Wisconsin w Magazine of History
// Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg WINSTON CHURCHILL Earle Melvin Terry, Father of Educational Radio JOHN S. PENN Marcus Lee Hansen and the Historiography of Immigration ALLAN H. SPEAR The "Greek Revival" in American Historiography O. LAWRENCE BURNETTE, JR.
Published by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin / Vol. XLIV, No. 4 / Summer, 1961 STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN
LESLIE H. FISHEL, JR., Director
Officers Wi I.I.I AM B. HESSELTINE, President GEORGE C. SELLERY, Honorary Vice-President JoH.N C. GEILFUSS, First Vice-President GEORGE HAMPEL, JR., Treasurer E. E. HoMSTAD, Second Vice-President LESLIE H. FISHEL, JR., Secretary
Board of Curators Ex-Officio GAYLORD NELSON, Governor of the State MRS. DENA A. SMITH, State Treasurer ROBERT C. ZIMMERMAN, Secretary of State CONRAD A. ELVEHJEM, President of the University A-NCLS B. RoTHWELL, Superintendent of Public Instruction MRS. SILAS SPENGLEB, President of the Women's Auxiliary
Term Expires 1962 GEORGE BANTA, JR. HERBERT V. KOHLER WILLIAM F. STARK JOHN TORINUS Menasha Kohler Pewaukee Green Bay GEORGE HAMPEL, JR. ROBERT B. L. MURPHY STANLEY STONE CLARK WILKINSON Milwaukee Madison Milwaukee Baraboo SANFORD HERZOG GERTRUDE PUELICHER MiLO K. SVVANTON ANTHONY WISE Minocqua Milwaukee Madison Hayward
Term Expires 1963 SCOTT CUTUP MRS. ROBERT FRIEND JOHN C. GEILFUSS WILLIAM B. HESSELTINE Madison Hartland Milwaukee Madison W. NORMAN FITZGERALD EDWARD FROMM MRS. HOWARD T. GREENE JAMES RILEY Milwaukee Hamburg Genesee Depot Eau Claire J. F. FRIEDRICK ROBERT GEHRKE DR. GUNNAR GUNDERSEN CLIFFORD SWANSON Milwaukee Ripon La Crosse Stevens Point
Term Expires 1964 THOMAS H. BARLAND JIM DAN HILL MRS. VI.NCENT W. KOCH FRED I. OLSON Eau Claire Superior Janesville Milwaukee M. J. DYRUD E. E. HOMSTAD MRS. RAYMOND J. KOLTES FREDERICK SAMMOND Prairie du Chien Black River Falls Madison Milwaukee FRED H. HARRINGTON GEORGE F. KASTEI^ CHARLES MANSON WILLIAM STOVALL Madison Milwaukee Madison Madison
Honorary Honorary Life Members WILLIAM ASHBY MCCLOY, Winnipeg PRESTON E. MCNALL, Madison MRS. LITTA BASCOM, Madison DOROTHY L. PARK, Madison MRS. LOUISE ROOT, Prairie du Chien Fellows Curators VERNON CARSTENSEN (1949) HjALMAR R. HoLAND, Ephraim MERLE CuRTi (1949) SAMUEL PEDRICK, Ripon The Women's Auxiliary OFFICERS MRS. SILAS SPENGLER, Stoughton, President MRS. MILLARD TUFTS, Milwaukee, Vice-President MRS. WILLIAM H. L. SMYTHE, Milwaukee, Secretary MRS. E. J. BIEVER, Kohler, Treasurer MRS. CHESTER E.'VCELKING, Green Bay, Assistant Treasurer MRS. RAYMOND J. KOLTES, Madison, Ex-Officio VOLUME 44, NUMBER 4 / SUMMER, 1961 Wisconsin Magazine of History
Editor: WILLIAM CONVERSE HAYGOOD
Is Patriotism Healthy? 242 If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg 243 WINSTON CHURCHILL
Earle Melvin Terry, Father of Educational Radio 252 JOHN S. PENN
Marcus Lee Hansen and the Historiography of Immigration 258 ALLAN H. SPEAR
Blueprint for the Future: the Society's Historic Sites 269 JANE NEUHEISEL
The "Greek Revival" in American Historiography: A Review Article 275 O. LAWRENCE BURNETTE, JR.
Log Sauna and the Finnish Farmstead: Transplanted Architectural Idioms in Northern Wisconsin 284
RICHARD W. E. PERRIN
Readers' Choice 287 Accessions 314 Contributors 320
Published Quarterly by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin
THE WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY is published not assume responsibility for statements made by contribu quarterly by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 816 tors. Second-class postage paid at Madison, Wisconsin. State Street, Madison 6, Wisconsin. Distributed to members Copyright 1961 by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. as part of their dues (Annual membership, $5.00; Family Paid for in part by the Maria L. and Simeon Mills Editorial membership, $7.00: Contributing, $10; Business and Profes Fund and by the George B. Burrows Fund. Wisconsin ncws- sional, $25: Life, $100; Sustaining, $100 or more annually; pajjers may reprint any article appearing in the WISCON Patron, $1000 or more annually). Single numbers, $1.25. SIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY providing the story carries Microfilmed copies available through University Microfilms, the following credit line: Reprinted from the State Histori 313 North First Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Communica cal Society's Wisconsin Magazine of History for [insert the tions should be addressed to the editor. The Society does season and year which appear on the Magazine}. grew in significance. Fifty years ago it was paramount policy; now it has been reduced to a debatable issue. The patriot should know, and understand, some of the great decisions in our history which have shaped the country of his allegiance. No one questions that we are an institu tionalized country today. We live in the mid IS PATRIOTISM HEALTHY? dle of organizations. Our families are in volved in schools and churches, labor groups, and farm organizations. We can not turn around without bumping into an institution of some sort. Our cities are institutions in them selves. Important as these are in our daily lives, we can not understand our relationship to them and their contribution to our country unless we know why and how they grew to size UMMER is the wrong time for tackling and power. S big questions, not to mention delicate No one questions the central importance of ones, but "Is Patriotism Healthy?" can never our state and community in the life of this be a seasonal issue. It is one thing to enjoy country. Too many, however, shrug off the fireworks, know the words of the Star Span narrative of the development of these local gled Banner (or even the tune), and fly the elements as irrelevant. Yet the seeds of vital flag on national holidays, but is this enough? and vigorous living were sown generations ago I think two elements are basic. in Wisconsin, as In other states, by men and The first is obvious. Patriotism calls for an women who were not indifferent to their past. unabashed appreciation of the greatness of The story of any local industry is a case in this country, its strengths and weaknesses, its point—how it began, expanded, and pros virtues and vices. A patriot respects his coun pered, was handed down from generation to try for what it is and can be, not for what it generation, was buffeted by economic and po is not and can never be. A patriot recognizes litical currents, and how it survived. This is that the grandeur of the United States is partly just one facet of local history—a foundation geographic and mostly human. stone on which this country was built. The second element is just as basic. A Is patriotism healthy? Some people will healthy patriotism grows out of an under quibble over a definition of the word "patriot standing of our past. This means more than ism" and the use of a medical measure. Others remembering that July 4 was one of a number will dismiss the whole subject with a yawn of critical days in the evolution of the Decla and go back to routine activities. Still others ration of Independence, more than remember will argue that this is not a legitimate question ing who wrote the national anthem and under since the answer is so obviously either "yes" what circumstances, more than remembering or "no," and, they will add with a flourish, the symbolism of the stars and stripes. An un they can cite chapter and verse to prove it, derstanding of the American past begins with using their own source books. And some peo knowledge. There are some "why and how" ple, I hope, will think on these things. areas of our history about which Americans I believe that patriotism based on apprecia should know. Why and how were the great de tion and knowledge is healthy. We can be cisions in our history made? Why and how proud of achievement and charitable toward did our American institutions grow? Why and failure. We can honor greatness and admit to how has our state and community developed? pettiness. We can cherish the right decisions Let me take these in order. and acknowledge the wrong ones. We can rec No one questions the assertion that Ameri ognize that this nation was built by men and can leaders have made grave decisions which women who were neither perfect nor saintly; literally turned the course of our progress. realizing this, we will appreciate and under There are a multitude of examples, but just stand the legacy they gave us and, prayerfully, one will serve. When the Monroe Doctrine was we can hope to equal their accomplishment. announced in 1823, it made a slight impres This is healthy patriotism. sion. Over the years as our relations with Latin America became more active, the Doctrine L. H. F., JR.
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This article was suppressed in 2010 at the request of the copyright holder: Curtis Brown Ltd. 1750 Montgomery St. San Francisco, CA 94111 (415)954-8566 www.curtisbrown.com Curtis Brown Ltd. 1750 Montgomery St. San Francisco, CA 94111 (415)954-8566 www.curtisbrown.com n\ UI1 iiitfi *t^ iiio„ijt! iMsih-ft «*ri. 1jii.r,riiig feiihEtilly ai. «; This article was suppressed in 2010 at the request of the copyright holder: Curtis Brown Ltd. r 1750 Montgomery Street San Francisco, CA 94111 (415)954-8566 www. curtisbrown. com This article was suppressed in 2010 at the request of the copyright holder: Curtis Brown Ltd. 1750 Montgomery Street San Francisco, CA 94111 (415)954-8566 www.curti sbrown. com f^mmiiVir, ar»< t^-mim'^ mn<>\imm w»TIC It JJ'B' "H-|.ll» m'.'y •' \\H.\ Files Earle M. Terry and Burton Miller with early broadcasting equipment. EARLE MELVIN TERRY, FATHER OF EDUCATIONAL RADIO By JOHN S. PENN f I ^HE radio broadcasting activity of the Uni- Terry, a physics professor, typifies a little- -*- versity of Wisconsin, widely recognized as recognized group who were largely responsible part of a long-established tradition of public for the development of radio telephony in the service, is generally regarded as vital to the United States. W. R. McLaurin, in his Inven educational structure and cultural pattern of tion and Innovation in the Radio Industry, the state. The University's station, WHA, often writes that "In the pre-commercial period of considered to represent the best in radio broad wireless exploration, research was carried on casting, has long been acknowledged to be the largely by university scientists."^ Physicists oldest educational station in America. Yet the for the most part, these scientists worked in the modest scientist who created this effective in laboratories of their universities without either strument of service to the University, the state, the facilities or the unlimited research funds and the nation has been overshadowed by his available to the great electrical companies. And contemporaries and has remained unrecog since they were primarily concerned with wid nized by his beneficiaries. ening the knowledge of electronics, from them The story of radio at the University of Wis came few inventions to be patented and ex consin, from its origin to its well-established ploited. Terry's research, like that of his fel operation in the late 1920's, is the story of low scientists, was devoted to the why and how Earle Melvin Terry. As expressed by his long time colleague, L. R. Ingersoll, in the student newspaper, the Daily Cardinal of May 3, 1929: ' W. R. McLaurin, Invention and Innovation in the Radio Industry (New York, 1949), 153. For a fuller "Through his efforts the broadcasting station exposition of the history of radio at the University WHA was founded, and it would have died of Wisconsin, see John S. Penn, "The Origin and many times in the years that followed without Development of Radio Broadcasting at the University of Wisconsin," unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, Uni his help." versity of Wisconsin, 1959. 252 PENN EARLE MELVIN TERRY of electronic principles, as clearly distinguished lation, his interest shifted to the elimination from the researches of later inventors who de of static, the separation of radio signals, and signed equipment for commercial production. the function of quartz crystals; and then to His interest was so sharply concentrated on re short wave propagation and the transmission search and teaching that he made no effort of pictures by radio. In a Phi Kappa Phi lec to secure academic or public recognition by ture given on February 19, 1925, he accu releasing information to the press. Indeed, his rately foretold the nature and utility of short graduate students have observed that his un- wave radio and television.^ pretentiousness and modesty were so great that In 1910 Terry assumed the direction of the even his own students were often unaware of basic physics course required of all engineer his successes. ing students, a responsibility he retained throughout his career. It was in this course HE emergence of radio broadcasting at the that many students first felt the impact of the TUniversity of Wisconsin, as the product of man and his teaching and were thus stimulated one man's interest, perseverance, and enthu to continue the study of electronics. Terry's siasm, appears to be a happy accident of his teaching also included the advanced courses in tory. In 1902, the year Fessenden demon magnetism, electricity, and the theory of ra strated that a continuous wave transmitter was dio, "in which fields he was an outstanding suitable for voice transmission, Earle M. Terry, authority."^ It was in the advanced work that holder of a B.A. degree from the University of he found the new, unfolding field most chal Michigan, began graduate study in magnetism lenging and the stimulus for his own research and electricity at the University of Wisconsin as well as that of his graduate students. on a graduate assistantship. Two years later, Strongly desirous of making his teaching as after receiving his M.A., he was appointed to effective as possible, Terry devoted himself to an instructorship while pursuing further grad his work, shunning inordinate social and com uate study. By the time Terry received his munity activities. Although closely attached to Ph.D. and was promoted to an assistant profes his family, many of his evenings were spent in sorship in 1910, Fleming had introduced his study and preparation, the results of which detector tube or valve, De Forest had devel were quite evident in the classroom where his oped the third electrode of the vacuum tube, material was presented in a direct, well-orga Armstrong had demonstrated his coupling of nized, stimulating and good-humored manner. plate and grid circuits, and Alexanderson had Intrigued with the potentialities of the vac devised the frequency alternator. This series uum tube, Terry kept underway a multiplicity of events fired the inquisitive mind of the elec of projects—either his own or those of grad tronically inclined young physicist to pursue uate students working under his direction— investigation in the realm of applied physics, and his laboratory was filled with numerous despite such unorthodoxy in a University de sets of apparatus operating simultaneously. As partment composed of traditionally "pure" he constantly strove to seek new information, scientists. Terry's enthusiasm for the young new applications, new developments in his ex field of electronics was further stimulated by perimentation, there never seemed to be suffi the fortunate experience of being able to share cient time to devote to his laboratory. "He was his interest with a brilliant young colleague. an indefatigable research worker—in the lab Dr. A. Hoyt Taylor, who was later to achieve oratory early and late," according to his col international recognition for his contributions league, L. R. Ingersoll. "I recall one Christmas to the field as Director of Electronic Research Day when Terry was making radio tubes for for the U. S. Navy. In spite of the inducements offered by indus try Terry continued in his university labora " Earle M. Terry, "Progress in Radio Communica tory, engaging in research whose trend clearly tions during the Last Quarter Century," Phi Kappa Phi Lecture, 1924-1925. Copy in Manuscripts Sec forecast the developments in the swiftly mov tion, State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Unless ing field of electronics. From his earlier con otherwise noted, all manuscripts cited are deposited cern with the function of vacuum tubes and with the Society. ' E. J. Knapp, Texas College of Mines, letter to their relation to oscillating currents and modu J. S. Penn, June 15, 1953. 253 WISCONSLN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1961 WHA, it being Christmas he felt the necessity on the campus—Radio Hall.) For his trans of closing early—four o'clock in the after mitter Terry "borrowed" a license from his noon."* friend Edward Bennett of the Electrical En It soon became apparent to Terry that re gineering Department. Bennett, who had been search on the vacuum tube would be greatly operating a personal wireless set under the enhanced by the construction of transmitting license 9XM, recognized its value to Terry's equipment with which the tubes could be research and gladly offered it. Thus, Terry had tested, and his earliest observable step in that available an instrument with which to test his direction occurred in 1914 when he strung tubes, an instrument which was to be rede Lecher's wires the length of the large lecture signed and rebuilt repeatedly over the years as room used by Benjamin Warner Snow, then one research success after another demanded departmental chairman. Thereafter Terry gath- continuing adaptation for transmitting. ALTHOUGH Terry, assisted by Malcolm -'-*- Hanson and Carl Kottler, completed the station in 1915, no announcement of the fact was made until the fall of that year, and it was not until February of 1916 that Terry officially recorded evidence of the project in his "In structional Report." In the initial release de scribing the new station, the editor of the Uni versity Press Bulletin prophetically said: "The outfit is permanent . . . and it will be put on at least a semi-official basis."^ Throughout the academic year 1915-1916 the station was operated extensively by a group of student volunteers who became known as "the wireless squad." As these operators en gaged in communication with other stations their telegraphic conversations were heard by amateurs who were listening in. The reports of these listeners were most helpful to Terry in evaluating the performance of his tubes. At the same time they made him aware of a new con cept of wireless: it was similar to a party line on a country telephone system in which all who were at their receivers could listen to a com mon source of information. WHA Files The fall of 1916 brought a reconstructed Terry (right) with Malcolm Hanson, student operator of 9XM and later chief radio operator for Admiral transmitter and the first "broadcasting" from Byrd's First Antarctic Expedition. the University campus. Motivated by his firm conviction that scientific knowledge should be applied practically to the interest of society ered together excess equipment in the depart and taking full cognizance of the "party-line" ment and with it built his first transmitter, nature of wireless operation, Terry decided to completed in the spring of 1915 and located in operate the wireless telegraph station on a the basement of Science Hall, with an antenna regular schedule, disseminating information extending to the chimney of the old Mining as a service to the public. He arranged with Engineering Building. (It is an interesting Eric Miller, U. S. Meteorologist on the cam coincidence that this latter building twenty pus, to broadcast weather information daily at years later became the home of modern radio ° Press Bulletin, University of Wisconsin, November ' Daily Cardinal, May 3, 1929. 3, 1915. 254 PENN EARLE MELVIN TERRY 11:00 A.M., a service which was instituted on HE most dramatic application of Terry's December 4, 1916." Before long, reports indi T research occurred in 1917-1918 when the cated that some 200 amateur radio operators U. S. Navy was experiencing difficulty in com were regularly receiving the weather forecasts, bating the German U-boat threat for lack of an and thus was Wisconsin broadcasting born. antisubmarine detection device. A research World War I brought a cessation of this activ team of Wisconsin physicists composed of Max ity, but it is significant that Terry's broadcasts Mason, J. R. Roebuck, and Terry, designed were instituted some five or six years before and constructed a submarine detector which commercial interests came to recognize the utilized much of Terry's research findings, in broadcasting potential of radio.'' cluding the tubes he had designed. Named the The transmitter's effectiveness in testing the MV-tube by the Navy, it was, after preliminary tubes quickened the pace of Terry's research, improvement, produced in quantity and in and he made rapid progress in the improve stalled on many anti-submarine ships.'"" Unfor ment of their design and use in radio circuitry. tunately, the secrecy necessary at the time Since tubes or their components were unavail prevented recognition of the scientists involved. able from commercial sources, every tube that With the end of hostilities and the subse was used had to be completely constructed by quent resumption of civilian wireless telegraph Terry himself in a process which was often activity in 1919, many amateur radio opera repeated with each advance in his experiments. tors in the Midwest were startled to hear clear It was a laborious and trying procedure, first voice transmissions emanating from Terry's ex to manufacture the metal parts such as fila perimental station. By February, 1920, his ments, grids, plates, and lead-ins; then to fuse station began to send out telephonic weather them into glass bulbs which Terry had per reports on a regular basis as Terry once again sonally blown in his laboratory. Those who demonstrated his concept of public service. worked with him agreed that in the course of This service lasted until the close of the aca his investigations he became a skillful glass demic year, but was not resumed for over six blower and technician. Although sometimes months. On January 3, 1921, the nation's pio many hours of careful, minute work would be neer educational station began regular radio negated by a slight imperfection, Terry would, with great patience and good humor, persist until he achieved success or recognized a dead ° History of the Bureau of Engineering, Navy De partment, During the World War (Washington, end. 1922), 47-73. The success of Terry's work was marked by his construction in 1917 of a continuous wave transmitter capable of transmitting voice and music. Used in experimental communication activity throughout the war period, it signaled the end of spark-gap wireless telegraphy. How ever, it was not until 1921 that the Radio Cor poration of America installed the first vacuum tube transmitter at its important Chatham, Massachusetts, communication station, and not until a year later that RCA began installing vacuum tube transmitters in its equipment aboard ocean vessels.^ ° Eric R. Miller, letter to U. S. Weather Bureau at Milwaukee, December 16, 1916. Copy in WHA files, Madison. ' Radio Corporation of America, Annual Report of the Directors for Year Ended December 31, 1922 (New York, 1922), 18. * Donald McNicoI, Radio's Conquest of Space (New York, 1946), 314. Terry testing equipment components for early 9XM transmitter. 255 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1961 telephonic broadcasting.^" As the station passed ment of wireless transmission is made pos from experimental to sustained broadcasting sible."-^^ As long as Snow continued in the activity, it ceased to play a vital role in Terry's chairmanship, he maintained an attitude of ad research, although, because of his awareness of ministrative tolerance towards Terry's work, its social value, he continued as its director un and it is a matter of conjecture as to what de til his death, despite opposition within his own gree of recognition Terry might have been ac department and the apathy of the University corded had Snow remained as chairman and administration. had the public service-minded Van Hise con Among his senior colleagues, Terry's suc tinued in the presidency. cessful development of the transmitter had However, Dr. C. E. Mendenhall, who suc crystalized opposition to his interest in applied ceeded Snow, was one of the senior colleagues physics. With the departure in 1909 of Dr. A. less disposed to recognize deviation from Hoyt Taylor there remained no one in the de "pure" research. Seemingly unappreciative of partment who shared his ardor for and fascina the educational and social significance of early tion with radio. The younger staff members of radio, he, with others, was annoyed when the fered no criticism of his work, and several operation of the radio station interfered with maintained warm personal relationships. But in research projects underway in the department. a department and at a time when considerable In the 1920's, when faculty permission was awareness of the academic hierarchy existed being sought to allow the broadcasting of class there was little disposition to manifest strong room lectures, Mendenhall rose in a faculty interest in Terry's laboratory experiments. The meeting to oppose the proposal on the grounds older men, while respecting his ability as a that it had no experimental value. A salient physicist, were reluctant to accept applied re reply was presented by a fellow scientist, Joel search as the legitimate realm of the scientist. Stebbins, the University astronomer, who ex A former graduate student later wrote: "The pressed the belief that the project had merit as simplest way of explaining their attitude is to a social experiment, whereupon the measure say that they tolerated the existence of WHA was approved. . . . Professor Terry's interest seemed (to In the post-war period, the fact that Terry them) to be more in the engineering direction continued as director of the radio station even than towards physics research, and the staff after it had progressed from experimental to respected his interest in the project to the ex regular broadcasting, led to an increased rejec tent that they did not cause any actual inter tion of his experiments in newer aspects of ference, neither did they give any very active electronics. The station's extended operation support."^^ The field of electronic research was caused interference with departmental projects, still too undeveloped to evoke concern from the evoking strenuous objections from time to time. theoretical scientists. The observations of faculty members outside That his colleagues were aloof to his work the Physics Department, such as E. B. Gordon was not Terry's fault, since he was not only un and W. H. Eighty, agree that Terry's interest restrained in his enthusiasm but also availed in radio was often the subject of objection and himself of suitable opportunities to discuss his sometimes of scorn from his colleagues. The area of interest. On one occasion Dr. B. W. most concise summary of the situation was ex Snow, chairman of the department, wrote to pressed in a letter written by Mendenhall in President Charles Richard Van Hise: "I hope 1932, in which he said: "This department has you may be able to come down some afternoon not offered a course in radio since the death and see what [Terry] has done, and have him of Professor E. M. Terry several years ago."^^ explain to you, as he has many times to me, the mechanisms by which the marvelous achieve ''B. W. Snow, letter to Charles R. Van Hise, No vember 25, 1916. Copy in President's papers, Uni " Malcolm P. Hanson, letter to Andrew W. Hop versity of Wisconsin Archives. kins, November 12, 1923. "C. E. Mendenhall, letter to A. D. Taylor, 1932. " G. W. Curran, letter to J. S. Penn, June 29, 1953. Copy in Bennett papers, WHA files. 256 PENN : EARLE MELVIN TERRY HE most unfortunate aspect of the unsym mission invited him to participate in its consid Tpathetic attitude since Terry's work was its eration of the problems of regulating the broad effect on his status in the department. Advance casting industry. Within five years of Terry's ment in salary and rank came slowly. Having death. Professor Henry Lee Ewbank, the joined the department in 1902, he was not spokesman of the Wisconsin radio station made an associate professor until 1927, and it which Terry had created, was again to repre was not until 1928, a year before his death, sent educational broadcasLing in the nation that he was raised to the rank of full professor. before the new Federal Communications Com This slow progress, made all the more obvious mission in its review of the noncommercial by contrasting advancement of others, did not uses of radio.^' disturb the modest Terry unduly, but it was a Through the things he accomplished and matter of concern to his growing family. through the people whose lives he touched, On the national scene, however, the stature Earle M. Terry left the imprint of a great of Terry's work was early recognized. In 1922, teacher on the University he loved. From the 1923, 1924, and 1925, either he or his stu laboratory his students went forth to top-rank dent, C. M. Jansky, Jr., represented educa ing research positions in some of the greatest tional institutions in the four radio conferences industrial and governmental institutions in called by Secretary of Commerce Herbert the country, there to make important contribu Hoover, fn this series of meetings many of the tions to radio, radar, and television. Others of principles were evolved which Hoover later pre his students followed their professor's leader sented to Congress as the basis of legislation ship into careers of teaching and research at to regulate the broadcasting industry, fn these leading universities where they in turn have meetings agreement was first reached on the trained young scientists. need to reserve channels in the broadcast spec In the radio activity which he stimulated trum for educational purposes—a measure and in his concept of educational broadcast advocated by both Terry and Jansky. Although ing, Earle Terry profoundly influenced the it was years in realization, this goal was finally greatest mass medium in the nation and left reached with the reservation of short wave a rich heritage to the people of Wisconsin. The radio channels, and, more recently, with simi broadcasting activity which he gave to Wiscon- lar action in regard to television. siniles is now so much a part of their lives that When impending legislation demanded that it is inconceivable that they will ever permit it a definite structure be established for the allo to cease. cation of frequency assignments, Terry was again called to Washington by Secretary " H. L. Ewbank, Conservation of Radio Resources Hoover to assist in the task. And in March, (Madison, 1934). Paper presented at the hearings of the Federal Communications Commission, October 1, 1927, the newly created Federal Radio Com 1934. Mural in Radio Hall, University of Wisconsin, painted by John Stella and depicting WHA pioneers. Left to right: James B. Davis, Roswell Her rick. Burton Miller, C. M. Jansky, Jr., J. P. Foerst, William H. highly Malcolm Hanson, Andrew W. Hopkins, Edward Bennett, E. M. Terry, Henry L. Ewbank, Waldemar Geltch, Edgar B. Gordon, and Paul Sanders. 257 MARCUS LEE HANSEN AND THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF IMMIGRATION By ALLAN H. SPEAR TN its broadest sense, the historiography of rope and the newcomers from the South and -'• immigration began when the first setUers East who were unfamiliar with the Teutonic in the New World related their experiences in institutions upon which American society was letters, diaries, journals, and reminiscences. based. This view appeared prominently in the From the English colonists who stepped off the work of such historians as Henry Adams, Susan Constant at Jamestown to the twentieth- John Fiske, John Burgess, and Henry Cabot century Polish immigrant debarking at Ellis Lodge.^ Island, the millions who have made their way All of these writers, however, treated immi across the Atlantic have been eager to share gration incidentally; their prime concern was their adventures with the world. Those who with political events and constitutional de were able set down in writing their personal velopments. It was not until the traditional accounts of the great journey: the bitter-sweet boundaries of history were extended to include departure from the old home; the hardships of the study of social phenomena that immigra the crossing itself; the difficulties of adjust tion was seen as a major factor in American ment in an alien land. Others passed their history. The key figure in this reorientation tales on by word of mouth to children and of American historiography was Frederick grandchildren who were willing to listen. The Jackson Turner. Not only did Turner reject literature they created—both oral and written the Teutonic germ theory of Herbert Baxter —was the necessary first step in recording the Adams, but he also rejected the institutional story of immigration. approach to history which had concentrated The earliest trained historians to consider chiefly on political and constitutional develop immigration were the men of the late nine ments. The great debate over the frontier teenth century who wrote under the influence thesis has tended to overshadow this even more of the Teutonic theory of the origins of Amer fundamental feature of Turner's contribution. ican institutions which was emerging from the Rejecting the old concept of history as the nar seminars of Herbert Baxter Adams at the ration of political events. Turner was the first Johns Hopkins University. Operating on Dar truly interpretive historian. He saw the United winian assumptions, Adams used the compara States as the product of the "interaction of eco tive method to find the germs of American nomic, political, and social forces in contact institutions in medieval German forests. The with peculiar geographical factors."^ It is for heirs to the great Teutonic tradition were the the questions he asked rather than the answers Anglo-Saxon families who had carried Teu he gave that Turner remains important. Inter tonic seeds across the Atlantic and planted ested in why America evolved in the way it did, them in the forests of the New World where he went beyond his predecessors in examining they sprouted forth in the form of the New England village. This glorification of the early New England town led quite easily to an in dictment of later immigration as one aspect ' Edward N. Saveth, American Historians and Euro pean Immigrants (New York, 1948), 19-26, 32-89. of the new industrial order which was destroy ' F. J. Turner to Carl L. Becker, October 3, 1925 ing the traditional American way of life. More (MS), quoted in Avery Craven, "Frederick Jackson over, a sharp distinction was made between Turner," The Turner Thesis Concerning the Role of the Frontier in American History, George R. Taylor, immigrants from Northern and Western Eu ed., (Boston, 1956), 76-77. 