Book Reviews
Harry Hopkins: Ally of the Poor and
Defender of Democracy. By George
McJimsey. (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1987. xiv + 474p.;
illustrations, notes, index. $25.00.)
Perhaps it was the common bond of a
Grinnell College education that lured
George McJimsey to Harry Hopkins as a
biographical subject. Certainly few
men other than heads of state and a
handful of generals were more important
than Hopkins during World War II, and no
one, including Franklin D.
Roosevelt himself, was more pervasive as
the New Deal swept across the
nation. Yet, like other presidential
factotums, Hopkins has been largely
forgotten by all but historians and a
diminishing generation of older Americans.
McJimsey begins his account with a
description of Hopkins' early years and
family life in Sioux City and Grinnell,
Iowa. The son of a harness maker,
Hopkins enjoyed a happy
turn-of-the-century existence. He delivered papers,
easily made friends in school and had a
steady girl. He was also a good athlete,
particularly in basketball. Even in the
idyllic small-town environment of
Grinnell, though, Hopkins was already
developing the healthy cynicism that
later deflated so many of the New Deal's
critics.
After high school, Hopkins matriculated
at Grinnell College. There, influ-
enced by professors who believed
Grinnell graduates should improve the world
through social commitment, the young
Hopkins began to refine the attitudes he
carried into public life. His Grinnell
education led him to social work in New
York City, and later to positions with
the American Red Cross, the Association
for Improving the Condition of the Poor
(AICP) and finally to the executive
directorship of the Temporary Emergency
Relief Administration (TERA),
where he attracted Roosevelt's attention
in 1932.
The ensuing phases of Hopkins' life are
better known. He directed with skill
and compassion a number of New Deal
relief programs, all the while never
deviating from a simple conviction:
"Hunger is not debatable." So humane a
philosophy naturally endeared him to
America's poor. In his unwavering
devotion to that humble constituency
Hopkins truly exemplified the highest
sense of the term "public
servant."
World War II, of course, altered
America's and Hopkins' destiny. At
Roosevelt's beckoning, Hopkins made an
effective transition from relief
minister par excellence to
diplomat extraordinaire. Before and after the United
States' entry into the war Hopkins advanced
America's cause. He was
virtually everywhere-Placentia Bay,
Casablanca, Tehran, Yalta and else-
where, even though serious digestive
problems frequently debilitated him.
McJimsey devotes about two-thirds of his
book to Hopkins' career during
the war years. It is here that the
author is most artful, describing in patient
detail the Gordian snarl of Lend-Lease
and other wartime policies. Hopkins
seemed to sense instinctively how
idiosyncrasy and personal pique often shape
diplomacy, steering a delicate course,
for instance, between Winston Churchill
and Josef Stalin, although he tended to
placate the Soviet leader.
McJimsey used a wide variety of printed
and manuscript sources, including
Grinnell College records, Red Cross and
other social service agency papers,
the correspondence of several prominent New Dealers and
wartime figures and
180 OHIO HISTORY
the rich Hopkins and Roosevelt
collections in Hyde Park. Indeed, it is through
his extensive use of these varied
materials that McJimsey's biography surpass-
es the more anecdotal (and consequently
more readable) Harry Hopkins: A
Biography, by Henry H. Adams. Too, McJimsey's book is more
analytical
than Robert Sherwood's Roosevelt and
Hopkins: An Intimate History, which,
though dated, remains indispensable because
of its detail and description.
One wishes that McJimsey would have cast
his Hopkins more vividly against
the backdrop of the thirties and
forties. The book provides little of the flavor
of the Roosevelt court and almost none
of World War II. For example,
McJimsey mentions neither VE nor VJ Day.
Furthermore, McJimsey's Hopkins
would have been livelier had he been
juxtaposed, inter alia, against the London
Blitz, the siege of Leningrad and the
atomic destruction of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. And this book lacks colorful
vignettes of Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt,
Chiang Kai-shek, Charles de Gaulle and
others. Considering that these men
were the titans of their age, they
deserved a better descriptive fate.
Walsh College Frank P. Vazzano
Dictionary of American Conservatism:
The First Complete Guide to Issues,
People, Events, Organizations. By Louis Filler. (New York: Philosophical
Library, Inc., 1987. 380p.; $29.95.)
Louis Filler, now retired from teaching,
but continuing a prolific publishing
career that reaches back half a century,
has written the first dictionary of
American conservatism. It covers people,
organizations, events, and issues of
conservatism past and present. The
entries are not only informative, as one
would expect, but interesting, largely
because of the author's wide range of
scholarship and distinctive point of
view. Many items, handled somewhat
differently, also appear in his Dictionary
of American Social Change.
Professor Filler takes care to say that
a dictionary is not an encyclopedia, yet
the volume under review often emits the
variant hues of an eclectic encyclo-
pedia. Words such as racism and even
conservatism are more discussed than
defined. The same may be said of war,
liberalism (transformed after the Great
Depression into quasi-socialism), and
slavery (too closely linked with the
indentured servitude of whites).
Many years ago Filler grew sympathetic
to conservative causes, while
maintaining a compassionate attitude
toward the poor and the less-privileged.
He is not anti-labor or even
anti-government, and looks always for humane
action. This sensibility pervades his
entries, many of which are short essays of
enlightenment. The seven-hundred-word
essay on World War I is excellent, as
are the tightly written pieces on Henry
James, Herbert Hoover, and H. L.
Mencken. This reviewer is struck by
Filler's ability to find conservative themes
in movements and personalities commonly
deemed reformist or liberal. Thus
readers will find discussions of
populism, progressivism, abolitionism, Jane
Addams, and Lewis Tappan. Filler excels
in book reviews; see, for example,
The Unraveling of America (1984), in length comparable to reviews found in
scholarly journals. Many essays conclude
with suggestions for additional
reading.
Although Filler protects himself by
acknowledging that he has not prepared
a Who's Who of conservatives,
hoping only to cover "representative figures,
Book Reviews
181
visible personalities, and symbolic slogans and
ideas," users of this reference
book will find cause to second-guess his
principles of selection. Jane Addams
and Abbie Hoffman are included, but not
Edith Wharton or Nicholas Murray
Butler. Anita Bryant makes the list;
Walter Lippmann, William Gilmore
Simms, Donald Davidson, and George
Stigler do not. Why the muckraking
journalist and novelist David Graham
Phillips and Claude Pepper, the Demo-
cratic politician from Florida, are
included is not made clear. Readers will find
entries on tipping and quality control,
but none on such venerable conservative
themes as duty, work, custom, prudence,
authority, virtue, inequality, and
legitimacy. Fuzziness in description
occasionally sets in. A case in point is the
New History, misleading on both James
Harvey Robinson and the more radical
approaches that emerged in the 1960s.
The Dictionary of American
Conservatism would have benefited from more
careful editing. Common names such as
Randolph Bourne, John Kenneth
Galbraith, Pare Lorentz, and Nikita
Khrushchev are misspelled; The Scarlet
Letter is dated 1950, and so on. Bibliographical selections
are not always the
preferred ones. To list Fawn Brodie's Jefferson
as one of only two books on
the revolutionary thinker is surprising,
given the numerous better studies
available.
Some of the deficiencies in the volume
are attributable to the fact that it is the
first such effort to appear in print.
When all is said and done, there is something
about the texture of this Dictionary
that is subtly engaging. The varied entries
and sources, the sensibility of a
learned student of American history, leavened
with a taste for realism and common
sense, carry the reader along. Moreover,
Filler's work is graced with an
admirable Preface by Russell Kirk, who in
several paragraphs provides a concise
statement on the nature of the conser-
vative mentality. What emerges is not a
bland dictionary or an epic of
conservatism, but rather a living
portrait of issues that matter to conservatives.
This Dictionary is a success because it
proves that such an ambitious
undertaking is possible, even though
revisions will doubtless be necessary.
