^^m@^ imwi'^%'i^i^:^i:^^^'ii

ftit «» THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN JAMES MORTON SMITH, Director

Officers E. DAVID CHONON, President GEORGE BANTA, JR., Honorary Vice-President JOHN C. GEILFUSS, First Vice-President E. E. HOMSTAD, Treasurer HOWARD W. MEAD, Second Vice-President JAMES MORTON SMITH, Secretary

Board of Curators Ex-Ofjicio PATRICK I. LUCEY, Governor oj the State CHARLES P. SMITH, State Treasurer ROHERT C. ZIMMERMAN, Secretary of State IOHN C. WEAVER, President of the University MRS. GEORGE SWART, President of the Women's Auxiliary Term Expires, 1971 ROGER E. AXTELL KENNETH W. HAAGENSEN MOWRY SMITH MILO K. SWANTON Janesville Oconomowoc Neenah Madison MRS. HENRY BALDWIN ROBERT B. L. MURPHY MRS. WM. H. L. SMYTHE CEDRIC A. VIG Wisconsin Rapids Madison Milwaukee Rhinelander HORACE M. BENSTEAD FREDERIC E. RISSER WILLIAM F. STARK CLARK WILKINSON Racine Madison Nashotah Baraboo

Term Expires, 1972 E. DAVID CRONON MRS ROBERT E. FRIEND MRS. HOWARD T. GREENE J. WARD RECTOR Madison Hartland Milwaukee Milwaukee SCOTT M. CUTLIP ROBERT A. GEHRKE BEN GUTHRIE CLIFFORD D. SWANSON Madison Ripon Lac du Flambeau Stevens Point W. NORMAN FITZGERALD JOHN C. GEILFUSS MRS. R. L. HARTZELL Milwaukee Milwaukee GRANTSBURG

Term Expires, 1973 THOMAS H. BARLAND MRS. EDWARD C. JONES HOWARD W. MEAD DONALD C. SLIGHTER Eau Claire Fort Atkinson Madison Milwaukee JIM DAN HILL MRS. RAYMOND J. KOLTES FREDERICK I. OLSON DR. LOUIS C. SMITH Middleton Madison Wauwatosa Lancaster E. E. HOMSTAD CHARLES R. MCCALLUM F. HARWOOD ORBISON ROBERT S. ZIGMAN Black River Falls Hubertus Appleton Milwaukee

Honorary Honorary Life Members WILLIAM ASHBY MCCLOY, New London, Connecticut PRESTON E. MCNALL, Clearwater, Florida JOHN C. JACQUES, Madison DOROTHY L. PARK, Madison BENTON H. WILCOX, Madison Fellows VERNON CARSTENSEN MERLE CURTI ALICE E. SMITH

The Women's Auxiliary Officers MRS. GEORGE SWART, Fort Atkinson, President MRS. GORDON R. WALKER, Racine, Vice-President Miss RUTH DAVIS, Madison, Secretary MRS. RICHARD G. ZIMMERMANN, Sheboygan, Treasurer MRS. EDWARD H. RIKKERS, Madison, Ex-Officio VOLUME 54, NUMBER 4 / SUMMER, 1971

of Histor

WILLIAM CONVERSE HAYCOOD, Editor WILLIAM C. MARTEN, Associate Editor

The Great Peshtigo Fire: An Eyewitness Account REVEREND PETER PERNIN 246 Theodore Roosevelt and the State Historical Society of Wisconsin WILLIAM CONVERSE HAYGOOD and JOAN SEVERA 273 A Time of Change: Green Bay, 1815-1834 JOHN D. HAEGER 285

The Politics of Anti-Communism: A Review Article ROBERT GRIFFITH 299 Book Reviews 309 Accessions 325 Contributors 327

Published Quarterly by The State Historical Society of Wisconsin

THE WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY is published by contributors. Second-class postage paid at Madison, quarterly by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Wis. Copyright © 1971 by the State Historical Society of 816 State Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53706. Distributed Wisconsin. Paid for in part by the Maria L. and Simeon to meinbers as part of their dues (Annual membership, Mills Editorial Fund and by the George B. Burrows Fund. $7.50; Family membership, $10; Contributing, $25; Busi­ Wisconsin newspapers may reprint any article appearing in ness and Professional, $50; Sustaining, $100 or more an­ the WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY providing the nually; Patron, $500 or more annually). Single numbers, story carries the following credit line: Reprinted from the $1.75. Microfilmed copies available through University State Historical Society's Wisconsin Magazine of History Microfilms, 313 North First Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan. for [insert the season and year which appear on the Maga­ Commxinications should be addressed to the editor. The zine]. Society does not assume responsibility for statements made THE GREAT PESHTIGO FIRE:

AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT

By REVEREND PETER PERNIN

Introduction was exploiting the surrounding forest lands to the fullest advantage. William G. Ogden, the ICTOBER 8, 1971, marks the centennial of Chicago millionaire, had invested heavily in the two greatest natural catastrophes in what was then the country's largest wooden- the history of the Middle West. Ironically, both ware factory to convert the river-borne logs happened not only on the same day but almost into such articles as pails, tubs, broom hand­ at the same hour; both had been preceded by les, barrel covers, and clothespins. There was ample but disregarded omens; and both also a sawmill, a sash, door, and blind factory, stemmed from the same fundamental causes—• a foundry and blacksmith shop, stores, hotels, wood rendered tinder-dry by prolonged a boarding house, and, to the villagers' con­ drought, plus the factor of human carelessness. siderable pride, a schoolhouse, and a Protes­ In Chicago, a lantern thoughtlessly placed with­ tant as well as a Catholic church. in kicking distance of a cow in a barn on De All this was as of the early evening of Octo­ Koven Street is reputed to have set off the most ber 8, when the village's official population of destructive metropolitan blaze in the nation's 1,700 was swollen by an influx of recently ar­ history, resulting in a property damage of rived laborers to work on the railroad right-of- $200,000,000 and virtually annihilating the way, in addition to the usual number of sales­ city's core. In northeastern Wisconsin, fires set men, travelers, and visitors to be found in any by hunters, Indians, lumberjacks, railroad similar village. By daylight less than 1,000 of workers, and farmers burning stumps and this number were still alive, and only one struc­ rubble culminated in the nation's worst forest ture, a partially constructed house, remained fire, in terms of lives lost. standing. Although the Wisconsin fire ravaged 2,400 The occurrences of that dreadful night have square miles and destroyed numerous settle­ never been accorded their proper place in the ments and isolated farms on both sides of Green history of American disasters, primarily be­ Bay, it has gone down in history as the Peshtigo cause Chicago's ordeal was by its very nature fire, because it was in this village and in the more spectacular, more universally publicized, farming area immediately surrounding it that and more often revived in print. Peshtigo's industry and population were the most concen­ chief historians have been two journalists and trated, that the fire reached its greatest viru­ a novelist, Frank Tilton—a Green Bay news­ lence, and that the majority of the fatalities paperman who in 1871 put together a book of occurred. eyewitness accounts and his own reportage to In the fall of 1871, like other localities to sell for the benefit of the survivors—Robert W. which the expanding railroads were bringing Wells of the Milwaufcee Journal, who in 1968 an undreamed prosperity, Peshtigo, on the gave the Peshtigo story a skillful and readable river of the same name in Marinette County, reconstruction, and William F. Steuber, Jr.,

246 PERNIN: THE GREAT PESHTIGO FIRE who in 1957 used the tragedy as the basis for a prize-winning novel. But no writer has yet to equal in vividness, imagery, or sheer drama the contemporary account written by Father Pernin, the parish priest for Peshtigo and nearby Marinette, whose churches both burned to the ground. Published in Montreal in 1874, ostensibly to raise funds for a new church in Marinette, Father Pernin's account may have also been an attempt to jft,^ exorcise the memories of that October night during which he suffered fearfully while be­ having heroically. - *.'\- Not a great deal is known about Father Peter Pernin except that he was born in France about 1825, and served parishes in L'Erable and Clif­ ton in Illinois from 1865 to 1869. He was parish priest in Oconto in 1870 and in Marinette from 1871-1874. From 1876-1878 he was at Grand Rapids (Wisconsin Rapids), and in 1879 he was at LaCrescent, Minnesota, in which state he continued to serve a number of parishes, the last recorded one being in 1898 when he was Societ> S Iconographic Collections at St. Joseph's Church in Rushford, Diocese of Winona. Wood engraving oj Father Peter Pernin, about 1874. In 1918-1919 Joseph Schafer serialized parts of Father Pernin's account in the Wisconsin COUNTRY COVERED with dense forests, Magazine of History (Vol. 2). In reprinting it A in the midst of which are to be met with during this centennial year we have added here and there, along newly opened roads, some material which Mr. Schafer omitted and clearings of more or less extent, sometimes a have supplied footnotes wherever they seemed half league in width to afford space for an in­ necessary to further clarify the events being fant town, or perhaps three or four acres described. intended for a farm. With the exception of these isolated spots where the trees have been cut down and burned, all is a wild but majestic W.C.H. forest. Trees, trees everywhere, nothing else but trees as far as you can travel from the bay, either towards the north or west. These im­ mense forests are bounded on the east by EDITOR'S NOTE: Full bibliographical information about the works on the Peshtigo fire mentioned above is: Green Bay of Lake Michigan, and by the lake Frank Tilton, Sketch of the Great Fires in Wiscon­ itself. sin at Peshtigo, the Sugar Bush, Menekaune, Wil- liamsonville, and Generally on the Shores of Green The face of the country is in general un­ Bay; with Thrilling and Truthful Incidents by Eye dulating, diversified by valleys overgrown with Witnesses (Green Bay, 1871); Robert W. Wells, Fire at Peshtigo (Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood cedars and spruce trees, sandy hills covered Cliffs, New Jersey, 1968) ; William F. Steuber, Jr., with evergreens, and large tracts of rich land The Landlooker (Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, 1957) ; filled with the different varieties of hard wood, and The Finger of God Is Therel, or Thrilling Epi­ sode of a Strange Event Related by an Eye-Witness, oak, maple, beech, ash, elm, and birch. The Rev. P. Pernin, United States Missionary, Published climate of this region is generally uniform and with the Approbation of His Lordship the Bishop of favorable to the crops that are now tried there Montreal (Montreal, 1874). Wells' book contains a useful summary of sources, especially of newspapers with remarkable success. Rains are frequent, consulted. Strangely, no writer on the subject seems and they generally fall at a favorable time. to have consulted the valuable material contained in the appendices to the Wisconsin Assembly Journal, The year 1871 was, however, distinguished 1873. by its unusual dryness. Farmers had profited

247 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1971 of the latter circumstance to enlarge their companied by a lad of twelve years of age, clearings, cutting down and burning the wood who offered to guide me through the wood, that stood in their way. Hundreds of laborers started in pursuit of some of the pheasants employed in the construction of a railroad had which abounded in the environs. At the expira­ acted in like manner, availing themselves of tion of a few hours, seeing that the sun was both axe and fire to advance their work. Hunt­ sinking in the horizon, I bade the child re­ ers and Indians scour these forests continually, conduct me to the farmhouse. He endeavored especially in the autumn season, at which time to do so but without success. We went on and they ascend the streams for trout-fishing, or on, now turning to the right, now to the left, disperse through the woods deer-stalking. At but without coming in view of our destination. night they kindle a large fire wherever they In less than a half hour's wanderings we per­ may chance to halt, prepare their suppers, then ceived that we were completely lost in the wrapping themselves in their blankets, sleep woods. Night was setting in, and nature was peacefully, extended on the earth, knowing silently preparing for the season of rest. The that the fire will keep at a distance any wild only sounds audible were the crackling of a animals that may happen to range through the tiny tongue of fire that ran along the ground, vicinity during the night. The ensuing morn­ in and out, among the trunks of the trees, leav­ ing they depart without taking the precaution ing them unscathed but devouring the dry of extinguishing the smouldering embers of leaves that came in its way, and the swaying the fire that has protected and warmed them. of the upper branches of the trees announcing Farmers and others act in a similar manner. that the wind was rising. We shouted loudly, In this way the woods, particularly in the fall, but without evoking any reply. I then fired off are gleaming everywhere with fires lighted by my gun several times as tokens of distress. man, and which, fed on every side by dry Finally a distant halloo reached our ears, then leaves and branches, spread more or less. If another, then several coming from different fanned by a brisk gale of wind they are liable directions. Rendered anxious by our prolonged to assume most formidable proportions. absence, the parents of my companion and the farm servants had finally suspected the truth Twice or thrice before October 8, the effects and set out to seek us. Directed to our quarter of the wind, favored by the general dryness, by our shouts and the firing, they were soon had filled the inhabitants of the environs with on the right road when a new obstacle pre­ consternation. A few details on this point may sented itself. Fanned by the wind, the tiny interest the reader, and serve at the same time flames previously mentioned had united and to illustrate more fully the great catastrophe spread over a considerable surface. We thus which overwhelmed us later. The destructive found ourselves in the center of a circle of fire element seemed whilst multiplying its warn­ extending or narrowing, more or less, around ing to be at the same time essaying its own us. We could not reach the men who had come strength. On September 22 I was summoned, to our assistance, nor could we go to them in the exercise of my ministry, to the Sugar without incurring the risk of seriously scorch­ Bush,' a place in the neighborhood of Pesh­ ing our feet or of being suffocated by the tigo, where a number of farms lie adjacent to smoke. They were obliged to fray a passage each other. Whilst waiting at one of these, for us by beating the fire with branches of isolated from the rest, I took a gun, and, ac- trees at one particular point, thus momentarily staying its progress whilst we rapidly made our escape.

^ There were three of these fanning communities: the Lower Sugar Bush, comprising settlements ex­ tending for about seven miles west of Peshtigo on The danger proved more imminent in places the road leading to Oconto; the Middle Sugar Bush, exposed to the wind, and I learned the follow­ made up of settlements along a road running to the ing day, on my return to Peshtigo, that the southwest; and the Upper Sugar Bush, containing settlements along what was known as the Lake town had been in great peril at the very time Noquebay Road. In all, they consisted of about 300 that I had lost myself in the woods. The wind families. Frank Tilton, Sketch of the Great Fires in Wisconsin at Peshtigo, the Sugar Bush, Menekaune, had risen, and, fanning the flames, had driven Williamsonville . . . (Green Bay, 1871), 7. them in the direction of the houses. Hogsheads

248 PERNIN: THE GREAT PESHTIGO FIRE

of water were placed at intervals all round the several days the fires had been raging in the town, ready for any emergency. timber all around—north, south, east, and I will now mention another incident that west. Saturday the flames burned through to happened a few days before the great catas­ the river a little above the town; and on trophe : Saturday night, much danger was appre­ hended from the sparks and cinders that I was driving homeward after having visited blew across the river, into the upper part of my second parish situated on the banks of the the town, near the factory. A force was sta­ River Menominee, about two leagues distant.^ tioned along the river, and although fire Whilst quietly following the public road caught in the sawdust and dry slabs it was opened through the forest, I remarked little promptly extinguished. It was a grand sight, fires gleaming here and there along the route, the fire that night. It burned to the tops of sometimes on one side, sometimes on the the tallest trees, enveloped them in a mantle other. Suddenly I arrived at a spot where the of flames, or, winding itself about them like flames were burning on both sides at once with a huge serpent, crept to their summits, out more violence than elsewhere. The smoke, upon the branches, and wound its huge folds driven to the front, filled the road and ob­ about them. Hissing and glaring it lapped scured it to such a degree that I could neither out its myriad fiery tongues while its fierce see the extent of the fire nor judge of the breath swept off the green leaves and roared amount of danger. I inferred, however, that through the forest like a tempest. Ever and anon some tall old pine, whose huge trunk the latter was not very great as the wind was had become a column of fire, fell with a not against me. I entered then, though at first thundering crash, filling the air with an hesitatingly, into the dense cloud of smoke ascending cloud of sparks and cinders, whilst left darkling behind by the flames burning above this sheet of flames a dense black fiercely forward. My horse hung back, but I cloud of resinous smoke, in its strong con­ finally succeeded in urging him on, and in five trast to the light beneath, seemed to threaten or six minutes we emerged safely from this death and destruction to all below. labyrinth of fire and smoke. Here we found Thousands of birds, driven from their ourselves confronted by a dozen vehicles ar­ roosts, flew about as if uncertain which way rested in their course by the conflagration. to go, and made the night still more hideous "Can we pass?" inquired one. by their startled cries. Frequently they "Yes, since I have just done so, but loosen would fly hither and thither, calling loudly your reins and urge on your horse or you may for their mates, then, hovering for a moment be suffocated." in the air, suddenly dart downward and dis­ appear in the fiery furnace beneath. Thus Some of the number dashed forward, others the night wore away while all earnestly had not the hardihood to follow, and conse­ hoped, and many hearts fervently prayed, quently returned to Peshtigo. for rain. ¥T MAY THUS be seen that warnings were Sunday morning the fires had died down, ••• not wanting. I give now another trait, more so that we began to hope the danger was striking than either of those just related, over. About eleven o'clock, while the differ­ copied from a journal published at Green ent congregations were assembled in their Bay.^ It is a description of a combat sustained respective churches, the steam whistle of the against the terrible element of fire at Peshtigo, factory blew a wild blast of alarm. In a Sunday, September 24, just two weeks before moment the temples were emptied of their the destruction of the village: worshippers, the latter rushing wildly out to see what had happened. Fire had caught in Sunday, the 24th inst., was an exciting, the sawdust near the factory again, but be­ I might say a fearful time, in Peshtigo. For fore we reached the spot it was extinguished. The wind had suddenly risen and was blow­ ^ A league varies from about 2.4 miles to 4.6 sta­ ing a gale from the northwest. The fires in tute miles, depending on the nation involved. Pernin the timber v/ere burning more fiercely than was probably using the English league which is about ever, and were approaching the river direct­ 3 miles, since Peshtigo is about seven miles from ly opposite the factory. The air was literally Marinette. filled with the burning coals and cinders, ^ The account is from the Green Bay Advocate, October 5, 1871. which fell, setting fire all around, and the

249 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1971

prairie grass, the timber fire is intenser, hotter, grander, than the prairie fire. The fire on the prairie before a high wind will rush on and lap up the light dead grass, and it is gone in a breath. In the timber it may move almost as rapidly, but the fire does not go out with the advance waves which sweep over the tops of the trees and catch the light limbs and foliage. Nor is there the same chance to resist the approach of fire in the forests. It is as though you attempted to resist the approach of an avalanche of fire hurled against you. With the going down of the sun the wind abated and with it the fire. Timber was felled and water thrown over it; buildings were covered with wet blankets and all under the scorching heat and in blinding suffocating smoke that was enough to strangle one, and thus passed the night of Sunday. Monday, the wind veered to the south, and cleared away the smoke. Strange to say not a building was burned—the town was saved. Monday the factory was closed to give the men rest, and today, September 27, all is quiet and going on as usual. Tilton, Great Fires in Wisconsin What did these repeated alarms filling the The Peshtigo Congregational Church in 1871. minds of the people with anxiety during the three or four weeks preceding the great calam­ utmost diligence was necessary to prevent ity seem to indicate! these flames from spreading. The engine was brought out, and hundreds of pails from the Doubtless they might have been looked on factory were manned; in short, everything as the natural results of the great dryness, the that was possible was done to prevent the number of fires lighted throughout the forests fire from entering the town. by hunters or others, as well as of the wind But now a new danger arose. The fires to that fanned from time to time these fires, aug­ the west of the town were approaching menting their strength and volume, but who rapidly, and it seemed that nothing short of will dare to say that they were not specially a miracle could save it from utter destruc­ ordained by Him who is master of causes as tion. A cloud of hot, blinding smoke blew well as of their effects? Does He not in most in our faces and made it extremely difficult cases avail Himself of natural causes to ex­ to see or do anything; still prompt and ener­ getic means were taken to check the ap­ ecute His will and bring about the most won­ proaching flames. derful results? It would indeed be difficult for The Company's teams were set to carry­ anyone who had assisted as I had done at the ing water, and the whole force of over three terrible events following so closely on the hundred of the laborers in the factory and above mentioned indications not to see in them mills were on the ground, besides other the hand of God, and infer in consequence that citizens. Goods were packed up, and moved these various signs were but forerunners of from buildings supposed to be in immedi­ the great tragedy for which He wished us to be ate danger. Indeed a general conflagration in some degree prepared. seemed inevitable. I have seen fires sweep over the prairies with the speed of a loco­ I cannot say whether they were looked on motive, and the prairie fire is grand and by many in this light or not, but certainly some terrific; but beside a timber fire it sinks into were greatly alarmed and prepared as far as insignificance. In proportion as the timber lay in their power for a general conflagration, is denser, heavier, and loftier than the burying in the earth those objects which they

250 PERNIN: THE GREAT PESHTIGO FIRE

specially wished to save. The Company caused all combustible materials on which a fire could possibly feed to be taken away, and augmented the number of water hogsheads girdling the town. Wise precautions certainly, which would have been of great service in any ordinary case of fire but which were utterly unavailing in the awful conflagration that burst upon us. They served nevertheless to demonstrate more clear­ ly the finger of God in the events which suc­ ceeded. As for myself, I allowed things to take their course without feeling any great anxiety as to Soci('t\'",s Icoimuniphio Collections consequences, or taking any precautionary steps, a frame of mind very different to that "Queen" Marinette and her home, one of the first to be built in the vicinity. which I was destined to experience on the evening of the eighth of October. church, a handsome new presbytery just finished, in which I was on the point of taking A word now about my two parishes. up my abode, besides a house in course of Peshtigo is situated on a river of that name, construction, destined to serve as a parish about six miles from Green Bay with which it school. communicates by means of a small railroad. The population was about double that of The Company established at Peshtigo is a Peshtigo. source of prosperity to the whole country, not Before entering into details, I will mention only from its spirit of enterprise and large one more circumstance which may appear pecuniary resources but also from its numer­ providential in the eyes of some, though ous establishments, the most important of brought about by purely natural causes. which, a factory of tubs and buckets, affords At the time of the catastrophe our church at alone steady employment to more than three Peshtigo was ready for plastering, the ensuing hundred workmen. The population of Pesh­ Monday being appointed for commencing the tigo, including the farmers settled in the work. The lime and marble dust were lying neighborhood, numbered then about two thou­ ready in front of the building, whilst the altar sand souls. We were just finishing the con­ and various ornaments, as well as the pews, struction of a church looked on as a great had all been removed. Being unable in conse­ embellishment to the parish. quence to officiate that Sunday in the sacred My abode was near the church, to the west edifice, I told the people that there would be of the river, and about a five or six minute no mass, notifying at the same time the walk from the latter. I mention this so as to Catholics of Cedar River that I would spend render the circumstances of my escape through the Sunday among them. The latter place was the midst of the flames more intelligible. another of my missions, situated on Green Bay, Besides Peshtigo, I had the charge of an­ four or five leagues north of Marinette. Satur­ other parish much more important situated on day then, October 7, in accordance with my the River Menominee, at the point where it promise, I left Peshtigo and proceeded to the empties into Green Bay. It is called Marinette, Menominee wharf to take passage on the from a female half breed, looked on as their steamboat Dunlap. There I vainly waited her queen by the Indians inhabiting that district. coming several hours. It was the only time that This woman received in baptism the name of year she had failed in the regularity of her Mary, Marie, which subsequently was cor­ trips. I learned after that the steamboat had rupted into that of Marinette, or little Marie. passed as usual but stood out from shore, not Hence the name of Marinette bestowed on the deeming it prudent to approach nearer. The place. It is there that we are at present build­ temperature was low, and the sky obscured by ing a church in honor of our Lady of Lourdes. a dense mass of smoke which no breath of At the time of the fire, Marinette possessed a wind arose to dispel, a circumstance render-

251 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1971 ing navigation very dangerous especially in luded to, apprehensions contradicted by reason the neighborhood of the shore.^ Towards which assured me there was no more cause for nightfall, when all hope of embarking was present fear than there had been eight or over, I returned to Peshtigo on horseback. fifteen days before—indeed less, on account of After informing the people that mass would be the precautions taken and the numerous sen­ said in my own abode the following morning, tinels watching over the public safety. These I prepared a temporary altar in one of the two opposite sentiments, one of which per­ rooms, employing for the purpose the taber­ sistently asserted itself despite every effort to nacle itself which I had taken from the church, shake it off, whilst the other, inspired by and after mass I replaced the Blessed Sacra­ reason was powerless to reassure me, plunged ment in it, intending to say mass again there my faculties into a species of mental torpor. the next Monday. In the outer world everything contributed In the afternoon, when about leaving for to keep alive these two different impressions. Marinette where I was accustomed to chant On one side, the thick smoke darkening the vespers and preach when high mass was said sky, the heavy, suffocating atmosphere, the at Peshtigo, which was every fortnight, my mysterious silence filling the air, so often a departure was strongly opposed by several of presage of storm, seemed to afford grounds for my parishioners. There seemed to be a vague fear in case of a sudden gale. On the other fear of some impending though unknown evil hand the passing and repassing in the street haunting the minds of many, nor was I myself of countless young people bent only on amuse­ entirely free from this unusual feeling. It was ment, laughing, singing, and perfectly indiffer­ rather an impression than a conviction, for, on ent to the menacing aspect of nature, was suffi­ reflecting, I saw that things looked much as cient to make me think that I alone was a prey usual, and arrived at the conclusion that our to anxiety, and to render me ashamed of fears were groundless, without, however, feel­ manifesting the feeling. ing much reassured thereby. But for the certainty that the Catholics at During the afternoon, an old Canadian, re­ Marinette, supposing me at Cedar River, would markable for the deep interest he always took not, consequently, come to vespers, I would in everything relating to the church, came and probably have persisted in going there, but asked permission to dig a well close to the under actual circumstances I deemed it best to sacred edifice so as to have water ready at yield to the representations made me and re­ hand in case of accident, as well as for the use main where I was. of the plasterer who was coming to work the God willed that I should be at the post of following morning. As my petitioner had no danger. The steamboat which I had expected time to devote to the task during the course of to bear me from Peshtigo, on the seventh of the week, I assented. His labor completed, he October, had of course obeyed the elements informed me there was abundance of water, which prevented her landing, but God is the adding with an expression of deep satisfaction: master of these elements and Him they obey. "Father, not for a large sum of money would Thus I found myself at Peshtigo Sunday eve­ I give that well. Now if a fire breaks out again ning, October 8, where, according to all pre­ it will be easy to save our church." As he vious calculations, projects, and arrangements, seemed greatly fatigued, I made him partake I should not have been. of supper and then sent him to rest. An hour The afternoon passed in complete inactivity. after he was buried in deep slumber, but God I remained still a prey to the indefinable ap­ was watching over him, and to reward him prehensions of impending calamity already al- doubtless for the zeal he had displayed for the interests of his Father's House, enabled the pious old man to save his life; whilst in the very building in which he had been sleeping more than fifty people, fully awake, perished. ' During early October the smoke was so dense on the Bay that during daylight hours navigation was What we do for God is never lost, even in done by compass, and fog horns were kept blowing this world. continuously, the shores being invisible. Green Bay Advocate, October 5, 1871. Towards seven in the evening, always

252 Society's Iconographic Collections Bird's-eye view of Peshtigo as it appeared in 1871 shortly before its destruction. The sites indicated by circled numbers follow the order in which Pernin intro­ duces them in the text. (1) is the Catholic church; (2) shows the dam to the right, the bridge to the left, with the sawmill directly above the number; (3) shows the Company warehouse and factory on the far side of the river; (4) indicates the site of the Company boarding house where the loss of life was probably the heaviest; (5) is the Forest House, also pictured on page 256; and (6) marks the location of the Congregational church and the schoolhouse, pictured in greater detail on pages 250 and 264 respectively. Flames leaping between the sawmill (2) and the boarding house (4) prevented Pernin from going downstream after he had crossed the bridge. haunted by the same misgivings, I left home moody and mysterious silence. I re-entered to see how it went with my neighbors. I the house but only to leave it, feeling restless, stepped over first to the house of an elderly though at the same time devoid of anything kind-hearted widow, a Mrs. Dress, and we like energy, and retraced my steps to my own walked out together on her land. The wind abode to conceal within it as I best could my was beginning to rise, blowing in short fitful vague but continually deepening anxieties. On gusts as if to try its strength and then as looking towards the west, whence the wind quickly subsiding. My companion was as had persistently blown for hours past, I per­ troubled as myself, and kept pressing her ceived above the dense cloud of smoke over­ children to take some precautionary measures, hanging the earth, a vivid red reflection of but they refused, laughing lightly at her fears. immense extent, and then suddenly struck on At one time, whilst we were still in the fields, my ear, strangely audible in the preternatural the wind rose suddenly with more strength silence reigning around, a distant roaring, yet than it had yet displayed and I perceived some muffled sound, announcing that the elements old trunks of trees blaze out though without were in commotion somewhere. I rapidly re­ seeing about them any tokens of cinder or solved to return home and prepare, without spark, just as if the wind had been a breath further hesitation, for whatever events were of fire, capable of kindling them into a flame impending. From listless and undecided as I by its mere contact. We extinguished these; had previously been, I suddenly became ac­ the wind fell again, and nature resumed her tive and determined. This change of mind was

253 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1971 a great relief. The vague fears that had here­ A neighboring American family were enter­ tofore pursued me vanished, and another idea, taining some friends at tea. The room which certainly not a result of anything like mental they occupied at the moment overlooked my reasoning on my part, took possession of my garden; thus they could see me whilst I could mind; it was, not to lose much time in saving as easily overhear them. More than once, the my effects but to direct my flight as speedily smothered laughter of some of the guests, as possible in the direction of the river. Hence­ especially of the young girls, fell on my ear. forth this became my ruling thought, and it Doubtless they were amusing themselves at my was entirely unaccompanied by anything like expense. About nine, the company dispersed, fear or perplexity. My mind seemed all at once and Mrs. Tyler, the hostess, approached me. to become perfectly tranquil. The actions of the priest always make a certain impression, even on Protestants. "Father," she questioned, "do you think TT WAS NOW ABOUT half past eight in the there is any danger?" -•- evening. I first thought of my horse and "I do not know," was my reply, "but I have turned him free into the street, deeming that, unpleasant presentiments, and feel myself im­ in any case, he would have more chance of pelled to prepare for trouble." escape thus than tied up in the stable. I then "But if a fire breaks out, Father, what are set about digging a trench six feet wide and we to do?" six or seven feet deep, in the sandy soil of "In that case. Madam, seek the river at the garden, and though the earth was easy once." enough to work my task proved a tedious one. I gave her no reason for advising such a The atmosphere was heavy and oppressive, course, perhaps I had really none to offer, be­ strangely affecting the strength and rendering yond that it was my innate conviction. respiration painful and laborious. The only Shortly after, Mrs. Tyler and her family consideration that could have induced me to started in the direction of the river and were keep on working when I found it almost im­ all saved. I learned later that out of the eight possible to move my limbs, was the fear, guests assembled at her house that evening, all growing more strongly each moment into a perished with the exception of two. certainty, that some great catastrophe was ap­ At a short distance from home, on the other proaching. The crimson reflection in the west­ side of the street, was a tavern. This place had ern portion of the sky was rapidly increasing been crowded all day with revellers, about in size and in intensity; then between each two hundred young men having arrived that stroke of my pickax I heard plainly, in the Sunday morning at Peshtigo by the boat to midst of the unnatural calm and silence reign­ work on the railroad.^ Many were scattered ing around, the strange and terrible noise al­ throughout the town, where they had met ac­ ready described, the muttered thunder of which quaintances, while a large number were lodg­ became more distinct as it drew each moment ing at the tavern just mentioned. Perhaps they nearer. This sound resembled the confused had passed the holy time of mass drinking and noise of a number of cars and locomotives ap­ carousing there. Towards nightfall the greater proaching a railroad station, or the rumbling part of them were too much intoxicated to take of thunder, with the difference that it never any share in the anxiety felt by the more ceased, but deepened in intensity each moment more and more. The spectacle of this menac­ ing crimson in the sky, the sound of this strange and unknown voice of nature constantly •' The northern extension of the Chicago and North­ augmenting in terrible majesty, seemed to en­ western Railway from Fort Howard to Menominee dow me with supernatural strength. Whilst and thence to Escanaba to connect with the iron mines in upper Michigan was under construction. In toiling thus steadfastly at my task, the sound clearing the right-of-way, many fires had been al­ of human voices plainly audible amid the lowed to escape into the woods. Tilton, Sketch of the silence and species of stupor reigning around Great Fires, 10; letter dated July, 1927, from John J. Casson of Los Angeles, a mechanic at the Peshtigo fell on my ear. They betrayed on the one hand woodenware mill and a survivor of the fire, in thoughtlessness, on the other folly. Archives-Manuscripts Division, State Historical So­ ciety of Wisconsin.

