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Armenian Americans

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Armenian ( endonym : հայերեն , hayeren , pronounced [hɑjɛˈɾɛn] ) is an Indo-European language and the sole member of the independent branch of the Armenian language family. It is the native language of the Armenian people and the official language of Armenia . Historically spoken in the Armenian highlands , today Armenian is also widely spoken throughout the Armenian diaspora . Armenian is written in its own writing system , the Armenian alphabet , introduced in 405 AD by Saint Mesrop Mashtots . The estimated number of Armenian speakers worldwide is between five and seven million.

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179-603: Armenian Americans ( Armenian : ամերիկահայեր , romanized :  amerikahayer ) are citizens or residents of the United States who have total or partial Armenian ancestry. They form the second largest community of the Armenian diaspora after Armenians in Russia . The first major wave of Armenian immigration to the United States took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Thousands of Armenians settled in

358-522: A Baltimore newspaper editor, Frank Key Howard , after he criticized Lincoln in an editorial for ignoring Taney's ruling. In Missouri, an elected convention on secession voted to remain in the Union. When pro-Confederate Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson called out the state militia, it was attacked by federal forces under General Nathaniel Lyon , who chased the governor and rest of the State Guard to

537-525: A blockade of the Confederacy to suffocate the South into surrender. Lincoln adopted parts of the plan but opted for a more active war strategy. In April 1861, Lincoln announced a blockade of all Southern ports; commercial ships could not get insurance, ending regular traffic. The South blundered by embargoing cotton exports before the blockade was fully effective; by the time they reversed this decision, it

716-520: A consistent Proto-Indo-European pattern distinct from Iranian, and that the inflectional morphology was different from that of Iranian languages. The hypothesis that Greek is Armenian's closest living relative originates with Holger Pedersen (1924), who noted that the number of Greek-Armenian lexical cognates is greater than that of agreements between Armenian and any other Indo-European language. Antoine Meillet (1925, 1927) further investigated morphological and phonological agreement and postulated that

895-434: A course of ultimate extinction. Decades of controversy over slavery were brought to a head when Abraham Lincoln , who opposed slavery's expansion, won the 1860 presidential election . Seven Southern slave states responded to Lincoln's victory by seceding from the United States and forming the Confederacy. The Confederacy seized U.S. forts and other federal assets within their borders. The war began on April 12, 1861, when

1074-705: A draft law in April 1862 for men aged 18–35, with exemptions for overseers, government officials, and clergymen. The U.S. Congress followed in July, authorizing a militia draft within states that could not meet their quota with volunteers. European immigrants joined the Union Army in large numbers, including 177,000 born in Germany and 144,000 in Ireland. About 50,000 Canadians served, around 2,500 of whom were black. When

1253-483: A firm hand by Lincoln tamed Seward, who was a staunch Lincoln ally. Lincoln decided holding the fort, which would require reinforcing it, was the only workable option. On April 6, Lincoln informed the Governor of South Carolina that a ship with food but no ammunition would attempt to supply the fort. Historian McPherson describes this win-win approach as "the first sign of the mastery that would mark Lincoln's presidency";

1432-468: A loan from Armenian (compare to Armenian եւ yev , ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁epi ). Other loans from Armenian into Urartian includes personal names, toponyms, and names of deities. Loan words from Iranian languages , along with the other ancient accounts such as that of Xenophon above, initially led some linguists to erroneously classify Armenian as an Iranian language. Scholars such as Paul de Lagarde and F. Müller believed that

1611-479: A man until she died in 1915 at the age of 71. The small U.S. Navy of 1861 rapidly expanded to 6,000 officers and 45,000 sailors by 1865, with 671 vessels totaling 510,396 tons. Its mission was to blockade Confederate ports, control the river system, defend against Confederate raiders on the high seas, and be ready for a possible war with the British Royal Navy . The main riverine war was fought in

1790-425: A network of schools where modern Armenian was taught, dramatically increased the rate of literacy (in spite of the obstacles by the colonial administrators), even in remote rural areas. The emergence of literary works entirely written in the modern versions increasingly legitimized the language's existence. By the turn of the 20th century both varieties of the one modern Armenian language prevailed over Grabar and opened

1969-657: A number also offered by Dr. Harold Takooshian of Fordham University . Prof. Dennis R. Papazian of University of Michigan–Dearborn claimed that there were 1,000,000 people of Armenian ancestry living in the US. Armenian Mirror-Spectator , the German news website Spiegel Online , and The New York Review of Books reported the estimate of 1,200,000, while the World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples, U.S. News & World Report , and Los Angeles Times put

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2148-451: A patriotic fire under the North. On April 15, Lincoln called on the states to field 75,000 volunteer troops for 90 days; impassioned Union states met the quotas quickly. On May 3, 1861, Lincoln called for an additional 42,000 volunteers for three years. Shortly after this, Virginia , Tennessee , Arkansas , and North Carolina seceded and joined the Confederacy. To reward Virginia,

