John David Smith

Racial Borders: Black Soldiers along the Rio Grande: Leiker, James N: College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 241 pp., Publication Date: March 2002

imagine how Addams’s thought could improve our own political culture. She draws for her general audience the contours of U.S. women’s and political history in the course of onc woman’s life. Jane Addams is best known as the social activist who started Hull House in Chicago. She is representative of Progressive reformHull House became a model for hundreds of other settlement houses-yet she stands apart from its aims of social control. Elshtain concedes that many reformers did condescend to “the poor,” but she permits no such characterixation of Addams: Addams wanted to bring ncighbors together as subjects, not just objects, of social change. She provided space for study, dance, theater, and the arts, all of which she believed spoke to our universal humanity. Her particular concern with children’s welfare led her to articulate a social model in which “family claims,” such as those involving nurture, are not always sacrificed for the “social claims” of the wider world. Elshtain admires Addams, a lot. And at times this affects her tone: Striking the same note over and over, she tells us, rather than shows us, that we should appreciate Addams’s contributions. It makes for some fervent and ultimately tiresome prose. Still, her advocacy does not keep her from critically analyzing Addams’s pacifism: In declaring that society had moved beyond the need for martial values, Addams abandoned her usual approach, which sought to incorporate conflicting positions not just override one of them. Elshtain’s critical perspective loses focus, though, when it comes to sexuality. She shields Addams from what she considers women’s historians’ undue attention to sexuality; specifically, yet without mentioning the word, she dissociates Addams from any kind of lesbian activity. Elshtain succeeds in explaining what sexual instincts may have meant to this generation of single, activist women, but her method renders Addams’s sex life entirely taboo. Elshtain intends this monograph for the reading public. Accompanying it is a fine collection of Addams’s writings, which Elshtain edited. The Jane Addams Reader features essays that would enrich college courses on women’s history, political theory, peace studies, and social welfare.