Blog Post #7 - Christabel's Speech at Queen's Hall

This week, one speech in particular offers quite the perspective from Christabel Pankhurst. Christabel gave this speech at the Queen’s Hall on December 22, 1908. For her this speech is a call to arms, once again reiterating the importance of the militant campaign. She explains how the government continues to ignore the constitutional movements of the Suffragists. Christabel argues that without the militancy the government could sweep the women’s suffrage question under the rug to be forgotten. The militancy forces the government to react with arrests and trials. The public knows of the militancy it cannot be hushed up. One must deal with the demands of these women; these women shall not be silenced.

This whole speech is filled to the brim with fantastic quotes concerning all the pieces of the militant movement. Christabel attacks those who believe women did not think out their militancy, “I want you to understand, however, that our militant campaign has been thought out with the utmost care. Whatever else we may be, we are neither heedless, rash, nor unthinking,” (Jorgensen-Earp 88). As she continues into her speech Christabel mentions the importance of action by any supporters of the WSPU. It is better to fight alongside these women instead of offering nothing but supportive words. She rallies these supporters with these words, “You know the old methods of working for the vote are futile, and not only futile, but humiliating, unworthy of you,” (Jorgensen-Earp 89). With these rallying cries, Christabel once again found more support for the WSPU and the suffrage movement, even as the militancy increased. With the lack of resolution from the government, these women prepared yet again to demand action, or respond with further militancy until suffrage was won.

Jorgensen-Earp, Cheryl R., ed. Speeches and Trials of the Militant Suffragettes: The Women's Social and Political Union, 1903-1918. Madison, WI: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1999.

**The speech used comes from pages 87-99 of the book.**

Ashley Blog #7: Gordon on the Soviet Occupation

I’m doing a little late-night blogging, pulling an all-nighter to finish up yet another outline that I have to do for tomorrow (Tiananmen Square – I just love the bloody stuff!) and I thought I’d take a quick break to do my post. For this week, I’m going to illuminate a bit on the Jewish perspective of the Soviet occupation of Lithuania in June 1940. The source I’m taking this from is by Harry Gordon, who immigrated to the US in 1949 from Kovno, Lithuania. The citation and analysis follow.

Gordon, Harry. The Shadow of Death: The Holocaust in Lithuania. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1992.

In the second chapter of his memoir on the Holocaust in Lithuania, Harry Gordon detailed the arrival of the Soviet Union to Kovno in 1940. According to his description, the Jews were first seized by an intense terror, fearing that the Germans were manning the tanks. He stated, “They were closed so we couldn’t see anyone. We thought the Germans were coming. We didn’t know what was happening” (Gordon 9). This fear came from knowledge that, should the Germans invade Lithuania, the Jewry of the country would no longer be safe from their ghettos and concentration camps: “We knew what they were doing in the other countries… We thought that if they were coming, that was what they were going to do with us, too. After all, we Lithuanian Jews were no better than any other Jewish population” (Gordon 9).

Yet, upon discovering that the soldiers were not Germans, but instead were the Russians, Gordon described an immediate sense of relief among his family. He wrote, “Suddenly our mood changed. Instead of panic, we felt an unnatural joy. Everyone started hugging and kissing each other, family and neighbors, as if the Messiah had just arrived” (Gordon 9). The entire Jewish section of the city, as he described it, was caught up in an infectious happiness.

This happiness, however, did not extend to the Lithuanians: “The Lithuanian police from the old democratic republic… were very demoralized. They knew their country was being taken over, yet they still had to try to keep order” (Gordon 11). While “the Jewish people felt very free,” the Lithuanians were forced into submission by the Russians, having to walk on the sidewalk and curb their impoliteness lest they be arrested (Gordon 16). Gordon stated that this gave rise to frustrations, writing that “the anti-Semites’ eyes were popping out of their heads from the pressure of having to keep their mouths shut” (Gordon 16). Some, even with the threat of arrest, could not remain silent and spread their propaganda. Even the Lithuanian Communist party, which at this time ruled the government, was “both anti-Semitic and anti-Russian,” paving the way for the German army to take back power in 1941 (Gordon 20).

These details show that the pre-1941 tensions between the Jews and the Lithuanians were heightened by the acceptance of the Soviets by the Jewry. Despite the illegality of their actions, many Lithuanians continued to actively campaign against the Soviet regime, channeling their frustration through anti-Semitism. There is little surprise that this would then lead to the image of Jewish-Bolshevism gaining such popularity amongst the younger generations of Lithuanian men who would go on to participate in the pogroms.

I hope everybody has a nice break! See you all next Thursday!

THE WAR UPON THE PRESIDENT.; Manifesto of Ben. Wade and H. Winter Davis against the President's Proclamation.

http://www.nytimes.com/1864/08/09/news/war-upon-president-manifesto-ben-wade-h-winter-davis-against-president-s.html?pagewanted=2

Senator Benjamin Wade was a radical Republican who served from 1851-1869. Wade was known for his extreme views on reconstruction of the South. He is of special importance to the Battle of Fort Pillow because he was a man who co-authored.

