European History
TIME: Reading Period — 15 minutes
Writing Time for all three essays — 115 minutes
DIRECTIONS: Read over both the Document-Based Essay question in Part A and the choices in Part B during the Reading Period, and use the time to organize answers. All students must answer Part A (the Document-Based Essay Question) and choose TWO questions from Part B to answer.


PART A - DOCUMENT-BASED ESSAY
This question is designed to test your ability to work with historical clocuments. As you analyze each document, take into account the source and the point of view of the author. Write an essay on the following topic that integrates your analysis of the documents. You may refer to historical facts and developments not mentioned in the documents.


Analyze the nature of the Peterloo Massacre of 1819, and assess the validity of the following statement about the event.


“Peterloo. . .proved to be a watershed. A nice, neat little massacre occurring within a quarter of an hour. No long drawn-out horror to numb the sensibilities. Not too many casualties, but sufficiently occasioned, with sabres slashing, children screaming, and horses trampling, to shock.... (it) galvanized the middle-class Radicals, prodded the Whigs, and stiffened the Government into action.”
—Joyce Marlow, The Peterloo Massacre


Historical Background: The Peterloo Massacre occurred during a time of turmoil and tension in Great Britain. The Napoleonic Wars had ended just four years before. Food prices were rising, and some blamed the Corn Laws, which the Tories had passed through parliament during the Napoleonic Wars. By imposing large tariffs on foreign grain during times of shortage, the Corn Laws were designed to increase food prices and benefit the nobility financially. Only the very wealthy—almost all nobility—voted for the elected house of Parliament, the House of Commons. Middle-class orators who were demanding the expansion of the electorate cited the Corn Laws as an example of the evils of the nobility’s monopoly of Parliament. As new industrial cities arose, orators also complained about the “rotten boroughs” (election districts which were over-represented in Parliament because their population had declined). In 1819, one of the middle-class orators promoting expansion of the electorate, Henry Hunt, called for a rally to be held at St. Peter’s Field in the relatively new, industrial city of Manchester. Despite its rapid growth, Manchester did not have a representative in Parliament. Local authorities, fearing violence, sent local militia and an army cavalry unit into the crowd. In the ensuing panic, a number of people in the crowd were killed and many injured. This event was later dubbed the “Peterloo Massacre.”

Document 1

Contemporary drawing of the Peterloo Massacre.

http://www.uncp.edu/home/rwb/peterloo.jpg

Document 2
“(They should) take the liberty to recommend to those poor fellows, the language of whose petition breathed throughout every line a feeling of despondency and forlorn hope. . .to seek a redress of their manifold grievance. . .He advised them to give up all ideas of leaving the country.. .to join with the great body of people who... .had embarked in a firm and constitutional way to reform the House of Commons, and never were either to the right or left until Annual Parliaments, Universal Suffrage, and Election by Ballot shall be established in the land.”
—J. T. Saxton, radical reform leader, to the distressed weavers of Manchester in June 1819.

Document 3
“. . .we are unsound in the vitals...,that’s the seat of the mischief—the Constitution’s become rotten at the core—Corruption’s at the very helm of the state; it sits and rules in the very House of Commons; this is the source, the true and the only one of all our sufferings—what the remedy, then? Why, reform—a radical and complete constitutional reform; we want nothing but this.. .to mend our markets and give every poor man plenty of work and good wages for doing it.”
—From a letter to the Manchester Mercury in August 1819.

Document 4
“We are very well as we are,’ says the hereditary Lord, who squanders away his 30,000 British pounds a year in every species of debauchery and dissipation. . . ‘We are very well as we are,’ say the Representatives and Aristocratical Proprietors of Rotten Boroughs. But what say seven millions of persons in this country who are totally unrepresented? What say the liberal minded—the independent—the friends of freedom—and the friends of thought?”
—From an article in the Manchester Gazette, December 16, 1818.

Document 5
“You will meet on Monday next, friends, and by your steady, firm, and temperate deporting, you will convince all your enemies, that you feel you have an important and imperious public duty to perform. Our Enemies will seek every opportunity to. . . excite a riot, that they may have a pretence for Spilling our Blood. ...Come, then, friends, to the meeting with no other Weapon but that of a self approving conscience; determine not to suffer yourself to be irritated or excited, by any means whatsoever, to cause any breach of the public peace.”
—Statement by Hunt, announcing the rally at St. Peter’s Field.

