BOOK REVIEWS

Charles McLean Andrews. A Study in American Historical Writing, By A. S. EISENSTADT. (: Columbia University Press, 1956. xx, 273 p. Frontispiece, bibliography, index. $5.00.) Charles McLean Andrews not only won the deep affection of his students and the unstinted respect of his colleagues during his lifetime, but such public tributes as his election to the presidency of the American Historical Association in 1925 and Professor Lawrence H. Gipson's excellent review article in this Magazine on the first appearance of The Colonial Period in 1935. During the year following Andrews' death in 1943, the late Professor Neillie Neilson wrote an informal and moving eloge for the Bryn Mawr Alumnae Bulletin^ and Professor Labaree published in the William and Mary Quarterly in 1944 a note on Andrews prefacing a bibliography of his works. A definitive and critical biography has yet to appear. In publishing this dissertation, subtitled "A Study in American Historical Writing," the Columbia University Press has been perhaps more benevolent than judi- cious. In spite of considerable and industrious research in both printed and manuscript material, aided by the generous help of Mrs. Andrews and of her husband's former students and friends, the author has not in fact produced anything likely to be of much value to those interested in "the historiographic legacy" of the various schools of colonial history in which Mr. Andrews studied and taught. Mr. Eisenstadt briefly discusses Andrews' early formative years in what is perhaps the best part of the volume. He proceeds to Andrews' contribu- tion—"the purely substantive elements of his system"—to early American history, the application in his later years and work of principles acquired earlier, and finally the relation of Andrews to others of his school and the "growing obsolescence" of his work "in the context of changing history and a changing history of history." Mr. Eisenstadt is industrious and has cov- ered much ground. This review will be directed not toward a denial of his talents, but toward a criticism of an approach which, if not obsolete, is not demonstrably helpful in the understanding of the work of our colleagues past and present. Mr. Eisenstadt is, of course, right in supposing that each age writes history with different presuppositions, or prejudices, and different prob- lems in mind. He would also be right were he to claim that the study of historiography in our time has often led to an increased appreciation of the value of studying the great historians for their reflection of the intellectual temper of their own periods. But to conclude, as he suggests in the last 199 2OO BOOK REVIEWS April paragraph of his introduction (p. xiv) and seems to confirm in the opening paragraph of his conclusion (p. 220), that truth is exclusively dependent on who does the finding is surely a gross and unwarranted extension of rela- tivism. He admits that if history be "social thinking" this viewpoint con- demns "all our monumental works" to become "colossal wrecks, stones standing in the desert, their epoch stamped on lifeless things" (p. xiv). Mr. Eisenstadt is much too sensible when he forgets this kind of nonsense to believe all its implications. Do we now read the works of Livy, Machia- velli, Clarendon and Ranke, for example, only for the sake of discovering their personalities and reflections of the ideologies of their period? Professor Andrews' work had limitations. He has been criticized for a lack of interest in society, in class conflicts and tensions, in racial admix- tures, in immigration in general, in wage rates, and in the distribution of wealth. This seems fair enough. It is, however, unjust to dismiss his preoc- cupation with English origins, policies, and administrative bodies as another example of Anglophilia. This reviewer is sensitive to Britannia-plating. Andrews had not undergone the process. He was not, as some of his genera- tion admittedly were, sentimental about Anglo-Saxon ties, and he could be shrewdly critical of his English contemporaries, however generous were his praises of a Maitland. Nor did he neglect American repositories for the English Public Record Office. He managed to compass an Atlantic area of research. His Guide is indispensable to students. His Colonial Period will long afford the best political account of his chosen field. His interest in economic and business history still bears its fruit among the historians of today. His concern with the West Indian islands and with other far-flung outposts of empire has inspired many a study useful to American and British scholars alike. There will be many more cosmopolitan and more sociological histories of the American colonies. Historians, according to their taste and the prevailing fashion, will find new areas to explore. But good conscientious historical work, even without the literary genius of a Plutarch or a Gibbon to popularize it, has other values than Mr. Eisenstadt would admit in his more theoretical passages, and will continue to be useful for a long time to come. The contribution of historians like that of other human beings is at once more complex in its nature and yet simpler in its values than this sort of analysis allows. Bryn Mawr College CAROLINE ROBBINS

Arms and Armor in Colonial America^ I526-1783. By HAROLD L. PETERSON. (Harrisburg, Pa.: The Stackpole Company, 1956. [xiv], 350 p. Illustra- tions, appendix, bibliography, index. $12.50.) At last we have all in one place a discussion of ordnance materiel used in what is now the continental United States by white men before 1783. Books I957 BOOK REVIEWS 2OI have been published by the dozens on other phases of colonial life; the means of existence in the New World—arms, both offensive and defensive— have been slighted. Probably no other subject was as important to the people themselves, but some otherwise well-qualified students of the period have known little and cared less about it- Mr. Peterson has produced a concise and authoritative survey of more than two and a half centuries of military materiel. He has deliberately not discussed artillery. Perhaps no similar period before World War II in Western military history shows so much change. The Spaniards who went into New Mexico had as their principal projectile weapon the crossbow; they relied on armor to protect them and their extremely important horses while they used their edged weapons for decisive action. The principal battles of the Revolution were determined by musket- and bayonet-armed infantry in very much the same way that the great nineteenth-century battles were won and lost. Mr. Peterson chose to divide his period into two parts. His emphasis from the first to the second changes slightly. The first period is from 1526 through 1688, and includes a discussion of Spanish arms and armor along with the better known British, French, Dutch and Swedish weapons. The second period is from 1689 through the end of the Revolution, and deals very thor- oughly with British and American arms as well as treating French and German weapons in some detail, particularly those used in the actual fighting here between 1775 and 1783. In each period, Mr. Peterson devotes chapters to firearms, ammunition and equipment, edged weapons, and armor. This book is intensely readable; the author writes clearly and concisely. The unfolding of the story of colonial arms holds one's interest page after page. However, it's also authoritative. The author's scholarship is beyond question; perhaps no one knows so much about the written sources which survive as he does. In addition, Mr. Peterson has the unique advantages of his position with the National Park Service. As its Chief Historian, he has conducted personally some archeological exploration of important historical sites and has had firsthand access to all other finds. He has been the fore- most consultant in arms of his period for years, and has had countless surviving specimens in his hands for examination. Mr. Peterson has profited immeasurably by all his opportunities. In this book he draws freely on his great knowledge and intensive study, without sacrificing the story to me- chanical and historical minutiae. It would be impossible for a treatment of as large and diverse a subject to be susceptible to one interpretation only in all its details. Sometimes primary sources say one thing and surviving weapons another. A wide choice of interpretation is left to the serious student. Even those who disagree with Mr. Peterson in some of his conclusions, however, cannot help but be im- pressed by his knowledge and thoroughness. 2O2 BOOK REVIEWS April The controversial points are few. Some will disagree with the author in connection with Queen Ann's association with the Brown Bess Musket and socket bayonets. Mr. Peterson has followed what has been written in Eng- land rather than the evidence of surviving pieces. The career of Patrick Ferguson and the rather remarkable breech-loading rifle which he perfected could have been treated differently. Mr. Peterson has perhaps overempha- sized the actual use of polearms in the Revolution by the American side. There are many fascinating facts and passages. There is much that is new to most readers. One of the most interesting sections of the book is the discussion of the use of armor in in the very early days. The image of a deerskin-clad rifleman comes to mind when many of us think of colonial Virginia. This was partially true in the middle eighteenth century; however, in the early seventeenth century, armor had its place. The sword was of extreme importance even for infantry until about 1760; it continued to be the most important single weapon of the cavalry throughout the Revolution. Mr. Peterson achieves his purpose as set forth in his preface. He traces the broad outlines of the development of arms and armor in colonial America very well indeed. There remain many places, as he points out, for mono- graphs on specific weapons; however, the general survey is now well done and need not be redone. An understanding of this relatively short book should prevent errors which have unfortunately crept into the work of some of America's finest historians. This book appears to be a must for anyone who wishes to write, talk, or think accurately about the period.

