Terry L. Jones, Civil War Historian
Throughout his life Abraham Lincoln was sympathetic to the plight of the Irish. In 1847 he contributed $10.00 for relief of the Irish during the Great Famine, not an inconsiderable amount of money at a time that private soldiers during the Mexican War were being paid $8.00 per month.
When Irish Catholics faced discrimination in this country Lincoln spoke up for them in spite of the fact that most Irish Catholics were Democrats.
In the 1840s America was beset by a wave of anti-Catholic riots. An especially violent one occurred in Philadelphia on May 6-8. These riots laid the seeds for a powerful anti-Catholic movement which became embodied in the years to come in the aptly named Know-Nothing movement. To many American politicians Catholic-bashing seemed the path to electoral success.
Lincoln made clear where he stood on this issue when he organized a public meeting in Springfield, Illinois on June 12, 1844. At the meeting he proposed and had the following resolution adopted by the meeting:
“Resolved, That the guarantee of the rights of conscience, as found in our Constitution, is most sacred and inviolable, and one that belongs no less to the Catholic, than to the Protestant; and that all attempts to abridge or interfere with these rights, either of Catholic or Protestant, directly or indirectly, have our decided disapprobation, and shall ever have our most effective opposition. Resolved, That we reprobate and condemn each and every thing in the Philadelphia riots, and the causes which led to them, from whatever quarter they may have come, which are in conflict with the principles above expressed.”
Lincoln remained true to this belief. At the height of the political success of the Know-Nothing movement 11 years later, Mr. Lincoln in a letter to his friend Joshua Speed wrote:
“I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we begin by declaring that “all men are created equal.” We now practically read it “all men are created equal, except negroes.” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read “all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.” When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty-to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy [sic].”
As a young man Lincoln memorized the speech of Robert Emmet, a Protestant Irishman, before he was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered in 1803 after his capture by the British. Emmet’s family was sympathetic to the plight of their Irish Catholic countrymen, as they had been earlier sympathetic to the cause of the patriots in the American Revolution. He was captured after leading an abortive rebellion in Dublin in 1803. Unbeknownst to Emmet, his chief defense counsel had been bribed by the British to help assure his conviction, although his junior defense counsel manfully defended Emmet with all of his skill. Emmet himself took full advantage of his opportunity to speak before sentencing:
A few minutes after the judge’s charge, the foreman of the jury accordingly addressed the court:
“My lords, I have consulted with my brother jurors, and we are all of opinion that the prisoner is guilty”.
The clerk of the crown read the indictment, and stated the verdict found in the normal form. He then concluded accordingly:
“What have you, therefore, now to say why judgment of death and execution shall not be awarded against you according to law?” Robert Emmet, immediately responded,
“What have I to say why sentence of death should not be pronounced on me, according to law? I have nothing to say which can alter your predetermination, not that it would become me to say with any view to the mitigation of that Sentence which you are here to pronounce, and by which I must abide. But I have that to say which interests me more than life, and which you have laboured, as was necessarily your office in the present circumstances of this oppressed country to destroy. I have much to say why my reputation should be rescued from the load of false accusation and calumny which has been heaped upon it. I do not imagine that, seated where you are, your minds can be so free from impurity as to receive the least impression from what I am about to utter. I have no hope that I can anchor my character in the breast of a court constituted and trammelled as this is. I only wish, and it is the utmost I expect. that your lordships may suffer it to float down your memories untainted by the foul breath of prejudice, until it finds some more hospitable harbour to shelter it from the rude storm by which it is at present buffeted.
Were I only to suffer death, after being adjudged guilty by your tribunal, I should bow in silence, meet the fate that awaits me without a murmur; but the sentence of the law which delivers my body to the executioner, will, through the ministry of the law, labour in its own vindication to consign my character to obloquy, for there must be guilt somewhere—whether in the sentence of the court, or in the catastrophes posterity must determine. A man in my situation, my lords, has not only to encounter the difficulties of fortune, and the force of power over minds which it has corrupted or subjugated, but the difficulties of established prejudice. The man dies, but his memory lives. That mine may not perish, that it may live in the respect of my countrymen, I seize upon this opportunity to vindicate myself from some of the charges alleged against me. When my spirit shall be wafted to a more friendly port—when my shade shall have joined the bands of those martyred heroes, who have shed their blood on the scaffold and in the field in defence of their country and of virtue, this is my hope—I wish that my memory and name may animate those who survive me, while I look down with complacency on the destruction of that perfidious government which upholds its domination by blasphemy of the Most High—which displays its power over man is over the beasts of the forest—which set man upon his brother, and lifts his hand, in the name of God, against the throat of his fellow who believes or doubts a little more or a little less than the government standard—a government which is steeled to barbarity by the cries of the orphans and the tears of the widows which it has made.
