Book Reviews

BOOK REVIEWS

The Social Sciences in Historical Study: A Report of the Committee on Historiography. [Social Science Research Council, Bulletin 64.] (New- York: Social Science Research Council, 1954. x, 181 p. Indices. Cloth, $2.25; paper, $1.75.) In 1946 the Social Science Research Council published as Bulletin 54 a report by the Committee on Historiography under the title Theory and Practice in Historical Study. The widespread attention it attracted among scholars is analyzed and summarized by Jeannette P. Nichols in the first chapter in this new report. The Committee on Historiography making the new report is not identical with the earlier Committee. Three of its members, Dr. Nichols, Shepard B. Clough, and Thomas C. Cochran, served on both Committees. To them have been added Samuel Hugh Brockunier, Hugh G. J. Aitken, and Bert James Loewenberg. Although the initial drafts of the seven chapters were prepared by individual members, the final report is a joint efTbrt to which all on the Committee contributed and for which all are responsible. It is reasonably safe to predict that this report will not have as much of an impact on the profession as did Bulletin 54, nor will it evoke as much discussion. It is narrower in scope and less concerned with the fundamental presuppositions of history in its all-inclusive sense. Admittedly, the so- called social sciences probably contain the most used and most useful knowledge for the historian, and certainly the Committee is justified in restricting its study to a partial approach to history, especially since it labels it as such. Yet a reminder that the social science historian is a lesser being than the historian is in order. The historian must have the effrontery to assert that it is his task to synthesize all knowledge and to tell the complete story of man in all his activities and aspects. Social science history, like patriotism, is not enough. Although the Committee is aware of this, there is an ever-present assumption, like the beating of the drums in Eugene O'Neill's Emperor Jones, that social science history is the complete answer, the total synthesis. Another fact which will detract from the usefulness of the report is the presence of a large number of technical and abstract terms, the meanings of which must be learned. Obviously the historian must understand the language employed in the separate social sciences, if he is to benefit from the specialized knowledge being accumulated in them. This is not easy, since the specialists themselves sometimes disagree on definitions. More- over, the historian, if he is to meet his responsibility, must translate the 506 1955 BOOK REVIEWS 507 technical terms into a common speech which can be understood by the members of all the social sciences and by the general public as well. Not enough of such translation has been done in the report. Most historians will find it necessary, as I did, to shed much mental sweat before they can feel that they understand the technical terms with which the report abounds. This is especially true of the philosophical jargon in Chapter 6. It is also unfortunately exemplified in Chapter 3, the longest chapter in the report and a remarkable tour de force in which various social sciences are surveyed and the most promising areas of development and the areas of most interest to historians are pointed out. The most valuable section of the report, in my opinion, is the final chapter which discusses some of the studies that should result from an application of social science concepts and methods to history. Probably this appeals because, unlike most of the report, it shifts from abstract ideas to specific problems to be investigated. Most of us in the field of history feel secure and at ease only when dealing with specific and concrete facts and ideas. Many more illustrations in the other portions of the report would have added greatly to its effectiveness. Exhortations to ascertain the best current knowledge in other branches of learning and theoretical descriptions of method are apt to have little impact on the practice of historical writing. Yet even in this stimulating chapter there is evidence of an attitude which makes me apprehend a great disservice to history from an abuse or a too- narrow application of the thinking of trie Committee on Historiography. I fear the "social science" approach may dehumanize mankind. After ob- jecting to the synthesis built around great men and events and to the prevailing popular dramatic frame of reference, the report says (p. 160): "This general approach is often valid when applied to the actions of a single individual, but neither narrative nor popular drama is usually suited to the analysis of mass phenomena. While drama will still be found in the conflict and resolution of forces or in group challenge and response, this is likely to be drama on a nonpopular abstract level." I do not subscribe to the great man theory of history. At the same time, I object to seeing great men or all the little men reduced to a decimal point of "mass phenomena" in a "drama on a nonpopular abstract level." There is poetry in life. And the history, or any science, that omits the poetry from life is both untrue and dangerous.

University of Washington W. STULL HOLT

American Heritage. Volume VI, Number 1 (December, 1954). Edited by BRUCE CATTON. (New York: American Heritage Publishing Co., Inc., 1954. 120 p. Illustrations. $2.95 per copy, $ 12.00 per year for six issues.) Let's face it: history, if it is to be read, must be well written and interesting, and, in this picture-loving age, to be interesting it must be illustrated. 508 BOOK REVIEWS October Realizing this, the American Association of State and Local History began publishing American Heritage in 1949 as a quarterly illustrated magazine devoted to the interpretation of the American past. Without adequate financial backing, but with expensive tastes as to format and illustration, it is remarkable that the magazine weathered five volumes. In the meantime, the Society of American Historians began plans for a popular journal of American history, each number to be issued in boards, and succeeded in raising $40,000 to start the enterprise. Then, happily, the two undertakings merged under the sponsorship of the two parent societies and became national in scope. With Bruce Catton, Civil War historian and author of the Pulitzer Prize book A Stillness at Appomattox, as editor, with James Parton as publisher, and with ample financial backing, the new popular journal finally got off on the right foot in December, 1954. It is pleasant to record that, at the present writing, it has approximately 80,000 sub- scribers in addition to the book store sale, and its success seems assured. When we examine the first number of Volume VI we find that the reader gets good value for his money. To begin with, he has before him an 8>£ x 11 inch format with 120 double-column pages, the equivalent of about 250 average book pages, thirty-two illustrations in full color and fifty-nine in black and white. Where else can one get so much magnificence (well laid out, printed and bound in board covers) for so little money? The readability of the magazine is assured by the fact that all of its editors and contributors, even the college professors and professional historians, have had experience as newspapermen. What they say is generally accurate history and is also understandable and interesting to the layman. Since our historic past is made up of the thoughts and actions, the dreams and aspirations of average Americans, as well as those of our national heroes, the field of this magazine is bound to be wide, varied, and pictur- esque. This we learn as we scan the pages of the initial issue. After an elo- quent foreword by the editor, we find thirteen feature articles, eighteen short reviews of current books with brief mention of thirty-three others, and two pages of current historical news. The articles follow one another in a fascinating parade, all written by men who are experts in their fields. The Fall River Line, the old country store, the famous old clubs of New York City; painters of the plains, the Acadian country of Louisiana, the stories of Panamint, "suburb of Hell," and of the burning of Washington during the War of 1812; Theodore Roosevelt's letter describing the funeral of King Edward VII, a reinvestigation of the Civil War treason of General Charles P. Stone, an essay on Henry Ford, the personal reminiscences of Albert Lasker (the first of Allan Nevins' oral history records to be published); a not-too-successful comparison of British and American viewpoints in the writing of history, and the condensed book selection, "The Great River," from Paul Horgan's The Rio Grande—these are the fine and varied fare of the first number of our new popular magazine of American history. 1955 BOOK REVIEWS 509

As it grows in stature, this book-magazine deserves to become one of the most popular journals in our country. We need this magazine in our homes and in our schools, for it brings to the intelligent layman a series of vivid pictures of our past, presented in entertaining fashion by competent historical writers as a protest against the unappetizing fare of many of our historians who, lacking imagination and literary skill, produced their pon- derous volumes mainly for the admiration of their professional colleagues. The New-York Historical Society R. W. G. VAIL

