Book Reviews

Charles C. Cole, Jr. A Fragile Capital:Identity and the Early Years of Columbus,Ohio. Columbus: Ohio State UniversityPress, 2001. 292 pp. ISBN: 1814208533(cloth), $46.95.

In the popular historical imagination, the story ofthe "winning" of the American west is a rural sto-

ry, dominated by images of individualistic frontiers-men, resolute American Indians, and rugged cow-boys. Historians have long been aware, however,that the story of the development of the west shouldreally be told as an urban story.From Richard C. Wade writingin the 1950s through WilliamCronon in 1990s, historians haveshown that western cities servedas nodes of settlement and com-merce, and as centers of politicsand culture. Wade, in particular,argued that historians shouldclosely examine Pittsburgh, Cin-cinnati, Louisville, St. Louis andChicago when researching thedevelopment of the trans-Appala-chian west during the nineteenthcentury. Unfortunately, the roleof smaller cities like Columbusgot lost in that focus. Charles C.Cole, Jr., has done historians a considerable servicein providing us with information that allows theincorporation of Columbus into this larger story.Created by an act of the Ohio legislature in 1812,the city of Columbus went from an unbroken tractof forest to one of the Ohio Valley's largest andmost important cities in just a few decades. Relyingon a large number of letters and diaries, as well as

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ragileCapital

Charles C. Cole J

published materials, such as government recordsand newspapers (mostly from the Ohio HistoricalSociety), Cole tells the story of Columbus during thefour decades following its creation. In focusing ona place, rather than a person or persons, Cole haschosen to emphasize coverage over drama.

Cole has adopted a thematic approach in chart-ing the development of Columbus between 1812and 1852. Chapters focus on discrete topics suchas economic development, transportation, educa-tion, politics, culture, religion, journalism, and thearts. He also devotes chapters to discussions of

Columbus's experiences with thewomen's movement, anti-slaveryactivities, and other forms of an-tebellum reform. In each of thesechapters, Cole narrates ratherthan analyzes. For example, inthe chapter on economic devel-opment he describes in detail theowners of individual businessesand how their businesses oper-ated, but he does not generalize inorder to draw a collective portraitof businessmen and their activi-ties in Columbus. And althoughthe author examines the city'sbusiness directories, he makesno use of tax lists, and there is

almost no statistical analysis of property or persons.Therefore, Cole can only speculate about upwardmobility among the citizenry and the compositionand size of an obviously growing middle class.

In addition, readers may find themselves raisingtwo other major concerns. First, it is unfortunatethat Cole chose to examine only the first forty yearsof Columbus's history. Had he extended his study a

Identity andthe Early Yair

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bit, he could have included the place of Columbusin the Crisis of the Union. It would have been inter-esting to learn how the Republican Party took holdin Columbus and how the city's sons experiencedthe Civil War. Secondly, those studying topics out-side of Ohio will lament the fact that Cole has notdone more to connect the story of Columbus to thevarious historical literatures dealing with nationaldevelopments in nineteenth-century America.

That said, Cole's knowledge of Ohio is exten-sive, and readers interested in a deeper knowledgeof the city of Columbus and a description of whathappened between the 1810s and 1850s will findA Fragile Capital a valuable source of information.One therefore can easily imagine graduate studentsusing Cole's book as a starting point for their ownexamination of these and other topics in Ohio his-tory, and as a point of entry into the collectionsof the Ohio Historical Society. In short, CharlesCole has written a useful book that will serve Ohiohistorians for years to come.

Leonard J. SadoskyIowa State University

this movement, for example, Catherine Clinton'sHarriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom (2004),Kate C. Larson's Bound for the Promise Land:Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American (2004),and Jean M. Humez's Harriet Tubman: The Lifeand Life Stories (2003). Providing a regional studyof the Underground Railroad in Kentucky as wellas a local study centered in and around Louisville,Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad inthe Kentucky Borderland supplements and expandsupon these national studies and biographies.

J. Blaine Hudson, Professor of Pan-African Stud-ies and Acting Dean of Arts and Sciences at theUniversity of Louisville, set out in this book "topresent the historical record pertaining to fugitiveslaves and the Underground Railroad in Kentuckyas fully and as accurately as possible, based on theavailable evidence." (2) And, indeed, he has suc-ceeded. Hudson presents an impressive statisticalanalysis of newspaper runaway notices, and hethoroughly analyzes the autobiographical and bio-graphical recollections of many African Americanswho took flight from slavery in Kentucky, accountswritten down sometimes by African Americans andsometimes by the white friends of the runaways.

J. Blaine Hudson. Fugitive Slavesand the Underground Railroad inthe Kentucky Borderland. Jeffer-son, North Carolina: McFarland& Company, 2002. 215 pp. ISBN:078641345X (cloth), $39.95.

Recently, scholarship on thehistory of the Underground

Railroad—the movement of slavesescaping north to freedom—hasenjoyed a renaissance. Scholarssuch as David W. Blight in hisbook Passages to Freedom: TheUnderground Railroad in Historyand Memory (2004) have added significantly to thefield, as have new studies of notable participants in

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Hudson begins this book with an introductionthat reviews some of the relevant historiography,states the purpose of the study, and surveys relevantprimary sources, and he follows that section witha chapter covering the physical geography of theOhio Valley, including Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois,Indiana, and Tennessee. The next five chaptersparse the evidence collected by Hudson from a widereading in the Kentucky newspapers of the era thatincluded hundreds of runaway slave advertisements.He then collates the information gleaned from theadvertisements, "801 references to 1,196 fugitiveslaves" (32), as he says, using an SPSS statisticalprogram to create a "KentuckyFugitive Slave Data Base." Thedatabase is the source of numeroustables scattered throughout thiswork as well as, one supposes, thebasis of the information providedin two appendices. Unfortunately,it is not clear from the text or thefootnotes how or whether otherscholars can access this importantdatabase, a worrisome problembecause without such access theyhave no way to check the accuracyof the author's calculations.

