Book Reviews
The Politics of Community: Migration
and Politics in Antebellum Ohio. By
Kenneth J. Winkle. (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1988. xiii +
239p.; notes, tables, bibliography,
index. $32.50.)
This interesting, but ultimately
unsatisfying, book probes an apparent
contradiction in the findings of modern political and
social historians of the
mid-nineteenth century. Studies of
electoral behavior in various constituen-
cies, in Ohio and elsewhere, show an
amazing stability in the proportion of the
aggregate vote given to each party from one election to
the next; the new social
history reveals that the population was
highly mobile and that the individuals
who made up the aggregate figures were
not the same from one year to the
next. Dr. Winkle's most important
contribution is to use some Ohio township
pollbooks to demonstrate that the annual
turnover of population was even
greater than census material alone
suggests: "After every election, up to
one-third of all voters might leave a
community, only to be replaced before the
next election by as many or more new
voters. Over an entire decade, the local
electorate might turn over almost completely" (p.
177). How then was it
possible for townships to continue
preferring the same political party by
roughly the same proportion from one
decade to the next?
The answer developed here is that each
community was dominated by a core
of persisters, who may have been outnumbered by
transient voters but who
held public office and commanded the electoral process.
In particular, the core
community could exploit the law
requiring each voter to prove his legal
residence in state, county and township,
if challenged at the polls. The law was
slowly evolving until by 1878 a voter
could vote in the township he chose, but
in the 1840s and 1850s the old concept
of "consensual suffrage" still survived,
which allowed the local community to
decide who was resident in its voting
district. Hence newcomers and migrant laborers could be
excluded from voting
by local judges of elections, especially if the
supremacy of the locally dominant
party was being challenged. The
transient voter therefore was allowed to vote
only on sufferance.
The trouble with this appealing argument
is that it gives a misleading
impression of antebellum elections. The
main evidence presented of a long
history of wrangling over residence
rules is based on poor-law cases, when
townships fought to avoid granting
"settlement" to newly-arrived paupers;
yet refusal of residence for that
purpose did not imply refusal for voting
(p. 195 n. 4). The author assumes that elections were
originally meant to be
"meetings" of the community,
though that had never been true in Ohio, except
in the case of the April township
elections. There was much concern to ensure
that only locals voted in these latter
elections since they could affect township
taxation, but Dr. Winkle concentrates
entirely on the October elections for
national, state and county office when
precise place of voting was rather less
important. The author makes splendid use
of a disputed election in Wayne
County in 1846 which could determine the
balance of power in the state senate,
but he does not see how unusual that election was; he
is wrong to assume that
the sifting of voters on that occasion
was "presumably commonplace" (p.
155). In the first decades of the
century newcomers were eagerly welcomed,
Book Reviews
75
and voters were challenged more on the
grounds of citizenship than of
residence. Even the migrant farm
laborers described by David E. Schob in
Hired Hands and Plowboys (1975; not cited here) were customarily allowed to
vote, as were some 5,000 canal-diggers
in the 1828 Presidential election.
Admittedly thereafter the increase in
immigration prompted stricter rules on
residence, but this did not stop most
new arrivals from voting-as the large
number of one-time voters enumerated by
Dr. Winkle in the 1850s illustrates.
Even so, the paradox between voter
persistence and social mobility remains.
Dr. Winkle is surely right to emphasize
the leadership advantages of the core
community, but he needs to make more
allowance for fluctuating participation
rates and for the existence of national
party loyalties even among the
geographically mobile: to what extent
did they make for communities that were
culturally and politically congenial to
them, so that their arrival and departure
made little difference to the balance of
power in that constituency? Moreover,
the pollbook evidence (which is quite
extensive, even before the 1840s)
requires more thorough exploration:
eight townships during one decade are not
a sufficient base to build a thesis on,
especially when only one of the townships
represents Ohio south of a line drawn
from Youngstown to Greenville!
University of Durham Donald J. Ratcliffe
The Road to Respectability: James A.
Garfield and His World, 1844-1852. By
Hendrik Booraem, V. (Cranbury, New
Jersey: Bucknell University Press,
1988. 301p.; illustrations, maps,
appendix, notes, bibliography, index.
$37.50.)
Why should anyone want to write (or, for
that matter, read) the biography of
a teenager, even if he would grow up to
be president of the United States?
Because adolescence has been for too
long the exclusive property of novelists.
It is time that historians had their
turn. The problem is that adolescence is an
unmapped country, lacking the wealth of
documentation that grown-up events
carry. Until recently young people were
expected to be seen but not heard,
which made it especially difficult to
penetrate their inner life.
Hendrik Booraem's decision to use James
A. Garfield as an exemplar of
coming-of-age in nineteenth century
America circumvents some of these
problems. For one thing, young Garfield
was exceptionally articulate, leaving
behind an extensive paper trail of
diaries and letters. For another, his
subsequent fame would cause this paper
to be preserved by its recipients, along
with their memories of the most famous
person who had once touched their
lives.
Young Garfield grew up in Ohio's Western
Reserve just as it was undergoing
the momentous transition from frontier
life to settled society. The chief virtue
of this smoothly written, extensively
researched study is how well it conveys
a unique sense of place, creating a
touching and evocative portrait of a
long-vanished lifestyle. From its pages
the reader learns how a canal boat
operated, what a district schoolhouse
was like, how homes were built and food
prepared. In short, this is not merely
biography; it is descriptive social history
at its best, recreating the gritty
texture of the world in which young Garfield
moved and lived.
76 OHIO HISTORY
The difficulties of such research are
well known to anyone who has
attempted it. Sources are scattered,
ephemeral and fragmentary. From them
emerges a striking picture of a
dirt-poor boy, left fatherless at an early age, who
rises above his crude environment by
dint of intellect and ambition. Put so
simply, it sounds like a story by
Horatio Alger (who did, in fact, write it, as
From Canal Boy to President). But Booraem's massively detailed account
reveals the ambiguities and
cross-currents of the American Dream to an extent
that Alger's edifying fable could not.
Seldom can so much scholarly effort have
been lavished on describing the
life of a schoolboy. Yet, even so, much
of young Garfield's life remains obscure
and has to be reconstructed by
guesswork. Most of the time it is convincing but
at some points it is not. For example,
Booraem argues that Garfield and his
mother briefly relocated to Michigan
when he was eleven years old. The basis
for this conjecture is a remark in
Garfield's adult diary that "When I was ten
years of age I had never travelled
fifteen miles from home." From that,
Booraem concludes that when Garfield was
eleven he must have travelled far
from home, to wit: Michigan. Another
possible reading of this diary entry,
however, would undermine that
conclusion. Garfield had just seen his ten-
year-old son off on a trip. The quoted
words could be interpreted as contrasting
his own limited experience at age ten to
the wider world enjoyed by his son. If
so, the Michigan conjecture collapses.
Such eagerness to jump to conclusions
renders suspect other conjectures,
such as the one that Garfield's mother
remarried shortly after her husband
died. All that Booraem has to go on is a
cryptic string of initials in Garfield's
"Genealogical Notes." Booraem
may had decoded them correctly, but one's
confidence would be greater if he could
bolster his conclusion with more solid
supporting evidence.
Nonetheless, despite reservations that
could be expressed on this point or
that, this is a generally convincing and
never less than fascinating reconstruc-
tion of the lost world of Ohio's Western
Reserve and the early life of its most
famous citizen.