2327-615: A predominantly male population. The top states with Armenian church followers were Massachusetts, Michigan, California and New York. The Western Diocese was established in 1927. After the Soviets took over Armenia in 1920, the Armenian American community was divided into two camps: one supporting Soviet Armenia (mostly members of the Hunchak and Ramgavar parties), another one against it (mostly made up of ARF members). During

2506-421: A republic, but a third challenge faced the nation: maintaining a republic based on the people's vote, in the face of an attempt to destroy it. Lincoln's election provoked South Carolina 's legislature to call a state convention to consider secession. South Carolina had done more than any other state to advance the notion that a state had the right to nullify federal laws and even secede. On December 20, 1860,

2685-608: A small community in East Hollywood was named Little Armenia by the Los Angeles City Council . The city council file on the adoption states that "the area contains a high concentration of Armenian businesses and residents and social and cultural institutions, including schools, churches, social, and athletic organizations". Glendale, just a few miles away from Downtown Los Angeles, has a population of about 200,000, of which, according to some estimates, 40%

2864-428: A very active social and occupational life and receive many services without speaking a word of English and interacting only with Armenians. Armenian-speaking food vendors, pharmacists, physicians, dentists, lawyers, tailors, hair stylists, shop owners and mechanics are all available. Up to three different 24-hour Armenian language television and radio channels are available. There are various social activities to attend for

3043-613: Is Armenian. According to the 2000 Census, 53,840 people, or 27% of the population, identified themselves Armenian in Glendale. Glendale also home to the highest percentage of people born in Armenia. Other than Glendale and Los Angeles proper, significant Armenian populations reside in Burbank (8,312), Pasadena (4,400), Montebello (2,736), Altadena (2,134), and La Crescenta-Montrose (1,382). The Armenian Genocide Martyrs Monument ,

3222-735: Is also a small Armenian community in Portland, Maine; this community was founded in 1896 and is currently represented by the Armenian Cultural Association of Maine (ACAME). One of the ACAME's first projects (in 2003) was to build a monument dedicated to the victims of the Armenian genocide, located at the intersection of Cumberland Avenue and Franklin Arterial in Portland. Other sizable Armenian American communities exist in

3401-552: Is an independent branch of the Indo-European languages . It is of interest to linguists for its distinctive phonological changes within that family. Armenian exhibits more satemization than centumization , although it is not classified as belonging to either of these subgroups. Some linguists tentatively conclude that Armenian, Greek (and Phrygian ), Albanian and Indo-Iranian were dialectally close to each other; within this hypothetical dialect group, Proto-Armenian

3580-591: Is called Old Armenian Town . The Northern Californian Armenian population is not as populous as the Southern portion of the state. Armenians are mostly concentrated in and around the cities of San Francisco , San Jose , and Oakland . The 2000 Census reported only 2,528 Armenians in San Francisco, but Hayk, the Ubiquitous Armenian, stated that "the actual number is probably much higher, since

3759-561: Is clearly the dialect to be most closely related to Armenian. Eric P. Hamp (1976, 91) supports the Graeco-Armenian thesis and even anticipates a time "when we should speak of Helleno-Armenian" (meaning the postulate of a Graeco-Armenian proto-language). Armenian shares the augment and a negator derived from the set phrase in the Proto-Indo-European language * ne h₂oyu kʷid ("never anything" or "always nothing"),

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3938-474: Is derived from Proto-Indo-European *h₂r̥ǵipyós , with cognates in Sanskrit (ऋजिप्य, ṛjipyá ), Avestan ( ərəzifiia ), and Greek (αἰγίπιος, aigípios ). Hrach Martirosyan and Armen Petrosyan propose additional borrowed words of Armenian origin loaned into Urartian and vice versa, including grammatical words and parts of speech, such as Urartian eue ("and"), attested in the earliest Urartian texts and likely

4117-613: Is in the Greater Los Angeles area , where 166,498 people have identified themselves as Armenian to the 2000 Census , comprising over 40% of the 385,488 people who identified Armenian origins in the United States at the time. The city of Glendale , in the Los Angeles metropolitan area , is widely thought to be the center of Armenian American life (although many Armenians live in the aptly named " Little Armenia " neighborhood of Los Angeles). The Armenian American community

4296-415: Is not considered conclusive evidence of a period of common isolated development. There are words used in Armenian that are generally believed to have been borrowed from Anatolian languages, particularly from Luwian , although some researchers have identified possible Hittite loanwords as well. One notable loanword from Anatolian is Armenian xalam , "skull", cognate to Hittite ḫalanta , "head". In 1985,

4475-522: Is the most politically influential community of the Armenian diaspora. Organizations such as Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) and Armenian Assembly of America advocate for the recognition of the Armenian genocide by the United States government and support stronger Armenia–United States relations . The Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU) is known for its financial support and promotion of Armenian culture and Armenian language schools . The first recorded Armenian to visit North America

