study is to examine
Lyman Beecher as a leader of a
generation of American churchmen and
educators who were leaders of the
second great awakening. They undertook
to use the movement to mold the
entire institutional life to bring about
the millennium - the Kingdom of God
in America. Fraser's book is not a
biography of Beecher, but he uses the life
of Beecher as a vehicle and a focal
point to examine the cluster of related ed-
ucational institutions which emerged in
the first half of the nineteenth centu-
ry as instruments to promote the
Protestant concept of a millennial society.
Fraser's study is based on the
assumption that significant insights into the
history of education can be gained by
studying the configurations of the
overlapping educational institutions
which collectively made up the educa-
tional milieu of the era.
Fraser's configuration includes seven
educational agencies that Beecher
was involved with and served as the
spokesman for their aspirations through
his writings and preaching. These
institutions were the church, college, the-
ological seminary, Sunday school, public
school, journal and home mission.
These institutions functioned together
through the operation of voluntary as-
sociations of which Beecher was one of
the central figures and organizers.
One of Beecher's most important
accomplishments was contributions to
the understanding of the significance of
the west in the theory of the
millennism by his A Plea for the West
in which he explained the central role
the west would play in the concept of
the coming of the millennium. It was in
his Plea for the West that he
developed his most militant anti-Catholicism.
He saw Catholicism as the enemy in the
west just as he had earlier seen Epis-
copalians and Unitarians as the enemies
in the east.
Beecher was instrumental in the
formation of the American Education So-
174 OHIO HISTORY
ciety whch subsidized needy theological
students. He conceived of the the-
ological seminary as an institution to
train a new generation of revival clergy
who would continue the work of building
the millennium. Colleges should
be designed to train leaders for the
academies, Sunday schools and public
schools.
The public schools were important in the
evangelical plan because the
church alone was not considered
sufficient. Beecher idealized the Puritan
educational system of New England.
Fraser calls attention to the fact that
there were many nonevangelical and
non-New Englanders among whom the
evangelists worked in creating a western
school system. He points out that
Edward Miller overstated the New England
educational influence in Ohio.
(OAHSP, 1918), but also says that
William McAlpine was guilty of an over-
correction in favor of non-New England
influence. (OAHSQ, 1929.)
The author concludes that Beecher did not
succeed in harmonizing the
educational institutions though they
often cooperated closely. "While
'Protestantizing' the culture,"
Frazer contends, "the evangelicals were
secularizing their millenium"
(p.203). Although John Dewey differed in
many respects from Beecher, he was in
accord with Beecher that schools
should serve to transform society.
Frazer's book is of particular interest
to the student of the history of Amer-
ican education.
Morehead State University Victor B. Howard
The Salvation Army Farm Colonies. By Clark C. Spence. (Tucson: The Uni-
versity of Arizona Press, 1985. vii +
151p.; notes, bibliographical essay, in-
dex. $19.95.)
The Salvation Army planted three farm
colonies in the United States in
1898: Fort Romie, California; Fort
Amity, Colorado; and Fort Herrick, Ohio.
Although the Army relied on the example
of hundreds of earlier European
and American farm colonies, Clark Spence
argues that these colonies were
unique in their ambition to move millions
of urban unemployed to the land.
They would "aid the needy, improve
living conditions, reform criminals, ....
[and] diminish the breakup of
families."
This is the first major study of the
colonies, which William Booth pro-
posed in his Darkest England Scheme of
1890. The Army's founder com-
posed In Darkest England and the Way
Out as a program to move the "sub-
merged tenth" back to the land in
three steps: from city workshops which
salvaged urban waste, to English farm
colonies for training in agricultural
skills, to overseas colonies where they
would farm small plots under the
Army's tutelage as they gradually
purchased the farm themselves. The
plan's genius was in its immense scale,
proposing to move millions back to the
land, and in Booth's ability to lure the
support of progressive reformers who,
in the 1880s to 1920s, embraced
back-to-the-land ideas, scientific social and
agricultural reforms, efficient business
methods, and imperial-colonial no-
tions.
Spence's careful study describes the
Army's management, finances,
choice of colonists, and the colonists'
work, income, and social relations.
Book Reviews
175
The colonies' main problem was
capitalization. Spence agrees with the con-
clusion of Commander Frederick
Booth-Tucker, General Booth's son-in-law
and sponsor of the American colonies,
and of H. Rider Haggard, an investi-
gator commissioned by the British
government, that only governments had
resources to support a plan of the
proportion Booth had envisioned. Senator
Mark Hanna of Ohio, a prime supporter of
the Army's efforts, died before
Congress considered his
"Booth-Tucker Bill" in 1904, and Haggard was
unable to convince a shaky Tory
government and rival social agencies to sup-
port his plan in 1905. These failures
brought down the curtain on the scheme
by 1906. Lack of capital made
improvement of the land difficult, and irriga-
tion and drainage problems drove all but
a few of the Army's colonists off
the land. After 1906 the Army was more
successful in emigration schemes,
particularly in moving emigrants from
England to Canada, and in "city
agencies to uplift the poor."
