Memorial Day 1896: A Governor, a Nativist Oration, and Thirty Graves in the Rain
Seattle's Civil War remembrance became a stage for anxiety over unemployed marchers and foreign-born workers, while veterans decorated Lake View Cemetery under a steady downpour.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Seattle marked Memorial Day with exercises that mixed Civil War remembrance with the labor and immigration fears of 1896. One speaker described the 'present movement' of unemployed men as 'visionary and erratic,' predicting that the so-called army would soon exhaust itself. But he also demanded a radical change in the naturalization laws: 'American labor ought to be protected against foreign invasion,' he said, accusing corporations and capitalists of shipping 'ignorant, vicious and brutal immigrants' into the country to take the place of American laborers. He praised the Western coast for being 'protected against Mongolian immigration' and asked why the Atlantic ports should be left open.
Maj. W. S. Harlan then introduced Governor John H. McGraw as 'an honored and loyal citizen.' McGraw spoke on loyalty and patriotism, urging citizens to look beyond state and sectional lines and warning against demagogues who set class against class. Afterward the audience sang 'Marching Through Georgia' and 'Tramp, Tramp, Tramp,' and Joseph Shippen recited part of James Russell Lowell's memorial ode.
At Lake View Cemetery, rain fell steadily as the Grand Army plot was decorated. Thirty veterans' graves were in the plot; fifteen had government marble headstones and the rest wooden boards. The services included singing, the dipping of the flag, and the Ladies' Relief Corps, though the downpour interfered with the planned flag decorations. Flowers were laid on every grave, including that of an unknown drowned man, remembered by a woman with a bunch of pansies 'for thought.'
“American labor ought to be protected against foreign invasion.”
Memorial Day in 1896 was a civic ritual, but also a political platform: the speaker used the memory of Union dead to argue for closing the country to immigrants and protecting 'American labor.' That fusion of patriotism and nativism has recurred in Washington and U.S. politics, and the rain-soaked graves at Lake View remind us that the people excluded from that 'American' ideal were also part of the city's life.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.