BOOK REVIEWS George Washington. A Biography. Volume VI: Patriot and President. By DOUGLAS SOUTHALL FREEMAN. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1954. xlviii, 529 p. Illustrations, appendices, bibliography, index. $7.50.) The death of Douglas Southall Freeman on June 13, 1953, ended a career which will make its mark on the practice of biography in America. Profes- sional historians have smiled at his enthusiasm over his "discoveries"; and they are right in that the work now ended has produced no significant revaluation. They have smiled at his assembly-line technique of research, and have been pleased to point out errors which resulted from it. They have complained of the pedantry of the footnotes which swarm after every sen- tence, and of the cryptic abbreviations which they contain. But the public, which one would have expected to have been frightened off by this parade of scholarly machinery, has taken to heart this vast biography, as it did that of R. E. Lee. The number of Freeman fans among people who are not naturally readers of heavy books is amazing. To this concluding volume Dumas Malone has contributed an essay on "The Pen of Douglas Southall Freeman," and Mary Wells Ashworth has contributed a prefatory note which the writers of popular biography and youthful practitioners of history should read thoughtfully. Indeed some of the professional historians of this generation would have done their own work much better had they seriously aimed at Freeman's goal of perfection, and had they labored as earnestly as he to reach it. This volume would have remained the climax of the biography of Washington even if Freeman had lived to complete the seventh. It covers the retirement of the hero to his farm, the creation of the Union, and the celebration of the first inauguration in such a national burst of enthusiasm as the states had never seen. The near-worship of Washington had carried ratification, and it provided the bond which held the new government together until the mutual interests of the states could sort themselves out and provide cohesion. Then came the development of politics and, in the second Presidential election, the savage attacks on John Adams which warned Washington that the game was going to be one which he could not play. The parallel between his concept of the Presidency and his experience and those of President Eisenhower is instructive. The volumes in this biography dealing with the Revolution suffered somewhat from being Washington-centered. One sometimes wondered whether Freeman realized that he was for this reason giving a distorted, 237 238 BOOK REVIEWS April and sometimes inaccurate, picture of the war. On the other hand, the Washington-centered quality is one of the useful things about Volume VI. The biography was to end with Freeman's over-all appraisal of Washing- ton, which we were awaiting with great interest. Looking back at the series, one can see that Freeman was ideally prepared for this task. In some ways he was amusingly like his own conception of Washington; for example, in his own career there is a striking parallel to Washington's refusal to accept a salary. He had the same sense of dignity; he never called any man by his first name. He wrote of the great with reverence, and with an eye to moral and ethical standards which statistical biographers regard as a contamina- tion of history. But this biography is no mere glorification of Washington. Freeman agreed with the President's modesty about his own mental powers. He gently jokes about his dignified liking for the ladies. He says frankly that Washington "never could have won the war in the spirit he displayed in this effort to secure the peace." He sees no reason to apologize for the fact that Washington, in late pre-Jefferson times, saw nothing wrong in the use of taxation to support the church. The public, which has a vague idea that Washington was "the richest man in the country," will learn much from the picture of the planter which Freeman has drawn from manuscripts and from books usually used only by historians. Washington was not only practically bankrupt in 1787, but dis- inclined to economize or to reduce his scale of living in any way. Freeman's submerged New England ancestry, which regarded bankruptcy as evidence of sin, seems to have stirred not at all at this sight. Nor was it distressed at Washington's contract to give his gardener four dollars with which to be drunk four days and nights at Christmas. Freeman knew farming, and when he talks about Washington's experimentation with Chinese, South African, and Siberian seeds in Virginia soil, he writes as a planter. In spite of the fact that for the later portion of Washington's life the bulk of source material, some of it still untouched by historians, is such that Freeman could not possibly cover it all, this work will stand for generations as the definitive biography. It points the need for a hundred specialized works on smaller segments of Washington's life, but all of these will rely on Freeman for the background. American Antiquarian Society CLIFFORD K. SHIPTON Lemoyne cTIberville^ Soldier of New France. By NELLIS M. CROUSE. (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1954. xii, 280 p. Frontispiece, maps, appendix, bibliography, index. $4.00.) Read the epic pages of Francis Parkman, or the story of the Hudson Bay Company, or chronicles of early Maine, or again the history of Louisiana, and very soon a certain Pierre Lemoyne d'lberville enters the scene. 1955 BOOK REVIEWS 239 Wherever the interests of France and England clashed in the New World, in the two decades from 1686 to 1706, Lemoyne d'lberville played his customarily violent and often brief role. He thrust the English out of the Hudson Bay country, ravaged Newfoundland, raided the cost of Maine, took part in the brutal sack of Schenectady, laid waste the island of Nevis, and secured Louisiana for France. He was in the midst of planning further raids in the West Indies, perhaps a descent on British North America, when he died in Havana in 1706 at the age of forty-five. What manner of man was this "Canadian Cid"? What did he contribute to his times? What is his true place in history? These are the questions raised and left unanswered by the scattered references and episodic accounts through which most American readers have hitherto made Iberville's acquaintance. Now, thanks to Mr. Crouse, we have at least partial answers readily available in English. It is no criticism of Mr. Crouse to say that a fully rounded picture of the man Iberville does not emerge, since the source material for a biography is simply not to be found. Nevertheless, Mr. Crouse does permit himself a few general observations. Iberville, he writes, was throughout his career "imbued with a feeling of loyalty to his king . almost religious in its intensity," to which was added, "as a corollary," an implacable hatred of the English engendered by the cruelty of the Iroquois assault on Canada. As the story unfolds, other traits of Iberville's character reveal themselves to the reader: the traits of a forceful leader, ruthless, resourceful, and intrepid, but cautious when caution was called for, and those also of a man personally ambitious, clever, shrewd, and capable of turning his exploits into private gain. The emphasis, however, is, and rightly so, on Iberville's achievements, not on what he was. In careful and sometimes meticulous detail, Mr. Crouse describes each of the dozen raids and expeditions that made Iberville the hero of New France. It is an exciting story. Mr. Crouse is at his best in portraying the arduous journeys through the Canadian wilderness and the hardships of arctic warfare that faced Iberville and his men in their campaigns against the English outposts on Hudson Bay. The clash of arms, whether in northern Canada, Newfoundland, or Nevis, is described in hearty style. Yet, as a description of military opera- tions, the account is often frustrating. The strength and disposition of the opposing forces are not always set forth clearly, and Iberville's movements are frequently difficult to follow. To be understood fully, Iberville's cam- paigns must be fitted closely into the context of border raids and reprisals, the struggle for the beaver trade, and Iberville's own search for plunder. Mr. Crouse stresses, instead, the international rivalries of England, France, and Spain on the European stage. Finally, Mr. Crouse's highly unsym- pathetic and unconvincing view of "Leisler's rebellion" as background for the Schenectady raid and his low opinion of the English forces and their leaders tend to becloud the reasons for Iberville's success as a commander. In every operation except his Hudson Bay campaign of 1688-1689, Iberville 24O BOOK REVIEWS April seems to have achieved surprise and enjoyed overwhelming superiority in numbers; but was it sheer luck or good intelligence (in the military sense) that enabled him to hit the enemy when and where they were not ready? It is something of a paradox that Iberville's chief claim to historical im- mortality rests on the one peaceful interlude in his career. His "bayou diplomacy" and his exploration of the lower Mississippi in 1699 established France's title to Louisiana. The fort he built in 1700 below the present site of New Orleans and the settlement he established on Mobile Bay in 1702 laid the permanent foundations of the colony. These, not his more violent exploits, entitle Iberville to that place in history which Mr.