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Michael Foot

Michael Mackintosh Foot (23 July 1913 – 3 March 2010) was a British politician who served as Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party from 1980 to 1983. Foot began his working life as a journalist on Tribune and the Evening Standard and co-wrote the 1940 polemic against appeasement of Hitler, Guilty Men, under a pseudonym.

Foot served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1945 to 1955 and again from 1960 until he retired in 1992. A passionate orator, and associated with the left wing of the Labour Party for most of his career, Foot was an ardent supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and of British withdrawal from the European Economic Community (EEC). He was appointed to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Employment under Harold Wilson in 1974, and later served as Leader of the House of Commons (1976–1979) under James Callaghan. He was also Deputy Leader of the Labour Party under Callaghan from 1976 to 1980.

1930s

 * Even the victor in a just cause is susceptible to the passions which war arouses. Every inhuman feeling is at once exacerbated. Truth, decency, morality, justice are the first casualties in any war. The accumulated effect makes a just settlement impossible. ... The pacifist treasures justice, liberty; but he believes that they can only be lastingly secured by peaceable means and that the use of force will only contaminate them. ... Armaments themselves provide an independent cause of war owing to the suspicion and fear which they breed. ... Unilateral disarmament offers the only way to escape once the policy of collateral disarmament has failed.
 * Article in Young Oxford and War (1934), quoted in Mervyn Jones, Michael Foot (1994), p. 30

 * Socialism with its ideal of the national control of consumption and production, its substitution of national barter for the processes of foreign trade, is by no means an international force. ... It looks inwards rather than outwards and sets up a national economy, which every true protectionist should envy. Russia is a powerful national state and has indulged in nationalist policies. ... Even a Socialist state cannot provide against war unless a world authority has been formed.
 * Article in Young Oxford and War (1934), quoted in Mervyn Jones, Michael Foot (1994), p. 31

 * I am a Liberal, first of all, because of the unfaltering resistance which liberalism is pledged to offer to those twin dangers of fascism and war.
 * 'Why I am a Liberal', News Chronicle (4 April 1934), quoted in Kenneth O. Morgan, Michael Foot (2007), p. 30

 * THE ARMAMENTS RACE IN EUROPE MUST BE STOPPED NOW. ... I am not in favour of going to war in order to defend the Foreign Investments of British financiers, or the protective tariffs of British industrialists. ... I am a young man. I appeal to the Youth of the Monmouth Division to consider what the world offers to our generation. WAR and POVERTY are the twin dangers which threaten our chances of a decent, happy life in the World. All over Europe youth is being recruited into the ranks of Fascism. Fascism represents the last attempt of those who control economic power to maintain their supremacy. ... I WANT TO SEE A GOVERNMENT IN THIS COUNTRY WHICH WILL SERVE THE INTERESTS OF THE DESERVING MANY, AND NOT THOSE OF THE WEALTHY FEW.
 * Election address (c. November 1935), quoted in Mervyn Jones, Michael Foot (1994), p. 43

 * The revolt against imperialism in the Colonies, therefore, even when it takes on a nationalistic form, is a revolt against British capitalism and colonial peoples in revolt must be looked upon by a Socialist movement in Great Britain as allies in the fight against the common enemy. This theory is fully developed in Stalin's Marxism and the National Question. The methods by which the Soviet Government has dealt with colonial peoples reveal a real basis for co-operation with so-called backward peoples as soon as the power of capitalism within the imperialist nation has been effectively broken.
 * Foot's contribution to Stafford Cripps, The Struggle for Peace (1936), p. 287

1940s

 * We've got to win it. We're in it. Politically it is impossible for anybody to withdraw. The British people would not stand it. We have got to beat Hitler... Chamberlain is not a war man. He's a man of peace. His heart is not in the war. The only hope is to put Churchill in charge and get rid of Chamberlain.
 * Remarks to Lord Beaverbrook during the Phoney War (1940), quoted in Anne Wolrige Gordon, Peter Howard: Life and Letters (1969), pp. 101-102

 * [T]he England of the Conservative Party...condoned Fascism, consorted with Fascism, connived at imperialist war, abandoned any hope of building a sane and secure international society... Yet there was still another England. This other England detested Fascism from the day of its birth. It fought against the betrayal of Abyssinia. It denounced the policy which led to the massacre of Spain. It struggled in opposition throughout those years to build an international society and it understood that the chief enemy which must be fought was Fascism in whatever guise it might appear and in whatever land it might capture the apparatus of the State. This was the England of the Left, the England of Labour, the England which inherited and adapted to the modern age the European policy which made this country the leader of the nations in the nineteenth century. This England made errors too, but they were errors of a quite different nature from those crimes committed by the men who believed they could reach comfortable terms of settlement with the forces of Fascism which threatened to engulf the continent in a new Dark Ages... It was the resurrection of this other England which saved the world, and the hopes of the European revolution which must follow the defeat of our enemies on the battlefield will depend on which England rules as the fighting subsides.
 * The Trial of Mussolini: Being a Verbatim Report of the First Great Trial for War Criminals Held in London Sometime in 1944 or 1945 (1943), pp. 80-81

 * American capitalism is arrogant, self-confident, merciless and convinced of its capacity to dictate the destinies of the world.
 * Article in The Daily Herald (14 December 1945), quoted in Mervyn Jones, Michael Foot (1994), p. 141

1950s

 * Is the Labour Party to remain a democratic party in which the right of free criticism and free debate is not merely tolerated but encouraged? Or are the rank and file of the party to be bludgeoned or cowed into an uncritical subservience towards the leadership?
 * Tribune, 1954

 * Socialism without public ownership is nothing but a fantastic apology.
 * The Daily Herald, 1956

1960s

 * Like it or not, one of the most spectacular events of our age is the comparative success of the Communist economic systems. ... Do you seriously imagine that there is no challenge from the Communist States on this level? And who do you think will win the contest if we stumble on as we are—the Communist States, which are not afraid of full production, or the Western States, which have still never achieved for any considerable period full production and full employment without inflation? Yes, who will win—the Communist States, who are turning out trained technicians at an unexampled pace, or the Western powers, who contentedly spend more on advertising than education?
 * 'Up The Garden', The Spectator (22 January 1960), pp. 8–9

 * A Britain which denounced the insanity of the nuclear strategy would be in a position to direct its influence at the United Nations and in the world at large, in a manner at present denied us
 * newspaper article, 1960

 * The only man I knew who could make a curse sound like a caress.
 * (Aneurin Bevan, Vol 1, 1962)

 * Spain cut the knot of emotional and intellectual contradictions in which the Left had been tangled ever since Hitler came to power. Suddenly the claims of international law, class solidarity and the desire to win the Soviet Union as an ally fitted into the same strategy. These subconscious releases no doubt played their part in swelling the mood of sympathy for the Spanish Republic which swept so swiftly through the British working class. But no complicated explanations are required. The spectacle itself was stirring enough.
 * On the Spanish Civil War; Aneurin Bevan, Volume One: 1897–1945 [1962] (1975), p. 220

 * President de Gaulle is a rebel against American leadership. Some of us who are also rebels have some sympathy with him on that account. ... [O]ne of his long-term aims is to secure a settlement between East and West in Europe. ... The whole situation is altering between East and West. The planet is trembling with alterations and differences in alliances and arrangements. I do not believe in the old configuration of the cold war. ... It is out of date. It is five years, even ten years, out of date. ... [W]e may, whatever may have been his motives and reasons, thank President de Gaulle for doing for us what the British Government had not the courage and energy to do for themselves.
 * Speech in the House of Commons (11 February 1963)