Hudson is at his best when herecounts the escapes of slaves frombondage. These stories, some of which are wellknown to scholars, such as the difficulties MargaretGarner faced, and some of which are little known tohistorians, detail the perils, pitfalls, and possibilitiesfacing fugitive slaves. Overall, Hudson's work con-firms what previous scholars have argued about es-caped slaves, specifically that they were overwhelm-ingly young and male and from the border states,and that they passed through an UndergroundRailroad consisting of a loose network of slaves, freeAfrican Americans, and white sympathizers. Hud-son also argues that, based on extrapolations fromhis database, the number of escaping slaves wasgreater than scholars have believed previously, and

that a natural increase among slaves in the Southoffset the loss of fugitives. Fugitive Slaves and theUnderground Railroad in the Kentucky Borderlandwill find a place in high school and undergraduatelibraries that supplements the recent scholarship onthe Underground Railroad in the United States asa whole, while offering a regional and sometimeslocal case study of runaways from Kentucky.

Thomas C. MackeyUniversity of Louisville

Kirk C. Jenkins. The Battle RagesHigher: The Union's FifteenthKentucky Infantry. Lexington:University Press of Kentucky,2003. 452 pp. ISBN: 0813122813(cloth), $35.00.

over seventy-five thousandKentuckians served in the

Federal armies during the Civil Warwhile less than thirty-eight thou-sand Kentucky men enlisted in theConfederate armies. Yet the latterenjoys the attention of historianswhile the former goes almost un-

noticed. First-time author Kirk C. Jenkins attemptsto redress this imbalance by rescuing a few of thesemen in blue from obscurity.

The Fifteenth Kentucky was a volunteer regimentorganized in the fall of 1861 and assigned to theArmy of the Ohio (later renamed the Army of theCumberland). When the army attempted to checka Confederate invasion of Kentucky in October1862, the regiment received a punishing baptism offire at Perryville. Specifically, the Fifteenth's eighty-two men killed or mortally wounded in that battleranks as the seventeenth highest numerical loss forany Union regiment in a single engagement. Twomonths later, the Fifteenth was mauled again at

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Stones River, Tennessee. Then it endured a thirdbattering (this time from their displaced Kentuckyneighbors in the Confederacy's storied "Orphan"Brigade) alongside Georgia's Chickamauga Creekthe following September, as the Southern armyseized the initiative from their pursuers, sent themreeling back to the defenses around Chattanooga,and settled down for a siege. Serving in the city'sgarrison force, the Fifteenth did not participate inthe Army of the Cumberland's smashing of the Con-federate position atop nearby Missionary Ridge inNovember. However, it rejoined the army in May1864 for the Atlanta campaign—a one hundredmile odyssey that saw the regiment encounter the"Orphan" Brigade on a number of occasions. Itparticipated in the sequence of battles on the out-skirts of Atlanta itself that summer, then spent theremainder of its service defending the railroad toChattanooga before being shipped to Louisville onChristmas Day, 1864, to be mustered out.

In three years of campaigning, nine hundred six-ty-four men had soldiered in the Fifteenth Kentucky,but only one-quarter of that number remained inthe ranks by war's end. With 14.3 percent of itsmen killed or mortally wounded in action, onlythirty-two Federal regiments experienced a higherrate of combat deaths. There is no question thatthe unit compiled a record in which any soldercould take pride, and Jenkins does a credible jobpresenting that record. Military historians mayquibble with his failure to grasp the nuances ofcertain terms (most noticeably his inaccurate useof the word "flank"), but the author has written aclear and accessible narrative. A dozen maps do anexcellent job of rendering broad tactical situationsintelligible while simultaneously highlighting theparticular role of the Fifteenth. And the inclusionof a detailed, one hundred eighteen page biographi-cal roster will be of particular interest to personsresearching individual soldiers.

As with many modern regimental histories, how-ever, one is left wondering if this work needed to bewritten. The Fifteenth fought hard, but their fight

can hardly be considered unique. Descendants suchas Jenkins may thrill to their ancestors' exploits, butfor wider audiences the book offers little of note.The author's perspective on the war in the west fo-cuses too much on local details to serve the interestsof general history, and the experiences of the menwho served in the Fifteenth Regiment are simply toocommonplace to merit specific attention.

The Fifteenth deserves consideration, however,not for what its men did but for why they did it. Themost notable action of the Fifteenth, for example,came not on the battlefield but in camp, when nearlya score of officers attempted to resign followingnews of the Emancipation Proclamation. Thisincident alone demonstrates that historians whoreduce the war to a conflict for or against slaveryneed to explain the motivations of men such as theseKentuckians, many of them slaveholders who nev-ertheless had committed themselves to the Federalcause. Unfortunately, the author never steps backfrom the daily routine of his subject to fully con-textualize what Unionism meant in a slaveholdingstate, or even to show how the anti-abolition, anti-Republican sentiments of the Fifteenth comparedto those of other Federal units. Thus, the authordevotes chapters to rehearsing familiar accountsof battles while incidents such as the killing of fivemen of the regiment by Confederate guerillas aftertheir return home receive scant attention. In sum,when authors like Jenkins complain that Kentucky'sFederal soldiers have been neglected, they needto think about why that has been so. Moreover,they need to do more than simply to reproducewell-worn battle narratives that add little to ourunderstanding of the meaning of the lives of CivilWar soldiers.

Joseph PierroWilliamsburg, Virginia

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Thomas E. Pope. The Weary Boys: ColonelJ. Warren Keifer & the 110th Ohio Vol-unteer Infantry. Kent, Ohio: Kent StateUniversity Press, 2002. 183 pp. ISBN:0873387295 (paper), $16.00.

In The Weary Boys, Thomas Pope provides stu-dents of the American Civil War with an in-depth

accounting of the 110th Ohio Volunteer Infantry'sescapades. In doing so, the author hopes to disproveGeneral Winfield Scott Hancock's depiction of the110th Ohio as the "Weary Boys," and to make a casefor valuing the 110th Ohio's important contributionsto the Union war effort.

Pope provides readers with the first detailedhistory ever published of the 110th

Ohio. Taking a chronological ap-proach, the author begins with the110th's formation and continueswith the regiment's initial training,its first taste of combat, its transitionfrom a group of raw recruits to sea-soned veterans, and finally, the war'sconclusion. This approach makesa great deal of sense, but unfortu-nately, Pope routinely introducesevidence from 1864 and 1865 inchapters that were to focus on 1861and 1862. This makes it difficult forthe reader to understand what lifewas like for the soldiers in earlier years when Popeuses evidence from later years to prove his points.In addition, most chapters have no introduction orconclusion, leaving the reader to wonder how theinformation presented in each chapter advances thestory. The book also lacks a clear conclusion, leav-ing the reader uncertain whether or not Pope provedhis point that the 110th Ohio did not deserve to beknown disparagingly as the "Weary Boys."