 One example of the type of reconstruction measures that Wade was in favor of was a bill that passed both the House and the Senate that would require state governments to return to a republican form of government. The bill's timeline goes as follows "The bill had been discussed and considered for more than a month in the House of Representatives, which it passed on the 4th of May; it was reported to the Senate on the 27th of May without material amendment, and passed the Senate absolutely as it came from the House on the 2d of July" (Wade, 1864). This means that deliberation on the Bill started in late March or early April, the same month of the Battle of Fort Pillow. In between the time the House passed and the Senate deliberated the bill, Wade had produced his report on the Battle of Fort Pillow. This could explain why the bill passed through the Senate in a matter of 5 days.

            As stated earlier, President Lincoln took a much more moderate stance on the Reconstruction than some of his fellow party members which is why he did not sign the bill and sent back a proclamation. Based on the letter Wade sent it would make it seem like the House either did extreme due diligence on the bill or that the Senate rushed through the bill after Fort Pillow. The bill passed in the House in over a month where as the Senate passed the bill with no amendments in 5 days. While many other correlations may exist between the report and the passing of a bill that supported radical reconstruction was simply ignore by Lincoln until he sent the memo. One might say that the quick reaction and rush to pass this bill could not have happened without the Battle of Fort Pillow. This finding does not fit the hypothesis I made about Wade hurting his political agenda, however, it does fit the idea that the Battle of Fort Pillow was used as an event to rally political support for radical reconstruction.  

This specific manifesto against Lincoln shows the divide between the two . It also incorporates evidence about other political policies that may not directly impact the aftermath of Fort Pillow.  

Blog- Primary Source Babylon is fallen

I focused on this song, since as I mentioned in the presentation, it is a good perspective of the political viewpoint of what the minstrel performers may have been wanting to express.
This song, when doing the research on it, is about the Blacks joining the Union army to fight in the civil war. Babylon is representing the South, so when the Blacks entered the Union to fight, they were aiming for the "fall of Babylon", or the Fall of the South.
"Don't you see de black clouds, risin' ober yonder, whar de massa's ole plantation am?" The Black clouds, a symbol for the Blacks, and they are rising over the plantation, where several Blacks could possibly be. The next line acknowledges the first " Dem is only Darkeys, come to jine an' fight for Uncle Sam", in other words it is only the Blacks coming to fight for the Union, possibly to save the other Africans from slavery.
Lastly, the end of the song is Babylon is Fallen, ending with the Africans going to occupy the land, meaning they are going to take over when the whites have left or been run off.
This song is significant because it shows that there were songs who that were showing a preference for a political stance, and that at least one of the minstrel composers were showing a preference for the North.

New Developments and Additional Primaries

  
     

I would like to thank everyone for your useful feedback about my primary sources during our last class period. You raised a lot of good questions and helped me to realize that my topic was much too broad and my thesis too vague and uncertain. While thinking about this week's assignment, I have changed my thesis and the framework of my essay. Previously I had said there were many reasons, not only social class, which determined the survival rate of the Titanic, but now I have a much more precise thesis. Also previously I had wanted to examine primary documents from survivors of each of the social classes and the crew, but that task is too far-reaching and would probably require an entire book. I have changed my framework to include only the accounts of second class passengers and crew members as I have discovered they have been largely ignored in both popular and scholarly history. I was also interested in the second class because the second class men had the least percentage of survival rates, which was about 8%. My new thesis is "There were several significant reasons why passengers decided not to get on the lifeboats while the Titanic was sinking, but primary accounts from both surviving second class passengers and crew members reveal that the most substantial reason why so many people died that night was because they refused to believe the Titanic could sink, even after it was already sinking."

            I would also like to share some additional primary sources which I intend to use in my paper, and hopefully it will capture for you the direction in which I am going. The information that I analyzed for the two following sources are interviews of survivors which were included in a journal article called The Titanic and Southampton: The Oral Evidence by Donald Hyslop and Sheila Jemima, published in 1991 by the Oral History Society.

Edith Haisman

 

            Haisman was sixteen years old when she travelled as a second class passenger aboard the Titanic with her family. Her father was the only one in her family who did not survive.

 

            When asked if she was worried when she saw the iceberg next to the boat she replied, "No, I didn't realize anything at all, I thought it was wonderful to see the ice like that, you know... Just wondered what happened, like everybody else did. What happened to the boat? And everybody kept saying she's unsinkable, she won't go down. She's unsinkable" (Hyslop and Jemima 38). Later in her interview she stated that it took over an hour before anyone worried about what had happened, many passengers went back to bed not realizing they were in danger. 

            Haisman's interview provides crucial evidence for my thesis. She described how there was no panic aboard the Titanic for at least an hour after it hit the iceberg. One reason which she indicated for this was that the people could not feel the boat sinking. Her account shows how many people did not believe it could sink and went on about their business, not realizing the severity of the situation.

