1000 The Journal of American History Louis P. Cain Northwestern University Evanston, Illinois and Loyola University Chicago Chicago, Illinois doi: 10.1093/jahist/jaaa492 Brigham Young and the Expansion of the Mormon Faith. By Thomas G. Alexander. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2019. xxiv, 392 pp. $29.95.) Scholars of Mormon history have long awaited Thomas G. Alexander’s biography of Brigham Young, and the author has rewarded their patience with a deft portrait of one of nineteenth-century America’s most divisive figures. Those who have read John Turner’s engaging 2012 biography Brigham Young: Pioneer Profit—which appeared almost three decades after Leonard J. Arrington’s American Moses (1985)—might wonder if we need a new study of Joseph Smith’s successor in such quick succession. Alexander’s rendering is warranted, despite its limitations. Alexander wrote the book for the Oklahoma Western Biographies series at the request of Richard W. Etulain, who excuses the fact that the “volumes . . . carry no notes” by explaining that “they are prepared by leading scholars” (p. xi). Although the book does not “break new ground,” Alexander demonstrates an intimate knowledge of the many primary sources that illuminate Young’s life (p. xiii). He also uses prior biographies and scholarship to offer a straightforward narrative, but one that yields a rich portrayal of how Young led the Latter-day Saints during a determinative period. Readers who place their trust in the author will appreciate the execution. While Turner situates Young’s religious life in a broad American context, Alexander details Young’s interactions with Mormons and Gentiles in the West. His attention to place results in meticulous discussions of land surveys and irrigation efforts, as well as careful descriptions of the sometimes-violent interactions between Mormons and local American Indian tribes. Alexander notes cases when Young’s policies led to death, as in his order to hold natives hostage during the Black Hawk War (1865– 1872), but also cases in which flouting his direction led to violence, as when some church members ignored his policy of defense and conciliation during the Wakara War (1853– 1854). Alexander argues that Young’s power “extended only as far as those in the community willingly followed his advice” (p. 104). This pays off in his analysis of the 1857 Mountain Meadows massacre, where he counters scholarship that places blame at Young’s feet and instead faults the local leader Isaac Haight. Furthermore, in contrast to some studies of the event, Alexander's book tracks how authorities rebuffed Young’s repeated efforts to help bring the perpetrators to justice. While the author acknowledges that the Mormon leader’s rhetoric sometimes had violent repercussions, he contends that Young more often strove to promote peace. Although Alexander brings attention to developments overlooked by other biographers— including Young’s reorganization of the church’s structure—the book is as interested in the Utah Saints as it is in Young. Other Americans only factor into the story as they enter the space or act in ways that impinge directly on the Saints, as with the many government officials who made life difficult for them. While Alexander describes Young’s plural marriages and sermons, he does not probe his inner life. In the final chapter, Alexander states that “religion had guided Brigham Young’s life since he was old enough to make choices for himself ” (p. 327). Readers might question whether Alexander has demonstrated this unless they remember his prior statement that “Young and most Mormons recognized no division between the religious and the temporal” Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jah/article/107/4/1000/6157183 by guest on 07 March 2021 accounts as comprehensively as she did her household accounts, an important trait when she became a widow in 1865. Late in life Juliette referred to John and herself as the “grandfather and grandmother of Chicago” (p. 65). She left the city in 1870 and died later that year, one year before the Chicago fire razed her “grandchild.” Keating, a renowned historian of Chicago, has written a fascinating book about the city’s first historian. March 2021 Book Reviews (p. 280). Himself a Latter-day Saint, Alexander provides a grounded depiction that is less about the “expansion of the Mormon faith” than it is about how Young ensured the faith’s temporal salvation. doi: 10.1093/jahist/jaaa540 “There Is a North”: Fugitive Slaves, Political Crisis, and Cultural Transformation in the Coming of the Civil War. By John L. Brooke. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2019. xx, 404 pp. Cloth, $90.00. Paper, $26.95.) John L. Brooke’s book focuses on the decade preceding the Civil War. He argues that abolitionists had struggled for two decades to move the issue of slavery to the top of the national agenda but failed to bring a significant segment of the northern population to their movement. Party attachments connected to patronage, economic links and interests tied to the South, and a lack of sense of urgency about the issue of slavery, kept most northerners ambivalent to abolition. Two convergent events transformed northern opinions about slavery. First, the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act (1850), which encouraged slave catchers with new Federal powers to sweep through northern communities, made slavery more visible to northerners. The second event—the publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)—happened within the context of the proliferation of newspapers, books, and theater in the expanding public cultural space of the midcentury. Seeing and reading news reports about blacks being ripped from their homes and places of work, thrown into Federal holding areas, and whisked off to the South without a trial by jury enraged thousands of northerners (some fifty thousand gathered in Boston to protest Anthony Burn’s rendition in 1854), Brooke argues that equally important in moving sentiment toward antislavery was the publication, wide distribution, and theatrical presentations of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Brooke does an excellent job describing just how wide the influence of this book was not just as a book or a newspaper serial but also in the many and varied adaptations of the book for the stage. Uncle Tom’s Cabin opened the public space for a wide variety of popular presentations of antislavery themes. The Fugitive Slave Law and the publication and wide readership of Uncle Tom’s Cabin created the context for antislavery to move from the political shadows to the political mainstream, and the creation of the Republican party, and from there the inevitable Civil War. “There Is a North” has many strengths. Brooke does a masterly job untangling the messy political world of proslavery, antislavery, conservative Whigs and Democrats, and nativists. His presentation of evidence for the importance of Stowe’s work certainly gives weight to Abraham Lincoln’s remark that she was the author of the Civil War itself. If one wants a work that captures the cultural and political feel of the decade leading up to the Civil War, this is such a book. That being said, there are significant drawbacks to this book. Brooke’s theoretical analysis was not helpful to this reader. It did not contribute to the book’s central point. I would have preferred a more direct approach to the material. Brooke’s detail enlivens much of the narrative, but at times it just bogs down the story. I also feel, to make his point, Brooke deemphasized the role the abolitionists played in setting the stage for the political realignment of the 1850s. John T. Cumbler Suffolk University Boston, Massachusetts doi: 10.1093/jahist/jaaa493 Fugitivism: Escaping Slavery in the Lower Mississippi Valley, 1820–1860. By S. Charles Bolton. (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2019. x, 302 pp. $34.95.) Each generation adds new fictions to the old myths of the fabled Underground Railroad. So, despite the best efforts of scholars, Americans believe that fugitive slaves, armed with coded quilts, marched northward along Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jah/article/107/4/1000/6157183 by guest on 07 March 2021 Jordan Watkins Brigham Young University Provo, Utah 1001