A Measure of Success: Protestants and Public Culture in Antebellum Cleveland (review)

BOOK reviews85 the vital role of religion in Brown's thinking as well as his mental state. Robert McGlone's essay deals with the question of Brown's possible insanity and of how Virginia's Governor Wise and others reacted to it. Each essay adds to our understanding of the subject. EspeciaUy valuable is Paul Finkelman's discussion of the aboUtionists, who attempted to reconcile their nonresistance with support for Brown by placing blame for the violence on the slave power rather than on the Uberator. Brown himself aided that process after his capture by assuming the role of a gentle Christian martyr. In his essay on the return home from Philadelphia of Southern medical students, James Breeden documents the depth of anger and horror that many Southerners felt after the Harpers Ferry raid. In the final essay, Charles Joyner appUes the sociological theories of Victor Turner to the Brown theme, concluding that Brown's martyrdom made the i860 election "a referendum on the future of slavery" and the Civil War "a war against slavery." The John Brown legend endures in popular thought, an excellent example of terrorism-become-acceptable that helps iUuminate contemporary events as well. Each individual and group found special meaning in the event at Harpers Ferry. An incident that created fear and panic in the South inspired such New Englanders as Henry David Thoreau to compare John Brown to Jesus. Thoreau's hatred of slavery was so intense that it led him tojustify an act that, under other circumstances and for any other cause, would have horrified him. The question stiU turns on ends and means, whether the most noble cause justified extreme violence against its opponents. The question remains unresolved , but these varying responses to the Harpers Ferry raid should help to clarify the issue and provide some basis for an answer. Larry Gara Wilmington College A Measure ofSuccess: Protestants andPublic Culture inAntebellum Cleveland. Michael J. McTighe. (Albany: State University of New York Press. 1994. Pp. xiv, 283. $21.95.) In this significant contribution to nineteenth-century social and cultural history, published after the author's untimely death in 1993 and edited in its final form by his colleagues at Gettysburg College, Michael J. McTighe argues that Cleveland's weU-connected, self-conscious, Protestant socioeconomic elite attempted with "a measure of success" before i860 to shape the rapidly growing city's emerging "pubUc culture." Basing his conclusions on a wide variety of primary sources, including in particular church records but also city directories, newspapers, and the manuscript census of 1850, McTighe clearly shows that Cleveland's Protestant elite closed ranks in an effort to exercise power and influence in the city. They were particularly successful in stamping their imprint on economic development and benevolence. Their strong support for 86CIVIL war history commercial growth was counterbalanced by concern with the evil effects of Mammon, but, believing that commerce and religion went hand in hand, they soughtto solvethese tensions by supporting programs ofbenevolenceconducted by philanthropic institutions and movements that they themselves controlled. Yet benevolence could not be permitted to hinder commerce unduly. Henry Stevens, the president of the street railway, answered his Sabbatarian critics by explaining that he ran cars on Sunday so that people could get to church. On the other hand, he ran no cars during meeting hours of 10:30-12:00 noon and 7:30-9:30 p.m. Officials and many Protestant clergymen supported his artful compromise. For Cleveland's Protestant eUte, Christianity and commerce were mutually supportive. The elite was less successful, however, in controlling other elements of the city's emerging public culture. Temperance, for example, encountered sustained opposition. Cleveland's leading Protestants were never sufficiently united on the issue of antislavery as to make it a hallmark of the city's public culture. Nor were they able to maintain control ofthe rituals ofcommunity Ufe. July 4th observances were increasingly secularized in the 1850s, and, to the disquiet of the Protestant and often anti-Catholic eUte, immigrant Catholics began to march in celebratory parades. The reasons for what McTighe calls the elite's "measure of success" in defining the city's public culture were many. Particularly important was the fact...