Book Reviews

BOOK REVIEWS

William Penn and Early Quakerism. By MELVIN B. ENDY, JR. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973. viii, 410 p. Bibliography, index. #17.50.) It is indeed refreshing to read a book which modifies the recent efforts to explain seventeenth-century Quakerism in terms of left-wing Puritanism, and begins to move back toward the mystical emphasis enunciated by Rufus M. Jones, and, to a lesser degree, William Charles Braithwaite and John Wilhelm Rowntree, at the beginning of this century. We have known for more than two decades that Jones went too far in seeking to tie early Friends to continental mystics and pietists, but few have been willing to challenge the neo-orthodox swing of the pendulum, started by Geoffrey Nuttall, which replaced the mystical interpretation with one attaching Quakers firmly to Puritanism. Melvin Endy, while not wholly rejecting the Puritan influence among early Quakers, has stressed what he has called spiritualism or the spiritualist emphasis, which sounds somewhat akin to the positive mysticism put forward by Rufus Jones in the Rowntree series, beginning with Studies in Mystical Religion (London, I9°9)- Endy defines spiritualism or a spiritualist theology as one which rests exclusively upon the Holy Spirit, upon direct, immediate inspiration from the divine. The spiritualist tended to reject the present world, and to look toward the Millennium; he also rejected existing churches, depending instead upon the invisible church. The spiritualist accepted the separation of the human from the divine, and believed that a total conversion experience could change a person from a sinner into a saint. Endy has listed Seekers, Familists, and Ranters with the Quakers as part of the spiritualist group, and has even included a few of what he terms "spiritual puritans." The volume is much more than a study of William Penn's religious beliefs; it is actually a careful analysis of seventeenth-century Quaker theology, placed, in turn, within the context of English religious thought for the same period. Endy began with an examination of the theological patterns found in England in the 1640s at the time George Fox began to preach and attract a modest following. In addition to discussing the writings of Fox, he has also considered those of Edward Burrough, Samuel Fisher, James Nayler and Isaac Penington in the early period. Penn, who did not join the Quakers until 1667, scarcely appears in the first 100 pages of the volume. It is clear that Penn's theology was more unconventional in his early years as a Quaker than later in life. He got into trouble over The Sandy 250 1974 BOOK REVIEWS 251

Foundation Shaken (1668) because he attacked the traditional concept of the Trinity, and other early writings led to vigorous attacks from Quaker opponents. Endy has described the changes made in his The Christian Quaker . . ., first printed in 1674 (wrongly listed as 1673), when it was reprinted in 1699, in order to make it more acceptable to readers. The two other well-educated Friends who were writing in the Restoration period, the Scotsmen Robert Barclay and George Keith, were more orthodox in their theology. Furthermore, Penn was more strongly influenced by the rising rationalism of his day than most other Quakers. In fact, he found it difficult to reconcile the spiritualism of his Quaker beliefs with new, rational tendencies. Endy described the wide range of theological views expressed by various Friends, but pointed out that they all had one thing in common, despite the variations in belief; when a man or woman became a Friend, he or she was a transformed person. Life had a new meaning, the relationship between the individual and God was entirely different, and the experience was akin to changing from darkness to light. He wrote, "they were con- vinced that being a Christian was primarily a matter of living and acting in relation to God and their fellowmen rather than affirming beliefs'* (p. 264). This is an important point to remember when considering the varieties of theological beliefs held by early Friends. In eighteenth-century Philadelphia too many Quakers cherished toleration of varieties of beliefs without holding on to the necessity for a transforming religious experience. Endy's book is a tough, penetrating examination of the theology of early Friends and of the other left-wing Protestant sects of the period. While it is well written, it does not make easy reading, for the issues he has considered are very complicated and need to be studied carefully if they are to be fully understood. Although it covers much of the same territory taken up in Hugh Barbour's volume, The Quakers in Puritan England, it begins with a different premise, and, in the end, produces different conclusions. Barbour, in collaboration with Arthur Roberts, has just published a volume entitled Early Quaker Writings (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1973). One wonders whether Melvin Endy would select quite a different set of documents and essays if he were to illustrate his interpretation of seventeenth-century Quakerism.

Haverford College EDWIN B. BRONNER

Puritanism in America: New Culture in a New World. By LARZER ZIFF. (New York: The Viking Press, 1973. xiv, 338 p. Index. $10.00.) A dozen years ago Larzer Ziff produced one of the best modern studies of Puritanism, The Career of John Cotton: Puritanism and the American 252 BOOK REVIEWS April

Experience, Now he has written, in his words, "the first book that attempts to synthesize the special concerns of intellectual, social, and economic history into a single account of the American Puritans." ZifFs study begins in sixteenth-century England and ends in mid-eighteenth-century America at the time of the Great Awakening. All of the most important develop- ments in American Puritanism are discussed here: the antinomian controversy, the banishment of Roger Williams, relations with the Indians, Negro slavery, the declension of the 1670s and '80s, the witchcraft craze, the founding of the Brattle Street Church, and the like. On nearly every topic that he treats, Ziff sheds new light. Especially helpful is his examination of the relationship of Puritanism to the needs of people in a new land. Thus he notes that the Puritans "pioneered in the field of education as the means of shaping the individual to a psychological acquiescense in the norms of his community, to educating him, as it were, for citizenship." Ziff even sees such aberrations as Salem witchcraft in the context of needs: it demonstrated the dissatisfaction of children, females, and servants with their powerlessness. Puritanism in America is that ideal book, one that can be profitably read both by the general reader, for whom it is doubtless the best first book on the subject, and by the specialist, since Ziff is never merely ele- mentary. But to commend the book so is not to say that it is without weaknesses. And, unfortunately, the weaknesses will reduce its usefulness to both kinds of readers. The nonspecialist will find the book, especially the first two chapters, very hard going. Despite its central theme, the book lacks adequate continuity; one seldom feels drawn ahead. More important, Ziff's expository style is too demanding. Though always clear, it often lacks needed emphasis. The book is so full of information and commentary that even the specialist yearns for the leisure to digest that might be provided by a telling example. Perhaps because, as Edmund Morgan has written, the understanding of Puritanism has reached "a level unattained in any other branch of intellectual history/' this book is for the scholar something less than the promised synthesis. One whole element is strangely missing: the contributions of the recent town historians, Powell, Greven, and Lockridge. What they have discovered about the relationship of the generations in Puritan Massachusetts Bay, for example, is too important for Ziff to have overlooked. Other valuable contributions seem to have been ignored also: that model of Puritan scholarship, Morgan's Visible Saints; John S. Coolidge's Pauline Renaissance in England (a book too often overlooked); Rutman's American Puritanism; Pope's Half-Way Covenant. Because of these gaps, Puritanism in America is out-of-date despite the fresh ground that Ziff breaks. I find especially regrettable Ziff's adoption of Perry Miller's view that the covenant is the key to early American Puritan thinking; Michael McGiffert's review essay on Puritan studies in the 1960s ought, I judge, 1974 BOOK REVIEWS 253 to have prevented further acceptance of Miller's oversimplification. I regret also that Ziff chose not to take up at any length what Robert Middlekauf calls "the invention of New England/' the creation by the second generation of a myth about the mission of the Puritan fathers, and a closely related phenomenon, the flourishing of that branch of theological exegesis known as typology. So much is known about American Puritanism that the task of synthesis is unusually difficult. How can one synthesize the brilliant work on Puritan high culture of Perry Miller and his followers and successors with the recent demographic, social, and economic studies? Moreover, important specialized studies in intellectual history are just appearing or soon to appear—the work of people like Sacvan Bercovitch, Emory Elliott, and James W. Jones—and their existence suggests that some time will pass before we can expect a definitive general study. In the meanwhile, Larzer ZifF's book is the best we have—and it will contribute significantly to that future richer synthesis.

