Book Reviews

BOOK REVIEWS

Jacob EichholtZy 1776-1842: Portrait Painter of Pennsylvania. By REBECCA J. BEAL. (Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1969. xxxiv, 402 p. Illustrations, bibliography, appendix. $15.00.) When merit, original and hard-won, is at long last given its full due recognition, the accolade brings with it all the pleasure and satisfaction of a fairy-tale ending. This has come to Jacob Eichholtz in a book of scholarly substance, of dignity and much charm. William Dunlap's History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design, 1834, gives three pages to Eichholtz, including an autobiographical statement which is the cornerstone of the scant primary source material on his life. In 1912-1913, articles by William U. Hensel, antiquarian of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, gave renewed recognition as well as preserving material from the artist's now missing ledger of his work between 1817 and 1842. These were accompanied by the first Eichholtz exhibition. In 1939, Edgar P. Richardson called wider attention to Eichholtz in an article in Art in America, and, twenty years later, in his Painting in America, the Story of 450 Years, brought forward again that "hard, clean fresh, luminous style," and those "qualities of an excellent craftsman and an unsophisticated, natural sensibility." In the same year, 1959, in his introduction to the catalogue of the Eichholtz exhibition sponsored by the Pennsylvania State Museum, Dr. Richardson reiterated the need for fuller treatment. That recognition was, with his personal encouragement, even then on the way. In 1947, on a visit to Lancaster to see the house where Eichholtz, her great-grandfather, had lived, Mrs. Beal had become interested in his career, at first casually, and then with a deepening preoccupation. Her gradual, careful accumulation of notes and biographical data forms the substance of this book. Its descriptive catalogue of 889 portraits and 34 miscellaneous paintings is preceded by her introduction telling the story of her quest and the problems she encountered. An essay on the artist by Dr. Richardson follows this, and then a chronological outline of Eichholtz' life. An appendix contains a publication of significant letters, a note on the "Brass Engravings for the Sun Fire Pump Company, 1830," a valuable study by Theodor Siegl, Conservator of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, "Eichholtz Techniques," and Mrs. Beal's own "Comments" on the development of Eichholtz' style. A bibliography of manuscript and printed sources completes the work. There are excellent reproductions of 261 works by the Meriden Gravure Company. Representative examples of the artist's signature at different 245 246 BOOK REVIEWS April periods are shown. Four portraits appear in full color, the strong self- portrait of 1834, the Daniel Buckley pair of 1814, and one group, Mrs. Elder and Her Children, 182,5. The portrait illustrations are arranged chronologically, from the small profile likenesses with which Eichholtz' career began, about 1805, as a sideline to his work as a tinsmith, and reveal his rapid development in skill and sophistication. The catalogue entries describe each work, identify its subject, list exhibi- tions and pedigree of ownership. Most of the paintings listed are signed or otherwise documented. Those without documentation are distinguished by an asterisk, and where the author feels some reservation in her attribution a double asterisk is used. It might have been preferable to have entered "Unknown" subjects under that one heading rather than by title, yet the inquirer who may have a solution to a puzzle of this sort will not have to search far. American art historians will welcome this beautiful book, filling a long- felt need. Historians of the American scene as a whole, and particularly of Pennsylvania, will find it an equally welcome regional record. Most of the artist's work was done in his native Lancaster, though he was occasionally afield, and had a studio in Philadelphia from 1823 to 1832. But the names, as one runs through these pages, are primarily those of central Pennsylvania families: Antes, Barton, Champneys, Ellmaker, Fahnestock, Hubley, Humes, Kelker, Muhlenberg, Reigart, Slaymaker and others—bringing us a new visual record of this culture. Four governors are in the list: William Findlay, Joseph Ritner, John A. Shulze and Simon Snyder. Other distinguished sitters are James Buchanan, Robert Coleman, the wealthy ironmaster to whose daughter Buchanan was briefly engaged, General John Steele of Washington's staff, Richard Dale, who had been John Paul Jones' second in command on the Bonhomme Richard, John Bannister Gibson of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, and Thaddeus Stevens, a portrait of 1838 celebrating Stevens' early championship of the cause of public education. P. J, Conkwright, designer of the book, has given it all the substantial and attractive qualities appropriate to its subject and the many years of study that went into its making—a monument to the dedication and skill of both artist and author.

Dickinson College CHARLES COLEMAN SELLERS

Charles Willson Peale. By CHARLES COLEMAN SELLERS. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1969. xiv, 510 p. Illustrations, bibliography, index. $20.00.) John Neal wrote of the octogenarian Charles Willson Peale, "[he] is one of the best men that God ever made, though he will paint portraits with a chisel, marry a fifth wife every few years, and outlive all the rest of the world." Three times a widower and hoping to remarry, the patriarchal Peale had sired seventeen children, ten of whom survived him. One of the I97O BOOK REVIEWS 247 latter, Sophonisba Angusciola, having married Coleman Sellers, became the great-grandmother of Charles Coleman Sellers, the author of this definitive biography. The book has been aged and ripened. In a first volume, The Artist of the Revolution, printed in 1939, Mr. Sellers acknowledged "that his work is in large part based upon the material gathered through a lifetime with studi- ous care by his father, Horace Wells Sellers." The project was then completed in two volumes, published in 1947 under the auspices of the Ameri- can Philosophical Society. And now this new version in one handsome volume supersedes its predecessors in every respect. Thoroughly reworked, the text has been in places curtailed, in others expanded, divisions have been eliminated in the interest of fluency—in short, the whole has been upgraded and made more readable. The book's large pages are typographically attractive, and to the 102 black-and-white illustrations have been added 37 in color of oils, watercolors, and minia- tures. A paucity of data (dimensions, etc.) for art objects shown may be passed over on grounds that this is explicitly "a biography," rather than a pictorial monograph. The ensemble is, unequivocably, an important contribution to the literature of American art, and, beyond that, to our social and cultural history. A first-rate scholar, Mr. Sellers utilizes a mass of source materials that include letters, papers, diaries, and a late autobiography of his subject, deals with an enormous cast of characters and with an intricate complex of circumstances, all the while maintaining the balance of a juggler per- forming on a tightrope. Peale's many-ioled career was so interlocked with events and persons of his time that its story relates to the national annals. Besides portraying more contemporary Americans of consequence than any other artist, from the Presidents to Yarrow Mamout, a Mohammedan Negro, said to have lived 134 years, he served honorably in the Revolution, was active in Whig politics, promoted organizations to advance the standing of the arts, and established an amazing museum—its "pet," the first fully assembled skeleton of a mastodon—that might with governmental support have preceded the Smithsonian as a national institution. He was proficient in any number of crafts, from his early saddlery to later dentistry, owned and farmed for a while a country estate, and always as a man radiated the kindliness, unselfishness and human warmth that colored his relationships with a multitude of friends and the near-multitude of his own family. Reading of his perennial boyishness, one is reminded of Havelock Ellis' saying of Leonardo: "Every person of genius is in some degree at once man, woman, and child." When Neal remarked that Peale "will paint portraits with a chisel," it was with reference to the artist's nonacceptance of the loose brushwork and glazing of Stuart and others, a technique then prevailing among our leading artists. Peale remembered the relatively hard-surfaced execution that he had learned in Benjamin West's London in the late 1760's, and 248 BOOK REVIEWS April

afterward received instruction only in the even firmer French mode brought by his son Rembrandt from Paris. As reproduced in color on the book's dust jacket (less well as its frontispiece) the C. W. Peale Self Portrait of c. 1804 gives a fair idea of his painting style. It suited his purpose of producing the well-crafted canvases that pleased his patrons. When told that his likenesses were more "certain" than Copley's, he remarked, "What more could I wish?"—at the same time modestly rating his achievement as "infanitely [sic] below that perfection that even portrait Painting may be carried to." He early renounced the glories of "history" painting, yet did, particularly in those anecdotal representations of members of the Peale household to which he was given, produce some of the most cherished pictures of our art heritage. The aftermatter of Mr. Sellers' work consists of a Peale genealogy, forty pages of notes, a bibliography of manuscript sources and Peale publications, an index, and illustration acknowledgments. And for the statistical record, the eleven by nine-inch volume weighs three and three- fourths pounds.