The Army acquired its Ohio colony of 288
acres, near Mentor, the early
home town of James A. Garfield, and
named it for Myron T. Herrick, a promi-
nent banker, later ambassador to France
and Ohio Governor. Herrick and
his brother-in-law, James Parmalee, sold
the land and lent the Army $5,000.
Herrick had an interest in agricultural
schemes and had introduced Booth-
Tucker to Mark Hanna. Although Fort
Herrick deviated from the farm colony
scheme due to insufficient acreage,
Booth-Tucker saw it as a training farm for
colonies in the West. Only ten families
became colonists in 1898, and only two
remained by 1900 due to drainage and
other problems. In 1903 the Army re-
organized Fort Herrick as an
"Industrial Colony" to dry-out inebriates nine
miles from the nearest saloon. But
within a few years it became a "Fresh Air
Camp for the Children of
Cleveland," just twenty-miles away, until the Army
sold it in 1974.
The back-to-the-land mentality enticed
men like Herrick and Hanna to
support the Army's colonies in 1898.
But, as Spence points out, their support
was insufficient or too late to save the
Army's scheme. This book ends with a
summary of vestiges of the colonization
idea in the 1920s.
Spence fails to distinguish pre-Civil
War utopian schemes from the inten-
tional communities established by
social-religious-governmental organiza-
tions at the end of the century, nor does
he tell us how William Booth, an
English revivalist preacher with little
love for social remedies apart from indi-
vidual soul salvation, became a social
reformer in the 1880s. Even though the
colonies had no alcohol or dance halls,
the Army's spiritual side resented
the organization's scarce resources for
evangelization being spent on essen-
tially social reform programs. Spence's
work is well organized, but a bibliog-
raphy would have been helpful, and the
title should reflect that Spence's fo-
cus is only on the Army's American
colonies. The Army also had colonies in
England, Canada, Australasia, southern
Africa, and India, as Spence notes.
Otherwise, Spence provides an important
contribution to students of the
back-to-the-land and colonization
movements.
University of Cincinnati Norman H. Murdoch
"Let the Eagle Soar!" The
Foreign Policy of Andrew Jackson. By
John M.
Belohlavek. (Lincoln: The University of
Nebraska Press, 1985. 328p.;
maps, appendixes, notes, bibliography,
index. $28.95.)
176 OHIO HISTORY
John M. Belohlavek's goal is to create a
positive portrait of American for-
eign policy in the Age of Jackson. His "Let
the Eagle Soar!" offers a compre-
hensive, detailed analysis of United
States diplomacy during the Jackson
administration. Old Hickory, Belohlavek
argues, directed an "aggressive,
bold, and imaginative" (p.2)
approach to foreign affairs that proved largely
successful in furthering America's
commercial growth and in protecting the
nation's honor.
Historians of the Jacksonian period have
often ignored foreign policy or as-
sumed that because Jackson opposed
political involvement overseas, he
must not have been concerned with other
aspects of foreign relations.
Belohlavek insist that while Jackson did
oppose American participation in
foreign alliances, he was committed to
the expansion of American economic
interests and the enhancement of
America's international prestige. This poli-
cy may not have been new, Belohlavek
admits, but Jackson's execution dem-
onstrated a "sharper,
harder-hitting edge" and so "produced greater re-
sults" than previous
administrations (p. 23).
It is this Jackson style of diplomacy
that attracts Belohlavek's greatest in-
terest. His Jackson is not so much a
quick-tempered frontiersman as a "calm
and dispassionate" (p.55),
carefully calculating statesman, capable of consid-
erable "tact, patience, and
finesse" (p. 252). Motivated by a blend of "ego
and patriotism" (p. 9), Jackson,
Belohlavek tells us, took personal charge of
the country's diplomacy and succeeded in
achieving "more often than not
. . .increased profits for American
businessmen and a new-found respect for
the United States" (p. 53).
Among the many foreign policy
accomplishments that Belohlavek associ-
ates with the Jackson administration, he
places special emphasis on the 75
percent growth in exports and the 250
percent increase in imports during the
Jackson years; the reorganization of the
consular service; the strengthening
of United States naval forces; the
pursuit of positive relations with Europe;
and the settlement of oustanding claims
against European powers, including
the difficult and protracted dispute
with France. Belohlavek reserves his
highest praise for Jackson's handling of
American ties with Great Britain.
