BOOK REVIEWS

George Washington. A Biography. Volume VI: Patriot and President. By DOUGLAS SOUTHALL FREEMAN. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1954. xlviii, 529 p. Illustrations, appendices, bibliography, index. $7.50.) The death of Douglas Southall Freeman on June 13, 1953, ended a career which will make its mark on the practice of biography in America. Profes- sional historians have smiled at his enthusiasm over his "discoveries"; and they are right in that the work now ended has produced no significant revaluation. They have smiled at his assembly-line technique of research, and have been pleased to point out errors which resulted from it. They have complained of the pedantry of the footnotes which swarm after every sen- tence, and of the cryptic abbreviations which they contain. But the public, which one would have expected to have been frightened off by this parade of scholarly machinery, has taken to heart this vast biography, as it did that of R. E. Lee. The number of Freeman fans among people who are not naturally readers of heavy books is amazing. To this concluding volume Dumas Malone has contributed an essay on "The Pen of Douglas Southall Freeman," and Mary Wells Ashworth has contributed a prefatory note which the writers of popular biography and youthful practitioners of history should read thoughtfully. Indeed some of the professional historians of this generation would have done their own work much better had they seriously aimed at Freeman's goal of perfection, and had they labored as earnestly as he to reach it. This volume would have remained the climax of the biography of Washington even if Freeman had lived to complete the seventh. It covers the retirement of the hero to his farm, the creation of the Union, and the celebration of the first inauguration in such a national burst of enthusiasm as the states had never seen. The near-worship of Washington had carried ratification, and it provided the bond which held the new government together until the mutual interests of the states could sort themselves out and provide cohesion. Then came the development of politics and, in the second Presidential election, the savage attacks on John Adams which warned Washington that the game was going to be one which he could not play. The parallel between his concept of the Presidency and his experience and those of President Eisenhower is instructive. The volumes in this biography dealing with the Revolution suffered somewhat from being Washington-centered. One sometimes wondered whether Freeman realized that he was for this reason giving a distorted, 237 238 BOOK REVIEWS April

and sometimes inaccurate, picture of the war. On the other hand, the Washington-centered quality is one of the useful things about Volume VI. The biography was to end with Freeman's over-all appraisal of Washing- ton, which we were awaiting with great interest. Looking back at the series, one can see that Freeman was ideally prepared for this task. In some ways he was amusingly like his own conception of Washington; for example, in his own career there is a striking parallel to Washington's refusal to accept a salary. He had the same sense of dignity; he never called any man by his first name. He wrote of the great with reverence, and with an eye to moral and ethical standards which statistical biographers regard as a contamina- tion of history. But this biography is no mere glorification of Washington. Freeman agreed with the President's modesty about his own mental powers. He gently jokes about his dignified liking for the ladies. He says frankly that Washington "never could have won the war in the spirit he displayed in this effort to secure the peace." He sees no reason to apologize for the fact that Washington, in late pre-Jefferson times, saw nothing wrong in the use of taxation to support the church. The public, which has a vague idea that Washington was "the richest man in the country," will learn much from the picture of the planter which Freeman has drawn from manuscripts and from books usually used only by historians. Washington was not only practically bankrupt in 1787, but dis- inclined to economize or to reduce his scale of living in any way. Freeman's submerged New England ancestry, which regarded bankruptcy as evidence of sin, seems to have stirred not at all at this sight. Nor was it distressed at Washington's contract to give his gardener four dollars with which to be drunk four days and nights at Christmas. Freeman knew farming, and when he talks about Washington's experimentation with Chinese, South African, and Siberian seeds in Virginia soil, he writes as a planter. In spite of the fact that for the later portion of Washington's life the bulk of source material, some of it still untouched by historians, is such that Freeman could not possibly cover it all, this work will stand for generations as the definitive biography. It points the need for a hundred specialized works on smaller segments of Washington's life, but all of these will rely on Freeman for the background.

American Antiquarian Society CLIFFORD K. SHIPTON

Lemoyne cTIberville^ Soldier of New France. By NELLIS M. CROUSE. (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1954. xii, 280 p. Frontispiece, maps, appendix, bibliography, index. $4.00.) Read the epic pages of Francis Parkman, or the story of the Hudson Bay Company, or chronicles of early Maine, or again the history of Louisiana, and very soon a certain Pierre Lemoyne d'lberville enters the scene. 1955 BOOK REVIEWS 239 Wherever the interests of France and England clashed in the New World, in the two decades from 1686 to 1706, Lemoyne d'lberville played his customarily violent and often brief role. He thrust the English out of the Hudson Bay country, ravaged Newfoundland, raided the cost of Maine, took part in the brutal sack of Schenectady, laid waste the island of Nevis, and secured Louisiana for France. He was in the midst of planning further raids in the West Indies, perhaps a descent on British North America, when he died in Havana in 1706 at the age of forty-five. What manner of man was this "Canadian Cid"? What did he contribute to his times? What is his true place in history? These are the questions raised and left unanswered by the scattered references and episodic accounts through which most American readers have hitherto made Iberville's acquaintance. Now, thanks to Mr. Crouse, we have at least partial answers readily available in English. It is no criticism of Mr. Crouse to say that a fully rounded picture of the man Iberville does not emerge, since the source material for a biography is simply not to be found. Nevertheless, Mr. Crouse does permit himself a few general observations. Iberville, he writes, was throughout his career "imbued with a feeling of loyalty to his king . . . almost religious in its intensity," to which was added, "as a corollary," an implacable hatred of the English engendered by the cruelty of the Iroquois assault on Canada. As the story unfolds, other traits of Iberville's character reveal themselves to the reader: the traits of a forceful leader, ruthless, resourceful, and intrepid, but cautious when caution was called for, and those also of a man personally ambitious, clever, shrewd, and capable of turning his exploits into private gain. The emphasis, however, is, and rightly so, on Iberville's achievements, not on what he was. In careful and sometimes meticulous detail, Mr. Crouse describes each of the dozen raids and expeditions that made Iberville the hero of New France. It is an exciting story. Mr. Crouse is at his best in portraying the arduous journeys through the Canadian wilderness and the hardships of arctic warfare that faced Iberville and his men in their campaigns against the English outposts on Hudson Bay. The clash of arms, whether in northern Canada, Newfoundland, or Nevis, is described in hearty style. Yet, as a description of military opera- tions, the account is often frustrating. The strength and disposition of the opposing forces are not always set forth clearly, and Iberville's movements are frequently difficult to follow. To be understood fully, Iberville's cam- paigns must be fitted closely into the context of border raids and reprisals, the struggle for the beaver trade, and Iberville's own search for plunder. Mr. Crouse stresses, instead, the international rivalries of England, France, and Spain on the European stage. Finally, Mr. Crouse's highly unsym- pathetic and unconvincing view of "Leisler's rebellion" as background for the Schenectady raid and his low opinion of the English forces and their leaders tend to becloud the reasons for Iberville's success as a commander. In every operation except his Hudson Bay campaign of 1688-1689, Iberville 24O BOOK REVIEWS April

seems to have achieved surprise and enjoyed overwhelming superiority in numbers; but was it sheer luck or good intelligence (in the military sense) that enabled him to hit the enemy when and where they were not ready? It is something of a paradox that Iberville's chief claim to historical im- mortality rests on the one peaceful interlude in his career. His "bayou diplomacy" and his exploration of the lower Mississippi in 1699 established France's title to Louisiana. The fort he built in 1700 below the present site of New Orleans and the settlement he established on Mobile Bay in 1702 laid the permanent foundations of the colony. These, not his more violent exploits, entitle Iberville to that place in history which Mr. Crouse has reserved for him, as "one of the greatest of France's empire builders."

Alexandria^ Va. BYRON FAIRCHILD

Pennsylvania Politics and the Growth of Democracy, 1740-1776. By THEO- DORE THAYER. (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1953 [1954]. x, 224 p. Illustrations, bibliography, index. 12.75.) This book presents a short history of the growth of the democratic move- ment in Pennsylvania from 1740 to the Revolution. The author is well qualified by previous research to deal with this topic, and has produced a useful handbook which covers most of the major points of interest. The story outlines the prolonged attacks by the popular party on the proprietors, and the subsequent unfolding of the Revolutionary drama. Mr. Thayer demonstrates how the old pacifist power crumbled in 1755, and establishes another dramatic turning point in the year 1764, by when, he states, Franklin had completely broken the power of the Penns. His account continues to the establishment of the radical constitution of 1776, a story which in its larger aspects is fairly well known, but which is here strength- ened in detail by Mr. Thayer's research. Some of this detail could have been more carefully checked by Mr. Thayer, who makes quite a number of factual errors in his descriptions of important men. To mention several such errors by way of example: William Peters was not a minister; the Rev. William Smith was not identi- fied with Christ Church; Thomas Penn made one visit, not two, to Phila- delphia; Governor Hamilton was not born in Pennsylvania; Joncaire did not visit Weiser in 1748. Errors such as these do not affect the validity of the book, but they do give it an untidy appearance. Several interpretations can be challenged. One is the statement that William Allen practically alone determined who should fill the high appoint- ive offices of the province after 1740 (pp. 15, 92). Mr. Thayer's examples of 1955 BOOK REVIEWS 24I

Allen's influence all follow Richard Peters' retirement in the sixties. In 1764 Thomas Penn denied that Allen had made many recommendations for office (Penn Letter Book, VIII, 82). The statement that the Quaker party became the defender of the Frame of Government (p. 8) may be questioned. It can be argued that Thomas Penn was the defender of this instrument, and that the Quaker party, seek- ing to enlarge its powers, constantly attacked the Frame of Government. Mr. Thayer himself has seemingly hinted that that was the case in his biography of Israel Pemberton in which he stated (p. 47) that "the difficulty was not that William Penn had failed to give the Assembly large powers, but that it had not been granted all the powers of government." Some day a historian will achieve a fresh appraisal of Thomas Penn. He merits it, for he was important, yet he is known to history only through the eyes of his political enemies, Franklin and the Quakers. It is their viewpoint which Mr. Thayer expresses in his book. I am not in agreement with the major point made by Mr. Thayer that by 1764 Franklin and his party had completely broken the power of the Penns. It is a statement which is difficult to assess because Mr. Thayer does not discuss or explain it when he reaches 1764. On the contrary, in 1764 he pic- tures the Penns as doing unusually well at the polls. They even turned Franklin out of the Assembly. In that year Governor John Penn, by adher- ing to his instructions, dealt the Assembly an important defeat on the sup- ply bill. On May 30, 1764, Franklin bitterly acknowledged: "Proprietary Will and Pleasure, expressed in their Instructions, being now our only Law, which, through publick necessities and the distresses of War, we have been and are compelled to obey" (ColonialRecords, IX, 188). Evidently, the way to break the power of the Penns was to transfer Pennsylvania into a Crown colony. In this effort Franklin failed. It is true that in 1764 Thomas Penn retreated from his stand on taxation, thereby removing a cause of political agitation, but if this action diminished the power of the Penns, Mr. Thayer does not explain how. The Penns had never controlled the Assembly. Their traditional sources of power in 1764 as in 1754 seem to me to have continued in full force: control of the execu- tive, the judiciary, and the land office, and the support of the Crown. Political heats revolved around the proprietors for many years. That such conflicts later shifted to other sources of democratic wrath need not imply that the power of the Penns had been broken. There is room for all gradations of opinion in any political discussion. My concentration on several controversial points is not intended to take away from the many judicious and painstaking conclusions arrived at in this volume, which takes its place in the growing series of Pennsylvania political studies.