 * The members of our secret service have apparently spent so much time under the bed looking for communists that they haven't had the time to look in the bed.
 * On the Profumo Scandal, 1963

 * When I was a small boy, following the affairs of the House of Commons as closely as I could, I asked my father what a Royal Commission was. He said, "It is a broody hen sitting on a china egg".
 * Speech in the House of Commons (3 December 1964)

 * It is a justifiable proposition that every wave of immigration we have had into this country has benefited this country.
 * Speech in the House of Commons (23 November 1965)

 * I am bitterly opposed to any form of legislation, particularly legislation introduced by a Labour Government, which involves an element of colour bar. It is an appalling thing to have happened. I want to see us returning as swiftly as possible to a situation where we wipe away this stain on the reputation of the Labour movement.
 * Speech in the House of Commons (23 November 1965)

 * Think of it! A second Chamber selected by the Whips. A seraglio of eunuchs.
 * Speech in the House of Commons against proposals for reforming the House of Lords (3 February 1969)

 * What we are doing is to ensure that for the next 20, 30 or 40 years the constitutional balance will be heavily weighted on the side of reaction, the elderly and the Establishment, those who in the main have exhausted the contribution which they can make to the political life of the country and who wish to sustain all the old institutions.
 * Speech in the House of Commons against proposals for reforming the House of Lords (12 February 1969)

 * The British Constitution is an interesting contraption. I hope that is not too Burkeian a sentiment for a Thomas Paine-ite like myself to utter. There are many parts of it which die of apathy or inanition, and at the proper moment such parts have to be lopped off. That is what I should like to do with the House of Lords.
 * Speech in the House of Commons (19 February 1969)

1970s

 * We in this country, particularly when we are arguing with the people of the United States, have a right to recall the part played by Chatham, Edmund Burke and Charles James Fox, who opposed a war waged by a great nation which did suffer defeat but survived its defeat because it was prepared to admit that the opposition to the war had justice on its side. This is the lesson to be learned. This is the lesson to be learned from these events. Although opinion in the United States may have reached this conclusion for a variety of reasons, just as opinion throughout the world has reached this conclusion for a variety of reasons, the conclusion is all the stronger and more certain. The conclusion is that the military machine of the United States, all-powerful almost though it may be, cannot win a civil war in Indo-China. It can kill. It can destroy. It can defoliate. It can bomb. It can exterminate. It can spread horror and devastation. But it cannot win a victory.
 * Speech in the House of Commons on the Vietnam War (5 May 1970)

 * I oppose Britain's entry into the rich nations' club, sometimes called the Common Market... In the interests of British democracy, of the health of our economy; in the interests of Wales and our fight against a return of unemployment; in the interests of a wider peace in Europe and links with countries in the Commonwealth, I believe Britain should keep out of this narrowly conceived, Little-European Common Market.
 * Speech in Ebbw Vale during the general election campaign (c. June 1970), quoted in Mervyn Jones, Michael Foot (1994), pp. 329-330

 * I sometimes wonder whether hon. Members opposite really have any understanding of what hot industrial fires they are playing with and whether they understand what deep fissures they are driving into our society, at a time when we in this country, of all countries, should be showing how violent tensions can be relieved without violence... When I look across at the benches opposite, not only at the Front Bench but at those behind, it seems to me very often that what they speak for is...a narrow, blinkered, suburban England with no conception whatsoever of industrial Britain.
 * Speech in the House of Commons on the Coal Industry Bill (29 October 1970)

 * [W]e are in for fierce and angry times in this country.
 * Speech in the House of Commons on the Coal Industry Bill (3 December 1970)

 * The value-added tax is a derogation of the sovereignty of this Parliament. The House of Commons and the British people will have less power to protest against the value-added tax than John Hampden had to protest about ship money. If we go into the Community, that will be settled away from this House.
 * Speech in the House of Commons (25 October 1971)

 * The end of the era of cheap food is no small incident in British history, even if the Leader of the Liberal Party is not prepared to shed a single tear at the abandoned tomb of Richard Cobden. The instinct of the British people on these matters, particularly when it is sustained in the teeth of persistent opposition and propaganda from the main organisations and newspapers in the country, is not to be despised by those who aspire to govern them. I expect the right hon. Gentleman to take some account of these matters.
 * Speech in the House of Commons on Britain's application to join the European Economic Community (25 October 1971)

 * I have respect for the history of this House. There is nothing reprehensible in people recalling that some of the liberties of the people of this country enshrined in this House go back not merely to the conflicts of the seventeenth century, which will certainly apply to many of the matters with which we have to deal—the power over taxation which resides, or is still to reside, in this House—but to the controversies which prevailed in the House of Commons during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. If people say to me that all these are remote, old-fashioned ideas, I reply that they are as up-to-date as the ideas that brought the Labour Party into being.
 * Speech in the House of Commons on the European Communities Bill (17 February 1972)

 * [N]o one can dispute the proposition that the Bill is the most deliberate proposal for curtailing the powers of this House that has ever been put before Members of Parliament.
 * Speech in the House of Commons on the European Communities Bill (17 February 1972)

 * If the Government say they are going to ram through this measure to reduce the power of the Commons it would be scandalous. It is one of the most shameful frauds ever perpetrated. It would break the control between government and the people and this would inflict serious injury on our democratic institutions. If they do that we will be nearer the day when people will say 'All right, let us settle things by violence'.
 * Speech in Connah's Quay, Flintshire, on the European Communities Bill (10 March 1972), quoted in The Times (11 March 1972), p. 2

 * If the Common Market Bill goes through, Parliament will have been deprived of some of the essential instruments for planning the nation's economy.
 * Speech in Newport (18 March 1972), quoted in The Times (20 March 1972), p. 2

 * How long will it be before the cry goes up: "Let's kill all the judges"?
 * Attacking the National Industrial Relations Court and its President, Sir John Donaldson, in a speech at the Scottish Miners' Gala in Edinburgh (3 June 1972)

 * What is even more dangerous is to set the cause of internationalism against the claims of freedom and democracy. That is a very dangerous course. What is necessary is that the two claims should be combined, and it is perfectly possible. It is so dangerous to set the cause of Europe against the cause of Parliament, but that is what the Bill does in every contemptible Clause and every pusillanimous subsection. The Bill says that we have to choose between the ideal of entry into Europe on the terms which have been settled by the Government and sustaining our parliamentary freedoms and democratic rights. That is a very dangerous choice.
 * Speech in the House of Commons on the European Communities Bill (13 July 1972)

 * The issue of sovereignty...was always intertwined with the issue of democracy. Many of us held that it was not only unwise but wanton for British MPs to surrender a part of our democracy to institutions which were so grotesquely undemocratic.
 * Letter to The Times (4 January 1973), p. 13, regarding Britain's membership of the EEC

 * What I do seek to do is contest the suggestion that the present arguments in the Labour Party can be categorized as those between Social Democrats and Marxists. This strikes me as misleading and indeed politically illiterate, since, historically speaking, many Social Democrats have regarded themselves as Marxists. Moreover, the idea implicit in this false distinction that Marxism is somehow inherently undemocratic or anti-democratic is a perversion of thought and language comparable with that perpetrated by the Stalinists. May I add that those engaged in destroying British Parliamentary democracy by the acceptance of the European Communities Act in all its immeasurable undemocratic manifestations are in no position to "lecture" others about how to preserve British democracy?
 * Letter to The Times (30 November 1973), p. 19