The University of Toledo Ronald Lora
Crusade Against Slavery: Friends,
Foes, and Reforms, 1820-1860. By Louis
Filler. (Algonac, Michigan: Reference
Publications, Inc., 1986. 389p.; illus-
trations, maps, notes, bibliographic
overview, index. $24.95 cloth; $12.95
paper.)
When first published in 1960, Louis
Filler's The Crusade Against Slavery,
1830-1860 received positive reviews. Prominent historians
including Kenneth
Stampp, Gilman Ostrander, Larry Gara,
and Avery Craven recognized it as an
important achievement, especially in its
elevation of William Lloyd Garrison to
central leadership of the abolition
movement. Filler's rejection of the Gilbert
Barnes thesis which had promoted
Theodore Weld and other westerners as the
most important leaders of the movement
has stood the test of close to thirty
years of abolition study. Thus one might
expect that the publication of a new
edition of Filler's pathbreaking study
would be a welcome addition to
antislavery literature. Yet a closer
look leaves one who is familiar with the
original monograph wondering why another
edition is in order.
182 OHIO HISTORY
In a new introduction Filler tells us
that he has made several hundred
changes in the text along with
significant emendations of footnotes. Such
textual changes are very difficult to
locate. Indeed, all but a few are of minor
consequence and hardly merit a new
edition. Filler has also added a subtitle
and altered the beginning date from 1830
to 1820 without changing the text. Nor
are the footnotes significantly amended.
All but a few are left as they were, the
only changes being infrequent additions.
In light of the vast abolition literature
published since 1960, one is surprised
to discover how few significant writings
are mentioned in the new edition. One is
also disappointed to find that the new
Bibliographic Overview is extremely
selective and in no sense gives the reader
the total picture of recent antislavery
historiography. For example, no mention
is made of James B. Stewart's model
political biography of Joshua Giddings in
either footnotes or bibliography. Filler
makes no effort to hide his personal
bias, taking verbal swipes at such
prominent historians as Larry Gara,
Lawrence Friedman, and Merton Dillon, as
well as Stewart who is berated for
his interpretation of the movement in
his highly useful Holy Warriors.
Despite the promise of significant
changes from the 1960 study, Filler
disappoints the reader in his basically
unaltered study. His introduction does
not really discuss recent trends as much
as it allows the author to vent his
feelings at several of his favorite
targets. Especially and perhaps deservedly
attacked are those historians who
persist in psychological interpretations of the
abolitionists, usually concluding that
less than admirable factors motivated
their interest in the plight of the
slave. Filler purports to see an erosion of
appreciation of the abolitionists and
their movement among today's histori-
ans-a trend which many in the field
would not agree exists.
Filler's original monography remains
useful to students of the antebellum
period. He provides an important,
largely appreciative overview of abolition-
ism and is especially effective in
showing the close relationship of abolitionism
and other reform movements and in
describing the years before the antislavery
movement became politically oriented.
His defense of the abolitionists as a
whole and the Garrisonians in
particular, all the time pointing out their
inconsistencies and faults, is as viable
today as it was in 1960. Less useful is
Filler's recounting of the 1850s where
the reader is led through familiar
territory without significant additional
information or interpretation. In places,
the study is somewhat disjointed in
organization and choppy in style. The book
is clearly not for the beginning college
student who would be left confused with
the lack of an overview or smooth
transition from one topic to the next. To
those versed in the period, Filler's
view remains as significant an account and
interpretation in the eighties as it was
in the sixties. The original edition will
continue to meet the needs of most
readers.
Youngstown State University Frederick J. Blue
Agricultural Distress in the Midwest
Past & Present. Edited by Lawrence
E.
Gelfand and Robert J. Neymery. (Iowa
City: Center for the Study of the
Recent History of the United States,
1986. ix + 111p.; tables, figures, notes.
$9.95 paper.)
Agricultural distress is not new to
farmers in the Midwest. From the granger
period of the 1870s through the
cooperative movement of the early twentieth
Book Reviews
183
century, economic change has troubled
the agricultural community. With acute
economic distress continuing to plague
Midwestern agriculture during the late
twentieth century, the Center for the
Study of the Recent History of the United
States at the University of Iowa hosted
a symposium at which scholars
attempted to place Midwestern
agricultural problems in perspective. The
papers presented at that symposium,
published here, trace the development of
those problems and the policies designed
to alleviate them over the past
century.
The first paper presented by Walter T.
K. Nugent, Tackes Professor of
History at the University of Notre Dame,
provides an excellent introduction to
the state of American agriculture
between 1880 and 1920. Nugent notes that
improved technology and transportation
helped make farmers one-crop spe-
cialists within the market economy of
the industrialized world. Commercial
agriculture, however, meant a loss of
freedom and a dependence upon bankers,
commission men and markets far beyond
the control of farmers. Increasingly,
Midwesterners attempted to resolve
economic problems by political means.
Governmental intervention in agriculture
in the form of tariffs, direct purchas-
ing and price fixing became daily topics
of discussion in the farm community.
Nugent correctly notes that as long as
farmers exist within an industrial,
market economy, their economic situation
or plight will change little. Nugent
implies, although he does not state,
that the solution to the economic problems
of many small-scale farmers is for them
to leave the land.
Next, David E. Hamilton, Assistant
Professor of History at the University of
Kentucky, furnishes a detailed look at
American farm policy between World
War I and World War II. Hamilton rejects
the traditional belief that the 1920s
were years of economic depression for
farmers caused merely by low prices
and inadequate federal policy. Instead,
he suggests that the interwar years
marked a time when policy makers
attempted to "rationalize" agriculture by
giving it an institutional order.
Hamilton contends that federal policy makers,
led by the Bureau of Agricultural Economics,
tried to fit agriculture into the
context of mainstream industrial
society. As technocrats addressed the prob-
lems of agriculture, however, their
solution favored narrow interest groups not
the marginal farmer.
Stanley R. Johnson, Director of the Center
for Agricultural and Rural
Development at Iowa State University,
explains the purpose of the Food and
Agriculture Act of 1985 that will shape
governmental agricultural policy into
the early 1990s. He is not optimistic
that the economic condition of agriculture
will change for the better during the
immediate future, because of foreign
production, demand and protectionism.
Finally, Norman Borlaug, Distin-
guished Professor of International
Agriculture at Texas A & M University and
past Director of the International Maize
and Wheat Improvement Center at
Londres, Mexico, and father of the
"Green Revolution," looks at the Center's
activities and world agricultural needs.
Borlaug's common sense approach to
agricultural improvement and incisive
reflection upon human nature provides
an enjoyable reflection on the past.
Overall, this collection of symposium
papers furnishes a useful, brief and
highly selective look at Midwestern
agricultural problems. Agricultural histo-
rians will find the contributions of
Nugent and Hamilton particularly useful for
synthesizing their knowledge of
agricultural problems and policy since the late
nineteenth century. Only Nugent and
Johnson, however, deal specifically with
184 OHIO HISTORY
the Midwest. Hamilton's policy study
necessarily applies to the nation as a
whole, while Borlaug's address is a
pleasant diversion.
State Historical Society of
Missouri R. Douglas Hurt
Frances Willard: A Biography. By Ruth Bordin. (Chapel Hill: The North
Carolina Press, 1986. xv + 294p.;
illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.
$25.00.)
In Frances Willard: A Biography, Ruth
Bordin masterfully portrays the life
of the charismatic leader of the Woman's
Christian Temperance Union who
was widely regarded during the latter
decades of the nineteenth century as both
the temperance queen of the United
States and the St. Francis of American
womanhood. Using the previously
unavailable sources, including all of
Willard's diaries and the private papers
of her close friend and associate,
Hannah Whitnall Smith, Bordin
convincingly illustrates that Willard's success
came from her ability to merge within
her personality the conflicting goals
advocated by a radical social vision,
and those demanded by the cult of
domesticity.