University of Massachusetts, Amherst EVERETT EMERSON

The Marquis: A Study of Lord Rockingham, 1730-1782. By Ross J. S. HOFFMAN. (New York: Fordham University Press, 1973. xiii, 397 p. Illustrations, index. #15.00.) The age of George III has now become a richly worked field. Yet until now there has been a marked neglect of Lord Rockingham who in 1765— 1766 and again in 1782 was the King's somewhat reluctant first Minister, and, in the years between, at least a major leader of opposition who could claim to be the real head of the old Whig Party. There are many reasons for the neglect: the man was a poor speaker, and had none of Chatham's charisma; he sat in the Lords, and politics for him was mainly a game of skillful manoeuvre; he seemed, and in a measure was, at best prudent, at worst timid and lazy, a product of the age of Walpole rather than of Wilkes. To problems of personality one had, until 1949, to add the problems of accessibility of sources. The opening up of the family papers and the richness of the Fitzwilliam mine since that date permit a new assessment of the man to be attempted. Professor Hoffman, Emeritus Professor of History at Fordham, and a distinguished student of Burke over many years—his Edmund Burke, New York Agent appeared as long ago as 1956—was led to this study while working on Burke. The author is right to state that he has not written a biography, but "a piece of political history." He does not indeed entirely fill out the answers to his own questions. The principal reason seems to lie not with Professor Hoffman but with his subject. Important as his group 254 BOOK REVIEWS April was and rich though the records may be, it is the political manipulator rather than the man himself who comes to life. After a first chapter, "The Inheritors," describing the Marquis' youth, his European travels and his succession to his title and estates in 1750, this volume is for the most part a meticulous and detailed account of the party and parliamentary ma- noeuvres of the Rockingham Whigs. One would have welcomed much more on the family, and not least on Wentworth Woodhouse, the great family home in the West Riding. The Marquis spent much time there, infinitely preferring private to public life—in part as a deliberate tactic of abstention from Westminster when, as in the 1770s, he felt himself power- less to shape events there. York races appear as a regular date in his calendar, as regular as anything in London; and in the capital itself White's and the Jockey Club were for him almost as important as St. Stephen's. But as a human being he does not quite come to life in these pages. As a study, however, in British politics, Professor Hoffman's work fits in admirably with the Namierite treatment of the period we have already had from Mr. Brooke for 1766-1768, Professor Christie for 1780-1782, and in Peter Langford's recent study of The First Rockingham Administration 1765-66 (Oxford University Press, 1973). If Rockingham's original motiva- tion for becoming so active a politician is still not fully exposed, it is clear that he came into front rank first as a Pelhamite and then after 1760 both as a protege of the Duke of Cumberland, and with some air of independence as a great magnate in a county with twice as many freehold electors as any other county in England. As Horace Walpole wrote of him in 1765, "having been only known ... by his passion for horse races, men could not be cured of their surprise at seeing him First Minister." The King shared the surprise, for he had no illusions about his abilities. Rockingham's lack of histrionics and of open ambition made him acceptable to many, though even for him relations with the Great Commoner, "the Person," were never easy. That great man, was, as Burke put it, all too often "peevish and perverse' to all in his path. Even so, from this study, it is also clear that if anyone could have saved the Empire in 1776—as in 1757—it was Chatham, and Chatham alone. This is a valuable chronicle of Rockingham's Parliamentary activity. But it has in fact a non-Namierite consequence. Rockingham was a great landowner who publicly as privately wanted a quiet life, and "order in government. By nature he was a King's man, willing and eager to serve the royal interest, given that he could do so by sharing power with those other great Whig landowners who were as interested in peace and tranquility as was the King himself. Yet with the Rockingham Whigs, consistency and honour come to represent something more than the claim of a faction. In these pages, it must be admitted their cause is most clearly voiced by Burke, not Rockingham; and indeed both the clarity and the purpose become sharper as Burke's role in the group becomes clearer—a conclusion that not all Namierites will welcome? There was more, how- 1974 BOOK REVIEWS 255 ever, to the Rockinghams than Burke's eloquence or his pamphleteering. There were letters and appeals to the county representatives of York- shire, which was to lead in 1780 to the Association movement. There was the device of protests in the Lords journal, and the influencing of history by Burke's link with the Annual Register, There was in successive elections considerable dexterity and organisation in ensuring victory at the polls in the power-base of Yorkshire. If the purpose was less to stir the political nation but to quieten it, "to keep kingdom and empire in tranquility," there was nevertheless here the rudimentary shape of a consistent political tactic, and what in other ages would be clearly seen as embryonic party politics; there was in the Rockingham Whigs consistency, a capacity for compromise and a largeness of view which would have made it possible for them—and probably for them alone in 1782—to have come to terms with America. The best chapter in the book, the penultimate chapter, is entitled "Peace with America" and recounts the attitude and efforts of the Rock- inghams to prevent the resort to arms in 1776. It is the clearest, the best written, and the most moving. In it, this unrobust, quiet and yet quietly ambitious nobleman reveals a strong sense of public service, much wisdom and—unfortunately—no great courage. In the end he had little to show for all his years of absence from Yorkshire. With his death the Marquisate became extinct, and he lies in York Minster in an unmarked space in the family tomb. But he has now, in this book, a good memorial. It is not quite a biography but a splendidly researched and exact political record of a nobleman who sought the public good and who almost prevented the loss of the American colonies. Institute of United States Studies University of London ESMOND WRIGHT

The Loyalists in Revolutionary America, 1760-178 1. By ROBERT MCCLUER CALHOON. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1973. xviii, 580 p. Bibliographical essay, index. #17.50.) The project of a survey of the American Loyalist mind is one which had slight prospects of meaningful results. After all, the American Revolu- tion was twenty separate, smoldering, regional struggles which happened to be brought to the flash point by the sparks of Lexington and Concord. One is aware more of the chance of the cast of the dice than a pattern, but, amazingly, Calhoon has demonstrated pattern, meaning, and results. Forty years ago, when we began the biography of a Loyalist, the first and hardest part of the work was to strip away the character mask which W7hig propaganda had made for this character. That done, we could proceed to examine the man we found under the costume. Today, Cal- 256 BOOK REVIEWS April

hoon's patients await his scalpel on the operating table, and he works with the impartiality of a surgeon. This book has not a drop of plea, defence, or justification; it is history and not polemic. Calhoon begins with an excellent succinct survey of the situation and problems of the Empire, giving a slightly-left-interpretation of Gipson, and then an adequate account of the relevant elements in the American background. Then he examines the minds of individuals—Wright, Colden, Hutchinson, Sewall, Leigh, Galloway and Leonard, and the leading lawyers and clergymen. In all, some score of the Tories who left voluminous literary remains are dissected with surprises for some of us who thought that we knew some of them very well. Then Calhoon calls to the witness stand hundreds of minor characters who testify in their own words before mobs, committees, and justices; he has a genius for working brief quotations into his text. He looks at groups, religious and geographical, and by briefly tracing in his last chapters the course of Loyalism in the South, he demonstrates the nature of its fatal weaknesses. This book will add to the special knowledge of the professional American- ists, but its importance lies in its description of what the author calls "A Special Kind of Civil War." It is not at all like those of France, Russia, and China. All revolution is not the same things in different costumes. The really important part of Calhoon's book is not his distinguishing the philosophies of government, which he does well, but his demonstration of the ways in which the participants of this civil war reacted toward those with whom they disagreed. The people of New England and the Seaboard were the most politically literate community since classical Greece, but their political philosophy could not be separated from a religious impera- tive which was intensely individualistic and ethical. These people were concerned not only with taxes, but with how far a community can rightly go to silence criticism. Testimony before justices and committees of correspondence shows clearly a general effort to avoid confrontation, to look for compromise, and to inflict no more than token punishment. Calhoon does not gloss over the ugly and sometimes savage aspects of this civil war, but his evidence shows that they were peripheral and not a pattern of calculated means. Even if the managed Boston mob was for a moment at the center of events, its long run effect was trivial. One finishes this book with a clearer understanding why the men who were Whigs in one colony might be Tories in the next, but the same collapse of Loyalism would result from the gravitational pull of a multitude of different strings of independence. Loyalist political philosophy was not proved to be wrong, but it did prove to be in advance of its times when it was remoulded into the Second British Empire, along with those reforms from the Cromwellian Commonwealth which had shared the same history of premature rejection.

Shirley Center, Mass. CLIFFORD K. SHIPTON 1974 BOOK REVIEWS 257

Francis Marion: The Swamp Fox. By HUGH F. RANKIN. (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1973. xv, 346 p. Illustrations, bibliography, index. $ 10.00.)

Dr. Rankin's biography of Francis Marion is part of the "Leaders of the American Revolution Series," edited by North Callahan. And it is a fine addition to the series. It is well written, has been based upon careful research, and its author has avoided the glorifying of Marion. It should be added that the author has also avoided the extreme of debunking the Swamp Fox. As a result, the reader has been presented with an excellent book about a human being who had some faults, some virtues, and a remarkable ability to lead bands of South Carolina partisans to victory against British regulars and Loyalist irregulars alike. It should be pointed out that Francis Marion saw no service in Pennsyl- vania. He was often engaged in combat, but all his fighting was done in the Carolinas, and most of it was done within 100 miles of his home in South Carolina. Yet he was able to think beyond the interests of his own state. He valued his commission in the Continental Army more highly than his commission in the South Carolina militia, and he proved repeatedly that he was willing to subordinate himself and his military operations to the strategy of Continental officers (especially General Nathanael Greene). Because of the hero-worshipping books written by Parson Weems and William Gilmore Simms, the Swamp Fox has sometimes been presented to the American reading public as a Homeric hero. And that he was, but not in the sense intended by Weems and Simms. Far from being ten feet tall, he was a small man who walked with a limp, lost his temper sometimes, and who became frightfully discouraged from time to time. But he won many victories with poorly armed, poorly equipped partisan forces which served without the benefit of pay, medical services, or veterans' benefits. Somehow, he succeeded in gaining the respect of his armed farmers and blacksmiths. And he instilled enough discipline in them so that they became good soldiers. Occasionally, they broke and ran. But more often they charged bravely and won repeatedly even when outnumbered two or three to one. Since Francis Marion was neither rich nor famous before the War for Independence, most of his fame is based upon his military exploits. He was at his best in 1780 and 1781 when he was fighting guerrilla style in a state in which all the cities and towns were occupied by the British. He cut the British lines of supply repeatedly and pinned down hundreds of troops who were assigned the task of trying to track down and destroy his highly mobile—they were all mounted—partisans. Perhaps his biggest contribution to the southern campaigns was his pinning down of troops who were needed at the "front" as reinforcements for the army com- manded by Lord Cornwallis. Yet, as Dr. Rankin has pointed out, Marion had a claim to fame beyond 2,58 BOOK REVIEWS April his military exploits. As a military commander and, after the war, as a state legislator, he was not vindictive. He disapproved the plundering of the Loyalists either through wartime robbery or peacetime expropriation. Although he was ruthless in battle, he did not believe in a war of reprisals and atrocities. Both as a military leader and a legislator, he showed himself to be a humane man.

Northern Arizona University GEORGE W. KYTE

Roots of Maryland Democracy, 1753-1776. By DAVID CURTIS SKAGGS. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, Inc., 1973. xii, 253 p. Bibli- ography, index. $12.00.) The nature of the American Revolution has been the subject of debate since the War for Independence ended and it continues to be a source of fascination for historians. Was there a broad consensus based on majority rule as argued by Robert E. Brown, or was the Revolution a dual one for independence and for determination of who would govern at home as argued by Carl Becker? Two questions concerned David Curtis Skaggs: Was Maryland a democracy? and was there a demand in the confusion leading to the Declaration of Independence for a more democratic political and social order? Based on an intensive examination of pre-Revolutionary Maryland, Skaggs concluded that Maryland was not a democracy and that many who fought in Maryland did so because they desired to change the existing political and social order. In other words, Roots of Maryland Democracy is still another reaffirmation of Carl Becker's concept of an "internal revolution." To avoid the problem of imprecise definitions faced by advocates of colonial democracy, Skaggs carefully defines what he means by democracy. Utilizing the definition put forth by Austin Ranney and Willmoore Kendall in Democracy and the American Party System that democracy consists of four principles—namely, popular sovereignty, political equality, popular consultation, and majority rule—Skaggs investigated the degree of democracy found in Maryland. Given Maryland's peculiar circumstances, it is perhaps not startling that Skaggs found little to meet his rigorous definition of democracy. For example, he discovered that only about forty per cent of the white freemen owned land, that there was a high incidence of poverty (half the population was in want), that there was heavy indebtedness and a rising incidence of tenancy and that in all probability only one-half of the freemen could vote. Maryland, Skaggs concluded, was hardly the land of opportunity usually depicted for colonial America. Skaggs also demonstrated that during the imperial crisis there was considerable agitation for social and political change. Politics was limited 1974 BOOK REVIEWS 259 to a relatively select group who dominated the colony through personal sway, wealth, and family connections. The confrontation with England marked the first significant challenge to their rule. However, the "democratic or egalitarian politicians/' as Skaggs styled them, were unsuccessful in wresting control from the "great planters of whiggish persuasion." The inroads made, especially with regard to the increased upward mobility through the militia, are what Skaggs called the roots of democracy in Maryland. For the most part he has judiciously evaluated his evidence. However, some of his conclusions are difficult to substantiate. An example is his assertion that "independence and a new state constitution drawn along conservative lines" were the result of "the tide of radicalism which threat- ened to sweep [Maryland] onto the shoals of anarchy" (p. 176). This ignores the imperial crisis altogether. In addition, while carefully defining democracy, Skaggs was less conscientious in his use of such concepts as conservative and radical. The Whigs he described seem ill-fitted for any reasonable definition of conservative. Despite his effort to fit Maryland into a Becker motif, this is an important study and Skaggs is to be commended for his penetrating analysis of Maryland society and politics before the Revolution.