Princeton, N. J. JAC WELLER

Century of Conflict. The Struggle Between the French and the British in Colonial America. By JOSEPH LISTER RUTLEDGE. [Canadian History Series, Vol. II.] (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday & Company, 1956. xii, 530 p. Maps, index. $5.00.) In this second volume of the new Canadian History Series Mr. Rutledge, a Canadian journalist, has told a story of conflict from the time of Fron- tenac's arrival in Quebec to the climax of the French and Indian War. Throughout the narrative the author gives the impression that he has con- sulted original sources, and no doubt he has. The general reader, reassured by occasional mention of the word "document" or "journal," or by such authoritative phrases as "But all the records say . . . ," will accept the veracity of the narrative and enjoy a vigorous and sometimes eloquent portrayal of a colorful era of North American history. The author, however, has not satisfied the curiosity of the more serious reader by footnotes or a bibliography. In his introduction Mr. Rutledge makes only one acknowledgment to authority, and that is to Francis i957 BOOK REVIEWS 203 Parkman. George M. Wrong is mentioned in the text, and herein are also found references to Charlevoix, Horace Walpole, the Louisbourg Journals, and other sources of information. If the reader should ask what authorities were used in writing this book, he might infer, from allusions in the text, that the narrative is based primarily on documentary materials. Neverthe- less it appears that it is based for the most part on the History by Francis Parkman. One who is familiar with Parkman's writings can understand why Mr. Rutledge naturally turned to the greatest historian of Canada when he wished to create, as he says in the introduction, a work of ". . . flesh and blood and a sense of immediacy. . . ." Indeed, in this imaginative history we seem to have an inside view of Frontenac's mind; we are told that his "face flushed with anger"; and we can almost hear a carriage as it ". . . came rattling down Duke of Gloucester Street. . . ." But these are appar- ently the author's conjectural inferences, not Parkman's. While Parkman is cited in the text, the author is extremely reluctant to cite him again when a document is quoted that has previously been quoted in Parkman's History. As an example, compare the words of Wolfe on page 485 with those quoted on page 31 of Montcalm and Wolfe (Vol. Ill, Frontenac edition). Since pithy quotations from original manuscripts in Parkman's History have been used by other writers as their own, repeating them without giving Parkman credit is not an unusual sin. With some variation and without citation, the author also quotes the well-known speech of Duquesne to the Iroquois (p. 359) which probably first appeared in F. J. Turner's famous essay in The Frontier in American History (New York, 1921), page 14. Yet this latter speech has also been quoted by profes- sional historians without reference to Turner. Is this, the reader ponders, curious coincidence or is it literary cannibalism? Although the epic of the author's Century of Conflict has in large part been told in Parkman's Half-Century of Conflict and his other volumes, Mr. Rutledge has at times startled us by original interpretations such as com- paring the death of Frontenac to that of Joseph Stalin "in our own time." In the main, however, he follows Parkman's spotlight in treating episodes like the Acadian controversy, the tragedy at Deerfield, and the saga of Montcalm and Wolfe. Even the brief, entertaining section on the coureurs de bois and the roving gentilhomme has the flavor of Parkman's Old Regime. Parkman's influence is perhaps most vividly exhibited in the author's judgment of the British position in the Acadian deportation. The reader who is beginning a study of Canadian history will find this book fascinating reading. Spurred on by chapter headings like "The Awful Frown of God" or "Captains Courageous," he becomes a spectator of the sights and smells of war and its brutalities. As a prominent journalist who has turned to writing history, the author has something to teach the profes- sional historian. He has written a popular history and he has made it 2O4 BOOK REVIEWS April interesting. In quick, concise style the story moves easily through the decades, and leading actors are represented in convincing profiles in Park- man's manner. Perhaps the author's most significant contribution is in the realm of synthesis. A complicated series of events is skillfully woven into a fabric of dramatic narrative.

