Book Reviews
Union & Emancipation: Essays on
Politics and Race in the Civil War Era. Edited
by David W. Blight and Brooks D.
Simpson. (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State
University Press, 1997. x + 231p.;
illustrations, notes, selected bibliography,
index. $35.00.)
Examining the impact of slavery and race
on American politics and culture dur-
ing the decades surrounding the Civil
War, this collection of essays is especially
useful for scholars of northern party
politics in the 1850s.
In the first of three essays on partisan
ideology during the late antebellum era,
Robert E. May assesses the validity of
Free Soil and Republican party claims that
American presidents were tacitly
permitting private military expeditions designed
to spread slavery south of the United
States. May demonstrates the falsehood of
these charges by documenting numerous
efforts by Presidents Polk, Taylor,
Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan to
prevent southern filibustering operations. May
fails, however, to account for Pierce's
recognition in 1856 of William Walker's
filibuster regime in Nicaragua. Overall,
though, May's exhaustive examination
succeeds in highlighting the
exaggerated, paranoiac nature of antislavery politi-
cians' rhetoric about a Slave Power
conspiracy.
Michael J. McManus's study expands the
portrait of antebellum Republican
party ideology that has emerged from the
scholarship of Eric Foner, Michael F.
Holt, and William E. Gienapp. Throughout
the late 1850s, reveals McManus, the
Wisconsin Republican party justified its
opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act of
1850 by invoking the states' rights
doctrine that historians typically associate
with the nineteenth-century Democratic
party. The hostility toward national au-
thority that McManus discovers in the
Wisconsin Republican party of the late
1850s suggests an explanation for the
Republicans' willingness to endorse poli-
cies, such as congressional prohibition
of slavery in the territories, that clearly
had the potential to disrupt the union.
The important implications of this analy-
sis underscore the need for additional
research on the pre-Civil War Republican or-
ganizations of other northern states.
Peter Knupfer illuminates the philosophy
of the short-lived Constitutional
Union party of 1860. Citing the national
party platform's advocacy of the union
and the Constitution, traditional
historiography summarily characterizes the par-
ty's stance as an anachronistic evasion
of the slavery issue without fully describ-
ing
the party's ideological perspective.
The recurring message of the
Constitutional Union campaign, exposes
Knupfer, was that the preservation of
the federal union depended on a return
to a form of party politics that addressed
economic issues and excluded the
sectionally divisive question of slavery.
Knupfer's insightful study would have
been even more informative had it delin-
eated the party's political economic
program.
The essays in this volume discuss not
only electoral politics but also the policy
decisions of civil and military leaders
during the Civil War era. Emphasizing the
primary role that the slaves themselves
played in prompting President Lincoln to
issue the Emancipation Proclamation, Ira
Berlin convincingly argues that slaves
proved to Lincoln their value to the
Union war effort by fleeing to Union lines and
offering vital services to the Federal
army. Berlin lucidly recapitulates the thesis
of scholars such as Vincent Harding and
Barbara J. Fields, but could have offered a
Book Reviews 205
fresh interpretation had he demonstrated
his assertion that emancipation resulted
not only from the slaves' efforts but
also from the independent influence of
Lincoln and other actors such as
congressional Republicans. Exploring the un-
charted territory of military
policymaking toward African American soldiers dur-
ing the Civil War and Reconstruction,
Brooks D. Simpson's piece proves that
General Ulysses S. Grant repeatedly
pressured Confederate authorities to grant
equal treatment to black Union prisoners
of war. Simpson's thorough research of
Grant's correspondence manages to shed
considerable light on a topic that has
previously attracted scant scholarly attention.
Louis S. Gerteis's essay on blackface
minstrelsy is heavy on plot summaries
and selections of verses but light on
analysis, illuminating little about race rela-
tions and racial attitudes in
nineteenth-century America. In a more trenchant study
of popular culture, David W. Blight
offers a cogent reconstruction of early-twenti-
eth white America's memory of the Civil
War. Treating the Battle of Gettysburg
fiftieth anniversary celebration in 1913
as a window into white Americans' histor-
ical memory, Blight concludes that the
culture of sectional reconciliation and
white supremacy that had emerged during
the late nineteenth century fostered a
memory of the Civil War that focused on
military valor but ignored slavery, eman-
cipation, and other racial dimensions of
the war.
The University of Virginia John D. Morton
Calvinists Incorporated; Welsh
Immigrants on Ohio's Industrial Frontier. By
Anne Kelly Knowles. (Chicago The
University of Chicago Press, 1997. xxiii +
332p.; illustrations, appendices,
bibliography, index. $24.95 paper.)
Anne Kelly Knowles has written a book
that will help historians understand the
route America followed into an
industrial and urban nation by taking us off the
beaten path. Knowles finds links between
industrialization, frontier settlement,
and immigration in a study of the Welsh
immigrants who lived in Jackson and
Gallia counties.
Knowles has made an important
contribution to our understanding of Ohio's
role in industrial development. Knowles,
a geographer, integrates history and ge-
ography in her work, which stands at the
intersection of immigration, regional,
and industrial history. Most
importantly, Knowles' examination of Welsh migra-
tion aptly demonstrates that what might
seem clear in the broad strokes of interna-
tional and national history becomes
murkier upon closer examination.
The Welsh experience is summarized in
the title, Calvinists Incorporated, as the
immigrants built upon their religious
traditions in the making of their iron busi-
nesses. Knowles goes to the heart of
several long-standing debates over the de-
velopment of class, the impact of
industrialization on communities, the debate
over the existence of entrepreneurship
among early settlers, and the immigrant
experience. Knowles argues that in
"their economic dealings," the Welsh "could
be characterized as both family-oriented
yeomen farmers and competitive en-
trepreneurs whose investments hastened
the development of industrial capitalism
in their rural Ohio community. Their
deeply religious values both constrained
their economic behavior and facilitated
their success in the American capitalist
system" (p. xxi).
