Download In the name of God, civilization, and humanity: The United States

Cet article est disponible en ligne à l’adresse :
http://www.cairn.info/article.php?ID_REVUE=LMS&ID_NUMPUBLIE=LMS_227&ID_ARTICLE=LMS_227_0027
In the name of God, civilization, and humanity: The United States and the
Armenian massacres of the 1890s
par Ann Marie WILSON
| La Découverte | Le Mouvement Social
2009/2 - N° 227
ISSN 0027-2671 | ISBN 9782707157355 | pages 27 à 44
Pour citer cet article :
— Wilson A. M., In the name of God, civilization, and humanity: The United States and the Armenian massacres of the
1890s, Le Mouvement Social 2009/2, N° 227, p. 27-44.
Distribution électronique Cairn pour La Découverte.
© La Découverte. Tous droits réservés pour tous pays.
La reproduction ou représentation de cet article, notamment par photocopie, n'est autorisée que dans les limites des
conditions générales d'utilisation du site ou, le cas échéant, des conditions générales de la licence souscrite par votre
établissement. Toute autre reproduction ou représentation, en tout ou partie, sous quelque forme et de quelque manière
que ce soit, est interdite sauf accord préalable et écrit de l'éditeur, en dehors des cas prévus par la législation en vigueur
en France. Il est précisé que son stockage dans une base de données est également interdit.
In the name of God, civilization, and humanity :
The United States and the Armenian massacres
of the 1890s
by Ann Marie Wilson *
Le Mouvement Social, avril-juin 2009 © La Découverte
F
or the United States, the 1890s was a watershed decade in the history of international humanitarianism. During most of the nineteenth century, American
efforts to assist or intervene in the troubles of distant peoples remained sporadic,
localized, and limited to private channels. The Greek struggle for independence
attracted the sympathetic attention of American Philhellenes during the 1820s, but
Congress refused to embroil itself in the affairs of a foreign power by recognizing the
belligerents or appropriating funds for humanitarian relief. During the great Irish
famine of the 1840s, even larger numbers of citizens called upon Congress to send
relief, but once again lawmakers threw the burden of assistance on churches and
private charities. For the next forty years, American humanitarians relied on small,
ad hoc committees when they wished to lend assistance to foreign peoples suffering
under the weight of a political crisis or a natural disaster 1.
Two things began to change during the 1890s. First, humanitarian reformers
became both better organized and more attentive to distant calamities. The Russian
famine of 1891 provoked the largest and most centralized humanitarian response
the United States had seen to date, with nearly one million dollars worth of food
and supplies flowing to Russia. Although it came from private hands, much of this
aid was delivered under the auspices of the American Red Cross, a nationally recognized (if not yet federally chartered) agency embarking on its first international
mission. Not long before, Americans had failed to organize on a wide scale to aid
victims of the Franco-Prussian War, and they paid relatively little attention to the
Ottoman massacres of Bulgarians in 1876 – the so-called “Bulgarian Horrors” that
brought William Gladstone out of retirement and stoked the fires of public outrage
across Great Britain. But from 1891 onward, they seemed to fix their attention
on one foreign disaster after another. At the same time, elected officials began to
reconsider the role the federal government might play in channeling the humanitarian energies of the citizenry 2.
The signal episode in this transformation was the American response to the
Armenian massacres of the 1890s. Between 1894 and 1896 – two decades before
* Ph.D. candidate in History at Harvard University. She would like to thank Nancy Cott, Sven
Beckert, Lizabeth Cohen, George Blaustein, Noam Maggor, Benjamin Waterhouse, Elizabeth More,
and Emily Conroy-Krutz for their comments on drafts of this essay.
1. M. Curti, American Philanthropy Abroad, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1963,
p. 22-64.
2. Ibid., p. 99-119 ; E. S. Rosenberg, Spreading the American Dream : American Economic and Cultural
Expansion, 1890-1945, New York, Hill and Wang, 1982, p. 34.
Ann Marie Wilson, In the name of God, civilization, and humanity, Le Mouvement Social, avril-juin 2009.
the genocide of 1915 – the Ottoman Empire convulsed in a series of upheavals
that caused the deaths of 200 000 or more Armenian Christians 3. As “suffering Armenians” captured the attention of the Western world, the United States
Congress took the unprecedented step of passing a joint resolution that emphasized
not temporary aid through private or public agencies, but diplomatic action to
check the causes of an ongoing crisis 4. At the same time, Americans continued to
raise large sums for humanitarian relief, once again sending the American Red Cross
abroad to deliver food and medical aid to desperate people in need.
Internationally, much grassroots support for Armenians came from members of
evangelical churches and missionary societies, especially in Britain and the United
States. Recent studies of the British and American mobilizations, however, have
tended to emphasize the movement’s secular and liberal aspects over its religious
ones. Writing about nineteenth century humanitarianism in general, including
the Armenian episode, Gary Bass attributes British and American activism to a
free press, a vigorous public sphere, and an influential set of liberal intellectuals
whose ideas about human solidarity were expansive enough to contain not only
fellow Christians, but all humankind. Moreover, while Bass recognizes the potential
dangers of humanitarian intervention, he draws a “bright line” between humanitarianism and imperialism, arguing that many reformers were willing to critique
their own countries’ imperialist ventures even as they condemned the excesses of the
Ottomans. Peter Balakian concurs, claiming that during the 1890s the “Armenian
question emerged, in some ways uniquely, as a humanitarian project at a time when
imperialist designs were governing most American international interventions” 5.
This essay offers a somewhat different evaluation of the Armenian episode in
international humanitarianism. It aims to disaggregate the complex interplay of liberal, Christian, and nationalist impulses that characterized the American response
to Armenian suffering and closes with some reflections on the line dividing the
Armenian question from another American intervention in the same period: the
1898 war in Cuba. While no doubt nurtured by a free press and a vigorous public
sphere, the political coalition that took shape around the Armenian crisis was more
complicated, and more fractured, than previous studies have suggested. Indeed,
in the United States the first people to direct their attention to “Turkish outrages”
were Protestant missionaries and Armenian nationalists – two groups that hardly
saw eye-to-eye on either tactics or goals. They were joined by former abolitionists,
woman suffragists, Unitarian clergymen, evangelical ministers, and jingoist newspapermen – each of whom added their own perspective to the conflict at hand.
While some of these advocates spoke in the liberal idiom of universal human rights,
many more did not, construing their project instead as an effort to rescue “innocent
Christians” from “fanatical Muslims”. But whether advocates employed secular or
religious terms, and whether or not they expressed outright chauvinism, nearly all
3. M. Anderson, “ ‘Down in Turkey, far away’ : Human Rights, the Armenian Massacres, and
Orientalism in Wilhelmine Germany”, Journal of Modern History, 79, March 2007, p. 82.
4. M. Curti, American Philanthropy..., op. cit., p. 133.
5. G. Bass, Freedom’s Battle : The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention, New York, Alfred A. Knopf,
2008, p. 5-8 ; P. Balakian, The Burning Tigris : The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response, New
York, HarperCollins, 2003, p. 5. For pro-Armenian movements in Europe, see M. Anderson, “‘Down
in Turkey’…”, art. cit., and V. Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide, New York, Berghahn
Books, 2003, p. 61-97.
Le Mouvement Social, avril-juin 2009 © La Découverte
28 n Ann Marie Wilson
In the name of God, civilization, and humanity n 29
believed that they were defending “Christian civilization” from a “barbarous” other.
