The Politics of Community: Migration and Politics in Antebellum Ohio (review)

BOOK REVIEWS181 however, he noted that few Southerners expected Kansas to become a slave state, and one of the reasons he gives is that "natural conditions seemed inhospitable to slavery" (64). The author is especially good on the Civil War, although one of his conclusions is dubious. He argued that Lincoln was forced "into curtailment of civil liberties" by opposition in the North (112). This was a reference to the "dark lantern"societies, but Frank Klement's study ofthose alleged groups has shown that they were paper thin. They were no threat to anyone and could hardly have forced Lincoln's hand. There are occasional slips or overstatements. An example ofthe latter is the remark that "the crusade against American slavery was nearly as old as the institution itself (17). It is hard to find much of a "crusade" in the seventeenth or early eighteenth centuries. An example ofthe former is the identification of Chancellor William Harper as a Virginian (13). He was, rather, a leading South Carolinian, and an active supporter ofnullification. These, however, are quibbles, and overall the book is a carefully done overview of widely held interpretations of the coming and the conduct of the war. One disappointment perhaps is that there are no new questions asked. Thomas D. Morris Portland State University The Politics of Community: Migration and Politics in Antebellum Ohio. By Kenneth J. Winkle. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Pp. xii, 239. $32.50.) Since Frederick Jackson Turner, historians have been aware of the dominant role migration has played in the development of the United States. Few, however, have taken advantage ofthe recent work by social historians that demonstrates just how widespread the movement of peoples actually was. Political historians in particular have failed to grasp the significance ofthese findings. In this carefully argued study, Kenneth J. Winkle seeks to correct this fault. His goal is to explain the "impact of migration on political behavior" (p. xii). Specifically, he attempts to analyze the relationship between migration and patterns of political participation, the distribution of political power, and the growth of political stability. Using detailed information from quadrennial enumerations of eligible voters, Winkle first establishes the existence of an astonishingly high incidence of mobility in the electorate of one Ohio county. He finds that between 1 85 1 and 1 855 only 43 percent ofthe voters remained in their original townships, while 8 percent moved to different townships within the same county, and 49 percent left the county altogether. Urban and rural voters were about equally apt to move in this one four-year period. Winkle next examines the legal status ofthese migrant voters. He traces 182CIVIL WAR HISTORY in detail the process by which the definition of residence changed from the New England concept, which granted the community the power to determine its own membership, to the more modern notion of allowing an individual the right to decide where his legal residence was. This shift from a consensual to a volitional definition of residence did not, however, necessarily guarantee a migrant the right to vote in the town in which he claimed to live. Winkle shows how communities, acting through politically appointed election judges, could still determine their own membership by deciding the accuracy of a migrant's claim to residency. "Migrants," Winkle concludes, were thus "put at a political disadvantage," and communities were allowed to "temper the political disruption occasioned by heavy migration" (p. 87). Having demonstrated that at least in law Ohio migrants had the right to vote, Winkle proceeds to analyze the impact they had on voting and on the structure ofnineteenth-century politics. By looking at surviving poll books from consecutive elections held in a number of different Ohio counties, Winkle finds that the typical voter cast ballots in only three elections in any one township before moving on, and that first-time voters represented from one-fifth to one-quarter ofa township's electorate in an average election . But, while short-term residents held a balance ofpower in many elections , the minority that remained in a community acquired "exaggerated political influence" (p. 1 10). These "persisters," largely the wealthier and better skilled in society, dominated the political offices...