254 PERNIN: THE GREAT PESHTIGO FIRE steady members of the community, or even to arms. My thought was that I should meet notice the strange aspect of nature. Whilst someone who would help me in the task. I re­ working in my garden, I saw several of them entered to seek the chalice which had not been hanging about the veranda of the tavern or placed in the tabernacle, when a strange and lounging in the yard. Their intoxicated condi­ startling phenomenon met my view. It was that tion was plainly revealed by the manner in of a cloud of sparks that blazed up here and which they quarrelled, wrestled, rolled on the there with a sharp detonating sound like that ground, filling the air the while with wild of powder exploding, and flew from room to shouts and horrid blasphemies. room. I understood then that the air was satu­ rated with some special gas, and I could not When hastening through the street, on my help thinking if this gas lighted up from mere way to the river at the moment the storm burst contact with a breath of hot wind, what would forth, the wind impelled me in the direction of it be when fire would come in actual contact this house. A death-like silence now reigned with it. The circumstance, though menacing within it, as if reason had been restored to the enough, inspired me with no fear, my safety inmates, or fear had suddenly penetrated to seemed already assured. Outside the door, in a their hearts. Without shout or word they re­ cage attached to the wall, was a jay that I had entered the place, closing the doors as if to had in my possession for a long time. The in­ bar death out—a few minutes later the house stinct of birds in foreseeing a storm is well was swept away. What became of them I know known, and my poor jay was fluttering wildly not. round his cage, beating against its bars as if After finishing the digging of the trench I seeking to escape, and uttering shrill notes of placed within it my trunks, books, church alarm. I grieved for its fate but could do noth­ ornaments, and other valuables, covering the ing for it. The lamps were burning on the table, whole with sand to a depth of about a foot. and I thought, as I turned away, how soon Whilst still engaged at this, my servant, who their gleam would be eclipsed in the vivid light had collected in a basket several precious ob­ of a terrible conflagration. jects in silver committed to my charge, such as crosses, medals, rosaries, etc., ran and de­ I look on the peculiar, indeed almost child­ posited them on the steps of a neighboring ish frame of mind in which I then found my­ store, scarcely conscious in her trouble of what self, as most providential. It kept up my cour­ she was doing. age in the ordeal through which I was about to pass, veiling from me in great part its She hastily returned for a cage containing horror and danger. Any other mental condi­ her canary, which the wind, however, almost tion, though perhaps more in keeping with immediately tore from her grasp—and breath­ my actual position would have paralyzed my less with haste and terror she called to me to strength and sealed my fate. leave the garden and fly. The wind, forerunner of the tempest, was increasing in violence, the I vainly called my dog who, disobeying the redness in the sky deepening, and the roaring summons, concealed himself under my bed, sound like thunder seemed almost upon us. It only to meet death there later. Then I hastened was now time to think of the Blessed Sacra­ out to open the gate so as to bring forth my ment—object of all objects, precious, priceless, wagon. Barely had I laid hand on it, when the especially in the eyes of a priest. It had never wind heretofore violent rose suddenly to a been a moment absent from my thoughts, for hurricane, and quick as lightning opened the of course I had intended from the first to bring way for my egress from the yard by sweeping it with me. Hastening then to the chamber con­ planks, gate, and fencing away into space. taining the tabernacle, I proceeded to open the "The road is open," I thought, "we have only latter, but the key, owing to my haste, slipped to start." from my fingers and fell. There was no time I had delayed my departure too long. It for farther delay, so I caught up the tabernacle would be impossible to describe the trouble with its contents and carried it out, placing it I had to keep my feet, to breathe, to retain in my wagon as I knew it would be much hold of the buggy which the wind strove to easier to draw it thus than to bear it in my tear from my grasp, or to keep the tabernacle

255 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1971

ciety's Iconographic Collections Artist Mel Kishner's conception of the terrorized populace fleeing down Oconto Avenue toward the protection of the river.

in its place. To reach the river, even unen­ meeting crowded vehicles taking a direction cumbered by any charge, was more than many quite opposite to that which I myself was fol­ succeeded in doing; several failed, perishing lowing, it never even entered my mind that it in the attempt. How I arrived at it is even to would perhaps be better for me to follow them. this day a mystery to myself. Probably it was the same thing with them. We The air was no longer fit to breathe, full as it all hurried blindly on to our fate. was of sand, dust, ashes, cinders, sparks, smoke, Almost with the first steps taken in the street and fire. It was almost impossible to keep one's the wind overturned and dragged me with the eyes unclosed, to distinguish the road, or to wagon close to the tavern already mentioned. recognize people, though the way was crowded Farther on, I was again thrown down over with pedestrians, as well as vehicles crossing some motionless object lying on the earth; it and crashing against each other in the general proved to be a woman and a little girl, both flight. Some were hastening towards the river, dead. I raised a head that fell back heavily as others from it, whilst all were struggling alike lead. With a long breath I rose to my feet, but in the grasp of the hurricane. A thousand dis­ only to be hurled down again. Farther on I met cordant deafening noises rose on the air to­ my horse whom I had set free in the street. gether. The neighing of horses, falling of chim­ Whether he recognized me—whether he was in neys, crashing of uprooted trees, roaring and that spot by chance, I cannot say, but whilst whistling of the wind, crackling of fire as it struggling anew to my feet, I felt his head ran with lightning-like rapidity from house to leaning on my shoulder. He was trembling in house—all sounds were there save that of the every limb. I called him by name and mo­ human voice. People seemed stricken dumb by tioned him to follow me, but he did not move. terror. They jostled each other without ex­ He was found partly consumed by fire in the changing look, word, or counsel. The silence same place. of the tomb reigned among the living; nature Arrived near the river, we saw that the alone lifted up its voice and spoke. Though houses adjacent to it were on fire, whilst the

256 PERNIN: THE GREAT PESHTIGO FIRE

wind blew the flames and cinders directly into water. One of these sprang back again with a the water. The place was no longer safe. I re­ half smothered cry, murmuring: "I am wet"; solved then to cross to the other side though the but immersion in water was better than im­ bridge was already on fire. The latter pre­ mersion in fire. I caught him again and sented a scene of indescribable and awful con­ dragged him out with me into the river as far fusion, each one thinking he could attain safety as possible. At the same moment I heard a on the other side of the river. Those who lived splash of the water along the river's brink. All in the east were hurrying towards the west, had followed my example. It was time; the air and those who dwelt in that west were wildly was no longer fit for inhalation, whilst the pushing on to the east so that the bridge was intensity of the heat was increasing. A few thoroughly encumbered with cattle, vehicles, minutes more and no living thing could have women, children, and men, all pushing and resisted its fiery breath. crushing against each other so as to find an issue from it. Arrived amid the crowd on the TT WAS ABOUT TEN O'CLOCK when we other side, I resolved to descend the river, to •*- entered into the river. When doing so I a certain distance below the dam, where I neither knew the length of time we would be knew the shore was lower and the water shal­ obliged to remain there, nor what would ulti­ lower, but this I found impossible. The saw­ mately happen to us, yet, wonderful to relate mill on the same side, at the angle of the my fate had never caused me a moment of bridge, as well as the large store belonging to anxiety from the time that, yielding to the in­ the Company standing opposite across the voluntary impulse warning me to prepare for road, were both on fire. The flames from these danger, I had resolved on directing my flight two edifices met across the road, and none towards the river. Since then I had remained could traverse this fiery passage without meet­ in the same careless frame of mind, which per­ ing with instant death. I was thus obliged to mitted me to struggle against the most in­ ascend the river on the left bank, above the superable obstacles, to brave the most ap­ dam, where the water gradually attained a palling dangers, without ever seeming to re­ great depth. After placing a certain distance member that my life might pay the forfeit. between myself and the bridge, the fall of Once in water up to our necks, I thought we which I momentarily expected, I pushed my would, at least be safe from fire, but it was not wagon containing the tabernacle as far into so; the flames darted over the river as they did the water as possible. It was all that I could do. over land, the air was full of them, or rather Henceforth I had to look to the saving of my the air itself was on fire. Our heads were in life. The whirlwind in its continual ascension continual danger. It was only by throwing water constantly over them and our faces, and had, so to speak, worked up the smoke, dust, beating the river with our hands that we kept and cinders, so that, at least, we could see clear the flames at bay. Clothing and quilts had been before us. The banks of the river as far as the thrown into the river, to save them, doubtless, eye could reach were covered with people and they were floating all around. I caught at standing there, motionless as statues, some some that came within reach and covered with with eyes staring, upturned towards heaven, them the heads of the persons who were lean­ and tongues protruded. The greater number ing against or clinging to me. These wraps seemed to have no idea of taking any steps to dried quickly in the furance-like heat and procure their safety, imagining, as many after­ caught fire whenever we ceased sprinkling wards acknowledged to me, that the end of them. The terrible whirlwind that had burst the world had arrived and that there was over us at the moment I was leaving home had, nothing for them but silent submission to their with its continually revolving circle of oppos­ fate. Without uttering a word—the efforts I ing winds, cleared the atmosphere. The river had made in dragging my wagon with me in was as bright, brighter than by day, and the my flight had left me perfectly breathless, be­ spectacle presented by these heads rising above sides the violence of the storm entirely pre­ the level of the water, some covered, some un­ vented anything like speech—I pushed the per­ covered, the countless hands employed in beat­ sons standing on each side of me into the ing the waves, was singular and painful in the

257 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1971

fe . Al ^-fCt i_..i '^. .i-l«v,J,,, i»k'-V .. • ,». ^ * • ^- Ml. %

ii.iiper's Weekly, November 25, 1871 ^n artist's reconstruction of the panic which ensued at the riverside. extreme. So free was I from the fear and anx­ speedy, for, in less than a quarter of an hour, iety that might naturally have been expected the large beams were lying blazing on the to reign in my mind at such a moment, that I ground, while the rest of the building was actually perceived the ludicrous side of the either burned or swept off into space. scene at times and smiled within myself at it. Not far from me a woman was supporting When turning my gaze from the river I herself in the water by means of a log. After chanced to look either to the right or left, a time a cow swam past. There were more than before me or upwards, I saw nothing but a dozen of these animals in the river, impelled flames; houses, trees, and the air itself were thither by instinct, and they succeeded in on fire. Above my head, as far as the eye could saving their lives. The first mentioned one reach into space, alas! too brilliantly lighted, I overturned in its passage the log to which the saw nothing but immense volumes of flames woman was clinging and she disappeared into covering the firmament, rolling one over the the water. I thought her lost; but soon saw her other with stormy violence as we see masses of emerge from it holding on with one hand to clouds driven wildly hither and thither by the the horns of the cow, and throwing water on fierce power of the tempest. her head with the other. How long she re­ Near me, on the bank of the river, rose the mained in this critical position I know not, store belonging to the factory, a large three- but I was told later that the animal had swam story building, filled with tubs, buckets, and to shore, bearing her human burden safely other articles. Sometimes the thought crossed with her; and what threatened to bring de­ my mind that if the wind happened to change, struction to the woman had proved the means we should be buried beneath the blazing ruins of her salvation. of this place, but still the supposition did not At the moment I was entering the river, cause me much apprehension. When I was another woman, terrified and breathless, entering the water, this establishment was just reached its bank. She was leading one child by taking fire; the work of destruction was the hand, and held pressed to her breast what

258 PERNIN: THE GREAT PESHTIGO FIRE

appeared to be another, enveloped in a roll of There is an end to all things here below, disordered linen, evidently caught up in haste. even misfortune. The longed-for moment of 0 horror! on opening these wraps to look on our return to land was at length arriving, and the face of her child it was not there. It must already sprinkling of our heads was becoming have slipped from her grasp in her hurried unnecessary. I drew near the bank, seated my­ flight. No words could portray the look of self on a log, being in this manner only partly stupor, of desolation that flitted across the immersed in the water. Here I was seized with poor mother's face. The half smothered cry: a violent chill. A young man perceiving it "Ah! my child!" escaped her, then she wildly threw a blanket over me which at once strove to force her way through the crowd so afforded me relief, and soon after I was able as to cast herself into the river. The force of to leave this compulsory bath in which I had the wind was less violent on water than on been plunged for about five hours and a half. land, and permitted the voice to be heard. I then endeavored to calm the anguish of the T CAME OUT of the river about half past poor bereaved woman by suggesting that her -*- three in the morning, and from that time child had been found by others and saved, but I was in a very different condition, both she did not even look in my direction, but morally and physically, to that in which I stood there motionless, her eyes wild and star­ had previously been. Today, in recalling the ing, fixed on the opposite shore. I soon lost past, I can see that the moment most fraught sight of her, and was informed subsequently with danger was precisely that in which danger that she had succeeded in throwing herself into seemed at an end. The atmosphere, previously the river where she met death. hot as the breath of a furnace, was gradually Things went well enough with me during the becoming colder and colder, and, after having first three or four hours of this prolonged bath, been so long in the river, I was of course ex­ owing in part, I suppose, to my being con­ ceedingly susceptible to its chilly influence. My tinually in motion, either throwing water on clothes were thoroughly saturated. There was my own head or on that of my neighbors. no want of fire, and I easily dried my outer garments, but the inner ones were wet, and It was not so, however, with some of those their searching dampness penetrated to my who were standing near me, for their teeth inmost frame, affecting my very lungs. Though were chattering and their limbs convulsively close to a large fire, arising from heaps of trembling. Reaction was setting in and the cold burning fragments, I was still convulsively penetrating through their frames. Dreading shivering, feeling at the same time a complete that so long a sojourn in the water might be prostration of body and spirit. My chest was followed by severe cramps, perhaps death, I oppressed to suffocation, my throat swollen, endeavored to ascend the bank a short dis­ and, in addition to an almost total inability to tance, so as to ascertain the temperature, but move, I could scarcely use my voice—utter my shoulders were scarcely out of the river, even a word. when a voice called to me: "Father, beware, you are on fire!" Almost lifeless, I stretched myself out full length on the sand. The latter was still hot, and The hour of deliverance from this prison of the warmth in some degree restored me. Re­ fire and water had not yet arrived—the strug­ moving shoes and socks I placed my feet in gle was not yet over. A lady who had re­ immediate contact with the heated ground, and mained beside me since we had first taken to felt additionally relieved. the river, and who, like all the others, had remained silent till then, now asked me: I was lying beside the ruins of the large factory, the beams of which were still burning. "Father, do you not think this is the end of Around me were piles of iron hoops belonging the world?" to the tubs and buckets lately destroyed.® With "I do not think so," was my reply, "but if other countries are burned as ours seems to have been, the end of the world, at least for us, " John Casson says in the previously cited letter: must be at hand." "All of the bodies were so badly charred we used iron barrel hoops under the necks and limbs to move After this both relapsed into silence. them."

259 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1971

'JuWn*

Society's Iconographic Collections This painting by Mel Kishner graphically illustrates the plight of victims trapped in such outlying areas as the Sugar Bushes. the intention of employing these latter to dry without minding his neighbor, the task was my socks and shoes, now the only possessions easy even to the most scrupulous and delicate. left me, I touched them but found that they Putting on dry clothes afforded immediate were still intolerably hot. Yet, strange to say, relief to the pain and oppression of my chest, numbers of men were lying—some face down­ enabling me to breathe with more ease. Finally ward—across these iron circles. Whether they day dawned on a scene with whose horror and were dead, or, rendered almost insensible from ruin none were as yet fully acquainted. I re­ the effects of damp and cold, were seeking the ceived a friendly summons to proceed to an­ warmth that the sand afforded me, I cannot other spot where the greater number of those say; I was suffering too intensely myself to who had escaped were assembled, but the in­ attend to them. flammation of my eyes had rapidly augmented, My eyes were now beginning to cause me and I was now perfectly blind. Someone led the most acute pain, and this proved the case, me, however, to the place of refuge. It was a to a greater or less extent, with all those who little valley near the river's edge, completely had not covered theirs during the long storm sheltered by sand hills, and proved to be the of fire through which we had passed. Notwith­ very place where I had intended taking refuge standing I had kept head and face streaming the evening previous, though prevented reach­ with water, the heat had nevertheless injured ing it by the violence of the hurricane. Some my eyes greatly, though at the moment I was had succeeded in attaining it, and had suffered almost unconscious of the circumstance. The comparatively far less than we had done. The intense pain they now caused, joined to a feel­ tempest of fire had passed, as it were, above ing of utter exhaustion, kept me for a length this spot, leaving untouched the shrubs and of time extended on the earth. When able, I plants growing within it. dried my wet garments, one after the other, Behold us then, all assembled in this valley at the blazing ruins, and those near me did the like the survivors after a battle—some safe same. As each individual thought of himself. and wefl, others more or less wounded; some

260 PERNIN: THE GREAT PESHTIGO FIRE were very much so, especially a poor old and vainly sought to give him a lesson in woman who, fearing to enter the river com­ politeness. I never heard the name of this man, pletely, had lain crouched on the bank, partly and rejoice that it is unknown to me. in the water, partly out of it, and, consequent­ Ten o'clock arrived. After the sufferings of ly, exposed to the flames. She was now the night previous, many longed for a cup of stretched on the grass, fearfully burned, and hot tea or coffee, but such a luxury was en­ suffering intense agony, to judge from her tirely out of our reach, amid the desolation heart-rending moans and cries. As she was and ruin surrounding us. Some of the young dying, and had asked for me, I was brought to men, after a close search, found and brought her, though I fear I proved but a poor con­ back a few cabbages from a neighboring field. soler. I could not unclose my inflamed eyes, The outer leaves, which were thoroughly could scarcely speak, and felt so exhausted and scorched, were removed, and the inner part depressed myself, that it was difficult to impart cut into thin slices and distributed among courage to others. The poor sufferer died those capable of eating them. A morsel of cold shortly after. raw cabbage was not likely to prove of much Those among us who had sufficient strength use in our then state of exhaustion, but we had for the task dispersed in different directions nothing better at hand. to seek information concerning the friends At length the people of Marinette were in­ whom they had not yet seen, and returned with formed of our condition, and, about one appalling tidings relating to the general ruin o'clock, several vehicles laden with bread, and the number of deaths by fire. One of these coffee, and tea arrived. These vehicles were told me that he had crossed to the other side commissioned at the same time to bring back of the river, and found all the houses as well as many of our number as they could contain. as the church in ashes, while numbers of Anxious to obtain news from Marinette, I en­ corpses were lying by the wayside, so much quired of one of the men sent to our assistance disfigured by fire as to be beyond recognition. if Marinette had also suffered from the fiery scourge. "Well," I replied, "since it is thus, we will "Thank God, Father, no one perished, all proceed to Marinette, where there is a fine though all were dreadfully alarmed. We have church, new presbytery, and school house, had many houses, however, burned. All the capable of lodging a great number." mills and houses from our church down to the About eight o'clock, a large tent, brought on Bay have gone." by the Company, was erected for the purpose "And the church?" of sheltering the women, children, and the "It is burned." sick. As soon as it was prepared someone came "The handsome presbytery?" and urged me to profit of it. I complied, and stretched myself in a corner, taking up as little "Burned." place as possible, so as to leave room for "The new schoolhouse?" others. But the man employed by the Company "Burned also." to superintend the erection of the tent had Ah! And I had promised the poor unfor­ evidently escaped all injury to his eyes during tunates of Peshtigo to bring them to Marinette the night, for he perceived me at once. He was and shelter them in those very buildings. Thus one of those coarse and brutal natures that I found myself bereft in the same hour of my seem inaccessible to every kindly feeling two churches, two presbyteries, and school- though he manifested a remarkable interest in house, as well as of all private property be­ the welfare of the ladies, and would allow none longing to them or to myself. but them under his tent. As soon as his glance fell on me he ordered me out, accompanying "DETWEEN ONE AND TWO O'CLOCK I left the rude command with a perfect torrent of ^-^ in one of the wagons for Marinette, and insulting words and blasphemies. Without re­ after arriving there, sojourned for some time ply I turned over, passing beneath the canvass, at the residence of one of my parishioners, and quickly found myself outside. One of the Mr. F. Garon, receiving under his hospitable ladies present raised her voice in my defense. roof all the care my condition required.

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The two banks of the river respectively ing it instinctively to prayer, even as the named Marinette and Menominee and which, terror-stricken child casts itself into the arms united, formed another parish, were strangely of the mother it has summoned to its help. changed in appearance. These two sister towns, What are we, poor mortals, exposed to the wild one situated on the south and the other on the fury of the unchained elements, but helpless north side of the river, were no longer recog­ children? The Catholics present with one ac­ nizable. Life and activity had entirely given cord cast themselves on their knees and prayed place to silence and a species of woeful stupe­ aloud, imploring the Ruler of the elements to faction. A few men only were to be seen going stay His vengeful arm and spare His people. backwards and forwards, looking after their They prayed without shyness or human re­ property, or asking details concerning the con­ spect. Doubtless, there were present those who flagration at Peshtigo from those who had just had perhaps never learned to pray, or who had arrived from that ill-fated spot. No women forgotten how to accomplish that all important were to be seen in the streets nor even in the duty, and these latter might in other circum­ houses, the latter having been abandoned. The stances have felt annoyed at such public mani­ children, too, with their joyous outcries and festations of devotion, but in this hour of noisy mirth had disappeared from the scene. common peril, all hearts involuntarily turned These shores, a short while since so animated, towards heaven as their only resource. There now resembled a desert, and it was a move­ were no tokens of incredulity, impiety, or ment of overwhelming and uncontrollable bigotry evinced by any. The Protestants who terror that had created, as it were, this soli­ were present, being unacquainted with the tude, a terror which dated from the preceding Catholic formula of prayer, could not unite night when the tempest of fire came surging their supplications with those of the latter, but on from Peshtigo, consuming all that part of they encouraged them to continue their devo­ Marinette that lay in its path. Intelligence of tions, and when they paused, solicited them to the fate that had overtaken Peshtigo farther recommence. Danger is a successful teacher, increased this general feeling of alarm till it its influence immediate and irresistible. No culminated in a perfect panic. Dreading a reasoning succeeds so quickly in making men similar catastrophe to that of Peshtigo, many comprehend the greatness of God and their families hastened towards the Bay, embarking own insignificance, His almighty power and on the steamers. Union, Dunlap, and St. their own helplessness. Naught else detaches Joseph, which had been kept near the shore so souls so completely from earth and raises them as to afford a refuge to the terrified inhabitants. towards Him on whom we all depend. The consternation was indescribable, and one unfortunate man on arriving panting and The preceding details, furnished by individ­ breathless at the boat fell dead from fear or uals coming and going from the boats, were exhaustion. These boats afforded anything but full of interest to me. During this time I re­ a safe place of refuge, for if the conflagration mained with my kind host, Mr. Garon, being had broken out as suddenly and raged as too ill even to leave the house. The kind atten­ fiercely as it had done at Peshtigo, nothing tions of which I was the object soon restored could have preserved them from the flames, me in some degree to health. Tuesday evening, and the only alternative left to those on board I was able to visit several persons who had would have been death by fire or water. Fear, been injured more or less grievously by fire, however, is generally an untrustworthy coun­ and to prepare the dying for their last end, as sellor, and the expedients it suggests remark­ far as lay in my power, in the total absence of ably ill chosen. The inhabitants of Marinette everything necessary on the sad occasion. Feel­ and Menominee passed the night of October ing strong enough, I resolved to return to eighth dispersed in the different boats, and it Peshtigo on Tuesday night, and commenced is unnecessary to add that few slept during my preparations. The clothes I wore had been those hours of strange anxiety. Terror effec­ greatly injured by my long sojourn in the tually banished slumber, producing the result water, and I would have willingly replaced fear generally does on the Christian soul, turn­ them, but found this impossible. The store­ keepers, fearing a similar misfortune to that

262 PERNIN: THE GREAT PESHTIGO FIRE which had overtaken the merchants of Pesh­ been. I plunged my cane into one of them, tigo, had packed up the greater part of their thinking what must the violence of that fire merchandise and buried it. I could get nothing have been, which ravaged not only the surface save a suit of coarse yellow material such as of the earth, but penetrated so deeply into its workmen wear whilst engaged in sawmills. In bosom. Then I turned my wondering gaze in the absence of something better it had to an­ the direction where the town had lately stood, swer, and about ten o'clock at night I went on but nothing remained to point out its site board a steamboat about leaving for Green Bay, except the boilers of the two locomotives, the calling previously, however, at Peshtigo. The iron of the wagon wheels, and the brick and night was very stormy, and it was only about stonework of the factory. All the rest was a daybreak that we ventured to land, the water desert the desolation of which was sufficient to being very rough when we reached Peshtigo draw tears from the eyes of the spectator—a landing, which was about nine or ten in the desert recalling a field of battle after a san­ morning. I remained there only a few hours, guinary conflict. Charred carcasses of horses, during which time I visited the sick beds of cows, oxen, and other animals lay scattered several victims of the conflagration. here and there.^ The bodies of the human vic­ tims—men, women, and children—had been About one o'clock in the afternoon a car already collected and decently interred—^their was leaving for Peshtigo, conveying thither number being easily ascertained by counting men who went daily there for the purpose of the rows of freshly-made graves. To find the seeking out and burying the dead. I took my streets was a difficult task, and it was not with­ place with them. The locomotives belonging out considerable trouble that I succeeded at to the Company, having been burned, were length in ascertaining the site where my house now replaced by horses, and we progressed had lately stood. My next care was to look for thus till we came up with the track of the fire. the spot where I had buried my trunks and We walked the rest of the way, a distance of other valuables. This I discovered by means half a league, and this gave me ample oppor­ of the shovel which I had employed in digging tunity for examining thoroughly the devasta­ the trench and which I had thrown to a short tion and ruin wrought, both by fire and by distance, my task completed. There it still lay, wind. Alas, much as I had heard on the sad half of the handle burned off, the rest in good subject, I was still unprepared for the melan­ order, and I employed it once again to disinter choly spectacle that met my gaze. my effects. On moving the sand, a disagreeable odor, somewhat resembling that of brimstone, It is a painful thing to have to speak of exhaled from it. My linen appeared at the first scenes which we feel convinced no pen could glance to be in a state of perfect preservation. fully describe nor words do justice to. It was on the eleventh of October, Wednesday after­ noon, that I revisited for the first time the site of what had once been the town of Peshtigo. Of the houses, trees, fences that I had looked ' All other accounts mention that in addition to on three days ago nothing whatever remained, the ruins noted by Father Pernin, a partially com­ save a few blackened posts still standing, as if pleted dwelling survived the disaster, one side of which had been burned to cinders while the side fac­ to attest the impetuous fury of the fiery ing the fire had not even been scorched. A photo­ element that had thus destroyed all before it. graph of the house, showing one of the charred beams Wherever the foot chanced to fall it rested on which was included in the final construction, ap­ peared in the Milwaukee Journal, October 8, 1951. ashes. The iron tracks of the railroad had An appendix to the Wisconsin Assembly Journal of been twisted and curved into all sorts of Proceedings, 1873, page 173, lists the following loss in shapes, whilst the wood which had supported property and livestock: 27 schoolhouses, 9 churches; 959 dwellings; 1,028 barns and stables; 116 horses; them no longer existed. The trunks of mighty 157 working cattle; 266 cows and heifers; 201 sheep; trees had been reduced to mere cinders, the and 306 hogs. The figures undoubtedly are incom­ plete, since many homesteads were so completely blackened hearts alone remaining. All around destroyed that no trace of any living thing could be these trunks, I perceived a number of holes found. The heaviest individual loser was William G. running downwards deep in the earth. They Ogden, the Chicago railroad magnate, who is re­ puted to have lost three million dollars in the Pesh­ were the sockets where the roots had lately tigo and Chicago fires. Wells, Fire at Peshtigo, 142.

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into conversation. One was a bereaved father seeking his missing children of whom he had as yet learned nothing. "If, at least," he said to me, with a look of indescribable anguish, "I could find their bones, but the wind has swept away whatever the fire spared." Children ;-^:' "^^V • '"."3 were seeking for their parents, brothers for their brothers, husbands for their wives, but I saw no women amid this scene of horror which it would have been almost impossible for them to contemplate. The men I met, those sorrow­ ful seekers for the dead, had all suffered more or less in the battle against wind and fire. Some had had a hand burned, others an arm or side; all were clothed in blackened, ragged Tilton, Great Fires in Wisconsin garments, appearing, each one from his look Wood engraving of the Peshtigo Schoolhouse prior of woeful sadness and miserable condition, to the fire. like a ruin among ruins. They pointed out to having kept even its whiteness, with the ex­ me the places where they had found such and ception of the pleats, which were somewhat such individuals: there a mother lay prone on discolored; but on touching it, it fell to pieces her face, pressing to her bosom the child she as if the substance had been consumed by some had vainly striven to save from the devouring slow, peculiar process, or traversed by elec­ element; here a whole family, father, mother, tricity. Whilst touching on this subject we may and children, lying together, blackened and add that many felt a shock of earthquake at mutilated by the fire fiend. Among the ruins the moment that everything on the surface of of the boarding house belonging to the Com­ the earth was trembling before the violence of pany, more than seventy bodies were found, the hurricane. Here again was a total loss. disfigured to such a fearful extent that it was A few calcined bricks, melted crystal, with impossible to tell either their age or sex. crosses and crucifixes more or less destroyed, Farther on twenty more had been drawn from alone pointed out where my house had once a well. One of the workmen engaged in the been, while the charred remains of my poor construction of the church was found, knife in dog indicated the site of my bedroom. I fol­ hand, with his throat cut, two of his children lowed then the road leading from my house to lying beside him in a similar condition; while the river, and which was the one I had taken his wife lay a little farther off, having evident­ on the night of the catastrophe. There, the car­ ly been burned to death. The name of this man casses of animals were more numerous than was Towsley,* and during the whole summer elsewhere, especially in the neighborhood of he had worked at the church of Peshtigo. the bridge. I saw the remains of my poor horse Doubtless seeing his wife fall near him, and in the spot where I had last met him, but so becoming convinced of the utter impossibility disfigured by the fiery death through which of escaping a fiery death, his mind became he had passed that I had some difficulty in troubled, and he put an end to his own exist­ recognizing him. ence and that of his children. There were several other similar cases of suicide arising Those who have a horse, and appreciate the from the same sad causes. valuable services he renders them, will not feel surprised at my speaking twice of mine. There These heartrending accounts, combined with exists between the horse and his master a the fearful desolation that met my gaze species of friendship akin to that which unites two friends, and which in the man frequently survives the death of his four-footed com­ " Although the implication here is that the bodies panion. were found in Peshtigo, they were actually discovered in the Lower Sugar Bush. In the list of recognized Whilst wandering among the ruins I met bodies printed in the appendix to the Assembly several persons, with some of whom I entered Journal, 1873, the father is given as C. R. Tousley.

264 PERNIN: THE GREAT PESHTIGO FIRE wherever it turned, froze my veins with mortal remains, and the iron circles of the horror! wheels. It was with some difficulty that the human relics could be distinguished from those of the horses. The workmen of the Com­ A LAS! that I should have to record an pany were employed in collecting these sad -^*- incident such as should never have hap­ memorials and burying them by the wayside, pened in the midst of that woeful scene! there to remain till such time as the friends Whilst struggling with the painful impressions of the dead might wish to reclaim and inter produced in my mind by the spectacle on them in a more suitable manner. which I looked, my attention was attracted to I left them at their mournful task, and re­ another quarter by the sound of voices, raised turned to the site where our church had so in loud excitement. The cause of the tumult lately stood. There also all was in ashes, noth­ was this: In the midst of the universal con­ ing remaining save the church bell. The latter sternation pervading all minds, a man was had been thrown a distance of fifty feet; one found degraded enough to insult not only the half was now lying there intact, while the other general sorrow and mourning but also death part had melted and spread over the sand in itself. Enslaved by the wretched vice of avarice, silvery leaves. The voice of this bell had been he had just been taken in the act of despoiling the last sound heard in the midst of the hurri­ the bodies of the dead of whatever objects the cane. Its lugubrious note yet seems at times fire had spared. A jury was formed, his to strike on my ear, reminding me of the punishment put to the vote, and he was unani­ horrors of which it was a forerunner. mously condemned to be hanged on the spot. The graveyard lay close to the church, and But where was a rope to be found? The fire I entered and waited there; for I expected had spared nothing. Somebody proposed sub­ momentarily the arrival of a funeral. It was stituting for the former an iron chain which that of a young man who had died the eve­ had been employed for drawing logs, and one ning previous, in consequence of the terrible was accordingly brought and placed around burns he had received. Never was burial ser­ the criminal's neck. Execution was difficult vice more poverty-striken nor priest more under the circumstances; and whilst the pre­ utterly destitute of all things necessary for the parations dragged slowly on, the miserable performance of the sad ceremony. Nor church, man loudly implored mercy. The pity inspired nor house, nor surplice, stole nor breviary: by the mournful surroundings softened at nothing save prayer and a heartfelt benedic­ length the hearts of the judges, and, after tion. I had felt this destitution still more having made him crave pardon on his knees keenly on two or three previous occasions for the sacrilegious thefts of which he had when asked by the dying for the sacrament of been guilty, they allowed him to go free. It Extreme Unction, which it was out of my may have been that they merely intended power, alas, to administer to them. I left the frightening him. graveyard with a heavy heart, and turned my Weary of noise and tumult, and longing for steps in the direction of the river, which I had solitude, I left my previous companions, and to cross in order to seek for my tabernacle followed for a considerable distance that road with whose ultimate fate I was unacquainted. to Oconto on which I had seen so many A bright ray of consolation awaited me and vehicles entering, turning their backs on the seldom was consolation more needed. river to which I was hastening with the taber­ I crossed the river on the half-charred nacle. I had not gone far before I saw much beams of the bridge which had been joined more than I would have desired to see. All in together so as to offer a means of passage, this line had perished, and perished in masses, though a very perilous one, to those who chose for the vehicles were crowded with unfor­ to trust themselves to it. I had barely reached tunates who, flying from death, had met it all the other side when one of my parishioners the sooner and in its most horrible form. In hastened to meet me, joyfully exclaiming: those places where the flames had enfolded "Father, do you know what has happened to their victims in their fiery clasp, nothing now your tabernacle?" was to be seen but calcined bones, charred "No, what is it?"