University of California WILBUR R. JACOBS Santa Barbara College

The Beekmans of New York in Politics and Commerce', 1647-1877. By PHILIP L. WHITE. (New York: The New-York Historical Society, 1956. xxxii, 705 p. Illustrations, chart, bibliography, appendix, index. $10.00.) The Beekman Mercantile Papers, 174.6-1799. Three Volumes. Edited by PHILIP L. WHITE. (New York: The New-York Historical Society, 1956. x, 1485 p. Appendix, index. $25.00.) The Beekman family was prominent in the politics and commerce of New York from the days of down to the reign of Boss Tweed. Except for a few old and not completely reliable genealogies and a mention or two of the Beekman Patent in Dutchess County, New York, standard reference books have, however, almost completely by-passed the family. The four volumes under review illuminate the role of this old Dutch family and go far to explain why they have been called representative of New York aristocracy. Philip L. White's scholarly one-volume study of the Beekmans from 1647 to 1877 is totally objective, perhaps sometimes overly detailed, but cer- tainly never dull. From the days of Dutch colonist William Beekman in 1647 through six generations in and its environs, the author traces the Beekman's colonial, political interests and later mercantile busi- ness. Here is family history as it should be written, but seldom is. The chapters on William, Gerardus, and the two Henry Beekmans are based on published sources readily available in most large libraries. The value of these sections lies in the fresh interpretation of this material offered by the author. The data included on the Leisler Revolution of 1689, f°r example, is the best to appear on this subject in recent years. So far as this reviewer can see, the author's treatment does not contain the inaccuracies that marred Jerome R. Reich's study of Leisler'}s Rebellion (1953). Dr. Gerardus Beekman (1653-1723), provincial councilor, acting gov- ernor, and son of the New Amsterdam settler, was particularly active in this early political revolution against authoritarian principles and certainly de- serves more recognition from historians than he has hitherto received. Con- victed of treason and coming dangerously close to losing his head and being I957 BOOK REVIEWS 2O5 "Cut* in four parts/' the Beekman family's most prominent member was in part responsible for New York's democratic government of the 1750's. "In the course of the eighteenth century," states Professor White of the Department of History at the University of Texas, "business for the first time replaced politics as the central interest of the leading members of the family." The chapter on Gerard G. Beekman, sartorial, sports-loving, con- vivial bon vivant, is one of the most enjoyable in the book. Dr. White obvi- ously likes Gerard, and by making excellent use of the source material available he sketches a convincing portrait of the commission agent. After a chapter of "Summary and Conclusion" on the merchant members of the family, Dr. White's one-volume study ends with an account of philan- thropist James William Beekman (1815-1877). "Whereas his ancestors," concludes the author, "had struggled to win and retain power for an upper class of merchants and landowners . . . James W. Beekman . . . made himself the servant of the new ruling class of working people." The Beekman papers, now in the collections of the New-York Historical Society, have been printed in a three-volume set entitled The Beekman Mercantile Papers, 1746-1799, edited by Dr. White. The binding is similar to that of the one-volume study, but the two titles may be purchased separately. According to the editor, these volumes constitute the "largest publication of American commercial correspondence of that period which has yet been made." For this reason they should find their way to the shelves of all large public libraries and historical research centers. Gerard's correspondence shows that New York's business relations with Philadelphia in the mid-1700's were very close, perhaps closer than with any other part of the country except Rhode Island. Such well-known Philadelphia names as John Sayre, Townsend White, Thomas Clifford, Thomas Wharton, the firms of Cunningham and Nesbitt, among others, are prominent in the Beekman letter book covering the years 1746-1770. There are also frequent references to ships sailing out of Philadelphia, since much of dry-goods-importer 's correspondence overseas was mailed via that port. This correspondence is of special value to historians, especially those letters written and received before and after the Revolu- tionary War. The amazingly complete indexes provided for these books are a most welcome feature. Both were made by David H. Wallace, Assistant Editor of the New-York Historical Society. A glossary of eighteenth-century trade terms also adds to the value of the set. Genealogists will welcome these publications not only for the genealogical chart of the Beekman family which they include, but also for the many references to other important families of the times. Dr. Fenwick Beekman, foremost contemporary repre- sentative, has written an introduction which provides a "Who's Who" of other members of the family.

Minnesota Historical Society JAMES TAYLOR DUNN 2o6 BOOK REVIEWS April : New Responsibilities within the Enlarged Empire, 1763-1766. By LAWRENCE HENRY GIPSON. [The British Empire Before the , Vol. IX]. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1956. xliv, 345, xlvi p. Maps and plans, index. #7.50.)

Looking back through the stained-glass window of the Revolutionary War, Americans have commonly concentrated upon the growing quarrel between the old colonies and the mother country which the expulsion of French power from this continent released, and their view of British policy during these interwar years has therefore been strongly—and naturally— colored by nationalism. To get a clearer understanding of the motives and spirit behind the British handling of the crucial colonial problem, Professor Gipson has wisely turned our attention first to another set of imperial problems confronting the government in London at the same time, the strange and variegated problems of the territories brought under British control as a consequence of the Great War for the Empire. A detailed examination of these constitutes the present volume, which, like the preced- ing volumes in this series, is firmly based upon a well-nigh exhaustive study of primary as well as secondary materials and written in an attractive smoothly-flowing style. After a swift but penetrating survey of the Empire in 1763 and of the contemporary domestic political scene in Great Britain, Gipson carefully traces the evolution of the famous Proclamation of 1763. He gives par- ticular attention to the purpose of the line therein laid down, which was to prevent hostilities between red men and white by giving security to both in accordance with previous American plans. Readers who wish to consult the supporting documents, however, should be warned that in this chapter all the page references to the important collection by Shortt and Doughty are wrong because they are taken from the first edition, not the second, which is cited. But this is the only slip of its kind that I have detected. The next two chapters, dealing with the Cherokee War of 1759-1761 and the much greater Indian uprising of 1763 in the north, are of particular interest because they reveal very distinctly the conscious American de- pendence on British regulars. The chapter on "The Transformation of Nova Scotia" shows how that colony, while still confined to the peninsula and almost depopulated by the removal of the Acadians, got an assembly at the command of the home government; and how it was later (beginning before the 1763 additions of Cape Breton and the present provinces of Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick) repopulated mostly from New England. Canada, its boundary clipped close and its name changed to the Province of Quebec, was denied the assembly promised by the Proclamation of 1763. Governor Murray stood in the way, because by English law an assembly would have to be Protestant and he would not deliver 70,000 French Canadians into the hands of a few hundred recently arrived British-born merchants who aspired to rule. Exasperated by his refusal, the leaders of this mercantile I957 BOOK REVIEWS 2O7 minority bombarded the home government with all manner of wild accusa- tions against Murray in order to get a peremptory command for him to call an assembly or else the substitution of another governor who would call one. Gipson might have explained this better, and also the reasons that misled the home government in 1763 when preparing for the new Province of Quebec a constitution that proved to be an utter misfit. A more careful checking of this chapter would have corrected a number of minor inac- curacies which need not be specified here. The two chapters on the new colonies of East Florida and West Florida bring out the peculiar difficulties of providing for the government and the colonization of each. The ceded islands in the Caribbean presented still another set of compli- cations, such as free ports, the grouping of little islands under one governor, the presence of troublesome "black Caribs," concessions to the French population, and the constitutional issue over export duties. Much more momentous and baffling because of the uncounted millions of people in- volved and the geographical remoteness of their country was the surpris- ing turn of events in India, where native political anarchy was drawing the English trading company, against the will of its directors in London and of the British government, into becoming a ruling power. In focusing attention on all these manifold developments Gipson has increased our already heavy debt to him, for this volume widens our view of the immediate background of the War for American Independence. We are also much beholden to Alfred Knopf for continuing to produce, espe- cially in such fine format, the most distinguished multivolume work by any living American historian.

