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Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of theAmerican Colonization SocietyNan Sumner-Mack aa Providence College , USAPublished online: 23 Jul 2012.

To cite this article: Nan Sumner-Mack (2005) Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society,History: Reviews of New Books, 34:1, 8-9, DOI: 10.1080/03612759.2005.10526710

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Appalachia. Young argues that Lou Hoover’s activism was ironic since she desired privacy and never fully connected with the American people. Her attempts to humanize relief efforts met mixed results.

Young’s volume is carefully conceived and executed. Based extensively on the holdings in the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, the book places Lou Hoover in the context of other women of her era. However, it would have been helpful to attempt to compare her more fully to Eleanor Roosevelt. So too would have been the inclusion of additional data on her actions to promote women’s ath- leticism and civil rights. Also lacking is the personal dynamic that determined Lou Hoover’s actions, as well as the voice of Her- bert Hoover. Why and how did their marriage become “politically moribund”-as Young asserts? The Great Depression and partisan- ship harmed both individuals’ reputations, but before they did so, it is important to remem- ber that the Hoovers were a powerful duo that paved the way for political couples of the future. According to Young, it is time for Lou Henry Hoover’s activism to be celebrated. Recommended for upper level undergraduate audiences and above.

MARIAN E. STROBEL Furman University

Connerly, Charles E. The Most Segregated City in America: City Planning and Civil Rights in Birmingham, 1920-1980 Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press

Publication Date: June 2005 360 pp., $45.00, ISBN 0-8139-2334-4

In 1963, images of bombed black churches and nonviolent African American demonstra- tors being met by water cannons and police dogs made Birmingham, Alabama, an inter- national symbol of racial oppression. In a work that will be of great interest to scholars interested in urban, southern, and African American history, Charles E. Connerly, a pro- fessor of urban and regional planning at Flori- da State University, presents a detailed look at the spatial context within which these con- flicts occurred. By shifting the focus away from the 1960s confrontations to probe how urban planning played a pivotal role in creat- ing and sustaining a racially polarized city over several decades, Connerly offers impor- tant insights into the roots of those protests as well as the troubled efforts by the city’s black residents since then to achieve social, politi- cal, and economic equality.

Connerly skillfully shows how city offi- cials in 1926 knowingly adopted an unconsti- tutional racial zoning law. As a result, African Americans were condemned to live in woe- fully substandard housing in an area highly prone to flooding. The city’s NAACP branch tried valiantly to resist, but Eugene “Bull” Connor and other city leaders, as well as vig-

ilante groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, were able to maintain the law until 1951 when the Supreme Court struck down what had become the longest standing racial zoning ordinance in the South. City officials, Con- nerly also compellingly demonstrates, used federal urban redevelopment and transporta- tion funds from the 1940s through the 1960s “to relocate blacks when they got in the way of the white community” (103). Whites’ eco- nomic interest in commercial development and the preservation of home prices mattered far more than African Americans’ needs.

These themes echo numerous other recent works that examine the intersection of race, politics, and urban space in modem America, but Connerly balances this bleak picture with a look at the history of African American planning. Denied participation in formal planning activities tied to city government, African Americans created “indigenous . . . neighborhood organizations that attempted to provide the public services that were denied by the white-controlled city government” (217). These efforts included neighborhood clean ups, recreation, public safety, and tran- sit, among others. This tradition culminated in the 1970s in the Citizen Participation Plan and the election of an African American mayor. Connerly persuasively argues that blacks had at last acquired some influence over urban affairs, but he rightly avoids romanticizing this process by noting that although important changes have occurred, African Americans in Birmingham continue to face difficult social, political, and econom- ic challenges.

TIMOTHY THURBER Virginia Commonwealth University

Rosenberg, Victor Soviet-American Relations, 1953-1960: Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange during the Eisenhower Presidency Jefferson, NC: McFarland 324 pp.. $49.50, ISBN 0-7864-1934-2 Publication Date: June 2005

Historians abandoned the idea of Dwight Eisenhower as a “do nothing” president long ago. Indeed, many scholars have concluded that Ike was among the most successful pres- idents of the twentieth century. Arguably the most significant accomplishments of his administration were in the field of foreign policy. Victor Rosenberg’s Soviet-American Relations, 1953-1960 is a detailed account of Eisenhower’s foreign policy concerning the Soviet Union, the United States’ major cold war rival.

