Union and Democracy . [The Riverside History of the United  States, II. William E. Dodd, Editor.] By Allen Johnson ,  Professor of American History, Yale University.  (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. [1915.] Pp. xii,  346, xvi. $1.25 net.)

Expansion and Conflict . [The Riverside History of the United  States, III. William E. Dodd , Editor.] By William E.  Dodd, Professor of American History, University of Chicago.  (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. [1915.]  Pp. xvi, 329, xxiv. $1.25 net.)>

Together these two little volumes survey the history of the United States from the close of the Revolution to the end of the Civil War, with the election of 1828 as the dividing line between them. They are designed primarily as text-books for college classes, but are likely to find their greatest field of usefulness among general readers desiring a brief, readable, interpretative discussion of the period. Professor Johnson's task has been essayed so often and from so many different angles that little opportunity for originality remained. It is a good, clear narrative, but, except for a slightly greater emphasis on the economic influences which shaped our early constitutional development,—probably a more or less unconscious response to Beard's somewhat spectacular thesis,—his book has little to distinguish it from others of approximately the same compass. Chapter XIV, analyzing the motives and influences of the Westward Movement, and Chapter XVI, describing the New Democracy that came into its own with Jackson's rise to the presidency, are the newest features of the book, and they are excellent.

Economic history, and particularly the economic history of the South, has only begun during the last decade to attract the serious attention of investigators, so that in the field which is peculiary his own Professor Dodd has been able to put into convenient form a great deal of analyzed and interpreted information not elsewhere readily available. Though both books are as non-partisan in spirit as human fairness and honesty can make them, the writer does not remember to have seen a more uncompromising characterization of the abolition movement from the Southern point of view than Professor Dodd's: “In no other country of that time could a movement like American abolitionism have gained such a hearing. In England the Government, that is the people, never dreamed of destroying without compensation the millions of property in West Indian slaves. But American abolitionists declared that there could be no property in man, just as the socialists say there can be no property in land. To destroy outright the property which underlay the Southern political power and the Southern aristocracy was the aim of Garrison, and he found able men, owners of large estates in the North, who were willing to do what he urged.” On the refusal of the House in 1836 to debate petitions concerning slavery, “John Quincy Adams declared that the rights of his constituents, as guaranteed in the Constitution, were ... abrogated. On the other hand, Calhoun declared in the Senate, with equal truth, that the constitutional rights of his constituents would be jeopardized if the petitions were received and debated.” The interplay of sectional interests is remarkably well depicted.

Numerous maps and charts are a feature of both books, but a considerable number of these will not prove as useful as they are probably expected to be because neither they nor the texts provide the data necessary for interpretation. Moreover, the scale upon which they are drawn is too small for practical use. The plan of the books does not allow footnotes, but brief bibliographical suggestions follow each chapter. In these it is gratifying to notice the steady reliance upon McMaster.

Eugene C. Barker .

How to cite:
Barker, Eugene C., "Union and Democracy", Volume 019, Number 3, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, Page 314 - 315. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v019/n3/review_31.html
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