The Pennsylvania State University HAROLD E. DICKSON

The Susquehannah Company Papers^ Volume VIII, 1784-1786. Edited by ROBERT J. TAYLOR. (Ithaca, N. Y.: Published for the Wyoming His- torical & Geological Society by Cornell University Press, 1969. xxxix, 451 p. Illustrations, index. $15.00.) Volume VII of The Susquehannah Company Papers covered the period during which, by the Decree of Trenton, on December 30, 1782, Pennsyl- vania was awarded sovereignty of the lands in dispute with Connecticut. The present volume, covering the period from mid-1784 to the end of 1786, deals with the diverse but interrelated skirmishes that, in the Wyoming valley, were the aftermath of the major conflict. Essentially, these skirmishes were in the nature of delaying actions by Connecticut interests facing Pennsylvania authority. Pennsylvania's announced intention to respect the rights of bona fide settlers was wise and welcome, but it could not immediately resolve the conflicts between Connecticut and Pennsylvania land grants, and it was far from reassuring to the Connecticut-based Susquehannah Company itself. Dissolution of the Connecticut county of Westmoreland, whose bounds had overlapped those of the Pennsylvania counties of Northampton and Northumberland, left the Connecticut settlers under the jurisdiction of local Pennsylvania officials who might feel no special kindness toward Yankee intruders. In defense of its investment, the Susquehannah Company took a strong stand, asserting the validity of its Indian purchase, charter, and land grants, and continued its work of colonization. Its activity in Pennsylvania, 1970 BOOK REVIEWS 249 led by John Franklin, and Pennsylvania countermeasures brought a renewal of the "Pennamite Wars" in 1784, when Connecticut settlers besieged a Pennsylvania party at Fort Dickinson (formerly Fort Wyoming) and the State sent a force of Northampton County militia to disarm the combatants. In the interest of peace, President Dickinson of Pennsylvania then ordered the fort evacuated and demolished. Seemingly extraneous matters delayed a final showdown and gave some comfort to the Connecticut people. In Philadelphia a Constitutionalist- controlled Council of Censors condemned the Republican-controlled As- sembly's handling of the Connecticut affair. In Congress the cession of western lands, in which Connecticut had a claim under its sea-to-sea charter, raised questions similar to some involved in the Pennsylvania- Connecticut dispute. The creation of a new Pennsylvania county, Luzerne, in 1786 removed the Connecticut people from the jurisdiction of Northampton and North- umberland counties and enabled them to choose officials who might better represent their interests. Nevertheless, the end of that year found the problems of the Connecticut settlers far from their final settlement. As in previous volumes of this series, the editor's historical Introduction is an especially useful feature and provides a valuable background for understanding and use of the documentary texts, 271 in all, that make up the body of the book. As in the seven previous volumes, these are reliably reproduced from newspapers and other contemporary printed items; from original manuscripts preserved in depositories in Massachusetts, Connecti- cut, Pennsylvania, Washington, D. C, and elsewhere; and, in a few instances, from previously published copies of documents whose originals can no longer be found. Three portraits provide interesting illustrations. That of John Armstrong, Jr. (facing page 134), might be compared with a youthful profile portrait in the custody of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and with one in old age (sometimes identified as of John Armstrong, Sr.) at Independence Hall. Four more volumes are expected to complete this work as planned. Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission WILLIAM A. HUNTER

The Idea of a Party System: The Rise of Legitimate Opposition in the United States, 1780-184.0. By RICHARD HOFSTADTER. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969. xiii, 280 p. Index. $6.95.) This book, written by one of our most respected, brilliant, and informed students of American political culture, illustrates the perplexities that confront the investigator of the role of "ideas" in the history of American political parries. Professor Hofstadter set out initially to explore the idea of party held by leading Jeffersonians, and dealt with that subject in his 250 BOOK REVIEWS April

Jefferson Memorial Lectures at Berkeley in 1966. Subsequently, he expanded the scope of his study to include some notice of Federalist leaders and then added a postscript chapter dealing with Martin Van Buren and the Albany Regency. His main objective was to trace the emergence and acceptance of the idea of a party system as a legitimate feature of the American political process. Not too surprisingly, he reports that when such figures as Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Hamilton, Adams, and Washington recorded their views on parties, they rarely departed from the traditional attitude that parties or factions were an evil to be deplored in a republic. This conventional wisdom, derived from what were held to be the lessons of history, was generally accepted during the period of the first party system. The leaders of the fledgling parties refused to concede a legitimate role to their opponents and sought either by suppression or absorption to eliminate them. Strengthening their basic antiparty commitment was their belief that their opponents represented a hostile and dangerous ideology as well as their fear that the new republic was such a fragile experiment that it could ill afford internal dissension. Nevertheless, as is well known, both induced the active electorate to assume partisan identities, accept party-sponsored candidates, and respond to party rhetoric. Professor Hofstadter is at his best in delineating the antiparty attitudes of the Founding Fathers and relating them to the inherited English tradition and the contemporary political culture. Having found no acceptance of the concept of a legitimate party system in the Jeffersonian era, Professor Hofstadter turns to New York, Van Buren, and the Regency in the i82o's. There, growing out of the exigencies of the bitter and sustained contests between the Bucktails and the Clin- tonians, he finds the piecemeal formulation of a rationale for parties. But it is party as organization that is extolled; the focus is on the Bucktail- Republican party; and the opposition is accorded recognition chiefly as a useful instrument for inspiring unity among the Republicans. Some Regency theorists would concede that parties served as desirable checks on one another and aroused citizen interest in public affairs. That this study is less than satisfying is not entirely the fault of Pro- fessor Hofstadter. The "idea" of party was scarcely confronted by Ameri- can political leaders, or even by political scientists until late in the nineteenth century, and it remains ambiguous and elusive today. The American constitutional system, as Professor Hofstadter properly emphasizes, was designed to frustrate parties. Moreover, popular sentiment has been ambivalent toward the notion of responsible party government. Professor Hofstadter has once again opened up a fascinating field of inquiry, and those who follow in his footsteps will venture into a little explored, highly treacherous, but potentially rich terrain.

Rutgers University RICHARD P. MCCORMICK 1970 BOOK REVIEWS 251

The Opposition Press of the Federalist Period. By DONALD H. STEWART. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1969. xiii, 957 p. Appendix, bibliography, index. $18.00.) "You certainly never felt the Terrorism, excited by Genet, in 1793," John Adams recalled to Jefferson twenty years after the event, "when ten thousand People in the Streets of Philadelphia, day after day, threatened to drag Washington out of his House, and effect a Revolution in the Government, or compell it to declare War in favour of the French Revolu- tion, and against England." That terror had been fed by the Democratic- Republican press which teemed with polemical literature. On one level the decade of the 1790's produced an array of political talent of the highest order, men who invested the quarrels of that ?ge with philosophical dignity; on a more popular level the period was marked by a divisiveness and scurrility scarcely matched in American history. In essence, Americans were awakening to the joy of participation in the political process, and their prime vehicle of expression was the press. Dr. Stewart's massive volume, the result of prodigious research, could more aptly be entitled "a political history of the United States from 1789 to 1801 as seen from the Democratic-Republican press." He has combed through hundreds of opposition newspapers and presents what they had to say on an enormous number of subjects and issues which concerned Americans: Hamilton's financial program, the French revolution, GeneVs activities, Democratic societies, the Whiskey Rebellion, the character of Washington, Jay's treaty, Edmund Randolph's guilt, the Alien and Sedi- tion Acts, the XYZ affair, the William Blount conspiracy, the Society of the Cincinnati, British impressment of sailors, as well as the nature of republican government, the disposal of western lands, the class nature of society, commercial relations and foreign entanglements, etc. Much of this material is witty and humorous, much of it vile and rancorous, much of it wise and trenchant—taken together it serves to reveal, as nothing else might, the mental attitudes of rank and file Democratic-Republicans. For this scholars will be grateful. Nevertheless, Dr. Stewart's relentless piling of quotation upon quotation, almost exclusively from newspaper sources, occasionally borders on boredom. He appears to have been reluctant to discard any utilizable note. Several contemporary historians have posed the identical question with which Dr. Stewart begins his work. How did it happen, he asks, "that Thomas Jefferson and his associates were able to fashion, in so brief a period and out of apparent nothingness, a party that soon became domi- nant and that has ever since remained a potent political force?" Noble Cunningham's studies, for example, have detailed the mechanisms by which Democratic-Republican party formation was achieved as various local organizations responded to divisions which originated on the national level. Paul Goodman has reminded us that this formation varied consider- 252 BOOK REVIEWS April ably from state to state, depending upon its internal social structure and constitutional arrangement. Alfred Young has traced party development in New York State from conflicts which stretched back to the pre- Revolutionary period, contradicting the work of Joseph Charles, who believed that political parties in the 1790's were not mere continuations of earlier factions. Richard Hofstadter has written a brilliant account explaining how and why American attitudes toward political parties shifted from hostility to acceptance to appreciation. Dr. Stewart's work will be a welcome addition to this literature. He has reminded us that "with all their gifts for leadership, and all the popular topics that arose, Madison, Jefferson, and their companions could not possibly have worked this mir- acle without the aid of the newspapers." A "loyal opposition" had been created and succeeded to the government in 1800 by peaceful means. The event was extraordinary. It was accomplished, writes Dr. Stewart, with the help of "indefatigable and inkstained editors who fought the Repub- lican cause to a triumphant conclusion."

