Review: Undoing Manifest Destiny

November 3, 2026November 2, 2026 / rtrube54 / Leave a comment

Undoing Manifest Destiny

Undoing Manifest Destiny, L. Daniel Hawk. IVP Academic (ISBN: 9781514008645) 2026.

Summary: Through vignettes from Ohio history, questions narratives used to justify injustices against Native peoples.

“I live on the ancestral Lands of the Miami and Hopewell peoples. This Land was ceded in the 1795 Treaty of Greenville.” This is the land acknowledgement I’ve appended for some years to my email signature. In this treaty the Indigenous peoples of Ohio ceded roughly three fourths of what is now Ohio to the United States, retaining the land of the northwest quadrant for their own use. The treaty was never enforced and settlers encroached on this remaining land.

Like the author of this book, I’ve lived all my life in the state of Ohio. The name of the state and most of its rivers and many counties derive from indigenous names. My wife has a collection of arrowheads found in her backyard, not far from a tribal gathering area on the east side of Youngstown. We live a couple hours from the site of the massacre of Moravian Christian Native people at Gnadenhutten. In the quadrant reserved for Indigenous peoples, particularly the Wyandottes, they were eventually expelled, traveling their own “trail of tears.”

I am a lifelong fan of Cleveland baseball. However, from the first time I saw the demeaning image of Chief Wahoo outside the old Municipal Stadium, I sensed something wasn’t right. I approved the name changed to the Guardians, so appropriate to the carved figures (“the Guardians”) on the Bob Hope Bridge approaching Progressive Field from the west. And I live in a city named after the “discoverer” of America, a city that removed a statue of him in recent years from in front of City Hall. October 12 is now Indigenous Peoples Day in our city.

L. Daniel Hawk descends from a German family that settled in the northwest Ohio town of Tiffin. An Old Testament professor at Ashland Seminary, he also has studied Ohio’s treatment of Indigenous people. Likewise, he explores the conquest narratives in Joshua and their use to support American settler narratives. He brings all this together in a rich exploration designed not to blame or shame but to encourage us to question those narratives. He writes particularly for those of us who, like him are descendants of White settlers.

Each chapter of the book begins with a vignette from Ohio history, a number which I’ve mentioned. He begins with a statue of the Indian Maid overlooking his home of Tiffin. He considers the settler narratives that justified dispelling the Seneca peoples. In succeeding chapters, he explores the use of the doctrine of discovery along with the creation mandate to seize land and efforts to extort, exterminate, expel, and erase indigenous peoples.

Then he explores five “tropes” used to construct native peoples, four of which are under the fifth, the Vanishing American. All of these help explain by White settlers are the rightful possessors of the land. The other tropes are the Ignoble Savage and the Noble Savage, and the Indigenous helper (e.g. Pocahontas) and the White Savage.

When Hawk turns to Joshua, he does not find many direct references to Joshua’s conquest in early colonial writing. However, he does find parallels in the theological justifications of violence, displacement and seizure of the land. He also notes the parallels of Indigenous helpers, Rahab in Joshua and Pocahontas and Sacagawea in the American context.

The concluding chapter offers hope and help for those deconstructing the American settler colonialist narrative. It can be hard and there may be pushback, as he notes our city experienced in removing the Columbus statue. Our state has doubled down against teaching students, even in college, “divisive” concepts. Sadly, they miss the truth that it is only by interrogating our narratives that we can begin to explore healing pathways. He concludes with one such example, in which his denomination restored a Wyandotte mission and burial ground to the living descendents of the Wyandotte nation, now living in Oklahoma, marked by exchanges of gifts and shared celebration. Instead of division, there was a new friendship.

What makes this such a compelling study is that Hawk models what he invites the reader to consider. He interrogates his own situation, his own history, working from there to set it in a larger national context. Rather than write a piece on national policy, he exemplifies the thoughtful and hard work Christian individuals and congregations might engage to undo the myths of national origin and destiny, including Christian overlays, by which our forebears perpetrated grave wrongs. Then, he points to ways we can pursue making things right in our sphere, as we connect with Indigenous peoples. Rather than suppress history or cause division, he points to awareness that can heal.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Beyond the River

January 16, 2026January 15, 2026 / rtrube54 / Leave a comment

Beyond the River

Beyond the River, Ann Hagedorn. Simon & Schuster. (ISBN: 9780684870663) 2004.

Summary: A history of the Underground Railroad line passing through Ripley, Ohio, featuring the Rankin family and other townspeople.