Cleveland State University Allan Peskin
Letters of Delegates to Congress
1774-1789, Volume 13: June
1-September 30,
1779. Edited by Paul H. Smith, Gerard W. Gawalt, and Ronald
M. Gephart.
(Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress,
1986. xxvii + 647p.; editorial
method and apparatus, acknowledgments,
chronology of Congress, list of
delegates to Congress, illustrations,
notes, index. $27.00.)
Letters of Delegates to Congress
1774-1789, Volume 14: October 1,
1779-
March 31, 1780. Edited by Paul H. Smith, Gerard W. Gawalt, and Ronald
M.
Gephart. (Washington, D.C.: Library of
Congress, 1987. xxix + 600p.;
editorial method and apparatus,
acknowledgments, chronology of Congress,
list of delegates to Congress, notes,
index. $28.00.)
Nowadays talented and ambitious people
sometimes lament that they cannot
get themselves elected to Congress, that
they are frozen out by circumstances
of one kind or another. But it appears
that this yearning for a congressional seat
has not been equally intense in every
period of our nation's history. In the late
Book Reviews
77
1770s, for instance, not a few members
of Congress lamented-and not a few
times either-that they had been unlucky
enough to be selected for congres-
sional service by their respective state
legislatures. Localism in the America of
that era was very strong, and so most
people simply did not like the idea of
leaving home for any extended period of
time. Nor was there much to lure
them or to keep them lured. The
"perks" for delegates to Congress in those
days were precious few. These two
weighty tomes make that very clear.
Like many another human being before and
since, Cornelius Harnett of
North Carolina had a way of feeling
unappreciated, undercompensated, and
overburdened. When he wrote his letter
of October 9, 1779, to fellow delegate
Thomas Burke, Harnett was feeling
particularly weary and just plain worn out.
"For Gods sake come on to relieve
me in Novr., but at farthest the very
beginning of December & make that
Domestic creature Whitmell Hill come
with you." As things turned out,
the aforementioned "Domestic creature,"
Whitmell Hill, apparently knowing when
he was well-off, decided to merely
stay put. Consequently, Hill did not
attend Congress at all in the time-frame
covered by these two volumes, though he
had been elected to do so. The nearly
desperate Harnett continued to implore:
"Send some body or Other to relieve
me & let me, for Gods sake, take my
leave of this Laborious, disagreeable,
& perhaps unthankfull Office for
ever" (Volume 14, pp. 50-51).
Every delegate to Congress was different
from every other, to be sure, but
in some ways Harnett was almost a
fitting symbol of that body as a whole. For
it was a body that hardly wanted to exist,
one compelled by sheerest necessity
to deal with circumstances that seemed
ever to be beyond its power to control.
Would the British make peace and, if so,
on what terms? Could the often
asserted American right to the North
Atlantic fisheries be maintained? What
could be done about the soaring prices,
the profiteering, and the rapid
depreciation of the currency? How could
the various states be encouraged to
make speedy payment of their apportioned
shares of the $15,000,000 per month
that Congress was now calling for? Could
the army be kept together through
the winter? Even Samuel Huntington of
Connecticut, the president of Con-
gress and the person who held that post
longer than anyone else except for
John Hancock, was fearful that a
respectable American fighting force might not
even exist when the time for the next
spring offensive rolled around. Such were
the uncertainties of the hour.
There is much of value in these some
1,250 pages, indeed thousands upon
thousands of discrete facts that will
help future scholars round out the public
careers and even, to some degree, the
private lives of their several subjects.
And it is for such rather specific
reference and research purposes that these
well-edited and attractively produced
volumes will mainly be used. But these
documents, when taken together as a
whole, also serve a broader and no less
vital purpose. They raise some very
interesting and historiographically signif-
icant questions about many of the
interpretations of the Revolutionary era
posited by historians of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. For example,
the patrician George Bancroft, probably
the greatest American historian in the
first century after independence, always
professed to see a lot of patriotism
motivating the nation's founders. While
one does encounter some evidence of
patriotism in these many pages, one
encounters a whole host of other things as
well-frustration, bickering, posturing,
self-assertiveness, outraged innocence,
in short nearly the full range of human
emotion and motivation. Bernard Bailyn
of our own late twentieth century has
made a considerable reputation arguing
78 OHIO HISTORY
that the Revolution was largely the
product of forces ideological and intellec-
tual. But one does find much material
here that would particularly bolster
Bailyn's thesis about a generation of
Americans who were highly ideologized.
After reading these documents, one
wonders if our historians all the way from
Bancroft to Bailyn and beyond have not
been guilty of imposing a far neater
structure on Revolutionary reality than
ever existed.
The main point, then, seems to be that
the documents in these volumes and
in the series as a whole might well lead
us to question our old interpretations
of the Revolution and to formulate some
new ones. There is a vast complexity
here, and there are perhaps a thousand
themes. At times, there appear to be
about as many perspectives on the
Revolution as there are members of
Congress. Where are all those unifying
motifs of which historians are so
enamored? People seem to have gotten
along back in 1779 and 1780 in just
about the way most people get along
now-not by the sustenance provided by
grand themes but rather from day to day
to day and often by hanging on to hope
when that is about all they have left to
hang on to. Perhaps Gouverneur Morris
phrased it about as well as anybody,
this feeling felt by so many of those who
served: "We hope much, expect much
and are Certain of this only That every
Thing in this World is uncertain"
(Volume 14, p. 98).
In brief, these two volumes continue a
distinguished and highly serviceable
series that was inaugurated some years
ago by the Library of Congress as its
own kind of scholarly and lasting
commemoration of the "Bicentennial Era."
When the more superficial forms of
celebration are over, when the last
fireworks have lighted up the sky, and
when the din in due course has finally
subsided, these volumes documenting
disordered lives will still be around to
inform, to enlighten, to entertain, and,
perhaps most of all, to raise their
questions. Now that is almost something
worth shouting about.
Marquette University Robert P. Hay
A Time for Giants: The Politics of
the American High Command In World War
II. By D. Clayton James. (New York: Franklin Watts, 1987.
xvi + 371p.;
illustration, notes, bibliography,
index. $19.95.)
To almost anyone over the age of 45, the
names resonate with familiarity:
Eisenhower, MacArthur, Halsey, Patton,
Arnold, Nimitz, and Marshall. Other
names of less public reknown but
crucially important to American military
leadership strike ready recognition to
those well read on World War II: Ernest
J. King, George C. Kenney, Omar N.
Bradley, Joseph Stilwell, Carl A. Spaatz,
Raymond Spruance, and A. Archer
Vandegrift. D. Clayton James has identi-
fied these men, along with William D.
Leahy, Mark W. Clark, Ira C. Eaker,
and Holland M. Smith, as key figures in
the American high command of World
War II.
James seeks to answer the question:
"how did American high commanders
... attain their lofty positions of
authority" (p. xiii)? He sees the war as a time
for giants,
and the test of the American military system was to provide giants
equal to the occasion. The author chose
these eighteen using a criteria which
included the importance of the position
they held, their achievements, con-
temporary assessment of their
performances, postwar recognition and leader-
Book Reviews
79
ship, but most importantly, reliance on
his twenty years as a military historian.
His subjects all held posts at a level
higher than that of a numerically
designated army, fleet, or air force,
except George C. Patton, Jr., commander
of the Third Army. James' leaders were
partially selected to reflect the relative
wartime strength of each of the armed
forces. Consequently, he includes seven
army generals, five admirals, four Army
Air Force generals, and two Marine
generals.
