20th+

Thursday, November 26, 2015

In 1832, voting rights were given to the property-owning middle classes in Britain, but many wanted further political reform.

Chartism emerged in 1836 as a working class movement, aimed at securing political rights and influence. It was most active between 1838 and 1848. The aim of the Chartists was to

Chartism was named for the People’s Charter, which listed the six main aims of the movement. These were:

a vote for all men (over 21)
the secret ballot
no property qualification to become an MP
payment for MPs
electoral districts of equal size
annual elections for Parliament

In 1839, 1842 and 1848, Chartists presented three petitions to Parliament. Each was rejected. It was claimed that the last great Chartist petition in 1848, garnered six million signatures. The 1848 plan included a peaceful mass meeting on Kennington Common in London, followed by delivery to parliament. The demonstration was deemed a failure when, on a cold rainy day, the government sent 8,000 soldiers, yet only 20,000 Chartists attended the mass meeting. The rejection of this petition marked the end of Chartism.

Some opponents of the movement feared that Chartists were not just interested in changing the way Parliament was elected, but really wanted to turn society upside down by starting a revolution. They also thought that the Chartists (who said they disapproved of violent protest) were stirring up a wave of riots around the country. On 4 November 1839, 5,000 men marched into Newport, in Monmouthshire, and attempted to take control of the town. Led by three well-known Chartists (John Frost, William Jones and Zephaniah Williams), they gathered outside the Westgate Hotel, where the local authorities were temporarily holding a number of potential troublemakers. Troops protecting the hotel opened fire, killing at least 22 people, and brought the uprising to an abrupt end. Preston in Lancashire was the scene of rioting in 1842.

Support for Chartism peaked at times of economic depression and hunger. There was rioting in Stockport, due to unemployment and near-starvation, and Manchester, where workers protested against wage cuts, wanting "a fair day's pay for a fair day's labour". The "Plug Plots" were a series of strikes in Lancashire, Yorkshire, the Midlands and parts of Scotland that took place in the summer of 1842. Workers removed the plugs from the boilers in order to bring factory machinery to a halt. Wage cuts were the main issue, but support for Chartism was also strong at this time.

Although the Chartist movement ended without achieving its aims, the fear of civil unrest remained. Later in the century, many Chartist ideas were included in the Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884.

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/politics/g7/ .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartism .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Act_1832 .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Act_1867 .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representation_of_the_People_Act_1884 .

Third Reform Act 1884 ..

1835-1-30 Andrew Jackson - assassination attempt

30th January 1835: Assassination US President Andrew Jackson - HiPo > .

23-9-14 Kill or capture? Morality of assassination in war | DiD - Tele > .

Late 19th Century History (1875-1899) - HiPo >> .

Andrew Jackson survives the first assassination attempt of a sitting US President: Andrew Jackson had been censured in 1834 in the aftermath of his decision to veto a bill that would have reauthorized the charter of the Second Bank of the United States. The confrontational nature of his dealings with government saw him make many enemies, but it was an unemployed house painter from England who attempted to kill him on 30 January 1835.

Jackson was leaving the funeral of South Carolina Representative Warren Davis at the Capitol Building when Richard Lawrence attacked him. The would-be assassin was equipped with two single-shot Derringer pistols, and he had aimed the first at Jackson as he passed through the East Portico of the Capitol. Although the sound of the percussion cap exploding echoed around the Capitol the gun misfired, possibly due to damp weather, and the President reportedly prepared to strike Lawrence with his cane as the shocked painter raised the second gun that also misfired.

Lawrence was set upon by the crowd, and the President himself, before he was taken away by police to stand trial for attempted murder. Francis Scott Key, the writer of the poem that became “The Star-Spangled Banner”, was the prosecutor in the case but it soon became clear that Lawrence was mentally unstable and delusional. He maintained that he was the 15th-century English king Richard III, and refused to recognize the legitimacy of the court.

After just five minutes’ deliberation the jury found Lawrence ‘not guilty by reason of insanity’ and he was committed to an asylum. Nevertheless some people, including the President himself, believed the assassination attempt was a conspiracy by his political enemies.