The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century. By BERNARD BAILYN. [Studies in Entrepreneurial History.] (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1955. xiv, 249 p. Illustrations, bibliograph- ical note, index. #4.75.) This book attempts to satisfy a felt want in the historiography of colonial New England. Many special works on New England merchants have already appeared in print—among these are admirable studies of the Pepper- rells, the Browns, and the Hancocks—but until the publication of Professor Bailyn's book no one had attempted to give us a comprehensive picture of the multifarious activities of the men who founded the New England mercantile empire. Although it appears as one of the Harvard Studies in Entrepreneurial History, this book is more than a mere chronicle of the business activities of the New England merchants. Instead, it attempts to picture the merchants in relation to the whole society in which they lived. Thus the author pays considerable attention to the ethical standards and social goals of the merchants, as well as to their relations with the Puritan church, the colonial governments, and the English government. Much of the last half of the book is concerned with the fascinating story of the impact of English im- perial thought and colonial policy on the New England merchants in the years after 1660. In the first part of the book Professor Bailyn presents a concise and lucid account of the beginnings of New England commerce: the early and futile concentration on the fur trade, the attempts to establish some kind of local manufactures, the beginnings of the all-important trade in English manu- factured goods, and the eventual emergence of an export trade in agricul- tural provisions, fish, and lumber products sent to the West Indies and the Wine Islands in the Atlantic to help to pay for imports from England. Thus the author arrives at the important generalization that the final outlines of New England's commerce had pretty much emerged by the middle of the seventeenth century and that subsequent years only saw the filling out of the patterns thus established. Unfortunately, however, the author fails to convey any sense of growth. One assumes that the trade of New England 5IO BOOK REVIEWS October

must have been larger in 1700 than it was in 1650, but the book does not consider this important point at all. Commercial statistics for the seventeenth century are rare indeed, but it seems that the author might at least have given us an informed guess. Several other important topics seem to have been unjustly ignored or insufficiently developed. For example, the author discusses early efforts by the New England colonial governments to enact a framework of laws regu- lating the conduct of business. This subject might well have been developed more fully, but the reader is left in ignorance of any developments which may have taken place after the middle of the seventeenth century. The author also emphasizes that a constant aim of the merchants was to accu- mulate enough capital to be able to import goods from England "on their own account" instead of acting as factors for English merchants. Yet the reader is never told how successful the merchants were in attaining this goal. Questions of business organization, methods, and vocabulary are like- wise left largely to the reader's imagination or previous knowledge. Such information, of course, is readily available in other sources, but it is doubtful if the general public (not to mention many scholars) either knows about these sources or has the time to investigate them. It is a truism of book reviewing that any book ought to be judged in the light of what its author has tried to do. Yet it seems that these and other topics of interest come well within the purview of the author's announced intentions and that the book might have been better for their inclusion, especially as it is by no means a long one. Overconcentration on insignificant details is undeniably a curse of much contemporary historical writing, but the author of this book may have bent over backwards too far in avoiding that evil.

Westminster College ARTHUR L. JENSEN

Walter WhartorCs Land Survey Register, 1675-1679. West Side Delaware River', from New Castle County, Delaware, into Bucks County, PennsyU vania. Edited by ALBERT COOK MYERS. (Wilmington, Del.: The Historical Society of Delaware, 1955. 112 p. Illustrations, index. $3.00.) This little book adds valuable new material to the land titles of Pennsyl- vania and the Three Lower Counties on the Delaware. It is charmingly introduced and informingly annotated by the eminent historical scholar Albert Cook Myers, the authority on William Penn, his associates and associations. Dr. Myers is a master craftsman in his field, and has written and edited numerous works on Pennsylvania history and biography. Com- pared with an earlier, more extensive work, for example, his Immigration of Irish Quakers into Pennsylvania, 1682-1750 . . . (Swarthmore, 1902), which blazed the trail for documented historical writing in this area, Dr. Myers handles the Register in the same able manner and with the same interest in presenting new source material. 1955 BOOK REVIEWS 511 In his new book Dr. Myers tells us that "A pulping machine of a York County paper plant was about to devour this precious old manuscript . . . [and that] Just in the nick of time the Register was rescued by a workman attracted by the antique handwriting. The Register, nearly all of it in the copperplate hand of Wharton himself, consists of fifty recorded descriptive surveys of the metes and bounds of tracts of land for the period 1675-1679 . . . including the original index. . . . The area of the surveyings extends for about 56 miles, from St. Georges Creek, now New Castle County, Delaware, on the south, as far north as Neshaminy Creek, now Bucks County, Pennsylvania." Dr. Myers found the original Indian deed, from Chief Seketarius and other Delaware chiefs to William Penn, for part of this territory at the house of the late Mrs. Frances de Haas Janvier (nee Rodney) at New Castle, Delaware. She rescued it from peach baskets of discarded papers next door. Walter Wharton, who kept the Register, was from England, and being "skilful in the Mathematicks and well understanding in the Art of Survey- ing," he was commissioned by Governor Lovelace on June 17, 1671, as Surveyor General "in Delaware River, that is to say the Western Side of [the] said River." "Capt." Wharton was one of the four appraisers in 1672 in the celebrated suit of Armegot, widow of Johan Papegoja (daughter of Johan Printz, the first Swedish Governor, 1643-1653, in the present Penn- sylvania) against Carr as to the title of Tinicum Island. He was made a justice in 1672 "on Delaware River." His political position, however, did not prevent the New Castle clergy from getting him into trouble. They presented him at court on March 7, 1678, "for marrying himself," "Contrary to ye knowne Laws." He did not live long after this and died on January 3, 1679, at his house in New Castle. He was attended by Thomas Spry, "Chirurgeon," and his funeral sermon, which cost fifty gilders, was preached by Dominie Petrus Teschemacker. The first of Walter Wharton's surveys, dated May 27, 1675, was f°r Mrs. Anna Wale, and comprised some three hundred acres, called Chelsey, on the south side of St. George's Creek (now in New Castle County). The next day an adjoining survey was made for Thomas Spry for one hundred sixty acres, which he appropriately called "Doctors Common." Some other interesting names which appear in these records are: Ollie Paulson, Arent Johnson, John Moll, Peter, Lawrence, Erick and Otto Ernest Cock, Lawrentius Carolus, and Ollie Stillie. The land of Gasper "ffish" was called Pimmee- pahka (Pennypack), on the lower side of the creek bearing this name. Another tract for 570 acres was "nigh unto the upper end of Bread and Cheese Island," in New Castle County, and was surveyed in 1675 for W[al]ven (Walraven) Johnson (Jansen) de fox (Vos) and Charles Rumsey. De fox (Vos) is listed under Johnson de Fox in Frank L. Batton's excellent index, an oversight not made by Dr. Myers in Records of the Court of New Castle on Delaware, 1681-1691 (p. 18), though Dr. Myers erroneously makes Blackbird Creek a tributary of Duck Creek. 512 BOOK REVIEWS October

The Register is dedicated to the late Pierre Samuel du Pont, financier and public benefactor. Dr. Myers' choice of illustrations is excellent. The book has an attractive format. The editor, Mr. Batton, and The Historical Society of Delaware are to be congratulated.