University of California^ Santa Barbara MORTON BORDEN

Lewis and Clark: Pioneering Naturalists. By PAUL RUSSELL CUTRIGHT. (Urbana, 111.: University of Illinois Press, 1969. xvi, 506 p. Illustra- tions, appendixes, bibliography, index. $12.50.) The Washington National Intelligencer for January 16, 1807, printed a lengthy account of an "elegant dinner" given by the citizens of Washington in honor of Meriwether Lewis, who had just returned from the expedition which he and William Clark had led to explore the trans-Mississippi terri- tory to the Pacific Coast. The dinner was a gala affair and included a poem written for the occasion by Joel Barlow, which was read by John Beckley, Clerk of the House of Representatives. There was great national excitement engendered by the safe return of these brave men, reminiscent of our astronauts today. One might expect that the leaders of such an important expedition would have written a full account of it soon after their return. They did indeed plan such a publication but circumstances prevented it. Their journals were edited by a young Philadelphia lawyer, not a member of the expedition. A number of other accounts have appeared since, some of them well done, but they have combined to give a picture of these men as "master explorers, superb woodsmen," but not "important forerunners in such fields as botany, zoology, geography, cartography, meteorology, and eth- nology." These quotations are from Paul Russell Cutright, who, more than a century and a half after the return of Lewis and Clark, has given us an account which emphasizes their scientific accomplishments. Dr. Cutright, a biologist, has devoted some years to meticulous research, and has traveled 15,000 miles in preparing this work. He writes with all of the enthusiasm for his subject which this would suggest. 1970 BOOK REVIEWS 253 Dr. Cutright considers the expedition to have been "a scientific venture from beginning to end," and he documents his opinion in convincing fashion. It was a scientific venture because Thomas Jefferson "conceived it, nurtured it," wrote extremely detailed instructions for it, and did every- thing short of accompanying it, and he would have loved to do that also. Dr. Cutright has not sacrificed other aspects of this remarkable and fascinating undertaking. He gives a day by day account of the journey with all of its trials and tribulations, the excitement of new discoveries, dis- appointments, triumphs, hardships and dangers. Having traveled over much of the route himself, he brings a special and sympathetic understanding to his writing. That it was a labor of love is evident throughout. Although discoveries of scientific interest appear appropriately in the general account, they are not belabored, and they appear in summary at the ends of chapters, and in detail in an excellent appendix. They are thus more useful to the specialist and do not detract from the enjoyment of the general reader. The book is not extensively illustrated, but the illustrations used are well chosen and very pleasing. They are largely of plants and animals discovered, some being photographs of museum and herbarium specimens, and some drawings by Clark, Alexander Wilson, Alexander Lawson and others. There are a few pen and ink sketches by Cutright, one of the route of the expedition for a three-day period. It is regretable that there were not many more such sketches included, with a map of the entire route traveled. Few readers will be as familiar with the geography of the region as is the author. Dr. Cutright does not end his account with the return of the expedition, but goes on to tell what became of the specimens collected, an interesting story in itself. Future students of the journey will welcome the enumeration in the appendix of the present locations of all maps, journals, letters, portraits and related materials located by Dr. Cutright, and also the excellent bibliography. His summary of the scientific achievements of the expedition in concise form requires a short chapter and should convince any who have questioned such accomplishments. Dr. Cutright is to be congratulated for a valuable and scholarly addition to the history of American scientific discovery. Central Virginia Community College', Lynchburg EDMUND BERKELEY

The Constitutional Decisions of John Marshall. Volumes 1-2. Edited by JOSEPH P. COTTON, JR. New Preface by Alpheus Thomas Mason. (New York: Da Capo Press, 1969. xvii, xxxvi, 462 p.; v, 464 p. Index of Cases and Authorities, Index of Topics. $27.50.) In republishing The Constitutional Decisions of John Marshall, edited by Joseph P. Cotton, Jr., the Da Capo Press has produced two handsome 254 BOOK REVIEWS April volumes admirably executed throughout, and it has made available again, in convenient form, a complete collection of John Marshall's opinions in the Supreme Court and on circuit. Following one upon another, the decisions afford a primary record of the robust transformation of the Court under Marshall, of the evolution of our constitutional history during the thirty-four years of the Marshall Court, and of the emergence of the national judicial tribunal as an effective political instrument powerfully affecting the nation's economic development. Whether the decisions are illustra- tive as well of Marshall's prescient judicial statesmanship and of his talent for epigrammatic and commanding expression, or whether, on the contrary, they reveal a consummate Federalist jurist who was neither political theo- rist nor legal philosopher, and whose prose was "repetitive and prolix," depends upon the persuasion and prejudices of the appraiser. Opinion divided early and sharply over "the great Chief Justice," and over his caretakership of the Court. And though modern scholarship has been rich and illuminating on the nature and consequences of the Marshall era, judgments, equally impeccable and authoritative, have remained diverse and particular. In his Preface^ newly minted for the Da Capo edition, Professor Alpheus Thomas Mason elects to ignore the assorted assessments of Marshall. In- stead he makes homage of his discernments. Pithy and provocative, he presents Marshall in all the storm and turbulence of his day and in the full grandeur of his achievements. Commenting on Marshall's constitutional jurisprudence, Professor Mason writes that the decision "reached in Marbury seemed to be the only one consistent with reason, common sense, and the Constitution. With a single stroke the Chief Justice encompassed the higher law background of our constitutional heritage and delineated its implications for the functioning of the American system of free government. Eschewing precedents, authorities, and documentation, he took the high road of principle. ... In grounding his opinion in 'established principles,' he wrote in the tradition of the Declaration of Independence. Marshall no more than Jefferson aimed at originality." In his Prefatory Note, Introductory Essay, and especially in the Notes with which he introduced each case, editor Joseph P. Cotton, Jr., under- took to fashion a critique: directing his exposition and analysis toward a "better understanding of Marshall's genius." His annotations, he ex- plained, attempted to describe the political circumstances surrounding each suit, faithfully to lodge each decision in "its setting in the history of Marshall's time," and to accord to each opinion its proper place in our system of constitutional law. Thoughtfully, with care and clarity, and in detail, discarding his lawyer's language, the editor scrupulously rendered the classic conservative interpretation of the classic decisions of the Mar- shall Court. The Chief Justice's Hamiltonian economics, his Federalist politics, his nationalist views, and, at the pinnacle, his legal and constitutional principles are presented—with little pause—as verities. Whatever I97O BOOK REVIEWS 255 his intentions and aspirations, Mr. Cotton wrote not as a discriminating critic, nor as an American, nor a legal, nor a constitutional historian, but as a layman and a votary. Possibly herein rests, for the modern scholar, the greatest value of the editor's comments. Herein is displayed the limitations and dangers of the testimonial style, of the facile acceptance of premises, of the ready use of interpretation, and of the comfortable reliance upon absolutes. About one error in the editor's text there is no question. He was mis- taken when he remarked, in 1905, that it was "not possible to bring to the study of Marshall's life and work any great new light." And in that this was a blunder, we have reason to rejoice—perhaps.