This conviction helped sustain a nationwide humanitarian movement, but it also
threatened the success of the very relief mission that advocates worked so hard to
implement. At the same time, support for Armenia contributed to American selfunderstanding as a nation uniquely positioned to define, and to defend, civilization
itself. In the end, the American response to Armenia can teach us not only about the
vagaries of international humanitarianism, but also about implications of Protestant
nationalism at a moment when the United States were beginning to test their role
as a world power.
Le Mouvement Social, avril-juin 2009 © La Découverte
Emergence of the Armenian Question
What became known as the “Armenian Question” grew out of the broader “Eastern
Question”, or the set of legal and geopolitical problems produced by the slow collapse of the multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire 6. The immediately precipitating events,
however, took place in eastern Anatolia during the early 1890s. For generations,
Armenian farmers and shepherds had shared rocky highlands with nomadic Kurds,
whose tribal chiefs collected feudal dues in exchange for vows of protection. Their
coexistence was a rough one, and during the 1870s and 1880s – following successful
agitations by insurgent Bosnians, Serbs, and Bulgarians – Armenian revolutionary
nationalist and socialist organizations formed in order to protest Kurdish depredations and the web of legal restrictions facing Christians subjects under Ottoman
rule. One such organization was the Hunchak Party, a socialist group founded in
1887 by Russian-born Armenians living in Switzerland. By the summer of 1894,
Hunchak organizers had begun organizing farmers in the remote village of Sasun,
and in August a confrontation took place in which several Kurds were killed. Eager
to quash any hint of revolution in the region, the Sultan Abdul Hamid II dispatched
his cavalry with deadly alacrity, causing the destruction of 25 villages and the deaths
of more than 10 000 Armenians – the vast majority of whom played no role in the
uprising.
The Sasun massacre marked the beginning of two years of protest and reprisals.
In May 1895, Britain, France, and Russia endorsed a package of reforms for the
six Anatolian provinces with the largest Armenian populations. While the Sultan
dragged his heels, the Hunchaks staged a protest march of 4 000 in Constantinople
in September 1895. Once again, violence erupted. Fearing an Armenian ascendancy
in the Anatolian provinces, and vexed by Armenian collaboration with Macedonian
revolutionists at the other end of his empire, the Sultan decided upon a policy of
terror against the Armenians, punishing an entire community for the political transgressions of a few. His police force incited mobs to murder hundreds of Armenian
6. For reasons of space, I can offer only the briefest description of the Armenian crisis. My account
draws upon T. Akçam, A Shameful Act : The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility,
New York, Metropolitan Books, 2006, p. 35-46 ; L. Nalbandian, The Armenian Revolutionary
Movement, Berkeley, University of California Pess, 1963, p. 104-150 ; R. Mirak, Torn Between Two
Lands : Armenians in America, 1890 to World War I, Cambridge, Mass, Harvard University Press, 1983,
p. 211-212 ; W. Langer, The Diplomacy of Imperialism, 1890-1902, New York, Knopf, 1956, p. 153161 ; A. J. Kirakossian (ed.), The Armenian Massacres, 1894-1896 : U.S. Media Testimony, Detroit,
Wayne State University Press, 2004 ; V. Dadrian, Armenian Genocide, op. cit., p. 113-171 and “The
1894 Sassoun Massacre : A Juncture in the Escalation of the Turko-Armenian Conflict”, Armenian
Review, 47 (1-2), 2001, p. 5-39.
30 n Ann Marie Wilson
7. “The Armenians and Our Duty”, The News and Observer (Raleigh, N.C.), December 1, 1894.
8. V. Dadrian, Armenian Genocide, op. cit., p. 61-68 and 70-76.
9. R. E. Cook, The United States and the Armenian Question, 1894-1924, Ph.D. diss., Fletcher
School of Law and Diplomacy, 1957, p. 30 ; R. Kark, American Consuls in the Holy Land, 1832-1914,
Detroit, Wayne State University press, 1994, p. 71 ; R. Mirak, Torn Between Two Lands, op. cit., p. 26.
See also J. E. Reed, “American Foreign Policy, The Politics of Missions and Josiah Strong, 1890-1900”,
Church History, 41 (2), June 1972, p. 230-245 ; J. Grabill, Protestant Diplomacy and the Near East :
Missionary Influence on American Policy, 1810-1927, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1971,
p. 3-34 and 37-38 ; J. A. De Novo, American Interests and Policies in the Middle East, 1900-1939,
Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1963, p. 8-16.
10. M. V. Malcolm, The Armenians in America, Boston, The Pilgrim Press, 1919, p. 61 ; P. Balakian,
The Burning Tigris, op. cit., p. 93 ; Congressional Record, Vol. 28, 54th Congress, 1st Session, p. 962.
Le Mouvement Social, avril-juin 2009 © La Découverte
marchers before violence spread outward, with pogroms sweeping across eastern
Anatolia. By December 1895, an estimated 80 000 to 100 000 Armenians had
perished. The story continued the following summer, when members of a second
Armenian nationalist organization, the Dashnak Party, seized the Imperial Ottoman
Bank in Constantinople in an attempt to secure foreign intervention. European
consuls helped ferret out refugees, but more large-scale massacres followed. By the
close of 1896, estimates of the total death toll ranged from 100 000 to upwards of
300 000. One American editorialist expressed the views of many when he exclaimed :
“Not since the darkest days of the middle ages have such horrible inhumanities
shocked the world” 7.
In simple geopolitical terms, the United States did not hold any direct stakes in
the diplomatic wrangling that surrounded these events. While France owned over
70 % of Ottoman securities assets, and while Great Britain and Russia wrestled for
power in the region, the United States stood apart 8. Moreover, the U.S. had not
been party to the Treaty of Berlin, signed in 1878 at the close of the Russo-Turkish
War, whose sixty-first article bound the European powers to oversee administrative
reforms that would guarantee the security of the Armenian minority. Nonetheless,
two important connections gave the United States an interest in Ottoman affairs.
First was the long history of American missionary activity in the Near East. The
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), a group
founded by Congregationalists and Presbyterians, had been evangelizing in the
empire since 1819. Missionaries had initially hoped to convert large populations of
Muslim “heathen”, but in the long run they set their sights on the less numerous,
and far less resistant, members of the Armenian Apostolic Church, an institution
the missionaries considered only “nominally Christian”. By 1894, the ABCFM in
the Ottoman Empire employed over 150 missionaries, who in turn operated 112
churches, 15 mission stations, and 268 outstations, and attended to an estimated
flock of 47 000. With over four million dollars in property holdings, the American
missionary presence was far greater than that of any other European power; it also
overshadowed the importance of U.S. business interests in the region. Consequently,
American consuls in the Ottoman Empire directed much of their energy toward
protecting the safety and legal rights of missionaries and their families 9.
Armenian immigrants to the United States represented the second major connection to the Ottoman Empire. Their numbers were small – there were fewer than
10 000 Armenian immigrants in the U.S. in 1894 – but in urban enclaves they worked
to make their political voices heard 10. Before the massacres of 1894-96 brought
In the name of God, civilization, and humanity n 31
about larger waves of migration, most Armenian immigrants were young, single men
seeking employment on a temporary sojourn. Some were Protestant converts who
came at the behest of missionary sponsors ; a few were successful merchants 11. The
most politically important immigrants, however, were young men affiliated with
revolutionary nationalist organizations like the Hunchak Party, which established
active branches in cities like New York, Boston, and Worcester, Massachusetts 12.