In America, the Welsh advanced as many
became land owners rather than tenant
farmers. However, they chose land
similar to that of Wales and thus sacrificed
206 OHIO HISTORY
additional opportunities as commercial
farmers. In southeastern Ohio the Welsh
immigrants found the hilly land that
allowed them to recreate their European farm-
ing experience. The Welsh commitment to
farming did not, however, rule out in-
dustry. Knowles traces the path of the
various Welsh groups through Britain and
finally to Ohio. Laborers could work in
the iron industry of southeast Wales; after
immigration the farmers of Jackson and
Gallia counties could draw on industrial
experience.
The Welsh competed with the American
iron masters of the Hanging Rock Iron
Region by blending industry and
agriculture. The Welsh raised capital for the
Jefferson and Globe iron furnaces by
deeding land to the iron plantations to pro-
vide raw materials, thus providing the
furnaces with wood for charcoal and clearing
farm land. In return for the land, the
farmers became stockholders in the furnace
and shared in future profits. Local
ministers and commercial farmers provided the
leadership for the furnace ventures and
the businesses resembled the organization
of their churches.
Knowles point that the "debate over
rural economic transformations has tended
to analyze social structure and conflict
in terms that set economic and culture in
opposition to one another," but we
"might find more examples of ways in which
culture and economy reinforced one
another if we look at places where capitalism
developed in the absence of overt
conflict" is well taken (p. 257). While I would
agree that historians are too often
drawn to dramatic watershed events, it is not en-
tirely accurate to describe the Hanging
Rock Iron Region as lacking overt con-
flict. Indeed, her research would
indicate that there was less conflict at the Welsh
furnaces than in some of the other
furnace communities in the area, perhaps a dif-
ference explainable by the importance of
religion in the communities. Although
the Hanging Rock Iron Region lacked the
same level of strikes as in the nation as
a whole, there were conflicts over
community resources, company housing, and
the development of unions. Maybe this is
one of the differences between urban
and rural industry?
None of this is meant to detract from Calvinists
Incorporated. Knowles makes
good use of the often sparse
documentation, relying on government statistics and
making extensive use of newspaper
biographies and obituaries. It is her thorough
and creative use of sparse documentation
that allows us to understand better the
Welsh migration to Ohio.
Ohio Historical Society Phillip G.
Payne
Kentucky: A Portrait in Paradox,
1900-1950, By James C. Klotter.
(Frankfort,
Kentucky: Kentucky Historical Society,
1996. x + 424p.; notes, illustrations,
index. $38.00.)
Although the mystique evoked by "My
Old Kentucky Home," the beloved state
song, has been enshrined in the hearts
and minds of Kentuckians, the state has in
truth been a land of contrasts. In the
first half of the twentieth century the
Bluegrass horse country, the Louisville
metropolitan area, and the Appalachian
counties constituted three distinct
sections. Each had its own historical, ethnic,
and cultural milieu and was bound to the
other sections by limited ties. John Fox
Jr., and James Lane Allen, two of the
state's most perceptive writers of fiction,
noted at the turn of the century a
well-nigh unbridgeable gulf between the
Bluegrass aristocracy and the state's
eastern mountaineers. The Louisville area
Book Reviews 207
appeared to be most attuned to the goals
and ideals of the New South, but it, too,
retained strong ties to its past.
Klotter does not impose any dominant motif upon
the various parts of the state, but he
identifies important statewide patterns that af-
fected all sections and shaped their
development in the half-century with which his
book is concerned.
One of Klotter's major themes lies in
his contention that the first half of the
twentieth century was marked by both
great challenges and golden opportunities
for Kentucky. One of the state's
tragedies, however, lay in the failure of its leaders
to grapple effectively with the
challenges or to seize the opportunities for much-
needed changes. Consequently, Kentucky
failed to keep pace with other states,
even the Southern states, in many vital
matters.
Probably no failure of Kentucky's
leaders in the first half of the twentieth cen-
tury brought the state greater notoriety
than their dereliction in dealing quickly
and decisively to end the violence that
erupted in the state with disturbing fre-
quency. In 1900, just as the new century
was near, violence reached the top level
of power with the killing of
Governor-elect William Goebel in front of the state
capitol four days before he was to be
inaugurated. In the Black Patch War, which
began in 1902 and raged for several
years, western Kentucky tobacco growers
joined with others along the northern
border of Tennessee in armed conflict with
powerful outside business interests,
whom they accused of actions threatening ruin
to tobacco farmers. Later, Harlan County
coal miners fought with equal intensity
against mighty coal companies that
seemed bent upon reducing the miners to pe-
onage. In eastern Kentucky, an
assortment of bloody feuds, , arising from clash-
ing political ambitions, business
rivalries, and family vendettas, were often fueled
by copious amounts of liquor and were brought
to national attention through
tabloid-type journalism. The failure of
the commonwealth to maintain peace and
dignity within its borders was, in the
minds of many of its citizens and other
Americans, one of the darkest stains
upon its history in the first half of the twen-
tieth century.
Quite properly, Klotter devotes special
attention to education, an ongoing need
in Kentucky and one of the state's most
awesome responsibilities. Sadly,
Kentucky failed to discharge that
obligation in a commendable manner. By nearly
every criterion used in judging
educational quality and achievement. Kentucky
ranked low among the states, and even
among states of the South. As late as
1929, only one-third of its counties
provided a high school for African-American
students. One report in 1943 placed
Kentucky fortieth among the states in per-
centage of income spent on education.
Klotter asserts that the people of Kentucky
certainly desired better educational
opportunities for their children, but they bore
some culpability for their state's
plight because of their unwillingness to pay for
improvement.