Oregon State University THOMAS R. MEEHAN

George Bourne and The Book and Slavery Irreconcilable. By JOHN W. CHRISTIE and DWIGHT L. DUMOND. (Wilmington: The Historical So- ciety of Delaware, and Philadelphia: The Presbyterian Historical Society, 1969. xi, 206 p. #5.00.) George Bourne was a forerunner of radical abolitionism, whose book on the Bible and slavery influenced William Lloyd Garrison. Bourne's book is extremely rare; only four copies of it are known to exist. Dr. Christie, a distinguished Presbyterian minister of Wilmington, Delaware, and Dr. Dumond, the dean of historians of the American antislavery movement, have provided a 100-page sketch of Bourne's life and a new edition of his important book. Bourne was born in England in 1780. His father was a cloth manufac- turer and a deacon in the Congregational Church. The son studied for the ministry at Homerton College in a suburb of London. He was married in 1804 and shortly thereafter came to the United States, settling in Balti- more. There he published a newspaper and wrote the first of his numerous books and pamphlets. About 1810 he moved to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where he held several Presbyterian pastorates in the vicinity of Harrisonburg and formed his impressions of slavery, developing a strong antislavery feeling. Many years later he contributed evidence from this experience to Theodore Weld's classic Slavery As It Is. At the 1815 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, Bourne bit- terly attacked slaveholding by ministers, elders, and members of the church. Shortly thereafter he was deposed from the ministry by his local presby- tery. Appealing this decision to the General Assembly, he was able to ob- tain a pastorate in Germantown, Pennsylvania. It was there that he completed his major work, The Book and Slavery Irreconcilable•, which was printed in Philadelphia by J. M. Sanderson & Co. in 1816. Christie and Dumond make the rather extreme claim that this was "the most important 256 BOOK REVIEWS April book published during the slavery controversy." It is of particular interest because in it Bourne advocated immediate uncompensated abolition of slavery fifteen years before Garrison began the Liberator, and because in due time Garrison discovered it and borrowed from it. Bourne was also fond of calling slaveholders "man-stealers," a Scriptural term which was adopted by the American Anti-Slavery Society at its founding in 1833. The Presbyterian General Assembly approved Bourne's deposition from the ministry, but in later years he held a Congregational pastorate in Quebec and Dutch Reformed charges in New York City. He also edited an anti-Catholic paper called the Protestant and the Dutch Reformed Church paper. However, these aspects of his work are not covered in this book. He died in 1845. The Book and Slavery Irreconcilable forms the second half of this volume. Filled with Scriptural quotations and pious platitudes, it is heavy going. Christie and Dumond have supplied a three-page list of Bourne's publications, but there is no other bibliography and no index.

Pennsylvania State University IRA V. BROWN

James Watson Webb: A Biography. By JAMES L. CROUTHAMEL. (Middle- town, Conn.: Wesley an University Press, 1969. ix, 262 p. Notes on sources, index. $10.00.) James Watson Webb (1802-1884) was most noted as a pugnacious, New York newspaper editor during the years in which the modern press developed. The son of a Revolutionary general, Webb first tried a military career. But the dullness of army life in frontier Chicago and Detroit in the 1820's, together with two duels and other personal embroilments, caused him to resign his army commission in 1827 and return to New York where, with the financial help of his father-in-law, Alexander L. Stewart, he became editor of the New York Morning Courier. As did most New York editors, Webb played an active part in politics. At first an avid Jacksonian, he broke with the President over the latter's Bank Veto in 1832. The fact that Webb and his partner, Mordecai M. Noah, had borrowed over $52,000 from Biddle's Bank prior to the Courier's deser- tion of Jackson undoubtedly had something to do with the switch, though Professor Crouthamel goes to some lengths to exonerate Webb from this charge. After 1832 Webb helped form the New York Whigs and even suggested the party's name during the 1834 New York City mayoralty campaign. Except for a brief flirtation with nativist politics in the mid-1830's, Webb remained an active Whig, aligning himself with the Seward-Webb faction of the party. In the mid-fifties he followed Seward into the Republican ranks. For his help in the election of Lincoln, Webb was appointed minister to Brazil in 1861—a post which he filled vigorously, but poorly, for eight years. 1970 BOOK REVIEWS 257 The most interesting chapters of this biography deal with the New York newspaper world between the time of Jackson's presidency and Lincoln's. When the Courier was founded in 1827 it was one of several commercial papers serving the business community. No popular press existed. Within a few years, however, all this changed. In 1833 Benjamin H. Day launched the New York Sun, the city's first popular, penny paper (the Courier and other commercial papers sold for six cents). Two years later, a former associate on Webb's Courier, James Gordon Bennett, began an even more successful penny paper, the New York Herald. Facing stiff competition from the penny press as well as from mercantile papers such as the Journal of Commercey Webb's Courier helped pioneer such techniques as rapid news gathering via pony express and steamship, and excellent coverage of Euro- pean events. One of the most important figures who attempted to mod- ernize the Courier in the 1840's was Henry J. Raymond. But despite improvements, the days of a personal and largely commercial paper were numbered. The Courier was already on the wane when Raymond left it in 1851 to found the New York Times. In 1861, using his ministerial appointment as an excuse, Webb sold the heavily mortgaged Courier to the publishers of the New York World, ending a fascinating chapter in the history of journalism. Though shedding some light on both the press and politics, Crouthamel's biography is somewhat tedious reading, marred by both repetition and the rehashing of well-known history. Perhaps the difficulty lies with the subject matter. James Watson Webb does not call forth the reader's sympathies. Described by the author as "a chauvinist, a racist, a materialist, and a partisan . . . motivated by a striving for status and power . . . insensitive to morality and idealism" (p. 201), the reader is left to judge Webb largely by his accomplishments. Here, too, he was a failure. Not understanding the emergence of the modern newspaper, he became an anachronism as a journalist even before the sale of the Courier'in 1861. A friend of powerful, political figures both in America and Europe, Webb himself was not a major politician. In his only significant position as minister to Brazil, his rash actions led Professor Crouthamel to conclude: "There is no doubt that the image of the United States in Brazil suffered during Webb's eight years there" (p. 194). Even financially, Webb's numerous get-rich-quick schemes failed time and again.

Michigan State University DOUGLAS T. MILLER

The Best-Dressed Miners: Life and Labor in the Maryland Coal Region, 1835-1910. By KATHERINE A. HARVEY. (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell Uni- versity Press, 1969. xiv, 488 p. Illustrations, appendixes, bibliography, index. $14.50.) Having myself devoted several years' research to a book on a coal-mining region—and having ultimately produced a single article in this journal—I 258 BOOK REVIEWS April greatly admire Mrs. Harvey's ability to bring her study to a fuller conclusion. We need many such detailed accounts of industrial districts in order to generalize confidently about nineteenth-century American life and labor. Mrs. Harvey does not wholly resolve, however, the difficulties inherent in a project of that kind. The George's Creek district, like the mining regions of Pennsylvania, has left the historian a very large heap of data— company records, newspapers, state inspectors' reports, trade union journals, and occasional manuscript letters—as the seventy pages of notes in this book well attest. Unfortunately the data are all too like a culm heap, full of a certain few kinds of material, of rather limited utility, and very little else. In the first third of the book Mrs. Harvey makes what she can of the economic, social, and cultural life of the Maryland miners. Perhaps they could rightly claim to be better off than men in other coal fields—"a roast beef, silk dress and broadcloth aristocracy of labor, as against the corn bread, pork and beans and linsey-woolsey common places," as the mine inspector put it in 1883. In so far as the book argues a thesis, it is summed up in the similar quotation that provides its title. And at most of the points where the Maryland data permit comparisons with wages, working conditions, or housing in West Virginia or the Clearfield region of Pennsyl- vania, the assertion seems true enough. By any later standard, however, Maryland's advantage appears marginal at best, and in some respects, such as the proportion of boys working underground, it was weighted the other way. Mrs. Harvey gives no hint, in spite of the miners' frequently "desperate straits," that her title may be read ironically. In the last two thirds of the book she works through the sort of chronicle that comes most readily to hand in every such region: the perennial repetition of layoffs and strikes, advances and reductions in wages, attempts to organize and maintain operators' agreements and miners' unions, hesitant passage and ineffectual enforcement of labor legislation. Mrs. Harvey is content to present a straightforward narrative, almost year by year, with a minimum of topical digression or analysis. Here and there she passes by, without emphasis, some revealing phrase, like that of the Cumberland gentleman, during the strike of 1882, who deprecated as a merely "senti- mental principle" the companies' insistence upon dealing with individual employees rather than their union. By the time the reader reaches the strike of 1900, he is grateful to be given a condensed account, "to avoid tedium," and a general reference to the files of the Baltimore Sun. One can only commend the author's meticulous care in verifying the accuracy of her story among all the kinds of data available for the region. But her acquaintance with either the life or the labor of the George's Creek miners, most of whom were British, Irish, and German immigrants, extends only a little way beyond what was locally recorded by native Americans. Her inference "that the Welsh miners belonged to various dissenting denominations," although, of course, correct as far as it goes, is drawn from I97O BOOK REVIEWS 259 one oblique remark in a mine official's diary; since no one referred to "black damp" as carbon dioxide, she leaves it unidentified. Naturalization is unreflectingly accepted as equivalent to Americanization; for temperance societies to have existed alongside saloons is made to seem odder than it was. Mrs. Harvey is a lucid guide down the hundred-year course of labor relations on George's Creek, but she leaves it to others to place her descrip- tion of the miners' life in some larger, more analytical context.

