Book Reviews
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Edmunds is a t his best in relating the inter- and intratribal rivalries that dominated Potawatomi affairs in this period.
As in most societies, economic interests, kinship ties, and personality clashes all played a vital part in political development.
Edmunds clearly reveals the operation of this tribal political
system.
Although the book is admirable, two criticisms are in order. It is only natural for the author to emphasize the role
played by the Potawatomis in the conflicts with the invading
whites. However, he often gives the tribe too much credit. The
reader might well assume that the Potawatomis played a much
more important part in the battles against Edward Braddock,
Harmar, St. Clair, and Wayne than is actually the case. It is
also unfortunate that the book is so limited in scope. Edmunds
covers only the period from 1600 to 1840, from the earliest
white contact to the final removal of the Potawatomis from the
Old Northwest. The opening date is understandable given the
paucity of research materials, but it is indeed unfortunate that
the Potawatomis’ history was not brought up into the present
century.
The Potawatomis were a n important midwestern tribe, and
their history has been too long neglected. Edmunds has used a
wide range of source material to construct this fine contribution
to Indian scholarship and has provided the standard history of
the tribe.
Utah State University, Logan
Paul A. Hutton
Texas Annexation and the Mexican War: A Political Study of
the Old Northwest. By Norman E. Tutorow. (Palo Alto:
Chadwick House, Publishers, Ltd., 1978. Pp. xv, 320.
Notes, appendixes, maps, tables, bibliography, index.
$12.95.)
This monograph, the purpose and scope of which are well
defined by its title, overlaps to some degree Joel H. Silbey, The
Shrine of Party: Congressional Voting Behavior, 1841-1852
(1967) and John H. Schroeder, Mr. Polk’s War: American Opposition and Dissent, 1846-1848 (1973), but it offers more material on the Old Northwest than either. Norman E. Tutorow
has ransacked newspaper files of the region as well as the
Congressional Globe, serial Congressional documents, and state
legislative journals for the political attitudes and actions of
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan on a crucial issue, territorial expansion, during a crucial period, the 1840s. About
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Indiana Magazine of History
one quarter of the book is devoted to elaborate tables and
well-drawn maps setting forth population distribution, vote
counts, and other useful statistical information.
Tutorow’s painstaking work leaves no doubt whatever-if
any ever existed-that through the dilemmas and heroism that
accompanied the winning of the F a r West and Southwest
politicians never forgot partisan infighting or their own prospects in the next election. They might occasionally declaim
with the Madison, Indiana, Banner that “we are now all Whigs
and all Democrats’’ (p. 1291, but none of them meant it for a
moment.
Since politicians and attendant newspaper editors functioned in a democratic republic, a narrowly political study such
as this is apt to seem a t times unreal or superficial. One cannot
help wondering what the mass of people thought about all
these issues and to what degree they supported or even accepted what they were told. Unfortunately, the historian of the
many centuries before polls is chained in Plato’s cave straining
to glimpse mere shadows of public opinion in the flickering
firelight of editorials and debates. Tutorow h a s certainly
avoided much doubt and conjecture with his self-imposed limitation on politics as such. Nevertheless, even he cannot resist a
little speculation a t times. For example, in discussing northwestern opposition to the Mexican War, he suggests that “opinion in Congress was more a molder of public opinion than a
reflection of it” (p. 182). How does he know? His evidence comes
entirely from state and county political conventions or is deduced from political actions. He might have provided a t least a
whiff of public opinion by quoting constituents’ letters in some
of the collections that he consulted (e.g., the papers of William
Allen and Robert J. Walker). These are the genuine uox populi
even if not numerous enough for statistical significance.
The book contains much background material about the
events of Texas annexation and the Mexican War. This material could have been fcrther condensed without harm to the
average informed reader. In the space thus saved Tutorow
might well have given a more penetrating discussion of the
wartime split between the regional followers of David Wilmot
(who wanted territory from Mexico but none for slavery) and of
Thomas Corwin (who wanted no territory a t all). In the Northwest, at least, this fault line became the epicenter of numerous
wartime and postwar tremors that shook the framework of
American politics and society.
Indiana University, Bloomington
David M. Pletcher