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"Come quickly then, and see. Oh! Father, it These sacred objects, though possessing in is a great miracle!" reality but little intrinsic value, are neverthe­ I hurried with him to that part of the river less priceless in my eyes. I prize them as most into which I had pushed as far as possible my precious relics, and never look at or touch wagon containing the tabernacle. This wagon them without feeling penetrated with senti­ had been blown over on its side by the storm; ments of love and veneration such as no other whilst the tabernacle itself had been caught up holy vessels, however rich and beautiful, could by the wind and cast on one of the logs float­ awake within me. In the little chapel at Mari­ ing on the water. Everything in the immediate nette, which replaces the church burned there vicinity of this spot had been blackened or more than two years ago, the same tabernacle charred by the flames; logs, trunks, boxes, is on the altar and contains the same mon­ nothing had escaped, yet, strange to say, there strance and ciborium which were so wonder­ rose the tabernacle, intact in its snowy white­ fully preserved from the flames, and, daily, ness, presenting a wonderful contrast to the during the holy sacrifice, I use them with a grimy blackness of the surrounding objects. species of religious triumph as trophies of I left it in the spot where it had thus been God's exceeding mercy snatched so marvel­ thrown by the tempest for two days, so as to lously from destruction. give all an opportunity of seeing it. Numbers I must beg my readers to return with me came, though of course in that time of horror for a little while to the banks of Peshtigo and desolation there were many too deeply en­ River—but not to linger there long. Before grossed with their own private griefs to pay removing the tabernacle I was busily occupied attention to aught else. The Catholics generally three days and two nights, now in seeking for regarded the fact as a miracle, and it was the dead, then in taking up from the water spoken of near and far, attracting great atten­ various objects which I had thrown by arm- tion. fuls, at the moment of leaving my house, into Alas! Nothing is more evanescent than the the wagon and which had been overturned salutary impressions produced on the mind of with it into the river. The most precious of all man by divine blessings or punishments. Time these was the chalice, which I was fortunate and the preoccupations of life efface even the enough to find, together with the paten. My very remembrance of them. How few there are search was greatly facilitated by the opening among the rare survivors of the fire that swept of the dam and letting out of the waters which Peshtigo from the face of the earth who still were here fifteen or twenty feet in depth. This see the power of God in the calamity that then step was necessary for the finding of the overwhelmed them as well as in the preserva­ corpses of those persons who, either seized tion of the tabernacle, events which at the time by cramps, or drawn in by the current, had of their occurrence made so deep an impres­ been drowned during the night of the hurri­ sion on their minds. cane. When the duties which had detained me For the space of these three days our only three days amid these mournful scenes were habitation was the tent, the shelter of which completed, I took the tabernacle from the place had been so arbitrarily refused me the preced­ which it had occupied of late and sent it on ing Monday. It covered us during our meals, to Marinette where I intended soon saying which we took standing and as best we could, mass. When the right time arrived, I forcibly and during the night protected the slumbers of opened the tiny door. There—circumstance as those who could sleep, a thing I found im­ wonderful as the preservation of the tabernacle possible. Our beds were made on a most in the midst of the conflagration—I found the economical plan—the river sand formed our consecrated Host intact in the monstrance substitute for mattresses, and a single blanket while the violent concussions the ciborium constituted our covering. must have undergone had not caused it even During this period I first learned the fate to open. Water had not penetrated within, and of the city of Chicago. A physician, come from the flames had respected the interior as well as Fond du Lac to attend to the sick and burned, exterior, even to the silky tissue lining the brought a newspaper with him, and in it we sides. All was in a state of perfect preservation! read of the terrible ravages wrought by fire,

266 Society's Map Collections This U.S. Weather Bureau map, prepared from reports made by U.S. Army Signal Service observers at 5:35 P.M. Central Standard time, October 8, 1871, shows the course of the cyclonic storm that prevailed on the day of the Chicago and Peshtigo fires. on the same night, and, strange to say, about As often happens in such cases, the most the same hour, not only at Peshtigo but in contradictory rumors had been circulated with many other places and above all at Chicago. regard to myself. Some declared that I had This great conflagration at Chicago proclaimed been burned in the church whither I had gone to the world by the myriad voices of journal to pray a moment previous to the outburst of and telegraph, created far and wide an im­ the storm, others asserted that I had met a mense outburst of compassion in favor of the fiery death in my own abode, whilst many were unfortunate city, diverting entirely the general equally positive that I had perished in the attention from the far more appalling calam­ river. ities of which we had been the hapless victims. On seeing me the Bishop, who had naturally been rendered anxious by these contradictory /~|N THE AFTERNOON of Friday, the reports, eagerly exclaimed: Oh! at last! I have ^^ thirteenth, I had about finished my been so troubled about you! Why did you not labors on the desolate banks of Peshtigo River. write?" "My Lord, I could not," was my reply, The corpses found had all been decently in­ "I had neither pen, ink, nor paper, nothing terred, and the sick and maimed carried to but river water." different places of safety. Exhausted with He generously offered me every thing I re­ fatigue and privation, I felt I could not bear quired, either from his library or wardrobe, up much longer, and accordingly took place in but I declined the kind offer, as there were a wagon that had brought us supplies, and was still a number of my parishioners on the river now returning to Oconto in which latter town Menominee and it was for them to help, not I had friends who were awaiting my arrival him. He then wished to appoint me to another with friendly impatience. I enjoyed two days parish, declaring that I merited repose after of the rest at the residence of Father Vermore all I had endured, and that a farther sojourn [A. Vermere], the excellent parish priest of among my people, poor and decimated in num­ the French church. Monday following I left for ber, would be only a continuation of suffering Green Bay to visit his Lordship, Bishop Joseph and hard toil. Remembering, however, that my Melcher, dead, alas, even now while I write parishioners would thus be left without a these lines. priest at a time when the ministrations of one

267 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1971 would be doubly necessary to them, recalling, your place, you would equally desire to render also, how much better it was that their poverty me a similar service." and privations should be shared by one who knew and loved them, I solicited and obtained TT MAY BE as well to record here some of permission to remain among my flock. Soon, -'- the extraordinary phenomena and peculiar however, the sufferings I had endured began characteristics of the strange fire that wrought to tell on my constitution; and to such an ex­ so much desolation, though I was not person­ tent that, having been invited by the Rev. Mr. ally a witness to them all. I was too near the fP.] Crud, parish priest of Green Bay, to inner portion of the circle to be able to see preach on All Saints, he was told by Bishop much of what was passing on the outside. It is Melcher he must not count on me as my brain not he who is in the middle of the combat that was seriously injured by the fiery ordeal has the best view of the battle and its details, through which I had passed. I cannot well say but rather the man who contemplates it from whether this was really the case. I know that I some elevated point overlooking the plain. was terribly feeble, and hoping that a few Whole forests of huge maples, deeply and months' repose might restore my health, I re­ strongly rooted in the soil, were torn up, solved to travel, determined to make the trip twisted and broken, as if they had been willow conducive at the same time to the welfare of wands. A tree standing upright here or there my impoverished parishes. My first intention was an exception to an almost general rule. was to visit Louisiana returning by the East, There lay those children of the forest, heaped but I was destined soon to learn that my up one over the other in all imaginable posi­ strength was unequal to the task. Arrived at St. tions, their branches reduced to cinders, and Louis, I was attacked by a fever that kept me their trunks calcined and blackened. Many as­ confined to the bed each day for three or four severated that they had seen large wooden hours, and which made sad inroads on the houses torn from their foundations and caught small stock of health left me. Accordingly I up like straws by two opposing currents of went no farther. The kind people of St. Louis air which raised them till they came in contact showed me a great deal of sympathy, and I with the stream of fire. They then burst into made friends among them whom I can never flames, and, exposed thus to the fury of two forget, and whom meeting with once more fierce elements, wind and fire, were torn to would be a source of great pleasure. I will not pieces and reduced to ashes almost simul­ mention their names here, but they are written taneously. on my heart in ineffaceable characters. I can do nothing myself to prove my gratitude, but I will Stifl, the swiftness with which this hurri­ whisper their names to our most powerful and cane, seemingly composed of wind and fire most clement Lady of Lourdes, in her church together, advanced, was in no degree propor­ of Marinette, and she will atone for my in­ tioned to its terrible force. By computing the capacity. length of time that elapsed between the rising of the tempest in the southwest, and its sub­ Having mentioned the claims of the inhab­ siding in the northeast, it will be easily seen itants of St. Louis on my gratitude, it would that the rate of motion did not exceed two be unjust on my part to pass in silence over leagues an hour. The hurricane moved in a those of my own parishioners and friends in circle, advancing slowly, as if to give time to Wisconsin, who spontaneously offered me help prepare for its coming. in the first moments of distress. Ah, they are Many circumstances tended to prove that not forgotten! Very pleasant is it to recall the intensity of the heat produced by the fire these warm expressions of sympathy, spring­ was in some places extreme, nay unheard of. ing directly from the heart. Amongst many I have already mentioned that the flames pur­ similar traits, well do I remember the words sued the roots of the trees into the very depths of a friend in Oconto who, wishing me to of the earth, consuming them to the last inch. accept decent garments to replace those which I plunged my cane down into these cavities, I had brought back from the conflagration ex­ and convinced myself that nothing had stayed claimed on my persistent refusal, "I insist, the course of combustion save the utter want for well I know that, if I happened to be in of anything to feed on. Hogsheads of nails

268 PERNIN: THE GREAT PESHTIGO FIRE were found entirely melted though lying out­ portions. Thus no one could meet it standing side the direct path of the flames. Immense erect without paying the penalty of almost numbers of fish of all sizes died, and the instantaneous death. morning after the storm the river was covered When the hurricane burst upon us, many, with them. It would be impossible to decide surprised and terrified, ran out to see what was what was the cause of their death. It may have the matter. A number of these persons assert been owing to the intensity of the heat, the that they then witnessed a phenomenon which want of air necessary to respiration—the air may be classed with the marvelous. They saw being violently sucked in by the current tend­ a large black object, resembling a balloon, ing upwards to that fierce focus of flame—or which object revolved in the air with great they may have been killed by some poisonous rapidity, advancing above the summits of the gas. trees towards a house which it seemed to single It is more than probable that for a moment out for destruction. Barely had it touched the the air was impregnated with an inflammable latter when the balloon burst with a loud re­ gas most destructive to human life. I have port, like that of a bombshell, and, at the same already mentioned the tiny globules of fire fly­ moment, rivulets of fire streamed out in all ing about my house at the moment I quitted it. directions. With the rapidity of thought, the Whilst on my way to the river, I met now and house thus chosen was enveloped in flames then gusts of an air utterly unfit for respira­ within and without, so that the persons inside tion, and was obliged on these occasions to had no time for escape. throw myself on the ground to regain my It is somewhat difficult to calculate the ex­ breath, unless already prostrated involuntarily tent of territory overrun by the fiery scourge, by the violence of the wind. Whilst standing in on account of the irregularity of the course the river I had noticed, as I have already re­ followed by the latter. Still, without exaggera- lated, on casting my eye upwards, a sea of flame, as it were, the immense waves of which were in a state of violent commotion, rolling ° In his report to Governor C. C. Washburn, Cap­ tumultuously one over the other, and all at a tain A. J. Langworthy, chairman of the Green Bay prodigious height in the sky, and, consequent­ Relief Committee stoutly upheld the theory that in­ ly, far from any combustible material. How flammable gas, particularly marsh gas from peat swamps which in the preceding weeks had often can this phenomenon be explained without ad­ burned to a depth of three feet, played a major role mitting the supposition that immense quan­ in increasing the fire's intensity. He enclosed in his tities of gas were accumulated in the air?^ report a statement from Increase A. Lapham sup­ porting the view that "carburetted hydrogen" pro­ Strange to say there were many corpses duced great masses of combustible gas resembling balls of fire which would explode on contact with found, bearing about them no traces of scars oxygen. Langworthy also included a letter from C. F. or burns, and yet in the pockets of their habili­ Chandler of the Columbia College School of Mines ments, equally uninjured, watches, cents, and in New York flatly denying that combustible gases could be produced in the atmosphere. As a final other articles in metal were discovered com­ clincher, Langworthy included depositions from Lu­ pletely melted. How was it also that many ther B. Noyes, Marinette judge and editor, and from a noted chemist on the faculty of the U.S. Naval escaped with their lives here and there on the Academy, both upholding the gas theory. In 1927 cleared land as well as in the woods? The Joseph Schafer attempted a scientific explanation for problem is a difficult one to solve. The tempest the great fires of 1871, but it remained for Robert Wells, using research reports furnished by the U.S. did not rage in all parts with equal fury, but Forest Service to supply the most intelligible explan­ escape from its power was a mere affair of ation for the origin and nature of the fire. Conced­ chance. None could boast of having displayed ing that marsh gas may have played a minor role. Wells concludes that the convection column—a whirl­ more presence of mind than others. Generally ing chimney of superheated air generated by the fire speaking, those who happened to be in low —suddenly broke through the blanket of heavier, lying lands, especially close to excavations or smoke-laden air into the colder air above, thus creat­ ing a huge updraft which led to the fire tornado, the even freshly ploughed earth with which they whirlwinds, and the curious phenomena reported by could cover themselves, as the Indians do, survivors. See appendix to the Assembly Journal, 1873; Joseph Schafer, "Great Fires of Seventy-One," succeeded in saving their lives. Most frequent­ in the Wisconsin Magazine of History, 11:96-106 ly the torrent of fire passed at a certain height (September, 1927) ; and Wells, Fire at Peshtigo, from the earth, touching only the most elevated 199-214.

269 Courtesy Prentice-Hall, Inc. Map adapted from Tilton s Great Fires in Wisconsin, and used in Robert Wells' Fire at Peshtigo to illustrate the burnt district in Wisconsin and Michigan. The dotted lines indicate the approximate extent of the devastation, as do the blackened areas in the insert.

270 PERNIN: THE GREAT PESHTIGO FIRE tion, the surface thus ravaged, extending from age the Birch Creek settlement in Michigan, the southwest to the northeast of Peshtigo, killing eight men, two women, and twelve chil­ may be set down as not far from fifteen to dren. twenty leagues in length by five or six in Some sources have estimated the number of width. The number of deaths in Peshtigo, in­ dead as 1,200. The Encyclopedia Britannica cluding the farmers dwelling in the environs, gives a total of 1,152, evidently using the figure was not less than one thousand—that is to say, arrived at by Stewart Holbrook in his Burning about half of the population. More than eight An Empire. However, the true total will never hundred known individuals had disappeared; be known, since whole farmsteads were erased, but there were crowds of strangers, many of leaving no trace, and no one knows how many whom had arrived that very morning, whose itinerant workers died in Peshtigo's company names had not been registered, and whose boarding house or in its two churches to which number will ever remain unknown. many fled in panic, or in isolated logging camps Among those who escaped from the awful deep in the surrounding woods. People simply scourge, many have since died, owing to the became piles of ashes or calcinated bones, hardships then endured, whilst others are identifiable only if a buckle, a ring, a shawl pin dropping off day by day. A physician belong­ or some other familiar object survived the in­ ing to Green Bay has predicted that before ten credible heat. A painstaking, three-month in­ years all the unfortunate survivors of that vestigation by Colonel J. H. Leavenworth, as terrible catastrophe will have paid the debt of printed in the Assembly Journal for 1873, lists nature, victims of the irreparable injury in­ the names of only 383 identified dead: 77 in flicted on their constitutions by smoke, air, Peshtigo, 12 in Lincoln, 50 in Brussels, 3 in water, and fire.-"* If the prediction continues Nasawanpee, and 22 in Birch Creek, Michigan. to be as faithfully realized in the future as it The heaviest losses were in the Sugar Bushes, has been in the past, my turn will also come. where no convenient river furnished a refuge May the construction of the Church of Our from the flames. Here a total of 241 identified Lady of Lourdes, at Marinette, be then com­ bodies were found, of whom 123 were those of pleted, so that some grateful hearts may pray children. How many died subsequently or were there for the repose of my soul. maimed for life is not known. At any rate, according to Leavenworth's report, a year after Epilogue the event many survivors remained partially or "PROM PESHTIGO the fire roared toward permanently demented as a result of their or­ -*- Marinette, destroying Father Pernin's other deal. church and its newly built presbytery, but leav­ News of the disaster did not immediately ing the village mainly intact. Then the fire split reach the outside world. Isaac Stephenson, the into two forks, the one on the right going on to Marinette lumber baron, on learning of Peshti­ consume the village of Menekaunee, the one on go's fate, had an emissary sent to Green Bay— the left jumping the Menomonee River to rav- the nearest place where the telegraph lines had not been burned out—to transmit a message to Governor Lucius Fairchild. The message did not reach Madison until the morning of the ^° Although many survivors subsequently died of 10th. Fairchild and all state officials were in their dreadful burns and others were disabled for Chicago, whence they had gone with carloads life, the unidentified physician's prediction fortu­ nately did not hold true. When ceremonies were held of supplies to aid the stricken city. A capitol on the eightieth anniversary of the fire in October, clerk took the telegram to Mrs. Fairchild, who 1951, nineteen survivors were present to witness the unveiling of the first official state marker, erected in immediately swung into action. For a day this the refurbished Fire Cemetery. The oldest survivor remarkable woman, then less than twenty-four, was 96. As late as 1958, Fay S. Dooley, curator of was to all intents and purposes the governor of Old Wade House and a former Peshtigo resident, was able to identify six survivors still living then. Wisconsin. As her daughter, Mrs. Mary Fair- Milwaukee Journal, October 8, 1951; Peshtigo Times, child Morris, recalled in a letter to Joseph October 4, 1951; William F. Steuber, Jr., The Prob­ lem at Peshtigo," in the Wisconsin Magazine of His­ Schafer in May, 1927, her mother comman­ tory, 43:13-15 (Autumn, 1958). deered a boxcar loaded with supplies destined

271 ^f^<' " <*»M=i^^T •-'- •

Society's Iconographic Collections Ten years after its destruction, as this 1881 bird's-eye view demonstrates, Peshtigo had risen phoenix-like from its ashes. Indicated by the circled numbers are the rebuilt Catholic Church (1), the restored Peshtigo Company Sawmill (2), and the new Congregational Church (below 3). for Chicago, ordered railroad officials to give and 200,000 rations of hard bread, beans, ba­ it priority over all other traffic, and then dis­ con, dried beef, pork, sugar, rice, coffee and covering that the car contained food and cloth­ the like. ing but no defenses against the October cold, Slowly the devastated area began to recover. rallied Madison women to supply blankets to Schoolhouses and bridges were rebuilt, roads stuff into the already loaded car. After the car were repaired. Despite his substantial losses, was dispatched, Mrs. Fairchild issued a public William G. Ogden ordered that his wooden- appeal for contributions of money, clothing, ware company be rebuilt; others followed suit, bedding, and supplies, with the result that a and Peshtigo struggled back to life. In January, second boxcar left Madison that night. 1873, Governor Cadwallader C. Washburn, Immediately on receiving the news of the who had succeeded Lucius Fairchild, reported Peshtigo disaster, relief committees were orga­ in the Assembly Journal: "In the month of July nized in Green Bay, Oconto, and Marinette; I visited the burnt district on the penninsula, emergency hospitals were set up for the injured, as well as on the west side of Green Bay. I found and lodgings were found for the homeless sur­ the devastation produced by the fire fiend such vivors. Eventually the Green Bay Relief Com­ as is impossible for the mind to comprehend mittee was augmented by a second in Milwau­ without the aid of the eye. I was pleased to find kee, and hardly a community in the state failed that a majority of the survivors had returned to establish some kind of relief organization. to their clearings; many had raised fair crops, Following Governor Fairchild's broadcast ap­ and were hopeful of the future. . . ." peal for aid, contributions began to pour in Part of the process of reconstruction includ­ from all over the state, the nation, and several ed the rebuilding of Father Pernin's church. foreign countries. In all, $166,789 was collect­ Our Lady of Lourdes. It still stands today on ed in cash donations, while the United States Main Street in Marinette as a part of Central government contributed from army supplies Catholic High School, its sanctuary serving as 4,000 woolen blankets, 1,500 pairs of trousers a chapel and the remainder of the building and overcoats, 100 wagons with sets of harness, as a rehearsal hall.

272 THEODORE ROOSEVELT AND

THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN

By WILLIAM CONVERSE HAYGOOD and JOAN SEVERA

TN 1967, in an effort to establish a central Twenty-eight, and already the author of three •*- reservoir of information concerning the books written in rapid succession,^ Roosevelt present location of items formerly used to was at the time in the process of writing the furnish and decorate the White House, the first volume of his Winning of the West (a Smithsonian Institution's Division of Political book, incidentally, which Draper's biographer History sent a letter of inquiry to museums asserts that Draper should have written him­ and historical agencies throughout the country. self) .^ In the letter, Roosevelt made a respect­ Margaret Brown Klapthor, writer of the letter ful request to obtain information from the re­ and the Division's associate curator, whose nowned assemblage of frontier and pioneer current interests include the china services materials which Draper had spent the major used by successive administrations,'^ was pleas­ part of his earlier career collecting and the antly surprised at the response from the So­ latter part battling to withhold from his fellow ciety's Museum. It was somewhat unexpected historians: that a Midwestern museum would be able to I am now engaged, on a work in refer­ claim even a small selection of Presidential ence to the extension of our boundaries to china among its holdings. the southwest from the day when Boone The collection in question, from the china crossed the AUeghenies to the days of the services of five Presidents of the United States, Alamo and San Jacinto. was donated by President Theodore Roosevelt I know of no one whose researches into, in 1903. Actually, it represents only one of the and collections of material for, our early many tangible evidences of T. R.'s long asso­ western history have been so extensive as ciation with the Society, beginning with a your own; so I venture to ask you if you letter written on February 11, 1886, to Lyman can give me any information how I can get at what I want. I wish particularly to get Copeland Draper, the Society's first Secretary. hold of any original or unpublished mss; such as the diaries or letters of the first settlers, who crossed the mountains, and ^ See Margaret Brown Klapthor, White House China of the Lincoln Administration in the Museum of History and Technology (United States Museum " The Naval War of 1812; or The History of the Bulletin 250, Contributions from the Museum of His­ United States Navy During the Last War With Great tory and Technology Paper 62, Smithsonian Press, Britain (1882) ; Hunting Trips of a Ranchman Washington, 1967). In a letter dated November 24, (1885) ; and Thomas Hart Benton (1886). 1970, Mrs. Klapthor indicates that her completed his­ ' William B. Hesseltine, Pioneer's Mission: The tory of presidential china will be published in its Story of Lyman Copeland Draper (Madison, 1954), entirety, rather than as separates. 289.

273 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1971

Four pieces in the Society's collection of presidential china, presented by Theodore Roosevelt in 1903. The plain gold-bordered dinner plate at the left is from the State china used during the Cleveland Administration. The two floral pieces (top and bottom center) are from the Grant setting, while the purple- bordered plate at the right was used during Lincoln's presidency. their records of the early Indian wars, the furnish Roosevelt some information, however attempt at founding the State of Franklin grudgingly, is attested to by a letter written by [Tennessee] etc. the latter on February 21, 1886, thanking Do you know if there are any records in Draper for "your courtesy in answering." In existence in ms. or otherwise, of Sevier, it, the future President tactfully reproached Shelby, Robertson, and the other early Tennesseeans? or of Clark, Harrod and Draper for not making his papers more widely their companions? available. "I am very glad," he wrote, "that Ramsey in his Annals of Tennessee speaks you intend to publish at least some of your of the Sevier mss; I wonder how they could papers. Only the other day two or three of us be got at. Extracts from Clark's journal have who were talking together were regretting that been published; but I do not know if all of you had not made public more of your re­ it has been, nor, if it has not been, where it searches. I shall await with interest your life could be seen. of Clarke "= Trusting you will not think I have tres­ passed too far on your good nature, I am Most Truly Yours ....'' * Roosevelt to Draper, February 12, 1886, in the Draper Collection, Archives-Manuscript Division, Unfortunately Draper was not addicted to State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Unless other­ preserving copies of his own correspondence, wise noted, all letters cited hereafter are in the so we have no way of knowing what his re­ Society's collections. '• Roosevelt to Draper, February 21, 1886, in the sponse was, although the fact that he did Draper Collection.

274 THEODORE ROOSEVELT AND THE SOCIETY

Roosevelt's next letter, dated March 5, 1888, Finally, in 1889, the year in which President while still respectful, reflects Draper's evident Benjamin Harrison made Roosevelt a civil ser­ reluctance to co-operate in the young man's vice commissioner as a reward for his political quest for source material: support, the first two volumes of Tfie Winning of the West appeared, and the mutual antag­ Pardon my writing you again. I appre­ onism that he and Draper had hidden beneath ciate thoroughly the impropriety of asking a surface of bland courtesy came into the open. any one for information which by any pos­ In his prefatory acknowledgments Roosevelt sibility he may himself use; but it occurred to me that possibly you might have some mentioned neither Draper nor the Society— matter you did not intend to do anything a slight which must have rankled. Although with that would nevertheless be of direct William Best Hesseltine asserts that Draper application to my subject .... had little regard for "the shallow glibness of For instance, if you have any material young Theodore Roosevelt," the direct evi­ concerning Boone that you are not going to dence is lacking,* since there are no replies make use of—or anything about Crockett— in Draper's papers to the two letters on which it would be invaluable to me. Indeed, any the assertion is based. On June 28, 1889, a material, of no service to yourself, relating Philadelphia friend wrote: ". . . Yesterday in to that period (1775-1815), would probably help me over the dark points. New York in Putnam's, I looked through Mr. When is your Clarke' coming out? I am Roosevelt's new attempt at rivaling you, so I very anxious to see it. I think it is the biog­ directed that a copy be addressed to you, raphy that we most need. No one has done which please accept with my regards." An­ justice to Clarke; at least no one in the other friend, writing on the stationery of a east. Denver Hotel, wrote, "It is a great pity these I trust you to understand that I do not 'dabsters' should trifle with the subjects of wish for an instant to trouble you by asking which they must have the most limited data, for anything you are unwilling to give; but and so deaden interest in works of real merit I thought that in your remarkably complete such as you propose, founded on so much collection of mss. you might have material for which you yourself had no use.^ more. ^ More direct evidence of Draper's disapprov­ The following month Roosevelt wrote a al can be inferred from the Society's copies polite note to thank Draper for a reprint of of the first two volumes of the original edition his article, "Autographs of Signers of the of The Winning of the West, both heavily an­ Declaration of Independence and of the Con­ notated by Draper himself. Writing in angry stitution" which appeared in volume 10 of the red ink, he notes inaccuracies in names (e.g., Society's Collections? This volume, the last to George for John Bradford), lapses in gram­ be edited by Draper, had been scheduled to mar, contradictions in facts, uncritical use of appear in 1886, but owing to unavoidable de­ unreliable sources, and the ignoring of im­ lays (meaning Draper's dilatoriness and legis­ portant ones. Whole pages are studded with lative parsimony) did not appear until 1888. question marks; entire passages are heavily By then Reuben Gold Thwaites had succeeded underlined for reasons not now known. Roose­ to the secretaryship of the Society, Draper velt's spelling of Boone as Boon seemed having retired in January, 1887, although he especially to irk him,^" and on the end papers continued to work on his various, never- finished projects and to use the Society's letter­ head for his correspondence. " Hesseltine, Pioneer's Mission, 289. ° Letters from George P. Smith, June 28, 1889, and Posey S. Wilson, September 3, 1889, in the Draper Collection. " Roosevelt to Draper, March 5, 1888, in Elting E. " Interestingly, in his letters Roosevelt invariably Morison (ed.), The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt refers to George Rogers Clark as "Clarke," but (Cambridge, 1951), 1:138-139. spelled Boone's name correctly. Although volumes I ' Roosevelt to Draper, April 26, 1888, in the Draper and II of The Winning of the West omit the final e Collection; State Historical Society of Wisconsin in Boone, it appears in volumes HI and IV, while Collections (Madison, 1888), X:373^47. Clark's name is correctly given throughout.

275 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1971 of each volume are lengthy and sometimes illegible comments of a derogatory nature, most of them concerning the fact that Roose­ velt had totally ignored Draper's major con­ tribution to history. King's Mountain and Its Heroes, published in 1881. Whether Draper communicated his reac­ tions to Roosevelt is not a matter of record, but in a letter to Francis Parkman who had praised his work (probably because it was dedicated to him) Roosevelt concluded with the remark, "Mr. Draper unfortunately thinks one bit of old ms. just exactly as good as any other."" Writing to William Frederick Poole, librarian of the Newberry Library and found­ er of Poole's Index to Periodical Literature (the forerunner of the Reader's Guide to Pe­ riodical Literature), Roosevelt shed all pre­ tense of respect for Draper's scholarship: Society's Iconographic Collections "Such a book as Draper's King's Mountain for The James R. Stuart oil portrait of Lyman Copeland instance is not a history at all; it is a mass of Draper. matter, some of great historical importance, most of it useless, much untrustworthy, out of that if necessary I may answer him. I mean which a history can be built by somebody the names of your informants as well as else."i2 what they said, and the sources of knowl­ edge they had as taken down in your notes Roosevelt's final letter to Draper, dated at the time. Any letter you write me I will May 23, 1890, indicates something of the na­ quote entire, giving you the full credit for ture of the meagre infromation he had re­ it, or make any other use of it that you wish. ceived from Madison: When is your life of George Rogers Clarke coming out? It is a greatly needed My Dear Sir: work, and I hope we shall soon see it."^^ A man named Butterfield has recently published a life of Simon Girty. In it he Roosevelt must have known perfectly well makes some criticisms upon my Winning who the "man named Butterfield" was since of the West, mostly of a perfectly silly he had cited Butterfield's book on Colonel character. He however entirely discredits William Crawford's Sandusky campaign in the story of Girty's speech at Boonsborough The Winning of tfie West—inaccurately, as and the answer made by young Aaron Draper took pains to note in his annotated Reynolds. In giving account of this I stated copy. Consul Willshire Butterfield, a native of that I put it in because you told me that the New York, had succeeded William Croffutt as incidents had been related to you by several Draper's literary assistant. Croffut and Draper old men who had themselves been in the had collaborated amicably to produce a vol­ fort. Butterfield asserts that you were evi­ ume called The Helping Hand. Published in dently entirely mistaken, or that the old men did not know what they were talking 1870, it was a curious conglomeration of about. I would be much obliged therefore if you would give me some data to go by so *' The incident referred to occured not at Boones- borough but at Bryan's Station, Kentucky, a stock­ aded fort then under seige by Indians led by Simon '' Roosevelt to Parkman, July 13, 1889, in Morison Girty, an interpreter for the British and an ally of (ed.), Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 1:172-173. the Indians, known as the "Great Renegade" or the " Roosevelt to Poole, November 8, 1889, in George "White Savage." In an attempt to force the fort to Burwell Utley, "Theodore Roosevelt's The Winning surrender, Girty issued an ultimatum which was sup­ of the West: Some Unpublished Letters," in Miss­ posedly hotly and profanely rejected by young Aaron issippi Valley Historical Review, 30:502-503 (March, Reynolds, one of the fort's defenders. Roosevelt's 1944). letter to Draper is in the Draper Collection.

276 THEODORE ROOSEVELT AND THE SOCIETY household hints, farming advice, and miscel­ editors, but also, in the words of Frederick laneous information which proved something Jackson Turner, "the builder of a new type of of a financial disaster. It was Croffutt who state historical society."'^ later observed that Draper, whom he liked A former schoolteacher and managing and admired, was "a gleaner rather than a editor of the Madison Wisconsin State Journal, compiler."'* From the start, Butterfield and Thwaites set out to create a new image of the Draper were incompatible, partly because, un­ Society as a vehicle not only for scholarship like Croffutt, Butterfield did not share Draper's but also for public service. His journalist's enthusiasm for spiritualism, and partly be­ sense of public relations must have led him, cause the precise and disciplined Butterfield the year following Draper's death, to invite deplored Draper's procrastinating and seem­ Roosevelt—whose efforts to eliminate all traces ingly disorganized approach to his work. Their of the spoils system from the Civil Service association degenerated into a bitterness which Commission had brought him national pub­ led Draper to stipulate in his will that his licity—to deliver the Society's biennial address books and papers, which he had willed to the on January 24, 1893, in Madison. Although Society, were not to be made available to no copy of Thwaites' letter exists, it seems Butterfield under any condition. Nevertheless, evident from Roosevelt's reply that Thwaites the two did manage to produce together had cannily included an invitation to inspect "Border Forays and Adventures," which, fail­ the now accessible Draper Collection. From ing to find a publisher, reposes today in the Washington Roosevelt replied: Society's Archives-Manuscripts Division, to­ All Right, I'll speak on the 24th, and for gether with Draper's partially completed biog­ not more than 60 minutes; and I will re­ raphies of Daniel Boone and George Rogers member your suggestions. How would the Clark." "Northwest in History," or the "Old North­ Roosevelt had reason to be nettled, for even west," do? I'll try to shape the title better the most thick-skinned author would have pro­ and will send you a manuscript a week in tested Butterfield's merciless attack. In his life advance. of Girty,-'^ published in 1890 after he had I have to be in Chicago Friday the 20th, parted company with Draper and had removed and it would be useless to return here for so short a time; so I shall go on to Madison himself to Omaha, Butterfield, in thirty-four about the 22nd, and if you will permit me, different citations, not only dwelt on Roose­ will spend Tuesday looking at your collec­ velt's numerous inaccuracies but also de­ tions—especially at such of the Draper molished his historiographic credentials. Nor manuscripts as you may be willing to let did he neglect to disparage Draper. In a foot­ me see, as I am greatly interested in them, note (which led to Roosevelt's plea for sub­ in connection with my "Winning of the stantiation) he accused Draper of having con­ West." As I thus may stay on two or three fused misty reminiscence with actual fact. days, I think I had better go to a hotel, and not impose too much on your kindness; There is no record that Draper, who died in what is the best hotel? and how long does August of the following year, sent a reply. it take to reach Madison from Chicago?'*

T N THE FIVE YEARS in which he had been Evidently in a subsequent letter Thwaites as­ -*- executive officer of the Society, Thwaites sured Roosevelt of complete access to the had quietly begun the groundwork which was Draper Collection, for in early January the not only to make him one of the country's latter wrote suggesting two alternate titles for most distinguished librarians and historical his address, and ending, "I am very sincerely obliged to you for your courtesy about the

" Hesseltine, Pioneer's Mission, 254. ^^ For an account of Draper's relations with Butter­ " Quoted in Clifford L. Lord, "Reuben Gold field, see Hesseltine, Pioneer's Mission, 258-260. Thwaites," in the Wisconsin Magazine of History, '" History of the Girtys, Being a Concise Account 47:3-11 (Autumn, 1963). of the Girty Brothers—Thomas, Simon, James, and " Roosevelt to Thwaites, December 30, 1892, in the George. . . . (Cincinnati, 1890). Reuben Gold Thwaites Papers.

277 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1971

at the party in Madison, which Mrs. La Follette described as being in the nature of an open house and "largely attended. Politicians, re­ formers, scholars, big-game hunters, and people generally were much interested in meet­ ing him. He was 'delighted' to meet them. In introducing the callers. Bob gave the cue as to who they were, and Roosevelt came back with just the right response. The occasion was a success, as were all of the social events of his Visit."20 The next day, both the Madison Times and the Wisconsin State Journal, in addition to de­ tailed accounts of the past evening's festivities and the magnetism of the guest of honor, car­ ried the following notice: "Theodore Roosevelt, the well known political reformer, will give an address in the Assembly Chamber this evening under the auspices of the State Historical So­ Society's Iconographic Collections ciety, his subject being The Northwest in the Reuben Gold Thwaites at his desk in the Society's Rooms in the Capitol; from a photograph taken by Nation. The lecture will begin at eight o'clock. Mrs. Thwaites about 1897. The simple announcement of a lecture by this eminent gentleman will be sufficient to fill the Draper MSS. Are you not going to have them chamber to overflowing." published?"" Nearly identical articles appeared in both Roosevelt spent two days in Madison, dur­ papers the day following the lecture, contain­ ing which time he was widely entertained. Ex- ing resumes of its content and references to Congressman Robert M. La Follette, Sr., and Roosevelt's humor. According to the reports, his wife gave a reception for him on the eve­ the speaker followed his introduction by say­ ning of January 23 at their West Wilson Street ing that he was commonly presented in western home. The newspapers reported that about 800 states as "that well-known writer from the of "some of the best people of the city" were east" and in eastern states "as that well-known in attendance from eight until about eleven cow-puncher from the west." After Roosevelt's P.M. Belle Case La Follette had first met address, the University Glee Club sang, and Roosevelt at a New Year's reception in Wash­ there was a reception "in the Historical So­ ington at the home of ex-Governor Jerry Rusk, ciety's Rooms," at that time three floors in then Secretary of the newly established Depart­ the south transverse wing of the capitol.^' ment of Agriculture. While she was attempt­ Belle Case La Follette was not overly im­ ing to serve Roosevelt a cup of coffee, one of pressed by Roosevelt's presentation. "I think," his emphatic gestures inadvertently dashed she later wrote, "that he had come in advance the contents over the front of her white dress, intending to do some work on his speech, but greatly to Roosevelt's embarrassment. The he was absorbed in having a good time and his next day he sent flowers and a note of apology, address gave the impression of lack of prepara­ and later he once said, "I blush when I wake tion." She also noted that Roosevelt made it up in the dark and think about spilling that a point before leaving Madison to make a coffee over Mrs. La Follette's dress." Doubt­ formal call on the La Follettes and later wrote less they laughed about the incident together a cordial note of thanks for their hospitality. Although La Follette and Roosevelt were to

" Roosevelt to Thwaites, January 5, 1893, in the Thwaites Papers. -° Belle Case and Fola La Follette, Robert M. La ^' Madison Times and Wisconsin State Journal, Follette (New York, 1953), 1:86, 105. January 25, 1893.

