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BOOK REVIEWS167 mentioned monographs more suited to their purposes. On the other hand, the "Essay on Sources" in the present volume is probably the best guide available to secondary as well as primary materials relating to Missouri history in the Civil War period. Further, this book has the value of treating Civil War and Reconstruction politics together. In the process it reveals important relationships that are at least less apparent in the more restricted studies. In particular, the unified treatment underscores that secession in 1860, emancipation in 1864-1865, and suffrage in 1868 were three separate issues , each of which effected a realignment of political forces. Parrish, then, has given us a useful book, subject only to the complaint that Parrish himself had already told much of the same story. That reservation is offset, however, by the great value of the bibliographical essay and the merit of organizing Civil War and Reconstruction political history in a continuous narrative. John V. Mertng University of Arizona Mr. Polk's War: American Opposition and Dissent, 1846-1848. By John H. Schroeder. (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1973. Pp. xvi, 184. $12.50. ) John H. Schroeder has attempted to pull together the political and nonpolitical opponents of the Mexican War. Focusing on the tactics of the antiwar factions, he organizes the strategies of the polĂ­ticos (predominately conservative Whigs and Calhoun Democrats in the Congress ) chronologically and those of the ideologues ( pacifists, abolitionists , and "conscience" Whigs) topically. The two groups were never able to agree on a common plan, and Schroeder concludes that the antiwar movement was unable to affect "the war's duration, outcome, or final terms" (p. 162). Schroeder blames the conservative Whigs for much of the antiwar movement's ineffectuality. Seeking to avoid the fate of Federalists during the War of 1812, most Whigs approved, however reluctantly, whatever the administration desired. This strategy spilt the antiwar forces, but this political opportunism helped the Whigs to gain the White House. Systematic analyses of state and local election data would have clarified the relationship between antiwar sentiment and Whig partisanship during the war. In the absence of these data, the reader is left with the unresolved paradox exemplified by the "conscience" and conservative Whigs: the moralists lost, and the pragmatists won. Many of the book's interpretive issues have been raised by others, and the author's thesis that the Two Million Bill and the Wilmot Proviso galvanized Whig resolve to oppose territorial acquisition is weakened by majority approval of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Potentially the most significant contribution of the book remains undeveloped. In 168CIVIL war history the preface, Schroeder states that the antiwar movement during the Mexican War is "representative" of later examples. What seems most representative of "Mr. Polk's War," however, was the President's ability to squelch dissent by fusing partisan with national objectives. The Mexican War helped to establish precedent for creating and enforcing consensus, and wartime Presidents seem to have been diligent students of this episode in American history. Ronald L. Hatzenbuehler Idaho State University The Unbounded Frame: Freedom and Community in Nineteenth Century America. By Michael FeIIman. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press Inc., 1973. Pp. xx, 203. $10.00.) In this brief volume of loosely connected essays, Michael FeIIman of Simon Fraser University explores responses to Utopia of ten reformers from Albert Brisbane to William Dean Howells. Although most essays are well done, the book does not stand as a unified whole and Fellman's choice of subjects sometimes seems a bit arbitrary. Of the ten writers only the Fourierist Albert Brisbane, the Christian perfectionist John Humphrey Noyes, and possibly the anarchist enemy of money Josiah Warren, gave themselves seriously to the task of creating Utopian communities . Three persons, Isaac T. Hecker, Margaret Fuller, and G. W. Curtis, had ties with the celebrated Brook Farm Association (later Phalanx) but never accepted communal ideology. Hecker lingered a few months before fleeing to Catholicism and the Paulist Brothers; Margaret Fuller enjoyed her visits without ever proposing membership; and Curtis found the communal spirit hostile to his ultra-individualism from the beginning of his sojourn at West Roxbury. Curtis, who never really belonged to Utopia, is introduced...

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