Civil War History

BOOK REVIEWS183 states had no voice. The second session was only a pale echo of the first as southern "ultras" found themselves overwhelmed by gathering procompromise sentiment. Admitting that the convention "recorded little concrete accomplishment ," Jennings concludes that southerners had at least found common cause at a critical moment and had boldly, if unsuccessfully, experimented with the idea of separation. The Nashville meetings and this volume must be reckoned with in any work on pre-Civil War political affairs. Lynda Lasswell Crist The Papers of Jefferson Davis Isaac I. Stevens: Young Man in a Hurry. By Kent D. Richards. (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1979. Pp. xiv, 485. $15.95.) Isaac Ingalls Stevens was one of the youngest generals in the Union Army when he led a brash charge at the battle of Chantilly in September 1862 and died with a bullet in his brain. Thus ended prematurely the career of a controversial figure who had played an active role in the occupation of the American West. Graduating from West Point at the head of his class in 1839, Stevens served in the Army Engineers on the east coast and in the Mexican War, where he was shot in the foot on the last day of fighting. In the postwar years he went with the Coastal Survey, especially as a lobbyist. When his friend, Franklin Pierce, became president in 1853, Stevens at the age of thirty-five took on tripartite appointments: governor of the new Washington Territory, superintendent of Indian affairs for that region and head of the northernmost federal railroad survey to the Pacific. While governor, he hastily and rashly negotiated a series of treaties with Northwest tribes which soon brought turmoil, bloodshed and eventually martial law. When it seemed clear he would not be reappointed to the executive chair, in 1857 he sought and was elected delegate of the territory to Congress, where he served two terms. When the Civil War erupted , he was commissioned to command the 79th New York Regiment of Volunteers, the "Highlanders," at which post he proved to be stern, arbitrary and at times daring. In his own day, Isaac Stevens was a controversial public figure. Brilliant , energetic and strong in personality, he was also autocratic, egotistical and consumed with ambition. In the mid-nineteenth century, his "regular go-ahead manner," one of the traits commonly associated with the frontier, was admired by many. His son, in the only biography prior to this, elevated him to a status only slightly below that of the angels. On the other hand, his detractors have made much of his brashness and inflexibility and of his treatment of the Indians. Kent Richards is neither a partisan nor a defamer. He gives a fully 184CIVIL WAR HISTORY documented, objective picture of Stevens and his environment; he shows an officer with human foibles who in his career in public service is forced to grapple with many of the basic issues of American expansionism —the territorial system, the demands of new scientific reconnaissance , Indian-white relations, civil versus military controls, and stresses between the United States and Great Britain in the Northwest. Richards meets his challenges better than Stevens met most of his. Clark C. Spenge University of Illinois Passionate Liberator: Theodore Dwight Weld ó- the Dilemma of Reform . By Robert H. Abzug. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. Pp. xi, 370. $19.95.) Ever since Gilbert Hobbs Barnes located a trunkful of letters in a farmhouse outside of Allston, Massachusetts, historians have included Theodore Dwight Weld in their line-up of prominent abolitionists. Celebrated for his role in the Lane Seminary debates and as a potent abolitionist lecturer, Weld also contributed several antislavery tracts and worked in Washington towards repeal of the gag rule. Yet, for reasons unexplored until now, Weld repudiated his commitment to abolition. He served as an antislavery itinerant for only two years between 1834 and 1836. Thereafter , Weld maintained his interest in abolition, but by 1844 he rejected a life of antislavery activism. In Passionate Liberator, Robert Abzug examines the psychological and social origins of Weld's "dilemma of reform." Abzug analyzes memories that Weld, at age seventy-three, shared with his daughter and concludes that as...