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Reviews of Books and Films
olution, the replacement of the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution, and the Civil War-that
resulted in significant changes in rules of apportionment. For each of these instances, he sets himself the
goal of providing"analytically rigorous and historically
realistic accounts of several creations, transformations,
and breakdowns in the American political order."
In order to accomplish his goal, Kromkowskipresents a discussion of the context in which each rule
change occurred, a "micro-level" analysis of the roles
specific actors played in the rule change, and then a
game-theoretic look at each change, followed by a
consideration of the ways in which the apportionment
rule change became institutionalized.
Each of his context discussions considers interpretive perspectives (basically the historiography of the
period in question). He then examines the economic,
demographic, institutional, and ideological conditions
that influenced the rules change in question. His
contention is that these conditions do not prompt the
changes; rather the changes are the result of changes
in the expectations of politically relevant actors.
Generally speaking, the book's historiographical
sections are extremely weak. Kromkowski evinces a
tendency to set up straw historians against his own
interpretive perspective. For example, in his discussion
of the origins of the Civil War, he claims that historical
accounts of the causes of the war follow one of two
"general logics" (p. 315): the irrepressible conflict or
the blundering generation. He claims that followers of
the first logic disregard human agency and that those
of the second completely ignore structural differences.
This crude bifurcation and reductionism describes a
Civil War historiography stripped of all its subtlety,
complexity, and nuance. Similarly, in discussing the
interpretive perspective of the period leading up to the
Constitutional convention, Kromkowski states "existing interpretations rarely provide credible accounts of
the process of constitutional change that ultimately
yielded both an increase in national governing authorityand a change in the national rule of apportionment"
(p. 206, emphasis in the original). Since this statement
is not elaborated on, either in the text or in a footnote,
it is impossible to guess exactly what he is referring to.
Much contemporary historical analysis is devoted precisely to the relationships among conceptions of liberty, power, and representation and provides rich and
detailed accounts of why issues of national governing
authority and national rules of apportionment would
be bundled together in the process of constitutional
change.
This brings us to a curious lacuna in Kromkowski's
analysis: although he pays specific attention to ideology (and, to his credit, attention to both British and
American ideological developments in the period leading up to the American Revolution), he devotes almost
no analysis to the concept of republicanism that has
been so influential in the historiography of the American Revolution and the early national period. Of
course, with a net cast as widely as Kromkowski's, it is
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inevitable that gaps will exist. However, he asserts that
his analysis undercuts claims that structural, economic,
demographic, institutional, or ideological changes account for changes in rules of apportionment. Given the
fact that his accounts of the changes in each of these
areas for each rule change are fairly cursory (for
example, his survey of economic conditions in the
period 1790-1870 runs from pages 317 to 319), it is
hard to see how this level of analysis could in fact
provide either support or lack thereof for any proposed causal explanation of change.
Any attempt to provide an account of three such
major phenomena as the American Revolution, the
origins of the Constitution, and the Civil War that is
both rigorous and realistic, all in the space of 433
pages, is doomed to failure. Kromkowski's achievement is to raise the issue of the nature and causes of
change in the rules of apportionment within a consensual constitutional system. He concludes that such
change is caused by "changes in political expectations
concerning decision-making capacities and governmental authority" (p. 425). The question that remains
is why Kromkowski seems to believe that this conclusion must be an alternative, rather than an addition, to
explanations grounded in broader social and intellectual forces.
KIMBERLY SHANKMAN
Benedictine College
JUDITH L. VAN BUSKIRK. Generous Enemies: Patriots
and Loyalists in Revolutionary New York. (Early American Studies.) Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press. 2002. Pp. 260. $35.00.
In a nicely written and well-argued volume, Judith L.
Van Buskirk discusses the strong ties that overrode
political concerns and bound friends, family, and acquaintances to each other despite the American Revolution. The work fits in with recent historiography on
revolutionary New York, including Joseph S. Tiedemann, Reluctant Revolutionaries: New York City and the
Road to Independence, 1763-1776 (1997) and Richard
M. Ketchum, Divided "Loyalties: How the American
Revolution Came to New York (2002). Tiedemann
explores the difficulties faced by New York's heterogeneous population in reaching a consensus on how to
oppose British imperialism, while Ketchum comments
on the almost religious zeal that swept up patriots who
then engaged in the savage persecution of Loyalists.
Van Buskirk addresses some of these issues, but rather
than concentrating on societal divisions, she emphasizes the factors that drew people together. Personal
ties, argues Van Buskirk, more than ideology often led
Patriots and Loyalists to put aside political considerations and maintain amicable contact. She believes
that war in New York City "saw two communities
operate in close, sustained proximity, each testing the
limits of military and political authority ... They
learned to survive on their own terms and in so doing
became generous enemies" (p. 7).