Dover, Del. GEORGE VALENTINE MASSEY II

Historic Germantown^ From the Founding to the Early Part of the Nineteenth Century. A Survey of the German Township. By HARRY M. and MAR- GARET B. TINKCOM, and GRANT MILES SIMON, F. A. I. A. [Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 39.] (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1955. v^> *54 P- Illustrations, bibliography, index. $5.00.) On the occasion of the Centennial of 1876, many Americans, impressed with evidences of national immortality, wrote local histories to preserve the record of their forefathers and to celebrate the doings of those who ruled their towns during the colonial era. Although Pennypacker published a useful book on its founders, Germantown, one of the most important colonial communities in Pennsylvania, has always lacked a satisfactory history. Doubtless the principal reason for such neglect has been the gradual sub- merging of the old village in the history of Philadelphia. In the present volume the Tinkcoms go far toward filling this void in Pennsylvania's local history. This work is an introduction to the published "Survey of Germantown," which was begun in 1951 by the Germantown Historical Society with the co-operation of several other civic bodies to provide a record of existing seventeenth and eighteenth century buildings and to initiate a program for their preservation as historical monuments reflecting the community's past. The choice of authors was a particularly happy one: they are trained historians familiar with the history of Pennsylvania, yet they are not subject to the bias and filial reverence of the native Germantowners. As a result, their narrative is informed, sympathetic, well balanced, and it always de- picts the history of the village against its Pennsylvania, colonial, and European backgrounds. In so doing, the authors have not once fallen back into the old-fashioned concept that a local history should chronicle exclu- sively the doings of the prominent and well-to-do few; here we have a model little essay on the historical significance of Germantown as a community, a treatment of all its people and their mode of life in its varied entirety. This village of one street—"The Main Street" as those of us who grew up there always called it—displayed from its inception many of those features today called urban. Founded by Dutch-Quaker artisans, it continued to be a town of shopkeepers and craftsmen, and very early it became a manufac- turing center, with the leather trades predominating. Soon the Germans from the Rhineland outnumbered the Dutch, and before 1800 the English 1955 BOOK REVIEWS 513 who settled there were never numerous enough to change the town's character, which expressed itself in the "Deutsch" tongue, modes of wor- ship, manners, and general culture. A "building boom" came after 1745, when, in thirteen years, the village's one hundred houses grew to about 350, and it virtually became the first victim of Philadelphia's creeping urban imperialism. Thus, Germantown provides us with an early, if not the first, case study in the Americanization process. With Christopher Sower's press and newspapers, several religious bodies, the Academy, and a subscription library, this cultural center for all German America was slowly but inexor- ably transformed into a typically American society. So accurate is this study that it may be of use to straighten out a few ambiguities: it is most doubtful that the first settlers erected "log" houses (or cabins); and the implication that Francis Asbury preached in German- town during the Great Awakening is, of course, unintentional (p. 15). A real problem is raised by what the authors call the Dutch Reformed Church, and the matter grows more confusing when we realize that the German Reformed churches remained for a long time under the sponsorship of the Synod of Amsterdam. However, Howard Jenkins probably came as close as one can get to accuracy by calling the edifice erected on Market Square in 1733 the German Reformed Church. Architecture, of all the arts, is the most responsive to social change, and the surviving buildings supply us with the finest visual means of tracing and understanding the nature of this change. One must read the Tinkcoms* interesting essay, then study the photographs of the eighty-five structures so thoroughly described by Mr. Simons, for no review can do more than suggest the richness and charm of these architectural remains. An excellent bibliography also points the way to the full-dress history of Germantown we all want some day to read. And, in the meantime, it is devoutly hoped that this survey will promote the preservation of all the structures located along what is a unique American "Main Street."

University of California CARL BRIDENBAUGH

Paul Revere's Engravings. By CLARENCE S. BRIGHAM. (Worcester, Mass.: American Antiquarian Society, 1954. xvi, 181 p. Illustrations, index. $25.00.) All America knows Paul Revere. If today the majority know him only as the man who made the midnight ride, at least a few also know him as a great silver craftsman; a few are familiar with the bells he cast for New England belfries and the cannon he cast for our early navy, and some know that he did the copper work for the Constitution and that the copper manu- facturing company he founded still carries on its work. But they are few indeed who know that he cut copper and type-metal plates for engravings, or if they do, the extent of this work. His contemporaries, however, were well acquainted with his abilities in all these fields. 5I4 BOOK REVIEWS October

With the long-awaited appearance of Paul Revere's Engravings, knowledge of this subject can now be had by all who can read—and even by those who can only look at pictures. If there was ever a definitive book, this would seem to be it. After a brief but useful introduction by way of orientation and a few words about Revere's Day Books (the major source of information about his engraved prints), we find here in chronological order a discussion of each of his major engravings, followed by a discussion of the minor engravings in broad groups—bookplates, trade cards, clock advertisements, masonic engravings, metal cuts, and paper money. I wish that each of these descriptions could have started or ended with a brief descriptive summary of the print. I believe this would have made quick reference easier, but the point is, of course, a minor one of form and not of substance. Some seventy and more of Revere's copperplate engravings, not counting his three books of music, are known. All have here been reproduced in collo- type (except the Romans map of East Florida), together with all the known type-metal engravings. This work of the Meriden Gravure Company, particularly the colored reproductions of Harvard, the Boston Massacre, and the View of Boston, is to be commended. Although Brigham modestly—but, of course, correctly—says that the chapter on paper money makes no attempt to write the history of Massa- chusetts currency, it certainly is a large start in that direction. Here, too, is the welcome story in detail of the controversial Boston Massacre print, although in this I feel that Revere is being acquitted too easily of his plagiaristic sins. The study of the Royal American Magazine is another particularly valuable chapter. A further rewarding feature is the information— again with reproductions—on the original sources from which Revere copied or adapted his own plates. It has been realized that he was an engraver and not an artist, but here, after what must have been the most arduous research, are to be found chapter and verse in support of this fact in a great many cases. This latter fact gives rise to a query, perhaps outside the scope of a review of this book, but still interesting. Since Revere was not an original artist when it came to engraving copperplates, could he have been an original artist in making and shaping and engraving all his beautiful silver, or was he copying or adapting English models ? Paul Revere's Engravings^ the result of the labors of forty years, is a monument not only to Clarence Brigham as an author, but to Clarence Brigham as the director of the American Antiquarian Society, which mainly by his efforts has acquired through the decades a well-nigh complete collection of all known Revere prints. This book, in addition to his great Bibli- ography of American Newspapers ^ is certainly an achievement which he can view with pride.