Setting aside past animosities, Jackson
successfully concluded agreements
with America's former enemy over such
issues as trade in the West Indies
and the Maine boundary - though the
latter agreement was never ratified.
By striving to establish a relationship
of mutual respect, he "ushered in a
new era of Anglo-American
understanding" (p. 73).
Belohlavek's treatment of Jackson's
foreign policy record is by no means
limited to an analysis of European
relations. He presents a lengthy, thorough
examination of all American efforts at
trade expansion in every part of the
world. At times his account is
maddeningly detailed, but always the story is
fascinating and the theme of
international commitment well documented.
Ever determined to defend Jackson the
diplomat, Belohlavek even insists
that the most celebrated of these
American forays into the far reaches of the
globe, the incident at Quallah Battoo, was yet another
example of Andrew
Jackson's "deliberate and
thoughtful" (p. 162) approach to foreign affairs.
Belohlavek concedes that not all of
Jackson's diplomatic efforts were suc-
cessful. He admits, for example, that
Jackson's attempt to purchase Texas
from Mexico failed, but argues that no
Mexican government could have
agreed to a sale and survived the
domestic outcry. Belohlavek has less pa-
tience with Jackson's Latin American
policy. Here he sees Jackson's reluc-
Book Reviews
177
tance to engage in political
intervention as having a crippling impact on
America's status in the region. A
limited interpretation of the Monroe Doc-
trine, argues Belohlavek, led Jackson to
respond timidly to crises in such
places as Argentina and Columbia. This
timidity, coupled with a number of
poor Latin American appointments,
allowed Great Britain to gain ascendancy
in an area of the world the United
States could have more successfully influ-
enced.
This criticism does not mar Belohlavek's
overall assessment of Jacksonian
foreign policy. The image of Andrew
Jackson-Diplomatist continues to soar
alongside the American eagle in his
account. This treatment of Jackson may
be questioned at points; Old Hickory's
failures in Latin America, for one
thing, may be of greater significance
than Belohlavek would care to admit.
Nevertheless, Belohlavek has made an
important contribution to our appreci-
ation of America's nineteenth-century
commitment to an active involvement in
world affairs.
The University of Texas at
Arlington Stephen E. Maizlish
George Washington Williams: A
Biography. By John Hope Franklin.
(Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1985. xxiv + 348p.; illustra-
tions, notes, note on sources,
appendixes, index. $24.95.)
In 1945, while preparing to write From
Slavery to Freedom: A History of
Negro Americans, John Hope Franklin found A History of the Negro Race
in
America from 1619 to 1880, written by George Washington Williams and pub-
lished in 1882. Thus began a forty-year
undertaking in which Franklin, him-
self a pioneer among mid-twentieth
century American historians,
rediscovered the remarkable story of the
first historian of American blacks.
The resulting biography is compelling on
three levels. Readers will not only
be captivated by Williams's unusual
life, but they will also relish Franklin's
brief account of "stalking George
Washington Williams" from scattered evi-
dence on three continents. Finally, they
may find themselves pondering
both the similarities and the contrasts
between the biographer and his sub-
ject.
Like Franklin, Williams was a man of
ability who was deeply committed to
black Americans. Both overcame barriers
of racism with significant achieve-
ments. Born into a poor free black
family in Pennsylvania in 1849, Williams as
a teenager fought in the U.S. Civil War
and in Mexico against Maximilian.
After theological training, Williams
became the minister of Boston's Twelfth
Baptist Church in 1873. After less than
two years, he resigned to launch a na-
tional black newspaper, The Commoner.
When the paper failed after only two
months, Williams moved to Ohio. Between
1876-1883, he had a varied ca-
reer as minister of Cincinnati's Union
Baptist Church (1876-77), columnist for
the Cincinnati Commercial, law
student, Republican politican, first black
member of the Ohio legislature
(1880-81), and pathbreaking historian of his
race. After unsuccessful attempts to
become U.S. minister to Haiti, Williams
directed his energies eastward across
the Atlantic. He was in Europe in
1888-89 and toured Africa in 1890-91 as
an agent for railroad chief Collis
Huntington. In the Congo Free State,
however, he not only advised against
178 OHIO HISTORY
future railroad construction and other
economic projects but was also re-
volted by the brutality, exploitation,
and mismanagement under the Belgian
monarch's rule. His Open Letter to His
Serene Majesty Leopold I1 (1890), the
first expose of conditions in the Congo,
created hostility toward Williams and
cost him Huntington's financial support.
His already frail health further
weakened by his African travels,
Williams died in England in August, 1891,
at age 41.
