Michigan Journal of History Volume X, Issue Ii
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MICHIGAN JOURNAL OF HISTORY VOLUME X, ISSUE II 2 Cover photo title: Campus view from northwest corner; Date: 1892/1893; Collection title: University of Michigan photographs vertical file; Photographer: Allen Lysander Colton; BL#000055; Located in Bentley Historical Library Online Image Bank: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/b/bhl/x- bl000055/BL000055?lasttype=boolean;lastview=thumbnail;med=1;resnum=685;size=20;sort=none;start=681;subvi ew=detail;view=entry;rgn1=ic_all;q1=bhl 3 FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Dear Readers, We are very excited to publish this edition of the Journal! Last term we were blown away by the responses from undergraduates around the country. We didn’t think it was possible that the number could increase, but it did. Out of 87 submissions, the below authors truly embodied the spirit of the Journal and what we wanted to bring to the community of readers. A major thank you goes out to our staff, who have worked very hard to get their edits in shape for the Journal. Once again a special thanks goes out to our Managing Editor Emily Riippa, who has worked very hard this semester to get the Journal ready for print. She has done an amazing job over the last year, and it was a joy to work with her. It has been an honor to serve as the Editor-in-Chief for the Michigan Journal of History this past year. I came into the position knowing there needed to be a lot of changes, and the editing team jumped right on board. This past year has been a complete turnaround for the Journal, and we hope to see the number of submissions continue to increase. The amount of intellectual creativity and prowess blew us away again this term, and we encourage undergraduates to continue submitting their work. Sincerely, Anna Gwiazdowski Editor-in-Chief, Michigan Journal of History 4 5 MICHIGAN JOURNAL OF HISTORY EDITORIAL BOARD, WINTER 2014 Anna Gwiazdowski Editor-in-Chief Emily Riippa Managing Editor Melissa Durante Andrew Wu Senior Editors Benjamin Sporn Webmaster Sarah Bedoyan Mollie Berkowitz Indira Bhattacharjee Iris Chen Andrew Grafton Hannah Graham Jordan Grauer Sonali Gupta Trey Hines Kelly Karpus Jose Miranda James Nadel Alec Ramsay-Smith Jason Rozbruch Associate Editors 6 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS 9 Road Blocks to Suffrage Daisy Dowdall, Wellesley College 18 Legend and Legacy: A Rhetorical History of Lewis and Clark Jake Sonnenberg, Stanford University 31 Labor Politics and the Historical Memory of 1989 Jack Fuller, University of Michigan 39 Leading from the Front: An Analysis of What Made a Successful Civil War Unit Ian Gorham, University of Michigan 51 The Warsaw Ghetto and the Shanghai Ghetto So Yeon Jeong, Wellesley College 67 The Men of Creedmoor Rifle Range Lindsay Sovern, Brown University 80 How American Energy Dependence Sparked al-Qaeda’s War on the United States Ben Gottesdiener and David Sutter, Washington University in St. Louis 90 The Evolution of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in American Cinema and Culture Patrick Van Hackeling, Swarthmore College 117 Journey of the Mad Scientists Marcus Nappier, University of Virginia 137 The Inescapable Politics of Identity Sarah Pauling, University of Michigan 158 The Mass Lynching of Italians in 1891 New Orleans: Marking Italians as Racially “Dago” Nicholas Borkowski, Swarthmore College 8 9 ROAD BLOCKS TO SUFFRAGE DAISY DOWDALL WELLESLEY COLLEGE In many respects, the fight for women's suffrage in Britain was an uphill battle. Although the campaign emerged as a national movement in 1872, women were not granted suffrage until 1918—nearly 50 years later—and still not on the same terms as men.1 It is commonly believed that the road to enfranchisement was protracted due to the crippling misogyny of those in power. Certainly, prejudice did play a large part in the delay: Enlightenment-era medicine had defined women by the supposed fragility, nervous instability, and even hysterical insanity of their sex.2 Such ideas persisted well into the 20th century and had become part of public discourse, especially as many doctors regularly expounded their theories of female weakness in popular middle-class journals.3 Not surprisingly, these medical theories figured prominently in anti- suffragist arguments as well. They were, after all, a convenient justification for denying women the vote, as such theories rendered the issue not as one of oppression but one of women’s safety and lower position in the natural order of society.4 Although the notion of female inferiority remained common in early 20th-century Britain, the strict gender norms of the previous century were in flux, with many women assuming an increasingly public role in society.5 In particular, middle and upper-class philanthropy had somewhat normalized female involvement in public affairs. The prevalence and prestige of volunteerism had been a key factor in women gaining voting right in local elections, for example, and becoming speakers, canvassers, and fundraisers for the three national political parties.6 Thus, by the early 20th century, many women were trusted participants in national politics, despite not being able to vote. In fact, Martin Pugh argues that, because of their involvement, by the turn of the century, the argument for women's suffrage had essentially been won: at this point, the majority of MPs supported the general idea of female enfranchisement in 1 Susan Kingsley Kent, Sex and Suffrage in Britain, 1860-1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 185. 