As president, Ike, like his Soviet counter- parts, confronted what Rosenberg calls the “two specters” of World War I1 and the atom- ic bomb. Clearly, all major international fig- ures, both in the west and the Soviet bloc, wanted to avoid another major conflict, espe- cially in a world where nuclear weapons

made such a war much more dangerous than ever before. Under such conditions, a suc- cessful foreign policy was a prerequisite for a successful presidency, and Ike put a great deal of time and effort into international diploma- cy. Rosenberg correctly maintains that, in spite of what many people thought, Eisen- hower made his administration’s foreign pol- icy, not his secretary of state John Foster Dulles. Further, Ike was a man of remarkable vision, who, at the height of the cold war, foresaw a world where the United States and the Soviet Union could coexist peacefully, and that the Soviet Union would experience a dramatic liberalization. Indeed, Rosenberg argues, the Eisenhower administration laid the foundations for the thaw and dktente of the 1960s and 1970s.

While the majority of the book deals with the nuts and bolts of diplomatic relations, the most interesting chapter is concerned with social and cultural relations between the two countries. Here one reads about the piano- playing Texan Van Cliburn, winner of the first International Tchaikovsky Competition, who was mobbed like a rock star as he walked the streets of Moscow. There is also an account of the emerging chess rivalry between the two countries, not to mention fascinating descrip- tions of the reactions of common people. Soviets who had visited the United States as well as Americans who toured the Soviet Union, often misunderstood what they expe- rienced in the other country.

Scholars searching for the “New Cold War History” will not find it here. There is rela- tively little concerning the role of small states in the superpower rivalry, nor is there much about the relationship between foreign and domestic policies. The book is based largely on published sources, and, while Rosenberg makes effective use of the State Department’s Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) volumes, there are no dramatic reve- lations from unexplored archives. In short, Soviet-American Relations, 1953-1 960 is a solid, if traditional, account of superpower relations during this crucial period, which will serve as a valuable introduction to the subject for university undergraduates.

RUSSEL LEMMONS Jacksonville State University

Burin, Eric Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society Gainesville: University Press of Florida

Publication Date: August 2005 240 pp., $59.95, ISBN 0-8130-2841-8

When is slavery preferable to freedom? For many slaves during the antebellum period, the answer was when freedom meant ship- ment to Liberia. Burin (PhD, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1998, and cur- rently assistant professor of history at the

8 HISTORY

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University of North Dakota) lays out in detail the controversial story of the African Colonization Society (ACS) and the con- tention aroused by its motives, its methods, and the colony it shaped.

P. J. Staudenraus laid groundwork for critical study of the ACS with The African Colonization Movenzent 1816-1865 (1961), and studies of later phases of the society’s work and of African American emigration have mined the African Repository and other archives adequately. Kenneth C. Barnes’ introduction to Journey of Hope: The Back-to-Africa Movement in Arkansas in the Late 1800s (2004) gives perhaps the best summary of relevant features and statis- tics, although every study of black history touches on the ACS.

Burin, however, looks at specific manumis- sions tied to emigration and at the shifting role of the ACS in helping to free the enslaved and prepare them for emigration. He thor- oughly examines the mixed blessing of man- umission as viewed by Southern owners, legislators, and jurists, as well as the contra- dictory responses to the concept of emigra- tion by those still in bondage.

Burin deals with actual conditions in Liberia during the colonization period late in the book. His first six chapters describe slaves’ refusals of offers of freedom or of free transatlantic transportation made con- tingent on emigration. Chapter 7 illuminates negative aspects of colonization: hostile cli- mate, unfamiliar or inadequate employment, lack of financial support or basic equipment. The depiction seems rather anecdotal, focusing on experiences of a few individuals and scattered periods.

Aimed at a graduate-level audience, the book omits definitions of terms like the “Sec- ond Great Awakening” and assumes its read- ers will be familiar with the censorship pat- terns of the freedom of thought struggle in the Old South. The monograph avoids details of the concerns of opponents of colonization.

What the book does well is analyze numerous legal cases and legislative acts related to manumission and inheritance. Burin’s selection of critical issues conveys the image of chattel slavery not as a mono- lithic structure controlling all masters and slaves everywhere but as a constantly chang- ing entity throbbing with painful issues of personal and private rights in conflict with predominant opinions about social cohesion and custom. States and local governments passed differing laws regarding the freeing of slaves and the control of freedmen after manumission. The result is a refreshingly complex picture of American slavery.

That complexity explains why most enslaved people, and most emancipated indi- viduals, chose to endure deplorable but famil- iar conditions rather than face possible sepa- ration from family and friends and a dubious future in Liberia.

