United States
discussions in both volumes are detailed and probe the
motivations and concerns of each side, but maintain a
good flow of the narrative. With his focus on personal
narratives, Cayton may provide the greater insight into
the Native American mind, especially in a figure like
the Miami Chief Little Turtle who turns from great
military leader to leading accommodationist. Hurt,
however, clearly sees Little Turtle as the only native
leader who assessed correctly the weakness of the
Indian situation in the Fallen Timbers campaign. Since
the crucial 1790s battles took place on Ohio soil, there
is a more comprehensive description of these military
engagements in the Hurt book. Cayton, however, has
opportunity to examine closely the comparative approaches the French, English, and Americans had
toward the land and the native occupants, and that
motif is a continuing one throughout his volume.
Clearly, neither of these volumes could have been
written two decades ago. They are both fully informed
by the new (or not so new) social histories-community, women, Native American, demographic, familyand the many monographs published in recent years.
Cayton can use the life of Anna Tuthill Symmes
Harrison not only as the vehicle for a discussion of
William Henry Harrison's role as territorial governor,
but for that of gender roles, household organization,
population demographics, and the value systems that
underlay the frontier enterprise in Indiana. In one of
his most revealing discussions, Hurt describes the pain
of Indian parents and spouses at losing adopted white
family members when Col. Henry Bouquet ordered the
return of all white captives following the collapse of
Pontiac's uprising in 1764. Some had to be bound to be
turned over, and parents followed the army for miles
to delay final parting (p. 53). The perspectives in such
narratives are a far cry from the old frontier stories
like the escape of Mary Draper Ingles from Shawnee
captivity.
In the end, both authors see the American relationship to the land as the defining characteristic of the
frontier period in both states. In Indiana, the era had
been a "struggle for the power to control the development of the region" (p. 300). In Ohio, even with its
bustling towns and early manufacturing growth, it was
"Farmers, First and Last" (p. 345).
New syntheses like these are valuable contributions
to both the general and the informed reader. The
Trans-Appalachian Frontier series has found its niche
and will make a significant contribution if all volumes
are as successful as these.
R. EUGENE HARPER
University of Charleston,
West Virginia
JON GJERDE. The Minds of the West: Ethnocultural
Evolution in the Rural Middle West, 1830-1917. Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1997. Pp. xiii,
426. $39.95.
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
1229
Since entering its dynamic phase in the 1960s, American immigration and ethnic history has tended to
concentrate on southern and eastern Europeans in
cities and industrial areas. In recent years, however,
scholars such as Kathleen Neils Conzen and Jon
Gjerde have reexamined the rural settlement of northwest European immigrants, principally in the Middle
West.
Westward migration had reached such proportions
by the 1830s that "the West" appeared to be the
crucible of America's future. This inspired hopes that
the established patterns of American society would
replicate themselves across the continent. But in addition to controversy over the spread of slavery, it also
aroused apprehensions over the large influx of foreign
elements into the region. During the 1830s, "new"
immigrants, chiefly Germans (Catholic and Lutheran),
Irish Catholics, and Scandinavian Lutherans, began to
establish themselves in the rural Middle West.
The "minds" that Gjerde analyzes and compares in
this absorbing study are the mentalities and value
systems of the "American" and "European-American"
inhabitants of the midwestern patchwork of ethnoreligious rural settlements. Differences between them
essentially revolved around their understanding of
American liberty. The "American" or "Yankee" view
stressed the freedom of the individual in the pursuit of
happiness. European Americans of non-Protestant
and/or non-English-speaking origins warmly embraced
American liberty but interpreted it as freedom to
preserve their traditional communal values and ways
of life. Indeed, Gjerde shows that this gap widened
during the nineteenth century, due to a growing European reaction to revolution and the Enlightenment
and increasing American emphasis on untrammeled
individualism.
Midwestern communities were based primarily on
religion and ethnicity, often deriving from specific
home localities. Their leaders, characteristically clergymen, strove to preserve inherited values and purity
of faith. For "Yankees," this meant a high degree of
individualism, including a pietistic religious tradition
that stressed the personal search for salvation. Immigrant communities typically built on inclusive confessional churches.
Conceptions of family were of central importance.
In the "Yankee" tradition, every individual was free to
make his or her own way. This implied the free choice
of companionable marriage partners and considerable
independence for children, placing heavy demands on
the conjugal bond and risking neglect of aging parents
by often absent offspring. Old World tradition stressed
the family unit, for whose welfare all members should
sacrifice purely personal interests and subordinate
themselves to the male head of the household. This
provided economic advantages and future security for
the parents but resulted in inequities and often high
levels of frustration and conflict within immigrant
families.