Washington University ROWLAND BERTHOFF

Forging a Majority: The Formation of the Republican Party in Pittsburgh, 1848-1800. By MICHAEL FITZGIBBON HOLT. (New Haven: Yale Uni- versity Press, 1969. ix, 408 p. Appendixes, bibliography, index. $10.00.) In i860, Abraham Lincoln carried Pittsburgh by a wider margin than any other major city in the country. His victory, in which he amassed sixty-six per cent of the vote in a four-cornered contest, marked the com- pletion of a majority Republican coalition in Pittsburgh. Michael Fitz- gibbon Holt reconstructs the Pittsburgh scene at the end of the Mexican War and traces through the chaos and confusion of the fifties those elements which fused into the Republican majority of i860. The result is a detailed and analytical account of political alignments and realignments, and of the forces which produced them. While Holt restricts his conclusions to the single city examined, he clearly believes that many of them have a much broader relevance. This is a study, primarily, of voter behavior and leadership response. The author, in the tradition of Lee Benson, Samuel P. Hays, and others, asserts "that politics often involves the whole fabric of human interrela- tionships" and that some historians, by examining political behavior in a solely political context, "have neglected the influence of cultural, economic and social conditions" which are always important and occasionally decis- ive. Thus, they have produced "excellent studies of the maneuvers and motives of national and state party leaders" but have failed to explain satisfactorily "why people voted as they did." To this task, the author set himself. Holt expels much of the doubt as to why Pittsburgh voters voted as they did. Relying upon the manuscript censuses of 1850 and i860, he constructed a socioeconomic profile of the city through the period under study. Through the same sources, supplemented by miscellaneous business and church directories, he developed a similar profile of party leadership. Subjecting the party platforms and press appeals to a careful content analysis, he established the qualitative and quantitative differences in party appeals for voter support. His analyses of the leadership and of the parties enabled l6o BOOK REVIEWS April

him to state in precise socioeconomic terms who managed the parties, to whom each party appealed and how emphatically each did so. Finally, by correlating election returns with socioeconomic variables within the electorate (via the Pearson Product-Moment formula), he was able to isolate those which appeared to be controlling. The correspondence of party leaders, and the political columns of the party press were examined particularly for references to socioeconomic factors in the electoral process. Holt's conclusions, although at variance with those of several older studies, are consistent with and supply a statistical confirmation for a number of more recent interpretations. Acknowledging that slavery, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, sectional conflict and other national issues did influence voter behavior, he stresses local circumstances and issues as so vitally affecting it that accounts based solely on national issues and considerations are "inadequate," "distorted," and "unsatisfactory." When the parties did try to exploit the antislavery theme, they emphasized the negative effects of slave competition on free labor, or the aggressions committed by the slavocracy against northern rights; that is, the threat which slavery (or slaveowners) posed to northern white interests. Due to the prevalence of racist sentiment, appeals to conscience were ineffective and leaders in both parties felt constrained to deny any affection for Negroes. Downgrading the importance of economic appeals, Holt underscores, instead, the efficacy of anti-Catholic and nativist appeals in producing Whig and, later, Repub- lican majorities. In addition, he emphasizes the significance of the Know- Nothing Party in the realignment of the mid-fifties, and the antirailroad impulse in the politics of the late fifties, and offers provocative conclusions on the components and leadership of the parties, and on issues and elections throughout the period. In some hands, quantitative studies become statistical collections, graph- ically presented and interspersed with passages of highly technical analysis. This is not such a study. Holt has placed his sixty-one tables of statistical evidence in one appendix, and devotes a second to a concise explanation of his methods and their limitations. The text itself is organized chronologically, and presents Holt's views clearly, cogently, and with commendable detachment and restraint. There are neither heroes nor villains in this book, for the author's methods are not designed to identify either. It is worth noting that election analyses painstakingly reveal the significant socioeconomic characteristics of the candidates, but occasionally fail to name the candidates. However, one need not concur with this implied denial of the political significance of the individual personality, nor need one agree with all of Holt's conclusions, to assert that this book deserves the attention of all historians who profess an interest in antebellum America. It could well serve as a model for further studies in this and in other periods.

St. Francis College JOHN F. COLEMAN 1970 BOOK REVIEWS 26l

Visions of a Heavenly Sphere, A Study in Shaker Religious Art. By EDWARD DEMING ANDREWS and FAITH ANDREWS. (Charlottesville: Published for the Henry Francis DuPont Winterthur Museum by the University Press of Virginia, 1969. xiv, 138 p. Illustrations, appendixes, biblio- ography, index. $15.00.) This lovely and welcome work introduces us to the transcendental art of nineteenth-century American Shakers. This pioneering work in a rich field of American decoration brings us twelve fine color plates of Shaker "drawings'* along with a dozen and a half black and white illustrations. These plates are framed by informed chapters on the gift of inspiration among the Shakers and Inspired as well as on the general character of religious art. The work also includes a valuable check list of these Shaker inspirational drawings in several archives and museums and an extensive bibliography, all introduced by a foreword by Dr. Frank Somer, head of libraries at Winterthur. This book has the privilege of introducing a genre of transcendental art in which words still are attached to the designs. Here again we have to do with a mystical folk art which is not dumb and which can speak out what it means. The message it brings is fully comprehended in the title of the book: Visions of a Heavenly Sphere! The charismatic portrayals of such transcendent reality have taken many forms from the medieval French Romance of the Rose and the English The Pearl to the lovely painting of the Garden of Paradise by the master of the Upper Rhine, from the baroque poetry of Angelus Silesius to the Puritan verse of Edward Taylor, from Swedenborg's New Jerusalem to the verbalized visions of Quakers and Pietists in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania. To these we now must add these drawings by mid-nineteenth-century Shakers, some of the purest manifestations of this mood. This is transcendental art, not representational; what is drawn is therefore hope, not mundane reality. We are concerned once more with the same old Christian imagery which, originating in Scripture, and abundantly expressed in medieval art, here brims over into the graphic arts again. These flowers, birds (especially doves), trees, animals are no longer the common objects of everyday experience but they are symbols of the heavenly vision. And the captions which accompany the designs tell us just what they meant for the artists who made them; and we are again sharing the iconography which appears to be common to all Christian art and which periodically spills over into artistic forms. The great manuscripts made at Ephrata a century before these Shaker pieces yield the same treasury of meanings, even though the Ephrata designs are not captioned but take meaning from the hymns which are associated with them. While the authors are indeed well informed on Shaker history and the origins of the movement in the deserts of southern France, they have not seen fit to suggest that both Ephrata and the Amana Socie- ties in Iowa were offshoots of the same movement. 262 BOOK REVIEWS April

Comparison of Shaker art with Pennsylvania German Fraktur is almost demanded by the nature of these pieces. Our Pennsylvania German art was taught in the church schools and so rested upon a pedagogical tradition wherein the broken or fractured style of lettering was taught. So Fraktur was more rational and less visionary. And, as the authors say, there was no genetic connection between Fraktur and Shaker visions. The drawings herein depicted would serve psychologists of the Jungian tradition as superb examples of mandala symbolism, the pictures of the trees of life for extroverts and of the enclosed circles for introverts. Here this point is clear. The appreciative foreword by Dr. Somer brings warmth and charm to this fine book, thus introducing us to another of America's fine decorative traditions wherein the spiritual maturity of our people is plain.

Fleetwood, Pa. JOHN J. STOUDT

Fenians and Anglo-American Relations during Reconstruction. By BRIAN JENKINS. (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1969. 346 p. Bibliography, index. $10.50.) Brian Jenkins has written a fine new study of the effect of the Fenians on Anglo-American relations. It does not, in fact, change the existing view of British, American, and Canadian reactions to the clumsy efforts of the Fenians to bring freedom to oppressed Ireland, but it presents many new details in the story, and it does so with grace and verve. Anyone who has struggled through William D'Arcy's almost unreadable volume on the Fenian movement will know more about Fenianism per se than is presented here. In addition, D'Arcy made it quite clear that it was the fluid and confused political situation after the Civil War, especially during Presidential Reconstruction, that allowed the Fenians to operate so freely in mounting expeditions against Canada. The desire of Andrew Johnson for the votes of Irish-Americans, and the attempts of the Radicals to make the President seem anti-Irish, made it politically difficult for the administration to take any positive stand against Fenian operations and naturally this produced diplomatic complications. All of this has long been known. What this book does is to present a far clearer and more detailed picture of the British, American, and Canadian diplomatic maneuverings under the stress of pressures at home and abroad than existed before. Jenkins, an assistant professor at the University of Saskatchewan who took his Ph.D. degree at the University of Manchester, apparently used his far-flung aca- demic travels to delve into foreign office and private papers in England, Ireland, and Canada which d'Arcy did not use. The only source which D'Arcy used which seems not to have been available to Jenkins was what 1970 BOOK REVIEWS 263 D'Arcy called the O'Mahony papers—an enormous cache of Fenian letters, account books, military rosters, and such which D'Arcy had in his personal possession in 1947. Whether these are the same papers as those in the Irish Historical Collection in the New York Public Library, or whether the O'Mahony papers have again disappeared, Jenkins does not say. Since the author's bibliography is "selected," it is impossible to know whether he saw any of these papers and did not find them helpful, or merely did not use them. It does seem possible that since the Fenians were in contact at times with President Johnson, and may have communicated with the Radicals, some light might have been thrown on his subject by these papers. Beyond the possible fault of failing to look at some manuscripts, a few instances of perhaps too colorful writing, and the dividing of certain Canadian and Irish adventures that occurred at the same time into separate chapters, there is little to criticize in this volume. It is thoroughly researched and documented, well written, and well printed. The story it presents of careful ministers, coping with Secretaries who were under various political pressures, and, in America, with a divided government, most of whose leaders seem to have been trying to avoid responsibility as much as possible, is a fascinating one. The picture of Stanton or Speed trying to embarrass Johnson is not a new one. But the attempts of Seward and Welles to avoid personal responsibility for anti-Fenian acts even after administration policy had been decided adds a further dimension to the difficulties of Andrew Johnson's presidency. It is true that Jenkins' subject is not a large one; that the Fenians were only, as he admits, "an encumbrance" on Anglo-American relations during Reconstruction; and that no one will need to change their interpretation of these events because of this book. Nonetheless, Brian Jenkins has told his story well and completely. He has, furthermore, shown a capacity for historical writing which should enable him to go on now to bigger and better topics.