But the book does have its good points. It isbased on research in the most pertinent reposi-tories, including the Ohio Historical Society, theUnited States Army History Institute, the National

Archives, the Library of Congress, and numerousother libraries. And, impressively, Pope exhaus-tively searched period newspapers for tidbits on theregiment. Another contribution of The Weary Boysis Pope's inclusion of the regiment's official roster,as compiled by Ohio's Adjutant General's Office be-tween 1886 and 1895. The roster provides readerswith each soldier's induction date, age upon joiningthe regiment, and a brief overview of each soldier'sservice record, especially useful information forpersons interested in genealogy. The author couldhave provided additional insight into the regimentby identifying its members in other records as well.Census records and personal and real property taxrecords, for instance, might have allowed Pope to

provide more definitive informationon the type of men who served in the110th Ohio.

The Weary Boys is an interest-ing story. It fills a gap in Civil Warhistory by providing a detailed his-tory of the 110th Ohio VolunteerInfantry's exploits. Genealogistsespecially will find the roster useful.Unfortunately, Pope fails to impartto the reader why this story is im-portant and worth telling, and heavoids entering into any of the majordebates currently gripping Civil Warhistoriography. Pope seems not to

have consulted any of the numerous significantworks on Union soldiers published in the lastfifty years, such as studies by Reid Mitchell, JamesMcPherson, and Gerald Linderman. Similarly,although a significant portion of the book detailsthe 110th Ohio's interaction with Confederate civil-ians, Pope did not address issues raised in any of themajor works on this topic, including those writtenby Charles Royster and Mark Grimsley.

Michael MangusOhio State University at Newark

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Stephen D. Guschov. The Red Stockingsof Cincinnati: Base Ball's First All-Profes-sional Team. Jefferson, North Carolina:McFarland & Company, 1998. 151 pp.ISBN: 0786404671 (paper), $24.95.

Most Cincinnatians need little excuse to waxnostalgic about baseball in their city. This

fall, the opening of the Cincinnati Reds Hall ofFame at the Great American Ballpark should pro-vide ample reason for the city to reflect back onceagain on the glory years of one of the nation's moststoried sports franchises. Inevitably, the media willturn its attention to two moments in time—theBig Red Machine of the 1970s and the first yearthe Red Stockings fielded an all-professional team,1869. If all goes according to plan, the museumwill offer fans many exhibits representing thesemoments, as well as many others,that will complement an already richprinted literature on the Reds. GregRhodes, perhaps the most prolificReds historian, is overseeing themuseum's creation. And thereforesoon Stephen Guschov should alsosee increased interest in his workafter the museum's completion.

In The Red Stockings of Cin-cinnati, Guschov provides a fairlycomplete story of America's firstall-professional team. He includesbrief contextual material on thedevelopment of the game, which spread nationallyduring the Civil War, and on the early use of paidplayers around the country, especially in New York,where corrupt politicians managed to place starplayers in bogus government jobs. Guschov alsoprovides helpful, brief biographies of the ten menwho played on the 1869 team. The longest biog-raphies are reserved for Harry Wright, the team'scaptain and driving force, his brother George, theteam's best player, and Asa Brainard, the team'spitcher. At the end of the book, Guschov offers brief

follow-ups on each player as they departed fromthe Red Stockings after the 1870 season. Guschovthen gives a game-by-game recounting of the firstseason, including a nearly out-by-out retelling of acritical victory against the New York Mutuals. Indoing so, Guschov evokes a growing excitementthat surrounded the team as it moved through itsfirst season undefeated. Cincinnatians gatheredat the Gibson Hotel to follow away-games thatwere reported by telegraph. The media in othercities anticipated the arrival of the new baseballpowerhouse, eager for their local teams to trip upthe Red Stockings.

Guschov's writing is clear enough, and at timesvery engaging, though the game-by-game accountof the first season loses its punch after the author'sdescription of the Red Stockings' first successfuleastern road trip. Guschov's research is good as far

as it goes, and he provides many in-teresting quotes from newspapers inboth Cincinnati and the cities wherethe Red Stockings played. The bookalso contains several illustrations,mostly portraits of the players. Gus-chov, however, is a lawyer and news-paper columnist, and his affinityfor the brief essay quickly becomesapparent in the organization of thebook which includes twenty-sevenchapters in just one hundred fiftypages. As a result, no single issueseems to receive adequate attention,

as nearly every possible topic is broached but neverthoroughly investigated or analyzed.

In the end, readers may be left with the impres-sion that the Red Stockings revolutionized thegame by inspiring all-professional teams aroundthe country and in encouraging fan support of thegame. Indeed, the ball club did play a significantrole in the baseball's rapid growth into the nationalpastime. Still, Cincinnati's own support of the gameappears less important in this telling than in others,and therefore we are left to wonder how Harry and

O H I O V A L L E Y H I S T O R Y

George Wright could have fled the city just a yearafter the close of their inaugural professional season,taking apparently everything with them, includingthe name Red Stockings, which they kept for theBoston team they organized. One would like toknow more about how Cincinnatians coped withthe loss, or, even whether they understood the RedStocking's departure to be a loss at all.

David StradlingUniversity of Cincinnati

Frank X. Gerrity, ed. Taft Paperson the League of Nations, Vol. 7,The Collected Works of WilliamHoward Taft. Athens: Ohio Uni-versity Press, 2003. 302 pp. ISBN:0821415182 (cloth), $49.95.

This volume of the WilliamHoward Taft papers consists

of speeches, newspaper articlesand complementary documentsproduced from 1915 through 1919that deal with the League of Na-tions. During that period, Taft, aleader of the nation's conservative internationalists,headed the League to Enforce Peace (LEP). Foundedin 1915 mostly by Republicans, the LEP advocateda world parliament, arbitration of internationaldisputes, and collective security arrangements.Unlike Wilsonian liberals, however, the LEP alsofavored a long-term expansion of the United Statesarmed forces and universal military training onthe theory that peace could be insured through apolicy of military strength. The LEP also opposedany formal renunciation of national sovereigntyby the United States to the League of Nations, andinsisted that the nation reserve the right to use forceindependently, stands that placed the group at oddswith the Wilson administration's views. Most ofthe papers in this volume consist of statements by

Taft explaining the LEP's views on internationalismin general and commenting on Wilson's League ofNations proposal in particular.