As implied in the title, James examines
the process by which these men came
to high command to see if they rose by
merit, or whether political influence
counted more than ability. He concludes
that "without exception" they
received their appointments "by
being the best qualified and most experienced
officers available for the jobs at the
time" (p. 268). The generals and admirals
shared several common characteristics,
including lengthy service (an average
of thirty-five years), graduation from
the two service academies (thirteen of
eighteen), attendance at the higher
level military schools, and frequent
personal and professional contact during
the interwar years. They were
sufficiently capable that only one of
them, Joseph Stilwell, was relieved of his
position, and Stilwell fell prey to
national and international politics, not
incompetence.
Beyond these common characteristics, but
briefly reviewed in a short last
chapter, James discovers no consistent
pattern or stated policy for selecting
high commanders. He sees "a process
of natural selection," coupled with
"chance or luck" (p. 51). He
need not be faulted for failure to find consistency
if there was none, but his approach
works against identifying general patterns.
A Time for Giants is a series of brief sketches, largely anecdotal and
based
chiefly on secondary sources. Little new
is revealed on the conduct of the war.
Its organization leads to confusion and
repetition. Each of the first nine
chapters is tripartite, with the first
section quickly reviewing strategic ques-
tions as they bore on American command
needs, and the latter two providing
biographical overviews of two commanders
selected to meet those needs. The
chapters proceed chronologically from
1941 to 1945, shifting alternately from
the European to Pacific theaters. This
approach inevitably creates backtrack-
ing and reiteration, and sometimes
perplexity.
Perhaps we have come to expect too much
of D. Clayton James, a
meticulous, critical, astute historian
of American military affairs. Certainly his
larger theme is timely for there is
sufficient distance from the war and adequate
secondary work to evaluate the
performance of the giants who led American
forces to victory in 1945. This book is
an earnest attempt at evaluation but falls
short in its conception.
University of Missouri-St. Louis Jerry Cooper
Witness to Gettysburg. By Richard Wheeler. (New York: Harper & Row,
Publishers, 1987. xii + 273p.;
illustrations, maps, quotation sources, sup-
plementary references, index. $19.95.)
Because of the continued appeal to
readers of the Battle of Gettysburg, the
author begins with the contention that
he probably does not have to justify
producing yet another book about it.
Still he feels compelled to follow this
80 OHIO HISTORY
half-apology with a claim of innovation:
he promises a story written as much as
possible in the words of participants.
He carries out his plan by inserting
frequent, lengthy quotations into his
narrative history. Having alluded to the
vast previous literature of Gettysburg,
he bases his book on only a limited
sampling of it. For example, his list of
"Supplementary References" does not
include Edwin B. Coddington's
incomparable The Gettysburg Campaign
(1968). He does, however, quote from
many of the familiar military witnesses,
including P. Regis de Trobriand and
Frank A. Haskell of the Union Army,
James Longstreet and John B. Gordon
among the Confederates. He also has
attempted to find less often reprinted
sources, the most unusual of which are
the accounts of several civilians who
lived near Gettysburg. The author claims
to have checked all the quoted matter
for factual accuracy and credibility and
to have indicated the deletion of any
misleading statements. Nonetheless, since
the contemporary witnesses recorded
their observations at varying times
ranging from just after the event to a
quarter century or more later, there are
differences among them in outlook and
tone. Readers who may wish to look for
the quotations in their original context
will not find it easy. Because the book
substitutes for footnotes only an
alphabetical list of "Quotation Sources," one
cannot always determine even the book
which contains a given quotation.
The contents of Wheeler's book are
broader than its title suggests. It is at
least a partial history of the
Confederate invasion of the North as well as an
account of that campaign's major battle.
Beginning with Robert E. Lee's plan
to shift the fighting from Virginia, Witness
to Gettysburg treats in some detail
the preliminary cavalry battle at Brandy
Station, the Confederate capture of
Winchester with a large part of its
garrison, cavalry fights near Aldie, and the
initial movements of the invading army
into Maryland and Pennsylvania. More
than two fifths of the book are gone
before its author turns to the events of the
first day of the Battle of Gettysburg.
The familiar theme of his mainly
chronological account of the battle is
that repeated successes had made Lee
and his Confederates overconfident-a
contention well supported by the
description of their almost reckless
approach to Gettysburg-while on the
other hand the Northern troops, able to
stand on the defensive, were
determined to win while on their own
soil. Except for a lack of detail on the
related cavalry fights, there is
adequate attention to the battle's principal
events. Happily the account of the
arguably decisive second day of fighting is
not overshadowed by that of the third
day's Pickett's Charge. But in contrast
to the full treatment of the beginning
of the invasion, the history of the battle's
aftermath is oddly abbreviated, with no
quotations on the actions associated
with the Confederate recrossing of the
Potomac.
Presumably this book is not intended for
Civil War specialists; certainly its
usefulness is marginal to anyone who has
read much about the subject. For the
general reader, however, it may well be
helpful and indeed appealing.
Wheeler's style, honed in writing
several similar works, is felicitous. His facts
are mainly correct-though General Robert
H. Milroy was not "an old-time
United States Army regular" (p.
41). The supplementary material is also
mostly good. There are many well chosen
drawings from nineteenth century
sources, including striking portraits of
the principal leaders. Except for the lack
of a general chart of southern
Pennsylvania, the maps sufficiently illustrate the
text. If only the index had entries
subdivided so as to make it possible to find
specific regiments from each state, it
too would be fine. For anyone who knows
little about the Gettysburg campaign,
Wheeler's book with its focus upon
Book Reviews
81
human interest and its sense of
immediacy could be a good introduction to
North America's biggest battle.
Kent State University Frank L. Byrne
Police, Prison, and Punishment: Major
Historical Interpretations. Edited by
Kermit L. Hall. (New York: Garland
Publishing, Inc., 1987. xiv + 750p.;
notes. $110.00.)
This book is so disappointing primarily
because Kermit Hall is such a
respected historian within the field of
criminal justice history. Indeed, a major
problem with this compilation of
articles is that there is so little evidence of any
work by Professor Hall, including as an
editor. The subtitle, "Major Historical
Interpretations," also is
misleading, for many of the articles contained therein
do not meet that expectation.
Professor Hall's thin three-page
introduction provides no good clue regard-
ing his choice of articles, except for
the unfounded claim that they "deal with
the evolution of both theory and
practice within the criminal justice system"
(p. xiii). It would have been helpful if
he told us how they fulfilled that
criterion, but in fact he supplies no
comment or analysis of the selected
articles. Furthermore, he arranged the
articles in alphabetical order according
to the author's name, which forces the
reader to jump about the book to
compare similar topics. A simple
division of the twenty-six articles into three
main sections-Police (six articles),
Prisons (fourteen articles), and Punish-
ment (six articles)-with Professor
Hall's discussion of their differences and
relative merits seems to me a minimum
obligation of an editor.
This is especially the case since
several of his selections lead this reader to
wonder why they were chosen. Who would
want to read "The Waukesha
County Jail-Building, Administration,
Inmates: 1901-1904," by Elizabeth
Brown? Ms. Brown claimed that "This
study was shaped by the available
facts" (p. 263)-i.e., a Jail
Register found for this period-but because she
could not provide any broader framework,
she acknowledged that her article
"... must stand in isolation, and
any conclusions must be of a guarded,
tentative nature" (p. 264). Similarly,
Professor Hall does not share with us his
reason to include John P. Resch,
"Ohio Adult Penal System, 1850-1900,"
originally published in Ohio History (1972).