258 SPEAR : HISTORIOGRAPHY OF IMMIGRATION all of the various forces which contributed to both social scientists and interested laymen, American development. attempted to outline possible solutions. The Turner's broad interests naturally led him to bulk of this literature had a strong restriction- a consideration of immigration. He believed ist bias. During this period, the social sciences that one of the influences of the frontier on were becoming permeated with racist think American society was its function as a melting ing. The vaguely racist notions of the nineties, pot. The frontier stripped the settler of his set forth by a few New England patricians, European ways and molded "a mixed race, had, by 1910, hardened into an ideology bol English in neither nationality nor character stered by supposedly scientific findings. The istics."^ Although Turner made no thorough eugenicists held that immigration meant ad study of immigration, he introduced concepts mitting "degenerative breeding stock" into the which were to have profound effect on future United States, thus ultimately lowering the historians. His writings suggested that immi quality of the American people. The ethnolo gration was the product of economic and social gists, by dividing the European peoples into conditions on both sides of the Atlantic and three physically distinct races, provided re- must, therefore, be studied from a European strictionists with a presumably scientific basis as well as an American point of view. He for distinguishing between the "old" immi shifted the focus of American historians from grants and the recent arrivals from Southern a concern with the inherent traits of European and Eastern Europe. And a leading economist, peoples to an emphasis on environment, which Francis Amasa Walker, argued that the native was to prove a more fruitful approach for those American birth rate was declining because of attempting to understand the process of immi the competition of prolific immigrant peoples gration. As a student of population movements, willing to work for lower wages and under he developed theories concerning the West poorer conditions. Hence, the foreign-born ward migration in America which were later were replacing the native stock in a Darwin to be used with notable success by students of ian struggle for survival.* the Atlantic migration. Finafly, Turner led The work of John Commons, Henry Pratt American historiography away from its pre Fairchild, Prescott HaU, and most of the con occupation with political institutions toward tributors to the report of the Dillingham Com a broader concept of its task and thus paved mission on Immigration was based on these the way for serious historical study of immi widely-held racist notions.^ The writing of gration. these men was also characterized by a notable lack of historical perspective. So involved "r\ESPITE Turner's work, however, profes- were these writers with the problems of their -*--^ sional historians generally neglected im own day that they were unable to see immi migration as an area for research down gration as a continuous process which had through the first quarter of the twentieth cen tury. As late as 1920 there was still no signifi * Racist trends in the social sciences are admirably cant American historian working in the field. discussed in John Higham, Strangers in the Land To find a literature on immigration, it was (New Brunswick, N. J., 1955), 142-155. The apothe osis of the racist literature was Madison Grant, The necessary, in the early twentieth century, to Passing of the Great Race (New York, 1916). look not to the historians but to the social ° John R. Commons, Races and Immigrants in scientists and to the spokesmen of the immi America (New York, 1907) ; Henry Pratt Fairchild, Immigration: A World Movement and Its American grant groups themselves. Significance (New York, 1913) ; Prescott F. Hall, Between 1890 and 1924 immigration as Immigration and Its Effect Upon the United States sumed the status of a major social problem. (New York, 1906). Oscar Handlin has dissected the Dillingham Commission report in his Race and Na Scores of books, pamphlels, and articles, by tionality in American Life (Garden City, N. Y., 19.57), 78-104. Exceptional among the contribiuions to the Dillingham report was the work of the anthro ^ F. J. Turner, The Frontier in American History pologist, Franz Boas, who found that the American (New York, 1920), 23. Turner's only direct consid (nivironment clianged what was believed to be the eration of immigration was in a series of newspaper most persistent hereditary trait—the shape of the articles, "Studies of American Immigration," Chicago head. This challenge to racist assumptions was, how Record-Herald, August 28, September 4, 11, 18, 25, ever, ignored by most writers concerned with immi October 16, 1901. gration. 259 V^'ISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1961 been in operation since the first landfall at had excelled in America in the arts, in politics, Jamestown. Instead, they assumed that there in business. Hurt and offended by the charges was something peculiar in the recent immigra that their people were incapable of appreciat tion, and, fortified by racist doctrines, they as ing American institutions, the filiopietists em cribed this peculiarity to the shift in the phasized the compatibility of their groups' source of immigrants from Northern and values with traditional American ideals. Each Western Europe to Southern and Eastern Eu immigrant spokesman was eager to show how rope. Most of the enormous mass of books and democracy or freedom of speech or public edu pamphlets on immigration appearing in the cation was the birthright of his nationality. early years of the century was, therefore, po Filiopietism must be seen as a direct reac lemical in ils nature. Written in the heat of tion to the attacks of the racists. If the re- controversy, it was intended to persuade the strictionists deprecated the character of the reader, to enlist his aid in the struggle at hand. immigrant peoples, the filiopietists merely sub Thus, these works were generally biased and stituted favorable generalizations for unfavor short-sighted, and while they may have served able ones. Lacking the sophistication neces their function as propaganda, they contributed sary to demonstrate the fallacy of ascribing little to an understanding of the immigration any fixed traits to an ethnic group, the history process. they wrote was marred by many of the same The debate over restriction was bound to weaknesses seen in the racist literature. It was leave its imprint upon the immigrants them intensely nationalistic; it often shared the rac selves. As social scientists and politicians ar ist assumptions of the nativist literature; and, gued over the merits of a free immigration despite the fact that its authors fancied them policy, the immigrants saw that they were selves historians, only their use of a chrono being judged in an often unfriendly light. The logical scheme of organization could justify increasing hostility on the part of native Amer this claim. Since these writers had no concep icans intensified the group consciousness of the tion of the dynamics of historical processes immigrant peoples. As a result, each ethnic they generally gave scant attention to the group organized its own defense associations larger problems of immigration—the Old and began to develop a defiant nationalism World background, the forces behind emigra which glorified the achievements of the group tion, the transplanting of community life, or both in the Old World and in America. One of the impact of the American environment on the manifestations of this nationalism was a immigrant values. For later writers, the filio flood of filiopietist histories which related, with pietist works were more useful as source ma glowing pride, the important contributions of terial than for any intrinsic merits of interpre the various nationalities to American life." tation or insight. These works were generally self-congratulatory exercises, designed to instill confidence in peo 'T^HROUGH the first quarter of the twen- ple who had been given reason to question their -»- lieth century, then, one could not properly value as American citizens. As such, they em speak of a historiography of immigration. The phasized the achievements of a few outstand professional historians had generally given im ing heroes rather than probing into the life of migration no more than a perfunctory glance, the common folk whose contributions to Amer leaving the field to racist social scientists seek ican life were less tangible. Often these histo ing solutions for the "immigrant problem," ries appeared to be little more than a list of the and to immigrant spokesmen who tried to show names of Germans or Swedes or Italians who that there was no problem.'^ During the 1920's and 1930's, however, several developments, "Works of this type are too numerous to list. both in the historical profession and in Amer- Among the best known are A. B. Faust, The German Element in the United States (Boston, 1909) ; Henry J. Ford, The Scotch-Irish in America (Princeton, ' Arthur M. Schlesinger, writing in 1922, noted that 1915) ; Giovanni Schiavo, The Italians in America despite the vast body of literature dealing with immi Before the Civil War (New York, 1934). That filio gration as a social problem, writers "have given little pietist histories have not yet completely disappeared or no attention to immigration as a dynamic factor is evident in the recent, popular works of Louis in American development." New Viewpoints in Amer Adamic. ican History (New York, 1922), 21. 260 SPEAR : HISTORIOGRAPHY OF IMMIGRATION ican life in general, converged to set the stage in all of its manifestations, but the great migra for the emergence of an important historical tions had drawn to a close and could be studied literature on immigration. in their entirety. In the early years of the century, American Furthermore, by the 1930's, a new attitude historiography had already begun to break the toward race was replacing the concept which bonds of tradition which had confined it to a had dominated American thought since the consideration of political developments. 1890's. The old theory had held that the vari Turner, in particular, had opened the door to ous races and subraces were set apart by cer a broader conception of history. During the tain inherent characteristics which were im twenties this tendency was greatly accelerated. mutable, marking some races as superior, some With the work of such men as Charles Beard, as inferior. In the mid-thirties, this doctrine Arthur M. Schlesinger, and Vernon Parring- collapsed. No longer was it respectable for ton, history was no longer merely the study of Americans openly to avow their adherence to past politics; social, intellectual, and economic the racist ideology. Behind this newer attitude developments were finally receiving full treat lay several reasons: Americans were shocked ment from the professional historians. by the extremes to which racism had led in This trend coincided with changes in Amer Nazi Germany; the New Deal strengthened ican society at large which had important im humanitarian ideals; and there was a waken plications for the study of immigration. The ing of political consciousness among the mi restriction laws of 1921 and 1924 moved immi nority peoples. Moreover, the social scientists, gration out of the arena of public debate and who in former years had provided justification into the realm of the historian. No longer was for racist thinking, abandoned their old as there a need for polemic literature to fan the sumptions and began to concern themselves flames of controversy. The Johnson Act pre with cultural differences among men, based on sented to the historian a finished story. Immi environmental rather than inherited factors.^ grants would continue to trickle in and it With the broadening of the horizons of his would be generations before the impact of im tory, the end of open immigration, and the de migration on the United States could be seen cline of racism, the path was cleared for the emergence of a group of professional histo rians prepared to devote their careers to a study of immigration. The men who undertook this task were, almost without exception, the sons of immigrants. But they were a far dif ferent lot from the amateurs who had written the filiopietist tracts. Educated in the leading American universities, the new historians of immigration combined a natural sympathy for the plight of the immigrant with the highest degree of professional competence. It was this group of second generation immigrants— Theodore Blegen, Carl Wittke, Oscar Handlin, and Marcus Hansen—who created the historio graphy of immigration. lyiARGUS LEE HANSEN was born in 1892 -'-'-*-in Neenah, Wisconsin, the son of an itiner ant Danish preacher and his Norwegian wife." "Handlin discusses this phenomenon in Race and Nationality in American Life, 136-149. •' Material on Hansen's life can be found in C. Fred i'r M'iSi,!.-':.:'.. !vr: erick Hansen, "Marcus Lee Hansen—Historian of Uni\crsit\ of Illinois Immigration," Common Ground, II (Summer, 1942), 87-94, and John B. Brebner, "Marcus Lee Hansen," Marcus Lee Hansen, from a photograph taken in the Dictionary of American Biography, Robert L. in the 1930's. Schuyler, ed. (1958), XXII, 278-279. 261 Vi'ISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1961 Hansen spent his boyhood moving from one works delved into some aspects of the immi Scandinavian settlement to another, collecting grants' American experience. Hansen's essays impressions which he was later to draw upon covered a wide range of subjects, including the in his studies of immigration. After receiving impact of immigration on Westward expansion, his B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University democracy, Puritanism, and American culture, of Iowa, he entered Harvard where he was ex and the problem of the second and third gen posed to the new trends in American historiog eration immigrants. The Mingling of the Cana raphy which were developing in the twenties. dian and the American Peoples^'^—Hansen's There he studied under Frederick Jackson third major book—presented a detailed ac Turner who encouraged his interest in immi count of Canadian-American migrations and gration and impressed upon him the necessity the relationship between the north-south move of studying the immigration process from a ments and expansion to the West. European as well as an American point of Many influences came together in the work view. Hansen received his Ph. D. in 1924 and of Marcus Hansen. From his own background then spent three years combing the libraries came sympathy for the struggles of the immi and archives of Europe to find material on emi grant peoples and a realization that the story gration. In 1928 he joined the faculty of the of immigration was, above all, a story involv University of Illinois where he taught for ten ing the hope and despair of human beings. years. During this time, Hansen assumed From the dominant intellectual currents of his many duties in addition to his teaching and day, both inside and outside the historical pro wrote several articles for scholarly journals. fession, he absorbed an interest in social and But his principal project was his plan for a economic forces and a belief in the power of three-volume history of American immigra the environment to alter human traits. But it tion, from Jamestown to the recent past. He is the fact that Hansen was a student of Fred was never to complete this monumental un erick Jackson Turner that provides the most dertaking for, on May 11, 1938, Hansen died important key to an understanding of Han at the age of forty-five. At the time of his sen's view of immigration. Turner himself had death the first volume of the proposed trilogy become interested in immigration in his later was in manuscript form. Edited by Arthur years, seeing in the Atlantic migration the M. Schlesinger, it was published in 1940 as complement of the Westward movement. Fur The Atlantic Migration, 1607-1860,^° and won thermore, Turner had asked questions about the Pulitzer Prize in history. Schlesinger also the nature of American development which re edited nine of Hansen's essays and published quired a study of immigration in its broadest them under the title of The Immigrant in context. As a follower of Turner, Hansen took American History.^^ the concept of the frontier, modified it for his The Atlantic Migration is a study of emigra purpose, and extended its application from the tion, of the expulsive forces which resulted in United States alone to the entire Western the exodus of millions of Germans, Irishmen, world. Britons, and Scandinavians in the years prior In Hansen's view, immigration was not pri to the American Civil War. In this work Han marily an American phenomenon but the re sen took his stand in Europe and did not deal sult of European expansion which, beginning with the immigrants' adjustment to the Amer in the sixteenth century, reached its climax in ican environment. Most of his sources were the great outpouring of the nineteenth. The European—government documents, emigrant factors lying behind this exodus were not na handbooks and journals, consular letters. Han tional but world-wide in their implication and sen, therefore, did not provide a complete ac were an integral part of the history of the mod count of the Atlantic migration, even in the ern world. Emigration was thus a continuous, period he was considering, since he limited imivcrsal process which was necessarily viewed himself to one side of tho ocean. Bui his olhcr in the context of the entire span of modern his tory and as a phenomenon which affected all '" Cambridge, Mass., 1940. " Cambridge, Mass., 1940. • New Haven, Conn., 1940. 262 SPEAR : HISTORIOGRAPHY OF IMMIGRATION of the countries of the Atlantic community. been designed to provide for the increased Distinctions between "old" and "new" immi population were only a further impetus to ex gration and study along narrow national lines pansion. Land reforms meant the breakdown had no place in Hansen's analysis. To isolate of the old feudal order which had for centuries emigration from a specific country or immi tied the peasant to the land. And the introduc gration to a specific country without viewing tion of the potato linked the welfare of the the process as a whole was to ignore the basic peasant to a single crop which was subject to characteristics of modern population move devastating diseases. In the nineteenth cen ments. "The significance of the transatlantic tury, land reforms and famine combined with migration," Hansen said, "is broader than the the pressure of a growing population to force experiences of detached groups; and its full Europeans to seek their livelihood in other meaning will not be revealed until the natural parts of the world.^^ emigration areas of Europe, at present ob National boundaries are of little importance scured by statistics, laws, and conventional in determining the causes of emigration. The treatments, are delineated and until the myste "natural emigration areas" which Hansen rious forces that, disregarding political boun sought were not political units but districts daries, operated to set mankind in motion, are which suffered, to an extreme degree, from understood."^^ the social and economic problems which con To delineate these areas and understand tinent-wide changes had wrought. In the pe these forces was the task Hansen set for him riod with which Hansen deals in The Atlantic self. Previous works along national lines had Migration, the most important of these areas put an emphasis on political and religious fac were southwestern Germany and Ireland tors in emigration and had obscured economic where social and economic ills reached a cli forces which in their applications affected the max in the years of the great migration, 1846 entire continent. These forces had their origins to 1854.^= in the early modern period, but it was not until To Hansen, then, America was the frontier the eighteenth century that they gained in of an expanding Europe. The dynamic forces tensity and set in motion the processes that which Turner had seen at work in the United were to culminate in the nineteenth-century States were also operative in the entire West migrations. Between 1700 and 1800, the popu ern world. Thus, as America pushed its boun lation of Europe doubled. Improved medical daries Westward to the Pacific, so Western practices, the absence of serious plagues, and civilization pushed its boundaries to all cor the lack of destructive wars brought about ners of the earth. The development of the this sharp rise. To assure an adequate food United States was merely one aspect of the supply for the new multitudes, scientific meth greater story of European expansion. ods of agriculture were introduced which ne There is, however, one basic difference be cessitated reallotment of the land into larger tween Turner's analysis of the forces which units and the breakup of the ancient com were drawing Americans across a continent munal pattern of farming. In addition, the po and Hansen's analysis of the forces which were tato became the staple crop of Western Europe, propelling Europeans across an ocean. Turner providing an easily-grown, versatile food prod saw westward expansion in the United States uct for the rapidly increasing population. As as the response to an attractive force—the ap Europe continued to grow, it broke the bounds peal of free lands—drawing Americans toward of its traditional geographical limits. The the Pacific. In Hansen's view, on the other wastelands of the German East and of Russia hand, the European was motivated to emigrate were put under cultivation, and soon even the less by the promise of his new home than by Atlantic no longer seemed a barrier to expan sion. In addition, the very means which had " The Atlantic Migration, 17-24. "r/ie Atlantic Migration, 200-206, 211-220, 242- 254, 272-276, 284-294. For a more detailed discussion " Review of Norwegian Migration to America, of emigration from Germany, see Hansen's "The 1825-1860, by T. C. Blegen, and The Background of Revolution of 1848 and German Emigration," Journal Swedish Immigration, by F. E. Jansen, American of Economic and Business History, II: 630-657 Historical Review, XXXVII: 572-573 (April, 1932). (August, 1930). 263 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1961 the exigencies of his old. The Atlantic migra 1815 and 1845, a steady transatlantic trade tion was primarily a process of emigration and was established and internal transportation in only secondarily a matter of immigration. Europe was greatly improved. The immigrant traffic became a ])articularly lucrative trade LTAVIiNG analyzed the expulsive forces for many shipping companies. Vessels from^ •*--'- which caused emigration, Hansen turned America usually carried heavy raw materials to an examination of the factors which deter while, on the return trip, they carried less mined the paths this exodus followed. While bulky goods, leaving empty space in their the European emigrated because of his desire holds: emigrants provided the ballast for the to escape Europe, his destination was deter westbound voyage. The exodus from each sec mined by conditions in the various areas of tion of Europe followed the course of trade settlement and by the existing routes of trans from that section to America. The Irish mi portation. Hansen lucidly describes the rela gration depended to a large extent on the lum tionship between these factors in shaping the ber trade and accordingly the Irish were course of immigration to the United States: carried to the heavily wooded banks of the St. "It may be said that America was a huge Lawrence, from whence they usually made magnet of varying intensity, drawing the their way to New England. Germans shipping people of Europe from those regions where out of Le Havre were carried by cotton ships conditions made them mobile and from which to New Orleans and then proceeded up the transportation provided a path. American con Mississippi Valley to St. Louis or Cincinnati. ditions determined the duration and height of The Bremen trade was based on tobacco, and the waves; European, the particular source."-^" emigrants leaving from that port were likely Thus when the lustre of the United States to find their destination Baltimore. Thus the dimmed, emigration did not cease, but merely patterns of immigration, like the forces behind turned to alternate destinations such as Can emigration, were primarily conditioned by ada, Brazil, and Russian Poland.^'' economic factors affecting the entire Atlantic The prime factor in drawing the emigrant community.-'^'' to a particular country at a particular time In Hansen's scheme there was little room was a favorable economic situation. But be for the exercise of free will on the part of in fore the economic conditions of a distant land dividual emigrants. Like Turner, Hansen had could affect the actions of a European peasant, an essentially deterministic point of view. The means of communication had to be established great migration, he said, "arose apart from the which would keep the prospective immigrant volition of men; its course was directed by informed. This process of communication was circumstances other than their wifl."^" Ejected cumulative, for when the early migrants from from Europe by the pressures of economic a given locale settled in America they imme change and swept to his new home by the cur diately established contact with those they left rents of world trade, the migrant was a pawn behind, and their reports helped to determine moved by forces he could not begin to under the course of future immigration. In the gen stand. When famine gripped Ireland in 1845 eration after 1815, this communicative link and 1846, the poor cotter did not rationally was firmly established and, as reports of Amer make a decision to leave, but was driven by ican prosperity filtered back to the old coun impulse to escape the accursed homeland. In try, the United States became the dream of a Germany, conditions were not quite so critical, vast number of those torn loose by the upheav but though the peasant did not face starvation als of Europe.^^ if he remained, a vague fear that current dif A second factor in determining the destina ficulties foreshadowed total disaster in the fu tion of the emigrants was transportation. Here ture moved the Germans to emigrate in large Hansen saw the course of migration as closely related to commercial developments. Between " The Atlantic Migration, 178-195; The Immigrant in American History, 156-167. " The Immigrant in American History, 192. ^° German Schemes of Colonization Before 1860, " The Atlantic Migration, 107-117. "Smith College Studies in History," IX, (Northamp 'V6iW., 146-171. ton, Mass., 1924), 65. 264 SPEAR : HISTORIOGRAPHY OF IMMIGRATION numbers.-^ The choice of America as the desti population each European country sought nation of so many emigrants was also the re more living space and so came in conflict with sult of forces beyond the comprehension of its neighbor; hence, the end of emigration was the individuals involved. The brisk European- the cause of World War II. The best-known American trade provided cheap passage, and application of these theories was made by the United States was often enjoying its great Walter Prescott Webb in The Great Frontier est prosperity at times of European depression. (1952) .23 Webb believes that the age of dis If Hansen's view of the dynamics of immi covery opened up a great frontier of Europe gration can be seen as an extension of the which, by providing an excess of land and of Turner thesis, so his concept of race can be capital for a relatively fixed number of people, viewed as an extension of Turner's environ- resulted in a four-hundred-year boom. As mentalism. Hansen never formulated a theory Turner had seen the American frontier as the of race, but implicit in his basic understand central factor in American development, so ing of the immigration process was a rejec Webb sees the great frontier and the boom it tion of the racist assumption of the early social engendered as the focal point in modern Euro scientists. To Hansen, distinctions between im pean history. By 1890, the frontier had been migrant groups on the basis of racial origins virtuafly filled up and, although Webb does were meaningless, for all of the newcomers, not specifically relate this fact to the catas uprooted by similar economic forces, came to trophes of the twentieth century, he does see the United States with similar hopes and as it as ground for serious and pessimistic con pirations. For Hansen, as for his great teacher, cern. In summarizing the conclusions of the essential factors motivating human be Kulischer and Webb no suggestion is intended havior are the products of the environment that either man was specifically influenced by and not of inherent racial characteristics. Hansen, but their views do serve to show some The concept of immigration as a part of of the possible implications of Hansen's European expansion has implications which thought. For Hansen's analysis goes beyond Hansen himself did not fully develop. Other the realm of American immigration. Though writers, whether or not directly influenced by he himself centered his attention upon the Hansen's work, have used this concept in spec United States, his theories are of importance ulating about the course of modern European to an interpretation of the history of the entire history. Viewing the Atlantic migration as pri modern world. marily a European phenomenon caused by elemental, world-wide forces, these men have TTANSEN did not give full-scale treatment used the Turner analogy to ask questions Han -•--*- to the impact of the immigrant upon sen never considered. If emigration was the American society as he did to the process of outgrowth of European difficulties, and if peo emigration. He did suggest, however, some ple emigrated to escape P'urope, then the pres possible answers to the problems of the immi ence of the United States, Latin America, and grants' adjustment in America, and many of the dominions constituted a "safety valve" for his ideas along this line have had considerable Europe. What would be the result when immi influence on later writers. gration to these countries was cut off, when Behind the expansion of the European peo Europe's frontier ceased to be a refuge for the ples were forces which did not cease operating cast-offs of the motherland? when the immigrant reached the shores of the Eugene M. Kulischer, a demographer writ New World. Immigration and the westward ing in 1948, maintains that migrations are advance in America were part of the same vast necessary for an expanding people and that expansive movement. Hansen, it is true, saw when, in the 1920's and 1930's, Europe's over the Atlantic migration as primarily an expul seas frontier was closed, the result was cata sive movement, while Turner had seen west strophic.^^ Without an oudet for its excess ward expansion as primarily an attractive '^^ The Atlantic Migration, 249-253. "Eugene M. Kulischer, Europe on the Move (New ='Walter P. Webb, The Great Frontier (Boston, York, 1948), 1952). 265 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1961 movement, but these two concepts were not culture which the immigrant brought with him mutually exclusive. Despite the importance and the communities which he established of European forces and of the paths of com "that formed the human connecting link merce, conditions in the United States did play between the old world and the new."^' a role in determining the volume of immigra Hansen's analysis of the relationship between tion in any given year. By the same token, immigration and westward expansion is more since the existence of free land was an unvari- vulnerable to serious questioning than is his able factor in American history before 1890, analysis of emigration. First of all, it seems to business conditions also determined the mag be a greatly oversimplified view of the distri nitude of westward expansion. In Hansen's bution of immigrants in the United States inas view, periods of prosperity brought waves of much as it focuses almost entirely on the immigration while periods of depression en immigrants who settled in the rural regions of couraged westward expansion. Americans the Middle West. Not only did Hansen fail to headed West when conditions in the East were account for the "new" immigrants who con bad; when good times returned, immigrants centrated so heavily in the Eastern cities, but moved in to take their places.^* he also ignored the Irish who, even in the early Hansen conceived of the immigrant's role as period, did not fit into his pattern of "fillers- that of a "fiUer-in." The immigrant had neither in." Secondly, Hansen's concept of a cyclical the instinct nor the ability to be a frontiersman pattern of American expansion seems to be or a pioneer farmer. His communal habits were seriously jeopardized by the devasting critique, ill-suited for the lonely, individualistic life of in recent years, of Turner's "safety valve" the frontier, and, as an Old World farmer, he theory. According to such critics as Fred A. had none of the technical knowledge needed Shannon, the periods of westward movement to carve a homestead out of the American did not correspond to periods of depression in forest or plains. Instead, the immigrant took the East, as both Turner and Hansen had over the farms of American pioneers who were supposed.^^ attracted by the lure of a stifl-farther West. The In addition to his suggestive work on immi immigrant, then, was the permanent settler gration and expansion, Hansen also wrote sev who, in Turner's scheme, had formed the third eral essays on the immigrants' adjustment to wave of westward expansion. Like his pred the American environment. These studies, too, ecessors—the frontiersman and the pioneer grew out of his concept of the forces behind farmer—he was a necessary element in the emigration. Thus Hansen found that the immi continuous process of filling up the American grants, on the whole, formed a profoundly con continent.^" servative element in American life. The vast In Hansen's view, it was necessary to revise majority of immigrants were seeking not Turner's thesis in order to give fuller consider political or religious liberty but economic free ation to the impact of the immigrant on the dom—"freedom from laws and customs that development of the American frontier. Since curbed individual enterprise." Emigration, for the West was the frontier of Europe as well as the millions who were displaced in Europe, of the Eastern United States, the influence of was an attempt not to find a brave new world European ideas was a vital factor in the shap but to regain that which had slipped from their ing of Western society. In addition, the Ameri grasps in the old country. In America, they can frontier reacted upon Western Europe wanted only to preserve the free enterprise sys "with a force comparable to that which it ex tem which would "facilitate their acquisition erted upon Atlantic America."^'' Hansen re of property and position and would protect ferred to this concept as "Neo-Turnerism." He them in what they acquired." Though gener encouraged future historians to examine the ally a member of the noncapitalist class, the "•' The Atlantic Migration, 16-17. "' The Problems of the Third Generation Immigrant '''The Immigrant in American History, 53-76; The (Rock Island, 111., 1938), 18-19. Atlantic Migration, 13-15. ^' Fred A. Shannon, "A Post-Mortem on the Labor ^^ "Remarks," Sources of Culture in the Middle Safety Valve Theory," in Agricultural History, XIX: West, Dixon R. Fox, ed., (New York, 1934), 108-110. 31-37 (January, 1945). 