The Historical Society of Pennsylvania NICHOLAS B. WAINWRIGHT 242 BOOK REVIEWS April

Some Account of the Pennsylvania Hospital By BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. Printed in Facsimile, with an Introduction by I. BERNARD COHEN. [Publications of the Institute of the History of Medicine, Fourth Series, Biblioteca Medica Americana, Volume VI.] (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1954. xxxii, 40 p. $3.25.) This beautiful facsimile reproduction makes generally available a docu- ment, first published in 1754, which is of the greatest importance in Ameri- can medical and social history. Well over half the pamphlet consists of let- ters, petitions, laws and tables relevant to the early history of the first general hospital established in the colonies. It is a fascinating story told charmingly by Benjamin Franklin, who made use in this account of several of the techniques still popular with those who seek to stimulate giving for worthy causes. Franklin's contribution and something of his motivation are made clear in the introduction by I. Bernard Cohen. The book is a valuable addition to the series of seminal American medical works being published by the Institute of the History of Medicine.

New York University BROOKE HINDLE

The Coming of the Revolution, 1763-1775. By LAWRENCE HENRY GIPSON. [The New American Nation Series.] (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1954, xvi, 288 p. Illustrations, maps, bibliography, index. $5.00.) In 1763 the Union Jack waved triumphantly over a vast empire in North America, testifying to the enterprise of the people of the British Isles and to the valor of their arms. The Peace of Paris, negotiated that year, had brought to a successful conclusion the latest of the many struggles by which the military had shared in this achievement. Englishmen on both sides of the Atlantic enjoyed a sense of pride and accomplishment. It was satisfying to be a member of a national society so favored by Providence. The accent upon patriotism was not, however, to survive many seasons. Within a twenty-year span the Empire was torn by internal dissension, secession, and civil war. Former friends found themselves separated by chasms of outlook too wide to be bridged; even blood ties were often unable to withstand the strain of developing differences. And the ordeal once begun was brought to a halt only after a new nation had been carved out of the British territorial holdings in the Western Hemisphere. The antecedents of this change form the substance of the discussion by Lawrence Henry Gipson in the work under review. In this study Professor Gipson, one of the most distinguished historians of the present generation, has applied his diagnostic talents and vast knowledge with skill and felicity of expression. The product is a volume stimulating throughout. In addition to providing us with an able synthesis of the views of modern scholars on the subject, the author suggests a number of provocative interpretations of his 1955 BOOK REVIEWS 243 own. Probably few will dissent from his over-all conclusion that the inability of British statesmen after 1763 to devise a formula within which the nation- alistic aspirations of the American people and the new administrative re- sponsibilities of the British government could be reconciled spelled the doom of the old British Empire. In developing his principal theme, Professor Gipson follows for the most part a chronological pattern. His first two chapters are devoted to a survey of the British Empire in 1763 and an analysis of the internal situation of the American colonies. This discussion is followed by essays on the Sugar Act, Stamp Act, Townshend duties, Tea Act, and the ultimate decision of the home government to adopt a policy of coercion. Each of these subjects is related to the author's thesis and is described with a wealth of detail. High- lighting the description of events is the author's successful effort to keep the reader aware of the difficulties involved in administering a colonial popula- tion that has reached an advanced stage of maturity. Impressive evidence is marshaled in support of the assertion that on the eve of the Revolution most of the older colonies were competent to provide for local needs and interests unaided by the mother country. A recurrent note throughout the book is the contention that prior to 1763 the British system of colonial control was admirably adapted to promote the growth of the colonies; indeed, that the colonies were among its chief bene- ficiaries. Moreover, a strong case is presented in behalf of the wisdom of the Sugar Act. In these respects the author adds his support to those students who question the colonial merchants' evaluation of the navigation system. It is clear, furthermore, that the Stamp Act in its final form embodied a number of redemptive features and was, in view of existing circumstances, an equitable solution of a thorny problem. But as the author notes, "What men in the past have believed to be true may well be as important ... as the actual truth." This observation assumes great significance under Pro- fessor Gipson's handling of his subject. In this addition to The New American Nation Series, Professor Gipson has obviously brought to bear the knowledge he has accumulated in the writing of his highly acclaimed multivolume study, The British Empire before the American Revolution. The Coming of the Revolution, 1763-1775 is a fitting climax to this study and should take its place as a distinguished contribution to the new Harper and Brothers series in American history.

Muhlenberg College VICTOR L. JOHNSON

The Admiral and the Empress: John Paul Jones and Catherine the Great. By LINCOLN LORENZ. (New York: Bookman Associates, 1954. 194 p. Illustrations, bibliography, index. $3.50.) Because he believes that John Paul Jones's experience in the Russia of Catherine the Great gives the present international situation "an immediate 244 BOOK REVIEWS April importance," the author, with the consent of his former publishers, has adapted for this present volume the material he used in the last portion of his definitive biography of Jones. "Adapt," as he expresses it, is scarcely the proper word; barring some introductory remarks, the inclusion of a pur- ported confession, and certain deletions, The Admiral and the Empress is little more than a verbatim reprint of Part 7, "The Rear Admiral in Russia," of John Paul Jonesy Fighter for Freedom and Glory, published in 1943. Lorenz regards this republication justified as "a prophecy of the Iron Curtain for the better, if belated, understanding of Russia especially by some of our former statesmen." Regardless of this premise, which seems founded upon tenuous grounds at best, the book re-emphasizes the most disappointing and frustrating period of Jones's life, the unfortunate results of his restless ambition and fatuous faith in the promises of royalty. The navy's great hero scarcely deserves this repetition of his disillusionment. Lorenz, however, has performed a service in unearthing a statement by Jones which places in a more believable light his relationship with the girl the Russians charged he had deflowered. This "Letter of Purported Con- fession," as Lorenz calls it, is in the Museum of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, and he has shown it in facsimile. It is in French, and handwriting experts believe it was written by a Russian secretary. Jones's signature to it is unmistakable. According to the translation, Jones readily confessed that he "often frolocked" with her, and paid her for the pleasure, "but by no means did I take her virginity." Such has long been the conclusion of all the Jones biographers, although the "confession" does contradict the account of the affair that M. de Segur, the French Ambassador, claimed to have received from the Admiral. Whether, as the jacket states, this book proves "a parable for our times," it also serves to bedraggle again the closing years of a great sea fighter.

Brevardy N. C. WILLIAM BELL CLARK

The Light of Distant Skies, 1760-1835. By JAMES THOMAS FLEXNER. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1954. xiv, 306 p. Illustrations, bibliography, index. $10.00.) The public is much indebted to the author for his half dozen clear, read- able volumes on the timely subject of painting in this country. He is pos- sessed of a fine journalistic flair for the selection of the significant, he is able to knit together scattered facts into a rational, well-composed pattern, his style is lucid, and he is always interesting. But books about painting ob- viously require illustrations—many of them—which may be studied, along with the text, with the least possible trouble and effort on the part of the reader. Their selection, quantity, quality, size, position on the page, and placement within the text may enhance or mar the work. The volume under I955 BOOK REVIEWS 245 review is disappointing, though the fault is not the author's nor altogether the publisher's; it may be ascribed to "the times" and skyrocketing costs. In the book under review we have quantity but not quality and, cer- tainly, not reader convenience. The illustrations, totaling one hundred and two, crammed into sixty-four pages, have been subjected to an exasperating Procrustean process. Some of the works illustrated are reduced four and a half times and others as much as twenty-four times that they may be squeezed into the fewest pages possible. This space-saving device and ar- rangement by size and shape have thrown many of the illustrations out of the order of the text, thereby creating a frustrating and discouraging process on the part of the reader attempting to follow both. Nor does the trouble stop here; half the illustrations stand on their sides, requiring the reader to give the book a quarter turn every time he wants to have a look. This book, the sequel to the First Flowers of Our Wilderness (1947), is the outcome of the author's recent Lowell Lectures, given at the Boston Public Library for the Lowell Institute. It covers the period from "the drama that had started when West reached Italy in 1760" down to "its tragic end," with the disillusionment of painter-scientist Morse, the "new movement," and the rise of the romantic Hudson River School. West's long and powerful domination of the scene is most effectively presented, and the story of the struggles, the performances, the trials and successes of his many pupils— Peale, Earl, Stuart, Trumbull, Allston, and Morse—in the newly created Republic is well told. Nor are folk art and the productions of the self-taught stay-at-homes neglected. Various forces, social, economic, and aesthetic, are weighed, interpreted, and presented in a unified whole. But the fabled Procrustes has been at work with text as well as illustrations—the book has been "bulked"; it is the same size as First Flowers, but there are twenty per cent fewer lines per page and twenty per cent fewer pages. The cost is just twenty per cent more. Does the discriminating public buy books by poundage? After what has been stated above, it may seem unkind to point out differ- ences of fact and opinion. For instance, Trumbull was commissioned a colonel at the age of twenty-one, not at twenty-three (p. 30). "Trumbull . . . was forced to carry his American subjects to continental mezzo- tinters" (p. 88). Never—they were line engravers; the process of mezzo- tinting would not have permitted the painter to achieve the large number of prints required for his historic paintings. One of Trumbull's early portraits, however, the Washington painted from memory at London in 1780, was mezzo- tinted by Valentine Green. "Stuart . . . painted the so-called 'Landsdown Portrait* in which Washington, at full length, wades in an iridescent pool of noble symbols. . . . Stuart . . . became annoyed with this elaborate composition, and then tangled in it" (p. 77). Query: Should not some men- tion be made that the composition was lifted, in a simplified form, from Hyacinthe Rigaud's celebrated portrait of Bishop Bossuet through the means of Pierre Drevet's engraving? ". . . in some particulars Stuart fore- 246 BOOK REVIEWS April

shadowed the point of view and technique of Impressionism" (p. 82). The reviewer finds this opinion difficult to follow, nor does he share the author's enthusiasm for the color and design of Kemmelmeyer's Washington (p. 111). His most serious difference arises over Benjamin West's "Death on the Pale Horse from Revelation [which] shows the apocalyptic destruction of man- kind by three terrible riders" (p. 130): three riders for the four in the Biblical account—and, incidentally, in the Philadelphia Quaker's picture (plate 56). But, aside from such matters, the question as to whether the book should be purchased, with its manufacturing shortcomings and at the price, must be left to personal decision. The writer of these lines, for one, is all for it.