University of Minnesota A. L. BURT

The Birth of the Republic, 1763-89. By EDMUND S. MORGAN. [The Chicago History of American Civilization.] (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956. xi, 177 p. Bibliographical note, index. $3.00.) This fine new book by Professor Morgan is one of the volumes of the series edited by Professor Daniel J. Boorstin of the University of Chicago under the title The Chicago History of American Civilization. Professor Boorstin is to be congratulated upon the fine team of authors, including Merrill Jensen, Dexter Perkins, Howard Peckham, and Bell I. Wiley, who have agreed to write the volumes which have been published or which are now in preparation for the Chicago History series. The high quality of Dr. Morgan's book is a good omen, indeed, if it is representative of the standard of scholarship and literary achievement which will prevail throughout the volumes in the series. However, just as there are thorns and nettles in the world, there are flaws in the volumes of the Chicago History series. Dr. Boorstin, the University of Chicago Press, or both, have evidently set a policy of producing very short, very inexpensive volumes. The policy of keeping down the length of 2O8 BOOK REVIEWS April the volumes has put the several authors in handcuffs and strait jackets. Let us pause to remind the reader that Edmund S. Morgan and Helen M. Morgan are authors of a book, The Stamp Act Crisis; Prologue to Revolution (Chapel Hill, N. C, 1953), in which they discussed in 302 pages the subjects which are crammed into just fourteen pages of the chapter entitled "Sugar and Stamps, 1764-66," in The Birth of the Republic, Dr. Morgan has done a fine job of summarizing his vast knowledge of the Stamp Act crisis in one short chapter, but the reviewer feels that it is a misfortune that a fine scholar has been forced to compress his findings into so few pages. Thirty pages might have been fairly adequate, but, surely, cutting to fourteen pages was an overly drastic form of surgery. The reviewer feels strongly that Dr. Boorstin should allow his authors another fifty or sixty pages apiece even if it results in another $1.00 or $1.50 being added to the price of each volume. Within the limited space available to him, Dr. Morgan has written an excellent summary of the misunderstandings and clashes which led to the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. He has demonstrated that the rift between Briton and American arose primarily from British efforts to tax their American subjects and from American resistance to such taxa- tion. British ministers and members of Parliament maintained that Parlia- ment had the right to tax the American colonies, and the colonists, led by such men as James Otis, Daniel Dulany, and Thomas Paine, resisted in various ways and on various grounds which finally boiled down to the principle that taxation without direct representation was un- constitutional. The lines of argument finally hardened to the point where speeches and pamphleteering gave way to military action in the spring of 1775- Professor Morgan has devoted only a few pages to the shooting phase of the quarrel between Briton and American. The war will be treated at greater length by Dr. Howard F. Peckham in a volume to be entitled The War of the Revolution. However, in his brief treatment of the war, Dr. Morgan wrote that Sir Henry Clinton was a more energetic commander than was Sir William Howe—and to that statement the reviewer makes serious objections. Surely, Clinton was more sluggish than Howe; on this subject, the reader is referred to William B. Willcox's introduction to the book which he edited, The American Rebellion^ Sir Henry Clinton's Narra- tive of His Campaigns, 1775-1782 . . . (New Haven, Conn., 1954). The author concludes his book on the birth of the Republic with a sum- mary of the Constitutional Convention and a brief chapter on the ratifica- tion of the Constitution. He gives what the reviewer considers to be an excellent defense of the motives of the Founding Fathers against the views of the late Dr. Charles Beard who claimed that the makers of the Constitu- tion were seeking primarily to protect their own class and economic interests.

Lehigh University GEORGE W. KYTE 1957 BOOK REVIEWS 209 The Nation's Advocate. Henry Marie Brackenridge and Young America. By WILLIAM F. KELLER. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1956. xii, 451 p. Illustrations, bibliography, index. $5.00.) Most American historians will know Henry Marie Brackenridge either for his account of a journey up the Missouri River in 1811 or for his role as secretary of the Rodney-Graham-Bland mission to South America half a dozen years later. Now for the first time we have a complete biography of this interesting figure set against the background of the vigorous, turbulent land that was the America in which he lived from 1786 to 1871. As such a biography, William F. Keller's The Nation's Advocate is indeed a welcome addition to the literature of the American scene. Henry Marie Brackenridge has been described by a contemporary as the "gifted son of a gifted sire." Born in Western , he was to be influenced strikingly in his formative years by his father, the distinguished Hugh Henry Brackenridge—wit, scholar, lawyer, and author of Modern Chivalry. Paternal tutoring commenced at the age of two, with the parent setting a hornbook before the son. Moreover, Hugh, a rabid Francophile, sent young Henry, at the age of seven, some 1,500 miles from Pittsburgh down the Ohio and the Mississippi to Louisiana in order that the boy might learn French among the Creoles! A stint at the Pittsburgh Academy and the reading of law in private offices completed the more formal aspects of the young man's education and in 1806 he was admitted to the bar. The year 1811 found him in the company of naturalists John Bradbury and Thomas Nuttall, accompanying the fur-trader Manuel Lisa up the Missouri to Fort Mandan, 1,600 miles from St. Louis. Then commenced a career in the public service, first as deputy attorney for Orleans Territory, then district judge in Louisiana, secretary to the South American mission, and a term in the Maryland House of Delegates. In 1821 young Bracken- ridge became private secretary and interpreter to Andrew Jackson, the governor of Florida. Through the influence of Old Hickory, he subsequently became alcalde of Pensacola and judge of the Territory of West Florida until 183a when removed as "the victim of Jacksonian politics" (p. 348). Following the break with Jackson, Brackenridge sat in Congress for a term, was a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives briefly, and one of the Mexican Claims Commissioners appointed by President Tyler in 1841. The remaining thirty years of his life were devoted to private pursuits at Tarentum, the town he founded on his own estate near Pittsburgh. The Nation's Advocate shows Brackenridge as a versatile and prolific writer. Although overshadowed by his literary father, he left behind not only accounts of his voyages up the Missouri and to Buenos Aires, but also a history of the War of 1812 (hacked out originally for $600 to meet a six weeks' deadline, it subsequently went through eight editions and was trans- lated into both French and Italian); a history of the Whiskey Rebellion 2IO BOOK REVIEWS April (mainly a vindication of his father's role in that disturbance); eulogies on Jefferson and the two Adamses; a study of the aborigines of North America; an article on Pedro Menendez de Aviles; and numerous other contributions. If Brackenridge emerges as a man of wide interests, he also appears as a man of liberal political philosophy. He fought boldly to enfranchise the Jews in Maryland, was keenly interested in the struggle for Latin American independence, and his career on the bench in Florida reflected sound judg- ment wisely administered. Yet his bitter feud with Theodorick Bland and his vehement, ill-concealed denunciation of Jackson in 1832 indicate that while he may have fought on the side of the angels, he was still very human. Mr. Keller is probably at his best in describing life in early Western Pennsylvania and the legal problems of early Louisiana and Florida. The threads of Brackenridge's personal life sometimes appear slim, however, and one cannot help but feel that his wife, Caroline Marie, does not receive adequate attention. Occasionally Brackenridge becomes almost obscured in the pattern of events around him. For the better portion of two chapters, the Callava controversy at Pensacola holds the center of the stage, with Jackson occupying the limelight and Brackenridge receding into the shad- ows. But does the affair warrant such detailed treatment? Was it as im- portant in "president-making" as the author infers (p. 292)? Or was the whole episode, as Parton suggests, "Much ado about less than nothing"? However that might be, the reader must congratulate Mr. Keller for having produced a serious, meticulous, carefully documented study which combines scholarship and interest without the sacrifice of either. A biog- raphy of Brackenridge has long been in order and this is a good one.

