Washington presides over the task of reaching a solution for America of the problems of government already mentioned. By 1830 changed conditions necessitate an attempt at more precise definition of the terms of the solution. Lincoln's task is to apply the essence of the original solution, modified to meet the changed conditions-" to maintain the keystone of the arch".

The book is obviously designed for the general reader, who may be expected to find it interesting and edifying. One may hazard the conjecture that it is an expansion of one or more series of popular lectures. The outlines of the plan of treatment are made relentlessly clear at every step. Anecdote is diligently employed for purposes of enlivenment. The author has consulted the sources and is aware of much of the modern literature of the subject. It is necessary to observe, however, that throughout the book, carelessness and awkwardness of literary expression seriously mar the effectiveness of presentation.

CHARLES W. SPENCER.

The Methodist Episcopal Church and the Civil War. By William Warren Sweet, Ph.D. (Cincinnati, Methodist Book Concern Press, 1912, pp. 228.) This book was offered as a doctoral dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania. After a brief historical introduction, it discusses the attitude of the church in the Border States, in the New England Atlantic States, and in the Central and Northwestern States. There follow accounts of missions and periodicals during the war, of the activity of chaplains and bishops, of co-operation with other religious organizations, and a very interesting and valuable bibliography. The appendix contains chiefly lists of Methodist chaplains. The treatment is scholarly, but there are typographical errors in quoted passages. They are evidently copied from the originals, but indication of the error should have been given (pp. 23, 158).

The subject is in itself an illustration of the attention which American historians are just beginning to give to the neglected field of church history, and the contents illustrate some of the contributions which such studies may be expected to make. The bulk of the material is drawn from fresh sources. It yields to the study of public opinion not sidelights, but direct clarification. The fact that the break between the sections at the time of the war did not exactly correspond to that between the two branches of the church in 1844 proves illuminating rather than confusing. The parallelism between state rights and conference rights is interesting.

The study is ecclesiastical rather than religious. The author might well have devoted more attention to methods and results of the camp revivals, to an analysis of sermons, and to the reflex effect of the war on church thought. He has, however, refrained from handling questions involving subjective treatment, deterred by a somewhat too narrow interpretation of "scientific" method. He achieves impartiality, but one feels

AM. HIST. REV., VOL. XVIII. —-27.

that the cause of historic accuracy would have been even better served if the "mephitic gases" which Professor R. G. Stevenson, who wrote the introduction, refers to as latent in chapter v., had been permitted a few quiet and regulated explosions.

C. R. FISH.

The New Market Campaign, May, 1864. By Edward Raymond Turner, Professor of European History, University of Michigan. (Richmond, Whittet and Shepperson, 1912, pp. xiv, 203.) Grant's plans for the spring campaign of 1864 provided that when he advanced Butler should threaten Richmond by way of the James River and Sigel move in two columns, one under Crook, up the Kanawha Valley, and the other under Sigel himself, up the Shenandoah Valley with the object, primarily, of preventing the sending of supplies or reinforcements to Lee in the Wilderness.

Butler was promptly bottled up. Crook fought two successful engagements, inflicted some damage, and then halted, later returning to his starting-point. Sigel advanced slowly to New Market where he was met by Breckinridge and defeated with heavy loss. So complete was the Confederate victory, that the upper valley was entirely cleared of Federals and Breckinridge enabled to send aid to Lee when aid was sorely needed.

New Market was therefore one of the most important secondary engagements of the war; but it is best known, perhaps, because of the presence with the Confederate forces of the boys of the Virginia Military Institute. Their gallantry and steadiness stimulated the whole army and contributed largely to the Confederate victory.

Professor Turner has written a very interesting and instructive account of the New Market campaign and battle. He gives first a concise but graphic narrative of events without the usual extended details, so often bewildering, of the inevitable controversies as to the numbers engaged and the part taken by the different commands. These he reserves for later chapters and by the time the reader reaches them he does so with an understanding that enables him to appreciate the evidence offered and the conclusions reached. There are numerous notes, an extensive bibliography, and an index. A special word of praise is due the admirable illustrations of the battlefield as it is to-day. The book can be cordially commended to both the student and the general reader.

South America: Observations and Impressions. By James Bryce. (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1912, pp. xxiv, 611.) Of the sixteen chapters of this work, constituting about two-thirds of the whole, eleven are devoted to a description of six South American countries, including Panama, which the author visited in the course of a tour of four months. The remaining five chapters discuss political, social, and economic phenomena associated with Latin America in general, and con

stitute by far the most valuable part of the book. Nowhere else in English will be found a series of observations and impressions so accurate, so profound, or so instructive. At the same time the reviewer must dissent strongly from some of the statements regarding the lack of intellectual, scientific, and artistic progress in Latin America; nor is he disposed to admit the propriety of the author's constant use of the term "North American" when referring to the people of the United States. The work also provides a few maps and a page or two of notes on books and travel conditions.

While no one is better equipped than Mr. Bryce to produce illuminating pictures of society anywhere in the world, it is to be regretted that his incidental treatment of Spanish-American history has been derived, it would seem, mainly from reading the conventional misrepresentation of Spanish rule. Had he made use of a treatise like Bourne's Spain in America, he could not have condemned the Spanish colonial system in so sweepingly a dogmatic fashion (p. 16).