Marquette University JOHN D. KRUGLER

Adams Family Correspondence: Volume 3, April 1778-September 1780; Volume 4, October 1780-September 1782. L. H. BUTTERFIELD and MARC FRIEDLANDER, Editors. (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1973. Vol. 3, lvii, 426 p.; Vol. 4, xvii, 472 p. Index. $32.50.) There is something ironic about all editions of the writings of the early Adamses, since there is so much of public value in what was not written for the public at all. One recalls such a reflection having been made by Charles Francis Adams a hundred years ago, as he prepared an edition of the Familiar Letters with the Centennial celebration of the American Revolution in mind (somewhat as we have the Bicentennial in mind today, with a promise that the John Adams Papers will be soon forthcoming). The editors of this modern edition of the writings do not echo the concern of Charles Francis Adams as to the propriety of invading his grandparents' privacy, but all of us must agree with him that the "feeling" in their letters does give them a special charm. Of course, these new volumes contain many letters by many other persons, e.g., by the Adams children, and by numerous friends and acquaintances of the family. All of the Adamses had ink in their veins, but John and Abigail must have been the best scribblers of the lot—or at least John was a scribbler. i6o BOOK REVIEWS April

Abigail seems to have made drafts of most of her letters. Perhaps one should be a little careful of too much brilliance in even so charming a lady. Had she not once exhorted one of her boys to remember that these were the times "when a genius would wish to live"? The thought must have applied equally to herself. It is to her everlasting credit, of course, that she has not quite been able to make the grade with today's "liberation" movement for women (as has her one-time dear friend and neighbor, Mercy Otis Warren), but this apparently relates to a different thing altogether, i.e.y the equality of the sexes. In the volumes under review, there are several editorial departures from earlier pronouncements. Each pair of volumes of correspondence forms a unit of its own (with its own index), but an editorial apparatus covering the first four volumes is here appended; there is also a chronology of all Adams family events, which was not once thought necessary. The excuse for the latter is that volume three of this series sees a remarkable branching out by various members of the family, when the voyages to France are undertaken by John Adams and his sons. The foreign letters of young John Quincy Adams now begin to appear, starting in "Paris april ye nth 1778" and ending in "St. Petersbourg Septr. 27th. 1782". In between are frequent maternal admonitions for a boy's proper behavior, plus generous paternal advice about a young man's proper education. There is also the endless flow of letters between "Portia" and "My dearest Friend" (except when he was too busy to write). Much of the diplomatic history of the American Revolution is revealed in an unofficial way. There is a homespun quality about everything the Adamses did. Even when they were widely scattered—and these are the great years of separation—there were always affectionate, not to say passionate, remembrances of life in Quincy. "Oh that I had Wings, that I might fly and bury all my Cares at the foot of Pens Hill," John Adams once exclaimed. Most of the letters in these volumes were written by unusual people, but the unusual times must have been a contributing factor. ("Uncommon parts require uncommon opportunities for their exertion," Dr. Johnson once remarked.) It might also be noted that the earlier volumes in this series appeared about ten years ago. The public papers of John Adams are also overdue. These new volumes are beautifully gotten up as well as beautifully edited, and one only hopes that John and Abigail could have afforded them.

Program for Loyalist Studies and Publications ROBERT A. EAST

The Peoples of Philadelphia: A History of Ethnic Groups and Lower-Class Life, 1790-1940. Edited by ALLEN F. DAVIS and MARK H. HALLER. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1973. ix, 301 p. Index, maps, tables. $9.95.) 1974 BOOK REVIEWS i6l This welcome volume of scholarly essays has a central focus and a consistency of quality rare in edited works. The contributors, who par- ticipated in a 1971 conference at Temple University and who make use of such primary source materials as city directories, tax returns, court records, and census data, are exponents of a "new urban history" which, to quote Allen F. Davis, "seeks to tell the story of the ordinary people who make up the life of a city, but who leave no autobiographies or manuscripts and rarely even get into the newspapers" (p. 5). The selections attest to the complexity of Philadelphia's history. Davis warns that no catch phrases or simplistic categorizations can summarize the essence of Philadelphia's many pasts. John K. Alexander concludes that, at least during the late eighteenth century, the "City of Brotherly Love" could as easily have been called the "City of Brotherly Fear." Indeed, the "Quaker City" image belies the unwelcome reception which awaited abolitionists and freedmen. The "City of Homes" image obscures the proliferation of turn-of-the-century rear alleys and overcrowded dwell- ings. And the "most American City" nevertheless had ghettos honey- combing the poorer districts which constituted, in Mark H. Haller's words, "a mosaic of ethnic groups." Continuity is a recurring theme in The Peoples of Philadelphia. Alexander documents the preindustrial existence of poverty, residential segregation, and class antagonism. John F. Sutherland traces row houses back to 1691. Bruce Laurie mentions the antebellum antecedents of gang graffiti. Michael Feldberg criticizes those historians who stress disruption and discontinuity in explaining urban violence and concludes that the riots of the 1830s and 1840s, a heritage of the American Revolution, were goal-oriented and not exemplary of chaos so much as of organization within the "normal processes of the Jacksonian political and economic bargaining system" (p. 66). Dennis J. Clark emphasizes the gradual economic progress of Irish immigrants but states that the enduring Republican machine dominance during the century following the Civil War hindered Irish political ascendancy. Richard A. Varbero notes the persistence of Old World values in the South Italian immigrant's attitudes regarding education and the role of women. Mark Haller, in discussing Philadelphia's long history of vice and police corruption, concludes that "the close connection that has existed in American cities between crime, politics, and the police may well help to explain the fact that American cities have the highest level of street crime and violence among modern nations" (p. 289). While most of these historians admittedly are offering guarded conclusions or progress reports on unfinished monographs, their hypotheses have broadened the parameters of Philadelphia historiography. Caroline Golab makes one of the book's few overgeneralizations in her otherwise excellent study on why Jews and Italians were more likely than Poles to stay in Philadelphia when she writes: "The Pole who came to America, therefore, was not an immigrant. He was a migrant, a temporary worker. Always, 262 BOOK REVIEWS April his intention, if not his dream, was to return to Poland . . ." (p. 223). While Golab's analysis of Philadelphia's economy showed why the en- vironment was not conducive to unskilled Poles, one learns little about those who nonetheless remained. Among the book's most interesting conclusions are: Theodore Hershberg's assertion that cities were often more harmful to black family stability than slavery and that ex-slaves generally fared better in antebellum Philadelphia than free-born blacks; Stuart M. Blumin's statistics on residential mobility from 1820 to i860, showing that only 20 to 25 per cent of the city's male population remained in the same neighborhood for as long as a decade; Russell F. Weigley's rinding that the old elite, who still dominated City Hall during the mid-nineteenth century, had more cultural ties with the South than with New England; John F. Sutherland's portrayal of slumlords as just as likely to be small immigrant businessmen as millionaire tycoons; and Mark Haller's insight that new- comers increased their sense of ethnicity in the face of obstacles—that, heretofore, loyalty ties often had not extended beyond the family, clan, or village. The Peoples of Philadelphia has very few flaws. Generally the articles concerning immigrant acculturation are less stimulating than those center- ing on social disorders and the resultant attempts to control violence through law and order or the legitimatizing of disruptive forces. The book's subtitle suggests a time span covering 1790 to 1940. Except for mention of an Italian riot against the policies of Cardinal Dennis Joseph Dougherty and passing reference to contemporary Irish contractors, there is virtually nothing about the 1930s. This, however, is hardly a major criticism. Just as Sam Bass Warner, Jr.'s The Private City: Philadelphia in Three Periods of Its Growth holds up rather well in the light of this scholarship, one suspects that the essential validity of these articles, which are exhaustingly researched and meticulously footnoted, will be affirmed. Happily, this book makes obsolete Allen Davis' introductory lament that historians have neglected Philadelphia's poor people.