Pennsylvania State University CLARK C. SPENCE

Tecumseh, Vision of Glory. By GLENN TUCKER. (New York: The Bobbs- Merrill Company, Inc., 1956. 399 p. Frontispiece, maps, bibliography, index. $5.00.) This full-scale biography by Glenn Tucker, advertising man, journalist, and amateur historian, is predicated on the conviction that Tecumseh was the greatest Indian who ever lived. Although this belief is not stated until the end of the book—when the valiant Shawnee is rated above Pontiac, Joseph Brant, Cochise and Sitting Bull—it comes as an anticlimax. It is the final, inevitable encomium in a biography that is replete with accolades, one that exemplifies hero-worship at its most extravagant and fulsome. Just about all the desirable qualities of leadership that one can think of are at- tributed to the hero. Perhaps the author is correct in his estimate of Tecumseh's greatness, but his case is weakened rather than strengthened by repetitious adulation and special pleading. I9S7 BOOK REVIEWS 211 Indeed, so close is the author-hero identification that one is given the distinct impression that Tecumseh and Tucker share the same friends and enemies. Indians friendly to Tecumseh are good Indians, but his white enemies are almost always presented in an unfavorable light. Tucker's treat- ment of William Henry Harrison, governor of the Indiana Territory from 1801 to 1812, is generally unsympathetic, if not downright hostile, particu- larly so in his account of the governor's activities in 1810-1811 which culminated in the Battle of Tippecanoe. Here Harrison is decried as "the aggressor" and treaty breaker who was plunging the Madison administra- tion into "another Indian war." Without attempting to justify Harrison's conduct it should be pointed out that as far as the western settlers were concerned war had already begun in the form of extensive Indian activity against border settlements in the summer of 1811. As a contributive factor this deserves more than the aside Tucker gives it, and he nowhere mentions the Vincennes July Resolutions wherein the people of Vincennes demanded the destruction of the Prophet's Town on Tippecanoe Creek. It was the settlers who insisted on decisive action. Nor did Harrison have any illusions about Tecumseh's intentions or attitude. He could not forget that the inde- fatigable Shawnee, then on another tour advocating confederation and war against the whites, had just the summer before insulted him physically and verbally and had loudly repudiated the Indian land cession set forth in the Treaty of Fort Wayne of 1809. Harrison had a choice: he could either wait for Tecumseh to attack at a time of his own choosing or take the initiative. Other Indian enemies, especially successful ones, fare little better in Tucker's hands: Daniel Boone unsportingly used "trickery" and "false- hood" to escape from Shawnee captivity; General Anthony Wayne is com- pared to a "blacksnake" and other reptiles, and George Rogers Clark is likened to Genghis Khan for destroying the Indian town of Old Piqua. Although Tucker's apotheosis of Tecumseh may not be completely justi- fiable, it is understandable. His protagonist's qualities of character and leadership were indeed high. And when so many of his fellow chieftains were succumbing to the white man's whisky and pensions he remained abstinent and aloof. In battle he was savage and ruthless, but despite his consuming hatred of the white race he was too humane to torture prisoners. Recogniz- ing the fatal consequences of sporadic and piecemeal resistance to the west- ward flow of settlement, he constantly advocated unity of effort and dis- cipline. Here, then, is a noble and tragic figure whose personal battle and failure against great odds highlighted the almost unending catastrophe of a proud Neolithic people in conflict with a superior civilization. This is Tucker's theme. The emphasis given here to the book's dominant characteristic, hero- worship, should not obscure some of its better qualities. Its field of action is one of the most exciting and colorful periods in the long and bloody history of border warfare. Extending from Tecumseh's birth in 1768 to his death in 1813 the narrative omits little that is significant. Its cast of char- 212 BOOK REVIEWS April acters includes the noted and notorious, the heroic and cowardly, the barbaric and humane. Just to list some of them is an imagination-stirring process: George Rogers Clark, Little Turtle, Blue Jacket, Anthony Wayne, Daniel Boone, Simon Kenton, the Girtys, the Prophet, Isaac Brock, and always Tecumseh. Here are the men, events, and forces that constitute great drama, and Mr. Tucker has taken full advantage of his opportunity. Writing with enviable grace and ease, he has told a colorful and romantic saga that holds the reader's interest.

Temple University HARRY M. TINKCOM

The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South, By KENNETH M. STAMPP. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956. [x], 436, xiii p. Bibliog- raphy, index. $5.75.) There will be few to dispute that this work instantly takes its place in the literature of American history as the best volume on its subject. This reviewer, for the profession, here offers its felicitations to the author, to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation who sponsored his work by granting him a fellowship, to Alfred A. Knopf, publishers, who now add another brilliant volume to the growing list of books on the history and culture of Negro Americans which they have published in recent years. The old adage that each generation must write its own histories is here strikingly confirmed. The better older works on slavery in the United States, notably those by Ullrich B. Phillips, were quite adequate in their time, but they are now indisputably superseded. And this not because of the avail- ability of new evidence, for Stampp discloses no startingly new "finds," but because of the advance in critical historical scholarship in recent years, in turn informed by the immense progress in contemporary social science. We are simply better equipped now for the proper study of mankind. And to this may be added the maturing of modern liberal traditions in American scholarship increasingly concerned, we are encouraged to believe, with values—a development that permits a historian to appraise a historical process in its moral context. Though there will be those who rebuke him for leaving out too much that might have placed the slave-owning class and the plantation system in a kindlier light amid the encircling gloom, Professor Stampp's account of the slave system is an eminently rounded one. If his basic data are not new, what is new is his synthesis, his overwhelming documentation, his tracing out of implications and concomitants, his probing into the human factors, the sharpening of focus and clarification of image, the redistribution of emphases. And though it may not be necessary to agree with a professional colleague of mine who declares that "one would hardly know that Stampp i957 BOOK REVIEWS 213 and Phillips were talking about the same thing," what emerges is a genu- inely new and fresh delineation. After a crisp essay on the origins and maturing of American slavery and some of the myths surrounding them, the volume describes the institution as a labor system and as "a troublesome property." Its economic and legal aspects are carefully analyzed and there is a meticulous examination of the day-to-day life of the slave, the structure and dynamics of slave society, maintenance, the slave trade, discipline, health and disease, morality, the life of the mind and spirit, and the relationships of master-class, nonslave- holder, and slave. A recurrent theme throughout the book is the enormity of the affront to the human spirit of which—after all, even when the fullest allowance is made for every conceivable extenuation—the slave was the pitiable victim. The vexed question of the profitability of slavery Stampp chooses to re- solve by insisting—again, with impressive substantiation—that it was still paying off on the eve of the Civil War; and he invites the inference that (mankind's subservience to economic interest being what it is) slavery would have continued for a considerable period had there been no war. On this issue of the economics of slavery Stampp will doubtless be vigorously challenged. The research has been enormous, particularly in manuscript sources, and the author knows how to let the testimony speak for itself. A bibliography of nonmanuscript materials would have enriched the book still further. And while we are on the subject of documentation let us add that scholars rejoice to see that there are still a few publishers who know that the proper place for footnotes is the bottom of the page, not the back of the book. Finally, the book is handsomely made—well bound, beautifully printed. This reviewer will be surprised if it does not win some major award.

