nativism, assimilation, ethnic diversity, and group

hopelessness by reworking a myth foundational tothe nation’s origin’’ (7). Regardless of the harshness

of Roosevelt’s rhetoric, he sought to provide a wayfor ‘‘others’’ to achieve equality as Americans. The

prerequisites were strength and character. These couldlead to true status as Americans for immigrants, for the

continent’s Native Indian population, and for AfricanAmericans.

Conversely, native-born whites could prove them-selves unworthy to be ‘‘American.’’ The prevailingnativist rhetoric he cast as the ‘‘opposite of his

Americanism.’’ Rather, it was un-American, ‘‘with its‘boasting and vainglorious ignorance of everything

good and bad in this country’’’ (33). Such people were‘‘unfit,’’ regardless of race or place of birth.

Although it is fairly brief, Dorsey’s book isadmirably broad. His treatment of TR is far more

balanced and insightful than many far more extensivestudies, and he is not content to deal with merehistorical issues. He extrapolates his findings into

contemporary America, and even discusses today’shysteria regarding Mexican immigrants—especially

those who enter the country in violation of currentlaws. One is tempted to resort to the cliche that the

more things change, the more they remain the same.Dorsey puts it clearly, saying that ‘‘the relevance of

Roosevelt’s rhetorical discourses in contemporaryAmerican society is unmistakable. He was, for his time,

a rhetorical broker of identity who simultaneouslysimplified and complicated the issues of assimilation,ethnicity, immigration, and race to ensure the nation’s

unity, viability, and progress’’ (148). He proceeded tosay that this all affected him at a personal level. His son,

biracial, would come to him one day, he said, wanting toknow why some people considered him ‘‘different.’’

In relating why he would have to prove himself inways that many others do not, Dorsey said, he would

tell him about ‘‘Pop,’’ and about his own father’sadvice. ‘‘I will even tell him about Roosevelt,’’ hewrote, and said the he could only hope that when he

and his son finished talking about the ‘‘pure andsimple’’ nature of American identity, they would be

able both ‘‘to muster something more than a resignedshrug’’ of their shoulders.

With his We are All Americans, Pure and Simple,Dorsey has made a true contribution, both to cultural

studies and to the voluminous literature on Theodore

Roosevelt.

—Max J. Skidmore

University of Missouri-Kansas City

Women & Children First: Nineteenth-

Century Sea Narratives & American

IdentityRobin Miskolcze. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,

2007.

Everyone knows that when a ship is sinking,women and children get the first seats in lifeboats;

then men may take what’s left. And the last one to leaveis the captain. But what everyone knows is a relativelyrecent convention, says Robin Mickolcze. In 1854 the

US Arctic took four hours to sink after having collidedin the fog with a French steamer. Of those who

boarded lifeboats, 70% were crew and only 30% werepassengers. Not a single woman or child was saved.

News of the disaster was bad enough, but accountsof the selfishness of the men were even worse for a

nation that prided itself on being a city on a hill, aChristian model for the rest of the world to follow—what Alexis de Tocqueville had termed American

exceptionalism. Miskolcze says this event shookAmerica to its very core: the nation had failed to live

up to its own espoused ideals. Three years later theCentral America—carrying men, women, children, and

gold—was hit by a hurricane on its way back fromCalifornia. Three-quarters of those on board perished,

a quarter of a million dollars in gold was lost, butunder the direction of Captain Herndon all thirty

women and twenty-six children were saved. Thistragedy, horrific though it was, vindicated America’sbelief in itself. Men had sacrificed their own interests—

wealth and life itself—to protect women and children.The nation’s outpouring of sympathy was immediate

and overwhelming. Newspaper readers subscribed to afund for the widow of Captain Herndon—as water

engulfed the ship, he was last seen on the bridgecalmly smoking a cigar—and a monument to his

memory was erected on the grounds of the US NavalAcademy.

346 Journal of American Cultures � Volume 31, Number 3 � September 2008

Miskolcze reads antebellum sea narratives—factual

and fictional—as coded cultural parables: they portraywomen as models of Christian and American ideals.

What happens to women tests and explores anxietiesabout national identity. Her first two chapters take a

chronological look a sea deliverance stories. EarlyPuritan accounts manipulated anecdotal details so that

survival could be seen as evidence of the providentialhand of God’s protecting his chosen people: those

coming to his New World. At the end of the eighteenthcentury, accounts showed that shipwreck survivaldepended not only on God’s intervention but

also on man’s ingenuity. And by the nineteenthcentury, America was in fascinated by the exquisite

sentiment (with an undeniable element of titillation)evoked by accounts of women in danger at sea. The

code that demanded saving women served as a morallesson from pulpit and editorial page.

Miskolcze’s final three chapters explore specialcases. Chapter four is about the slave trade. Aware ofthe rhetorical impact of stories about women at risk,

abolitionists would often describe slave women indanger of shipwreck—both literal and symbolic. For

instance, Harriet Beecher Stowe envisioned Eliza’shopping from ice floe to ice floe as a kind of Middle

Passage. Abolitionists hoped to elicit the deeplyingrained sympathies of white men for the plight of

women, regardless of color. And the stories hadbroader metaphorical implications for the slave trade:

shipwrecks, like auctions, separated women from theirhusbands and children. Chapter five examines heavilyfictionalized American accounts of English women

enslaved after a shipwreck. Miskolcze says that,despite wars and political arguments between the

peoples of the two nations, Americans saw the Englishas their cultural soul mates. Because the best British

women (that is, those of the higher social classes)

persistently and effectively resisted sexual pressure

from their captor, virtue deservedly led to the rewardof being rescued by their husbands. Chapter six

addresses America’s almost obsessive interest in cross-dressed women seafarers. James Fenimore Cooper

used such women to define the ideals of Americanmanhood in three thematically related novels: The

Pilot, Red Rover, and The Water Witch. In each casethe woman disguised herself as a means to an end:

emotional and spiritual reunion with her man. But inCooper’s later novel Jack Tier cautioned that genderdisguise may have hazardous consequences—here, the

cross-dressed woman has lost her femininity andtherefore is not romantically reunited with her

husband.Miskolcze’s book selects intriguing primary

narratives—some are examined here for the first time.She is conversant with secondary sources. For exam-

ple, she makes telling use of Etienne Balibar’s term‘‘fictive ethnicity’’ to describe America’s insecureinfatuation with all things English. She does a fine job

describing sea narratives (her analysis of Cooper’s fournovels is particularly good) and reading visual images,

but sometimes her insistence that a nonshipwreck eventis a metaphorical shipwreck stretches the primary

material too far. Her observations are frequentlypungent but, as in much academic writing, her

prose style tends toward blandness. In her relativelybrief survey (177 pages of text), Miskolcze demonstrates

that sea narratives treat women as cultural treasures,representing America’s covenant with God and belief incommunity. The inclusion of women, far from

being incidental, is racially essential. As she says,‘‘America relied on the notion that men must save

women first.’’—Stephen Curley

Texas A&M University at Galveston

347Book Reviews