Some of these men came to the United States because of its exceptional naturalization policy. Once naturalized as an American citizen, a former Ottoman subject
could return to the empire under the protection of the American flag – at least as far
as U.S. consulates were concerned. The same was not true for citizens naturalized
in Great Britain or any of the other European powers 13. But whether or not they
sought strategic citizenship, many Armenians worked hard to support nationalist
political activity, and a few returned to Turkey carrying money, propaganda, and
even munitions 14. This practice naturally implicated the United States in the internal
turmoil of the Ottoman Empire, to say nothing of the political headaches it caused
for State Department officials, who supported the Ottoman prerogative to exclude
“objectionable aliens”, even as they strived to offer equal protection to all American
citizens, be they naturalized or native born 15.
The Making of a Humanitarian Crusade
Le Mouvement Social, avril-juin 2009 © La Découverte
In the United States, the transformation of a little-known Ottoman minority into
an international cause célèbre began in the writings and meeting rooms of Armenian
immigrants and American missionaries. At the outset, at least, the aspirations of
these two groups could not have been more distinct. While most Armenian immigrants espoused an agenda that was nationalist, if not revolutionary, the leaders of
the ABCFM did everything they could to distance themselves from Armenian separatism 16. Missionaries sympathized with their Armenian congregants and earnestly
prayed for their deliverance from persecution, but the ABCFM’s foremost goal was
the continuation of its work of saving souls, and any hint of Hunchak sympathies
risked antagonizing Ottoman officials, who repeatedly accused American missionaries of inciting Armenians to violence 17. The ABCFM therefore abjured Armenian
revolutionary activity and even sent representatives to Armenian neighborhoods to
11. R. Mirak, Torn Between Two Lands, op. cit., p. 36-44.
12. Ibid., p. 207-208 ; W. Langer, The Diplomacy of Imperialism, op. cit., p. 158.
13. “Status and Treatment in Turkey of Naturalized Americans of Turkish Origin”, Papers Relating to
Foreign Relations of the United States (hereafter FRUS), 1894-95, Washington, U.S. Government Printing
Office, 1895, p. 752-779 ; J. W. Garner, Introduction to Political Science, American Book Company,
1910, p. 362-363 ; N. Cohen, A Dual Heritage : The Public Career of Oscar S. Straus, Philadelphia,
Jewish Publication Society of America, 1969, p. 31-33 ; E. M. Borchard, The Diplomatic Protection of
Citizens Abroad, New York, Banks Law Publishing Co., 1915.
14. Richard Olney to Grover Cleveland, December 19, 1895, FRUS 1895, p. 1260-1261.
15. Alexander Terrell to Walter Gresham, August 9, 1894 ; Gresham to Terrell, August 30, 1894,
FRUS 1894, p. 735-739.
16. R. Mirak, Torn Between Two Lands, op. cit., p. 209.
17. Judson Smith to Walter Gresham, January 3, 1895, ABCFM Papers Houghton Library,
Harvard University (hereafter ABC), 1.1 Vol. 172 ; Smith to Richard Olney, December 21, 1895,
ABC 1.1 Vol. 180. See also Barnum to Smith, November 29, 1893 ; Smith to Gresham, Dec 26,
1893 ; Terrell to Gresham, January 18, 1894, FRUS 1894-95, p. 706-710.
32 n Ann Marie Wilson
counsel “hot headed persons” against “wild talk” 18. Armenian nationalists resented
this conservatism, and those who remained true to the Armenian Apostolic church
harbored additional ill feelings toward the missionary impulse to proselytize 19.
Therefore much suspicion existed between these groups – and yet neither could
control fully the movement they jointly unleashed.
Missionaries and their supporters held the upper hand when it came to influencing government and shaping public opinion about violence in the Ottoman
Empire. In the first place, longstanding lines of communication existed between
the ABCFM and the State Department, and missionary workers in stations located
near the massacres proved to be a crucial source of news. Throughout the crisis, the
ABCFM kept State Department officials informed by relaying information from
missionaries who had witnessed violence, taken in refugees, or spoken to British
consuls 20. At the same time, ABCFM officials inundated State Department officials
with a stream of policy directives. Above all, they wanted more numerous and better qualified consular staff, assistance in protecting missionary staff and property,
and intervention when matters went awry. A year before the Sasun massacre, for
instance, ABCFM officials requested the dispatch of U.S. cruisers to help secure
an indemnity for property damaged by mob violence 21. While not always met,
demands like these became more frequent throughout the period of disturbances,
and early in 1895 President Cleveland conceded to them by sending the U.S. Navy
cruisers San Francisco and Marblehead to Turkish waters 22. While the ABCFM took
a conservative position on Armenian nationalism, then, its leaders stretched the
spirit of the Monroe Doctrine by unabashedly calling for a stronger U.S. military
presence in the Mediterranean.
18. “Minutes of the Annual Meeting”, Missionary Herald, November 1893, p. 500 ; “Editorial
Paragraphs”, Missionary Herald, September 1895, p. 352 ; C. Hamlin, “The Armenian Massacres”, The
Outlook, December 1895 ; Smith to Edwin Bliss, January 12, 1895, ABC 1.1 Vol. 172.
19. Armenian National Committee to Officers of the ABCFM, December 21, 1894, ABC 10.
20. See “Protection to American Missionaries”, FRUS 1896, p. 848-900, and “Condition of Affairs
in Asiatic Turkey,” FRUS 1895, Part II, p. 1255-1264.
21. J. E. Reed, “American Foreign Policy...”, art. cit., p. 235 ; M. Curti, American Philanthropy
Abroad, op. cit., p. 120.
22. A. J. Kirakossian (ed.), The Armenian Massacres..., op. cit., p. 38 ; R. E. Cook, The United
States..., op. cit., p. 55 and 73 ; Mavroyeni Bey to Greham, April 6, 1895, FRUS 1896, p. 1249.
23. Smith to Gresham, January 2, 1895, ABC 1.1 Vol. 172.
Le Mouvement Social, avril-juin 2009 © La Découverte
In January 1895, after massacres had spread across Constantinople and Anatolia,
ABCFM corresponding secretary Judson Smith began to press Secretary of State
Walter Gresham for actions that went beyond protecting American citizens. Noting
that “something more than a merely political question” was involved in the crisis,
he suggested that the U.S. government, “actuated simply by the considerations of
humanity, should do its utmost to [...] make it impossible that the deed should be
repeated” 23. Smith believed that Gresham should pressure Britain and the other
European powers to fulfill their obligations under the Treaty of Berlin ; he even
recommended privately that the United States and Great Britain join forces as an
“international executive” to enforce international law. But because he did not think
it the place of the ABCFM to take an official position on such matters, Smith
In the name of God, civilization, and humanity n 33
Le Mouvement Social, avril-juin 2009 © La Découverte
kept his recommendations off the public record 24. Josiah Strong, by contrast,
had no such compunctions. As General Secretary of the American branch of the
Evangelical Alliance, an interdenominational group claiming to represent some 15
million church members, Strong formed a special committee on “Turkish outrages”
that spoke on behalf of missionary interests without publically mentioning the
ABCFM by name. The Evangelical Alliance sent deputations to Washington, D.C.,
and presented concurrent memorials to both the President of the United States and
the Sultan himself. The Alliance also corresponded with American church leaders,
reminding them of the “special claims” Armenians held over them as a result of the
suffering they endured “as Christians” 25.
Together, the leaders of the ABCFM and the Evangelical Alliance helped mold
American public opinion about Ottoman affairs. Perhaps the most significant
form of influence was simple information about events on the ground. While the
ABCFM shared news with the State Department, it also released missionary letters to newspapers in Britain and the United States, providing vivid, on-the-scene
accounts to editors who may have lacked foreign correspondents of their own 26.