278 THEODORE ROOSEVELT AND THE SOCIETY become future political enemies, Mrs. La also that of the Wisconsin Academy of Follette noted that "in these earlier years Bob Sciences, Arts, and Letters.^^ The legislatures entertained a genuine feeling of regard and of 1895, 1897, and 1899 appropriated in all good fellowship for Roosevelt; but it was $580,000, and the building, which took five never in the nature of a close personal under­ years to construct, was formally dedicated on standing, such as he felt for McKinley."^^ October 19, 1900.^^ It was a fortunate move, When Roosevelt found the time to look at since in 1904 a disastrous fire swept the second the Draper Collection is a question, although capitol building, destroying many irreplace­ later evidence indicates that he did. But to the able state records, among which would have Society his appearance under its auspices was undoubtedly been the Society's library and col­ worth far more than the $100 fee which he lections. received. Thwaites also arranged to have Meanwhile, Frederick Jackson Turner had Roosevelt made one of the eleven honorary delivered his provocative "The Significance of vice-presidents of the Society, a post he held the Frontier in American History" at the July, until the entire category was abolished in 1893, meeting of the American Historical As­ 1897. Thwaites also printed Roosevelt's speech sociation in Chicago, and later redelivered it in fun.23 before the Society's forty-first annual meeting in Madison, December 14, 1893. It was duly TN NOVEMBER, 1894, in order to gain legis- printed in the Proceedings of that year, as well -'- lative support for a new fireproof building, as in the annual report of the AHA.^^ On read­ Thwaites solicited endorsements of the Society ing it, Roosevelt wrote Turner a congratu­ from such luminaries as Woodrow Wilson, latory note, in which he said, "... I intend James B. Angell, Melvil Dewey, Edward Eggle- to make use of it in writing the third volume ston, William Rainey Harper, Albert Bushnell of my 'Winning of the West'; of course Hart, John G. Nicolay, Justin Winsor, and making full acknowledgement. I think you Theodore Roosevelt. Among the twenty-eight have struck some first class ideas, and have put responses received and printed, Roosevelt's into definite shape a good deal of thought was one of the most fulsome in its praise: "I which has been floating around rather loose- can conscientiously say that I don't think that in the entire country there is a single historical In 1894, the third volume of The Winning society which has done better work for Amer­ of the West appeared, and Roosevelt hand­ ican history than yours, and but one or two somely acknowledged in the preface his debt can rank with it at all. Every American to Thwaites when he wrote: "The material scholar, and in particular every American used herein is that mentioned in the preface to historian, is under a debt to your Society, and the first volume, save that I have drawn freely a debt to the State of Wisconsin for having on the Draper Manuscripts in the Library of kept it up. I earnestly hope that you will get the State Historical Society of Wisconsin in your new building."^* Madison. For the privilege of examining these Both the Society and the University libraries valuable manuscripts I am indebted to the were outmoded and overcrowded, and acting together the Board of Regents and the Society's Board of Curators petitioned the legislature for a new building on a site whose "title shall ^'' Reuben Gold Thwaites (ed.). The State His­ torical Society of Wisconsin . . . Memorial Volume rest in the name of the Society as the trustee (Madison, 1901)', 103. of the state," and which would house not only ^° Vernon Carstensen, "A Building Is Achieved," in the Wisconsin Magazine of History, 39:68-72 the Society's and University's libraries but (Winter, 1955-1956); Thwaites (ed.). The State Historical Society, 103. " Annual Report of the American Historical As­ sociation for the Year 1893 (Washington, 1894), 199-277; Proceedings of the State Historical Society "^ Belle Case and Fola La Follette, Robert M. La of Wisconsin (Madison, 1894), 79-122. Follette, 1:105-106. '^ Quoted in Wilbur R. Jacobs, The Historical ^ Proceedings of the State Historical Society of World of Frederick Jackson Turner: With Selections Wisconsin (Madison, 1893), 92-99. from His Correspondence (Yale University Press, '* Ibid, (Madison, 1895), 83. New Haven, 1968), 4.

279 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1971 generous courtesy of the State Librarian [sic], less obvious relations; and the marks of actual Mr. Reuben Gold Thwaites; I take this oppor­ haste are plain in careless proof-reading and tunity of extending him my hearty thanks." citations." Turner would have been less than Nor did he neglect his promise to Turner, for human if he had not been a bit annoyed at after paraphrasing Turner's frontier thesis— being cited in a footnote on page 220 as "Fred­ and as some critics have suggested, failing to erick A. [s^c] Turner of the University of grasp its essential point^^—he refers in a foot­ Michigan [sic\." He also raised several ques­ note (p. 208) to The Significance of the Fron­ tions of interpretation which led to further tier in American History as "A suggestive correspondence, with Roosevelt ultimately con­ pamphlet, published by the State Historical ceding Turner's points. Nevertheless, it is ob­ Society of Wisconsin." vious that Turner's frontier thesis had a pro­ In the Nation for March 28, 1895, Turner found impact on Roosevelt, and it might well submitted an unsigned review of Roosevelt's be that his personal interpretation of it may first three volumes of The Winning of the have led him to see the whole world as a new West, which, while generally favorable, de­ American frontier, and accounted for much of plored the fact that only in the third volume his eventual expansionist political philosophy. had the author drawn on the Draper Manu­ In his April 10, letter to Turner, Roosevelt scripts. This elicited an immediate response had expressed the hope that following the from Roosevelt, who in a letter addressed "to issuance of the fourth volume of The Winning the Author of the Review of the Winning of of the West he could write another which the West," made obvious the frustrations he would carry the story through the Mexican had suffered at Draper's hands. "I was not able War. ". . . but whether I can ever do this or to use the Draper manuscripts," he wrote, "for not," he concluded, "I don't know. I certainly the excellent reason that the good old Dr. can't until I get entirely out of political life; Draper was then alive and would not let me a move I am strongly tempted to take." nor anyone else look at anything he had However, a two-year stint as president of gathered. He was immensely put out when I the New York Board of Police Commissioners, was able to get copies of his originals, or followed by McKinley's grudging appointment originals of his copies, having the real anti­ to the Assistant-Secretaryship of the Navy sent quarian desire to hoard his information."^" him back into the political arena; and his ex­ Turner wrote back, thus initiating a corre­ ploits as Colonel of the Rough Riders in the spondence which both men evidently found Spanish-American War—colorfully publicized stimulating. In a long letter dated April 10, by Richard Harding Davis and himselP^— 1895, Roosevelt indicated his method of utiliz­ assured that he would remain there. Riding ing from a distance the materials he had ex­ the wave of national adulation accorded a war amined in Madison. "By the way," he wrote, hero, and affectionately known to the public as "I must get my friend Thwaites to tell me Teddy (a nickname he cordially despised), he somebody in Madison by whom I can have your won election to the governorship of New York Fallon papers copied, or at least as many of in 1899, much to the dismayed surprise of them as are necessary."^' However, when the Thomas Collier Platt, Republican boss of New fourth and final volume of The Winning of the York. Uneasy over Roosevelt's independence West appeared in 1896, Turner's critique in in office and his reform proposals, Platt and the American Historical Review for October, his cohorts, despite McKinley's lack of en­ 1896, was less favorable than had been his re­ thusiasm, succeeded in getting him out of New view in the Nation. Roosevelt, he noted, "fre­ York and onto the ticket as Vice President at quently fails to work his subject out into its the June, 1900, Republican Convention in

"^ Davis reported the Spanish-American War for ^ See Frederick Logan Paxon's sketch of Roose­ both New York and London newspapers and wrote velt in the Dictionary of American Biography, 136. The Cuban and Porto Rican Campaigns (1898). '" Roosevelt to Turner, April 2, 1895 in Morison Roosevelt's own The Rough Riders (1899), together (ed.). Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 1:438. with Davis's accounts, helped to create an aura of " Ibid., 1:440-441. glory.

280 THEODORE ROOSEVELT AND THE SOCIETY

Philadelphia. Roosevelt, dubious about accept­ personal friends of the employees of the ing a post which might lead only to a political establishment. dead-end, cast the only dissenting vote. I am now getting to the meat of the Nevertheless, dubiety did not prevent him matter. from becoming McKinley's leg-man and con­ If you will write to President Roosevelt soon, and say that you understand that Mrs. ducting a vigorous canvass in the President's Roosevelt has recently presented a collection behalf. On September 10, 1900, he was once of examples of White House china to The again in Wisconsin, this time to address a Albany Historical and Art Association, and heavily attended Republican rally at La Crosse, that the State Historical Society of Wiscon­ in which he and La Follette rode together in sin would be under lasting obligation, etc., the lead carriage in the parade preceding the if a similar collection should be presented to evening's oratory.^^ After his election to the it for its new historical museum, I think you Vice Presidency, Roosevelt's fears of having will get it.'* gotten himself into a cul-de-sac increased. Thwaites lost no time in following up this Then, on the afternoon of September 6, 1900, lead. He had his assistant, Annie A. Nunns, while attending a public reception in Buffalo, write directly to the President, and on July 1 McKinley was shot by Leon F. Czolgosz and came this reply from William Loeb, Jr., Roose­ died six days later. On September 14, shortly before he turned forty-three, Theodore Roose­ velt's assistant secretary: velt was sworn in as the twenty-sixth President The President has referred your letter of of the United States. the 25th ultimo to Mrs. Roosevelt, who has His prediction to Turner had come true: taken pleasure in ordering a collection of history itself prevented him from writing examples of White House china sent to the history. His projected continuation of The Wisconsin State Historical Society. She Winning of the West was abandoned, and his prefers that the china be sent to historical letters to his friend Thwaites ceased. Not until societies, where the public can see it, rather 1902 did Thwaites attempt to renew his con­ than have it fall into the hands of individ­ tact with Roosevelt, this time as a seeker rather uals. than a giver of favors. In June of that year he We may not be able to forward the plates had received the following letter from Byron for some time. On account of the alterations Andrews of The National Tribune: The Favor­ going on in the White House, everything ite Fireside Weekly of the Nation: has been put in storage.^^ Loeb wrote again on February 11, 1903, to No doubt you are aware that each ad­ say that the collection was being shipped that ministration, from perhaps Madison's time, day by Adams Express. When it arrived it has had a set of characteristic china, special­ ly made for the mistress of the White House, was found to consist of seven plates from the but being paid for out of public funds, it services of Presidents Lincoln, Hayes, Grant, being left by the retiring President as an Cleveland, and Harrison.^® heirloom for the successor. Thwaites, meanwhile, had been making It has been the custom occasionally to sell good use of the Draper Collection. In Novem­ at public auction certain portions of this ber of 1902 he sent Roosevelt—and received china along with other junk, and of course an acknowledgment from a White House it brought tremendous price as souvenirs. The pieces that were sold were those which were slightly marred or chipped. President Roosevelt has decided to stop all this junk business and also the miscellaneous distri­ "* Andrews to Thwaites, June 18, 1902, State His­ torical Society of Wisconsin, General Correspondence, bution of old White House china among April-November, 1902. Andrews, author of The Facts About the Candidate (Chicago, 1904), appears to have been part of Roosevelt's circle of acquaintances, and may have thus picked up this bit of inside in­ formation. ^ Loeb to Mr. [sici A. A. Nunns, July 1, 1902, in " Belle Case and Fola La Follette, Robert M. La SHSW General Correspondence Series 27, Box 4. Follette, 1:135. " Ibid., Series 27, Box 7.

281 WISCONSIN M.AGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1971

Additional pieces from the Society's collection of White House china. The plate at the lower left is from the setting made for Benjamin Harrison; the other two were made for the Hayes Administration. The entire collection is currently on display in the office of the Lieutenant Governor in the capitol. secretary—a copy of his newly published with a good many foot-note citations from Daniel Boone, dedicated to Draper and based the originals—though these are, in the giv­ largely on Draper's notes and chapters from ing, editorially "improved." It fell to my his unfinished biography of Boone.^'' On June lot to be invited to edit the originals them­ 11, 1903, Thwaites again wrote the White selves, directly from the manuscripts pre­ House: served in the American Philosophical So­ My dear Mr. President: ciety's rooms in Philadelphia where Jeffer­ son placed them in 1818. This I have done, Possibly you may be aware, through verbatim et literatim, with foot-notes, intro­ literary announcements, that I have been duction, and other editorial accompani­ editing for publication in six volumes by ments. Fortunately, I have been able to add Dodd, Mead & Co., the original journals of to the Lewis and Clark journals those of Lewis and Clark. These have never hitherto Sergeant Charles Floyd (in the possession of been published exactly as written—for the Wisconsin Historical Society) and of Nicholas Biddle's edition (1814) was, as Private William Whitehouse (the existence of course you know, but a paraphrase, of the latter unknown till a few months ago). though exceedingly wefl done; and Coue's Publication will commence this coming fall, edition is an annotated reprint of Biddle, and the publishers propose to give it the ^' Reuben Gold Thwaites, Daniel Boone (D. Ap­ very best of dress. pleton, New York, 1902). I wish very much to dedicate this publi-

282 THEODORE ROOSEVELT AND THE SOCIETY

cation to you—for three good reasons: (1) We have long been personal friends, as well as fellow laborers in the same field of his­ tory; (2) your "Winning of the West" especially associates you with this earliest path-breaking to the Pacific; and (3) it would seem eminently appropriate that the first complete publication of the results of the expedition which President Jefferson fathered a century ago, should be inscribed to the chief executive in this centennial year —he who has but recently dedicated the exposition which celebrates this exploration, and whose own recent journey to occidental i<'.w*Ni. tidewater has of itself proved a veritable "Winning of the West." Had there been an opportunity for five m minutes' private conversation with you, aijluc (\)llections when you were in Madison on your recent Roosevelt speaking beneath a canopy raised at the east entrance of the capitol, April 3, 1903. trip, I should have preferred my request in person, and this letter has awaited your re­ and said: 'Mr. Thwaites I am overjoyed to see turn from the West. As I expect to send the you. I wish I had time to talk over a million first volume to the printers within a fort­ literary things with you . . . ."*" night, may I venture to beg an early reply ?^^ Roosevelt was not tardy in giving his per­ mission for the Lewis and Clark journals to be T^HE REFERENCE in the last paragraph dedicated to him. A typewritten letter on -'- is to the two-hour stopover Roosevelt made White House stationery, dated June 13, 1903, in Madison on April 3, 1903, during the states: "I have your letter of the 11th instant. course of a Western tour. Met at the station by Few things could please me more than to have an official delegation at nine A.M., he rode in you dedicate these volumes to me. I accept a carriage with Governor La Follette to the with the greatest pleasure, and I am very much capitol where he made two speeches, one be­ touched by your kindness."*^ fore a joint session of the legislature and one The Original Journals of tfie Lewis and from a platform erected at the east entrance Clarfc Expedition, expanded to eight volumes, of the capitol, where he was introduced to the appeared in 1904-1905. A letter from William large crowd by the governor. Belle Case La Loeb, Jr., evidently in reply to a letter from Follette later observed that the President Thwaites, says: "We are looking forward to "made no reference to politics in either of the receipt of the volumes of Original Journals his Madison speeches, although a word on the of Lewis and Clark to which you refer."*^ On primary bill and the fulfillment of platform July 30, 1906, Roosevelt dictated two letters pledges would have had great influence at this to Thwaites from his home at Oyster Bay, both time."'* Roosevelt also was given a reception on White House stationery and both typed in in the governor's office which Thwaites at­ the peculiar shade of blue which characterized tended. According to a reporter: "When Mr. most of his correspondence. The first reads: Reuben Thwaites approached the President, "That magnificent edition of Lewis and Clark the Executive grasped his hand enthusiastically

" Wisconsin State Journal, April 3, 1903. "" Thwaites to Roosevelt, June 11, 1903, in the ••' Roosevelt to Thwaites, June 13, 1903, in the Thwaites Papers. Thwaites Papers. " Belle Case and Fola La Follette, Robert M. La " Loeb to Thwaites, October 2, 1905, in the Follette, 1:160. Thwaites Papers.

283 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1971 is now in my library, where I placed it yester­ Whether Roosevelt saw Thwaites during his day, and I must write you a line to say what 1911 visit is not known, but in Thwaites' an admirable bit of work it is and how deeply papers there is one of Roosevelt's personal I appreciate your having dedicated it to me. calling cards with the handwritten notation: It was the kind of compliment that meant "For Mr. Reuben G. Thwaites, very sorry to much to me . . . ." The second note, obviously have missed you. I shall call again." in reply to Thwaites' request for a reworking On the subject of the disposal of damaged or enlargement of Roosevelt's flattering 1894 White House china, Archie Butt, Roosevelt's estimate of the Society, says: "I am afraid personal aide, furnishes an interesting side­ I shall have to ask you simply to reprint what light in a letter written on December 11, 1908: I have already said. If I should now issue a new note I am afraid I might get into diffi­ I had a rather interesting time the last culties with some other institutions who are few days looking over the china at the White House with a view to destroying all continually asking me to do similar things.*^ that is chipped or broken in any way. Mrs. The last letter in the Society's collection is Roosevelt does not want it sold at auction, a note of thanks to Milo M. Quaife, who suc­ for she thinks this method cheapens the ceeded Thwaites as the Society's superintend­ White House .... In former years it was ent on the latter's death in 1913, and who regarded as the property of the mistress of had evidently furnished Roosevelt some source the White House, who would give it away material in which he was interested. It is as she desired, but Mrs. R. thinks that it should never be given away—and it should dated October 11, 1918, and is written on a not, in my opinion, for it is government letterhead which reads, "The Kansas City Star, property just the same as the furniture. If Office of Theodore Roosevelt, New York it were sold by private bids it would create Office.""" Out of office in 1909, Rooseveh, an awful howl in the press should it become finding that the income from his comfortable known, and so I am convinced all concerned estate was insufficient to maintain his standard that it should be broken up and scattered in of living, had turned to writing articles for the river, which will be done . . . ."^ Outlook, the Metropolitan Magazine, and the Kansas City Star. The importance of the Society's small collec­ tion of presidential china is growing. The ex­ Roosevelt's last visit to Madison was on amples of White House china scattered in April 15, 1911, and was again a stopover various institutions around the country are few following a speaking tour of the West. Once and will remain few. According to legislation again he addressed a joint session of the passed by Congress in 1961, all decorative ob­ legislature, and also gave a speech at the jects of historic interest are now permanently University Gymnasium. In both, his praise of owned by the White House and may be ex­ La Follette and the reforms initiated under his hibited only in the Smithsonian Institution.*'^ All damaged pieces are reduced to powder. leadership led La Follette and his supporters Thanks to Byron Andrews' inside informa­ falsely to assume that Roosevelt would support tion, Thwaites' prompt action, and Roosevelt's La Follette as a presidential candidate in the personal regard for the institution with which election of 1912. Instead, he himself entered he maintained ties for most of his adult life, the race as the Progressive candidate, and the Society was able to acquire this unique split the Republican vote between William material before its circulation was prohibited. Howard Taft and himself sufficiently to insure the election of Woodrow Wilson. It was an action La Follette never forgot nor forgave.''^

'° Belle Case and Fola La Follette, Robert M. La Follette, 1:327-328. " Lawrence F. Abbott (ed.), The Letters of Archie '" Roosevelt to Thwaites, July 30, 1906, in the Butt: Personal Aide to President Roosevelt (New Thwaites Papers. York, 1924), 237. " Roosevelt to Quaife, October 11, 1918, in SHSW " Public Law 87-286, 87th Congress, S. 2422, Sep­ General Correspondence, 1918. tember 22, 1961.

284 A TIME OF CHANGE: GREEN BAY, 1815-1834

By JOHN D. HAEGER

/ have no very agreeable news to relate to you my Dear Friend but if it is not tiring your patience too much I will give you a little detail of my situation in life. I will commence in saying tfiat tfie first Year after tlie War was the last year I saved myself for every year since I have been loosing money & not a little in tfiat cursed Indian trade tfmt I have always persisted and do Still persist to continue which will soon put me a beggar (but you may well say or asfc the question why do you still continue since you find it a loosing business.) I will say I do not Icnow what to do else as I am not capable of doing or following any other fcind of business. I always lived in hopes but I am at last be­ ginning to despair the old times is no more that pleasant reign is over & never to return any more. . . .^

' I ''HIS CRY of anguish represented the feel- began to arrive, the fur traders were a broken -*- ings of many French and British inhabi­ and destitute people, a casualty of America's tants of Green Bay in the period between 1815 frontier expansion. What happened at Green and 1834. These people were the original settlers Bay probably occurred time and again as of the Old Northwest who, for over a hundred America moved swiftly across the continent.^ years, had traded with the Indians and had In the decades immediately preceding 1815, constructed a simple, communal society which Green Bay had been a wilderness village with was disturbed only by the periodic contests of the fur trade as the inhabitants' principal occu­ France, England, and the United States for pation. The outpost was theoretically under control of the territory. The War of 1812 was British control, with settlers of British and the final struggle marking the emergence of French lineage. The foremost residents of the American control over the Old Northwest and community included Jacques Porlier, a native the decline of the simple frontier life known by of Montreal, who settled at the Bay in 1791, hundreds of residents at small outposts such as and John Lawe, who first traded at Mackinac Green Bay. In the process of Americanization, and then moved to the Bay in 1797. Equally which took place from 1815 to 1834, the French prominent were the Grignon brothers, especially and British citizens of Green Bay found their lives severely altered. By 1834, when farmers

2 The contention that the Green Bay fur traders were exploited by American society during the fron­ tier period is an attempt to answer the call of Wil­ 1 John Lawe to Mrs. Hamilton, September 12, 1824, bur Jacobs for a new look at the fur-trade period in in "The Fur Trade in Wisconsin, 1812-1825," Col­ American history. See Wilbur Jacobs, "Frontiersmen, lections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin Fur Traders, and Other Varmints, An Ecological Ap­ (Madison, 1911), XX: 351. Hereinafter cited as praisal of the Frontier in American History," in the WHG. Original punctuation and spelling have been American Historical Association Newsletter, VIII: retained in all quotations. 5-11 (November, 1970).

285 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1971

Augustin and Pierre. The traders received manufactured products from British firms in Canada to exchange for the animal pelts col­ lected by the Indians. There were few pressures concerning profit and loss and minimal con­ flicts between Indian and white civilizations as the two races freely intermarried and shared the economic benefits of the trade.^ But the War of 1812 abruptly changed this idyllic life style. During the war, the Green Bay residents had assisted the British cause against the Ameri­ cans.* When the war ended and the British supposedly relinquished all territorial and trade rights in the Old Northwest, the Green Bay traders suddenly faced the eagerness of the Americans to bring the area under their control. As officials of the American government set to work to devise military and Indian policies for the Old Northwest which would affect the Society's Iconographic Collections society at Green Bay, many officials harbored John Lawe, who settled in Green Bay in 1797. hostile feelings toward the fur traders and In­ dians because of their complicity with the Brit­ and at the Grand Portage, thereby guarding the ish during the war. General Jacob Brown, major communication arteries and preventing commander of the Northern Division of Mili­ British infiltration into the Old Northwest.'' tary Departments recommended, for example, The War Department reacted to these sugges­ the wholesale exclusion of all British nationals tions and established a military post at Green from the territory.^ Governor Ninian Edwards Bay in 1816, convinced that the traders re­ of the Illinois Territory specifically cited Green quired careful supervision. Bay as a British stronghold and recommended Military control, however, was not alone the forceful removal of all traders and their sufficient to guarantee frontier security, so the replacement by American citizens.^ Governor government also established an Indian agency Lewis Cass of the Michigan Territory also per­ at Green Bay under Colonel John Bowyer. The ceived a British threat and urged the establish­ Secretary of War indicated that one of the ment of military posts at Green Bay, Chicago, reasons for this action was "that the menaces of the Indians throughout the Indian countries require immediate attention, and among the means which are proper for restoring harmony, 3 Information on the early history of Green Bay can be found in the following: William Francis Ra­ preserving peace, and defeating the arts em­ ney, Wisconsin: A Story of Progress (New York, ployed by intrusive traders to generate Indian 1940), 56; Augustin Grignon, "Seventy-Two Years' hostilities, it is recommended that there be Recollections of Wisconsin," WHC, HI: 242-245; Louise P. Kellogg, The British Regime In Wisconsin immediately established an Indian agency on and the Northwest (Madison, 1935). Studies which the Fox River in the neighborhood of Green highlight the differences between Green Bay before and after 1815 include Albert G. Ellis, "Fifty-Four Bay "8 Years' Recollections of Men and Events in Wiscon­ Colonel Bowyer's major responsibility, there- sin," WHC, VHI: 217-221; Henry S. Baird, "Recol­ lections of the Early History of Northern Wisconsin," WHC, IV: 205. An excellent secondary source is Alice Smith, James Duane Doty, Frontier Promoter (Madison, 1954), 63-66. * Reginald Horsman, "Wisconsin and the War of ''' Lewis Cass to Alexander J. Dallas, Acting Secre­ 1812," in the Wisconsin Magazine of History, XLVI: tary of War, June 20, 1815, ibid., 378. 3-15 (Autumn, 1962). * Report of the Secretary of War to the President, 5 Henry P. Beers, The Western Military Frontier, June 19, 1815, Michigan Superintendency of Indian 1815-1846 (Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 1935), 35n. Affairs, Letters Received and Sent, I: 72-74. These ^ Governor Ninian Edwards to James Monroe, records are a National Archives microfilm publica­ March 3, 1816, WHC, XIX: 401-404 tion. Hereinafter cited as MSLA.

286 HAEGER: GREEN BAY, 1815-1834

fore, was to curtail British influence among the firm, hiring two dynamic frontiersmen, Ram­ Indians, an influence which the British had say Crooks and Robert Stuart, to oversee the built up through years of involvement in the defining of trade territories, to recruit traders, Indian trade. The Indian agent's lever of con­ and to stifle any opposition. A few years later trol was government legislation requiring all the American Fur Company moved into the fur traders to possess a license to trade.^ Colo­ Green Bay region as a step toward securing a nel Bowyer naturally would have had a ten­ monopoly of the fur trade in the Old Northwest. dency to withhold licenses from many Green The fur traders would soon learn that the meth­ Bay traders. After all, Bowyer needed only to ods of the American Fur Company bore little remember their obvious British sympathies relation to the fur trade they had previously during the war. known.'' Matthew Irwin joined this group of Ameri­ can officials in 1816 to direct the Green Bay TN 1816 the future looked dim indeed for factory, a system which had been established •*- Green Bay's residents. They faced the out­ in 1795 to regulate the Indian trade. It was right hostility of the military, the Indian agent, administered by the Superintendent of the In­ and the government factor, because government dian Trade who was responsible to the Secre­ officials were convinced that the traders' British tary of War. The government provided the sympathies represented a threat to frontier factory with money and supplies to exchange security. The traders, moreover, were subjected for the Indians' furs. Its most distinguished to a government policy which was not only aim was humanitarian, for the factory hoped inconsistent but also possessed of startling con­ to eliminate the impoverishment which the In­ tradictions which only added to the problems dians suffered in dealing with the supposedly which they now faced. unscrupulous fur traders.'" When Matthew A good example of the inconsistency of gov­ Irwin arrived at Green Bay, the unscrupulous ernment policy and its effect on the traders was fur traders were by definition former British evident in the government's regulations for subjects, such as John Lawe, Jacques Porlier, licensing fur traders. Especially sensitive to and the Grignon brothers. British influence in the Old Northwest, Con­ The fur traders' dilemma was only beginning, gress passed a law in April, 1816, which stipu­ for at the very time that the government formu­ lated that "Licenses to trade with the Indians lated policies in Washington, John Astor was within the territorial boundaries of the United building an even graver threat to the traders' States shall not be granted to any but citizens economic and social lives. For several years of the United States, unless by the express before the War of 1812, Astor had worked to direction of the President of the United States, wrest control of the fur trade in the Old North­ and upon such terms and conditions as the west from British firms. In 1811 he entered into public interest in his opinion requires."'^ a partnership with a British company for the The law was designed to encourage and to trade of the Old Northwest. With the conclusion aid American business in capturing the fur of the war and the expulsion of British interests trade from British firms. The national govern- from the Old Northwest, the territory seemed open to wholesale exploitation by Astor's American Fur Company. Beginning in 1815, he organized the administrative details of his

11 A description of John Astor's tactics in organiz­ ing the American Fur Company can be found in Paul Phillips, The Fur Trade (Norman, 1961), II: 136- 140; David Lavender, "Some American Characteris­ 8 The Indian agent's role on the frontier has been tics of the American Fur Company," in Russell W. discussed by Francis Paul Prucha, American Indian Fridley, ed.. Aspects of the Fur Trade (St. Paul, Policy In the Formative Years: The Indian Trade 1967), 30-39. The literature on the fur trade is and Intercourse Acts, 1790-1834 (Cambridge, 1962), voluminous. Important works include: David Laven­ 52-57. der, The Fist in the Wilderness (Garden City, New 1" Prucha, American Indian Policy, 84-93; Ora B. York, 1964) ; Kenneth W. Porter, John Jacob Astor: Peake, A History of the United States Indian Fac­ Business Man (2 vols.. New York, 1931). tory System, 1795-1822 (Denver, 1954). 12 U.S., Statutes at Large, III: 331-333.

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ment never intended that all foreigners should Major Puthuff's rigorous enforcement of the be excluded, since there simply were not enough law was soon tempered by instructions from American citizens to carry on the business. Lewis Cass, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Thus, the President delegated his authority to who pointed out that American businesses re­ the Governor of the Michigan Territory and the quired the employment of some British trad­ Indian agents at Mackinac, Green Bay, and ers."* In April and May, 1817, the traders sud­ Chicago to exercise discretion in determining denly found that trading licenses from Colonel who and how many British traders should be Bowyer were available for the asking. Louis licensed.'^ Grignon appeared somewhat confused by this The Green Bay traders must have waited change in policy: ". . . In regard to the License anxiously on the local Indian agent for an After all the Trouble possible Col Bowyer has interpretation of the law. Their answer came decided to give them to every person who asks quickly. In June, 1816, Major William Puthuff, for them. He has said Openly that if the matter Indian agent at Mackinac, seized the furs of was at his option no one should obtain a license, Jacques Porlier and Louis Grignon, claiming but Mr. Rouse, Mr. Lawe, & Mr. James.... I be­ that they were trading without licenses. In cer­ lieve there will be as many traders as Houses."'^ tain respects, Puthuff had the strictest type of Louis Grignon's confusion was understand­ legality on his side. Porlier and Grignon were able. It stemmed from the fact that government shipping furs to Drummond Island, center of policy attempted to balance a number of con­ British control on America's northwest boun­ flicting interests, and its policies shifted from dary, and most likely were trading without satisfaction of one interest and then the other. licenses.'* On the other hand, Puthuff exercised The War Department, which was responsible little human understanding. The Green Bay for the military posts, the Indian agencies, the traders had no other outlet for their furs in factory system, and the enforcement of legis­ 1816 since American businesses, especially the lation relating to these institutions, had one American Fur Company, had not, as yet, primary goal—the elimination of British influ­ entered the Green Bay region. The charge that ence in American territory. A principal method the traders did not possess trading licenses was of accomplishing this objective was to exclude also harsh, because the law was passed in April, the British from involvement in the fur trade. 1816, and the furs were seized in June, 1816. But the War Department also realized that if Considering the frontier's primitive communi­ American businesses, especially the American cations system, this was not sufficient time to Fur Company, captured the trade, then the Brit­ conform to the law's requirements. Major ish would lose their hold over the Indians. Puthuff was overzealous, perhaps because to Thus, the War Department might at one point him, as to many frontier officials schooled by a outlaw all foreign participation in the trade bloody war, Green Bay represented the very and then later permit a few exceptions, if such seat of British influence and therefore required exceptions benefited the American fur trade a strict application of government legislation.'^ companies in defeating their British competi­ tors.'^ Not all government officials agreed with this policy. Thomas L. McKenney, director of the 13 William H. Crawford to Governor Cass and In­ dian Agents, May 10, 1816, WHC, XIX: 406. A dis­ cussion of the law of 1816 is contained in Prucha, American Indian Policy, 77-80. 1* Pierre Rocheblave to Jacques Porlier, June 20, 16 Governor Lewis Cass to Major Puthuff, July 20, 1816, WHC. XIX: 416; Pierre Rocheblave to Louis 1816, WHC, XIX: 427^28. Also see Cass to Puthuff, Grignon, June 20, 1816, WHC, XIX: 417. June 19, 1817, in the Lawe Family Papers, Letter 15 Major Puthuff to Governor Cass, May 14, 1816, Folder II, Chicago Historical Society. WHC, XIX: 408^09; Major Puthuff to Governor 1''' Louis Grignon to M. Dousman, September 14, Cass, June 20, 1816, WHC, XIX: 423-424. Both let­ 1817, WHC, XIX: 475-476. ters indicate Puthuff's great fear of the British influ­ 1* William Crawford to Governor Lewis Cass and ence in American territory. Numerous authors have Indian Agents, May 10, 1816, WHC, XIX: 406; mentioned Puthuff's policy. See Prucha, American George Graham, Acting Secretary of War, to Gov­ Indian Policy, 78; Lavender, The Fist in the Wilder­ ernor Cass, May 4, 1817, WHC, XIX: 457-458; ness, 236-245. Prucha, American Indian Policy, 11.

