Book Reviews 351

Most of the men of the frontier knew how to tell a good story! Here one feels the terror of Alexander Henry, a trader caught in the fort at Mackinac during Pontiac’s Rebellion, watching the massacre of his fellow Englishmen. One shares the purposefulness of Daniel Eoone walking away from his Indian captors to hike over one hundred sixty miles in five clays with only one meal in order io warn the settlers of Boonesborough of impending attack or marvels at John Colter’s race for survival, naked, chased by vengeful Black- foot for six miles. As the editor notes, the frontiersmen helped to shape America’s image of itself, But excitement and color have too often made for myth and obscured reality. The frontier fre- quently coarsened men. Arrogance and brutality are evident in many of these accounts, as well as an attitude of cultural superiority toward the Indians. In search of private gain or adventure, the frontiersman inevitably helped blaze the trails and passes that carried the nation westward, but he also senselessly slaughtered the beaver and buffalo, provoked and killed Indians, and sometimes exhibited a selfish callous- ness toward his own companions. On the other hand, these accounts also offer surprising expressions of tenderness, ap- preciation of the grandeur of the wilderness, and a remarkable sensitivity. Despite the subtitle and the dustjacket not all the ac- counts are true, as Froncek cautions, and some of the tales are told about the frontiersmen and not by them. Readers must remember that tall tales came naturally to the west- erner, a typical kind of frontier wit often intentionally perpe- trated on the eastern dude. Hopefully, this collection will lead the interested reader back to the original, full accounts, whetting his appetite for more about the story of our way west. Butler University, Indianapolis George M. Waller

William H. Crawford, 17’72-1834. By Chase C. Mooney. (Lex- ington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1974. Pp. xi, 364. Notes, note on sources, index. $15.00.) During his active political career, William H. Crawford was regarded by most of his contemporaries as a major na- tional figure. He was senator from Georgia during the last 352 Indiann Magazine of History

Jefferson and first Madison administrations and then went on to be minister to France for two years. When the War of 1812 ended, Crawford was appointed secretary of war by James Madison, after which he served throughout James Monroe’s eight presidential years as secretary of the treasury. Extra- ordinarily popular in Congress, politically adroit, very affable and physically attractive, Crawford seemed a sure bet to become President of the United States. He backed away from the nomination in 1816, and when illness struck him down in 1823, his national career collapsed. Although his health improved sufficiently after his re- turn to Georgia for him to serve competently as state superior judge for the northern circuit, his influence at home steadily declined, and it is unlikely he would have been reelected when his term on the bench expired in 1834. Crawford recognized this possibility and therefore asked President Andrew Jack- son for ail appointment to the United States Supreme Court when a place became vacant with the death of Justice William Johnson. Unfortunately-or perhaps fortunately, consider- ing all the blows he had sustained over the last few years- he died two weeks after he made his request. Not much later it was said that Crawford retained only a “shadow” of a reputation. Today, even that shadow has disappeared. Scholars have neglected him. Georgia has accorded him scant recognition. His grave site goes unattended; the marble slab covering the grave is broken; and the iron fence around it has fallen apart. Poor Crawford. He deserves a good biography because he was in fact an important figure of the early nineteenth century. But his ill luck still persists, for the late Chase C. Mooiiey has not provided a biography that does Crawford justice. Not that it was entirely Mooney’s fault. Any Crawford biographer is faced with an enormous problem at the very outset. The lack of a large collection of manu- script sources is an insuperable difficulty. Crawford himself was careless about preserving his correspondence, and he rarely made copies of outgoing letters. Furthermore, the effort of his son-in-law, George M. Dudley, to preserve Crawford material was vitiated when the Dudley home burned during the Civil War. Still the author might have done more with extant docu- ments, both public and private. Little in the way of import- Book Reviews 353

ant, new information is revealed. Opportunities to dig deeply into significant events and provide penetrating analyses are repeatedly missed by the author. The controversy over the Florida invasion and the events leading to Jackson’s discovery of John C. Calhoun’s “perfidy” is a case in point. “The story has been told many times before,” writes Mooney, “and will not be repeated here” (p. 318). Fair enough. But what of Crawford’s involvement in the revelation ? “The exigencies of politics probably determined the actions of the principals,” Mooney states; “if blame is to be attached, it should be spread among a half dozen or so” (pp. 319-20). So much for the manner and motivation that set the events in motion, although the author in a footnote does remark that there exists “no evidence of direct collusion between Crawford and Martin Van Buren in the Jackson-Calhoun matter” (p. 320, note 48). Again, the author is not especially enlightening about the fierce animosity between Crawford and Jackson that de- veloped immediately following the Creek War. He concedes that Crawford’s order to renegotiate the Treaty of Fort Jackson may have had something to do with it. But why did Crawford issue the order? Crawford spoke to the Indian chieftains, says Mooney, and believed their arguments just ! For a politician of Crawford’s skills this explanation hardly seems complete or adequate. Unfortunately, most of the book simply reworks old interpretations or accepts without ques- tion rather naive explanations. Unlike his subject, the author is very cautious. He hedges about Crawford’s debilitating illness that struck him down in 1823. Was it “inflamatcry rheumatism,” as Craw- ford himself believed, or bilious fever or erysipelas or a stroke? The reader is free to choose among them. And what finally killed Crawford? The newspapers at the time de- scribed it as an “affection of the heart” whatever that means. Mooney is content to leave it at that. It is painful to write a negative review about a work whose author has recently died and over which he labored so long and diligently. In fairness it should be said, as a final comment, that the book is useful to scholars in gathering together in one place all that is known-and maybe knowable -about the life of a distinguished politician of the early national period. University of Illinois, Robert V. Remini Chicago Circle