266 SPEAR : HISTORIOGRAPHY OF IMMIGRATION immigrant's dream of success made him a stricter than those they had left behind in Eu capitalist at heart, one who exerted upon rope. In the Midwestern communities, this ten American society a great stabilizing influence. dency was strengthened by a desire to conform The immigrant's conservatism was strength to established middle-class American stand ened by his tendency to cling to old ways more ards. Discipline became more and more strict, tenaciously than those who stayed at home, ft and the pleasures brought from the Old World was not until the second generation reached were gradually abandoned.'*" adulthood that members of the immigrant com Hansen's discussion of the conservatism and munity began turning to progressive move the Puritanism of the immigrant communities ments.^" is open to criticism on several grounds. He Hansen also observed in the immigrant com considers both of these phenomena in regard munities a deep Puritanical streak. This he to the Midwestern communities of the Germans explained by viewing Puritanism not as a theo and Scandinavians, without testing their appli logical position but as a mechanism against cation to the urban settlements of the Irish and threats to discipline and order. When a society the Eastern European immigrants. It seems finds its old values in jeopardy its natural re likely that Puritanism was generally limited to course is to enforce a stricter disciplinary code. Protestant groups and, although Hansen argues Immigrant communities, from colonial New that it also affected the Catholic Church, he England to the Midwestern settlements of the focuses upon the German Catholics of the Mid nineteenth century, were faced with a break dle West rather than the Irish, Italian, and down of morals in a strange and hostile envi Polish Catholics of the East.^-' In addition, ronment and attempted to impose codes '" Ibid., 97-128. ' The Immigrant in American History, 77-96. '' Ibid., 122-123. II.lip. IS Weekly "Prospective American Citizens," a turn-of-the-century photograph of an immigrant family at Ellis Island. 267 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1961 Theodore Blegen has argued that Puritanism changing the continent from a feudal to a among the Norwegian immigrants was not a modern society and, in the process, ruthlessly product of American conditions but was uprooting those who could not find a place in brought over from Norway, especially by those the new order. In Hansen's analysis, the old who had accepted the pietistic teachings which emphasis on political exiles and the exploits of were widespread in the early nineteenth cen- outstanding individuals was replaced by a con jyj.y 32 Pinally, one wonders, if Hansen's theory cern for the great mass of emigrants who were is correct, why Puritanism developed in six expelled from Europe by circumstances be teenth-century England and why it failed to yond their control and directed to America by develop in the American colonies outside of the currents of commerce and opportunities for New England. economic advancement. In the past twenty years, the historiography fT^HE achievement of Marcus Hansen clearly of immigration has, for the most part, followed •*- does not rest on the quantity or scope of the patterns which Hansen established. Oscar his work. He did not provide a comprehensive Handlin has used Hansen's basic theories as a story of immigration. But within the limita starting point and has proceeded to investigate tions which his tragically short life set for him, the immigrant's American experience—an Hansen succeeded in providing a meaningful area which Hansen barely touched.^^ Hand- framework for immigration historiography by lin's emphasis has been Eastern and urban firmly placing it within its historical setting. while Hansen was concerned primarily with Before Hansen, the literature of immigration the rural immigrants. In addition, Handlin had been, for the most part, marred by preju has concentrated on patterns of community de dice or by parochialism. The racists and the velopment rather than patterns of migration; filiopietists had written works colored by the his approach has been sociological rather than debate over restriction. They had failed to see demographic. Nevertheless, Handlin's work is immigration with historical perspective or to based on the general theories which Hansen relate it to the great forces which had shaped formulated. Like Hansen, he views immigra modern history. Hansen was the first historian tion as a continuous process which was the to treat immigration, not in terms of national result of profound economic changes affecting groups nor in terms of the United States alone, the entire Western world. And as in Hansen's but as one aspect of the expansion of Europe. work, Handlin's immigrants are not free Applying what he had learned from Turner to agents, but arc "uprooted" men, forced, out of the entire Western world, Hansen viewed this desperation, to leave their homelands and to expansive process as a vast westward movement seek opportunity abroad. Hansen's contribu in which Europeans migrated to a transatlantic tion, therefore, incomplete though it was, pro frontier and pushed the native Americans on vided a meaningful structure which has been ward to a still-farther frontier. With Hansen, the basis of most important subsequent work distinctions between "old" and "new" immi in the field. And it seems likely that whatever grants, and the racist assumptions upon which work is done in the future will continue to be these distinctions were based, became meaning based on the assumptions which Marcus Lee less. All were driven across the Atlantic by the Hansen first developed. same disruptive economic forces which swept across Europe, from Northwest to Southeast, "Oscar Handlin, Boston's Immigrants (Cambridge, Mass., 1941); The Uprooted (Boston, 1951). Most recently, Handlin has extended his theories of immi '-T. C. Blegen, Norwegian Migration to America: gration to include the Puerto Rican and Southern The American Transition (Northfield, Minn., 1940), Negro influx into New York City. The Newcomers 221-222. (Cambridge, Mass., 1959). 268 .ON l<» M£. BLUEPRINT FOR THE FUTURE: THE SOCIETY'S HISTORIC SITES By Jane Neuheisel TT is the pledge of the State Historical So- maxim can well be applied to these five his -*- ciety of Wisconsin to collect, preserve, and toric sites. Needless to say, the State Historical make known the past, but like any other organ Society of Wisconsin will choose to progress. ization it must also concern itself with the Perhaps the most exciting chaflenge ahead future. The future has probably never looked is providing activation at each of the sites. brighter in terms of challenge, promise, and Each August visitors to Old Wade House may energy. ride in a stagecoach identical to the ones that One of the ways the Society "makes known" arrived daily at this charming inn one hun history is through operation of historic sites— dred years ago. Trained animal acts are fea a statewide field of endeavor which began in tured at the Circus World Museum to capture 1952 when the Society assumed operation of some of the life and movement of the circus. the Villa Louis at Prairie du Chien. In 1953 Hopefully, a paddlewheel steamboat will be it acquired the Nelson Dewey Home and the secured for the Vifla Louis so that visitors may Stonefield Farm and Craft Museum at Cass- ride on the Mississippi River and appreciate ville, and Old Wade House at Greenbush. In its influence on the history of the state. 1959 it launched the Circus World Museum While the Society does not intend to become at Baraboo, and in 1960 assumed operation of engulfed in the entertainment business, it does the Museum of Medical Progress at Prairie du feel a responsibility to make the learning ex Chien. perience at an historic site as complete as Each of these five sites has unlimited possi possible. This requires activation along with bilities. Each can tell a story of the past which basic refurbishment and maintenance, all of can not be told elsewhere. But the time has which require foresight and funds. come to take stock of the possibilities, to secure funds for development and maintenance, to The State Historical Society is ready to meet make careful plans, and to chart a blueprint its commitments and fulfill its promises. The for the future. teaching of history at historic sites presents a It has been said that one either progresses most exciting challenge. Let us face it with or regresses; one can not stand still. This determination and enthusiasm. 269 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1961 y ^.- Activity at the Brisbois Home, given to the Society by Mrs. Cornelius Root in 1958, has bogged down Newest of the historic buildings property is the while researchers seek to establish the exact date of Glynn property, also known as the Tremont Hotel, its construction. Even so, the story of the Brisbois which was presented to the Society at the 1961 An family and its association with the fur trade and the nual Meeting by the Living History Committee. Even development of Prairie du Chien warrant the devel if the building pictured does not contain within its opment of this site. walls an earlier structure built by Joseph Rolette, the land on which it stands is important as a buffer against undesirable commercial development of the historic Prairie du Chien waterfront area. Prairie du Chien As the second-oldest city in Wisconsin, Prairie du Chien is a rich storehouse of history. Here Indian tribes once held their councils. Here the federal government built three frontier outposts—Fort Shelby and the first and second Fort Crawford. Located at the confluence of the Mississippi and Wisconsin Riv ers, Prairie du Chien became a great trading center and figured prominently in the steamboat and rail road movements. The State Historical Society is co-operating with the Living History Committee, a group of interested Prairie du Chien residents, to preserve and recon struct as much of the past as is possible. Only small bits and pieces of the story remain uncovered; many historic buildings and homes have been acquired, and others are being sought; plans have been drawn, and .some money has been raised. But the greater part of the task—that of presenting the Prairie du Chien of the nineteenth century, the fur trade center of the Midwest—remains ahead. The challenge is great, but the promise is greater. And the excitement of seeing the project come to pass spurs us onward. 270 NEUHEISEL : THE SOCIETY S HISTORIC SITES The Knowlton House was presented to the Society About thirty years of dedicated effort begun by by the Prairie du Chien League of Women Voters, citizens of Prairie du Chien to preserve the military who injected some of the first efforts towards "acti hospital of the Second Fort Crawford were fulfilled vation" through annual sponsorship of the Villa Louis when the Museum of Medical Progress was opened Tea. At present it provides a very appropriate and in 1960. The Charitable, Educational and Scientific convenient information center for Prairie du Chien's Foundation of the State Medical Society has financed many and varied attractions. this project to record and present the history of medicine. Villa Louis Because it is nearly thirty years since Virginia Dousman Bigelow carried on the restoration of Villa Louis, it is understandable that several major main tenance and refurbishment items now require atten tion. Villa Louis has been nationally recognized for the high percentage of authentic Dousman items it contains, but many of these items now need cleaning, reupholstering, and refinishing. Before the site be came a Society property, a leaky roof admitted water stains on much of the wallpaper Mrs. Bigelow had reproduced from original patterns at considerable cost. The building's exterior is now sound and weath erproof but the interior needs redecorating. The 1843 laundry building continues to deteriorate. Lack of funds prevents the conversion of this building into a badly-needed Reception Center to house the site's office, sales room, basic orientation area, and toilet facilities. 271 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1961 •,; «». Old Wade House, a stagecoach inn, was completed in 1851. It prospered for a few years and was then virtually put out of business by the coming of the railroads. By 1950 it liad changed ownership many times and was described as a "weary, weather-stained I .••"iMIHfi iiiMiM'it 1 11r. 77 ' ^^ » old hulk." It was then that Mrs. Ruth DeYoung Kohler undertook the restoration of the grand old inn and its accompanying buildings as a memorial to her sister-in-law. In 1953, when the project was complete—after months of painstaking research and restoration—it was given to the State Historical So ciety by the Kohler Foundation of Kohler, Wisconsin. Approximately 40,000 people visit the Wade House each year between May and October, and it is espe cially popular with school children. The problems of maintenance have not presented serious stumbling blocks because the Kohler Foundation has continued to be generous, and because the Wisconsin Conser vation Department services the complex as a state park. Old Wade House Greenbush A stagecoach inn is really not complete without a Acquired by the Wisconsin Conservation l)ei)art- stagecoach. This coach and more than a hundred ment in 1960, the Herrling Property is right next other horse-drawn vehicles of all kinds belong to door to Wade House. The millpond and the sawmill, Wesley W. Jung of Sheboygan. He and Society ^vhere lumber for Wade House was cut, should be representatives hope that this famous carriage col reconstructed, and the new property developed. Per lection will soon find a permanent home at Green haps future visitors can ride in various horse-drawn bush in a Jung Carriage Museum. vehicles along beautifullv wooded trails. 272 NEUHEISEL : THE SOCIETY'S HISTORIC SITES After four of their "old timers," all of whom were more than seventy years old, had prepared the mor tise and tenon construction using 1890 tools, mem bers of the Wisconsin Council of Carpenters held an old-fashioned "barn raising bee." With money, ma terials, and labor contributed by the Carpenters' m^ Union, the Carpenter Shop was completed and is one of the truly distinctive buildings in the 1890 Village. L _ • ' I plans for the 1890 village call for a total of twenty-seven units which will include offices and shops, a school, a bank, a funeral parlor, a saloon, a railroad station, a hotel, a newspaper office and print shop, and many others. Actual construction of the village was begun in 1956. Stonefield Farm And Craft Museum at Nelson Dewey State Park, Cassville Stonefield, located near Cassville on the Mississippi River, was once the plantation home of Nelson Dewey, Wisconsin's first governor. Today it is being developed as an historical-recreational complex. Ap proximately six hundred acres of the original estate have been set aside as Nelson Dewey State Park and the Wisconsin Conservation Department has provided camping and picnic facilities. The Dewey home with accompanying domestic and farm buildings has been preserved by the State Historical Society and is open to visitors daily, May through October—as are all of the Society-operated sites. Dewey's stone barn is headquarters for the Stone field Farm and Craft Museum, one of the most com plete museums of its kind in the country. Here are more than 12.000 pieces of farm machinery dating from the 1820's through the 1930's. To recreate history and demonstrate the relation ship of the pioneer farm to the nearby community, an 1890 village is being constructed at the site. Thousands of items which recall the early crafts such as harness making, blacksmithing, carpentry, wagon and shoemaking have already been collected and will go on display in their appropriate settings. The vil lage will be completed only as fast as funds can be secured, but at least ten units will be ready for visitors by 1962. 273 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1961 Trained animals peilorm dailj at the Cin us World Museum, recalling for visitors the gaiety and hoopla of the gieat American circuses. Many historic circus wagons and floats are still being located for the museum. Here skilled workmen restore them to their original beauty as visitors look on. Circus World Museum Baraboo The circus has a history all its own and much of it is recreated at the Circus World Museum at Bara boo. Here the visitors are given a taste of the "behind the scenes" activity of a circus as well as the history of this great American institution. The museum is headquartered in the original win ter quarters of the Ringling Brothers Circus. Three of the buildings—the camel, trained horse, and ele phant barns—have been refurbished to house the gaily colored circus wagons, posters, photographs, equipment, and other memorabilia. The State Historical Society of Wisconsin has leased this site to the Historic Sites Foundation for operation. The Circus World Museum, dedicated to the generations of people who created the greatest of all entertainment spectacles, holds great promise as an historic site. Development will proceed as ^ry''-''*^'--1l^?l quickly as funds can be secured. 274 THE 'GREEK REVIVAL' IN AMERICAN HISTORIOGRAPHY: A REVIEW ARTICLE* BY O. LA'WRENCE BURNETTE, JR. fX^HE Greeks had a word for it, but it has methods and philosophy. Happily, it now ap -•- seen little service in America. The word pears that we are in process of rediscovering was historiography, "the writing of history, the the Grecian interrelationship between history study and criticism of the sources and develop and philosophy, that history itself has a history, ment of history," and its atrophy from the and that our historiographical tradition shapes American professional vocabulary has been a the history which we write and read. In short, serious indication of an uncertain grasp of we seem to be in the early stages of a "Greek some underlying factors which our European Revival" in American historiography. counterparts have long understood. Even our The best evidence of the revival is the spate historians, most of whom would qualify for of books published during the last two years inclusion in the term, have shunned calling on various aspects of the nature and develop themselves historiographers. Though partly a ment of the historiography of America. Per misdirected effort to escape pedantry, this haps this concentration of publication is a slighting of a legitimate word has been more logical outgrowth of the rise of intellectual a reflection of our American concern with his history, or perhaps it is an accident signifying torical substance than with procedure, a con that the writing of American history has come cern with the facts of history rather than its of age. Whether or not this is true, the increas ing concern of the historians of America with "" Reviewed herein are: the inner workings of their own craft is a The American Historian: A Social-Intellec gratifying turn of events, ft promises not only tual History of the Writing of the American a better orientation of the historical discipline Past. By HARVEY WISH. (Oxford University but also a better understanding of the sub stance of the American past. Seconding this Press, New York, 1960. Pp. 366. $7.50.) promise is an increasing emphasis upon for mal graduate training in American historical Recording America's Past: An Interpreta literature, methodology, documentation, and tion of the Development of Historical Studies writing—all of which may be conveniently in America, 1607-1884. By D.4VID D. VAN sheltered under the generic term, histori TASSEL. (The University of Chicago Press, ography. The term may still be awkwardly Chicago, 1960. Pp. 223. $6.00.) foreign, but the concept is sprouting in the rank growth of the American historical jungle. Turner and Beard: American Historical i^NE of the most comprehensive flowers of Writing Reconsidered. By LEE BENSON. (The ^-^ the new interest in American histori Free Press of Clencoe, Illinois, 1960. Pp. 241. ography is the brilliant study by Harvey Wish, $5.00.) entitled The American Historian. A composite biography of the great masters of American Essays in American Historiography: Papers historical literature, this new work places the Presented in Honor of Allan Nevins. Edited by development of American historiography with DONALD SHEEHAN and HAROLD C. SYRETT. in its social and intellectual context. It is (Columbia University Press, New York, 1960. perhaps prophetic that one of our leading in Pp. 320. $6.00.). tellectual historians should point the way to- 275 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1961 wards a renewed interest of history in itself, cal scholarship imported from Germany fash and perhaps we must look to this special field ioned another even more rigorous than the for more such contributions. For the moment, one it overthrew, ft institutionalized American the Wish study is an admirable start, a second history and professionalized it, but in an alien ary condensation of the recent literature, but and sterile mould, ft loosed a flood of histori unquestionably displacing the older works by cal writing—most of which was not read. In Kraus as standard in the field. fact, it jealously suspected any historical writ The Wish volume goes considerably beyond ing which had the normal aspirations of litera a mere catalog of historians and their writings, ture. And always it pursued with a single mind for it has considerable pretension to interpret the origins of political institutions, giving the ing the development of the institution of lie to its own professions of absolute objec American historical scholarship. In chapters tivity. It sought to build a mighty temple of which are more functional than arbitrary di proven historical facts which would defy the visions, the author develops the principal passing of time. Instead, it built an intellectual theme of the work: While disclaiming to be prison, poisoned by Anglo-Saxon racism, smug in its provincialism, and unaware of its philosophical contradictions. History lay in bondage until redeemed at the turn of the century by the broader vision of her social science allies and by a rebellious group of her younger disciples, fn the last analysis, it does not really matter wherther Turner's frontier thesis was valid. It was valid for the moment in that it was one of the effective rams battering down an exclusive and con fining historiographical system. Fortunately, a relativist. Wish finds social determinants all that erratic genius of the scientific system, too intrusive upon American historiography, Henry Adams, escaped the destruction with that historians and their writings are children only a diminished reputation. He is in process of their times. How else can the Puritan histo of being refurbished. rians be understood than as amanuenses of the Wish is at his best in dealing with historians hand of God in human affairs? The secular already familiar to intellectual history, such excitement of the American Revolution (with figures as Turner, Adams, and Vernon Parr- but little influence from French Revolutionary ington. Somewhat disappointing is the treat rationalism) stimulated a new school of nation ment of Beard and the economic determinists. alistic and secular history, flowering in such ex It is certainly understandable within the cellent examples as Jared Sparks, Jedidiah larger context of historiography why the Marx Morse, and Washington Irving. All of these ist view of history has never been very popular writers possessed a facile pen, a tolerable re with American historians.^ Even the more gard for the niceties of documentation, and a liberal of them are reactionaries by Marxist genuine rapport with their times and their standards, ft is an alien philosophy, not tract readers. They went far in establishing a native able to the American historian's dedication to historiographical tradition admirably suited to property, political stability, and popular de the needs of the new nation. Unfortunately, the mocracy, but its argument that man is subject school was cut down in its prime, the victim of the narrow blade of German scientism which found an easy mark in the flimsy work of the weaker filiopietists. Mason Locke Weems * For a brief and illuminating glimpse into the and John Alarshall. Marxist outline of American history, see 0. Lawrence Burnette, Jr. and William Converse Haygood, eds., It is too tempting to lament the midyears of "A Soviet View of the American Past, An Annotated the last century, in which Clio lay in the Translation of the Section on American History in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia," in the Wisconsin chains of critical scientism. Rebelling against Magazine of History, 43:2-55 (Autumn, 1959), also preconceived philosophies in history, the criti published as a separate title by the Society in 1960. 276 BURNETTE : A REVIEW ARTICLE to economic motivation is a powerful one. That T EST it appear that a commitment to the argument fell on fertile ground, freshly plowed -*-^ hero approach to history is indicated by by the Populist and Progressive ferment at the the biographical method of the Wish study, turn of the century. It grew out of proportion the slight but provocative volume by David into an exclusive interpretation of history in the Van Tassel should be read for balance. Not second generation, for Beard, like John Dewey, nearly so ambitious, this study traces the has suffered from overzealous followers. The evolution of "historical studies" (a sly cir critics and disciples of Beard make the same cumvention of historiography) up to the found basic error. His was an economic interpreta ing of the American Historical Association in tion rather than a statement of economic de 1884. The approach is institutional and by agencies, those maligned work horses of his termination. True, he equivocated in the torical scholarship which would be frightened extent of his determinism, but he always left within an inch of expiration to be mentioned the door ajar to the possibility of other viable in the same breath with so academic a term historical systems. Wish's chapter on Beard is as historiography. By viewing the past of competent, if not pressing beyond a summ^ary American historical scholarship as an institu of the voluminous controversy surrounding tion rather than as the accumulation of the him. Its strength is in placing Beard and his writings of historians. Van Tassel sees a thought into their proper historical framework. number of obvious but important truths. It has been facetiously suggested (not by To begin, American history prior to the Wish) that if Freudian psychology had been Revolution was necessarily local history. Colo as current as Marxist economics in Beard's nial historiographers were concerned with the intellectual maturing, he might have written various colonies, not with sections of a nascent something entitled "A Sexual Interpretation nation or with a segment of the Empire. of the Constitution." Colonies were viewed simply as contiguous It is more than appropriate for Wish to rest settlements under a common government, and his survey of American historiography, and to however diverse or provincial the pattern of generalize upon its present state, on the con their growth, they were institutions whose his tribution of the dean of Americanists, Allan tory could be written in readable (and often Nevins. While Nevins has enjoyed too much quite respectable) narrative prose. There was financial success in his voluminous writing and an implied natural, evolutionary philosophy is read somewhat too widely to be called "a as the framework of interpretation, and such historian's historian," he has undoubtedly had histories by literate amateurs escaped the dual more influence upon the character of American pitfalls of antiquarianism and a snobbish pro historical scholarship than any of his con fessionalism. If colonial promotion and the temporaries. Without question, he will serve finger of God were observed as the two most as a model for the next generation of histori active agents in the evolution of the colonies, that is only to be expected. Why not interpret ographers, for his special forte, as Wish put history in terms of the agents which make it? it, is "attractive narrative drawn from rich As it has been observed, the Revolution in sources and tempered by shrewd insights." He volved the writing of history as well as political has also made his peace with the instruments and social systems, stimulating the rise of a and materials of modern historical documen national school which lasted well into the tation. We need more of these qualities, but Republican Era. The purposes of the nation how are they to be instilled save within the demanded that American history be rewritten framework of a philosophy of history, of on a national basis, that the glories of the which Nevins is suspicious? To probe deeper Revolutionary generation be recorded for in research, to interpret with greater insight, future appreciation, and that history justify and to write with a literary skill beyond the act of conservative revolution. All of these the call of a Pulitzer citation is all but dis purposes were admirably served, and some jointed activity unless harnessed and given fair history produced, even if largely based direction by a commitment to a larger meaning upon the British Annual Register. This fact, in history. plus the Republican reaction to the Federalist 277 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1961 sympathies of the new national history, pro European archives. Agents from the historical duced its own historiographical counter societies pack-ratted through the garrets of revolution, or Jeffersonianism expressing itself New England, and several tidy fortunes were in terms of a new rash of localized history. made in publishing compilations of American Such politically inspired history can be well and colonial state papers, with and without justified, for in argument there is discovery public subvention. This was the heyday of of truth. For instance, the loyalist side of the documentary publication, when the prestige Revolution would have been lost but for the of historical societies was measured by the various state histories produced to counter number of documents published, rather than Federalist, national history. by the number collected or used in histori A second "bastion of localism" in American ography. A great deal of this frenzied activity historiography in the early national period, as was duplicated and wasted effort, but it edu Van Tassel has observed, was the various his cated the nation to the value of historical torical societies which sprouted like mush documents before they were irrevocably lost, rooms from the decaying memories of the ft also provided the documentary grist for Revolution, from the old seaboard to the the mill of critical scholarship which was soon farthermost reaches of the Western frontier. to begin grinding out more definitive and less Sharing a laudable purpose and embracing readable history. the social and political leaders if not the in tellectual elite of their communities, these organizations have exerted an influence upon the course of American historiography which is as yet unrealized. Especially in the period before history was professionalized, it was written from the materials at hand, and it was interpreted in a manner acceptable to the in telligent lay reader. The collecting policies of •^^€^ these societies and the historical preconcep tions of their members did as much as 0^S^3^ anything to influence the kind of history writ ten by Jared Sparks, and later by Frederick Jackson Turner. Van Tassel has made an ex HE school of scientific history which be cellent beginning, but there remains to be Tgan to flourish in the 1840's sought prima done an exhaustive study on the role of the rily to trace the development of institutions of historical agencies in the evolution of Ameri national significance, but it also spawned a mi can historiography. nority branch which attempted to write local The most important contribution made by history using the same canons of absolute ob the historical societies in the development of jectivity and rigorous documentation. Critical historiography in the last century was the of the propagandistic writings of their prede promotion of documentation, or contributing cessors, these new local historians made some to the national obsession of "documania," as valuable contributions to the development of Van Tassel aptly describes it. Predating the the component parts of America under the demands of German scholarship, the native banner of "localized history." The pity is that mania for collecting the documents of the they and their work are little known or ap Revolution was fed by chauvinism, the com preciated today. Outside of graduate seminars, petitive activity of the new societies, and the who has heard of Francis W. Allen (Turner's gleam of critical historical scholarship caught mentor at Wisconsin) or Richard Frothingham by such contemporary writers and documen- (who set the record straight on "Old Put" at tarians as Sparks, George Bancroft, and Peter the battle of Bunker Hill and produced a Force. As the deaths of the last of the Found model of the orderly and discriminate use of ing Fathers gave a note of urgency to the historical evidence) ? Lyman C. Draper, of chase, the various states outdid one another course, has fared better with posterity—not in securing documentary transcripts from for his administrative genius in building the 278 BURNETTE A REVIEW ARTICLE Wisconsin society or for the saga of the Old \ RECENT study by Lee Benson picks up Frontier which he never wrote—but for the -'-^ the story of American history where Van valuable but popularly overvalued manuscript Tassel leaves it, by uniquely analyzing the two collection which bears his name. leading figures of the early professional school. Local history fell upon evil days in the Turner and Beard, It is regrettable that the 1850's, becoming the handmaiden of sectional volume is something of a historiographical ism in the growing national crisis. Historians, disappointment.