The Franklin Institute HAMILTON VAUGHAN BAIL I955 BOOK REVIEWS 515 A House Called Morven. Its Role in American History', 1701-1954. By AL- FRED HOYT BILL, in collaboration with WALTER E. EDGE, with an Essay on the Architecture by GEORGE B. TATUM. (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1954. xvi, 206 p. Illustrations, bibliography, index. #3.00.) Historic houses and historic spots excite interest and command attention because of the personalities or the incidents for which they have formed the setting. In writing the story of such houses or places it is highly important to be punctiliously specific. It may be all very well to say that General Washington once dined at such and such a house; it will give a far more definite and lasting impression to state exactly when General Washington dined there and the occasion of the dinner. In other words, the greater the exactitude in presenting the picture, the more vivid and convincing will it be and the better will it fix itself in the mind of the reader. As one reads chapter after chapter of A House Called Morven, it is agree- able to have set before one so many successive side lights on New Jersey history and the local conditions that obtained through the passing years. At the same time, some of these side excursions are scarcely germane to the presumed purpose of the book. For example, although it may be proper to explain the connection between the Stockton and Boudinot families for the benefit of those whose genealogical knowledge is straitly limited, to give so much space to a long discussion of Boudinot family affairs certainly does not illuminate the story of the "House Called Morven." Morven is a house that deserves the utmost consideration. Everyone who feels the least concern in preserving our national heritage of historic houses cannot fail to applaud the action of former Governor Edge in acquiring Morven from the Stockton family (who have owned and lived in it for more than two hundred and forty years), and presenting it to the state of New Jersey as the official residence of the Governor for the time being. And few will be disposed to question Governor Edge's conviction that no historic house in our land "can claim more interesting incidents and historical associations than can Morven." And yet, it is in this very respect that the author seems to have missed a golden opportunity. Too often has he failed to anchor associations fast to exact dates or to the dramatis personae concerned. When associations are left unattached in this casual way, they lose their vitality and tend to pro- duce a rather nebulous impression in the mind of the general reader; to anyone in serious quest of definite information, the factual omissions are irritating. It is unfortunate, too, that the author has occasionally permitted himself to employ unwarranted assumptions to round out his picture. For instance, in describing the finished house as it presumably appeared by 1705, he says: "A wide hall, with a fanlight at either end, ran through its center, and seven 516 BOOK REVIEWS October rounded archways connected the rooms. . . ." The introduction of "a fanlight" and "seven rounded archways" is definitely an anachronism. The "fanlight at either end" of the hall and the "seven rounded archways" connecting the rooms came as later alterations. The special section on "The Architecture of Morven," by George B. Tatum, represents a difficult task gracefully performed. Unfortunately for the helpless house, its owners through the years possessed the means and the inclination to keep their dwelling in line with the latest architectural fashions. Some of the alterations were commendably performed; some, especially during the nineteenth century, were atrocious. The latest indignity to which the house was subjected was the injection, about 1880, of two huge arches, of Persian provenance, from the hall into the parlour and dining room respectively. Fortunately, intelligent restoration can restore Morven to its pristine dignity and beauty. The bulk of Mr. Tatum's contribution is a very sound and scholarly paper on the characteristics of Early, Middle, and Late Georgian domestic architecture in America. He was not expected to be too severely critical of the present state of Morven, and he has tactfully confined his comments to a minimum on the current condition of the house. To borrow a line of sincere praise from Gilbert and Sullivan, of the house itself he "has said nothing in particular, and said it very well."

Philadelphia HAROLD DONALDSON EBERLEIN

The Prose of Philip Freneau. Selected and edited by PHILIP M. MARSH. (New Brunswick, N. J.: The Scarecrow Press, 1955. xii, 596 p. Notes, bibliography. $12.00.) It has long been recognized that the most serious single obstacle to the complete and serious study of American literature—and particularly the literature of the colonial and early national periods—is the absence of authentic texts. Most of the judgments of literary historians on the prose works of Philip Freneau have obviously been made without a very large acquaintance with those works. One inclined to doubt this statement need read only the section entitled "Evaluations—The Prose" in Mr. Marsh's introduction to The Prose of Philip Freneau. Although Freneau's verse is readily available and widely anthologized, his prose has been almost completely inaccessible except to the student willing to turn through the peri- odicals in which it appeared or fortunate enough to have access to the Miscellaneous Works of Freneau (1788). The appearance of this large and well-chosen selection from Freneau's prose is accordingly an event which will be welcomed by all students of early American writing. It is therefore the more regrettable that a work of this kind, to which the editor has obviously given years of preparation, 1955 BOOK REVIEWS 517 could not have been printed by letterpress and have enjoyed both the sponsorship and careful editorial attention of either a large commercial press or one of the university presses. As it is, the reproduction of type- written pages by an offset process gives us a book unpleasing to the eye and difficult to use effectively. The absence of italics, of different type sizes, and of occasional boldface provides the reader with stumbling blocks to ready discrimination between titles of various items, as well as between text and notes. One hopes it is not carping too much to suggest that typed copy intended for such reproduction be done on a machine capable of justi- fying the right-hand margins. This is a minor matter, to be sure, but the irregular margins become annoying with time. More careful editorial supervision would presumably have eliminated the errors of spelling and punctuation which, though not great in number, further serve to irritate the reader. The editor's introduction supplies a brief summary of Freneau's career, mentions the opinions of a few leading literary historians and critics on the poetry and prose of Freneau, discusses the leading ideas of the prose, and estimates the extent of various influences on Freneau. The last-mentioned two sections are accurate and concise, though one could wish that Mr. Marsh, out of the fullness of his acquaintance with Freneau, had devoted more space to them. One particularly misses a full-scale discussion of Freneau's prose style, or rather, of his several prose styles, since he varied style to suit the purposes of his writing. Also misusing is an indication of the completeness of this edition or a suggestion of the total volume of Freneau's prose work. When all this has been said, however, it must be added that this volume represents a real addition to our knowledge of Philip Freneau and that no future judgments of his literary position can ignore the large volume of his prose output. If one were to venture a guess as to the effect of this new knowledge upon estimates of Freneau, he might well feel that it would be slight. To be sure, a great versatility is displayed in the prose work: there is violent political denunciation, and there is the charming personal essay. But the same range of interest was already known in the poetry. We certainly have a more complete picture of Freneau, but yet hardly one that justifies the editor's praise of him as "our best writer of the eighteenth century."

University of Arizona ALBERT FRANK GEGENHEIMER

The Burr Conspiracy. By THOMAS PERKINS ABERNETHY. (New York: Ox- ford University Press, 1954. xii, 301 p. Frontispiece, bibliography, index. $6.00.) Among the traitors of American history, Aaron Burr has received kinder treatment than most, both from historians and from the popular mind. This has been due in part to certain romantically attractive features in his 518 BOOK REVIEWS October

personality. The very vastness of his traitorous scheme—to separate and rule personally much of what was to be the United States by the year i goo- has made it seem less real. And a cloud of doubt has been cast over the fact of his participation in the conspiracy. This doubt has come not only from the actual difficulty of proving his legal guilt, but also from his actual acquittal (if only for technical reasons) by a Federal court, and from the untrustworthy character of General James Wilkinson, who was the principal witness against him. In the present volume, Professor Abernethy serves his fellow historians by drawing together, from manuscripts and published sources, all that is now known of the conspiracy. The result is a judicious, tightly knit account which is likely to remain the standard treatment of the subject. If, in his effort to keep the chronology clear and to stick close to the evidence, he sometimes fails to give his narrative sprightliness or romance, his work has more substantial virtues. He is more concerned to reveal any doubt which the evidence casts on the supposed sequence of the narrative than to exploit the drama of its undoubted episodes. Professor Abernethy's account has the further virtue of making Burr's vast scheme credible, thus giving it significance as an episode in the knitting of the Federal Union. Perhaps the most familiar detailed account of the conspiracy for the general reader of American history is Albert J. Beve- ridge's, in the third volume of his Life of John Marshall There, in his eager- ness to discredit Jefferson and to defend Marshall, Beveridge is bound to disparage the evidence against Burr, and to imply the improbability of his project. This has been the traditional image: Burr was a romantic fool, not to be taken seriously as a criminal because ex hypothesi the Federal Union was already one and inseparable. But Professor Abernethy, drawing on his extensive knowledge of the troubled West in the years just after the Louisi- ana Purchase, persuades us that Burr's project was not a mere pipe dream. In 1806 one need not have been a madman to imagine that much of the West could be separated from the Union. A sane and self-confident intriguer might well have hoped that the forces producing the tug of war among Great Britain, France, and Spain might be harnessed to pull away the peripheral pieces of the young United States. Professor Abernethy persuades us not so much by using a darker palette in painting the villainy of Burr, as by drawing the confused background in scrupulous detail. The threads of support for Burr's conspiracy were numerous and miscellaneous: eastern Federalists who had feared the effect of the Louisiana Purchase on their political and economic interests; land speculators who hoped to profit from the transfer of the lands of the Mississippi Valley to a new jurisdiction; the Catholic Bishop of New Orleans interested in revolutionizing Mexico; and the more familiar interests of France and Spain, and myriad lesser ones. But the Federal Union was still weak; tumult and particularism ruled many of the isolated frontier communities. Here was a stage on which Burr's grandiose plot might have succeeded. 1955 BOOK REVIEWS 519

