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Reviews of Books
heavily on the theory of U.S.-trained race scholars for
her assumptions on race and does not support her
arguments with documents.
This is troublesome because Streeby makes imaginative and provocative statements such as "These
representations [in the dime novel] suggest that European immigrants, specifically the Irish, were being
admitted into the national and racial 'community' at
the expense of those, such as Indians and Mexicans,
from whom territory was being taken away" that often
tease the reader (p. 105). However, this phenomenon
of inclusion has existed for most of U.S. history and
race scholars can further appreciate this statement in
the context of September 11, 2001, when many African
Americans, Latinos, and others felt like part of "the
national and racial 'community.'" Since Streeby was
dealing with Mexicans, she should have detected similarities in incidents such as the Camp Grant Massacre
of the 1870s, when Mexicans and Papagos participated
in the massacre of Apache women and children; the
complicity of Mexican elites, who willingly married off
daughters to men socially beneath them; and the
Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, which made Mexicans
legally "white" but was then deconstructed by state and
federal courts and laws. The truth be told, Mexicans
have had to struggle not only with American constructions of whiteness but also with their own colonial past.
This book is an excellent literary critique; however,
it falls short as a history. Its flaws are evident in
Streeby's treatment of Juan Nepomuceno Cortina and
Joaquin Murieta. While her analyses of dime novels
are provocative, they lack historical context. Streeby
neglects the current historical literature on Cortina
and the economic forces that formed the conflict.
James Leroy Evans's "The Indian Savage, the Mexican
Bandit, the Chinese Heathen-Three Popular Stereotypes" (Ph.D. 1967) and John Mason Hart's Empire
and Revolution (2002) would have added to an understanding of the economic dimensions of empire building on the border.
Streeby closes the book with an analysis of John
Rollin Ridge's The Life and Adventures of Joaquin
Murieta, the Celebrated California Bandit (1854). Murieta arrived in Alta California from San Rafaelito de
los Alamitos, Distrito de Altar, Sonora, Mexico, where
he owned some land. When claim jumpers lynched his
older brother and gang raped his wife, Murieta extracted his revenge. Streeby repeats the myths but does
not delve into the reality that there were no less than
forty-two "Joaquins" and that Murieta probably lived
to a ripe old age in Sonora. By not using current
research on Sonora, Streeby's account is flawed; race
has multiple dimensions, and the victim's reaction to
racism is an important variable. Murieta was from
Mexico, not from California, which is a variable that
she should have raised.
Despite my nitpicking, this is an important book.
Undoubtedly, if Streeby had written it as a "cultural
history," it would have been far less imaginative. Its
strengths are that the author fearlessly explores
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themes, stretches traditional paradigms, and brilliantly
compares notions such as "Hacienda, the Factory, and
the Plantation," drawing on the similarities between
the Mexican peons and northern workers. Because of
the broadness of her landscape, however, the reader
often has difficulty in distinguishing detail, something
that Streeby could have overcome with a more judicious use of historical documents.
RoooLFO F. AcuNA
California State University,
Northridge
STEVEN J. RAMOLD. Slaves, Sailors, Citizens: African
Americans in the Union Navy. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. 2002. Pp. ix, 253. $32.00.
For decades, historians have debated and discussed
the service of African Americans in the U.S. Navy
during the Civil War. There has, however, been no
consensus regarding the contributions of these men or
even the numbers in naval service. A full understanding has been elusive for several reasons. Few of the
navy's records differentiate between the races, and
African Americans enjoyed greater acceptance in the
navy than in the army. Additionally, blacks had already
established a tradition of service in the navy and,
during the war, they participated in the ships for the
most part as equals. Steven J. Ramold has dealt well
with these difficulties to present a clear narrative of
African-American naval service during the Civil War.
Despite the fact that African Americans participated
in every American war from the Revolution to the
Civil War, black men never enjoyed unfettered access
to the navy. When it needed men, the navy turned to
African Americans, and the Civil War was no exception. At the beginning of the war, only 2.5 percent of
the sailors in the navy were African Americans. In the
early months of the war hundreds of African Americans fled to the Union ships for protection, but it was
not until September 1861 that Secretary of the Navy
Gideon Welles judiciously authorized the use of
former slaves on board Union ships. The employment
of escaped slaves, however, was complicated by existing federal laws. While blacks from northern states
could join the Union armed forces, the largest population of African Americans was concentrated in the
South, and the Lincoln administration was hindered by
the Fugitive Slave Act and the Confiscation Acts.
To build his argument, Ramold uses data from
Joseph Reidy's ongoing and pioneering study. Doing
chi-square and analysis of variance tests on Reidy's
data and a wealth of other primary and secondary
sources, the author draws a portrait of the average
African American in the Union navy. Ramold concludes that these men were about twenty-four years
old. Demographically about fifty percent of the sailors
came from the southern states and were largely skilled
laborers. Those from the northern states came from
the service and industrial occupation groups. These
professionally oriented men were largely from urban
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Canada and the United States
areas and comprised twenty percent of those who
enlisted. The remaining men came from the border
states.