This selection even includes
pictures of all of Ohio's wardens during
this period, thus demonstrating the
compiler's dogged determination not to
exclude anything, including the
original page numbers. Because each
article was reproduced as it initially
appeared, the variance in type-setting
is impressive.
It must be admitted that Professor Hall
did a lot of searching. He presents
pieces from the state historical
societies of California, Georgia, Louisiana,
New York, North Carolina, Ohio,
Pennsylvania, and Tennessee, and from the
Law Reviews of Wayne State, Louisiana
State, Cincinnati, and Cleveland
State. Interestingly, Francis A. Allen's
"The Decline of the Rehabilitative
Ideal in American Criminal
Justice," must have been published in the
Cleveland State Law Review on the basis of a tape recording, since the first
paragraph acknowledges that the author
is presenting his "interim report"
without benefit of a printed text (p.
1).
82 OHIO HISTORY
State historical journals, as any reader
of this review would agree, provide
important insights into their state's
history, and frequently publish first-rate
studies. The same is true for the law
reviews at places such as Cleveland State.
But Professor Hall has shown that they
do not often get the chance to print
major historical interpretations in the
field of criminal justice history.
Professor Hall also has preserved
several very old pieces, including a paper
read by Harry Elmer Barnes before the
New York State Historical Society in
1920, and it is safe to say that the
interpretations are dated. Two classics by
Blake McKelvey, published in the 1920s,
however, are still worth reading,
although they should have been grouped
for comparative purposes with articles
on similar themes.
Finally, the compiler does include some
familiar major interpretations, such
as David Brion Davis, "The Movement
to Abolish Capital Punishment in
America, 1787-1861," originally
published in the American Historical Review
in 1957. Specialists in the study of law
enforcement also will be pleased to find
important works by Mark Haller, Wilbur
Miller, and James Richardson. But
these offerings are not enough, and not
just in the obvious sense that major
articles by important scholars have not
been included. That list is too long to
provide here. It is simply that
specialists will find the familiar or the forgettable
in this collection, and will determine
the cost prohibitive and the selection
questionable for classroom use. As
doubtlessly was intended, this is a book
only libraries will purchase.
The Ohio State University Eugene J. Watts
Cherokee Renascence in the New
Republic. By William G. McLoughlin.
(Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1987. xxii + 472p.;
illustrations, tables, notes,
bibliography, index. $29.50.)
Too many studies of American Indians or
"Indian policy" lapse into a simple
recital of federal government motives
and machinations. Consequently, Native
Americans almost appear as passive
observers of their own history. William G.
McLoughlin's Cherokee Renascence in
the New Republic is an exemplary
exception to this pattern. Not only does
McLoughlin recount the valiant
struggle of the Cherokee to realize the
promise of equal citizenship held out to
them by the first six U.S. presidents,
he also provides a dimension lacking in
some analyses of Indian-government
relations. Consistently, McLoughlin
maintains the Cherokee perspective on an
intricate web of political, economic,
social, and religious issues.
As America's Enlightenment
egalitarianism shifted to romantic nationalism,
the Cherokee found themselves embattled.
Southern states coveted Cherokee
land, and the federal government slid
from respect for treaty obligations to
naked racism. The wholesale removal of
eastern Indians and the infamous Trail
of Tears serve as malignant monuments to
the so-called resolution of that
dilemma.
Significantly, McLoughlin accompanies
accounts of the larger political and
economic issues with a sensitive
portrayal of the inner conflicts which beset
the Cherokee. The change from hunters to
farmers involved far more than
alteration in land use. In the first
decades of the nineteenth century, Cherokee
Book Reviews
83
society became irrevocably secularized.
The old view of an ubiquitous divine
presence, a delicately balanced natural
order, and a harmonious social order
changed forever. These profound and
wrenching passages from one world view
to another found expression in bitter
factionalism between Cherokees advo-
cating voluntary removal and those
determined to maintain the bounds of their
traditional homeland.
McLoughlin also illustrates how the fate
of Cherokee revitalization and
progress toward "civilization"
posed a crisis for white Americans. According
to the U.S. Constitution, treaties with
sovereign nations supersede domestic
laws. Through a long series of treaties
with the U.S. government, through their
own stubborn insistence, and eventually
through U.S. Supreme Court deci-
sions, the Cherokee Nation achieved an
arguable claim to sovereignty. In 1827
the Cherokee even framed their own
constitution (modeled after the U.S.
Constitution) and implicitly challenged
the American government to live up to
its professed ideals. Yet other impulses
in the American heart won out.
Upholding a states' rights-based claim
to Cherokee land, even the quintessen-
tial romantic nationalist Andrew Jackson
flaunted U.S. Supreme Court vali-
dation of Cherokee sovereignty.
Perhaps the ultimate irony of the
eventual Cherokee removal was that since
the 1790s Cherokee culture had evolved
in ways similar to the world of white
America. By the 1820s, the zenith of the
Cherokee renascence, farming, the
nuclear family, patrilineal hierarchy,
Protestantism, the work ethic, and
materialism had replaced many
traditional characteristics of Cherokee life. Not
unlike earlier white American
nationalists, the Cherokee sought unsuccessfully
to live as members of a distinct
sovereign group within a larger state.
Unfortunately for them, the Cherokee
never produced a Washington. Given
the futility of armed resistance, the
wiles of a Cherokee Henry Clay might have
made a compromise possible. But the
Cherokee never had such a spokesman
of their own.
Author of Cherokees and the
Missionaries (1984), McLoughlin is well
qualified to discuss how the
philanthropic public and the post-1819 influx of
missionaries affected the Cherokee. In a
uniquely Cherokee way secular
nationalization and spiritual
revitalization combined to fuel the renascence.
In McLoughlin's phrase, the Cherokee
strove sincerely to become part of
"the wider world and yet [maintain]
their particular ethnic identity within it"
(p. 365).
Kentuckians will be surprised to read
that their state gained admittance to
the union in 1796 (p. 7) instead of four
years earlier. Equally eye-opening will
be the statement that Daniel Boone led
"hundreds of families" (p. 19) through
the Cumberland Gap in the 1760s. (The
first permanent white settlement came
in 1774 and not by Boone's efforts.)
But these errors are trivial exceptions
to a body of research which overall is
superb. Meticulous attention to the
records of Cherokee relations with federal
agents, missionary groups, and a careful
tracing of the often subtle shifts in
Cherokee-white associations characterize
McLoughlin's treatise. An equally
well done volume on the successful
Cherokee renascence after removal would
be a welcome addition to the story of a
remarkable people.
Kentucky Historical Society James Russell Harris
84 OHIO HISTORY
Images of America: Travelers from
Abroad in the New World. By Robert B.
Downs. (Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1987. 232p.; index. $24.95.)
In Images of America: Travelers from
Abroad in the New World, Robert B.
Downs provides forty short summaries of
travel accounts written by foreign
visitors to the United States (and, in
several cases, other parts of the western
hemisphere). They range chronologically
from the observations of the Swedish
naturalist, Peter Kalm, who investigated
and reported on the flora and fauna of
Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and
southern Canada, 1748-1751, to the
magisterial work of D. W. Brogan,
English political scientist, who visited the
United States frequently, and published The
American Political System in
1933, and The American Character in
1944. Although the span of time thus
covered is almost 200 years, the
eighteenth century is represented by only four
visitors, and the twentieth by three.