The web of domestic politics, as the author is careful to show, entangled many into an unwillingness to believe or to expose the plot. There was, of course, the actual support of the conspiracy by some Federalists in the East. Apparently, Jefferson's reluctance to prosecute, when given information by Daviess, was connected with the fact that Daviess himself was a Federalist and that those discredited by the exposure would be Republicans. Jefferson's role, at best, remains partisan and puzzling. All these facts make the possible success of the conspiracy more conceivable. The reader becomes convinced, then, that Professor Abernethy is not exaggerating when he concludes that the conspiracy was, "next to the Confederate War . . . the greatest threat of dismemberment which the American Union has ever faced." This episode, which patriotism and national self-esteem have discounted as romantic digression, he now helps us rediscover in the main stream of struggle for a stronger Federal Union.

University of Chicago DANIEL J. BOORSTIN

Justice William Johnson^ The First Dissenter. By DONALD G. MORGAN. (Columbia, S. C: University of South Carolina Press, 1954. xvi, 326 p. Frontispiece, appendices, index. $6.50.) When, in 1804, President Jefferson made his first appointment to the Supreme Court, his choice fell upon a young judge of the South Carolina Court of Appeals. The appointee, William Johnson, who was then thirty- two, was the son of a prosperous Charleston blacksmith. He had spent a year of his youth in Philadelphia, exiled from his home by the British occupation. Later, he had been educated at Princeton, had read law in the office of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, had practiced law in Charleston, had entered politics as a Republican and served three terms in the state legis- lature before his appointment to the state bench. On the Federal Supreme Court Johnson served for thirty years, to 1834, a term entirely encompassed by the chief justiceship of John Marshall, but longer than that of any other of Marshall's Republican colleagues. On the Marshall court, Johnson was distinguished by his independence; of the seventy-two dissenting opinions given on the court during his service there, Johnson wrote thirty-two, and of thirty-seven separate, concurring opinions, he was responsible for twenty-three. Johnson's record represented more than just a difference of opinion on certain specific cases. At a time when Marshall was seeking to fix the law of the land with great certainty by firm and unanimous opinions, Johnson wished to place greater restraint on judicial power and to exalt Congress. The Constitution he regarded as a tripartite contract of the people, the states, and the United States, one that permitted a remarkable degree of co-operation between states and nation to fit the dynamic conditions of life 52O BOOK REVIEWS October

and to promote the welfare of the individual, for whose benefit the government existed. Jefferson directly influenced Johnson to prefer a historical to a literal interpretation of the Constitution and to make known disagreements on the court, as, for example, by seriatim opinions, so that decisions could be correctly evaluated by the public. Off the court as on, Johnson's career was interesting, the more so because of his willingness to let his opinions be known. He wrote various newspaper and magazine articles, usually contentious, on political subjects, sometimes thinly veiling his identity by a pseudonym. He was the biographer of Nathanael Greene, like him a blacksmith's son, and his other writings, such as his Nugae Georgicae, his "Memoire on the Strawberry," and his "Rural Economy; On the Killing of Crows," were fitting expressions of the interests of" an officer of the Horticultural Society and of the Literary and Philosoph- ical Society of Charleston and a member of the American Philosophical Society. Just before his death in 1834 Johnson was placed in a particularly unhappy role of dissent, for he vigorously opposed what he termed the "folly" of the South Carolina nullification movement of 1832 and even went so far as to uphold and defend the protective tariff which was the irritant that produced this movement. The biography by Donald G. Morgan which details the story of this interesting life is a thoroughly admirable work—careful, clear, and reasonably complete. If it emphasizes the justice at the expense of the man, that is quite understandable, both because no large collection of Johnson letters has survived, and because if it were not for interest in the justice it is likely that the man would not even now be rescued from the obscurity in which he has rested for a century. It is fitting that this excellent book should be published by the press of the University of South Carolina, for Johnson was an active trustee of this university—and, briefly, president of its board—at the time of its founding.

University of Delaware JOHN A. MUNROE

Nathan Trotter, Philadelphia Merchant^ 1787-1853. By ELVA TOOKER. [Harvard Studies in Business History, XVIIL] (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1955. xviii, 276 p. Illustrations, appendices, index. $6.00.) In 1926 the voluminous collection of business records of Nathan Trotter and Company of Philadelphia was presented to the Baker Library at the Harvard School of Business Administration. The collection, which covers the first half of the nineteenth century, provides the foundation for this study of the business activities of the Philadelphia Quaker, Nathan Trotter. In some respects, for the period involved, these manuscript sources may be compared with the records of the firm of Boulton and Watt at Birmingham, 1955 BOOK REVIEWS 521

England. This is especially true in regard to completeness and detail, although, of course, one was a relatively small-scale business concern and the other an industrial enterprise. Though most of Miss Tooker's research has centered in the Trotter manuscripts, she has not neglected other sources. For example, the Trotter- Newbold papers in the Thompson Collection and other such manuscripts at The Historical Society of Pennsylvania were explored and utilized. Primary and secondary sources at various depositories were used. To a lesser extent, sources were consulted for the various phases of general economic development during the life-span of Nathan Trotter in order to round out the picture of the activities of a business firm in a period of continual change. The Trotters began business chiefly as importers of English goods, especially woolens, leather, and semimanufactured metals, but throughout the period, merchandise and metals were procured from places close by and far distant. American towns, English cities, and even Russia provided the mate- rials the Trotters sold. At first the chief customers were small storekeepers, craftsmen, and traveling peddler-salesmen. As American manufactures expanded and railroads arose, Nathan Trotter began to specialize in metals, especially sheet iron, tin plate, galvanized iron, steel, and zinc, as well as hardware. To meet the new industrial needs of manufacturers there were increasing demands for pig metal such as block tin, ingot copper, spelter and pig lead. The revolutionary changes that were taking place in production and also in transportation, marketing, and investment are clearly reflected in the history of Nathan Trotter's business interests. The financial problems and changes that beset businessmen of the period are set forth. Methods of credit and collection, plans for dealing with slow- paying debtors, the difficulties involved in the depreciation of state bank paper currency and dislocations caused by business depressions are dis- cussed. Like many merchants of his times, Nathan Trotter accumulated capital for his undertakings by living far below his means; he was therefore able to put his savings into business channels where they benefited the American economy and himself. Always a cautious investor, he turned from ship and other "ventures" to investments in real estate, loans, stock, and especially commercial paper. When he died he left an estate of almost a million dollars, one half of which was invested in commercial paper. This monograph is somewhat more than a business history. It sketches the life of Nathan Trotter from his birth at the time of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia to his death a short time after the mid-nineteenth century. It presents his family antecedents and his business background. Glimpses of old Philadelphia and the shadowy figures of contemporaries can be discerned on its pages. Although prosperous, Trotter never aspired to social position and he led a simple life. He was not a brilliant leader, but a shrewd and kindly businessman. He practiced the Quaker virtues and policies of his times. He was an example of the very successful small businessman who never had more than a handful of employees. 522 BOOK REVIEWS October

