Federalist Tycoon: the Life and Times of Israel Thorndike.Bytimo- Thy H

BOOK REVIEWS 725 books on Benjamin and William Franklin, and on Judith Sargent Murray. Federalist Tycoon: The Life and Times of Israel Thorndike.ByTimo- thy H. Kistner. (Lanham, Md.: The University Press of America, 2015. Pp. ix, 176.$65.00.) Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/88/4/725/1792665/tneq_r_00501.pdf by guest on 26 September 2021 In this detailed biography of Massachusetts entrepreneur Israel Thorndike, Timothy H. Kistner states his goal as “writing history for those outside academia” (p. ix). Like his protagonist, this lawyer and first-time author can consider himself a success in this endeavor. As the subtitle suggests, Kistner’s thoroughly-researched and well- written account provides a full biography of Thorndike while placing him soundly within the larger context of the major historical events of his lifetime. Through a brisk and engaging narrative, the reader is transported from the wharves of small-town colonial Beverly, Mas- sachusetts to the trading seaports of the West Indies, Europe, and Asia; from the political wrangling of ratifying the Constitution, to the debates over New England secession in 1814; and from the mansions of Beverly and Boston to the burgeoning textile mills in their outskirts. Although the historical record on Thorndike can be spotty at times, Kistner expertly and judiciously fills in the missing details based on careful research, always making sure that the reader knows when he is making educated guesses. The author leaves no stone unturned in detailing the life of “New England’s richest man and largest textile manufacturer” (p. 162). After a prologue set during October of 1814, when Thorndike and other Federalists were in active opposition to the nation’s second war with Britain, the book proceeds chronologically from Thorndike’s birth in 1755 to his death in 1832. Although born with neither wealth nor family connections, Thorndike exhibited intelligence, ambition, and business acumen from an early age. Barely twenty years old on the eve of the Revolution, he was already a moderately wealthy owner of several fishing vessels and the business partner of Moses Brown. He solidified this wealth during the Revolution, investing in several dangerous but lucrative privateering missions against the British fleet. As a sign of his growing respect within the local community, his peers sent him as their representative to the state ratifying convention, where he successfully lobbied representatives from Massachusetts in support of the Constitution. The book’s middle chapters detail the vast global trading network he built in the aftermath of the Revolution. Always on the lookout for 726 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY the next great profit-making enterprise, Thorndike took advantage of the recurring European wars to become one of New England’s most important merchant capitalists. Yet not everything Thorndike touched turned to gold. On several occasions, his captains failed him: his ships were captured during the long naval war between Britain and France, his trading plans disrupted by rapidly-changing supply and demand of global commodities, and his investments in early textile manufac- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/88/4/725/1792665/tneq_r_00501.pdf by guest on 26 September 2021 turing failed to bear fruit. But while Kistner details these failures to demonstrate the perils of global commerce in the Early Republic, it is clear that – most days – Thorndike indeed had the Midas touch. By the time of the Embargo and the War of 1812, Thorndike had become one of the most respected voices in the resurgent Federalist Party. With the massive disruption to trade wrought by embargo and war, Thorndike deftly shifted his interests to the emerging manufacturing concerns of New England, particularly the textile industry which would prove to be a major catalyst of the American industrial revolution. He was a leading investor in the Boston Manufacturing Company, initiated by Francis Lowell in 1813, and served as its president from 1817 to 1831. He would likewise invest in several other textile concerns, as well as some early railroad enterprises. At his death, he was worth $1–2 million dollars, an astounding amount for the time, especially considering his impoverished origins. Despite the high quality of this book, it has minor problems of style and content. While well-written, the author is at times repetitive, and there are a few glaring grammatical mistakes and word omissions which should have been caught by the editor. Particularly in the second half of the book, the transitions between different topics are sudden and awkward. A few details are also inaccurate. For example, the incorporation of the Boston Manufacturing Company was in no sense “a novel way of structuring the company” or “a new innovation” in 1813 (p. 119). Incorporation was an increasingly common practice for transporta- tion companies, banks, insurance companies, and manufacturers by the War of 1812. In Thorndike’s own backyard, the Beverly Cotton Manufactory had been incorporated in 1789, and the Newburyport Woolen Manufactory in 1794. The Massachusetts legislature codified these practices by passing a general incorporation law for manufacturing concerns in 1809. Kistner also misreads the political status of the Federalists after the War of 1812, implying that the party somehow “reconciled” with the BOOK REVIEWS 727 Republicans (p. 137). While the Republicans could not just ignore every former Federalist after the war, the party – as a whole – was in severe decline locally and dead as a doornail on the national scene. Finally, the author vaguely criticizes other accounts of Thorndike’s life for over-emphasizing his trading enterprise, yet this emphasis also constitutes the majority of Kistner’s book. Indeed, he provides little evidence – beyond monetary investments – for his assertion Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/88/4/725/1792665/tneq_r_00501.pdf by guest on 26 September 2021 that Thorndike was “the nation’s first great industrialist” (p. 162). Although Thorndike served as president of the Boston Manufac- turing Company for fourteen years, Kistner gives no details of his management of it. While Francis Lowell was essential in the devel- opment of American textile manufacturing, calling Thorndike instead one the greatest “venture capitalist[s]” of the period seems much more appropriate. Federalist Tycoon accomplishes exactly what the author intended. Although it offers little new in terms of content or argument for the academic reader, it provides the general reader with an informative, enjoyable narrative account of several critical business and political events of the period, as demonstrated through the lens of the life of the interesting figure, Israel Thorndike. Sharon Ann Murphy, professor of history at Providence College, is the author of several books and articles on the financial history of the early republic and antebellum America. Those Good Gertrudes: A Social History of Women Teachers in Amer- ica. By Geraldine J. Clifford. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. Pp. vii, 458.$44.95.) Those Good Gertrudes is the first comprehensive portrait of women teachers in the United States from the colonial era to the present. Women came to dominate K-12 teaching by the early nineteenth century, provoking Geraldine Clifford’s animating historical question: “What difference did it make, then and since, that the schoolmaster gave way to the schoolmistress?” (p. viii). To answer this question, Clifford places “the taken-for-granted woman teacher” in the spot- light, and reframes how the history of education is told. Clifford focuses squarely on the everyday lives of female teachers. Her work combines the topical focus of Joel Perlmann and Robert Margo’s Women’s Work? American Schoolteachers 1650–1920 (2001), with.

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