Downs' emphasis on the nineteenth
century is, however, understandable. It
is the period of the "great influx
of travelers, an exciting era" (p. 3) in which
the new, expanding republic drew the
attention, at once superior yet defensive
of old world culture, dazzled by the
sheer size and hustle of the booming
democracy, yet critical of its excesses,
vaulting materialism, and especially the
institution of slavery, of an array of
literati, adventureers, scientists, politi-
cians, and many others less easily
labeled who came to see and experience the
strange new world. For Americans
concerned about "who we are," and why,
Downs' brief review of the observations
and conclusions of these outside
commentators can be most provocative and
enlightening.
Most of Downs' visitors are English, by
his own definition, twenty-eight in
all. They range in time from Henry
Wamsey, who wrote An Excursion to the
United States of North America in the
Summer of 1794, to Brogan. Downs
includes six Scots, three Frenchmen, one
Argentine, a Japanese and a Russian.
Thus the overall impression is of a
decided "Anglo" interest in the American
experiment and environment, the
"New American Order" that Paul Connor
discovered in the writings of Benjamin
Franklin. Some of Downs' liveliest and
most thoughtful essays catch the
peculiar blend of praise and censure,
fascination and revulsion, elicited from
representatives of the old mother
country as they struggled to comprehend
such progeny: the incomparable (and
incomparably fussy) Frances Trollope,
haughty Harriet Martineau, and bril-
liant James Bryce. Yet among the most
rewarding of the brief accounts deal
with non-Anglos: Alexis de Tocqueville,
Yukichi Fukuzawa, and David
Macrae especially.
Robert Downs has written a useful, and
for the most part, an engaging book.
His book does three things particularly
worth the attention of academics and
general readers interested in the roots
and growth of our national identity and
character. He introduces us to a
valuable, wonderfully interesting literature
about ourselves. In a wide ranging
introduction, he points us to a number of
bibliographies of foreign travelers'
accounts that will greatly expand his own
brief summaries of a fraction of the
literature. Finally, most importantly, he
stimulates our interest in reading the
originals.
The Ohio State University Paul C. Bowers
Book Reviews
85
Black Leaders of the Nineteenth
Century. Edited by Leon Litwack and
August
Meier. (Urbana: The University of
Illinois Press, 1988. xii + 344p.;
illustrations, bibliographical essay,
notes on contributors,index. $24.95.)
In this volume the editors have brought
together a highly useful collection of
essays concerning some of the key black
leaders of nineteenth century
America. Leadership is considered as it
functioned on several levels and in
varying spheres of activity. There is
the religious and community leadership of
Richard Allen and the role of Henry
McNeal Turner as church leader and black
emigrationist. There is Harriet Tubman's
heroic leadership of runaway slaves
and Mary Church Terrell's emergence as a
foremost middle class representa-
tive of black clubwomen who spoke out
eloquently against racial oppression,
living long enough to denounce the 1951
indictment of Dr. Du Bois as an
unregistered foreign agent and to sign
the We Charge Genocide petition to the
United Nations. We range from those,
exemplified by Frederick Douglass,
who believed black purposes could be
advanced though unity in struggle with
white people to a Martin Delany who
articulated a policy of black nationalism
and following the Civil War sought the
best possible deal with white suprem-
acists. We are given quiet activities
but also the revolutionary spirit of Nat
Turner. All in all this is a varied and
rich portrait of blacks who met the
complex challenges of slavery and the
first post-Civil War decades.
Several of the contributions are
particularly insightful. Peter Wood's discus-
sion of Nat Turner sheds light on the
reliability of Thomas Gray and leads us
to take account of the interaction of
evangelical Christianity with African belief
systems that formed Turner's
consciousness. Waldo Martin's view of Frederick
Douglass focuses upon the catholic,
humanist vision that made this great figure
a spokesman for all humankind. Douglass
related the black freedom struggle to
a worldwide tradition of liberation
movements. Sterling Stuckey's analysis of
Henry Highland Garnet insightfully sets
this figure within a broad context of
democratic struggle against monopoly and
labor exploitation. Stuckey stresses
that Garnet's formulation "that
exploited whites and blacks have similar
interests, while insisting on the right
of blacks to help determine the destiny of
the country, contributed to liberation
theory for all because it maximized
possibilities for cooperation across
racial lines without sacrificing the souls of
black people." Stuckey's essay is
interesting for its thoughtful attempt to
reconcile the claims of nationalism and
socialism. Nell Painter's treatment of
Martin Delany is valuable for the
reminder that unlike some nationalist trends
of the 1960s and 1970s, earlier versions
of black nationalism could be elitist,
disdainful of the black masses. (It
might be added that Delany was a striking
blend of elitism and opportunism.) Eric
Foner's contribution is a significant
call for greater scholarly attention to
black leadership as it existed at the grass
roots level. Benjamin Quarles vividly
presents Harriet Tubman as a leader of
mythic proportions whose accomplishments
were extraordinary. Tubman
appears as having faith in the Infinite
but also as willing to take the pains to
carefully plan her forays against
slavery.
Of considerable interest is David A.
Gerber's essay concerning the career of
Peter H. Clark, until recent years a
figure scholars had most often neglected.
In his varied roles as educator and
political advocate Clark had explored
several of the ideological alternatives
that Afro-Americans might embrace. The
Gerber essay outlines the changes in
outlook occurring in Clark's long life,
although more attention might have been
paid to what made his career
86 OHIO HISTORY
especially noteworthy, his appearance as
the first American black socialist.
Also, it is not quite true that Clark
completely disappeared from the public eye
following his departure from Cincinnati.
In 1898 the black press reported
Clark's protest, on behalf of the St.
Louis Forum Club, against the massacre at
Wilmington, North Carolina.
The brief introductory essay explains
the criteria employed in the choice of
individuals selected for treatment but
one might still question the omission of
such important figures as Sojurner
Truth, Isaac Myers and Charles L. Remond.
As the book stands, however, we have
been provided with a valuable collective
biography of black leadership that adds
much to our understanding of the
dialogue within nineteenth century black
America. These were not isolated
personalities, but true leaders who
articulated views shaping and reflecting the
consciousness of millions.
University of Cincinnati Herbert Shapiro
Heartland: Comparative Histories of
the Midwestern States. Edited by James
H. Madison. (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1988. 308p.; maps,
notes, contributors, index. $29.95.)
The jacket of Heartland says that
the "volume is an attempt to examine the
origins and nature of the unique
midwestern cultural phenomenon." Much is to
be said for an attempt to accomplish
such a result. And the attempt has borne
much fruit. With twelve authors it is inevitable
that the style and clarity will
vary from author to author, and they do
but the general level is high. For this
reviewer the climactic piece of work was
done when the author of the work on
Illinois described the effects of the
Ordinance of 1785 on the geography and
culture of his state, but other work was
well done also. From the viewpoint of
clarity it would be difficult to improve
on the essay on Nebraska.
Some aspects of the examination of
unique midwestern culture are almost
uniformly well done by the twelve
authors. The work on geographical origins
and cultural baggage of incoming
settlers (or in South Dakota people already
there) and later immigrants is a case in
point. This becomes of considerable
importance in accounting for variations
in patterns from state to state. Most of
the twelve writers also did an excellent
job on state politics accounting for
changes over time and interweaving
political, cultural and economic develop-
ments within and among the various
states and the whole United States.
One problem did turn up in the field of
transportation which has to be
important in any region referred to as Heartland.
