Rear Admiral John Rodgers, 1812-1882 by Robert Erwin JohnsonReview by: William J. MorganThe American Historical Review, Vol. 74, No. 1 (Oct., 1968), pp. 282-283Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1857829 .

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282 Reviews of Books

passed through successive transformations over the past 150 years, conceptions of industrial education have changed significantly. Fisher sketches three clusters of images and ideals, each of which came to the fore at a particular stage of industrial development. The "philanthropic ideal," first enunciated during the Jacksonian era, cast industrial education as an instrument for preserving the independence of the new factory "artisan" by immersing him in culture through mechanics institutes, lyceums, and common schools. The "ideal of success," which came into its own along with the self-made man after the Civil War, conceived of industrial education as a device for group and individual mobility through the diffusion of scientific and technical knowledge. The "ideal of the skilled workman," which was closely tied to early twentieth-century concerns for efficiency, conceived of industrial education as trade training coupled with appropriate vocational guid- ance. These three ideals, Fisher goes on to say, have been interpreted differently in different regions of the United States, and so she follows the explicatory chapters with two case studies: one traces the development of industrial educa- tion in the South from the earliest efforts to advance southern manufactures through the massive programs of the General Education Board in the years before World War I; the other traces the development of industrial education in the Far West, focusing on southern California with its lively aircraft industry. A final chapter treats the period since the passage of the Smith-Hughes Act in I9I7, stressing the persistence of the three ideals and their relevance to present-day political and educational discussion.

One need only compare the substance and sources of this treatise with those of the classic in the field, Charles Alpheus Bennett's two-volume History of Manual and Industrial Education (I926, I937), to sense the freshness of Fisher's approach. What she has really done is to place the problem of industrial edu- cation in a much broader perspective, examining a number of relatively unex- plored connections with other aspects of American social and economic history. The very breadth of her inquiry, however, coupled with a certain lack of pre- cision in her terminology and style, has lent a measure of diffuseness to the discussion that one hopes will be corrected as Fisher and others pursue further work on the problem.

Columbia University LAWRENCE A. CREMIN

REAR ADMIRAL JOHN RODGERS, I8I2-I882. By Robert Erwin Johnson. (Annapolis, Md.: United States Naval Institute. I967. Pp. xiv, 426. $Io.oo.)

ExCEPT for the War of I8I2 at one end and the Spanish-American War at the other, this book is virtually a history of the US Navy in the nineteenth century.

A naval officer register that did not include one or more members of the Rodgers family was as unthinkable as taking a ship to sea without a rudder. This John Rodgers joined the service in I828, and, until his death fifty-four years later, he actively wore the navy blue.

Midshipman Rodgers entered a small, tightly ingrained sailing navy where his father, the commodore (also John), could readily obtain choice assignments for him. Young Rodgers went first to the Mediterranean in the USS Constellation, captained by his uncle. This was followed by duty in the sloop of war Concord,

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Americas 283 commanded by Matthew Calbraith Perry who was related to the Rodgers clan by marriage. The apprenticeship of John Rodgers was well guided.

The Civil War offered Rodgers and other officers of his generation a chance for daring deeds and personal recognition, and his combat experience during the conflict was extensive and varied. He took part in many of the more important naval actions. With the monitor Weehawken, he captured the Confederate iron- clad ram Atlanta. Rodgers' most far-reaching strategic achievement was the purchase and outfitting of the first three Union gunboats on western waters. They were the beginning of a river force that fatally severed the Confederacy along the Mississippi.

Rodgers' long span embraced important events and revolutionary changes in the weapons of naval warfare. The Civil War was preceded by the Mexican War, and before that the Seminole Wars were fought in the forbidding Ever- glades. Improved technology brought steam propulsion, ironclads, rifled cannon, and steel ships.

Mr. Johnson's work is detailed and well-documented naval history. He writes "navalese" with a sailor's flair that becomes a little heavily salted at times. This book is a solid narrative account. However, it is one that is difficult to evaluate as biography.

The reader, and I suspect even the author, does not get to know John Rodgers or his influence and total impact on the navy. He never seems to be cast in the leading role. Rodgers lacks the flamboyancy of David Dixon Porter, the personal appeal of Farragut, the lasting intellectual stimulus of Mahan. Rarely do we hear his voice alone. Therein, perhaps, as an effective catalyst, lies the essence of John Rodgers.

Johnson foregoes the customary summation of his subject's attributes and contributions. In almost a final sentence he does note that the admiral's "career had encompassed so much of the Navy's history." To this one can only reply, "Yes, it did."

Navy Department WILLIAM J. MORGAN

SOLDIERS ON THE SANTA FE TRAIL. By Leo E. Oliva. (Norman: Uni- versity of Oklahoma Press. I967. Pp. Xi, 226. $4.50.)

IN Soldiers on the Santa Fe Trail, Leo Oliva sets out to provide "an integrated military history of the Santa Fe Trail from the first escort in I829 to the arrival of the railroad at Santa Fe in i88o." He has no difficulty in establishing the important role the US Army played in guarding caravans and immigrants on that historic route or in convincing the reader that the trail was also a strategic mili- tary lifeline for the Indian fighting army on the Plains and in the Southwest.

After a brief and nicely balanced summary of the familiar history of the origins and rise of the Santa Fe trade, Oliva proceeds at once to detail a thorough, accurate chronicle of the early military escorts, the troubles with such Texan raid- ers as the Snively and Warfield expeditions, and the march of Kearny's "Army of the West." Along with 0. 0. Winther and others he correctly observes that the old Santa Fe trade operated exclusively by merchants ended with the Mexican War, but that gold-rush immigrants and a new freighting trade in military

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