...
Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was an American soldier and statesman who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Before being elected to the presidency, Jackson gained fame as a general in the United States Army and served in both houses of the U.S. Congress. An expansionist president, Jackson sought to advance the rights of the "common man" against a "corrupt aristocracy" and to preserve the Union.

Many of his actions proved divisive, garnering both fervent support and strong opposition from many in the country. His reputation has suffered since the 1970s, largely due to his role in Native American removal; however, surveys of historians and scholars have ranked Jackson favorably among U.S. presidents.

1834-8-1 Abolition of Slavery, UK

1834-8-1 Slavery Abolition Act enforced; United Kingdom - HiPo > .

On 1 August 1834 the Slavery Abolition Act came into force in the United Kingdom.

Parliament had outlawed the slave trade in the Slave Trade Act of 1807, but that Act only served to stop the creation of new slaves. It did not address the issue of existing slaves who were already in the colonies.

It was these slaves that the new Slavery Abolition Act sought to address, and it received royal assent in 1833. The Act outlawed slavery throughout the British Empire although the impact took a long time to be felt. There were also some exceptions such as in areas controlled by the East India Company.

A key problem facing the government was what to do with the former slaves. The Act addressed this issue by stating that former slaves over the age of six became ‘apprentices’ and continued to work on the same plantations in largely the same conditions as before. Many of them were only fully emancipated six years later in 1840, although all slaves in Trinidad were fully emancipated ahead of schedule in 1838.

The position of the former slave owners themselves was also addressed in the Slavery Abolition Act. It’s important to remember that the Act effectively stripped slave-owners of their property. The Act therefore compensated the slave-owners for their loss of property. This was done by the Slave Compensation Commission that awarded the equivalent of £17bn in today’s money, funded by the taxpayer, to 46,000 slave owners.

A searchable online database of every slave-owner who was awarded compensation by the Commission is available to view at www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs.

1832 Great Reform Act

.The Great Reform Act 1832: Origins and Opposition | feat UK Parliamentary Archives > .

Great Reform Act - Ending Rotten Boroughs - Bonum >> .

The Representation of the People Act 1832 (also known as the 1832 Reform Act, Great Reform Act or First Reform Act) was an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom (indexed as 2 & 3 Will. IV c. 45) that introduced major changes to the electoral system of England and Wales. It abolished tiny districts, gave representation to cities, gave the vote to small landowners, tenant farmers, shopkeepers, householders who paid a yearly rental of £10 or more, and some lodgers. Only qualifying men were able to vote; the Act introduced the first explicit statutory bar to women's voting, by defining a voter as a male person.

It was designed to correct abuses – to "take effectual Measures for correcting divers Abuses that have long prevailed in the Choice of Members to serve in the Commons House of Parliament". Before the reform, most members nominally represented boroughs. The number of electors in a borough varied widely, from a dozen or so up to 12,000. Frequently the selection of Members of Parliament (MPs) was effectively controlled by one powerful patron: for example Charles Howard, 11th Duke of Norfolk, controlled eleven boroughs. Criteria for qualification for the franchise varied greatly among boroughs, from the requirement to own land, to merely living in a house with a hearth sufficient to boil a pot.

There had been calls for reform long before 1832, but without success. The Act that finally succeeded was proposed by the Whigs, led by Prime Minister Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey. It met with significant opposition from the Pittite factions in Parliament, who had long governed the country; opposition was especially pronounced in the House of Lords. Nevertheless, the bill was eventually passed, mainly as a result of public pressure. The Act granted seats in the House of Commons to large cities that had sprung up during the Industrial Revolution, and removed seats from the "rotten boroughs": those with very small electorates and usually dominated by a wealthy patron. The Act also increased the electorate from about 400,000 to 650,000, making about one in five adult males eligible to vote.

The full title is An Act to amend the representation of the people in England and Wales. Its formal short title and citation is "Representation of the People Act 1832 (2 & 3 Wm. IV, c. 45)". The Act applied only in England and Wales; the Irish Reform Act 1832 brought similar changes to Ireland. The separate Scottish Reform Act 1832 was revolutionary, enlarging the electorate by a factor of 13 from 5,000 to 65,000.