The Removal of the Choctaw Indians (review)

274civil war history South is omitted. The book is also marred by minor errors, such as a five million dollar debt, supposedly accumulated by Michigan during its territorial period, which had no existence in fact. The chapter on the Civil War is an adequate, if conventional, discussion of the problems encountered by the Union and Confederate governments , and the steps that were taken to cope with them. Union bond issues , greenbacks, the National Banking Act, and Confederate bonds and notes are described in turn, and their treatment is acceptable, if neither startling nor analytical. Readers should be wary of the implication— never explicitly stated—that there was a postwar industrial surge for which wartime reforms were at least in part responsible. In sum, readers of Civil War History needing a quick reference or a general survey will find this text useful, but those seeking a detailed treatment of the war will undoubtedly want to turn to a detailed study such as Bray Hammond 's Sovereignty and an Empty Purse. Robert J. Parks University of Wyoming The Removal of the Choctaw Indians. By Arthur H. DeRosier, Jr. (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1970. Pp. xvi, 208. $7.50.) In this study of Choctaw removal, Arthur H. DeRosier repeats an argument he advanced in an article in 1958—that the moderation in urging removal to the West which marked the policy of John C. Calhoun and Thomas L. McKenney was radically changed to a policy of forced removal under Andrew Jackson. The Choctaws, as the first Indian nation to be moved to the West, formed a pattern for later Indian removals, including the well known Cherokee removal. The book traces in detail the history of negotiations between the Choctaws and the federal government , with emphasis on the removal treaties of Doak's Stand (1820) and Dancing Rabbit Creek (1830), and on the complications that came from Mississippi's insistence upon ridding the state of the Choctaws and the opposition of the settlers of Arkansas to having the Indians moved into their midst. The book ends with an account of the actual movement to the West and the inevitable hardships involved. In telling this story of conflicting interests, injustice, and hardship, DeRosier manages to avoid the passionate denunciation of the government that mars many accounts of Indian removal. Although the study is well-conceived and the topic an important one, the execution is not completely satisfactory. The main thesis of a sharp break with the past with the advent of Andrew Jackson to the presidency and the formation of a "new" policy is not convincing, for elements of continuity of policy are underplayed. And little use is made of the important studies of Mary E. Young on the allotment of the Indian lands that was such a vital part of the Choctaw removal story. The scholarly apparatus of the book, too, though extensive, is not reassuring. There is BOOK REVIEWS275 repeated reliance on newspaper accounts when official sources are available , for example, and treaties are cited only in the summary form provided by Charles Royce's Indian Land Cessions in the United States, rather than from the full text given in Kappler's compilation or in the Statutes at Large. The bibliography lacks important items and the index is very poorly done. In short, this work, though useful, falls short of being a definitive one, and the high expectations instilled by the laudatory foreword by Arrell M. Gibson are not fulfilled. Francis Paul Prucha Marquette University The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. By Gerald Sorin. (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Corporation , 1971. Pp. xiii, 172.) At first glance one would think (and perhaps hope) this book to be a behavioral analysis of the Abolitionists in New York, a pivotal state in the movement which contributed, as scholars know, such abolitionists as Gerrit Smith, James G. Birney, the brothers Lewis and Arthur Tappan, Frederick Douglass, and such lesser known black abolitionists as Charles B. Ray, Samuel E. Cornish, and Henry H. Garnet. Such menmoral giants, in many ways—and their movement would make an excellent history, as readers familiar with the late Gilbert H. Barnes' book, The Anti-Slavery Impulse...