Ethnic societies, both "Yankee" and European,
OCTOBER 1997
Reviews of Books
1230
reacted to cultural conflict by seeking to insulate
themselves against outside influences or through political mobilization. Clergymen and newspapers inveighed against contamination by outside ideas threatening to faith, family, and community. Parochial
schools, both Catholic and Lutheran, indoctrinated
children in traditional values. Immigrant farmers
bought out outsiders in their midst or formed new
daughter colonies to prevent dispersal.
Contact with unfamiliar peoples and faiths meanwhile tended to "ethnicize" immigrant groups and, by
implication, "Yankees" as well, with political consequences. Three issues above all tended to polarize
ethnic blocs: public schools, women's rights, and prohibition. Strong support for these reforms by "Yankee" and certain Protestant immigrant Republicans,
especially Scandinavian, revealed a new factor in the
equation: readiness to use state power to implement
nationwide reforms. This position was resolutely opposed by conservative immigrant groups, mainly Democrats, both Catholic and Lutheran, who saw it as a
threat to the sanctity of faith, home, community, and
essentially to their American freedom to be different.
Only the devastating nativism of the World War I years
tipped the scales decisively in favor of "Americanization."
Gjerde's Middle West is in effect the Upper Middle
West, where both European and Yankee settlement
were most prominent. His "Americans" are thus New
Englanders and New Yorkers; those of Appalachian or
other background play virtually no part. Something
more might have been made of old American communal traditions as well as of those liberalizing trends in
northwestern Europe that affected many emigrants
even before their departure. No real attention is given,
for example, to free-thinking elements among the
Germans, Czechs, or Scandinavians. Conversely, extreme Protestant ethno-religious communities like the
Mennonites and Hutterites could have added contrast.
A look at the tensions of the time between rural and
urban America-cutting in part across ethno-religious
lines-might have been instructive. Striking parallels
with immigration and ethnic relations in the United
States today likewise invited commentary.
It is nonetheless the sign of a truly important work
of synthesis that one can only note what the author did
not choose to cover rather than fault the overall
interpretation. Gjerde has indeed made a groundbreaking and highly thought-provoking contribution to
American history.
H. ARNOLD BARTON
Southern Illinois University,
Carbondale
MARK J. STEGMAIER. Texas, New Mexico, and the Compromise of 1850: Boundary Dispute and Sectional Crisis.
Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press. 1996. Pp. xii,
434. $39.00.
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
Historians who deal with the Compromise of 1850
have traditionally emphasized three central elements
that helped postpone a clash of arms between North
and South for another decade: California statehood,
territorial slavery in the Southwest, and the explosive
fugitive slave question. At the same time, scholars have
stressed the role played by key congressional orators
and those who guided the Compromise package
through nine months of tortuous debate and political
maneuvering, including Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun,
Daniel Webster, and Stephen A. Douglas. Only incidentally have these writers mentioned the Texas-New
Mexico boundary dispute and its relationship, in the
final settlement, to the Texas debt. Now Mark J.
Stegmaier sheds new light on the sectional conflict by
placing the Texas-New Mexico question at the center
of the controversy, arguing convincingly that it became
the issue on which the fate of the Compromise and
even the survival of the Union depended.
Stegmaier begins by tracing the origin of the boundary dispute, which involved what is today the eastern
half of New Mexico, the area east of the Rio Grande.
The issue originated in the struggle for empire between France and Spain in the eighteenth century,
with the region becoming Mexican when that nation
won its independence from Spain in 1821. The Texas
Revolution of 1836 renewed the controversy, as the
Lone Star Republic insisted on a Rio Grande border,
even though the disputed region was dominated by
Native American and Mexican rather than Texan
settlers. The issue remained unresolved when the
United States annexed Texas in 1845. The treaty
ending the Mexican War (1848) gave the disputed
region to the United States, but this served only to
intensify the conflict between New Mexico and Texas.
It also became a sectional issue, with New Mexicans
opposed to slavery and Texans hoping to expand slave
regions with their claim.
Stegmaier details the dispute from the perspective
of New Mexicans, Texans, and government officials in
Washington and presents a story that has rarely been
told. Especially significant is his account of those in
New Mexico, backed directly by the United States
Army under Colonel John Munroe and indirectly by
President Zachary Taylor, who sought immediate
statehood as a solution to the crisis. In contrast, Texan
Robert Neighbors was sent by the Austin government
even as the legislature declared the disputed territory
to be part of Texas. Stegmaier will lose some readers to
excessive detail and complex cast of characters (made
up mostly of names unfamiliar even to students of the
Compromise). His account of congressional maneuvering after Taylor's death in July 1850 details every
roll call and every amendment, major or minor. It is an
account whose thoroughness few will find necessary.
Yet the result is an authoritative and exhaustive study
of a dispute that came close to causing bloodshed in
large part because of its implications for the expansion
of slavery.
Stegmaier maintains that Taylor was stubbornly
OCTOBER
1997