Confederate Operations in Canada and the North: A Little-Known Phase of the American Civil War (review)

BOOK REVIEWS83 Northem-bom citizens (who constituted only one-eighth of the Georgetown population in 1861) held multiple civic offices, it appears; but no indication of voting patterns or party affiliations is given. We are left at the end feeling as if we have been wandering all over a small town without ever reaching its center. All of which is not to say that Mrs. Mitchell's effort has been useless. She has done an immnse amount of original research that future historians of Georgetown will find indispensable . Further, she has written a lively and interesting book, that deserves to be read and enjoyed by a wide audience. Maxwell Bloomfteld Catholic University of America Confederate Operations in Canada and the North: A Little-Known Phase of the American Civil War. By Oscar A. Kinchen. (North Quincy, Mass.: Christopher Publishing House, 1970. Pp. 254. $4.95.) Oscar Kinchen retells the familiar, not "litüe-known," story of exploits by Confederates and their sympathizers in the North and Canada. Beginning with an account of Morgan's raid and the Michigan's capture, he moves on to discuss the Canada mission of Jacob Thompson and Clement Clay, then switches back to cover the abortive uprising at the 1864 Chicago Democratic convention. The scene changes to the commissioners ' peace feelers in the summer of 1864, to operations on Lake Erie, the St. Alban's raid, the election-day plot in Chicago, the hotel-burning episode in New York City, a preacher's non-mission, and the last days of Thompson and company. For all their bravado, Kinchen concludes that the agents failed to divert enough Federal troops from the southern front to affect the war, that detectives and informers prevented them from achieving success, and that their work led to "a serious crisis in Canadian-American relations that was not soon to subside." This work has several drawbacks. Thompson and Clay are supposed to be the central figures but they are obscured by dozens of characters, some unidentified, who scramble madly over the pages searching in vain for the reader's attention. The book contains needless detail, exemplified by all of Chapter Nine ("Parson Stewart's Secret Mission"). The publisher must be blamed for misnumbered chapter titles, and frequent misspellings. But the author stands guilty of dialectical spelling ("suspicioned "), tedious writing, and incomplete footnotes. According to the dust jacket, this is the book that "tells it all—direct from Confederate records and private correspondence." The author does use a half-dozen collections of papers (Clement C. Clay and Thomas H. Hines appear most useful), files deposited in the Public Archives at Ottawa, and some Confederate correspondence. But he relies heavily on printed materials like John Castleman's Active Service, John Headley's Confederate Operations in Canada and in New York, Wood Gray's The Hidden Civil War, and James Horan's unfootnoted 84C I V I L W ? R II ? S ? ? R ? Confederate Agent. Kinchen disclaimed having written a definitive account but he has produced a brief general work which must suffice until this interesting subject receives the comprehensive treatment it deserves. Gordon H. Warren Winston-Salem State University The Cross of Culture: A Social Analysis of Midwestern Politics, 18501900 . By Paul KIeppner. (New York: The Free Press, 1970. Pp. x, 402. $9.00.) Borrowing many techniques from the behavioral sciences, Paul KIeppner argues that political behavior from 1850 to 1900 in Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin was determined primarily by the ethnic and religious identifications of the voters. In the 1850's mobility, immigration, moral reform movements and Know-Nothingism produced a "new structure of political action" which prevailed until the 1890's. Men chose parties on the basis of their religious attitudes. Those whose religion stressed "right behavior" ("pietists") joined the Republicans, the party of the "great moral ideas" which would use strong government to eradicate sins. Those whose religion stressed "right belief ("ritualists") naturally turned to the Democrats as the party which traditionally had rejected a strong role for the state in regulating behavior. The principal political clashes of the late nineteenth century were not economic wars between debtors and creditors but were ethnoreligious battles over temperance and parochial schools. The 1890...