The author’s family were whalers from Nantucket. Mr. Merrick is a good story-teller, and his book abounds with tales of traffic on the Mississippi River from 1854 to 1863.
The author originally came from Nantucket, and began as a pantry boy on the Mississippi, occupying every position in the steamboat and flat-boat business for a great many years, and his tales of war-times are intensely interesting. The book is not well named, however, because steamboating was a large business for over thirty years before the narrative begins. He tells interestingly of bringing to the front in April, 1861, Sherman’s Flying Artillery, the most famous organization in the old army, stationed at the time at Fort Ridgely, high up the Minnesota River. The Fanny Harris, the largest boat which had ever gone up the stream, received the battery on board, its commander then being no other than John C. Pemberton of Pennsylvania, at first a loyal Union officer, although afterwards the Confederate lieutenant-general at Vicksburg. His lieutenant was Romeyn B. Ayres, than whom no Federal officer of the Civil War was braver. The river was at flood, the perils of navigation great, but the emergency was pressing. The Fanny Harris dashed on at full speed, sometimes in the tortuous channel, sometimes crashing through narrow barriers of land into inundated bottoms and even woods, the battery-men meantime exclaiming that the risk to life in battle was far less than among those pouring waters. Three hundred miles down the current was accomplished in two days. The boat was almost stripped of smokestacks, light upper work, and nearly all of her guards, but the battery was delivered, guns and men, at Prairie du Chien. Its style is simple, but very interesting, and the book is beautifully illustrated and printed.
Texts of the Peace Conferences at The Hague, 1899 and 1907, with English translation and appendix of related documents. Edited by James Brown Scott, technical delegate of the United States to the Second Peace Conference at The Hague.
The volume is published by Ginn & Company of Boston and New York, of which our Librarian and Archivist, Mr. Thomas B. Lawler, is a partner. There is a twenty-five page introduction, giving an analysis and discussion of the work of the conferences. Most of the documents have been published elsewhere, and some of them many times, but it is well worth while to have them brought together in this convenient form. Ex-Secretary Root thinks the work of the Second Conference presents the greatest advance ever made at any single time towards the reasonable and peaceful regulation of international conduct, unless it be the advance made at The Hague Conference of 1899. The volume is complete and treats of the important factors in both conferences, and publishes the very valuable documents.
The Bibliographer’s Manual of American History, containing an account of all state, territory, town and county histories, etc., compiled by Thomas Lindsley Bradford, M. D.
Three volumes have thus far been issued, and each volume shows improvement over its predecessor. It is a valuable work and a most excellent compilation of documents of great advantage to students of American history, and furnishes a good means of observation to the members of the American Irish Historical Society to take in at a glance the history of so many places in this country.
The American Executive and Executive Methods. By John H. Finley, President of the College of the City of New York, and John F. Sanderson, member of the Pennsylvania Bar.
The joint authors of this book have maintained the high standard of scholarship that has characterized the series of which the volume under review is the final number. There are fourteen chapters upon the executive department of the American state, and the other eight deal with the federal executive, to which is added an appendix upon the presidential electoral system. Throughout the work reference is made to the excellent achievements of many Pennsylvania Irishmen, but Mr. Marshall S. Brown, who prints a review of the work, finds, among other things, that the book reflects somewhat the defects inherent in a work of dual authorship.
Winthrop’s Journal, 1630–1649. Edited by James Kendall Hosmer. Two volumes.
This is one of the series of “Original Narratives of Early American History.” The old title, “History of New England,” is given in this edition only as a sub-title, and the volumes appear to be what they are—a journal. Nevertheless, the work is interesting throughout, and would be a valuable addition to the Society’s library.