George Caleb Bingham: Missouri's Famed Painter and Forgotten Politician.

George Caleb Bingham: Missouri's Famed Painter and Forgotten Politician. By Paul C. Nagel. Missouri Heritage Readers. (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, c. 2005. Pp. xx, 161. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 0-8262-1574-2.)

Today George Caleb Bingham is remembered as one of America's greatest painters. His paintings Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, The Verdict of the People, and Daniel Boone Escorting Settlers through the Cumberland Gap commonly illustrate college textbooks, making him one of the handful of antebellum American artists whose work the average American is likely to encounter. Bingham was also ambitious to make a name for himself in politics, yet his activities as a politician have generally been forgotten.

In this brief new biography, Paul C. Nagel attempts to correct this oversight by portraying "the complete George Caleb Bingham: the artist, the politician, and the person" (p. xv). A lofty goal for such a slim book. Nevertheless, Nagel succeeds in succinctly sketching Bingham's life as both an artist and a politician. Perhaps ironically, Bingham, whose paintings such as Jolly Flatboat-men in Port and Stump Speaking celebrate the common man and frontier democracy, became an ardent Whig. According to Nagel, Bingham came to despise the Democrats. His political sympathies were with the wealthy patrons for whom he painted rather than with the common man of the West. America, he thought, needed an assertive federal government guided by prosperous businessmen. "For Bingham, the American party division was one between rascals and gentlemen" (p. 30).

After an unsuccessful bid in 1846, Bingham was elected to a seat in the state legislature in 1848. While there, he put before the house the so-called Bingham Resolutions. Though he was himself a slaveholder, Bingham believed that the federal government should restrict the expansion of slavery in the interest of holding the Union together. Therefore, he offered his resolutions as a Unionist alternative to those introduced by Clairborne Fox Jackson, the Jackson Resolutions, which asserted that Congress had no constitutional authority to interfere with slavery in the territories. The Bingham Resolutions, which Nagel calls "the most important achievement of his career in politics," were defeated (p. 60). In 1860, with the Whig Party dead, Bingham supported the Constitutional Union ticket of John Bell and Edward Everett. However, he was not disappointed in Lincoln's election. He believed, wrongly, that Lincoln would be able to allay sectional tensions. During the Civil War, Bingham served as state treasurer, and from 1875 to 1877 he was Missouri's adjutant general. Despite his grand political aspirations, Bingham greatest legacy is his paintings, which "remind us that our republic's greatest strength arises from a citizenry where private aspirations do not smother individuals' awareness of public responsibility" (p. 153).

This amply illustrated and affordable paperback is part of the Missouri Heritage Readers series. Books in the series are designed to serve as easily accessible studies of the state's history and cultural heritage. Though the target audience for the book is "new adult readers," the volume would also be suitable for freshman surveys (p. iii). Since it was not written for an academic audience, the book lacks footnotes and a full bibliography. There is not much in this book for scholars, but nonspecialists and undergraduates will find it is a dearly written introduction to the life of one of America's greatest artists.

SEAN R. BUSICK

Kentucky Wesleyan College