288 HAEGER: GREEN BAY, 1815-1834 factory system, and Matthew Irwin, the Green factory, the military, and the Indian agencies Bay factor, had a common interest with the created a chaotic situation for several years at Indian agents and the military in curtailing the Green Bay. When the War Department did not influence of British traders, since they com­ stringently enforce the law of 1816 to exclude peted with the factory system. Shortly after all foreigners from the fur trade, Thomas Mc­ arriving at Green Bay, for example, Matthew Kenney asked government officials for a stricter Irwin requested John Bowyer, the Indian agent, application of the law. McKenney had received to withhold licenses from the traders at Green the first accounts of the Green Bay factory Bay because "whilst these and other British which indicated that it had been unable to gain subjects are suffered to enter and continue in the Indians' business. Major Irwin claimed that this Country as traders. It will be useless in the the failure of the Green Bay factory was caused Government to continue this factory here; prin­ by the looseness of government policy which cipally from the asendancy which an inter­ allowed British traders in the territory.^' Mc­ rupted intercourse of many years has enabled Kenney appealed to higher officials in Wash­ them to acquire over the minds of the Indians, ington, first to George Graham, Acting Secre­ supported by extensive family connections with tary of War, and then to Henry Southard, them."'9 chairman of the Select Committee on Indian Matthew Irwin and Thomas McKenney, how­ Affairs. McKenney argued that government ever, went one step farther, for they opposed policy which allowed private traders in areas the licensing of all traders, British or Ameri­ supplied by the factories hindered the effective­ can. Their aim was to control the fur trade so ness of the factories and permitted the British that no trader could defraud the Indians. The to maintain their influence with the Indians.^^ War Department's policy of encouraging pri­ McKenney's appeals and a subsequent report vate enterprise through the licensing of traders of the House Committee on Indian Affairs was directly opposed to its factory system. Ma­ forced a change in government policy. In Janu­ jor Irwin accurately described these conflicting ary, 1818, War Department orders instructed lines of authority between the Indian agent and Indian agents to exclude all foreigners without the government factor at Green Bay: exception.^^ No sooner had the War Depart­ ment's orders been issued than the American There appears a palpable incongruity in Fur Company indicated its strong objections to the manner of conducting the Indian trade; this policy. Two months later the national gov­ the factors are sent to supply the wants of ernment changed its policy once again.^* As of the Indians, and the Indian Agents can adopt such measures as to defeat all their plans to April, 1818, the War Department allowed for­ that end. It is very certain that the authority eigners to participate in the fur trade, but only vested in them to issue licenses is well calcu­ as employees of an American citizen. This lated to destroy all the benefits that might be directive at least provided Porlier, Lawe, and expected from the factories. . . .^^ the Grignonswith the hope of obtaining licenses and pursuing the trade, although they, theoreti- The national government's attempt to balance the interests of the American Fur Company, the

21 Thomas McKenney to Matthew Irwin, January 6, 1817, WHC, XIX: 448; Irwin to McKenney, 19 Major Irwin to Colonel John Bowyer, July 24, 11819], WHC, VII: 277-278; Irwin to McKenney, 1817, WHC, XIX: 470. March 10, 1817, WHC, VII: 270-271. ^0 Major Irwin to Colonel Thomas L. McKenney, 22 Thomas McKenney to George Graham, Acting September 29, 1817, WHC, VII: 274-275. Surpris­ Secretary of War, September 30, 1817, WHC, XIX: ingly few authors have detailed the confusion in 480-481; McKenney to Henry Southard, January 6, government policy. Theoretically, the factory was to 1818, WHC, XX: 12-16. Southard was chairman of operate in areas where private traders could be or the Select Committee on Indian Affairs. On January had been excluded. In actual fact, factories at Chicago 22, 1818, he reported a bill to establish additional and Green Bay were in the most competitive locations factories. WHC, XX: 12n. of the Old Northwest. Government policy was also 23 Governor Lewis Cass to John Bowyer, January affected by conflicting lines of authority within the 22, 1818, WHC, XX: 16. Also see Prucha, American War Department. The Secretary of War was directly Indian Policy, 79-80. responsible for both the factory system and the In­ 2* Ramsay Crooks and Robert Stuart to John Astor, dian agents. January 24, 1818, WHC, XX: 18.

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ing our rights nor where we shall be attacked. In an obscure labyrinth, loaded incessantly with the most atrocious calumnies without means of unmasking them, what are we to do? I would never have believed that among any people it would be a title of reprobation to have been a British subject, to have be­ longed to a Government which has always seemed to me so kind to foreigners. I begin to perceive the word liberty in the language of politics or of the Governments does not mean the same thing as we commonly sup­ pose.^''

If the traders became American citizens, how­ ever, they could escape the prejudice of Ameri­ can officials and national legislation toward British subjects. But the road leading to citizen­ ship was a long and arduous one. In 1819 the Green Bay traders applied to Colonel Bowyer for American citizenship, a request which Bow­ yer denied. The acting governor of the Michi­ gan Territory, William Woodbridge, however, granted the citizenship request on the grounds that Porlier and the other traders had resided in the territory since 1796 and fell under the The J. Saintain oil portrait of Ramsay Crooks, owned provisions of the Jay Treaty which made citi­ by the Society. zenship all but automatic.^^ Some national and local officials, however, perceived a threat to cally, had to proceed to the Indian country frontier security from these "dangerous" trad­ under the direction of an American citizen. ers and requested the Attorney General of the The local Indian agent. Colonel Bowyer, still United States to review the decision. The Attor­ possessed the prerogative of excluding any for­ ney General ruled that the Green Bay traders eigner whom he judged to be dangerous to the could not automatically become citizens under United States.^° Considering Bowyer's unfavor­ the Jay Treaty because recent legislation re­ able view of the Green Bay traders, his subse­ quired prospective citizens to swear an oath quent decision to refuse licenses to the traders before the proper official. On the basis of this came as no surprise to the Green Bay resi­ technicality. Governor Lewis Cass was forced dents.^^ The enormous difficulties and constant to revoke the traders' citizenship and trading uncertainties surrounding his attempts to ob­ licenses, which they had just recently secured.^^ tain a trading license led Jacques Porlier to The action of Cass plunged the traders into comment that ... I cannot make out what is going to become of us, abandoned as we are not know- 2'' Jacques Porlier to Forsyth, Richardson, and Co., (no date, about 1818), WHC, XX: 94. 28 Louis Grignon to Governor Cass, August 27, 1819, WHC, XX: 120; Adam Stewart to John Bow­ 25 Governor Lewis Cass to the Indian agents at yer, September 3, 1819, WHC, XX: 120-121; Robert Chicago and Green Bay, April 23, 1818, WHC, XX: Stuart to Governor Cass, November 13, 1819, WHC, 43^6. 135-136. 26 Jacques Porlier to Forsyth, Richardson and Co., 29 William Wirt, Office of the Attorney General, (no date, about 1818), WHC, XX: 93-94; John Lawe to John Calhoun, Secretary of War, September 3, to Thomas G. Anderson, November 13, 1818, WHC, 1819, WHC, XX: 121-122; John Calhoun to Gover­ XX: 93. Bowyer clearly indicated his opinion of the nor Cass, September 6, 1819, WHC, XX: 123; Gov­ Green Bay traders in a letter to Governor Cass, May ernor Cass to Indian agents at Michilimackinac, 16, 1818, MSIA, Letters Received and Sent, II: 403- Green Bay, Chicago, Fort Wayne, Piqua, October 11, 404. 1819, WHC, XX: 127-128.

290 HAEGER: GREEN BAY, 1815-1834 despair, for they had already accepted, on I have been in Hell ever since, I wish I could credit, a supply of goods for the trade. Without sell out and leave this country forever."^^ At licenses, they had little hope of obtaining furs to one point they seriously considered a move to pay their creditors.^" One government official land in the Red River district made available was extremely pleased by this development. to them through a Canadian acquaintance. Informing Matthew Irwin of the Attorney Gen­ Lord Selkirk. His death, however, forced the eral's decision, Thomas McKenney's assistant traders to make the best of their plight at commented, "This will rid you I hope of a Green Bay.^* number of the greatest enemies to your factory Harassed by the frontier officials, plagued by and enable you to carry on a much more advan­ the competition of the factory system, and beset tageous trade in the future with the Indians."^' by the necessity of obtaining licenses and citi­ zenship, the Green Bay fur traders recognized the advantages of employment with the Ameri­ /~\NE CAN only express bewilderment at the can Fur Company. The first years after the war, ^-^ American government's attitude during they had refused to join the American Fur the licensing and citizenship controversies with Company, preferring instead to trade through the Green Bay traders. There was little doubt an old British friend, Jacob Franks, then em­ that John Lawe, Jacques Porlier, and the other ployed by a Detroit firm, David Stone and Bay traders conducted business with British Company.^^ When they had failed to gain companies in the first years after the war, but licenses and citizenship in 1818, they turned in they had little choice since American firms did desperation to the American Fur Company, not immediately enter the fur trade in the Green hoping that its power would bring a quick reso­ Bay area.^^ The War Department was also cor­ lution of their problems. There was justification rect in viewing the traders as British sympa­ for their decision. Since establishing headquar­ thizers, but what other attitude could be ex­ ters at Mackinac, Ramsay Crooks and Robert pected after the war? One fact which the Stuart had slowly fashioned a monopoly in the national government never considered was that fur trade. Government policy had facilitated the traders were simple men, desirous of living this development. The law of 1816 eliminating free from political entanglements. The almost all foreigners allowed the American Fur Com­ paranoic fear of the national government that pany to capture many areas previously supplied the Green Bay residents would continue to by the British. When the American Fur Com­ further British interests prevented the formu­ pany desired the employment of selected Brit­ lation of a more reasonable policy which would ish traders, pressure was exerted on national have incorporated the traders into American and local officials to relax the laws. Indian society. agents, such as Major Puthuff at Mackinac, Not surprisingly, the traders' correspondence who opposed the granting of favors to the expressed their frustration with the American government. John Lawe lamented, "This is three years . . . since peace has been made and

33 John Lawe to Captain Thomas Anderson, Nov­ ember 13, 1818, WHG, XX: 90-93. 34 Louis Grignon to Robert Dickson, February 6, 1819, WHC, XX: 102-103; Robert Dickson to John •^0 Robert Stuart to Governor Cass, November 13, Lawe, April 23, 1819, WHC, XX: 105-106; Lord 1819, and November 21, 1819, WHC, XX: 135-137; Selkirk to Robert Dickson, May 21, 1819, WHC, XX: 0. N. Bostwick to John Lawe, September 10, 1819, 110-111. Selkirk had been involved in the fur trade WHC, XX: 125; John Lawe to Captain Thomas in the early nineteenth century and had just received Anderson, November 13, 1818, WHC, XX: 90-93; a grant from the Hudson's Bay Company to begin a Louis Grignon to Robert Dickson, February 6, 1819, colony in the Red River district. WHC, XX: 102-103. 35 Lavender, The Fist in the Wilderness, 267; 31 Jeremiah Bronaugh to Matthew Irwin, Septem­ Phillips, The Fur Trade, II: 372. Both authors be­ ber 10, 1819, WHC, 123-124. lieved that the traders' inability to obtain licenses 32 In 1816, the American Fur Company attempted drove them into the arms of the American Fur Com­ to enclose Green Bay within its monopoly, but the pany. Phillips claimed that Ramsay Crooks con­ traders then refused to join the Company. See the vinced the Secretary of War that the Green Bay discussion in Lavender, The Fist in the Wilderness, traders should not receive licenses in order to destroy 267, 285, 301-302. David Stone's Company in Detroit.

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American Fur Company, found that the Com­ territorial officials, Astor, Crooks, and Stuart pany's influence superseded his own, even to threatened, cajoled, and lobbied before the the point of reversing his decisions or affecting government, claiming that the factory was a his position. Matthew Irwin, government factor business competing with private enterprise. In at Green Bay, once described the power of the the actual trading territories, the competition American Fur Company: was intense for the American Fur Company offered lower prices than the factory, utilized . . . The agents of Mr. Astor held out an idea liquor as a means to gain the furs of the Indians, that they will ere long, be able to break the factories; and they menace the Indian agents, and hired all personnel in a particular area and others who may interfere with them, merely to cause a manpower shortage at the with dismission from office, through Mr. factory.^" Astor. They say that a representation from Granted that all the charges against the Messrs. Crooks and Stewart [sic] (Mr. American Fur Company were true, it seems of Astor's agents) led to the dismission of the little value to narrate a familiar story, for it Indian agent at Mackinac, and they also say only succeeds in hiding the real causes for the that the Indian agent here is to be dis­ factory's failure. The government's inadequate­ missed.^^ ly conceived Indian policy, which permitted Once employed by the American Fur Com­ private traders to flourish in areas supplied by pany, the traders benefited from its power. the factories, hindered the success of the factory Robert Stuart pledged to aid them in obtaining system. Success for the factory system, more­ licenses and citizenship and seemed confident over, depended upon its ability to obtain the of success when he wrote to Governor Cass ex­ trust and confidence of the Indians. Consider­ plaining the hardships suffered by the traders ing that the traders naturally opposed the sys­ because of government policy.^^ By July, 1820, tem and also held the trust of the Indians the members of the Green Bay community had stemming from years of intercourse, it was received American citizenship.^* hardly surprising that the Green Bay factory The necessity of working with the American was an unprofitable venture. Only after several Fur Company was all the more imperative in years of intense warfare between the traders their struggle with the factory. To the fur trad­ and the factory did the national government ers the factory was a business intending to move to adopt a more realistic approach. As eliminate their only source of economic liveli­ early as 1818 Governor Lewis Cass had urged hood. This attitude was shared by the American the government to close the factories and to Fur Company, for it feared the competition of adopt a policy of regulation over private enter­ the factory in the fur trade. Employed now by prise involved in the trade. John Calhoun as the American Fur Company, the Green Bay Secretary of War recommended just such a traders had a powerful ally in the fight to end policy, but no action was taken. In 1820 the the factory system. Numerous authors have de­ Reverend Jedidiah Morse suggested that the tailed the methods used by the American Fur Indians were not maltreated by the traders. The Company in its struggle with the factory sys­ Indians dealt with the traders, Morse observed. tem. In Washington and in the offices of major

39 The fight between the American Fur Company and the factory system can be followed through the excellent collection of letters by Matthew Irwin, 36 Matthew Irwin to Thomas McKenney, 1819, Thomas McKenney, Robert Stuart, and Ramsay Crooks WHC, VII: 278; Lavender, The Fist in the Wilder­ in "Fur Trade and Factory System at Green Bay," ness, 276-280. WHC, VII: 269-288. Additional letters and docu­ 37 [Robert Stuart] to Bernard Grignon, October ments are found in the National Archives microfilm 28, 1819, WHC, XX: 128-129; Robert Stuart to Gov­ publication of the Superintendent of Indian Trade, ernor Cass, November 13, 1819, WHC, XX: 135-136; Letters Received and Sent, 1807-1824. Especially Stuart to Cass, November 21, 1819, WHC, XX: 136- revealing concerning the tactics of the American Fur 137; Stuart to Jacques Porlier, May 20, 1820, WHC, Company were the statements presented by Indian XX: 171-172. agents before the Committee on Indian Affairs. See 38 Naturalization papers of Charles Grignon, July Documents Relative to the Indian Trade (17 Con­ 20, 1820, WHC, 177-178; Citizenship papers of John gress, 1 session, Senate Document no. 60, serial 59, Lawe and Jacques Porlier, WHC, XV: 215-216. Washington, 1822).

292 HAEGER: GREEN BAY, 1815-1834 because they lacked confidence in the govern­ ment's factories.*" In 1822 the national govern­ ment responded to the overwhelming political pressure of the American Fur Company and abolished the factory system. But the years between 1815 and 1822 had been critical for the Green Bay fur traders, for they discovered that their lives were severely restricted by government regulations and the outright hostility of the conquering power. Realistically they could not leave their homes at Green Bay; their only alternative was to join the American Fur Company. After all, Robert Stuart and Ramsay Crooks guaranteed them annual trading licenses, more supplies to com­ pete with the factory, and a promise of richer rewards.'" The promise of rich rewards did not materialize. Twelve years later, when the traders' association with the American Fur Company ended, they were a destitute people. Augustin Grignon, from an oil painting owned by the Society.

A FTER ACCEPTING employment with the and powerful members of the French-British -^*- American Fur Company, the traders were community: Louis, Pierre, and Augustin Gri­ forced to alter their system of fur trading. In gnon, John Lawe, and Jacques Porlier. To sim­ earlier years, when profits had not been of real plify accounting procedures, these traders oper­ concern except to provide the few necessities of ated under the title of the Green Bay Company, life in the wilderness, the traders had roamed each trader agreeing to share one-fifth of the the length and breadth of present-day Wiscon­ profits or to suffer one-fifth of the losses of the sin in their search for animal pelts."*^ The trade with the American Fur Company. The American Fur Company, however, demanded trade goods were to be obtained exclusively profits, and with the increasing numbers of from the American Fur Company, thus pre­ traders filtering into the territory, the Green venting the Green Bay Company from buying Bay fur traders were forced to accept the more goods or exchanging furs with any competing refined methods of business enterprise urged enterprise. The agreement was to last for three on them by the American Fur Company. The years. One signatory of the contract remained Company employed only the most respected at Green Bay to handle administrative details, such as the packaging and shipment of furs to Mackinac. The remaining traders hired the necessary boatmen and clerks and journeyed to *" Reverend Jedidiah Morse, A Report to the Sec­ retary of War on Indian Affairs (New Haven, 1822), selected regions in the Indian country.*^ By 49; Governor Cass to John Calhoun, September 14, establishing the Green Bay Company, the 1818, WHC, XX: 82-86; Report of the Secretary of American Fur Company dropped from its ac­ War of a System Providing for the Abolition of the Existing Indian Trade Establishments of the United counts many other traders previously supplied States and Providing for the Opening of the Trade on an individual basis. These traders probably with the Indians to Private Individuals (15 Congress, 2 session. House Report no. 25, serial 17, Washing­ obtained goods from competing firms, but ton, 1818). *l The argument that the government's inconsist­ ent policies aided the American Fur Company in cap­ turing the allegiance of the traders has also been expressed by Lavender, The Fist in the Wilderness, •l^ Agreement among Augustin Grignon, Pierre 301. Grignon, Louis Grignon and John Lawe, August 24, *2 Louis Grignon to Charles Grignon, July 23, 1822, 1821, WHC, XX: 206-210. Also see Ramsay Crooks WHC, XX: 268-269. Also see "Porlier's Narrative," to Jacques Porlier, August 24, 1821, WHC, XX: WHC, XV: 439. 211-212.

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Crooks and Stuart seemed to feel that a cen­ I am perfectly aware that the capital placed trally organized Green Bay Company could in your hands by the Company gives you the subdue rival interests.** power to injure all your competitors, if not The American Fur Company also assigned to destroy their business altogether, and I each trader a specific location, usually along am not ignorant of the advantages which such a result would secure nor have I the the Fox and the Wisconsin rivers. Areas which smallest doubt that such is your aim—Still the Green Bay traders had formerly visited however obvious the benefit, moderation to­ were now allotted to traders from different re­ ward those who derive their supplies from us, gions. The Green Bay men, for example, had must be the governing principle. . . .*^ often journeyed up the Wisconsin River to the Mississippi in search of favorable trade. By Why did Crooks urge moderation toward the 1822, however, this territory was controlled by Green Bay traders even though he also admitted other traders of the American Fur Company, that "benefit" might accrue from ruining their notably Joseph Rolette operating from Prairie trade? Crooks' position represented a carefully du Chien.*5 developed business strategy of the American The Green Bay traders were never able to Fur Company. Crooks realized that there was adjust to the regulations of the American Fur considerable competition for furs around Green Company. The detailed accounting procedures Bay, for it was the first permanent settlement and the restricted trading territories were un­ on the western shore of Lake Michigan and like their earlier practices in the fur trade. naturafly the first place the vanguard of west­ During the next decade, the traders experienced ward migration stopped en route to the oppor­ year after year of unprofitable trade, partially tunities of the West. This early migration in­ because of the harsh economic practices of the cluded many merchants and lawyers who origi­ American Fur Company. nally settled in the immediate neighborhood of Soon after the Green Bay Company was Fort Howard, an area which came to be known established, for example, Augustin Grignon of as Shantytown. Two of these merchants, Daniel the Green Bay Company continued the practice Whitney and Robert Irwin, were fairly typical. of trading along the lower Wisconsin River, They opened general retail businesses, but despite the American Fur Company's directions since there were few settlers at Green Bay they that this area belonged to Joseph Rolette. Ram­ needed other sources of income. Both Whitney say Crooks considered Grignon's conduct and Irwin, therefore, entered the fur trade and symptomatic of a lack of principle.*^ In the provided competition for the American Fur winter of 1822, Grignon and Rolette bitterly Company. They were supplied with trade goods fought for the Indian trade along the Wisconsin from Detroit and generally received a larger River, and Grignon's trading post was de­ supply and wider assortment of goods than the stroyed by the Indians. There seemed little personnel of the American Fur Company.*^ doubt that Rolette had deliberately provoked the Indians into this act.*^ The American Fur Company, aware of Rolette's actions, refused *'' Louis Grignon to Augustin Grignon, February 19, 1822, WHC, XX: 243-246; Jacques Porlier to to censure him, because he conducted one of Lewis Cass, June 8, 1922, WHC, XX: 258-260; Gov­ its most profitable outfits, while the Green Bay ernor Cass to John Calhoun, Secretary of War, July Company struggled along year after year. 9, 1822, WHC, XX: 265. Later, Grignon was in­ formed that the government could take no action Crooks did caution Rolette to be somewhat against Rolette because there was no definite proof. more moderate toward the Green Bay traders: See James G. Soulard to Augustin Grignon, July 29, 1822, WHC, XX: 274. Rolette was considered the most ruthless trader in the territory. See Lavender, The Fist in the Wilderness, 321-325. 48 Ramsay Crooks to Joseph Rolette, September ** Ramsay Crooks to Louis Rouse, September 4, 5, 1823, AFC Papers, III: 14; Ramsay Crooks to 1821, in the American Fur Company Papers, II: Robert Stuart, April 8, 1822, AFC Papers, II: 248. 133, State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Herein­ 49 Henry S. Baird, "Recollections of the Early His­ after cited as AFC Papers. tory of Northern Wisconsin," WHC, IV: 202; Alice 45 Ramsay Crooks to Joseph Rolette, September Smith, "Daniel Whitney, Pioneer Wisconsin Business­ 4, 1821, ibid., 132. man," in the Wisconsin Magazine of History, XXIV: *6 Ramsay Crooks to Robert Stuart, January 4, 283-304 (March, 1941) ; John Lawe to Robert Stuart, 1822, ibid., page number illegible. January 4, 1823, Lawe Papers, IV.

294 HAEGER: GREEN BAY, 1815-1834

The Shantytown merchants were a serious pression that he was singularly unconcerned threat to the members of the Green Bay Com­ about the opposition and had no doubts that pany. The traders often gave the Indians mer­ the traders could still secure profits. At other chandise on credit before the winter's hunt, times, however, when communicating with more only to see the Indians later sell their furs to favored traders of the Company, Stuart ex­ the Shantytown merchants. To prevent the In­ pressed his real policies regarding Green Bay: dians from dealing with Whitney and Irwin, John Lawe urged the traders to conduct all For they [Green Bay traders] have got goods from Irwin at the bay, (which he got business with the Indians in the interior, away from Detroit) . . . besides I know that Lock- from Green Bay and the influence of Shanty­ wood made them a liberal offer to supply all town. At one point, Lawe considered spreading their wants; and let the result be loss again, a rumor that smallpox was ravaging the Green they would have strengthened his opposition Bay community to keep the Indians in the so as to make it of serious consequence to interior."^ your operation for there would be no re­ Realizing the intensity of the competition at straint whatever; and it would be throwing Green Bay, Crooks and Stuart abandoned any them completely into the arms of our oppo­ hopes of ever attaining a monopoly. They were nents which, as I have already stated, might convinced that the Green Bay area would never be of no beneficial result to either of them but still must have turned out of serious yield a profit; the merchant businesses of men, detriment to us. . . .^* such as Whitney, were just too solidly en­ trenched.^' The American Fur Company, how­ Stuart accomplished his objective of main­ ever, maintained a token opposition at the Bay taining a token resistance at Green Bay in a to prevent its competitors from ever gaining a number of ways. Inadequate supplies were con­ real foothold in the trade, a base from which sistently sent to the Green Bay traders while they might threaten more profitable trading more elaborate outfits were shipped to areas areas along the lake shore or in the interior. where the American Fur Company's monopoly The Company did not communicate this strat­ was more secure, such as at Prairie du Chien. egy to the traders. In fact, it allowed the Green Although this was certainly a sound business Bay traders to believe that they were treated procedure, it sealed the Green Bay traders' fate: equally with all other employees. When in­ they could not compete with the opposition, formed of Daniel Whitney's presence by the and consequently they lost money.^^ Green Bay traders, Stuart led them to believe that Whitney would not affect their trade.^^ TN 1823 Stuart disbanded the Green Bay Com- Stuart also derided the efforts of another mer­ ••- pany, but for the next decade he supplied chant, Robert Irwin, to hire traders at the Bay. traders on an individual basis.^® When losses in Writing to Jacques Porlier, Stuart observed, the trade continued to grow, Stuart adopted "I believe the house of which Mr. Irwin is said additional financial measures to reduce the to be agent will create more noise than effect; losses suffered by the American Fur Company. the Lord knows the trade is already bad enough; The traders were forbidden to advance credit but if more fools will come, why we must wel­ come them."^^ Stuart's letters to the traders gave the im- 54 Robert Stuart to Joseph Rolette, August 29, 1822, AFC Papers, II: 326. 55 Ramsay Crooks to Pierre Grignon, October 2, 1821, AFC Papers, II: 152; I. Mason to RoleUe, August 22, 1822, AFC Papers, II: 325; Stuart to 50 John Lawe to Jacques Porlier, November 14, Crooks, November 11, 1822, AFC Papers, II: 438. 1823, WHC, XX: 322; John Lawe to James Porlier, 56 In 1823 the American Fur Company merged February 3, 1824, WHC, XX: 331-332. with Stone, Bostwick and Company, a Detroit firm. 51 Ramsay Crooks to Robert Stuart, January 4, This merger necessitated a complete accounting of 1822, AFC Papers, II: page number illegible; Crooks the Company's books. At this time, Stuart decided to Stuart, AprU 8, 1822, AFC Papers, II: 248; Stuart to terminate the Green Bay Company and establish to Crooks, November 10, 1822, AFC Papers, II: 442. new agreements with selected traders. See Robert 52 Robert Stuart to John Lawe, October 10, 1821, Stuart to Ramsay Crooks, November, 1823, AFC ibid., 120. Papers, III: 33; Stuart to Jacques Porlier, June 10, 53 Robert Stuart to Jacques Porlier, October 27, 1823, AFC Papers, II: 453; Stuart to Louis Rouse, 1822, WHC, XX: 290. May 10, 1823, AFC Papers, II: 449.

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pinch also hit the Shantytown merchants, forc­ ing Daniel Whitney to tender an offer to the American Fur Company to sell his interest in the trade. Always the master strategist, Stuart refused the offer. Conditions were now favor­ able to the American Fur Company, for a stale­ mate had been achieved at Green Bay. Com­ menting on Whitney's offer, Stuart observed, "Whitney must have suffered severely — and wished me to buy him out, but he may make the most of it for altho we cannot abandon that trade, I would rather he should supply some of the people, than we; for whether there is oppo­ sition or not, no money is to be made there."^" From the beginning of their association with the American Fur Company, the traders had realized Stuart's strategy. In 1822 Jacques Por­ lier bitterly complained that the Company was supplying other traders with goods at cheaper prices and locating them in trading territories which, for years, he had occupied. In an amaz­ ingly accurate summary, John Lawe indicated the traders' knowledge of Stuart's tactics:

Society's Iconographic Collections As I wrote you last year they made us form Daniel Whitney, pioneer Green Bay businessman, a Company at the Bay but it is a mere Bur­ who settled there in 1819. lesque for to throw us into misery & trouble to the Indians for a winter's hunt in hopes of they pretend it is for our own good it is true it would be if we had the privilege of others obtaining furs after the season.^^ The traders (that is to get our goods as low as they Could also were refused permission to reduce the price really give them and with a good profit) and of their goods to compete with the merchants ... at least liberty to go where we please but of Shantytown. As more and more settlers no it is quite the contrary they don't wish trickled into the frontier community, Stuart I believe to ruin us for fear an opposition opposed cash sales to them because he feared might form and come into the country.^i that the traders would not devote their full Many historians have claimed that the story attention to the trade in f urs.^^ Such cost-cutting is not complete without recognizing that the measures on the part of the American Fur Com­ Green Bay traders contributed to their own pany were sound business procedures, but they difficulties.^^ Certainly such charges hold some were financially ruinous to the traders. Each year their losses increased and also their debts to the American Fur Company. If they could 5'i' Robert Stuart to Michael Dousman, August 13, not advance credit to the Indians or lower 1825, WHC, XX: 378. prices, their chances of ever competing with the 58 Ibid. The American Fur Company had always been opposed to the sale of goods to settlers as a Shantytown merchants were nil. If they could supplementary occupation for the traders. See J. not trade with the settlers, they were absolutely Ward Ruckman, "Ramsay Crooks and the Fur Trade prevented from ever participating in the chang­ of the Northwest," in Minnesota History, VII: 27 (March, 1926). ing economic structure of the Green Bay com­ 58 Robert Stuart to Ramsay Crooks, November 11, munity. The account books of the American 1823, AFC Papers, II: 438; Stuart to Crooks, July Fur Company indicate the traders' fate. In 1822 26, 1826, AFC Papers, III: 327. ^^ Robert Stuart to Ramsay Crooks, August 18, the Green Bay Company was $16,000 in debt, 1827, AFC Papers, III: 460-469. and each year thereafter the debt increased.^* 61 John Lawe to Jacob Franks, August 26, 1822, In 1826 and 1827 Green Bay experienced its WHC, XX: 277-278; Robert Stuart to Jacques Por­ lier, May 16, 1822, WHC, XX: 255. worst trade years. But this time the economic 82 This is also the position of Lavender, The Fist

296 HAEGER: GREEN BAY, 1815-1834 truth. Often they refused to journey into the tory body to the traders, since its duties in­ wilderness for trade. At other times, John Lawe volved the supervision of French and British freely dispensed credit to the Indians and fur traders. Government contracts for beef, oats, traders alike, although he knew their ability to and grain, therefore, were rarely granted to the pay was doubtful.®^ Stuart once commented on traders. They were primarily involved in fur such business habits: "There exists among the trading with few opportunities for providing gentry of that district an unconquerable aver­ such products. Their reputation as British sion to economy, and their only care seems to nationals, moreover, made it difficult to sur­ be to get into their profession the means of mount the influence of the "Yankee" mer­ pampering their indolence. . . ."®'' chants.*^ Soldiers' payrolls also failed to benefit Rather than view these faults as justifications the traders because of the rule of the American for the American Fur Company's business poli­ Fur Company against sales to settlers and be­ cies, it seems more appropriate to say the fur cause of their inability to compete with the traders were fairly consistent. They continued prices and influences of the Shantytown mer- to follow the life and economic pattern they had chants.6'' known before the frontier entered a transitional It is not surprising, therefore, that the fur period. This was the tragedy of the Green Bay traders viewed the military as a threat, rather community; both the government and the than as an economic boon to the Green Bay American Fur Company in their desire to ex­ community. The traders must have been slightly ploit and develop the frontier economy took amused when the military arrived in 1816 to little notice of a segment of the population in­ protect them from the Indians, a race with capable of adapting to new conditions. whom the traders had lived for years in relative But why did the traders continue their affili­ harmony. As the years passed, the traders' cor­ ation with the American Fur Company for so respondence was filled with comments on the long, even as their debts increased? The traders disastrous effect of the military on Green Bay. had few alternatives, for trading was their only John Lawe once commented: skill. They were culturally and economically . . . There has been a great number of U.S. different from the "Yankee" migration exem­ troops garrisoned or that [are] Stationed at plified by Daniel Whitney. Whitney, too, had Green Bay but what good does that do me entered the fur trade, but at the same time he it is only to assist in ruining of me & the was involved in purchasing land, in retail trade Pilfering or general Stealing, Killing of Cat- with the settlers, and in the supply of Fort Howard with beef and grain.®^ This economic diversity gave Whitney an enormous advantage 66 This statement is at variance with most of the over the traders. Where Whitney could trade literature on the military and its effect on frontier with the settlers, the fur traders could not be­ communities. Prucha claimed that the military was cause of the rules of the American Fur Com­ an economic stimulus to Green Bay. Although this statement is true, it needs careful distinctions. Gov­ pany against retail trade. While the military ernment contracts benefited men, such as Daniel proved an economic advantage to merchants Whitney, not the fur traders. My argument is impres­ sionistic, derived from reading countless letters of such as Whitney, it represented purely a regula- the traders. Additional research, however, on the dis­ position of government contracts would substantiate these generalizations. In 1830, for example, only Daniel Whitney and John P. Arndt received govern­ in the Wilderness, who first claimed that the Green ment contracts for supplying Fort Howard. See Let­ Bay traders were used by the American Fur Com­ ter from the Secretary of War Transmitting State­ pany as a block to other fur trading interests. Lav­ ments of the Contracts Made by the War Depart­ ender, however, tended to believe that the traders ment during the Year 18.30 (21 Congress, 2 session, were indolent and lacked business skill. See Laven­ House Executive Document no. 73, serial 208, Wash­ der, The Fist in the Wilderness, 345-346. ington, 1831). Also see Prucha, Broadax and Bayo­ **3 Robert Stuart to Ramsay Crooks, November, net, 161. 1823, AFC Papers, HI: 33; Robert Stuart to John 6'' John Lawe to Jacob Franks, September 5, 1823, Lawe, September 10, 1826, AFC Papers, III: 356. WHC, XX: 308-310; John Lawe to Mrs. Hamilton, 64 Ramsay Crooks to Robert Stuart, January 4, September 12, 1824, WHC, XX: 351-353; Ramsay 1822, AFC Papers, II: page number illegible. Crooks to the Secretary of War, May 7, 1835, in 65 Smith, "Daniel Whitney," 283-304; Francis Clarence E. Carter, ed.. The Territorial Papers of Paul Prucha, Broadax and Bayonet (Lincoln, 1967), the United States, Vol. XII: The Territory of Michi­ 161. gan (Washington, 1934-), 909.

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tie and commiting every kind of depredation Thus, the frontier period in Green Bay from that they can. . . . They are a nuisance to 1815 to approximately 1834 was transitional Society and in place of being put there for and with change came confusion, contradiction, the protection of the place they are the de­ and exploitation. The government experimented struction of it.*^ with suitable policies for military defense, the Indians, and the fur trade. Its initial efforts nPHE FINAL BLOW to the Green Bay traders were often inconsistent, as indicated by the -*• occurred in 1834 when John Astor sold his government's enforcement of the law of 1816 interest in the American Fur Company and it and the establishment of both Indian agencies was reorganized under the direction of Ramsay and government factories. To the American Fur Crooks. Crooks decided to close all affairs in Company this period was both the heyday and Green Bay and required a final accounting. the decline of the fur trade in the Old North­ Since the 1820's, the traders had steadily lost west. Time was short, investment was great; money. To satisfy their debts, they mortgaged the need for the close scrutiny of trade and their land claims and deeds to the American traders was obvious. At first, the fur trader Fur Company.®® What, on the surface, seemed willingly attached himself to the American Fur an equitable settlement, left the traders with Company as a refuge from what seemed the little capital or a marketable commodity—land cruel and oppressive policies of the American —in the 1830's as the fur trade died out. government. Later, he discovered that his life As the American Fur Company acquired title with the Company was no better. Uninitiated to the traders' land in Green Bay, the land's in the methods of corporate enterprise, that is, value suddenly skyrocketed because thousands defined trading territories, and his role as a of farmers and town dwellers arrived to settle block to other fur trading companies, he gradu­ along the western shore of Lake Michigan. ally compiled unpayable debts to the American Astor, Stuart, and Crooks then plotted a town Fur Company. As the frontier scene changed at Green Bay, appropriately named Astor. The from fur trade to settlement, the fur trader had land rose in value while the traders remained neither the skills nor the capital to enter fully impoverished.™ A contemporary resident de­ into this new economic life. The American Fur scribed the conditions leading to the plotting Company refused to allow retail trade with the of Astor: settlers and requisitioned his only other asset— . . . The land was originally owned by John land. As with the land and the Indians, the fur Lawe and the Grignon family. Together with trader was exploited, sometimes intentionally, other real estate it was taken in payment of other times quite unconsciously, by a society balance due the old Green Bay Company to in the process of change. the former Company; the debt having ac­ crued by loss in the Indian trade—for in this business, it generally happened that the small traders who purchased their goods at higher 68 John Lawe to Mrs. Hamilton, September 12, prices, after years of toil and privation spent 1824, WHC, XX: 351-353. There are many letters of the traders expressing their opposition to the mili­ in the trade, came out with nothing leaving tary. See, for example, John Lawe to Jacob Franks, to the great monopoly the lion's share of the September 5, 1823, WHC, XX: 310; John Lawe to profits. The consideration received by the (unknown), March 9, 1820, Lawe Papers, III; Jacques Porlier to Governor Cass, June 8, 1822, in former owners, was trifling compared with Carter, ed., The Territory of Michigan, XI: 243. the present value of the property.'" 69 Smith, James Doty, 158-159. The transfer of deeds can be followed in the Lawe Papers, X-XX. The traders did not suddenly leave Green ''O Smith, James Doty, 158-173, describes in detail Bay; many lived on there until the 1850's. John the establishment of Astor. •'I Baird, "Recollections of the Early History," Lawe still received a few goods from the Ameri­ WHC, IV: 215. can Fur Company; others dabbled in land spec­ •^2 Many traders went on to local politics and to open ulation and local politics. These activities, how­ small businesses, but the later history of Green Bay made it evident that the fur traders had relinquished ever, can not conceal the fact that few traders community leadership to men such as James Doty achieved material success and that Green Bay's and Daniel Whitney. As late as 1840, for example, history was now dominated by the restless John Lawe owed f22,500 to the American Fur Com­ pany. Contract between Sammuel Abbot and John American frontiersmen.^^ Lawe, August 28, 1840, Lawe Papers, XXII.

