The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 66, July 1962 - April, 1963 Page: 181

Book Reviews

obscured. While occasional statements in the final chapter are
worthy of note, the overall result is that secession in both the
lower South and the upper South was strongest in counties where
slave holdings were greatest. Thus, concludes Wooster, the del-
egates from the heavy slave holding counties were convinced that
secession was needed to preserve their economic-social order.
The Secession Conventions of the South includes a number of
maps identifying delegates' home counties with their stands on
secession. Although the text attempts to explain this crazy-quilt
pattern of voting behavior by pointing out that certain counties
were economically poor or had few slaves, perhaps a more easily
grasped method of indicating this would have been a series of
several outline maps of the same state on a single page blocking
out such key information as voting, agricultural status, and slave
population of the individual counties.
As for style, the author seems straightforward and clear in those
areas where he develops his ideas or pursues some main point.
The many pages of flat historical facts and the discussions of
figures that also appear in the volume's seventy statistical tables,
however, both limit Wooster from making full use of his expressive
ability. The selected bibliography of secondary works includes a
number of valuable studies on secession activities within single
states and a rather large number of unpublished theses and dis-
sertations.
In all, Wooster has undertaken a tremendous task in obtaining
data from manuscript census records and reducing them to mean-
ingful tables and statistics. For gathering and presenting this in-
formation in digested form he is to be commended. Also, he has
presented the reader with a handy one volume summary of the
basic factors and forces at work in the secession sessions. It is un-
fortunate that his obscure conclusions detract from the book.
ALLAN C. ASHCRAFT
The Agricultural and Mechanical
College of Texas
Indian Civilizations. By Robert S. Reading. San Antonio (The
Naylor Company), ig61. Pp. xii+2oo. Illustrations, bibliog-
raphy. $4.95.
Reviewers of bad books, though they may be forced to search

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