As the daughter of a Free-Soil Democrat
who served in the Wisconsin
legislature, Willard, born in 1839, was
raised in that era of altruistic reform
culminating in the abolitionist crusade
to end involuntary servitude. Beginning
in the early 1870s as Willard grew into
her majority, she increasingly became
drawn to women's issues. As these issues
became central to her life, they led
her to become first the president of the
Northwestern Ladies College (later, the
Women's College, Northwestern
University), and ultimately, in 1879, the
president of the Woman's Christian
Temperance Union, a position she held
until her death in 1898. From this
position, Willard attempted to make the
WCTU a multi-issue organization,
focusing first on protecting women and the
home, then on temperance and other
radical causes such as woman's suffrage,
equal rights, prison reform and
Christian Socialism. By advocating what was
then regarded as radical reform to
protect women, the home and the cult of
domesticity, Willard, by not threatening
traditional values, gained a wide
popular following throughout the nation.
Frances Willard is not limited to biography; it also is excellent
social history
illustrating one woman's tenuous
existence in an overwhelming male environ-
ment. Bordin, drawing on Carrol
Smith-Rosenberg's notion of homosocial
relationships, illustrates that
Willard's intimate relationships with women was
the supportive human characteristic
allowing her to continue her crusade in the
face of an obstinant male world.
Willard, while eschewing marriage, developed
homosocial relationships with her
mother, her personal secretary, Ruth
Gordon, and with many other women who
shared her views, goals and
burdens. While constantly rebuffed by
the male establishment, especially in
the Methodist church, Willard did not
falter because of the close, personal
support she received from women with
whom she shared her deepest and most
intimate feelings.
While portraying Willard as a strong
link between altruistic reformers of the
nineteenth century and their more
realistic counterparts in the twentieth
century, Bordin failed to adequately
explain why the woman who at her death
Book Reviews
185
was regarded as the most famous American
of her sex is hardly remembered
today. To conclude, as Bordin does, that
Willard became too closely identified
with the failed reform of temperance is
not fully explanatory. Willard's passing
popularity also appears as a reaction to
her thorough devotion to the rejected
conception of women as defined by the
cult of domesticity. Purity, piety,
domesticity and submissiveness were
alien to the thrust of the woman's
movement throughout most of the
twentieth century, even if in recent years
temperance again has raised its sober
head.
This criticism should not detract from
the significant contribution made by
this book. Bordin has thoroughly
researched her subject, and her presentation
is so becoming that the reader is left
with the impression that he has known
Willard for most of her life. This is
biography at its best, and Bordin is to be
highly complimented. Frances Willard:
A Biography is required reading for
students of women's and social history.
Youngstown State University Fred W. Viehe
Rebel Raider: The Life of General
John Hunt Morgan. By James A. Ramage.
(Lexington: The University Press of
Kentucky, 1986. xi + 306p.; illustra-
tions, maps, notes, bibliographic notes,
index. $25.00.)
Ramage planned to describe the life and
career of John Hunt Morgan, as well
as evaluate his role in the Civil War.
Born in 1825 of a family well up in the
social aristocracy of Kentucky, and the
eldest of eleven children, Morgan
attended Transylvania University.
Undistinguished as a student, he left the
university after a duel with a
classmate. He served in the Mexican War with the
Kentucky militia, fighting at Buena
Vista. Attracted by military life, Morgan
tried to obtain a commission in the army
after the war, to no avail. He went into
business, including that of renting
slaves to others, and became a captain in the
Kentucky militia. Ramage observed that
"he thoroughly identified with the
Southern way of life .... When Southern
civilization was threatened,
Morgan's own adjustment was
endangered" (p. 39).
After Kentucky's abortive attempt at
neutrality as the Civil War opened,
Morgan led the Lexington Rifles and
other volunteers of occupied Lexington,
and on his own initiative embarked on a
guerrilla war, aimed, Ramage claimed,
to protect Southern sympathizers in
Kentucky. At about the same time his first
wife, Rebecca, died after an extended
illness. The story of Morgan's activities
as a partisan leader are well-known, as
he disrupted Union communications,
especially railroads, in Kentucky and
Tennessee. Though he accomplished
"nothing of great military
significance" (p. 63), he became something of a
popular military hero throughout the
Confederacy.
A guerilla leader, Morgan received
little support and sympathy from the
regular Confederate military, and
deservedly so as he was "not a team player"
(p. 228), but he remained a hero of
considerable proportions to Southerners.
Morgan appeared to be successful even
when the fortunes of war failed to favor
the Confederate cause. His career
divided into roughly two parts: that prior to
his second marriage, on which his
reputation was established, and that after,
when he proved less successful. He
married Martha Ready, of Murfreesboro,
Tennessee, in December, 1862. Morgan
"put gambling and high risks behind
186 OHIO HISTORY
him," and "the source of his
creativity and motivation as a guerrilla warrior
was lost" (p. 147).
Ohioans know Morgan best for his raid
into Indiana and Ohio, where
careless, he was captured and imprisoned
in the Ohio State Penitentiary at
Columbus. Ramage gives General Ambrose
E. Burnside the credit for this, as
Burnside's cavalry, Commander Leroy
Fitch's gunboats, along with Indiana
and Ohio militia brought Morgan to bay.
The raid succeeded in refurbishing
Morgan's reputation, but failed to hurt
Northern morale.
After four months in prison, Morgan and
some of his men escaped, and he
returned to lead another raid into
Kentucky in 1864. He had virtually no regular
Confederate support, as that army was
stretched too thin to provide either the
men or material for him. Supposedly
relieved of command because of an
investigation into a bank robbery by his
forces, he instead moved his small
command into eastern Tennessee, where,
at Greeneville, he chose to flee
rather than surrender, and was killed,
September 4, 1864.
Ramage combed many manuscript
collections, with countless letters and
dozens of newspaper accounts. There is
no bibliography, only a brief biblio-
graphical note, and we may well lament
this. The end notes, however, appear
quite complete and fill some of the
void. We learn more of Morgan than we
perhaps need to know, but that is a
tribute to Ramage's thorough investigation.
Along with other, previously published,
accounts of Morgan, it appears no one
will have to tackle this job again for a
long time.
The University of Akron Robert H. Jones
The History of Wisconsin. Volume III: Urbanization & Industrialization,
1873-1893. By Robert C. Nesbit. (Madison: The State Historical
Society of
Wisconsin, 1985. xiv + 693p.; maps,
illustrations, notes, appendix, notes on
sources, index. $30.00.)
Robert C. Nesbit argues that the period
1873-1893 was one of "sweeping
changes" in the lives of
Wisconsin's citizens. A "major transformation" of the
state's economy brought about, in turn,
a series of "far-reaching adjustments"
in its social and political structures
(pp. v-vi).
Nesbit, a retired professor of history
at the University of Wisconsin-
Madison, has mined an extensive
collection of published and unpublished
materials in order to produce a
remarkably thorough work of scholarship.
There are lengthy notes at the foot of
the page, numerous maps and graphs,
seventy-three fascinating photographs, a
twenty-four page essay on sources,
and a marvelous index. Nesbit has thus
contributed a most impressive addition
to the six-volume History of
Wisconsin sponsored by the State Historical
Society of Wisconsin.
In keeping with his thesis, Nesbit
devotes the first section of five chapters to
economic developments. He recounts the
shift from wheat farming to dairying
as the focus of Wisconsin agriculture.
Most interesting here is the suggestion
that the emergence of dairy farming was
by no means inevitable but, in fact,
required considerable prosyletizing,
experimentation, technological innova-
tion, and tax revenues. Nesbit then
discusses lumbering, the state's dominant
industry, the expansion of the rail
network along with other forms of transpor-
Book Reviews
187
tation, and the crucial role played by
entrepreneurs in the region's flour mills,
paper factories, and, of course,
Milwaukee's famous breweries. In the final
chapter of the section Nesbit portrays
Wisconsin as a "workshop," a supplier
of machinery, goods, and services,
located between the rising commercial
centers of Chicago and Minneapolis-St.
Paul (p. 205).