Some of Klotter's most severe criticisms
of Kentucky during the first half of the
twentieth century fall upon its
politics. In its first decades, Presidents Theodore
Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and
Woodrow Wilson and other national leaders
were in the vanguard of reform movements
and helped spur numerous states to ac-
tion. Kentucky, however, failed to
capitalize on the reform spirit sweeping the
country and remained anchored to the old
ways. Klotter places much of the blame
for the state's inertia upon Democrats
who were mired down in factionalism and
die-hard Republicans. He contends that
both were small-minded and concerned
only with matters of immediate interest.
Moreover, he finds that even some of the
advocates of reform were lacking in zeal
to introduce more democracy into gov-
ernment, make elected officials more
responsible to the public, promote more
208 OHIO HISTORY
honest and ethical governments, render
better public service, control corporations
and monopolies, enact child labor
legislation, enforce prohibition laws, extend
the suffrage to women, and approve other
substantive changes sought by genuine
reformers.
Fortunately for Kentucky, the effects of
the Great Depression, the success of
New Deal philosophy in changing the role
of government in promotion of human
welfare, and the impact of World War II
opened another window of opportunity and
gave the commonwealth another chance to
adapt to the twentieth century.
Kentucky: A Portrait in Paradox is well researched and written with the assurance
and clarity that comes only from a
proven scholar.
West Virginia University Otis K.
Rice
Institute of Tecnology
Washington's Partisan War, 1775-1783.
By Mark V. Kwasny. (Kent, Ohio: The
Kent State University Press, 1996. xv +
425p.; illustrations, notes, bibliogra-
phy, index. $35.00.)
Mark Kwasny's Washington's Partisan War
provides an answer to those stu-
dents of the Revolutionary War who may
wonder how the small Continental Army
managed by itself to keep larger,
better-trained British forces in check for more
than eight years. Kwasny's response: it
didn't. The Continental Army was con-
stantly aided by militia forces which
supplemented the strength of the regulars and
also acted independently, harassing and
annoying British forces at every opportu-
nity. Ignored and often maligned by
military historians who concentrate over-
whelmingly on the Continental Army, the
revolutionary militias take center stage
in Kwasny's study.
That the American Revolution was a
partisan war in some respects few would
deny, and historians have chronicled
this type of warfare in the Southern states.
But Kwasny concentrates on an area in
which conventional warfare and the
Continental Army supposedly
dominated-the Central Atlantic states of New
York, New Jersey and Connecticut. There
he finds that the militia played an indis-
pensable role in supporting the
operations conducted by George Washington. The
militia not only supported the Army
directly, but also operated independently in
small units to harass and oppose British
campaigns and excursions. Moreover, it
helped to defend coastal towns and
frequently launched raids and attacks against
British detachments and outposts.
Kwasny characterizes this small-unit
warfare as partisan war and suggests that
such activities aided Washington's
efforts considerably. Washington, Kwasny
admits, had to learn on the job how to
utilize militia troops effectively, discover-
ing early in the war that it was not
feasible to mobilize large numbers of militia to
augment his army directly. He learned to
use them in small parties, often with de-
tachments of Continentals to aid them.
At the same time, however, he conserved
Continentals by using the militia for local defense whenever possible.
Throughout the war Washington preferred
Continentals, but he learned to use mili-
tia to best advantage, one reason why he
was "the great leader of the war, consis-
tent, yet willing to learn from past
events."
Washington's Partisan War ably proves most of its contentions. Readers
schooled in the traditional military
histories will be impressed at the constant
flurry of small-unit actions that
characterized periods of the war often thought of
Book Reviews 209
as static-an impression previously
receivable only indirectly through such
sources as the casualty lists in Howard
Peckham's The Toll of Independence.
Kwasny is less effective in
demonstrating their strategic effect on the British; here
he is generally reduced to quoting
postwar justifications by British generals, justi-
fications that often refer to the large
amounts of militia at the rebels' disposal.
Perhaps the most striking feature of Washington's
Partisan War is its depiction
of Washington's relations with the
leaders of Connecticut, New York and New
Jersey. Students of the Revolutionary
War are all too familiar with conflicts be-
tween the Continental Army and the
Continental Congress, and between
Washington and various subordinates. But
Washington and the various war gov-
ernors with whom he had to deal were
able to maintain surprisingly cooperative
and unexpectedly effective relationships
with each other. These relationships in-
dicate an area of wartime leadership
which historians have largely neglected.
There are, however, areas which Kwasny
himself neglects in his study of the
Revolutionary militia. Washington's
Partisan War, first and last, is a study of
military operations. The militia are
considered only in their role as soldiers and
only through the lens of military
campaigns. Thus the institutional and social
mechanisms affecting militia service and
mobilization-including class conflict,
compensation and equalizing the burdens
of military service are simply not dis-
cussed. Nor are the effects of militia
service on families and communities ex-
plored. Perhaps more surprisingly
downplayed is the role that the militia played
in controlling and limiting Tory
sentiment. If the militia served in a partisan war,
then this sort of very irregular warfare
was definitely a part of it. Lastly, it should
be noted that the focus on Washington,
while understandable, provides a peculiar
distortion to the nature of the warfare
described in the study, for the more the war
was indeed a partisan war, the less it
was Washington's war. Washington had lit-
tle control over small-scale operations
and raids, still less over independent ac-
tion against Tories. The true leaders in
partisan war are the relatively junior offi-
cers and men who remain mostly anonymous
in Kwasny's study.
Despite these shortcomings, there can be
no doubt that Washington's Partisan
War provides an extremely useful addition to the military history
of the
Revolutionary War. No reader will be
able to go back to the traditional works that
focus almost exclusively on the
Continental Army without wondering where the
rest of the war went.
Institute for Intergovernmental
Research Mark
Pitcavage
Explicit & Authentic Acts:
Amending the U.S. Constitution, 1776-1995.
By
David E. Kyvig. (Lawrence: University
Press of Kansas, 1996. xx + 604p.;
notes, bibliography, index. $55.00.)
