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BOOK REVIEWS279 case of the Cherokees because they were among die largest, most acculturated, and best unified of eastern tribes. Elders rejected the battlefield and instead fought their war through the printing press, federal courts and Congress. Their story then is somewhat unique and for that reason continues to command public attention long after the appearance of pathbreaking works by Grant Foreman, Angie Debo and R. S. Cotterill. Cherokee Sunset represents die latest publishing venture in this thoroughly studied field, and though it reveals no new interpretations or untapped research collections, the book successfully relates the story in a manner attractive to researchers and armchair historians alike. Two brief introductory chapters quickly summarize traditional Cherokee culture and verify active tribal support for the United States during the War of 1812. The author dramatizes Cherokee loyalty to Andrew Jackson at the 1814 battle of Horseshoe Bend and subsequently reminds readers that it was die same national leader who in 1828 allegedly remarked "Build a fire under them. When it gets hot enough, they'll move" (p. 83). Proper attention is given to missionaries such as Samuel Worcester and Elizur Butler who sacrificed personal comfort for the Indian cause, but Carter never loses sight of the crucial fact that Indians played the primary role in defense of their lands and culture . Unfortunately, die tenuous unity began to dissipate by the early 1830's when small groups of Cherokees willingly migrated to Arkansas and ultimately to Indian Territory. Factionalism gradually undermined resistance when a large group led by The Ridge, John Ridge, Elias Boudinot and Stand Watie accepted removal as the only alternative to extinction. Majority support remained with John Ross who exhausted the constitutional arguments before finally bowing to forced eviction in 1838. Factionalism plagued the Cherokee Nation for another three decades and the old wounds would again be reopened during the Civil War when the leaders allied themselves with opposing causes. Drawing its documentation from both published sources and manuscript collections, Cherokee Sunset offers an interesting and impartial appraisal of this critical episode in American history. It stands as an eloquent testimony not only to past injustices, but also provides further proof that even today the Indian's desire is for a land base, not for the money accrued from its sale. Michael L. Tate University of Nebraska at Omaha Henry Highhnd Garnet: A Voice of Bhck Radicalism in the Nineteenth Century. By Joel Schor. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977. Pp. XU, 251. $15.95.) Joel Schor hopes his study of Henry Highland Garnet will "vindi- 280civil war history cate black radicalism as a positive force in the Negro community and give Garnet greater recognition than he has heretofore received . Schor's thesis is that Garnet was in the vanguard of black abolitionism and that moderate black leaders eventually accepted Garnet's radical strategies even as his personal influence declined after his famous Address to the Shoes in 1843. This thesis is plausable, but Schor's argument of it contributes little to our understanding of the dynamics of black protest. Although he asserts that Garnet was "a voice of black radicalism," nowhere does Schor define or explain what radicalism was in antebellum America. He generally equates radicalism with "militancy," but he equates militancy alternately with the advocacy among free blacks of political abolition and voluntary emigration and, among slaves, of physical resistance. Conversely, he asserts without explanation that opponents of those tactics were "conservatives" or "moderates." Thus, the book focuses on the tension which Schor believes always existed within black abolitionism between the practical and realistic radicals and the impractical and inflexible moderates. More specifically, much of Schor's book is a denigration of the Garrisonians, and especially of Frederick Douglass, for being too conservative to abandon their tactical opposition to antislavery politics and emigration. Many Garrisonians did refuse to abandon tactics they had adopted, but it is not persuasive to assert widiout argument that they therefore were conservatives. According to Schor, after all, it was Garnet who believed mat the ideals and Constitution of the United States were antislavery, that the "official channels" of government were merely "blocked" (p. 64), and that black suffrage, self-help, and selective emigration would...

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