Lord Norbury— “The weak and wicked enthusiasts who feel as you feel are unequal to the accomplishment of their wild designs”.
I appeal to the immaculate God—I swear by the Throne of Heaven, before which I must shortly appear—by the blood of the murdered patriots who have gone before me—that my conduct has been, through all this peril, and through all my purposes, governed only by the convictions which I have uttered, and by no other view than that of the emancipation of my country from the superinhuman oppression under which she has so long and too patiently travailed; and I confidently and assuredly hope that, wild and chimerical as it may appear, there is still union and strength in Ireland to accomplish this noblest enterprise. Of this I speak with the confidence of intimate knowledge, and with the consolation that appertains to that confidence, think not, my lords, that I say this for the petty gratification of giving you a transitory uneasiness. A man who never yet raised his voice to assert a lie will not hazard his character with posterity by asserting a falsehood on a subject so important to his country, and on an occasion like this. Yes, my lords, a man who does not wish to have his epitaph written until his country is liberated will not leave a weapon in the power of envy, nor a pretence to impeach the probity which he means to preserve, even in the grave to which tyranny consigns him.
Lord Norbury — “You proceed to unwarrantable lengths, in order to exasperate or delude the unwary, and circulate opinions of the most dangerous tendency, for purposes of mischief”.
Again I say that what I have spoken was not intended for your lordship, whose situation I commiserate rather than envy—my expressions were for my countrymen. If there is a true Irishman present, let my last words cheer him in the hour of his affliction—
Lord Norbury— ”What you have hitherto said confirms and justifies the verdict of the jury”.
I have always understood it to be the duty of a judge, when a prisoner has been convicted, to pronounce the sentence of the law. I have also understood that judges sometimes think it their duty to hear with patience, and to speak with humanity; to exhort the victim of the laws, and to offer, with tender benignity, their opinions of the motives by which he was actuated in the crime of which he was adjudged guilty. That a judge has thought it his duty so to have done, I have no doubt; but where is that boasted freedom of your institutions—where is the vaunted impartiality, clemency, and mildness of your courts of justice, if an unfortunate prisoner, whom your policy, and not your justice, is about to deliver into the hands of the executioner, is not suffered to explain his motives sincerely and truly, and to vindicate the principles by which he was actuated?
My lords, it may be a part of the system of angry justice to bow a man’s mind by humiliation to the purposed ignominy of the scaffold; but worse to me than the purposed shame or the scaffold’s terrors would be the shame of such foul and unfounded imputations as have been laid against me in this court. You, my lord, are a judge; I am the supposed culprit. I am a man; you are a man also. By a revolution of power we might change places, though we could never change characters. If I stand at the bar of this court and dare not vindicate my character, what a farce is your justice? If I stand at this bar and dare not vindicate my character, how dare you calumniate it? Does the sentence of death, which your unhallowed policy inflicts upon my body, also condemn my tongue to silence and my reputation to reproach? Your executioner may abridge the period of my existence, but, while I exist, I shall not forbear to vindicate my character and motives from your aspersions; as a man to whom fame is dearer than life, I will make the last use of that life in doing justice to that reputation which is to live after me, and which is the only legacy I can leave to those I honour and love, and for whom I am proud to perish.
As men, my lord, we must appear on the great day at one common tribunal, and it will then remain for the Searcher of all hearts to show a collective universe who was engaged in the most virtuous actions or actuated by the purest motives—my country’s oppressor, or—
Lord Norbury— ”Stop, sir! Listen to the sentence of the law”.
My lord, shall a dying man be denied the legal privilege of exculpating himself in the eyes of the community from an undeserved reproach thrown upon him during his trial, by charging him with ambition, and attempting to cast away for a paltry consideration the liberties of his country? Why did your lordship insult me? Or rather, why insult justice in demanding of me why sentence of death should not be pronounced? I know, my lord, that form prescribes that you should ask the question. The form also presumes the right of answering. This, no doubt, may be dispensed with, and so might the whole ceremony of the trial, since sentence was already pronounced at the Castle before your jury were empanelled. Your lordships are but the priests of the oracle. I submit to the sacrifice; but I insist on the whole of the forms.
