[October 8-10 marks the 150th anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that tragedy and four other historic fires, leading up to a somber special post on our current crops of horrific wildfires.]
On the tragedy
that sheds new light on one of our more complex histories.
In this
post on Martin Scorcese’s Gangs of New
York (2002), I gave the
filmmaker a good bit of grief for the way in which his film builds toward a
chaotic but sympathetic depiction of the city’s Irish American community during
the 1863 draft
riots. As I noted there, the riots were of course part of a complex set of
historical and social contexts and factors, but likewise, and even more
saliently for Scorcese’s sympathies, was the period’s Irish American
community. It’s always challenging for those of us striving for a
progressive perspective on history when one oppressed community opposes
another, and that’s undoubtedly part of the story of the riots (if not, frankly,
the central
story of them): a recent, heavily discriminated-against American community
(Irish immigrants) reacting to yet another perceived discrimination (the Civil
War draft) by enacting violence against an even more discriminated-against
community (African Americans).
If we’re going
to remember the draft riots more fully and accurately, as I believe we
certainly should, it’d be important at the same time to remember the ways in
which Irish Americans contributed much more constructively to the Union cause
during the war. That would definitely include the
nearly 150,000 Federal troops who had been born in Ireland, nearly a third
of whom were apparently New Yorkers and all of whom were instrumental to the war’s successful
outcome. But it would also include the many Irish
American women who worked in the era’s mills, factories, and especially
arsenals—the latter especially not only because of their overt contributions to
the war effort, but also because of the striking number of tragic
arsenal explosions and accidents that claimed many workers’ lives (in
the South as well as the North) over the course of the war.
Exemplifying
such tragedies, and particularly overtly linked (in its own era and in
our collective memories of the event) to the Irish American community, was
the June
1864 Washington Arsenal fire. 1,500 men, women, and girls worked in that
arsenal, and while it’s impossible to ascertain an exact tally of how many were
killed and wounded in the fire, historians
estimate that at least twenty women died (the particular
area where the fire began was worked almost exclusively by women), and many
of the rest were likely injured either in the blaze or during their escape. It’s
certainly fair to say that these workers were casualties of war, just as all
such workers contributed mightily to the war effort; fair and important to
remember them right alongside those Irish American soldiers. And, to reiterate,
right alongside the New York draft rioters as well. History’s not reducible to
any one moment, and the more we put them in conversation, with each other and
all their contexts, the stronger and more valuable those collective memories
will be.
Next fire
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Fires or other historic disasters you’d analyze?
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