Remembering The Titanic and the Fort Dearborn Massacre

This year in Chicago we commemorate the anniversary of two events that happened 100 and 200 years ago. Ironically, the sinking of the Titanic and the Fort Dearborn Massacre also happened 100 years apart.

To put the two events in perspective, the passengers on the Titanic were as far removed from the War of 1812 and the Fort Dearborn Massacre as we are removed from the sinking of the Titanic. The Fort Dearborn Massacre was one of the early events of the War of 1812, a war that seems to have been forgotten my many Chicagoans. Today, the sinking of the Titanic is on the news more than the issues and politics that swirled around the War of 1812. This was not the case in 1912, one hundred years after the massacre. At that time the War of 1812 and the men, women and children who lost their lives in the Fort Dearborn Massacre were well remembered.

---

Tourists often went to the site of the massacre by the shore of Lake Michigan. They sent postcards home with an image of the monument George Pullman set up and where the ghosts of pioneers were claimed to be seen, wandering aimlessly on foggy Chicago mornings. Some even saw the massacre as a formative event for the great city of Chicago. William T. Stead in his now overlooked book, “If Christ Came to Chicago: A Plea for the Union of All who Love in the Service of All who Suffer (1894)” refers to the Fort Dearborn Massacre as one reason why Chicago can lay claim to being a great city. Stead writes, "Chicago, though one of the youngest of cities, has still a history, which begins, like that of more ancient communities, in blood." Here, Stead attempts to link the history of Chicago with other great cities like ancient Rome. Besides the history of blood, Stead wanted to document the history of saloons, pawnshops and brothels that led many good men and women in Chicago astray, especially in an area of Chicago that is nowadays referred to as the South Loop. Currently, that area is a trendy and upscale Chicago neighborhood, not too far removed from where the Fort Dearborn Massacre happened. William T. Stead’s work in Chicago was also one of the first sociological studies of vice. He even located on a map of Chicago where all the brothels, pawnshops and saloons were. The political corruption in Chicago that Stead documents is still present a hundred years after he wrote his book. Likewise, the issues that gave rise to the War of 1812 and the Fort Dearborn Massacre, especially the issue of citizenship, are still with us today. Just who and what is an American citizen, something the British in 1812 refused to recognize on the high seas, still haunts us when we read about undocumented workers, and the meaning of the requirement that a US President be a natural born citizen. Perhaps we want to remember the sinking of the Titanic because the sinking seems more an act of nature than a political event. The Titanic does not force us to examine our ideas of patriotism and our politics the way the Fort Dearborn Massacre does. In a multicultural Chicago, people are dazzled more by jewels pulled up from the depths of the ocean than they are by the courageous acts of men like captain William Wells and ensign George Ronan, two men who died defending their country during The Fort Dearborn Massacre. A few years after the publication of his book, William T. Stead returned to England to carry on his evangelizing. The great Columbian Exposition took place in Chicago and people remarked how far the city had come in a 100 years from its early pioneer days. By the 1970s, both Stead’s book and the statue donated by Pullman to commemorate the Fort Dearborn Massacre had all but disappeared from the memory of most Chicagoans. By 1980, the resting place of the Titanic at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean had not yet been discovered, and the bones of those who died at the Fort Dearborn Massacre remained in unknown graves. A hundred years ago, in 1912 William T. Stead was called back to the United States to talk about his work of reform and his controversial book about Chicago. By then, Pullman who died in 1897 was buried at Graceland Cemetery. In 1912, the statue Pullman put up to commemorate the Fort Dearborn Massacre was still a popular tourist attraction in Chicago. Perhaps Stead would pay the monument site a visit when he returned to the city. He still hoped to persuade all those who love to help all those who suffer. So, Stead went ahead and booked transatlantic passage on the Titanic.