By far the most interesting aspect of this vol-ume is the evidence it provides of support amonginfluential American conservatives in the earlytwentieth century for international arbitration asan alternative to a confrontation among the GreatPowers. Equally interesting is the informationpresented here about how conservatives favoredcollective security arrangements to deter militaryaggression, and sought a world court to develop and

apply principles of international lawto a wide range of disputes betweennations. In this volume, Taft's views(and the LEP's) on diplomacy andinternational affairs are revealed tobe of a moderate but conservativekind, rather than the more extreme"Old Guard" position that histori-ans usually associate with Taft andhis allies. Even Taft's statements indefense of retaining formal nationalsovereignty are nuanced. In responseto complaints that the United Stateswould surrender its sovereignty byjoining the League of Nations, for

example, Taft firmly replied, "Sovereignty is onlya matter of definition and degree...We need not befrightened by a definition. We agree to arbitrate;we agree to abide by the result of an arbitration.That limits our sovereignty, does it not? Is that soheinous?" (175)

Taft's moderation on the League of Nations is-sue can also be seen very clearly in his decision toendorse the League Covenant developed at the ParisPeace Conference of 1919, and in his subsequenttour of the United States during which he spoke infavor of the treaty creating the League that Wilsonhad submitted to the U.S. Senate for its approval.Although Taft would have preferred to insertinto the treaty some article or clause that wouldexplicitly exempt the Monroe Doctrine from that

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agreement's reach, he nonetheless publicly stated onMarch 16, 1919, that if the choice were betweenthe League treaty as submitted or insisting that it berenegotiated, "I should, without the slightest fearas to the complete safety of my country under itsprovisions, vote for it as the greatest step in recordedhistory in the betterment of inter-national relations for the benefit ofthe people of the world and for thebenefit of my country." (263) Oneyear later, Taft elaborated on thatposition by stating publicly that, hadhe been a senator in 1919, he wouldhave voted for the League treaty assubmitted, rather than permit itsrejection by the Senate, (xiii) Intaking that stand, Taft broke withsuch old Republican colleagues asElihu Root, Philander C. Knox, andHenry Cabot Lodge.

Thus, this volume of the Taftpapers provides a timely reminder of a long-stand-ing internationalist tradition among moderateconservatives in the United States. The editors andpublisher also deserve commendation for presentingthis material in an attractive, easy-to-read edition,which replaces an earlier volume in an edition ofthe Taft papers that Macmillan published in 1920,although the editors might have noted at the startof each selection where it came from rather thanputting that information at the end. That quibbleaside, this is a fine piece of work that scholars andeducated general readers will find useful.

David StebenneOhio State University

Ancella R. Bickley and Lynda Ann Ewen,eds. Memphis Tennessee Garrison: TheRemarkable Story of a Black Appala-chian Woman. Athens: Ohio UniversityPress, 2001. 249 pp. ISBN: 0821413740(paper), $17.95.

During her lifetime, MemphisTennessee Garrison estab-

lished chapters of the NationalAssociation for the Advancementof Colored People, organized GirlScout troops for young AfricanAmerican girls, created a curricu-lum designed to educate childrenwith learning disabilities, organizedher own breakfast program for herneedy students during the Depres-sion, served as mediator betweenblack labor and management forU.S. Steel, and started a "Negro

Artist Series" that brought nationally and interna-tionally renowned artists to West Virginia. ThroughGarrison's story we become privy to the intricaciesthat comprised the lives of African Americans liv-ing in the coal towns of West Virginia during theage of Jim Crow. And we come to understand howmeaning can be derived from both individual andcollective experiences. Garrison's life, fascinatingas the editors of this book suggest, was infused withwhat on the surface appear to be contradictions,but when viewed more closely serve as evidenceof her ability to successfully reconcile her role inconflicting positions.

While Garrison tells her story in a very matter-of-fact way, with an air of nonchalance, she clearlypossessed a keen understanding of the significanceof the contributions she made as an educator, poli-tician, and community activist. But readers learnlittle about the emotional toll that Garrison bore asa public figure. A poignant example may be seen inher discussion of how her support of Joe Parsons,a black man running for sheriff in Keystone, West

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Virginia, led to her suspension from teaching dutiesfor an entire year. (132) Garrison also cites otherexamples of retaliatory measures taken againsther for violating the racial code of etiquette, butprovides little insight into how she dealt with theseassaults on a personal level. She makes it clear thatshe found much spiritual strength in her Christianfaith, but who besides her mother sustained heremotionally? The editors note the existence of thesesilences and gaps in Garrison's story. However,they fail to provide any context that might helpin explaining these gaps, context that could havebeen established using interviews with Garrison'sfriends and acquaintances that are printed in theepilogue of this book. Moreover, the editors didlittle to situate Garrison's story within the largercontext of women's activism, as they did for thehistory of the state of West Virginiaand Appalachia in an "HistoricalAfterword."

In spite of these flaws, Bickleyand Ewen have made a tremendouscontribution to the study of women'sactivism in general, and AfricanAmerican women's activism in par-ticular. Through Garrison's life weare given a glimpse of what activismmeant to black women living out-side of urban centers, lacking readyaccess to human and economicresources. The editors thereforeshould be commended for recovering and makingavailable the story of Memphis Tennessee Garrison.It is through our knowledge and understanding ofthe lives of women like Garrison that we can cometo understand the social, political, and economicmilieu in which racial and gender consciousnesscame to be created, articulated, and transformedin early twentieth century America.

Beverly A. Bunch-LyonsVirginia Polytechnic Institute &

State University

TRAPPED!The Story of Floyd CollinsROBERT K. MURRAY « ROGER W. BRUCKER

Robert K. Murray and Roger W. Brucker.Trapped! The Story of Floyd Collins.Lexington: University Press of Kentucky,2003. 333 pp. ISBN: 0813101530 (paper),$11.49.