Yale University THEODORE SIZER

Captured by Indians: True Tales of Pioneer Survivors. By HOWARD H. PECKHAM. (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1954. xviii, 238 p. Illustrations, bibliography, index. $5.00.) This handsomely produced little volume performs an excellent service for the "general reader." (One hopes there are enough survivors of this genus to appreciate what Mr. Peckham and the Rutgers University Press have done for them.) Here are fourteen of the most famous and most reliable of the "Indian captivities," retold by the compiler with necessary background material deftly worked into the text. The narratives range in time from 1676 to 1864 and in place from the New England of Mary Rowlandson to Fort Sully, north of Pierre, South Dakota, of which Fanny Kelly was the "savior." Through these fourteen stories the Narragansett Indians give way to the Tequestas (in Florida); they in turn to the Abenakis and Caugh- nawagas (at the Deerfield massacre of 1704); and so on across the continent where, on the ever-moving frontier, the white characters in this drama met the successive violence of Shawnees, Mingoes, Senecas, Chippewas, Wyan- dots, Ottawas, Delawares, Miamis, Copper Heads (of the Athapascan family), Blackfeet, Comanches, Wichitas, Kiowas, Apaches, Mojaves, and Sioux. If Mr. Peckham had chosen merely to reprint the narratives he has here condensed and retold, adding the requisite explanatory and corrective notes, we should have had in our hands an unmanageable book of possibly two thousand pages. Moreover, there are many longueurs in the original stories, exciting and significant as they are in the main. It would have been wise, no matter what the plan of presentation, to omit such passages. Still, a good deal has been lost in the retelling. Inevitably the stories read as if they had all been written by Mr. Peckham! One misses the stylistic varia- tions so interesting to the literary historians, who view these narratives not as historical documents merely, but as constituting one of the most fascinat- ing genres of writing which America has produced. It may be that Mr. 1955 BOOK REVIEWS 247 Peckham has recovered "the vitality of the experience" (as he expressly- hoped to do) by stripping away "some of the detail added for sensation, or for * elegance.'" However, such literary historians as Philips D. Carleton and Roy H. Pearce have found in just this sort of detail material for speculation about what the writers and the ghost writers of these narratives believed their public wanted to read. Thus, authenticity, of a kind, can be discerned in "elegance" of style as well as in the correctly remembered day on which the Indian raiders fell on a lonely cabin when no help was near, or in the proper identification of an Indian tribe. By reducing these narratives to the historian's concept of them, very little of the purpose of the original teller or transcriber is permitted to come through. Mary Rowlandson wrote her story for her children, but her sub- sidiary purpose was to demonstrate God's Providence, Christian fortitude, and the Puritan view of the Indians as a "company of hellhounds." She ends her narrative on a true note of Convenantal piety: "I have learned to look beyond present and smaller troubles, and to be quieted under them, as Moses said, Exodus xiv. 13, Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord?' How significantly different were the motives which prompted Hugh Henry Brackenridge of Pittsburgh to persuade John Knight and John Slover to tell the story of their sufferings. Brackenridge was one of our greatest Indian haters, and he knew that in their Narratives of a Late Expedition he had a tale which, would stop the mouths of the sentimentalist and of the legalist who thought treaty-making was great medicine. His ultimate aim was to persuade the government to take some effectual steps to chastise and suppress these "animals, vulgarly called Indians." But I do not wish to conclude ungenerously. Mr. Peckham has given us a carefully planned book which succeeds in bringing within its relatively small compass two hundred years of one of the most complex themes in American history.

Princeton University WILLARD THORP

Soldiers of the American Army> 1775-1954. Drawings by FRITZ KREDEL. Text by FREDERICK P. TODD. (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1954. [80 p.], 32 plates. $12.50.) Primarily, this is a book of excellent colored plates of uniforms worn by various components of the armies of the United States. Accompanying each illustration is a descriptive sketch giving the necessary historical back- ground of the uniform pictured. Unlike most studies on this subject, this volume is the result of the collaboration of a distinguished military artist, Fritz Kredel, and a capable historian, Frederick P. Todd. Basing their work on the clear, simple fact that "an army is composed of men and . . . other paraphernalia," the authors 248 BOOK REVIEWS April have depicted and described these men, both "regulars" and civilians. The majority of soldiers were civilians serving by whatever title the times ap- plied to them—volunteers, minute men, militia, reserves, draftees, selectees. Through the combined skill of Mr. Kredel and Col. Todd, we are able to visualize the appearance of the "Shirties," a segment of the buckskin-clad Continental Army. Our early "Common Militia" is appealingly portrayed in its civilian garb augmented by an occasional piece of real military trap- pings. In chronological order, the reader can examine the inappropriate but spectacular uniforms copied from the European armies of the Napoleonic era, the homespun tatters of the hard-fighting Confederate infantry, the picturesque brilliant red bloomers of the New York Zouaves, the dashing appearance of Jeb Stuart's cavalry, among others. Also included are the im- practical, dudelike uniforms of some of the lesser marching societies of the various loose-knit units of the state volunteer corps. This book takes a valued place among the select few works which over the generations have sought to depict in a significant way the uniforms of our fighting men: Huddy, Duval, and Childs, famed for their engravings and lithographs; Nebel, with his portrayal of the Mexican War; the Civil War engravings of Forbes; the products of Brady's camera. Remington vividly recalls to us the appearance of our Indian fighters; Pyle and Ogden, in their fastidious gay nineties manner, made their contribution; Lefferts concentrated on colonial times. Work such as that produced by Mr. Kredel and Col. Todd invariably attracts the attention of special collectors. It will prove of great interest to The Company of Military Collectors and Historians with their concentra- tion on military research. For that matter, the time and labor taken by the authors to assemble, evaluate, and illustrate the appearance of our soldiers as they dressed and equipped themselves for war will prove of great value to all interested people. The authors can now turn their happy talents to the completion of other works they have planned on the uniforms of the Ameri- can Navy and Marine Corps, as well as an ambitious volume on the uni- forms of the world.

Newtown Square JOHN H. HUNTER, 2ND

Understanding the American Past: American History and Its Interpretation. Written and edited by EDWARD N. SAVETH. Introduction by ALLEN NEVINS. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1954. x, 613 p. Index. $6.00.) Anthologies of historical writings are remarkably rare, and after an ex- amination of Mr. Saveth's welcome volume the reader may well ask him- self, "Why hasn't someone done this before?" His fellow craftsmen will be i955 BOOK REVIEWS 249 indebted to Mr. Saveth to the extent that these pieces will be a source of pride to the whole profession, for this is truly history with its best foot forward. The hoped-for wider public, to which this book should certainly appeal, will find each essay a rewarding and stimulating experience. The purpose of this large volume is to describe some of the high lights of American history and at the same time illustrate important trends in his- torical interpretation. By way of setting the stage for what follows, the editor has written a discerning review of the major currents in American historiography since the time of Bancroft. It is, for its length, the most use- ful summary of its kind available. The thirty essays by thirty-two distinguished authors that comprise most of the volume have been chosen because they are concerned with certain important problems on a high level of interpretation. Rising above the mass of our historical literature, they are outstanding for the manner in which they illuminate and synthesize the facts with which they deal. Each takes a decided point of view and is therefore suggestive and provocative, as well as informative. Mr. Saveth has not attempted to "cover" the whole sweep of our history. Of the thirty selections, four are devoted to the colonial era, six to the post- Revolutionary years, seven to the circumstances that form the background of the Civil War, seven to the late nineteenth century and the Progressive period, and six to our own times. Ten of the items have been drawn from books, and the other twenty have been exerpted in whole or in part from articles in seventeen different periodicals. For what significance it may have, it may be worth noting that there is not a single piece from the American Historical Review', only one from the Mississippi Valley Historical Review. The Political Science Quarterly is represented three times, the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society twice. One naturally wonders why our two major journals are so conspicuously underrepresented. Doubtless most readers will take exception to the neglect of favorite fields or to the omission of long-buried "gems," but that is a form of criticism that all anthologists must risk. Recent scholarship quite properly receives the major share of attention. Only five essays—by Henry Adams, Beard, Becker, Commons, and Turner —date from longer ago than two decades. Of the remainder, seventeen were published within the past ten years. It would be pointless and even invidious to attempt to single out individual authors and their contributions for special mention. Suffice it to say that here are the recognized masters per- forming at a high level of distinction. This, then, is a volume of the best, and it can be enthusiastically recom- mended to students of the American past on all levels. I predict that even history professors will want to buy it—at least this one did.