Lord Norbury— “You may proceed, sir”.
I am charged with being an emissary of France. An emissary of France! And for what end? It is alleged that I wish to sell the independence of my country; and for what end? Was this the object of my ambition? And is this the mode by which a tribunal of justice reconciles contradictions? No; I am no emissary.
My ambition was to hold a place among the deliverers of my country—not in power, not in profit, but in the glory of the achievement. Sell my country’s independence to France! And for what? A change of masters? No; but for my ambition. Oh, my country! Was it personal ambition that influenced me? Had it been the soul of my actions, could I not, by my education and fortune, by the rank and consideration of my family, have placed myself amongst the proudest of your oppressors? My country was my idol. To it I sacrificed every selfish, every endearing sentiment; and for it I now offer myself, O God! No, my lords; I acted as an Irishman, determined on delivering my country from the yoke of a foreign and unrelenting tyranny, and from the more galling yoke of a domestic faction, its joint partner and perpetrator in the patricide, whose reward is the ignominy of existing with an exterior of splendour and a consciousness of depravity. It was the wish of my heart to extricate my country from this doubly-riveted despotism—I wish to place her independence beyond the reach of any power on earth. I wish to exalt her to that proud station in the world which Providence had destined her to fill. Connection with France was, indeed, intended, but only so far as mutual interest would sanction or require.
Were the French to assume any authority inconsistent with the purest independence, it would be the signal for their destruction. We sought their aid— and we sought it as we had assurances we should obtain it—as auxiliaries in war, and allies in peace. Were the French to come as invaders or enemies, uninvited by the wishes of the people, I should oppose them to the utmost of my strength. Yes! My countrymen, I should advise you to meet them on the beach with a sword in one hand and a torch in the other. I would meet them with all the destructive fury of war, and I would animate my countrymen to immolate them in their boats before they had contaminated the soil of my country. If they succeeded in landing, and if forced to retire before superior discipline, I would dispute every inch of ground, raze every house, burn every blade of grass; the last spot on which the hope of freedom should desert me, there would I hold, and the last of liberty should be my grave.
What I could not do myself in my fall, I should leave as a last charge to my countrymen to accomplish; because I should feel conscious that life, any more than death, is dishonourable when a foreign nation holds my country in subjection. But it was not as an enemy that the succours of France were to land. I looked, indeed, for the assistance of France; I wished to prove to France and to the world that Irishmen deserved to be assisted—that they were indignant at slavery, and ready to assert the independence and liberty of their country; I wished to procure for my country the guarantee which Washington procured for America—to procure an aid which, by its example, would be as important as its valour; disciplined, gallant, pregnant with science and experience; that of allies who would perceive the good, and polish the rough points of our character. They would come to us as strangers, and leave us as friends, after sharing in our perils, and elevating our destiny. These were my objects; not to receive new taskmasters, but to expel old tyrants. And it was for these ends I sought aid from France; because France, even as an enemy, could not be more implacable than the enemy already in the bosom of my country.
Lord Norbury— ”You are making an avowal of dreadful treasons, and of a determined purpose to have persevered in them, which I do believe, has astonished your audience”.
I have been charged with that importance in the efforts to emancipate my country, as to be considered the keystone of the combination of Irishmen, or, as your lordship expressed it, “the life and blood of the conspiracy”. You do me honour overmuch; you have given to a subaltern all the credit of a superior. There are men engaged in this conspiracy who are not only superior to me; but even to your own conception of yourself, my lord; men before the splendour of whose genius and virtues I should bow with respectful deference, and who would think themselves disgraced by shaking your bloodstained hand—
Lord Norbury— “You have endeavoured to establish a wicked and bloody provisional government”.
What, my lord! shall you tell me, on the passage to the scaffold, which that tyranny, of which you are only the intermediary executioner, has erected for my murder, that I am accountable for all the blood that has been and will be shed in this struggle of the oppressed against the oppressor? Shall you tell me this, and must I be so very as slave as not to repel it?
Lord Norbury— “A different conduct would have better become one who had endeavoured to overthrow the laws and liberties of his country”.
