The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 76, July 1972 - April, 1973 Page: 99

Book Reviews

Texas. For northern consumption Mississippi Senator Robert J.
Walker developed the widely accepted thesis that Texas, if annexed,
would attract slavery westward away from the soil-exhausted states of
the east. Texas, then, would serve as a safety valve through which
slaves would disappear into Mexico, and Central and South America.
The Walker thesis did not lead to ratification of the Texas treaty,
but it may have contributed to James K. Polk's success in certain
northern states in the 1844 election and to annexation by joint resolu-
tion of Congress. This is an important, provocative book, bringing
attention to an early example of executive manipulation of foreign
policy through covert domestic activities, and reminding us that
"Manifest Destiny" in the 184o's received a healthy shove from the
lightly regarded John Tyler.
New Mexico State University GENE BRACK
The Higher Realism of Woodrow Wilson and Other Essays. By Arthur
S. Link. (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1971. Pp. xxii+
425. $12.95.)
In this volume Arthur S. Link, the dean of Wilson scholars, con-
veniently collects twenty-four of his essays, all but two of which have
been published previously. Primarily they deal with Wilson and pro-
gressivism. In a twelve-page foreword Dewey W. Grantham sum-
marizes Link's major scholarly achievements and contends that his
essays "constitute a vital and generally neglected contribution to our
historical literature."
In addition to Link's devastating review of the 1967 Freud-Bullitt
book, the articles on Wilson analyze his Presbyterianism, his southern-
ness, his study of public administration, his governorship (in a pre-
viously unpublished 1964 address), and his role as party leader,
1913-1914. Six other articles generally provide much greater detail
than Link was able to include in Wilson: The Road to the White
House (1947) on aspects of the 1912 campaign and election: Texas,
Tennessee, Underwood, the Baltimore convention, the Negro, and
Roosevelt and the South.
Six more essays deal largely or entirely with Wilsonian diplomacy
regarding World War I: studies of neutrality, peace moves, the cot-
ton crisis of 1914-1915, Wilson's English critics, his "higher realism,"
and, most important, "'Wilson the Diplomatist' in Retrospect," a