As clergyman, journalist, legislator,
advocate, and historian, Williams ac-
complished much in his brief life. Not
only was he frequently a black
"first," but most of what
Williams did, he did well. For example, Franklin
rates A History of the Negro Race and
a second book, History of the Negro
Troops in the War of the Rebellion (1887), as substantial works. Williams did
exhaustive research, rendered
independent judgments, and broke new
ground in the use of interviews and
newspapers as historical sources. But for
all his abilities, Williams, unlike his
biographer, was a tragic figure. Restless
and unfulfilled, he moved quickly from
one endeavor to another. Gifted, he
was also egotistical and apt to debate
or correct others; these qualities did
not endear him to his peers. Sadly,
Williams neglected his wife and son, left
some debts unpaid, and falsified his
achievements on occasion. Franklin has
given us a biography which is
traditionally conceived, gracefully written,
and impressively researched. It is
futher enriched by the author's command
of the times in which Williams lived.
Franklin follows Williams's life in great
detail and reveals his subject's
achievements and his shortcomings. As the
author concludes, "It is well that
one should not try to make more of him
than what he was - a flawed but
brilliant human being."
Eastern Michigan University Michael W. Homel
Truman: The Rise to Power. By Richard Lawrence Miller. (New York:
McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1986. xvi +
536p.; illustrations, notes, bibli-
ographic note, index. $19.95.)
The scholarly literature concerning
Harry S. Truman quite naturally has fo-
cused on his presidency. His
pre-presidential years, most especially those
covering his involvement in the
government of Jackson County, Missouri,
have been covered rather cursorily in
most biographies. In contrast,
Richard Lawrence Miller's study is devoted
solely to examining Truman's ca-
reer prior to his accession to the
presidency in April 1945. It is heavily docu-
mented and rests upon detailed
manuscript research especially among papers
housed in the Truman Library. Miller has
mined the Truman "Family, Busi-
ness and Personal" papers
thoroughly and gleaned much of value from
Truman's Senate papers.
Truman: The Rise to Power challenges the conventional view of Truman's re-
lationship with the monumentally corrupt
Kansas City political machine led
by Boss Tom Pendergast. Miller assaults
forcefully the view, presented
among others by Lyle W. Dorsett in The
Pendergast Machine, that Truman
was untouched by the machine's corrupt
practices yet a beneficiary of its po-
litical power. He argues that
"Truman played a key role in maintaining the
Pendergast control of life in Jackson
County after 1926," and that "he not
Book Reviews
179
only knew of the machine's illegalities
but participated in some of them" (p.
167). He presents Truman, the presiding
judge of Jackson County, Henry
McElroy, the Kansas City manager and
Johnny Lazia, the machine's enfor-
cer, as comprising "the triumvirate
directly below Boss Tom" (p. 247). While
Miller's analysis is rather strained at
times, as for example in his linking
Truman and Lazia, it is ultimately
convincing in revealing Truman's deep in-
volvement with the Pendergast machine.
What strengthens the book is that Miller
has not attempted to write an ex-
pose simply to illuminate the "dark side" of Harry
Truman. He willingly ad-
mits that Truman differed from many of
his associates in the Pendergast or-
ganization. The future president had a
positive vision for the future,
genuinely sought to use government to
improve the lives of citizens, occasion-
ally tried to limit the corruption
involved in the letting of contracts and, most
notably, never profited personally from
the illegal activities of the machine.
And Truman had a conscience that forced
him constantly to wrestle with the
question of whether the ends he sought
justified the means he used.
Miller's work also contains material of
interest concerning Truman's person-
ality and basic beliefs. Miller attempts
to portray Truman as carefully follow-
ing a "plan for his life"
(p.24) which involved his gaining experience in fi-
nance, the military and farming. This
attempt is somewhat artificial and
forced and ignores the role in Truman's
life of factors over which he had lit-
tle control. On more particular matters,
however, such as the importance of
freemasonry for Truman (p.72),
his religious outlook (p. 75), his approach to
politics (p.314), and his racist
attitudes (pp. 84 and 325-27) Miller is perceptive
and persuasive. Miller does not add
significantly to our understanding of ei-
ther Truman's senatorial career or his
election and brief service as vice-
president, although he includes an
interesting account of Truman's little-
known and extremely naive involvement
with the Moral Rearmament
movement in the late 1930s and early
1940s.
Richard Miller claims that in
researching this book he discovered a
"Truman Establishment" (which
he never describes) that is "very uneasy
about investigations into his (Truman's)
role with the Pendergast machine"
(p. ix). Clearly an investigation such
as Miller's upsets the rather stock image
of Truman as simply the unsullied public
servant unswervingly devoted to
the common good. But it provides a more
human and accurate portrait of
Truman and, as such, a better basis for
understanding his actions as presi-
dent.
University of Notre Dame Wilson D. Miscamble, C.S.C.,