In Explicit and Authentic Acts, Professor
David Kyvig of the University of
Akron examines the substantive attempts
to amend the constitutions of the United
States from 1776 to the present. The two
key words in that statement are substan-
tive and attempts. Kyvig does not
examine every proposed amendment to the
Constitution. Neither does he restrict
his focus to amendments adopted. Instead,
Kyvig focuses on those efforts to revise
the Constitution which attracted consid-
erable (widespread) support, although
they may not have proven successful.
Explicit and Authentic Acts is a well researched, logically presented, and com-
prehensive work. Kyvig examines more
than two hundred years of United States
210 OHIO HISTORY
history, presenting a readable narrative
and thoughtful survey of the issues of con-
stitutional revision from the
Declaration of Independence to the calls for a consti-
tutional convention and amendments in
the 1990s.
Kyvig has taken on an enormous task,
which he has executed well. His exami-
nation, for example, of the creation and
adoption of the first ten amendments is
well rooted in the sources. His
presentation of the data is solid and his conclu-
sions well reasoned. Likewise, his
assessment of the post Civil War amendments
demonstrates a mastery of the primary
and secondary sources, a solid understand-
ing of the issues, and is an excellent
overview of the constitutional changes con-
sidered and the narrower ones adopted.
Kyvig is also judicious in his inclusion
of proposed amendments that did not, or
have not yet at least, met the
requirements for inclusion in the fundamental law of
this nation. Kyvig examines both proposed
amendments that have not to date
overcome the obstacles of congressional
and state legislative super majority re-
quirements. In examining, for example,
the proposed amendments restricting
child labor or guaranteeing equal
protection without regard to gender, Kyvig
makes clear that the obstacles to
constitutional inclusion are considerable.
Likewise, the proposed amendment to
require a balanced budget, which has not yet
secured congressional approval, will
face considerable difficulties if presented to
the states.
In sum, Explicit and Authentic Acts is
the best kind of constitutional history. It
provides us with much data on a complex
and recurring question, and encourages us
to explore in our own minds the
significance of that history to the issues of con-
stitutional life today.
University of Texas at San Antonio Steven R. Boyd
The Strange Deaths of President
Harding. By Robert H. Ferrell. (Columbia:
University of Missouri Press, 1996. x +
203p.; illustrations, notes, bibliogra-
phy, index. $24.95.)
In this short, thoroughly researched
volume, historian Robert Ferrell seeks to
dismiss some of the rumors and scandals
that have marked discussions of Warren
G. Harding's administration, and account
for why those dark secrets have contin-
ued to mar Harding's reputation. Simply
put, Ferrell contends that the twenty-
ninth president's reputation died some
unseemly deaths shortly after he met with
his own, and Harding's legacy has never
recovered from those blows, as evidenced
in the regularity with which he is
placed last in historians' polls of the presidents.
The book's opening chapter provides a full account of Harding's death,
from
cardiovascular disease, at the San
Francisco Palace Hotel on August 2, 1923, and
the outpouring of public grief that
accompanied the passage of his body back to
Washington, D.C. Ferrell establishes
clearly enough that Harding died of a heart
attack and that the public was mightily
saddened by his passing. Indeed, one sus-
pects that of twentieth century public
outpourings of grief for American presi-
dents, only the deaths of Franklin D.
Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy elicited a re-
sponse exceeding that which accompanied
Harding's (but then, it is worth remem-
bering that those two and William
McKinley were the only other presidents to die
in office in the present century, and
the epitaph, "his death prompted more public
grief than did McKinley's" would
hardly enhance a past president's legacy).
The book's next chapter traces the
genesis and dissemination of the theory that
Book Reviews 211
Harding was poisoned, either by himself,
in an effort to escape impending scan-
dal, or by his wife. The author analyzes
the two works that promoted the poison
theory-Samuel Hopkins Adams' novel Revelry (1926) and
Gaston B. Means's
The Strange Deaths of President
Harding (1930) (from which he draws
the present
volume's title)-and dismisses them and
laments their enduring influence.
Chapter three takes on the allegations
of Nan Britton that her child was, as her in-
fluential 1927 volume declared, The
President's Daughter. This is probably the
volume's weakest chapter, since the
reader is left with the sense that the president
was certainly engaged in some extracurricular
activities, even if Nan Britton's
daughter was not his own. Ferrell
engages in some interesting analysis and some
remarkable detective work in the
chapter, but seems to be trying just a little too
hard to explode rumors of Harding's
alleged infidelity (especially since such infi-
delity-with Carrie Phillips-is
highlighted in the book's closing chapter).
Chapter four does a stronger job of
absolving Harding of direct responsibility
for the various other scandals that
marked his administration, most notably
Teapot Dome, Charles Forbes' looting of
the Veteran's Administration, and
Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty's
failure to effectively prosecute those
crimes. On the other matter of his
connection to these scandals, however,
Harding's reputation is on shaky ground
regardless of one's conclusions. If he
was unaware of these unseemly
developments then he was innocent of complicity,
but was a mere dupe of his appointees,
who are shown to be none too bright them-
selves in the conducting of their
shenanigans. Ferrell concludes that
"[t]he
Harding scandals lacked large historical
importance" and Harding knew little about
them (p. 133).
The book's final chapter,
"Aftermath," is the most interesting. The author sur-
veys the historiography on the Harding
administration and concludes, correctly, I
think, that Robert K. Murray's 1969
biography of Harding is the best, most bal-
anced work available. Ferrell is highly
critical of the less favorable portraits pre-
sented by Clinton W. Gilbert, Henry L.
Mencken, and William Allen White in the
1920s, and by Frederick Lewis Allen,
Allan Nevins, Alice Roosevelt Longworth,
Mark Sullivan, and Adams (in his second
Harding book) in the 1930s. Yet Ferrell
is, on occasion, almost Menckenesque in
his criticism of those Harding bashers.