^ North and South, were pressed to defend the Benson writes on a historical subject, using historical accuracy of the conflicting theories what is called the methodology of the social of the union, without distinction to themselves sciences to produce new insights. History or to American historiography. William Gil- should certainly expect to be schooled by its more Simms' bumptious history of South Caro younger sisters when they have something to lina may be set against Richard Hildreth's teach, but in this instance the lesson is lost. Yankee panegyric as examples of the depths Even its emptiness is marred by an egotistical to which history can fall when prostituted. It literary style coupled with gratuitous reflec was a merciful death that overtook such writ tions upon Turner and Beard in an effort to ing in the sectional holocaust which followed. explain the origins of their historical thought. The apparent sincerity with which the sec The burden of Benson's argument is to ad tions embraced conflicting historical interpre duce evidence that Turner was indebted to tations of the origins and nature of the union the Italian economist, Achille Loria, in the should be sufficient proof of the influence of formulation of his frontier thesis. According the present upon the understanding of the to Loria's theory of free land, there can be no past. It should also suggest a fruitful subject capitalistic development while there exists any for further investigation. free land yet to be developed within the na As history was forced to serve the ends of disunity, following the war it was one of the cohesive forces in national reunification. It was no accident that there was a resurgence of national historiography during Reconstruc tion, culminating in the centennial feast of national unity in 1876. The rancors of sec tionalism could not prevail against such his toriographical testaments to national strength and glory as those produced by Hubert Howe Bancroft and Justin Winsor. The histori ographical unity of the nation had been restored, but it was the work of the last gen tional domain, and that industrial profits arise eration of non-professional historians. There only from the exhaustion of free land. Even if after the writing of history in America became Loria's theory were not contradicted in large the monopoly of the professional historian. measure by the American industrial experi Of uneven quality, but sprinkled with fresh ence, its influence upon Turner's theory of the insights into the institutional development of frontier is at best conjectural. An elaborate historiography and its supporting agencies in case upon circumstantial evidence is built to America, the Van Tassel work is a most wel suggest that Turner probably read and was come departure from the traditional formula influenced by Loria, but to what end? The for its subject, and it should stimulate its frontier theory was not of such novel character author and others to pursue some of the more as to necessitate its seminal suggestion from a promising sections and the more recent activity remote source. Furthermore, it seems highly in historiography. The guide lines of original improbable that Turner was as profoundly in- interpretation in the work often become sub merged to the recital of bibliographical facts and may be more apparent than real, but they " The volume has been previously reviewed by the present author in The Southwestern Social Science seem to point in a most promising direction. Quarterly (Spring, 1961). 279 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1961 fluenced by Loria as is suggested without ever fluenced by Loria, and gradually drifted into acknowledging his debt. The more probable a philosophy of economic determinism because truth of the matter is that the theory rose from of environmental circumstances. Specifically, a number of suggestive ideas, but that the re Beard supposedly: (1) was absorbed in the sulting synthesis was so genuinely the work Progressive context, in which noneconomic of Turner that he rightly regarded it as his factors were discounted; (2) was influenced own. All the evidence suggests that Turner by the prevailing intellectual climate of opin never regarded the thesis as a mature philoso ion toward economic determinism; (3) was phy of history. Rather he conceived it as a psychologically prepared to accept as "inner very effective teaching tool, one which suited light" Federalist Number 10 (in which Madi his purposes in prying open new avenues son observed that protection of the "diversity of historical research. Viewed as such, the in the faculties of men, from which the rights celebrated thesis, without impairing its sig of property originate ... is the first object of nificance, does not justify half of the time government," and other similar statements and ink which has been spent in its attack suggesting party divisions on the basis of prop and defense.^ erty) ; (4) sought a more realistic interpre The treatment of Turner by Benson may be tation of American national development than put down as an interesting exercise in histori those previously advanced; and (5) desired a cal conjecture, but his analysis of Beard is natively American, realistic interpretation of more serious, hence deserving greater critical history with which to escape the rigors of attention. Beginning by drawing the very Marxism. It is not necessary to subscribe fully proper distinction between history conditioned to Beard's urging of the significance of eco and determined by economic forces, Benson nomic factors in American history to reject as says Beard shifted imperceptively and uncon unconvincing Benson's account of its origins. sciously from a belief in the former to a phi In his later years, when the storm over eco losophical commitment to the latter, without nomic determinism raged most bitterly. Beard fully understanding what either term meant! had adequate opportunity to clarify the posi On its face, this seems to be a rather out tion from which he wrote his most significant rageous statement. An apocryphal story which work. He simply reiterated the title. An Eco has something to say at this juncture has it nomic Interpretation of the Constitution. Most that the elderly Beard, past President of the critics will be willing to let the matter go American Historical Association, once at at that. tended a session of the organization in which After setting up a straw man for his own a group of young, self-conscious historians purposes, Benson accuses two of the recent were so intent in discussing their own inter critics of Beard of doing the same thing. Robert pretations of Beard and economic determinism E. Brown is convicted of freighting Beard's that they failed to recognize the presence of interpretation with moralistic value judg their principal subject. Considerably confused ments alien to Beard's own thought. Forrest by what he thought he heard, "Uncle Charley" McDonald comes in for more extensive criti turned up his hearing aid, still without success cism for his deliberate application of Beard's in catching the drift of the scholarly papers. own methodology to a wider body of new evi Finally the old gentleman broke up the session dence to see if the original conclusions still by rising and demanding, "What in Hell is hold, as Beard himself suggested they might. going on here?" McDonald concluded that the conclusions do Benson says that Beard began with an adop not hold, but Benson concludes that McDonald tion of Edwin Seligman's philosophy of erred in falling into the same trap that Beard economic interpretation, was considerably in- set for himself. However much one may care to differ with Mr. Benson's conclusions regarding Turner ' For a new contribution to the literature of Tur ner and the frontier, see the forthcoming Wisconsin and Beard, for purposes of reviewing the his Witness to Frederick Jackson Turner: A Collection toriographical renaissance, his suggested ap of Essays on the Historian and the Thesis, compiled plication of a new methodology to history by 0. Lawrence Burnette, Jr., to be published in 1961 by the Society. bears closer attention. Rather than suggesting 280 BURNETTE : A REVIEW ARTICLE a new, more efficient, and scientific method of interpretations. From their day there has been historical proof, one borrowed from the social a retreat from scientism and a progression to sciences, Benson seems to be engaged in the wards historiographical free will and multi old, inefficient, and unscientific method of variate causation. However, this progression merely "heaping up" evidence, of adducing has not itself become a dogma as it has in circumstantial evidence to support the possible, some of the social sciences. Such generaliza of not discriminating between various cate tions are subject to question, but most con gories and values in historical evidence. It is temporary American historians seem willing not admitted that the social sciences possess a to agree that totally objective truth about the superior method of handling evidence which past is unobtainable, and they seem increas is applicable to history, and it is frankly dis ingly willing to risk a study of issues and ma concerting to contemplate the nature of the terial which require the passing of subjective history which would be produced by straying judgment on the basis of incomplete evidence. further from the traditional critical method. Perhaps in dropping the yoke of scientism, and What the social sciences have to offer history after wandering freely in the fields of subjec is not a new method, but insight; not new rules tive relativism, we are now assuming the loose of evidence, but new evidence in the broader reins of objective relativism. dimensions of the new history. It is the knots and tangles in a wool ball which require rewinding, and the most promi nent historiographical knot in the American NE of ihe best works through which to ob past which we are currently rewinding is the O serve the changes in dimension and char Civil War. By 1965 we shall all be so com acter in contemporary historiography is the pletely satiated with its celebrations and com new Festschrift honoring Allan Nevins. Possess memorations that we shall welcome the merci ing greater unity than most such collections of ful relief of the approaching bi-centennial of essays, these papers offer some benchmarks the Revolution in 1976. The bright hope for generalizing in the fog of contemporary against the dismal horizon of mock battles, history. Taken together, they form something maudlin sentimentalism, and tourist trapping of a commentary on the nature and quality is the opportunity for some serious reconsid of contemporary historical scholarship in eration of the historiography of the Civil War. America, illuminating the various aspects of Robert C. Black's contribution is an excellent the craft of which Nevins is the current speculative step in that direction, one in which high priest. a good deal of historiographical folly is Edward N. Saveth's review of the rise and plowed under by common sense. fall of scientific history in America is a con The Civil War is a natural center of gravity ventional account of the subject, cogently sum in American history, full with drama, popular marizing the Gdtterddmmerung of the Ger interest, and obvious importance. It was an manic goal of history. Scientific history was ordeal which changed the nature of the union, based upon the faith that the laws of science yet curiously it has become for some his could be applied to history, and its decline torians a kind of fencing match between followed the refutation of that faith. The touch Abraham Lincoln and The Confederate States stone of the system was historical fact, the of America. In this century there have been immutable bricks for building the wall of many good, objective histories of the war, but history. Of the making of the bricks there was there has been much foolishness in attempt no end, but the brick makers made without ing to fix causes, and to determine whether the straw. Their product was too brittle. For all war was "repressible." The central questions its regularity, it could not survive the shocks should be, why did the Confederacy exist, and of the positivists, the neo-historians, the prag- why did it fail?—with no moralistic overtones. matists, and the relativists, all of whom chal Some of the obvious causes of failure have lenged not Only the attainability of fact, but already been well documented: fiscal mis its very existence in an absolute state. Like management, loss of will to resist, diplomatic Turner, they battered the walls of absolutism bungling, and the debilitating cancer of states' with brilliant tentative postulations of various rights. Perhaps there are others which await 281 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1961 the historian's discovery. The reasons which MIDDLE group of minor essays in the called the Confederacy into being are the A Nevins volume illustrates the results of same ones which give the South its con not applying the same qualities of interpre tinuing self-consciousness: Southern national tive insight and narrative skill in writing ism, states rights, and the determination to about history as in writing it. James A. preserve white supremacy. The Confederacy Rawley's article on American historians from was a premature effort at Southern self-reali the Civil War to World War I is largely a zation, but the determination for its still exists. bibliographical essay, missing the opportunity History, then, has something to say in the to be more. Mark D. Hirsch similarly pleads racial problem of the contemporary South. It the case for urban history, without giving need not speak in an obfuscating whine, but much indication of the impact of the process it can teach patience and understanding to the of urbanization upon American historiography, extremists of both factions. and Hal Bridges flatly traces the historiog Donald Sheehan fearlessly wades into the raphy of the idea of the Robber Barons. The murky waters of Reconstruction historiography article by Carlton C. Qualey is largely a re to note that it was Northern historians who cital of which topics in the history of immigration need further study. first noted the disparities between Republican principles and Radical policies. Their "Revis Joseph A. Borome and Sidney Ratner come ionist" histories supported the Southern posi closer to the higher thought to which historians tion on the racial problem as more in harmony need exposure if they are to participate in the with the growing imperialistic urge to shoulder "Greek Revival." Borome's paper on Evolu tion is a cogent statement of its origins and the "white man's burden," and they did much various applications, but an opportunity was to accommodate the nation to the Southern ad missed to trace the application of the concept justment while preparing the way for our ex to historiography, through scientism and such periment in imperial expansion. Curiously evolutionary ideas as the frontier thesis. Rat- enough, Negro and Marxist historians have ner's "Pragmatism in America" is pure in viewed the same Reconstruction period as a tellectual gold, malleable to the purposes of democratizing interlude and as the first time historiography. in our history when individual liberty made Pragmatism is the uniquely American headway against massive property rights. In method of applying theory to life, a proposal an effort to suspend judgment and avoid this that the truth of speculative theory be deter historiographical controversy, Sheehan ob mined by tracing its logical consequences if serves that historians have senselessly piled assumed to be true. Fathered by C. S. Peirce, counterweights on both sides of the argument, as popularized by William James it was bobbed leaving logic and critical analysis of the evi to read, "Jf an idea works, it's true." The idea dence to go by default. The distinction between has proved too novel and theoretical for most the "old" and "new" Radicals is dismissed as historians, leaving it to the educator John largely artificial, and the author backs away Dewey to apply to the process of human learn from the "conspiracy" thesis of Woodward on ing and adjustment. Dewey's experimentalism Reconstruction and Reunion. Woodward's use held that human thought arises out of human of the term "New South" is also questioned by needs and frustrations, and that a true idea is Jacob E. Cooke, who wonders if the region one which agrees with reality because it is a exists in sufficient significance to justify its workable solution to human problems. Dewey separate study. This may be begging the ques and his followers are credited with some non tion. It has been conceived as an historical en sense but considerable progress in education, tity, self-conscious, and full of interesting but history has not benefited beyond the rather self-contradictions, and some better reasons rudimentary pragmatic applications of Turner are needed before we destroy this valuable and Beard, American historiography awaits and curious enigma. Besides providing a its philosopher, pragmatic or otherwise, to school of historians a fascinating subject, it give it a new form and sense of direction. has provided some valuable insights into the Three additional articles on the Muck- evolution of the nation. rakers. Revisionism between the World Wars, 282 BURNETTE : A REVIEW ARTICLE and F. D. R. complete the weaker portions time. It is the reaction of depressed peoples of the Nevins volume. Of disparate quality, against that assumption of inferiority which the very disparity is representative of con now plagues America at home and abroad. temporary historiography. Part of our dilemma is that we attempt to ex Perhaps the most recurring theme in the plain ourselves of fifty years ago by contem Nevins papers, and a tentative philosophy of porary moral standards. The result is unnec history, is that written history is as much a essary embarrassment. reflection of its own day as of the past. Everett Times change and history must change with Walter's survey of Populism makes the per them seems to be the moral of historiography ceptive point that the difference between the for the present day. Our recent modes and interpretations of Eric Goldman and Richard forms are too confining to hold an understand Hofstader is that the former writes in the ing of an ever more complex civilization, cap Progressive, liberal tradition of the turn of able of more complex and sophisticated the century while the latter speaks from the interpretation and documentation. History is contemporary vantage of mid-century. James P. Shenton's significant paper on "Imperialism undergoing a transformation, and we need a and Racism" makes the same point. Terms redefinition of its first principles and a re hardly have the same meaning in 1900 and examination of its methods to save it from 1950. In 1900 everyone thought it dutiful to degenerating into historiometrics or interdisci establish empires; by 1950 everyone was get plinary speculation about the past. Until a ting out of the sinful business. Imperialism new philosophy of history is brought forth, a was always built upon the assumption of in workable method of getting on with the labor feriority of subject peoples, and it is highly of historiography is a willingness to keep an significant that America embraced the policies open mind about the purposes and methods of Jim Crow and empire building at the same of history. ARCHIVES DIVISION ACQUIRES REGIMENTAL ROLLS The Archives Division of the Society stances of his death. In addition to this recently acquired from the State Adju military information, the rolls cite per tant General a valuable series of Regi sonal facts about individuals at the time mental Descriptive Rolls which contain of their induction, including age, marital the service records of Wisconsin men status, occupation, place of residence, who served in the Civil War. State offi and color of eyes and hair. cials compiled these records in 1885 The rolls are bound in fifty-nine large from muster rolls, company and regi volumes, arranged by military unit, by mental returns, bi-monthly musters, cas company, and alphabetically by indi ualty reports, descriptive books, and viduals thereunder, thus facilitating their other papers, many of which no longer use as reference works. exist in the original. Governor Jeremiah M. Rusk said in The rolls contain a great number of 1885 that "The value of these records material facts in the military history of each man on whom information was to the State, the soldiers and those de available. They show when and where pendent upon them cannot be overesti each was mustered into federal service, mated, and it is beyond question that this to what town or ward his name was value will increase for many years to credited, and the reason for his termi come, . . ." The free reference service nation of service. They also include a offered by the Archives Division now "remarks" column which gives the place makes available to the public this vast and date of promotions, details, leaves, collection of information pertaining to iffnesses, engagements, and if the soldier the men who foflowed the Wisconsin col died in the service, the place and circum ors during the Civil War. 283 LOG SAUNA AND THE FINNISH FARMSTEAD: Transplanted Architectural Idioms in Northern Wisconsin BY RICHARD W. E. PERRIN /~\ F Finland and its culture, it has been said transplanted to Wisconsin by the early settlers. ^-^ that "rocks, water, wood, and space in Most probably of Scandinavian origin, it is their constant interrelationship have formed claimed that in saga times (900-1250 A,D.), the people and their architecture."^ These at there was such a bathhouse in nearly every tributes are most certainly evident in the sur homestead."* Originally a small timber build viving examples of pioneer farm buildings of ing about nine to twelve feet square, the sauna the Finnish settlers who came to northern Wis was usually set apart from the farm group, consin some seventy years ago. preferably near a stream or lake. As in the old Homesteads were established in Douglas and country, the early Wisconsin sauna had no Bayfield Counties, much of which was cutover windows, only a small vent near the ceiling to timber land. These first settlers had left Fin let out the smoke rising from the natural field- land mainly because of hard times, aversion stone oven located in one corner. This oven to military conscription, and a growing fear was about four feet square and three feet high, of Russification.^ Arriving in northern Wis large boulders forming the side walls, and consin, they drew on their experience and the small fieldstones making up the slightly domed rural philosophy of their homeland. They top. Firing the oven with wood began several cleared the land, cut logs, and built houses, hours before the sauna was to be used, and barns, root cellars and saunas in traditional when the fire had burned down completely, fashion, and they possessed the skill and crafts the smoke-filled room was entered and a dipper manship to build them well. With changing of water dashed on the glowing, hot stones. economic conditions, many of the early build The resultant gush of steam drove the smoke ings fefl into disuse barely a half-century after out of the room through the opened smoke hole their construction. Some of the old buildings and door. The soot was then wiped from the are still used, although frequently covered with sweating bench and the sauna was ready. wood shingles or siding material, but most of After years of use, inside log surfaces acquired the abandoned ones are in ruinous condition a glossy black patina and a pleasant pitchy with just enough of the fabric surviving to fragrance. permit evaluation of the timberwork and Small rooms were often added, and the appreciation of the craftsmanship. sauna thereby became far more than a steam According to a Finnish saying, "if sauna and bath. Its warmth was used for germinating brandy cannot help a man, death is near at barley, and to dry meat, flax, herbs, and ber hand."^ The Finnish bathhouse or sauna was ries. According to Mrs. Ida W. Lauri of Superior, who recalls many early Finnish ' Ed, and CI, Neuenschwander, Finnish Architec practices, the sauna was also used as a work ture and Alvar Aalto (American Edition, Frederick shop where candles were made and where A, Praeger, Inc., Publisher, 105 W. 40th St., N, Y„ 1954), 8, spruce and willow bark gathered by the chil • John I, Kolehmainen, The Finns in America, A dren was hung to dry. When dry and brittle, Bibliographical Guide to Their History (Finnish Lu this bark was splintered and put into the theran Book Concern, Hancock, Michigan, 1947), 9, 10, tanning brine to cure hides for many home ^ A. William Hoglund, Finnish Immigrants in America 1880-1920 (The University of Wisconsin •* Guthorm Kavli, Norwegian Architecture. Past and Press, Madison, 1960), 7. Present (Dreyers Forlag, Oslo, 1958), 28. 284 PERRIN THE FINNISH FARMSTEAD vicinity is on the Soyring place, but the stone ovens have been removed in both instances. However, on the deserted Jonas Ojala farm in Oulu Township, an old stone oven has survived in the ruins of a log sauna and may still be seen as it was originally built. TN addition to sauna and dwelling house, -"- the Finnish farmstead had a horse stable, sheds for cattle and sheep, a barn for threshing and storing of grain, and often several hay barns. Built of hewn or rounded logs, usually of pine or black ash, these humble buildings invariably had good lines and distinct archi tectural quality. Almost as unique as the sauna were the hay barns. Usually quite sm.all, All photos by the author these buildings stood in the middle of the hay Southeast elevation of hewn timber sauna building on the Hendrickson place near Maple, Douglas County. fields. Because of fire danger Finnish farmers chose to build several small hay barns far uses. Because of the sterile atmosphere and enough away from the other buildings to warmth, babies were often born in the sauna, minimize the risk of losing the entire crop as especially in winter. Without hospitals or doc well as stock and the other buildings. tors, neighbors helped each other at such times or when other health care was required, and the heated sauna became the treatment room. Old sauna buildings can stiff be found in Maple and Brule Townships of Douglas County and Oulu Township of Bayfield County, but seldom in completely original condition. One of the nicest specimens is on the Hendrickson place, originally the Perala farm, just north of Maple, Another good example in the same Fieldstone Oven Raised wooden platform and sweat benches Wooden wall bench ^ Floor plan of typical sauna building before Detail of overlapping, locked corner joint, addition of other rooms. Hendrickson sauna near Maple. 285 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1961 Extremely interesting barns are on the Lammi and Ruokonen farms in the vicinity of ^- Maple. The Ruokonen barn has vertical stave or palisaded walls and a gently sloping gam brel roof covered with hand split cedar shakes twenty-five inches long, laid double course and exposed twenty inches to the weather. Of simi lar construction is the "long barn" on the Ha- r * kala place. In the same vicinity is the Penttila barn, also with a gambrel roof, but much 'r steeper in profile. The very unusual walls and i -• '• roof of this building consist of overlapping ,^- • Ii- timber planks, recalling a construction method of great antiquity,' Other roofs may still be seen with vestiges of birch bark held down Southwest elevation of small stock barn on the Penttila farm in with sapling poles. Sod roofs were sometimes Maple Township, Douglas County, an unusual example of lapped used, as was thatching with rye straw, but of plank roof and side walls. these, no examples are known to have survived. The typical Finnish dwelling house, a one- story log or hewn timber structure, usually followed the ancient Nordic "hearth" house pattern" with three adjoining rooms. The sizes of these rooms were determined by the length of available logs, fn the best houses, after wall logs and the roof had been placed, the whole building was left unfinished for a year or more so the walls could settle, and each log in the wall thereby fitting still more tightly upon the one below. Then the door and window openings were cut and so grooved that the logs could continue to sink without affecting the openings. Just such a building, and well preserved, is the Getto house in Oulu Town ship, With its relatively flat-pitched roof calcu Southwest elevation of gambrel roofed barn on the Ruokonen place lated to hold the winter snow, and its low, hewn near Maple, showing palisaded walls of stavework and handsplit cedar shakes on roof. log walls weathered to soft brown, this old building would be as much at home in Oulu ?^P^1 Province of Finland as it is in Oulu Township of Bayfield County, The Finnish log buildings in northern Wis consin are transplanted architectural idioms of great interest. The protection and restora tion of the best of the surviving specimens would be extremely desirable to preserve for posterity in a physical way something of the cultural legacy of the early Finnish settlers, "Sigfrid Svensson, Hembygdens Arv (Nordisk Rotogravyr, Stockholm, 1929), 126. "Thomas Paulsson, Scandinavian Architecture (Leonard Hill Ltd., London, 1958), 18, 19. See also Neuenschwander, Finnish Architecture and Alvar Aalto, 12. Northwest elevation of Gctto house, Oulu Township, Bayfield County. 286 teaders' nchoice The Iron Brigade Finds Its Historian: A Review By Jerri) M. Slechta OME twenty-five years after Appomattox, teers as "the finest material for soldiers I ever S Rufus Dawes, Colonel of the 6th Wiscon saw," A few months later Gibbon was given sin Regiment of the fron Brigade, wrote and command of the brigade and this association privately printed a history of his regiment brought out the greatness of both commander taken primarily from wartime letters he wrote and men. to his fiancee. This account, one of the finest It was General Gibbon who gave the brigade of all regimental histories, tefls of the disap its distinctive uniform—the plumed black hat, pointment of the men and officers at having frock coat, and white leggings. Constant and missed the battle at Bull Run and of their fears rugged campaigning soon saw the end of all that the war would be over before they could but the black hats, but these now identified fire on the enemy. Then came what Alan Nolan the brigade to friend and foe alike, so that has named the battle of Brawner Farm, and when the Confederates saw them advancing Dawes wrote: "In our future history we will on McPherson's Ridge on the first day at always be found ready but never again anx Gettysburg, they could be heard telling each ious." If this were to be the motto of the Iron other in dismay, "Here comes those damned Brigade, it would be a most modest one. black hat fellers again, ft ain't the militia, The war was six months old when the 7th that's the Army of the Potomac," Wisconsin reported at Washington and was as Not until the end of August, 1862, did the signed to the command of General Rufus King men see their first serious action, and then the of Milwaukee, to brigade with the 2nd and 6th brigade found itself a part of General Rufus Wisconsin and the 19th Indiana to form the King's division of McDowell's corps of Pope's only all-western brigade in the eastern theatre Army of Virginia, marching along the War- of operations. The 2nd Wisconsin had been the renton Turnpike towards what they hoped to first on the field and had suffered severely as be a meeting with Stonewall Jackson, Sud part of General W. T. Sherman's brigade at denly and unexpectedly they were introduced Bull Run, but, beyond a skirmish, the war not only to the Stonewall Brigade but to Jack during the winter and early summer of 1862 son's entire division and part of Ewell's: 2,100 was the frolic they expected it to be. untried men faced 5,200 of Lee's best veterans, During the winter Battery B of the regular and reinforcements brought these odds to 2,900 U. S, Army Artillery, under Capt, John Gib to 6,400, Battery B's six guns were opposed bon, became associated with this new western by twenty-two. In a strange, stand-up, two- brigade and he quickly appraised these volun- hour fight at a maximum range of seventy-five yards, with no intrenchments or cover, no ma neuvering, no advancing, and no retreat, with ^r/ie Iron Brigade: A Military History. By the men simply facing each other in ordinary ALAN T, NOLAN, (The Macmillan Company, ranks—not even lying down—volley after vol New York, 1961, Pp, 412, Maps, illustrations, ley was exchanged. When it ended both sides index, $6,95,) were exactly where they were when it began. 287 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY When darkness brought this bloody initiation to a close, the dead of both sides lay among the cartridge papers in even rows as they had fal len—rows seventy-five yards apart—and the brigade had a firm hold on the first rung of the ladder of immortality—133 dead, 535 wounded and seventy-nine missing of those en gaged, including seven of twelve field officers. The 2nd Wisconsin, which was to end the war with the unsought honor of having a higher percentage of its enrollment killed tban any other regiment in the Union Army, left 298 of its 500 dead or wounded on Mr. Brawn- er's farm. As Bruce Catton wrote, "The 2nd Wisconsin had a leg up on its horrible rec ord," The enemy fared no better and Jackson lost 2,200 of 6,400 engaged, and of two division Society's Iconographic Collet commanders, the famous Dick Ewell, Second Wisconsin Headquarters Staff at mess, Arlington Heights, The Black Hats, as they now became known, spring of 1862. Left to right, foreground: Surgeon A. J. Ward, had now had their baptism of fire, but, Major Allen, Lieutenant Colonel Fairchild, Colonel O'Connor. strangely enough, it was not until Mr. Nolan wrote this story that the battle even had a name. This undeserved omission has now been corn field, so far in advance of the rest of the corrected and the battle of Brawner Farm it First Corps as to be caught in flank by Hood. now is. Of 800 who marched out that morning, 343 Within a few weeks of Brawner Farm the didn't make it back. brigade was ordered to carry the center of D, With brigade strength reduced from 4,000 H, Hill's line plugging Turner's Gap on South men to less than that of a regiment. Gibbon's Mountain, and McClellan, watching them ad plea for another regiment of Western men was vance against a barricaded enemy, remarked answered when the 24th Michigan reported. to General Joe Hooker, "They must be made The chilly reception accorded them left no of iron," They now had the name. doubt of their probation and the Michiganders Three days later Gibbon's brigade renewed understood perfectly. A few months later, when its acquaintance with Stonewall Jackson's men at Fredericksburg their commander enjoined on the bloodiest day of the war at Antietam, his soldiers, "Steady men, those Wisconsin and in the opening attack of the day they men are watching you," it was clear that the swept Jackson aside, driving them through the 24th belonged. .Society's Iconographic Collection Company "I," Seventh Wisconsin, at Upton's Hill, September, 1862. 