NAN SUMNER-MACK Providence College

Pacheco, Josephine F. The Pearl: A Failed Slave Escape on the Potomac Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press

Publication Date: February 2005 307 pp., $29.95, ISBN 0-8078-2918-8

Josephine F. Pacheco has fashioned an intriguing story of an 1848 failed attempt by three white men to carry seventy-six slaves by water from Washington, DC, to freedom in Pennsylvania. The author, a distinguished professor of history emeriti at George Mason University, uses this episode and its aftermath to illuminate the complex character of the slavery issue during the era of the Mexican War and Compromise of 1850.

Her story, at one level, revolves around questions specific to the incident itself. Who planned and financed the escape attempt? What ultimately were the fates of the failed rescuers and the slaves they attempted to lib- erate? Pacheco succeeds admirably as a sto- ryteller, and many readers will savor this book for its human interest content.

The primary strength of this study is Pacheco’s vivid illustration of the differ- ences among the abolitionists (or “emanci- pationists,” as she prefers) on principles, strategy, and tactics. Scholars have long appreciated that the enemies of slavery were, as she asserts, “a quarrelsome lot” among themselves. Pacheco’s contribution is to vivify that historical truth by effective- ly relating disagreements among William Lloyd Garrison, Gerrit Smith, William Seward, Charles Sumner, Horace Mann, Frederick Douglas , William Chaplin, Joshua Giddings, and others concerning questions of aiding the imprisoned whites and freeing the recaptured slaves. She also succeeds in portraying conflicting opinions found among slavery’s defenders, as well as among spokesmen of various Protestant Christian denominations, over “The Pearl” incident and slavery in general. Her descrip- tion of the unique character of slavery in the nation’s capital and the long-standing con- troversy over its existence there is both con- cise and subtle.

Experts in this period may find fault with some aspects of this study. There is no bib- liography, and one must comb the endnotes to discover the author’s sources. Those sources, moreover, may strike some as over- ly weighted with the writings of abolition- ists. Further, in describing the historical context in which the slavery issue increas- ingly dominated national politics, she focus- es almost entirely on the issue of runaway slaves, giving slight attention to the question of slavery in the newly acquired western regions. California is not mentioned at all. The index contains some errors (for exam- ple, James H. Birch and James H. Burch appear as separate Washington, DC, slave traders). The merits of this study, however, far exceed any of its weaknesses, and The Pearl should be added to every reading list for undergraduate courses and graduate

seminars surveying this period and general subject.

HUTCH JOHNSON Gordon College

McDonough, James Lee Nashville: The Western Confederacy’s Final Gamble Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press 358 pp., $39.95, ISBN 1-57233-322-7 Publication Date: October 2004

Naslzville is the right name for this book writ- ten by James Lee McDonough, a retired pro- fessor of history from Auburn University. He is a Nashville native who remembers the Louisville & Nashville steam locomotives and the wartime production of P-38s (xi). McDonough locates battle sites relative to today’s Interstate highways and housing developments such as the battle between the armies of John Bell Hood and George Henry Thomas in mid-December, 1864.

“The Western Confederacy’s final gamble,” not as well known as Sherman’s 1864 March to the Sea, first intended to lure Sherman back inland by destroying his supply lines, and, when that failed, to seek a victory by attack- ing Nashville. When Joseph Johnston did not attack Sherman enough to suit Jefferson Davis, he replaced him in July with John Bell Hood, just thirty-three years old. Now Davis had a well known attacker who Sherman’s generals from West Point described as, “a stu- pid fellow, but a hard fighter” (6). Hood attacked three times after being appointed. He took thirteen thousand casualties, began suf- fering desertion, and did not attack Sherman again. Instead, he withdrew, west and north. At Spring Hill, John Schofield’s army corps slipped north by Hood to reinforce George Henry Thomas at Nashville. At Franklin, about which McDonough has also written, Hood attacked Schofield’s corps across an open field, a glorious parade which cost him some seventeen hundred more dead, many of which were officers.

The bulk of this book details Hood’s last vain attack, on Nashville. Here, minor Con- federate victories at regimental and brigade levels were washed in a rout capped by Brigadier General John McArthur’s assault. A final rally spurred by Confederate Lieutenant General Stephen D. Lee became a footnote of bravery to the flight of Hood’s relic army south to Mississippi.

The book has many great features: good maps, good photographs of sites and houses, rosters of both forces at Nashville, a thor- ough bibliography, index and notes. In addi- tion, Nashville native McDonough has enriched the saga with personal letters from those fighting. Also he provides important details of African American forces on the Union side (USCT), who were intended to be kept out of combat, but fought bravely at Nashville (more because of battle conditions

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