I who fear not to approach the Omnipotent Judge to answer for the conduct of my whole life, am I to be appalled and falsified by a mere remnant of mortality here? By you, too, who if it were possible to collect all the innocent blood that you have shed in your unhallowed ministry in one great reservoir, your lordship might swim in it.
Lord Norbury—“I exhort you not to depart this life with such sentiments of rooted hostility to your country as those which you have expressed’.
Let no man dare, when I am dead, to charge me with dishonour; let no man attaint my memory by believing that I could have engaged in any cause but that of my country’s liberty and independence; or that I could have become the pliant minion of power in the oppression and misery of my countrymen. The proclamation of the Provisional Government speaks for my views; no inference can be tortured from it to countenance barbarity or debasement at home, or subjection, humiliation, or treachery from abroad. I would not have submitted to a foreign oppressor, for the same reason that I would resist the domestic tyrant. In the dignity of freedom, I would have fought upon the threshold of my country, and its enemy should only enter by passing over my lifeless corpse. And am I, who lived but for my country, who have subjected myself to the dangers of the jealous and watchful oppressor, and now to the bondage of the grave, only to give my countrymen their rights, and my country her independence—am I to be loaded with calumny and not suffered to resent it? No, God forbid!
Here Lord Norbury told Emmet that his sentiments and language disgraced his family and his education, but more particularly his father, Dr. Emmet, who was a man, if alive, that would not countenance such opinions. To which Emmet replied:—
If the spirits of the illustrious dead participate in the concerns and cares of those who were dear to them in this transitory life, O! ever dear and venerated shade of my departed father, look down with scrutiny upon the conduct of your suffering son, and see if I have, even for a moment, deviated from those principles of morality and patriotism which it was your care to instil into my youthful mind, and for which I am now about to offer up my life. My lords, you seem impatient for the sacrifice. The blood for which you thirst is not congealed by the artificial terrors which surround your victim [the soldiery filled and surrounded the Sessions House]—it circulates warmly and unruffled through the channels which God created for noble purposes, but which you are now bent to destroy, for purposes so grievous that they cry to heaven. Be yet patient! I have but a few words more to say. I am going to my cold and silent grave; my lamp of life is nearly extinguished; my race is run; the grave opens to receive me, and I sink into its bosom.
I have but one request to ask at my departure from this world; it is—THE CHARITY OF ITS SILENCE. Let no man write my epitaph; for as no man who knows my motives dare now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them and me rest in obscurity and peace, and my name remain uninscribed, until other times and other men can do justice to my character. When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written. I have done.
The barbarous sentence was carried out the next day and Robert Emmet departed this vale of tears on September 20, 1803, age 25. His words lived on however, to inspire countless millions in the years to come, including a man who would be born in far off Kentucky six years after Emmet’s death.
“To burst in twain the galling chain
And free our native land.”
From “The Boys of wexford”
B/G Thomas F. Meagher (first commander of the Irish Brigade) was similarly condemned to death (commuted to Australia) in 1847.
Here is the ultimate sentence in his speech from the dock.
“I shall go, I think, with a light heart before a higher tribunal—a tribunal where a Judge of infinite goodness, as well as of infinite justice, will preside, and where, my lords, many, many of the judgements of this world will be reversed.”
N.B., the “mere” Irish, pacem brave Scotsmen and worthy Welsh, were able (after much suffering) to wrest their (26/32) independence from the Sassenach.
However, Sigmund Freud did not say, “The Irish are the only people who are impervious to psychoanalysis.” Because we have whisky.
Emmet’s rebellion, despite some sophisticated planning and protracted negotiations with the French, ended up as a rather nasty riot in Thomas Street, Dublin, in which the Irish Lord Chief Justice, Lord Kilwarden, a fair-minded man who opposed military ‘justice’ and had secured a writ of habeas corpus for Wolfe Tone, was dragged from his carriage and hacked to death by a mob over whom Emmet had lost all control.
Having consorted with the enemy in wartime (as Casement was to do in 1916) he was found guilty of High Treason and hanged. After the Second World War William Joyce and John Amery suffered the same fate. The latter was the son of a Cabinet minister.