Rutgers University RICHARD P. MCCORMICK 25O BOOK REVIEWS April Eventful Years and Experiences: Studies in Nineteenth Century American Jewish History. By BERTRAM WALLACE KORN. [Publications of The American Jewish Archives, No. 1.] (Cincinnati, Ohio: The American Jewish Archives, 1954. xiv, 249 p. Index. $4.00.) The appearance of this volume during the celebration of the American Jewish Tercentenary is a noteworthy invitation to untrodden paths of American history. In the first study, "Jewish Forty-Eighters," a scholarly approach is established which characterizes all eight studies. The identifica- tion, background, and integration of forty German Jews associated with that fateful year invite the reader to the mid-nineteenth-century experiences of thousands of other German Jewish immigrants. "American Jewish Life in 1849" examines the social, cultural, and religious activity of an emerging community. The growth of the periodical press and its reception by the Jewish population and the determined but unsuccessful attempt to organize a union of American Jewish organizations are only two of the outstanding events which are objectively analyzed. The religious bigotry which was an organic part of the Know-Nothing movement finds individual Jews sharing both sides of the debate, but never as a major part of the controversy. As a community, the Jews withheld their frail weight from the factionalism. The portrait of "Judah P. Benjamin as a Jew" reveals that amazing and brilliant figure of American political life as a target of anti-Jewish prejudice, despite the fact that his personal identification with Judaism was one of indifference. On the eve of secession, when the Congress of the United States was torn by sectional strife and unable to elect a Speaker of the House, a most signifi- cant event took place in its halls. On February 1, i860, Rabbi Morris J. Raphall delivered the first Jewish prayer to open a session of the House of Representatives. This recognition of Judaism as having an equal status with Christianity had no counterpart elsewhere in the world. The press praised the action and condemned it, vilified it and sneeringly accepted it as Si/ait accompli. The equality of religion which was theoretically established was extended to reality. Ultimately, the right and privilege of Jewish clergy- men to open legislative sessions with prayer reached every state in the Union. "The First Jewish Prayer in Congress" is a distinguished moment in American history. When the War Between the States became a reality and Biblical exegesis a toy pistol in the hands of proslavery or abolitionist clergymen, and the Methodist Church split north and south, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, pub- lisher of The Israelite^ became a provocative advocate of peace without becoming a neutral. This study, "Isaac Mayer Wise on the Civil War," is an examination of the editorial writings of Wise during and after the war. As an independent addition to the extensive Civil War literature with which Dr. Korn is intimately familiar, this analysis of Jewish periodical journalism indicates the work yet to be done. One other study which concerns itself 1955 BOOK REVIEWS 251 with Jewish participation during a critical period of wartime is "Jewish Welfare Activities for the Military during the Spanish-American War." Its significance is not only of national scope, but contains items of Philadel- phia interest, such as the activi ty of Rabbi Joseph Krauskopf, a predecessor of Dr. Korn at Congregation Keneseth Israel, whose work in other areas has been discussed in The Pennsylvania Magazine. One of the methods em- ployed here is of special interest because the author made an extensive effort to interview surviving veterans of the war with Spain to draw upon their personal experiences. The most valuable contribution among these studies concerns the "First American Jewish Theological Seminary," Maimonides College. The college was organized in the summer of 1867 through the determined efforts of Rev. Isaac Leeser, a luminary in the life of American Jewry for almost four decades. This third attempt to provide an institution for the education of Jews for the ministry was also destined to be a failure. Such competent men as Leeser, Sabato Morais, and Marcus Jastrow were not in themselves enough to attract a large student body. The death of Leeser may have been the first blow in weakening the strength of the college, but other factors con- tributed to its short life—poor administration, inadequate finances, and disorganization in the Jewish communal structure. The failure of Mai- monides College did not prevent Isaac Mayer Wise from establishing Hebrew Union College, now the oldest Jewish College in continuous exist- ence, two years after the Philadelphia institution closed its doors in 1873. Nor did other communal leaders remain inactive because of this failure; Sabato Morais devoted his energies to the establishment of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. This collection of studies is marked by originality and effective presenta- tion. Dr. Korn has worked from primary sources and has avoided the un- fortunate tendency of some investigators to regroup secondary material. All the studies are carefully documented, and the valuable notes make the book attractive not only to the scholar, but to the general reader as well. The Publications of The American Jewish Archives proudly make their debut with this volume.

Philadelphia MAXWELL WHITEMAN

The First Republicans: Political Philosophy and Public Policy in the Party of Jefferson and Madison. By STUART GERRY BROWN. (Syracuse, N. Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1954. x, 186 p. Bibliography, index. $3.00.) The contribution of Jefferson's and Madison's controlling ideas to the philosophy of American democracy has been newly explored in recent years by scholarly interpreters. The present volume borrows heavily from this body of scholarship, and, as Vtr. Brown says, rests content with these 2^2 BOOK REVIEWS April "original researches" in order to play the function of "the generalist student of the history of ideas." The reader is keyed to expect that he will get "a fresh look at larger perspectives" and that the author will provide "a logical articulation of certain great ideas which the old Republicans . . . built into a system of free government and a free way of life." The viewpoint is described as that of the "first Republicans"—by whom Mr. Brown means principally the great Republican philosopher-statesmen, Jefferson and Madison, and their able cohorts Gallatin and Monroe. What we find in the compass of this brief book is an intelligent review of the leading ideas of these men on fundamental subjects like the nature and rights of man, the Constitution, domestic and foreign policy of the Repub- lican Party in power, religion and the state. By the terms of the author's announced intention, one is not to expect any contribution to scholarship, but a fresh look at larger perspectives. In a sense, we do have the larger perspectives here, for the subjects discussed cover not only some basic elements of our liberal democratic tradition, but attempt to consider the policy implementation given those ideas by the skillful Republican strate- gists. Larger perspectives, however, without a penetrating and responsible analysis of ideas and issues might result in a "fresh look" that would be evanescent and not revelatory—and this, I am afraid, is true of the present study. There are serious faults of two kinds inherent in this work. First, the author's assumption that it is possible to take at face value the offerings of recent scholars in this field without any personal responsibility to investi- gate at least at those points where the scholarship conflicts with other scholarship, or where a given scholar fails to handle ideas adequately, is a comfortable but untenable assumption. And were historians disposed to regard the self-proclaimed "generalist" as a person absolved from the rigors of any kind of firsthand research, the very least that we would demand is thorough knowledge of the interpretive material on which the new study rests. This requirement is not met by Mr. Brown. For example, he is un- aware of Douglass Adair's research on the authorship of the disputed numbers in the Federalist, and thus comments of Numbers 62 and 63 (on the Senate) that they are of "undetermined authorship." This is not only a failure in having canvassed important historical literature in recent professional journals, but shows no familiarity with the two recent editions of the Federalist, one by the late Charles Beard, the other by Ralph Gabriel, both of which accept Adair's attributions and ascribe these papers to Madison. In a different context, Mr. Brown relies on a previous scholar's interpretation of the Jefferson-Madison exchange of letters on the theme "the earth belongs to the living," and on Madison's later paper for the National Gazette (1792) in which Madison takes a different position from the one he took in his earlier criticism of Jefferson. But Mr. Brown did not master the analysis given of the Jefferson-Madison exchange because he does not realize that Madison's later position is in fact changed to the 1955 BOOK REVIEWS 253 Jeffersonian one. He mistakenly asserts that the later context is a "new" one, namely, war. Yet this was exactly the context for Jefferson's earlier reflections and Madison's critique. The second serious fault endemic in this study is probably more substan- tial than the first. It has to do with the quality of logical analysis and the degree of intellectual vigor in handling ideas. Issues are sometimes griev- ously oversimplified, and claims are made about the harmony and consist- ency of Republican theory, in all its aspects, and Republican policy that bespeak the author's enthusiasm for his subject, but not his responsible historical sense. For an illustration of an unreasonably oversimplified issue I adduce the author's account of the purchase of Louisiana, which he con- cedes is an exception to the constitutional policy of the Republican leaders, but still finds it consistent with that policy because "Jefferson faced the fact that it was in contradiction to his policy and asked for a constitutional amendment to cover such actions." This supposed consistency might have been claimed on a quite different and more pertinent ground. For Jefferson acted, after all, despite his scruples, without an amendment. And he justi- fied his action by pleading that in momentous decisions, under the pressure of acting quickly or sacrificing national self-preservation, the democratic leader must make effective decisions and then throw himself upon the people's judgment for approval or repudiation. For inadequate logical analysis of ideas, I would submit the author's contention that Madison's praise of "the extensive republic" can be equated with a defense of the issue of "Big Government" — and his unhistorical suggestion that this would be Madison's inclination in the complicated contemporary controversy about the dangers lurking in "big government" for democracy. Along similar lines, I find dangerously unqualified and even distorted the claim that the "First Republicans" were "the original demo- cratic planners, for whom the 'general welfare' was indeed the welfare of the general public." This large and curious pronouncement is made on the basis of a slender thread of evidence having to do with Jefferson's and Gallatin's plans for physical and cultural "internal improvement" (in the former's second administration)—plans that were never realized because of the process that terminated in the War of 1812, and because of Jefferson's belief that an amendment to the Constitution would be necessary to enable such a program. It is rather startling to find this intended but not realized program taken to be sufficient to classify the vision of the Republicans as in a direct line with "TVA, more than a century and a quarter later." This view, incidentally, is put forth only a few pages after the author has re- hearsed Jefferson's and Madison's strict construction arguments with respect to Hamilton's report on banking. It is perfectly admissible to argue that the earlier view and the shift to a more liberal spending power on the part of the government may represent two phases of a consistent concern for a free and prosperous democracy; but a bland and wholesale celebration over the welfare implications of the later position ignores the 254 BOOK REVIEWS April problem of a shift in policy and/or belief, and makes no attempt to weight the two views with respect to guiding principles or changed historical circumstances. This is not sound historical interpretation, whether firsthand or deriva- tive, whether "generalist" or "specialist." It does not really perform a valuable service in making the ideals of the early Republicans viable in our own day because it pretends that the solution of specific problems in the past is the key that fits the lock of our tangled problems today. It thus enlists these really great philosopher-statesmen in heated and complicated issues of the atomic era with more respect for their authority than for the sage and careful realism with which they protected the solid core of their liberal ideals. University of California, Berkeley ADRIENNE KOCH