298 THE POLITICS OF ANTI COMMUNISM:

A REVIEW ARTICLE

By ROBERT GRIFFITH

^ I "'HE BOOKS under review in this essay con- J. Beveridge Award. First published in 1967 -•- cern McCarthyism, or, more accurately, and now reissued in paperback. The Intellec­ America's second great Red Scare. The dis­ tuals and McCarthy is a brilliant analysis of tinction is important, for the two are not the political origins of McCarthyism and a synonymous. The term McCarthyism was devastating critique of that explanation of coined during the early 1950's to describe the McCarthyism popularized in the 1950's by politics of anti-communism. This politics did Daniel Bell, Seymour Martin Lipset, Richard not begin with Joe McCarthy's famous speech Hofstadter, and the other contributors to Tfie at Wheeling, West Virginia, nor did it end in Neiv American Right.^ 1954 with his censure by the Senate. Indeed, During the 1950's, argues Rogin, American the term itself vastly exaggerates the Senator's liberals, traumatized by the impact of wars, importance and distorts the past of which he revolutions, and totalitarian mass movements, was only a part. During the past several years sought to explain McCarthyism in terms of a a growing number of scholars have sought to mass-based, "radical right" threat to America's interpret (and in some instances reinterpret) conservative institutions. Led by Bell, Lipset, the politics of anti-communism in mid-twen­ and Hofstadter, they identified McCarthyism tieth-century America.' The books under re­ with populism and described both as irrational view in this essay are representative of this responses to the secular, industrial state. effort. McCarthy was the heir to La Follette, they The first and most important of these books argued; McCarthyism was populism gone sour. is Michael Paul Rogin, The Intellectuals and Disillusioned by what they believed to be the McCarthy: The Radical Specter,* winner of consequences of mass democracy, these "plu­ the American Historical Association's Albert ralist" scholars instead placed their confidence in interest groups, in public and private bu­ reaucracies, and in the educated elite which governed both. They discovered in these in­ NOTE: The titles of those books under review are identified by asterisks; complete bibliographical stitutions and in their instrumental politics, information is given at the end of the article. a conservative bulwark against the dangers of ' See, for example, the following: Donald J. Kemp­ popular passion. er, Decade of Fear: Tom Hennings and Civil Liber­ ties (Columbia, Missouri, 1965) ; Earl Latham, The Communist Controversy in Washington: From the New Deal to McCarthy (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1966) ; Robert Griffith, The Politics of Fear: Joseph '^ Daniel Bell (ed.), The New American Right R. McCarthy and the Senate (Lexington, Kentucky, (New York, 1955), and its revised edition. The 1970). Radical Right (New York, 1963).

299 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1971

in order to examine populist rhetoric for evi­ dence of anti-semitism, anti-intellectualism and irrationality), while on the other hand they have failed (through "the sin of noncompara- tive analysis") to see that many of the charac­ teristics which they attribute to the populists are far more applicable to the conservative and elite adversaries of populism. "The point here is not to absolve Populism of sins by spread­ ing the guilt, but rather to question interpreta­ tions which locate the roots of contemporary provincial extremism specifically in the agrar­ ian radical tradition." Like Norman Pollack, Rogin sees populism as a rational, mass-based protest, not against industrialism per se, but against control of the industrial process by groups inimicable to agrarian interests. Finally, Rogin argues that McCarthyism, unlike agrarian radicalism, was not a mass movement. It did not split apart existing coali­ tions or create a new mass basis for politics. Rather, McCarthyism was the product of ac­ tions (and inactions) on the part of conserva­ UP-C.ipital Times tive (and liberal) elites—precisely those groups Senator McCarthy, arm in cast following an accident, to whom the pluralists would turn for the leaving the Senate after its first tentative vote to orderly operation of society. From the outset censure him. McCarthy's power and prestige depended upon the active support of conservative Republican This interpretation of McCarthyism is in­ leaders, and upon the acquiescence of Demo­ adequate, argues Rogin, for three reasons. In crats and Republican moderates. Once such the first place it rests on the false assumption support and acquiescence became inexpedient, that there is a continuity between agrarian as it did after 1954, McCarthy's influence radicalism and McCarthyism. After carefully rapidly evaporated. McCarthyism thus be­ analyzing voting patterns in Wisconsin, North comes not, as the pluralists would have it, an Dakota, and South Dakota, Rogin concludes object lesson in the beneficence and wisdom that there is no such continuity. If anything, of elite rule, but a cautionary tale about the the opposite is more accurate; agrarian radi­ dangers of abandoning popular democracy.* calism, where cohesive, has contributed not to the Republican right, but to the constituency This is a brilliant book, the importance of of Democratic liberalism.^ which goes far beyond the problems of Mc­ Secondly, the pluralists misinterpret the na­ Carthyism and agrarian radicalism. Tfie In- ture of agrarian radicalism. Caught up in a system of thought which defines mass move­ ments as automatically irrational, the plural­ * This same point was made earlier by David and ists have on the one hand underemphasized the Esther Thelen in their fine study of the McCarthy specific issues and goals of populist protest recall movement, a grass-roots movement frustrated by the timidity and self-interest of the state's plura­ (in The Age of Reform, for example, Richard list institutions. "As the leaders of the recall move­ Hofstadter quickly passes over economic issues ment discovered, every institution or pressure group has a vested interest in perpetuating Its own exist­ ence. And when public endorsement of an unortho­ dox social or political movement might threaten that existence, the institution inevitably balks, hesitates, " On this point also see David A. Shannon, "Was and in the end does nothing at all." David and Esther McCarthy a Political Heir of La Follette," in the Thelen, "Joe Must Go: The Movement to Recall Wisconsin Magazine of History, 45:3-9 (Autumn, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy," in the Wisconsin 1961). Magazine of History, 49:185-209 (Spring, 1966).

300 GRIFFITH: THE POLITICS OF ANTI-COMMUNISM tellectuals and McCarthy poses a fundamental Senator's admirers, Roy Cohn and William S. challenge to modern pluralism, the liberal Schlamm, as well as critics such as Arthur political theory which has until very recently Eisenhower and Will Herberg. The final sec­ prescribed and limited the study of American tion contains three examples of the "pluralist" politics.^ According to Rogin, modern plural­ analysis by Nathan Glazer, Peter Viereck, and ism centers on the interest group organization Seymour Martin Lipset, all contributors to Tfie of American politics and upon elite manage­ New American Right. There is also a class ment of these interest groups. Politics, in this analysis by the editors of Monthly Review, analysis, becomes the process through which Leo Huberman and Paul M. Sweezy. The col­ these various elites seek to maximize the in­ lection includes Nelson Polsby's important terests of their groups. This process takes 1960 article, "Towards an Explanation of place in an atmosphere of compromise and McCarthyism," which attacks the status-anxiety civility made possible by the insularity of hypothesis and argues that McCarthy's sup­ leaders from their constituents and contributes porters were primarily Republicans acting on to the orderly functioning of government. the basis of conventional political considera­ Mass politics, in the pluralist view, threatens tions. The volume closes with an excerpt from the operation of government through the in­ Rogin's The Intellectuals and McCarthy which troduction of emotionalism, inflexibility, and emphasizes the role of political elites in sus­ unreasonableness. taining McCarthyism. As Rogin points out, such a theory can ex­ The achievements and limitations of elite plain neither elite support of irrational, anti­ resistance to McCarthyism are nowhere better democratic movements such as McCarthyism, revealed than in Thomas C. Reeves, Freedom nor creative and democratic mass movements. and the Foundation,* a thoroughly researched Populism, industrial unionism, the civil rights and well-written study of the Fund for the movement (and, one might add, opposition to Republic. The Fund was incorporated in late the Vietnam War) have all been creative 1952 as an independent subsidiary of the Ford popular movements organized outside the nor­ Foundation which turned over to it some mal channels of American politics. Yet all of fifteen million dollars for the defense of free­ them fall outside the pale of pluralist respect­ dom and liberty. After several years of cau­ ability. Pluralism, concludes Rogin, is "a tious delay, the Fund, under the bold leader­ peculiar mixture of analysis and prescription ship of Robert Maynard Hutchins, proceeded . . . [which] may best be judged not as the to disburse some eleven million dollars to product of science but as a liberal American finance books, articles, pamphlets, speeches, venture into conservative political theory." seminars, and other projects in the area of This is an important work and one which civil rights and civil liberties. should be read by every serious student of modern America. This was an exceptional endeavor given the timidity of most tax-exempt foundations dur­ ing this period, and one which no doubt con­ |~| NE MAY also follow the debate over the ^-^ sources of McCarthyism in the pages of tributed to the decline of McCarthyite senti­ Joseph R. McCarthy,* a collection of docu­ ment during the late 1950's. Certainly the ments and articles edited by Allen J. Matusow Fund's activities were significant enough to for Prentice-Hall's Great Lives Observed series. arouse the furies of the Right. Fulton Lewis, In addition to a representative sampling of Jr., Paul Harvey, David Lawrence, the Hearst McCarthy's own inimitable speeches, Matusow papers, and others kept up a steady stream of has included excerpts from the writings of the criticism; while Congressman Francis E. Wal­ ter (D-Pa.) and the House Un-American Activities Committee repeatedly harrassed the Fund's oificers and directors. The Internal Revenue Service, moreover, subjected the Fund •"^Also see Theodore j. Lowi, The End of Liberal­ ism: Ideology, Policy, and the Crisis of Public Auth­ to continuous and excessive scrutiny. ority (New York, 1969) ; and Robert Paul Wolff, None of this, of course, bothered the re­ Barrington Moore, Jr., and Herbert Marcuse, A Critique of Pure Tolerance (Boston, 1965). doubtable Hutchins, who as Dwight Mac-

301 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1971

Donald has observed, feared controversy as of the United States and the Declaration of Br'er Rabbit feared the briar patch. "If your Independence. Such advocacy is merely to sup­ object is to promote justice," Hutchins once port existing systems and not to promote re­ declared, "you're likely to be attacked, be­ forms." The directors were fearful of contro­ cause if people weren't profiting by injustice versy, moreover, and tended to tack in the face it wouldn't exist." of criticism. When, for example, Hutchins But controversy did bother the Fund's direc­ named to the Fund's staff an attorney who had tors and it did bother Henry Ford II, and their pleaded the Fifth Amendment before a con­ response helps to illustrate the narrow limits gressional committee, the board rose up in full of business liberalism.^ Ford, for example, had rebellion. One director resigned and four developed a dislike for Hutchins during the others called for Hutchins' resignation.'^ latter's tenure as associate director of the Ford Hutchins weathered the storm, but the direc­ Foundation, and it is unlikely that his opinion tors subsequently restricted his freedom of changed after Hutchins shifted his base of action and during the next few years the pace operations to the more controversial Fund for of Fund activity slackened appreciably. In the Republic. The receipt of a small number 1959 the Fund for the Republic transferred its (1,200) of irate letters from Ford customers attention (and its remaining money) to the and dealers further unnerved Ford, who in Hutchins-inspired Center for the Study of December, 1955, sharply criticized the Fund. Democratic Institutions, an important but rela­ "Some of its actions, I feel, have been dubious tively uncontroversial undertaking. in character and inevitably have led to charges Professor Reeves, of the University of Wis­ of poor judgement," declared the automotive consin, Parkside, has carefully examined the heir. Ford's criticism contributed to the in­ minutes, records, and other papers of the creasing caution of the Fund's board of direc­ Fund for the Republic (now at Princeton tors and to their growing resistance to Hutch­ University). His book. Freedom and the Foun­ ins' bold projects. dation, is an important and original contribu­ The board itself was made up, as Reeves tion to the study of American politics and wryly observes, of solid citizens of "Impec­ philanthropy. cable Reputation." They were sincerely dedi­ cated to the preservation of freedom and AMES ARONSON has tried to examine the liberty, but they interpreted this mandate very J reaction of the press, another elite-managed narrowly. As the Fund's attorneys declared: institution, to McCarthyism smd to the cold ". . . the Fund is free to engage in partisan war crisis of which McCarthyism was but one advocacy for the principles of the Constitution facet. His book. The Press and The Cold War,* is part memoir, part polemic. Aronson is a radical journalist of the old- left variety who in 1948 helped found the " Ford's response to the 1952 campaign of Demo­ cratic Senator Blair Moody of Michigan is a good il­ National Guardian. Part of his book traces, in lustration of how the "instrumental" orientation of elliptic fashion, the history of this small, radical America's interest group leaders contributed to Mc­ weekly. The National Guardian supported Carthy's success. In 1952 Moody was opposed by Republican Congressman Charles Potter, a member Henry Wallace in 1948, denounced American of HUAC who had won a reputation as "something foreign policy (including U.S. intervention in of a junior McCarthy" during the 82nd Congress. McCarthy campaigned for him in Michigan and his Korea), and defended Alger Hiss and the election was interpreted as a victory for the Wiscon­ Rosenbergs. On the eve of the Korean War it sin senator. Ford's position on the contest was sum­ had a circulation of over 50,000. Shortly after­ marized in a letter to Moody: "Also, I feel that I will have to vote for Rep. Potter for Senator, since wards, as a result of governmental persecution, it seems to me that you have consistently played the paper's circulation was halved and one of only one side although you have sometimes taken a position that has been helpful to industry. However, in my opinion, your reasons for taking that position is that labor's interest is also served by your taking such a position." Henry Ford II to Blair Moody, ' The latter group was led by Dean Erwin N. Gris- July 23, 1952, in the Blair Moody Papers, Michigan wald of the Harvard Law School, who had recently Historical Collections, University of Michigan, Ann authored a book entitled The Fifth Amendment Arbor. The grammar and punctuation belong to Ford. Today.

302 GRIFFITH: THE POLITICS OF ANTI-COMMUNISM

Madison Capital Times G. David Schine, Roy M. Cohn, and Joseph R. McCarthy, during the March, 1954, Army-McCarthy Hearings. its editors driven into exile. It never really were also members of the Institute of Pacific recovered, although Aronson himself hung on Relations. In the early fifties the IPR became for more than a decade, resigning in 1967 a prime target for Joe McCarthy and Pat following a dispute with younger staff mem­ McCarran. As a result, from 1952 to 1955, not bers. one of the IPR-related scholars was asked to The main argument of Aronson's book is review a book for the Times. In effect, the that the press has served America poorly be­ Times was deferring to the judgment of Mc­ cause of its subservience to governmental Carthy and McCarran. On another occasion policy. This is an important thesis and one the Times succumbed to pressure from Senator which deserves a far better job than Aronson James Eastland by dismissing employees who has done. Unfortunately, The Press and the had taken the Fifth Amendment before the Cold War is marred by poor organization, Mississippi Senator's Internal Security Sub­ sketchy documentation, and inflated rhetoric. committee. It is unfortunate that the Times' Too much of the book depends on the reader's libertarian professions did not extend to their acceptance of Aronson's assumption that the personnel practices. It is even sadder to note Rosenbergs were innocent, that Syngman Rhee that the American Newspaper Guild acquiesced started the Korean War, and that United States in the dismissals. Pluralism, in these instances policy is "the chief source of the world's prob­ at least, contributed not to the defense of free­ lems." dom and liberty, but to their erosion; and The best portions of the book are devoted to Aronson's book, despite its many faults, pro­ a not altogether original exposure of the New vides considerable evidence on the short­ Yor/c Times. For example, Aronson points out comings of pluralist institutions. that between 1945 and 1950 twenty-two of the President Harry S. Truman had the dubious thirty books on China reviewed in the Times distinction of presiding over America's second were reviewed by Far Eastern specialists who great Red Scare. The Politics of Loyalty* by

303 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1971

Alan D. Harper is an account of Truman's amended the program by changing the criteria response to this crisis: his establishment of a for dismissal from "reasonable grounds" to federal loyalty program, his battle against the suspect disloyalty to "reasonable doubt" of an McCarran Internal Security Act, his efforts employee's loyalty—an alteration which meant to quiet critics by the establishment of a Com­ a sweeping reversal in the burden of proof. mission on Internal Security and Individual Harper mentions this change in the context of Freedom. a discussion of the Nimitz Commission on In­ Truman emerges from these pages as an em­ ternal Security and Individual Rights. There battled champion of civil liberties. Where his is no mention of Truman and the casual reader liberalism faltered, it was usually because of is likely to assume, erroneously, that the Pres­ the incredible partisanship of the Republican ident had no hand in it. opposition, the cowardliness of the congres­ Only two noncommittal sentences are de­ sional Democrats, or the intractability of the voted to the dismissal of veteran diplomat John federal bureaucracy. Certainly there is much Stewart Service. In a memorandum not cited truth in this description. But it is also true, by Harper, one of Truman's aides described as Truman was fond of pointing out, that the the case as "a miscarriage of justice."^" The buck stops at the White House and that the Truman Administration, however, apparently President himself must assume responsibility preferred political expediency to justice. for the record of his administration. Much There are other omissions and oversights. of this record is admirable, for example, For example. Harper does not deal with the Truman's ringing pledge to veto the McCar­ Justice Department's prosecution of com­ ran bill "regardless of how politically unpop­ munist leaders under the Smith Act, although ular it was—election year or no election surely this constitutes an important chapter in year."^ But there was another less courageous the "politics of loyalty." Harper's legislative side to the Truman record, much of it unre­ history of the McCarran Act ignores one of its corded in this book; for Professor Harper, most controversial features—the "concentra­ like Norman Vincent Peale, has chosen to em­ tion camp" proviso sponsored by Democratic phasize the positive. liberals Paul H. Douglas, Harley M. Kilgore, Harper ignores the point recently made by and Hubert H. Humphrey. And although Athan Theoharis that the Truman Administra­ Harper criticizes Truman's appointment of tion contributed greatly to the hysteria of the conservatives to head the loyalty program, he fifties through its rhetorical justification of does not examine the impact this had on the cold-war foreign policy, as well as the earlier disposition of individual cases. The stories suggestion by William Berman that the chronicled by Bert Andrews and Adam Yarmo- Truman Administration helped to fashion an linsky (neither of whose books is cited in the "incipient garrison-state ideology ... by footnotes or bibliography) might have pro­ means of its loyalty program, Attorney Gen­ vided the material for a more critical appraisal eral's list and prosecutions under the Smith of the Truman loyalty program.^^ Similarly, Act."« little attention is paid to the activities of the federal government in regard to immigration, Harper barely mentions, for example, the aside from a brief discussion of Truman's veto crucial change in federal loyalty standards of the McCarran-Walter bill. Even a cursory made by Truman in April, 1951. Under pres­ investigation of the activities of the U.S. Im­ sure from right-wing critics, the President migration Service during these years would have produced a picture of the Truman Ad-

" Quoted in Stephen J. Spingarn, Memorandum for the Files, July 22, 1950, in the Spingarn Papers, Har­ ry S. Truman Library. " Athan Theoharis, "The Rhetoric of Politics," in '° Donald Hanson, Memorandum, January 3, 1953, Barton J. Bernstein (ed.). Politics and Policies of in the Spingarn Papers. Service was re-instated by the Truman Administration (Chicago, 1970) ; Wil­ order of the Supreme Court in 1957. liam C. Berman, "Civil Rights and Civil Liberties," ^' Bert Andrews, Washington Witch Hunt (New in Richard S. Kirkendall, The Truman Period As A York, 1948) ; Adam Yarmolinsky, Case Studies in Research Field (Columbia, Missouri, 1967). Personnel Security (Washington, 1955).

304 GRIFFITH: THE POLITICS OF ANTI-COMMUNISM ministration sharply different from that pre­ success for Republican partisans long denied sented by Harper.*^ access to national office. Following their de­ Finally, Tlie Politics of Loyalty is badly feat in 1948, Republican campaigners increas­ padded by the presence of two unnecessary ingly stressed foreign policy and "Yalta" as a chapters—one on American policy in China means of discrediting the Democrats. But the and another on the removal of General Doug­ Republicans were able to capitalize on Yalta, las MacArthur. Both of these chapters are Theoharis argues, only because of the Truman based primarily on secondary sources and Administration's fundamental reorientation of neither adds substantially to our understand­ American foreign policy. The adoption of con­ ing of these problems. The book's lengthy ap­ tainment and its rationalization by means of pendices might also have been eliminated; a rhetoric of crusading anti-communism radi­ more than half of the material has already cally altered popular assumptions as to what been printed in the public record, the re­ constituted a wise foreign policy. As a con­ mainder is interesting but unnecessary. A re­ sequence, the Truman Administration's con­ sourceful editor might have trimmed more than servative critics were able to mount an attack a hundred pages from the book and, presum­ based on the very assumptions of the admin­ ably a few dollars from its exorbitant ($13.00) istration itself, while, conversely, the admin­ price. istration was prevented from raising more than a half-hearted and partisan defense of past policies. "As the Administration reversed its A FAR MORE CRITICAL APPRAISAL of views on the reasonableness and desirability •^*- the Truman Administration emerges from of trusting the Soviet Union," Theoharis con­ two recent books by Athan Theoharis of Mar­ cludes, "Yalta became a conference that it had quette University. In his first book. The Yalta never been." Myths,* Theoharis traces the rise of the Yalta Conference as an issue in American politics. This is a valuable study, although it is not In 1945, he argues, most Americans shared the without shortcomings. Theoharis has not ex­ Roosevelt Administration's attitude toward the amined any of the relevant manuscript collec­ Soviet Union, an attitude which emphasized tions, but instead has confined his analysis to the necessity for mutual understanding, trust, the rhetoric of foreign policy debate. As a con­ and co-operation. Criticism of the conference sequence, his study has a somewhat one- was confined to right-wingers whose primary dimensional quality. His presentation, more­ purpose was to discredit New Deal liberalism. over, is marred by a rigid chronological By the early fifties, however, Yalta had become framework and is often repetitious. His argu­ a symbol for the failure of Democratic foreign ment concerning the role of the Truman Ad­ policy. Concessions which in 1945 had ap­ ministration, while not unconvincing, rests peared reasonable and realistic were de­ more on inference and assertion than on evi­ nounced as stupid and even treasonous, and in dence, and is more fully developed in his the 1952 campaign the Republican party second book. pledged itself to "repudiate all commitments contained in secret understandings, such as Theoharis extends his indictment of the those of Yalta, which aid Communist enslave­ Truman Administration in Seeds of Repres­ ments." sion: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of What had changed, of course, was not the McCarthyism.* For Theoharis, McCarthyism Yalta Conference, but the climate of American was not only "a logical extension of traditional politics. In part this was a measure of public conservative politics," but was also a function response to the emergence of the cold war of the cold war and the rhetoric used to sustain with its attendant anxieties and frustrations. it. The success of conservatives, and in par­ More importantly, it represented a means to ticular the Republican right, was made pos­ sible by the dramatic changes which took place in the climate of American politics between 1945 and 1950; and these changes, he argues, " See, for example, Kemper, Decade of Fear, 33- were in large measure the product of the 35; and Ellen R. Knauff, The Ellen Knauff Story (New York, 1952). Truman Administration. Truman's militantly

305 lar, as both Harper and Theoharis point out, consistently undercut the administration, both through the sponsorship of legislation opposed by the White House and through its hysterical rhetoric. "There are today many Communists in America," Attorney General J. Howard McGrath told an audience. "They are every­ where—in factories, offices, butcher shops, on street corners, in private business—and each carries with him the germs of death for Society." At that very moment, McGrath warned, they were "busy at work—undermin­ ing your Government, plotting to destroy the liberties of every citizen, and feverishly trying, in whatever they can, to aid the Soviet Union." With spokesmen for the Truman Administra­ tion calling for a holy war on communism, it is hardly surprising that McCarthyism flour­ ished, or that McCarthyite congressmen at­ tacked the administration for its failure to act in accordance with its own rhetoric.

This is an original and controversial study Wisconsin State Journal which challenges the conventional view which A 1946 campaign photograph taken by the Rierson depicts McCarthyism as only a function of Studios of Madison. Before the picture was made, the conservative politics and Truman as only its photographer induced McCarthy to get a shave and innocent victim. While Alan Harper's study buy a new necktie. seeks to exculpate Truman from any respon­ sibility for the creation of McCarthyism, Theo­ anti-communist rhetoric, with its stress on haris makes Truman its principal architect. American innocence, Soviet depravity, and the His case is, perhaps unavoidably, overstated. need for confrontation with communism, con­ He underestimates the depth and tenacity of tributed to a new political environment which pre-war anti-communism which structured the narrowed the arena of legitimate political de­ response of both Truman and his critics; he bate and sharply reduced the flexibility of exaggerates the influence of the President over American foreign policy. The administration's the post-war political environment; and he un­ Republican critics, Theoharis argues, were derestimates the influence of conservatives in faithful to Truman's own assumptions when shaping the political context in which Truman they denounced the Yalta Conference, blamed operated. On balance, however, this is a per­ the administration for "losing" China, and de­ suasive and important book—one which un­ manded total victory in Korea. settles the comfortable assumptions of previous In a similar manner the Truman Admin­ scholarship and advances a bold and bitingly istration legitimized red-baiting at home critical interpretation of the Truman Admin­ through its loyalty program (which applied istration. sweeping standards to all government em­ ployees, not just those in sensitive positions), through the Attorney General's list (which, fyHE IDEOLOGY of America's anti-com- based on the concept of guilt by association, •*- munist politics is examined by political rapidly became the most widely used litmus scientist Michael Parenti in The Anti-Com­ for "subversive tendencies"), and through its munist Impulse.* "If America has an ideology, public quest for total security (which raised or national purpose, it is anti-communism," an impossible standard by which the admin­ argues Parenti. His book is a polemical attack istration itself would be judged and found upon the intellectual assumptions of this ide­ wanting). The Justice Department in particu­ ology and upon its baleful influence on Amer-

306 GRIFFITH: THE POLITICS OF ANTI-COMMUNISM ican foreign policy.*^ The anti-communist im­ of some senators during those troubled times. pulse, he argues, imposes a false categorical There are few surprises in this memoir for uniformity on diverse and competing com­ those familiar with the proceedings of the munist systems and then interprets all of them McCarthy censure: the disinclination of the as interchangeable parts of a threat to the Eisenhower Administration to take a stand; "American way of life." At the same time, it McCarthy's unwillingness to compromise (in assumes the innocence of American intentions a sense he sought censure) ; Watkins's firm and the benevolence of American actions. The leadership in the face of incredibly abusive result is a crusading foreign policy of global personal attacks. ("They will destroy you," counter-revolution. warned his sister, who was convinced that The Anti-Communist Impulse is not a ter­ McCarthy was right and that Watkins should ribly original book; most of the points Parenti not become a party to the censure effort.) makes have been made before, although they One item that is new concerns the role of obviously have not penetrated the thinking of Senate Minority Leader Lyndon Baines John­ official Washington. It is also thinly researched. son and a censure charge relating to Mc­ The chapters on foreign affairs, for instance, Carthy's abusive treatment of General Ralph are based on the selective use of a narrow Zwicker. The Watkins committee had recom­ range of revisionist studies. Finally, it fails to mended that McCarthy be censured on several explain adequately the origins of the anti- counts, including his treatment of Zwicker. On communist "impulse" or its persistence as a the final day of debate, however, the Zwicker dominating influence in American life. These charge disappeared into a parliamentary reservations aside. The Anti-Communist Im­ mousetrap and never came to a direct vote. pulse is a useful antidote to the stereotypical According to Watkins this was because John­ thought produced by America's long cold war. son came to him on the floor and demanded The McCarthy years are still close enough that the count be dropped because at least to the present to remain the subject of auto­ fifteen southern Democrats were unwilling to biographical reminiscences. Enough Rope,* vote for it. by Senator Arthur V. Watkins, is one of sev­ Watkins was defeated for re-election in 1958 eral books in this genre to be published during in a three-way contest with Utah's McCarthyite the last five or six years.^* Watkins was a con­ former governor, J. Bracken Lee, running as servative Republican from Utah who in 1954 an independent, and Democratic liberal Frank chaired the Senate's Select Committee to study Moss. Thus, according to Watkins, the Mc- censure charges against McCarthy. Carthyites, aided by the lavish spending of Watkins was a zealous anti-communist who Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats on be­ had served as a member of Pat McCarran's half of Frank Moss, were able to settle an old Internal Security Subcommittee. He was also score. an isolationist (or as he would have it, a "con­ The final volume under review in this essay, stitutionalist") who was critical of American Odyssey of a Friend,* is a remarkable collec­ involvement in Korea, and, more recently, tion of letters written by Whittaker Chambers Vietnam. He was chosen by Senate Majority to William F. Buckley, Jr., between 1954 and Leader William Knowland to head the Select 1961. Committee because he had never become in­ Many of the themes sounded in these letters volved in the McCarthy controversy—in itself will be familiar to the readers of Witness and a ratlier disturbing testament to the insularity Cold Friday:^^ Chambers' dark, deterministic conviction that the West was in irreversible decline (the original title of Cold Friday was The Losing Side) ; his belief in the pervasive- ^^ Two similar studies are Sidney Lens, The Futile Crusade: Anti-Communism As American Credo (Chi­ cago, 1964) ; and The American Friends Service Committee, Anatomy of Anti-Communism (New York, 1969). "° Whittaker Chambers, Witness (New York, 1952) " See, for example, Roy Cohn, McCarthy (New and Cold Friday (New York, 1964). The latter book York, 1968) ; and Charles E. Potter, Days of Shame is edited and with an introduction by Duncan Norton- (New York, 1965). Taylor.

307 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1971 ness of evil and corruption ("All life is On one occasion McCarthy crudely used rooted in horror as every field of springing Chambers and the latter never forgot or for­ grain is dunged with filth and death") ; his gave.'^ McCarthy's antics, moreover, dis­ fixation upon the Hiss case, the "heart of the tracted attention from the all-important (in anti-communist fight" by which "most of the Chambers's eyes) Hiss case. In the end. Cham­ rest stands or falls": and finally, his deep and bers concluded that McCarthy was a godsend overwhelming sense of alienation, alienation for the communists; for the Senator united the not just from the superficial aspects of con­ non-communist left while dividing the right. temporary society, but from its most funda­ The Hiss case and Joe McCarthy aside, mental dynamics—socialism and capitalism, these letters are fascinating, although one oc­ communism and anti-communism. Industrial­ casionally wishes that the other side of the ism, materialism, war, revolution, these were correspondence, Buckley's letters to Cham­ the forces which destroyed Chambers's "civil­ bers, were also included. Certainly Chambers ization" and rendered himself irrelevant. "His­ is a major figure whose strange odyssey can tory hit us with a freight train," he wrote in teach us a great deal about the social and in­ his last letter; and earlier, "we are history's tellectual history of modern America. rejects." His view of McCarthy, and it was this which attracted the attention of the press when the letters were first published, is not surprising. He accepted McCarthy as a fellow combatant '" In early 1953, during the fight over the confirma­ tion of Charles Bohlen as ambassador to the Soviet in the war against communism, but he pre­ Union, McCarthy paid a conspicuous visit to Cham­ ferred to keep his distance. McCarthy had no bers's Maryland farm. The visit was designed, of program, no strategy, but "only a tactic which course, to suggest that Chambers had some informa­ tion concerning Bohlen. Chambers had nothing of consisted exclusively in the impulse: Attack." the sort and resented McCarthy's crude tactics.

Bibliography

The Intellectuals and McCarthy: The Radical The Yalta Myths: An Issue in U.S. Politics, Specter. By Michael Paul Rogin. (Paperbound 1945-1955. By Athan Theoharis. (University edition, Massachusetts Institute of Technology of Missouri Press, Columbia, 1970. Pp. viii, Press, Cambridge, 1969. Pp. xii, 366. Maps, 263. Notes, appendices, bibliography, index. charts, tables, notes, appendices, bibliography, $10.00.) index. S2.95.) Seeds of Repression: Harry S. Truman and the Joseph R. McCarthy. Edited by Allen J. Matu­ Origins of McCarthyism. By Athan Theoharis. sow. (Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New (Quadrangle Books, Chicago, 1971. Pp. xi, Jersey, 1970. Pp. vii, 181. Cloth, $4.95, paper, 238. Appendices, bibliographical essay, index. $1.95.) $6.95.) Freedom and the Foundation: The Fund for The Anti-Communist Impulse. By Michael the Republic in the Era of McCarthyism. By Parenti. (Random House, New York, 1969. Thomas C. Reeves. (Alfred A. Knopf, New Pp. xi, 333. Appendices and index. $7.95.) York, 1969. Pp. xi, 355, ix. Notes, index. $7.95.) Enough Rope. By Arthur V. Watkins. (Pren­ The Press and the Cold War. By James Aron­ tice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, and son. (Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, 1970. Pp. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, 1969. 308. Index. $8.00.) Pp. xii, 302. Appendices, index. $6.95.) The Politics of Loyalty: The White House and Odyssesy of A Friend: Whittaker Chambers' the Communist Issue, 1946-1952. By Alan D. Letters to William F. Buckley, Jr., 1954-1961. Harper. (Greenwood Publishing Corporation, Edited with notes by William F. Buckley, Jr. Westport, Connecticut, 1969. Pp. xii, 318. Foreword by Ralph de Toledano (G. P. Put- Notes, appendices, bibliography, index. nams Sons, New York, 1969. Pp. 303. Index. $13.00.) $6.95.)