In 1895, former missionary Frederick D. Greene excerpted dozens of such letters
in his widely read book, The Armenian Crisis in Turkey 27.With an introduction by
Josiah Strong, Greene’s book caused such a sensation that it caught the attention
of Alexander Terrell, the American Minister in Constantinople, who worried that
it would hamper any diplomatic work he presumed to undertake on behalf of the
ABCFM 28.
As missionary letters circulated publicly, and as journalists, ministers, and other
humanitarian advocates elaborated upon the narratives therein, three essential messages emerged. First was the narrowly religious nature of the conflict. In a sermon
reprinted in the The Outlook, Congregationalist Minister Lyman Abbott described
the persecution of Christians in Armenia as “the worst, the most cruel, the most
barbarous religious persecution the world has ever seen”. While he acknowledged
that the causes of the violence were “partly race hatred, partly trade jealousy, partly
religious animosity”, he gave pride of place to the “theology of Mohammedanism”,
which he claimed intensified all other jealousies 29. Former missionary Edwin
Bliss, in his compendious Turkey and the Armenian Atrocities, concurred, suggesting that “in the East”, religious and political questions are so inseparable as to be
indistinguishable from each other 30. Frederick Greene, for his part, believed that
Armenians could flourish only if the Ottoman Empire ceded its territories, since
24. Smith to Rev. A. N. Hitchcock, January 7, 1895, ABC 1.1 Vol. 172 ; Smith to Mrs. Olivia N.
Ford, December 28, 1895, ABC 1.1 Vol. 180.
25. Josiah Strong to Rev. H. N. Barnum et alii, June 16, 1896 ; Strong to Gresham, December 20,
1894 ; Executive Committee Notes, December 27, 1895, Evangelical Alliance Records (hereafter EA
Records), The Burke Library Archives at Union Theological Seminary, New York ; Strong to C. H. Daniels,
January 27, 1894 ; Strong to Smith, December 10, 1894, ABC 10.
26. Daniels to Blatchford, November 29, 1895, ABC 1.1 Vol 179 ; Smith to Miss Sarah Pollack,
March 25, 1896, ABC 1.1 Vol. 183.
27. F. D. Greene, The Armenian Crisis in Turkey, New York, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1895.
28. R. E. Cook, The United States..., op. cit., p. 68.
29. “The Armenian Question”, The Outlook, December 5, 1896.
30. E. M. Bliss, Turkey and the Armenian Atrocities, Philadelphia, Hubbard Publishing Co., 1896,
p. 482.
34 n Ann Marie Wilson
31. F. D. Greene, The Armenian Crisis..., op. cit., p. 115.
32. Ibid., p. 38.
33. Ibid., p. 27 ; “Armenians Rounded up like Sheep”, Boston Daily Advertiser, January 2, 1895.
34. “Women’s Views on Armenia”, The Woman’s Journal, July 6, 1896 ; “For the Freedom of Armenia,”
undated clipping, Scrapbook 74, Reel 44, Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) Papers,
Microfilm Edition of Temperance and Prohibition Papers.
35. S. Payaslian, United States Policy Toward the Armenian Question and the Armenian Genocide,
New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, p. 13.
36. “Turkish Persecution of Christians”, Boston Transcript, August 2, 1894 ; “The Armenian Question”,
The Outlook, October 28, 1893.
37. “Yankees of the Orient”, Boston Daily Globe, December 29, 1895.
Le Mouvement Social, avril-juin 2009 © La Découverte
“Mohammedanism at its birth was a malformation […] and will continue so even
though restored to a state of perfect health” 31.
The second message flowing from missionary pens was that Armenian women
were uniquely victimized by a social order that left them “trodden in the mire of
Moslem lust” 32. Of the letters Greene reprinted, almost all included lurid details
about the use of rape as a tool of war. More than one related a story in which
“sixty young brides and more attractive girls were crowded into a little church […]
where, after being violated, they were slaughtered, and a stream of human blood
flowed from the church door” 33. Several others described forced conversions, the
murder of pregnant women and children, and the abduction of young girls into
harems. Politically active American women reprinted stories like these in publications like the Woman’s Journal, where they encouraged their allies in the woman
suffrage and temperance movements to come to the rescue of “Christian womanhood”. Frances Willard, president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union,
the largest political organization of women in the United States, editorialized that
“the atrocities committed upon women in Armenia are the natural outcome of the
sex-worship of themselves by men”. When Willard announced that it was “time
that the womanhood of the nation aroused itself to go to the relief of this people”,
thousands of American women heeded her call by signing a petition or making a
donation 34.
Finally, advocates spread the notion that Armenians deserved American sympathy for the twin reasons that the Armenians were, on the one hand, unique in
the world for their long-standing devotion to Christ, and, on the other, just like
average American Protestants. Early in the nineteenth century, when the ABCFM
first embarked upon evangelizing the Near East, its members frequently wrote
home to complain about the “nominal Christians” they hoped to lift from darkness, grumbling about the Armenians’ “dominant love of money”, their “low moral
character”, and their apparent “addiction to concubinage” 35. By 1894, however, it
seemed that the nominal had become devout. Armenians were now described as “a
people of Caucasian blood like ourselves”, laudable for their entrepreneurial acumen, their patriotism, and their “devotion to a pure home” 36. Evidently, the wholesome influence of American Protestantism had purified (not to mention whitened)
this “ancient” Christian people – now commonly referred to as the “Yankees of
the Orient” 37. Yet the Armenians’ historical roots remained important. Time and
again Americans read in their newspapers that Noah’s ark had once rested atop
Mount Ararat, that the Garden of Eden had once bloomed in Anatolia, and that the
In the name of God, civilization, and humanity n 35
Le Mouvement Social, avril-juin 2009 © La Découverte
Armenian monarchy had been the first to adopt Christianity as its official religion
in 301 a.d 38.
Although Armenian revolutionists mocked missionaries for the “idle task” of
“converting Christians to Christianity”, their own propaganda efforts did not, in
fact, depart very far from the messages discussed above 39. In letters to the editor
and inside their own meeting halls, Armenians emphasized their long history of
Christian faith, the special dangers facing Armenian women, and the cultural similarities they shared with Americans. In a lengthy letter to a Boston newspaper, one
Armenian writer even tried to demonstrate the “striking resemblance” between early
New England Puritans and the Armenians of the present day 40. Yet Armenians
lacked the public platform enjoyed by missionaries at the ABCFM, whose allies
included men like George Frisbie Hoar, Senator from Massachusetts, and William
E. Dodge, Jr., a mining magnate who also served as a president of the Evangelical
Alliance 41. Meanwhile, journalists’ accounts of Armenian political gatherings tended
to highlight the immigrants’ ideological factionalism and their not un-frequent
fistfights, often hinting that Armenians posed a kind of anarchist threat 42. In Great
Britain, newspapers published similar stories, but there Armenian émigrés enjoyed
at least a small entryway into circles of power through their relationship to the
historian and Liberal MP James Bryce, who became an advocate for Armenia after
touring the Caucasus in 1897. In 1890, after building a relationship with Armenian
political organizations in Paris and London, Bryce founded the Anglo-Armenian
Association, a group of Liberal politicians, High Church and Nonconformist clergymen, and Armenians who sought reform in the Ottoman Empire 43. Armenian
nationalists in the United States, by contrast, lacked any such platform.