288 READERS' CHOICE In the reorganization of the army after CIVIL WAR Chancellorsville, the brigade became the First Brigade of the First Division of the First Well, Mary: Civil War Letters of a Wisconsin Corps, which led one of the men to remark that Volunteer. Edited by MARGARET BROBST if all the armies of the United States were in ROTH. (The University of Wisconsin Press, one line, the Iron Brigade would be on the ex Madison, 1960. Pp. 165. $4,00.) treme right. After Gettysburg, four regiments of the Iron Under the Flag of the Nation: Diaries and Brigade went on to the Wilderness, Spottsyl- Letters of a Yankee Volunteer in the Civil vania. Cold Harbor, Petersburg, Hatcher's War. Edited by OTTO F. BOND. (The Ohio Run and Five Forks, but Nolan chooses to end State University Press, Columbus, 1961. Pp. his account with the first day's battle at that ,308. $5,00,) Pennsylvania village, after which, reduced by terrific casualties, a Pennsylvania regiment joined the tattered remnants and the brigade These books have much in common. They lost its distinctive western character. Of the are concerned with individual volunteer sol diers' impressions of the Civil War and their 1,883 who had charged up McPherson's Ridge experiences in it; they include romances be on that afternoon of July 1, 1,212 were casual tween the soldiers and sweethearts at home, ties, and some companies were only able to romances that began through letters and cul muster three men. minated in post-war marriages; they were ed The incredible fact is that this semblance of ited by family members who had a sense of an organized unit existed as long at it did, and close connection with each soldier; they were was on its last day able to hold A. P. Hifl's published by university presses; and they ap outnumbering divisions until Meade's army peared on the rising tide of Civil War centen came up. The death of the fron Brigade on the nial commemoration. Both are attractively first day at Gettysburg may have saved Meade bound, illustrated, and jacketed, and neither by allowing him time to entrench on Gulp's one contributes much to a reader's knowledge HiU and Cemetery Ridge, In later years no of Civil War tactics, strategy, or logistics. They veteran of the brigade could ever be convinced are for the lay reader with an interest in the that too much attention was not paid to the war, not for the Civil War specialist in search Peach Orchard and the Wheat Field on the of new information or interpretation. second, and to Pickett's charge on the third. The central core of their similarity, how On that crucial first day the 1st Corps suffered ever, is their common theme of devotion to the 6,000 casualties out of 9,400 engaged, which Union. Both Private John F. Brobst of the was 2,000 more than Sickles was to lose in Twenty-fifth Wisconsin Infantry, whose let the Wheat Field and Peach Orchard, and ters make up Well, Mary, and Private, later 2,000 more than the 2nd Corps was to suffer Lieutenant, Owen Johnston Hopkins of the defending the Federal center against Pickett's Forty-second and One hundred eighty-second charge. Ohio Infantry, whose letters and diaries com No history of the Army of the Potomac has pose Under the Flag of the Nation, were sol been written without ample mention of the diers because of a sense of duty toward their fron Brigade, but the whole story had never nation, been told. Several regimentals, now hard to Brobst served at Vicksburg, in Arkansas, come by, were written and well done, but it Georgia, North Carolina, and Washington, remained for Alan T. Nolan, an fndianapolis Hopkins was with the Army of the Tennessee lawyer, to supply the long-felt lack. This ac in Mississippi and in the Cumberland and count is superbly told, well documented, and a Vicksburg campaigns. Roth were more con necessary addition to any Civil War library. cerned with the preservation of the Union than they were with the abolition of slavery. This reviewer wishes he coidd say as much Both wrote with pungency and humor, using for the publisher's effort. Having some knowl frontier speech and imagery that are delights edge of the time and dedication that Alan No to read and are of more than passing interest lan gave this splendid work, one can only hope to the social historian. Both soldiers were self- that his reward so encourages him that his fu reliant and independent in mind and spirit. ture labors will not be exclusively confined to Frederick Jackson Turner would have taken the law. But for the ordinary package enclos comfort in reading their letters and doubtless ing these 412 pages, S6.95 is just too expensive. would have seen in them not only personal 289 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1961 Statements of the Union cause, but clear sup ing a discussion of "little known aspects of the port for his theories about the effects of the Civil War." It was written from secondary frontier experience upon individual Ameri sources, primarily general histories and biog cans. raphies, with apparently little reliance upon Under the Flag of the Nation suffers some articles or monographs. Although the story is what from the fact that Hopkins himself wrote familiar enough, it has rarely been told with two narratives of his war experiences, based such lucidity. upon his own diaries, and portions of these By focusing closely upon the dramatic narratives, one written in 1864 and one in doings of a few colorful fanatics, Whitridge 1869, are combined with diary entries and necessarily gives poor perspective to the eco letters in the book. The result is a not very nomic and political forces which provided smooth composite story, although the sources them with a sympathetic audience. In such a of the somewhat disjointed parts are identified portrayal, slavery looms far larger than eco as each part appears. nomic conflicts over tariffs, railroads, and Well, Mary is more straightforward and sim Western land. "That there were real griev ple, merely presenting Brobst's letters with a ances and anxieties in both sections of the minimum of editing and rewriting. Both are country was obvious," he explains somewhat human documents in which two interesting apologetically. "These men did not create the men revealed themselves and their "little grievances, but by their incessant propaganda man's" view of the Civil War. they so upset the emotional balance North and South that any suggestion of conciliation, any GLENN E, THOMPSON appeal to common sense, was made to appear State Historical Society of Wisconsin like treason or cowardice in disguise," In a time of push-button catastrophe, states No Compromise! The Story of the Fanatics men and citizens alike might well ponder the Who Paved the Way to the Civil War. By questions raised in these essays, ARNOLD WHITRIDGE, (Farrar, Straus and Cud- ahy. New York, 1960, Pp, 212, $4.00,) RORERT G. GUNDERSON Indiana University In a series of three essays, Arnold Whitridge describes psychological preparations for the American Civil War, focusing particularly upon the fanatic, "the man for whom John Tfie Civil War in the Northwest: Nebraska, Randolph says there is no stopping point in Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and the Dakotas. life," Dominant positions are given to fire- By ROBERT HUHN JONES. (University of Okla eaters Robert Barnwell Rhett, William Lown homa Press, Norman, 1960. Pp. xvi, 216. des Yancey, and Edmund Ruffin, and aboli $4,00.) tionists William Lloyd Garrison, John Brown, Charles Sumner, and Wendell Phillips ("an This book takes first place among those infernal machine set to music"). necessary for a definitive picture of the Sioux Mr. Whitridge develops his thesis persua fndian war of 1862-1864, a position formerly sively: fanatics on opposite sides of the Ohio held by a volume of W, W, Folwell's A His "finally drove a reluctant people into a war tory of Minnesota, published in 1924, Profes they did not want to fight." A tantalizing rid sor Jones's study is also the pioneer and in dle thus develops. Why did the moderate ma dispensable work for the role of the United jority fail to negotiate a satisfactory compro States army in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and mise? The answer can perhaps be found in fowa, Dakota, and Nebraska territories dur a rigid political structure which makes no pro ing the Civil War, vision for referendums in times of crisis, A To cope with the Sioux rising which broke minority party controlled Congress; Lincoln out in Minnesota in August, 1862, Lincoln refused to retreat from the uncompromising in the following month constituted this area Chicago platform; and no means existed for as the Department of the Northwest and placed the moderate majority to assert its will. "Sur in command General John Pope, recently dis render," Lincoln wrote before leaving Spring credited by defeat in Virginia, Professor Jones field, "would be the end of us." traces the suppression of the fndian outbreak The virtue in this volume lies in its well- and the expulsion of the Sioux from Minne written interpretation. Nothing within its cov sota and, in the two following years, beyond ers warrants the dust jacket assertion promis the Missouri River. 290 READERS' CHOICE This is not a history of the efforts of these Jones praises Pope's regard for civil law and states and territories in the fight against the civil rights and concludes that civil affairs in Confederates (the first two Wisconsin war his department "were generally rather well governors do not appear in its pages), but the handled." In answer to requests for troops to history of what the army did in the area to meet resistance to the draft. Pope lectured control the Indians, protect the westward- Wisconsin's governor against relying on fed moving emigrants, handle draft riots and Cop eral military force when problems could be perheads, and deal with other army admini handled by civil authorities. However, he strative problems. furnished troops when he thought there was a The reader may resent being given the first need. chapter to Pope's career before being assigned The author has only touched lightly on the to the Northwest, but this justly emphasizes political aspects of his topic. C. M. Oehler's the importance Lincoln attached to the special recent The Great Sioux Uprising explores situation in this area and the connection be more deeply the struggle between hostile and tween the Sioux and Confederate wars. friendly factions within the Sioux. Other writ The book closes with the shift of Pope from ers discuss the grievances of the Indians and his headquarters at Milwaukee to St. Louis to causes of the rising at more length. command the Military Division of the Mis Although more restrained than most writers souri, newly established to include the Depart on the fndian war in making judgments, Jones ment of the Northwest, in February, 1865. Also is critical of the military trial of the captive emphasized are Minnesota's Governor Alex Sioux and of the demand of Pope and Minne ander Ramsey, who directed the state's effort sota leaders generally for hanging the 303 con against the Indians before Pope's appoint victed, which number Lincoln reduced to 39. ment, and General Henry H. Sibley, who Jones concludes that there is no proof that served as field commander from the first. Confederate or Canadian agents instigated the There are several earlier histories of the Indian troubles, as was widely beheved at the Sioux war which have treated it as an aspect time, and gives less emphasis than Folwell to of the history of Minnesota or of the larger local Copperheadism as a possible factor. With Sioux story, but Professor Jones approaches out referring to the controversy over Sibley's his subject by emphasizing military admin slowness in engaging the Indians, Jones sug istration and thus weaves together the Indian gests factors that tend to excuse delay. war, Pope's career, the roles of the states, and Corresponding with the book's perspective the area's relation to the larger war. The book of military administration, its sources are pri is also unique in exploring a heretofore neg marily reports and correspondence gathered lected aspect of Pope's life, and the author is in the many volumes of The War of the Rebel generally sympathetic to the general. He con lion and other government publications includ cludes that Pope honestly tried to improve In ing a variety of Congressional and national dian affairs. and state executive department reports. The A chapter describes the competition between reader will observe little use of manuscripts, the "Little War" in the Northwest and the except for a calendar of War Department let Confederate one for available resources. Al ter books, and will wonder what addition though Pope's war was a sideshow, "the two might have been made from the papers of such were intimately connected by chains of com participants as Ramsey and Sibley in the Min mand and necessities of supply, transport, and nesota Historical Society and the governor's manpower." The military District of Wiscon and adjutant generals' collections of the state's sin, a subdivision of Pope's department, was archives. The author should have cited the re one source of newly mustered federal troops search of Frank Klement on Copperheads and temporarily assigned to fight Indians in Min of Alvin C. Gluek, Jr., on Canadian-American nesota and beyond. Pope also sent a company relations in relation to the Sioux war. Closing of soldiers to Juneau County to control Wis quotation marks are absent on page 47, and consin's "wandering Winnebagos" but even the publication date given for Folwell is in tually left their discipline to local authority. error. Despite white apprehensions, the Lake Supe rior Chippewa did not imitate the restiveness GUY J, GIBSON of the Indians further west. Wisconsin State College 291 VS^ISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1961 Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction. By ERIC So McKitrick argues. He challenges the L. MCKITRICK, (The University of Chicago widely accepted interpretations of the late Press, Chicago, 1960, Pp. ix, 534. $8,50,) Howard K. Beale and others who hold that Radical Republicanism was inspired by eco nomic interests and that Johnson could have "How Andrew Johnson threw away his power saved himself either by drastic use of his pat both as President and as party leader, how he ronage power or by appealing to the public assisted materiafly, in spite of himself, in with a program of reducing the tariff, inflating blocking the reconciliation of North and South, the currency, and attacking monopolies, Mc and what his behavior did toward disrupting Kitrick contends, further, that Johnson did not the political life of the entire nation will form lose popular support because of the influence the subject of this book," Thus does Eric L, of business-inspired newspapers. Rather, the McKitrick summarize his thesis. relationship of press and opinion was the other Johnson's reputation has gone through ex way around, Anti-Johnson opinion eventually treme ups and downs. According to the view turned even such powerful papers as the New that prevailed at one time, he was drunken York Times and the New York Herald away and quarrelsome by nature, a total misfit in from the President, Nor was impeachment a the presidential office, and something of a case of kicking a man who was already down. traitor besides. According to a later view he The Republicans tried to oust Johnson because was a good if not a great man, a devotee of he persisted in interfering with the army's ef the Constitution, and certainly a statesman far forts to carry out the Reconstruction Acts, wiser than his opponents. Some of the (unstated) assumptions under At first glance McKitrick appears to lean lying the McKitrick thesis might be ques toward the first of these views. Actually, he tioned. Was the "reconciliation of North and presents an interpretation far more sophisti South" properly the main objective of postwar cated and informed than either. He acquits policy? This implies that the assurance of ac Johnson of the personal charges often made tual freedom to the former slaves should have against him, but convicts him of a more fun been, at most, a secondary aim. Was "ruth damental, "historical" kind of guilt. less" Reconstruction in itself necessarily bad, The ruthlessness of Radical Reconstruction, and were the carpetbaggers as a class so repre McKitrick suggests, was not the outcome of hensible? A case could be made to show that fate, nor was it simply a product of contin Reconstruction from the outset was by no uing war hatreds. At the end of the Civil War means thoroughgoing enough, and that most the Republicans disagreed among themselves of the carpetbaggers have been grossly misun on questions of policy toward the South. Most derstood and maligned. of these men dreaded a break with the Presi Other doubts might be raised. Surely the dent. Probably they would have been satisfied author errs in saying, of Wade Hampton and with a comparatively "soft" peace, and ex the murderous 1876 "white supremacy" cam tremists like Thaddeus Stevens would have re paign in South Carolina, that "Hampton pre mained only "marginal" politicians, had it not vented the use of open violence by his follow been for the obstinacy and obstructionism of ers." Such errors are very few. More serious Johnson. are the faults of wordiness and repetitiousness, Johnson ignored the "symbolic require the use of social science jargon, and the occa ments" of the time. The North needed some sional indulgence in idle speculation (one equivalent of formal surrender by the South, chapter discusses the hypothetical question of As victor, the North was entitled to the psycho what Reconstruction would have been like if logical satisfaction of victory. Johnson ruled John Andrew and Wade Hampton had jointly this out. Moved mainly by abstract considera taken charge). The book would have been bet tions—by his legalistic notions of state rights ter, shorter. —he stubbornly insisted that Congress could As it stands, it is a very good book. More not constitutionally deal with the Southern than that. It is an invaluable contribution to problem until all the Southern states had been the rewriting of Reconstruction history, a task restored to their full powers in the Union, Yet long overdue, McKitrick has taken a tremen he himself had imposed certain conditions be dous step in the right direction, fore approving and advocating the readmis- sion of those states. Thus he was less logical RICHARD N, CURRENT and consistent than he has been credited with University of Wisconsin being. 292 READERS CHOICE Father Abraham's Children; Michigan Epi dashed at them, they realized their mistake, sodes in the Civil War. By FRANK B, WOOD 'There's them damned black hats again,' FORD, (Wayne State University Press, Detroit, yelled an observant and surprised Confederate. 1961, Pp, xiv, 305, Illustrations, appendix, 'Hell, that's no milishy!' " Before the day was $6,50,) ended the Black Hals had suffered a loss of eighty per cent of their members by their "fierce obstinancy in holding their ground." Lincoln's call for volunteers, April 15, 1861, Other stories relate the reckless adventure found Michigan with an empty treasury and of Confederates in trying to capture a Federal a militia which consisted of twenty-eight local sloop-of-war on Lake Erie; the disaster which companies with a total strength of 1,241 of occurred when returning Federal prisoners ficers and men. None of these companies was were engulfed in the explosion of the steamer at full capacity. When the order went out that Sultana; the exciting race for the capture of the first ten companies ready would be ac Jeff Davis, which was won by a detachment of cepted, recruiting began. Boys from farms, the Fourth Michigan Cavalry; and the horrify shops, offices, and schools were eager to en ing conditions in Southern prisons, the desper list. By April 24 the First Michigan Infantry ate attempts to escape, and the indescribable Regiment was formed from the Detroit Light joy when successful. One escapee, having re Guard, Jackson Greys, Coldwater Cadets, Man marked "that he wouldn't make that trip again chester Union Guard, Steuben Guard (Ann for the whole state of Michigan," added, after Arbor), Michigan Hussars (Detroit), Burr a reflective pause, "Unless, of course, I had to." Oak Guard, Ypsilanti Light Guard, Marshall Frank Woodford is chief editorial writer for Light Guard, and Hardee Cadets (Adrian). the Detroit Free Press, and has long been in After three weeks of drilling and preparation terested in the personal aspects of the Civil the regiment started for Washington on May War. For the general reader, his book is a 13, commanded by Colonel Orlando B, Will- splendid introduction to Michigan's part in the cox, Amid cheering and martial music, the war. An appendix gives detailed and docu regiment arrived there on May 16, It was com mented information concerning men, units, posed of fine, soldierly looking men, well and events that should whet the appetites of equipped—the first western regiment to arrive readers with special interests and lead them at the capital. Two month later, at Bull Run, into further reading. The author has accom it would receive its baptism of fire. This was plished his goal with marked success of at the first of forty-five regiments which Michi tempting "to retell some of the stories and gan sent to the war—thirty-one infantry, reminiscences that are the basis of history eleven cavalry, and one each of engineers and and legend." mechanics, artillery, and sharpshooters, totall ing more than 90,000 men, IDA C. BROWN Mr, Woodford's book highlights episodes in Michigan Historical Collections, the exploits and adventures of these men and The University of Michigan units as well as events taking place back home. The accounts are factual, being based on a variety of written sources and on personal in Ohio Handbook of the Civil War. By ROBERT terviews with a few remaining veterans. They S. HARPER, (Ohio Historical Society for the are written in a colorful and engrossing man Ohio Civil War Centennial Commission, Co ner and with a wealth of detail. Among the lumbus, 1961, Pp, 78, $1,00,) episodes recounted are the operations of the Underground Railway in Michigan, where What Rol)ert Harper has done for Ohio in slaves found their way to freedom but where assembling important facts about the Civil "slave owners and their agents just weren't War will, no doubt, be duplicated in many safe;" the terror of the Detroit riot of 1863; other states before 1965 rolls around. Harper, and the first day of battle at Gettysburg with a Lincoln and Civil War historian, allots the the Twenty-fourth Michigan, a part of the im main part of the booklet to listings: Ohio mortal fron Brigade, losses, military camps, medal of honor win "With a cheer, the 24th swept forward, ners, sites, "firsts," battle flags, generals. Con charging across Willoughby Run, smashing federate dead, war governors, infantry-cavalry- the flank of Archer's brigade. The Confeder artillery units, and the Ohio road to the ates had expected to meet nothing more dan White House for Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Har gerous than militia. As the Michiganders rison, and McKinley, 293 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1961 Meatier portions, however, describe the in our major literary craftsmen but we err, I evitable "Lincoln in Ohio" (mainly after he think, in not doing so. We could not do with was dead!), the Squirrel Hunters (minutemen out our historians but if we want to live Wis who raised earthworks for a siege of Cincin consin of a century ago tlie best place to live nati which never occurred), General John H, it is in such novels as Wind Over Wisconsin, Morgan's raid in July, 1863 (with an excellent Restless Is the River, Bright Journey, the novel map), activities of the Copperheads, the Lake under review here, and in such remarkable Erie Conspiracy, and the Hundred Days men short story collections as Sac Prairie People (volunteer militia). and Place of Hawks. Our era inspires the quick fact book. The This time Derleth has written a story of Min Civil War Centennial Commission has printed eral Point in the 1840's and of the rise and a small handbook on the war in general, and decline of the lead mining industry there with the National Park Service's Historical Hand occasional excursions to Dodgeville, Belmont, book series includes Gettysburg, Shiloh, Fort Galena, Madison and even as far as Milwaukee Sumter, Vicksburg, Chickamauga, and Chat for conferences on Mr. Kilbourn's projected tanooga. Wisconsin, too, is preparing three railroad. The protagonist is David Pengellen, pamphlets, one to be published this autumn. a Cornishman, naturally, and a merchant, and The Ohio Handbook is a helpful model for around him Derleth has grouped the Rhode any state contemplating a similar booklet. Its Island wife he brought to the "wilderness;" twofold purpose is "to provide the answers to Tammy, the girl he came to love; Parr, popular questions, and to be used as a guide the debonair manipulator who was General to a fuller and deeper study of the events and Dodge's handyman; Dodge, Doty, Mitchell and the times and the Ohioans who lived through all the rest who figured so largely in those them." Though a better chronology and some formative years when Wisconsin was about to comparisons with nearby states would have become a state. You watch the tragedy of the been useful, any Ohio speaker on the Civil growing alliance between Pengellen's wife and War (and any reference librarian) will bless Parr and between Pengellen and Tammy, and Mr. Harper and the Ohio Historical Society the disaster that resolved this quadrangle but, many times over. more importantly, you watch as Mineral Point MARGARET MANSFIELD flourishes and then begins its decline when some fool out in California shouts "Gold!" You Oak Park, Illinois don't mine lead when you can mine that shiny stuff. STATE AND REGIONAL The Hills Stand Watch is a richly realized story of a moment in Wisconsin's time. It will The Hills Stand Watch. By AUGUST DERLETH. set no literary bonfires but it will, f believe, (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York, 1960. warm the hearts of many readers and espe Pp. 265. $4.50.) cially those who walk where the action takes place, Like Thoreau in Concord, August WiOiam VICTOR P. HASS Derleth has "traveled far" in his native Wis consin. For more than thirty-seven years of Omaha, Nebraska \ publication now, he has confined his huge '\ frame and his large art to Sauk City, that pleas ant little town in the beautiful great bend of La Pointe, Village Outpost. By^ HAMILTON the Wisconsin River. He was born in the NELSON ROSS. (North Central 'Publishing town in 1909 and today, in a very real way, Company, St. Paul, 1960. Pp. xix, 200, $6.50,) he is Sauk City just as, to thousands of read ers over the face of America, he is Wisconsin. In 1957, shortly before his death, Hamilton From the desk in his Sauk City home Der Ross completed a labor of love on a lifelong leth has sent out to an increasingly apprecia interest—the history of La Pointe, Madeline tive audience some ninety books—novels, short Island. Unhappy over the verbiage spent on stories, histories, juveniles—that make up, to Prairie du Chien and Green Bay, he consid my mind, the most impressive body of regional ered 340 years of La Pointe neglect, from 1615 literature written by an American in our time. to 1957, The operative word there is, of course, re A 1951 Ross pamphlet, The Apostle Islands, gional. We in America do not often give our has descriptions of the individual islands and regional writers pride of place in the ranks of nine maps. In the current version Ross has 294 READERS CHOICE concentrated on Madeline Island and used for those travellers willing to visit out-of-the- thirty-one maps, with details added to the orig way places. But the book has only about ten inal nine. From geology to the adventures pages on the modern scene. The author might of French explorers, missionaries, fishermen, have told about his own experiences as an on- loggers, miners, railroad men, and recent sum the-spot reporter. For local history is seeing mer people, the emphasis is on early history. with one's own eyes. Local history needs com Very little space is given to the 1900's and the parisons, perspectives, looking and reporting. men who spent time and money improving the One wishes that the author had omitted some island. Though born in Beloit, Ross almost ig of the French and British advances and told nores some Beloiters who purchased property about the beauty of the La Pointe he must have on the island and tried to build up the tour really seen. ist trade. DORIS H. PLATT Some little-known facts cited by Ross in State Historical Society of Wisconsin clude praise for the mechanical skill of the Ojibway (not recognized by early whites who were determined to turn the Indians into farm '93-41: Thunder Lake Narrow Gauge. By ers—a repetition of the overzealous missionary HARVEY HUSTON. (Harvey Huston, 860 Mt. work with the Nebraska Sioux) ; the reasons Pleasant St., Winnetka, Illinois, 1961. Pp. 145. for Protestant failure and Catholic success Illustrations. $7.50.) (Protestant ministers' families hindered them from making their rounds in the field) ; the This history of the Thunder Lake Lumber New York City brownstone front houses made Company's narrow gauge railroad in Wiscon of rock quarried in the Apostles; and the ex sin is an unusually accurate and interesting planation of the name Apostle itself. account of a logging era from 1893 to 1941. As a work of local history there is overem It is accurate because of thorough research by phasis on the past and a playing-down of the the author, and because almost all the people present. The fortunes of La Pointe fell as Bay making up the history were still living and gen field, Ashland, Duluth, and Superior came erously gave their time and records to help into being. Its resort heyday was in 1900, as make it so. It is unusually interesting and easy a hay fever refuge. But Ross neglects the to read because of the many pictures and hu ghostly beauty of the modern island for the man incidents incorporated. The author, story of French commandants and whale backs Harvey Huston, is an attorney for the Santa and hookers. His own personal notes are Fe railroad system in Chicago. His interest in lively if often trivial, as he often concludes railroading and in northern Wisconsin is felt with "legendary," "not confirmed," or "ques in every page of the book. He indicates that tionable" over hints at old island gossip about he waited hopefully for many years for some pirates and Robin Hood benefactors. one to write this history, but when no one did A glossary of Ojibway terms (taken from he assigned the task to himself. The result is Verwyst, Baraga, Warren), a bibliography, the "story of the last narrow gauge logging chronology, and index attest to the months of railroad in the Middle West." It operated on a work. There is surprisingly heavy reliance on gauge of 36 inches rather than the standard Minnesota records, although the Wisconsin 561/^ inches. Since forest products always Historical Collections are used. There are far provided the bulk of the traffic of the narrow too many typographical errors. gauge. Thunder Lake Narrow Gauge is logging Today you may board Booth Fisheries boats history as well as railroad history. (carrying your own picnic lunch) and tour The railroad was built in 1893 to transport the various islands on different days for a view logs to the Bobbins sawmill at Rhinelander, of fish nets drying and the catch taken aboard Wisconsin. Most of the pine had been cut in ship and weighed. Or a ferry can take your the area and floated down the streams to saw car to Madeline, where you may drive down mills. Hardwood does not float, and the rail lonely roads to nowhere. There are few tourist road was built to haul the hardwood, hemlock, attractions. The island is too isolated, too mod spruce and other products left after the pine est in its few refreshment stands, resorts and was cut. The road ran in a northeasterly direc gift shops, to lure the vacationer for any length tion into Oneida, Forest, and Vilas Counties of time. for more than fifty miles. But there is an excellent museum at La In 1919 Frank Robbins sold his complete Pointe, directed by Leo Capser of St, Paul, We holdings to John D. Mylrea who represented need a description of this. There is still charm a group of lumbermen. The purchase agree- 295 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1961 ment was reached while the two men were was about exhausted, and in August 1941 standing at the counter in the presence of the the corporate existence of the railroad was Robbins office force. dissolved. The peak year was 1929 when the company The rails were removed and sold for scrap had 900 employees. During most of the opera for more money than the original cost fifty tion, two trains per day of from thirty to fifty- years before. Timber lands were sold to the five cars supplied the Rhinelander sawmill. In Nicolet National Forest and are now growing all, twelve locomotives were used, but not more another crop of trees for future cutting. The than five at any one time. Snow storms hamp No, 7 locomotive was donated to the Rhine ered operations and swamps made road build lander Logging Museum and is now one of its ing difficult. Track was constructed without most photographed pieces. In 1960 the busi benefit of surveying instruments; sighting ness car was added to the museum collection, along an ax handle or using a pocket compass I present one suggestion of perhaps a minor plus a great amount of judgment was all that nature, A reorganization of the material would was necessary to lay out a track. When derail improve the book's value as a reference or ment occurred, which was not uncommon, a historical document. temporary track was built under the engine There will never be another sleigh haul, with little loss of time, there will never be another log drive, but the Frank Robbins, co-founder of the Narrow lore of logging will forever be enhanced by the Gauge, was a rugged individual. As was char history of the Thunder Lake Narrow Gauge, acteristic of the early loggers, he ran the operation with little regard to any regulations. L, G. SORDEN He had a great interest in farming and had University of Wisconsin large land holdings where he used his lumber jacks to clear land in the summertime. He pre dicted to the Railroad Commission that the Eagle Chain of Lakes "will eventually be the greatest summer resort in Wisconsin." Jack D. Mylrea, a trained forester, was a builder. As its president he operated the Thun der Lake Mill and railroad from 1919 to 1941. His employees were loyal to him in good times and in bad times, as brought out by a classical letter from an employee. Dorl Caldwell, the woods "walking boss," was a Scotsman with a passionate dislike for spending excessive amounts of money. Examples of his thrift add much to this account. George Smith (One- Shot) , superintendent of the Narrow Gauge, was a man of good judgment and mechanical skill. He worked for the railroad from 1899 to its closing. Smith and the narrow gauge retired together. There would be no logging without lumber jacks. They often came to town on Saturday night and on Monday morning some had not yet sobered up. Often the Narrow Gauge train would be held until the Chief of Police deliv ered these missing strays. The depression brought near ruin to the Thunder Lake Company. Many of the bachelor lumberjacks lost their jobs but most married men were kept working. Salaries were cut 50 per cent. But as business improved, so did employment, and in 1939 about 350 were employed. The supply of timber, however, John D. Mylrea Collection Winter scene at Thunder Lake Lumber Company Camp 13 near Butternut Lake, Forest County, 1928. 