308 IVE w I E WW 9

STATE AND REGIONAL they were in, the by-passing of Wisconsin as a place of investment by Easterners in favor of Iowa, Illinois, and Minnesota, the decline of the wheat industry and the repudiation of debts Railroads and the Granger Laws. By GEORGE growing out of the railway farm-mortgage plan, H. MILLER. (University of Wisconsin Press, the author shows that Milwaukee had become Madison, 1971. Pp. xi, 296. Notes, bibliogra­ the seat of one of the most aggressive railroad phy, index. $12.50.) systems in the country and that local ownership and control was no guarantee against arbitrary This is a well-researched and documented and extortionate rate-making. Although the study of the railroads and Grangers, more so of author argues that discontent transcended agra­ the railroads than of the Grangers; in fact it is rian borders, he concedes, especially after the so well-documented that almost one-third of the decline of the wheat industry, that the farmer book is given to footnotes, which most of us of Wisconsin was a more prominent figure in like to believe are the trademarks of a scholar. the movement for state railway control than he The author in challenging the thesis that the was in any other Granger state. Still he needed laws regulating the railroads generally have the support of the more intelligent city people been attributed to agrarian influences concen­ and villagers, the outraged shippers and mer­ trates on the railroads of the upper Mississippi chants, without whose help he was ineffective. Valley, the rate law of 1870-1871, the states What is unclear to the reader is precisely and the railroads—including detailed accounts who has been claiming that the Granger laws of activities in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and were primarily the result of agrarian agitation, Wisconsin—and then enters into a discussion and when? The author writes as though a hard- of the Grangers and Granger laws, public and and-fast line had been drawn between the rural private policy, and a summation. The result is and nonrural elements of the 1870's. In a sec­ a tightly written, analytical, and highly inform­ tion of the country in which rural thinking was ative account of the subject that promises to as pervasive as in Wisconsin, it is difficult to withstand the test of time. think of the small business and mercantile in­ Of particular interest to Wisconsin readers terests as being as segregated from the farming is the least typical of the laws studied, the interest as is implied. The values of the 1870's Potter law of Wisconsin which was viewed as for the most part were the values of a rural radical and deserving of the criticisms it re­ society, even of the larger towns and cities. ceived. After discussing the question of public The mood, temper, and demands of the farm­ aid for railroads in the state, the conditions ers, regardless of whether they had to have the

309 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1971 help of the townspeople, were very significant, were elected by the members of each company. even crucial, factors in the enactment of sec­ They give the pay scale which in 1831 ranged tional legislation. from $40 a month for a captain down to $6.66 This in no way is designed to detract from for each private. For mounted units, the rolls the high quality of the book. It is a well-thought- sometimes show the sex and color of each man's out and well-presented study that will appeal horse. They even demonstrate the often over­ more to the specialist than the general student, looked practice of using Indian warriors from but one that should find its way on the reading neutral tribes or those hostile to the Sauk-Fox, list of many courses. and include the rosters of two such Indian companies. THEODORE SALOUTOS Mrs. Whitney, the editor, lists two goals for University of California at this volume. The introduction is supposed to Los Angeles place the conflict in historical perspective. It does. The remainder of the book tries to ac­ count for the activities of as many Illinois Volunteers as possible. This is done with an awesome thoroughness and a high degree of The Black Hawk War, 1831-1832, Volume I technical skill. The extensive annotations and Illinois Volunteers. Compiled and edited by an index of over 100 pages give clear evidence ELLEN M. WHITNEY. {Illinois Historical Col­ of the painstaking care with which this material lections, Vol. XXXV, Illinois State Historical has been edited. This is a superior job on a Library, Springfield, 1970. Pp. xx, 682. Notes, regional topic which has broad national impli­ appendix, index. $20.00.) cations. Scholars interested in the problems of frontier government, transportation, finance, and defense can look forward with enthusiasm The Black Hawk War, which swept across to the next two volumes in this project. northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin dur­ ing 1832, resulted from the federal policy of ROGER L. NICHOLS forcing Indians who lived east of the Missis­ University of Arizona sippi River to move west of that stream. For those interested in Indian affairs or midwestern history, the conflict provides a classic example of a frontier clash between advancing whites and the displaced aborigines. This book, the GENERAL HISTORY first of a projected three-volume series, is the result of nearly thirty years of work by numer­ ous historians working for the Illinois State British Investment in American Railways, Historical Library, but the bulk of the editing 1834-1898. By DOROTHY R. ADLER. Edited by has been done by Mrs. Ellen Whitney. The MURIEL E. HIDY. (Published for the Eleutheri­ volume includes a long introduction which an Mills-Hagley Foundation by The University aptly places the Black Hawk War in its histori­ Press of Virginia, Charlottesville, 1970. Edi­ cal context. Next follow the edited muster rolls tor's introduction, notes, tables, appendices, of the Illinois militia units called to duty for bibliography, index. $11.50.) the brief campaign of 1831 which forced the last reluctant Sauk-Fox tribesmen west beyond the Mississippi. Most of the book, however, The Life and Decline of the American Railroad. consists of the muster rolls for the campaign By JOHN F. STOVER. (Oxford University Press, of 1832—the Black Hawk War. New York, 1970. Maps, illustrations, bibliogra­ Although clearly aimed at researchers and phy, index. $7.50.) not general readers, the documents edited here offer varied material for anyone who turns the These two books are as different from each pages. In addition to giving the names of all other as George Stephenson's "Rocket" and men who served in the militia units which took today's massive diesel-electric locomotive. Pro­ part in the war, the muster rolls include much fessor Stover, well-known to students through other information. They show, for example, his Railroads of the South (1955) and to a that militia oificers and noncommissioned offi­ wider audience through his American Rail­ cers, all the way down through the corporals. roads (1961), has written a general history

310 BOOK REVIEWS

aimed at the reading public rather than the teenth century, that is a task so massive as to scholar. The first third of his book brings the be beyond the capacity of any historian to reader down to the end of the nineteenth cen­ master. The record bulks so large that a life­ tury. This growth phase of the railroad indus­ time of study would be insufficient to examine try is an extraordinary story. Stover tells it more than a fraction of the papers available. clearly, perceptively, and excitingly. With a Some indication of the magnitude of even a sure eye for the anecdote or detail that illumi­ small part of the problem can be seen in the nates a point instead of dazzling the reader, he list of some 240 securities issued or sold on the conveys a confident grasp of the main themes. London market that Mrs. Adler sets out in two He never lets himself or his reader be shunted of her appendices. off on to branch lines, no matter how intriguing To be sure, the financial historian's task is or dramatic the story may be. lightened by the fact that many records have The bulk of the book, about 200 pages, deals been lost or destroyed. On the other hand, this with the twentieth century. The main theme is means that a great deal of the intricate story the relative decline of the industry. Simply can never be pieced together. Moreover, though stated, in 1900 railroads were by far the largest the archives of many railroads are available enterprises in the nation. They absorbed the for study, relatively few collections of papers most capital, employed the most workers, and of people involved in the Anglo-American hauled most of the nation's freight and passen­ money markets have ever been opened to his­ gers. By 1970 railroads had fallen far behind torians. It is not without point that Mrs. Adler other leading industries, they had lost most of had to write her study without the benefit of their riders to airlines, buses, and especially to such insights. For the most part she has been private automobiles, and they had given up forced into examining what newspapers and much of their most profitable freight to their financial periodicals said was happening. Be­ competitors—pipeline, trucking, and airline cause Professor Stover is writing for the gen­ companies. If the main outlines of this story eral reader rather than the specialist, he solves are familiar. Stover analyzes the process with these problems by ignoring them. It is one of a shrewd eye for underlying forces and a judi­ the few weaknesses of his treatment that he cious understanding for railroad problems. gives no general, interpretative view of railroad Along the way there are some useful correc­ finance. tives and reminders. So short is the popular For all of these reasons, it is understandable historical memory that most of us dale the on­ that Mrs. Adler's study of British investment set of decline after the Second World War. The should of necessity be both incomplete and author pushes it back by almost a generation, detailed. For the most part, we learn only what though his argument is less convincing than it the published record shows, and we get one might be because he uses "operating ratios" as fact piled upon another. In the first chapter, an analytical tool without ever saying what for example, there are 128 footnotes for twenty- they mean or how they are calculated. Most of four pages; the notes occupy almost as much us have forgotten that the industry poured space as the text. To some extent, that is the millions of dollars into passenger traffic after reality of the remaining historical record and 1945. Despite new equipment and improved the intricacies of the financial process. Within service, riders abandoned the railroads long the limits imposed by these circumstances, as before the industry abandoned passengers. well as the author not being able to revise her Mrs. Adler's book is totally different in own work for publication or to extend it to scope, approach, and conception. A dissertation World War I as she had planned, we must be completed at Cambridge University in 1958 grateful indeed for what we have. and published posthumously, it is a work of What Mrs. Adler gives us essentially is a impressively detailed scholarship and is based reference work. The concluding overview ex­ on manuscripts in Welsh libraries, official pub­ cepted (and it is richly thematic), the book is lications, newspapers, periodicals, and second­ particularly valuable for the way in which it ary works. Of all the aspects of railroad history, pinpoints details of which railroads placed finance is perhaps the most complicated and which securities on the market, when these difficult to handle. Consider the problems. Each offerings were put out, which London firms company has a separate financial history and handled them, who took them up, and what to understand the industry as a whole one must types of securities appealed to various cate­ necessarily understand each of its parts. Given gories of British investors at various times. the number of railroads formed in the nine­ All of this is set out in meticulous detail and

311 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1971 against an ongoing background of fluctuations dorsed or tolerated the Senator because of the in American and British money markets. issues he symbolized and their role in the Re­ This is extremely valuable data. One can be publican drive for power. Many Democrats sure that it will be mined for many years to viewed McCarthy as a threat to personal and come. However, like so many dissertations it party fortunes, and, fearful of appearing "soft" presumes that readers, including specialized toward Communism, sometimes exceeded their ones, know as much about the subject as the opponents in sponsoring repression. Con­ author does. (Every teacher recognizes the sequently, neither party acted to check Mc­ absurdity of this proposition, though many Carthy's excessive behavior. The Senate's dissertation advisers never act on it.) As a conservative institutions of prerogative and consequence, Mrs. Adler omits virtually all of precedent became the instruments of McCar­ the essential technical information about the thy's worst abuses. When finally persuaded to operation of the securities markets that any act, the Senate circumspectly evaded the issues reader, specialized or not, must have if he is and assumptions upon which McCarthy had to come to grips with the subject. For example, built his political career, choosing instead to "senior securities" are mentioned from time to condemn him for conduct "contrary to sena­ time, but the reader is never given a hint of torial traditions." what they are or why investors might or might Although the book covers some familiar not prefer them. Arbitrage is also mentioned ground, it adds substantially to our under­ but never defined until page 152. Even then, standing of the McCarthy controversy. The it is the editor who supplies a definition in a variety and quality of sources used, and Grif­ footnote. Worse, the explanation explains noth­ fith's deft handling of them, are the major ing for the uninitiated. In short, the kinds of reasons for the book's value. Although the revisions that an adviser or a press would nor­ McCarthy Papers remain unavailable, Griffith mally require have been necessarily omitted. consulted more than twenty manuscript collec­ This is understandable and inescapable in this tions. He is the first scholar to utilize the Wash­ case, but the way is still open for an enterpris­ ington files of the National Committee For An ing graduate student to write a study of British Effective Congress (NCEC), which provide a investment that explains as well as reports. unique inside picture of how the Senate func­ tioned with regard to the Senator. Griffith elucidates the creation and demise of the deli­ PETER J. COLEMAN cate balance of forces which for five years University of Illinois at Chicago Circle assured McCarthy his privileged sanctuary. Griffith offers a lengthy and valuable analysis of the activities of the Clearing House, an off­ shoot of the NCEC. Commencing in 1953, this small group of political activists publicized Mc­ The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and Carthy's activities and lobbied against him in the Senate. By ROBERT GRIFFITH. (The Uni­ the Senate. The author, however, exaggerates versity Press of Kentucky, Lexington, 1970. the accomplishments of the Clearing House. Pp. xi, 362. Preface, notes, bibliographical Although he contends that the 1954 Louis Bean essay, index. $8.50.) study (sponsored by the Clearing House) ex­ ploded the myth of McCarthy's invincibility, This significant book won the 1970 Freder­ Griffith only shows that the study received ick Jackson Turner Award, with which the "wide distribution" and that copies were "sent" Organization of American Historians recog­ to key political figures. This was true of count­ nizes the excellence of an author's first work. less exposes of McCarthy; the important ques­ The study focuses on the Senate career of tion is whether anyone acted upon such cri­ Joseph McCarthy from 1950-1954. Behind the tiques. Unconvincing evidence suggests that the rise of McCarthy, the author discovered five Clearing House was the catalyst behind the interrelated causes: fear of radicalism, cold ousting of J. B. Matthews in 1953 and that this war events, McCarthy's demagogic talents, par­ was a "tentative success" for the group. Grif­ tisan politics, and Senate weaknesses. The latter fith slights the most important factors—the two factors are emphasized. McCarthy's power spontaneous explosion of public outrage and and influence rested on more than his own tal­ the maneuverings of White House staff mem­ ents. His triumph lay in making himself the bers to have President Eisenhower criticize symbol of anti-Communism for many Republi­ Matthews. Dubious evidence is supposed to cans. For five years the Republican party en­ confirm the substantial influence of the Clear-

312 its foreign policy critics with the blanket in­ dictment "new isolationists," Ralph Stone's able study of the "irreconcilables" of a half century ago is particularly welcome. In a compact, well-researched, and carefully composed book. Stone demonstrates that the so-called "bitter-enders" were quite far re­ moved from an isolationist "ideologically ho­ mogeneous minority set off from the main­ stream of American thought." Fortified as the irreconcilables were by the weighty logic of Washington's Farewell Address and Monroe's inviolable doctrine, it remains a wonder that they were forced to operate as a minority and still appear in many historical accounts as a rigid, irrational, and demagogic band of ob­ structionists. Stone stresses the "essential diversity" of the sixteen irreconcilables. Indeed, one would be hard put to find two more diverse personalities than Joseph I. France, outstanding physician, Jeffersonian liberal, a peace progressive in sen­ timent, even an admirer of Lenin, and Miles Poindexter who attacked not only Wilson and 3>;f,.v„ the League but also pacifists, socialists, and organized labor. UP-Madison Capital Times Stone highlights the careers of the lesser While a Senate Elections Subcommittee was debating known irreconcilables and shows that in some his Senatorial fitness, McCarthy, who had refused an respects they were more influential than their invitation to testify, sat calmly reading on a bench more famous colleagues, Borah, Reed, and on the Capitol Grounds. Johnson. Flexible, skilled in debate and tactics, and always able to rely on Wilson's intransi­ ing House over Senator John McClellan during gence to bring them through the tight spots, debate on the censure resolution. The alleged the irreconcilables raised some probing ques­ power of the group is multiplied when we are tions concerning the League and the whole informed—with no documentation whatsoever concept of collective security. They, like almost —that McClellan "held the key to much of the everyone else, were slaves to the belief that the uncommitted Democratic vote" and that Sena­ Senate debate over ratification of the Versailles tors Thomas Burke and John Kennedy "tied Treaty and American membership in the their votes to McClellan's lead." League was the most important parliamentary This shortcoming hardly lessens the substan­ battle in the history of the Republic. This feel­ tial contribution of this outstanding study. No ing, while it added conviction to the struggle, historian can write authoritatively on McCar­ now appears somewhat inflated, for the history thy, the anti-Communist complex, or partisan of the League probably would not have been politics in the early 1950's without consulting substantially different given United States this book. membership. Nevertheless, though no band of angels, the "batallion of death" stood firm in MICHAEL O'BRIEN the assurance that they and they alone pos­ Wisconsin State University—Stevens Point sessed the courage to protect the proven value of freedom of action in American foreign policy. The Irreconcilables: Tfie Fight Against The League of Nations. By Ralph Stone. (The Uni­ The reader finishes the book wishing that versity Press of Kentucky, Lexington, 1970. Stone's five-page concluding chapter had ex­ Pp. 182. Notes, appendix, bibliographical es­ plored in greater depth the fundamental issues say, index, $9.95.) concerning collective security raised by the ir­ reconcilables. In addition, one wonders why In a day when the Executive branch of the the myth that the League (or the United Na­ federal government erroneously seeks to label tions) would become "a dictatorial superstate"

313 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1971 has persisted? The misuse of the term "isola­ dynamic period, with a reminder here and tionist" by Wilson during the Treaty fight and there of Populist hopes, of Declaration of In­ by many politicians and historians since might dependence hopes, of Kingdom of God hopes—• well serve as the basis for another study linking the landless would have land, racism would be the League period to our own day. set aside, the national government would serve all of the people on the basis of their particular DENNIS PHILLIPS needs. These hopes emerged haltingly in a University of Wisconsin framework of political expediency, and then faded out almost completely in the same way. The author lets the record speak, as Will Alexander makes his constructive contribu­ tions; as the hopeful Tenant-Purchase Bill of Senator John Bankhead and Congressman Cry from the Cotton: The Southern Tenant Marvin Jones is emasculated before it is Farmers' Union and the New Deal. By DONALD passed; as President J. R. Butler of the STFU H. GRUBBS. (University of North Carolina winds his uncertain way through complicated Press, Chapel Hill, 1971. Pp. xvi, 218. Iflustra- situations; as Cully Cobb and Chester Davis tions, notes, bibliography, index. $8.50.) represent firmly the traditional conservative cotton planters and succeed in unseating the re­ Here is a good social history, the kind of formers by Deep South political strategy; as social history we need more of. Maybe a bit Don Henderson follows the Communist line; as overdocumented, but it's better to err on that Gardner Jackson in Washington unstintingly side than on the other. The major title. Cry supports the STFU, insists on harmony, and from the Cotton, leaves room for the whole finally parts ways with Mitchell and his Union; story, from the slave plantations and poor as Howard (Buck) Kester, religiously oriented, whites of the old Southeast more than a century steps bravely into the thick of the violent re­ ago to today's inner city's problems of erst­ action of the planters to STFU activities; as while small cotton farmers, sharecroppers, and John L. Lewis remains safely aloof; as Mrs. day laborers rendered surplus in recent years Mary Connor Myers collects facts about share­ on the better level lands by power-driven ma­ cropper conditions that prove too unpopular in chines and chemical weedkillers, and elsewhere places of power for publication; as President by cattle growing and tree farming. The sub­ Roosevelt expresses guarded sympathy for the title. The Southern Tenant Farmers' Union and sharecroppers, understands the politics in­ the New Deal, focuses on the Cry in the 1930's volved, and sets up the Farm Security Adminis­ with minimal attention to matters before or tration; as Norman Thomas goes to bat again after that decade. The first brief chapter has a and again for the hard-pressed elements of the few paragraphs on plantation backgrounds and Southern population; as Rexf ord Tugwell finds the last five pages of the book bring the story it difficult to be himself in all the confusion; as of Harry Leland ("Mitch" ) MitcheU, the prin­ Henry Wallace tries to carry out some of his cipal subject, up through 1970. democratic ideals in a situation basically un­ democratic; and as the charismatic Reverend Though delimitation of material is praise­ Claude Williams points to the Promised Land, worthy, it is somewhat unexpected to find only gets beat up because of his identification with a locality reference to the "STFU's Hillhouse the STFU, and then is expelled by it. Cooperative in Northern Mississippi" (Delta Cooperative Farms), organized in 1936; and Only one basic inadequacy was noted: on no mention of either the National Sharecrop­ page 8 reference is made to the sharecropper pers Fund, set up in 1936, which gave financial working "on halves": says the author, "half and other support to the STFU, or of the re­ of the proceeds of the cropper's cotton goes to form-slanted Southern Conference for Human the landlord, who had furnished the cropper Welfare with southwide meetings in Birming­ with everything he needs to make the crop, ham in 1938 and Chattanooga in 1940. from shack to seeds." This gives the erroneous The book is rightfully compact, with Mitchell impression that the sharecropper received the and all the other characters (and they are other half. Not so: half of the crop went direct­ legion) playing their many-faceted roles. Any­ ly to the landlord, and out of the other half the one who knows what was going on in the sharecropper paid, usually at high carrying thirties will welcome Grubb's treatment of it; charges, for advances made to him on which to anyone who doesn't know can learn a great live while the crop was being produced—food, deal about it by reading this book. It was a clothing, patent medicines—and beyond that

314 BOOK REVIEWS

often for half of the fertilizer and seed. Some­ the publisher promotes the volumes as a text, times the sharecropper received some cash at and the two volumes divide at the traditional settlement time; often he ended up in debt. point, after the Civil War. Two other books from Chapel Hill that wear All thirty-two historians represented by the well with this one are Rupert Vance's Human books under review are well-known within the Factors in Cotton Culture (1929), and Sidney historical profession and some outside it. Gar­ Baldwin's Poverty and Politics: The Rise and raty deliberately sought to provide "an authori­ Decline of the Farm Security Administration tative overview of American history and of (1968). contemporary historical scholarship," in line with his textbook aim, by selecting the "best ARTHUR F. RAPER men" in each field from the "present day his­ Oakton, Virginia torical establishment." Most men, as he points out, therefore are middle-aged or older (some in their seventies), hold chairs in distinguished The Uncompleted Past. By MARTIN DUBERMAN. institutions, are or have headed the major na­ (Random House, New York, 1969. Pp. xiii, tional historical societies, and have won many 375. Index. $7.95.) prizes and honors, including nine Pulitzer Prizes as of 1969. Thus, Bernard Bailyn talks Interpreting American History: Conversations on the American Revolution, Richard Morris with Historians. Edited by JOHN A. GARRATY. on the Confederation and Constitution, Stanley (Macmillan Company, New York and London, Elkins on slavery, Ray Billington on the fron­ 1970. 1 vol. and 2 vols. Pp. x, 367, 334. Illus­ tier, T. Harry Williams on the Civil War, David trations. Cloth, $10.95; paper, $4.95 each.) Donald on Reconstruction, C. Vann Woodward The Politics of History. By HOWARD ZINN. on the Negro in American life, George Mowry (Beacon Press, Boston, 1970. Pp. x, 390. Notes, on the Progressive movement, Arthur Link on index. $7.50.) World War I, William Leuchtenburg on the New Deal, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., on political and social change from 1941-1968, and many The historian learns little new in these other scholars as famous as these speak with volumes in either content or form despite authority on the fields they helped shape. Gar­ appearances to the contrary. Both the Duber­ raty specifically omitted the so-called "New man and Zinn volumes are mainly collections Left" historians, like Howard Zinn, from his of previously published essays and book re­ interpreters. Yet Zinn is as famous in the pro­ views. Some of the Duberman selections ap­ fession, and perhaps more so outside the pear in their third or fourth version in The academy, as all but a few of those selected by Uncompleted Past. While the specific pieces by Garraty. A professor of political science at the twenty-nine eminent historians in the Gar­ Boston University, he published his disserta­ raty anthology see print for the first time, all tion as La Guardia in Congress and five other the interpretations naturally accord with the books, besides the present one, among which previously well-known views of these men. are The Southern Mystique, SNCC: The New Garraty's volumes, however, use a new form Abolitionists, and Vietnam: The Logic of Witfi- of question and answer in conversational for­ drawal. His articles appear in such establish­ mat to present these well-known views. Garraty, ment journals as the New York Times and a professor of history at Columbia University Harpers as well as Ramparts and the Nation. and author of several biographies, interviewed He is a scholar-activist who made headlines in each historian with a tape recorder. He then 1968 when he and Father Daniel Berrigan went reduced each transcribed conversation to a to Hanoi to receive three United States fliers chapter. Each historian then edited the tran­ from North Vietnam. Duberman is equally rec- scription, sometimes extensively, to produce osjnized outside the historical profession for his the final chapters of the two volumes. Thus the plays, especially In White America, his drama final version of each conversation reads very criticism for Partisan Review, and book re­ much like a standard chapter in any other text­ viewing for the New York Times, Book Week, book for a college survey course in United and many other periodicals. Educated at Yale States history. The resemblance is enhanced and Harvard, he wrote two prize-winning with the addition of the now-usual chapters on biographies of abolitionists, taught at Prince­ cultural and economic history to the customary ton when he wrote these pieces, and now holds framework of political events. Instead of a a chair at the City University of New York. In bibliography, the second volume concludes short, all of these men are part of the establish- with a conversation on historiography. In fact.

315 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1971 ment so far as scholarly credentials go, are in their approach to the American past. eminent in and out of the profession, and are at Most of them admit that the conflict least ten years older than the magic age of of class, race, and war on which Zinn concen­ thirty. trates did happen but they feel that the United What divides these historians then is not States' history is better understood by studying their eminence, age, or credentials but their the values shared by the majority of Americans espoused aims for history and the implications throughout their history than dissent by minor­ those aims have for what they stress in the ities from these ideals. With some exceptions, American past. Garraty, Duberman, and Zinn these historians see American society as more all want to make the past relevant to the present open than closed in social class and mobility, but see the results in quite different lights with picture power as more distributed among the diverse conclusions. Zinn espouses "radical his­ people than in the hands of any elite, and feel tory" for the political end of changing current that on balance the American system worked American society and politics. For him, history rather well when compared to other societies like all knowledge possesses the power to sensi­ in the world. In fact, most portray the United tize people to the false ideology of their times, States as an exceptional society unique in the thereby persuading people to change the system good fortune of its heritage. While racism, from supporting racism and violence at home class, and war occurred in American history, and abroad to humane ends. Historians ought they feel that this was neither the conscious nor therefore to write and teach toward four ends: unconscious aim of most Americans nor of a to "expose the pretensions of governments," to conspiratorial elite. For them, American beliefs intensify "perceptions of how bad things are, were not a false ideology propagated by an ex­ for the victims of the world," to expose the ploitative elite but a true reflection of the reali­ ideology that pervades the American culture ties of a relatively open and homogeneous so­ for what it is—a "rationale for the going ciety with the minor but tragic exception of order"—and to "recapture those few moments black and red men. Thus, most of the historians in the past which show the possibility of a bet­ in Garraty's volume talk about past and nresent ter way of life than that which has dominated political leaders and view the world through the earth thus far." He sees the traditional his­ their eyes. In fact, to some this is the only true torian's belief in objectivity as a disguise for way to approach the study of past reality, or inactivity and a support for the established at least this is how the editor, so fond of politi­ order of racism, social inequality, aggression, cal biography himself, has presented their and violence domestically and overseas. Rather, views. morality must pervade the historian's research and teaching. "To be truly radical is to main­ Duberman seems torn between his sympathy tain a set of transcendental beliefs (yes, ab­ for the humane ends advocated by Zinn and the solutes) by which to judge and thus to trans­ traditional notions of objectivity espoused bv form any particular social system." All social his teachers in the Garraty volume. His book systems are bad. and the American one par­ is a diary of the change in one liberal's outlook ticularly so as his substantive sections on class on the world during the 1960's. The young inequality, race, and nationalistic aggression might see The Uncompleted Past as naught try to show. Throughout the essays on theory but an "ego trip" for the author in his and in practice he particularly castigates lib­ Weltschmerz. Here is an intellectual who feels eralism as just another ideology of delusion that his world is and ought to be the world of and inhumanity, for in the end it too supports everyman. Thus, the sections of his book each the worst features of the establishment like any begin with the definite article The: "The Pro­ other set of beliefs. Although Zinn believes fession of History," "The Movement," "The morality should pervade the historian's selec­ Crisis of the Universities." Under these titles, tion of problems to investigate and the ends to Duberman talks principally about his impres­ which he directs history, he does not believe sions of the limits and possibilities of the his­ that facts should be distorted to fit preconceived torian's craft as he reviewed books of others, notions, moral or otherwise. how his impressions of the possibilities of the civil rights movement changed over time, and That moral ends must distort the evidence his experience with students at Princeton dur­ of the past as well as direct the ends of the his­ ing a turbulent decade for academia. At the torian is just the fear so often expressed by the end of the decade and the book, Duberman historians in Garraty's anthology. Garraty is wonders whether historians in general, and he frank in admitting that the historians he inter­ in particular, are of any worth in the present viewed represented the "consensus school" calamities and whether the past can really be

316 BOOK REVIEWS

understood in any basic way. In short, he can­ The lack of an adequate explanatory frame­ not reconcile the larger world of politics and work for men's actions in Zinn's book also life with the smaller world of the historian. leads the reader to wonder how useful radical Duberman's dilemma points up the basic history will be in changing men's actions as problem with the thinking of almost all the opposed to their minds, for in the end, Zinn, historians in these four volumes. With few ex­ like Duberman, subscribes to a theory of mo­ ceptions all espouse larger moral ends for his­ tivation as causation in human affairs. That is torical understanding, but they differ about the why he can urge radical consciousness as the basic model of society requisite for analysis chief goal of the historian's efforts. But, here for any moral end. Zinn is as contradictory in again, he does not show how this consciousness of the actors' past or present accomplishes any his own essays on the nature of American so­ action. He merely posits without proof that it ciety in its fundamentals as he differs from does in his essays. Perhaps, if he looked into some of the authors in Garraty. In fact, Zinn the model that Bailyn uses in analyzing the and Duberman at a fundamental level possess Revolution, he would see both the possibilities the same unsophisticated approach to the an­ and the limits of consciousness as ideology or alysis of society and culture as so many of the otherwise in explaining social change. Ideas historical establishment in the Garraty vol­ are needed, but so are certain structural fea­ umes. The picture of the past may be gloomy tures in the situations to allow these ideas to for one and happy for the other, but both sides operate. Neither ideas nor actions nor social demonstrate weak causal analysis. Bailyn on structure alone, but all in varying combina­ the Revolution and Diamond on the European tions at different times seem to make things basis of American Civilization were among the happen in the past as well as the present. If few writers in these volumes who showed any this is so, then almost all the historians in application of a complicated approach to cau­ these books, regardless of whose side they sation and the workings of society. Perhaps cheer, need to add elements to their analysis Duberman is the best illustration of the prob­ to achieve the ends they espouse. Otherwise lem. He seeks the explanation of human actions they fool themselves as much as they fool their solely in terms of men's motives. Given his sym­ readers. pathy for the abolitionists of the 1840's and the neo-abolitionists of the 1960's, he must believe ROBERT F. BERKHOFER, JR. that the professed goals of men are frequently University of Wisconsin the main motivation for their actions; other­ wise he agrees with those who see reformers as driven by their subconscious neuroses. Whether he sees motives as conscious or unconscious however, he cannot discover them adequately Crusade for the Children: A History of the in past men to give him the complete explana­ National Child Labor Committee and Child tion he so urgently craves, for he lacks suffi­ Labor Reform in America. By WALTER I. cient evidence on one hand and must use an TRATTNER (Quadrangle Books, Chicago, 1970. elaborate theoretical framework alien to him Pp. 319. Illustrations. $10.00.) on the other. Even worse, it is doubtful that historical events can be explained solely by A considerable portion of the development reference to the participants' pictures of the of American wealth, both agricultural and in­ situation or their motives. Other factors often dustrial, was built out of the bodies of slaves unknown to the participants operate in many and young children. Slavery was done away cases of historical events, and so Duberman's with in 1863. Child labor has not altogether model of explanation is doubly weak. The disappeared: it is still used and abused in mi­ frustration he finds in reconstructing the ex­ grant farm-work families. In fact, the bulk of planation of the past does not bother him as industrial child labor was made illegal only a playwright, for then he creates the motives during the depression years of the thirties. of his characters and manipulates their actions This book by a history and social welfare according to his model of men and their be­ professor at the University of Wisconsin—• havior. Perhaps this accounts, as much as his Milwaukee is the story of how an organization pessimism about current American life, for fought for child welfare from 1900 to the pres­ ent. This group of people called the National why he seems to wish to leave history-writing Child Labor Committee, fought all the battles for play-writing at the end of the decade. known to reformers in its seven decades, and

317 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1971 it is still at work. They tried getting state laws passed; they twice passed federal legislation only to have the Supreme Court declare the laws unconstitutional; and they tried a con­ stitutional amendment. They finaUy succeeded by executive order during the time when emer­ gency powers were being used to fight the ravages of the depression. The history is one of fighting the Southern textile miflowners, the glass factory owners, the mine owners, and the National Association of Manufacturers, organized labor, the hierar­ chy of the Roman Catholic Church, and at one period, most of the newspapers. The National Child Labor Committee had many allies, the most important of which was simply public opinion, which grew more and more in favor of controlling the use of children in the labor market. Reformers have become used to having the bulk of voters in favor of something, only to find politicians paying more attention to the rich and powerful people such as those who run Society's Iconographic Collections the National Association of Manufacturers. Clement L. Vallandigham. The kind of activity the National Child Labor Committee tried to eliminate from American life was the use of children from six to fourteen years of age working in the humid, The Limits of Dissent: Clement L. Vallandig­ lint-filled spindle rooms of textile mills; young ham and the Civil War. By FRANK L. KLEMENT. boys six to fourteen working in the anthracite (The University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, mines; young boys working in the furnace 1971. Pp. xii, 351. Illustrations, notes, bibli­ rooms of glass factories. The average working ography, index. $10.50.) day was eleven hours. The children, if they dozed off, were doused with cold water or Few figures of the Civil War era were as beaten. In 1900 there were two million workers controversial or notorious as Clement L. between the ages of ten and fifteen and many Vallandigham of Ohio, the most outspoken of more under ten who were not even counted in the "Peace Democrats" and a harsh critic of the census. They were paid very little, at most the Lincoln Administration. To Republicans, a few cents per hour. Included in the excuses he was an out-and-out traitor, "the most un­ for such practices were that they kept the chil­ popular man in the North;" to many Demo­ dren off the streets and, besides, without such crats, his arrest for encouraging disloyalty and cheap labor, the industries would go bankrupt. subsequent conviction by a military court made The basic facts about child labor, the organ­ him a martyr to the cause of free speech. ization of the National Child Labor Committee, Frank L. Klement's biography of Vallandig­ its trials and tribulations over seventy years ham is the first scholarly appraisal of this Cop­ are well and clearly reported in this history. perhead leader's career. In it, Vaflandigham For those of us who are concerned about child emerges as a dogmatic, inflexible, and ambi­ welfare, it is full of useful information. For tious politician, who misjudged both the poli­ those of us interested in the process of success­ tical situation in the North and the ultimate ful reform, it describes the virtues of hopeful aims of the South. Nonetheless, Klement feels persistence, a sound knowledge base and hard Vaflandigham has been unfairly treated by his­ work. All of those interested in American his­ torians, and a good part of the book is an at­ tory beyond military and political develop­ tempt to dispel the myths and misconceptions ments will find this book is more than which surround his name. As in his important satisfactory. earlier work, Copperfieads of the Middle West, Klement skillfully discusses such bases of anti­ MARTIN B. LOEB war sentiment as Western sectionalism, oppo­ University of Wisconsin sition to arbitrary arrests and the draft, and