Brown University BROOKS M. KELLEY

The Arts in America; The Nineteenth Century. By WENDELL D. GARRETT, PAUL F. NORTON, ALAN GOWANS, and JOSEPH T. BUTLER. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1969. xix, 412 p. Illustrations, bibliography, index. $20.00.) This volume is the successor and companion to the publisher's The Arts in America: The Colonial Period (1966), and like the latter is composed of four essays by specialists in the culture, architecture, pictorial arts and decorative arts of our nation. The arts of nineteenth-century America have for some years now been attracting the serious attention they have long deserved, and the period has proved to be as exciting for the collector and connoisseur as it is fruitful for the researcher in the history of art. The 264 BOOK REVIEWS April

present book is a survey and must therefore offer a somewhat general account of the various arts, but as a survey it is well written, is well illustrated, and manages to introduce some new ideas and theories for the consideration of those interested in the arts of nineteenth-century America. The first essay, "A Century of Aspiration" by Wendell D. Garrett, is a thirty-eight-page analysis of that vast panorama of American civilization from the end of the colonial period to the opening of our own century. The rise of a consciousness of an American nationalism and the search for an American style in art are subjects which introduce Garrett's chapter, and it continues with the effects of the westward expansion—America's "Manifest Destiny," as it was called—across the great, wild and new continent in the first half of the century. Garrett, a graduate of the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture and currently Managing Editor of Antiques magazine, was a good choice of the editors to pull together the diverse aspects of American culture, and his essay continues with a study of the political, social and economic developments throughout the century. He continually cites sources and quotations from the fields of history, literature, and art, which his interdisciplinary interests and training allow him to do with great effect. The emergence of a popular culture and the paradox of romanticism and industrialization are explored, as are the upheaval of the Civil War and its aftermath, and the search for status and a gilded culture in the last quarter of the century. The chapter concludes with the revolt against eclecticism and the genteel tradition, as the ground is prepaied for the growth of a new art and culture in the twentieth century. In his 134-page essay on architecture, Paul Norton, chairman of the department of art history at the University of Massachusetts, carries the reader from the Palladian and neoclassical designs of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin H. Latrobe to the works of H. H. Richardson, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright at the end of the century, touching upon all of the significant eclectic and romantic architects who came in between. There are 121 good, large illustrations of the standard monuments, plus a number of pieces which are not ordinarily found in surveys; there are interior as well as exterior views, and also many sketches, floor plans, elevations and engravings from design books and nineteenth-century periodicals. The variant neoclassical styles of Jefferson, Latrobe, Bulfinch and Mclntire, Mills and Strickland are discussed, as are the numerous other revival styles (from Gothic to Egyptian) as interpreted by such men as Upjohn, A. J. Davis, Ren wick and several others. Professor Norton also considers the work of the engineer-architects (among whom are James Bogardus and John Roebling) and the impact of their work on modern architecture. As the wealth of the expanding nation brought forth significant architectural edifices in the far reaches of the continent, buildings and architects from the midwest, from Texas and California are introduced, with several very fine and often surprising examples. Good survey studies of American archi- 197° BOOK REVIEWS 265 tecture following the colonial period are quite rare, and until an acceptable survey book on the subject appears, Norton's essay must be considered one of the most useful available to those who want a well-written and masterfully digested condensed account of nineteenth-century American architecture. Alan Gowans is known to historians of American art primarily as an architectural historian—through numerous articles and his book, Images of American Living; he is now chairman of the art history department at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. His selection as the author of the section on painting and sculpture is, therefore, somewhat surprising; it is a testimony to Professor Gowans' knowledge of the American arts in general, however, that he has provided a lucid and concise narrative of the pictorial arts in his 107-page essay. In spite of certain rather provocative theories which may fail to carry the endorsement of some of his colleagues, his section of the book is generally sound, and—through a keen knowledge of the field which he has developed over many years—he has made a special contribution by working the "popular arts" (political cartoons, magazine illustrations, lithographic prints produced for popular consump- tion) into his account of the pictorial arts. As all too often has happened in the past, the sculpture of the nineteenth century has received a less than sympathetic treatment, which has led, in the opinion of the reviewer, to a lack of perception of its real merits. The final essay in the book is Joseph T. Butler's ninety-six-page study of the decorative arts, beginning with the furniture made by American craftsmen from designs by Hepplewhite, Sheraton, and so on, continuing through the Empire style, into Victorian and finally Art Nouveau. Among the eighty-seven illustrations there are also many splendid reproductions of American silver, ceramics and glass, and the inclusion of the decorative arts accounts for no small portion of the value of this book as a complete survey of the arts of the United States in the nineteenth century. Mr. Butler is a graduate of the Winterthur Program (which places special emphasis on the decorative arts in America) and has for some time been curator of the Sleepy Hollow Restorations at Tarry town, N. Y.; in his essay he displays well his thorough knowledge of his subject from stylistic motifs to craftsmanship and technology. One of the salient characteristics of this handsome volume is the manner in which the authors have skilfully related American art to American culture and shown the impact of the latter on the former. Gowans' section on American painting is particularly interesting in this respect. And all of the authors possess a breadth of knowledge of their fields that allows them to condense their sections into essays that are highly recommended by this reviewer.

University of Delaware WAYNE CRAVEN 266 BOOK REVIEWS April

Hannibal Hamlin of Maine: Lincoln's First Vice-President. By H. DRAPER HUNT. (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1969. ix, 292 p. Bibliog- raphy, index. $9.00.) This is the first scholarly biography of Hamlin. The only previous book was written by Charles Eugene Hamlin, a grandson, and published in 1899; although filiopietistic, the earlier work has useful detail and will continue to be of some value to specialists in Maine history. Professor Hunt rightly focuses his work upon Hamlin's vice-presidency. Hamlin was in i860 a leader highly popular in his own state, a former freesoil Democrat who had become a Republican in 1856 and was now a United States Senator and at the peak of his influence. At the Chicago convention, after Lincoln had been nominated for the presidency, the friends of the disappointed Seward were given as a consolation prize the right to name the running mate. The Sewardites chose Hamlin, who would have declined the honor except that he was not at the convention and did not want to embarrass his party. There was a kind of poetic justice in this, in that Hamlin was considered a Seward man but had been working actively for Lincoln because he thought Seward could not win if nominated. Four years later, Hamlin was once again a pawn and just as unhappy! At Lincoln's instance, as Hunt makes clear, Hamlin was set aside in favor of Andrew Johnson, who was needed to bind the War Democrats to the cause in that desperate time. In this case, Hamlin wanted to keep his post because he was not at all certain of being able to win back a senate seat at the moment. In the secret maneuvering for Johnson, both Simon Cam- eron and A. K. McClure were utilized by Lincoln to produce the desired result and Pennsylvania's delegation played a large role. The author seems somewhat unfair in criticising the beleaguered Lincoln for not taking time to find suitable roles for his vice-president during the war. At the outset, Hamlin hastened to New York to expedite the movement of New England and New York regiments to Washington, especially the Maine troops. If he had persisted in this task longer, despite Lincoln's tardiness in even acknowledging his letters, he might have earned the president's recognition as a valuable aide and have been a high-level trouble shooter in other capacities as time went on. But then, as Hunt concedes, he was essentially a "dull" man. Generally he was all too ready to return to Maine during these years, even when the Senate was sitting. What was more, he constantly rubbed Lincoln the wrong way by joining the Com- mittee on the Conduct of the War in urging untimely measures. This study treats adequately of the phases of its protagonist's long career, which included two terms in the Senate after the war. He sketches in the background very well throughout. One might carp that he could have given another fifty pages to Hamlin himself. The book is clearly written and is carefully grounded in the sources. Its only fault technically 1970 BOOK REVIEWS 267 is that the notes are at the back. Probably no further biography of Hamlin will be needed.