Their cumulative impact (in conjunction
with more scandals that have surrounded
the Harding Papers) have, he contends,
stacked the historiographic odds against
the Harding legacy.
Ferrell concludes that in more recent
decades historians have failed to examine
Harding's presidency with the care they
afford to other topics and other presidents.
Perhaps so; yet the most logical
solution to the lamentable legacy of Warren G.
Harding would, one suspects, be a
full-scale re-examination of the achievements of
his life and his administration. Ferrell
has done an excellent job of explaining
why Harding has been so maligned by
journalists and historians, but much more
will need to be done for Harding to be
promoted from the rank of "weakest presi-
dents." Perhaps Ferrell himself
will undertake this task.
Widener University David M.
Wrobel
The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring
the Ordeal of Combat. By Earl J. Hess.
(Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of
Kansas, 1997. xii + 244p.; illustra-
tions, notes, bibliography, index.
$29.95.)
212 OHIO
HISTORY
Civil War veteran Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Jr., once declared that he and his fel-
low Billy Yanks had shared the
"incommunicable experience of war." Such senti-
ments are often dismissed as the special
pleadings of self-justification. But Earl J.
Hess's new analysis lends a considerable
measure of credence to the chief justice's
rhetoric. The Union Soldier in Battle
offers a well-grounded interpretation of the
Civil War battle experience, Northern
combatants' strategies for coping with the
shock of their engagements, and
veterans' postwar attitudes.
Employing a broader base of letters,
diaries, and memoirs than some recent, po-
litically correct tomes on soldier morale,
Hess reconstructs battle as a vivid, sur-
real, and "comprehensive physical
experience of the senses" (p. 47). Thus, Yanks
at Gettysburg understood the sights,
sounds, smells, and other elements like fear
and determination on a visceral level
far removed from rational discourse. In a
profound way the essence of battle, then
and now, truly is incommunicable.
Abstractions of language necessarily
diminish the totality of sensations which
Hess catalogues. For the soldier and the
civilian full comprehension of battle is
elusive.
But Billy Yank found a way. For most of
1861 America battle was an alien and
withering ordeal. Hess determines,
however, that the Northern soldiers' "loss of
innocence . . . did not necessarily
bring disillusionment" (p. 197). Instead, the
soldier generally integrated battle's
sordid, chaotic strangeness into a mindset
which enabled him to withstand the
cumulative traumas. And Hess excels in de-
scribing Billy Yank's combination of
ideology, adventurism, cultural norms,
comradeship, and romanticism. With Michael Barton (1981) and Gerald F.
Linderman (1987), Hess locates courage
as the center of this internal universe.
(Also orbiting nearby were manliness,
religion, and honor, all propelled by po-
tent moral fervor.)
Yet Hess goes further and emphatically
underscores the importance of Unionist
ideology. For the boys in blue such
tenets "linked the military struggle to funda-
mentally important goals" worth all
the blood and gore (pp. 98-99). What helped
the soldier to hold on was faith in the
cause and the surrogate family of his com-
pany or regiment. The intimate bonds of
these small, rough, but comprehensible
groups formed a kind of collective will
which supported the individual and equated
the fates of unit and nation. The
timelessness of the patterns identified by Hess re-
inforces his case.
Years after Appomattox but still in the
clutches of the dark, youthful romanti-
cism which linked patriotism and death,
Union veterans published war memoirs.
The vast majority, Hess maintains, still
saw the war in stoic terms, as a dirty job
but one they performed willingly. Here,
Hess directly challenges Linderman's
"modernist view of war" (p.
197). Hess acknowledges that the picture of the sol-
dier as victim might accurately
characterize recent conflicts, but this cynicism
misinterprets the Civil War. On the
contrary, Hess insists, ideology, patriotism,
and religion were taken more seriously
by the premodern army and society of
1861-1865 than by "their
twentieth-century counterparts" (p. 198). Although the
impact of such verities on our present
age is hard to deny, Hess correctly observes
that Civil War soldiers' muzzle-loading
weapons, transportation mostly by foot,
heavily Napoleonic methods, and other
orthodoxies separated them from truly
modern warfare. In battle they fell back
on conventional war making, values, and
social supports. In old age they tried
to shape their legacy within the old parame-
ters.
Hess's brief for the premodernism and
continuity of the Northern soldier ethos
is compelling. His interpretation and
the soldier analyses of Reid Mitchell (1988,
Book Reviews 213
1993) and James M. McPherson (1994,
1997) together reintroduce us to Billy
Yank and the fullness of his character.
Moreover, to paraphrase a well-known
Illinois politician, such works show how
increased devotion to the Northern sol-
dier's cause could have arisen from one
of his great battlefields.
Kentucky Historical Society James Russell Harris
Ironclad Captain: Seth Ledyard Phelps
and the U.S. Navy, 1841-1864. By Jay
Slagle. (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State
University Press, 1997. xvi + 449 p.; il-
lustrations, glossary, notes,
bibliography, and index. $35.00.)
"The sight of the mangled and dying
men which met my eye as I boarded the
ship was sickening." So did Ulysses
S. Grant describe casualties among the crew
of a Union gunboat which had engaged a
Confederate battery on the Mississippi
during the Civil War (Memoirs, 1,
397). One skipper of U.S. Navy ironclads in
that war whose crew suffered similar
casualties was Seth Ledyard Phelps, an ambi-
tious and skilled regular officer who
excelled at riverine operations.
Jay Slagle, the great-great grandson of
Seth Phelps, has produced a biography
of his ancestor taken in large part from
a substantial private collection of Phelps'
letters held by the family. He has also
consulted corroborating contemporary ac-
counts and modern historiography.