This changed in 1893, when an Armenian revolutionist named Garabed Papazian
strode into the Boston offices of the Unitarian Christian Register and suggested that
the editors, Samuel and Isabel Barrows, publish an article about the plight of his
people 44. The Barrowses proved receptive, perhaps because earlier that year, while
traveling in Leipzig, Isabel had made the acquaintance of an ambitious RussianArmenian student named Ohannes Chatschumian. Taking to him immediately,
Isabel convinced Chatschumian to return with her to the United States, where he
attended the World’s Parliament of Religions (held at the Columbian Exposition
38. Ibid. ; “Sketch of Armenia”, The Woman’s Journal, April 6, 1895 ; J. O’Shea, “Unhappy Armenia”,
The Catholic World, January 1895 ; “The Evil of the Turk (by an Armenian)”, The Outlook, August 24,
1895 ; “The Women of Armenia”, The Woman’s Journal, July 14, 1894.
39. “Philarmenic Association of America”, Armenia/Arménie (Paris), July 1, 1894.
40. “Puritan and Armenian”, Boston Daily Globe, March 19, 1894.
41. J. E. Reed, “American Foreign Policy...”, art. cit., p. 233 ; “William E. Dodge Dead”, New York
Times, August 10, 1903.
42. “Armenians Have a Row”, Boston Daily Advertiser, July 8, 1895 ; “Armenians in New York”,
Milwaukee Sentinel, September 11, 1891 ; “An Armenian Riot”, Worcester Daily Spy, March 27, 1893.
43. See letters in MSS 191, James Bryce Papers, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, and
“Armenia”, Contemporary Review, February 1895. See also J. Bryce, Transcaucasia and Ararat, London,
Macmillan, 1877 and J. Seaman, A Citizen of the World : The Life of James Bryce, London, Tauris,
2006.
44. M. G. Gismegian, “Relations with Armenians”, Armenian Affairs, 1 (2), Spring 1950, p. 139140 ; A. S. Blackwell, “Some Reminiscences”, The New Armenia, 5 (2), February 1918 ; Federal Writers’
Project, The Armenians in Massachusetts, Boston, Armenian Historical Society, 1937, Chapter 4.
in Chicago) and enrolled in Harvard’s Divinity School 45. While in Boston,
Chatschumian educated the Barrowses about Armenian politics, history, and culture. When Papazian suggested an article, then, the Barrowses were already ready to
add the Armenian Question to their long list of interests and to welcome their new
Armenian friends into their diverse coterie of social reformers.
It was out of this milieu that the “Friends of Armenia” was born. In the offices
of the Christian Register, Papazian found a group of humanitarian reformers who
were unafraid of the taint of radicalism. These included Unitarian clergymen like
Edward Everett Hale, woman suffragists like Alice Stone Blackwell, and former
abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison, Jr. Indeed, just two years earlier, this
same community produced a similar organization, the Friends of Russian Freedom,
at the initiative of Sergius Stepniak, a Russian anarchist who had founded a similar
group in London 46. The idea of forming a society of native-born Americans to work
in tandem with foreign “freedom fighters”, then, was hardly unfamiliar. Both the
Friends of Armenia and the Friends of Russian Freedom gave voice to the aspirations of a persecuted people, and both chose as their president the octogenarian
Julia Ward Howe, beloved author of the Civil War poem “Battle Hymn of the
Republic” and widow of Samuel Gridley Howe, who had led Americans in their
support of the Greeks during the 1820s. As one of the most famous women of her
day, “America’s Queen Victoria” lent any cause a venerable, if quaint, New England
respectability 47.
The Friends of Armenia began their agitation several months before the massacre at Sasun catapulted Armenia into national news. Joining forces with the
Boston Philarmenic Society in March 1894, the newly renamed United Friends
of Armenia opened its first meeting with harsh words for American missionaries.
William Lloyd Garrison, Jr., began by noting the reluctance of missionary societies
to discuss “Turkey’s guilt and responsibility”, suggesting that they should expect no
assistance “from the evangelical quarter”. He then introduced Michael Anagnos,
Julia Ward Howe’s son-in-law and a teacher at her late husband’s Perkins School
for the Blind, who condemned anyone who would proselytize to “Christians of the
first order”. “The same good church people who once preached the righteousness
of slavery”, Anagnos declared, are “now charging the Armenians with being only
agitators”. Following speeches by a number of local Armenians, Henry Blackwell,
Alice Stone Blackwell’s father and fellow editor of the Woman’s Journal, appealed
for the liberation of Armenia – which “ought to be accomplished by arms, if words
failed” 48.
When news of the Sasun massacre broke in late November 1894, the Friends of
Armenia organized a series of mass meetings and dispatched Samuel Barrows, Henry
45. Biographical Folder for Ohannes Chatschumian, UAV 328.282, Harvard University Archives.
See also P. Balakian, The Burning Tigris, op. cit., p. 13-20.
46. J. E. Good, “America and the Russian Revolutionary Movement, 1888-1905”, Russian Review,
41 (3), 1982, p. 273-287.
47. L. Richards, Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910, New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1916, p. 187. See
also D. P. Clifford, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory : A Biography of Julia Ward Howe, Boston, Little,
1979.
48. “Armenia : March 21, 1894”, typescript of speech by William Lloyd Garrison, Jr., Garrison
Family Papers, Series IV, Box 147, Folder 10, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton,
Mass. ; “Friends of Armenia”, Boston Daily Advertiser, March 22, 1894.
Le Mouvement Social, avril-juin 2009 © La Découverte
36 n Ann Marie Wilson
In the name of God, civilization, and humanity n 37
Blackwell, and an Armenian businessman named Moses Gulesian to Washington to
meet with Secretary of State Gresham. While the Evangelical Alliance appealed for
missionary security, Barrows, Blackwell, and Gulesian hoped Gresham would appoint
a native Armenian to an independent commission that would investigate the massacre, presuming that an Armenian would more likely collect truthful stories from his
countrymen. Meanwhile, in New York, Chicago, and Minneapolis, local groups of
Armenians organized their own mass meetings, often forging a united front among
members of the Protestant and Apostolic churches, as well as among revolutionaries
of various stripes 49.
While Armenian nationalists and their allies took to the streets, however, the
ABCFM remained cautious. In The Missionary Herald, a spokesperson attributed
the society’s relative silence on the massacres to the “extremely delicate position” of
missionaries in the region. While “sympathizing deeply” with the oppressed, these
hardy workers had always been “loyal to the government under which they have lived,
and have never countenanced sedition or rebellion”. The statement concluded : “It
is not necessary for our missionaries, after these scores of years of devoted labor for
the native races of Turkey, to prove their sympathy with the suffering and oppressed
by joining others who, at a safe distance from the scene of the danger, are passing
vigorous resolutions in condemnation of the wrongs inflicted” 50.
But if a divide separated the missionaries of the ABCFM from the more radical activists of the United Friends of Armenia in November 1894, it became less
apparent the following winter. Continued massacres brought about so much suffering – through violence, disease, and starvation – that missionaries and diplomats
alike warned of an unprecedented disaster. By December 1895, all of these groups
began to find common ground in a nationwide effort to send emergency relief to
the Ottoman Empire.
Le Mouvement Social, avril-juin 2009 © La Découverte
“The Two-Edged Sword of Civilization”
As sympathy and outrage poured forth from all corners of the United States, observers remarked upon the religious quality of the movement – what one Congressman
called a “Christian clamor” 51. Louis Klopsch, editor of the Christian Herald, the
most widely circulated religious newspaper in the English-speaking world, led the
early effort to raise money for relief, publishing calls for aid and printing the name
of every individual contributor, no matter how small the sum. This money was
forwarded directly to medical missionaries and joined contributions from readers
of The Outlook and Lend a Hand, a Unitarian publication 52. Local committees of
business men and elected officials launched fundraising appeals of their own, and
in November 1895 many affiliated with the National Armenian Relief Committee
(NARC), which established its offices at the American Bible Society headquarters
in New York City. Formed by businessmen who had given financial support to
49. Samuel Barrows to Ohannes Chatschumian, December 15, 1894, Barrows Family Papers,
Houghton Library, Harvard University ; “Friends of the Armenians”, Boston Daily Herald, November
27, 1894 ; R. Mirak, Torn Between Two Lands, op. cit., p. 212-213.