According to Nesbit, Wisconsinites
practiced an "old-time politics," by
which he means that they were
passionately partisan, intensely concerned with
state and local (but seldom national)
issues, and usually voted along lines of
ethnic and cultural affiliation. The
Republican Party, controlled by old-stock
Yankees, held fast to the governor's
seat and the legislature for most of the era.
The Democrats, representing the huge
Catholic immigrant population, might
have posed a greater challenge but were
unable to capture consistently
Wisconsin's German Lutheran electorate.
Nesbit contends that this Yankee-
dominated government responded quite
well to rapid social and economic
changes and satisfactorily pursued the
interests of the majority.
Wisconsin's social landscape is the
subject of five chapters collectively
entitled "Communities." Nesbit
begins with a fine demographic portrait of the
state and also includes an interesting
look at the conditions of Indians, blacks,
and women. As for the remaining
chapters, however, minor objections are in
order. "Labor" is devoted to
the plight of industrial unionism and would be
more effective as part of the first
section on the economy. Since "Communi-
ties: Geographic and Corporate" is
largely an examination of how ethnic and
cultural identities were expressed in
the political arena, it rightly belongs in the
section on politics and government. And
finally, "Life and Times" gathers
brief accounts of topics such as
education, religion, and the arts that deserve
to be treated in greater detail.
Nevertheless, Urbanization and
Industrialization is an admirable work. Not
the least of its several virtues is its
evenhanded judgement of Wisconsin's past.
For example, Nesbit is quite critical of
the high social cost exacted by the new
industrial order and yet convincingly
shows that, contrary to contemporary
opinion, the government "responded
with salutary changes, a considerable
expansion of services and resources, and
actual leadership" (p. 630).
Like the author, who admits that once he
began his project he was pleasantly
surprised to discover how dramatic the
subject was, this reviewer found that a
seven-hundred page book on two decades
of Wisconsin history was far more
absorbing than he had imagined it would
be.
Bethany College Bruce R.
Kahler
Pershing: General of the Armies. By Donald Smythe. (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1986. xii + 399p.;
illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography,
index. $27.50.)
"Black Jack" Pershing was
fifty-seven years old, in good health and ripe for
command when Congress declared war on
Germany in April 1917. His
previous experience in the Philippines,
and more recently as head of the
so-called Punitive Expedition in Mexico,
made him a likely candidate to
organize and lead the new American
Expeditionary Force to France. Admin-
istration officials likewise appreciated
his reputation for loyalty and apparent
188 OHIO HISTORY
lack of political ambition. So when
Secretary of War Newton D. Baker put
forth Pershing's name in the place of
others (including generals Leonard Wood
and Hugh L. Scott) President Wilson
approved without hesitation. Looking
back it seems he made the right choice.
John J. Pershing ultimately personified
the AEF. He also faced head-on the
complicated issues of modern coalition
warfare, and successfully guided
American efforts to help turn the tide of
events in the Great War.
This book is the second and concluding
volume in a two-part biography. (The
first volume entitled Guerrilla
Warrior: The Early Life of John J. Pershing was
published in 1973.) Author Donald Smythe
has spent more than a quarter
century researching his subject-examined
scores of archival collections here
and abroad, and interviewed or
corresponded with literally hundreds of people
who knew the general personally. The
result is an illuminating portrait which
will not be superseded anytime soon.
There are thirty-six chapters, each
relatively short and arranged in a straight
forward chronological fashion, e.g.
"The Voyage Overseas (May-June 1917),"
"First Days in France (June
1917)," "Getting Organized (July-August 1917),"
"Chaumont (September 1917),"
and so on. Roughly two-thirds of the book
focuses on Pershing's handling of
wartime issues and events, with only a few
remaining chapters devoted to his
postwar life and career.
Throughout the war Pershing drove his
staff hard, demanded results, and
when he failed to get them, sacked those
whom he considered responsible-
including on one occasion a whole slew
of division commanders. But he was
never as cold, humorless, and devoid of
emotion as some perceived. Rather he
was "two decidedly different men:
remote and austere in his official life, warm
and human in his personality" (p.
238). It takes a keen observer to find and
piece together all the subtle indicators
of a man's character and personality.
Professor Smythe more than meets this
challenge by calling up a wide
assortment of good quotes, anecdotes,
and other comments reflective of the
general's many-sided nature. Included
too are many brief yet insightful
characterizations of the key figures
surrounding Pershing.
Not all of the fighting in the Great War
took place on the battlefield.
Bloodletting of another sort, in the
form of strained relations over major policy
and strategic issues, frequently
occurred among Allied leaders at the highest
level. There were, for example, good
arguments on both sides of the so-called
"amalgamation issue." Yet
Pershing seemed willing to risk everything in order
to keep American units separate.
"He was," notes Smythe, "like a man
playing Russian roulette. He lived
through it, but he was lucky he didn't blow
his head off" (p. 234-35).
Pershing also guessed correctly in
assuming that the Allies would not need so
many priority shipments of American
infantry and machine gun units. How-
ever, Smythe seriously doubts that more
intensive rifle training or the use of
"open warfare" tactics, both
of which Pershing called for repeatedly, would
have altered the war's outcome. "In
truth," the author concludes, "it might be
argued that the war was eventually won,
not by the introduction of any tactic
like open warfare, but simply by
attrition, by the fact that one side ran out of
men and equipment before the other-in
other words, by exhaustion" (p. 236).
Smythe gives a balanced assessment
overall, both of America's and Pershing's
contribution toward victory in the war.
In addition, most readers will profit
from Smythe's tactical and operational
analysis of the 1917-18 campaigns. His
coverage of events at Cantigny, Belleau
Book Reviews
189
Wood, St. Mihiel, and the Meuse-Argonne
includes thoughtful discussion on
logistics, plans, training, and
organization, as well as good commentary on
Allied leadership capabilities. His
narrative also evinces a feeling description of
the "face of battle"-the muck,
mud, stench, darkness and confusion, the
sheer terror, and of course the heroism
commonly associated with fighting on
the Western Front. For Pershing,
clearly, it appeared darkest just before the
dawn. Worn out, sad and depressed by
ever mounting problems in early
October 1918, he confided in his secret
lover, Mademoiselle Resco: "I feel like
I am carrying the whole world on my
shoulders" (p. 208). Yet for the benefit
of those around him, he never wavered in
his optimism regarding eventual
triumph.
In sum, this is a thoroughly researched,
scholarly, and well-written study of
Pershing's life and career. It is
obvious that Smythe understands America's
one and only "General of the
Armies" better than any previous writer.
US Army Quartermaster School Steven E. Anders
Fort Lee, Virginia
American Workers, American Unions,
1920-1985. By Robert H. Zieger.
(Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1986. xii +
233p.; bibliographical essay, index. $25.00 cloth; $9.95
paper.)
University of Florida historian Zieger
has previously written three well-
received monographs on labor unions in
the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. His
newest book is a survey, based mainly on
secondary sources and intended for
general readers and for students in
history courses. It joins James R. Green's
The World of the Worker (1980) as general overviews of twentieth century
American labor. As we shall see, Zieger
differs from Green in important
respects.
As a brief synthesis, Zieger's work
traverses territory familiar to specialists
in the field. He describes organized
labor's expansion after 1933, New Deal
labor legislation, the founding of the
CIO, and its early victories in autos and
steel. During World War II, armed with
the government's maintenance of
membership policy, union membership
climbed 50 percent and organized labor
gained security in many industries. But the war's
heritage was mixed.
Governmental restrictions on unions
increased during and after the war, both
limiting labor's independence and
creating intra-union tensions. Second, major
strike waves both during and just after
the war alienated public opinion.
