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BOOK REVIEWS71 sen President." Not all historians would agree with Bryce on the identity of the "great men" who were not chosen, but surely all would agree with Norman D. Brown that Daniel Webster was a greater man than some of those who were elected between Jackson's presidency and Lincoln 's. In Daniel Webster and the Politics of Avaihbility Brown shows why Webster failed to achieve his ambition in 1836. For a time, in 1833, the prospects for the god-like Daniel had looked good. His fame as the Expounder of the Constitution, the champion of the Union, was still fresh. Having recently stood alongside President Jackson against Calhoun and the Nullifiers, he now hoped to join with Jackson in a new party alignment of nationalists against states' righters. But Van Buren and other Jackson henchmen would have none of Webster, and in any case the nullification issue was soon submerged in the Bank War, which further alienated the Websterites from the Jacksonians. Webster, a regular Whig perforce, next set his heart on the Whig candidacy. He and his followers did not much mind the Tennessee nomination of Hugh Lawson White, for they were confident that White would take votes from Van Buren in the South. The Harrison boom was quite another matter. Trying to head off Old Tippecanoe in the pivotal state of Pennsylvania, Webster outdid the war hero in professions of Antimasonry but could not match him in popular appeal. Webster was left as the Whig candidate not even in all New England (as Brown points out) but only in Massachusetts. Expediency, in Webster's view, had triumphed over principle. The story in its broad outlines is familiar enough, but Brown has told it more fully and accurately than anyone before him. He has pretty well exhausted both the primary sources and the secondary accounts, has kept his materials under good control, and has presented his findings in an admirably clear and straightforward style. His publishers have enhanced his work with an excellent job of book design, which they could have improved only by putting the footnotes where footnotes belongnot at the ends of the chapters. Richard N. Current University of North Carolina, Greensboro William Gilpin: Western Nationalist. By Thomas L. Kames. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970. Pp. 383. $7.50.) William Gilpin, named by Bernard DeVoto as the first American geopolitician , has been reduced in rank to "western nationalist" in this latest biography. Probably this is a more correct assessment of a figure who wrote in grand terms about the future of the "promised land." Gilpin, who ranged all over the West, from Missouri to Oregon and even to Mexico (during the Mexican War), ended his career in Colorado . A strong supporter of Senator Thomas Hart Benton, he acted as an outrider in the oratorical assault upon national and international ears 72CIVIL WAR HISTORY in that grand nineteenth century campaign to "sell" the American West to its potential users. Karnes compares Gilpin to Walt Whitman and this is a favorable view; some Coloradans may have paired him with the eccentric and erratic George Francis Train, who stepped back and forth across the borderline dividing genius from insanity during these years. In fact, Gilpin's wife alleged, during a divorce proceeding, that indeed he had gone 'round the bend.' William Gilpin, then, was a visionary and a publicist. As with many of his kind he made predictions that proved to be shrewd and farsighted ; others were entirely chimerical. Karnes "discovered" him through Bernard DeVoto; Henry Nash Smith (author of Virgin Land) may or may not have found his man in this manner. Hubert Howe Bancroft was Gilpin's biographer as early as 1889. Coloradans knew Gilpin as their controversial governor during Civil War days and as a man who stayed on in the role of land speculator, politician and local "character" until death claimed him in 1894. The latest biographer of this fascinating, yet puzzling personality on the western scene has performed his scholarly duties with care and skill. The book is thoroughly documented, the sources are of widely scattered and often obscure origin indicating a long and diligent search, and the writing is good. As...

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