Seth Phelps was a native of Chardon,
Ohio, who entered the Navy as a midship-
man in 1841, at age 17. Learning his
profession at sea on square riggers, the
young man first saw service suppressing
the slave trade off Africa where he wrote
with youthful arrogance, but with a keen
eye for observation, of African-American
expatriates in Liberia. He was patrolling the Central American coast
when
William Walker was filibustering in
Nicaragua, and he served on blockade duty in
the Caribbean during the Mexican War.
These were the years when Phelps ma-
tured, mastered his craft in both sail
and steam, and married. This is also when
Phelps grew to resent the ossified
promotion system of the Navy and what he saw
as an officer corps top-heavy with
tenured incompetents blocking advancement of
bright younger men like himself.
The Civil War brought Phelps to the
Mississippi and its tributaries, command-
ing ironclads. He bombarded forts, ran
supplies to the Army, and provided com-
munications to troops ashore. He fought
Confederate ironclads, maintained con-
trol of rivers, and captured enemy
ships. Phelps was one of the first naval officers
to conduct raids deep into Confederate
territory along the Cumberland and
Tennessee Rivers. He broke up
Confederate musters, intimidated enemy towns,
and aided Unionists in western
Tennessee. Given temporary command of small
flotillas, he loaded soldiers and
conducted joint amphibious operations deep in
Dixie, keeping the Confederates guessing
where he would strike next. For a time
in 1863, he was in temporary command of
the Mississippi Squadron, operating
between Cairo and Vicksburg.
But this was Phelps' personal high-water
mark. Ambitious for promotion and
permanent command of the Mississippi
Squadron, he lobbied aggressively, often
depreciating his competitors. He was
also harsh with subordinates, earning cen-
sure from his superior. With few
political connections and an abrasive manner,
Phelps incurred the displeasure of
Secretary of the Navy Giddeon Wells. Command
of the squadron went to a rival and
Phelps pinned his hopes on command of the
USS Eastport, a large, powerful, but slow ironclad recently
refurbished by the
214 OHIO HISTORY
Navy after its capture by Phelps from
the Confederates. But the Eastport was
jinxed, technically unreliable despite
Phelps' considerable skills, and missem-
ployed by the Navy in the disastrous Red
River campaign where her deep draft and
cumbersome handling eventually forced
Phelps to abandon and destroy her, barely
avoiding capture. Bitter over the loss
of the Eastport, at his failure of promotion,
and despairing of his career, Phelps
resigned in 1864 to pursue the life of a busi-
nessman and diplomat.
What emerges from Slagle's account is a
portrait of a brave, bold, and techni-
cally masterful officer who gave
distinguished service to his country in a career
that spanned more than twenty years. But
the picture is also of an arrogant man,
ambitious, contemptuous, and sometimes
conniving, who quit in a fit of pique be-
fore the war was over.
This is not a definitive history of
river warfare during the Civil War, but it does
not claim to be. This an engaging and
lively account of one man's experiences in
the war that reads like an adventure
yarn, yet Slagle is true to his sources. The ex-
tensive quotations from private
manuscripts will be useful to researchers. This is a
good read, suitable for both the general
reader and the scholar.
The Ohio State University Thomas C. Mulligan
Temperance & Racism: John Bull,
Johnny Reb, and the Good Templars. By
David
M. Fahey. (Lexington: The University
Press of Kentucky, 1996. xii + 209p.;
notes, appendix, bibliography, index.
$39.95.)
David M. Fahey's study of the
Independent Order of Good Templars (IOGT), a
fraternal temperance society, is an
important addition to the scholarship of frater-
nal societies, the temperance movement,
women's history, and African American
history. His voluminous primary sources
include correspondence, newspapers,
Templar records, photographs, and other
data gleaned from numerous repositories
in the United States, the United
Kingdom, and elsewhere.
Founded in the "burned-over
district" of New York in 1852, the Templars were
largely concentrated in the northern
United States and Ontario until after the Civil
War. Southerners began to join in the
postwar era as growing concerns about the
evils of drink permeated the entire
country. By the 1870s Templar lodges had
spread throughout the world, with their
greatest strength in England and the
British Isles. In 1902 the group changed
its name to the International Order of
Good Templars to reflect this
internationalism. Fahey focuses upon the United
States and England during the 1870s-
880s, however, with occasional references
to other countries.
Fahey argues that the most unique
feature of the IOGT was "universalism, which
in theory welcomed into membership all
teetotalers committed to prohibition" (p.
2). Although a few lodges in the North
operationalized the doctrine in the 1850s,
admitting both women and blacks on an
equal basis with white men, universalism
became a major issue in the postbellum
United States. Templar lodges continued
to welcome women as members-although
usually without offering them parity
with men-but rarely did those in the
U.S. admit blacks. Those in the Old South
barred African Americans altogether or
only admitted them into segregated lodges.
By contrast, the English and other
Europeans generally favored recruiting
additional black members. The issue of
black membership in the IOGT undermined
the organization, eventually resulting
in the great schism of 1876-1887. Other
Book Reviews 215
conflicts, particularly those relating
to the respective power of the United States
and English contingents within the
international body, also contributed to this
break.
Fahey indicates that two major
contingents developed in the 1870s.
Kentuckian John J. Hickman led a faction
dominated by an Old South credo which
denounced equalitarian social relations
between the races, and therefore opposed
blacks as members. Englishman Joseph
Malins, a former abolitionist, headed a
contingent which argued for inclusion of
blacks. Significantly, the Hickmanites,
initially strong only in the American
South, had gained the support of northern
white Templars by the mid-1870s; thus,
they were a majority in the United States.
Malinites dominated in England and the
rest of Great Britain. After eleven years of
fighting, the two groups reconciled in
1887, with the former adversaries agreeing
to accept segregated black lodges.