Indiana University Northwest JAMES B. LANE

Frustrated Patriots: North Carolina and the War of 1812. By SARAH MCCULLOH LEMMON. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1973. viii, 223 p. Bibliography, index. $10.50.) Accounts of individual states and the War of 1812 have been markedly rarer than those surveying national aspects of the conflict, but this is the second state study of the war within three years. Victor Sapio's Pennsyl- vania & the War of 1812> published in 1970, devoted its main attention to the causes of the war, and included only a chapter on the war itself. In this book Professor Lemmon has almost reversed these proportions. Most 1974 BOOK REVIEWS 263 space is devoted to North Carolina during the war, and the problems of causation are given only brief coverage. A major problem in writing a book on North Carolina and the War of 1812, is that the state was only peripherally involved in the military aspects of the conflict. No British armies campaigned through North Carolina, and, as Professor Lemmon points out, a coastline substantially sheltered by the Outer Banks was reasonably safe from British maritime attacks. A minor British naval raid on Ocracoke was the major military event within the bounds of the state. Given this paucity of direct military involvement, it is surprising that Professor Lemmon has chosen to stress military preparations and involvement more than the political, economic, and social aspects of the war. In a brief treatment of the coming of the war Professor Lemmon argues that North Carolina gave support to the conflict "because of old resent- ments from the era of the Revolution and because of what she regarded as insults to the national honor'' (p. 6). She argues that commercial restric- tions and impressment could not have been major issues as North Carolina was not "a great commercial state" (p. 11) and had few impressed seamen. The major part of the book deals with North Carolina's participation in the military effort: the raising of troops within the state, their involvement in actions in other areas, preparations for possible British attacks, and North Carolinians in the navy. The militia raised in the state saw no action, and North Carolina's main contribution to the land fighting was from troops serving in regular regiments along the Canadian border. "During the entire war on land," Professor Lemmon states, "eighteen men from North Carolina were among the known killed in action" (p. 118). North Carolina's participation in the war at sea was also extremely limited. The author points out that only four out of more than 500 privateers were from North Carolina. In chapters on the politics of the war and on "The Home Front," the author presents a useful description of North Carolina's opposition to the war, and some information on social and economic conditions, but there is no full-scale analysis of the nonmilitary impact of the war. The book is based on considerable research in North Carolina source materials, along with other relevant British and American sources, and provides some useful information on the details of recruitment, militia organization, and some North Carolina political attitudes. Much of the material covered is, however, not of major significance for the history of the War of 1812.

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee REGINALD HORSMAN

A Dream of Peace: Edward Hicks of Newtown. By EDNA S. PULLINGER. (Philadelphia: Dorrance & Company, 1973. xiv, 93 p. Illustrations, bibliography. $3.95.) 264 BOOK REVIEWS April

"There never was a Friends' journal writer," remarks the author in her preface, "with a greater sense of peace than the painter of The Peace- able Kingdom." This is certainly a true statement, for Hicks was unique among the writers of Quaker journals in being a professional artist— albeit a primitive one. There is no question that the relation between Edward Hicks of New- town and his community is an excellent area for exploration. And the author does explore it to some degree, starting with the artist's Tory grandfather, Gilbert Hicks, who was Chief Justice of Bucks County under the British Crown, and continuing with the family's fall from fortune during the Revolutionary War, Edward's childhood in the household of David Twining, his rugged apprenticeship as a coachmaker, his conversion to Quakerism, and his marriage to Sarah Worstall of Newtown, to be followed by various aspects of adult life as revealed in Hicks's own Memoirs. But the picture has not been sufficiently enriched by material from other sources. We would like more detail on such friends of the artist as John Comly and Abraham Chapman, more about the fellow townsmen whom he met on the village streets, more about the fellow meeting-goers to whom he preached so eloquently after being recorded as a Friends' minister in 1812, and with whom he sometimes quarreled. Edna Pullinger points out the unrest which disturbed the world outside Quakerism during the Jacksonian era, but she does not lay adequate stress on the conflict within the Quaker community. In 1827 the Society of Friends in the Philadelphia area was rent asunder by the Orthodox- Hicksite Separation. It was this Separation which motivated the artist- preacher's travels in the ministry during the 1830s, and which had an effect on his life and art which has not been sufficiently recognized. Edward Hicks was by no means a peaceable Quaker. He was a man of warm loyalties, but also of fierce prejudices which were challenged to the utmost during this complex controversy. Undoubtedly, his own lack of peace within helped to stimulate his search for peace without. The author acknowledges this, but passes over the fact so briefly that we get an unduly sunny impression of Hick's character. And though Edna Pullinger clearly understands the inward and mystical nature of the Kingdom series, and is sensitive to its rich symbolism, she gives no precise definition of the theological issues which left their mark on the primitive painter's canvases. More detailed research on Hicks's contacts and confrontations with his Newtown neighbors, Quaker or otherwise, would have clarified these points, and given an added dimension to this work. As written, A Dream of Peace is a pleasant introduction to Edward Hicks for the general reader, but it is not a book for the student or specialist.

Pendle Hill ELEANORE PRICE MATHER 1974 BOOK REVIEWS 26$

Catharine Beecher, A Study in American 'Domesticity. By KATHRYN KISH SKLAR. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973. xv, 356 p. Illustra- tions, bibliography, index. $12.50.)

Catharine Beechery A Study in American Domesticity is a valuable addition to the growing body of scholarship on the historic role of women in American life. A perceptive study of one outstanding woman, it also offers provocative new insights into the cultural dynamics of the mid-nineteenth- century America in which she lived. Catharine Beecher is identified today as the elder sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher, the most famous of her siblings, but in her own time she enjoyed national fame as an author and educator. Her Treatise on Domestic Economy, first published in Boston in 1841, was reprinted almost every year for fifteen years, a supplementary volume published in 1846 was reprinted fourteen times, and an enlarged com- pendium, The American Woman's Home, was published in 1864, these three works, together with several lesser publications on the same subject, making her a recognized authority on American family life. Elements of Mental and Moral Philosophy, published in 1831, was the first of another series on another topic, the translation of learning into right conduct. She pioneered in the establishment of schools for girls, worked for the primacy of women in public school teaching, traveled constantly in the East and West seeking locations for schools, recruiting, training, and placing teachers, raising funds to support all of these activities. Lyman Beecher, vital and domineering Congregational preacher, both inspired and traumatized all of his numerous progeny, and none more than Catharine, his first-born, whose life took form in response to the spiritual, intellectual, and social questions with which he challenged her. Born in 1800, during the Second Great Awakening, her father a leader of revival- ism, she rejected her father's theology, because she could never feel enough guilt nor quite strongly enough desire to submit to an angry God to achieve the all-important conversion experience. She did try, and at enormous emotional cost, but she finally decided to "return to the world," for "the heart must have something to rest upon and if it is not God, it will be the world." She believed that human beings "should cease to trouble themselves with God's plan, for 'the great system of the universe* would operate without their aid." She ultimately became a confirmed Episcopalian because of that denomination's emphasis upon "the institutional and social aspects of faith." Catharine shared her contemporaries' awareness of the disruptive forces at work in the United States in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. She sensed the explosive potential of growing nationalism coupled with intensifying sectionalism, rising economic productivity together with a growing maldistribution of wealth, the rise of a new elite in the midst 266 BOOK REVIEWS April

of expanding popular democracy. The ambiguities of progress struck her forcibly. Puritanism no longer offered satisfactory explanations of what was happening. She spent her life in a two-fold effort to cope with Jack- sonian America and to realize her own potential as an unmarried woman in a society which allotted marginal status to all women and ignored altogether the unmarried. She achieved both purposes in her ideology of domesticity. In effect, she politicized the home, making it the power base of American life, with women in control through their formation and nurturing of its moral values. To maintain these values outside the home would be the task of the public schools, staffed by women teachers. Cath- arine retained the Puritan ideal of the good society, a hierarchy to which the individual voluntarily subjected himself, but she replaced male by female hegemony. Many of her contemporaries worked along similar lines. Within fifty years Puritanism had given way to Victorianism, a new matrix, including "the transposition of the drama of salvation from theological to social grounds, the creation of a moral code designed to check behavior even without the existence of an angry God, and the assertion of a new class of moral guardians empowered to enforce this code." Dr. Sklar writes well. Her scholarship is impressive. She cites use of thirty-eight manuscript collections and she has also done her scholarly duty by the standard published primary and secondary sources. She has employed to good effect the specialized techniques of social psychology in articulating the complexities of Catharine Beecher's life and of the world in which she lived. The obvious question is to what extent the life of an extraordinary woman reveals what American women in general thought, felt, and did. Dr. Sklar makes no claims of universal revelation, nor even of statistical patterns. Her method is basically humanistic and impressionistic, albeit with a strong admixture of social science concepts and vocabu- lary. She brings once more onto center stage a remarkable human being who was once widely accepted by her fellow Americans as spokesman (spokeswoman?) for many of their major concerns and one who offered what they considered reasonable answers to these problems. Catharine Beecher should interest any reader who wants to know more about what it might have been like to be alive, bright, sensitive, and female in mid- nineteenth-century America.

Lebanon Valley College ELIZABETH M. GEFFEN

Henry Winter Davis: Antebellum and Civil War Congressman from Mary- land. By GERALD S. HENIG. (New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., J973- 332 P- Bibliography, index. $7.50.) During the Civil War few congressmen attracted as much attention as Henry Winter Davis of Maryland. Though many of his contemporaries 1974 BOOK REVIEWS 267 dismissed him as being nothing more than an ambitious, fanatical, and unprincipled politician, others, admiring his fine legal mind and his skill as an orator, considered him to be the ablest of the Radical Republicans. Neither view is completely correct, but for the past century historians have tended to favor the portrait of Winter Davis as the opportunistic demagogue. This view is unfair, claims Professor Gerald Henig of California State University, Haywood, for it slights Davis* positive achievements. These included keeping Maryland loyal in the Civil War, promoting emancipation, and breaking the deadlock in the House of Representatives speakership contest of 1859-1860. Despite Davis* prominence, this book is the first biography of him to be written in nearly fifty years. It replaces Bernard Steiner's dated study. Using newly discovered Davis letters in the du Pont Papers, contemporary newspapers, a variety of manuscript collections, and hundreds of published sources, Henig presents a complete picture of a heretofore obscure politician and offers new insights concerning Davis* reasons for opposing slavery, for joining the Know Nothings, and for quarreling with Abraham Lincoln. Some have alleged that Davis had no interest in eradicating slavery until it was politically expedient to favor such a course. That was not the case. Davis* father had been a colonizationist who once offered to free any of his slaves willing to move to Liberia. None accepted the offer, and a few confided to young Winter Davis that while they did want their freedom they considered the United States to be their home. Shortly after his father's death, Davis, who considered black bondage to be a national disgrace, freed all of the Negroes he inherited. Considering that Maryland was a slave state, it is not surprising that he would not publicly affiliate with the abolitionists until 1862. Thereafter none doubted that he was hostile to slavery; he was an early advocate of enfranchising the blacks. Another myth that Henig discredits is the belief that personal ambition was the sole reason Davis joined the Know Nothings in 1855. This, Henig concedes, was a consideration, but equally important was Davis* hope that the American Party could be a viable national party able to quench the fires of sectionalism that were consuming the nation. Also, having traveled to Europe where church and state were closely aligned, he desired to keep organized religion out of politics and education. At no time did he seek to prevent Catholics from practicing their religious beliefs in their homes or churches. Of equal interest to historians is Henig*s explanation of why Davis opposed Lincoln. The Marylander believed that he was entitled to a cabinet position for his behind-the-scenes efforts to elect Lincoln in i860. The spot he had hoped for was given to another from his state, Mont- gomery Blair. Moreover, Davis was disenchanted with the war policy of Lincoln, Secretary of State William Seward, and Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles. Welles he especially disliked for his cruel treatment of 268 BOOK REVIEWS April Admiral Samuel F. du Pont, whom Davis loved like a brother. As time passed, Davis persuaded himself that Lincoln was too lenient toward the South and too willing to allow former slaveholders to reenter public life. In 1864, making the biggest mistake of his political career, Davis sharply- castigated the President in what came to be known as the Wade-Davis Manifesto. When all is said and done, despite his occasional good deeds, Davis remains a somewhat unpleasant fellow. Repeatedly, Henig shows that he was obsessed by a pathological hatred of the Democratic Party. Ever since some Democrats removed his father from the presidency of St. John's College, Davis irrationally blamed the Democracy for every misfortune that beset the United States. Furthermore, he was egotistical and in- tolerant of criticism; never could he "gracefully acknowledge an opposing viewpoint (p. 219)." Though he professed to be worried about Lincoln's disregard of civil liberties, to support his own objectives he tolerated many constitutional abuses. After all, he felt, the righteousness of his cause sanctioned such action; in short, the end justified the means. Henig's biography is well written and well researched. Occasionally the reader gets lost in a maze of detail, and sometimes he wishes a few sections were better organized, but this is an excellent study. Henig somewhat alters the traditional picture of his subject as an ogre, but, despite this biography, Winter Davis is in no danger of becoming a national hero. That, however, should not discourage scholars from reading this book; it is worthy of a wide audience.