The Woman's College of the RICHARD BARDOLPH University of North Carolina

The Man Who Elected Lincoln. By JAY MONAGHAN. (New York: The Bobbs- Merrill Company, Inc., 1956. xii, 334 p. Frontispiece, bibliography, index. $4.50.) Jay Monaghan has long been recognized as an expert bibliographer, authority on Illinois history, and producer of several notable books in the Lincoln field. Regrettably, this will not be counted among them. Its failings are many. The title is so overreaching as to induce in the reader almost automatic resistance to its claim, while its principal, Dr. Charles Ray of the Chicago Tribune, is made to appear as the pivot around which revolved the creation of the Republican Party, Lincoln's nomination, and his eventual election to the Presidency, though there is hardly a shred of 214 BOOK REVIEWS April evidence presented in these pages to support such an extreme point of view. One comes away from this book with the uncomfortable feeling of having seen history projected against some carnival mirror, distorted and twisted out of shape so that familiar faces and events lose all true proportion. As editor of the great Chicago journal, Ray was certainly an influential force in the Middle West, and his support of Lincoln deserves attention. Yet there is little in this book to prove more than this, and the enthusiastic presenta- tion of scraps and shreds from the Ray papers to advance tortured interpre- tations of how much Lincoln must have been dependent upon the Chicago editor is singularly unconvincing. Even more disquieting is the interpretation of the Civil War era which forms the milieu for this story of Ray. The slavery controversy, the sec- tional clash in Kansas, the maneuverings of Stephen A. Douglas are all presented as backdrops before which Ray may perform in the role of a modern Parsifal, confounding the forces of evil by intuitive love of justice and righteousness. But this requires casting Ray's opponents in the roles of devils, and Mr. Monaghan shows no aversion to the task. Douglas is given short shrift as an unprincipled demagogue, and the proslavery position is treated without the slightest hint that some of those who adopted it might conceivably have been honorable men. Our most complex historical problem thus becomes in this approach a one-dimensional exercise of "good men" against "bad men," which must certainly induce a sense of helplessness and frustration in the ranks of historians who had foolishly hoped that such of their colleagues as Avery Craven, Roy Nichols, and George Fort Milton had finally exposed the emptiness of such an interpretation. Finally, it is ironic that what is meant to be a tribute to a forgotten figure of importance and sterling character actually leaves, at least with this reader, an impression quite different from the one intended. Despite Mr. Monaghan's words of praise, Dr. Ray is variously found in the position of nativist, bigot, deceiver, and ambitious opportunist, roles uniquely unsuited to a guileless defender of the Grail.

Loyola University, New Orleans JOSEPH G. TREGLE, JR.

This Hallowed Ground. The Story of the Union Side of the Civil War. By . (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1956. x, 437 p. Maps, bibliography, index. $5.95.) When lamenting the death of Jeb Stuart, the "eyes" of the Army of Northern Virginia, Lee is reported to have said, "He never brought me false information." This superlative praise by Lee might also apply to Bruce Catton and This Hallowed Ground^ which, written with the greatest his- torical care, brings forth the facts of the "irrepressible conflict" based on source records and judicious selection. i957 BOOK REVIEWS 215 This history of the Civil War in one volume, supplementing the vivid narratives Catton has already given us in Mr. Lincoln's Army^ Glory Roady and A Stillness at Appomattox, is the best one-volume approach to the war this reviewer has ever seen. It bears a chronological sequence which is not only unusual, but most helpful both to the tyro and the expert. The story flows freely from East to West as events occurred, and so skillful is the artistry of composition that there seems no break in continuity as the scene moves from Jackson's men back of the railroad cut at Second Manassas to Halleck's ponderous fortifications on the approach to Corinth. The story is all there, and it is written in easy flowing prose that delights as it informs. As is but natural, with the physical limit imposed by one volume, Catton has compressed, perhaps unduly, descriptions of the important battles of the Army of the Potomac in the East—Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellors- ville, Gettysburg, the Wilderness Campaign—because in previous books he has written in great detail on these epic struggles. Instead, Shiloh, Vicks- burg, Lookout Mountain, Atlanta and the March to the Sea are featured with fascinating detail. The subtitle, "The Story of the Union Side of the Civil War/' is rather perplexing because no brief for the North or bias against the Confederacy is apparent. However, after reading some recent books of Southern eulogy in the War Between the States in which the North could do no right and the South could do no wrong, Mr. Catton in a factual middle-of-the-road report may feel this book favorable to those who tried to preserve the Union and constituted authority. In any event, this point is not of major importance. What is worthy of comment is the tremendous demand for this book and others on the Civil War in all its aspects, although nearly a hundred years have elapsed since that conflict ended. Mr. Catton's training as a newspaper reporter, which develops the in- stinct of recognizing a "story" at a glance, accounts for the extraordinary ability he shows for reading a book listed in his bibliography and selecting therefrom the most colorful, interesting episode to use in This Hallowed Ground. As an example, he recounts in great detail the remarkable fight put up by General John Gibbon, a Philadelphian, when in Pope's ill-fated cam- paign before Second Manassas, near Groveton, Gibbon's "Iron Brigade" fought a personal battle with Stonewall Jackson's troops which ended at dark in a draw when neither side would yield a foot. Gibbon lost one third of his brigade, killed or wounded, in one and a half hour's fighting. Catton's description of this action makes inspiring reading. There is one aspect of Mr. Catton's handling of this book which is open to argument and reminiscent of the writing of Morris SchafT in The Battle of the Wilderness and others of his books on the Civil War—that is an undue psychological probing as to what various generals were thinking and "why they acted that way." It is as if the author were seated on Mount Olympus, peering down through the clouds that shroud history to disperse them for our benefit and give us the tables of the law on the motivation and cerebra- 2l6 BOOK REVIEWS April

tion of the military commanders. Perhaps Grant's words on the art of mili- tary success lack the finery of psychological verbiage, but they seemed to work: "Find out where your enemy is, get at him as soon as you can and strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on." In summation, the reviewer thinks this book will endure and, combined with the three previous volumes, gives as interesting and authentic a popular history of the Civil War as is apt to appear for many years to come.