The Jacksonians: A Study in Administrative History, 1829-1861. By LEONARD D. WHITE. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1954. xiv, 593 p. Index. $8.00.) The present volume, successor of The Federalists and The Jejfersonians, follows the pattern of organization of the earlier studies. In general, it treats first the administrative problems and mechanics of the Presidential office, the executive departments, and Congress, and next examines special administrative relationships which affected all branches of government, such as the press, rotation in office, career service, personnel problems, government and public economy, public service ethics, and Federal-state relations. The author concludes that "the basic forces that played upon the public business, and affected its conduct were primarily three: magnitude, facility of communication, and democracy" (p. 530). Of these, "the new element was democracy. It altered profoundly the character and spirit of the old system. ... It was an innovation that deserves to rank in its influence, both in its own time and in succeeding generations, with the original doc- trines on which the system was based" (p. 566). Yet, despite the many political changes wrought by the Jacksonians, their ascendancy marked no break in the administrative system. "There were no constitutional amend- ments; the body of administrative law was substantially untouched; the courts continued to mark the legal limits of administrative action. The formal structure and organization of the system were substantially the same in i860 as in 1830" (p. 553). Before proceeding to critical comment on the book, let me say that all the volumes of this trilogy are starting points, not the last word on the subjects examined. The author himself notes certain areas which he has explored only far enough to convince him that the field is fertile and untilled—public service ethics (p. 411, n. 1), for example, or public contracting (p. 430, n. 64). The historian will find dozens of subtitles within chapters which will suggest interesting subjects for more extensive treatment. 1955 BOOK REVIEWS 255

This work of imposing scholarship is clearly written and well organized, full of human interest and provocative of ideas. One major criticism is that there is not enough of it. The reviewer wishes that two areas in particular had been developed further: the relationships between state and Federal officeholders, and the connections between government officials and political party managers. The author emphasizes that in the period 1829-1861 the functions of the state governments more nearly kept pace with the demands of a growing citizenry than did those of the Federal machine. He also con- cludes that the era was one in which interest in party management took precedence over considerations of efficient public administration. Insofar as political parties were both managed and financed largely by government officeholders, it would seem that a more direct examination of party admin- istration might have thrown even more light on problems and methods of public administration, especially as these dual functions were commonly combined in the same person. A second criticism deals with the problem of balance of sources. While the amount of research bestowed upon this work was prodigious, and while most of the sources used were primary, there are several places where too much reliance was placed upon prejudiced sources. As a result, two heroes and one villain appear in the volume, Amos Kendall and James K. Polk representing the former, and James Buchanan the latter. Much of the data relating to the heroes comes from their own writings—Kendall's Auto- biography and Polk's Diary. Much of the data pertaining to the villain comes from the report of a Republican investigating committee headed by Buchanan's bitter enemy, John Covode, whose purpose was to wreck the administration. The reviewer was surprised to find no reference in the foot- notes to the work of Roy F. Nichols, The Disruption of American Democracy', which would have suggested some truer explanations of the activities of the Buchanan administration than the poisonous Report of the Covode Com- mittee. Dr. White, for example, takes the Committee's word for it that Buchanan's dismissals were based on his determination to have a second term for himself (p. 341), but says nothing of the Buchanan-Douglas feud and the problem of enforcing party discipline on the Lecompton policy which lay at the heart of this patronage furor. In the final pages of the book is a "List of Important Characters" in which some errors appear. Pennsylvania's Nicholas Biddle is described as a "cultivated New Yorker" (p. 569), and Winfield Scott is listed as "Demo- cratic candidate for the presidency in the election of 1848" (p. 573). The Jacksonians is a more negative and currently less useful book than were its predecessors, primarily because it is largely a record of things done wrong rather than an analysis of the thoughtful solution of puzzling and recurrent administrative problems. The latter was the flavor of The Federalists. The reviewer is uncertain how much of this difference in view- point is imposed by the data and how much proceeds from the author's selection of examples. Certainly, there is more literature about scandals and 256 BOOK REVIEWS April breakdowns of the system than on those officials who quietly accomplish their routine duties with efficiency and integrity. The latter seem no less important, but in this volume receive less than their share of attention. None of these comments detracts from the simple fact that this book is a masterpiece of ingenious inquiry which will give all readers a more realistic view of the American government, and will be for years to come a source of inspiration and challenge to other scholars. The Pennsylvania State University PHILIP S. KLEIN

A Whig Embattled: The Presidency under John Tyler. By ROBERT J. MOR- GAN. (Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1954. xiv, 199 p. Frontispiece, bibliography, index. $3.50.) This volume on the American Presidency under John Tyler will confound those who feel that for many periods of our early national history there remain no fields for researchers to conquer. The author, a political scientist at the University of Nebraska, acknowledges the abundance of historical scholarship for this period, but, correctly, indicates that no study of Tyler "has been concerned primarily with his theory and practice in the Presi- dency" (p. xii). Hence, this is not a historical narrative but one using historical materials to present a new synthesis. The materials are chiefly standard monographs and secondary works and published correspondence. This is not, however, an adverse criticism. It but demonstrates how from old sources new insights into important chapters in the formative period of our national history can be gained. A work of this type does not, of course, have the scope of Leonard White's administrative studies, now completed with the appearance of The Jacksonians. Nor can it present as well-rounded, as warm, and as human a picture of its central character as a full-length biography. It is a specialized case study of an important chapter in Amer- ican history. The author cannot properly be charged with not presenting what he did not intend to. The many strong points of Morgan's analysis include the further rehabili- tation of Tyler's reputation, so notably developed a decade and a half ago by Chitwood. Tyler, it is made clear, was the head of his Presidential household; he refused to be cowed in the face of almost complete opposition in 1841 from his Clay Whig cabinet. Later he reconstructed the cabinet (a second time) and gathered about him a group which aided him in the realization of the annexation of Texas. Tyler was no less determined and forthright than had been Jackson. He made frequent use of the power of removal, exercised the principle of executive autonomy, and asserted the President's right to investigate. Especially notable were his leadership, independence, and success in foreign affairs, wherein Morgan shows "he was totally thwarted only once, and that with respect to what must be con- sidered a minor practical matter" (p. 109). 1955 BOOK REVIEWS 257

For those interested in the evolution of American parties, there is mate- rial of interest. Clearly delineated are the successive stages through which Tyler moved to strengthen himself politically—his attempt to conciliate the anti-Clay Whigs, his support of the Democratic Party, and his decision to be a third-party candidate. Morgan understands the amorphous nature of parties during this era and reveals how Tyler, "a factional leader of the Democratic party" (p. 177), failed to build an effective, organized following, but at the same time, in 1844, acted to protect his followers, force the Democrats to abandon Van Buren, and to promote the annexation of Texas. If any historians today still believe that Tyler was weak, a do-nothing thwarted by leaders of the party which had made him Vice-President and demoralized by the cross fire of partisan politics, this book is a useful cor- rective. Here is ample proof that if Tyler was not a "strong" President, certainly he was far from a "weak" one. The first of several Vice-Presidents to attain the Presidency on the death of the incumbent, he made the significant decision to take the Presidential oath and thus to determine "for the future the tradition that a President by accident may use his official powers with a vigor and purpose undiminished by his peculiar position" (p. 188). But, as Morgan convincingly shows, this is but the least of Tyler's several claims to fame. Tyler, a "Jacksonian Whig," was impelled to block the program which the Clay Whigs had expected to drive through a manageable Harrison. He resisted, too, the Whig notion that Congress should exercise a legislative guardianship over the executive, and he "used the veto power more than any of his predecessors except Andrew Jackson" (p. 26). However, there "stands out in amazing contrast ... his lack of boldness in proposing legislation" (p. 38). But Tyler was an innovator, especially when he "be- came the first President to cast off the cloak of constitutional argument and openly to base his veto on the ground that Congress* action was unwise" (p. 181). This study is an important contribution, both to the understanding of America's formative years and to an appreciation of how the American Presidency became what it is today.

Muhlenberg College JOHN J. REED

Wholesale Prices in Philadelphia, 1852-1896: Series of Relative Monthly Prices, By ANNE BEZANSON. Assisted by MARJORIE C. DENISON, MIRIAM HUSSEY, ELSA KLEMP. [Industrial Research Studies, No. XXXVL] (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1954. xxii, 506 p. $10.00.) In this volume of 506 pages there are ten pages printed in sentences. The bulk of the remainder is divided into two parts, one a series of tables show- ing relative prices—the years 1881-1885 are the base period—month by 258 BOOK REVIEWS April month from 1852-1896 for 216 commodities and grades of commodities; the second, showing absolute prices in dollars and cents for the same period and in the same monthly fashion. Some of the commodities, like oil of bergamot, one is more apt to come across in crossword puzzles than in shopping. The arithmetical nature of much of this information might lead the unwary to believe that it is an easy task to assemble price data: all one has to do is copy. Such is not the case. Even in the modern days of print, sources of information run out. The authors, assembling their data primarily from the Philadelphia Commercial List and Price Current^ could find nowhere a surviving volume for 1889. P**ice series are meaningless unless they are prices of the same thing and prices for the same quantity. So rela- tively a standard commodity as wheat had no grades before 1827; between 1827 and 1842 it was graded on a basis of area of production; Pennsylvania red wheat, which in 1842 was the standard, was sold regularly in three grades after 1883. Nor was the standard of measurement always the same. A keg of gunpowder weighed twenty-five pounds, of potash one hundred pounds. The few modest and casual hints of such difficulties dropped by the authors, as well as their generous acknowledgment of financial aid, show that Wesley C. Mitchell, one of the patron saints in the area, knew what he was talking about when he wrote forty years ago of collecting original price quotations, "the field work is not only fundamental, it is also labori- ous, expensive, and perplexing." Those who perform it have to know how things are made and how they are sold. The particular tables in this volume bridge a critical gap in price series for the United States. Arthur H. Cole has collected and published wholesale prices for the United States to 1861; the Bureau of Labor Statistics has assembled such data back to 1890. Miss Bezanson's present volume over- laps both and fills in the interval with more detail and authority than heretofore. The general reader may well ask, what does it all prove? The answer is—nothing and everything. The data in the present volume have peculiar interest because of the period for which they are assembled. Here we have particularity for one of the greatest inflations in American history, that of the Civil War; and for one of the few conscious governmental at- tempts to reduce the amount of money in existence, the resumption of specie payments in the seventies. Incidentally, these circumstances intro- duced a further perplexity in collecting price data, for there were prices both in gold and in paper currency. The period was also one in which two major depressions, those of 1873-1877 and 1893-1897, and the less severe one of the mid-eighties wracked the economy. The behavior of prices explains much of the labor unrest, and the relative decline of agricultural prices accounts for the rise of agrarian discontent. Here is the raw material which will shed light on "Jumping Jim" Weaver, Peter Cooper, and William J. Bryan. High lights of this sort are so striking that Miss Bezanson and her asso- ciates could not entirely keep their self-denying ordinance of avoiding com- 1955 BOOK REVIEWS 259 ment and letting the figures speak for themselves. It is understandable, for as two students of prices expressed it, "their fluctuation caused more unhap- piness, suffering, and misery than any other economic phenomena with which we deal." Meanwhile, as Miss Bezanson and her coworkers bring to a close their long history of Philadelphia prices—this is the fourth volume— they have put into order the material which a host of other scholars will use to construct or check their hypotheses and analyses.