296 READERS CHOICE Hamlin Garland; A Biography. By JEAN HOL in subsequent books. Though she is dexterous LO WAY, (University of Texas Press, Austin, in marshalling these bushels of facts, and 1960, Pp, xii, 346, Photographs, bibliog scrupulous in its footnotes, her book remains raphy, index, $6,00,) a humane and readable story. Possibly it slights the critical analysis of Garland's fiction. For the general reader, the main appeal of By the lime of his death in 1940, Hamlin this biography lies simply in the rich human Garland had, as it were, succeeded his mentor interest of Hamlin Garland as a person—a William Dean Howells as "dean" of American Wisconsin farm boy who made himself a true, writers, and yet not until 1960, the centen if minor, American artist, a transitional figure nial of his birth at West Salem, Wisconsin, now seen to be almost symbolic in the defini has he been the subject of a full-length critical tion of midwestern American character. biography. The delay is hardly surprising in From a scholarly viewpoint, the most valu view of Garland's indefatigable indulgence in able part of this book is Mrs, Holloway's ac autobiography. But the four "Middle Border" count of the disappointing change in Garland's books and the four fat "Roadside Meetings" fiction in the late 1890's, from radical realism volumes were written mostly in his sixties and about the Middle West to romantic glorifica seventies, when his memory played him tricks tion of the mountain west. None of the pro and when his elderly opinions differed sig fessors who have confidently explained (that nificantly from those of his youth. For this is to say, over-simplified) this change have reason Jean Holloway's expert and sensitive known Garland well enough, and unfortunately biography is not only an interesting story, but some of them have not enjoyed Mrs, Hollo a needed correction of our literary history. way's quota of common sense. Her hard- Mrs. HoUoway, a member of the Texas bar headed but sensitive analysis of Garland's and author of Edward Everett Hale (1956), middle-aged metamorphosis into complacent brings to the case of the alternately appealing mediocrity makes previous accounts seem in and exasperating Garland what most other complete and premature. The most helpful Garland observers, a rather cross and bad- thing she could do now would be to give us tempered lot, have lacked—that is, impartial an article which consolidates her scattered criticism which is tempered by unsentimental remarks on this important topic, thus defini sympathy. Also she knows Garland better than tively cleaning up "the Garland problem" for the others, as her synthesis of his 5,000 unin- once and all. dexed autobiographical pages shows. Her study has been enriched by heretofore JAMES B. STRONKS untapped sources. She has worked through University of Illinois (Chicago) Garland's thirty semi-legible diaries, has sifted much of the mountain of manuscripts and let ters in the Garland Papers at the University A History of Minnesota, Volume II. By WIL of Southern California, and has used other LIAM WATTS FOLWELL. (The Minnesota His documents and photographs still held by his torical Society, St. Paul, 1961. Pp. 447. $7,75.) daughters. Expertly integrating all this data, she traces the germination and growth of his story ideas, and his wrestling of recalcitrant William Watts Folwell, president of the Uni manuscripts into publishable form; she tells versity of Minnesota from 1869 to 1884, made his reaction to critics; she charts his fluctuat a notable contribution to the historiography of ing morale—his phases of triumph or self- the state with his four-volume A History of doubt or despair; she explores the interesting Minnesota, published by the Minnesota His discrepancies between the facts of his early torical Society during the period 1921-1930, authorship and his elderly comment upon The complete work covers the history of the them; and she reports with gentle, poker-faced state from the earliest French penetration in charity his sorties into the spook-hunting the 17lh century to 1925, Volume I was re which he called "psychic research." issued in 1956, She also weaves in much of interest about Volume II, originally published in 1924, his sales figures, the prices he commanded, and out of print for some time, is now re the terms of his contracts and movie rights, vised and reissued. The revisions in this new his eager salesmanship or haughty pique with edition are few, consisting primarily of minor unenthusiastic editors, and his tight-fisted re corrections, simplification of the maps, and the use of identical material over and over again addition of new illustrations. In this volume 297 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1961 Folwell considers the first seven years, 1858- effort to discuss the national setting of the war. 1865, of the then frontier state. During these In any work of this length and nature, some formative years the state experienced the us factual errors are inevitable. For example, the ual problems of a frontier: lack of transporta author used some erroneous materials in his tion, shortage of capital and scUlers, and the discussion of the removal of the Sioux by need to establish a government. These tasks steamboats in 1863. He was led into this by alone would have been a sufficient challenge his tendency to rely heavily on published gov to any new state, but Minnesota's beginnings ernment reports, such as those of Indian were complicated by participation in the Civil agents. These official reports occasionally con War, and then by the Sioux Uprising during tained errors in fact since they were usually the Civil War. not written at the time of the event, and often Folwell begins his story with the first Min were recopied before publication. nesota slate legislature, which convened and The merits of the work, however, far out transacted business when the statehood bill had weigh any shortcomings. The revised edition not as yet passed Congress. This quasi-legal of Volume II is the basic secondary source for body, among other things, extended aid to rail anyone interested in the early statehood period roads in a unique financing scheme, the "Five of Minnesota. Million Dollar Loan," whereby the slate loaned WILLIAM E. LASS its credit in the form of bonds to the railroads, Mankato State College Folwell next considers the first major political revolution in Minnesota history, the victory by Republican Alexander Ramsey in the gu The Explorations of Pierre Esprit Radisson. bernatorial election of 1859 over the pro-Doug Edited by ARTHUR T. ADAMS. Modernized by las Democrats, LoREN KALLSEN, (Ross and Haines, Inc, Min Folwell devotes several chapters to Minne neapolis, 1961, Pp, 258, $8,75,) sota's participation in the Civil War, He con cerns himself initially with Ramsey's dramatic Historians, who have been slow to accept offer of the first Union volunteers, and then Radisson as anything more than a charlatan, devotes most of his description to the organi have usually limited his contribution to the zation of the 25,000 Minnesota troops and development of the Hudson's Bay Company, their activity in major battles. But the bulk of The sentiment against the explorer is based this volume is an account of the Sioux Upris on the discrepancies in Radisson's journals: ing. Folwell describes the action in Minne some of the scenes described by Radisson sota in 1862, the subsequent military opera would be more at home in a Paul Bunyan tions in Dakota Territory in the period 1863- tale, and certain weH-known events are in 65, and the reasons for the Uprising. correctly dated. Consequently, the journals Folwell, in this history, has presented the have been discredited by some historians. best work in existence on the early statehood Others have ignored the recorded dates of period. Despite the fact that new research ma minor events and have altered the chronology terials have become available since 1924, no until major events fell on the right dates. one has yet produced a sounder work. Fol The justification usually given for the adjust well's story is clearly written, with ample color ment is that Radisson wrote the journals sev provided by quotes from writings of the par eral years after the actual voyages and that ticipants. His descriptions of events, particu his memory failed him. larly battles, are detailed and factual. The dis Arthur Adams, editor of the present volume, cussion of the causes of the Sioux Uprising is maintains that the shifting of the journals outstanding. causes internal problems that can not be justi The major shortcoming of the book lies in fied. Therefore, instead of moving an entire its organization. For example, there is a journal on a time line, Adams transposes epi ninety-eight page appendix consisting of sev sodes which appear to be out of context. This enteen different accounts which supplement in rearrangement, made after a sentence-by-sen formation presented in the text proper. This tence examination of the journals, consists of information could better have been reduced creating space between certain paragraphs to and integrated in the text. Another shortcom insert a misplaced event. Then by closing the ing is the lack of analysis of the causes of the space left by the transposed material, Adams Civil War. Other than passing references to is satisfied that the journals have no internal the "slaveholder's rebeflion," Folwell makes no problems and that major events fall on their proper dates. 298 READERS CHOICE The Explorations of Pierre Esprit Radisson on a western trip at any time between 1652 is divided into three parts—an introduction in and 1659." cluding a foreword, biographical sketches of Adams relies on the Jesuit Relations for Radisson and Groseilliers, and a note by the proof of his contention that Radisson accom modernizer; the journals of the six voyages; panied Groseilliers. He finds points of simi and finally, a theory. Mr. Adams explains in larity between the Relations and the journals the foreword the transpositions he has made and concludes that because of these Radisson and his reasons for making them, and the jour did make the trip. But Miss Nute has pointed nals are published with his recommended out that Radisson had access to the Relations changes. The third and last part represents and has added that a reader might be led to Radisson as one of two Frenchmen who made believe Radisson copied them except for a few an unrecorded voyage to the western lands differences and additions. and as the discoverer of the upper Mississippi Adams' theory that the journal of the Mis River. sissippi voyage is a composite of two voyages Adams lists Grace Nute's Caesars of the was suggested by Miss Nute when she called it Wilderness in his bibliography and refers to it a narration of Groseilliers' trip. She added in his footnotes. He recognizes the Minnesota that Radisson made it appear that he was on historian as "the foremost biographer of Rad the voyage to promote himself and the com isson and Groseilliers" (Ixviii), yet he fails to pany at Hudson's Bay. refute or even to recognize some of her state For this reviewer there was nothing really ments which discredit Radisson. new presented here except the transposition of Admittedly, Adams questions Miss Nute's events in the journals. contention that the journals were translated THURMAN FOX from the French and paid for by the Huson's State Historical Society of Wisconsin Bay Company. Adams convinces himself that a bona fide translator would not have made as many errors in spelling and grammar as appear in the journals. But according to Miss GENERAL HISTORY Nute the journals housed by the Hudson's Bay Company have the "same binding, the spacing Tfie Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill. By DON of lines on the backbone, the paper, and the RUSSELL. (University of Oklahoma Press, watermarks are identical" to those found in Norman, 1960. Pp. x, 514. Illustrations, maps, the Bodleian Library and used by Adams. notes, bibliography, index. $5.95.) The Jesuit Relations and other contemporary sources mention two Frenchmen who made a trip west between 1654 and 1656, but no In view of the great quantity of published names are given. After an examination of the works about Buffalo Bill Cody, author Don contemporary court cases, Grace Nute specu Russell takes a calculated risk in attempting to lated that Groseilliers was one of the explorers add anything new to an old familiar story. The since he appeared in court regularly on various title. The Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill, is kinds of litigations before and after but not plural, in keeping with the multiplicity of roles during the two-year period. But from 1654 to played by the indefatigable William F. Cody. 1656 only Mrs. Groseilliers was in court "until Russell's experience as author and his own the return of her husband." Miss Nute specu editorial background provide him with wide lated as to who the other Frenchman was and spread knowledge of his subject, which he also that he might have found the upper Mis amply proves in this handsome volume. sissippi River valley, but she said categorically Perhaps new to the Buffalo Bill story is that it was not Radisson, who in November reliance on records found in the National 1655, signed a deed in Quebec and therefore Archives and in the Office of the Quartermas could not have been with Groseilliers. Adams ter General for verification of Cody's experi never mentions this fact but uses many pages ences as a member of the army and as a civil "proving" Radisson wrote the journal of the ian scout. Prior stories of this phase of Buffalo Mississippi voyage made in 165J.-1656 and Bill's life depended heavily on Cody's memory, another made between 1658 and 1660. Un notoriously inexact, or on even less reputable fortunately for Adams, "the foremost biogra sources. Cody emerges from the Russell treat pher" claimed that "It was an impossibility ment of his military service as something less for the two men to have been absent together than the heroic soldier and spy who was al ways in the thick of every battle. In fact, Cody 299 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1961 had earlier been a member of an irregular out reading, but the mystery of how the Kansas fit, the Red Legged Scouts, generally counted Territorial Register became The Kansas Edi on the Union side in the Civil War. Not until torial Register on page 19 is evidence of faulty 1864, when he was eighteen, did he enlist, communication, perhaps with an inanimate "under the influence of bad whisky," in the tape recorder. Seventh Kansas Volunteer Cavalry. More Fortunately the author displays no such ob heroic in stature was Buffalo Bill's activity as vious lapses with his main character, and his scout and courier for army units along the book will remain a solid, much-used, and well- Indian frontier in the late 1860's and during read life of a colorful figure of the "old West." the 1870's. In these years he gained a deserved The bibliography is voluminous and complete, national reputation as outstanding scout, cou and the Dime Novel list, alone, takes up nine rageous Indian fighter, and guide to extra and a half pages. ordinary hunting expeditions. Russell is at his best in unraveling the Buf HOMER E. SOCOLOFSKY falo Bill story. He describes the various legends Kansas State University and he leads the reader through his careful analysis of what is truth and what is fabrica tion. Buffalo Bill is depicted as a man of un The Decline of American Communism. By expected modesty, when he dealt with his own DAVID A. SHANNON. (Harcourt, Brace and activities. At the same time he seemed indiffer Company, New York, 1959. Pp. x, 425, ent to the extravagant claims and unusual $7,50,) abilities credited to the "chief of the scouts" by press agents and dime novelists. In a plausible In this excellently written and researched manner Russell shows which of the Buffalo Bill book, title and content are happily in unus books were actually written by Cody, which ually close accord. For the most interesting were greatly influenced by him, and which and surprising aspect of the book is the evi ones took great freedom with reality. The au dence that it offers concerning the extent of thor constantly keeps Cody near the center of the American Communist Party's decline since the stage, but he is ever mindful of the basic its peak in the years just after World War problems of dealing with time and space and Two, fn 1945, David A, Shannon reveals, the with the larger national scene. For example, Communist Party had reached the height of he reminds his reader that in "summarizing a its power and influence in this country. Its campaign hastily, it is easy to forget that all membership was between 75,000 and 85,000, these movements from one point to another on Communists, or men close to the party, led un a map were actually made by men who were ions containing between one-fifth and one- doing a lot of hard riding and fighting, getting fourth of the entire membership of the Con litde sleep, and galloping far ahead of supply gress of fndustrial Organizations, Polls wagons," Again he generalizes to say that indicated that there was less hostility towards "Cody was first to discover what all producers Communists on the part of Americans in gen of 'Westerns' ever since have proved—that the eral than there ever had been before, fn No wholly imaginary and fictitious West of stage, vember, 1945, in New York City, where the book, and screen is most popular in the real greatest Party strength in the country lay, the West it mistakenly represents," Communists were able to elect two members to the city council who had run openly on the When dealing with material which is peri Communist Party ticket. pheral to the Buffalo Bill story, author Russell is at his worst. Thus, the reader is informed Today these facts seem to belong to another that James H, Lane was former Governor of world. As Shannon points out, the American Indiana, when in fact he served as Lieutenant Communist Party then could benefit from the Governor. Mrs. Raymond H. Milbrook, page fact that Russia had been our wartime ally 36, and Mrs, Minnie D, Miflbrook, page 228, and from the legacy of a depression that had are one and the same, in spite of spelling in made radicalism attractive to some. But early consistencies. The author is further confused in 1945 Stalin was already beginning to as by Kansas geography with two errors on page sume the hostile stance towards the United 78, where he should record Saline County Stales thai brought about the cold war. As the (from the Saline River), and always the town cold war increased in intensity, American pub of Salina, The word "trial," instead of "trail," lic opinion became more hostile to Communists on page 269, could be due to failure in proof than ever before, and the McCarthy hysteria of the early 1950's increased it, American 300 READERS CHOICE prosperity, though the Communists continually American Labor. By HENRY PELLING. (The predicted new depressions, has continued, and University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1960. this has discouraged an interest in radicalism. Pp. 247. $5,00,) In addition, as the author makes clear, Khrush chev's revelation of Stalin's crimes at the Henry Pelling's concise survey of American Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party labor history is one of a series of topical his of the Soviet Union in February, 1956, fol tories now being published under the general lowed by the Russian crushing of the Hun editorship of Daniel Boorstin of the University garian revolt in November of the same year, of Chicago, The intention of the series is to proved especially disillusioning to American provide the general reader with a good intro Communists, duction to the history of America and to in By 1958 the American Communist Party struct him in the unique characteristics of its was a shambles. Its membership had dropped civilization. The topical studies complement to slightly less than 3,000, an unprecedented chronological surveys, and on completion all decline of eighty-five per cent in a little over volumes will together constitute the "Chicago two years. The Daily Worker had ceased pub History of American Civilization," lication, the once extensive Party schools were In his history of American labor Pelling ac closed down. Communist influence in the labor complishes these purposes. He is a well-known movement was nil, and at the polls, as Shan scholar in the field of English trade unionism non says, "The Communist Party today is al and socialism. He is also a student of Ameri most dead as a political force," can history and in that connection has been a Shannon has been careful to point out that regular visitor to the United States, especially such external forces as the cold war, prosper to the campus of the University of Wisconsin. ity, Khrushchev's speech on Stalin, and the fndeed, Madison seems to have become his brutal Russian action in Hungary were the adopted workshop during his stays in this major factors in causing the decline of the country. The volume under review is Pelling's Communist movement in the United States, At first major publication in American history. It the same time he shows that actions taken by is not, however, his first venture in this area as Communists themselves were not an altogether witnessed by a number of articles, including negligible factor. They entered a hard line in one on Milwaukee socialism. 1945 and 1946 when they ousted Browder and Some features in this history of labor his followers at the very time when changing are noteworthy. By means of a few concise American opinion should have demanded a paragraphs introducing each chapter, Pelling soft one. By helping to form and then by domi succeeds in keeping his story in the mainstream nating the Progressive Party in 1947 and 1948 of American history. He pays special attention the Communists actively encouraged the hos to the Negro, not permitting his reader to for tility of labor and helped to crystalize that of get that the slave and freedman before the Civil a growing anti-Communist left. By demanding War belonged to the nation's labor force. He a segregated independent Negro republic in never loses sight of the Negro's difficulties with the United States they insured their isolation the white man's unions as he surveys the trials from the Negro movement. By refusing to and tribulations of organized labor after 1860. permit criticism of the Russians following the He rightfully devotes an entire chapter to Sam events in Hungary, the American Communist uel Gompers in which he stresses the manner leaders lost much of their already dwindling in which Gompers made his views and the following. American Federation of Labor a permanent In all of these cases, the author indicates, feature of the American labor scene. He de the American Communists acted as they did votes a substantial portion of his survey to the because they slavishly followed Russian theor twentieth century, especially to the period be ies and policies. The one point on which they tween the great wars when industrial unionism never vacillated was in the defense of the So became a part of the American economy. viet Union and its foreign policy, even when Throughout the book Pelling maintains that doing so threatened the life of the American class conflict of the kind associated with Eu party. This is the only conclusion, given the ropean industrial development did not exist evidence, that it is possible to make. in American history. This view is, of course, not unique to Pefling, Other students, particu ROBERT H. L, WHEELER larly those of the Commons-Perlman school, have often pointed to the absence of class con Neiv York City sciousness and class conflict as fundamental 301 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1961 reasons explaining the differences between Eu nity both before and after 1775 realistically rope's and America's unionism and radicalism, accepted such policies, and that, given prevail Pelling, however, seems to want to push this ing conditions, Congress probably had no traditional position one step farther, for he other policy open to it. The second section de appears to be claiming that social conflicts were velops an interesting new thesis in which Fer not at all serious in America. He accepts as guson argues that the "Nationalists," led by fact the much-disputed conclusions Edmund Robert Morris, formulated a financial program Morgan reached after studying the relation during the closing years of the war which fore ship between the suffrage and property distri shadowed the Federalist policies later devel bution in Massachusetts on the eve of the oped by Hamilton. Thus they sought to enlarge American Revolution. Thus, Pelling contends Congressional powers in order to secure the that this nation, at the time of its birth, was funding and management of the public debt. well on its way toward achieving social These plans were frustrated, he contends, by equality for her people. the opposition of the "country party" in Rhode fn joining Morgan's conclusions to the tra Island and by the inability of the aristocratic ditional ones regarding class consciousness and faction to weld New England and Southern class conflict, Pefling has litde choice but to conservatives into an effective alliance. The mute the conflict—often violent—that was a post-war era, Ferguson's third section, em part of America's labor history. This frame braces the settlement of individual and state work does aid him, however, in fulfilling one accounts, the economic problems created by of the purposes of the "Chicago History of political disunity, and speculation in the public American Civilization": the reader will find debt. In particular, he shows that by 1790 the in this volume further instruction about the Continental debt had been transferred into varieties in American history and about its the hands of a relatively small number of men. uniqueness. He will also have before him a He does not argue, however, that these specu useful introduction to the history of American lators spawned either the Constitution or the labor. funding program. Rather, the adoption of the GERD KORMAN Constitution antedated speculation. Finally, Elmira College Professor Ferguson discusses the funding of the debt as the capstone to the Nationalist program of achieving political centralization through fiscal reform, The Power of the Purse: A History of Ameri A serious and fundamental weakness mili can Public Finance, 1776-1790. By E. JAMES tates against this study becoming definitive. FERGUSON. (University of North Carolina Professor Ferguson writes within a traditional Press for The Institute of Early American His framework of incompatibility between mercan tory and Culture. Chapel Hill, 1961. Pp. xvi, tile capitalists and agrarians. This leads him to 358. $7.50.) accept at its face value the eighteenth-century argument that paper money and liberty were Given the complexity of early American synonymous, and that specie policies were op public finance, it is not surprising that no pressive. Neither in his specific criticisms of scholar has attempted a full-scale re-examina Forrest McDonald's We the People (Chicago, tion since Charles J. Bullock and William 1956), nor in his closing discussion of Beard's Graham Sumner published their studies more critics, does he make a convincing case. In than two generations ago. Nor is it likely that deed, he criticizes McDonald's interpretation anyone will be courageous enough to tackle of conditions in South Carolina (p. 234), but this problem again in the foreseeable future. has not, apparently, examined the evidence This is unfortunate. For while Professor Fer on which McDonald based his case, and he guson has made a contribution to Revolution offers no proof of his charge (p. 332) that Mc ary literature, his essay is far from satisfactory. Donald has argued that the Constitution did Taking a broad view of his subject, Pro not prohibit the emission of state paper money. fessor Ferguson divides the study into four Thus McDonald has not rejected economic parts. In the first he discusses revolutionary forces, as Ferguson implies, but only rejected finances against the background of his re Beard's attempt to formulate a simplistic, jection of the nineteenth-century condemnation monolithic thesis couched in twentieth-century of fiat money. He demonstrates that revolu terms. At specific points McDonald's analysis tionary financial methods followed traditional may be defective, but his larger conclusion that colonial practice, that the commercial commu the Beard thesis teUs us more about the author 302 READERS CHOICE than about the process of writing and ratifying sented to have been mediocre at best and in the Constitution does not appear to be threat competent, if not bungling, at worst. His mis ened by Ferguson's attempt to state the Beard handling of the New Almaden quicksilver mine position in more moderate terms. affair illustrates the latter aspect of his admin Technical weaknesses, though less serious, istration. His management of Indian affairs are also important. Either Professor Ferguson and his caution over the abortive Negro coloni has been badly served by his editors or he has zation schemes do him most credit. The Secre taken too literally his dictum (p. 285) that the tary's relation to the beginnings of the Pacific "proper approach to the subject is a descriptive railroad construction under federal encourage one." Apart from brief chapter introductions, ment is carefully examined, as is Usher's later he makes little attempt to help his reader for work as solicitor for the Eastern Division mulate meaningful generalizations, but rather (Kansas Pacific) and still later for the Union leaves him to draw his own conclusions. Pacific. One wishes for a more rigorous criti Whether they are what the author intends is cal analysis of Usher's role here—both in his uncertain. Some chapters, such as the third, official capacity (in those free-wheeling days lack unity; others, notably the second, bear no when "conflict of interest" left the conscience discernible relationship to chapter titles. Nor untroubled) and in his private connections have his publishers served him well. There with the slugging match among Henry Villard, seems to be no justification for allowing tables Jay Gould, and others over control and merger to spill over two and occasionally even three of the rail lines of the plains and mountains. pages. While Usher's work is examined, the examina It is a pity that these weaknesses should tion is descriptive rather than analytically have been permitted to detract from what is probing. otherwise a clearly written, solid piece of in The research is solid, the documentary but vestigation. The Lilly Endowment, Inc., sub tressing impressive. The style is ploddingly sidized publication. pedestrian, perhaps befitting the self-effacing nature of the book's subject. PETER J. COLEMAN Washington University DAVID LINDSEY Los Angeles State College John Palmer Usher; Lincoln's Secretary of the Interior. By ELMO R. RICHARDSON and ALAN James Clyman, Frontiersman. The Adventures W. FARLEY. (University of Kansas Press, Law of a Trapper and Covered-Wagon Emigrant as rence, 1960. Pp. 152. Illustrations, notes, bib Told in His Own Reminiscences and Diaries. liography, index. $3.50,) Edited by CHARLES L. CAMP. (Definitive edi tion. Champoeg Press, Portland, Oregon, 1961. Pp. 352. Appendix, illustrations, maps, This slim volume seeks to examine "the per notes, index. $25.00.) sonal politics of federal administrative poli cies" during the Civil War and to analyze "a career which well demonstrates the role of the The James Clyman documents were first intermediary in history." While succeeding in published seriafly in the Quarterly of the Cali its first goal, it leaves much to wish for on the fornia Historical Society, 1925-27, and then second. brought out in a small edition of 330 copies. Of the book's six chapters, the first two sur Bernard DeVoto stated that in the preparation vey John P. Usher's life from his upstate New of the Year of Decision he owed "more to York birth through a quarter-century's law James Clyman than to any other single book. practice in Terre Haute, Indiana. The middle No more careful work has ever been done in chapters inspect his two-years' service in Lin Western history: Camp's editing does almost coln's Cabinet. And the final chapters cover as much as Clyman's text to make it one of his post-war labors as a railroad attorney and the half-dozen classics in the field." This new as prominent resident and one-term mayor of edition, also edited with painstaking care by Lawrence, Kansas. C. L. Camp, contains some new Clyman mate Usher's management of the Interior Depart rial and a great many additional notes. Like ment, whose chief concerns at the time related all books produced by the Champoeg Press, to Indian affairs, public lands, patents, and this is a handsomely printed volume. In view pensions, appears from the record here pre of the care lavished on the editing, and the 303 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1961 expense involved in printing, it is to be re classes of People should seU out comfortable gretted that the proofreading was carelessly homes in Missouri and Elsewhere pack up and done and that the 224 notes that accompany start across such an emmence Barren waste to the text were gathered together in thirty-six settle in some new Place of which they have pages of solid type instead of being handled at most so uncertain information but this is as proper footnotes which they are. Neverthe the character of my countrymen," A month less the publication of the volume is cause for later, when his party reached the Blue, he saw rejoicing. a grave marker of a woman who had died on James Clyman was born in Fauquier County, the trail at the age of seventy. "This stone,'' he Virginia, in 1792; he died in the Napa Val recorded, "shews us that all ages and all sects ley, California, ninety years later. He went as are found to undertake this long tedious and a child with his parents to Pennsylvania and even dangerous Journy for some unknown ob thence to Ohio where he was living at the time ject never to be realized even by those the most of the War of 1812. He drifted west to In fortunate and why because the human mind diana, where he worked at surveying and can never be satisfied never at rest allways on other jobs, to Illinois, and, in 1823, to St. the strech for something new some strange Louis where he met and signed up with Wil novelty." Tennyson would have liked this man. liam Ashley. From 1823 until 1827 he was a fur trapper and perhaps trader in the moun VERNON CARSTENSEN tains. He was a member of the party that University of Wisconsin went through South Pass in 1824 and, with several others, circumnavigated the Great Salt Lake in a bullboat in 1826. The next year he The Jefferson Image in the American Mind. came out of the mountains with furs which By MERRILL D. PETERSON. (Oxford Univer he sold in St. Louis for $1,251. From 1827 sity Press, New York, 1960. Pp. x, 548, Guide until the winter of 1843-1844 he lived in Illi to sources, index. $8.50.) nois and in Wisconsin, near Milwaukee. He crossed the country to Oregon in the summer of 1844, spent the following winter in Oregon. As the philosopher Alfred North Whithead The next spring he joined a party travelling has observed, the success of a free society de to California. Here he remained until 1846 pends not only on a reverence for its symbols when he returned again to the Middle West. but also on its capacity to revise them freely in Two years later, in 1848, he returned overland the light of changing national experience. In to California and the next year, at the age of this work, recently awarded the George Ban fifty-seven, he married, and shortly thereafter croft prize in American history. Professor Pet setded down in the Napa Valley where he re erson has examined Thomas Jefferson as the mained until his death. source of much that is vital in the American The principal documents in this volume in "symbolic code," Reflecting the current pre clude a narrative, begun in 1871, of Clyman's occupation of American historiography with recollections of his years as a mountain man the part played by myth and ideology in our (1823-1824) ; diaries covering the trip to development, the author has systematically Oregon in 1844, the stay in Oregon, the trip and precisely analyzed the evolution of the to California in the spring of 1845, the Cali body of beliefs, ideals, and sentiments that fornia residence, and the trip back to the states constitute the Jefferson image, a fundamental in 1846. The diary entries offer numerous in part of American thought and imagination. teresting observations made more complete be Since this is a "book on what history made cause Clyman apparently had some notions of of Thomas Jefferson," the author begins his publishing a guidebook to Oregon and Cali study in 1826, with Jefferson's death on the fornia, The observations are those of a shrewd fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of fn- and thoughtful but not highly literate man. dependence. Five hours later, while the nation Although himself a wanderer for more than engaged in a vast patriotic celebration, John half of his long life, Clyman was puzzled by Adams, his one-time enemy, uttered his sym the people he met going out to Oregon and bolic last words, "Thomas Jefferson still sur California in 1846, and perhaps a little dis vives," and followed him to the grave. These turbed: "It is remarkable how anxious these circumstances were of such dramatic character people are to hear from the Pacific Country as to lead to an immediate attempt to enshrine and strange that so many of all kinds and Jefferson as the symbol of American republi can liberty, just as Washington, in his lifetime. 