Finally, organized labor became closely
tied to the Democratic Party. The Cold
War and the 1948 Wallace campaign led to
the CIO's purge of member unions
which dissented from the Democratic
Party on these matters. Thereafter,
American unions became even more
troubled. In the fifties, "affluent work-
ers" enjoyed higher wages and
expanded fringe benefits; the AFL and CIO
merged; and public employee unionism
grew. But unions and labor-management
relations grew increasingly
bureaucratized, and alienation from work, wide-
spread poverty, and racial bias still
marred working-class society. The 1960s
found organized labor even more on the
defensive. Issues such as Vietnam, the
environment, civil rights, and black
militancy, plus the collapse of liberal
Democratic dominance late in the decade, eroded unions'
prestige and
weakened their influence in national
politics.
190 OHIO HISTORY
As the author's preface reveals, the
scope of this book is narrower than its
title suggests. Unlike Green, whose more
broadly defined "world of the
worker" encompassed culture,
ethnicity, and gender, Zieger's subject is
American unions more than American
workers. Chronologically, too, Zieger's
canvass is smaller than either his title
promises or than Green's, which spans
the entire twentieth century. Zieger's
main concern is the 1930s through the
1960s. The formative 1930s and 1940s
alone account for more than five-eighths
of the book. By contrast, readers will
find little here on the 1920s and 1980s and
almost nothing on the 1970s. Zieger's
chapters are clearly structured, which is
not always the case with Green's
writing. In addition, readers finding Green's
new left outlook uncongenial may feel
more comfortable with Zieger's main-
stream liberalism. Whereas Green's
heroes are militant radicals, Zieger's
sympathies lie with mainstream union
leaders. While not uncritical of their
policies, he casts them as unaccepted
"realists" steering between right-wing
employers and politicians on one side
and "self-assured radicals" on the other.
Although both Zieger and Green
acknowledge the left's presence, Zieger is
much less willing to see the relevance
of radicalism. His treatment of the CIO's
communist purge of 1948-50 condemns
violence and denounces persecution of
non-CP leftists but does not question
the assumptions or motives behind the
expulsion (or note its consequences for
organized labor). Zieger hits CP
unionists for subservience to the USSR
on foreign policy, but he does not
explain why so many workers elected
CP-linked officers or whether their
unions functioned differently from those
supporting the Democrats and the
Cold War. As these comments suggest,
readers seeking a dissenting perspec-
tive or a labor history wider than the
story of unions may be disappointed in
Zieger's offering. However, it will
likely satisfy those wanting a well-written
narrative of national events that
emphasizes and empathizes with organized
labor.
Eastern Michigan University Michael W. Homel
The Northwest Ordinance, 1787: A
Bicentennial Handbook. Edited by
Robert
M. Taylor, Jr. (Indianapolis: Indiana
Historical Society, 1987. xxiii + 136p.;
chronology, maps, illustrations, notes,
appendix, selected bibliography,
index, separate wall map, and facsimile
of the Northwest Ordinance. $6.50
paper.)
With the Declaration of Independence and
the United States Constitution,
the Northwest Ordinance has been called
one of the three great charters in the
formation of our nation. It has also
been called the plan on which the United
States was built. Providing for the
organization and governance of the new
nation's first colony, the area north
and west of the River Ohio, it established
the most magnanimous colonial policy the
world had ever seen. At its heart
was the assurance that as many as five
states could emerge from the Northwest
Territory, each "on an equal
footing with the original states in all respects
whatever." Under its principles
thirty-one of the present fifty American states
have entered the Union. Even the
territories of the Northern Marianas and
Western Samoan Islands are organized
today under those principles.
Of the three charters, it is the
Ordinance which has the least name
recognition, is the least understood.
Consequently, the bicentennial handbook
Book Reviews
191
published by the Indiana Historical
Society serves the important function of
providing teachers, students, and the
general public with an in-depth under-
standing of the content and significance
of the Ordinance in determining what
kind of country this was going to be.
The handbook is presented in three
parts. The first features an essay by
Andrew R. L. Cayton on "The
Northwest Ordinance from the Perspective of
the Frontier," and considers the
Ordinance from the points of view of three
disparate groups living on the frontier
at the time of its passage-the Native
Americans, the Anglo-Americans
(primarily squatters), and the French inhab-
itants of the area in and about
Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes. It also
includes an essay by its editor, Robert
M. Taylor, concerning the relatively
unknown eighteen men in the
Confederation Congress at the time of the
consideration and ultimate passage of the Ordinance, his
argument being that
they were not intellectually and
politically inferior to those sitting in the
Constitutional Convention in
Philadelphia as has frequently been asserted.
The second part of the handbook consists
of an annotated text of the
Ordinance, by section and article,
addressing the obscure legalese in which
much of the document was written and
making it intelligible for the great
majority of us who are not lawyers by
training and profession. Involving the
contributions of nearly a score of Indiana's finest
historians, editors, and
lawyers, the annotations (in this
reviewer's opinion) constitute the single
greatest service rendered by the handbook. As explained
in the Introduction
(p. xii), "Young readers are
forewarned that, in places, the Ordinance is
difficult for all but trained lawyers to
understand. (That is one reason why the
Society decided upon this format for the
book)."
In the third part of the handbook,
Patrick J. Furlong considers how a paper
plan was transformed into functioning territorial and
then state governments in
his essay "Putting the Ordinance to
Work in the Northwest." In it he details
the experiences of the people of the original Northwest
Territory under
Governor Arthur St. Clair, then those of the subsequent
territories which
emerged as the ultimate states of Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin,
and Minnesota. Furlong notes that while at first there
had been "serious doubt
that the westerners would be competent
to govern themselves without firm
direction from their betters in the
long-settled states along the Atlantic
seaboard," by the time the
Wisconsin Territory was formed "there were no
longer any legal or political arguments
about the meaning of the Northwest
Ordinance, . . . The patterns of
territorial government were well settled, the
necessary legal precedents were firmly
established, and personal and local
political issues dominated the attention
of voters and legislators alike. The
Northwest Ordinance had become a matter
of historical interest rather than
political debate."
Among the not unexpected spate of books
commemorating the bicentennials
of both the Northwest Ordinance and the
Constitution, this is clearly one of the
better, more useful ones, particularly
for classroom teachers and their stu-
dents. Favored with well-selected maps,
including the reproduction of a
handsome four-color wall map first
issued at the time of the Ordinance's
sesquicentennial anniversary, which has
been inserted in its own pocket
attached to the inside rear cover, it
also contains helpful end-notes and an
up-to-date bibliography.
A few errors and omissions managed to
escape the editor's pencil. For
examples, on page 4 the reader may be
surprised to learn that the Miamis as
192 OHIO HISTORY
well as the Delaware and Shawnee
"had migrated west from eastern
Pennsylvania in the middle of the
eighteenth century." And in the lengthy
annotation on pages 62-65 concerning the
third article of the Articles of
Compact, one is perplexed to find no
consideration of the highly significant
sentence dealing with the encouragement
of education.
Yet the merits of this handbook far
transcend occasional flaws. Intended
primarily for the people of Indiana, its
merits a wide readership across the Old
Northwest and the nation.
Miami University Phillip R.
Shriver
Statehood and Union: A History of the
Northwest Ordinance. By Peter S.
Onuf. (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1987. xxi + 197p.; maps,
notes, index. $27.50.)
With two books and a series of
distinguished articles, Peter S. Onuf of
Southern Methodist University has
emerged as the nation's foremost authority
on the evolution of the doctrines of
territorialism and statehood that dominated
the westward expansion of the United
States. Readers of Ohio History will
remember his stimulating "From
Constitution to Higher Law: The Reinterpre-
tation of the Northwest Ordinance"
which appeared in the Winter-Spring 1985
issue. Scholars were particularly
impressed with his The Origins of the Federal
Republic: Jurisdictional
Controversies in the United States, 1775-1787 (1983)
which examined the history of the
American state system during the Confed-
erate era. Onuf has capped his studies
with Statehood and Union, an
intellectual history of the adoption of
the Ordinance of 1787 and its implemen-
tation in the era of northwestern state
making.
For those interested in the early
history of Ohio, Statehood and Union is
indispensable reading. But it is not the
place to begin one's study of the region.
