Early Stationary Steam Engines in America: A Study in the Migration of a Technology (review)

BOOK REVIEWS189 to strip Jerusalem (the County seat) of its arms and then to disappear into the nearby Great Dismal Swamp—as so many slaves had done before (and after) Turner. As it reads, however, the quoted sentence is unfortunate. The author observes that the investigation of contemporary sources still remains incomplete; thus, rather mysteriously, a bundle of papers described at the time as containing material pertinent to the rebellion has been lost. Furthermore, the published official Calendar of Virginia State Papers contains no entries for the period from August through November, 1831—the period during which the outbreak commenced and the last rebel was hanged. Hc adds: "Prospective researchers in any subject related to the slave revolt or to Nat Turner, are warned that efforts to examine source material for such a purpose may meet with less than enthusiastic cooperation on the part of the authorities responsible for the custody of these records." The reviewer, who pursued that purpose in that locale some thirty-five years ago, knows very well what this means. But that a white Virginian (and a retired Lieutenant-Colonel , to boot!) should feel obliged to report such behavior in the present period might well provoke, I think, appropriate investigation and action by organizations of historians. Herbert Aptheker Bryn Mawr College Early Stationary Steam Engines in America: A Study in the Migration of a Technology. By Carroll W. Pursell, Jr. (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1969. Pp. 152. $6.75.) The Smithsonian Press has here presented a half-analytical, half-antiquarian study of the kind for which it is peculiarly suited. Professor Pursell traces the installation and building of steam engines to supply industrial power in America, from the 1750's to the 1850's. He traces the insistence on "high-pressure" engines that Oliver Evans and others pushed after 1804, together with the details of early controversy about that development. He re-emphasizes the moderate character of early American technical development, by displaying the two principal uses to which stationary engines were put, up to the 1840s: smaller engines for extending and dispersing conventional manufactures in the North, and larger engines for processing sugar, rice, and cotton in the South. He notes the long dependence of the South on northern engine-builders (though he docs not try to specify just how fast the South may have been catching up in the 1850's). He has presented all this in detail that will be useful to scholars and engaging to casual readers, amply furnished with both verbal and visual illustrations (though his publisher has served neither author nor reader well in the production of line diagrams ). But difficulties appear where the author moves from narration to in- 190CIVIL WAR HISTORY tcrprotation. There arc two major questions: Why did Americans specialize in one kind of engine (high-pressure): and did they produce at a high level of competence? Were high-pressure engines dictated by economy? By a need for certain sizes of engine? By a compulsive disregard for safety? Pursell ventures no judgment. On the specific question of scientific or mathematical competence, he suggests only the weasel that American builders used "whatever mathematical abilities they might have possessed." The frequency of explosions of stationary engines might have furnished some rough criterion for judging both design style and general competence, as it does for steamboats; but there Pursell has little to say. Perhaps a close technical analysis of selected cases might have served. Perhaps, on the other hand, the available materials do not permit systematic answers to all these questions. In such a case, an author's care to avoid arbitrary judgment can deprive his audience of his best-informed judgment. Daniel Calhoun University of California, Davis CIVIL WAR PRISONS edited by William B. Hesseltine Originally appearing as a special issue of Civil War History ten years ago and long out of print, the demand for copies of this collection of articles has prompted its reissue as a paperback book. Not pretending to be a complete history, Civil War Prisons is rather a series of studies of particular prisons North and South— Andersonville, Fort Warren, Rock Island, Libby, Elmira, Johnson's Island—and a focus on the experiences of...