The Black Laws: Race and the Legal Process in Early Ohio by Stephen Middleton (review)

BOOK REVIEWS century Indiana wine had many causes: endemic disease in the vineyards coupled with an inappreciative market, falling prices for virtually : ill crops, and a product that,by virtually all accounts,did not taste all that good. When better wine began to be made in Ohio starting in the late 1820s,the fledgling Indiana industry was doomed. The Ohio vintners used a different grape variet),the Catawba grape rather than the illexanderand their wines, particularl their Champagnestyled sparkling wines,came to be praised far and wide. By 1858, the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfi: llow could wax rhapsodic , calling Ohic, Catawba " more dulcet , delicious, and dreamy"than French Champagne. He apparently never tasted Indiana wine,the ineyards by then having become but distant memories. Ihe father and son team of James and John Butler tell the story of Indiana wine' s rise and fall in entertaining detail in their Indiana ; Fine. A History. The story of Dufour' s and the New Harmonists ' accomplishme nts takes up nearly half of their book, and it surely is the most interesting p:irt. The Butlers supply details that most students of American wine do not know,and in doing so they add substantially to our understanding of this oftneglected aspect of early American history. Following a short chapter on Indiana wine in the rest of the nineteenth century short because there essentially wasn' t any Indiana wine of note), the Butlers turn their attention to the modern Indiana wine industry In 1 971,a small winery law was passed in Indiana,leading to a revival of production. Twenty years later,when this book was first published,some twenty five wineries were in commercial production in the state. Unfortunately,this is the least interesting part of the book; least interesting, that is, if one reads the book as its subtitle demands. Instead of offering a history replete with evaluation, the authors simply offer a guidebook of sorts, listing the various Indiana wineries, providing travel directions, phone numbers , web domains, and the like. James Butler himself owns a winery in Bloomington . Perhaps because he is a member of the local industry, he and his son are unwilling to say much of anything of import about the quality of contemporary Indiana wine, let alone about the state' s prospects. They offer instead an uncritical survey,something that the Indiana Wine Grape Council provides consumers for free on their website. ' Ihe second half of this book,then,is a far cry from the truly fascinating history that makes up the first half. Paul Lukacs Loyola College in Maryland Stephen Middleton. 7be Black Laws: Race and the Legal Process in Early Ohio. Athens: Ohio University Press,2005. 363 pp. ISBN 0821416243 ( paper), $ 26.95. tephen Middleton, professor of his43 tory at North Carolina State University ,has been writing about abolitionism and the legal status of blacks for the past twenty years. His survey of the progress of civil rights in antebellum Ohio provides a welcome synthesis of the politi64 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY cally charged array of problems touching on racism,discrimination,comity,slavery, and abolitionism that faced Ohio and the nation. 732 Black Laws:Race and the Legal Process in Early Obio approaches these issues primarily as the struggle to reconcile the fundamental republican principle of equality under the law with the state's constitution,its statutes,and their judicial interpretations. The outlines of this story are familiar: the uncertainties in the application of the sixth article of the Northwest Ordinance that forbade involuntary servitude north of the Ohio River, the debates over slavery in the state constitutional convention, the passage of discriminatory Black Laws soon after statehood in 1803, and the legal and political wrangling over comity and fugitive slaves. Middleton' s discussion ofnumerous court cases,culled from an exhaustive survey of little used public records and newspaper accounts, provides additional insight into the role of the courts in promoting civil rights. Middleton' s approach places a good deal of faith in the inevitable victory of justice and equality. Although he argues that " progressive whites" and blacks worked tirelessly to push the agenda of civil rights in the state,the most significant gains resulted from judicial decisions...