Black Exodus: Black Nationalist and Back-to-Africa Movements, 1890-1910 (review)

book reviews273 effective way of presenting the diverse complexities of Reconstruction and should inspire similar collections dealing with the states of the deeper South. One of the above authors, Ross Webb, has also provided the second subject of this review, the first full biography of Benjamin H. Bristow. An Unconditional Unionist and then Republican from Kentucky, Bristow emerged from the battles of war and Reconstruction to become, during the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, the nation's first Solicitor General (1870-1872) and Secretary of the Treasury (1874-1876). A reputation for personal and political honesty, together with a prominent role in exposing the frauds of the Whiskey Ring, made Bristow a champion of Republican reformers and a leading contender for the presidential nomination in 1876. After failing to obtain that nomination, Bristow essentially left politics to practice law in New York. Thereafter an influential national figure of conservative laissez faire convictions, Bristow remained a loyal Republican, except for his refusal to support Blaine in the presidential campaign of 1884. Ross's biography is reliable and informative. Essentially narrative in form, it is at times disjointed and dull, faults which appear to reflect a necessary legalistic-fiscal focus and an unnecessary reluctance to condense , interpret, or draw conclusions. Bristow emerges as a capable and honest, but independent and close-mouthed individual, and despite the volume's subtitle we do not learn a great deal about border state politics . Although the author's Reconstruction views appear rather old fashioned , he effectively explains the development of Bristow's Republicanism , a mixture of nationalism, war experience, paternalism, civil equalitarianism, and free enterprise economics. But the high point of this biography is its depiction of Bristow's role as fiscal conservative and administrative reformer in the Treasury Department. It was here that his role in exposing the Whiskey Ring attracted such great support for his presidential condidacy but also killed what chances Bristow had of winning the nomination by alienating Grant and other Republican leaders. Ross rejects William B. Hesseltine's accusations of ambition and selfishness to affirm Bristow's loyalty as Secretary to Grant and the Republican party. This then is a capable if unexciting biography that contributes to our understanding of southern Republicanism and the still hazy history of the Grant administration. It is also unfortunately marred by poor proofing , including such bloopers as Thomas Nash for Nast and Daniel E. Sickels for Sickles, and the "Critical Essay on Authorities" is not that at all. Otto H. Olsen Northern Illinois University Bhck Exodus: Black Nationalist and Back-to-Africa Movements, 18901910 . By Edwin S. Redkey. (New Haven and London: Yale University, 1969. Pp. xii, 319. Cloth $10.00; paper $2.45.) 274CIVIL WAR HISTORY Edwin S. Redkey's study of the numerous back-to-Africa movements which sprang up among impoverished blacks in the South and Southwest between 1890 and 1910 is an important contribution both to the study of black nationalism and to what has recently been labeled the "history of the inarticulate." It also serves as a useful counterpoint to August Meier's definitive Negro Thought in America, 1880-1915, which brilliantly delineated the ideological alternatives of protest and accommodation dominating the actions of the black leadership of the period. Professor Redkey traces the interaction between the amorphous masses of black agriculturalists desiring to leave the South for Liberia and the leaders of the various organizations which, with varying degrees of sincerity and efficiency, attempted to transport the prospective emigrants to Africa. Consequently, Bfock Exodus focuses, in turn, upon the activities of the Liberian educator-statesman Edward Blyden and his support of the Butler bill to provide transportation for any black wishing to leave the South, the crisis of 1892 within the American Colonization Society and its subsequent demise as an effective aid to the growing black emigration movement, and the formation of the International Migration Society which successfully sent two shiploads of emigrants to Liberia in 1895 and 1896. Throughout the narrative, a bewildering number of smaller emigration organizations (and occasional charlatans) filter in and out. Dominating the entire scene is the towering figure of the African Methodist Episcopal Church Bishop, Henry M. Turner, a black nationalist whose continual...