The book is intended for the specialist. However, it is very readable and though some parts of it could have been expanded, the economist and historian as well as the student of business history will profit from reading it. The tables, charts, and maps are valuable aids to the study of various phases of the firm's business. The work is carefully edited and is a contribution to economic history for the period when the Industrial Revolution was making marked and rapid changes in American life.

University of Pennsylvania ARTHUR C. BINING

Priscilla Cooper Tyler and the American Scene, 1816-1889. By ELIZABETH TYLER COLEMAN. (University, Ala.: University of Alabama Press, 1955. xiv, 203 p. Illustrations, index. $4.50.) Priscilla Cooper Tyler was the embodiment of the nineteenth-century romantic heroine. Beautiful, lively, talented, she moved across the American scene from 1816 to 1889 with a grace that captivated the hearts of all who knew her. Even her five years on the stage as leading lady for her father, the noted actor Thomas Cooper, cast no shadow on her reputation. She was ardently and successfully courted by Robert Tyler, son of a distinguished Virginia family; within two years of her marriage, her father-in-law became President of the United States. Miss Coleman, like Priscilla Tyler's contemporaries, has been completely charmed by this charming woman. Her biography, obviously written by a feminine hand, is easy and pleasant to read, and is based primarily on the scattered letters and diaries of the Cooper family which are ably integrated into the story. The political background of the period is sketched in without burdening the reader with its intricacies, and the world of the theater and the changing social milieu of Priscilla Tyler's life are also portrayed in meaningful fashion. A more comprehensive index, particularly the inclusion of subject entries and place names, would have increased the usefulness of the book in these areas. The biography can be divided into three distinct periods. Priscilla's early years were rooted in the theater of the early 1800's. As the daughter of an actor and later as an actress in her own right, she knew all the stages on the circuit from Albany to New Orleans. Her experiences, not always happy, contribute much to a rounder picture of the American theater of the time. Next came the years in the White House, when, since the President's wife was an invalid, she acted as John Tyler's official hostess. Finally, her latter years were spent in a South torn by war and the bitterness of Reconstruc- tion. This familiar story is heightened by the personal tragedies of her family and friends. Each of these periods has its own appeal, but the White House years are perhaps the most colorful. Dinners and receptions, foreign dignitaries and American legislators enliven the scene. Particularly striking are the charac- 1955 BOOK REVIEWS 523 terizations of Daniel Webster, Dolly Madison, Washington Irving and Charles Dickens. One should note that John Quincy Adams is misleadingly referred to as John Adams. A focal figure, President Tyler emerges as a man of intellect and integrity, devoted to his family, politically a "martyr to his own consistency." Oliver Perry Chitwood's sympathetic biography of Tyler is the basis of Miss Coleman's portrait. To a degree, Priscilla Tyler belongs to Philadelphia. Until her marriage, she lived with her family in Bristol, just up the river from the city. From 1844 until her husband's pro-Southern sentiments forced them to flee the state, she lived both in Bristol and Philadelphia, where Robert Tyler practiced law and was active in state politics. Many incidents of her life in these two communities are delightful. The toast of her times, Priscilla Cooper Tyler led a varied, often an excit- ing, life. She was a "remarkable woman who used her talents not to further a career of her own but to play an important part in the lives of three men." Her nature was independent and imaginative, but, being a "reasonable woman . . . , she yielded gracefully to necessity."

The Historical Society of Pennsylvania Lois V. GIVEN

William Lloyd Garrison and the Humanitarian Reformers. By RUSSEL B. NYE. [The Library of American Biography.] (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1955. viii, 215 p. Bibliography, index. $3.00.) What history's verdict on William Lloyd Garrison would eventually prove to be was a subject hotly contested even by his own contemporaries. To his supporters he could do no wrong; they followed him unquestioningly wherever he led them. To his opponents he was a dangerous wrecker of causes and institutions; to Southerners, especially, his name suggested slave insurrection and violence symbolizing all that was malicious and evil in the North. To many others, most notably those who shared his antislavery ends but who differed with him over the means to those ends, Garrison posed an exasperating and insufferable paradox—a humanitarian reformer who could assail his own kind more bitterly even than he did the common enemy. Nor has Garrison's place in history been securely fixed since his death in 1879, particularly so far as credit for the extinction of slavery in the United States is concerned. The most recent significant study, for example, Gilbert H. Barnes' The Antislavery Impulse^ 1830-1844 (New York, 1933), tends to overwhelm Garrison's traditional position with that held by Theodore Dwight Weld and James G. Birney. Indeed, as Russel B. Nye states of Garrison's own times: "His admirers made him a greater man than he was, and his opponents gave him less praise than he deserved." This might almost have been written of his posthumous judges as well. Hence, it is a pleasure to welcome Professor Nye's William Lloyd Garrison and the Humanitarian Reformers to the growing Library of American 524 BOOK REVIEWS October

Biography, edited by Oscar Handlin. At last Garrison's proper place in the antislavery movement becomes readily apparent. According to Professor Nye: "It is only fair to grant Garrison pre-eminence in the first decade of abolition agitation. He personified its aggressive phase, publicized it for better or worse, and drove its issues deep into the national conscience. But he did not begin abolitionism, nor did he organize it." Instead, Weld and his western following, Birney and his Liberty Party, together with Arthur and Lewis Tappan of New York City, deserve major shares of the credit. In fact, the final triumph of abolitionism came about by political and religious methods Garrison had rejected and ideas he failed to comprehend. "Aboli- tion passed through him," Nye writes, "not from him." In addition to abolitionism, Garrison's career of rebellion against matters as he found them involved him in crusades for temperance, peace, and women's rights, and against "infidelity," government, and the Constitu- tion, each of which to him was but another form of compromise with the devil. Natural law, as set forth in the Declaration of Independence, and the Christian ethic were Garrison's standards by which everything could be judged. Anything which violated either must be scourged from the earth. Nothing was too trivial, nor should anything be postponed to await the success of the abolitionist movement. His goal was the regeneration of mankind. Thus, all crusades should proceed at once. In an age of reform, Gar- rison was indeed, as Nye paints him, the "reformer incarnate." That Professor Nye has given us a "good book" is without question. But whether he has given us a biography in the fullest meaning of a perceptive, sensitive human profile set against the panorama of an age is a question which should perhaps be addressed to the editor and publisher of the Library of American Biography. There is more than a suggestion inherent in these pages that Professor Nye's Pulitzer Prize-winning talents were subordinated to a predetermined editorial pattern designed to present a description of William Lloyd Garrison, the antislavery movement, and the humanitarian reformist impulses of the age of Jackson in diminishing order of importance. The result is a valuable little volume, though hardly biography in the finest sense. As a result of the book's apparently larger purposes and the need to condense so much into a brief compass, some lengthy passages possess a faintly musty, almost textbooky, quality. There is much that seems familiar, as though one had read it several times before. For example, with respect to the ten pages or more devoted to a general description of nineteenth-century reform, including the arguments for and against slavery, most of the time-honored cliches appear on schedule pre- cisely at the traditional places. The reader is left hoping that Professor Nye will write another book, this time a full-length biography of William Lloyd Garrison, the man. Nye's own brilliant brief sketch of Garrison contained in this book's "Epilogue" makes it abundantly clear he could do so.