As a result of this unfamiliarity with the sources of Spanish-American history, numerous errors have crept into the work. Some of them are quite possibly typographical slips. Others cannot be so disposed of. Pedrarias, for example, was not a viceroy (p. 11), and the statements about the viceroy of Peru (p. 47) need great modification to be true. The execution of Tupac Amaru (p. 116) warrants neither of the conclusions offered. It was not Toledo in 1575, but Loaysa in 1551 (pp. 162-163), who estimated the population of Peru at a figure that rested on no basis of fact whatever. Contrary to the author's implication (p. 165), no Indians were ever brought before the Inquisition. The audiencia of Charcas (Bolivia) owed its origin to none of the reasons specified on page 166. The assertions about the absence of the Inquisition in Chile (p. 218) are altogether erroneous. Mendoza was not the governor of Peru (p. 249) but the son of the viceroy of Peru. It is quite inaccurate to say that permission was ever given to the " Atlantic ports" " of the Spanish colonies "to trade with Europe". The Brazilians were not expelled from Uruguay in 1814 (p. 350). The treaty of Tordesillas did not provide for a demarcation line three hundred and seventy leagues "farther west" (p. 366). "Juan Ulloa" (p. 463), finally, was not a humane and orthodox Spaniard ", but in reality consisted of two individuals named Jorge Juan y Sentacilia and Antonio de Ulloa. Nor does Professor Moses say that "there were two Ulloas: Juan and Antonio ", even though "others hold there was but one". WILLIAM R. SHEPHERD.

NOTES AND NEWS

AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

The twenty-eighth annual meeting of the Association was held in Boston and Cambridge on December 27-31. The programme provided for conferences on historical bibliography with a discussion of the reviewing of historical books, on ancient history, on medieval history with a discussion upon profitable fields of investigation, on American history with especial reference to the period 1815-1860, on modern history, particularly the history of modern commerce, and on military history. In the annual conference of archivists a plan for a manual of archive economy was presented and discussed. In the conference of historical societies the principal subject was the relation of genealogy to history. A joint session was held with the New England History Teachers' Association, at which a report on historical equipment in high schools and colleges was presented. A meeting of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association considered, as its general subject, New England and the West, and a joint session was held with the American Political Science Association. There were also two general sessions, on European history and American history respectively. The presidential address, on History as Literature, by Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, will be printed in our next number, which will also contain the usual general account of the whole meeting.

At the meeting of the Executive Council held in New York on November 30, a nominating committee of five members of the Association was appointed, consisting of Professors Max Farrand, Ephraim D. Adams, Walter L. Fleming, Frederic L. Paxson, and Miss Lucy M. Salmon, to nominate officers for 1913. Provision was made for the appointment at the Boston meeting, one month later, of a similar nominating committee for 1914, with the expectation that members of the Association should during the present year send to the committee then appointed any suggestions that they may wish to make respecting the selection of officers. Upon an invitation from Columbia, South Carolina, it was voted that one general session should be held in that city as a preliminary to the general meeting of the Association at Charleston in December, 1913. Provision was made for the securing of an American publisher for the proposed bibliography of modern English history, prepared jointly by an English committee and a committee of the Association; for the reprinting of Professor David S. Muzzey's prize essay on The Spiritual Franciscans in a style uniform with the later prize essays; and for the taking of subscriptions toward a revised and amended edition of Dr. Ernest C. Richardson's Check List of European History Collections.

The Annual Report for 1910 was distributed to members in November. The Annual Report for 1911 is now in the hands of the Smithsonian Institution and may be expected to appear during the coming summer. The Adams prize essay for 1910, Miss Louise F. Brown's Political Activities of Baptists and Fifth Monarchy Men in England during the Interregnum, is in the press and will be sent to subscribers during the present month.

The tenth annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch was held at the University of California on November 29 and 30. Professor A. B. Show of Stanford University was elected president and Mr. H. W. Edwards of the Oakland High School secretary and treasurer. Among the papers we note: Some Phases of Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt, by Professor Richard F. Scholz of the University of California; Notes on the Biography of Cardinal Schinner, by Professor Alvin Martin of Stanford University; the Organization of the Reign of Terror in France, by Professor H. Morse Stephens of the University of California; the Background of Alaskan History, by Professor Frank A. Golder of the State College of Washington; Party Groupings in the Twenty-Second Congress, by Professor Edgar E. Robinson of Stanford University; and Some Effects of Inertia of Public Opinion, by Professor Murray S. Wildman of the same university.

An organization called the American Historical Society has been incorporated under the laws of the state of New York and is doing business at 154 East 23rd Street, New York City. The form of the name is an unusual one, for a company which according to its own declaration is simply a publishing organization. Without wishing to intimate that the name was chosen with any view to being identified in the public mind with the American Historical Association, we think it right to state that the new organization has no connection with the latter.

In the series Original Narratives of Early American History Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons will issue this spring the Journal of Jasper Dankers, edited by Rev. B. B. James.

PERSONAL

Dr. James Gairdner, who had been an assistant keeper of the British public records for many years beginning in 1859, died on November 4, at the age of eighty-four years. He edited the Memorials of Henry VII.; the Letters and Papers of the Reigns of Richard III. and Henry VII.; all but the first four volumes of the Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII.; the Paston Letters, and several volumes of the publications of the Camden Society. He was the author of a Life of Richard III., of The English Church in the Sixteenth Century, and more recently of a three-volume work entitled Lollardy and the Reformation in England, an Historical Survey.