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185
ings and thus make them more attractive to potential settlers.
In this latter endeavor Patton was neither skilled nor lucky.
As an agent of Virginia his efforts to deal with the Iroquois
were inept. Worse, he happened to be one of the few military
leaders on the Virginia frontier following the disastrous ending of General Braddock’s campaign. He died a t the hands
of the Indians in 1755 while leading a pitifully small band of
militia.
Although based on patient research, this volume does
not qualify as great history. The author fails to place Patton
in the larger historical context of the great events shaping
America a t midcentury. Patton was very much part of the
story of two great empires struggling for dominance over
North America. He was also a relevant figure in explaining
American expansionism and in evaluating American interaction with the Indians. His career throws light on the old
question raised by Frederick Jackson Turner regarding the
influence of the frontier on developing American democracy.
But if the book is short on analysis, the author has performed
a real service in bringing to our attention the fascinating
life of this early frontiersman.
University o f Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Frank A. Cassell
T h e American Territorial System. Edited by John Porter
Bloom. National Archives Conferences, Volume 5 ; Papers
and Proceedings of the Conference on the History of
Territories. (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1973. Pp.
xv, 248. End papers, notes. $10.00.)
This volume offers a potpourri of constitutional history,
local history, editorial comment, and source bibliographies
of great interest to any serious student of the United
State territorial system or of western Americana in general.
Editor Bloom has skillfully selected his contributors to
achieve a coverage of the history of the territorial system
that is both broad and penetrating. Most of them have
added something worthwhile to the study of the most singularly unimperialistic empire in the history of mankind.
Space precludes detailed comment on each of the eighteen
articles and commentaries making up this volume. A few
of them however, deserve to be singled out for their particular
merits. Leonard Rapport, Charles E. South, Marion M.
186
Zndinnn Magazine o f History
Johnson, and John P. Heard supply bibliographical commentary which should not be missed by students in the field. J o
Tice Bloom offers some real revelations as t o the substantial
influence often wielded by the territorial delegates in Congress. Robert W. Johannsen challenges the traditional view
of Stephen A. Douglas as a slick power broker in the KansasNebraska crisis and argues convincingly that Douglas was
genuinely concerned for the rights and welfare of territorial
inhabitants. Likewise, Kenneth N. Owens supplies some
interesting new ideas concerning politics and the day to day
activities of government in the territories. This reviewer,
however, does not entirely agree with his conclusion that
“territorial government provided the means by which a resident, upper-class leadership could fashion structures of government congruent with those in the older states” (p. 174).
The only disappointments in the volume are the contributions by Arthur Bestor and Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr.
Bestor, in his section entitled “Constitutionalism and the Settlement of the West: The Attainment of Consensus, 17541784,” overlooks the development of a consensus on western
independence from the Atlantic littoral before the American
Revolution. Although he does mention Benjamin Franklin’s
“Plan of Union,” which was presented at the Albany Conference, Bestor does not appear to notice how, here as elsewhere,
Franklin was expressing the general public sentiment in
the American colonies. Further research reveals that the
concept of western autonomy was well developed before the
Revolution and that it formed the ideological substance of
dozens of proposals for extending Anglo-American settlement
westward for over twenty years prior to the Revolution. What
happened afterward was more the implementation of the
consensus than its achievement. Bestor’s assertions that the
Proclamation of 1763 was of “far greater importance, from
almost every point of view” than Franklin’s Albany Plan and
t h a t the Proclamation’s “underlying principles were the same
as those of the Albany Plan” (p. 15) simply do not stand
up in the sources.
Berkhofer’s article, “The Northwest Ordinance and the
Principle of Territorial Evolution,” is free from such gross
errors but falls rather short of success in its effort to relate
the “republican ideology” of the Revolution to the principles
of territorial government. Berkhofer does skillfully quote
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187
Benjamin Rush to show t h a t a territory must evolve into “a
fertile, well regulated district,” inhabited by men “of property
and good character” before the status of statehood is deserved (pp. 50-51). In so doing, however, he misses at least
two essential points: the synergy of the American Revolution’s antiimperialism with the natural determination of
revolutionaries to propagate their institutions and their ethics
and, above all, the ideological amorphousness, born of a most
explicit eschewal of specific ideology, which made the American Revolution so different and which explains why a democratic regime followed. It seems dangerous to generalize for
the whole Revolution from Rush or any other single “ideologue” ; even if this works for tyrannical revolutions, it cannot
work here. Nevertheless, Berkhofer’s contribution represents
a useful point from which a discussion of these issues mag
begin.
Los Angeles, California
Chad J. Wozniak
Landlords and Tenants on the Prairie Frontier: Studies in
American Land Policy. By Paul W. Gates. (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1973. Pp. vii, 333. Notes, index.
$12.50)
Paul W. Gates has long been recognized a s a scholar who
relies on primary source material for interpretations of settlement and land use on the frontier. In Landlords and Tenants
on the Prairie Frontier he has collected more than two decades
of his own articles on how public lands in the northern
prairies came into private hands prior to the Homestead Act
of 1862. Some changes in content and annotated bibliographic comments leading the reader to more recent works
bring the book up to date. The excellent introduction contains
a summary of his ideas on the subject of land policy, including his own speculation on the effects of federal policy and
the problems of placing a specific monetary value on frontier
land.
The unifying thesis of this book is Gates’ conviction that
laws governing the occupation and sale of land have had a
strong and lasting effect on the economic, social, and political
development of prairie lands. Chapters about the prairies
of Indiana and Illinois indicate that large landholding by
speculators and the consequent tenant and labor systems
retarded the development of public services such as roads,