50. “Affairs in Turkey”, The Missionary Herald, January 1895.
51. Congressional Record, Vol. 28, 54th Congress, 1st Session, 1010.
52. M. Curti, American Philanthropy Abroad, op. cit., p. 111 and 121 ; C. Pepper, Life-Work of Louis
Klopsch, New York, The Christian Herald, 1910, p. 28-52.
38 n Ann Marie Wilson
53. “Save the Armenians ! Our Persecuted Fellow-Christians”, National Armenian Relief Committee,
WCTU Scrapbook, reel 44, WCTU Papers ; M. Curti, American Philanthropy..., op. cit., p. 122-123 ;
N. Cohen, Jews in Christian America : The Pursuit of Religious Equality, New York, Oxford University
Press, 1992, p. 100-108.
54. M. Curti, American Philanthropy..., op. cit., p. 111 and 124-125 ; Fundraising Circular, April 16,
1896, CPRC Papers.
55. Robert Dornan to Charles Warwick, May 4, 1896 ; “From the Citizens’ Permanent Relief
Committee to the Leading Business Men of Philadelphia”, March 16, 1896 ; Spencer Trask to Robert
Ogden, February 6, 1896, Citizens’ Permanent Relief Committee (CPRC) Papers, The Historical Society
of Pennsylvania.
56. Frederick Greene to James Barton, November 15, 1897, ABC 10.
57. See petitions in Record Group 46, Box 71, Folder SEN54A-J12, and Record Group 233, Box
169, Folder HR54A-H11.1, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), U.S.A.
58. “A Petition for the Protection of Life and Property in Armenia”, Record Group 46, Box 71,
Folder SEN54A-J12, NARA.
59. “Petition of Mass Meeting at Park Congregational Church, St. Paul, Minnesota”, Record Group
46, Box 71, 54A K-2., 54A Folder H11.1, NARA.
Le Mouvement Social, avril-juin 2009 © La Découverte
missionary and educational efforts in the Near East, the NARC was presided over by
Supreme Court Justice David J. Brewer, himself the son of missionaries and author
of the 1892 Holy Trinity Church v. United States decision, in which he famously
declared that the United States was a “Christian nation”. With the assistance of
secretary Frederick Greene and the Wall Street firm Brown Brothers & Company,
the NARC launched a major fundraising campaign on behalf of “Our Persecuted
Fellow-Christians” 53.
Donations to the Armenian cause never matched the sums collected during the
Russian famine of 1891, in part because of a severe economic depression that began
in 1893 and still lingered over the nation in late 1895. The Citizens’ Permanent
Relief Committee of Philadelphia, which raised over $100 000 in just three weeks
to feed hungry Russians in 1892, failed to collect more than $14 000 between
January and April 1896, largely due to what one donor called “miserable business
conditions” 54. Philadelphia boosters feared that such a “tardy and small” response
would reflect poorly on their city, but organizers were similarly frustrated in New
York, where “the wealthy men have heard so much of Armenia for the last few
months that in a measure their interest has palled” 55. In the end, the majority of
donations came in the form of humble “mites” collected by the Christian Herald
and local committees. But small sums added up. In 1897, Frederick Greene estimated that one million dollars had been raised to succor the Armenians, of which
$600 000 came from the United States and the remainder from Great Britain and
Western Europe 56.
Signing a petition or attending a mass meeting cost nothing at all, of course, and
Americans sent thousands of signatures to Congress during December 1895 and
January 1896, as the relief movement got off the ground 57. The appeals conveyed
a variety of messages from Protestant and Catholic congregations, youth groups,
Armenian societies, and women’s political organizations – even state and local governments. Some petitions, like that of the Christian Endeavor Society of Hazleton,
Pennsylvania, struck a nationalist note, demanding protection for American citizens
and payment of an indemnity for missionary properties damaged at the height of
the massacres 58. Others added fire to that command, insisting that the United
States should dispatch warships “in the name of outraged humanity” 59. Still others
Le Mouvement Social, avril-juin 2009 © La Découverte
In the name of God, civilization, and humanity n 39
focused on the plight of the persecuted Christians and implored the federal government to “interfere by moral suasion”. The great majority of petitioners seemed
to recognize that the United States could not intervene in the same way as Great
Britain or Russia, by virtue of its abstention from the Treaty of Berlin. All the same,
they believed that the United States was duty bound, as a “Christian nation”, to use
its influence to pressure the other “Christian Powers” to uphold their obligations to
the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian minority.
Pressured by public opinion, Congress took up these issues in January 1896. The
previous December, Democratic Senator Wilkinson Call of Florida had introduced
a joint resolution calling for the United States to join “civilized governments” in
ending the Armenian persecutions and rending onto the Armenians “a government
of their own people”, either by “peaceful negotiations, or if necessary by force of
arms” 60. Call admitted that the “traditional policy” of the United States was to avoid
“entangling alliances”, but he insisted that this did not mean that Americans, “the
foremost people of the world, shall take no part in the great efforts that may be
made by the civilized nations to suppress outrage, barbarism, and cruelty when it
is upon so large a scale that it threatens the civilization and the religions of the
world”. Republican Shelby Cullom of Illinois, chairman of the Senate Committee
on Foreign Relations, agreed with Call in spirit but proposed a more temperate
resolution urging the European powers to uphold their treaty obligations and secure
to the Armenians “all the rights belonging to them as men, as Christians, and as beneficiaries of [the Treaty of Berlin]”. The Cullom resolution also offered the President
support for any “vigorous action” he might take to defend American interests in
Turkey and further requested that the President communicate the text of the resolution to the governments of European powers 61.
Cullom’s proposal passed both the House and Senate after a lengthy, heated debate.
Some questioned the propriety, even the constitutionality, of Congressional commentary on European treaty obligations. Representative Henry Turner, Democrat
of Mississippi, warned against abandoning the “great precedent established by
Washington himself ”. He asked : “Shall we constitute ourselves universal guardians
of mankind ? Shall we arrogate to ourselves that superiority of Christian grace and
sympathy which will entitle us to tell them what their duty is, and how they must do
it ?” 62. But many believed the Cullom resolutions did not go far enough. Playing to
the galleries, Republican Representative Charles Grosvenor of Ohio spoke in biblical
metaphor : “[The Armenians] have asked us for bread, and we are giving them a
stone. They have asked us for the fish of a Christian nation’s powerful protest, and
we have given them the serpent of an abject falling down and apology at the feet of
the Turkish government” 63. Representative David Henderson, Republican of Iowa,
refused to speak of the “Christian world”, preferring instead the term “civilization”.
But his use of the word retained a kind of religious fervor. “If need be”, he declared,
“I am ready to have the two-edged sword of civilization pierce the cruel heart of
the Ottoman Empire” 64. Henderson echoed the original warning of Senator Call,
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
Congressional Record, Vol. 28, 54th Congress, 1st Session, p. 108.
Ibid., p. 854.
Ibid., p. 1010-1011.
Ibid., p. 1014.
