Horace White, Nineteenth Century Liberal (review)

66civil war history Ruth Randall was among those writers with talents justifying a venture, which gamble has paid off in ten books by her published by them: six for young people, the other four for adult enjoyment, and all of them of a biographical nature. Genuine and sustained interest in the field among youth thus may have been planted and fertilized by Mrs. Randall's "I" books: / Mary, pertaining to Lincoln's wife; / Varina (Mrs. Jefferson Davis); / Jessie (Fremont's wife); J Elizabeth (wife of General Custer); and the present J Ruth (wife of James G. Randall, the Lincoln scholar). Four Ruth Randall books for adults also clung to the Lincoln era: Mary Lincoln: Biography of a Marriage; Lincoln's Sons; The Courtship of Mr. Lincoln and Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, First Hero of the Civil War. Also, she produced Lincoln's Animal Friends. These books have exploited the perennial market for Lincolniana. Furthermore, sustained professional expertise in history also owes something to Ruth Randall, inasmuch as she heartily collaborated with her husband in a warm and sustained interest in the graduate careers of his college students, of whom quite a number subsequently have won high respect in the field. These contributions are important, even though one might not run them through a computer. The best-researched book was the first, Mary Lincoln, appearing in 1953, the year of Jim Randall's death. It was advantaged by his hearty collaboration in the perfecting of it, despite his knowledge that leukemia was cutting short his time to complete the last volume in his series on the Lincoln era, the book completed by Richard Current after Randall's passing. The work of the Randalls has aroused debate; it has seemed to some later historians to be lacking in understanding of such factors as Lincoln's basic toughness and Illinois' frontier survivals. At any rate, the book here under review is Ruth's tribute to her comradeship with Jim. If it seems to some readers as overly sentimental and nostalgic, they should remember that those are qualities inherent in the Randall relationship and thus essential to an adequate portrayal of it. Jeannette P. Nichols, University of Pennsylvania Horace White, Nineteenth Century Liberal. By Joseph Logsdon. (Westport , Conn.: Greenwood Publishing Company, 1971. Pp. xiii, 418. $13.50. ) Horace White was a model liberal reformer in Gilded Age America. Although he grew up on the Wisconsin frontier, he was raised in an atmosphere of gentility and had a finely tuned New England conscience. Throughout his life, he thought of himself as one of the "best men," charged with the onerous task of instructing his less favorably endowed countrymen in their moral and electoral duties, especially in matters of political economy. Journalism was an ideal profession in those years for a guardian of the public virtue; and White joined such luminaries as E. BOOK REVIEWS67 L. Godkin, Samuel Bowles, Henry Watterson, and George William Curtis , among the editorial oracles of his day. As editor of the Chicago Tribune from 1865 to 1874, he was largely responsible for making that newspaper the leading liberal organ in the Midwest. Later, he joined Godkin at the New York Evening Post, where as co-editors the two men tirelessly expounded the views of their idols, the classical economists of England and the continent. White was a charter member of "the Nation crowd," that coterie of educated, substantial men of independent political persuasion, who sought to elevate the tone of American life and who acknowledged Godkin as their foremost spokesman. White worked well with Godkin, but he was never the equal of his colleague as a publicist or critic. Nor did he match Bowles or Watterson in affecting the development of journalism as a profession. But he was intimately involved in the great issues of his day and knew well many of the nation's political and economic leaders. Moreover, in a modest way he influenced the course of political events, notably as a member of the journalistic "Quadrilateral" at the Liberal Republican convention and as one of Grover Cleveland's "gold bug" financial tutors. Certainly, White deserves a biography; and Joseph Logsdon has performed a distinct service in producing this admirable...