Sydney Daniels

            Daniels was eighteen years old and a member of the Titanic's crew. When the Titanic struck an iceberg, Daniels was fast asleep in his cabin and didn't hear of feel anything. Another crew member woke him up and told him "all hands on deck, get your lifebelt on” (Hyslop and Jemima 39). He thought it was a safety drill so he took his time getting up to the deck. Once there he was appointed to put women and children into lifeboats. After all of the boats had left except for one, Daniels was up to his knees in water and he decided to dive into the ocean and swim away for fear that the ship would create suction and drown him. He eventually found a group of about 20 people around an overturned lifeboat. The all climbed on top of the boat, it was too large to flip right side up and they were saved along with the other survivors later that morning by the crew of the Carpathia.

            Sydney Daniels’ amazing story of survival reveals how close to death many survivors came that night. Like Haisman, Daniels described how everyone was calm, and didn’t realize for a long time that the boat was sinking. His account also coincides with another crew member, Violet Jessop’s account which stated that they were told the filling of lifeboats was a precautionary measure, something which delayed panic as well as caused a higher amount of deaths. Another contributing factor to the low amount of male crew which survived was that they were dedicated to performing their duties until the very end. Along with most of the other passengers and crew, Daniels didn't believe the ship was sinking until he literally saw the water a few feet away.

Don Mullan - Primary Source

So last week I finally found a thesis that was working for me, but unfortunately, I couldn't find any sources to back it up. This weekend I did a lot of digging and I uncovered quite a few testimonies that supported what I wanted to argue. One such testimony that I would like to share with you is Don Mullan's, which he gave in the updated and recent investigation done over Bloody Sunday, The Saville Bloody Sunday Inquiry.

Like with all the testimonies given in the "Saville Inquiry," Mullan's testimony largely consisted of him repeating his recollection of events he witnessed on Bloody Sunday. To sum that up, he basically stated that no civilians carried any weapons with them that day and that the British paratroops started firing on the marchers without warning. This confirms what the majority of witnesses experienced that day, and it also what Lord Saville was trying to prove in his inquiry.

While this is all important, it didn't tie in with my thesis: The IRA used Bloody Sunday to gather support from the community and enact retribution on the unionists and the British government. However, there WERE some comments he made later in the inquiry that did match up with my argument. There were two quotes that I found particularly useful. Firstly, Mullan stated "I can recall conversations with my peers and we felt that the only way we could resist what had happened was by force. I have no doubt that many were fueled to join the IRA by the sight of the coffins alone" (7). This quote is great because it is the first time I have actually seen someone say that revenge is what they desired. He also reiterates the statistic that IRA recruitment increased in this time period, stressing that Bloody Sunday was the reason for this. His next quote I found beneficial declared "there was increasing IRA activity. Several 17 to 18 year old boys who I knew joined up. If I had been old enough I would have been tempted myself" (Mullan 2). Again, Mullan reinforces the idea that joining the IRA was on the forefront of people's minds after Bloody Sunday. And from that, statements from actual IRA members show that the IRA used this to their full advantage. 

Paul Revere

Paul Revere: Memorandum on Events of April 18, 1775

Paul Revere is most famously known for his 'Midnight Ride.' This ride, so famously publicized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, which was written in 1860. The ride that Longfellow spoke of really did not happen at all. Paul Revere recounted his ride in his memorandum. He tells of his ride. What is most important, for my paper, is his account of the 'Meeting House.'
For the purpose of my paper, the effects of taverns in society with an emphasis on the American Revolution. Revere, after being captured by the British, explains their movements toward the 'Meeting House.'
To establish the relationship between the term 'Meeting House' and tavern, we look to the end of his journey. Paul Revere states, “We went into the Tavern to git a Trunk of papers belonging to Col. Hancock, before we left the House, I saw the Ministeral Troops from the Chamber window. We made haste & had to pass thro’ our Militia." Here, Revere uses the term 'tavern' and 'house' interchangeably. We can infer that, in this text, a Meeting House and a tavern are the same establishment. This sets up the significance for the rest of the account.
Revere, after being captured, states that the British Major had them march towards Lexington (a city that Revere needed to warn). Revere states, "When we got within about half a Mile of the Meeting House, we heard a gun fired; the Major [British Major] asked me what it was for, I told him to alarm the country." The importance of this quote lies in the Meeting House. The Meeting House was used to house rebels. The rebels job was to warn the country of the British coming. Lexington and Concord was the first battle in the Revolution. So the warning of the country was pertinent to the Revolution. The Meeting House was the establishment where the rebels were waiting for notice of the British troops. The connection between Meeting House and the warning of the country is obvious. Here, taverns are 'watch dogs' of the country.
Furthermore, taverns were the establishment to gather the news. Revere shows this by saying, "I left Mess Adams & Hancock, an told them what had happened; their friends advised them to go out of the way: I went with them, about two miles a cross road; after resting myself, I sett off with another man to go back to the Tavern, to enquire the News; when we got there, we were told the troops were within two miles." Revere shows that the news he needed would be found at a tavern. This tavern was used to gather information about the Revolution. Revere used this tavern to get information about the movements about the British troops. He later uses taverns to gather information on other British troop movements. 
Taverns, shown in Paul Revere's account, were used to house rebels, and information, that furthered the American Revolution.