The Movement for Indian Assimilation, 1860-1890 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS83 enough, occupies one-third of the book. Three long chapters explore the segregationist attitudes of white Baptists toward Negroes in the church, in public life, and in social relations. The separation of Negro Baptists after whites set unacceptable conditions within the denomination is fully treated, but not their subsequent history. A comparison of the social views of Negro and white Baptists might have been interesting, though outside the limits of the present book. The author has made the most of excellent sources on southern racist attitudes, the myth of the vanishing Negro, obsessive interest in colonization, and countless propositions for Negro proscription , repression, and schooling in subordination. In all of his writing on racial themes, there is an undertone of moral criticism that the views expressed were more southern than Baptist. Southern Baptists had a similarly narrow attitude toward women both within the church government and in the feminist movement. The characteristic Baptist social crusades were those against Sabbath breaking, gambling at the race tracks and country fairs, dancing, nude statuary, and spitting on the church floor. ("Can people kneel down in ambeer and tobacco cuds, and be decent?" p. 204. ) Toward lynching, their attitude was ambiguous; toward prohibition, ambivalent. Like other southerners, Southem Baptists were slow to join the prohibition movement and were deeply divided between temperance and abstinence, but by the end of the nineteenth century they were among the most aggressively prohibitionist religious bodies. The WCTU was too enmeshed with feminism for Baptist tastes, but they wholeheartedly joined the Anti-Saloon League. Any excursion such as this in the uncharted territory of social history is welcome. The author writes with candor of even the unloveliest aspects of his subject, but the approach seems overly descriptive and not analytical enough. Some expected themes are neglected. Anti-Catholicism is relegated to a footnote on p. 34, for example, and two major factors governing Southern Baptist attitudes are badly slighted: social class and Baptist doctrines about the depravity of man. Louis R. Harlan University of Maryland The Movement for Indian Assimilation, 1860-1890. By Henry E. Fritz. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1963. Pp. 244. $6.00.) Despite its title, this book is essentially concerned with the origins and accomplishments of the Peace Policy movement associated with the Grant Administration, 1869-1877. Had the author confined himself to dus topic, he would have made a worthwhile contribution to our understanding of post-Civil War Indian policy. However, by attempting to push his thesis beyond tiiis period and apparently beyond the bounds of his archival research , Professor Fritz has weakened his case and has produced a book which is lacking in internal logic, is marred by his own peculiar biases, and is filled with contradictions. Here is a case of a doctoral dissertation which 84CIVIL WAR HISTORY was lengthened into an unsatisfactory book, when it should have been distilled into a good article. In 1869 Congress provided for the creation of a Board of Indian Commissioners , to be nominated by various Protestant denominations, which was to advise the government on necessary changes in federal Indian policy. The following year the Congress forbade the appointment of military officers as Indian agents and President Grant, following the advice of the Board of Indian Commissioners, ordered that the agencies be divided among the churches which would then become responsible for nominating the agents. This plan to appoint Christian, God-fearing men to civilize the Indians was the essence of the Peace Policy which Professor Fritz says was "a phase of a Protestant movement for the assimilation of Indians, which culminated with the passage of the Dawes Act. . . ." Fritz's account of the origins of the Peace Policy is detailed and thorough and it is here that he makes an important contribution to our knowledge of Indian affairs. His thesis that this was a Protestant movement culminating in the passage of the Dawes Act, however, remains unproven despite its frequent repetition. Worse still, it results in a distortion of the sources and a grossly subjective analysis of the Catholic position. On examination, Fritz's "Protestant movement" comes down to a demand for reform by only two churches: the Society of Friends and the...