Paoli KENT PACKARD

South After Gettysburg. Letters of Cornelia Hancock, I86J-I868. Edited by HENRIETTA STRATTON JAQUETTE. (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1956. xii, 288 p. $4.00.) When one reads a batch of old letters, he is often forced to admit that they are boring and that all the subjects on which he wished enlightenment have been omitted. Such is not the case with these letters, for every word and every detail is of interest. As a result of Cornelia Hancock's brilliant reporting, the reader is caught up in the very atmosphere of the letters. After seeing Lincoln and his generals, as well as many lesser lights, so vividly portrayed, the reader feels that he, too, has lived through the Civil War and the Reconstruction period. The figure of Cornelia Hancock that emerges from these letters is that of an amazing and entirely likable girl. This twenty-three-year-old Quakeress left her home in Salem County, New Jersey, on an hour's notice to accom- pany her doctor brother-in-law to Gettysburg to serve as a volunteer nurse. She had had no previous nursing experience, she was far too young to be a nurse, judged by the standards of propriety of her generation, and, to make matters even worse, she was attractive. Dorothea Dix, in charge of the army's nursing program, turned her down on sight. Cornelia met this situa- tion with the spirit of calm determination that was to stand her in good stead on many occasions. She simply stayed in the train for Gettysburg. In a matter of days she proved her worth by the surgeons' side at their im- provised operating tables, and she won the love and respect of patients and staff members alike. Nursing was but a small part of her work in the field hospitals where she served. With clarity and humor she wrote home of her varied services, of the people she met, and of the conversations that ensued. Early in the letters it becomes apparent that to Cornelia, brought up as she was in the atmosphere of Quakerism and abolition societies, the task of nursing the wounded was but a temporary measure. Already her mind was busy with thoughts of the freedmen and of how best to improve their miser- able condition. Her idealism about the freedmen received a sad jolt when for a short interval she nursed in a "contraband" hospital in Washington. This experience made her realize that education was the most pressing need i957 BOOK REVIEWS 217 of the former slaves. It was therefore a natural step, when the war had ended, for her to go south to participate in the educational program. In the face of much opposition she founded the Laing School for Negroes in Mt. Pleasant, a suburb of Charleston, South Carolina. Her letters show that the problems of Sesch, freedmen, and the Union sympathizers in the South were such that even she felt daunted by them. Only time, she felt, could solve these problems. The last letter included in this collection was written by Cornelia Han- cock when she had not yet reached her thirtieth year. Mrs. Jaquette's wel- come introduction to the book gives the reader a completed picture of Cornelia's life. Leaving the Laing School after ten years, she studied social work, traveling to England to see what was being accomplished there in this field. Later, on her return to Philadelphia, she became a social worker, devoting herself to those problems of poverty and degradation which are more binding than any bonds of race or color. In the course of many years of active service she helped to found two important organizations which are known today as the Children's Aid of Pennsylvania and the Family Society of Philadelphia. Until she was seventy-five years old she was active in a pioneer housing project at Wrightsville in South Philadelphia. In view of Cornelia's later career this book of letters becomes a fascinating study of the awakening of social consciousness in a life devoted to helping others help themselves.

Germantown SARAH A. G. SMITH

So Fell the Angels. By THOMAS GRAHAM BELDEN and MARVA ROBINS BELDEN. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1956. 401 p. Illustra- tions, index. $5.00.) If you haven't read So Fell the Angels as yet, rush out and buy or borrow a copy, for here is one of the most readable history books with a sound scholarly background that has turned up in a long time. It may not have the scope or reinterpretative significance of an Age of Jackson or an Age of Reform^ but few volumes have had for their subjects such an extraordinary group of characters whose careers once more demonstrate that history can always beat both Confidential and Hollywood at their own game whenever it wants to. This is the story of Salmon P. Chase, perennial aspirant for the Presi- dency, his glamorous daughter Kate, and his poor little rich boy son-in-law, William Sprague. It is a story that is often startlingly bizarre, and Mr. and Mrs. Belden have made the most of it. If the account is a little highly colored at times, it was an understandable temptation and the final result is one of the strongest morality tales in American history. 218 BOOK REVIEWS April First there is Chase, presented largely as a sanctimonious opportunist who played a particularly dubious role in Lincoln's Cabinet. Pennsylvanians especially may find revealing how Chase's search for money to finance his political activities and to live in the style his daughter considered essential led to a far from edifying alliance with Jay Cooke and his brother Henry. The political strivings and financial maneuverings of the Secretary of the Treasury who later became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court are pre- sented somewhat unsympathetically up to the time that he finally realized that he would never attain his goal and that perhaps all he had succeeded in doing was to lose his integrity. In his last years the Beldens give him a dignity that is far more appealing than the mere pomposity they had described earlier. Even more absorbing is the personality of his daughter, Kate Chase Sprague, in a sense the central figure of the book since she is the connecting link between the sometimes quite disparate activities of her father and husband. She emerges as a charming (up to a point), restless, ruthless woman, driven by angry fates in ways she probably never fully understood herself until finally it is clear that beneath the glitter lay a psychopathic personality which ruined the lives of those whom she touched closely. If ever history has furnished a dramatic example of retribution, it is the sordid story of Kate's last years. And then there is the third member of this curious triumvirate, William Sprague, millionaire industrialist, boy politician, and would-be military hero, who managed to fail in business, in politics, in war, in marriage, and even in loyalty to his country. Some of the most unsavory revelations of the book involve his treasonable trading activities with the Confederacy during the Civil War, just the type of expose which would have delighted all be- lievers in the "merchants of death" theory of wartime profiteering some twenty years ago. Nevertheless, Sprague arouses more sympathy in some ways than do the other two. The Beldens have made him more pathetic than vicious in his efforts to compensate for various personal inadequacies, and certainly Kate gave him a rough deal. But of the three he displayed the strongest survival power, ending up in Paris quite happily with a second wife and not dying until 1915. The Beldens have been heroic in avoiding the kind of amateur psycho- analysis which all this could easily lead one into. This is not to say that we are unaware of various psychological implications throughout the book, but they have carefully shunned any overt conclusions beyond what the evi- dence warranted. Though this is an outgrowth of Mr. Belden's doctoral dissertation (a type of outgrowth which is unfortunately all too infrequent and which must be the envy of all his fellow students), it has become more a study of personality than a work of history. This biographical approach is, of course, more dramatic and entertaining, but as a result we miss a full treatment of the more basic economic and social forces that would have given more substance to the important role Chase did play. Presumably the i957 BOOK REVIEWS 219 most significant aspects of Chase's life were how the Civil War was financed while he was Secretary of the Treasury and what constitutional decisions were made while he was Chief Justice, but of these we get only indirect glimpses. But this is quibbling, because the Beldens have been so successful in what they have chosen to do, and their vivacious account actually leaves us much to ponder over as to why obsessive, unscrupulous ambition some- times leads to success and sometimes merely to self-destruction.