Document 6
(Local authorities stationed themselves in buildings near the rally to observe the crowd; after the rally had begun, they ordered the local militia (the Yeomanry) and an army cavalry unit, both of which were waiting in nearby streets, to move into the crowd to maintain order.)
“At first (the movement of the Manchester Yeomanry) was not rapid, and there was some show of an attempt to follow their officer in regular succession, five or six abreast; but they soon increased their speed. . .they had long been insulted with taunts of cowardice, (and) continued their course, seemed to vie with each other which should be first. . .As the cavalry approached the dense mass of people they used their utmost efforts to escape; but so closely were they pressed in opposite directions by the soldiers, the special constables,... and their own immense numbers, that immediate escape was impossible. . . On the arrival (of the troops). ..a scene of dreadful confusion ensued.”
—Account of the Rev. Edward Stanley, an eyewitness.

Document 7
LIST OF THE DEAD AT “PETERLOO”
Thomas Ashworth. Sabred and trampled.
John Ashton. Sabred and trampled on by the crowd.
Thomas Buckley. Sabred and trampled.
James Crompton. Trampled on by the cavalry.
William Fildes. Two years old. Ridden over by the cavalry.
Sarah Jones. No cause given.
John Lees. Sabred.
Arthur O’Neill. Inwardly crushed.
Martha Partington. Thrown into a cellar and killed.
John Rhodes. Died several weeks later.
Joseph Ashworth. Shot.
William Bradshaw. No cause given.
William Dawson. Sabred and crushed.
Edmund Dawson. Died of sabre wounds.
—From a list compiled from many sources by a modern historian.

Document 8
“The inscriptions upon the flag are “Parliaments Annual, Suffrage Universal.” I cannot say that I see anything wrong in either of these. ‘Unity Strength.’ ‘Liberty and Fraternity.’ Now are these.. .calculated to produce dissatisfaction and contempt and hatred to His Majesty’s Government?
—Justice Bayler, defense attorney, at the trial of Hunt, describing banners at the St. Peter’s Field rally.

Document 9
“The results of yesterday will bring down the name of Hunt and his accomplices . .With a fractious perverseness.. .they have set open defiance upon the
timely warning of the magistrates.. .and daringly invited the attendance of a mass
of people which may be computed at near 100,000....Yesterday’s proceedings
showed that the Revolutionary attempts of this base Junto was no longer to be
tolerated.”
—From one of the first newspaper accounts of the massacre, in the Manchester Mercury, August 17, 1819.

Document 10
(The Peterloo Massacre was regarded as a civil insurrection by the Tories in Parliament, who used their majority to force through Parliament a series of laws restricting basic liberties, the Six Acts. The rival Whigs opposed the Six Acts and tended to see the incident as evidence of popular discontent and proof of the need for electoral reform.) “He felt himself bound to recommend to the House, if it wished to avoid civil dissension, if it wished to avoid the greatest of all evils, the shedding of English blood by English hands, to examine fairly and freely into the state of representation....”
—From a speech by a Whig member of Parliament, December 1819.


Document 11
“For many months, we had suffered the terrors of siege, having enemies within as well as without; and when we went to bed at night, we knew not, bu:
that our town would be in flames before morning.. . .Who shall complain of Peterloo, when the organized terrors of months of slavery and fear had driven us to make a desperate stand for all, which Britons can value.”
—A Tory speaker defending the authorities’ handling of the crowd.


Document 12
“. . .it must be admitted that taxation is ponderous, and that the middle class are like enough to fall into the state of the lower, and the lower into a state of starvation. But what can Reform, or any other nostrum of political agitation do here? We are suffering the effects of the late war and bad harvests, and must wait patiently until the tide turns. It is absurd to attribute such calamities to boroughmongering and the Bourbons.”
—Lord Gatliffe to Lord Farington, June 5, 1819 (The Bourbons were the French ruling family).


Document 13
“The policy which is meant to suppress or fetter discussion is.. .doubtful; for
the best vent for passion.. .is the freedom of using angry words.”
—A Whig comment on the Six Acts, from an article in the London Times.


Document 14
(Among those expressing disapproval of the Six Acts was the young Tory Robert Peel, later to be prime minister of England. During the 1 820s, Peel and other “reform” Tories would convince Parliament to approve legal and other reforms.)
“Do you not think that the tone of England.. .is more liberal.. .than the policy of the government? Do you not think there is more a feeling, becoming daily more general.. .in favor of some undefined change in the role of governing the country...?”
—Robert Peel, Letter of 1819.


Document 15
(The Tories controlled Parliament until 1831. During an election in 1829, the Duke of Wellington, campaigning for the Tories, was greeted by signs bearing the words “Remember Peterloo.” By the time of major national elections in 1831, the Whigs had committed themselves to expanding the electorate. When they won, they passed legislation giving the suffrage to half of the adult middle-class males, beginning a process that continued throughout the century.)

“Peterloo was Tory justice, and is what they would repeat should they ever come to power again.”
—From a Liberal party pamphlet directed against the Conservative party (formerly called the Tories) in the election of 1874.