2 Anne Digby, “Women’s Biological Straightjacket” in Sexuality and Subordination: Interdisciplinary Studies of Gender in the Nineteenth Century, ed. by Susan Mendus and Jane Rendall (London: Routledge, 1989), 203. 3 Digby, “Women’s Biological Straightjacket,” 193-194, 208. 4 Kent, Sex and Suffrage in Britain, 189-190; Digby, “Women’s Biological Straitjacket,” 193. 5 Digby, “Women’s Biological Straitjacket,” 195. 6 Martin Pugh, Women and the Women’s Movement in Britain, 1914-1959 (Basingstoke: MacmillanEducation, 1992), 4. 10 one form or another.7 The question, then, becomes why it took until 1918 for women to be granted even limited suffrage. Historians such as Sophia van Wingerden have successfully argued that female enfranchisement was a radical and complicated change to the voting system and that, consequently, change was inevitably slow; others, like Gail Braybon, have noted the distracting nature of the First World War in national politics.8 This paper focuses on the roadblocks to suffrage that actually emerged from the women's movement itself. I examine the period between roughly 1905 and 1914 to show that internal division, militancy, and a failure to ally itself with one of the “big three” political parties significantly hindered the suffrage campaign. In my conclusion, moreover, I briefly consider why women were finally granted suffrage in 1918, arguing that the breakthrough was not a simple result of changed perceptions of women but was actually an afterthought in larger electoral reform. One of the major problems the suffrage campaign faced was its lack of a coherent platform. Instead of presenting a united front in the fight for suffrage, a number of splinter groups formed, advocating for enfranchisement along different terms and employing wildly different tactics; these groups were often hostile to each other. Fractures began properly in 1903, when a group of women, including Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, broke from the non- militant and decidedly middle-class National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) to form the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). From 1903 to 1906, the WSPU, which emphasized “deeds not words” and, initially, universal female suffrage, received its main support from radical suffragists and socialists.9 However, in 1906, Christabel Pankhurst decided that the WSPU had become too dependent on its working class contingent, shifting her focus from universal adult female suffrage to the enfranchisement of women of a certain socioeconomic status.10 She justified this new platform as being more realistic: conservative lawmakers, Pankhurst reasoned, would be more sympathetic to suffrage bids that mirrored existing voting rights for men.11 This changed position stirred considerable controversy within the WSPU’s ranks. Many 7 Pugh, Women and the Women’s Movement, 35. 8 Sophia A. van Wingerden, The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Britain, 1866-1928 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999), 28; Gail Braybon, Women Workers in the First World War (London: Routledge, 2012), 86. 9 Jill Liddington and Jill Norris, One Hand Tied Behind Us: The Rise of the Women’s Suffrage Movement (London: Rivers Oram Press, 2000), 205. 10 Liddington and Norris,One Hand Tied Behind Us, 208. 11 Liddington and Norris, One Hand Tied Behind Us, 209. 11 radical suffragists and socialists alike were displeased by the narrowed franchise demands and consequently distanced themselves from the WSPU. Broadly, their opinion can be understood through an article written by the radical suffragist Julia Dawson. She argued that, although the WSPU spoke of granting votes for women, “they really mean votes for some women. Not for me, certainly…but for some other women who have qualifications which [working-class women] have not.”12 Finally, in late 1906, the WSPU officially dropped its working-class contingent, with Christabel Pankhurst explaining that “it is now evident that the House of Commons…are more impressed by demonstrations of the feminine bourgeoisie than of the female proletariat.”13 Whatever her larger political objectives, Pankhurst’s decision alienated most