Bowdoin College EDWARD C. KIRKLAND

Bohemian Brigade: Civil War Newsmen in Action. By Louis M. STARR. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1954. x, 367 p. Illustrations, biographical supplement, bibliography, index. $5.00.) "Bohemian" in this book refers to Civil War reporters. This makes the title misleading, for, beyond an opening chapter re-creating the 1861 atmosphere at Pfaff's Cave, a Broadway journalistic rendezvous, Bohemia plays no part in Mr. Starr's story. The author's purpose is to give some idea of how much the American people knew about the War Between the States while it was in progress, and to illuminate the war's effects upon the development of journalism. The second objective—the "compelling" one—is reached on schedule, but only by deduction does one get much illumination on the first. One concludes that in spite of censorship, the North (and this is a Northern book) had a good deal of information, albeit much of it false. The South was worse off; Confederate papers either were too small to afford war correspondents or ran out of newsprint early, or their staffs ran off to war. A co-operative news association was formed, but it dealt with official handouts and pieces rewritten from Northern papers, which were the best source of news for the South, much to the disgust of Northern generals. Newspapers and the attitude toward newspapers underwent a great alteration during the war. It saw the beginning of public acceptance of the reporter's "nose" and the beginning of a journalism centered on news rather than on political opinion. Until the public became desert-thirsty for war news, the idea of a reporter running about asking questions was little short of ill-bred impertinence. Henry Clay assisted Washington newsmen to establish a press gallery in the 1840's, but the esteemed statesmen would have been horrified if asked to grant an interview. No president up to Lincoln had trafficked with report- ers, and members of Lincoln's cabinet did not follow his example. In fact, they condemned his willingness to talk with reporters; but he continued, for he got from the reporters facts no one else would tell him. With few excep- tions, the military men were wary, and censorship was heavy-handed. Yet the government got its first news of the Merrimac, of Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg and Fredericksburg from dispatches of reporters in the field. i6o BOOK REVIEWS April The thirst for news led straight away from newspapers devoted entirely to plugging the political and social views of publishers and editors, from assigning reporters to write what the editorial greats of the day wanted to publish. The by-line, incidentally, played a part in this, for it made the reporter more careful about what he wrote, more finicky about what he was willing to write. And the by-line came about from a strange source: generals demanded it. They thought signed dispatches would make the correspond- ents more careful—and, of course, make it easy to pin a man down if need be. No story of reporting and reporters could be told without giving much of the history of the times, and that Mr. Starr does down to that almost impossible feat of revealing a couple of new Lincoln anecdotes. Across the pages march the top reporters of the day—the Smalleys, Byingtons, Cadwalladers, Richardsons and Stillsons. There are some thrilling tales of exploits, such as Homer Byington's (New York Tribune) repairing of a tele- graph line to get out the first story of the Gettysburg battle ("Who's Byington?" Lincoln, to whom the dispatch had been sent erroneously, wired back to the telegraph head), and Sylvanus Cadwallader's (New York Herald) heroic attempt to save General Grant from drunken disgrace during the Vicksburg campaign. Several examples of excellent reporting, such as Jerome B. Stillson's (New York World) account of Sheridan's ride at Cedar Creek, stand worthily with the best of today. The author consciously centers his attention on the reporters from New York papers. There were some two hundred full-time reporters in the war, and most of them never sniffed the thick atmosphere of Pfaff 's Cave or felt Greeley's lash. Since no detail of the Civil War, however small, fails to interest the American public, Mr. Starr has left the way open for someone to delve into the remaining part of the story. But this is the best book on Civil War reporting that has been written. Philadelphia MELVIN K. WHITELEATHER

Stormy Ben Butler. By ROBERT S. HOLZMAN. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1954. xx, 297 p. Illustrations, bibliography, index. #5.00.) It is hard to tell exactly why a man so widely known as General Ben Butler should have waited so long for a biographer. He took great pains that there should be plenty of racy interest in his life, and he saved every scrap of paper possible. Likewise, he was written about intensively while he lived. But he was one of those characters who repel while they interest. Probably a number of possible biographers may have decided they did not wish to live with him that long. Yet his family found him affectionate and concerned for their welfare. Be all this as it may, the General has a biog- rapher at last and one who has brought him to the public in a manner easy to take. 1955 BOOK REVIEWS i6l Butler's father was something of a privateersman, pirate some called him, who flourished during the War of 1812 and died soon thereafter leaving his widow in straitened circumstances. In true American fashion, she sup- ported her small family by keeping a boardinghouse. She destined her cross- eyed little boy to be a minister of the gospel, but he preferred the law. It is a challenge to the imagination to consider what his life might have been had his mother's wish prevailed. He learned early to combine law practice with business to his great advantage, and then he took on politics. In this latter game he was a tireless player, but his score was relatively small. Not until the Civil War broke out did he gain the notoriety which he craved. He secured his commission as major general by skillful politics, and he went at war the way he attacked law, business, and politics. He was adroit, highly intelligent, indefatigable, fearless and unscrupulous. Wherever he went there was tremendous activity, ruthlessness, usually some scandal and seldom any notable success. As a general in battle, he just didn't know how. Whether or not justifiably, he gained a reputation as a pilferer and the title of "Beast." It took all of Lincoln's great skill to deal with him. After the Civil War, Butler's political ambition was disappointed; several terms in Congress and one term as governor of Massachusetts were the slight successes he could claim although he labored mightily, running and running and hoping and hoping. His business and legal talent made him a millionaire, but his genius could not get him into the cabinet or into the White House. He had hosts of friends, but a horde of the bitterest enemies. To many he was a hero, to great numbers a scoundrel. Which he was is probably not subject to legal proof. All that can be said is that he was a complex dynamic figure capable of many roles. There was some substance of him in each one. The type is something of a constant in the politics of democracy. This is a graphic book, just the right length for easy reading. The impres- sion given the reader is balanced and based upon careful reading of volumi- nous material. Often some details are lacking that the more precise historian would welcome, but the portrait is there and displayed so as to be compre- hended easily and pleasantly. The author and readers are much indebted to the cartoons of Thomas Nast, one of the best sources for students of Butler's character. They are more greatly indebted to Butler himself for his frank lack of inhibition which put up no discernible bars to self-revelation. University of Pennsylvania ROY F. NICHOLS

A Merchant Prince of the Nineteenth Century: William E. Dodge. By RICHARD LOWITT. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954. xii, 384 p. Bibliography, index. $5.00.) Soon after receiving his degree, a new Ph.D. faces the problem of what to do about publishing his dissertation. He has two choices. He may publish 2,62 BOOK REVIEWS April it as it stands and risk comment that he has sent forth a partly digested, undistilled work. Or he may strive to improve the manuscript by further research and laborious rewriting in order to achieve smoothness, clarity, balance and polish; the world of scholarship being what it is, he may still expect criticism, but less than if he adopts the first alternative. Dr. Lowitt has chosen the first course of action. The author has set down data on William E. Dodge the whole man, not just the businessman. His antecedents, early training, family life, business career, and legislative achievements, not to mention religious and humani- tarian activities, all receive attention. Dodge was truly one of the last of the merchant princes. Most significant to the man and to the economic and business historian is the range of Dodge's enterprises, both as a private individual and as a partner in Phelps Dodge & Co., the direct antecedent of one of today's industrial giants. The partners, individually and/or collec- tively, engaged in importing metals, exporting cotton, investing in real estate, lumbering in various states of the Union and Canada, manufacturing brass, copper, and iron products, mining copper, and promoting and operat- ing railroads, to name the outstanding achievements. By recording these multitudinous activities Dr. Lowitt has provided valuable information on Dodge as a contributor to the growth of the economy of the United States. Dodge's service in Congress, his labors in behalf of the Indian, and his efforts to eliminate municipal misrule substantiate the concept that some nineteenth-century American businessmen were not unaware of their social responsibilities. The collection and publication of these data are com- mendable. Unfortunately, Dr. Lowitt gives the impression of being so much in a hurry to embark on other work that he failed to produce the finished job of which he is capable. He has accumulated an impressive amount of informa- tion from a variety of sources, and he has written his story with interest and clarity. He obviously has the ability to discern and present the significance of some of the facts which have been recorded, but he leaves much of this work to the reader. Perusal of two or three well-known books on interna- tional trade and finance would have led the author to provide a more com- prehensive and meaningful setting for the chapters on importing metals, and should have induced him to see that he should not be seduced by a plethora of manuscript material into incorporation of unprofitable detail. The back- ground material on Dodge's lumbering operations is almost casual, and the reader looks in vain for a picture of competition. Neither Dodge nor Phelps Dodge & Co. acted in a vacuum. Without laboring the point, it should be clear that an additional three to six months of work under the guidance of a capable and "cruel" editor would have enabled the author to convert a useful manuscript into an excellent one.