T rapped is the story of an attempted rescuefrom a cave in southern Kentucky in 1925

that proved to be one of the three most well-knownnews events in the years between World War I andWorld War II. In fact, only Charles Lindbergh'shistoric flight across the Atlantic in 1927 and thenthe subsequent kidnapping of the Lindbergh family'sbaby in 1932 received more attention in the media.News reporters and radio commentators fromaround the country flocked to a little out-of-the-wayKentucky town to relay the ordeal in minute detail.

And what they reported was a taleabout Floyd Collins, a thirty-sevenyear old local cave explorer, wholived for sixteen days while rescuecrews fought to release him fromhis entrapment. He eventually diedfrom starvation and exposure, butin the meantime, he became a folkhero to millions of followers throughaccounts printed in newspapers andheard on the radio. Eventually, thescene took on a carnival atmospherethat hampered efforts to free Collinsfrom his eventual tomb. Report-

ers, photographers, law enforcement officials andrescuers mingled with crowds of curious onlookersthat at one time reached close to ten thousand innumber. Other problems also complicated rescue ef-forts, especially a lack of leadership, uncoordinatedplans and continual confusion among would-berescuers.

Trapped kept me on the edge of my seat. Youknow the ending but still read on in hopes thatsome miracle will happen. Just when you think allhope is lost and you come to believe the rumors ofCollins death, you are jolted by the reality that he is

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alive and there is hope. In short, the story of FloydCollins and his struggle to survive is well writtenand well researched by men who know history andcaving, and who have enriched their story withcontemporary newspaper accounts and with oralhistory interviews done with people connected toCollins and the rescue. The book also includes adetailed description of the Sand Cave site based onthe authors' own explorations that helped them tobetter understand and describe the confinement ofa man pinned in a crevice by rock and dirt fifty-fivefeet below ground. Finally, an important part ofthis tale revolves less around the trapped man thanhow the media created a national event out of alocal tragedy, much as cable television news showsand tabloid newspapers still do today.

This reprinting of a book originally publishedin 1979 by G. P. Putnam's Sons is well worth theread. It provides important information about atime period that should not be forgotten and makesfor exciting reading as it brings this bit of history,at least, to life.

Cornelia E SexauerUniversity of Wisconsin-Marathon County

Annetta L. Gomez-Jefferson. TheSage of Tawawa: Reverdy CassiusRansom, 1861-1959. Kent: KentState University Press, 2002. 325pp. ISBN: 0873387481 (cloth),$42.00.

The African American religiousexperience has produced nu-

merous individuals whose lives havemade significant contributions tothe nation. Among the more wellknown are Dr. Martin Luther King,the Reverend Ralph David Abernathy and the Rev-erend Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Among the lesserknown but nonetheless important black religious

leaders was Reverdy Cassius Ransom, a highlyinfluential cleric-activist-scholar in the AfricanMethodist Episcopal Church (AMEC). By way ofbackground, the AMEC was established in 1787in response to racial discrimination at the mostlywhite St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church inPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania. Subsequently, otherAMEC congregations were formed in most stateswith black populations.

After graduating in 1886 from Wilberforce Uni-versity in Ohio, Ransom served as a pastor in severalstates and eventually was elected as a bishop in theAMEC. Throughout his early years in the AMECas a pastor, he raised an articulate opposition tothe accommodation to white supremacy supportedby Booker T. Washington. His support of reformefforts called at the time "social gospel" coincidedwith the views of Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois and WilliamMonroe Trotter, highly visible secular opponents ofsegregation and racial discrimination. Ransom of-ten chastised fellow black clerics and others for notmaking the church an effective opponent of racialdiscrimination and an advocate for social change.Ransom's religious advocacy coincided with hislove for Wilberforce University where he finallyretired and died in 1959 after serving the AMEC

as a bishop well into his nineties. Hisbattle to keep Wilberforce Universityopen led to part of the university be-ing controlled by the State of Ohioand eventually spun off as CentralState University, an historically blackpublic university.

Professor Gomez-Jefferson re-veals the complexities of Ransom'slife and work in the context of theinner workings of one of the oldestAfrican American organizations, thechurch, that forms an integral part ofRansom's story. But Professor Go-

mez-Jefferson's also adds her personal understand-ing of Ransom since her father, Joseph Gomez, wasboth an AMEC minister and bishop mentored by

• %ffe,

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MAN

Ransom. Her introduction, for instance, informsreaders that Ransom had personal flaws that shegoes on to detail. In this respect, the The Sage ofTawawa seems reasonably balanced and thought-ful. The only possible flaw in the book lies in theauthor's treatment of AMEC protocols and orga-nizational processes. Readers who are not familiarwith AMEC might find some of her discussionsof Ransom's interactions with other clerics to bemerely accounts of administrative "turf" battles oflittle substance.

In sum, this work makes an important contribu-tion to the study of the African American religiousand intellectual leadership in thenineteenth and twentieth centuries.Reverdy Cassius Ransom influencedboth his contemporaries and suc-cessors in church leadership andcivil rights. Black churches and theirleaders like Reverdy Cassius Ran-som would prove crucial during thebattles for civil rights in the years im-mediately following Ransom's deathin 1959. In this regard, Gomez-Jef-ferson provides the reader with anunderstanding of why the AMEC,like other denominations with largeblack memberships, succeeded inorganizing black communities around the civilrights agendas of the 1960s and 1970s. Annetta L.Gomez-Jefferson has written a comprehensive andintriguing biography of an important figure in thehistory of the civil rights movement.

John A. Hat dinWestern Kentucky University.

Rick Nutt. Many Lamps, One Light:Louisville Presbyterian Theological Semi-nary: A 150th Anniversary History. GrandRapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans,2002. 272 pp. ISBN: 0802839134 (cloth),$38.00.

M any Lamps, One Light is a very readable,well-researched history of the Louisville

Presbyterian Theological Seminary that traces theschool's development from its early days as an out-post of Old School Presbyterianism to its presentposition as a leading mainstream theological school.

The account is richly spiced with ex-amples of the ways in which broaderAmerican religious and intellectualconcerns have intersected with thehistory of a small, but influential,institution. To read this history isto rehearse the story of the develop-ment of American theology as thatdevelopment came to be experiencedin the Midwest and South. Indeed,part of the significance of the storyof the Louisville seminary lies in thefact that the story encompasses boththe North and the South as they metin the Ohio Valley.