304 READERS CHOICE had been enshrined as the symbol of American Bryan worked consistently within a framework nationality. But the effort at apotheosis was of Jeffersonian ideas, and Woodrow Wilson premature. Unlike Washington, the complex reversed his earlier scholarly convictions to Jefferson could not be shaped into a simple, embrace the image. Henry Adams' History, a coherent image. Moreover, as Peterson points new edition of Jefferson's writings, and the out, the ideas and ideals he represented "ad work of Frederick Jackson Turner and Charles dressed the future; they were bound into the A. Beard revived scholarly interest in Jeffer living tissues of a growing democracy; they son. Franklin D, Roosevelt, who in 1925 had bred contention and strife." This vitality of reviewed Claude Bowers' popular Jefferson and the Jefferson image through time leads Peter Hamilton in glowing terms, made the Jefferson son to his convincingly presented view that its image serve the New Deal, which in its spe evolution provides an accurate reflector of cific political and economic programs was de- "America's troubled search for the image of cidely un-Jeffersonian. In fact, Peterson ar itsdf." gues, the New Deal marked the "ultimate dis Because of the protean quality of Jefferson's integration of the Jeffersonian philosophy of ideas and because his theory often did not government." After the Roosevelt Revolution square with his practices, aspects of the Jeffer reasonable men could no longer yearn for an son image could be made to serve a variety of agrarian Utopia, accept the Jefferson-fs.-Ham purposes in the political struggles that foflowed ilton interpretation of American history, or his death. To Jacksonians, he was an intransi seriously propose that government be organ gent Democrat, to conservatives a ruthless ized on the Jefferson model. But paradox demagogue, to Whigs a liberal and practical ically through the destruction of the more con statesman, and to Old Republicans a states crete aspects of his tradition, the canonization rights constitutionalist. Through exegesis of of Jefferson was made possible, for by now the Jefferson writings, through extrapolation of his Jefferson image could represent a cultural con accepted doctrines, and even through the use census—"the faith in the power of free men of spurious documents, politicians of varied constantly to rediscover their heritage and to persuasion sought to clothe themselves in Jef work out their destiny in its spirit." ferson's mantle. The Jefferson image informed There is an undercurrent of pessimism in all battles over the issues of the ante-bellum the author's intriguing concluding speculations era. Nullificationists and Secessionists appealed on the future of the Jefferson image. His anal to the Jefferson of the Kentucky resolutions. ysis is convincing. He points out that Amer Abolitionists to the author of the Notes on ica has become inextricably involved in the Virginia, and the new Republican Party to the affairs of the world and that world events wifl father of the Declaration of Independence. determine our future. But Jefferson, who rep Peterson recognizes that afl the appeals to Jef resents much that is best in the American tra ferson had a degree of validity, for, as he puts dition, provides an incongruous symbol in a it, "in the clashing and refracted light of time, revolutionary world. Viewed in the light of Jefferson's landmarks were enigmatic, and the world history or through the eyes of recent re guideposts pointed in several directions," One visionist historians, Jefferson seems more and of the major merits of the book is that Peter more a fundamentally unradical representative son is able to examine dispassionately the of an unique system that can not be exported. evolution of the image without partisan in One can not help but agree with Peterson that a volvement in the struggles of any period. As Jefferson image that has at its heart a Jefferson Peterson's own examination of Jeffersonian who speaks for the American liberal-capitalist historiography demonstrates, historians and consensus provides litde with which to counter scholars have rarely demonstrated this kind of the dynamic ideology of Communism in most intellectual integrity. of the rest of the world. In the years after the Civil War, Jefferson In his 63-page essay on sources, Peterson fell into eclipse, Alexander Hamilton became a has provided a magnificent guide to printed patron saint of the Republican Party, and he Jefferson materials. In view of all that has been not Jefferson attracted the interest and atten written about Jefferson, it is not surprising that tion of historians and biographers. But the the study required twelve years to complete, Jefferson image survived and by the turn of but the author's enormous labor was eminently the century its power had been restored. The worthwhile. Tfie Jefferson Image is an unquali Populists emphasized the radical and agrarian fied success. Original in approach, prodigious aspects of the tradition. Wifliam Jennings in research, mature in viewpoint, felicitous in 305 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1961 style, this exploration in intellectual history because they contain a great deal of economic, provides an essential book on Jefferson. It de political, and social information they are of serves to rank with such important recent great importance to scholars interested in works of Jeffersonian scholarship as Dumas studying Florida and the relationships of the Malone's biography and the Princeton edition territories in general to the federal govern of the Jefferson Papers. ment. Many of the documents consist of rou tine correspondence, petitions, appointments CHARLES N. GLAAB of officers, proclamations, and stockholders' University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee reports, but there is also correspondence relat ing to such matters as the removal of Governor McCall, the illegal cutting of timber on federal The Territorial Papers of the United States: lands, and abolitionist activities among the Vol. XXV, Tfie Territory of Florida, 1834- slaves. 1839. Compiled and edited by CLARENCE ED The next territory to be covered after an WIN CARTER. (Government Printing Office, other volume on Florida will be Wisconsin, Washington, 1960. Pp. 790. $6.00.) 1836-1848. In preparation, the staff of the National Archives has already culled great This is the twenty-fifth volume of Clarence quantities of records relating to Wisconsin and Carter's monumental compilation of the Ter has processed over one hundred rolls of micro ritorial Papers of the United States, and the film. Carter will make most of his selections fourth of five projected volumes on Florida for publication from the microfilmed docu Territory. The volume covers the administra ments and from the portions of the Executive tions of governors John Eaton, 1834-1839, and Journal in the custody of Archives Division, Richard Call, 1836-1839. Most of the docu State Historical Society of Wisconsin. ments are from the National Archives in Wash It is hoped that the territorial papers project, ington, although some are housed in other first authorized by Congress in 1925, will be places, such as the Library of Congress and the carried through to final completion. The suc Florida State Library. ceeding volumes will always be welcomed and, The important record series of official papers of course, the volumes on Wisconsin should be concerning the federal administration of the an invaluable aid to the study of the territory. territory have been published almost in their entirety. These include the records of the LAWRENCE H. LARSEN State Department, which had over-all jurisdic State Historical Society of Wisconsin tion over the administration of the territory, the letterbooks of the Postmaster General re lating to the establishment and operation of A Guide to Arcfiives and Manuscripts in the the postal system, plus the memorials and peti United States: Compiled for the National His tions sent to Congress by local citizens. Un torical Publications Committee. Edited by fortunately, only a fragment, running from PHILIP M. HAMER, (Yale University Press, January to June, 1840, remains of the Terri New Haven. Connecticut, 1961. Pp, xxiii, 775, torial Executive Journal, which includes all $12,50,) appointments and copies of official documents such as court proceedings and governor's mes So many things about this remarkable re sages. search tool deserve mention that it is difficult The editor and his staff, with the view in to know where to begin and where to end. It mind of supplementing what is already in print is the first extensive guide to unpublished rec and providing a more complete picture of the ords in the United States that has ever been operations of the territorial government, have produced. From some 1,300 depositories Dr. included selections from other record groups. Hamer and his staff have obtained records of There are records concerning Indian defense their holdings and compiled therefrom this and important land purchases, along with cer compendium of information on the hundreds tain important papers from various govern of millions of items that comprise the papers ment agencies such as the Treasury Depart collected and preserved in public depositories ment, which handled customs, and the Navy throughout the country. Department, which maintained naval stations Here are listed the important collections of at Key West and Pensacola, national, regional, and state archival agencies, The documents in this well-indexed volume state and local historical societies, college and constitute the "raw material" of history, and university libraries, national and state libra- 306 READERS CHOICE ries, and numerous institutions whose own ac by consulting the jjublished guides and the per cumulations of records have grown to substan sons in charge of collections. The American tial proportions. Some of these agencies, to historians' dream of a union list of historical be sure, have issued information from time to manuscript collections comparable to the Na time on their collections in the form of notes tional Union Catalog of printed items and the in scholarly journals, articles in their quarterly volumes of serial publications and newspapers publications, or in published guides to their is at last realized, collections. This Guide summarizes the con tents of reports such as these and brings them ALICE E, SMITH up to approximately the year 1960; it also con State Historical Society of Wisconsin tains information on a surprising number that have sprung up recently and on some long-es tablished ones that have made virtually no pub The Proudest Day: Macdonough on Lake lic announcements of their holdings. Champlain. By CHARLES G. MULLER. (The The wealth of information has been pre John Day Company, New York, 1960. Pp. ix, sented in a way best calculated to aid the 373. Maps, bibliography, index. $5.75.) researcher. Collections are listed alphabeti cally by state and by city within the state. Within each large depository collections are The Proudest Day is designed by Charles classified according to a pre-determined ar G. Muller to rescue Thomas Macdonough's rangement—roughly, period, subject, and pro victory on Lake Champlain from relative neg fessions. The approximate size of the holdings lect. His defeat of a stronger British fleet on of each depository is usually indicated, also of Plattsburgh Bay, September 11, 1814, was a each item. References lead to printed sources greater achievement than any of Perry's vic containing further information on holdings. tories, and perhaps had a more significant Each individual is identified in terms of resi strategic importance. Macdonough's fleet and dence, occupation, and position, A 132-page General Alexander Macomb's outnumbered de index includes references to proper names, geo fenders of Plattsburgh were the only barriers graphical designations, and subject headings. between the invading force of veteran British All these aids to the researcher do not mean troops and New York City. Moreover, the he need no longer do exploratory work. Small knowledge of Macdonough's victory strength collections of less than fifty pieces have, for ened the hand of American peace negotiators the most part, been omitted. Relatively few at Ghent and made the war look more hope names of persons of less than national fame— less to top British officials. those who did not attain the Dictionary of Macdonough's achievement in the two-and- American Biography or Who's Who in Amer a-half-hour battle was the result of two years' ica—were included. Eighteenth and nine work. He constructed and equipped a fleet in teenth-century figures predominate. The em the face of tremendous logistical problems; he phasis falls on personal collections, rather than procured and trained the sailors; and he strug those of social, business, labor, scientific, or gled tirelessly against local indifference, even other organizations that loom large in modern- hostility, and against the nearly uniform Army day affairs. Nor was it possible in a one-volume incompetence. Muller has used these two years publication to devote much space to indicat of preparation to build his story to an artisti ing who one's correspondents were and what cally satisfying and historically accurate cli subjects were discussed—matters of deep in max. terest to the historian. This well-written book about the hero of Despite these drawbacks the volume will un Lake Champlain is the product of fifteen years doubtedly prove to be indispensable to every of part-time but painstaking research. Muller advanced student of American history. Where has foflowed the finest tradition of Kenneth as he formerly had to search through dozens of Roberts and MacKinlay Kantor in diligently scattered reference books, he can now find pursuing the facts to exhaust the primary and between the covers of one volume information secondary materials before resorting to artistic on every major historical collection in the fifty license. The author used imagination to create states, the District of Columbia, and the Canal minor incidents, dialogue between characters, Zone, Without stirring from his desk he can Macdonough's domestic life, and several minor trace the location of divided collections, deter characters who embody contemporary senti mine what institutions in a state or locality ments about the war. Muller, however, seldom preserve records, and extend his investigations strays from documented facts and most of his 307 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1961 fiction is built upon insights developed by a Protestant denominations. Instead he chooses fifteen-year absorption in the project. "a minority . . . [who] were living out pur Obviously Macdonough was courageous, re poses only dimly felt by others"—ministers sourceful, and able, but the reader wifl feel who if not "typical" were at least "sympto that Muller has succumbed to fifteen years of matic," for they "registered points of pres hero worship: the well-drawn portrait is too sure" (p. 1). idealized. The resultant paragon does not jibe Meyer begins his analysis with a backward with the Macdonough as revealed by letters in glance at the development of the social gospel the appendix. These suggest a stubborn man tradition. His view is sweeping and full of in with a pungent vocabulary. Perhaps the attri sights that have been missed or blurred in the bute which is hardest to swallow is Macdon works of earlier scholars. The social gospel is ough's sense of destiny which Muller has added seen as the middle-class response to the chal as an artistic ingredient to bolster the story's lenge of immigration, urbanization, and busi unity and suspense. The one-sided view leaves ness expansion. It is a theology which identifies one to speculate about the Army's problems of the Kingdom of God in America with middle- dealing with Macdonough. Moreover, the bal class Protestant culture. And most important ance of power between the two fleets may have of all, the social gospel leaders are character been in Macdonough's favor since Captain ized by a lack of critical self-consciousness. George Downie's fleet was even more ill pre The social gospel preachers lacked self- pared than that of the American commander. awareness in failing to see the need for a In spite of partisanship and the few surpris strategy which would put them in an effective ing omissions from his twelve-page bibliogra position to carry out the process of individual phy, such as C, T. Harbeck's Bibliography of conversion. Moreover, they did not realize that the History of the United States Navy and by the mid-1920's the middle-class Kingdom George Dangerfield's Era of Good Feeling, was on the wane, and that they themselves were Muller has written a fast-paced, accurate book out of touch with the sources of political power which should help to keep Commodore Thomas in the American community. Long before the Macdonough's memory green. nation entered the economic depression of 1929, it found itself in the trough of a religious RICHMOND D. WILLIAMS depression. American Association for State Put as succinctly as possible, the problem and Local History was this: from Washington Gladden to Walter Rauschenbusch, the social gospel looked for God's Grace to work itself out within the his torical context. This basic commitment to the The Protestant Search for Political Realism, existing cultural and historical milieu pre 1919-1941. By DONALD B. MEYER. (Univer vented the social gospel thinker from search sity of California Press, Berkeley and Los An ing for new tools or strategies which would geles, 1960. Pp. X, 482. $6.75.) allow him to make a more effective analysis of society. The mature social gospel tradition was, Begun as a doctoral dissertation under Ar in other words, a prisoner both of its social thur M. Schlesinger, Jr., at Harvard Univer context and of its theological presuppositions. sity, this study essays to "record the evolution It was thus doubly isolated from the fast-mov of . . . religious self-consciousness under the ing tide of political and social reality which pressure of politics" (p. 2). Professor Meyer's threatened to leave liberal religion in some book differs from two recent treatments of this shallow historical backwater. same problem in that he neither finds his focus The concept of self-consciousness is central in the great wealth of religious periodicals, re to this book. In his attempt to make use of the ports, and minutes of General Assemblies and idea, Meyer employs tools from sociology and Convocations (as does Robert Moats Mifler in psychology, and uses the rigorous yardstick American Protestantism and Social Issues, of logic in examining the development of theo 1919-1939), nor is he interested in describing logical and political ideas. Self-consciousness detailed relations and interactions between emerges as the awareness of one's relationship American Protestantism and American Politics to society and of the social origins of theology. (as is Paul Carter in The Decline and Revival It is also the understanding of contradictions, of the Social Gospel, 1920-1940.) Meyer dis both implicit and explicit, which a system of avows at the outset any attempt to study typi religious ideas holds. And most broadly de cal or representative thinkers in the major fined, self-consciousness is an understanding 308 READERS CHOICE of the viable alternatives open to any system from Marxian realism to Augustinian conserv of ideas when translated into social or politi atism. cal action. The Protestant Search for Political Realism Relatively few Protestant ministers expe is not an easy book to read. Its depth of analy rienced the shock of self-consciousness. For sis rivals the work of Perry Miller on earlier those who did, in most cases the original im periods of American religious development. In petus came from a realization of the role re many ways Meyer's study ends unsatisfactorily ligion played in the sanctification of America's with the coming of the Second World War. participation in World War One. In the tragic The concluding chapter is pregnant with hints figure of A. J. Muste it worked itself out in a and guesses which need greater elaboration. system of Utopian pacifism, while in the acid It is to be hoped that scholars soon will carry writings of Charles Clayton Morrison of The this type of study through the post-World War Christian Century self-consciousness eventually Two period. took the form of reactionary isolationism. JOHN E. LANKFORD Kirby Page plunged from the pulpit into the stream of labor strife, and for Harry Ward University of Wisconsin the Moscow line came to replace the vision of the middle-class Kingdom. This vital self- awareness took institutional form in denomi The Siege of New Orleans. By CHARLES D. national social action committees and in such BROOKS. (University of Washington Press, non-denominational organizations as the Fel Seattle, 1961. Pp. x, 334. $6.50.) lowship of Reconciliation and the Feflowship of Socialist Christians. But in terms of partic Though the causes and results of the War ipation in organizations and the development of 1812 have repeatedly been pondered over of ideas, the shock was embodied most per by historians, the actual fighting has received fectly in one man—Reinhold Niebuhr. scant attention. This is not altogether surpris In many ways Niebuhr is the hero of this ing. For the most part the war was a singu book. Much of Meyer's analysis focuses on the larly undistinguished conflict which deserves writings of the Detroit preacher turned Semi the oblivion to which it has been consigned by nary Professor. Essentially, Niebuhr found British historians. The mighty struggles of himself forced to do two things. First, he had France at bay dominate the military history of to contend with the optimism latent in the old the years from 1812 to 1814, and with eyes social gospel synthesis—he had to offer an al blinded by the fiery clash of armies in Europe ternative to the myth of progress. To do this it is difficult to focus on the erratic progress of Niebuhr posited a tragic view of the history of tiny armies on the North American continent. Western culture, and in this attempt he was The land war only takes on a truly dramatic greatly aided by the great depression of 1929 quality in the course of the British expedition and the development of world politics in the against New Orleans in December, 1814, and decade of the 1930's, In short, Niebuhr sug January, 1815. This campaign is here treated gested that the Kingdom would not work itself in detail by Professor Brooks. With extensive out in time and that God's Grace was some detail Brooks attempts to conjure up the whole thing quite beyond human history. Secondly, atmosphere of the British campaign. He does it was necessary for him to re-examine the this by laying stress on the reactions of the sources of sin. Sin was shown to be something lesser participants (particularly on the Brit more than a product of environment. It was ish side), and for the most part he succeeds in relocated in human nature. Most difficult of presenting an interesting narrative. It is a all, Niebuhr had to make those moves without narrative which appears to be based exclu giving up the possibility of political action. He sively on printed sources and secondary works, did not wish to follow the path of the anti-his but Professor Brooks has used these to good torical theologians led by the exiled German, effect. He succeeds in making the conflict a Karl Barth. Niebuhr wished to open the way clash of individuals rather than a pattern of so for a pragmatic attack on political problems many regiments or companies, and recreates using whatever tools seemed practical. He both the fierce glory of the American defense wanted to tap the springs of both Reformation and the poignancy of the British veterans who humility and Renaissance aspiration. Rein- survived the campaigns against Napoleon only hold Niebuhr created a system of dynamic to die advancing in a steady, futile line against paradoxes and within this framework moved relentless fire on a Louisiana plantation. Professor Brooks' work does, however, have 309 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1961 certain weaknesses. He neglects analysis in The familiar aspects of Borah have been his stressing narrative, and judgments have often position as one of the frreconcilables in oppo to be gleaned from his descriptions, fn regard sition to the League of Nations and the World to the main personages these judgments seem Court, his subsequent advocacy of the "Out somewhat oversimplified. There may well be lawry of War," and his insistence upon reten truth in the impression of a relentless, brave tion of the rigid embargo principle in the Andrew Jackson, an unimaginative General neutrality legislation of the 1930's. On these Pakcnham, a rather slow and not-very-bright subjects the material in this book supplements General Keane, and an irascible, foolhardy rather than changes the record already known Cochrane, but one could accept these judg to historians, though many enriching details ments more readily if they were proved rather are given. The important contribution of Pro than assumed, Jackson tends to become the fessor McKenna is that she makes possible a popular "hero of New Orleans" in these pages. much broader evaluation of the man, and that He even utters the terse phrase "it's magnifi she offers a credible analysis of the influences cent. But it isn't war," (p, 241) as the British which helped to shape him. troops advance to be slaughtered. If this is Though the author is often sympathetic to correct, then General Bosquet's famous "C'est her subject, at no time is she an apologist for magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre" of him. fn fact she demonstrates convincingly Balaclava was forty years too late. An attempt that his views were full of inconsistencies, and at estimating the relative importance of Jack the political course which he followed was er son's generalship, the skill of his troops, the ratic. In the field of domestic policy she de nature of the terrain, British mistakes, and the scribes him as "a Republican by inheritance, a other reasons for the striking American vic Democrat by inclination"—actually a noncon tory would have added a great deal to the vol formist who never officially left his party, but ume. in 1912, 1924, and 1932 absolutely refused to fn short, though the book would have been endorse its presidential candidates. His tal improved by more penetrating analysis. Pro ents seemed particularly suited to a minority fessor Brooks has written an interesting volume position; he never hesitated to castigate mem which will be of interest to the layman as well bers of his own party, or to urge that it must as to the historian. be reorganized according to his concept of REGINALD HORSMAN righteousness. At the same time he enjoyed thoroughly the power he was able to wield as University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, to which he succeeded by seniority right early Borah. By MARIAN C. MCKENNA. (University in 1924, following the death of Henry Cabot of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1961. Pp. 450. Lodge. From this bastion he hurled forth a $7.50.) constant stream of opinions, defying Presidents as well as mere Secretaries of State, and justi Quite appropriately this book bears no title fying his conduct by reference to the constitu beyond the name of the enigmatic individual tional powers accorded to the Senate. ist from Idaho who served in the Senate from Many penetrating comments on Borah and 1907 to 1940. Though often the center of at his contemporaries are scattered throughout tention during a career which spanned seven this book, including this allusion to the Presi presidential administrations, William E. Borah dent whom he most admired: "he could well has until now lacked an adequate biography. have caught from Theodore Roosevelt both a Marian C. McKenna was fortunate in securing fuller understanding of the grim need for do access to voluminous papers covering nearly mestic readjustment and a larger vision of the fifty years of his life, including in addition to country's necessary role in world affairs." Un office files such valuable personal records as his fortunately, this Senator was rarely influenced scrapbooks and the dictated reports of confi by other people. Considered by some an intel dential conferences in the White House. Out lectual recluse, he was fond of quoting Emer of this great mass of materials she has pro son's essay on "Self-Reliance," and the trait of duced a scholarly book, in which she carefully character which he most admired was courage. sets forth the views and actions of Borah, and Undoubtedly he possessed this quality in high at the same time adroitly sketches his relation measure, along with complete honesty, sincer ship to the Republican party of the twentieth ity, and a passionate brand of patriotism. century and to the changing issues which ex However, another measure of the man is that cited popular attention. no important act of Congress bears his name. 310 READERS CHOICE Though his influence at times reached stagger well Address transformed it into a political ing proportions, few will want to overlook his testament. He ends his study with a detailed faulty judgments, or the arrogance with which discussion of the Farewell, which he considers he clung to them. the capstone to the entire development of DOROTHY J. ERNST American ideas on foreign policy, ideas rooted University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in Europe's contemporary thought on diplo macy and foreign affairs. He thus sees a unity To the Farewell Address: Ideas of Early Amer and continuity in American ideas on foreign ican Foreign Policy. By FELIX GILBERT. policy running from the colonial period (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1961. through the Federalist era, at least to 1796, Pp. viii, 173. $3.75.) This interpretation, which other historians have not stressed, is a unique and valuable In recent years scholars have shown an in feature of this book. creasing interest in the ideas that have con If there is any weakness in this study it is tributed to the development of American for the author's effort to seek too much in the eign policy. One of the first to concern him Farewell Address. He says it reveals the basic self with this aspect of American diplomatic issue of the American attitude toward foreign history was Professor Gilbert of Bryn Mawr policy, the tension between idealism and real Coflege, a distinguished student of European ism. It seems doubtful that there is such a history. Diplomatic historians have long been basic attitude, that this is it, and that it is im familiar with his two excellent articles on the plicit in the Farewell Address. This conclusion, European sources of American ideas in foreign an effort to show that the Farewell is part of an policy. The first, on "The English Background endless problem, appears to be an attempt to of American Isolationism in the Eighteenth read a contemporary academic debate into the Century," was published in 1944 in The Wil past. All of this, however, is only a minor part liam and Mary Quarterly and the second, "The of Professor Gilbert's presentation and does 'New Diplomacy' of the Eighteenth Century," not detract from a delightful litde book, lucid in 1951 in World Politics. At last he has taken in its ideas, fresh in its prose, and profound these essays and made them the core of a book in its scholarship. For those who wish to ex showing how European ideas, or merely no plore the early ideas on American foreign pol tions, were fashioned into a special American icy and their origins in Europe, no better guide approach to foreign policy. Specifically, he than this can be recommended. seeks to analyze the varied intellectual trends ALEXANDER DCCONDE that went into the making of Washington's The University of Michigan Farewell Address and hence to shed additional light on its beginnings, English colonists came to America, Gilbert A History of the United States Weather Bu says, to construct a better social order, an ob reau. By DONALD R. WHITNAH. (University jective which presupposed a critical attitude of fllinois Press, Urbana, 1961. Pp. ix, 267. toward European values and a fear that Old $6,00,) World vices might spread to the New, This con cept, based on the ideas of the Enlightenment Whitnah's account of the United States in Europe, led to the early growth of what has Weather Bureau, from its beginning in 1870 been called isolationism. He points out, how as a part of the Army Signal Service to the ever, that the foreign policy of the newly inde launching of the weather satellite. Tiros f, in pendent nation, stemming from English intel 1960, is a significant contribution to the grow lectual currents as wefl as from the thinking ing body of literature on the history of science of the French philosophes, with its emphasis and the growth of the national bureaucracy. on commerce and no political connections, was It will be especially useful to researchers work idealistic and internationalist as well as isola ing in these areas, but should interest all his tionist. He explains how and why these seem torians. It clearly demonstrates the inevitable ingly contradictory concepts were not incom growth of a national bureaucracy in an in patible. creasingly technological society. In discussing Federalist foreign policy, Gil A professional meteorologist as well as an bert suggests tbat the Jay Treaty, still a source historian, Whitnah is particularly well quali of controversy among historians, had little fied to write a history of the Weather Bureau. value in preserving American neutrality, and His casual use of terms such as "inverted that Hamilton in revising Washington's Fare astatic pendulum," "ceilometer," "selsyn type," 311 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1961 and "sling psychrometer" indicate the meteor where virtually no secondary studies pointed ological knowledge he brought to his study. the way. His use of these terms without adequate defi GRAHAM P. HAWKS nition, however, also suggests the book's major Western Michigan University failing. It is primarily the work of a meteorolo gist rather than an