New York University RALPH W. HIDY I955 BOOK REVIEWS 263

Rutherford B. Hayes and His America. By HARRY BARNARD. (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1954. 606 p. Illustrations, bibliog- raphy, index. $6.00.) Once more "Hayes1 luck," traditionally credited with active aid to his ambitions, has intervened to his advantage. Long since, funds bequeathed by his uncle, Sardis Birchard, began in part to be employed by his descend- ants for publication of materials by and about him and for a memorial library and scholarly research center. Latterly, searching for an author to essay a third biography of this little-remembered President, they hit upon Harry Barnard. He has rewarded their confidence with an accurate, well- documented narrative, abundantly implemented with interest, insight, and color. He has avoided Eckenrode's surface treatment and the adulation of the Williams biography, projecting "not the biography of a President but the life of a man whom circumstances made President." Barnard enjoyed a plethora of both personal and political sources, for Hayes and his kinsfolk preserved much diary and letter material on the intimate side, and historians have never ceased to add to the exploratory analyses of the Civil War and Reconstruction periods during which Hayes mounted his ambitions. Sifting these materials and coping with the fact that the first forty-two years of Hayes's career (1822-1864) could not be pre- sented as other than those of a relatively undistinguished person, Barnard fills his first 223 pages with a vivid presentation of his subject's ancestral, domestic, and earlier adult experience, approached from the psychiatric angle. This is a tricky approach, full of pitfalls for any but an astute biographer fortified by a rigorous conscience; it could affect historiography badly if employed wholesale with less caution and understanding than here are displayed. Hayes, it appears, started with three strikes against him: adulation by his uncle and mother (to whom he later became as a "brother"); loving domination by a sister who became as a "mother" to him and from whom he was not completely released until her death in 1856; birth two months after the death of his father, which chained Hayes to the "father image" until Civil War service released him from this compulsion. Also, this part of the book includes material back as far as the seventeenth century to portray how ancestors of Hayes and many other Americans lived and thought. With Hayes's first election to Congress (1864), Barnard turns to straight political biography. Only four pages are given to the two congressional terms—one served only in part, and neither probably worth much com- ment. It is somewhat unfortunate, however, that Hayes's three terms as governor are merely sketched, although he was not deep in the factionalism that for three postwar decades tore out the "innards" of Ohio politics. Luckily, more detail develops over the assumed "renunciation" of "poli- tics"; anyone who has handled many collections of political manuscripts 264 BOOK REVIEWS April

knows well how politicians fancy talk of retirement, seldom stick to it, and make it the favorite indoor sport of elected legislators and executives. The red-hot campaign and electoral dispute of 1876-1877 are given one hundred and twenty pages in an account necessarily heavily indebted to Vann Woodward's perceptive analysis. Barnard concludes that Hayes was legally entitled to the Presidential chair; but of other men, other things. Here realistic politics, double-dealing, naked and unashamed, stands forth to display its worst human (and inhuman) qualities, particularly its gross inconsistency. It would indeed be fatuous to assume that politicians or citizens trafficking with political powers could be miraculously free from disloyalty, from compulsions to all-too-human inconsistency. The administration begun so inauspiciously could not be a joyous one; the one hundred and one pages describing it underscore the mediocrity of the period in and out of Washington. The peculiar combination of astuteness and naivete in this upright Presidential couple could serve to confound themselves, their friends, and enemies, sometimes defeating worthy objec- tives along with political ambitions of divers sorts. On a few points historians may wish that Barnard had done more. He does not sufficiently support such statements as that Reconstruction ended in 1873, that prewar southern Whigs took over the Democratic Party there, and that the Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina elections could have been honestly won in 1876. A curious lapse is omission of the key words "to vote" in quoting the Fifteenth Amendment (p. 240). Also, more dates in the Hayes diary citations would have been useful. On the whole, notes, bibliog- raphy, and index are strong, and the "acknowledgements" are so tendered as to be especially useful to other writers in this period. The general reader will be enticed by tricks of spacing, vocabulary, and sequence which clothe this piece of solid research in the garments of interesting and entertaining reading. University of Pennsylvania JEANNETTE P. NICHOLS

A Hundred Pennsylvania Buildings. By HAROLD E. DICKSON. (State Col- lege, Pa.: Bald Eagle Press, 1954. [12,6 p.] Illustrations. $6.50.) This book is worth while. It is a volume that has in its intent long been needed in the cultural history of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. We cannot state that it is the final and conclusive treatment of the subject, and we are quite sure that the author would not want us to come to such a conclusion. There are many works on one phase or another of historical architecture which, because of their very excellence in scholarship and research, inspire further study, investigation, and enlargement. This book should do just that. We remember some thirty years ago a college colleague, motoring to and from the Pittsburgh area and the University in Philadelphia over the then 1955 BOOK REVIEWS 265 winding and picturesque roads, remarking, "Some day I shall do a book on the development of Pennsylvania architecture." Thirty years ago this de- velopment was obvious by the roadside; one came upon it with surprise and at easy speeds, and one was charmed by discovery. Our colleague did not do the book, and we should be eternally grateful to Dr. Dickson that he had the intellectual stamina and curiosity to devote several years to the collec- tion of the material, both textual and photographic. The fact that he has visited each architectural subject presented in the volume is proof of his searching scholarship and, we may say, a demonstration of architectural scholarship which is most notably absent in many contemporary publica- tions. We feel very sure that architecture in the social and economic develop- ment and expansion of an area, such as Pennsylvania, is, in the history of this country, an orderly process. It can, of course, be interrupted in some- what remote instances, but such architectural interruptions are not sig- nificant. We are disturbed that, with all the research and thoughtful work evident in this volume, there is no attempt to bind the whole into an orderly procedure of architectural endeavor keeping pace with those influ- ences that most certainly determine man's habitations and working places. One would expect in this book to see an exposition of orderly arrangement of both text and illustrations from the seventeenth-century caves on the Delaware to the aluminum of Pittsburgh. No such thing. We regret that the author could not have enlarged the introduction to explain to the laymen interested in architecture the social and economic compulsions which accounted in Pennsylvania for the log cabin in the seventeenth century. (Dr. Conant of Harvard, incidentally, places the Downing cabin at Downingtown as the oldest log cabin extant in the country.) Some similar explanation of the final illustrations of the "point" area of Pittsburgh would also have been helpful. Along the same lines, Philadelphia, in its Penn Center, is undergoing a somewhat questionable and premature renascence, but it is presumably, and perhaps rightly so, too insignificant for inclusion. There is no point in fine, detailed criticism unless it can be objective. Arthur Meigs was one of the really great architects who had an untrained and pure instinct for fitting a building to its natural site. (He never used a bulldozer.) It is unfortunate that the photograph of his own house in rela- tion to his mother's house could not have been used instead of the really awful illustration of the work of Mellor, Meigs and Howe. (Your reviewer lives next to a much better example of their work.) Also, it is too bad that the illustration of the Eastern Penitentiary showed the facade, which is not distinguished, when there is a fine print of an aerial perspective of the penitentiary, showing John Haviland's plan of the building which many years ago became the model for prison design. Some of the selected ex- amples of the work of nineteenth-century architects and the photographs of these examples might have been more closely examined for excellence. 266 BOOK REVIEWS April

We regret the lack of an index so that those who are scholarly inclined might use this document as a tool of research. Since it is obviously presented as a work of architectural history—or is it?—it would seem proper to include an index of architects. They were somewhat important in the building. An index of "Picture Credits" is commendable, but not very enlightening research-wise. We also deeply regret that the designer of this book should see fit to compromise his artistic principles to that low level of a modern cliche of using lower-case type in place names. We cite particularly "bethlehem" and "ephrata." There can be no real reason for that kind of thing, especially when in the text below the illustrations the same words are printed with capitals. We repeat, this is a worth-while book. Thank heaven, Dr. Dickson was encouraged and enabled to make this contribution to American history by the substantial support of a grant-in-aid from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. We pray for more help from the generous coffers of that Commission for this kind of work. Let us have more books like this with a somewhat more scholarly ap- proach and blended with better craftsmanship of design, printing, and photography. After all, a volume on architecture should be orderly and beautiful.

Villanova THEO B. WHITE

Folk Art Motifs of Pennsylvania, By FRANCES LICHTEN. (New York: Hast- ings House, 1954. 196 p. Illustrations. $5.75.) Miss Lichten has given us another fine volume to delight the eye and to inaugurate a chain reaction of thought in her interpretations of the art motifs of the Pennsylvania Germans. In her earlier volume, Folk Art in Rural Pennsylvania (1946), the author-artist gave us a compendium of exotic, sometimes bizarre, designs which bore the label of Pennsylvania rural art. Failure to identify the character of the materials in the title was misleading, and, again, we find that the title neglects to delimit the areas discussed. This time, however, we find ourselves in much closer agreement with the interpretations and the illustrations selected as eye-catchers. The text in Folk Art Motifs of Pennsylvania clearly calls attention to Pennsylvania German art, as such. Almost in synonym Miss Lichten calls it "peasant art," and there is no quarrel with that term when it is used intelligently and not in its stereotyped sense. Through the entire volume there runs a thread of warm appreciation for the materials she examines, and an enthusiasm, bred of intimacy, spreads a soft glow of simplicity and charm over the printed pages. Miss Lichten has gone to the sources and has presented a true work of art. 1955 BOOK REVIEWS 267

Although the author states that her earlier volume contained the more familiar motifs of the people of southeastern Pennsylvania and that her present work reflects the lesser-known features, we find ourselves in the opposite position. To us, there is far more that is authentic and familiar in the new book, and there is a much better grasp of the subject in every way. For once, we have a book which does not attempt to create something that is of value only because it is odd. The inherent values contained in the symbolism, the deep, underlying "Geisten," the cultural overtones of a sturdy people are given full recognition. The color work is beautiful and in excellent taste. The publishers were successful in capturing the sensitive shadings and blends of colors. The pen and ink sketches reflect the proper degree of crudity without exaggeration. The designs abide peacefully to the eyes of those who have lived with them for many years; there is none of the rude shock which too often jars our senses when outlanders try to do "feature" sketches about our people of Berks, Lehigh, Lancaster and other Pennsylvania areas. The motifs are selected from a wide variety of sources, such as Taufscheinen (baptismal certificates), barn signs, dower chests, bookplates, and other vestiges of a culture which once flourished here. The element of the new book which offers its greatest appeal to this observer is the effort on the part of its creator to be an author first and an artist only secondarily. The text is exceptionally well written, and the materials are authentic insofar as it is possible to determine the facts. Only a person who has lived with and absorbed the better elements of Pennsyl- vania German lore could set pen to paper and produce so fine a story. Only an artist could capture some of the beauty of the designs. Only a philosopher could give the proper interpretation to "peasant art." These things Miss Frances Lichten has done in her Folk Art Motifs of Pennsylvania. Robesonia ARTHUR D. GRAEFF