University of Pennsylvania WALLACE EVAN DAVIES

Charles Evans Hughes and American Democratic Statesmanship, By DEXTER PERKINS. [Library of American Biography.] (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1956. xxiv, 200 p. Bibliographical note, index. $3.50.) To study an American political leader of national stature is, in almost all cases, to observe a man caught amid clashing roles and competing alle- giances. Such is the case with Charles Evans Hughes. Lawyer and law teacher, reform governor, Supreme Court justice, presidential candidate of a reunited Republican Party, Secretary of State during a period of isola- tionist resurgence, Chief Justice fated to preside over a conservative court during a liberal era, he had always to mediate among the conflicting claims and expectations of a pluralistic society. Some of these competing claims Hughes met with adroitness and aplomb. , the distinguished editor of the Library of American Biog- raphy (of which this is a recent volume), rightly points out that the lawyer in public service must serve his nation and people as a whole and yet by profession act as spokesman for particular groups pursuing their own inter- ests. Hughes met this problem by maintaining a rigid propriety as he shut- tled back and forth between private and public life and by throwing himself into each role with single-minded dedication and intensity. Yet his life is filled with contradictions and paradoxes. A believer in some kind of league among nations, on becoming Secretary of State in 1931 he abandoned the stand he had taken only a year before. A living symbol of impeccable public conduct, he was ready after the Harding scandals to de- fend the Republican Party and "to maintain, somewhat sophistically," Professor Perkins says, "that guilt was personal and constituted no indict- ment of the party organization." As governor he refused to use patronage to influence the legislature, but took part in a state senatorial battle "with all his energy." As Secretary of State he could give a ringing declaration of noninvolvement in Latin American affairs and then issue a statement de- priving the declaration of much of its meaning. The supreme paradoxes of Hughes's life both involved his judicial role. In 1912 he spurned efforts to draft him for the Republican nomination, stating grandly that he wanted to establish the idea that "a Justice of the Supreme Court is not available for political candidacy. The Supreme Court 22O BOOK REVIEWS April must be kept out of politics." Four years later, "after the most painful reflection," but still a member of the Court, he accepted the Republican draft. Later, as Chief Justice, he operated with brilliant political acumen and force, exploiting his judicial position to the hilt, to help bring down Roosevelt's court plan. Hughes was living proof of the fact that keeping the Supreme Court—or anything else invested with public implications and private ambitions and interests—"out of politics" is one of the emptiest and phoniest phrases in our political or academic vocabulary. It is one of the great merits of this book that Professor Perkins faces these paradoxes bluntly, neither under- nor over-playing them. He suggests, for example, that one reason for Hughes's about-face on the presidential draft was simply that the prospect of victory was far better in 1916 than 191a; but the author does not stop to moralize. It is also a great merit of the book that he does not seek to pursue the will o' the wisp of looking for a consistency in Hughes that often did not exist. Consistency is exceedingly awkward for leaders in the American democracy. Like other great American politicians, Hughes wanted to be a good party man (because he believed in party strength and responsibility and because the party could help him fulfill his ambitions), but he also wanted to be an effective reformer, secre- tary of state, and justice. He met these diverse claims about as successfully as any political leader of this century. A near-miracle of condensation, this volume is written with the acuteness, judiciousness, and balance that befit the subject and typify the author. It takes full standing in a series of short biographies that are especially valu- able because they seek, as their editor points out, "to assess the role of men in history" at the points where "the situation can throw light on the char- acter of the individual and the individual's reaction can illuminate the situation."

Williams College JAMES MACGREGOR BURNS

The Crucial Decade: America^ 194.5-1955. By ERIC F. GOLDMAN. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956. x, 298, ix p. Index. $4.00.) The theme of this book is as follows: The decade of 1945-1955 was crucial because the American people then faced two basic questions and, through much travail, answered them. (1) In domestic affairs should they accept, or turn back from, the quasi-welfare state and welfare capitalism expressed in the "Half Century of Revolution," a Revolution which was affecting Amer- ican living profoundly and rousing bitter, strong opposition? (2) In foreign affairs should they go further in experiments with containment and coexist- ence, vis-a-vis the Communists, or revert to the historic position that the United States, almost singlehandedly, could find quick and total solutions to international problems? I957 BOOK REVIEWS 221

While thus confronted, Americans were resenting the strange economic, social, and political changes which were disrupting familiar patterns on the domestic scene and prolonging an indecisive "cold war" abroad. Confused, exasperated, bitter and impatient, many Americans flailed out blindly at the continual uncertainties. Shutting their eyes to the need for adaptation to a changing world, they indulged in the futilities of neoisolationism, neocon- servatism, and McCarthyism. But, says Goldman, from the McCarthy- Army hearings emerged more tolerance of difference, more groping toward the moderation of a middle position. President Eisenhower, mirroring the fumbling nation, announced that on domestic issues he sought to be conservative in economic matters and liberal in human affairs; on foreign problems he admitted a compulsion to tolerate coexistence with Communism. In sum, New Dealism and Fair Dealism should be blended with conservatism. The saving spirit of moderation, says Goldman, approaching slowly, arrived in the summer of 1955 when the American people "had brought about a consensus in their thinking which was ready for the world of the 1950s" (p. 295). Not everyone, by any means, will agree that a consensus has been reached; but regardless of the degree to which events puncture Goldman's thesis or discredit his optimism, his presentation will have advantaged at least three important groups. (1) Written in a lively, provocative, and at times "earthy" vernacular, it should reach a far wider audience than could a more "scholarly and dispassionate" narrative, thus enticing more of the careless "general reader" group into considering serious alternatives to habitual assumptions. (2) The annoyance that the book should arouse in the "unregenerate" should force them, and Goldman, to make clearer defini- tions of their arguments. (3) Historians will have been bequeathed a number of otherwise fugitive facts, preserved because Goldman submitted sectors of chapters I-X to about 85% of the active participants mentioned therein; about 90% of these sent replies which, with other related materials, are projected for ultimate availability to scholars at the Princeton Library. Moreover, the listing of those participants (seventy-five in number) who permitted Goldman to make printed acknowledgment of their aid reflects that conglomerate quality of history-making of which we need continually to be reminded. Of course, without saying so explicitly, this book challenges American citizens to reflect upon the consequences of childish, emotional reactions to current events. Would that it might help to galvanize leadership into preaching the necessity for adult response.

University of Pennsylvania JEANNETTE P. NICHOLS The Papers of Thomas Jefferson Control Files on Film

The document files in the editorial offices of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson are made up exclusively of photofacsimiles of original manuscripts. Control files have been set up which provide a convenient location guide to some 60,000 documents and letters written by or to Thomas Jefferson. Since it is not feasible to open the resources of the editorial office to the general research needs of scholars while this edition is in process, the Editors have prepared a microfilm copy of all the editorial control files. The control cards have been filmed in the following sequences: Alphabetical Cards; Chronological Cards; Source Cards; Bibliographical Cards. While this film is available for use by all scholars without restriction, it should not be used by anyone without warning of its limitations. These cards were prepared solely for the purposes of the editorial staff and do not conform to normal standards of bibliographical, or library or archival practice. It should be understood that the cards are entirely unedited and have received no checking whatever before being microfilmed. In case of doubt, users should verify information by applying to the institution which owns the original manuscript. A positive copy and the master negative of this film will be placed in the Library of Congress. Additional copies of the positive film are being placed in the Princeton University Library; the Alderman Library of the Univer- sity of Virginia; the Historical Society; the Missouri His- torical Society; the Library of the University of Chicago; and the Henry E. Huntington Library. These positives are available on interlibrary loan. Other positive copies may be purchased by institutions or individuals from the Photoduplication Department of the Library of Congress.

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