The People in Power: Courthouse and Statehouse in the Lower South, 1850-1860 (review)

188CIVIL WAR history right. From their point of view, his life was a story of progressive alienation from his own people. He began his political career on a foundation of Norwegian votes; in the end he had become so Americanized that he abandoned his membership in the Norwegian Lutheran church in favor of the Unitarian. The slower assimilator might well have asserted that in his eagerness to be an American, Johnson was prepared to sacrifice all that was dear, even his faith in his Norwegian God. Because of the complexity of Johnson's life, Miss Larson chose to structure her biography topically. This is unfortunate. On one hand, important relationships are ignored. It is, for example, as though Johnson's Americanization had nothing to do with his decision to abandon politics for business, or as though his presidency of the Fuller and Johnson Company was unaffected by his founding of the Gisholt Machine Company . On the other hand, the tracing of separate threads in Johnson's career results in unnecessary repetition. Thus, Johnson's death in 1901 is recorded not less than three times. Certainly John A. Johnson was an uncommon American, as Miss Larson calls him. But more important is the fact that his life exemplifies the tensions which existed between immigrants who were successful men of affairs and the ethnic group with which they felt a strong cultural bond. Frederick C. Luebke University of Nebraska The People in Power: Courthouse and Statehouse in the Lower South, 1850-1860. By Ralph A. Wooster. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1969. Pp. xv, 189. $6.25.) The People in Power continues the author's bedrock contributions to southern history and is an appropriate sequel to his Secession Conventions of the South. This offering, similar in many respects to the earlier study of the conventions, provides analysis and summary tables from a very extensive collection of information about individual state and local officeholders. The manuscript schedules for the 1850 and 1860 federal censuses yielded age, occupation, birthplace, value of property, and number of slaves. As would have been expected by any who have used these fruitful but frustrating sources, many of the men under study could not be located; but the accumulation of such detailed data for the thousands of men who could be found in the census schedules is a service that will long be appreciated by students of southern life. The seven states that formed the original Confederate States of America are included in the study, and officeholders range from governors or other statewide officials, through state legislators, and to holders of several categories of county posts. The bibliographical essay contains a comprehensive guide to sources for the names of officeholders, their book reviews189 party affiliations, and other personal information beyond that found in the census schedules. It was not possible to assemble names of all local officeholders for every state, but an extensive inclusiveness provides firm foundation for the tabulations and analyses. With some exceptions the men studied are those in office at about the time of the two federal censuses used, 1850 and I860. The manner of selecting state and local officers in each state is traced through state constitutional developments, and the extent of popular election, progress toward universal suffrage for white men, and implications of apportionment arrangements are perceptively discussed. Ten summary tables located in the text sustain analytical passages, and forty-three pages of appendix materials expand in table form the collective biography by state for legislators and county governing boards. Southern officeholders were commonly middle-aged, southern born, and holders of substantial amounts of real and personal property. They were "predominantly agrarian in their sympathies and outlook." Both planters and plain people were well represented, but the proportion of planters and slaveholders was larger in 1860 than in 1850. No Southwide pattern of personal characteristics distinguished Democrats from their opponents. The author offers these and other interpretations of the significance or implications of his composite picture without being concerned primarily with applying his findings to issues on which his data may be brought to bear. The work is chiefly a meticulous frame of reference and a massive effort in descriptive statistics. Only a few...