Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/915

 Burton : Jo/ui Sherman 905 John Sherman. By Theodore E. Burton. (Boston and New York: Houghton, Alifflin and Company. 1906. Pp. vi, 449.) There has been a reasonable e.xpectation that this new life, pub- lished in the American Statesmen series, would add materially to the knowledge of the character and career of Sherman, but unfortunately this hope is disappointed. If the author had access to private papers and letters, there is little evidence in this volume. Disappointment is the more keen because there are many passages in Sherman's life which require explanation for a clear understanding of the course of political events. The work is more a financial history than a biography of Sherman ; as a history of taxation, national banking, silver, and govern- ment indebtedness, it is a sober and careful presentation; but pages, if not chapters, follow in rapid succession with hardly a reference to Sherman's influence on the life of his time. In many ways it is simply a condensation of Sherman's own Recollections of Forty Years, lacking, however, the frank and open judgments of men and motives which Sherman freely expressed. Possibly the author was overwhelmed by the mass of historical matter so near to his own life-time, and felt the necessity of arranging it in an orderly narrative ; if so, he has done it at the sacrifice of personal detail. In this the book does not bear favor- able comparison with Stanwood's Blaine, published in the same series. If these biographies are to win appreciation they must rely upon the assumption that the reader has acquaintance with the historical events of the period, and it is therefore to be hoped that in the succeeding volumes of the series, the authors will not feel the obligation of a restatement of national politics, but will devote a larger share of the necessarily limited space to a portraiture of character and to the molding influence of these characters upon these general policies. For example, pages 88-106 cover an account of the financial legisla- tion of the Civil War with not a single reference to Sherman; in chapter vi., containing twenty-five pages of taxation, loans, and the national banking system, there are eighteen pages in which Sherman's name does not appear even by indirect reference ; and m succeeding chapters on the Reconstruction period, at least two-thirds might with equal propriety be included in any volume of general history of post- bellum conditions. Too often when Sherman is brought upon the stage, it is through long quotations from speeches taken from the Congressional Record. In vain one looks for any account of Sherman's reported activity in seeking Southern delegates for the presidential nomination ; or, for an analysis of the complications in Ohio politics which perplex the general reader and make it difficult to understand the varying fortunes of the statesmen of that commonwealth. It is not idle curiosity or desire for amusement on the part of the reader to wish for more quotations from correspondence like the one given on page 296. In 1880 Sherman wrote: "The nomination of Arthur is a ridiculous burlesque, and I am