Religious Newspapers in the Old Northwest to 1861: A History, Bibliography, and Record of Opinion, and: Brand Whitlock's The Buckeyes: A Story of Politics and Abolitionism in an Ohio Town, 1836-1845 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS Religious Newspapers in the Old Northwest to 1861: A History, Bibliography, and Record of Opinion. By Wesley Norton. (Athens: Ohio University Press. 1977. Pp. ix-xi, 196.) Brand Whitlock's The Buckeyes: A Story of Politics and Abolitionism in an Ohio Town, 1836-1845. Edited by Paul W. Miller. (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1977. Pp. 269. $12.00.) Wesley Norton's informative book bears a title which may unfortunately suggest that only a few specialists can profit from it. Professor Norton, who has spent several years assembling his material , has handled it with a skill that merits a wider readership. The Old Northwest with its wealth of peoples and opinions was a key element in the growing nation. Into it came religious people of every stamp, bound on spreading the gospel. The chief device by which they did it was the religious weekly paper, which Norton correctly calls "a unique blend of the secular and the religious." These papers represented virtually all the recognized sects and a variety of European languages. The people who edited them did not want to be editors and had no training that would have fitted them for the job. Their call was to preach. They could not, however, fail to see that the printed word could reach an audience infinitely greater than that of the pulpit. Nonetheless, their tenures were rather short—about five or six years—and many lost all their assets. The Methodists kept a tighter control on their publications than the others, most of whom were largely autonomous. There was, according to Norton, surprisingly little rancor between the sects except, of course, where the Catholics were involved. Even there, criticism was largely directed to what were thought to be antidemocratic tendencies in the Catholic Church; their freedom of worship and belief was respected. The reader is likely to get the impression, whatever his own views, that these were admirable people although , as Norton admits, they were afflicted with a rather excessive solemnity. As they never thought that spreading the gospel separated them from the issues of the time, it was inevitable that they should involve themselves in political and economic issues, and to many they might be "radicals." In fact, outside the slavery question they seem 161 152CIVIL WAR HISTORY rather conservative. They looked to God to take care of many of the woes which afflict people and governments and they were strong for law and order. When Michigan and Wisconsin abolished the death penalty, every sect except the Universalists protested. Following the Mexican War their focus turned inexorably toward slavery; after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act that issue became all-absorbing. Entitling his last chapter "The Politics of Slavery," the author shows paper after paper obliged to take sides. He concludes that by the late fifties every Protestant paper in the Northwest had lined up with the Republican party. The marshalling and arrangement of this material, made up of an infinitude of forgettable names and manifold small items not terribly gripping in themselves, into a readable and illuminating account is a splendid achievement. Equally fine is the author's objectivity. While his feelings appear to be with the evangelicals, he is not only fair to all but, more importantly, he evaluates them in their own context, not in ours. Altogether an excellent piece of work. Brand Whitlock's last and unfinished novel, assumed to be lost after his death at sixty-five in 1934, has been discovered and now appears in an attractively printed and illustrated edition with a valuable introduction by Paul W. Miller. The title, The Buckeyes, appears in Mrs. Whitlock's hand, suggesting that her husband had at least tentatively chosen it. While it will be unlikely to attract new readers to a writer who has been gone for almost half a century, it will be received with delight by those who admired the literary, political, and diplomatic career of the four-term mayor of Toledo and ambassador to Belgium. Moreover, even those who have cared nothing for Whitlock, or never heard of him, may share the astonishment occasioned by the manner of the manuscript's discovery. Like Poe's letter, it was found...