The book has many highlights. As a historian ofAmerican religion whose current research centerson the twentieth century, I found Nutt's emphasison the recent history of the seminary particularlyfascinating. Louisville Presbyterian TheologicalSeminary resulted from the merger of two olderschools that represented the Southern and North-ern branches of the Presbyterian Church. The newfoundation was an attempt to create an institutionthat would have the strength of both of its ances-tors, while hopefully, being freed from the financialshackles that had weighed down theological educa-tion in Kentucky. In many ways, this small mergedinstitution led the way toward the eventual reunionof the two primary wings of American Presbyterian-

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ism in the 1980s.If the Louisville seminary, however, had been

only the product of a financial shotgun marriage,the recreated school might not have survived longenough to merit a decent burial. But Nutt carefullyshows that the school succeeded, in fact, in stakingout a crucial position between the two regionalwings of the denomination. The skill of the school'sadministrators, trustees, and faculty in finding away to rise above the squabbles of its time alsobecomes apparent in the way the seminary avoidedmany of the passions of the modernist-fundamen-talist controversy. While the Louisville seminaryremained a basically conservative institution from1920 to 1950, its conservatism was of the type thatincluded substantial readings from all perspectives,and in some areas, such as religious education, itoften took the lead in exploring new ideas and prac-tices. Interestingly, one can see how this approachhas remained important in the way in which theschool handled the turbulent post-1960 era whenwomen and ethnic minorities struggled both to finda place in the school and to help the school defineits mission anew. While these battles were foughtin almost all American seminaries, the LouisvillePresbyterian Theological Seminary'sresolution of them reflected its ownunique heritage and location.

Nutt's book has a flaw commonto many histories of institutions,including seminaries; he organizeshis story around presidents as if theysomehow represented an embodi-ment of the school's ethos in certainperiods. To be sure, the Louisvilleseminary has had some fine peoplein the office of the president, includ-ing Frank Caldwell, C. Ellis Nelson,and John Mulder, but one wonderswhether the story might not have been told moreeffectively from another vantage point. Given theimportance of theology in the school's story, forexample, one wonders if an exploration of that

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The University of Illinois

1965-75

subject might have provided another and differ-ent perspective on the institution. It is, however,unfair to compare a book to one that might havebeen written. Nutt's history is a well-researchedvolume that will be read and appreciated by boththose within the seminary and outside it for sometime to come.

Glenn MillerBangor Theological Seminary

Bangor, Maine

Joy Ann Williamson. Black Power onCampus: The University of Illinois, 1965-75. Urbana: University of Illinois Press,2003. 224 pp. ISBN: 0252028295 (cloth),$34.95.

CL T ) tack Power" is still a discomfiting phrase.A-/It remains so packed with emotional

resonance that, now three decades after its initialuse, it can be difficult to understand what is actu-ally being said when we hear those two words.

Fortunately, a generation of youngscholars has begun to re-examinethe Black Power era, trying to helpus understand what our deep hopesor deep fears obscured at the time.Joy Ann Williamson[]s Black Poweron Campus is a welcome additionto that conversation, in large partbecause higher education proved tobe one of the most important venuesin which the Black Power dynamicplayed itself out.

Williamson[]s case study of BlackPower at the University of Illinois

reflects the tensions and changes that affectedcampuses across the country. After the assassina-tion of Martin Luther King, the number of AfricanAmerican students admitted to historically white

O H I O V A L L E Y H I S T O R Y

colleges and universities escalated sharply. And thatmeant black students arrived on campuses acrossthe country just at the moment when the nation'sdiscussion of racial issues had begun to be shapedby the notion of Black Power. To whites on thosecampuses, it often seemed as if black students con-stituted a strongly united and uniformly militantbunch. But what appeared to be solidarity fromthe outside could seem very different from insidethe black student community. Racial cohesionproved to be a fragile thing, consensus on politicalmeans and goals elusive, although student leadersconstantly worked to build cohesion (or at leastthe appearance of it). The difficulty of the workaccounts for some of their stridency.

Williamson deftly captures the complexity ofthe social situation in which black students foundthemselves, as well as their ideological and organiza-tional responses to it. She has an equally complexview of the relationship between the universityadministration and black students. In fact, manyin the administration at Illinois expressed a gooddeal of sympathy for many of goals of black studentson campus. In 1968, for example, administratorsproposed bringing five hundred disadvantaged stu-dents, most of them black, to campus, a far largernumber than most schools proposed to recruit atthe time. Nevertheless, University of Illinois admin-istrators had to placate a watchful state legislaturethat tended to see black students as ungrateful andunqualified. More poignantly, however sympa-thetic they may have been, administrators tendedto see black students through a cultural lens thatmade them appear culturally deprived, a viewthat consistently undermined the good intentionsof administrators. They, for example, could un-derstand courses in African American history as akind of therapy for black students, but they couldnot understand why black students raised funda-mental questions about the curriculum as a wholeand argued that the courses then available left allstudents ill-served. In short, although conflict overdiffering interpretations of social reality may have

been unavoidable, Williamson argues convincinglythat students, animated by the ideas of Black Power,ultimately changed the University of Illinois for thebetter for everyone.

Charles PayneDuke University

Anne Braden. The Wall Between. With anew epilogue. Foreword by Julian Bond.Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press,1999. 349 pp. ISBN: 1572330619 (paper),$19.95.

Catherine Fosl. Subversive Southerner:Anne Braden and the Struggle for Jus-tice in the Cold War South. New York:Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. 418 pp. ISBN:0312294875 (cloth), $35.00.

These two volumes illuminate the life of AnneBraden, longtime resident of Louisville, and

one of the outstanding leaders of the twentiethcentury movement for human and civil rights. Borninto a family that upheld conventional notions ofracial subordination, she moved far beyond thosemoorings, becoming a bold, determined battleragainst racism and segregation. Conscious of thebroad context of economic and political changein which the American racial crisis was set, AnneBraden and her husband-comrade Carl, who diedin 1975, committed themselves to the work of ral-lying Southern whites to support the black freedomstruggle, and she continues that work today.

