Jonathan Worth: A Biography of a Southern Unionist (review)

72CIVIL WAR HISTORY colonization schemes were obsolete. The Thirteenth Amendment's ratification only reaffirmed these happy facts, and stipulated implicitly that some form of continuing biraciahsm lay in the future. The national government , for the first time in American history, was attempting a social welfare function, trying, however inadequately by inapplicable modern standards, to raise up the conditions of the former slaves and other displaced persons in the conquered Confederacy. Through continued political action, men reasonably hoped to gain statutory underpinning for practices of racial equality that only four years earlier were simply absurd imaginings, hi short, the American society of 1865 and after was measurably and vastly superior to what had obtained in 1860. Helper could neither make the rise nor feel joy in these war-induced changes. Instead he continued on an erratic course, intermittently emitting variants on the Crisis theme of superior Anglo-Saxonism to an American society that refused to be audience for him, but that accepted newer prophets of racism. Bailey's Helper provides a convenient insight into the man's career. Unfortunately, adequate new source materials were not available to permit Professor Bailey to complete a full-scale biography of this curious and unpleasant man. Considering the nature and supply of what he had to work with, Bailey deserves commendation for holding carefully to restrained conclusions. Indeed, I worry that he was too restrained. I missed in Helper a sense of outreaching, of concern that the subject receive evaluation in the context of his time and in comparison with his peers, and of full absorption of the large new literature on abolitionism, the War, and Reconstruction. Certainly I wish that better editing and proofreading had graced the production of this book. The presence of too-numerous detail errors inevitably results in some loss of confidence in the whole enterprise. After all, it is late in the game to note again that Andrew Johnson wax impeached, not merely threatened with the constitutional process. Notwithstanding these reservations, Bailey's Helper must be the standard place to which the profession henceforth will turn for information on a man and an attitude toward race that played a significant role in the American past. Any current newspaper unhappily affirms that the spirit of Helper still walks. Harold M. Hym\n Center for Advanced Studies, University of Illinois Jonathan Worth: A Biography of a Southern Unionist. By Richard Î .. Zuber. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965. Pp. 351. $7.50.) Professor Zuber has written a carefully documented, essentially sympathetic biography of a sober, honest, religious (his Quaker beliefs deeply influenced his public acts), and able North Carolinian. Jonathan Worth BOOKREVIEWS73 was not a national figure, but his career included six terms in the legislature , two as state treasurer, and two as governor. He was a lawyer, a businessman of rare acumen, and, finally, a politician. The author traces his career in a well-balanced approach, with the last half of the book being of special importance. Worth was a Whig, a consistent one. His basic conservatism caused him to oppose secession, although he supported the Confederacy once the war began. In 1862 he resigned his legislative seat when he was elected state treasurer, a victory achieved with support from the Conservatives , a faction lukewarm toward the war. The contest was a bitter one, but he won re-election in 1864 without opposition. While he longed for peace, Worth performed his increasingly hopeless functions with ability. In 1865 he stepped down as treasurer, won pardon from President Johnson , and once more became treasurer and property agent in the provisional government of W. W. Holden. Later that year old Whig Unionists persuaded him to run for governor, an office he won by a margin of six thousand votes. As chief executive Worth had no chance to enact a program, and spent much time battling with the Freedmen's Bureau. In 1866 he won a second term as governor, handily stemming the tide of the pro-Radical Union party. His biographer devotes detailed consideration to Worth's opposition to the Fourteenth Amendment and his dealings with the military . Worth left office after the Republicans carried the state elections in 1868. He spent...