Cambridge^ Mass. ARNOLD SHANKMAN

The Secession Movement in the Middle Atlantic States. By WILLIAM C. WRIGHT. (Cranbury, N. J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1973. 274 p. Bibliography, index. $15.00.) Until recent times losers have not fared well in our historical literature. Women, Indians, Blacks, Tories, Copperheads—the list of the failed or oppressed groups which have been misinterpreted or neglected is a lengthy testament to our preference for stories of success and power. For a multitude of reasons, historians in our own time have made effective inroads into the inadequately explored terrain of America's social and political victims and begun to recover our fuller past. William C. Wright's study of anticoercion and pro-secession sentiment in the middle Atlantic states during the winter of 1860-1861 is perhaps an expression of this renewed interest. Rejecting a picture of unalloyed militant Unionism, Wright directs our attention to the many northerners who either actively supported southern secession and sought it for their own states, who desired 1974 BOOK REVIEWS 269 creation of a "central Confederacy/' or who opposed the use of any force to maintain the old federal Union. Such a study has the potential to refine our understanding of northern ideology, the nature and strength of Union- ism, and of the decision for southern secession itself. Unfortunately, the Wright book disappoints these expectations. The study is marred by stylistic, organizational, and research disabilities, and is drawn toward unacceptable characterizations and conclusions by faults of terminology and logic. It is difficult to say which of these sets of problems was the more decisive in undermining the force and quality of the book. Wright's organization does seem to lead him away from rather than toward an intensive analysis of the motivational roots and practical significance of antiwar feeling. A discussion of the origins and fate of northern pro- secessionism demands careful consideration of such matters as bitter partisanship, economic determinism, racism, and impotent leadership. But instead of the comprehensive and comparative region-wide examination suggested in the title, we get a repetitious and superficial survey of politics in each state, and lengthy and too frequent quotations, preceded by shallow economic and demographic data which are inadequately tied in to the subsequent political narrative. Indeed, the basic question of whether these states (Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York) ought logically to be treated as a unit is assumed more than explored; surely the slaveholding border states had much more in common with each other than each had to adjoining free states. There is, moreover, no little confusion in Wright's use of his research materials. What exactly was this "secession movement"? Radical pacifists, abolitionists black and white, Whiggish Republicans, venomously anti- Lincoln Democrats, an indecisive and frightened President, slaveholders and negrophobic Yankees, men as various in their orientation as Frederick Douglass, William Seward, and Delaware's ardently pro-southern Senator James Bayard are linked together as unconscious collaborators in the "movement." The mere expression of noncoercion or even pro-secession inclinations is taken without sufficient discrimination to be proof of the existence of a "movement" to support the permanent division of the country. Nor is it clear whether this point of view was prevailing by the spring of 1861. In his conclusion, Wright affirms that the "secession movement" controlled northern opinion to the extent of denying majority support for Lincoln's policies. Only the blundering assault on Fort Sumter fused an allegedly declining will to maintain the Union. But this contradicts his own evidence, for he had previously described the collapse of the "movement" for want of leadership and vehicles of expression. The Sumter attack could not have destroyed a healthy and expanding northern crusade to endorse southern independence if, as Wright earlier attested, it had already been effectively smothered by the opposition of virtually all middle state 27O BOOK REVIEWS April governors, legislatures, and the national administration. This leads us finally to question his repeated assertion that antiwar feeling was obliter- ated by the wave of fierce Unionism generated by the fall of Sumter. The story of northern peace activities throughout 1861 and after clearly belies tjiis; any connections between pre-Sumter feeling and organization and later eastern Copperheadism go unmentioned here.

University of Kentucky STEVEN A. CHANNING

The Unwritten War: American Writers and the Civil War. By DANIEL AARON. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973. xix, 385, xiv p. Index. $12.50.) The sheer mass of Civil War literature, that which tries to recount the war's history and that which is frankly fictional, staggers the imagination. Edmund Wilson has asked whether "there has ever been a historical crisis of the magnitude of 1861-1865 in which so many people were so articulate?" and Daniel Aaron thinks the conflict "probably inspired more miscellaneous commentary . . . than all of America's other wars put together." (On seeing a copy of Aaron's The Unwritten War on this reviewer's desk a colleague wonderingly asked, "You mean there is something more to be said about the Civil War?") It is the thesis in this beautifully written and informative volume that there is still something lacking in the many published accounts of America's great traumatic experience of a century ago. With approval Professor Aaron cites Sherwood Anderson's observation that "no real sense of it has yet crept into the pages of a printed book." Whether the North or the South won the "written war" is of less importance in his mind than the fact that "for over a century the war as a subject has powerfully attracted many of the finer talents" without producing a satisfactory understanding of the war's epic proportions. Even the undeniably "finer talents" of Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, and Mark Twain among others, and that of such recent writers like William Faulkner, failed to do justice to it. That, at least, is the author's contention. Aaron largely absolves historians and biographers for this failure. It is the writers of fiction—poets and novelists—along with literary critics who have, with certain notable exceptions, missed "the real sense" of the war. Even Edmund Wilson's Patriotic Gore> a book inevitably to be com- pared with Aaron's treatise, "leaves too many questions unanswered, blurs or omits too much." What, then, accounts for these shortcomings, what the source and nature of the neglect demonstrated on the part of Civil War laureates and novelists, North and South? To this question Aaron undertakes to provide an answer. The author begins with examining the antebellum writers, both those 1974 BOOK REVIEWS T"]\ who took no interest in politics and, like Bayard Taylor and E. C. Stedman, looked upon the sectional crisis as "an annoying interruption" in their pursuit of literary distinction, and those like William Gilmore Simms in Charleston and Ralph Waldo Emerson in Boston who were trapped by bitter sectional partisanship. Patriotic Puritans, reared on the poetry of Paradise Lost, regarded southern secession as " 'a foul conspiracy* against a God-ordained Union," and for them John Milton became "the ideal War-laureate." Southerners, regardless of their sentiments for or against the Union, "were under pressure to refute Northern aspersions against their section." Thus it was, that voices of moderation, such as was Nathaniel Hawthorne's, could hardly be heard or understood in the din of reciprocal recrimination. Aaron notes that some writers, North and South, interpreted the disruption and the armed hostilities which followed as "a wholesome calam- ity." Oliver Wendell Holmes, M.D. likened the Union to a grievously ill patient who required "rough chirurgery," and at the South George W. Bagby opined that only by hard fighting could the South "ever get rid of the black, bad blood in the veins of both sections." Simms was persuaded that the Union had been devised by the Devil, while James Russell Lowell looked to the creation of a "Yankeeized South," cleansed of its sins and redeemed by sacrifice and suffering. There were those who romanticized the "warrior mystique," one which centered attention almost exclusively on the officer corps. Included in the "unwritten war" is the story of Billy Yank and Johnny Reb, neither of whom received their due in the literature dealing with the war. But an even greater omission was any proper recognition of "the root cause of the war," namely, the literal and symbolic role of the Negro and slavery. Northern writers for the most part appeared to consider slavery a social evil more damaging to southern whites than blacks and they were prone to justify the war not as an antislavery crusade but "as the long suffering North's reply to Southern bullies." Southern writers glossed over slavery, soft-pedaling the moral issues raised, holding that it was less vicious than painted, and they saw the struggle primarily as one for southern independence and to preserve a way of life. According to Aaron, the historical novel set in Civil War times is an equally untrustworthy source. Regrettably, as Robert A. Lively has put it, Margaret Mitchell's best-selling Gone With the Wind has fixed southern traditions more firmly in the American consciousness than has Douglas Southall Freeman's careful examination of the career of Robert E. Lee. Aaron dismisses Miss Mitchell's widely read novel as "a panoramic yarn, a piece of documented partisanship." In his judgment, the best novel about the war, a saga comparable to Tolstoy's War and Peace, is John W. DeForest's Miss RaveneVs Conversion, and he also gives high marks to Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage. 272 BOOK REVIEWS April

It is hard to fault Professor Aaron's book. Perhaps he expects too much of that Civil War generation of writers who had not the benefit of retro- spection and of more recent fictionizers whose works are colored with a sectional bias reflecting still the lingering effects of the great convulsion that tore the nation apart over a century ago. But one must accept his final conclusion that "our untidy and unkempt War still confounds interpreters."