 * I certainly think that a Labour Government will have to have effective powers to control the outflow of capital.
 * On Election Call (21 February 1974)

 * Some fool or some trigger happy judicial finger.
 * On the NIRC Judge Sir John Donaldson (Hansard, 7 May 1974, Col. 239)

 * [There are] judges who stretch the law...to suit reactionary attitudes.
 * On ITV's People and Politics (9 May 1974)

 * The national strike of the miners in 1972 performed, I believe, a great service, not only to the miners, but the people in Britain today who wanted coal
 * House of Commons speech (1974)

 * Disraeli was my favourite Tory. He was an adventurer pure and simple, or impure and complex. I'm glad to say Gladstone got the better of him.
 * (March 1975)

 * The consequences of withdrawal from the EEC had been exaggerated: he did not accept that Britain's problems could be solved only by our accepting an alien system whose legislative basis – the European Communities Act 1972 – it was to proposed to change. Policies which had stood Britain in good stead, for example on agriculture and the Commonwealth, had already been destroyed by attempts over the last decade to join the EEC. Continued membership would lead to the dismembering of the United Kingdom, and of the authority of Parliament which had already lost much of its power in EEC affairs. If we remained in the Community the seat of power would lie in future in permanent coalition in Brussels.
 * Remarks to the Cabinet (18 March 1975), quoted in Kenneth O. Morgan, Michael Foot (2007), p. 327

 * In the Labour movement they said they would have no truck with coalition, but if Britain stayed in the EEC then for decades to come they would be enmeshed in various forms of coalition government than ever before. That was the most important issue of all. If in Britain the people did not like a government they could vote it out of office, but they had no similar recourse in the case of the institutions of the EEC, which had supreme powers and which were undemocratic.
 * Speech to the Labour Party conference on Britain's membership of the EEC (26 April 1975), quoted in The Times (28 April 1975), p. 4

 * They had been told that those political disabilities, the delegations from our sovereignty and the dismemberment of Britain's parliamentary institutions, must be accepted because of economic circumstances; that there was no choice. But [I] did not believe that. I hope the message which will go out from this conference to our movement up and down the country is, 'Do not let this great Labour movement be afraid of those who tell us that we cannot run our own affairs, that we have not the ingenuity to mobilize our resources and overcome our economic problems'. Of course we have, and we can save our democratic freedom at the same time.
 * Speech to the Labour Party conference on Britain's membership of the EEC (26 April 1975), quoted in The Times (28 April 1975), p. 4

 * Parliament (by which I mean, of course, the elected House of Commons stripped of all irresponsible encumbrances) is the institution which has played the central, liberating role in our history ever since Cromwellian or even Elizabethan times; no comparable institution certainly has shaped so continuously the life and society of any Western European state. It is the authority of our distinctive Parliament which is one of the stakes in the choice now before the people.
 * 'Putting Parliament at stake', The Times (23 May 1975), p. 14

 * The truth is that the dismemberment of the British Parliament, the calculated acquiescence in the decline in its authority deriving from entry into the EEC, has started. It will continue apace, until the British people call a halt... I believe it will be done sometime in some way when they discover how far-reaching and all-embracing is the anti-democratic counter-revolution involved in EEC membership.
 * 'Putting Parliament at stake', The Times (23 May 1975), p. 14

 * Whatever the outcome on June 5, historians looking back, and starting soon I believe, will be amazed that the British people were urged at such a time to tamper irreparably with their most precious institution; to see it circumscribed and contorted and elbowed off the centre of the stage... [W]e are assured that we shall be stronger...if we turn for salvation to institutions not our own, never devised to suit us, and not at all inspired from the sources which have so frequently given this country its renewal of democratic vigour. It is as if in 1940 we had set fire to the place, as Hitler did with his Reichstag. Instead, let it not be forgotten that what Parliament did in 1940 was effectively to throw out one government and put in another. Once we are snugly and irremovably in the Market, that effective power will have been cast away.
 * 'Putting Parliament at stake', The Times (23 May 1975), p. 14

 * I am asking this movement to exert itself as it has never done before, to show the qualities which we have, the socialist imagination that exists in our movement, the readiness to reforge the alliance, stronger than ever, between the government and the trade unions, and above all to show the supreme quality in politics, the red flame of socialist courage.
 * Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool (29 September 1975), quoted in Kenneth O. Morgan, Michael Foot (2007), p. 319

 * The crisis afflicting this country, along with other countries of the Western world, is a crisis of capitalism. It is a crisis of the dominant economic system that prevails in all those countries.
 * Speech to the House of Commons (Hansard, 20 January 1976, Col. 1126)

 * I've been on the left of the Party since I joined it about 1934 and I haven't seen much reason for altering...I have always been a strong libertarian both inside the Labour Party and outside...what I want to seek to do over a period of course is to establish a Socialist society.
 * On BBC's Panorama (22 March 1976)

 * It's impossible to write the history of freedom in this country without telling how trade unions have contributed to it.
 * On the ITV's Weekend World (4 April 1976)

 * People must learn more and more that the strength of this country is the democratic power of the trade union movement
 * The Morning Star (1976)

 * [The constituency will be certain to return a socialist candidate] and this will help gain a socialist majority in the Commons and help Britain on the way to becoming a socialist republic.
 * Speech during the Ashfield by-election campaign (April 1977), quoted in Simon Hoggart and David Leigh, Michael Foot: A Portrait (1981), p. 184

 * It does so happen to be the case that if the freedom of the people of this country—and especially the rights of trade unionists—if those precious things in the past had been left to the good sense and fairmindedness of judges, we would have precious few freedoms in this country.
 * Speech to the Union of Post Office Workers at Bournemouth (15 May 1977)

 * There is nothing wrong with being a Marxist. Their point of view is essential to a democratic debate
 * The Daily Telegraph, 1977

 * The history of British Socialism cannot be written without constant reference to the Celts, and perhaps I may say in passing that this was one reason why I was so eager to see a Devolution Act passed through the House of Commons, to help keep the Celts within the United Kingdom. The blood of our Labour Movement cannot tingle properly without them, devolution or no devolution.
 * 'The Chartist: William Lovett', lecture delivered in Penzance (8 August 1977), quoted in Michael Foot, Loyalists and Loners (1986), p. 247

 * Few words in our language have been more sadly debased than the name 'Radical'. Once it could strike terror into the ranks of wealth and privilege. Now it has been purloined even by the palest and pinkest critics of current orthodoxy. A Radical nowadays may merely be one who can be distinguished by his respectability from a Socialist.
 * 'The Chartist: William Lovett', lecture delivered in Penzance (8 August 1977), quoted in Michael Foot, Loyalists and Loners (1986), p. 248

 * You just want the Tories in, and then we will be in the Common Market for life. You, with your halo of martyrdom. I've been anti-Market longer than you.
 * Remarks to Tony Benn (22 November 1977), quoted in Tony Benn, Conflicts of Interest: Diaries 1977–80 (1990), p. 250

 * It is not necessary that every time he rises he should give his famous imitation of a semi-house-trained polecat.
 * Speech in the House of Commons (2 March 1978), referring to Norman Tebbit

 * He's passed from rising hope to elder statesman without any intervening period whatsoever.
 * On David Steel, 1979

 * What is needed is a strong shift leftwards. This party in Parliament ought to start the process, and if it won't, the party conference will do it for them
 * Tribune, 1979

 * If only my hon. Friend would conduct the novel experiment of listening with his ears instead of his voice, a whole new world would open to him.
 * Speech in the House of Commons (26 November 1979)

1980s

 * Of all the sights and sounds which attracted me on my first arrival to live in London in the mid-thirties, one combined operation left a lingering, individual spell. I naturally went to Hyde Park to hear the orators, the best of the many free entertainments on offer in the capital. I heard the purest milk of the world flowing, then as now, from the platform of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.
 * Debts of Honour, 1980.

