"Gentleman George" Hunt Pendleton: Party Politics and Ideological Identity in Nineteenth-Century America

Although George Hunt Pendleton was the Democratic vice presidential candidate in 1864 and the sponsor of the first major piece of civil service reform passed in American history, few non-Gilded Age specialists are likely to be familiar with him. Thomas Mach has produced the first book-length biography on "Gentleman George." Hoping to use Pendleton as a microcosm into Jacksonian ideology in a particular place at a particular time, Mach argues that Pendleton has been unduly overlooked. In Mach's reading, an appreciation for the career of Pendleton demonstrates that Civil War-era political ideologies were more stable than previous scholars have contended. Those hoping to understand the factional infighting among nineteenth-century Ohio Democrats will benefit most from this book.

Mach's study is in many respects much more than a political biography. The author intimately examines the constant battles that Ohio Democrats waged in the United States around midcentury. Mach locates Pendleton, a resident of Cincinnati, within the Democratic attempts to remain politically relevant during the Civil War era. Pendleton gained national notoriety as a Congressman for his principled opposition to the manner in which the Lincoln administration waged war. Counting prominent Copperheads such as Clement Vallandigham as his allies, Pendleton hoped that the Democrats would emerge as a "respectable minority" (61) during the war years.

Mach devotes a chapter each to the most important causes with which historians associate Pendleton: the Ohio Idea (a proposal to redeem federal war bonds with paper money, or greenbacks) and the civil service reform bill that bears his name. Both issues illustrate to Mach that Pendleton was trying to stay true to his Jacksonian roots while also fashioning a place for an evolving Democratic Party. In both cases—but with civil service reform in particular—one could be persuaded that Pendleton was not as steadfast in his ideology as the author claims.

While in many respects Mach's study is much more than a political biography, in some other facets it is less conventional. Almost none of the senator's papers survived. Much of the content and the structure of Mach's book reflect the limitations of these sources. Readers thus get a picture of Pendleton through his official public life, with little else to understand how he thought and acted.

Midwestern readers may also wish that Mach had been more systematic with the angle of regional identity. The Old Northwest had emerged as the political battleground during Pendleton's career; Ohioans were president from 1869 to 1881 and again from 1889 to 1893 and 1897 to 1901. Clearly the area now known as the Midwest was vital to electoral politics. In this work Mach frequently refers to Pendleton's "distinct midwestern Democratic ideology" (3). Yet the term "midwestern" was not one in circulation until well after Pendleton's life, and therefore he would not have described his own ideology as such. What, then, would have been the primary way in which the senator thought of himself?

"Gentleman George" is part of Kent State University Press's emerging presence in the study of Ohio history. Thomas Mach's book clearly was a labor of love that helps to fill a gap in the historical record.