The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 85, July 1981 - April, 1982 Page: 458

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Southwestern Historical Quarterly

"disagreeable in the extreme-an unpleasant country and a wretched
people," but was delighted with the area around San Antonio because
of its German population, which he described as "free-thinking" and
"cultivated" (pp. 271, 273). Olmsted was so taken with the Germans
that he quickly became the enthusiastic champion of dividing Texas
to create one or more new states dominated by these intelligent and
energetic immigrants. Anglo-American settlers, he wrote, tend toward
"barbarism," while the "genial" Germans would create a "prosperous,
wealthy, healthy-minded, and happy community and a great, free, in-
dependent state" (p. 306). For years after his visit, Olmsted remained
committed to the idea of creating "Western Texas" as a barrier against
slavery extension. His continuing enthusiasm is revealed in Chapter
VII, which contains a number of letters written during 1857 in an
effort to stimulate free-labor immigration to the Southwest.
Olmsted's papers do not reveal any great change in his views on the
South and slavery from 1852 to 1857. He was never an abolitionist and
did not share the moral certainty and immediatism of that group. But
he was always a sectionalist, and his feelings, although perhaps inten-
sified to some extent by the threat of slavery extension after 1854,
were confirmed by his journeys. Overall, the view of slavery and the
South that emerges from these papers is not notably different from
that presented in his famous books. The materials in this volume do,
however, as the editors promised, supplement Olmsted's own publica-
tions and fill out the record. The letters and documents included are
themselves supplemented by a useful biographical directory of in-
dividuals important in Olmsted's life during these years and by an-
notated itineraries of his journeys. In the future, those who plan to use
Olmsted as a source on the antebellum South will be well advised to
consult this compilation of his papers as well as his published works.
North Texas State University RANDOLPH B. CAMPBELL
Gone From Texas: Our Lost Architectural Heritage. By Willard B.
Robinson. (College Station, Tex.: Texas A8cM University Press,
1981. Introduction, photographs, illustrations, glossary, bibliog-
raphy, index. Pp. xix+ 296. $29.95.)
Will Robinson's Gone From Texas will find its place on the shelves
of those interested in historic Texana. Continuing a concern originally
focused by John Mead Howells in his Lost Examples of Colonial Archi-
tecture, published during 1931, and Lost America: From the Missis-

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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 85, July 1981 - April, 1982, periodical, 1981/1982; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101208/m1/516/ocr/: accessed March 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.

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