After adequately dealing with
settlement routes, canals, and
railroads, things thin out. Little is found on later
development of highways. State
development of major modern tollways in
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Kansas, and
their inspiration and interrelation with
the interstate system, is not treated.
No mention was found of the St.
Lawrence Seaway or of the development of
air or space facilities. Henry Ford
got due credit but standouts like
Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr., the Wright brothers
and Neil Armstrong are missing although
their cultural contributions are
considerable.
Since this review is being done for the
Ohio Historical Society it is perhaps
fitting to note what is said about Ohio. When it is
recorded that Ohio is
Book Reviews
87
mainstream American we have a summary
that has been true for a century and
a half, although we certainly share that
mainstream more today than at most
past times. However, if Ohio is indeed
mainstream America we get a pretty
gloomy picture of America. We are told
about the Rust Belt; acid rain is
lamented; we are told of the existence
of an underclass; "downward social
mobility" is deplored. Fortunately the
end of the decade of the eighties does
much to lighten the "gloom."
The Rust Belt is obviously gaining a bit of gloss:
new industrial complexes are rising.
Witness the Ford expansion near Batavia,
the army tank plant in Lima and the
vastness of Honda's installation near
Marysville, to mention three. The latter
of these is plowing some new ground
in labor-management relations. In
mid-1988 Ohio's unemployment rate for the
first time in years is lower than the
national rate. The "downward mobility of
society" is "vanishing
upward," according to a recent government study, with
family income rising since 1981 and
federal taxes producing record revenues
each year. Probably the liberal
mythology that is so pervasive in the picture
that is painted presented too bleak a
scene originally. Progress in Ohio is clear
if we may paraphrase an apt quote from
the author of the piece on Minnesota:
Ohioans are not telling Cleveland
jokes any more!
Overall we close by revisiting our first
paragraph: this book is worthwhile;
there is a wealth of fact and insight
that will reward the careful reader.
Ohio Northern University Boyd M. Sobers
Gentrification of the City. Edited by Neil Smith and Peter Williams. (Boston:
Allen & Unwin, 1986. xiii + 257p.;
maps, illustrations, notes, bibliography,
index. $13.95.)
Gentrification, or the improvement of
older urban neighborhoods by newly
arrived "urban pioneers," has
become a fact of life in many cities. This
anthology provides a comparison of
Marxist and traditional perspectives in
historical-urban geography. It
critically evaluates the process of gentrification
as a peculiarity of mature, capitalistic
systems which encourage the formation
of social class structure and whose
cities are heir to major cycles of investment
and disinvestment. The gentrification of
American, Canadian, Australian, and
British cities is analyzed and compared
in ten separate chapters involving a
total of twelve authors.
Editors Smith and Williams begin with
"an invitation to debate" centering
on five basic concepts: 1) the validity
of production-side versus consumption-
side explanations of economic behavior,
2) the question of the emergence of
the post-industrial city, 3) the
relative importance of social structure and
individual agency, or choice, in the
gentrification process, 4) the question "is
there a new middle class and what is its
role?" and, 5) an attempt to answer the
question "what are the costs of
displacement today and in the future?" That
the authors' findings do not square with
the generally conservative philoso-
phies of the 1980s is an understatement.
The book's premise is that the myth
of the urban pioneer as individualist is
as empty, and arrogant, as the myth of
the frontiersman who had a mission to
displace the "savage" Indian. The
authors consider gentrification from
both an aesthetic perspective (that is, the
visual imprint of trendy renovations
commonly associated with the
88 OHIO HISTORY
yuppification of older neighborhoods)
and from the social-geographical, or
spatial, perspective. Gentrification
emerges not as a unique experience, but
rather as a more or less predictable
outcome of realignments in investment in
the post-industrial city.
Gentrification in the City sheds light on some very important concepts and
questions. The chapter by LeGate and
Hartman entitled "The Anatomy of
Displacement in the United States"
concludes that displacement is wide-
spread, and creates substantial
hardships on those who are displaced. Contrary
to popular opinion, however, the authors
note that lower middle class, white,
socially heterogeneous neighborhoods-rather
than lower income black neigh-
borhoods-are most heavily impacted by
first-generation gentrification. More-
over, it is upwardly mobile urbanites,
not immigrating suburbanites, who
comprise the majority of gentrifiers.
Peter Marcuse's chapter on gentrification
and displacement in New York City is one
of the most definitive place-specific
studies to date, and it, too, points to
the large-scale displacement patterns
which evidently affect both the
condition of homelessness and may shed some
light on the observation that our older
inner suburbs are becoming the slums of
tomorrow. The chapters dealing with
gentrification of cities in Canada,
Australia, and Britain are liable to be
eye-openers for American readers who
think that gentrification is a
home-grown process.
Ohio historians may be disappointed that
Gentrification of the City contains
very few references to the Buckeye
State's cities, especially since German
Village in Columbus is often cited in
the literature as one of the first privately
financed urban revitalization projects,
and Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine is
forever mentioned, but never
substantiated, as one of the state's largest areas
of potential ethnic/social displacement.
Nevertheless, this book uses case
studies primarily to confirm the
importance, and impact, of gentrification on all
post-industrial cities where
reinvestment is occurring. Ohio's cities are very
much a part of this international
developmental process. The authors demon-
strate that the pace of gentrification
is increasing, and, even though it will not
eclipse the centrifugal trends toward
suburbanization, it will continue to be a
major force affecting our cities. In
summary, then, this book provides an
important, if controversial, framework
for future research into the impact of
decision-making on the structure, and
inhabitants, of urban places.
Ohio Historical Society Richard V. Francaviglia
Delivered From Evil: The Saga of
World War II. The First Complete One-
Volume History. By Robert Leckie. (New York: Harper & Row,
Publishers,
1987. xvii + 998p.;
maps, bibliographical note, index. $29.95.)
The title of this book reveals its
nature. It is a Homeric saga of men at war
contesting transcendent issues across
the world's oceans and continents. It is
a volume about global politics, strategy
and battle tactics. It is not about those
who worked and waited and produced the
sinews of victory at home. It is a
celebration of the achievements of the
officers and men of the Anglo-American
and Russian armies and navies. The
central theme is crime and retribution, and
the heroes and the villains are
unmistakable. If there is any tragedy it is in the
story of the brave, talented and
dedicated soldiers of Germany and Japan who
Book Reviews
89
were led into disaster by evil masters.
But of course they had to be worthy
adversaries or there would be no glory
for the victors. It is a sign of the
uniqueness of the Second World War that,
after almost half a century and many
attempts at historical revision, a
popular author like Robert Leckie can still
write a plausible book on that text.
There is nothing new for the specialist
in this book. It is a synthetic work full
of intellectual quirks which reveal the
ideological idiosyncrasies and blind
spots of the author. He perpetuates
certain historical myths and oversimplifi-
cations like that of the decadence of
the French nation which made it
impossible for the army to recover from
its initial defeats in the spring of 1940.
Leckie is a conservative cold warrior
and his biases show. He still asserts that
it was in part President Roosevelt's
belief that he could charm Stalin that led
to the so called Yalta sellout. He pays
little attention to the history of
intelligence and code breaking that
revolutionized writing about the war in the
late seventies. It suits him to see the
SS and the concentration camp authorities
as the sweepings of the European gutters
rather than to accept them as the
upwardly mobile middle class
professionals and intellectuals that many of them
were. But most of us of a particular age
still prefer this morality tale. We like
to remember the world of clear options
that we thought was there when we
were young. For sweep and drama, for a
memory of the pithy directness of GI
language, for a whopping good evening's
read for a military history buff, this
book should not be overlooked.