Bryn Mawr College ARTHUR P. DUDDEN 1955 BOOK REVIEWS 525

Susan B. Anthony, Her Personal History and Her Era. By KATHERINE ANTHONY. (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1954. xiv, 521 p. Illustrations, bibliography, index. $6.00.) Susan B. Anthony is a legend. Revered and honored in her old age, she had already become a legend before her death in 1906. Yet, strangely enough, there never has been a definitive scholarly biography of her as woman and reformer. She wanted her life history to serve as a history of the suffrage movement, and for this comprehensive undertaking she chose Ida Husted Harper as her biographer. Together they worked on the three- volume The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony. Mrs. Harper stipulated that all the original data, except the scrapbooks of news clippings, should be destroyed when the book was finished. This apparently was done, and, in 1903, approximately 20,000 handwritten letters containing a century of history went up in flames. Miss Katherine Anthony has based her work primarily upon Mrs. Harper's biography, supplemented by reminiscences of relatives and friends of Susan B. Anthony. It was Susan B. Anthony's Quaker background which initiated her into the reform movements of the mid-nineteenth century. Her first step into the outside world came when she joined the Daughters of Temperance in Rochester, New York. In 1851 she met Elizabeth Cady Stan ton, who con- verted her to the woman's rights cause. Both women left the temperance movement in New York State when that group "purified" the temperance cause from the taint of woman's rights; they now gave themselves to the cause of woman's rights in New York. Miss Anthony's devotion to Mrs. Stanton was strengthened during these years by increasing rivalry with the Massachusetts woman's rights group, led by Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell. In 1856 Miss Anthony's Quaker associations drew her inevitably into the abolitionist movement. She became an agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society, and throughout the Civil War remained a fighting abolitionist. After the war it was necessary to start the woman's rights movement all over again. The abolitionists deserted Miss Anthony when she urged that the cause be dedicated to securing suffrage for women as well as for Negroes. At the same time, factionalism in the suffrage ranks proved disastrous. Personal hostility between Susan Anthony and Lucy Stone was largely responsible for the division, although the Massachusetts group advocated woman suffrage as a "desirable reform of the future" in order to secure Republican support. During the seventies and eighties Susan toured the East, California, and the Northwest, speaking now solely for a Sixteenth Amendment. Between lecture tours she maintained a lobby in Washington. Although her fame rests on her influence over women, her achievements depended upon her influence over men. She met them with high intelligence and breadth of outlook and won their respect. In 1890 the two suffrage factions were reconciled into the National American Woman Suffrage Association. The Boston wing brought much- 5^6 BOOK REVIEWS October needed strength to Susan B. Anthony's ranks—a younger generation of leadership. Two women were outstanding—Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt. Susan failed to see in Mrs. Catt a new and driving force in the suffrage cause, but she became deeply devoted to Miss Shaw. During her last years Susan guided Anna Shaw toward leadership of the movement and drew closer to the college women who were flocking into the movement. As a source of inspiration to these young women, she carried the movement to the threshold of victory. Miss Katherine Anthony has endeavored primarily to write "not a history of the woman suffrage movement but the history of a woman's life." She has found the woman and has based the interpretation of her life upon the premise that Susan Anthony's early disappointment in love and her subsequent choice of spinsterhood as a necessary condition of devotion to the cause profoundly affected her career. It was responsible for her unreasonable attachment for the unhappily married Mrs. Stanton and for her equally unreasonable rejection of Lucy Stone, who deserted the ranks of "rebel spinsters" to marry Henry Blackwell. The biography loses its effectiveness for the layman by its bulk of unintegrated material. It is rich in names and incidents of the woman suffrage movement, but they are not organized into a striking pattern. Susan B. Anthony's dynamic personality highlighted against the backdrop of her era could well be a fascinating narrative.

Crane, Texas HENRIETTA KRONE ARMSTRONG

Black Moses: The Story of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improve- ment Association. By EDMUND DAVID CRONON. (Madison, Wis.: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1955. XV1U 27^ p. Illustrations, refer- ences, index. $5.00.) Thirty years ago some thirty thousand Americans of African descent were banded together under the leadership of a Jamaican-born Negro named Marcus Garvey in the largest Negro movement of its kind in history. It was an enterprise suffused with a spirit of complete rejection of the white man's world through an escapist program of chauvinistic Negro nationalism and operating under the name and style of the Universal Negro Improve- ment Association. In a volume that is both biography and social history, and which is distinguished by high scholarship and excellent writing, E. David Cronon of the History Department of Yale University relates the life story of Garvey, the supremely confident and strangely gifted "Black Moses," and describes the "black Zionism" which flourished under Garvey's leadership during the 1920's. Marcus Garvey arrived in the United States in 1916 at the age of twenty- eight, his brain afire with a plan involving complete racial compartmentali- i955 BOOK REVIEWS 527 zation and the creation of an all-Negro republic consisting of the entire African continent. Within a few years he had established in New York's Harlem a national headquarters and an auditorium, the latter shortly to be filled nightly with capacity audiences of six thousand people, who listened to the "compelling words and audacious ideas of the little man from Jamaica." Velvet-trimmed academic robes and other resplendent regalia; mammoth dress parades; conventions packing Madison Square Garden and Carnegie Hall; the Black Star Line, an all-Negro steamship company; a weekly newspaper, Negro World; the Negro Factories Corporation—these are among the activities through which Garvey captured the imagination and the support of the thousands who followed him and who poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into his organization's treasury. But the business enterprises of the Negro Factories Corporation (a chain of co-operative grocery stores, a restaurant, a steam laundry, a tailor and dressmaking shop, a millinery store, and a publishing house) were only moderately successful. Moreover, most of the existing responsible Negro leadership (including the Negro press and national and local leaders of the N.A.A.C.P.) maintained a constant bombardment on the man and the movement. Meanwhile, the Black Star Line, which came to consist of some three or four small ships which made limping trips along the Atlantic Coast and in the Caribbean, ended in an engineering and fiscal disaster which in turn brought its founder, in 1925, a prison term on a charge of using the United States mails to promote the sale of worthless stock. Another charge of income-tax evasion was nol-prossed years later, after Garvey's 1927 de- portation from the United States. Thirteen years later, in 1940, Garvey died in London, comparatively forgotten. John Hope Franklin has very appropriately noted in his foreword to this volume that the author "has achieved the uncommon success of being sympathetic without becoming adulatory or patronizing, of being critical without becoming derogatory or malevolent." The rare excellence of the book may perhaps best be illustrated by the author's over-all appraisal of the Garvey movement: "Garvey demonstrated as no man before him . . . the basic unrest within the Negro world. . . . [He] proved that the black masses could be organized through an emotional appeal based on racial chauvinism. But the . . . decline . . . after 1925 suggests that the . . . appeal that worked so well . . . after World War I was much less effective under later conditions. It is doubtful whether Garvey could find today, in the United States at least, the ready response that greeted his early prose- lytizing efforts. . . . Garveyism failed largely because it was unable to come up with a suitable alternative to the unsatisfactory conditions of American life as they affect the Negro. Escape, either emotional or physical, was neither a realistic nor a lasting answer."

