The Midwest Quarterly; Vol. 27 No. 1

Authors

• Virginia J. Laas
• Mark A. Plummer
• Jeffery A. Hughey
• Robert K. Ratzlaff
• A. J. Shakeshaft
• Stuart Friebert
• Julie S. Hughes
• Midwest Quarterly Editors

Contents

ARTICLES

The Courtship and Marriage of Elizabeth Blair and Samuel Phillips Lee: A Problem in Historical Detection

Profile in Courage? Edmund G. Ross and the Impeachment Trial

The Last Stand of the Confederates in Missouri: The Battle of Newtonia, October 28, 1864, and its Place in Price’s Missouri Raid

The Evolution of a Gentleman-Politician: John Rutledge, Jr., of South Carolina

Social Security at Fifty Years: A Preface to Hard Choices

POEMS

My Brother's Keeper ....

Harvey Tells Us About Frohman Butcher

Psalmody

REMEMBRANCE

Teaching History

The Midwest Quarterly is happy to announce that it is opening its poetry section once more to submissions from all serious writers of poetry. The new poetry editor is particularly interested in well-mad, though not necessarily traditional, poems that see nature and the self in bold combinations, from writers striving to find expression for the ineffable, the inexplicable, the irrational, the unknown either in themselves or in the world around them.

The poetry editor is particularly interested right now in poems dealing with Halley's comet or other astronomical phenomena.

Abstract

in this issue. . .

The waters of historical research abound with shoals, whirlpools, and uncharted, if not unimportant, wastes. VIRGINIA J. LAAS relates one such encounter on a voyage of discovery related to the biography of Rear Admiral Samuel Phillips Lee she undertook with Dudley T. Cornish, a successful and altogether fortuitous collaboration which benefitted both scholars and their profession. The book which resulted, entitled The Life of Rear Admiral Samuel Phillips Lee, U.S. Navy, will be published in early 1986 by The University Press of Kansas. The marriage in 1843 of the young naval officer, then a Lieutenant in the service of his country, to Elizabeth Blair, both families of historical importance, would seem of only passing interest to all but a sentimentalist. In fact, Laas's essay shows what historical research is really about and it does so in a lively and entertaining fashion.

Laas received her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in history from Pittsburg State University in 1964 and 1966. After a fifteen-year hiatus devoted to raising three sons, she returned to academic life to teach part-time at PSU. It was then that her collaboration with Professor Cornish on their biography of Rear Admiral Lee began. Since 1981, she has published three articles on Elizabeth Blair Lee and the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron in Civil War History and the Journal of Southern History. She presently teaches at Pittsburg State University and Missouri Southern State College.

After getting the who, what, when, and where, right, the historian seeks to reconstruct the causes, context, and consequences of the event. So, too, does he try to correct erroneous appraisals of the subject in question. In the present case, MARK A. PLUMMER examines the self-proclaimed courage of Senator Edmund G. Ross of Kansas in voting against articles of impeachment for President Andrew Johnson. What Plummer finds is a man for whom calculation and advantage outweigh conviction and courage.

Subsequent to acquiring his first two degrees from Pittsburg State University, where the association with Professor Cornish "converted" him to history and to the exacting practice of that profession, Plummer went on to earn his Ph.D. from the University of Kansas in 1960. He is currently Professor of History at Illinois State University and is this year President of the Illinois State Historical Society. He has been Fulbright Professor at National Taiwan University, Chairman of the Department of History at Illinois State, and an active scholar. Author of two books, Frontier Governor: Samuel J. Crawford of Kansas (Lawrence, 1971), initially a dissertation topic suggested by Professor Cornish, and Robert G. Ingersoll: Peoria’s Pagan Politician (Macomb, 1985), as well as numerous articles on Civil War politics, Plummer includes among his first published works an article on "The Even-numbered Days" in the Autumn 1963 issue of The Midwest Quarterly.

The Civil War continues to attract the attention of historians, in part because of its significance, of course, and also because its complexity and impact touched so many lives, North and South, in such remarkable ways. Events in Kansas and Missouri during the war, while not as spectacular or as decisive as those on the other side of the Mississippi River, proved equally hard-fought and necessary to the war, s outcome. JEFFERY A. HUGHEY has chosen to examine the final engagement, the Battle of Newtonia, of a two-month long campaign by Confederate forces under General Sterling Price to take pressure off embattled Rebel troops to the east by operations in Missouri. The result was not the success the leaders of the CSA had hoped for, though Price did avoid capture or surrender. Hughey traces Price’s Raid from its origin in Confederate desperation to its close in rapid withdrawal from Missouri after the clash at Newtonia that both sides claimed as a victory.