University of Cincinnati Daniel R. Beaver
So Close to Greatness: A Biography of
William C. Bullitt. By Will Brownell
&
Richard N. Billings. (New York:
MacMillan Publishing Company, 1987. xiv
+ 368p.; illustrations, notes,
bibliography, index. $24.95.)
The title of this book aptly conveys the
authors' assessment of William C.
Bullitt, a man with considerable
diplomatic ability and potential, who partici-
pated in many momentous twentieth century
events, who knew the prominent
figures of this era, but whose career
precipitously ended when he ran afoul of
President Franklin Roosevelt. The
Bullitt Will Brownell and Richard Billings
describe was a talented diplomat and at
times a farsighted analyst of the
contemporary international scene, a man
who moved from left to right on the
political spectrum as his experiences
with the Soviet Union affected his
perceptions of world affairs. Bullitt
was arrogant, ambitious, and self-assured,
prone to be rash and impulsive in
action. The authors aptly trace these
characteristics through his career.
Bullitt was born to Philadelphia
aristocracy and educated at Yale, where he
was voted "most brilliant" by
his classmates. After leaving school, he
advanced rapidly as a journalist
covering the First World War and then as a
diplomat during the Versailles
Conference. From the outset, his actions exuded
promise, controversy, and frustration.
In 1919, at the age of twenty-eight, he
was sent on a mission to strife-torn
Russia, where he met with Lenin and
returned with what he felt was an
agreement to end the civil war. But he was
rebuffed by President Woodrow Wilson,
earning the president Bullitt's life-
long enmity. The authors suggest that
Bullitt's mandate in this mission was
90 OHIO HISTORY
unclear and that he may have
over-stepped his orders. But they also note how,
following this snub, Bullitt presciently
predicted the future problems arising
from the Versailles settlement.
Out of government service in the 1920s,
Bullitt lived in Europe, writing and
leading a bohemian existence. He married
the notorious Louise Bryant, the
widow of radical journalist John Reed.
When Franklin Roosevelt captured the
presidency in 1932, Bullitt used his
political connections to return to diplomatic
service. As the United States' first
ambassador to the Soviet Union and then
as ambassador to France, he became
Roosevelt's friend and confidant, often
reporting directly to the president
instead of through official State Department
channels. While in Moscow, the
eye-opening experience of dealing with
Stalinist Russia moved Bullitt away from
a regime sympathizer and toward
suspicion of Soviet intentions.
Consequently, during World War II he predicted
with foresight the coming of the cold
war. As ambassador to France, he
unwisely stayed in Paris as the French
government fled in the face of the Nazi
advance. Bullitt asserted that he could
not abandon his diplomatic post, but as
the authors argue, this seemingly noble
gesture lost him the opportunity to
convince the French government to
continue its opposition to Hitler.
When he returned to Washington, Bullitt
continued as a public servant for
the Roosevelt administration. He coveted
a cabinet post, preferably War or
State. However, the president was not so
inclined. He enjoyed Bullitt's
company, but felt his ambassador talked
too much and was too rash in his
behavior. Frustrated that he was not
appointed to the cabinet, Bullitt attacked
Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles,
who had committed a homosexual
indiscretion. Roosevelt was appalled and
severed all ties with Bullitt.
The authors appropriately end their
study with a consideration of the dispute
between the heirs of Sigmund Freud and
Bullitt over the publication of Thomas
Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological
Study, allegedly coauthored earlier by
the
two men. To the end, Bullitt's life
exuded controversy. His strengths were
counter-balanced by serious personality
flaws, as this book ably corroborates.
This is a very readable biography.
Although at times the authors' digressions
into the social background and
importance of Bullitt's acquaintances are
disconcerting, and although scholars
will be disappointed with footnoting and
documentation, this is a capable study
of a diplomatic career filled with
promise and disappointment.
St. Louis University T. Michael Ruddy
First Ladies. By Betty Boyd Caroli. (New York: Oxford University
Press,
1987. xxii + 398p.; illustrations,
notes, appendices, index. $19.95.)
The Oxford University Press, one of the
principal publishers of books on
American history, has long enjoyed an
enviable reputation for the quality of its
publications. In this era of feminism as
well as presidential transition, it now
appears to have pulled a marketing coup
as well, with not one but two new
books on a topic hitherto largely
neglected by most American historians, the
role of the First Lady in the life of
the nation. One of these books is Paul
Boiler's anecdotal Presidential
Wives. The other is Betty Boyd Caroli's First
Ladies. Of course there is a distinction in content as well as
title of the two. Not
all First Ladies have been presidential
wives, as attested by the daughters,
Book Reviews
91
daughters-in-law, nieces, and sisters
who served as chatelaines in the admin-
istrations of such presidents as Thomas
Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Martin
Van Buren, John Tyler, the bachelor
James Buchanan, and Grover Cleveland.
Nor have all presidential wives accepted
the obligations of First Lady, witness
Margaret Taylor who designated her
daughter as substitute.
It has been my pleasure to read and
review First Ladies, a worthy inclusion
in the long list of Oxford Press titles.
Its author, Betty Boyd Caroli, is Professor
of History at the Kingsborough Community
College of the City University of
New York. The book is an absorbing,
intimate account of how thirty-six
women, from Martha Washington to Nancy
Reagan, "handled what may be the
most demanding, unpaid, unelected job in
America." According to Caroli,
"They were a remarkably diverse
lot-from Eliza Johnson, who remained so
elusive [and obscure] that she was
called 'mysterious' [though paradoxically a
1982 poll of historians rated her 21st
in effectiveness, ahead of such others as
Sarah Polk, Elizabeth Monroe, Mamie
Eisenhower, Pat Nixon, Jane Pierce,
Nancy Reagan, and Mary Lincoln], to Lady
Bird Johnson, whose prominence
resulted in cartoons calling for her
impeachment.... They ranged in age from
early 20s [Frances Folsom was only 21
when she married the incumbent
president, Grover Cleveland] to the late
60s [Anna Symmes Harrison was
66 years old when her husband was
inaugurated]. Some were superbly
educated for their time [Lucy Webb Hayes
was the first to attend college
among them]; others poorly schooled
[Abigail Adams 'complained that she had
not had a single day of schooling';
Dolley Madison had very little; Martha
Washington 'had so much difficulty with
spelling that George finally took to
writing out her letters for her and
having her copy them']. Some [such as
Elizabeth Monroe and Louisa Adams] were
courageous and adventuresome; a
few [among them Mary Todd Lincoln] were
emotionally unstable. Some were
ambitious [for example, Helen Taft];
others [such as Margaret Taylor and
Abigail Fillmore] despised the public
arena." Surprisingly, from Washington to
Reagan, most American presidents married
women "who ranked above them
in social and economic status;"
notable recent exceptions, Nixon, Ford, and
Carter. Not surprisingly, the
expectations for presidential wives have enlarged,
from docile, supportive roles to
politically active "associate presidencies."
This brings us to the underlying theme
of the book: that the role of the First
Lady has been changed not only by the
character and personality of each
woman who held the position but also by
the increasingly demanding times
through which the nation has passed.
