Posted on 07/01/2017 6:20:50 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
What was all the ruckus about anyway?
The Diary of George Templeton Strong, Edited by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas
The Time of Troubles for New York City in 1857 gives some backstory perspective on the draft riots to come less than 10 years from now.
In contrast to the draft rioters, the Irish Brigade will be one of the toughest units in the Union Army.
A very WASPy entry from Mr. Strong ;-).
I don’t think we need to worry about rioting for quite some time. This outbreak of violence regarding the police will will exhaust all the ruffians for quite a while. They’ll be happy to spend their off-work hours drinking beer.
Continued from June 6 (reply #10).
Nicole Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era
The Diary of George Templeton Strong, Edited by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas
That was “1803”.
A little more on the Lecompton Constitution:
http://www.kansasmemory.org/item/207409
There were four different Constitutions proposed in Kansas during this period: Topeka, Wyandotte, Lecompton and Leavanworth.
https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/kansas-constitutions/16532
The following has absolutely nothing to do with the Civil War, but as a musicology instructor I have to comment, because in an odd way it relates to President Trump.
The allegretto is the second movement of the symphony. It is, among people who listen to classical music, generally considered one of the most beautiful symphonic pieces ever composed. (See more on this here.) But among the classical music intelligentsia, it is considered one of the most boorish symphonic pieces ever composed.
I remember reading the review of the first time the symphony was ever played in London (the review was in the magazine Atheneum, but I can't find it online), which I read when I was researching in music college. The reviewer disliked the symphony in general, but I distinctly remember how he sniffed that the allegretto was actually played twice "for the benefit of the dilettanti." The writer in the above quote evidently thought the same way.
This is the way Trump is experienced today: those who are fond of America consider him the best political leader of our era, while those who are political intelligentsia consider him the most boorish political leader of our era.
I always tried to liven things up when we played Beethoven.
When our section had several measures of rest, I would jump up and start singing Scat.
“Shing-a-slang lobby lobba wheelie wheelie sha boom!”
Livened things up.....and then the Conductor fired me.
Jazz hater.
A common belief of the time, and very wrong. The writer, not being able to see the future of course, does not know two things. First, without the "Celtic fellow citizens" there would not have been enough cannon fodder in the Union Army to win the war. It was a common practice for the Army to have a recruitment table where the Irishmen came off the ships to America, and many were enlisted into the Army there. My own gggrandfather, James McGinley, came to the US three years after this in 1860, and immediately enlisted as a private.
Second, within a generation, the Irish had gone from good-Lord-how-did-they-ever-get-in-this-country! to being considered highly patriotic, hard-working, and maybe a bit weird but just as American as the rest of us--unlike, say, the Italians, about whom the general attitude was, well, good-Lord-how-did-they-ever-get-in-this-country!, including my own ggrandfather James DiLisi, who came in the early 1880s.
When we finally get control of the illegal immigration and return to the ideals of Emma Lazarus' The New Colossus, we'll see the same evolution happen among Latinos--indeed, among those who are legal we are seeing it already.
I fully understand both of these :-)
Another interesting note on the Seventh Symphony: "When [Karl Maria von] Weber heard the chromatic bass line in the coda of the first movement [around 11:30 of the recording linked below], he declared the composer ripe for the madhouse." George Templeton Strong would probably agree. The Allegretto begins at 12:41.
July 16. Stagnated at home in the evening till half-past ten, when an alarm of fire started me out and I chased the conflagration up Lexington beyond the bounds of civilization into desert places where Irish shanties began to prevail, and the region being lonely and suspicious and the fire still a dozen streets beyond and nearly out beside, I came back perspiring. It was a varnish factory in the latitude of Fifty-fifth Street.
Coroner’s inquest in progress over the unlucky German, Miller or Muller, the “opfer” of the 17th Ward riot. Evidence hopelessly conflicting; impossible to form an opinion whether he was killed by the police or by one of his own party. Teutonia is watching the case with much interest, and some say that if the verdict be not against the police, there will be a grand insurrection and a provisional government proclaimed in Tompkins Square.
The Diary of George Templeton Strong, Edited by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas
It's a good thing nothing like that happens today.
But who, today, would know what Mr. Strong means by Teutonia? Other than ourselves.
That said, I take comfort in knowing that things that always been as they are, while each generation believes things have never been worse.
German ancestry is still the largest ethnic group in the U.S. We don't notice it because the Germans have so thoroughly assimilated and few speak German anymore. My mother's family has an English sounding surname, but I was really surprised a couple of years ago to find evidence they actually came from Germany.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.