The U.S. Navy, from the beginning of the conflict,
offered blacks benefits that they could not find elsewhere: equality in pay and equal and overall fair
treatment. The author argues that African Americans
had much more in common with white sailors than
with their black counterparts in the Union army.
Unlike army service, the navy allowed African Americans to advance within the ranks according to their
skills. Furthermore, they earned pensions and were
paid at a rate consistent with civilian wages. Ramold
does not sugarcoat their naval experience and acknowledges that these men also faced ambivalence and
even racism, paternalistic treatment and condescension. He points out, however, there was little evidence
of widespread racism within the service and no institutional racism. In fact, the U.S. Navy was so egalitarian that, for the remainder of the century, these liberal
policies would open the door to careers in the navy for
African Americans.
African Americans encountered an egalitarian existence in the navy because they shared the same
burdens, boredom, food, schedule, and benefits and
saw the same duty at the guns and magazines and faced
the same death and disfigurement in combat. By
contrast, early in the war the Union army used African
Americans for fatigue duty and heavy labor. The army
never offered these men the opportunities that they
could find in the navy. Interestingly, according to the
author's statistical analysis, African Americans also
received better treatment in the navy's criminal justice
system, which demonstrates that the navy was an
egalitarian institution, balancing racial concerns and
strong discipline into a system that worked effectively.
Ramold has made a decided step forward in our
understanding of the naval service of African Americans during the Civil War. His work serves as a
continuation and lucid extension of Reidy's work,
which was incomplete at the time of its publication.
Although this will not be the final word on this topic,
every Civil War scholar should find this book interesting and worthwhile.
ROBERT M. BROWNING, JR.
Dumfries, Virginia
MICHAEL VORENBERG. Final Freedom: The Civil War,
the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment.
(Cambridge Historical Studies in American Law and
Society.) New York: Cambridge University Press.
2001. Pp. xviii, 305. $29.95.
Historians have given surprisingly little attention to
the intense debate over the adoption of the Thirteenth
Amendment. Too often, the Thirteenth Amendment is
presented as an inevitable follow-up to the Emancipation Proclamation. In this well-researched volume,
Michael Vorenberg traces the fortuitous events that
led to the freedom amendment. Although there was
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growing emancipation sentiment in the North by 1863,
there was no agreement as to how slavery should be
eliminated. Moreover, as Vorenberg points out, the
abolition of bondage did not necessarily confer any
rights on freedpersons or establish racial equality.
Even those who favored the amendment had diverse
views about what further rights, if any, freedom entailed.
In recounting the Thirteenth Amendment's adoption, Vorenberg skillfully weaves a fascinating tapestry
of legal theory, raw politics, racial prejudice, and
concerns for the balance of federal-state power. He
also shows how deliberation took place against a
changing backdrop of military events, hopes for sectional reconciliation, and emerging Reconstruction
policy. Both political parties were badly split over the
amendment. Radical Republicans wanted explicit
guarantees of equality. Many Republicans, however,
appeared lukewarm toward the amendment and
tended to stress its conservative character as a means
to preserve the Union. Most Democrats, citing states'
rights ideology and racial issues, were opposed, but
some supported the amendment as an implicit slap at
President Abraham Lincoln and the dubious constitutionality of his Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln
himself offered little public support for the amendment. It is sobering to recall that in June of 1864, the
House of Representatives could not muster the necessary two-thirds vote to adopt the Thirteenth Amendment, and that the amendment virtually disappeared as
an issue during the ensuing presidential campaign.
An interesting corollary to the emancipation process
was the question of compensation for slave owners.
The Constitution recognized slaves as a form of property. During the early years of the Civil War, Lincoln
repeatedly urged compensated emancipation upon
Congress and the loyal slave states but could arouse no
interest in such schemes. Vorenberg might profitably
have explored whether a compensated emancipation
would have eased some of the travails of the Reconstruction era. Still, it seems fair to conclude that, as a
practical matter, years of bitter warfare overwhelmed
the "conventions of property law-at least on the
question of 'just compensation' for slaves" (p. 224).
Although this work adds significantly to the literature on the Thirteenth Amendment, Vorenberg is less
convincing in his contention that the amendment
caused a transformation in constitutional thought. The
author argues that adoption of the emancipation
amendment not only sparked a rediscovery of the
amendment process but also opened the door for "a
revolutionary new understanding of the meaning of
constitutionalism" (p. 193) that downplayed the views
of the framers. Americans, Vorenberg maintains, increasingly turned to amendments as a vehicle for
constitutional change. The record, however, does not
bear out this assertion. There were numerous proposed amendments before the Civil War. Their failure
was due more to the difficulty of mustering the necessary support than to reverence for the framers. After
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