Kalamazoo College IVOR D. SPENCER

Millstone Valley. By ELIZABETH G. C. MENZIES. (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1969. xi, 308 p. Illustrations, index. $17.50.) The Millstone River flows, after a meandering start, straight through the heart of New Jersey from Princeton to the Raritan. Paralleled by traffic arteries at a considerable distance on either side, it has not been much frequented, and its banks have remained surprisingly unspoiled through the spoiling years of our lives. It is the bright freshness of this valley, clearly threatened now by the darkening march of progress, that Miss Menzies has sought to capture in her superb sequence of photographs, and to fortify by her fervent prose against the ravages of time. She is, as all Princeton alumni know, a brilliant photographer, whose pictures have adorned the pages of innumerable Princeton Alumni Weeklies and have recently given distinction to books on the Delaware Valley and on Prince- ton architecture. Readers of a conservationist bent, and indeed most readers who have managed to form an affectionate acquaintance with nature in this age, will be especially pleased with the opening chapter of the book. Here the Mill- stone Valley appears to best advantage (before the advent of civilization), and after a brief geological introduction one is presented with a beguiling collection of birds, flowers, trees and small animals, all eloquently described, all unquestionably to be numbered among the good and beautiful features of the land. It is when mankind arrives that trouble breaks in. For against the Mill- stone's ducks, geese and turtles, its catfish, milkweed and pink mallows, its black cherries and sycamores an army of bulldozers is shown advancing, leaving in its wake a desert of paved surfaces, felled trees, inadequate sewers, polluted waters and a general abomination of desolation. The un- equal conflict between these two forces is the underlying theme of the book, and, since the author can offer no assurance that fortune will favor the righteous, her writing occasionally approaches the edge of despair. "Of course, it may not be long before there is no countryside to preserve." The history of the valley after the coming of the settlers is told in a series of loosely connected sketches. It is a pleasant, folksy kind of history, proceeding from anecdote to anecdote through a vast and somewhat bewil- dering maze of genealogy. There is a profusion of interesting information on all sorts of matters: early mills, dams and canals, roads (with valuable maps), houses and churches, even a startling account of how the Woolworth 268 BOOK REVIEWS April

Building in New York came to be sheathed in terra cotta from Rocky Hill. Authorities are scrupulously cited, present-day equivalents are supplied for many of the localities described, and Princeton, the most considerable town in the valley, is not permitted to dwarf the charm and importance of such lesser settlements as Griggstown, Kingston, or Millstone. Miss Menzies has done an enormous amount of digging in the archives of the State, the publications of the New Jersey Historical Society, provin- cial, county and local histories and much beside, and if the ordering of the material leaves something to be desired, it would be ungrateful to object. On the other hand, something more might have been said about Manville, and all that Manville implies; and to this reader the remarks on religion, a subject of cardinal importance in the early history of any American colony, seem curiously superficial. The undoubted excellence of the book is due, however, less to the text than to the magnificent 300-odd illustrations. From the dramatic close-ups of frogs and turtles near the beginning to "the spoor of the bulldozer" near the end, the reader's eye is delighted and his imagination taken captive. Here are the wild, swampy upper reaches of the river, calm and a dim sun over Lake Carnegie, flood waters in village streets, swimmers, canoeing parties and fishermen, meadows with cows flapping a slow tail, and tall oaks casting shade in an eternal afternoon. There are a great many pictures of buildings, some of historical interest, some illustrating a point in architecture: an especially interesting series presents a number of English houses matched with Millstone Valley houses of like character. In her preface the author has given an engaging account of the purpose of her book: "to show the valley; to tell the way it was, the way it is, and what is happening to it." The statement could hardly be improved; the stated purpose has been admirably fulfilled. This is a delightful book.

Princeton, N. J. RICHARD V. LINDABURY

Poles in American History and Tradition. By JOSEPH A. WYTRWAL. (De- troit: Endurance Press, 1969. 485 p. Bibliography, index. $6.75.) The United States is composed, except for American Indians, of immi- grant groups and their descendants. In most cases the immigrants them- selves clung closely to their old culture, but the second generation often rejected this heritage in seeking acceptance in the new homeland. When Americanization was assured, the descendants relaxed and took pride in their folk culture with its distinctive dress and food, music and dances, customs and sayings. The Poles in America have differed somewhat from this pattern because of their fervent patriotism for Poland. The brutal suppression in 1795 of their national state, almost miraculously restored to independence in 1918 under the talented Paderewski, had much to do with their attitude. The 1970 BOOK REVIEWS 269 savage and unprovoked attack by Hitler in 1939 may have prolonged the love affair of American Poles with the mother country, though some today fear they see a diminution of this devotion. The Polish contribution to the United States has been great. There were few Poles in the colonies and, despite the romantic glamour of Kosciuszko and Pulaski during the American Revolution, their influence was compara- tively small. Not until after the Civil War did immigration become heavy —to the farms of Texas, Wisconsin, and Connecticut, the New England textile mills, the Chicago slaughterhouses, Ohio steel mills, Pennsylvania coal fields, and many other places. Chicago, Buffalo, Detroit, Cleveland, and Milwaukee have had large Polish populations. As Mr. Wytrwal says, "The immigrants may not have known the English language when they arrived, but no one could question the eloquence of their muscles, the fluency of their brawn, the speech of their industriousness, the articulate- ness of their loyalty to their work and their adopted country." The book is directed toward a popular audience, and Mr. Wytrwal has described hundreds of Poles of human interest. A few examples include the Jamestown glassworkers of 1608; Zaborowski (today Zabriskie), the New Amsterdam Indian trader and interpreter; Haym Salomon of Philadelphia, Revolutionary financier; Zajaczek, juggler and weight lifter, who made his debut in Peale's Museum; Dr. Marie Zakrzewska, founder of the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston; many talented musicians including Artur Rubenstein and Jozef Hofmann; the beautician Helena Rubenstein; and the curvaceous dancer Gilda Gray (Maryanna Michalska). Strong, industrious, talented, and enthusiastic, they have added much more to American life than their four per cent in our popula- tion total would predict. Any book of this general approach must be careful lest, in its pride, it claims too much and fails to distinguish between truth and myth. Mr. Wytrwal has tried hard to be accurate as his footnotes, his fifteen-page bibliography, and his useful index show.

Colonial Williamsburg EDWARD P. ALEXANDER

Republicans and Labor, ipip~ip2p. By ROBERT H. ZIEGER. (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1969. xii, 303 p. Bibliographical note, index. $8.25.) This book does not concern the Republican Party, not even the national Republican Party; rather it concerns a few high-placed Republicans in the Harding-Coolidge administrations, such as Secretary of Labor James J. Davis, Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty, and Secretary of Com- merce Herbert Hoover, some of the more prominent United States Senators and a few important politicians of Republican persuasion—including several from Pennsylvania such as George Wharton Pepper and Amos Pinchot. 27O BOOK REVIEWS April It does not concern all of organized labor; rather it concerns the "labor problems'* created by railroad and coal labor. Labor problems in this context involved those labor activities which disturbed the public and the Republican administration in Washington. Despite the limitation the book is a valuable addition to the historiog- raphy of American politics, of American labor, and of the American twenties. Professor Zieger, who has written several articles on Pennsyl- vania's Republican leaders and their labor problems, reveals—or in some cases confirms what others have revealed—a number of significant factors about the Republicans and labor: 1. That there was a wide spectrum of opinion concerning labor among Republicans; these opinions could be classified by such terms as "progressive," "open-shop," "efficiency-engineering," and "political." 2. That many progressive Republicans regarded labor unions in the same light as corporate monopolies; they were, moreover, interested in general reform and not in class-oriented programs. Progressive Republicans had no influence within the Harding-Coolidge administrations. 3. That Attorney General Daugherty, the most notorious open-shop advocate within the Harding administration, had little support for his position from other Republican leaders. 4. That Herbert Hoover, more than anyone else, was the major architect of the Harding-Coolidge policies toward labor; his program aimed at developing an efficient economy in which labor would prosper. 5. That the most consistent approach that the Republican administrations took toward labor during the period was one of political accommoda- tion. Harding and his advisors refused to encourage the open-shop movement and did encourage the labor-supported movement to restrict immigration. Although Harding used harsh language against railway shop craftsmen (permitting Daugherty to get an injunction) and against soft coal miners in 1922, this was something of an aberration. Republicans actually worked hard to convince labor that they were not opposed to its interests in 1924. The Coolidge administration was responsible for the Railway Labor Act of 1926; it deserved some of the credit for the Jackson- ville Agreement of 1924, dealing with the soft coal industry (an agreement that went wrong); it gave attention to possible reforms in the soft coal industry that were later adopted by the New Deal; it also gave attention to limitations upon the injunction. Professor Zieger suggests--cautiously because he recognizes that there were other forces at work in the period—that the Republican policy was successful. He concludes that the support Herbert Hoover received from labor in 1928 testifies to that success. I'm inclined to believe that he has largely proved his point. At the same time his evidence—particularly in relation to Hoover- reveals that the Harding-Coolidge administrations were hardly friendly to 1970 BOOK REVIEWS 2JI labor or to its aspirations. Labor was a "problem," to be handled like any- other problem. For Republicans it had no humanity. Professor Zieger's research, as indicated by his sources, is excellent. The University of Kentucky Press deserves commendation for the format it provided the book.

