Volume XXIII of the Society’s _Collections_ (_Frontier Advance on the Upper Ohio, 1778-79_) and Mr. Merk’s _Economic History of Wisconsin During the Civil War Decade_ have been distributed too recently to have attracted much attention at the hands of the reviewers at the time of our going to press. On the part of the newspapers of Wisconsin, however, Mr. Merk’s volume has already evoked much notice and comment. The Milwaukee _Sentinel_ and other papers of the state have republished numerous extracts from the book, while the Chippewa Falls _Independent_ devoted special attention to the chapters on the history of the lumbering industry in Wisconsin. The expected comment of our historical neighbors on these two volumes will be noted in a future number of the _Magazine_.
The annual volume of _Proceedings_ of the Society for the year 1916 came from the press and was distributed to our members and exchanges in July. The volume is longer than any of its predecessors, and the workmanship of the printer is probably the best of any in the long series of annual volumes put out by the Society. Aside from the business report and other routine proceedings, the book contains eight historical papers. The most interesting and valuable of these is Captain Arthur L. Conger’s study of “President Lincoln as War Statesman,” delivered as the annual address before the Society in 1916. Unless we mistake greatly, this paper will quickly gain recognition as one of the most trenchant studies yet made of Lincoln’s career. Four studies of a biographical character are the reminiscences of Father Chrysostom Verwyst of Bayfield and of Mary Elizabeth Mears, early Wisconsin authoress; “New Light on the Career of Nathaniel Pryor,” sergeant on the exploring expedition of Lewis and Clark; and an account of the military career of Major Earl, noted Wisconsin Civil War scout. A study of “The Beginnings of the Norwegian Press in America” reveals the fact, interesting to citizens of Wisconsin, that this state, rather than its western neighbor, was originally and for long the chief seat of Norwegian development in America. Hence the story of the beginnings of the Norwegian press in the United States is almost wholly a Wisconsin story. Another local study is that of the long-drawn-out “Watertown Railway Bond Fight,” one of the notable legal contests in American history. Finally, and of more general import, is “The Dream of a Northwestern Confederacy,” which recites the story of the rise and decline of the hopes of the Southern people to draw off the Northwest from the remainder of the Union and in so doing to win the struggle for its disruption.