Morgan State College WALTER FISHER 528 BOOK REVIEWS October

Fifty-five Colorful Years. The Story of Paint in America. By ERNEST T. TRIGG. (Stonington, Conn.: The Pequot Press, 1954. xvi, 307 p. Illus- trations, appendices, index. $5.00.) Ernest T. Trigg is a man who has enjoyed life to the full. A leader in industry and civic affairs, he has devoted his whole energy and interest to whatever task he set his hand. In Fifty-five Colorful Years he has told pleasantly and with humor both his reminiscences of his active career and the story of the growth of the paint industry in this country. It is a proud book, written by a man has who worked his way to the top—a testimonial to the American free enterprise system. Philadelphia is Mr. Trigg's adopted city. In 1908 he joined John Lucas & Company, paint manufacturers, as general manager, eventually becoming its president. He has participated in many city activities, including service on the Board of Trustees of Temple University and on the Board of Direc- tors of City Trusts. In 1933, he became president of the National Paint, Varnish and Lacquer Association, and continued vigorously the efforts already begun to better and expand the paint industry. The major portion of his book is concerned with these efforts. Every phase of the industry is touched on—early history, expanding demands and challenges, research, advertising and promotion, organization co-operation, relations with the government in peace and war. In Mr. Trigg's own words: "Certainly there are few, if any, industries, so rich in tradition and romance, so stimulating to the imagination, so responsive to individual effort and initiative. Few, if any, so essential to the general welfare, so conducive to better living, and so typically American in concept." Mr. Trigg has spent more than half a century living and proving his belief.

After Saratoga: The Story of the Convention Army. By WILLIAM M. DABNEY. [University of New Mexico Publications in History, No. 6.] (Albu- querque, N. Mex.: University of New Mexico Press, 1954. 90 p. Bibliography. Paper, $1.00.) By a "convention," in lieu of capitulation or surrender after the Battle of Saratoga in October, 1777, Burgoyne's British and German troops were to be returned to Europe, never to fight in America again. Congress would not permit the convention to be carried out, and the conventioners remained in America (quartered chiefly in Massachusetts and Virginia) until the war was over. Mr. Dabney's account of the convention army itself and of the manifold problems it created for Congress and the states is interestingly told and well documented. No aspect seems to have been neglected. The story of the convention army is a fascinating episode of the American Revolution. Seldom has so large a body of troops moved through so much 1955 BOOK REVIEWS 529 of the enemy's land. The experience was enlightening to both sides. Con- siderable freedom was allowed the officers; indeed, they gave balls and parties to which American civilians were invited, and they were welcomed in the best homes, including Jefferson's. For the most part, their "imprison- ment," if frustrating, was not unpleasant. The rank and file of soldiers did not fare as well, but the large German contingent adapted itself more readily than the British. The willingness of the Germans to help themselves in camp and to find employment in the areas of confinement was among the reasons why so many of them remained in America. The convention army was lodged in eight of the thirteen states at one time or another, and traveled more than a thousand miles through the heart of the United States. Several conventioners wrote travel accounts which Mr. Dabney has used judiciously in his study. Reproduced in the book is a letter which General Clinton wrote to Burgoyne in the late summer of 1777, telling of Howe's move on Phila- delphia. The use of an hourglass mask (sent by a separate messenger) over the letter as a kind of decoder reveals that Howe's move essentially ruined British battle strategy in New York, which in turn led to the Saratoga defeat and the convention army.

The House on Jones Neck: The Dickinson Mansion. By J. H. POWELL. (Dover, Del.: Friends of the John Dickinson Mansion, Inc., 1954. 28 p. Paper, $.50.)

The John Dickinson Mansion, near Dover in Kent County, Delaware, is being restored and will soon be open for exhibition. Beautiful in itself and distinguished by its owners, this notable house has a fine history. In an attractive pamphlet, J. H. Powell, an authority on John Dickinson, has written pleasantly and colorfully of the Dickinson family and the "house on Jones Neck" they loved so well. Samuel Dickinson, John's father, built the mansion in the late 1730's. It was a working plantation and a happy home. He was the "genius of the Jones Neck estate" and a remarkable man in his own right. But it was his brilliant son John, the "Pennsylvania Farmer," whose name will ever be identified with the mansion, the home in which his fondest dreams and associations were rooted. Dr. Powell's story is essentially that of the house and its two masters. But there are many details of Delaware history, of eighteenth-century life, and of the Dickinson family which readers will find of great interest. Copies of this pamphlet are available from The John Dickinson Mansion, P.O. Box 710, Dover, Delaware, or from the Delaware State Museum, 316 South Governors Avenue, Dover. 53O BOOK REVIEWS October

Travels of William Bartram. Edited by MARK VAN DOREN. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1955. 414 p. Thirteen original illustrations. Cloth, #3.95; paper, $1.95.) During the years 1773-1777 William Bartram made a botanical explora- tion of the southeastern part of the United States. In 1791 he published his Travels, which immediately aroused great interest in America and abroad. The book was reprinted many times and in several languages. The present edition is substantially a reprinting of Mark Van Doren's 1928 edition, with the addition of the thirteen illustrations used'in the 1791 edition. The index and editorial note of the 1928 edition are also included.

Sketches of Somerset. (Somerset, Pa.: Somerset Sesquicentennial Association, 1954. 96 p. Illustrations.) In 1804, Somerset in western Pennsylvania was incorporated into a borough. Settlement of the area dates from 1772, when Harmon Husband established his home in Cox's Creek Glades. Since those early days the town (called the "Roof Garden" of the state) has grown and prospered, and in 1954 proudly celebrated its sesquicentennial. Sketches of Somerset, published as part of that celebration, is just what its name implies—concise, interestingly written, and well-illustrated notes on the varied aspects of the town's history, development, and personalities.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR THE EDITOR The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography In looking over the review I wrote of Gay Wilson Allen's biography of Whitman for the July, 1955, issue of your magazine, I should like to correct two matters that crept in either through inadvertence or hurried proof- reading. I find an "and" inserted in the name of Emory Holloway. Of course, there were no two people with these names, but one person, the distinguished Pulitzer Prize winner, Emory Holloway. I also find the statement that "Whittier, not Taylor, delivered the opening poem" at the Centennial Exhibition. Whittier sent the poem, which he wrote and which was a hymn, to the Commission, to be sung by a chorus. Whittier himself was not present at the opening. Taylor's poem was read by him about two months later on the Fourth of July in Independence Square. Allen had stated that Taylor read his poem at the opening of the Exhibition, which was on May 10, 1876, at Fairmount Park.

Philadelphia ALBERT MORDELL