Ibid., p. 1007.
who worried “that the civilization which we represent” would be “overthrown by
intolerance, by bigotry, by superstition, by cruelty, and crime of every character” 65.
The rhetoric of Christianity and the rhetoric of civilization thus blended together
and reinforced each other. Individuals might emphasize one element or the other,
but many attributed the same characteristics – tolerance, democracy, “progress” – to
each 66.
Congressional debate mirrored the discussion in American magazines, newspapers, and public squares. While most advocates insisted that they raised their voices
“in the name of humanity”, the term “humanity” itself was almost always coded as
Christian by definition. William Lloyd Garrison, Jr., recognized this pattern and
made an explicit effort to work against it whenever he spoke about Armenia. He
pledged his support “not because they are Armenians and Christians, but because
they are human beings with rights and liberties as precious as my own”. He insisted
that “were the case reversed and Christian Armenians were butchering and violating
Mohammedan Turks and Kurds”, his “voice would be raised for the oppressed and
wronged” 67. Similarly, a representative of the Citizens’ Permanent Relief Committee
maintained that “we don’t help [the Armenians] because they are Christians but
because they are fellow men” 68. These statements corroborate the notion that
international humanitarianism emerged during the nineteenth century as a liberal
enterprise aimed at defending and protecting all human beings. But even within the
United Friends of Armenia – a group of people broad-minded enough to collaborate
across national and ideological differences – Garrison’s expansive liberalism proved
exceptional. Alice Stone Blackwell, for one, found it “repugnant that a nation like
the Armenians – a people remarkably intelligent, with an ancient civilization and
literature, and an exceptionally pure family life – should be left to perish at the
hands of stupid, brutal, and ferocious Turks” 69. Julia Ward Howe likewise referred
to the Turks “as a race whose barbarism has disgraced too long the civilization of
Europe”, insisting that the “root of [Armenian] troubles is that they are a Christian
people living under Mohammedan rule” 70. In the minds of these women and many
others, the humanitarian imperative to defend and protect – while often expressed
in universalist terms – remained closely tied to the defense of “Christendom” and the
protection of “noble races”.
In the end, it was this widely shared commitment to defending “Christian civilization” that provided the impetus behind American humanitarianism on behalf
of suffering Armenians. The irony, however, is that Christian rhetoric ultimately
threatened to undermine the delivery of material relief. In late November 1895,
missionaries in Constantinople cabled their brethren in Boston to ask that “the Red
65. Ibid., p. 144.
66. Confidence that Christianity represented “the religion of civilization” ran high among American
Protestants at this time. See R. T. Handy, A Christian America : Protestant Hopes and Historical Realities,
New York, Oxford University Press, 1971.
67. “Address at Armenian Meeting in Boston, May 1902”, Garrison Family Papers, Series IV, Box
147, Folder 10.
68. “Minutes of Mass Meeting of Citizens held at Mayor’s Office, February 3, 1896”, Box 35, CPRC
Papers.
69. “The Armenian Question”, The Outlook, October 28, 1893.
70. “Another Appeal”, Boston Daily Advertiser, April 10, 1896 ; “Julia Ward Howe”, Daily InterOcean,
Chicago, March 2, 1895.
Le Mouvement Social, avril-juin 2009 © La Découverte
40 n Ann Marie Wilson
Le Mouvement Social, avril-juin 2009 © La Découverte
In the name of God, civilization, and humanity n 41
Cross Society be induced to enter upon relief work as in a state of war” 71. In the face
of overwhelming misery, and in light of their own budget shortfalls, they hoped that
the American Red Cross could raise added funds and handle relief distribution in
areas where the ABCFM did not have a presence. They also believed that the Sultan
would be more likely to welcome the assistance of an internationally recognized
agency than to collaborate with missionaries whose loyalty he doubted. But the missionaries were mistaken. When Red Cross founder Clara Barton agreed to lead the
relief expedition, she insisted that she and her assistants would “enter the field [...]
free from all racial or religious feeling or alliances” 72. With American newspapers
describing the Armenian massacres as a sensational “crusade of the crescent against
the cross”, however, the Sultan concluded that Americans were exaggerating the
violence for political ends and that the Red Cross was not neutral, after all. While
Barton was still en route to Constantinople, she received word that she would not
be admitted to the empire 73.
Ultimately, Clara Barton convinced Tewfik Pasha, the Turkish Minister of
Foreign Affairs, that her object was “purely humanitarian”, and he agreed that she
and her four assistants could carry out their work without obstruction. By late
March 1896 Barton launched five separate relief expeditions from her headquarters in Constantinople. Three distributed seed, cattle, and farming implements
to destitute people in the province of Harput, while the other two recruited local
doctors to treat victims of small pox, typhus, and dysentery in the communities
of Zeitun and Marash 74. The task of relieving hunger, meanwhile, fell to the missionaries of the ABCFM. Indeed, despite all initial hopes, the ABCFM handled
the majority of the work carried out on behalf of the Armenians. Of the approximately 600 000 American dollars distributed by 1897, less than $27 000 passed
through the hands of the Red Cross ; the rest flowed through the Armenian Relief
Committee in Constantinople, which was led by ABCFM treasurer William Peet.
By late spring, Peet complained privately that the Red Cross had failed “to take
any considerable amount of the work off our hands,” and that “a great deal of the
work which has been done by missionaries has been ascribed [...] to the Red Cross
people” 75. As collaborators, the ABCFM and the American Red Cross undoubtedly carried out a heroic service, but relief workers remained limited in the number
of people they could reach through the five Red Cross expeditions and scattered
mission stations.
An anguished Clara Barton recognized that her organization was failing to meet
expectations. Although she defended the “splendid work” of her assistants, she blamed
their difficulties on having “two excited, unreasonable, and apparently fanatical
71. Judson Smith to George Frisbie Hoar, November 29, 1895, ABC 1.1 Vol. 179.
72. Clara Barton to Louis Klopsch, December 22, 1895, enclosed in Klopsch to Judson Smith,
December 23, 1895, ABC 10.
73. “More Turkish Outrages : It Is a Crusade of the Crescent Against the Cross,” Irish World and
American Industrial Liberator (New York), December 15, 1894 ; M. Curti, American Philanthropy..., op.
cit., p. 126 ; C. Barton, The Red Cross in Peace and War, Washington, D.C., American Historical Press,
1899, p. 276-77.
74. Clara Barton to Hon. R. R. Hitt, May 22, 1896, Reel 77, Clara Barton Papers, Manuscript
Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
75. William Peet to John Converse, April 27, 1896, CPRC Papers ; James Barton to Rev. E. M. Bliss,
May 8, 1896, ABC 1.1 Vol. 184.
42 n Ann Marie Wilson
nationalities to deal with – one of which was, of course, the Turks, [while] the other
wasn’t” 76. In the end, the Red Cross fell prey to controversy over the proper spirit
and conduct of humanitarian rescue. While members of the Citizens’ Permanent
Relief Committee withheld their support from the Red Cross because they distrusted
its “business methods”, relief committees in New York and Boston bundled their
contributions with a litany of complaints. Chief among these were concerns that
Barton was collaborating too eagerly with Ottoman officials, and that she was assisting Muslims as well as Christians, potential perpetrators as well as victims. American
money, these donors insisted, should go to persecuted Christians alone. Exasperated,
Barton decided that her work would be better off if she severed all ties to the two committees. In April she cabled home tersely : “We will finish the field without further
aid” 77. Later she expressed hope that Americans would learn from this experience in
the future. “One cannot fail to see how nearly a misguided enthusiasm […] came to
the overthrowing of our entire project”, she wrote. 78 From Barton’s perspective, at
least, the two-edged sword of civilization was double-edged indeed.
