Canada and the United States
Here, Rugh studies Fountain Green township in
Hancock County, Illinois, during the years 1830-1880.
Situated on the Mississippi River in the Illinois Military Tract, the county was also the site of Nauvoo. In
the first of three sections, Rugh sketches the system of
land distribution and the southern, northern, and
middle-state settlers involved. She then describes the
efforts of Mormons to settle in the county where the
other residents regarded their presence as "an affront
to their fundamental beliefs in a freely competitive
market, local self government, private property, and
the patriarchal family" (p. 52). The next section finds
the farmers-each part yeoman, part entrepreneurconfronting an expanding market in a "second stage of
agrarian capitalism" in which "women's labor was
critical to the transformation" (pp. 58, 65). Then
follow assessments of community institutions and commercial development, and losses in life and cohesion
during the Civil War. At this juncture, Fountain Green
residents crossed "an invisible threshold to enter a
nationwide market . . . attuned to industrialism" (p.
125).
In the book's last part, Rugh describes the increasing pressures of capitalist agriculture on farmers after
the Civil War. Fountain Green residents now regarded
farming as business enterprise rather than way of life.
The Granger protest of the early 1870s reflected the
situation. Women's expectations rose and men saw
patriarchal "hold on land and command of labor"
weakened (p. 153). Divorce numbers and domestic
violence increased. Other developments included outmigration, changes in mercantile and credit systems,
and efforts to arrest village decline. Protestant influence remained strong but Roman Catholicism faded.
Class and related political identities replaced region as
differentia although German residents maintained ethnic solidarity. A "Yankee-dominated elite" set social
tone and controlled local government. Descendants of
"founding families" constituted a "middling group"
and "perennial renters and farm laborers ... a rural
proletariat." Community uplift activity produced a
college, and efforts to control rough elements, eliminate gambling, and drinking. "Disparity between city
and country" widened. "The arch typical midwestern
culture" emerged, "middle class, Republican, Protestant, respectable." Carried from such communities
westward and cityward, its agrarian values were to "be
reified into a national myth" (pp. 171, 178-79).
Rugh concludes with a summary of findings and
suggestions for further research. "Agrarian capitalism," she argues, "developed out of adaptations farm
families made to maintain their values," these occurring in "areas of farming as a way of life: family labor,
independent ownership of land, social relations, and
politics" (p. 183). Much needs to be done in studyingnineteenth-century rural America, she suggests; in
particular, she urges study of the relation of rural
culture and gender to the market economy, as well as
of rural political culture.
In researching the history of a community, local
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
875
records and government publications must be unearthed, processed, and correlated to provide community trends and illustrative examples. Correspondence,
diaries, newspapers, and secondary sources must be
sought and methods and insights derived from related
disciplines. Rugh has met these challenges impressively. She writes well and enlivens her narrative with
accounts of representative individuals and events. Her
treatments of patriarchal relationships, gender implications, and the impact of the Civil War are particularly insightful.
Readers, however, may prefer a broader definition
of rural history and also want one of "agrarian capitalism." Some of Rugh's generalizations are unduly
sweeping. The tables supporting chapter text would
reward further consideration. Nor does she provide
key price or foreclosure series, weakening her assertions about market pressures. Such minor reservations
aside, this book is an important step forward in
midwestern rural history.
ALLAN G. BOGUE
University of Wisconsin,
Madison
BARTON H. BARBOUR. Fort Union and the Upper Missouri Fur Trade. Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press.200l. Pp. xvi, 30r. $34.95.
The book under review is the best researched, most
comprehensive volume ever written on Fort Union. At
first blush that statement may seem dubious to historians who have predetermined that fur trade history is
little more (or less!) than popular history. But the
truth is that Fort Union, which from 1830 to 1867
occupied an elevated prairie near the junction of the
Missouri and Yellowstone rivers, served as a powerful
United States presence in the Northern Plains, and its
economic importance extended south to St. Louis, east
to New York, and across the Atlantic Ocean to
London. Fort Union and its counterparts in the fur
trade enterprise put an American imprint on the West
as they provided both capital and corporate models for
business. Fort Union existed as America's most important nineteenth century fur trade post, the longest
lived, the most profitable, and the most populous. It
was also the best documented, an advantage that
Barton H. Barbour uses to great effect.
Barbour has several points to make in this volume,
and the one he seems to enjoy the most is that the
dwellers of Fort Union fashioned for themselves a
complex and unique social organization. More than a
simple frontier habitation, yet not quite a "company
town," Fort Union possessed a remarkably cosmopolitan society where the lingua franca included English,
French, Spanish, German, and five Indian languages.
Creoles mixed easily with metis, Hispanics, European
Americans, and African Americans. Engages, clerks,
bourgeois, women, and children all worked hard,
enjoyed the same rude entertainments, ate well, and
obeyed an informal common law. It was the sort of
JUNE 2002
876
Reviews of Books
place warmly remembered by travelers. Princes from
Germany, sportsmen from Ireland, artists like George
Catlin, scientists like John Jacob Astor, and missionaries like Father Peter De Smet all left complimentary
reminiscences about the place.