Because the author combines the
inevitable succession of biographical
vignettes with periodic generalizations
relating to the eras through which the
nation was passing, there is occasional
redundancy, but it is minimal. The
titles of her chapters define both time and
topic of these eras, for example:
"Setting Precedents: The First Presidents'
Wives (1789-1829)"; "Young
Substitutes for First Ladies (1828-1869)"; "Three
Exceptions: Sarah Childress Polk, Mary
Todd Lincoln, and Julia Dent Grant";
"The Limited Promise of the 'New
Woman' (1877-1901)"; etc.
Most memorable of the vignettes for this
reviewer were those described in
the highly visible, often unconventional
Eleanor Roosevelt; the regal yet
influential Dolley Madison; the popular
and politically astute niece of James
Buchanan, Harriet Lane; the unfairly
described "surrogate president," Edith
Bolling Gait Wilson; the faceless and
tragic Patricia Nixon; the chic though
uncaring Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy; and the enigmatic,
sometimes fanatical
Mary Todd Lincoln.
92 OHIO HISTORY
Of particular interest to Ohio
historians are the vignettes of the First Ladies
of the eight presidents from this state:
Anna Symmes Harrison, whose husband
William died one month after taking
office; Julia Dent Grant, who may have
been the first presidential wife to be
called "First Lady"; Lucy Webb Hayes,
nick-named "Lemonade Lucy"
because of the "dry dinners" and activist
stance on temperance; Lucretia Rudolph
Garfield, who sublimated her own
feminist inclinations to help her
husband's political career; Caroline Scott
Harrison, who not only began the White
House china collection but also helped
make the Johns Hopkins Medical School
coeducational; Ida Saxton McKinley,
whose "doll-like appearance"
masked "one of the most demanding invalids in
American history;" Helen Herron
Taft, who is perhaps best remembered for
arranging for thousands of Japanese
cherry trees to be transplanted about the
tidal basin of the nation's capital; and
Florence Kling Harding, who "could not
free herself from the belief' that
"matters of life and death" depended on the
stars. (Ironically, "a medium whom
she frequently consulted had predicted
that Warren would win the presidency but
that disaster would follow: Warren
would die in office and Florence, soon
afterward. When he won the nomina-
tion, Florence was widely quoted as
saying she saw only tragedy in his
future.")
Betty Boyd Caroli has written a solid,
well-researched, well-documented
book. Her style is eminently readable;
she "makes the reader want to turn the
page," as my old mentor, Allan
Nevins, used to say. The illustrations have
been selected judiciously. Fortunately,
only a handfull of minor errors escaped
the proofreader's scrutiny: Barbara
Welter on page vii; forebade on page xvi;
Frances Williard on page 93; "a
reticent women" on page 134. Though
end-notes are extensive, a bibliography
would have helped.
All, in all, First Ladies is a
book of substantial merit. It deserves to be read.
Miami University Phillip R.
Shriver
Military Effectiveness. Volume I: The First World War. Edited by Allan
R.
Millett and Williamson Murray. (Boston:
Allen & Unwin, Inc. for the
Mershon Center, The Ohio State
University, 1988. 361p.; maps, notes,
index. $50.00.)
Military Effectiveness. Volume II: The Interwar Period. Edited by Allan
R.
Millett and Williamson Murray. (Boston:
Allen & Unwin, Inc. for the
Mershon Center, The Ohio State
University, 1988. 281p.; maps, tables,
notes, index. $50.00.)
Military Effectiveness. Volume III: The Second World War. Edited by
Allan R.
Millett and Williamson Murray. (Boston:
Allen & Unwin, Inc. for the
Mershon Center, The Ohio State
University, 1988. 375p.; maps, tables,
notes, index. $50.00.)
Military Effectiveness is a work of amazing scope. In three volumes,
twenty-four authors assess the military
effectiveness of Britain, France,
Germany, Italy, Japan, the U.S., and the
U.S.S.R. from 1914 through 1945. All
of the authors approach the topic using
the same general model for their
evaluation, surveying in each case the
political, strategic, operational, and
tactical dimensions of the problem.
Book Reviews
93
A number of specific questions define
the model, with the focus ranging from
the ability of a military organization
to assure itself "a regular share of the
national budget" (a measure of
political effectiveness-I, p. 4) to the degree to
which tactical systems place "the
strengths of military organizations against
their adversary's weaknesses" (I,
p. 25). Both the model and the authors using
it recognize the complexity of military
activity and the sometimes tenuous
connection between effectiveness and
success. This well researched and
extensively documented collection
provides an excellent starting point for any
number of projects, from the study of a
single nation in a single period or over
the span of all three volumes to more
complex comparisons of two or more
nations at a particular point or over
the entire period.
The World War I volume is well focused,
and Paul Kennedy's conclusion in
the final chapter, that tactical failure
affected everything above the tactical
level, identifies the war's primary
problem: applying force in operations and
tactics to achieve political or
strategic ends. As "the first, all-out mass
industrialized coalition war of this
century," the war "tested effectiveness at
all levels-political, strategic,
operational, and tactical-and usually found
things wanting" (1, p. 329).
Although more diffuse than either of the
other two volumes, Volume II
clearly demonstrates the difficulty that
most military forces had integrating the
lessons of the First World War. The
"small wars" of the interwar period made
the interpretation of the 1914-18
experience more difficult, and as Robert
Doughty concluded in his very
sympathetic view of the French, "From the
perspective of military effectiveness,
... no definitive measure of military
readiness can be reached in
peacetime" (II, p. 66).
The two final chapters of Volume III
indicate clearly the utility of the many
fine chapters preceding them. Lt. Gen. John Cushman's
forward looking
analysis of the many tactical and
operational lessons evident in Volumes I-III
stresses the importance of leadership in
"an atmosphere of open, shared
thought" (III, p. 336). Cushman's conclusions
reinforce Paul Kennedy's view
that "military effectiveness is a
complicated, multi-layered phenomenon,
and one that is unlikely to be attained
by a few smart reforms here and there"
(I, p. 348).
Russell Weigley does a masterful job of
bringing together the political and
strategic threads running through the
three volumes. Readers should reflect
upon his observation that "the
hypertrophy of war through war's assumption
of global dimensions and almost
unlimited destructiveness has led most
emphatically to the emergence of war not
as the servant but as the master of
politics" (III, p. 341) and recognize the dangers
inherent in such a situation.
Weigley also raises the key question for
any policymaker considering the
problem of military effectiveness:
"effective in pursuit of what purposes"
(III, p. 342)? By the time of World War
II, civilians had gained firm control
over their military organizations in
virtually all of the nations studied, but that
control did not bring an end to
militarism. Instead, civilians have demonstrated
that they could be as militaristic as an
uncontrolled military.
The volumes contain another message of
importance to world leaders, both
in and out of uniform. As Weigley
observed, the great powers of the twentieth
century often sacrificed their
effectiveness "on the altar of inordinate ambi-
tion" (III, p. 364). Fortunately,
the way to make armed forces effective is as
apparent as the problem: "tailor their
responsibilities and goals to the limits of
tactical, operational, strategic, and policy-making
practicability" (III, p. 364).
94 OHIO HISTORY
In a work of such breadth, readers can
easily find problems or topics they
would like to see covered in more
detail. Many historians of intelligence, for
example, will feel that their field has
been slighted, particularly given the
meager references to "Ultra"
in Volume III and the importance of surprise at
all four levels of the effectiveness
model. Even that omission seems tolerable,
however, given the incredible
achievement of editors Millett and Murray. They
have produced a well crafted work filled
with examples of military history at its
best.
The College of Wooster John M. Gates