 * He was without any rival whatever, the first comic genius who ever installed himself in Downing Street
 * On Benjamin Disraeli, in his own book, Debts of Honour (1980)

 * Men of power have not time to read; yet men who do not read are unfit for power
 * On Benjamin Disraeli, in his own book, 'Debts of Honour'' (1980)

 * In my opinion, Marxism is a great creed of human liberation. It is the creed which says that when all other empires fade and vanish, our business is to enlarge the empire of the human mind
 * Morning Star, 1980

 * Most liberties have been won by people who broke the law
 * interview, 1980

 * I first joined the Labour party in Liverpool because of what I saw of the poverty, the unemployment, and the endless infamies committed on the inhabitants of the back-streets of that city. I am horrified that the threat of unemployment and economic misery is now being deployed against the same kind of people once again.
 * Press conference after his election as Labour leader (10 November 1980), quoted in Simon Hoggart and David Leigh, Michael Foot: A Portrait (1981), p. 57 and The Guardian (11 November 1980), p. 1

 * Since the matter has been raised, may I say that the individual concerned is not an endorsed member of the Labour Party, and, so far as I am concerned, never will be endorsed? [Interruption.] May I add that, as the Labour Party has played the leading part in the establishment and sustenance of parliamentary democracy, we do not need any instructions on the matter from skin-deep democrats on the Conservative Benches or defectors on this side?
 * Remark in the House of Commons (3 December 1981), referring to Peter Tatchell. Foot subsequently corrected "endorsed member" to "endorsed candidate".

 * She has no imagination and that means no compassion
 * On Margaret Thatcher, 1981

 * The rights and the circumstances of the people in the Falkland Islands must be uppermost in our minds. There is no question in the Falkland Islands of any colonial dependence or anything of the sort. It is a question of people who wish to be associated with this country and who have built their whole lives on the basis of association with this country. We have a moral duty, a political duty and every other kind of duty to ensure that that is sustained. The people of the Falkland Islands have the absolute right to look to us at this moment of their desperate plight, just as they have looked to us over the past 150 years. They are faced with an act of naked, unqualified aggression, carried out in the most shameful and disreputable circumstances. Any guarantee from this invading force is utterly worthless—as worthless as any of the guarantees that are given by this same Argentine junta to its own people.
 * Speech in the House of Commons after Argentina's invasion of the Falkland Islands (3 April 1982)

 * We are paramountly concerned, like, I am sure, the bulk of the House—I am sure that the country is also concerned—about what we can do to protect those who rightly and naturally look to us for protection. So far, they have been betrayed. The responsibility for the betrayal rests with the Government. The Government must now prove by deeds—they will never be able to do it by words—that they are not responsible for the betrayal and cannot be faced with that charge. That is the charge, I believe, that lies against them. Even though the position and the circumstances of the people who live in the Falkland Islands are uppermost in our minds—it would be outrageous if that were not the case—there is the longer-term interest to ensure that foul and brutal aggression does not succeed in our world. If it does, there will be a danger not merely to the Falkland Islands, but to people all over this dangerous planet.
 * Speech in the House of Commons after Argentina's invasion of the Falkland Islands (3 April 1982)

 * I know a fascist when I see one.
 * Remark to Tam Dalyell at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party after he had criticised Foot's speech in the Falklands debate, quoted in Kenneth O. Morgan, Michael Foot (2007), p. 412

 * “Think of it, a free Italy: it is the poetry of politics”, wrote Byron at a dark moment in the history of the Italian Risorgimento. Think of it, a free, democratic Socialist Spain – there is surely still some poetry in that kind of politics today, even if it is beyond the imagination of such stunted, pusillanimous souls as Bernard Levin.
 * Letter to The Times (25 October 1982), p. 11

 * We are not here in this world to find elegant solutions, pregnant with initiative, or to serve the ways and modes of profitable progress. No, we are here to provide for all those who are weaker and hungrier, more battered and crippled than ourselves.  That is our only certain good and great purpose on earth, and if you ask me about those insoluble economic problems that may arise if the top is deprived of their initiative, I would answer 'To hell with them.' The top is greedy and mean and will always find a way to take care of themselves.  They always do.
 * Speech before the 1983 General Election.

 * We had not the armour, the strength, the quickness in manoeuvre, yes, the leadership
 * explaining Labour's 1983 election defeat when he was leader in his book Another Heart And Other Pulses, 1984.

 * One of the worst aspects of this incursion is the conspiratorial way in which the leaders of the Militant Tendency have sought to operate without a membership and thereby to circumvent the rules of the [Labour] party, with or without any proscribed list. It was for this reason that, on my initiative, we took steps, with the later full backing of the party conference, to exclude the Militant leadership from our ranks. ... The task of freeing the party from Militant and kindred pestilences is not an easy one. But it has to be done, and it has to be done by methods which are fair. I strongly support all the steps which Neil Kinnock has taken to this end.
 * Letter to The Times (11 December 1985), p. 15

 * It is all the more necessary that we should prevent an extension of the powers of the European Assembly, however it may be elected. I have been opposed to the extension of those powers, and I remain so. ... We must preserve every precious part of the power that we retain in the House.
 * Speech in the House of Commons (26 June 1986) against the Single European Act

1990s

 * The right hon. Member for Heseltine—[Laughter.]—well, that is what he is; he sticks to that principle more than he does to Henley.
 * Speech in the House of Commons (26 March 1991), referring to Michael Heseltine. MPs are referred to in the House by the constituency they represent rather than by their name, so Mr Heseltine would be "Rt. Hon. Member for Henley".  Whether by accident or intent, Foot mixed this up in a way which clearly amused other MPs.

 * It's quite a change to have a prime minister who hasn't got any political ideas at all.
 * On John Major, 1991

 * No rising hope on the political scene who offered his services to Labour when I happened to be its leader can be dismissed as an opportunist.
 * On Tony Blair, 1995

 * I think the House of Lords ought to be abolished and I don't think the best way for me to abolish it is to go there myself
 * On his departure from the House of Commons, 1992.