Temple University JOSEPH G. RAYBACK

The Log Cabin in America^ from Pioneer Days to the Present, By C. A. WESLAGER. (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1969. xxv, 382 p. Illustrations, notes on sources, appendix, index. $12.50.) Any American, interested in log cabins, should not fail to read this book. If his interest is merely casual, he will soon learn that he has touched upon an involved subject, the ramifications of which extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from Maine to Florida. The author's announced purpose is to record faithfully and factually the part played by the log cabin in American life. This he assuredly has done in a definitive manner, stressing the effect of these primitive structures upon family life, the fortunes of politics, and the development of democracy. He has succeeded, as he hoped to do, in associating the log cabin with people, American people, thus emphasizing its important place in the story of our country. Although he disclaims any intention of treating his subject as an architect or folklorist, he has nevertheless covered a good bit of that ground. Being an experienced archaeologist, he knows the necessity of competent research in order to confirm findings and deductions. It is very easy for an author to append an impressive bibliography of reference works. However, the character of Mr. Weslager's chapter notes, which include many references, pretty well demonstrate that he has actually read most, if not all, of the cited sources. It represents an impressive volume of study. If the first part of this book seems a bit tedious (as it did to your reviewer) by all means continue reading. You will soon encounter valuable evidence from his patient studies and sensible deductions. And you will also detect a refreshing lack of dogmatism. After thorough documentation and explanation of origins and ethnic influences, and widespread travel to study the impact of pioneer conditions and attitudes of mind, he still retains an open mind. The very last paragraph in his book ends with these statements: "Further research may be expected to reveal additional data about the log cabin, particularly the associations of different methods of corner notchings with different cultural groups and why certain preferences resulted in the domination of one method over another in certain areas. This I will leave to others better qualified to investigate, but time is growing short. A day is rapidly coming when the American log cabin, except for memorial structures, will be extinct." 272 BOOK REVIEWS April This is the attitude of a thorough scholar, although future researchers will have to study his book. Partly because of his open mind, however, your reviewer will advance one small criticism—the scant attention given to the use of split slabs, held down by roof poles with "spreaders" between, as a method of log cabin roofing. In some areas, this method would seem to have been the earliest pursued. It is doubtful if Mr. Weslager ever saw such a roof, since rafters and split shingles probably replaced most of them in reroofing operations, and roofs have a distinctly limited life span. However, "John Woods' Descrip- tion of Building a Log Cabin, 1820," in the Appendix, describes the process in great detail. The side (log) wall of the cabin was simply bent over, in effect, and continued up the roof, like a log wall constructed out-of-plumb. The roof logs were held apart by gable logs, cut slanting at each end. Split slabs were then pegged to the roof logs, and these were held in place by "weight poles," kept apart by split "spreaders." The gable logs at eaves' level projected at each end to provide support for the lowest "weight poles." A photograph in possession of the Wisconsin State Historical Society shows the decaying log cabin erected by Daniel Boone in St. Charles County, Missouri. The gables are of logs, with projecting ends on the eaves' logs. Side-lapped split slabs (like long shingles) are still in place, but the "weight poles" and "spreaders" are gone. (Boone originally lived in Berks County, Pennsylvania.) Figure 26 shows one of the "hutts" reconstructed at Valley Forge by this reviewer for the State of Pennsylvania. The roof, or "weight poles" and the "spreaders" show clearly. This type of roof was selected because in his order of the day to the army, issued December 18, 1777, just before breaking camp for the march to Valley Forge, Washington described in detail the huts to be built upon arrival. In part it reads: "Sides, Ends and Roofs made of logs." This eliminates rafter, lath, and shingle construction, but does describe the familiar "slab and pole" roof. It must be remembered that the General had spent many days on the frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia on missions for Virginia's governor, and knew that such a roof eliminated the need for nails. By way of further proof of this fact, the Boone genealogist, describing the cabin built on the Elkhorn in North Carolina by William Grant (brother-in-law of Daniel Boone) soon after 1783, says, "The log house which he built there was still standing as late as 1851, in its original state, the roof put on with wooden pins."

Gwynedd Valley', Pa. G. EDWIN BRUMBAUGH THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA President, Boies Penrose Vice-Presidents Richmond P. Miller Ernest C. Savage Roy F. Nichols Harold D. Saylor

Secretary, Penrose R. Hoopes Treasurer, George E. Nehrbas Councilors Benjamin Chew Robert L. McNeil, Jr. Martin P. Snyder Thomas C. Cochran Henry R. Pemberton Frederick B. Tolles Mrs. Anthony N.B.Garvan E. P. Richardson David Van Pelt Howard H. Lewis Mrs. Lawrence M. C. Smith H. Justice Williams Joseph W. Lippincott, Jr. Thomas E. Wynne Counsel, R. Sturgis Ingersoll

Director, Nicholas B. Wainwright Curator, John D. Kilbourne Librarian, Frank W. Bobb ¥ ¥ T 9 Founded in 1824, The Historical Society of Pennsylvania has long been a center of research in Pennsylvania and American history. It has accumulated an important historical collection, chiefly through contributions of family, political, and business manuscripts, as well as letters, diaries, newspapers, magazines, maps, prints, paintings, photographs, and rare books. Additional contributions of such a nature are urgently solicited for preservation in the Society's fireproof building where they may be consulted by scholars. Membership. There are various classes of membership: general, #15.00; associate, $25.00; patron, $100.00; life, #300.00; benefactor, $1,000. Members receive certain privileges in the use of books, are invited to the Society's historical addresses and receptions, and receive The Pennsylvania Magazine oj History and Biography. Those interested in joining the Society are invited to submit their names. Hours: The Society is open to the public Monday, 1 P.M. to 9 P.M.; Tuesday through Friday, 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. The Society is normally closed from the first Monday in August until the second Monday in September. «£TA(D(DIB

PORTRAIT PAINTER OF PENNSYLVANIA

BY REBECCA J. BEAL With an Essay by E. P. Richardson

^ESIGNED by P. J. Conkwright, illustrations by the Mcriden Gravurc Com- pany, printed by The Winchell Company, bound by Murphy-Parker, 436 pages, 256 illustrations (four in color), notes on Eichholtz techniques by Theodor Siegl, bibliography. This first volume on Eichholtz represents about twenty years of research and effort on the part of Mrs. Beal, its compiler, and is a long overdue appreciation of the career of an important nineteenth-century American portrait painter. "It was," comments Dr. Richardson, "from the great body of unpretentious, hard-working, deeply patriotic Americans, simple in their tastes, domestic in their interests, that Eichholtz came and it is of their qualities he speaks." Born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Eichholtz was basically a self-taught artist who did most of his work at Lancaster except for a ten-year period, 1823-1832, when he prac- ticed his art in Philadelphia. Mrs. Beal has catalogued and described 924 paintings known to have been painted by Eichholtz or attributed to him. This volume will be of interest to those who own Eichholtz paintings, descendants of subjects painted, people interested in American art, and libraries featuring strength in that field. Published by The Historical Society of Pennsylvania and now available. Orders may be placed with your local book store or directly with The Historical Society of Penn- sylvania, 1300 Locust Street, Philadelphia, 19107.

Price $15.00 postpaid. Residents of Pennsylvania add six per cent sales tax.