It requires its readers have a basic
understanding of the political history of the
early Northwest Territory, 1787-1837.
With such a background, readers will
find Statehood and Union is the
place to broaden one's informed comprehen-
sion of what the Founding Fathers meant
when they wrote the document and
how their fragmentary, ambiguous, and
contradictory provisions achieved
substance and form in the Old Northwest.
Onuf seeks to determine the
author's original intent and the
interpretation and application of the text in the
Northwest Territory, with particular
attention focused on Ohio. He concludes
with discussion of the apotheosis of the
Ordinance and of its elevation into one
of the great documents of America's
founding, rivaling the Declaration and the
Constitution.
According to Onuf, four basic premises
of westward policy emerged in the
1780s-prior survey, controlled
development, compact settlement, and the
introduction of industrious,
market-oriented settlers. Congress sought to
achieve the first three through the Land
Ordinance of 1785 and the last through
the guarantee of property rights and
eventual statehood status pledged in the
Ordinance of 1784 and implemented in the
1787 Ordinance. Once enacted, the
key question that emerged was just how
much the Ordinance was a "compact"
with constitutional validity that could
not be changed by Congress and just how
much latitude Congress or the
territories had to modify its provisions under
changing circumstances. Onuf's central
chapters concentrate on three critical
Book Reviews
193
"compact" provisions of the
Ordinance-the transition from territory to state;
state boundary questions; and the
prohibition of slavery. While the latter
question was never significant in Ohio
politics, the first two were given a
degree of permanency in the course of
Ohio's emergence as the first state
carved from the Northwest Territory.
Onufs arguments dovetail nicely with
those of Andrew Cayton in The
Frontier Republic: Ideology and
Politics in the Ohio Country (1986).
Both
books examine popular ideology. Both add
new dimensions to our comprehen-
sion of how the nation took the ideals
of republicanism and territorialism and
transformed them into transcendental
truths central to the American experi-
ence. Because both concentrate on the
intellectual aspects of their subject
areas, they avoid the clash of
personalities, regions, and interests that make
politics so popular to most readers of
history. Even so, both are worth reading.
Bowling Green State University David Curtis Skaggs
Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the
Old South. By Grady McWhiney with a
prologue by Forrest McDonald.
(University, Alabama: University of
Alabama Press, 1988. xliii + 290p.;
illustrations, notes, appendix, index.
$25.95.)
Everyone knows that Southerners differ
from Yankees, and in Cracker
Culture Grady McWhiney explains why. In fact, he suggests that
the differ-
ences between Northerners and
Southerners not only predate the settlement of
America, but arose before the conquest
of Britain (the Roman, not the Norman
one). His thesis is that the dominant
culture of the antebellum South, like most
of its people, came from the
"Celtic fringe" of the British Isles (Ireland,
Scotland, Wales, and the highland areas
of England), while Northerners came
predominantly from the English lowlands.
Using a variety of 17th-through-19th
century sources, mostly accounts of
travelers in the South and in the Celtic
regions of Britain, the author details
the similarities of culture in the two, then
compares them to their English and
Yankee counterparts. The material is
fascinating, even if neccesarily
anecdotal.
"Cracker" was a 17th-century
Scottish name for a braggart. The word today
is synonymous with "poor
white," but the term originally carried no class
distinction, and cracker attitudes
pervaded all levels of Southern society. Celts
and Southerners attached great value to
independence, leisure, hospitality,
eloquence, and valor. They scorned hard
work, formal education, and the
institutions of government. Conversely,
Northerners and the English valued
civil order, dependability, hard work,
and material success. They looked down
on Southerners as lazy, lawless,
improvident, boastful, and violent, Southerners
saw Yankees as rude, bloodless,
compulsive, materialistic, and money-
grubbing. In many ways, each culture
prized just those traits that the other
deplored.
The contention that the South's racial
stock was predominantly Celtic rests
on an analysis of surnames in the 1790
federal census, a method McWhiney
concedes to be "both complex and
inexact." The methodology, not explained
in the book, was developed by his
colleagues Forrest McDonald and Ellen
Shapiro McDonald ("The Ethnic
Origins of the American People, 1790,"
194 OHIO HISTORY
William and Mary Quarterly 37 [1980], 179-99). Family histories support but
cannot corroborate his thesis; the
proportion of families so studied is still far
too small.
This work has major implications for
cultural and family historians. The
Southern distrust of institutions, the
preference for oral rather than written
transmission of culture, and the lower
rates of literacy together explain why
public and private records of Southern
families are harder to find than they are
in the North. The nature of Southern
agriculture, based on the herding of
livestock on open range rather than the
mixed tillage of the North; the
preference for sparsely-settled country
rather than villages and close-set farms;
and the legendary senses of daring and
independence likewise account for the
footloose pattern of westward migration
shown by many Southern families.
The author notes that the antebellum
lower Midwest or Ohio Valley was
ethnically and culturally closer to the
South than to the North.
McWhiney does not discuss the
contribution of Celtic immigrants to the
spoken Southern dialect in terms of
accent and vocabulary. The effects of
climate and the practice of slavery on
Southern culture are dealt with only
briefly. He uses 1860 as his cut-off
date, limiting consideration of Southern
influence on the culture of the American
West. There is little about the role and
experience of women. Classical
descriptions of the ancient Celts of Europe
bear many similarities to accounts of
the early-modern insular Celts, but there
is no mention of the descendants of
continental Celts-as in Brittany and
Spanish Galicia-whose images do not conform
to the ancestral stereotypes.
Antebellum Southerners had little
future-consciousness; they lived in-and
enjoyed-their present, while their
Northern contemporaries constantly strove
for future security. Doubtless time
itself was perceived differently by the two
communities: observers of traditional
and agrarian societies often note their
timeless quality. This is not the same
as being ahistorical: if anything, Celts and
Southerners appear more conscious
of their history than English and Yankees.
But for the former the past has not passed,
as it has for the latter. For
Northerners, with a rigid sense of the
directionality of time, the future is most
important, the present is its
handmaiden, and the past is found in museums.
For Southerners time seems less linear,
and historical events-such as the Civil
War-have a presence and immediacy which
baffle Northerners. In the same
way, Irishmen deal every day with
repercussions of the Battle of the Boyne
(1690).
Tied to the different conceptions of
time were differing views of the Deity.
New Englanders labored under the
judgmental gaze of a God who participated
in history, who weighed and measured
men's actions and rewarded them
accordingly. Southerners appeared more
confident of divine grace and less
worried about the day of judgment, and
McWhiney's sources point out that
they were more relaxed about religious
observance and less given to denomi-
nation strife.
This is a provocative book, and the
contrast between Anglo-Saxon and
Celtic values and attitudes is sharply
drawn. In their purest forms, the cultures
McWhiney describes bear an uncanny
resemblance to Aesop's ant and
grasshopper, or Nietzsche's
Apollonian/Dionysian polarity. The persistence of
cracker values in modern American
society raises monumental challenges to
public policy, and McWhiney's
explication of their origin is both cogent and
enlightening. He has previously written
about the influence of Celtic cultural
values on Confederate military tactics
in the Civil War (Grady McWhiney and
Book Reviews
195
Perry D. Jamieson, Attack and Die:
Civil War Military Tactics and the
Southern Heritage (University, Alabama, 1980). I look forward with great
interest to his further work on this
topic.
Oberlin, Ohio William B. Saxbe, Jr.
The Origins of the Republican Party,
1852-1856. By William E. Gienapp. (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1987. xi
+ 564p.; notes, figures, tables,
appendix, bibliography, index. $35.00.)
William E. Gienapp has produced a study
of the rise of Republicanism that
most antebellum political historians
would be proud to have written, provided
one had the stamina to perform the same
impressive research. In this first
volume of a projected two volume work,
Gienapp carefully traces the growth
of the Republican party from the Whig
debacle of 1852 through the new party's
first presidential campaign with flawed
hero John C. Fremont atop the ticket.
