| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Dialogue on the Frontier: Catholic and Protestant Relations, 1793–1883. By Margaret C. DePalma. (Kent: Kent State University Press, 2004. xvi, 220 pp. $55.00, ISBN 0-87338-814-3.)

Scholars who examine the relationship between nineteenth-century American Protestants and Catholics tend to emphasize conflict. Margaret C. DePalma in Dialogue on the Frontier contends that Catholic and Protestant interactions in frontier Kentucky and Ohio were more harmonious than most realize. Her argument rests on the primacy of cooperation in frontier communities before the rhetoric of republicanism and building the nation hampered amicable relations. To substantiate her thesis, DePalma examines the work of three priests, Father Stephen Theodore Badin, Bishop Edward Dominic Fenwick, and Archbishop John Baptist Purcell. The author states that the clergymen carried on a "dialogue of mutual necessity" (p. xi). The dialogue was possible because Catholics were a visible presence during the formative years of settlement (they were less likely to be perceived as outsiders) and because of the priests' personalities. DePalma characterizes Badin, Fenwick, and Purcell as a "more accommodating strain in Catholic action" (p. xv); the trio she believes tended toward assimilation rather than confrontation with the local Protestant community.

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