Coming to Pittsburg State University from Baker University in Kansas, Hughey in 1981 completed his Master's degree at PSU under Dudley Cornish’s guidance. He has found employment as a history teacher at Parkwood High School in Joplin, Missouri, has published an article in Civil War Times Illustrated, and remains actively involved in "living history" interpretation of the sectional conflict. Hughey has demonstrated, in the classroom, in his writings, and on the field of encampment or mock battle, his enthusiasm for and professional commitment to history.

ROBERT K. RATZLAFF discusses an earlier period of division in the South, in this case the formation of political party structure in South Carolina. Ratzlaff gives the reader a glimpse of this process by means of following the education, early training and political development of John Rutledge, Jr., a third-generation aristocrat in that state. Though Rutledge remained a committed partisan of his state and nation, the machinations of Citizen Edmund Genêt and ratification of the Jay Treaty with England transformed the young South Carolinian into a staunch Federalist, and he continued to champion its cause during the years of success and afterwards as the party wandered toward dissolution.

With, a Bachelor’s degree from Kansas State University a Master’s degree from Pittsburg State and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Kansas, Ratzlaff has moved from a history teacher in Independence, Kansas, to Professor of History and Chairman of the History Department at Pittsburg State, the latter a post he assumed when Dudley Cornish stepped down in 1978. Ratzlaff’s particular interest in South Carolina in the years before the Civil War has produced a book, John Rutledge, Jr., South Carolina Federalist, 1766-1819 (New York, 1982), and the study Presented here, and he has published widely, at times in collaboration with another colleague, on the Early National period of American history and on the history of Southeast Kansas.

Unlike the social sciences  with which history shares some interests and methodology, history also partakes of the concern for the individual and for the life of the mind of the humanities. As part of that latter aspect, historians not only study literature they hold up for especial reverance those whose words are as majestic as the subjects they undertake to examine. Historians share with poets a dedication to selecting the right word to express what is meant, and this special issue includes three poems by STUART FRIEBERT, who made his debut as a poet in the pages of The Midwest Quarterly when Dudley Cornish served as its Editor-in-Chief. The brief encounters with three events Friebert provides here provoke amusement and reflection, a happy combination any historian would gladly achieve.

After taking his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Friebert taught German at Harvard, Mount Holyoke, and Oberlin, and he is currently Co-Editor of Field, a journal devoted to contemporary poetry and poetics, and directs the Creative Writing Program at Oberlin College. He has published ten collections of poems in English and German, the most recent of which are Nicht hinauslehnen and Uncertain Health. He has also published four collections of translations, with Karl Krolow's On Account Of: Selected Poems and Giovanni Raboni's The Coldest Year of Grace: Selected Poems (with Vinio Rossi) as the latest. Friebert was, along with David Young, editor of The Longman Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry: 1950- 1980. The poems printed here are from a new manuscript, Exposed Persons.

Study of the past develops out of concern with the conditions and values of the ever-advancing present. A. J. SHAKESHAFT focuses on an issue relevant to us all, one which will increasingly challenge the minds and hearts of scholars and public alike, the Social Security System. Friend and colleague of Dudley Cornish's since graduate-school days at Colorado, Shakeshaft here identifies four topics demanding attention and sketches the fiscal and philosophical issues involved in each. As we all race (some days) or stumble (others) toward the retirement Dudley Cornish has just achieved, we all have a stake in the outcome of this important New Deal program.

Recipient of Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the University of Colorado, Shakeshaft teaches political philosophy and the American judicial process at Iowa State University. He is a former member of the Iowa Humanities Board and in 1977 received the Outstanding Teacher Award, selected by the faculty, at Iowa State. In the 1950s he was Chief of State Plans of the federal hospital survey and construction program (Hill-Burton) in the U.S. Public Health Service, Washington, and maintains research interests in health policies. The article here grew out of that concern and from his view to providing readers with information on a topic of relevance to every one.

JULIE S. HUGHES provides a recollection of the influence of Professor Dudley T. Cornish as a mentor. Herself a teacher until her retirement from Missouri Southern State College, she documents the many ways an instructor can affect the direction and substance of a student's career. Hughes received her Bachelor's and Master's degrees from Pittsburg State University, and wrote a thesis on "Eugene Debs: The Kansas Years" under the direction of DTC.

Permissions to Use

In accordance with database agreements, the full text of the issue is not available for download. Pittsburg State Digital Commons has only provided the first 6 pages for author and publication information.

Recommended Citation

Laas, Virginia J.; Plummer, Mark A.; Hughey, Jeffery A.; Ratzlaff, Robert K.; Shakeshaft, A. J.; Friebert, Stuart; Hughes, Julie S.; and Midwest Quarterly Editors (1985) "The Midwest Quarterly; Vol. 27 No. 1," The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought: Vol. 27: Iss. 1, Article 1.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/mwq/vol27/iss1/1