By 1803 traitors were not drawn and quartered, but hanged until dead and then decapitated. The Irish historian Roy Foster writes of Emmet: “His ideas were those of elite separatism; neither social idealism nor religious equality appear to have figured … But he is inaccurately remembered as a noble and sacrificial dreamer … he would take his place in the martyrology of retrospective nationalism, whose interpretation of the late eighteenth century invariably played down the importance of the French connection, and elevated inchoate domestic failures into clear-cut moral victories”. (RF Foster, ‘Modern Ireland’ [1988] p.286)
But of course John, Emmet being Irish the French were not his enemy and the English not his friends.
In regard to being hanged, drawn and quartered John I believe that was still the penalty for treason in 1803. The sentence could be “commuted” to being hanged and decapitated as occurred in the case of Edward Despard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Despard
Presumably this must have also occurred with Emmet as he was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered but he was only hanged and decapitated.
“Emmet being Irish the French were not his enemy and the English not his friends”. He was a British subject, Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, and the United Kingdom was at war with France. During the Napoleonic wars a large proportion of the army and navy consisted of Irishmen who certainly saw the French as the enemy. And the thousands of Irishmen fighting on the Somme would not have been too impressed by Sir Roger Casement’s collaboration with the Germans. In the Second World War some 60,000 Southern Irishmen joined the British armed forces and of the four Victoria Crosses awarded to Irishmen, three went to southerners (the fourth went to a Belfast Catholic from the Falls Road).
As for Lincoln, his sympathy with rebellion was not greatly in evidence in 1861.
“He was a British subject”
As the descendant of a “British subject” John, Major Andrew McClary New Hampshire militia, who died fighting the redcoats at Bunker Hill I find that a less than compelling argument.
“consisted of Irishmen who certainly saw the French as the enemy.”
The profession of arms John has always been popular among the Irish. Catholic Irishmen who took the King’s Shilling rarely did it for love of the English or their King.
“And the thousands of Irishmen fighting on the Somme would not have been too impressed by Sir Roger Casement’s collaboration with the Germans.”
After the British executions of the participants in the Easter rising in 1916, I think there was quite a sea change in opinion about the War among the Irish Catholics. Considering the failure to pass Home Rule in 1914 it is truly remarkable that as many Irish Catholics volunteered to fight as did in that War.
“As for Lincoln, his sympathy with rebellion was not greatly in evidence in 1861.”
It was one country John, not the imposition of alien rule on an unwilling population as was the case with Ireland for almost eight centuries by England.
Your view of Irish history is too simplistic and Manichean, but unfortunately still prevalent among Irish-Americans who in the 1970s and 1980s financed PIRA terrorism through Noraid despite the Republic of Ireland government begging them not to. This still rankles over here and not just amongst the English. My grandfather was an Irish Catholic (born in Belfast) who joined the 5th Dragoon Guards in Dublin in 1910 and served on the Western Front throughout the Great War. In 1918 he was commissioned into the South Lancs. Regiment and won the Military Cross just three weeks before the Armistice. On leaving the army in 1922 he settled in the USA and joined the diplomatic service, ending his career as British Consul in Philadelphia.
In 1920, when he was a Lieutenant, his battalion was stationed in Dublin at the height of the ‘Troubles’. As an Irish patriot you might have thought he would have had divided loyalties; in fact he didn’t.
Modern Irish attitudes have moved beyond republican mythology and the convenient cop-out that you can blame the English for everything. The nations who make up the British Isles have a symbiotic relationship whether they like it or not, and a majority of the population of London is neither British nor Irish, which puts a different perspective on things.
What stopped Ireland going the same way as Greece in the recent financial meltdown? A bail-out by their Eurozone partners? No, it was the Brits who bailed them out. No wonder British-Irish relations are so good at the moment.
“Your view of Irish history is too simplistic and Manichean”
Not at all John. I simply understand that it was England that invaded Ireland and not the other way around. That is not Manichean, it is historically accurate.
“who in the 1970s and 1980s financed PIRA terrorism through Noraid”
I have no use for the latter day Marxists of the IRA. However if Catholics in Belfast hadn’t been treated as fifth class citizens they would have received little support.
“As an Irish patriot you might have thought he would have had divided loyalties; in fact he didn’t.”
He chose his side John and it was not the side chosen by the vast majority of his Irish Catholic compatriots.
“Modern Irish attitudes have moved beyond republican mythology and the convenient cop-out that you can blame the English for everything.”