Much of this volume concentrates on how
the Republicans successfully
struggled with the Know Nothings to
replace the Whigs as the Democrats'
chief rival for national political
power.
Gienapp's contributions do not really
come in the area of creativity or
originality. His real achievement is to
document with amazing clarity the
essential elements of what new political
historians have been saying for years.
Nevertheless he does spring some
surprises; for example, he questions the
common assumption that evangelicals
voted primarily anti-Democratic.
Still, the broad outlines of the new
political approach are clearly visible.
Gienapp shows that the disruption of the
Whig party and the new alignment of
the 1850s began well before the passage of the
Kansas-Nebraska Act. At the
same time he clarifies that this was but
the first of a two step process that ended
with the Republican party dominating
Northern politics. Throughout 1855
ethnocultural tensions, particularly
temperance and anti-Catholic issues, con-
tributed to the rapid growth of the Know
Nothing movement while hindering
the efforts of antislavery strategists
to build a Northern majority against
slavery's expansion.
Once and for all, Gienapp establishes
that the breakup of the Whig party was
due as much to cultural and religious
concerns as to slavery-related issues.
Though Whiggery limped on past 1854,
"nativism had sealed the party's fate"
(p. 161). Gienapp does differ from
Michael Holt by arguing that the crisis of the
1850s grew not from old issues no longer
being relevant, but that old politicians
could not control the new ethnocultural
pressures within the old political
system. (Indeed, Gienapp suggests that
temperance was the truly explosive
issue that most politicians sought to
avoid.) The Republican party did not
benefit immediately from this situation,
however; fusion first failed in most free
states. Opposition to the
Kansas-Nebraska Act alone proved insufficient to
build a new party.
By 1856, however, the march of events
weakened the nativist impulse and
played into Republican hands. A vital
first step was the disruption of the Know
Nothing national organization, a
development Republicans purposively en-
couraged. Besides exploiting the blood
split over Kansas, particularly that of
Charles Sumner, Republicans used a
strong dose of anti-Catholicism to lure
196 OHIO HISTORY
American party voters. Salmon P. Chase's
critical victory in the 1855 Ohio
gubernatorial race pointed the way to
the successful strategy. The "Ohio Plan"
envisioned a party that was half
Republican, half Know Nothing.
While admitting that the prime source of
Republican strength was Northern
fear of a "slave power
conspiracy," Gienapp thus insists that the Republicans
co-opted the nativists' political appeal
by similarly stressing the threat of papal
power. His analysis seems convincing on
this point, but some still may doubt
the implication that nativism proved the
"most powerful impulse" of this
critical period (p. 164). At times
Gienapp may indeed oversell his product; for
example, he occasionally exaggerates the
"commanding power" of the Know
Nothings (p. 271) and claims that
Republican candidate Fremont "sympathized
strongly" with the nativists (p.
318).
Although well-written and incisive, this
work probably will be engrossing
only to the specialist. It is definitely
not for the weak of will (although the
statistical tables wisely have been
relegated to an appendix). However, for
those willing to wade through the voting
analysis and follow the accounts of
party infighting from state to state, it
will deliver remarkable amounts of insight
and information. Most impressive is
Gienapp's skill in sketching political
developments within individual states
while providing a compelling picture of
the impact local and state disputes
carried on national politics.
With the publication of this work,
Gienapp joins Michael Holt, Joel Silbey,
and several other scholars as leading
interpreters of the causes of the political
turmoil in the 1850s. One can only hope
and expect that the proposed second
volume will maintain the high quality
exhibited in the first.
Kearney State College Vernon L. Volpe
Henry R. Luce and the Rise of the
American News Media. By James L.
Baughman. (Boston: Twayne Publishers,
1987. x + 264p.; illustrations,
chronology, notes and references,
bibliographic essay, index. $24.95.)
With the possible exception of William
Randolph Hearst, Henry Luce is the
most significant figure in the history
of American journalism. Time, Inc.,
continues to be the colossus of the
periodical trade, even though, well before
Luce's death in 1967, television,
soaring production costs, and successful
imitative competitors had undermined
Luce's preeminence as a journalistic
"communicator." The empire
that Luce built endures in the form of Time,
Fortune, Sports Illustrated, Time-Life Books, the post-Luce People, and a
variety of other enterprises. But it is
most unlikely that any single person will
ever equal the stature Luce had attained
by the 1940s-1950s.
Yet for all his fame and power, Luce, as
Baughman interprets his career,
"promoted rather than initiated
policies" (p. 158). Despite his conviction that
his magazines, especially Time, directly
expressed American values and
aspirations, and despite his famous call
in 1941 for an American Century, Luce
was generally content in trying to
influence his countrymen toward tendencies
already at work, not bold new
departures. And while he enjoyed a reputation
as a journalistic pioneer, Luce,
Baughman shows, has less to do with shaping
Time's distinctive character than his Yale classmate and
initial collaborator
Briton Hadden. He also took little
interest in the highly successful "March of
Book Reviews
197
Time" radio programs and newsreels,
and resisted launching a popular picture
magazine (Life) until second wife
Clare Boothe Luce and other associates
finally overcame his skepticism in the
mid-1930s. Fortune was the only one of
Luce's magazines that originated as his
own idea.
Limited by the format of Twayne's
Twentieth-Century American Biography
series to writing a short, interpretive
account, Baughman concerns himself
almost entirely with Luce's public life,
from the founding of Time in 1923 until
his effective retirement around 1960.
One would like a longer book that gives
more attention to such matters as Luce's
experiences as a student at Oxford
University and as a reporter in Chicago
and Baltimore after the First World
War; his divorce from Lila Hotz Luce and
marriage quickly thereafter to the
actress Clare Boothe Brokaw in 1935; his
relationship to his two sons by his
first marriage; and his and Clare's
experiments with LSD in the 1960s. But if
Baughman leaves the reader wanting more,
that is also because what he gives
us is so good. Meticulously researched
and perceptively written, Baughman's
book sets a high standard for the Twayne
biography series. It is an excellent
account of the China-born Presbyterian
missionary's son whose "mastery of
informing the middle class" (p. 61)
once was virtually unquestioned.
Ohio University Charles C. Alexander
The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant. Volume 13: November 16, 1864-February 20,
1865. Edited by John Y. Simon. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University
Press, 1985. xxvi + 599p.; maps,
illustrations, chronology, calendar, index.
$45.00.)
The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant. Volume 14: February 21-April 30, 1865.
Edited by John Y. Simon. (Carbondale:
Southern Illinois University Press,
1985. xxvi + 548p.; maps, illustrations,
chronology, calendar, index.
$45.00.)
To those Americans, Blue or Gray,
suffering in the lines before besieged
Petersburg or in their homes far from
the battlefield, it must have seemed like
an endless war in late 1864 as troops on
both sides slogged on to continuing
indecisiveness. The romance of the war,
if ever there was such, disappeared in
the inhumaness of hunger, illness,
loneliness, rain-drenched bodies, and cruel
death. Two intangibles stand out as
consistent in those trying times: the
South's indomitable spirit and General
U.S. Grant's tenaciousness. Grant
finally prevails and the North wins the
victory. To Robert E. Lee, this was no
pretty ending, this triumph on war's
chessboard by an old Mexican War
colleague.
These two volumes trace the trails of
these two remarkable generals to an old
Virginia courthouse, one general grown
old and broken as was his army, the
other upbeat and at the height of his
power in those fateful days before
Appomattox, his "finest hour,"
writes biographer, William McFeely, Grant
anticipated the outcome and made ready
to end hostilities with a look toward
a more peaceful future. As the end
approaches, some of the mystery of Grant
the general and Grant the man begins to
lift. His correspondence shows the
general, putting his trust in Generals
Sherman in Georgia and the Carolinas,
and Sheridan in Virginia, breaking the enemy with
tactics that reveal his genius
198 OHIO HISTORY
in the field. The man, usually writing
his wife, is deeply involved with family,
as with son Fred who joins his father on
the front lines outside Petersburg. He
is the friend, who in the midst of
decision making on the front, served as agent
for a project to construct a home for
General Sherman. He is the manager who
directs in laconic notes to his generals
his calculated moves to crush the
enemy.