Quotes about Michael Foot

 * Foot has not built a wall of words so much as a battering ram. It is a lexicon of positive politics; an overtly partisan rhetoric that has been forged from an intimate acquaintance with three centuries of radical writing. ... It is based on a belief of our shared humanity across races, peoples and to a lesser extent classes. At the heart of Foot's political credo is the articulation of a burning desire for equality of outcome. But perhaps even more pressing is the unrelenting demand for a peace that means more than simply an absence of war: a peace based on justice and international accountability. ... Much of the writing in this collection is as much about literature for its own sake as about politics; as much about love as Labour; as much about passion as power. Indeed, Foot the great humanist has a credo based on a trinity: politics, poetry and passion.
 * Brian Brivati, ‘Introduction’, The Uncollected Michael Foot: Essays Old and New, ed. Brian Brivati (2003), p. xiv

 * Michael Foot was a genuine British radical - one who possessed a powerful sense of community, a pride in our progressive past and faith in our country's potential for a radical future.
 * Gordon Brown, quoted in Andrew Sparrow, ‘Michael Foot: tributes and reaction’, The Guardian (3 March 2010)

 * I was caught on the hop in one of my interviews last week with the question: “Of all the people you have served with, who would you like to serve with again?” ... My reply was instinctive. Believe it or not, I said “Michael Foot”.
 * James Callaghan to Foot (1985), quoted in Mervyn Jones, Michael Foot (1994), p. 399

 * [After Argentina's invasion of the Falklands] Michael Foot – popularly seen as a sentimental old pacifist – was demanding a military response to wipe away the stain of national humiliation... In fact Foot was not a pacifist at all. As an ardent young journalist he had been one of the authors of Guilty Men, the famous indictment of the Chamberlain Government's unreadiness for war in 1939, and he still harked back to 1940 as emotionally as any Churchillian. In his very different way he expressed the national mood of outraged patriotism as authentically as Mrs Thatcher herself.
 * John Campbell, Margaret Thatcher, Volume Two: The Iron Lady (2003), p. 133

 * We remember Michael and celebrate his life not just as the life of an intelligent and principled politician but as a great British Humanist. A good life for all is a humanist aspiration, and Michael was one humanist who worked hard to make that a reality for every man and woman. His steadfast dedication to humanist and progressive ideals of freedom, peace, social justice was pursued in a life of both thought and action – another humanist ideal.
 * Andrew Copson, Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association, quoted in ‘BHA mourns Rt Hon Michael Foot, activist, journalist and humanist (1913-2010)’, Humanism.org.uk (3 March 2010)

 * Arriving for a recent away game at Selhurst Park, a steward asked the ninetysomething Foot whether he was carrying an offensive weapon, whereupon he produced a battered copy of Milton's selected poems, explaining that Milton's poetry represented one of the most potent weapons in English history.
 * Jonathan Freedland, 'A farewell to Michael Foot: politics, poetry and Plymouth Argyle', The Guardian (15 March 2010)

 * Farewell Michael Foot: Great orator, editor and thinker - the most decent leader Labour ever had.
 * George Galloway Tweet (3 March 2010), as cited in "Michael Foot: tributes and reaction", The Guardian (3 March 2010)

 * Michael Foot has been a great parliamentarian – perhaps the best I witnessed during my 33 years in the House of Commons. He had a particular talent for the spontaneous epigram. Jim Callaghan, he said, “does everything on purpose”. He loved the business of Parliament and believed in the Commons as a bastion of democracy. He would have been most at home in the Victorian Westminster when literature and learning were an essential requirement of success.
 * Roy Hattersley, ‘Happy returns to a romantic patriot’, The Guardian (13 July 2003)

 * Michael and I went together to Buckingham Palace in the year of the Prince of Wales's engagement to Princess Diana. ... As we stood awkwardly in line...the Queen said that ‘Carlos’ (by which she meant the king of Spain) was being difficult about the honeymoon yacht calling in Gibraltar. “I told him,” the Queen said, “it's my son, my ship and my dockyard.” There was a long pause before Michael responded: “The first Elizabeth could not have put it better.” On the way back to the Commons I expressed my surprise that a man whom I supposed to be a republican should have said such a thing. I expected him to plead good manners. Instead he told me – more by way of reproof than explanation – “She was standing up for England.” Michael Foot is a patriot.
 * Roy Hattersley, ‘Happy returns to a romantic patriot’, The Guardian (13 July 2003)

 * The fact is that if Michael had gone well before the [1983] election, we might have won. We had no chance whatever so long as he was Leader.
 * Denis Healey, The Time of My Life (1990), p. 502

 * Michael Foot, who has died aged 96, was a supreme parliamentary democrat who used his great gifts as an inspiring speaker and writer to urge peace, security, prosperity and opportunity for humanity and punishment for bigots and bullies of every kind. His bravery and generosity were unsurpassed. He used both to ensure that the Labour party survived as a political force when self-indulgent factionalism could have doomed it to irrelevance.
 * Neil Kinnock, quoted in Andrew Sparrow, ‘Michael Foot: tributes and reaction’, The Guardian (3 March 2010)

 * Foot's ultimate task, as orator, pamphleteer, and communicator extraordinary, has been to educate, and to relate the British variant of socialism to a long, but still relevant, history of British libertarian protest—in other words, to the real world. In his respect for parliament, for the rule of law (subject to some very valid doubts about the judgement of judges), for representative democracy, for the pluralism and tolerance embedded in the culture of his people, he has been in the best sense a force for stability. … He has re-articulated and vindicated a long, creative legacy of protest which in the 1970s seemed close to being corrupted or destroyed.
 * Kenneth O. Morgan, Labour People: Leaders and Lieutenants, Hardie to Kinnock (1987), p. 287

 * I revealed how, when in Government, Michael Foot never once sat with the four senior Ministers who made the decisions on nuclear policy. It reflected my very strong view that a man who had deliberately avoided sharing responsibility before was not fit to take the sole responsibility now. Under Michael Foot, Labour would not have been fit to govern.
 * David Owen, Time to Declare (1991), p. 579

 * The great talents and the outstanding oratory which have made the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) easily the first, facile princeps, among the parliamentarians of this day have been displayed for week after week and month after month in the opposition to the [European Communities] Bill. When the history of this episode comes to be written his part in it will be seen to have been at a level with those of the great figures of parliamentary history.
 * Enoch Powell, speech in the House of Commons (13 July 1972)

 * Michael Foot is a master of English. Both in parliamentary debate and in the written word his diction has the qualities of purity and terseness which the Augustans admired and sought. Indeed, it is of the age of Dryden and Pope, Addison and Swift, where he personally feels most at home, that he is the foremost modern heir and representative. His writing, like his speaking, is almost invariably perspicuous and graceful, offering no avoidable impediment to the reader, and concealing its imaginative quality with the artist's art. … Foot's Bevan will be among the outstanding biographies of the twentieth century.
 * Enoch Powell, 'Bevan Agonistes', The Listener (11 October 1973), quoted in Reflections of a Statesman: The Writings and Speeches of Enoch Powell (1991), p. 310

 * He was without question the master, spell-binding orator in the House of Commons in my day. When his name came up on the ticker-tape, people would come to hear him. He had this capacity for immense passion laced with humour.
 * David Steel, quoted in Andrew Sparrow, ‘Michael Foot: tributes and reaction’, The Guardian (3 March 2010)

 * Michael Foot is a highly principled and cultivated man, invariably courteous in our dealings. If I did not think it would offend him, I would say he was a gentleman. In debate and on the platform he has a kind of genius.
 * Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (1993), p. 265

 * I was very sorry to hear the news. He was a great parliamentarian and a man of high principles.
 * Margaret Thatcher, tribute to Foot (3 March 2010)

 * If one asks who is the Backbencher who makes the greatest contribution to the life of Parliament, there can at present be only one conceivable answer: Mr. Michael Foot. He is a wonderful man to have in politics. He belongs to the native British tradition of radicalism, the tradition of the Parliament men in the 17th century; of Fox at the end of the 18th; and of the radicalism that moved from the Liberal Party into the Labour Party at the beginning of this century... Mr. Foot has great powers as a Parliamentary orator; he is certainly the best writer and one of the two or three best speakers in the place. He is a man nearly without enemies as it would be decent to be and has a sweetness of temper which is the preservative of the health of any Assembly. He is a good, talkative, likeable and honest man.
 * 'Men Not Puppets', The Times (2 June 1970), p. 11

