The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 101, July 1997 - April, 1998 Page: 555
574 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Book Reviews
The majority, however, were healers who made medicines from local ingredi-
ents. Such a one was Nancy "Grandma" Parker, who came to West Texas in the
early 187os and used herbs and roots for her tonics.
Curative waters, mud, and advice were valued. Special words or directions,
sometimes whispered in secret between doctor and patient, charms and
amulets produced benefits. Laying on of hands, still a ritual among some reli-
gious fundamentalists, had power. Such practices were sometimes associated
with the supernatural, but not always. The stories of Francis Schlatter, the
New Mexico Messiah, Teresa Urrea, the Saint of Cabora, and Don Pedrito,
the Healer of Los Olmos illustrate the use of these methods based on person-
al choice.
Treatments that depended greatly on the healer's personal charisma and
ability to get in touch with another's universal life force produced sciences
variously called Mesmerism, Hypnotism, and Personal Magnetism.
Many expected dramatic entertainment, and medicine shows provided it.
Frontier adventures were part of the medicine men's bios and troupes of per-
formers reenacted the adventures before getting around to cures such as
snake oil, learned from the Indians during their adventures, of course.
A glossary defining the various sciences and techniques, handwritten formu-
las from the George Halleck Center, and photographs of healers round out an
excellent folklore study.
Keller JOYCE ROACH
With Charity for All: Lincoln and the Restoration of the Union. By William C. Harris.
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997. Pp. x+354. Illustrations,
acknowledgments, introduction, epilogue, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN
o-8131-2oo7-1. $37.95, cloth.)
William C. Harris is a well-known scholar whose studies of Reconstruction in
Mississippi are the standard works on that state after the Civil War. In this book,
Harris ventures into the broader question of determining the motives behind
President Abraham Lincoln's plans for reconstructing the Union. Examining
the President's efforts to organize loyal governments in those Southern states
that came under the control of the Union Army during the war, he concludes
that Lincoln was driven throughout the process by conservative ideological rea-
sons, that he sought simply to restore the Southern states to the Union as they
had existed before the war with minimal changes in their constitutional and
political structures. His belief that restoration must take place at the hands of
Southern Unionists within this framework stood in the way of his development
of clearly stated demands on critical issues. While he hoped that these restored
states would abandon their spirit of disunion and the institution of slavery, he
did not believe he had the power to impose such conditions.
In this argument, Harris moves away from recent scholarship that has offered
different explanations for the President's policies. Among the more important
of these alternatives have been Eric Foner and David Donald's view of the policy1998
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 101, July 1997 - April, 1998, periodical, 1998; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117155/m1/638/: accessed May 1, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.