Guide to the Manuscript Collections of the New Jersey Historical Society by Don C. Skemer;Robert C. MorrisReview by: Peter J. ParkerThe Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 104, No. 3 (Jul., 1980), pp. 405-406Published by: The Historical Society of PennsylvaniaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20091505 .

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1980 BOOK REVIEWS 405

place in history. The financial techniques necessary to the building of

mergers had been evolved by others, notably in railroads and the utilities. But central management of an industrial bureaucracy was a new art. One

of the keys was control by statistics: here the railroads had lessons to

impart, and also the federal government's arsenals, as Roe Smith's research

has made clear. But it was Pierre du Pont who, for good or ill, taught

twentieth-century corporate executives how to do it. What is to be said by way of criticism? One must confess that the book's

wealth of detail can prove wearisome. And no one need feel ashamed if, after 500 pages or so, he finds it difficult to tell one du Pont from another. But it is hard to suggest how these problems could have been avoided. It is

precisely the empirical detail and the careful documentation that makes the book convincing and distinguishes it from all the myraid company histories and entrepreneurial biographies that are really thinly veiled propaganda.

And if the complexity of the du Pont clan's interrelationships is a trifle

overwhelming?well, that is really part of the story, and neither the authors nor their readers would stand a chance of understanding the interactions of family and firm if they oversimplified the matter. I would, however, have welcomed a few end-of-chapter summaries; certainly they would have

added to the length of an already large book, but they would have been

very welcome to a reader interested in distinguishing the forest from the trees. Pierre du Pont would probably have approved of them.

Amherst College Hugh G. J. Aitken

Guide to the Manuscript Collections of the New Jersey Historical Society.

Compiled by Don C. Skemer and Robert C. Morris. (Newark, N. J.: New Jersey Historical Society, 1979. [v], 245 p. Appendixes,

illustrations, index. $21.00.)

This is the second, considerably expanded edition of the New Jersey Historical Society's Guide to its manuscript collections, necessitated by a

three-fold increase in the number of the Society's collections since the

publication of the last guide in 1957. The result is an excellent introduction to 1,057 ?f the Society's historical collections. Some users may be disap pointed that the compilers chose to exclude groups of manuscript gene

alogical notes, but their decision was certainly a practical one. Had they included the genealogical notes, the guide's name index might well have been as long as the guide itself.

As it is, the index contains many more names than subject headings. And some of the subject headings are somewhat presentist: collection

descriptions incorporating the terms slave, negro, black and certain proper names have all been indexed under the rubric of Afro-Americans. However, the arrangement will present no real problems. Present, too, is a very useful

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4o6 BOOK REVIEWS July

chronological list of the Society's manuscript groups arranged by decades. The list clearly shows that the bulk of the Society's collections are middle and late nineteenth-century materials.

Those unfamiliar with the New Jersey Historical Society collections and with the workings of older historical societies may be somewhat perplexed by the organization of the guide. The compilers note in their introduction that certain of the collections contain materials that have been added since the first edition of the guide. In newer repositories where accession records are adequate, such new materials would be separately described. But be cause older repositories have generally wretched provenance records, the

compilers have correctly chosen to follow the logic of research by incor

porating "newly discovered" materials into existing collections.

Completing the guide is an agreeable selection of illustrations drawn from the manuscript groups, a brief description of the Society's own

archives, and a list of the microform holdings. In sum, a very satisfactory guide.

Historical Society of Pennsylvania Peter J. Parker

A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American

Character, 1775-1783. By Charles Royster. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1979. xviii, 452 p. Illustrations, appendixes, index.

$19.50.)

In this well-researched volume the author assumes that there was an

American character during the American War for Independence. His

approach is that of analytical history rather than a series of narratives, although in assessing the relationship between the Continental Army and the American character, he has adopted a chronological approach.

Liberty could survive, many Americans believed, only if the people were

able to demonstrate that they were worthy defenders of that liberty. And to make independence safe, many revolutionaries contended, there had to

be realized rigorous ideals of national character and civil policy in the final

victory. One matter that greatly motivated the revolutionaries was an

awareness of posterity, and they constantly told themselves, that if a

generation enslaved itself, it also enslaved its posterity, a posterity who

would never know freedom. And as for those who fought against England,

they seemed to expect their posterity to revere them even more than they revered their own ancestors.

The first year of fighting and the creation of a Continental, or regular army, was the beginning of Americans' response to the problems of recon

ciling lapses in revolutionaries' conduct with the rigor of absolute ideals. There were two kinds of failure that threatened to undermine the cause:

battlefield defeats, which seemed to call the Americans' native courage into doubt, along with the army's lack of discipline and decorum, which

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