historian. American Suffrage from Property to Democ Granted the limitations of space and the racy, 1760-1860. By CHILTON WILLIAMSON. great amount of material to be covered, Whit (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1960. nah too often simply states an event or situa Pp. xi, 306. $6.00.) tion without an adequate explanation of its significance. He might have dealt with signifi Many histories of the suffrage in America cant material more effectively had he omitted were published in the late nineteenth and early some irrelevant detail. For example, a para twentieth centuries. Some reflected an anti graph begins, "European nations ignored the quarian preoccupation with minutiae, others United States as a political threat in this era; were as general as they were broad. But all yet it could not he denied that American contributed to that era in American historiog weather observations would be helpful to Eu raphy in which general surveys preceded spe ropean forecasters" (p. 36). The relevance of cialized monographic analysis. Professor Wil the first part of the sentence is not clear. Later, liamson is the first scholar to benefit from the discussing criticisms of the Weather Bureau, revived interest in the conduct of state politics he writes, "In another case, also in Chicago, which has occurred since the forties. He has complaints were sent to Congress, apparently combined his own archival research with the from a tavern address, to ridicule the Weather findings of local specialists. On the whole the Bureau" (p. 236). The complaints and the sig result is exceUent. His synthesis is both mean nificance of the tavern address are not stated. ingful and authoritative, and earlier miscon Whitnah also refers to "the comments of Ar ceptions or spurious generalizations are cor thur Godfrey toward the Baltimore station rected. [which] were not entirely complimentary, al The study is divided into five parts: the late though an apology was later made" (p. 237). colonial period; the Revolutionary generation; Again, the complaints are not stated. One the Jeffersonian age; the Jacksonian era; and would expect an historian to display a more the pre-Civil War decades. Within each seg critical approach to his material than is sug ment the author discusses both the legal and gested by these illustrations. the practical bases of the suffrage system, care- One would also expect a bit more regard for fufly distinguishes the electoral systems of the the rules of syntax than is apparent in this several colonies and states, demonstrates the book. For example, the author writes, "In a importance of local variations within particu similar manner, snow storms dating to 1717 lar jurisdictions, and, so far as possible, sur are also available from several of these indi veys developments within the larger context vidual records" (p. 10), and "The editors not of revolution, war, factionalism, and intellec only praised the United States Signal Service tual and reform currents. but also the enterprising owners of the New Sometimes sharply at variance with tradi York Herald who, they claimed, had probably tional interpretations, Williamson's conclusions done more than anyone else to popularize the are always enlightening and his data are bound effects of Atlantic weather on British weather, to prove a boon to all scholars interested in for foretelling such storms" (p, 37). American political development, national as These criticisms should not obscure the fact well as state, in the century preceding the Civil that Whitnah has told "the story of the public War. A few examples will have to suffice. Al services provided by [the Weather Bureau]," though there were wide variations in the pat the task he set for himself, fn his study, he has tern, Williamson concludes that although included the conflicts within the Bureau, con the property qualification for the franchise flicts with other branches of the national gov was not as restrictive in colonial America ernment. Congressional investigations, the as an earlier generation of historians believed, establishment of uniform procedures, research, the general consequence of the Revolution was the expansion of services in response to public to challenge the property qualification and, and Congressional demands, and the problem potentially at least, to enlarge the electorate. of verification of forecasts. In doing this, Whit Except negatively, however, the critical period nah has had to deal with a mass of documents was not one of substantial achievement. Though the decade may have been reaction- 312 READERS CHOICE ary in other respects, it "was not reactionary inescapable. Nevertheless, given the complex by and large in regard to the suffrage" (p. ity and variety of data, not to mention the 136) . Williamson also demonstrates that West problem of following developments occurring ern suffrage history was merely a recapitula in more that two dozen jurisdictions, more fre tion of earlier themes and events along the quent use of summary conclusions would have Adantic seaboard. Turner, he argues, "had helped the reader along. Too, any attempt to the western cart before the eastern horse" (p. isolate one facet of political history is bound 209), and the New West was neither unique to produce some distortion. Though the study nor "made any new contribution to the growth is set in a broad context, occasionally, as in of suffrage democracy" (p. 222). the Dorr War, the suffrage question is allowed Three weaknesses are worth noting. First, to overshadow all other and perhaps more im though we should be grateful for footnotes portant issues. But these are minor criticisms placed at the bottom of each page, the use of and they do not detract from a work which is op. cit., especially in the absence of a bibliog certain to have great utility for many years. raphy, creates difficulties. These are com We are also indebted to the Ford Foundation pounded when the citation on page 19, is, which subsidized publication. apparently, to a work by Lewis B. Namier first PETER J. COLEMAN cited fully on page 42. The others are, perhaps. Washington University BOOK REVIEWS: Adams, ed,, The Explorations of Pierre Esprit Radisson, reviewed by Thurman Fox 298 Bond, ed,. Under the Flag of the Nation: Diaries and Letters of a Yankee Volunteer in the Civil War, reviewed by Glenn E, Thompson 289 Brooks, The Siege of New Orleans, reviewed by Reginald Horsman 309 Camp, ed,, James Clyman, Frontiersman. The Adventures of a Trapper and Covered- Wagon Emigrant as Told in His Own Reminiscences and Diaries, reviewed by Vernon Carstensen 303 Carter, ed.. The Territorial Papers of the United States: Vol. XXV, The Territory of Florida, 1834-1839, reviewed by Lawrence H, Larsen 306 Derleth, The Hills Stand Watch, reviewed by Victor P, Hass 294 Ferguson, The Power of the Purse; A History of American Public Finance, 1776-1790, reviewed by Peter J, Coleman 302 Folwell, A History of Minnesota, Volume II, reviewed by William E, Lass 297 Gilbert, To the Farewell Address: Ideas of Early American Foreign Policy, reviewed by Alexander DeConde 311 Hamer, ed,, A Guide to Archives and Manuscripts in the United States: Compiled for the National Historical Publications Committee, reviewed by Alice E, Smith 306 Harper, Ohio Handbook of the Civil War, reviewed by Margaret Mansfield 293 Holloway, Hamlin Garland; A Biography, reviewed by James B, Stronks 297 Huston, '93-41: Thunder Lake Narrow Gauge, reviewed by L. G, Sorden 295 Jones, The Civil War in the Northwest: Nebraska, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and the Dakotas, reviewed by Guy J, Gibson 290 McKenna, Borah, reviewed by Dorothy J, Ernst 310 McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, reviewed by Richard N, Current 292 Meyer, The Protestant Search for Political Realism, 1919-1941, reviewed by John E, Lankford 308 Muller, The Proudest Day: MacDonough on Lake Champlain, reviewed by Richmond D, Williams 307 Nolan, The Iron Brigade: A Military History, reviewed by Jerry M, Slechta 287 Pelling, American Labor, reviewed by Gerd Korman 301 Peterson, The Jefferson Image in the American Mind, reviewed by Charles N. Glaab.... 304 Richardson and Farley, John Palmer Usher: Lincoln's Secretary of the Interior, reviewed by David Lindsey 303 Ross, La Pointe, Village Outpost, reviewed by Doris H, Platt 294 Roth, ed,. Well, Mary: Civil War Letters of a Wisconsin Volunteer, reviewed by Glenn E, Thompson 289 Russell, The Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill, reviewed by Homer E, Socolofsky 299 Shannon, The Decline of American Communism, reviewed by Robert H, L, Wheeler 300 Whitnah, A History of the United States Weather Bureau, reviewed by Graham P, Hawks 311 Whitridge, No Compromise! The Story of the Fanatics Who Paved the Way to the Civil War, reviewed by Robert G, Gunderson 290 Williamson, American Suffrage from Property to Democracy, 1760-1860, reviewed by Peter J. Coleman 312 Woodford, Father Abraham's Children; Michigan Episodes in the Civil War, reviewed by Ida C, Brown 293 313 ACCESSIONS The following accessions in the Manuscripts relating to army experiences at Camj) Randall Library represent microfilms and pliotostats in Madison, descriptions of fighting near At cataloged within the past year. lanta, and the march through Georgia; diaries of Isaac Newton Stewart relating to his ex periences as a recruiter at Chicago and as a Presidential Papers. The personal papers of conscript; letters relating to Morris Fyfe, 4th twenty-three Presidents of the United States Regiment Wisconsin Volunteers, written from are in the Library of Congress and are being Maryland, Virginia, and the lower Mississippi made available to other libraries through mi area; letters from John Anderson, 3rd Regi crofilm. Recent acquisitions by the State His ment Wisconsin Volunteers, written chiefly torical Society include the papers of Chester from Maryland, Virginia, and Tennessee; ex A, Arthur, Grover Cleveland, William Henry tracts from the diary and letters of Edwin Harrison, Andrew Johnson, Abraham Lincoln, Burnett, 23rd Regiment Wisconsin Volunteers, James Madison, James Monroe, Franklin describing army routine and maneuvers in Pierce, Zachary Taylor, and John Tyler, Al Kentucky, Tennessee, and along the lower Mis though there are wide variations in the size sissippi River; diary of Joseph Merrill, 19th and complexity of each series of presidential Regiment Wisconsin Volunteers, describing papers, the researcher will find a detailed list army experiences in Virginia, North Carolina, ing of contents on the first reel of each collec and Maryland; letters of Irwin Eckels, 32nd tion. Regiment Wisconsin Volunteers, describing army life and maneuvers in Tennessee, Missis Civil War Papers. Papers containing cor sippi, Alabama, and Georgia; letters from respondence and accounts relating to the Civil John A. Chambers, 22nd Regiment Wisconsin War include: correspondence of Orrin Buttles, Volunteers, describing army life and skir 1st Regiment Wisconsin Volunteers, describing mishes in Kentucky and Tennessee; letters chiefly the Maryland area of fighting; letters from John Brandon, 43rd Regiment Wisconsin from George B. Thomas, 5th Regiment Wiscon Volunteers, describing army life and maneuv sin Volunteers, relating to army life and mi ers in Missouri, Tennessee, and Kentucky; nor batdes in Virginia; correspondence of letters from Samuel and Robert Monteith, 7th James Burton Pond, 3rd Regiment Wisconsin Regiment Wisconsin Volunteers, relating to Cavalry, relating to experiences in Kansas their service in Virginia; letters from James against Quantrell's raiders; letters of Charles D. McVicar, 16th Regiment Wisconsin Volun M. Smith, 16th Regiment Wisconsin Volun teers, from Camp Randall in Madison, and teers, written from Camp Randafl in Madison from the lower Mississippi River area describ and from various Southern States, including ing fighting at Pittsburg Landing and near accounts of the battles of Atlanta and Kennesaw Vicksburg; diaries and notebooks of Suflivan Mountain; two letters concerning the army Dexter Green, 24th Regiment Michigan Vol rating and death of Wesley Patton, 36th Regi unteers and member of the "fron Brigade," ment Wisconsin Volunteers; notebook contain relating to his activities as a member of the ing papers of the Edward Lathrop Paine fam 24th Michigan as wefl as to his newspaper ac ily of Oshkosh, including Civil War letters of tivities; a contract for a substitute to serve for Nathan Paine, 1st Regiment Wisconsin Cav three years in place of Enoch Lewis in the alry, Charles N, Paine, 21st Regiment Wiscon United States Naval Service, August 26, 1864, sin Cavalry, and Charles Robert Nevitt, 5th and his certificate of non-liability for service, Regiment Wisconsin Volunteers (Reorgan August 27, 1864; and brief biographies and ized) ; letters of Jeremiah D, Swart, 1st Regi accounts of Civil War service by members of ment Wisconsin Cavalry, describing army the Grand Army of the Republic, Department maneuvers in Missouri, Tennessee, and Ala of Wisconsin, William B. Gushing Post Num bama; memoirs of Jacob T, Foster concerning ber Nineteen, Waukesha County, Wisconsin. his experiences as a teacher and businessman near Sheboygan, and as captain of the 1st Wis consin Battery of Light Artillery, and as lieu Autobiographies. Autobiography of Robert tenant colonel of the 1st Wisconsin Battery of Fargo, Lake Mills merchant and banker; auto Heavy Artillery; correspondence of Frank H. biography of Lorenzo Dow Fargo, pioneer Putney, 12th Regiment Wisconsin Volunteers, Lake Mills farmer, relating to his journey from 314 ACCESSIONS Connecticut to Wisconsin, the Civil War years vision of History of Trade Unionism, and "The on the farm, and the building of the I-^ake Mills End of the New Deal's Advance" (Restricted) ; library; autobiography of John Strange, lum letter, July 28, 1809, from Nicolas Boilvin, berman, relating to his business and political agent at Prairie du Chien, to President James activities, including his service as Lieutenant Madison describing the Indians at Prairie du Governor of Wisconsin and his association Chien and making recommendations for main with Robert M, La Follette, Sr,; papers of Gen taining good relations with them; files for eral Horace Capron, U, S, Commissioner of November 4, 1958 (Election Day), of the As Agriculture, 1867-1871, including correspond sociated Press 'A' trunk wire; papers, 1789- ence and autobiographical data relating to 186J, of P, B, Barbeau, Sault Ste, Marie mer his experiences in the Civil War, his service chant, including business correspondence, in in the Department of Agriculture, and his voices, and documents relating to Great Lakes years as agricultural adviser to Japan; Part maritime subjects; correspondence, 1908— HI of the unpublished autobiography. Sketches 1918, between Sir Horace Plunkett, Irish co of My Life, of Emil Seidel, Socialist mayor of operative leader, and Gifford Pinchot, conser Milwaukee and vice-presidential candidate on vationist and political figure; papers, 1845- the Socialist ticket in 1912; and papers relat 1879, of General Samuel D. Sturgis, Indian ing to the personal and business activities of fighter, relating to personal affairs and biog George Esterly, Wisconsin politician and man raphy, military matters, and the genealogy of ufacturer of agricultural machinery, including the Wilcox family; journal, 1862-1897, of A. an autobiography written about 1890, W, Hopkins covering his student years at Ob- erlin College in Ohio and Hillsdale College in Michigan, farming activities at Granville, Ill Organizational Records. Minutes of conven inois, travels abroad and in the United States, tions and directors' meetings, 1947-1961, of and service in the Illinois legislature; letters, the Wisconsin Association of School Boards; 1845-1899, written chiefly by Friedrick A, minutes and constitutions, 1856-1935, of the Meissner, town clerk, postmaster, and Justice Emanu-El Congregation, the B'ne Jeshurun of the Peace in Cashton, to family and friends Congregation, the Emanu-El B'ne Jeshurun in Germany; papers, 1836-1841, relating to Congregation, and the Temple Anshe Emmeth the nomination of James D, Doty as governor of Milwaukee; record book, 1912-1926, of the of Wisconsin Territory; manuscript copy of La Crosse County Graduate Nurses Association; book, Louisiana As It Is, a geographical de records of the Farmers Educational and Co scription of the state written by Samuel H, operative Equity Union of America, Wisconsin Lockett, 1873 (Restricted) ; correspondence, Division, covering annual conventions, 1934- 1830-1845, from Reverend Cutting Marsh re 1960, and reports and minutes of the Board of lating to missionary activities in Wisconsin at Directors, 1930-1959; and records, 1846- Statesburg and Stockbridge; correspondence, 1850, of the Southport (Kenosha) Eire Com 1869-1884, of Dr. 0, B, Buttles and his fam pany Number One, ily, including letters written while Dr, Buttles was a dentist in Paris, France, in the 1870's; Genealogies. Genealogical data, correspond correspondence, 1889-1915, between members ence, and memoranda on the Brisbois house in of the Benjamin Blodgett family who migrated Prairie du Chien; journal, 1893, relating to westward to engage in mining, lumbering, the history and genealogy of the Beeson fam trapping, and trading in California, Oregon, ily, with some descriptions of journeys to Wis and Alaska; papers, 1754—1860, of Levi S, consin and Kansas, written by Edward Beeson, Colton, including records of his army career Fond du Lac; genealogy of the Sloat family, at Fort Crawford, Prairie du Chien, 1830- from the time of Jan Pietersen Sloat of New 1831, and Fort Armstrong, Rock Island, Illi Amsterdam; and a collection of genealogical nois, 1833, Massachusetts land transfers, 1754- material on the families of Dunbar, Gates, 1819, and letters, 1856-1860, written by Schuctz, and Single, George Seckel, an adventurer in the California gold country; scrapbook of material relating to the development of the Kissel Kar, 1904- Miscellaneous. Papers of Professor Selig 1930, and its later history as an antique; rec Perlman consisting of "Union Leaders," an ords, correspondence, and minutes, 1762-1770, unpublished article by Perlman and Professor of the British Commissioners of Customs in Edwin Young, the revision of Toward a Theory America, including particularly the Boston of the Labor Movement, an unpublished re 315 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1961 office; letters, 1880-1895, from Isaac Cooper, Museum serving with the United States Navy off the coast of Central America and in Korea and F particular historical interest among the Japan; memorandum of Captain Henry Wager O accessions to the Museum are a number Halleck concerning his expedition in Lower which are associated with life in the Univer California, 1846-1848, and letters, 1852-1854, sity of Wisconsin community, of which the to him from Pablo Andres de la Guerra; pa State Historical Society is such an integral pers, 1645-1931, of Morgan L, Martin, land part. From Mr. A. F. Gallistel, Madison, we speculator and legislator, including corre have received some materials memorabilic of spondence, diaries, letterbooks, accounts, and the lives and work of two outstanding person the papers of Admiral Melancton Smith, alities of the University community of the brother of Mrs. Martin; papers, 1850-1958, past: Professor and one-time University Presi of Charles Shepard and other residents of the dent Edward A. Birge, pioneer and life-long Negro settlement of Pleasant Ridge, Grant student of the science of limnology; and Mal colm P. Hanson, pioneer in the field of radio County, including letters, tax receipts, and broadcasting as a founding father of Univer community history; papers, 1869-1875, of sity Radio Station WHA, and in the field of Joseph C. Cover, Lancaster editor and United Polar exploration as Chief Radio Operator for States Consul to the Azores, 1869-1872, re Admiral Richard E. Byrd's 1st Antarctic Ex ferring to politics in Grant County and de pedition of 1928-1930. In addition, the Uni scribing the work of the consular office and versity of Wisconsin, through the courtesy of life in the Azores; Cornell Western Lands President and Mrs, Conrad A. Elvehjem and Papers, 1859-1926, including correspondence, Mr. A. W. Peterson, Vice President for Busi survey reports, contracts, tax registers, land ness and Finance, has transferred to the cus examiner books, and material concerning lands tody of the State Historical Society the in Wisconsin owned by Ezra Cornell and en well-mellowed suite of bedroom furniture, in tered on behalf of the university he founded; walnut, brought to Wisconsin from Massachu copies of letters to a newspaper. The Gazette, setts by Paul A. Chadbourne in 1867 when he accepted the Presidency of the University of signed "A Pioneer," giving reminiscences of Wisconsin. In recent years this suite has graced early life on Lake Superior; correspondence, the University Presidential Residence on 1845-1872, 1921-1924, of William Friman, Prospect Avenue in Madison. immigrant from Sweden to southeastern Wis consin, chiefly with relatives in Sweden; cor Also of historical interest is the transfer to respondence, 1838-1945, of Mason C. Darling, the Museum of selected portions of the hold Fond du Lac politician, member of the terri ings of the Lafayette County Historical Society torial legislature, and Congressman, to Dr. at Darlington, Wisconsin, for incorporation Dennis Cooley, Washington, Michigan, pri into the Society's general collections. These marily concerning living conditions in the acquisitions fall into several classes of interest as being of military, domestic, or trades and Lake Winnebago area; papers, 1854^1959, of crafts origin, all reflecting the historical back the Brown Brothers Lumber Company, Rhine ground of this southwestern Wisconsin com lander, including correspondence, a cruiser's munity. diary, and reminiscences of Rhinelander and From the estate of the late Miss Mary Stuart Stevens Point; letter signed by Zachary Taylor Foster, former head of the Society's reference written from Fort Crawford, Prairie du Chien, library, we have received several pieces of an January 22, 1835; letters, 1855-1865, con tique furniture and a selected, representative cerning Catherine E. Beecher, relating to the collection of china and glass dating from the early history of Milwaukee-Downer College, early years of the twentieth century. Mr. Wil and including two letters from Increase A. liam T. Evjue, Madison, has presented the Lapham, March 19, 1861, and September 6, Society with the printer's page-proof of a 1865; letter, October 1, 1832, from John H. book; and Mrs. Eda Herold, New Richmond, Kinzie to George B. Porter describing the con donated an 1866 school bell. Materials ob struction of the Indian agency house at Fort tained as gifts or by purchase from Mr. Glen Winnebago, Portage; reminiscences of Arthur H. Ridnour, Monroe, include an antique po 0. Fox, Madison, entitled "Memories of Hap made jar, an ornate cast iron umbrella stand, a Mangletraer, a calendar stick, a "St, Nicho penings Among the Pioneers," with genealogi las" wooden chip-carved sweet-dough mold, a cal notes. touring robe made from a number of skins of 316 ACCESSIONS These two little chairs, somewhat sub standard in scale, date from the middle of the 19th Century, and are American, The nursing or sewing rocker, probably originally seated with rush, now features fine needlepoint. The small sidechair features a simple hand-carved detail on the upper slat and gracefully shaped legs. Both are of undetermined light woods. Gift of Mrs. Dola Decker, Brookfield. Dresser of the suite of bedroom furniture brought to Wisconsin by Paul A, Chadbourne when he assumed the presidency of the Uni versity of Wisconsin in 1867, The entire suite is of walnut, with hand-carved decorative motifs, and an excellent hand-rubbed finish throughout. The dresser top is of white marble. Gift of the University of Wisconsin. These two stunning hats were worn by Mrs, E, A, Wendt of Horicon about 1905, The white hat is of crushed chiffon over a wire frame, trimmed with twisted satin ribbons, and dec orated with natural thistles M'ith white velvet leaves and stems. The black hat is of cru.shed velvet, trimmed with lozenges of cut metal and curled tips of ostrich feathers. The models are Miss Veronica Yanz, on the left, and Mrs, Mary A, Russell, both of the Society stafE, Gift of Miss Florence Wendt, Madison. 317 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1961 timber wolves, an antique shotgun, and a ment including hat, jacket, skirt, jodhpurs, Colt's revolver. boots and accessories for "riding to the Materials comprising small collections in hounds." themselves were received from the following The accessions to the Museum have been donors: Mrs. J, R, McCarthy, personal and gratifyingly extensive in the limitless variety domestic memorabilia from the Ada Baker of the litde things of domestic or personal use Estate, including jewelry, costume accessories, and association which so weU reflect the daily badges and pins of political, temperance, fra life of the past. From Mrs. Mabel Matson, ternal, and religious origin, a lace bedspread, Deerfield, we have received an enameled ket and a "memory" quilt made from portions of tle and a saddle bag; from Mr. Harold Seger- the clothing of members of the Baker family; son, Madison, a shotgun and articles of ap Miss Harriet Shepard, Denver, Colorado, a parel made of horsehide; from Mr. Edwin W. jewel box, an oak darning egg, two ivory silk Tomlinson, Madison, a fan valentine and a drawstring purses, and mittens; Mrs, Raymond Remington repeating shotgun; from Mrs. Baruth, Clarendon Hills, Iflinois, a steelyard, Charles P. Vogel, Milwaukee, a Jeffersonian a ceramic tile calendar, two padlocks, a knife wine cooler; from Professor Lucien M, Hanks, sharpener, a pair of butter paddles, a basting North Bennington, Vermont, selected house syringe, a wooden spoon, and a crochet hook hold materials from the Vilas estate; from ajid darning block, both of wood; Mrs, John Mrs. Mary Zoellner, Lodi, a spinning wheel; Strange, Appleton, a baby's layette, a number from Mrs. Ruth Harris, Madison, an ironstone of lady's dresses and scarves, an evening gown bedpan; from Mr, F, W, Lawrence, Richland and a wedding gown, some jewelry, and a Center, a ladderback chair; from Mr, and number of glass dishes and vases, including Mrs, John W, Heuft, Madison, an art figurine the Tiffany bowl and the Amberina finger and a mantel clock; from Mrs, Carmen Goltry, bowl set previously featured in the Wisconsin Kiel, a zither; from Mrs, W. C, Rendall, Mad Magazine of History (Spring, 1961) ; Mrs, ison, a photograph album music box; from Ruth Heim, Madison, equipment for the mak Mr, Howard H, Matthews, Boscobel, a dulci ing of hair pieces; Mrs, Janet Lee, Madison, mer; from Mrs, Richard Kingston, Madison, pins and badges, and a baby's bonnet; Mrs. household wares and domestic items; from George S. Bryan, Madison, the U. S, Army Miss Eleanor L, Peterson, Madison, a churn Officer's uniforms and accessories of World and a stove pipe chimney hole cover; from War I belonging to her late husband. Miss Grace Byers, Monroe, household items; Additional diverse materials were received from Mrs, Harold Volk, Middleton, rose glass from these donors: Mrs, Hampton H, Thomas, ware; from Mr, Robert Eladten, Barron, a Milwaukee, a spice or tea chest and a sewing china plate commemorative of that city's cen chest, balance scales, a traveler's bootjack of tennial ; from Mrs, W, R, Marsh, Paynesville, solid oak, and a small Colt's pocket revolver; Minnesota, and Mrs, C, W, Nuzum, Viroqua, Mr, Charles I, Brigham, Jr,, Wheaton, Iflinois, a glass platter with a design commemorative of and Mrs, Edwin J. Rooney, Pelham, New the invention of the McCormick reaper; and York, materials from the estate of Mr, and from Mrs, Carl A, Johnson, Maple Bluff, a Mrs, Charles f, Brigham, Blue Mounds, in black milk glass plate. cluding women's clothing and costume acces Additional examples of personal handwork sories, jewelry, household objects, a pair of and domestic utility were received from the oaken Indian clubs, a chamber set, a scribner's following individuals: a woven coverlet, Mr. logging scale, an early song book of the Uni C. D, Brooks, Madison; a Battenberg lace table versity of Wisconsin, and a medal of the St, cover and examples of drawnwork. Miss Olive Louis Exposition; Mr, and Mrs, R, R, Crosby, J, Brosemer, Madison; a handwoven table Madison, a Civil War cartridge case, a lead cloth, Mrs, Alice Verbeck, Madison; a hand shot flask, a soapstone footwarmer, and house made slipcover, Mrs, Jessie Chase, Sturgeon hold items including a toothpaste jar, fruit Bay; table knives and forks of German silver, jars, cologne bottle, sad irons, a potalo masher, Mrs. Isador Van Engel, Milwaukee; a knife a hat pin, and a fork; Mrs, Arnold Griswold, and some spoons, Mrs, Errol DuBois, Madi Middleton, two beaded purses, a wooden spin son ; a set of place card holders. Miss Laura ning top, a toy iron, and a Belgian double- John.son, Madison; a set of silver spoons. Miss barrel percussion pistol; and Mr, Lee H, Harriet Shepard, Denver, Colorado; a glass Gregory, Two Rivers, a Mackinac Straits pin. bottle and a rolling pin of glass, Mrs, Charles Mrs. Orton Lee Prime, Oconomowoc, donated Berndt. Lake Geneva, formal side-saddle hunting attire and equip 318 ACCESSIONS Platter of good, heavy, sharply-pressed glass memori alizing an early McCormick reaper. Originally from the collection of the late Barbara Munson Vergeront, Viroqua, Jardiniere made at the pottery plant of Charles Her Gift of Mrs. C. W. Nuzum, Viroqua, and Mrs. Wm. R. mann, Milwaukee, Marsh, Paynesville, Minnesota. Gift of Mr. Louis Pierron, Milwaukee. Three pieces in the collection of the Society from the silver service used by Episcopal Bishop Jackson Kemper during his residence in Wisconsin from 1846 to 1870 at Delafield, The service was made by Lewis & Smith, Philadelphia, in 1805, Gift of the estate of Elizabeth Kemper Adams, Conway, Massachusetts. ^ii:^-^ 319 LLonttlljutati... JOHN S. PENN, a native of JANE JACKSON NEUHEISEL, un Portage, was reared and edu til recently a member of the cated in Wisconsin, receiving Society's staff, is a native of his undergraduate degree in Viroqua and a 1958 graduate history from Carroll College of the University of Wisconsin and his M.A. and Ph.D. de with an A.B. in journalism. grees in speech from the Uni After a period of employment versity of Wisconsin. After with J. L. Hudson's in Detroit, graduation from Carroll College he embarked Mrs, Neuheisel joined the Society's Public upon a career of teaching in the public schools Contacts staff where she was active in promot of Wisconsin and Michigan. Following a tour ing the Society's five historic sites and also of duty with the Navy in the Pacific during served as editor of Wisconsin Then and Now. World War II he joined the faculty of the In the late summer Mrs, Neuheisel resigned University of North Dakota and since 1948 her position to accompany her husband, a has served as Chairman of the Department of recent University Law School graduate, to Speech where his responsibilities include the Virginia, where Mr. Neuheisel will serve as a administration of radio-television activities. First Lieutenant in the U. S. Army. The He is a member of the Speech Association of Neuheisels have a six-month-old son. America, of the Central States Speech Associa tion, and of several North Dakota education ALLAN H. SPEAR, a graduate associations. student at Yale University, is r.\ currently working towards the doctorate in history. Born in For biographical information about RICH Michigan City, Indiana, in ARD W. E. PERRIN, see the Summer, 1960, 1937, he attended Oberlin Col lege where he received the B.A. degree in 1958. At Ober 0, LAWRENCE BURNETTE, JR,, lin he studied under the Society's director, book editor for the State His Leslie H, Fishel, Jr,, who stimulated his torical Society of Wisconsin, interest in American minority groups. The ar "^ ^ was born in Bethel, North ticle which appears in this issue of the maga Carolina, in 1927. His under- zine was adapted from a seminar paper writ ' 'ift^ graduate studies at the Uni ten at Yale under the direction of Professor versity of Richmond were fol John Morton Blum. Mr. Spear is now begin lowed by two years' service in ning work on a dissertation on the accultura the Navy (1945-1947), after which he taught tion of Southern Negroes in the urban North. high school in Petersburg, Virginia, before receiving appointments as instructor in history JERRY M. SLECHTA, whose review of Alan T. first at the University of Virginia and later Nolan's The Iron Brigade appears in this at the Virginia Military Institute. He earned issue, is a prominent attorney in Jefferson, the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in history at the Wisconsin, and an outstanding authority on University of Virginia and in 1953 became the history of the Civil War. A long-time mem field editor for Charles Scribner's Sons, for ber of Chicago's pioneer Civil War Round whom he edited the two elementary school Table, he is also a charter member of the history texts authorized by the Virginia His Civil War Round Table of Madison. Mr. tory and Government Commission. Mr. Bur Slechta served as State Chairman of the nette came to the Society in 1957. He has pub Lincoln Sesquicentennial Committee and is lished articles on various aspects of American also a Trustee of Lincoln College, Lincoln, history and on the problems of editing histori Iflinois, cal materials. He is especially interested in American historiography and historical docu All of the pen and ink sketches contained in mentation, instructing graduate seminars in this issue are the work of Paul Hass, graduate those special fields at the University of Wis student in American History at the University consin. of Wisconsin. 320 THE PICTURE OF WISCONSIN THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN A picture captures a moment in time and space 016 STATE STREET • MADISON B • WISCONSIN that occurs today and then vanishes Into history. Long before the story of man was recorded in written words, our ancestors scratched on the walls of their caves the picture of their day. Artists through the ages have left behind them graphic histories of their civilizations. And so today, artists with lens and shutter have recorded for now and future generations the Picture of Wisconsin. V— •" THE WISCONSIN CALENDAR 1 m^lp ^ V Retail price still $1,00 Discounts up to 50% a gift from you . . . to your friends, your business acquaintances, your employees or your customers. The Wisconsin Calendar is an attractive gift item that will solve many of your gift problems, and purchased in quantities it costs little more than a good Christmas card. a money maker for your organization . . . the Wisconsin Calendar is available at generous discounts on quantity purchases and many organizations make Calendar sales an annual pre-Christmas project. Generous discounts are avail able on quantity orders and Boy and Girl Scouts, school and church groups, local historical societies, junior historians, and other community organizations raise hundreds of dollars each year. To promote a wider appreciation of the American heritage The Purpose with particular emphasis on the collection, advancement, of this and dissemination of knowledge of the history of Wisconsin Society shall be and of the Middle West. Second class postage paid at Madison, Wis, Return postage guaranteed