One of the aspects of Ohio history of which I am most proud is our efforts to end slavery. From the advocacy of countless individuals to Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the numerous lines of the Underground Railroad, moving slaves to freedom in Canada, Ohio was on the forefront of opposing this form of human bondage. We are the home of the National Underground Freedom Center in Cincinnati. When I was a campus minister at Ohio State, I learned that one of those lines ran through the land that would become Ohio State, with a stop where the main library would later be located. The newest iteration of the student union features a three-story octagonal structure at the south end, an architectural representation of a lantern, a symbol for a stop on the underground railroad. Incidentally, The Lantern is also the name of the student newspaper.

Enough for giving kudos to my home state. Or not quite, because this review features a small Ohio town on the Ohio River that played a major role in underground railroad history. Ripley, Ohio is about as far south as you can get and still be in Ohio. Early settlers to the town included a number from the South who abhorred slavery. The town sat just across from Kentucky, a slave state on the north edge of the South. In between sat the river, which would sometimes freeze over in the city or run shallow in the summer.

Ann Hagedorn writes a vivid account of the townspeople who rescued and sheltered slaves, setting them on their way to Canada through a network of stops spanning the state. In order to write this history, Hagedorn moved to Ripley. Thus, she interviewed descendants, mined local archives, and saw the lay of the land, largely unchanged.

A figure who looms large in the account is Rev. John Rankin. He was among those moving from the South, not only because he opposed slavery, but had the temerity to do so in his preaching. The call to Ripley brought him to a small church more amenable to his views. The church not only served as a platform for his views but also a springboard to abolitionist advocacy and organizing throughout the state and nationally. Hagedorn chronicles how he “walked the talk” in helping fugitive slaves on their way north. He moved out of town to build a house atop the hill with a lantern that could be seen from across the river. Slaves knew to make for the lantern. Rankin’s whole family was involved and Hagedorn chronicles how mother and sons, toting guns repelled slave hunters seeking fugitives.

With the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, aiding fugitives was illegal. Hagedorn describes the ways “stationmasters” avoided detection. For example, they usually knew only the next stop so that they limited exposure of the line. Fugitives were moved quickly. Often, townspeople did not know who else was involved.

But some paid heavily. John Mahan was one. Hagedorn describes how slave hunters from Kentucky trapped him. Subsequently, officials extradited him to Kentucky. After months in jail, the jury acquitted him of criminal charge, allowing him to return home. However, legal costs, and a subsequent civil trial for damages from the slave owner led to bankruptcy.

Ripley had its own Harriet Tubman. John Parker was a former slave, who made frequent forays into Kentucky to bring slaves across the Ohio. All this was at great risk, especially when he saw wanted posters with his picture. But he never got caught.

Hagedorn shows the connections those in Ripley had to a wider network, particularly abolitionists in Cincinnati. One winter, the rescue, over melting ice of a slaved named Eliza and her children, contributed to one of the most memorable narratives in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

The narrative also traces the intensification of the hostility as more slaves crossed the river that mirrored the rising hostility between north and south. This included increasing incidents of violent attacks on Ripley residents.

Hagedorn combines scrupulous scholarship with vivid storytelling. She introduces us to “everyday heroes” as well as dominant figures like John Rankin. Also, behind this story is the question of when moral conviction and the laws of the land conflict. Hagedorn draws out the “higher law” that drove people like Rankin to courageously subvert the legal structures supporting slavery. Again, the local situation illustrates how untenable it is to sustain such a conflict. Something to think about.

Review: Unlikely General

January 2, 2025January 1, 2025 / rtrube54 / Leave a comment

Cover image of "Unlikely General" by Mary Stockwell

Unlikely General: “Mad” Anthony Wayne and the Battle for America, Mary Stockwell. Yale University Press (ISBN: 9780300251876) 2018.

Summary: A biography of “Mad” Anthony Wayne centered on his successful campaign to defeat Native tribes in the Northwest Territory.

For three years I lived one block from the Anthony Wayne Trail (part of US 24) in Toledo, Ohio. I knew little more than that it was the fastest way to downtown Toledo from our apartment, and that Anthony Wayne had fought against Native tribes in that part of northwest Ohio, and that Fort Wayne, southwest on US 24, was named after him.

Mary Stockwell’s biography of Wayne renders a far more complicated portrait of this man and explains why he succeeded where others before him failed on what was then the northwest frontier of the young country. Wayne had been one of Washington’s “warhorses” during the War for Independence. He led successful campaigns at Ticonderoga, Germantown, Stony Point (a signature victory against a British strong point), and after Yorktown, in Georgia, leading to the disbanding of British forces in the South.