318 BOOK REVIEWS racism. He denies that Vallandigham was in­ war critics, Vallandigham never developed a volved in any secret treasonable activities, and forward-looking critique of administration pol­ insists he never urged resistance to the draft icies. His slogan, "the Union as it was, the or other laws. Constitution as it is," was, at the war's outset, Although Klement is by no means sympa­ accepted by almost afl Northerners. Yet as the thetic to many of Vallandigham's views, the war progressed most—though not Vallandig­ book does represent a partial rehabilitation of ham—came to endorse Lincoln's alternative the Copperhead leader. At times it seems as if dictum, "the dogmas of the quiet past are in­ Klement accepts Vallandigham's own analysis adequate for the stormy present." of the political situation, as in such dubious as­ sertions as "Lincoln became a servant of New ERIC FONER England and industrialism," and "Vallandig­ Columbia University ham and Lincoln saw eye to eye" on Recon­ struction. Moreover, Klement seems to slough over some of Vallandigham's more question­ able actions. During his brief exile to the Con­ federacy in 1863, for example, Vallandigham Maury Maverick: A Political Biography. By advised Southerners that if they held out until RICHARD B. HENDERSON. (University of Texas the following year a new, peace-oriented ad­ Press, Austin, 1970. Pp. xxiii, 386. Photo­ ministration would be elected in the North, and graphs, notes, bibliography, index. $8.50.) he warned that any invasion of the North would solidify Lincoln's support. Did this not border Maury Maverick stuck out from the Southern on giving aid and comfort to the enemy? conservatism of his day like a sore thumb. For According to Klement, Vallandigham occu­ that reason it is unfortunate that Mr. Hender­ pied a "middle position" in the midwestern son has seemed to grasp only the thumb, and Democracy, opposing both the War Democrats not the man. The biography is, to be sure, who supported the administration, and the heavily documented, but overwhelmingly anec­ more extreme peace men who endorsed the dotal and surprisingly superficial when it Southern cause. He always insisted his goals comes to discussing such important themes as were peace and union. But his specific peace Maverick's shifting stands on isolation, civil plans, which included a proposal for an armi­ rights, and racism. The reader is made well stice, European mediation, and a national pres­ aware of these changes, but not of why they idential election in 1864, were, as Klement occurred. The book is subtitled A Political notes, "quite vague and impractical." It may Biography, and perhaps this is the author's be that Vallandigham never really decided excuse for not presenting the reader with the which of his twin goals had the higher priority. private as well as the public man. Most "politi­ Far from being the inflexible dogmatist pic­ cal biographies" are thus, not out of choice, tured by Klement, Vallandigham may be seen but because there are no private papers, and as inconsistent and vacillating, and having no the public man is all that is visible. Such is not real alternative to the course pursued by the the case here, as the bibliographical essay President. indicates. Vallandigham was not a pacifist—he ardent­ One of the major problems in biographical ly supported the Mexican War and called its literature is the placing of the subject in the opponents traitors. His opposition to the Civil context of his time (present, past, and future). War was political and legal, and it is on this In this area, too, the book is somewhat defi­ basis that it must be judged. On the one hand, cient. Maverick, for example, played an im­ Vallandigham recognized that the line between portant role in Franklin Roosevelt's wartime dissent and treason can be obliterated in war­ agencies, but the author restricts his narrative time and he helped establish the principle to Maverick's work in the agencies without giv­ that the prosecution of a war must not be an ing the reader a feeling for the nature of the excuse for the suppression of basic civil liber­ agencies themselves (which may well have ex­ ties. On the other hand, there is no question plained some of Maverick's actions). Further­ that his backward-looking political conserva­ more, a greater familiarity with the period in tism was anachronistic and inflexible, that general would have prevented Henderson from racism was a major prop of his antiwar out­ making such mistakes as saying that the Gava- look, and that, far from recognizing the role of gan Anti-Lynching Bill failed in the House of slavery in bringing about the war, he blamed Representatives (page 141). The negative vote the conflict on the abolitionists. Unlike today's Henderson cites was taken on proposed amend-

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ments to the bill. The bill itself passed in the House but was supplanted in the Senate by the Wagner-Van Nuys Bill. Finally, the author makes much of Maver­ ick's prophecies for the future. While the reader should recognize from the book that Maverick was a perceptive man of broad inter­ ests, there may arise some question as to whether the Congressman's batting average was quite as close to 1,000 as is indicated. One tends to wonder, in fact, whether Maury ever guessed wrong—except, of course, in his ability to get elected. Henderson concludes the biography with a reference to Maverick's "love affair with his land, his people, and his Texas heritage," but, considering the painfully short time in national and local office given to him by his constituents, it appears that Maverick the thinker may have been of more significance than Maverick the political doer. This is why an insight of Maury the man is so important, and it is perhaps why the absence of such is so tragic. Society's Iconographic Collections Albert J. Beveridge in 1906. MICHAEL S. HOLMES University of Wisconsin—Parkside

monumental biographies of John Marshall and Abraham Lincoln. The present work is the second good biogra­ Albert J. Beveridge: American Nationalist. By phy of Beveridge. Its predecessor, Claude G. JOHN BRAEMAN. (University of Chicago Press, Bowers' Beveridge and the Progressive Era Chicago, 1971. Pp. x, 370. Bibliographical (Boston, 1931), appeared soon after his death notes, index. $12.50.) and was the work of a friend and admirer. Despite certain obvious biases of sympathy and Albert J. Beveridge is a biographer's dream shortcomings of perspective. Bowers' Beveridge subject. He was a leading public figure, who as contained a lively portrait of the man's per­ Senator from Indiana from 1899 to 1911 sonality, conveying a clear sense of his burn­ played important parts in the two great politi­ ing ambition and ceaseless activity as well as, cal events of his time, imperialist expansion perhaps unintentionally, his consuming vanity and the emergence of progressive reform. and egotism. The greatest tribute to Bowers' Later, he fought in the front rank of Theodore depiction of the personal side of Beveridge Roosevelt's Progressive party and in the "batal­ comes with Braeman's treatment, which, lion of death" which opposed American mem­ though sharpening some emphases and offering bership in the League of Nations. At the same a number of corrections in detail, reproduces time, Beveridge was a reflective, articulate ob­ basically the same portrait. In other areas Brae­ server of the events in which he participated, man supplants Bowers. He presents a vivid, and he left a luminous record of his observa­ incisive examination of the various political tions in a steady output of magazine writing contexts in which Beveridge operated—the and correspondence with a circle of close hard-fought factionalism of the Indiana Re­ friends who included novelist David Graham publicans, the intrigues and maneuverings with­ Phillips, editors George Horace Lorimer and in the Senate, and the highly personalized in­ Albert Shaw, and businessmen-politicians fighting among the Progressives. Braeman George W. Perkins and John C. Shaffer. Also, likewise scrutinizes Beveridge's historical re­ after leaving oifice Beveridge made probably search and critically dissects his interpretations the most successful transition of any American of Marshall, Lincoln, and their political con­ from an active political career to distinguished texts. As a result, Braeman offers a vastly im­ historical scholarship when he produced his proved understanding of Beveridge as a public

320 BOOK REVIEWS

figure, especially as a practical politician, and disdain for economic concerns as unheroic, as a scholar. coupled with promotion of social welfare mea­ This book has other praiseworthy qualities, sures for the sake of national unity in meeting too. Braeman's research unquestionably de­ foreign challenges. In Roosevelt's case, with serves to be called exhaustive. Not only has he his patrician background and cosmpolitan up­ made full use of Beveridge's own extensive and bringing, it is easy to see how he came by such rewarding papers, but he has also examined all views. Beveridge, by contrast, was a self-made the relevant manuscript collections of Beve­ man who rarely left his native Middle West ridge's contemporaries and delved into news­ and did not travel abroad until after his elec­ papers and local records. Equally impressive tion to the Senate. Yet, as Braeman recounts, is the grace with which Braeman resists im­ from youth onward he scorned "materialism" pulses to show off the considerable digging that and declared as a college student, "I would be went into his work. Rather, he presents a well- willing to go to hell if I could make a reputa­ paced, unfailingly interesting, often exciting tion as great as Napoleon" (page 10). account of Beveridge's career. Unfortunately, Beveridge's political outlook becomes even the briskness and becoming brevity of the book more remarkable in view of what Braeman re­ also point to its chief flaw. In presenting a lates about the persistent coolness between him spare, fast-moving narrative Braeman passes up and Roosevelt. Despite their near identity of many excellent chances for analysis of Bever­ basic views, the President never liked or idge's views and approach to politics. This is worked closely with his senatorial supporter, not to say that the book is entirely unanalytical. and after both men had left office Beveridge's As the subtitle suggests, Braeman finds the key initial admiration curdled over Roosevelt's to Beveridge's political outlook in his passion­ callous disregard for the Progressive party. ate nationalism. He also makes clear at several Interestingly, too, when the two men differed, points how Beveridge was a self-consciously it was Beveridge who almost invariably pushed conservative reformer who wished to amelio­ the imperialistic viewpoint further. Whereas rate specified conditions in order to prevent Roosevelt developed doubts about the wisdom possible turmoil and forestall more radical of retaining the Philippines because of their changes. vulnerability to Japanese attack, Beveridge The drawback of the morsels of interpreta­ never wavered in his faith that the Stars and tion which Braeman presents is that they Stripes should wave over the islands forever. amount to only a startins; point for a truly per­ Similarly, the Hoosier shared none of his ceptive assessment. For example, he uses chief's fondness for diplomatic partnership Beveridge's assertion that he was "an American with Britain. He wished to see the United States Nationalist with a big 'A' and a big 'N' " (page rise to primacy in seapower, and during the 323) as if the statement supplied a self- First World War he became decidedly pro- explanatory concept. Instead of probing the German, out of both admiration for the Teu­ values and emotional projections which com­ tonic fusion of militarism and social welfare prised that "Nationalism," Braeman simply and a longing to see America profit from a comments that Beveridge "was a worshiper of British defeat. order, efficiency, and material progress" (page The significance of Beveridge's views is 273). What kind of order, with what groups in much broader than the man himself. After all, what positions? Efficiency at what costs and the most ardent exponent of an aristocratic- to whose benefit? Progress toward what ends militarist outlook was not, like Roosevelt or and at what expense? These are the kinds of Henry and Brooks Adams or Henry Cabot questions one would like to see explored. Lodge, from a disaffected, frequently expatri­ The most intriguing and significant problem ated upper crust. He was the product of Ameri­ about Beveridge, which Braeman also does lit­ ca's middle-class heartland, a would-be Middle tle to elucidate, is how he came to hold his Border Bonaparte. The genesis and nurture of peculiar political outlook. It has long been re­ Beveridge's views raise disturbing questions cognized that Beveridge virtually duplicated about the potentialities within American cul­ Theodore Roosevelt, first in his aggressive, ture and society in the decades following the imperialistic views of foreign affairs and later Civil War. The answers to such questions could in his philosophically conservative approach to yield important insights into what happened to domestic reform. Both men embodied the the country in those turn-of-the-century dec­ closest American equivalent to contemporary ades which witnessed imperial expansion, British "Tory democracy" and Bismarck's po­ myriad efforts at internal reform, and eventual sition in Germany—an essentially aristocratic entry into global conflict. It is regrettable that

321 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1971

Braeman has not explored these questions. If he Orient similar to the type of nation they were had, he might have written the great biography trying to establish at home. Their conflict was that Beveridge so plainly deserves. one of tactics not of ultimate purpose. There are several criticisms of Israel's work JOHN MILTON COOPER, JR. which need to be raised. In the first place, University of Wisconsin while the author makes clear the importance that fear of Japan had in leading Americans along the path of co-operation, he still leaves his reader feeling that the nation's policy makers were motivated primarily by ideolog­ Progressivism and the Open Door: America ical factors [i.e., the gospel of efficiency) and and China, 1905-1921. By JERRY ISRAEL. (Uni­ only secondarily by consideration of interna­ versity of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 1971. tional politics. And this is, indeed, a tenuous Pp. xxiv, 222. Notes, bibliography, index. position to hold. What is missing is sufficient $9.95.) analysis of the political and economic relation­ ships between the great powers in the Far East. Professor Israel has written an interesting In this respect Professor Israel might have and valuable study of America's open door done well to consult the opening chapters of policy during the progressive era. What makes Akira Iriye's excellent After Imperialism, even Israel's work different from other accounts of though Iriye writes of the period after 1919. the open door is his attempt to link that policy Secondly, Israel neglects an important facet to domestic progressivism, to show, in other of the interrelationship of progressivism and words, that Americans viewed and reacted to foreign policy in which the concept of efficiency conditions in the Far East in the same way they played a particularly relevant role, namely the responded to problems at home. organizational preparations made by the na­ Taking his cue from William Leuchtenberg's tion's leadership community to capture for­ landmark essay suggesting the relationship be­ eign trade—including that of the Far East. tween domestic reformism and progressive im­ Impressed by Germany's ability in foreign perialism, Israel emphasizes the conceptual markets, these leaders attributed Germany's framework behind the nation's China policy. success to her overall corporate efficiency and Noting that recent students of the progressive modeled their own efforts in developing over­ movement have broken from the traditional seas commerce along German lines. Much of political approach to progressivism in order to the talk about co-operation, which Israel em­ examine questions of content, he proposes to do phasizes in international terms, actually con­ the same for foreign policy. cerned domestic co-operation in order to pro­ mote trade. Israel's link between progressivism and the open door is the gospel of efficiency, especially Finally, Israel suggests that the United States its emphasis on co-operation. Arguing that during the progressive era directed its attention domestically progressives sought to replace the more to the Far East than any other non-Euro­ creed of competition with that of co-operation pean area of the world. Such sentiment is, per­ under the guise of efficiency, he maintains that haps, to be expected given Israel's special in­ with respect to China many of them sought also terest. But there is at least equal evidence to to substitute co-operation among nations for indicate that the nation's leaders turned in­ international competition. But just as there creasingly away from the Far East and towards were those who opposed the domestic move­ Latin America, which, they believed, offered ment towards co-operation, there were those greater commercial opportunity, especially who opposed a similar co-operative movement since completion of the Panama Canal would in foreign affairs. The result finally was a deli­ open the whole west coast of South America to cate compromise between a competitive and trade development. Thus, Israel's remark that co-operative stance with respect to China. during World War I "China, always the future "Finding the middle ground, the classic bal­ Eldorado, took on added significance as per­ ance, the acceptable compromise," Israel con­ haps the last prize to be left after the war's cludes, "was the legacy of the first two decades destruction" is at least questionable. of the twentieth century at home and in China." Nevertheless, these criticisms should not de­ But even those who fought the movement tract from the overall importance of Israel's towards co-operation, Israel makes clear, study. The author has established what other shared the determination of other progressives historians have neglected—an ideological link to create an efficient, harmonious nation in the between domestic and foreign issues. He has

322 BOOK REVIEWS

portant members of a "blundering generation" responsible for leading the nation to disunion and conflict, they are now relegated to the back­ benches by scholars more concerned with the junctures at which social structure, ideology, A' -'Mia; and economics meet. And yet presumably a biography of a Southern fire-eater—especially one considered to be an "ideal type" such as Louis T. Wigfall—could illuminate the shad­ owy area where men and "forces" confront each other, leaving visible marks on both. This, unfortunately, Alvy L. King does not do in the first fufl-scale biography of Wigfafl. To a consideraljle extent, the fault rests in the nature of Wigfafl's career and with the ma­ terials left behind for his biographer. A man of high birth but of limited means, Wigfafl's in­ fluence—and therefore his importance—was uneven during the three decades of his public Society's Iconographic Collections life. His few personal papers, concentrated on Students at the Canton Y.M.C.A. Commercial Day his Confederate years, reflect this unevenness. School in 1910. A native of South Carolina where he developed an ideological and temperamental affinity for the habits of the Southern aristocracy, Wigfall moved to Texas in 1846 after his short-lived bolstered his position with a wide variety of legal and political career had ended in disgrace primary and secondary materials, including and penury. He was more successful in Texas the infrequently used papers of the American where he became an important voice (if not Red Cross and the YMCA. Without neglecting power) within the state's Democratic party. more wefl-known personages, he has found a More strident in his states' rights views than place in his study for the lesser-known but still most Texas Democrats during the 1850's, Wig­ important journalists, humanitarians, and ed­ fall catapulted into a position of leadership in ucators who also made their impact on policy 1859 when, after John Brown's raid at Harper's formulation. As a result, he has offered addi­ Ferry (and, according to King, because of tional dimension to the history of America's Brown's action), he was selected as a United China policy during the progressive era. States Senator and thus given an opportunity to carry his extreme defense of the Southern position to the nation's capital. BURTON I. KAUFMAN Throughout 1860 and the early months of Louisiana State University in Netv Orleans 1861, the Texas senator championed his states' rights positions and heaped scorn upon afl an­ tagonists. Even after Texas seceded from the Union on March 2, 1861, Wigfafl remained in Louis T. Wigfall: SouthemFire-eater. By ALVY the Senate where he acted both as a gadfly and L. KING. (Louisiana State University Press, a covert spy for the newly formed Confederacy. Baton Rouge, 1970. Pp. ix, 259. Notes, bibli­ In late March, however, he left Washington to ographical essay, index. $10.00.) begin his mission as a Confederate politician championing the interests of the military. Dur­ ing the next four years Wigfall served as a Southern fire-eaters present difficult prob­ Texas senator to the Confederate Congress. lems for contemporary historians—especially Here he voiced a continual defense of the for those who choose to be their biographers. Southern cause—especiafly its most aristocrat­ Men of passionate tempers whose raging voices ic tendencies. He insisted that afl other con­ articulated certain of the South's grievances in siderations be subordinated to the necessities the decades before the Civil War, they general­ of military victory, and he quarreled incessant­ ly stood on the periphery of even their own ly with Jefferson Davis over the latter's conduct region's political consciousness until events of the Confederate war effort. At this time, Wig­ conspired to push their voices to the forefront. fafl's influence, disruptive in the main, was per­ Although once considered by historians as im­ haps at its height. King, in fact, claims that

323 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1971

"With the possible exception of Jefferson Davis logical predispositions, the North represented himself, there was no greater contributor to . . . a real threat to the continued hegemony of the disastrous internal dissension than Louis Southern aristocracy within a slave society. Wigfafl." And, as a man who perceived his interests as Wigfall, then, was a significant if not con­ being identical with those of the large-planter sistently influential figure during his public class, Wigfall suffered the impending threat career. His views were always too extreme, his personally as well as ideologically. temperament too combustible for him to act King's failure to emphasize the rationality of in the major arena. Nor was he a seminal Wigfafl's perceptions and consequent actions thinker who left an impressive body of material largely emanates from the limited setting he has explaining his positions and justifying his constructed for his subject. Despite an initial visceral loyalties. Rather, Wigfafl's importance attempt to sketch South Carolina society as rests largely with his disruptive actions during Wigfall knew it during his youth. King's major the war—actions motivated by his commitment concerns are with the deeds of his protagonist. to the preservation of Southern independence As a result, he is not totally successful in his at­ and the hegemony of the Southern aristocracy. tempt to play Wigfall off against the Southern It was the very intensity of this commitment aristocracy as a class. Nor does King compare which led Wigfall to his intemperate attacks Wigfall with other fire-eaters in an effort to upon Davis and Davis's war policies. Yet King comment on the larger phenomenon of political underplays the importance of these larger agitation. And Wigfall simply cannot bear the ideological considerations. Instead, he chooses burden of a narrowly conceived biography by to portray Wigfall as an exemplar of Richard himself. Hofstadter's "paranoid style" of American politics. Admittedly, Wigfall exaggerated the FLOYD J. MILLER villainy of the opposition. Yet, given his ideo­ Hiram College

BOOK REVIEWS:

Adler, British Investment in American Rail­ Klement, The Limits of Dissent: Clement L. ways, 1834-1898, reviewed by Peter J. Vallandigham and the Civil War, reviewed Coleman 310 by Eric Foner 318 Braeman, Albert J. Beveridge: American Na­ King, Louis T. Wigfall: Southern Fire-eater, tionalist, reviewed by John Milton Cooper, reviewed by Floyd J. Miller 323 Jr 320 Miller, Railroads and the Granger Laws, re­ Duberman, The Uncompleted Past, reviewed viewed by Theodore Saloutos 309 by Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr 315 Stone, The Irreconcilables: The Fight Against Garraty (ed.), Interpreting American History: the League of Nations, reviewed by Dennis Conversations with Historians, reviewed by Phillips 313 Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr 315 Stover, The Life and Decline of the American Griffith, The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. Mc­ Railroad, reviewed by Peter J. Coleman 310 Carthy and the Senate, reviewed by Michael O'Brien 312 Trattner, Crusade for the Children: A History Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton: The Southern of the National Child Labor Committee and Tenant Farmers' Union and the New Veal, Child Labor Reform in America, reviewed reviewed by Arthur F. Raper 314 by Martin B. Loeb 317 Henderson, Maury Maverick: A Political Bio­ Whitney (ed.). The Black Hawk War, 1831- graphy, reviewed by Michael S. Holmes .... 319 1832, Volume I Illinois Volunteers, reviewed Israel, Progressivism and the Open Door: by Roger L. Nichols 310 America and China, 1905-1921, reviewed Zinn, The Politics of History, reviewed by by Burton I. Kaufman 322 Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr 315

324 1917-1967, novelist, poet, including plays and librettos by Hughes, and miscellaneous pro­ ACCESSIONS grams and clippings, presented by Langston Hughes, New York, N.Y.; a letter, 1836, and a bill, 1846, of Solomon Juneau, fur trader, pre­ Manuscripts sented by Donald G. Coleman, Madison; tape- recorded interview with Douglas Korty, Uni­ versity of Wisconsin student, discussing his Services for microfilmiiig, photostating, and participation in civil rights work and labor or­ xeroxing all but certain restricted items in its ganizing in Haywood County, Tennessee, May- manuscripts collections are provided by the August, 1965, presented by Douglas Korty, Society. For details write Dr. Josephine L. Avon Lake, Ohio; microfilm edition of the Harper, Manuscripts Curator. papers of Henry Demurest Lloyd, 1840-1937, author, journalist, and social and economic reformer, consisting of correspondence, arti­ cles and addresses, book manuscripts, note­ Miscellaneous Collections. Papers of the Asso­ ciation of Wisconsin State University Faculties, books, scrapbooks and clippings, and miscel­ 1918-1968, including correspondence, com­ lany, presented by Mrs. Caro Lloyd Strobell, mittee reports and minutes, conference Wifliam B. Lloyd, Jessie B. Lloyd, Mary M. proceedings, constitutions, clippings, and ref­ Lloyd, Georgia Lloyd, Mrs. William B. Lloyd, erence and miscellaneous papers from the files Philip S. Foner, Mrs. Albert Hackett, and of the Association and its officers, presented by Michael Hatcher; papers, 1903-1966 of Rich­ the officers of the Association, 1963-1970; ard Paul Momsen, U.S. diplomat, international papers of the Congress of Racial Equality's lawyer, and businessman, including personal Western Regional Offi-ce, 1948-1967, including and business correspondence, addresses, state­ correspondence and subject files on adminis­ ments, documentary materials, clippings and tration, education, employment, housing, and scrapbooks, presented by Mrs. Richard P. reference materials, presented by the Western Momsen, Cross River, N. Y.; papers of Abra­ Regional Office, Oakland, Calif.; papers of Wil­ ham Polonsky, 1936—1968, writer of short liam Donahey, 1914-1969, creator of the car­ stories and novels, and for radio and motion toon strip, "The Teenie Weenies", consisting of pictures, editor of the Hollywood Quarterly, correspondence, clippings, Donahey's writings, motion picture director, and member of the books illustrated by him, music manuscripts, Hollywood Ten, consisting of drafts of his and business and financial papers, presented by novels, short stories, and articles, diaries, and William Donahey and his estate, Chicago, 111.; cinematic materials including scripts and papers of Edgar B. Gordon, 1906-1961, music screenplay and production materials, presented professor at the University of Wisconsin and by Abraham Polonsky, Red Hook, N. Y.; pioneer in educational radio broadcasting, in­ papers of Howard Rodman, 1942-1961, writer cluding incoming correspondence, articles, ad­ of short stories, and for radio, television, thea­ dresses, manuscripts of instructional manuals, tre, and motion pictures, including scripts, and other materials relating to music education stories and outlines, and a small amount of and appreciation, and reminiscences, scrap- correspondence, presented by Howard Rod­ books, and biographical data, presented by man, Los Angeles, Calif.; papers, 1880-1968, Mrs. Edgar B. Gordon, Madison; Hadassah—• of Gwyneth King Roe (Mrs. Gilbert Roe), wife Rachel S. Jastrow Chapter papers, 1919-1958, of a former law partner of Robert M. La Fol­ the Madison, Wisconsin chapter of the women's lette, physical education teacher, women's suf­ Zionist Organization of America, including fragist, and friend of Progressives, radicals, correspondence, minute books, membership anarchists, and muckrakers, including corre­ and officer lists, reports, clippings, and publica­ spondence, family, business, and teaching rec­ tions of the national convention and the Hadas­ ords, diaries, and notes and drafts of her writ­ sah Medical Organization, presented by Mrs. ings and those of Gilbert Roe, loaned by Mrs. Herman Mack, Madison; tape-recorded inter­ Edwin W. Murphy, Bethesda, Md.; papers of view with Christopher Hexter, University of Anne Romaine, 1966-1967, consisting of tape- Wisconsin student, concerning his experiences recorded interviews and transcriptions she con­ as a Freedom School teacher in Ruleville and ducted with several persons active in the civil Indianola, Mississippi, during the summer of rights movement, particularly in the Mississip­ 1964, presented by Christopher Hexter, New pi Freedom Democratic party, presented by Haven, Conn.; papers of Langston Hughes,

325 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1971

Mrs. Anne Romaine, Charlottesville, Va.; pa­ Manuscripts Accessioned for the pers, 1932-1963, of George F. Rowe, secretary Area Research Centers to U.S. Senator Robert M. La Follette, Jr., and to U.S. Congressman Merlin Hull, special assis­ At Whitewater. Biographical information con­ tant in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, cerning Harry S. Anderson, the founder of the secretary to two professional dairy organiza­ Bergen Telephone Company, Rock County, tions, and staff member of the Foreign Agricul­ presented by Mrs. Jean Lyons, Clinton; state­ tural Service, including segments of the re­ ment of Charles W. Hetzel, a teacher at Beloit search files and correspondence relating to his Memorial High School, made before the Beloit various positions, presented by Mrs. George Human Relations Commission, April 25, 1968, Rowe, Garette Park, Md.; papers, 1924-1945, concerning racial problems in the Beloit school of Clarence Senior, officer of the U.S. Socialist system, presented by Leslie H. Fishel, Tiffin, Party, labor journalist, Latin American spe­ Ohio; record books, 1844—1901, and a history cialist, author, and educator, including corre­ written by Mrs. Ardis Corey concerning the spondence, reports, notes and clippings relating First Baptist Church, Janesville, loaned for to his various activities, presented by Clarence microfilming by Mrs. Ardis Corey, Janesville; Senior, New York, N.Y.; papers, 1857-1947, record books, 1861-1913, of a farm owned by of George F. Shepherd, Wisconsin immigrant William P. Phillips, his father, and his broth­ farmer and Civil War soldier, consisting of ers. Lake Mills, including ledgers, livestock correspondence, legal records, and misceUa- records, records of butter production, and a neous biographical data, loaned for microfilm­ ledger of the Lake Mills Dairymen's Associa­ ing by Mr. and Mrs. Harry Fristad, Stevens tion, presented by Robert Ferry, Lake Mills; Point; diaries, 1857-1871, of Reverend John financial records, 1887-1952, of a Waterloo H. Simpson, Presbyterian minister and Con­ harness making shop owned first by Lyons and federate chaplain, presented by Herbert A. Kel­ Seaver and next by Robert Setz, including lar, Madison; correspondence and miscellany daybooks and account books, presented by of Joseph H. Spencer, 1861-1881, U.S. Army Arthur Setz, Waterloo; and the papers of John officer from Minnesota, presented by G. M. and Louisa (Sargent) Smith, early residents Wilcox, Chicago; papers, 1896-1933, of Helen of Rock County, including correspondence, Sumner Woodbury, labor economist and au­ 1832-1871, materials concerning Smithton thor, including correspondence, a reference School, a review of local events of 1891, and file, writings, and clippings, presented by Rob­ a copy of a 1675 will, loaned for microfilming ert M. Woodbury, Bryn Mawr, Pa. by Mrs. Paul R. Bobolz, Clinton.

Society's Iconographic Collections Jack K. Jallings, assistant state archivist, processing records for public use.

326 WILLIAM CONVERSE HAY­ GOOD was born in 1910 in At­ Contributors lanta, Georgia, and educated at Emory University, the Uni­ versity of Chicago, and the JOAN SEVERA, Curator of University of Michigan. After Decorative Arts for the Socie- serving as a librarian in Geor­ 1 's Museum and a native of gia and New York City, he became director of ^ jring Green, Wisconsin, has the American Library Association's Latin -f ;en a staff member since American project in 1939, and from 1941 to „>'. .. 1958, when she began as Mu­ 1947 was director of the fellowship program seum Registrar. During the of the Julius Rosenwald Fund, with time out years to follow, Mrs. Severa acquired a famil­ for service with the 76th Infantry Division in iarity with the depth of the collections and be­ France and Germany. Following the war he came increasingly aware of their exceptional was sent by the State Department to Spain to quality. A certainty began to grow that de­ inaugurate a system of United States Informa­ scriptions of many of the collections should be tion Libraries in Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, published — as television shows, illustrated Valencia, and Sevilla. From 1951 to 1953 he lectures, and articles. When in 1965 the post and his wife lived on the Spanish island of in Decorative Arts was created, Mrs. Severa in Mallorca where he did free-lance writing and the new capacity found further evidence to where their twins, Billy and Martha, were born. support this feeling; at the same time greater Returning to the U.S. in 1953, the Haygoods responsibilities and limited help made rapid lived on a farm outside Madison, where, except progress impossible. Work was begun, how­ for a time as library consultant to the Puerto ever, with various of the ceramic, glass, and Rican government, Mr. Haygood continued his costume collections in the creation of six slide- writing career. His novel. The Ides of August, lectures, and other of the Society's museum was published by World in 1956, and in the holdings were brought before the public meantime he had sold stories to such national through television. publications as Cosmopolitan, The Saturday With the publication of this article, in joint Review, and Woman's Day. In 1956 the Hay- authorship with William C. Haygood, Mrs. Se­ goods moved into Madison, and the following vera accomplishes the third step in putting the year Mr. Haygood joined the staff of the So­ quality of the Museum collections before a ciety as editor of the Magazine. wide audience. Another of the rare collections will be given an airing soon when the maga­ zine Antiques prints an illustrated article on ROBERT GRIFFITH, a frequent contributor of the shaving bowls collected in Spain in the book reviews and articles, is a native of Atlanta, 1880's by General Lucius Fairchild. A fufl cat­ Georgia, but grew up in southern Indiana. He alog of this important collection, with many received his undergraduate degree from De illustrations, should appear sometime next Pauw University in 1962 and his M.A. and year. Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1964 Mrs. Severa is a 1970 graduate of the Win- and 1967, respectively. Formerly on the history terthur Summer Institute for the Decorative faculty of the University of Georgia, he is now Arts, given by the Henry Francis DuPont Win- on the faculty of the University of Massachu­ terthur Museum in conjunction with the Uni­ setts at Amherst. His doctoral dissertation won versity of Delaware. She is the wife of M. the Frederick Jackson Turner Award of the James Severa, chief of Administrative Services Organization of American Historians. Pub­ for the Society. lished by the University Press of Kentucky.

327 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1971 under the title. The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. doctoral dissertation, a study of the early McCarthy and the Senate, it is reviewed in this development of cities along the western shore issue. For a photograph and further biograph­ of Lake Michigan, particularly Chicago, Mil­ ical information see the Autumn, 1970 issue waukee, and Green Bay from 1830-1845, led of the Magazine. to his interest in the French fur traders and their place in historical literature. Since JOHN D. HAEGER was born in September, 1968, Dr. Haeger has been an Oak Park, Illinois, twenty- assistant professor of history at Central Michi­ eight years ago, and grew up gan University in Mount Pleasant. He has in Aurora. He attended Loyola published an article on the American Fur Com­ University in Chicago, where pany at Chicago in the Journal of the Illinois he was awarded his B.A. in State Historical Society, and is currently work­ 1964, his M.A. in 1966, and ing on a book on the development of cities in his Ph.D. in 1969. In 1967-1968 he held the the Old Northwest from 1815 to 1860 with first Illinois State Historical Society Fellow­ special emphasis on the role of eastern capital ship for research in Illinois History. His in facilitating urban development.

Have You Thought of a Bequest for The State Historical Society of Wisconsin?

It is not necessary to have a fortune in order to play a vital part in perpetuating the rich heritage of Wisconsin. The Wisconsin History Foundation, a nonprofit corporation dedi­ cated to the support of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin program of preserving Wisconsin heritage and its history, needs many friends and contributors — those who will bequeath for the future as so many have contributed in the past. For your convenience, two forms most widely used for making bequests are provided:

AN UNRESTRICTED GIFT I, give, devise and bequeath to the Wisconsin History Foundation, the sum of dollars, to be used for the State Historical Society in the area of its greatest need as determined by the Board of Curators or the Director of the Society.

A PERMANENT FUND I, give, devise and bequeath to the Wisconsin History Foundation, the sum of dollars to be maintained as a permanent fund, the income only to be applied to the needs and purposes of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin as determined by the Board of Curators or the Director. Your bequest is an investment in Wisconsin's future. For informa­ tion about the work of the Society and how your bequest can help, write to: Secretary, Wisconsin History Foundation, 816 State Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53706.

328 ^1 Peace and Friendship

So pledged the silver medals struck by the United States government for presentation to hundred? of Indian chieftains between the American Revolution and the close of the nineteenth century. And though peace and friendship did not always prevail, the medals themselves played an important role in govern­ mental Indian policy for more than a century. Indian Peace Medals in American History, Father Prucha's definitive study of their design, manufacture, distribution, and significance, will be of interest to historians, collectors, numismatists, and reference librarians. The book is illustrated with full-size plates of sixty-five medals and with numerous Indian portraits.

INDIAN PEACE MEDALS IN AMERICAN HIS­ TORY, by Francis Paul Prucha. Pp. xiv, 178. Illus., notes, bibliography, index. $15.00.

He Dog, an Oglala Sioux chief, photographed in 1920 wearing a Ulysses S. Grant silver peace medal Courtesy Smithsonian Institution. •?>.• - ,^m

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Tills engraving, entitled "Tfie Great Fire at Peshtigo," was made from a sketcfi by G. J. Tisdale, and appeared in Harper's Weekly, November 4. 1871.