The Anglican Church in New Jersey. By NELSON ROLLINS BURR. (Philadel- phia: The Church Historical Society, 1954. xvi, 768 p. Maps, statistical tables, appendices, bibliographies, index. $10.00.) The Anglican Church in colonial New Jersey was of the spirit and the fabric of the Established Church of England with all the liabilities but none of the benefits of establishment; it was an episcopal church without epis- copacy, an orthodox church amid almost overwhelming dissent. Because it is divine and eternal, is Dr. Nelson R. Burr's premise, it survived and developed. For the most part, this generous tome is concerned with the Anglican Church—the Protestant Episcopal Church after the Revolution—in the eighteenth century. Though the foreword suggests a second volume, an epilogue covers the last century and a half of development and, unfor- 268 BOOK REVIEWS April tunately, slights the northern counties of the state after they were erected into a separate diocese in 1874. To those acquainted with New Jersey history, the story of contentious George Keith and impetuous John Talbot, first missioners of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (the S.P.G., chartered at Westminster in 1701), is familiar. But how their successors struggled to turn a legacy of distrust and hostility into confidence and friendliness is a tale never before so well told. In the face of WhitefiekTs revival raids among their constituencies, despite trying times and political tensions, the mis- sionary clergy refused to lose hope and sent to the secretary of the S.P.G. statistical evidence of their gains. The leading man in Dr. Burr's story is the parson. From England, Scotland, and Wales he came seeking a more fruitful ministry; young men from New Jersey ventured their lives and mortgaged their futures to secure ordination in England. Though there were rare exceptions, such men were welcomed and served in New Jersey faithfully. And what was their reward? From the records of the S.P.G. comes a story that overshadows St. Paul's plaintive recitation in Holy Writ. In desperation, the clergy mingled teach- ing with preaching and medicine with ministrations often to their embar- rassment. When they assembled together for counsel and comfort they talked of establishment and the need of a chief shepherd—a bishop. And to prove their consecration, they made mutual arrangements to care for their widows and orphans—a society which still exists as the "Corporation for Relief of Widows and Children of Clergymen." Undaunted, they served a "tolerated minority," built churches, and taught their adherents to share the Church's sacramental life and observe its moral ways. The supporting cast in this social history is the people, scattered, mobile, and never free from economic vagaries and uncertainties. Yet they sought the Church and its ministrations, and in many instances carried on with one of their own number as lay reader. Dr. Burr indicates clearly that though the colonial Church may have been judged by the actions of its well-to-do minority, the colonial adherent was far from being of the socially elite. That the Church survived the Revolution and the Methodist separation is a testimony to the fidelity of priest and people. Closed churches and the Tory taint were not solid foundations for post- Revolutionary rebuilding. Retreat to self-sufficiency and accommodations to local ways provided the simplest solutions. But New Jersey churchmen, gathered at New Brunswick on May 11, 1784, not only pondered the con- tinued care of widows and orphans, but sent forth a call for a gathering in New York in October. This gathering styled itself a "Convention of Clergy- men and Lay Deputies of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America," and proved to be the forerunner of subsequent gather- ings from which the church so designated emerged with its doctrines and practices preserving the traditions of the Church of England and its Prayer Book amended to suit the political alterations necessitated by independence. 1955 BOOK REVIEWS 269 This volume is attractive to the eye, and its maps make it easy to locate centers within the state to which reference is made in the text. Copious notes bear testimony to the extent to which Dr. Burr has drawn upon the archives of the S.P.G., of Fulham Palace, the home of the Bishop of London, and Lambeth Palace Library. Statistical tables add realism to the picture of growth within the state of New Jersey in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Especially valuable are the appendices which contain short his- torical sketches of colonial parishes, existing and extinct, together with thumbnail biographical stories of all the colonial clergy. A special bibliog- raphy provides a list of the printed writings of the Anglican clergymen who served in colonial New Jersey.

Rutgers University RUSSELL E. FRANCIS

Chesapeake Bay and Tidewater. By A. AUBREY BODINE. (New York: Hast- ings House, 1954. 144 p. Illustrations, index. $10.00.) If we cannot know a thing firsthand, one of the easiest ways of learning about it is through visual reproduction. The camera, a dispassionate wit- ness, would seem to provide a more accurate portrayal than the spoken or written word, especially in this day of mechanical reproduction of sound, color, and perspective. At the same time, the hand and the intent of the photographer must be taken into account. Mr. Bodine has done a fine job of picturing Chesapeake Bay and life on or near it. He has also produced a work of art. His book is a photographic gallery in which he has hung some of his best compositions. Anyone can point a camera at an object and click the shutter, but it could be only a happy accident if the result was on a par with the pictures which are the products of Mr. Bodine's skill and experi- ence. The reporter in him uses shots of fishermen, the men for whom the Bay has the most meaning, on the dust jacket and as the frontispiece; the artist in him catches these men in natural poses with their principal tools, their nets, making graceful festoons. Chesapeake Bay and Tidewater is a kind of continuation of the author's My Maryland and, indeed, overlaps it somewhat. Mr. Bodine could hardly have pictured Maryland without including the Chesapeake, or vice versa. Therefore, some tidewater seeps into the Maryland book and some more of that state's handsome historic houses appear in the Chesapeake one. The explanatory paragraphs which accompany the pictures do their job well. They tell what needs to be told in an interesting manner. While giving the author full credit for a fine piece of work, we should also recognize that this excellence is due, in part, to the skill of the lithographer. It is inevitable that Chesapeake Bay and Tidewater should be compared with M. V. Brewington's Chesapeake Bay; A Pictorial History, which ap- peared last year. Mr. Bodine's book will help viewers in the present and future to know the Bay scene as it is in our day. Mr. Brewington's book does 27O BOOK REVIEWS April the same for what is already part of the past and which exists only as we, with his help, are able to conceive of it in the present. The farther Mr. Brewington reaches into the past, the less he can rely upon the camera and the more he must use representations done in pencil or paint. Both these books are primarily picture books and use words only as a cement to unite the whole and to fill in the chinks. Chesapeake Bay enthusiasts will find them attractive, interesting, and complementary—desirable additions to their libraries. Newark, Del. DAVID B. TYLER Cumulative Record of Exhibition Catalogues: The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1807-1870; The Society of Artists, 1800-18 14; The Artists' Fund Society, 1835-184.5. Compiled and edited by ANNA WELLS RUTLEDGE. [Memoirs of The American Philosophical Society, Vol. 38.] (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1955. vi, 450 p. $6.00.) This volume was published as part of the celebration of the 150th anni- versary of the founding of The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In her foreword, Miss Rutledge briefly discusses the relationships of the three organizations included in this cumulative record, the problems presented by the catalogues, and the historical usefulness of the record. The record itself is divided into indices of artists (including a section on unknown or un- named artists), subjects, and owners, and is concerned only with paintings, drawings, and sculptures. Engravings, medals, classical casts, and other miscellany have been omitted. The volume is invaluable as a reference work for those interested in the art history of Philadelphia in the nineteenth century. William Bingham's Maine Lands, 1790-1820. Two Volumes. Edited by FREDERICK S. ALLIS, JR. [Publications of The Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Vols. XXXVI and XXXVIL] (Boston: The Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1954. xvi, 1315 p. Illustrations, appendices, index. $10.00.) In 1791 William Bingham, wealthy Philadelphia merchant, assumed control of the extensive Knox-Duer purchase of lands in Maine, some two million acres. After an introductory chapter in which Mr. Allis describes Maine conditions and land policy in 1790, the history of Bingham's massive land tract is traced in detail. The bulk of the two volumes is made up of correspondence and documents, a large part of which are from the Bingham Papers in The Historical Society of Pennsylvania. This source material is interspersed with the author's narrative to provide a continuous, meaningful story, to clarify problems created by sale and development efforts, and to characterize the many diverse and prominent persons involved in the speculation. 1955 BOOK REVIEWS TJI The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. Volume IX: November 1785 to June 1786; Volume X: June 1786 to December 1786. Edited by JULIAN P. BOYD. (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1954. xxx, 674 p.; xxx, 656 p. Illustrations. Each, $10.00.) With each new volume of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson the scope of inquiry, intellect, and insight of this American statesman is more sharply revealed. The correspondence to and from Jefferson in Volumes IX and X concerns his activities while United States minister to France. Many letters and documents relate to diplomatic matters, trade and commerce, and affairs in the United States. There are letters on books, natural history, science, music, art. Volume IX includes correspondence during his visit to England, and in Volume X is to be found his remarkable love letter to Maria Cosway—the famous dialogue between his head and his heart. Americans abroad receive his attention and advice on many subjects. Throughout, Jefferson proves himself to be America's spokesman in Europe, enhancing his nation's prestige in every area of his wide range of interests.

The Papers of Sir William Johnson. Volume XI. Prepared for publication by MILTON W. HAMILTON and ALBERT B. COREY. (Albany, N. Y.: The University of the State of New York, 1953. viii, 993 p. Illustrations.

This volume, which continues the mammoth series of the Johnson papers, covers the years 1764-1765. Much material never before printed has been assembled from a variety of sources to fill in the gap in the original publica- tion caused by the Capitol fire of 1911. The state of New York has done a great service to historians by presenting this material, and by distributing the volumes at a modest price. Three more volumes will complete the entirely praiseworthy project of making available to the world a mine of incalculable wealth of colonial history.

Pennsylvania's Iron and Steel Industry. By ARTHUR C. BINING. [Pennsyl- vania History Studies: No. 5.] (Gettysburg, Pa.: The Pennsylvania Historical Association, 1954. iv, 44 p. Bibliography. Paper, $.50.) Pennsylvania's Coal Industry. By ROBERT D. BILLINGER. [Pennsylvania History Studies: No. 6.] (Gettysburg, Pa.: The Pennsylvania Historical Association, 1954. vi, 54 p. Appendices, bibliography. Paper, $.50.) These brief but inclusive studies underline the significance of two major Pennsylvania industries—iron and steel, and coal (both anthracite and bituminous). The authors discuss the history and technological develop- ment of each industry, and evaluate its current position with respect to labor and production. The Pennsylvania Historical Association has served the state well in providing such interesting and well-written studies of its industries.