Politics and Patronage in the Gilded Age: The Correspondence of James A. Garfield and Charles E. Henry (review)

184CIVIL WAR HISTORY ers tended to oppose silver or support it most mildly. Resumption had come to be a kind of Repulican orthodoxy, and Republicans debated which money policy would best advance the cause of resumption. There is no doubt that the Senate contrived compromise represented Republican orthodoxy, or that the almost solid support (with Hayes dissenting ) was a vote for immediate resumption of specie payments rather than for inflation. There were present some interest conflicts. Weinstein has tested the traditional ones usually mentioned; they include the urban-rural, eastwest , banker-farmer, industrial-commercial, and even the north-south. It would not be correct to say that they have no meaning, but the lines of division are blurred and exceptions exist in almost every case. The scattering of the tabulated votes in Congress confirms the author's study of the regions and their local spokesmen. The money issue, he insists, is not one of economic interest or class, but of ethics, the effort to establish honesty in fiscal policy and politics. Only in this most indirect argument can the title of the book find justification . Certainly the Populists were heirs to the Greenbackers, who hardly showed in this crisis, rather than the heirs of bimetalists who sought specie payments. If the Prelude is the development of ethical and moral judgments, and their use in political argument, then the Prelude is the whole of nineteenth century America, and not the fiscal debate of 1876-78. But I quibble on a small point in an excellent and significant major contribution. Raymond C. Miller Wayne State University Politics and Patronage in the Gilded Age: The Correspondence of James A. GarfieM and Charles E. Henry. Edited by James D. Norris and Arthur H. Shaffer. (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1970. Pp. XXIX, 304. $7.95.) In the introduction to this volume the editors remind us that for a clear understanding of the dynamics of Gilded Age politics it is necessary to possess a clear understanding of the relationship of the congressman to his constituency. Certain questions present themselves in this regard which the historian must consider and attempt to answer. For example, how did the nineteenth-century congressman maintain his base of power at home without the benefit of mass communications and rapid transportation ? How did he use his patronage to build and operate local political organizations? How did he gauge the effect of national issues on his constituents? To what extent did the interests and aspirations of his constituents affect his actions in Congress? The editors of this volume contend that its contents sheds significant light on these questions and this reviewer agrees. The book consists of some 285 letters which passed between Congressman Garfield and BOOK REVIEWS185 Charles E. Henry between 1869 and 1880. During this period Henry became Garfield's chief associate and contact in the Nineteenth District of Ohio and much of the rest of the state as well. The political relationship began when, in 1869, Henry wrote to Garfield requesting an appointment as a postal railway clerk. The request was granted and thus began a friendship and a bond which continued to grow until the time of Garfield's tragic death. Henry became Garfield's "alter-ego" in the Nineteenth District and provided him with much detailed information which he picked up through his travels around the state. At first Henry only supplied Garfield with such information when it was requested, but by the late Seventies he habitually offered unsolicited advice on almost all matters of importance, and it appears that Garfield usually heeded that advice. Henry seems to have been a very important factor in spearheading Garfield's abortive election to the Senate in 1880 and also in securing him the Presidential nomination. The development of Henry's importance is clearly mirrored in the letters. There is one major editing error in the book. Norris and Shaffer suggest that a letter (p. 173) from Henry to Garfield dated December 7, 1876 deals with the election of the Speaker of the House. Under the terms of the Compromise of 1877, the Southern Democrats were to support Garfield in the election, but they failed to uphold their bargain. This...