 * Michael Foot was, and is, adored in the Labour movement, a movement he himself idealised. Neither the trades unions nor the many left-wing groups that found shelter within that big tent were as high-minded as Michael thought. They saw in Michael's kindly image of them what they would have liked to be, and they loved him for it. His own commitment to democratic socialism took the form of a passionate belief in social justice coupled with an equal passion for Parliament. Like the great nineteenth-century reformers, he linked the two, holding that the former could only be achieved through the latter. Michael was a radical, a reformer, an inspirer, but lacked the element of brutality political leadership requires. His judgements on national issues were too much affected by partisan proclivities. But he and I shared similar ideals. We trusted one another as people, even if we didn't trust one another's judgements. We were both optimists.
 * Shirley Williams, Climbing the Bookshelves (2009), p. 224

title: Michael Foot


text:
Wikiquote:Transwiki/American History Primary Sources The War of 1812

THE WAR OF 1812

1811.   	“This war, if carried on successfully, will have its advantages. We shall drive the British from our continent. They will no longer have an opportunity of intriguing with our Indian neighbors.... [H]er means of annoying us will be diminished.” Rep. Felix Grundy of Tennessee, speech in Congress supporting war with Britain.

1812.   	“The militia of Kentucky are alone [able] to place Montreal and Upper Canada at your feet.” “War Hawk” Rep. Henry Clay of Kentucky, speech in Congress urging war with Britain.

1812.   	“We hear from the halls of Congress the cry ‘On to Canada!’  It is the fur dealer and the land speculator who want war, but it is we of New England who will pay the price....  The War Hawks of Tennessee and Kentucky are safe. I doubt if the English navy can reach them.” Nicolas Smyth, letter opposing war.

1813	“I very much doubt if a parallel can be found for the state of things existing on this frontier. A gallant little army struggling with the enemies of their country and devoting their lives to its honor and safety, left by that country to struggle alone.” Jacob Brown

1813	“Don’t give up the ship.” 	Motto on a pennant flown on USS Lawrence, flagship of Captain Oliver Hazard Perry in the naval Battle of Lake Erie.

1813   	“We have met the enemy and they are ours.” Captain Oliver Hazard Perry, reporting his victory in the battle of Lake Erie to Gen. William Henry Harrison.

1814   	“The administration asserts the right to fill the ranks of the regular army by compulsion....  Is this, sir, consistent with the character of a free government? Is this civil liberty? Is this the real character of our Constitution? No, sir, indeed it is not. The Constitution is libeled.” Rep. Daniel Webster, speech in House of Representatives.

1814.   	“I have had [a wagon] filled with ... the most valuable portable articles belonging to the house....  I insist on waiting until the large picture of General Washington is secured....  It is done! And the precious portrait placed in the hands of two gentlemen of New York, for safe keeping.” First Lady Dolley Madison, preparing to evacuate the White House before it was seized and burned by British troops attacking from their fleet in Chesapeake Bay.

1814.   	Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming,

Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight

O’er the ramparts we watche’d were so gallantly streaming?

Francis Scott Key, words written after the failed overnight attack by the British Fleet on Fort McHenry, Baltimore.

1815 	“Nothing was adjusted, nothing was settled.” John Quincy Adams, comment on the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Talk:Transwiki:American History Primary Sources The War of 1812

Transwikiedi from wikipedia:en. History was as follows. Paolo Liberatore 15:27, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

11:26, 25 April 2006 Ligulem (qif → #if: (see m:ParserFunctions) using AWB) 01:32, 1 April 2006 Dmcdevit (mass-AFD tagging using AWB) 23:49, 18 March 2006 Melchoir 23:42, 18 March 2006 WillaimWestchester


text:
Wikiquote:Transwiki/American History Primary Sources The West

THE MINING WEST

“I came here expecting to find a rich mineral country, and also to find much such a population as California had in 1849 and ‘50.

“The great mineral wealth of eastern Nevada has not been exaggerated. In fact I did not expect to find so rich or so many silver mines.

“There is not so much wild reckless extravagance among the people of the towns and the miners as in the early days of California. There are not as many homicides... but there is perhaps more highway robberies committed. We have here, as twenty years ago, numbers too lazy to work but not too lazy to steal, and some too proud to work and not afraid to steal....

“There are, I judge, nearly 200 paying mines within four miles square.... There are very many mining districts within 80 and 100 miles that are now attracting the attention of miners and capitalists. The merchants of Chicago are turning their attention to this silver country and will enter into competition with San Francisco, and I should not be surprised if they succeed in establishing a heavy business and a profitable one....

“It will never be considered good grain country, but as a pastoral country it is unquestionably a good one. Millions of sheep can be kept here and without cutting hay for winter. It is also a good dairy country. There is a great scarcity of water, it is true, but artesian wells can supply it.

“It is also a healthy country: no fever and ague. At this high elevation, persons of weak lungs are subject to pneumonia, but a little care will prevent it.”

''Henry Eno, letter to his brother William (August 21, 1869). A book of his letters, Twenty Years on the Pacific Slope: Letters of Henry Eno from California and Nevada, 1848-1871, was published in 1965.''

c. 1876 “The sidewalks swarmed with people.... Money was as plenty as dust; [everyone] considered himself wealthy....  There were fire companies, brass bands, banks, hotels, theaters,... gambling palaces,... street-fights, murders,... riots,... and a half dozen jails... in full operation.” Mark Twain, description of silver-mining boom town Virginia City, Nevada, in his book Roughing It.

c. 1880 “[Men] without restraint of law, indifferent to public opinion, and unburdened by families, drink whenever they feel like it, whenever they have the money to pay for it, and whenever there is nothing else to do.” Description of life in a frontier mining town.

THE RAILROADS MOVE WEST

c. 1865 “Swinging near the cliff, Ah Goong... dug holes, then inserted gunpowder and fuses. He worked neither too fast nor too slow, keeping even with the others. The basketmen signaled one another to light the fuses. He struck match after match and dropped the burnt matches over the sides. At last the fuse caught; he waved, and the men above pulled hand over hand hauling him up, pulleys creaking.” ''From Maxine Hong Kingston, China Men, an account of explosive expert, her grandfather, Ah Goong, working on building Western railroads. ''

1869	“On the morning of May 10, 1869, Hon. Leland Stanford, Governor of California and President of the Central Pacific, accompanied by... a trainload of California’s distinguished citizens, arrived form the west. During the forenoon Vice President T. C. Durant... of the Union Pacific, with other prominent men, including a delegation of Mormons from Salt Lake City, came in one a train form the east....

“The Chinese laid the rails from the west end, and the Irish laborers laid them from the east end, until they met and joined....

“The [last] spike [to be driven to connect the two rail lines] was given its first blow by President Stanford and Vice President Durant.... Neither hit the spike the first time, but hit the rail, and were greeted by the lusty cheers of the onlookers, accompanied by the screams of the locomotives and the music of the military band. Many other spikes were driven on the last rail by some of the distinguished persons present, but it was seldom that they first hit the spike. The original spike, after being tapped by the officials of the companies, was driven home by the chief engineers of the two roads. Then the two trains were run together, the two locomotives touching at the point of junction, and the engineers of the two locomotives each broke a bottle of champagne on the other’s engine. Then it was declared that the connection was made and the Atlantic and Pacific were joined together never to be parted.” Grenville M. Dodge

THE FARMING WEST

c. 1870 “Land for the landless! Homes for the homeless!” From pamphlets distributed in Europe by salesmen working for American railroad companies, wanting to settle Western land.