Discussion of the schism dominates the
book, accounting for four of its six
chapters; the major portion of a fifth
also is devoted to the subject. Some readers,
probably academicians with a strong
interest in associationism and related topics,
will find the intricacies of the
trans-Atlantic conflict fascinating. Others may find
the details of the ideological and
personality conflicts, as well as the numerous
compromise proposals, less compelling.
A few questions need further discussion.
Fahey speaks of the militancy of the
Templars, but does not sufficiently
amplify the point. What militant actions did
they take, and what were their
consequences? Indeed, what impact did the group
have upon the larger society? One also
wonders why the Templars were less suc-
cessful than other voluntary
associations in maintaining their numerical strength
among blacks. Fahey's explanation is
unsatisfactory in that he maintains that
African Americans' poverty, low
educational levels, and dearth of leaders were the
major obstacles. But these factors apply
equally to all black voluntary associa-
tions, fraternal and otherwise, yet many
lasted for years, including into the pre-
sent era.
Southern Illinois University at
Edwardsville Shirley J.
Portwood
Charles G. Finney and the Spirit of
American Evangelicalism. By Charles E.
Hambrick-Stowe. (Grand Rapids, Michigan:
William B. Eerdmans Publishing
Co., 1996. xvii + 317p.; illustrations,
bibliographic essay, index. $15.00 pa-
per.)
Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe in Charles
G. Finney and the Spirit of American
Evangelicalism presents an in-depth analysis of the evangelicalist's
place in
nineteenth century religious development
and thought. The author takes his read-
ers on a journey of Finney's religious
and ministerial career beginning with his
conversion in 1821. Through this
approach, a clear picture emerges of Finney's
preaching style which he perfected in
western New York. Hambrick-Stowe utilizes
the career of Finney to explore American
evangelicalism and concentrates on
other elements of the nineteenth century
including reform and education. In this
volume, Hambrick-Stowe dissects Finney's
theological development and explains
his debt to various strands of
Protestantism including Calvinism and Wesleyanism
and also positions him in the Old
School-New School divide. The author connects
Finney's religious thought with Jonathan
Edwards, Samuel Hopkins, Timothy
Dwight, and other key figures in
American Protestantism. This book enhances our
216 OHIO HISTORY
understanding of the maturation of
Finney as both a theologian and a preacher. As
one of the leading ministers of the
antebellum period, his influence was felt from
the East Coast, where he attracted large
audiences, to the evangelical community
of Oberlin, Ohio.
Although Hambrick-Stowe completely deals
with Finney's religious growth,
more attention might have been given to
his stance on reform. While the author
cogently conveys the importance of
disinterested benevolence in Finney's
preaching, he might have included more
information on the methods Finney em-
ployed to encourage his followers'
participation in reform activities, especially
during his early career in the
burned-over district and New York City.
Additionally, Hambrick-Stowe needs to
provide more thorough discussion on the
role of women in Finney's ministry and
in nineteenth century revivalism.
In detailing the growth of Finney's
career, greater attention to Finney's rela-
tionship with his wife Lydia, including
her role in his ministry, and his relation-
ship with his children, could have been
provided. The author does a fine job of
defining the part played by Finney's
second wife, Elizabeth, in extending his min-
istry to England and Scotland.
Furthermore, Hambrick-Stowe solidly deciphers
the Oberlin sanctification doctrine and
other complex issues.
One of the noticeable strengths of this
biography is Hambrick-Stowe's sweep-
ing interpretations of nineteenth
century culture with emphasis on Finney as a ma-
jor figure during the Jacksonian era.
The author portrays the famous evangelical-
ist as displaying some key elements
identifiable with Jacksonian America such as
Finney's emphasis on the individual's
role in salvation and his entrepreneurial
spirit in establishing his ministerial
career. However, the author makes a power-
ful case against labeling Finney as a
Jacksonian Democrat. Finney saw a major
difference between Jacksonians and
himself as he did not live his life pursuit of
self-interest, which he classified as
sinful, but instead dedicated his life in labor
for God. "Jacksonianism was for Finney the apotheosis of sin"
(p. 92). He did
not support Jackson, nor did he promote
politics as an avenue for change. He be-
lieved that the way to change society
was through the conversion of people's
hearts.
With such interpretations the biography
provided enjoyable, insightful reading
and should interest any scholar
concerned about American Protestant development
and Finney's place in it. By using a
wide array of manuscript collections and pub-
lished sources, Hambrick-Stowe has
written an admirable account of Finney's role
in the religious development of the
United States. Also, the volume includes sev-
eral illustrations that afford another
glimpse into Finney's life. Hambrick-Stowe
makes a significant contribution to the
literature on Finney with the publication
of this book and adds to our knowledge
of the religious and social forces at work in
nineteenth century America.
Cuyahoga Community College Catherine M. Rokicky
The Evangelical War against Slavery
and Caste: The Life and Times of John G.
Fee. By Victor B. Howard. (Cranbury, New Jersey: Susquehanna
University
Press, 1996. 262p.; notes,
bibliography, index. $41.50.)
The book's main arguments are that John
Fee's zeal was directed at both slavery
and race prejudice, and that the basis
of his reforming zeal was evangelical faith.
The "life and times" approach
of the author is both chronological, giving the
Book Reviews 217
reader a sense of development and
movement in Fee's thinking and activities, and
also analytical, comparing Fee's
positions with that of others involved in anti-
slavery religion and Kentucky
politics. Drawing on primary and
secondary
sources on Kentucky and antebellum
reform, Howard portrays a reformer whose
moral intensity burned as strongly as
that of William Lloyd Garrison, but who
shared political instincts with Liberty
Party members who agreed that moral pur-
pose needed to be implemented through
political, legislative power.
Fee's associations with leading reform
politicians like Cassius Clay, Salmon
Chase, and Gerrit Smith make obvious the
potential importance of Fee's work.
