John Wesley Powell, a man for dry seasons

After many diversions, I finally finished reading A River Running West, Donald Worster's full-scale biography of John Wesley Powell. This was my follow-up to several reads of Wallace Stegner's classic account of Powell's career--Beyond the Hundredth Meridian. Undoubtedly it was brave of Worster to attempt to follow in Stegner's footsteps, and his book is far from bad, though not nearly as readable or compelling as Stegner's.

If one were to read only one account of Powell's famous expedition down the Colorado river--which made him a national hero--Stegner's would be the one to select for its thrilling narrative. Stegner doesn't take all of Powell's journals at face value. Nevertheless, he casts the break-up of Powell's party, and its differential consequences, in lines of high drama, to etch one of the great legends of the exploration of the West. Worster, as a careful professional historian, is constrained to acknowledge the uncertainties about why Powell's party broke up, and what became of those who left Powell's command. The result is a somewhat mushy story, though likely more accurately reflective of what is really known about the first Powell expedition.

Worster's careful historiography pays dividends in his description of the battles between Powell and his nemesis, Senator Stewart of Nevada. Stegner portrays Powell as a tower of enlightenment in regard to the appropriate policies for settlement of the arid West, and his downfall at the hands of Stewart as the triumph of benighted boosterism in a flawed political arena. No less than Stegner, Worster acknowledges Powell's ground-breaking work as a senior Washington bureaucrat. He also rightly praises Powell's unmatched appreciation of the challenges raised by lack of water in the plans for development of the West. But Worster's account also provides the insight that Powell's policy prescription--collective planned settlement on a watershed-by-watershed basis--was hopelessly quixotic, and out of touch with the social, economic and political realities of the late 19th century in the U.S. In my mind the key question was, where would the capital have come from to finance the water management infrastructure that would have permitted Powell's plan to come about? To put the question another way, why would the political forces provide a subsidy from the federal government for the collectives of small holders that Powell proposed?

Without having read up on the long aftermath of the boosters' triumph, I infer that what actually happened was that moneyed interests in the West influenced more-or-less corrupt Congressional representatives to provide the federal subsidy for water projects, but to the benefit of the large-holders, and not for settlement by collectives. The result was the proliferation of monopolies that Powell feared. A great many disputes over water rights also developed, and remain acute.

In other words, the West was bound to be exploited, even as the Indians were bound to be pushed out and marginalized. Since exploitation of the West would require government capital, and since the vested interests had the power to control the application of government capital, the exploitation came about to the advantage of the vested interests. Not a pretty picture, but what else could possibly have happened, given the way Washington works?

"Leading feminists opposed the Great Emancipator--details at 7"

Here's the not-so-hot scoop, as dished in Chapter 3 of Votes for Women, edited by Jean H. Baker--

In 1863 the radical wing of the Republican party were wary of Lincoln's apparent wobbling on emancipation. Leading suffragists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony founded the Women's Loyal National League in part to provide support for a possible alternative candidate who would adopt the radicals' uncompromising position on emancipation.

Lincoln invited Stanton and her husband to Washington for a "long talk" (in Stanton's words), in which the President sought to win her support for the Republican nomination. Stanton came away from the meeting with an improved opinion of "Abraham" (as she referred to him in a letter), but still favoring a radical alternative candidate.

In the event, however, the radical alternative John C. Fremont proved to be a dud of a candidate, and when the Democrats nominated McClellan on a peace platform, the radical Republicans "came home" to Lincoln, much as some say the conservatives will this year "come home" to McCain.

The same chapter in Votes for Women also includes a lot of interesting stuff about Republican factions in New York State at the time, and corruption thereamong. Most sensationally, Stanton's husband and son were caught up in a bribery scandal, and Stanton harbored deep suspicions that Lincoln had allowed her husband's downfall to occur. This was prior to the Lincoln-Stanton meeting mentioned above.

There is nothing new under the sun

I don't actually believe the title to this post (was not the Internet once new, and not so many years ago?), but I don't imagine much of what I post in this new blog of mine will startle or amaze with its novelty. Mainly I will look back to the past, perhaps fifty or hundred years or so, while noting "current events in the field of history" as I happen to come across them.

I'm encouraging myself to start this blog since my searches for U.S. history blogs have turned up, to my mind, a rather small number of blogs in the field.

I should acknowledge one fellow blogger, however...David O. Stewart, a distinguished (and relatively *new*) historian and old friend of mine. For my money (or should I say time and attention) Stewart's Constitutional Journal is the best blog going.