1879	When I landed on the soil of Kansas, I looked on the ground and I says this is free ground.” John Solomon Lewis, one of 50,000 “Exodusters” -- former slaves who left the South after violence during the elections of 1878 and moved West to start their own farms.

c. 1880 “I never saw finer country in the world than that part of Kansas passed over by the Atchinson, Topeka & Santa Fe [rail]road. Corn waist high, wheat in the shock, oats in fine condition, and vegetables in abundance.” Observation of a newspaper editor from Indiana. c. 1880 “Life in Nebraska is a lot like being hanged; the initial shock is a bit abrupt, but once you hang in there for a while you sort of get used to it.” Description of life in frontier Nebraska.

c. 1880 “You have no idea, Beulah, of what [wheat farms] are like until you see them. For mile after mile there is not a sign of a tree or stone and [the land is] just as level as the floor of your house..... Wheat never looked better and there is nothing but wheat, wheat, wheat.” Letter of a Dakota farmer to his wife before she moved to join him.

1887	“Nature was as beautiful as ever [but it could not] conceal the poverty of these people,... the gracelessness of their homes, and the... mechanical daily routine of these lives.” Novelist Hamlin Garland, the author of Main-Travelled Roads (1891) stories about the harshness of Western farm life, on visiting the West after being educated in Boston.

1889	“Thousands of people gathered along the border... As the day for the race drew near the settlers practiced running their horses and driving carts....  At ten o’clock [on April 22] people lined up... ready for the great race of their lives.” Cowboy Evan G. Barnard, observing the land rush for 160 acres in what had been Indian lands in present Oklahoma.

1889	“The race was not over when you reached the particular lot you were content to select for your possession. The contest still was who should drive their stakes first, who would erect their little tents soonest, and then, who would quickest build a little wooden shanty.... “On the morning of April 23, a city of 10,000 people, 500 houses, and innumerable tents existed where twelve hours before was nothing but a broad expanse of prairie.” Hamilton S. Wicks, one of 50,000 prospective homesteaders who raced into Oklahoma.

1889	“No Man’s Land” ''The strip of land not open to the 1889 Oklahoma land rush. The expression was used during World War I (1914 - 1918) to refer to the strip of land between the lines of opposing enemy forces.''

1891	“The introduction of machinery has revolutionized almost every branch of work on farms, and has greatly reduced the number of laborers required. In the great grain-producing sections of the country, farming has almost become a sedentary occupation.” Rodney Welch, “The Farmer’s Changed Condition,” in The Forum.

THE OUTLAWS’ WEST

c. 1875 “I carry the marks of fourteen bullet wounds on different parts of my body, most any one of which would be sufficient to kill an ordinary man.... Horses were shot from under men, men killed around me, but always I escaped with a trifling wound at the worst.” Nat Love, African-American cowboy and, later, rodeo star, in his autobiography, The Life and Adventures of Nat Love (1909).

THE COWBOYS AND RANCH LIFE

c. 1875 “The drovers [cowboys] of the seventies were a wild and reckless bunch... [who wore] a wide brimmed beaver hat, black or brown with a low crown, fancy shirts, high heeled boots, and sometimes a vest.” Memories of Teddy Blue, a cowboy.

c. 1876 “Dime novel” Inexpensive paperback books, which made popular adventures taking place in the Wild West (“Westerns”).

c. 1880 A man that is cowhunting with a lively crowd has no idea how long and lonesome the time passes with his wife at home.... A man can see his friends, hear the news, and pass time... while his wife is at home and sees and hears nothing until he returns from a long trip tired and worn out. Susan Newcomb, a Texas ranch wife.

c. 1890 Good-by, old trail boss, I wish you no harm; I’m quittin’ this business to go on the farm. I’ll sell my old saddle and buy me a plow; And never, no, never will I rope another cow. Cowboy song.

CONFLICTS WITH NATIVE AMERICANS

1869	“When the march of our empire demands this reservation of yours, we will assign you another;... so long as we choose, this is your home, your prison, your playground.” Massachusetts newspaper editor Samuel Bowles, on the message sent to western Indians by the actions of the United States government.

1876	“They crowded in, so we had to move out.” Chief Iron Teeth, on why white migration into the Dakotas led him to move his tribe out.

1876	“You are fools to make yourselves slaves to a piece of fat bacon, some hard-tack [biscuits], and a little sugar and coffee.” Sioux medicine man Tatanka Iyotake, known as Sitting Bull, to Indians who accepted life on reservations run by the Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs.

1876	Special Dispatch to the New York Times

“Chicago, July 6.--A special to the Times tonight from Bismarck, recounts most graphically the late encounter with the Indians on the Little Big Horn. Gen. Custer left the Rosebud on June 22, with twelve companies of the Seventh Cavalry, striking... in the direction of the Little Horn. On the evening of the 24th fresh trails were reported, and on the morning of the 25th an Indian village, twenty miles above the mouth of the Little Horn was reported about three miles long and half a mile wide and fifteen miles away. Custer pushed his command rapidly through. They had made a march of seventy-eight miles in twenty-four hours preceding the battle.

“When near the village it was discovered that the Indians were moving in hot haste as if retreating. Reno, with seven companies of the Seventh Cavalry, was ordered to the left to attack the village at its head, while Custer, with five companies, went to the right and commenced a vigorous attack. Reno felt of them with three companies of cavalry, and was almost instantly surrounded, and after one hour or more of vigorous fighting, during which he lost Lieuts. Hodgson and McIntosh and Dr. Dewolf and twelve men, with several Indian scouts killed and many wounded, he cut his way through to the river and gained a bluff 300 feet in height, where he intrenched and was soon joined by Col. Benton with four companies.

“In the meantime the Indians resumed the attack, making repeated and desperate charges, which were repulsed with great slaughter to the Indians. They gained higher ground than Reno occupied, and as their arms were longer range and better than the cavalry's, they kept up a galling fire until nightfall. During the night Reno strengthened his position, and was prepared for another attack, which was made at daylight.

“The day wore on. Reno had lost in killed and wounded a large portion of his command, forty odd having been killed before the bluff was reached, many of them in hand to hand conflict with the Indians, who outnumbered them ten to one, and his men had been without water for thirty-six hours. The suffering was heartrending.

“In this state of affairs they determined to reach the water at all hazards, and Col. Benton made a sally with his company, and routed the main body of the Indians who were guarding the approach to the river. The Indian sharpshooters were nearly opposite the mouth of the ravine through which the brave boys approached the river, but the attempt was made, and though one man was killed and seven wounded the water was gained and the command relieved. When the fighting ceased for the night Reno further prepared for attacks.

“There had been forty-eight hours' fighting, with no word from Custer. Twenty-four hours more of fighting and the suspense ended, when the Indians abandoned their village in great haste and confusion. Reno knew then that succor was near at hand. Gen. Terry, with Gibbon commanding his own infantry, had arrived, and as the comrades met men wept on each other's necks. Inquiries were then made for Custer, but none could tell where he was.

“Soon an officer came rushing into camp and related that he had found Custer, dead, stripped naked, but not mutilated, and near him his two brothers, Col. Tom and Boston Custer. His brother-in-law, Col. Calhoun, and his nephew Col. Yates. Col. Keogh, Capt. Smith, Lieut. Crittenden, Lieut. Sturgis, Col. Cooke, Lieut. Porter, Lieut. Harrington, Dr. Lord, Mack Kellogg, the Bismarck Tribune correspondent, and 190 men and scouts.