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To support her thesis, Van Buskirk offers some
persuasive arguments, among them the fact that not all
Americans, or even a majority of Americans, supported the war, while even those who termed themselves Patriots often changed their allegiance. After
the British occupied New York in the summer of 1776,
the Loyalists there settled in for a stay of some seven
years. Loyalist support of the British wavered as
British regulars and German mercenaries became unruly and demanding. The situation in New York City
was exacerbated as Loyalist refugees from surrounding
states poured into the city. With most supplies, including food, coming from Europe, the resultant shortages
in New York City undoubtedly led many Loyalists to
appeal for aid to friends and relatives in nearby
Patriot-held states.
Neither did the war stop social visits or trading, even
when the heads of households were prominent civil
and/or military leaders. Van Buskirk points out that
the Patriot general Lord Stirling's wife and daughter
visited another Loyalist daughter in New York City,
while New Jersey governor William Livingston's son;
Henry Brockholst Livingston, traded with the enemy.
Robert Livingston, the lord of the manor, "embrace[d]
his Loyalist relatives" (p. 54), including the well-known
lawyer, William Smith, Jr., who remained at Livingston
Manor for the duration of the war.
Many people moved freely during the war. Van
Buskirk points out the success of the "female network," whose members spread news, gossip, military
information, and rumors. Women, much like slaves,
were deemed incapable of holding "a serious political
belief, nor endowed with the power to act on it, [which]
encouraged men to talk freely with the ladies" (p. 55).
Slaves, inspired by Whig rhetoric that stressed freedom, fled their white masters to seek refuge among the
British in New York. Equally mobile were captured
officers on both sides, who were usually granted paroles that gave them the freedom to move between the
city and nearby communities.
The British and Loyalists in New York believed the
British would put down the rebellion until the battle of
Yorktown. After news of Yorktown arrived in New
York on October 24, 1781, some 30,000 Loyalists left
the city for Canada, the West Indies, or England. The
property of most New York Loyalists was confiscated
by the government, in accordance with a state law
passed in 1779. If the Loyalists expected assistance
from the British in recovering their losses after the
war, most were cruelly disappointed. The 1783 Treaty
of Paris merely recommended that states return Loyalist property, a recommendation that was easily ignored.
The book is interesting throughout and contains
much of value even if it downplays the hatred and
anger between Loyalists and Patriots. While lines of
communication were fluid at first, positions solidified
as the war progressed and did not immediately soften
at war's end. As Van Buskirk notes, American Whigs
were divided in their attitude toward Loyalists after
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1783. Some favored reconciliation, but others "saw
danger in making room for former enemies" (p. 155).
Those who feared the Loyalists prevailed in 1784 when
the New York Assembly disenfranchised and banned
from the holding of public office any person who had
served the British military or remained behind enemy
lines. Although Van Buskirk concludes that the Patriots took a "moderate line" (p. 188) with this action,
surely disenfranchisement reflects a lingering distrust
and seething anger toward Loyalists. Most of the
30,000 refugees who left New York after Yorktown did
not return because they recognized the hostile reception that awaited them in America. One might argue
with Van Buskirk's closing statement that "those
bridges" between Patriots and Loyalists "had never
been destroyed. during the war" (p. 195). While that
was true for some people, it most likely was not true
for all. Despite its downplaying of bitterness caused by
the war, the book sheds light on how the ordinary as
well as the extraordinary citizen dealt with the chaos
and disruption brought by warfare, a lesson that
concerns us to the present day.
MARY Lou LUSTIG
West Virginia University
IRA BERLIN. Generations of Captivity: A History of
African-American Slaves. New Haven: Yale University
Press. 2003. Pp. 374. $29.95
In this study, Ira Berlin fulfills his radical revision of
the static and time-frozen views of American slavery
that tended to dominate scholarship in the generation
following World War II. Berlin's new book builds
bridges between his masterly and prize-winning Many
Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in
North America (1998), which portrays slavery largely
from the slaves' point of view, and Berlin's earlier
leadership in reconstructing African Americans' central role in the Civil War and in helping to define the
meaning of their own emancipation. Inevitably, this
means some repetition of the themes, arguments, and
examples of Many Thousands Gone, although Berlin
has drawn impressively on the vast flood of recent
scholarship. What especially distinguishes Berlin's
present approach is its geographic breadth (including
the North, Florida, and the Old Southwest), emphasis
on the markedly different experiences of five "generations" of African-Americans, and focus on slaves'
agency, initiative, and skill at constant negotiation.
Although the life experiences of slaves could hardly
have been more different as "Atlantic Creoles" of the
"Charter Generation" gave way in the eighteenth
century to the "Planter Generation" and the "Revolutionary Generation," and then, in the nineteenth century, to the "Migration Generation" and the "Freedom
Generation," Berlin highlights the continuity of slave
negotiations with owners that mitigated some of the
most destructive effects of exploitation and created an
expanding (or shrinking) space for a slave culture that
could not be eradicated even by the disastrous breakup
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