Howard describes how Fee worked with
Clay in forcing Kentucky legislators to
consider proposals for the abolition of
slavery in the state, and with Gerrit Smith
to implement American Missionary
Association (AMA) missionary work among
Kentucky slaves and slaveholders. This
work is all the more impressive when, as
Howard demonstrates, Fee accomplished it
in the face of threatening, sometimes
violent opposition.
When the narrative falters, it seems due
in part to an excess of enthusiasm for
Fee. Howard asserts that Fee "was
the most important and influential reformer to
wage war against slavery in the South
during the nineteenth century" (p. 19).
While Howard shows Fee displaying great
moral courage, the reader is left wonder-
ing why Howard judges Fee more
influential than Cassius Clay, arguably his clos-
est associate. Readers who want a
clearer picture of Fee in relationship to other
southern abolitionists should better
turn to Stanley Harrold's Abolitionists & the
South, 1831-1861 (Lexington, 1995), which judges Clay "the most
influential" of
southern abolitionists (p. 128). Harrold
too sees John Fee as an important figure,
but mostly in Kentucky, arguing that
"Fee's churches served as the core of the Free
Soil, Republican, and Radical Abolition
party organizations" in Kentucky and
that Fee and Clay carefully coordinated
his free church services with Clay's politi-
cal rallies.
Howard's book documents the constant
traveling, preaching, writing, and orga-
nizing against mob violence which Fee's
abolitionism entailed. Perhaps most
impressive is the stamina of Fee. His
mission to end race prejudice began in the
1840s with the planting of free
churches, those who excluded neighborhood
slaveholders, and became a crusade which
lasted through the Civil War years. Fee
and his associates organized meetings
and distribution of religious and political
tracts in Kentucky. How many counties
were targeted and how broad were Fee's
free church associations is less clear,
since there is no chart or map marking free
church and AMA meetings or associates.
Since both free churches and tract distri-
bution required financing from outside
the state, Howard is at least correct in sug-
gesting that Fee's contacts outside of
Kentucky were extensive. Whether these
contacts enabled Fee to influence fellow
members of the American Missionary
Association, the tiny Abolition Party,
or even the Free Soil Party remains unclear.
What is clear is that the AMA provided
the most important and long-lasting sup-
port for Fee and other free church
organizers.
Newspapers in other states covered Fee's
activities, for example, when Fee trav-
eled to antislavery and political
meetings in neighboring Ohio and occasionally
as far east as Boston. These contacts
deserve further study, since they suggest that
Fee and the AMA were at the center of a
sustained attack on slavery that was both
church-centered and interregional,
qualities which characterized the Garrisonian
abolitionists only in the very early
years of organizing. To assess the breadth and
depth of the influence exerted by Fee
and the AMA, especially outside of
Kentucky, future scholars will need to
examine closely the membership and activi-
218 OHIO HISTORY
ties of reform societies, political and
religious, in the communities (many of them
in Ohio) targeted for preaching or tract
distribution by Fee.
By covering the entire span of Fee's
long life, Howard demonstrates the conti-
nuity between antebellum work in
founding free churches and fighting slavery and
Fee's efforts, beginning before the war
and continuing until his death, to create
settlements, churches, and schools, most
notably Berea College, which were free
of the old racial "caste"
system. What is lost is a clear sense of which of Fee's
projects are major and minor. Only by
turning to an earlier book of Howard's,
Black Liberation in Kentucky (1983), does one get a clear sense that blacks, not
Fee, initiated many of the religious and
political meetings held for Kentucky
blacks during the war, and that he was
not a leading organizer.
Despite the rich detail incorporated
into this biography. Fee remains a some-
what elusive figure. Howard describes
Fee as a poor public speaker (p. 29), and yet
the reader can also infer that Fee was a
popular speaker, judged by contemporaries
to speak with "considerable power
and eloquence" (p. 66). Placing Fee in the
scholarly taxonomy used to classify
abolitionists into either political or moral re-
formers is also impossible, since most
scholars present the moral reformers as
synonymous with the radicals in
Garrison's circle and the more conservative re-
formers as those who pressed for change
through political parties and legislatures.
Howard is obviously using a different
rubric when he labels Fee a "conservative"
for emphasizing "moral suasion"
to convert slave holders (p. 68). In another con-
text Howard employs a different
classifying scheme, showing Fee as no longer
conservative, perhaps even radical, in
demanding "immediate emancipation" and
"political rights and social
equality for blacks." Howard quickly shifts his view-
point again, arguing that "Fee was
not a revolutionist," but someone who kept
within "constitutional means for
ending slavery" (p. 138).
Howard's difficulty in painting a clear
portrait of Fee's position is understand-
able, given the variety of antislavery
views and strategies voiced in his world.
Perhaps Howard would have been wise to
avoid placing Fee on a continuum from
"conservative" to
"revolutionary" and instead follow Harrold's scheme of describ-
ing southern abolitionists in a dynamic
relationship with northern reformers,
sometimes being influenced, other times
influencing a northern organization's
course of action.
Opponents of abortion have presented
themselves as the moral heirs of aboli-
tionists, and in judging John Fee and
the AMA, the temptation is to see his activ-
ity, so deeply rooted in theological and
church commitments, as the moral equiva-
lent of its modern cousin, the Christian
Coalition. One clear difference, however,
was that Fee's passion and political
activity crossed social and racial barriers ac-
cepted by the vast majority of his
contemporaries; he aimed to overcome these
barriers by creating free churches and
schools where all could worship and learn.
During his lifetime, and especially
during his wartime and postbellum years, Fee
presided over these interracial
"free churches," and Berea College welcomed both
black and white students. After Fee's
death, however, state laws and social pres-
sures forcibly whitened Berea, undoing
most of Fee's work and making it that
much more difficult for scholars, much
less a general reader, to read and compre-
hend the nature of John Fee and his many
associations.
Ohio Wesleyan University Deborah Bingham Van
Broekhoven