Yet Washington was ambivalent about him. He reminds me of Grant. He was an aggressive fighter in contrast to the more cautious Washington, sometimes exposing himself to risks. Stockwell describes this ambivalence. Wayne did all asked of him by Washington and would do more. Yet others advanced past him. Stockwell interleaves Wayne’s Revolutionary War career with the account of Wayne’s campaign in the Ohio country of the Northwest Territory. By doing so, we meet a general at once an aggressive fighter and disciplinarian, yet one who struggled with self doubts.

Like Grant, Wayne struggled with what to do when he was not fighting. He endangered his estate in Pennsylvania with bad land acquisitions in the South. He briefly served in Congress. He at least flirted with an affair. He drank, suffered from old war injuries, and gout.

Yet American affairs were going badly. The British refused to settle a string of forts in Ohio and what is now Michigan. They enlisted a confederacy of tribes to fight for them in an effort to prevent settlement north of the Ohio River despite an agreement in 1785 by some tribes to allow settlers to settle in the southern half of what is now Ohio. In 1791, General Arthur St. Clair who was also governor of the Northwest Territory, was routed in a battle against Little Turtle near Fort Recovery in western Ohio near the present Indiana border. General Harmar, who had preceded him also was defeated in 1790.

Stockwell recounts how now-President Washington, after rejecting other candidates called Wayne out of retirement in the spring of 1792. She narrates the formation of a new, larger force, the Legion of the United States and Wayne’s move to Pittsburgh, at the head of the Ohio River, to recruit the army.

Both in his initial training camp in Legionville, near Pittsburgh, and later in Greenville, in western Ohio, Wayne built a fighting force for a different kind of warfare, marked by vigilance, discipline, and drills. Other troops had fled under fire. He wanted his to hold or advance and to know what to do. He became known by native scouts as “the General that does not sleep.”

Stockwell recounts the adversity he endured, from delayed supplies to desertions of Kentucky volunteers. Worse was the covert betrayal of General James Wilkinson, his second in command, who was secretly feeding negative reports to congressmen about Wayne and undercutting supply efforts. It later came out that he was collaborating with a foreign power, Spain.

By the summer of 1794, Wayne was ready to advance north. Natives fled ahead of him as he marched north to the Maumee River, building Fort Defiance at the junction of the Auglaize and Maumee Rivers. He then marched downstream toward the British Fort Miami. The Native tribes of the Confederacy sought refuge but the British, not wanting open war with the United States, shut them out, betraying their alliance. This led to the decisive Battle of Fallen Timbers, where Wayne defeated the Confederacy on the battlefield. He subsequently seized a center of the Confederacy, Kekionga, which he transformed into Fort Wayne.

Stockwell shows how Wayne transitioned from winning on the battlefield to wooing tribal leaders who had been abandoned by the British. He offered a settlement with minor adjustments of the 1785 agreement, allowing tribes to remain in northern Ohio while Americans could settle in the south. The Treaty of Greenville was agreed to in 1795. The location of my home in central Ohio is on land ceded by this treaty. Following the treaty, Wayne supplied food and farming supplies to the Native people.

Sadly, Wayne’s wife, from whom he was estranged, died during this campaign. His daughter and son were as well, although he re-established a relationship with the latter. A year later, Wayne was dead, from his old war wounds. Stockwell portrays a man good at one thing, winning battles and securing territory for his country.

While Stockwell offers an illuminating portrayal of Wayne, and one that portrays him magnanimous in peace with tribal leaders, she treads lightly on the larger issues at stake in America’s advance on tribal lands. She mostly focuses on the British exploitation of the tribes. There is little about their displacement from eastern lands. Nor does she discuss how quickly settlers moved north of the treaty line, displacing the tribes further west after the defeat of Tecumseh. By 1803, Ohio as it is presently configured, achieved statehood.

She observes Wayne’s apprehension of the threat the British and their tribal allies posed on the American frontier. Part of it was that the British had not honored their agreements from the Treaty of Paris in 1783 and were using the tribes for both trade benefits and to hold onto what was no longer theirs. But there seems to be no questioning of the fact that all of the conflict was over who would control these tribal lands, assuming the eventual displacement of Native tribes, first in southern Ohio, then all of the state, after Wayne’s death.

What Stockwell does do is establish Wayne as one of our outstanding early military leaders, despite Washington’s uncertainties. We also see a man whose love of country left little room for family. Like Grant, he was really good at one thing–fighting.