Gettysburg College ROBERT L. BLOOM

The Foundations of the American Empire: William Henry Seward and U. S. Foreign Policy. By ERNEST N. PAOLINO. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973. xii, 235 p. Bibliography, index. $9.75.) Ever since William Appleman Williams formulated his thesis of the open door policy as the guiding force in American foreign policy, various scholars have sought to develop the concept further and to apply it to all phases of diplomatic history. Walter LaFeber's The New Empire was a good example of this trend. Considering the development of American foreign policy from William H. Seward to John Hay, the author attempted to substantiate for the second half of the nineteenth century in particular much of what Williams had already said in general. LaFeber held that Seward was imbued with the notion of the need for expanding American foreign markets, and that his actions thus foreshadowed the imperialist tendencies of the 1890s. Ernest N. Paolino, in The Foundations of the American Empire^ has carried this type of research further. Focusing on Seward as the originator of a world-wide American commercial imperialism based on the open door, he attempts to show that Samuel Flagg Bemis' thesis of U. S. overseas expansion at the turn of the century as "the Great Aberration" is without foundation. According to Professor Paolino, Seward not only pursued this policy a generation earlier, but carried it out with as much success as possible under the circumstances and conditions confronting him. Thus he purchased Alaska, signed the Burlingame Treaty with China and the Convention of 1866 with Japan, hoped to open up Korea and Formosa, and envisioned American commercial supremacy in all parts of the globe. His efforts to sustain the Collins telegraph line to Europe via Siberia and to support schemes to unify the world's monetary system were allegedly part of the same general idea, as were his attempts to acquire Caribbean possessions and to promote the construction of a canal across the isthmus of Panama. The author calls the American diplomat "the most outstanding Secretary of State after John Quincy Adams/' and asserts that the "Great Aberration" looks more like the "Great Culmination" (p. 212). 1974 BOOK REVIEWS 273

Many of Professor Paolino's points are well taken. Basing his conclusions on a wide variety of sources, both published and unpublished, and approaching his evidence with critical detachment, he paints an interesting picture of Seward's foreign policy. That the secretary was indeed partial to American commercial imperialism is undoubtedly true. What is more questionable is the degree of Seward's devotion toward the goals so well depicted by Professor Paolino. Undoubtedly subject to multiple influences, the secretary, like other diplomats, pursued several objectives, of which the policy of economic expansion abroad was only one. Given the temper of his time, expansion for its own sake and the acquisition of coaling stations for purely strategic reasons also appealed to him. It is doubtful that he ever saw any conflict between these aims and the possibility of establishing a great commercial empire. Another difficulty is the great debt this book owes to Professor LaFeber. To be sure, the author greatly expands his predecessor's chapters on Seward, but in essence he repeats what LaFeber said some years ago. The publishers correctly advertise The New Empire on the back jacket as "of related interest," and Professor Paolino acknowledges the previous work in the customary footnotes, but it might have been better had he said something about The New Empire in the preface. Finally, it is unfortunate that so little care was taken with the language. Lack of attention to matters of agreement and consistency of tense mar the otherwise readable text. Minor errors of fact, such as the paternity of Prince Jerome Bonaparte, might have been avoided, and a few maps would have improved the volume. Aside from these reservations, The Foundations of the American Empire is a well-researched and thought-out book. It will doubtless take its place among the growing list of works dealing with Civil War and Reconstruction diplomacy.

Brooklyn College and Graduate Center, City University of New York HANS L. TREFOUSSE

Johnson, Grant, and the Politics of Reconstruction. By MARTIN E. MANTELL, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973. 209 p. Bibliography, index. #9.00.) This work discusses a not too familiar phase of the story of Reconstruc- tion. As Mantell rightly observes, present-day historians of the Recon- struction era, revising many long-held views of this age, have concentrated their attention on the first two years of Andrew Johnson's presidency. Like earlier historians of the period they are fascinated with the struggle between Johnson and a Republican congress that led to a critical con- 274 BOOK REVIEWS April gressional election in 1866 and the impeachment and trial of the president. The last two years of Johnson's rule, the period in which congressional reconstruction was implemented, were largely ignored, except for the impeachment struggle. Indeed the last major study of political events leading to the election of 1868, by Charles H. Coleman, was published some forty years ago and dealt mainly with the selection of the Democratic nominee. Now, in this slim volume Mantell studies the politics of those two years following the election of 1866 and evaluates the roles of the two prominent protagonists, Andrew Johnson and U. S. Grant. Presidential reconstruction under Johnson was based on voluntary co- operation of southerners, but southern voters were unable, so soon after the war, to break with their Confederate past. They would not compromise. With little support in Congress the President thus became a prisoner of this southern electorate. He was obliged to become their spokesman in Washington. Their hostility, however, to reconstruction efforts of the Republican congressional majority resulted in distrust among northern voters of both former confederates and a pro-southern president. This northern reaction destroyed Johnson's attempts to forge a coalition of moderate Republicans and Democrats in 1866. The election of that year produced an overwhelming Republican victory in the congressional elections, a victory that now made possible a reconstruction policy determined by a congress unsympathetic to both white southerners and Johnson. When the ensuing struggle between the president and congress over reconstruction policy became especially bitter, Johnson appointed Grant his secretary of war in place of E. M. Stanton. Historians have tended to support Johnson's statement that he appointed Grant to the post believing that the general supported the president's reconstruction policies. Johnson was then bitterly disappointed that Grant altered his views and joined the camp of congressional Republicans. Mantell argues, and I believe convincingly, that Grant had consistently supported congressional policy and that Johnson was well aware of this. Johnson, so Mantell concludes, appointed the popular general to soften the reaction sure to follow the removal of the war secretary. With Grant in the cabinet there would also be an impression created that he approved the administration's reconstruction measures. Grant, of course, did not remain very long as secretary of war. Grant indeed emerges in this study as a moderate and able leader who supported Republican reconstruction and who retained the confidence and respect of military commanders under him. Mantell believes that Demo- cratic gains in local elections in the North in 1867 reflected a shift in northern voter sentiment away from civil rights for Negroes. This movement forced Republicans to moderate their prb-Negro policies and to nominate a moderate, Grant, for the presidency in 1868. His electoral victory, which Mantell discovers to be equal to Lincoln's 1864 margin in 1974 BOOK REVIEWS 275

northern states, solidified Republican reconstruction programs enacted in the spring of the previous year over Johnson's veto. White southerners were now obliged to accept that policy and concentrate on winning control of the new reconstructed state governments. Their struggle would become bitter and violent and successful, and make President Grant's two terms in office anything but peaceful. Readers interested in the complicated era of Reconstruction will find this volume a helpful study of the politics of the period between 1866 and 1868.

Villanova University JOSEPH GEORGE, JR.

Children of the Light: The Rise and Fall of New Bedford Whaling and the Death of the Arctic Fleet. By EVERETT S. ALLEN. (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1973. ix, 302 p. Illustrations, maps, index. $10.00.) George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, named his followers "Children of Light." This book is a study of New Bedford Quakers, especially of the Howland family. In 1652 the first Quakers left Plymouth to found Dartmouth—later to become New Bedford. There they began as simple farmers. As the enormously successful whaling industry expanded, decade by decade after the War of 1812, they became whaling merchants without deviation from their principles. George Howland forsook the family farm. He died in the mid-nineteenth century worth more than half a million dollars and with a fleet of nine whaleships. His eldest son, George Jr., five times Mayor of New Bedford, bank president, State Senator, and founder of the Free Public Library, spent most of his time on public affairs, while the younger brother, Matthew, tended the family business as agents or owners of whalers. The chapter "A Ramble in New Bedford," with alternate financial ex- cerpts from the Boston Journal in 1871 and parenthetical quotations from the New Bedford Republican Standard^ is to be commended as a model for presentation of otherwise rather dull statistics. There is a look at Honolulu, the last stop for outfitting before going whaling in the north. A detailed discussion of Arctic whaling perils in the Bering Sea and a study in depth of the Inniut (Eskimo) tribes, who lived under cruel conditions on the North Slope shore of Alaska, set up a background for the final drama. The catastrophe of the whale fleet, trapped on a lee shore near Wain- wright Inlet in 1871 by heavy pack ice, unfolds. The decision to abandon the thirty-four ships, the escape in the fragile whaleboats in the narrow channel between the pack and the shore, the perilous stormy boat trip of 1,200 souls to the few whaleships outside the ice, all bear testimony to* Yankee courage and determination. 276 BOOK REVIEWS April

The Howland brothers lost three ships in the ice in 1871 and four more in 1876, harsh financial blows. Due to competition from Pennsylvania oil wells, the whaling industry was on the decline. The Howlands' remaining vessels, and even their homes, were sold. At the same time, by curious coincidence, attendance at Friends' Meetings declined, as did Quaker influence in New Bedford. Plate III of the Russell-Bufford lithographs of "The Abandonment of the Whalers in the Arctic Ocean September 1871" has been omitted from the List of Illustrations, but can be found in the end papers. The maps, one drawn with American names, and the other an English chart, fail to cover all places mentioned, such as "Seventy-two Pass," "Cape Thaddeus," "King's Island," etc.—the one real weakness in an otherwise excellent book. The author, an editorial writer, has had extensive personal contact with whalemen and access to the Howland and other papers. He presents an articulate, interesting insight into a forgotten chapter of history.