Clara Barton’s good friend and supporter, Julia Ward Howe, has been widely celebrated for her leadership in the United Friends of Armenia, and is remembered
today as one of the “foremost human rights crusaders” of her day 79. In 1904, however, in a loving character sketch written for The Outlook, Howe’s daughter Maud
described her mother as “an imperialist, an expansionist, and a Republican dyed in
the wool” 80. Does therein lie a contradiction ? As we have seen, the humanitarian
mobilization on behalf of Armenia drew upon a widely shared conviction that the
United States, as a Christian nation, had a duty to protect fellow Christians from
– to borrow a phrase from Wilkinson Call – “the hordes of Eastern barbarism”.
But is it reasonable to label the American mobilization on behalf of Armenia an
imperialist venture ? 81
The answer to that question depends on where – and when – one looks. The
British Liberal James Bryce appealed for American support for the Armenian cause
precisely because he did not think that anyone could accuse the United States of
harboring territorial or commercial designs in Turkey. “The Continental press tries
to present British action as prompted by self interest”, he wrote to the brother of
William Lloyd Garrison, Jr., in 1895. “But no one can allege that America has any
but a humanitarian motive” 82. Other European commentators proved less sanguine.
Following the passage of the Cullom resolution, a Viennese correspondent for the
76. Clara Barton to Stephen Barton, June 10, 1896 ; Clara Barton to Leonora Halsted, April 29,
1896, Reel 77, Clara Barton Papers.
77. C. Barton, The Red Cross..., op. cit.,p. 289 ; E. Pryor, Clara Barton : Professional Angel,
Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987, p. 294.
78. C. Barton, The Red Cross..., op. cit., p. 290.
79. A. J. Kirakossian (ed.), The Armenian Massacres..., op. cit., p. 41 ; R. Mirak, Torn Between Two
Lands, op. cit., p. 214 ; P. Balakian, The Burning Tigris, op. cit., p. 6, 20.
80. M. Howe Elliott, “Julia Ward Howe”, The Outlook, October 1, 1904.
81. Congressional Record, Vol. 28, 54th Congress, 1st Session, p. 144.
82. James Bryce to Frank Garrison, Garrison Family Papers, Series III, Box 111, Folder 27.
Le Mouvement Social, avril-juin 2009 © La Découverte
Conclusion
Le Mouvement Social, avril-juin 2009 © La Découverte
In the name of God, civilization, and humanity n 43
London Times indicated that the action was “not altogether to the taste of some
Continental Powers”, who saw it “as proving a desire on the part of the United States
to influence European affairs” 83. Yet in the final account, the U.S. government held
back from anything more than a symbolic diplomatic gesture. In fact, President
Cleveland ultimately chose not to forward the text of the Cullom resolutions to the
European powers, as Congress had requested. In the end, the most tangible immediate outcome of the American mobilization was the joint relief mission of Clara
Barton and the ABCFM, and the vigorous public discussion that surrounded it 84.
But legacy matters, too. When the United States decided to go to war against
Spain in 1898, supporters of the war effort framed intervention in Cuba as a humanitarian project, and they explicitly used the lessons of Armenia to justify that claim.
As early as 1895, William Randolph Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner announced
that Americans “cannot permit the creation of another Armenia in this hemisphere
[...]. Cuba is our Armenia, and it is at our doors” 85. In March 1898, Representative
William King of Utah invoked earlier statements by Secretary of State John Hay,
arguing that Americans “will not shield ourselves behind the position taken by the
British Government in the case of Armenia”, but would instead avenge the atrocities
taking place, once again, “at our door” 86. And although he lost his Senate seat before
the war began, Wilkinson Call was ready to send a fleet to Cuba as early as 1896
in order to save Cuban lives and, just as important, to defend American honor 87.
The spectacle of American humanitarianism on behalf of suffering Armenians –
regardless of its practical effect on the ground in Turkey – thus helped to shore up
a nationalist ideal in which the United States showed itself to be a more honorable
defender of “humanity” than the European powers. By 1904, Theodore Roosevelt
could formulate his expansionist corollary to the Monroe Doctrine by invoking
the “inevitability” that a great nation like the United States would sometimes wish
to express its horror at gross injustices abroad. “There must be no effort made to
remove the mote from our brother’s eye if we refuse to remove the beam from our
own”, he declared. “But in extreme cases action may be justifiable and proper”.
Among the cases he cited were Armenia and Cuba 88.
Some American humanitarians objected to this use of history. At the height of
the Spanish American war, the reformer Herbert Welsh confessed to James Bryce
that “the business of killing people as a humanitarian expedient is less and less to
my liking” 89. Alluding to the U.S. occupation of the Philippines, William Lloyd
Garrision, Jr., declared : “We are proving that Turkey and Spain have no monopoly
of torture and cruelty and that republican institutions can produce tyrants to match
in brutality Abdul Hamid or General Weyler” – a development that left him with
83. London Times, January 28, 1896, cited in R. E. Cook, The United States…, op. cit., p. 64.
84. M. Curti, American Philanthropy…, op. cit., p. 133.
85. Quoted in G. Bass, Freedom’s Battle…, op. cit., p. 317.
86. Appendix to the Congressional Record, Vol 31, 55th Congress, 2nd Session, p. 248.
87. “Send Fleet to Cuba : Senator Call Would Have Congress Declare War on Spain”, The Daily
InterOcean, April 2, 1896.
88. T. Roosevelt, “Annual Address to the Congress of the United States”, 1904. E. May discusses
the legacy of Armenia in Imperial Democracy : The Emergence of America as a Great Power, New York,
Harper & Row, 1961, p. 29.
89. Herbert Welsh to James Bryce, 24 May 1898, MSS USA 20, Bryce Papers.
44 n Ann Marie Wilson
90. “Address at Armenian Meeting in Boston, May 1902”, Garrison Family Papers, Series IV, Box
147, Folder 10.
91. “International Duties”, Armenia, October 1904.
92. “Cuba and Armenia”, The Century Magazine, February 1899.
Le Mouvement Social, avril-juin 2009 © La Découverte
“humbled pride” 90. Nevertheless, others retained their faith in American intervention. The feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman, writing in a pro-Armenian publication in 1904, expressed confidence that “America, with the blended blood of all
peoples in her veins, with interests in every land”, was uniquely positioned to lead
“not only in allowing human liberty here, but using her great strength to protect it
everywhere” 91.
The centrality of the Armenian episode to this story was perhaps best summed
up in 1899 by Talcott Williams, a prominent journalist and son of missionaries to
Turkey. For over a century, he argued, the United States had shown a reluctance to
interfere in the internal affairs of other nations, adhering instead to a “strictly legal
view” of sovereignty as supreme over morality. Even the abolition of slavery was
conducted not because it was “righteous”, but because it was expedient. “Yet after
a century of this habit of international thought”, he wrote, “we drew the sword
for Cuba, when Europe stood with sheathed sword before worse and more brutal
deeds in Armenia”. Atrocities in Armenia had provided “a vast object-lesson” in the
moral responsibility of “civilized nations for neighboring wrongs they could right”,
and the American intervention in Cuba, deemed by Williams to be a great success,
proved that “the blood shed in Armenia was not spilled in vain”. In the end, the
Armenian and Cuban experiences gave Americans “public recognition of a new
national duty and obligation, to wit : that the American lands to the south of us
shall never by our will be left in any inhuman oppression and wrong we can right”.
This fateful declaration, issued so earnestly in 1899, would hold grave implications
for the century that was to follow 92.