Modern Ireland from what I can see is a faithless, socialist, bankrupt mess by and large. I agree that the Irish should not blame the English for everything that has gone wrong in their history.
https://the-american-catholic.com/2010/07/24/the-secrets-of-irish-music/
That being said there is quite enough to blame the English for in regard to Ireland:
“For I must do it justice; it was a complete system, full of coherence and consistency, well digested and well composed in all its parts. It was a machine of wise and deliberate contrivance, as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment and degradation of a people, and the debasement of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man.”
“No, it was the Brits who bailed them out.”
Considering that the Brits are also bankrupt, I think the shelf life of Irish gratitude will be short.
Right. I ‘ll give it to you straight. Unless and until you stop mythologizing your own history (and I have seen lots of it on this blog) you will never understand the history of Europe, let alone that of the world which you claim to dominate until in the fulness of time you sink into oblivion like the rest of us. There is only one institution which transcends this, and that is the Catholic Church which is founded by Jesus Christ and will exist unto the consummation of the world, which could be tomorrow.
And also get your facts right. Ireland was invaded in the 12th century by the same Norman invaders who had subjugated England after 1066. Since the Papacy approved of both invasions, it was surely right ?
Rubbish plain and simple John. I present history based upon fact. If that doesn’t fit the myths you cherish so much the worse for your myths. I will always be willing to be corrected on a matter of historical fact, but I will never sit supinely and allow anyone on this blog to do violence to the historical record to suit their views.
“Since the Papacy approved of both invasions, it was surely right?”
No. Next question?
It was the Treason Act 1814 (54 Geo. III c. 146) which provided for male traitors to be hanged until dead and then beheaded and quartered. The king could direct beheading, instead of hanging and quartering, by warrant under the sign manual.
The decency due to their sex meant that women were never liable to the public exposure and mangling of their bodies; instead, they were burned alive, until the Treason Act 1790 (30 Geo 3 c 48) , which substituted hanging. The 1790 Act was extended to Ireland by the Treason by Women Act (Ireland) 1796 (36 Geo 3 c 31)
Unfortunately being Irish/English/ British/ European/Catholic/ I can’t nail my colours to any mast, except that I have taken an oath to Queen Elizabeth, her heirs and successors. Yes, HM is a Protestant, but the laws she defends were still God’s laws until recently. Are the laws of your great republic any better? I doubt it.
In 1953 you put to death the Rosenbergs for treason in that they gave secrets to the Russians during the Second World War when the Russians were your allies and ctiticism of Stalin was not allowed in the press.
I am quite prepared to criticize my own country for her failings, and for the record I think that Ireland was exceptionally badly treated – this was at least in part due to the Reformation which was a disaster for England as well.
Don, I’m sorry but you do romanticize history (as did my grandfather who like you loved Kipling) and as as someone with a foot in both camps I have taken the trouble to study Irish history on its own terms and not simply as an adjunct to wider British history. So rather than dismiss my views as “rubbish” I would respectfully suggest that you access the same sources and if they lead you to a different conclusion say so in all honesty.
We in England have had to demythologize our history with regard to the Tudors and the Reformation. You don’t present history “based upon fact” any more than anyone else does, and I would suggest that the popular American view of history is worse than the English Whig view of the 19th century which took a long time to discredit.
Examples of how I romanticize history John? I never make a secret of what side I am on regarding the historical subjects I write about, but I strive to be completely factual. An example of this is the Spanish Civil War where I am quite blunt about the atrocities committed by both sides, although my sympathies are with the Nationalists as opposed to the Republicans, at least the Republicans outside of the Basque area. History is ill served unless it is truthful and that that is one of my goals when I write about history to present facts and not wishes or myths.
“that they gave secrets to the Russians during the Second World War when the Russians were your allies and ctiticism of Stalin was not allowed in the press.”
Stalin was criticized up and down the land during WW2 John. There were no restrictions on the press in this country during the war as demonstrated by the Chicago Tribune revealing the breaking of the Japanese code after Midway. The Roosevelt administration convened a grand jury but abandoned the prosecution when they realized that they would get nowhere in court. There were fairly draconian restrictions on the press in World War I, but not WW II.
“Are the laws of your great republic any better? I doubt it.”
Depends upon the laws. I think it has been an advantage for the US to have a written Constitution. My late mother was quite fond of the Queen. I have been dismayed at the recent royal surrender to the gay agenda in England, although I understand that the Queen has very little to say about government policy.
“I am quite prepared to criticize my own country for her failings”
You will find quite a bit of criticism of the US on this blog John, especially current policies!