Gilded Age Cato: The Life of Walter Q. Gresham (review)

BOOK REVIEWS75 In part three, d'Entremont treats Conway's trauma duringthe Civil War. Shortly after President Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation , Conway mysteriously left for England. In d'Entremont's view, Conway had become troubled to the point ofdistraction (a pattern ofbehavior he had exhibited before). Unable to bear the strain between his love for the South and his hatred for its ways, and between his delight at the destruction of slavery and his horror at the bloody toll, he fled. D'Entremont plans another volume on Conway's twenty-year sojourn in England. For the most part, d'Entremont's analysis is subtle, thorough, and balanced . He generally avoids casting Conway's life in an Oedipal framework, though the evidence is tempting. He may be faulted, however, for his treatment ofthe role ofwomen in Conway's emotional makeup. By acceptingat face value common nineteenth-century stereotypes about alleged differences between women and men (and between white men and the "feminine " races)—arguing that the images governed people's behaviorand were not simply caricatures—he flouts the past generation's scholarship on these vexed questions. Purists might question aspects of his style, such as the liberties he sometimes takes with conventional sentence structure. His decision not to provide chapter titles, letting section titles alone provide conceptual guidelines , is also troubling. Finally, his occasional comments about research triumphs and failures, though happily confined to the notes, seem petty and should have been omitted. These criticisms aside, this will doubtless stand as the definitive biography of Conway. Readers may at times disagree with d'Entremont, but they must applaud his careful treatment of a life so deeply interwoven with the crucial issues of nineteenth-century America. Joseph P. Reidy Howard University GildedAge Cato: The Life of Walter Q. Gresham. By Charles W. Calhoun. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1988. Pp. viii, 280. $28.00.) This first scholarly biography of Walter Q. Gresham is an important addition to the literature on the Gilded Age. As Charles W. Calhoun points out in his bibliographical essay, "No previous published scholarly study has examined the entirety of Gresham's foreign policy." Diplomatic historians will welcome this study (along with The Presidencies ofGrover Cleveland by Richard E. Welch, Jr.) as they continue to try to determine the proper position ofthe Cleveland administrations in American foreign policy ofthe late nineteenth century. There is much more to Gresham than his briefstint as secretary ofstate in 76CIVIL WAR HISTORY 1 893- 1 895. About half the book covers every detail of Gresham's foreign policy, but Calhoun does not neglect the rest ofthe story. Gresham emerges as one of the most frustrated politicians of his era, haunted by "nagging pessimism and self-doubt, a fear offailure. . . ."He was, as Calhoun puts it, "not unlike the Mugwumps." Gresham launched his political career as a Know-Nothing in the 1 850s, and he never overcame that stigma. He won only one political contest in his lifetime, capturing a seat in the Indiana legislature in 1860. Meanwhile, he lost at least seven times, including two failed attempts to secure the Republican nomination for president (in 1884 and 1888). While serving as federal districtjudge for Indiana ( 1869- 1 883), briefly in 1 883- 1 884 as postmaster general and attorney general for President Chester A. Arthur, and judge of the seventh federal circuit (1884-1893), Gresham carried on a crusade against other Republican politicians who had succeeded where he had failed. In 1 879, Gresham spoke to his old Civil War comrades in the Society of the Army ofthe Tennessee and insisted, "mere tricksters, with no proper notions of social or political duty, aspire to office , expecting, if successful, to get rich in the shortest possible time by plundering the public." Gresham's foremost political enemy was fellow Hoosier Benjamin Harrison . Calhoun's treatment of their relationship offers interesting conclusions on the role ofeach man in the political struggles ofthe late nineteenth century. It was Harrison who took charge of the Republican cause in the crucial "swing" state. He served the party well in the rough and tumble politics ofthe 1 880s. At the same time, Gresham sulked—frequently refusing to participate...