Boston, Mass. FRANCIS B. LOTHROP

The Republican Party and Black America: From McKinley to Hoover, 1896-1933. By RICHARD B. SHERMAN. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1973. viii, 274 p. Appendixes, bibliographical note, index. $9.50.) Richard B. Sherman's The Republican Party and Black America is at once both thoroughly ordinary and thoroughly disquieting. In appearance and tone, it is similar to scores of other monographs published each year. However, its subject—the deepening exclusion of blacks from political participation—is the one that arouses feelings of shame and anger. Based solidly on manuscript materials and displaying familiarity with the relevant secondary literature, the book is well organized and clearly written. The volume itself is attractively produced, with footnotes appearing where they ought to be, although it suffers from a spotty index and from inade- quate bibliographical commentary. Sherman largely confines his attention to main-stream party history. In extending themes developed by Stanley Hirshon and Vincent De Santis for the late nineteenth century, Sherman is at a disadvantage, for he is probing a period in which blacks stood on the periphery of Republican concern. Hence, this is a simply structured account of the interplay between black politicians, reformers, and editors and the national Republican Party. Virtually the same issues, ranging from patronage squabbles to lynching, recur throughout the period, and Sherman dutifully recounts the debates and the controversies. Although he breaks into the chronological narrative now and then with informative brief discussions of peonage, 1974 BOOK REVIEWS 277 lynching, and the rise of black protest organizations, he devotes little sustained attention to the broad social and economic context of black political life. Nor does he depart from his national focus to examine the precincts and the counties aside from an occasional glance at Harlem or Chicago. His administration-by-administration approach, together with the heavy emphasis on formal policies, strategies, and controversies, gives the book something of a mechanical tenor, as it marches from patronage battle to patronage battle. If the book itself is sober and cautious, its subject is painful and emotion- laden. Although Sherman focuses on issues familiar to students of twentieth- century American history, this study of the victimization of black Ameri- cans provokes anger and resentment. From the outrageous punishments inflicted on black soldiers in the 1906 Brownsville affair to Woodrow Wilson's defense of segregation in the federal departments, the reader is confronted by a government that used its powers to humiliate and oppress its own citizens. If the uproar created by Theodore Roosevelt's White House luncheon with Booker Washington no longer has the capacity to shock, the fact that a similar outcry occurred in 1929 when Herbert Hoover entertained Oscar De Priest and his wife at a formal function for newly elected congressmen renews one's sense of disbelief. And then there is the systematic exclusion of black people from the ballot boxes, a process that every American president from Hayes to Truman condoned or ignored. And beyond even that, the bloody trail of racial lynching that wound its way through the half-century after 1890 without evoking anything beyond pro forma criticism by all but a tiny handful of whites. Whether Sherman's subject is the exploitation of workers through peonage or the insulting treatment in 1930 of Gold Star mothers, his narrative is a reminder of the ugly depths of racism that characterized American life during this period. Sherman certainly cannot be accused of academic demagoguery. His accounts of assorted outrages are judicious, if not always completely without editorial comment. Moreover, the dramatic examples of the neglect and disparagement occur amid extended discussion of such mundane matters as federal patronage, platform debates, and intra-party quarrels. As for interpretation, Sherman confines his remarks to a few brief comments relating the GOP's earlier twentieth-century experience to more recent efforts to forge a "Southern strategy." He is content to tell his story, leaving it to the reader to supply the broader context of historical events and economic and social setting. With an ordinary subject this narrowness of focus might be a disadvantage, but in this case it seems somehow appropriate. Even without a broad interpretive framework or an overt moral appeal, there is more than enough opportunity for reflection and indignation, for Sherman's subject itself is as dramatic and compelling as his treatment of it is restrained.

Kansas State University ROBERT H. ZIEGER 278 BOOK REVIEWS April

RizzOy From Cop to Mayor of Philadelphia. By FRED HAMILTON. (New York: The Viking Press, 1973. 209 p. Illustrations, index. $6.95.) Writing biographies of controversial contemporary characters has always been a hazardous task. This is particularly true when, as in this case, the central figure still holds public office. This book is no exception. It ends six months after Francis Lazzero Rizzo was elected Mayor of Philadelphia for a four-year term in November, 1971. Since this review is written early in 1974 the reviewer is subject to the same hazards as the biographer, although to a somewhat lesser degree. Fred Hamilton, a reporter on the Philadelphia Daily News, has, nonetheless, accurately, sympathetically, and objectively traced Rizzo's character and career from his boyhood in a strait-laced Italo-American family in South Philadelphia, through his almost incredible rise in the Police Department from patrolman to Commissioner, until shortly after his successful campaign for the office of Mayor of Philadelphia. Rizzo's father Raphael, a poor boy known as Ralph, migrated to Phila- delphia from Calabria in 1908. His grandfather had fought for Italian freedom with Garibaldi. In 1914 Ralph became the first Italo-American on the Philadelphia police force, where he served the rest of his life. He was a good cop and an honest one. His eldest son Frank was born on October 23, 1920, the eldest of four boys. Young Frank, "a tough street fighter," was not much of a student. Midway through his senior year in high school he dropped out to join the Navy. Two years later he returned to Philadelphia, married his sweet- heart Carmella Silvestri and in October, 1943, two weeks short of his twenty-third birthday, was sworn into the police force. His father was delighted. "Do a good job and stay out of trouble," he advised his son. Frank heeded the first part of the paternal advice. It was not in his character to comply with the second. Hamilton relates in detail the fascinating personal story of the next thirty years during which Rizzo rose from the ranks to Police Commissioner and then to Mayor. Wherever there was a fight, Frank was in it. Contro- versy was his life's blood. But like a Horatio Alger hero he surmounted all obstacles. Philadelphia is well described by Hamilton as "a loose confederation of separate neighborhoods each with a distinctive life style." Rizzo's was pure South Philadelphia Italian but with no traoe of the Mafia. Known variously as "Super Cop" and the "Cisco Kid," he became the city's number one "crime buster." Often the busting was done with his own fists. His devotion to "Law n' Order" without much regard for justice won him the devotion of the residents of many of these neighborhoods. It earned him the enmity of others, particularly among the blacks; but until quite recently his admirers outnumbered his detractors. 1974 BOOK REVIEWS 279

Some years before he ran for Mayor, Rizzo moved from South Philadel- phia to Mt. Airy, more recently to Chestnut Hill. There is some upward mobility in the city but his life style has not perceptibly changed although recent adversity has appeared to cool his bellicosity. Tall but burly—six feet two, two hundred and fifty pounds—a meticulous but conservative dresser, with dark slick black hair, hardly a trace of grey, Rizzo can exude charm when he wants to; but his temper has a short fuse. He is given to excoriation of those who cross him. One incident on election night 1971 gives a hint of the inner man. His opponent, Thacher Longstreth, sent word he was about to concede defeat. He wanted to come over and make a speech for unity. Hamilton reports Rizzo's response in a low deep rolling voice: " him." Rizzo intensely admires President Nixon whom he once described "as one of our greatest Presidents." This was before the worst of the Watergate disclosures. There are those who believe that the same instinct for self destruction drives both men. In any event, a series of disasters, political and personal, have largely, at least for the time being, destroyed the Rizzo myth. Only time will tell whether the setbacks are more than temporary. This is a good book. I recommend it highly.

Philadelphia JOSEPH S. CLARK

Early Domestic Architecture of Pennsylvania. By ELEANOR RAYMOND. Reprint of the William Helburn, Inc. 1931 publication. (Princeton, N. J.: The Pyne Press, 1973, 158 p. Illustrations. Paper $6.95; cloth $12.50.) After going through Greek Revival, Gothic Revival, Italian and other Revival styles, it was inevitable that there would be a revival of American vernacular architecture. This reached its height during the early twentieth century and it was this that triggered the original publication of works such as Eleanor Raymond's Early Domestic Architecture of Pennsylvania. Actually, the title is somewhat misleading, since the book is almost exclusively concerned with southeastern Pennsylvania. The original introduction, which is included in this reprint, was by R. Brognard Okie, A.I.A., one of the true masters of this school of architecture. His comments are as valid today as when they were written in 1930. As an extra bonus, there is a new introduction by John Milner, A.I.A., a contemporary architect who thoroughly understands this period. He supplies a number of facts which update the book, making it more valuable. Miss Raymond, a Fellow in the A.I.A., has a well-trained architect's eye for picking out the significant structures and for deciding which ones need close-up photos as well. There are also twenty-five beautiful and 28O BOOK REVIEWS April valuable scaled drawings at the back, which are cross-referenced to the photographs of the subjects. Unfortunately, the drawings don't say too much about the building materials. One of the things which would have made the book more useful would have been historical information about the erection of the buildings. This becomes particularly pertinent with buildings which were added to over the years. Another possible weakness of the original work is the fact that different buildings, belonging to the same farm group, are scattered throughout the book, according to their uses. While this is good, the buildings are not cross-referenced to each other. One thing which the photographs clearly reveal is the builders' instinctive understanding of adapting structures to their sites. Whether it be a Fort Zeller, a house near Schaefferstown, or just a barn, these early builders, without bulldozers to adapt the sites to pre-designed buildings, designed the buildings for the sites. Certainly the results of this process are very satisfying. The reprint's page is somewhat smaller than the page of the original edition. This, plus a choice of paper which does not lend to sharp repro- ductions, results in the loss of some of the detail which was in the original photographs. Of course, the photos do show the massing and siting of the buildings, the solids and voids, so they lose very little artistically. But from the point of view of the historic architect or builder, wanting to work from the book, there is a loss. Fortunately, decreasing of the size of the page has in no way hurt the drawings. Today, architecture with local character is disappearing and the same shopping centers and supermarkets can be seen in Maine, Iowa, or Virginia. So it is important that the remaining buildings, such as those which Miss Raymond has chosen, be preserved for posterity. They are a fast disappearing but vital mirror of the culture which produced them. Many of Miss Raymond's buildings are already gone. Mr. Milner points to the wisdom of adaptive restoration for buildings no longer able to be continued for their original uses. Frequently, only this will save historic buildings. But the reworking must be done so as not to violate the buildings! Since only 1,100 copies of this book were printed in the original edition, it is particularly useful to have this reprint available at a popular price. While many of the photographs in the reproduction lose some of their informational potential, the drawings themselves are worth the price of the book.

National Park Service HENRY J. MAGAZINER, A.I.A.