“Custer went into battle with Companies C, L, I, F, and E, of the Seventh Cavalry, and the staff and non-commissioned staff of his regiment and a number of scouts, and only one Crow scout remained to tell the tale. All are dead. Custer was surrounded on every side by Indians, and horses fell as they fought on skirmish line or in line of battle. Custer was among the last who fell, but when his cheering voice was no longer heard, the Indians made easy work of the remainder. The bodies of all save the newspaper correspondent were stripped, and most of them were horribly mutilated. Custer's was not mutilated. He was shot through the body and through the head. The troops cared for the wounded and buried the dead, and returned to their base for supplies and instructions from the General of the Army.

“Col. Smith arrived at Bismarck last night with thirty-five of the wounded. The Indians lost heavily in the battle. The Crow Scout survived by hiding in a ravine. He believes the Indians lost more than the whites. The village numbered 1,800 lodges, and it is thought there were 4,000 warriors.

“Gen. Custer was directed by Gen. Terry to find and feel of the Indians, but not to fight unless Terry arrived with infantry and with Gibbon's column. The casualties foot up 261 killed and fifty-two wounded. New York Times account of “Custer’s Last Stand,” (July 7, 1876)

1876	“Now they will never let us rest.” Sioux Chief Sitting Bull (c. 1831-1890), on the fact that the annihilation of Col. Custer’s detachment of Seventh Cavalry forces (“Custer’s Last Stand”) would lead to unrelenting pressure being put on the Indians.

1877	“Red Napoleon” Title given by newspapers to Chief Joseph of the Nez Percé tribe, during his three month journey to escape from confinement on a reservation with his tribe from their land in Oregon through Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana.

1877	“I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed.... It is cold and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death.... My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.” Oath of Chief Joseph (1840-1904) after surrendering to American troops.

1879	“We only ask an even chance to live as other men live. We asked to be recognized as men. We ask that the same law shall work alike on all men.... “Let me be a free man — free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to think and talk and act for myself — and I will obey every law, or submit to the penalty. “Whenever the white man treats the Indian as they treat each other, then we shall have no more wars. We shall be all alike — brothers of one father and one mother, with one sky above us and one country around us, and one government for all. Then the Great Spirit Chief who rules above all will smile upon this land, and send rain to wash out the bloody spots made by brothers’ hands upon the face of the earth.” “Chief Joseph’s Own Story”

1879	“Treat all men alike. Give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief.” Chief Joseph of the Nez Percé tribe, invited to address Congress.

1883	“Life Among the Paiutes” Title of a book written by Sarah Winnemucca, who had worked as an interpreter and a teacher at an Indian school, and who lectured to eastern audiences about corruption in the Bureau of Indian Affairs that caused money appropriated for Indians to disappear.

1886	“Once I moved about like the wind. Now I surrender to you and that is all.” Apache Chief Geronimo (1829-1909).

1887	“[T]ribal relations should be broken up, socialism destroyed and the family and autonomy of the individual substituted. The... establishment of local courts and police, the development of a personal sense of independence and the universal adoption of the English language are means to this end.” The Commissioner of Indian Affairs, on making the lives of Indians less tribal and more like other Americans.

1887	“[K]ill the Indian... and save the man.” The philosophy of the Carlysle, Pennsylvania Indian School, to “Americanize” Indian children who were taken from their parents and sent to the boarding school.

1890	“The rumor got about: ‘The dead are to return. The buffalo are to return. The Dakota [Sioux] people will get back their own way of life. The white people will soon go away, and that will mean happier times for us once more!’ “That part about the dead returning... appealed to me. To think I should see my dear mother, grandmother, brothers and sisters again.” ''A Sioux woman, explaining the nonviolent Ghost Dance religion that was preached by Wovoka, a Paiute holy man. Young Sioux militants who wanted action began wearing “Ghost Shirts” that, they claimed, would stop bullets.''

1890	“I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream.” Black Elk, after the Battle of Wounded Knee (December 29, 1890), the last fight between Indians and the army in the U.S., begun by young militant Sioux Ghost Dancers.

THE END OF THE FRONTIER

1893	“Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The existence of an area of free land... and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development.” Historian Frederick Jackson Turner, in his essay, “The Significance of the American Frontier”


text:
Talk:Transwiki:American History Primary Sources The West

Transwikiedi from wikipedia:en. History was as follows. Paolo Liberatore 15:28, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

11:26, 25 April 2006 Ligulem (qif → #if: (see m:ParserFunctions) using AWB) 01:32, 1 April 2006 Dmcdevit (mass-AFD tagging using AWB) 21:40, 15 March 2006 BirgitteSB (not wikisource) 16:52, 12 March 2006 Mushroom (move to Wikiquote or Wikisource) 15:51, 12 March 2006 WillaimWestchester


text:
Wikiquote:Transwiki/American History Primary Sources The Young US and Native Americans

THE YOUNG UNITED STATES AND NATIVE AMERICANS

1803

“The Indian tribes residing within the limits of the United States have, for a considerable time, been growing more and more uneasy at the constant diminution of the territory they occupy, although effected by their own voluntary sales. And the policy has long been gaining strength with them of refusing absolutely all further sale, on any conditions; insomuch that, at this time, it hazards their friendship, and excites dangerous jealousies and perturbations in their minds to make any overture for the purchase of the smallest portions of their lands.

“A very few tribes only are not yet obstinately in these dispositions. In order, peaceably, to counteract this policy of theirs, and to provide an extension of territory which the rapid increase of our numbers will call for, two measures are deemed expedient.

“First, to encourage them to abandon hunting, to apply to the raising stock, to agriculture, and domestic manufacture, and thereby prove to themselves that less land and labor will maintain them in this better than in their former mode of living....

“Second, to multiply trading houses among them, and to place within their reach those things which will contribute more to their domestic comfort than the possession of extensive, but uncultivated wilds.

“Experience and reflection will develop too them the wisdom of exchanging what they can spare and we want, for what we can spare and they want.

“In leading them to agriculture, to manufactures, and civilization; in bringing together their and our settlements, and in preparing them ultimately to participate in the benefits of our governments, I trust and believe we are acting for their greatest good.” Thomas Jefferson, confidential message to Congress to request funding for the Lewis and Clark expedition (January 18, 1803)

1805.   	“Brother, our seats were once large an yours were small. You have now become a great people, and we have scarcely a place left to spread our blankets.” Chief Red Jacket to an American Missionary.

1811.   	“These lands are ours. No one has a right to remove us, because we were the first owners. The Great Spirit above has appointed this place for us, on which to light our fires, and here we shall remain. As to boundaries, the Great Spirit knows no boundaries, nor will his Red children acknowledge any.” Chief Tecumseh to a messenger from President James Madison.


text:
Talk:Transwiki:American History Primary Sources The Young US and Native Americans

Transwikiedi from wikipedia:en. History was as follows. Paolo Liberatore 15:42, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

11:26, 25 April 2006 Ligulem (qif → #if: (see m:ParserFunctions) using AWB) 06:49, 8 April 2006 Woohookitty (- wfy tag. being transwikied) 01:32, 1 April 2006 Dmcdevit (mass-AFD tagging using AWB) 23:59, 18 March 2006 Melchoir (Move to Wikiquote) 23:38, 18 March 2006 Bluebot m (Wikify) 23:31, 18 March 2006 WillaimWestchester

Should we need such a page or this page must be deleted?(StarWarsFanBoy 16:42, 26 January 2010 (UTC))