Freedom and Franchise: The Political Career of B. Gratz Brown (review)

BOOKREVIEWS73 was not a national figure, but his career included six terms in the legislature , two as state treasurer, and two as governor. He was a lawyer, a businessman of rare acumen, and, finally, a politician. The author traces his career in a well-balanced approach, with the last half of the book being of special importance. Worth was a Whig, a consistent one. His basic conservatism caused him to oppose secession, although he supported the Confederacy once the war began. In 1862 he resigned his legislative seat when he was elected state treasurer, a victory achieved with support from the Conservatives , a faction lukewarm toward the war. The contest was a bitter one, but he won re-election in 1864 without opposition. While he longed for peace, Worth performed his increasingly hopeless functions with ability. In 1865 he stepped down as treasurer, won pardon from President Johnson , and once more became treasurer and property agent in the provisional government of W. W. Holden. Later that year old Whig Unionists persuaded him to run for governor, an office he won by a margin of six thousand votes. As chief executive Worth had no chance to enact a program, and spent much time battling with the Freedmen's Bureau. In 1866 he won a second term as governor, handily stemming the tide of the pro-Radical Union party. His biographer devotes detailed consideration to Worth's opposition to the Fourteenth Amendment and his dealings with the military . Worth left office after the Republicans carried the state elections in 1868. He spent his remaining days looking after business interests and died in September, 1869. This book is written in effective prose, although the author's habit of inserting "the fact that" is overworked. Professor Zuber's judgment is sound and his research cannot be faulted—the book is a valuable contribution to southern history. William Warren Rogers Florida State University Freedom and Franchise: The Political Career of B. Gratz Brown. By Norma L. Peterson. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press. 1965.Pp. 252. $6.50.) The index of the average textbook on American history has a single entry under the name "B. Gratz Brown." In most of these works he is briefly mentioned as one of the leaders in the Liberal Republican movement , which won an early victory in Brown's state of Missouri in 1870 and two years later made him its nominee for Vice-President. The Missourian 's place in his state's history is somewhat more substantial, for he was an influential political journalist and he served in the state legislature , in the United States Senate, and as governor. Even so, his political career was relatively brief and for all practical purposes ended when he left the governor's office in 1873 at the age of forty-six. Brown's political 74CIVIL WARHISTORY leadership was a product of the sectional conflict in a border state, and, despite an almost incredible series of party and factional gymnastics, it demonstrated the impossibility of riding the crest of popular approval very long in waters as rapid and treacherous as Missouri politics during the Civil War and its aftermath. Bom in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1826, Benjamin Gratz Brown was a member of a prominent family with wide and influential connections. He was educated at Transylvania University, Yale College, and the Louisville Law School. In the fall of 1849 he left Kentucky to join his cousins, Frank and Montgomery Blair, in St. Louis, and within a short time he became involved in the chaotic Missouri politics of the 1850's. A fiery redhead and an ardent champion of causes, the young lawyer became a supporter of Thomas Hart Benton (he had originally considered himself a Clav Whig), served three terms in the state legislature, and helped to edit the Missouri Democrat, one of the state's leading political newspapers . As a Benton Democrat during the gathering crisis over slavery and the territories, he was critical of both the proslavery men and the abolitionists. But by the late fifties he was drifting toward the Republican party and after war came he emerged as a strong Radical, advocating immediate emancipation of the slaves and harsh punishment of...