Basically, these volumes are an
accounting of Grant's activities and his
growth during those closing four and a
half months of the long war, a close look
at a military man being tested by war as
he faced the routines, the challenges
and the interruptions of command. As Grant
attempted to end the war against
a gallant enemy, he also faced daily the
irritating prisoner of war problems, the
bickering among his officers for
promotions and assignments, and the pres-
sures of a people and a Government
intent upon ending the war. Too often it
was his task to make important command
decisions for frail men too soon
thrust into command, seeking at the last
the glory they had missed by their late
arrivals to the field. Grant's
correspondence is the meticulous accountings of
the activities of a general holding
loosely to many strands of a developing
modern army, a general with a sense of
the present and of the future, planning
strategy for the victory, selecting
those commanders he felt were best to
perform the strategy of attrition he
designed for the failing enemy. This is the
story of the officers and men of the
Army of the Potomac, as they lower the
curtain on the drama through the smoke
and the dust of battle.
These closing days of conflict are also
the story of three generals and a
President, all intent upon a victory and
national restoration, finally becoming
that efficient team of command that made
things happen against a faltering
Confederacy short of men and material if
not of spirit. Slowly but surely,
Grant, Sherman and Sheridan, supported
by a cooperative President, effec-
tively press the might of the North's
military machine against a fading South.
But the end did not come handily. Rain
mudding up the roads stalled a great
army in the shadow of victory. Reporters
from the Northern Press, seeking
new headlines, daily streamed through
the ranks. To the general commanding,
there were always the questions of what
to do with the former slaves,
confiscated cotton, prisoners of war
demanding exchange. But persistent
generals pushed on. Sherman finished off
Georgia and South Carolina and
entered North Carolina. Sheridan cleared
the Shenandoah Valley of Confed-
erate units, and Grant like a talented
puppeteer moved the larger piece across
the chessboard, besting the talented Lee
move for move. While Sherman and
Sheridan burned the land, Grant appeased
the anxious President, coordinated
with the Navy, supervised prisoner of
war policies and prepared for the end.
Telegrams to Grant on April 5, from
field officers pursuing Lee's disinte-
grating army, spoke of Rebel deserters,
prisoners of war, casualty lists,
starvation and desperation among the
defeated enemy. Grant's tactics remain
unchanged. To Sherman he wrote: "If
you can possibly do so push on ...
to help "finish the job."
Early in April, 1865, the telegrams finally came:
"... Davis and his Cabinet and Lee
with most his army retreating ...
Our prisoners number from twelve thousand
. . . to fifteen thousand."
The reader anticipates the scene at
Appomattox Court House and is hardly
disappointed to read of that staging of
national victory. No new light appears
in correspondence relating to Lincoln's
assassination, but one seems to sense
a change in the General as his war comes
to a close. Grant, as McFeely
suggests, must now find his way in a
world in which to conquer becomes even
Book Reviews
199
a greater challenge. In a letter to
Julia on April 16, there is a harbinger of life
beyond the sounds of battle. He writes that he is under
close security but that
all threats seem past. He hopes Julia is
in their Philadelphia home, partly
because of the convenience of travel for
himself.
These two volumes continue the
excellence of their predecessors as they
follow the correspondence of army
officers and government agents, a recording
of democracy meeting its greatest
challenge. In particular these two volumes
are a story of the fall of Petersburg
and the meeting at Appomattox. But more
than this, they elaborate, through his
own writings, Grant, the great man. We
savor this greatness in the drive to
Appomattox, knowing that his brilliance will
fade in the political world ahead.
Forthcoming volumes of these papers may
prove even more important to historians
attempting a true assessment of the
man.
Saluda, North Carolina Robert Hartje
Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics,
Profits & Propaganda Shaped World
War II Movies. By Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black. (New York:
The Free Press, 1987. x + 374p.;
illustrations, notes, bibliographical essay,
index. $22.50.)
Mrs. Miniver, Since You Went Away, and Casablanca: these are among the
best known of the hundreds of patriotic
feature films made during World War
II. Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D.
Black commend that these morale
building movies were not merely a
reflection of that industry's devotion to the
war effort. Not only were the major
studios still guided by the profit motive,
but they also had to comply with
regulations instituted by the Office of War
Information (OWI), the federal
govenment's wartime propaganda agency. The
OWT's mandate over Hollywood was
strengthened by its close working
relationship with the Office of
Censorship, which issued export licenses for
films to foreign countries. "Since
foreign exhibition often made the difference
between profit and loss for a picture,
studio executives found it quite expedient
to follow OWI's advice" (p. viii).
Protective of their foreign markets, studio
chiefs shied away from serious
dramas that tackled contemporary
political and social issues. At times they
went to extraordinary lengths not to
antagonize the fascist powers in Europe.
For example, MGM's well intentioned
production of Robert Sherwood's
Pulitzer Prize winning play Idiot's
Delight, a biting antiwar, antifascist
statement extremely critical of
Mussolini, was submitted to officials of the
Italian government for changes. The film
that was finally released in 1939 bore
little resemblance to the play aside
from its title.
Hollywood crossed an important threshold
in the early 1940s, with the
release of pictures like Charlie
Chaplin's classic The Great Dictator (1940) and
Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign
Correspondent (1940), and assumed an openly
interventionist posture. The creation of
the OWI served to encourage these
patriotic efforts by filmmakers and
developed even stronger themes of wartime
propaganda. OWI officials evaluated
feature films with one primary criterion in
mind: "will this picture help win
the war?"
While OWI regulations acknowledged that
home front society was less than
perfect, films were, nevertheless,
encouraged to depict the civilian war effort
200 OHIO HISTORY
as a united endeavor. The OWI deplored
comedies like Palm Beach Story
(1942) and Princess O'Rourke (1942)
that trivialized the importance of volun-
tary contributions to the war effort.
The authors note that "even such a
cinematic staple as screeching tires was
toned down in Preston Sturges' The
Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944) to avoid a reprimand from OWI about
wasting rubber" (p. 143).
Conversely, the OWI applauded films like David O.
Selznick's Since You Went Away (1944),
"a virtual compendium of OWI-
approved vignettes of American life as
changed by the war" (p. 156). The
Hollywood image of a united home front
appealed to wartime audiences, the
authors contend, but it did little to
prepare the American public for the postwar
realities that faced them.
Equally important was OWI's concern for
how the United States' allies and
enemies were depicted on film. However
strained the connection might have
been, for propaganda purposes, all of
the United States' allies were placed
under the rubric of
"democracy." The OWI encouraged the production of
films that emphasized the commonality of
those nations. In Mrs. Miniver
(1942) no mention was made of the
British Empire, a point of contention
between Churchill and Roosevelt;
instead, viewers were assured that all social
classes in Britain were making
sacrifices for the war effort. Likewise, MGM's
Dragon Seed (1942) and Mission to Moscow (1943) represented
Hollywood's
efforts to portray China and Russia as
democratic societies. By the early 1950s,
the wartime image of the noble Russian
had become an embarassing anachro-
nism.
Koppes and Black note that filmmakers
applied different standards in the
depiction of Germans compared to the
Japanese. OWI codes insisted that
filmmakers distinguish between
"good" Germans and "evil" Nazis. This led
to sympathetic portraits of Germans,
even soldiers, as in The Moon is Down
(1943). The wartime image of the
Japanese, on the other hand, was unambig-
uously racist.
Hollywood Goes To War succeeds on two levels-it is both informative and
entertaining. It offers a clear account
of the uneasy partnership that emerged
between the federal government and
filmmakers that deeply influenced public
perceptions about the war.
University of Cincinnati Robert Earnest Miller