General Henry A. Baxter, 7th Michigan Volunteer Infantry: A Biography by Jay C. Martin (review)

116 The Michigan Historical Review Jay C. Martin. General Henry A. Baxter, 7th Michigan Volunteer Infantry: A Biography. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Publishers, 2016. Pp. 216. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Paper: $35.00. Henry A. Baxter is not someone very well known today, but he gained wide-spread public attention during the Civil War for his dramatic role in leading federal troops across the Rappahannock River during the Union’s failed Fredericksburg campaign in December 1862. This action, dubbed the “forlorn hope,” earned Baxter considerable acclamation. He, as colonel of the 7th Michigan Volunteer Infantry Regiment, would go on to brigade command, ending the war as a brevet major general. Postwar, Baxter served as President U.S. Grant’s minister to Honduras. He died suddenly at the age of 52, with a diplomatic appointment to Europe arriving days after his death. Author Jay C. Martin seeks to “capture the essence of Henry Baxter” as someone who “inspired his countrymen and accomplished great deeds in the midst of tremendous obstacles” (p. 1). Certainly, on the surface, Baxter had all the trappings of a successful nineteenth-century white businessman whose family helped found the Republican Party. Though he displayed tremendous personal courage in battle, suffering three separate combat wounds, he also had notable failures, such as his attempt at “striking it rich” in California or his diplomatic forays in Honduras. Martin repeatedly tells readers that Baxter was a “venturist,” someone who epitomized the “energy” and “creativity” of America’s “progress” in the mid to late nineteenth century (p. 2-3). The author lauds these venturists as problem-solvers who “overcame obstacles” in “the service of capitalism, military necessity, or social responsibility” (p. 3). Yet at what cost and for what ultimate purpose? In other words, “progress” for whom? There is only the most cursory mention of Native Americans or slaves, and Hondurans are referred to as violent and emotional. In sum, Martin fails to recognize the very real and lasting human cost of what scholars call “settler colonialism”: whites’ brutal exploitation of the North (and Latin) American continent. Despite Martin’s intention to write a complete biography of Baxter, he falls far short. Instead, Martin veers off into local and regimental histories, genealogy, battle narratives, and sweeping (and overly simplistic and outdated) generalizations about US and Latin American history. The result is unsatisfying on all levels. Martin seems to take all of his primary sources at face value (reprinting letters often in their entirety) and appears unwilling to critically engage (or question) them or place them in proper Book Reviews 117 historical context. Thus, Henry Baxter emerges as a one-dimensional, in Martin’s words, “man of his times” (p. 176). Yet, disappointedly, readers learn little about the complexity of the man or his times. Lesley J. Gordon University of Akron Frederick W. Mayer, A Setting for Excellence: The Story of the Planning and Development of the Ann Arbor Campus of the University of Michigan. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015. Pp. 184. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Cloth: $49.95. Fredrick W. Mayer, successful campus and city architectural planner, has written a skillfully detailed architectural history of the evolution of the University of Michigan campus in A Setting for Excellence. The campus first took shape under architects A. J. Davis and Ithiel Town in 1838 and 1839 as part of a Federal plan. By the 1870s, the campus comprised a “collegiate row” of buildings, including Haven Hall, University Hall, the observatory, the chemical laboratory, the Medical Building, and two original dormitories (Mason Hall and South Wing). The second half of the nineteenth century ushered in an era of laissez-faire opportunism which culminated in the “City Beautiful” movement, and city planners began aggressively reevaluating urban infrastructure and aesthetics. Mayer explores how the eclectic style of the post-Civil War decades signaled a deterioration in the aesthetic cohesion of the campus: carpenter style for the Pavilion Hospital and College of Dental Surgery, while the Heating Plant, General Library, University Museum, West Physics Building, Tappan Hall, Engineering Shops Building, and Waterman Gym were constructed in the Romanesque Revival style, and other buildings displayed Italianate and Second Empire motifs. Clearly, a new period of campus expansion was...