Catherine Fosl's meticulously researched andeloquently written biography insightfully fuses thepersonal and the political, linking Anne Braden's lifeto the influences exerted upon her by broader forcesin the community, region, nation and indeed theworld. Fosl ably depicts the Alabama and Kentuckyin which Anne Braden grew to adulthood, became

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a journalist, and came to challenge the status quo.While maintaining her independent judgment, Fosldraws Braden into the book by quoting from vari-ous oral history interviews she has given and byincluding a response by Braden to the biographyitself. Part of the response is a comment on theauthor's reference to her as a Marxist. Bradenfinds the reference not entirely accurate, observingthat in her view a "pure" Marxistbelieves everything is shaped by ma-terial conditions while she holds toa dualist view that sees a separationbetween our physical beings and theworld of spirit. Yet Braden notesthat her thought has been informedby Marxism, especially regardingthe view that human history hasbeen shaped by class struggle. ForBraden, changing sides in the classstruggle, moving from the propertiedmiddle class to become a championof the interests of the oppressed,proved to be the key to the overallcourse of her life.

Subversive Southerner provides astirring narrative of Braden's role innumerous struggles, a story that tellsthe reader much about social changethroughout the South in the last halfof the twentieth century. When shecame to Louisville in 1947, Bradenworked with the left-leaning CIOunions of the city and she alsotook part in Henry Wallace's 1948presidential campaign. In 1951, shejoined a women's delegation that traveled to Mis-sissippi in a vain attempt to save the life of WillieMcGee, a black man sentenced to death on chargesof raping a white woman. And, in 1954, Anne andCarl transferred the title to a house they had boughtin a previously all-white suburb to a black couple,Andrew and Charlotte Wade, who wanted betterhousing than was available in Louisville's segregated

black neighborhoods. An outburst of racist hysteriaensued that resulted in the bombing of the Wadefamily home. All this took place within days ofthe Supreme Court's historic desegregation rulingin the Brown v. Board of Education case. Later, theBradens helped lay the basis for the 1963 challengeto Jim Crow laws and practices in Birmingham,Alabama, and in 1966 they were selected to be co-

directors of the Southern ConferenceEducational Fund that sought tobroaden support for the civil rightsmovement in the South and the na-tion. In subsequent years, as Foslpoints out, Anne and Carl Bradenactively opposed the Vietnam War,and in doing so fused their radicalinter-racialism with anti-capitalistand anti-imperialist ideas and prac-tices, and they passed that legacy onto others involved in both the anti-war movement and the civil rightsmovement. This was importantbecause, as Fosl stresses (drawing onthe scholarship of Patricia Sullivanand John Egerton), the post- WorldWar II Red Scare had, by the 1960s,throttled the black-white alliancethat sprouted in the 1930s. All inall, this narrative admirably conveysthe drama and significance of AnneBraden's activism.

A reading of the Fosl biographycan be enriched by turning to AnneBraden's autobiographical The WallBetween, a memorable, splendidly

written memoir of an inspiring life. This book is acompelling blend of social history that includes anaccount of the personal side of Anne's life, especiallyher emergence from a conventional Southern whitemiddle class upbringing and her efforts to take upthe life of a committed radical. The book capturesthe reality of the corroding effects of racism uponwhite people, but it also chronicles how Anne

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Braden was of the generation that came to adult-hood during World War II, a war against the racistphilosophy of Nazism, and like many other whitesof that generation began questioning Americanwhite supremacy as a result.

The heart of the book is the story of how theBradens facilitated the Wade family's purchase ofa home on Rone Court in the Louisville suburb ofShively. This episode exemplifies in microcosmsome of the key features of the 1950s, specificallythe heightened desire of African Americans to seekrelease from the confinement of segregated housing,the increased willingness of some whites to committhemselves to a struggle for racial equality even asMcCarthyism still sought to demonize all socialactivism as Kremlin-inspired, and an upsurge indomestic terrorism aimed at preserving Jim Crow.It is also worth noting that in some struggles, as inthe Braden case, some measure of victory was woneven though the Wades, in the end, were forcedto leave Rone Court. Specifically, the Kentuckystatute under which the Bradens were charged withconspiring to blow up the Wade home was foundto violate federal law. This struggle brought theBradens national attention and the active supportof liberals and radicals in various parts of the na-tion. Reasoning Americans recognized that Anneand Carl Braden were not violent conspirators, butrather courageous, nonviolent champions of socialprogress.

In a foreword to a new edition of The Wall Be-tween, Julian Bond notes that the Bradens belongto a small band of modern abolitionists willing tobrave danger in pursuit of the unfinished Americanracial revolution, (xii) And commenting on the firstedition of Anne Braden's autobiography, MartinLuther King, Jr., declared, "I found it one of themost moving documents that I have ever read. Ifeel it will live to become a classic on the southernsituation." Enough said.

Herbert ShapiroUniversity of Cincinnati

Don Heinrich Tolzmann. German HeritageGuide to the Greater Cincinnati Area.Milford, Ohio: Little Miami PublishingCo., 2003. 120 pp. ISBN: 1932250077(paper), $15.95.

This engaging and very effectively organized littlestudy, which the author admits is "an introduc-

tion" not a "comprehensive history" (1), highlightsthe noteworthy people, places, and events pertainingto German-American heritage in the Cincinnati andNorthern Kentucky area. The author is one of themost prolific and well-respected authors of German-American history and immigration. He has writtennumerous books including Cincinnati's GermanHeritage (1994), Covington's German Heritage(1998), and Ohio's German Heritage (2002). Inaddition, Tolzmann has edited many other books,among them The German-American Forty-Eight-ers (1998), as well as Emil Klauprecht's GermanChronicle in the History of the Ohio Valley, andits Capital City Cincinnati, in Particular (1992).As curator of the German-Americana Collectionat the University of Cincinnati, and director of theuniversity's German-American Studies Program, heis well acquainted with the primary and secondaryscholarly resources of the field.