Sunbonnets and Shoofiy Pies: A Pennsylvania Dutch Cultural History. By JOHN JOSEPH STOUDT. (South Brunswick, N. J.: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1973. 272 p. Illustrations, index. 5525.00.) 1974 BOOK REVIEWS 281 Beneath the Kitsch of the title of this book, we are informed that the volume is to be a cultural history of the Pennsylvania Germans. It is incumbent upon authors of general works that they offer as generalizations the proved results of their own or other scholars' investigations and that they make certain all details provided readers are factually correct. Failure to fulfill these simple requirements erodes a book's credibility. Regrettably Stoudt fails on both counts: he makes generalization after generalization—the Moravians' Bethlehem diary is the "singly most important source for colonial history in Pennsylvania" (p. 255); the slip decoration on pottery varied from family to family to identify owners (p. 204), for instance—for which sufficient support lies either in his own imagination or in unpublished treatises. Why could not unicorns in Penn- sylvania German folk art be from the British coat-of-arms rather than Germanic mythology? And why beat around the bush on the whole matter of Hexerei and turn it into a matter of trolls or sweet fairies? The Pennsyl- vania Germans, or at least some of them, believed in the existence and harassing presence of evil spirits and used a number of means to keep them away (stars painted on the barn not being one of them), and that is that. Worse still, a parade of errors of fact and in spelling seriously blot the production. But a few examples may be cited: Daniel Schumacher did not spell his name Schuhmacher (and on p. 191 the misspelling is given under a photograph of his signature!); Ralph Funk's poems were published by The Pennsylvania German Society (and not the Folklore Society, which lost its existence in 1966 by merger); Hanover was not founded in the 1730s, but in 1763 (p. 37); and the village near which Henry Harbaugh was born is spelled Waynesboro (p. 191); the village (p. 34) in Lancaster County is Groffdale; and by Weavers town, I believe Weaverland is meant. John Conrad Weiser (p. 35) did not move to Pennsylvania in 1723 (but in 1729), nor was he ever Schultheiss of Grossaspach, in Germany (his grandfather was); nor did ^ but rather 16 families — as a contemporary source precisely states—migrate from New York to Tulpehocken in 1723. The Schoharie region is hardly "along the Hudson" (p. 32). But perhaps the book was not to be read seriously and was published only for the pictures. The new ones, not part of Stoudt's earlier produc- tions, are either not precisely identified (p. 78—what a frustration not to know where such a building stood), unbelievably poorly reproduced (color plates after pp. 96 and 128, for instance), or mislabelled (the Ziegel Church Lee Grumbine sang about is one by that name in his native Lebanon County, not the building pictured from Lehigh County on p. 199), or absurd (there is no fire under the applebutter being cooked on p. 219; there are European Springerle molds and cookie cutters on pp. 206, 207, 216, 217). Stoudt's own researches into the mystics who settled Germantown and the other sectarians in colonial Pennsylvania give his book an unbalance 2.82 BOOK REVIEWS April

which falsely suggests that this minority stamped the entire folk culture (chapters one to five), whereas it was the largely Lutheran and Reformed elements which were hospitable to the sort of material cited in chapter seven. A cultural history of the Pennsylvania Germans is badly needed, but many of the studies Stoudt says need to be done must be completed before an adequate summary can be written. Perhaps Mr. Stoudt would secure his reputation best if he would now return to creative research from rehash and produce a monograph of substantive nature.

Pennsylvania German Society FREDERICK S. WEISER

The Ethnic Experience in Pennsylvania. Edited by JOHN E. BODNAR. (Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1973. xvii, 330 p. $12.00.) John E. Bodnar, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Connecticut, is Associate Historian in charge of the ethnic studies program of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. In 1972 he prepared for the Commission "An Ethnic Bibliography of Pennsylvania History" (84 pages, mimeographed), revealing that far more than one would expect has been written on the numerous nationality groups contributing to the population stock of the Commonwealth. In 1973 he issued "An Ethnic Profile of Pennsylvania's Population" (6 pages, mimeographed), in which he estimated the ethnic origins of Pennsylvania's 1970 population as follows: Slavic, 28%; Italian, 17%; German, 15%; British, 10%; Negro, 9%; Irish, 6%; Jewish, 3%; Spanish-speaking, 1%; and others, 11%. In other words, it is not a WASP state. The immigrant hordes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, coming largely from southern and eastern Europe and largely Roman Catholic, exceeded in numbers the colonial population stock of English Quakers, Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, and the assorted German religious groups. The volume under review accents this change in the population makeup of the state. It is a book of highly specialized original essays written by twelve different scholars on selected aspects of post-colonial immigration. The one exception is a chapter by the late Professor Maurice A. Mook of Penn State on the Old Order Amish. After a somewhat skimpy introduction by the editor, James P. Rodechko of Wilkes College writes on the Irish immigration to the Pennsylvania anthracite region in the 1870s, with special emphasis on their part in the labor movement of the period. This story has been covered much more thoroughly in a recent book by Harold W. Aurand published by the Temple University Press. Caroline Golab of Philadelphia writes on the small Polish immigration to that city, suggesting reasons why it was bypassed in favor of settlement in central and western Pennsylvania. Carl Oblinger of Missouri State University at Maryville, 1974 BOOK REVIEWS 283 making use of the new quantitative methods, discusses the development of a large black "underclass" in southeastern Pennsylvania during the pre-Civil War years. Thousands of fugitive slaves and freedmen seem to have stopped their flight as soon as they crossed the Mason-Dixon line. Clement L. Valleta of King's College deals with an Italian settlement in Roseto, near Stroudsburg. Michael P. Weber of Carnegie-Mellon, in a quantitative study comparable to Oblinger's, observes occupational mobility among nineteenth-century immigrants to Warren; "enough unskilled workers," he concludes, "did advance up the occupational ladder to give hope to all." Walter C. Warzeski of Kutztown contributes an essay on the Carpatho-Ruthenian of "Rusin" immigrants, with special attention to their place in the Roman Catholic Church. Bohdan P. Procko of Villanova writes on the Ukrainians. Richard N. Juliani of Temple contributes one of the best chapters, a study of the origins and development of the Italian community in Phila- delphia. George J. Prpic of John Carroll University contributes an essay on the Croatian immigrants in Pittsburgh, emphasizing their interest in World War I. Maxwell Whiteman of the Union League writes on the arrival of the first East European Jews in Philadelphia during the 1880s. The last chapter is by Bodnar himself and deals with the Slavic settlers in Steelton. There is no conclusion, no index, and no bibliography. The footnotes are hard to use because they are placed at the end of each chapter and are printed in very small type. They indicate a substantial amount of fresh research in primary sources, many of them in foreign languages. While not providing scintillating reading, the essays are reasonably well written. This book does not encompass anything like the complete story of immigration to Pennsylvania, but it demonstrates some of the possibilities for further research in this area.

The Pennsylvania State University IRA V. BROWN

RicheSy Class, and Power Before the Civil War. By EDWARD PESSEN. (Lex- ington, Mass.: D. C. Heath and Company, 1973. xiv, 378 p. Illustra- tions, bibliography, index. $7.95.) Since 1970, Edward Pessen has written nine articles dealing with various aspects of upper-class life in the so-called "era of the common man." These articles, with some additional material, now form the basis of this important, though tedious, book. Pessen analyzes the wealth, life styles, and power of the richest and most prestigious citizens of four northern cities during the years 1825-1850. In all four—New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Brooklyn—he finds 284 BOOK REVIEWS April substantial evidence that runs counter to the chief assumptions of the traditional egalitarian thesis. Instead of this being an era of equality and opportunity, Pessen finds a society dominated by an aristocracy of wealth and tradition. Through a careful study of tax assessments, he reveals the existence not merely of rich Americans, but of Americans rich even by European standards. Inequality which was great in the late 1820s grew yearly greater. The proportion of total assessed wealth held by the richest one per cent rose from about one-quarter to one-half between 1825 and 1850. In further refutation of the egalitarian myth, Pessen shows that very few of the richest persons were "self made"; over 90 per cent in fact came from "rich and/or eminent" backgrounds and from long-established families. Nor did fortunes rise and fall with great rapidity. "During the antebellum years, few new great wealthholders sprang up, while fewer still fell away" (p. 138). Even the panic and depression of the late 1830s only increased the power and finances of the wealthiest. These elites were very exclusive. They married their own kind, lived sumptuously in close prox- imity to one another, had their own clubs, summered in similar locales, and socialized together. They also had a disproportionate preponderance of power within their cities, controlling and staffing the various benevolent and charitable societies and markedly influencing the political power structure. Though limiting his in-depth study to the four cities mentioned, Pessen makes frequent reference to recent studies of other cities, towns, and rural areas that support his thesis. His conclusion, therefore, is very broad: "the evidence indicates that the egalitarian version of antebellum American society should be discarded" (p. 306). Pessen's thesis, that American society in the second quarter of the nineteenth century was class structured and not egalitarian, is not, of course, new; this was first developed in my 1967 book, Jacksonian Aris- tocracy: Class and Democracy in New York, f<$jo-z86o. What Pessen has contributed, however, is substantial new evidence to support this hy- pothesis. Though much of this evidence is impressionistic (despite Pessen's claim to be "quantitative" and his unfortunate but frequent asides that only God really knows historical truth), it seems convincing. Riches, Class, and Power Before the Civil War should be read and studied by all historians of the middle period and especially by those still enamored of the egalitarian thesis. Unfortunately this will not be a pleasant task. Pessen's book is marred by repetitive stilted writing, a tendency to set up straw men and to belabor the obvious, and seemingly endless lists of names and bits of trivial information. Despite the bad writing, however, this book deserves careful consideration.

Michigan State University DOUGLAS T. MILLER THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA

President* Boies Penrose

Vice-Presidents Henry R, Pemberton Harold D. Saylor

Ernest C. Savage Thomas E# Wynne

Secretary, Howard H. Lewis Treasurer, George E, Nehrbas Councilors John Cadwalader Joseph W. Lippincott, Jr. Caroline Robbins Thomas C. Cochran Robert L. McNeil, Jr. E. Newbold Smith H. Richard Dietrich, Jr. Henry J. Magaziner Mrs. L. M. C. Smith Mrs. Anthony N. B. Garvan Bertram L. O'Neill Martin P. Snyder Wm. Richard Gordon E. P. Richardson H. Justice Williams

Counsel, Henry N. Platt

Director, Nicholas B. Wainwright

Founded in 1824, The Historical Society of Pennsylvania has long been a center of research in Pennsylvania and American history. It has accumulated an important historical collection, chiefly through contributions of family, political, and business manuscripts, as well as letters, diaries, newspapers, magazines, maps, prints, paintings, photographs, and rare books. Additional contributions of such a nature are urgently solicited for preservation in the Society's fireproof building where they may be consulted by scholars. Membership. There are various classes of membership: general, $15.00; associate, $25.00; patron, $100.00; life, $300.00; benefactor, $1,000. Members receive certain privileges in the use of books, are invited to the Society's historical addresses and receptions, and receive The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. Those interested in joining the Society are invited to submit their names. Hours: The Society is open to the public Monday, 1 P.M. to 9 P.M.; Tuesday through Friday, 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. The Society is normally closed from the first Monday in August until the second Monday in September.