Life was good at Fort Union because commerce was
good. Just four years after its founding, storerooms at
Fort Union held an inventory of trade goods valued at
more than $50,000 with net proceeds annually amounting to $130,000. And the bottom line held up. Even two
decades after the first exchange of money took place,
the fort reported a profit for its St. Louis and New
York investors in excess of $44,000. In 1865, just two
years before the post closed, net proceeds rose to
$200,000. Clearly, Barbour points out, lack of profits
did not force the abandonment of Fort Union. The
"why" of the demise of Fort Union is a complex
question. The rise of the Republican Party was a
factor. During the Civil War, many Republicans
viewed Pierre Chouteau, Jr., and his St. Louis business
allies as likely, or actual, Confederate sympathizers,
and they acted accordingly. Accusations that the company smuggled liquor to the Upper Missouri Indian
tribes resulted in protracted litigation. Yes, the federal
government relied on fur trade companies for transportation and warehousing of Indian annuity goods,
but Abraham Lincoln's party in Washington, D.C.,
decided which cases to prosecute and which to overlook. Lesser events, none of which Fort Union operatives could control, combined significantly to change
the fur trade and Fort Union. Extremely cold winters
drove bison far to the east. The price of beaver pelts in
London changed without notice. A fire in Chouteau's
New York offices reduced corporate records with
Astor to ashes. Statehood for Minnesota propelled
Fort Snelling to new status and thereby altered the
fulcrum of fur trade power away from St. Louis.
The author is not inclined to accept the "dependency theory" that that fur trade destroyed Indian life and
culture. Barbour agrees that the greed of white traders
played a role in the process, but his research reveals
that the Indians were partners in commerce and both
parties believed that the trade had advantages. It was
the U.S. Army, not fur traders, who demolished the
traditions of the Plains Indians. The army, working
with civilian federal agents, introduced a government
rationing system for Indians. That, plus a system of
sutler's stores at military posts, made fur trade entrepreneurs superfluous in the world of frontier commerce.
This is no ordinary book. It is thoughtful, based on
solid research, and it establishes Fort Union as a case
study for all that can be learned about the influence of
the fur trade on the American character during the age
of Andrew Jackson.
ROBERT C. CARRIKER
Gonzaga University
KATHRYN GROVER. The Fugitive's Gibraltar: Escaping
Slaves and Abolitionism in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. 2001. Pp.
xiii, 350. $39.95.
American historians need not puzzle any longer about
why New Bedford, Massachusetts, proved a hotbed of
antislavery sentiment before the Civil War. In her
remarkably rich study, Kathryn Grover carefully explains that this leading whaling center took its political
cues from a large and often militant community of
African Americans befriended by groups of white
abolitionists and antislavery advocates typically affiliated with unusually large concentrations of Baptists
and Quakers. She draws particular attention to the
city's African Americans, using a wide variety of
sources to depict scores of them in loving detail; if an
African-American man lived in New Bedford, lingered
there, or simply passed through, he is likely to be in
this book, and not just as a name. Grover shows how
they got to New Bedford; where they lived, worshipped, and earned a living; what they did for their
people; whether they were slaves, fugitives from slavery, or fellow citizens of Massachusetts.
The central thesis is that New Bedford cleaved into
loose groupings of radical abolitionists and more cautious antislavery advocates. The first group, which
consisted mainly of blacks and whites with Garrisonian
loyalties, took bolder stands against the South and for
African-American civil rights, goaded in large part by
the national furor over the Fugitive Slave Act. Black
leaders, for instance, formed armed bands in the early
1850s to protect the fugitives among them from southern slave catchers and federal agents. The second
group, which consisted mainly of whites, drew back in
reaction to the new aggressiveness on the part of black
abolitionists. Grover enriches this plausible thesis by
pointing out that the idealism of the Society of Friends
encouraged moderation as well as radicalism. It leaned
away from radicalism and toward antislavery because
the same injunctions that condemned servitude also
abjured violence, violence that black leaders had come
to expect and mobilized to resist in active ways.
Imbued with the paternalistic outlook often associated
with abolitionism, such white activists flinched at black
New Bedford's "forcible resistance" in response to
federal enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act.
The book also turns up useful information on other
dimensions of the African-American experience. It
shows that the city's robust coastal trade provided
fugitive slaves with something of an escape hatch from
slavery and from Virginia in particular. Fugitives,
moreover, could count on support from the clandestine network of the Underground Railroad, casting
further doubt on Larry Gara's claim that abolitionists
lacked the organizational capacity to spirit runaways
systematically from the South. Sympathetic whites not
only assisted fugitives, but the more liberal-minded
among them also provided blacks with jobs, an aspect
of white benevolence largely unknown in urban places.
Larger proportions of African-American artisans plied
their trades in New Bedford than in other cities, and
JUNE
2002