Review: A Journey through Texas: Or a Saddle-Trip on the Southwestern Frontier

A Journey through Texas: Or a Saddle-Trip on the Southwestern Frontier by Frederick Law Olmsted
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The author of this book is a New Yorker (who designed Central Park) and took a trip to Texas, Mexico, and surrounding areas in the 1850s and documented his travels. This book is everything you could want and more. An outside gives his honest opinion of the people, places and of course the prejudices of the place. The prejudices are obviously on the side of the Southern white Americans, but also the author's, which become evident.

However, the author (and his brother) are very much against slavery, and you see their impression of slaveholders go from low to extremely low, especially after encountering the Germans, who tend to be against slavery (and are surprisingly many). I found myself going through Google and Google maps to follow along, so I was very happy to hear about the book "Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide", wherein someone follows along the same itinerary, giving an update on everything covered in this book. I look forward to reading that as well.

Also very interesting to read about crossing the border into Mexico, and seeing how race relations differed there (they pretended to be German, since they felt it was dangerous to be American there, given the acrimony). Their encounters with native Americans at the time were interesting as well, and I found myself wishing there had been more.


A very pleasant surprise to have found this book, and I'm amazed it isn't more well-known.




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Review: Andrew Johnson: A Biography

Andrew Johnson: A Biography by Hans L. Trefousse
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My vote for the worst president ever. It's crazy to think a Civil Rights Bill came before him and he vetoed it, basically setting the country back 100 years (until the next President Johnson would sign the next Civil Rights Bill in the 1960s). So the South got to basically continue slavery (Black employees could be forced to work and were dragged back to their employer if they escaped).

Voted against the Smithsonian. Voted against salary increases for troops. Was pro-slavery but voted against many pro-slavery issues (including the 3/5 law), since his district of East Tennessee was mountainous and had very few slave-holders. He also voted against funding the railroad (at first) and against funding for a statue of George Washington.

He was also the only Southern Democrat politician to side with the Union, being dead against secession. After the war, many Northerners wanted to relegate the South to the status of territories (and not states). Lincoln's choice of Johnson as VP showed that he still supported statehood for the South.

Interesting how Eastern Tennessee remained more or less for the Union side throughout the war, and in fact almost became a separate state (like West Virginia split off from Virginia).

After having turned away from the Democrats to side with the Union, he basically sided with the Democrats after the war, granting statehood and amnesty to more or less everyone (stating that, due to states' rights, it was impossible to secede so they hadn't actually seceded). This made the unionists hate him, while the democrats still didn't trust him much.

The biography itself was excellent. I hope to read more by Trefousse.

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Review: James Buchanan

James Buchanan by Jean H. Baker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Odd how the most prepared person "since James Madison" to run for president could end up being such a terrible president. His undoing seems to be due to:

1) Like previous presidents, he backed slavery (despite being a Northerner). This puts him on the wrong side of history, as well as being a testimony to how blind people can be to basic fundamentals of life. However, his obvious siding with the South and slave states appalled Northerners, making many of them more sympathetic to the Republican cause.
2) Extreme corruption in his cabinet. Here again, it seems odd, since he himself seems to have been so well-versed in law and politics. Although, maybe the "politics" part was a disadvantage. There seems to have been an attitude that "the ends justify the means" in order to get things done, which, in his case, was silencing the "vocal minority" of abolitionists. Of course, by the end of his presidency this was no longer a minority. He also let his cabinet members, all of whom shared his views, do more or less as they pleased.
3) Following these two points, his cabinet consisted in Southerners and dough-faced Northerners (Northerner sympathetic to Southerners). In the meantime, pro-slavery southerners were becoming a smaller and smaller minority, which is why they started getting louder and louder. He didn't realize the real "vocal minority" was the Southern slave-holders.

Some people say the Civil war wasn't about slavery. His presidency and this book show it very obviously was. States Rights are only brought up during these years in relation to slavery. Let's not forget that it's a small minority of white men who even owned slaves, but they seem to have had all the power. In fact, as can be been with the Missouri compromise, the Wilmot Proviso and the fugitive slave act, these same "pro-states rights" people suddenly wanted Federal law to supersede when it came to slaves going to other states.

I found this book quite good. I think it's often difficult to write a biography of someone like Buchanan. After spending so much time researching one person, you end up either justifying all their bad decisions, or just concentrating on their bad points and reviling them. But this book seemed to do a good job of pointing out how bad he was without covering up or pushing the matter too much.

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