Tolzmann begins this book with a chronologicaltimeline that starts with the arrival of Major DavidZiegler and other Pennsylvania German soldiers atFort Washington in 1790. Ziegler later became thefirst mayor of Cincinnati. Five years later, MartinBaum, the "Father" of German immigration to theOhio Valley, arrived in Cincinnati. The author thentraces the establishment of German Protestant andCatholic churches, German Jewish congregations,and the founding of German-language newspapers.Interesting historical facts, such as the origins of thename of Cincinnati's "Over-the-Rhine" neighbor-hood (8), the appearance of the "first decoratedChristmas tree in Cincinnati" (10), the differencesbetween the dialects of "Low German" and "HighGerman" (10), and the free lunches available in

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Cincinnati's family beer gardens (18), are offeredalong the way. The author also documents Ger-man-American contributions to art and music, aswell as those to industry and philanthropy. By1890, fifty-eight percent of the city's populationwas of "German stock" (23) and, as the authorstates decidedly tongue-in-cheek, therefore threeyears later the "average per capita consumption ofbeer" in Cincinnati had risen to forty-one gallons, incontrast to the national average of sixteen gallons,"just one more indication of the German flavor ofthe area." (24) On a sadder note, the author detailsthe "Anti-German Hysteria" that accompaniedWorld War I in Cincinnati, the economic and cul-tural consequences of Prohibition to breweries andfamily beer gardens, and the plight of refugees whocame to the city from Hitler's Germany.

Later in the book, Tolzmann presents a seriesof detailed vignettes about the people and placesconnected with Cincinnati's German-Americanheritage. The author describes in some detail theTurnverein (or "Turners"), their motto of a "soundmind in a sound body," and their formation of theNinth Ohio Regiment during the Civil War. (48-50)He also includes an aptly titled "German HeritageWho's Who," featuring very short,one-to-two sentence descriptions ofnotable German-Americans in Cincin-nati, including Doris Kappelhoff (orDoris Day, as she is better known).Two chapters then detail the sites,or places, of German-Americanain Cincinnati's vast Over-the-Rhineneighborhood, and in Covington aswell. Finally, the author devotes thebook's final pages to museums, librar-ies, and German organizations. AgainTolzmann offers some fascinatingdetails about the Turners, includingthe Cincinnati Turner ColonizationSociety's founding of the town of New Ulm, Min-nesota, and the Covington Turners' opposition totemperance, the Know-Nothing Party, and slavery.

(93-94)In future editions, the author may wish to add

several books to his bibliography including: JohnE. Kleber's (editor) The Kentucky Encyclopedia(1992); Paul A. Tenkotte's A Heritage of Art andFaith: Downtown Covington Churches (1986); andAnnemarie Springer's electronic book, NineteenthCentury German-American Church Artists (2001)(available at http://www.ulib.iupui.edu/kade/spring-er/index.html.) Overall, this book is well-illustratedand written in sprightly prose.

Paul A. TenkotteThomas More College

G. C. Jones. Growing Up Hard in HarlanCounty. Lexington: University Press of Ken-tucky, 1985. 177 pp. ISBN: 0813190800(paperback reissue), $19.95.

M:emoirs serve a dual role in the academicworld, as both source material for historians

and literary works in their own right. Because theyare expressions of personal experience, they are

always, assuming a basic honesty,useful, even if the historical contentlacks precision. Such is the case in thememoir of Green C. Jones, a vivid andmoving account of the author's earlylife in Appalachian Kentucky duringthe 1920s and 1930s. The UniversityPress of Kentucky first published thebook in 1985 and has now reissuedit, although with no new front mate-rial. An expanded foreword, perhapswith biographical notes on Jones, andsome introduction to how and whyhe wrote this narrative, would havehelped the reader situate the book

more effectively in the context of its times.Jones "grew up hard," he tells us, through intense

physical work and in a painful family situation.

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Throughout the narrative, Jones displays consider-able earthy pride in his ability to wrestle his livingout of the physical world—through farming, drivingteams of mules, mining seams of coal, and, later,operating heavy machinery in construction jobs inFlorida. The book opens with an evocative vignettethat places twelve-year-old Jones and several othermen on a wagon trail that traversed Pine Mountainin Harlan County, Kentucky. These men, includingJones's father and brother, were moving farm goodsfor sale to towns and stores on the other side ofthe mountain. It turned out to be a grueling trip,but through it all the youngest Jones distinguishedhimself as an expert handler of horses and mules.That skill gained him notice from well-off storeown-ers, who convinced Jones to earn some extra cashby running moonshine to some recently openedcoal camps back on the other side. Through thoseconnections, Jones soon became known to severalpowerful men in the county who saw in the hard-working boy something of a protege.

Those connections paid off for Jones when, soonafter the Pine Mountain trip, his father kicked himout of the house, forcing him to scramble for sur-vival. Jones's cryptic depiction of his father's actionscaptures some of the mystification he must have feltas a child. Jones says, "he told me I would haveto be on my own." (25) That experience hauntedJones his whole life, through repeated, unsuccessfulattempts to repair the damaged relationship with hisfather. As he grew older, Jones came to understandthat he was a "woods colt," the product of an affairbetween his mother and another man. The man thatfor many years Jones had thought was his fathercould not accept him and "didn't want me aroundhim and his children." (176)

Much of this narrative concerns Jones's par-ticipation in the coal mining union wars that gave"Bloody Harlan" its sobriquet. By his own account,Jones became closely connected to the union leader-ship. He spied for the union, organized workers,sheltered representatives who came from outside theregion, and was the victim of various assaults and

kidnappings at the hands of gun-toting companythugs. Here the history loses some of its accuracy.Jones perhaps exaggerates his own role in variousunion efforts, as his name does not appear in thesecondary literature written by historians on thestrikes. Jones also dates the beginnings of theunion wars (as well as the institution of New Dealprograms like the CCC) to about the time when heturned fourteen years old. Since he was born in1913, his dating must be off by several years. Healso makes no distinction between the United MineWorkers of America and the communist NationalMiners' Union, both of which competed in the early1930s for the loyalty of Kentucky miners.

Not all of the union stories come directly fromJones's personal experience. For the early stages inthe unionization conflict, at least, before he playedan active role, Jones recounts happenings that heheard second and third hand. The descriptionsof "roving bands of united mine workers," forexample, or "beatings and threats from the mineprotection thugs," and rapes of miners' wivesand daughters are mostly the stuff of hearsay andcommunity talk. (47) In these sections, therefore,Jones reports not so much his own experiences asstories that had gained currency among the minersand their families during these struggles. Here hewrites less as a chronicler of events that he himselfwitnessed than as a translator to the outside worldof the common wisdom and understanding of thepeople with whom he lived and worked. This isnot meant as criticism. We may not always havein this memoir the most precise of histories. Whatwe do have, however, can be considered more valu-able—first-hand testimony and folk history from aman in his seventies looking back on a robust andadmirable life.

Robert S. WeiseEastern Kentucky University

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