The Underground Railroad in Connecticut (review)

BOOK REVIEWS107 because they present nothing new on the Army of Tennessee or the Western campaigns. Parks ignores the latest research, and repeats many of the mistakes and faulty interpretations he made in his biography of E. Kirby Smith. If he had relied less on the words of Polk and his supporters, Professor Parks, might have written a better biography. He could have found evidence that his high opinion of Polk's military ability was not shared by many of the bishop-general's contemporaries. St. John R. Liddell, for example, considered Polk pompous, theatrical, and incompetent. Bragg, who thought Polk had been a bishop too long to be a subordinate, wrote Jefferson Davk that "General Polk . . . k unfitted for executing the orders of others. He will convince himself his own views are better, and will follow them without reflecting on the consequences." And one of Hardee's staff, D. W. Yandell, wrote of Polk: He is great at talk, but is monstrous uncertain. I saw enough of . . . [him] at Shiloh & Perryville to cause me to place no great confidence in him. He will prevaricate. He did say he was going to do this and going to do that, but the old man forgets. Unless "he k transferred to house duties [some unimportant post]," concluded Yandell, "we will all go to the Devil out here." General Leónidas Polk k a useful guide to what Polk thought of himself and his contemporaries, and what his friends thought of him. It k not a critical biography. Grady McWhtney Northwestern University The Underground Railroad in Connecticut. By Horatio T. Strother. (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1962. Pp. x, 262. $5.00. ) This not wholly professional publication merits notice on several counts. It has taken much of its author's time and effort. It deak with a small segment of the antislavery front, true, since thk stretched across the MasonDixon Line and followed the Ohio River and beyond. But the author adds evidence to that already available that the "underground railroad" was a real and serious and long-time enterprise. He has tried to deal honesdy with a subject which often tempts partisans to sympathetic and inaccurate statement . The difficulties posed by materiak bearing on the topic are many. Thus, in one case, the vicissitudes of an alleged fugitive were retailed in the Liberator . If the investigator stopped there, he would be mkled, for it turned out that the "fugitive" was an impostor. A typical passage from the present author's book shows hk conscientious efforts to maintain a positive attitude toward the facts: From the home town of this influential spokesman for freedom [Nehemiah Caulldns], the fugitive might find hk way a few miles eastward to New London, or somewhat farther northward to Norwich. The former, then prospering as a whaling port second only to New Bedford, was the center of an active abolition movement. . . . Here, in 1844, was held a meeting "to hear the experience of the fugitive—John—who is just from the land of whips and chains—J. Turner, likewise a fugitive, was speaking when we arrived." It is not recorded how John and J. Turner reached the city—possibly by ship, for New London's ocean trade was extensive. Strangely, the identities of the Underground operators remain unknown, although the Hempstead house, oldest in the city, k said to have been a station. The quantity of actual new material here k rather meager, and Mr. Stiother has filled out his narrative with materials relating, for example, to the Prudence Crandall case (which does not involve the underground railroad), and with discussion of North-South divisions, which relate mostly to antislavery and abolition rather than the question of fugitives—let alone fugitives in Connecticut. Nevertheless, he has sought to improve our knowledge of such early fugitives as William Grimes, Billy Winters, and James Lindsey Smith, as well as such distingukhed fugitives as James W. C. Pennington, who was granted a Doctor of Divinity degree at the University of Heidelberg. Hk Appendix 2 (pages 210-211) offers a hst of known Connecticut underground agents. American attitudes toward scholarly concerns have, however, unfortunately suggested to the author the non-desirability of...