4654-684: Is the oldest national church in the world and had a major role in protecting the Armenian identity through the centuries of foreign domination. Many Armenian communities in the country are concentrated around churches that serve as community centers. The first Armenian Apostolic church in America, named Church of Our Savior , was built in 1891 in Worcester. The American Diocese of the Church was established in 1898 by Catholicos Mkrtich Khrimian . In 1916 there were 34 Armenian parishes with 27,450 members with

4833-545: Is the working language. Armenian (without reference to a specific variety) is officially recognized as a minority language in Cyprus , Hungary , Iraq , Poland , Romania , and Ukraine . It is recognized as a minority language and protected in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne . American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names )

5012-490: The 1860 presidential election . Southern leaders feared Lincoln would stop slavery's expansion and put it on a course toward extinction. His victory triggered declarations of secession by seven slave states of the Deep South , all of whose riverfront or coastal economies were based on cotton that was cultivated by slave labor. Lincoln was not inaugurated until March 4, 1861, giving the South time to prepare for war during

5191-738: The 1933 World's Fair , Leon Tourian , the primate of the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America, refused to give a speech because the Armenian tricolor of the 1918–1920 Republic was hanging behind him, while Etchmiadzin , the seat of the Catholicos of All Armenians , was in Armenia that was then part of the Soviet Union and used a different flag. This upset the Dashnak members present in

5370-517: The 2000 US Census , there were 385,488 ethnic Armenians living in the United States, and 202,708 people identified Armenian as 'Language Spoken at Home' . The overwhelming majority of Armenian-speakers lived in California (155,237). Other states with significant number of Armenian-speakers were New York (8,575) and Massachusetts (8,091). About 2/3 of Armenians speakers call Los Angeles County home. The 2009–2013 American Community Survey estimates put

5549-602: The 2010 Medicaid fraud . However, in the city of Glendale, California, where Armenians compose 27% of city's total population, only 17% of the crime in the city were committed by Armenians in 2006. According to the 2000 US Census , there were 385,488 Americans of Armenian ancestry at that time. The 2017 American Community Survey estimate found 485,970 Americans with full or partial Armenian ancestry. Higher estimates, of 800,000 to 1,500,000, are offered by many Armenian and non-Armenian organizations, media and scholars. The German ethnographer Caroline Thon puts their number at 800,000,

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5728-466: The Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia (11–14th centuries) resulted in the addition of two more characters to the alphabet (" օ " and " ֆ "), bringing the total number to 38. The Book of Lamentations by Gregory of Narek (951–1003) is an example of the development of a literature and writing style of Old Armenian by the 10th century. In addition to elevating the literary style and vocabulary of

5907-508: The Armenian genocide , mostly in the diaspora ). The differences between them are considerable but they are mutually intelligible after significant exposure. Some subdialects such as Homshetsi are not mutually intelligible with other varieties. Although Armenians were known to history much earlier (for example, they were mentioned in the 6th-century BC Behistun Inscription and in Xenophon 's 4th century BC history, The Anabasis ),

6086-541: The Battle of Appomattox Court House , setting in motion the end of the war . Lincoln led the nation through that victory but was shot by an assassin on April 14. By the end of the war, much of the South's infrastructure was destroyed. The Confederacy collapsed, slavery was abolished, and four million enslaved black people were freed. The war-torn nation then entered the Reconstruction era in an attempt to rebuild

6265-585: The Dred Scott decision was proof the Southern states had no reason to secede and that the Union "was intended to be perpetual". He added, however, that "The power by force of arms to compel a State to remain in the Union" was not among the "enumerated powers granted to Congress". A quarter of the US army—the Texas garrison—was surrendered in February to state forces by its general, David E. Twiggs , who joined

6444-618: The Emancipation Proclamation went into effect in January 1863, ex-slaves were energetically recruited to meet state quotas. States and local communities offered higher cash bonuses for white volunteers. Congress tightened the draft law in March 1863. Men selected in the draft could provide substitutes or, until mid-1864, pay commutation money. Many eligibles pooled their money to cover the cost of anyone drafted. Families used

6623-538: The First Nagorno-Karabakh War caused an estimated number of 700,000 Armenians to leave the country, most of whom ended up in Russia, still others in the United States, and some in Europe. Annually, on average, 2,000 people from Armenia migrated to the US since 1994, not including ethnic Armenians from Middle Eastern countries. According to the 2000 US Census, there were 65,280 Armenian-born people in

6802-641: The Greek language , the Armenian language, and the Indo-Iranian languages . Graeco-Aryan unity would have become divided into Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian by the mid-3rd millennium BC. Conceivably, Proto-Armenian would have been located between Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian, consistent with the fact that Armenian shares certain features only with Indo-Iranian (the satem change) but others only with Greek ( s > h ). Graeco-Aryan has comparatively wide support among Indo-Europeanists who believe

6981-643: The Indo-European homeland to be located in the Armenian Highlands , the " Armenian hypothesis ". Early and strong evidence was given by Euler's 1979 examination on shared features in Greek and Sanskrit nominal flection. Used in tandem with the Graeco-Armenian hypothesis, the Armenian language would also be included under the label Aryano-Greco-Armenic , splitting into Proto-Greek/Phrygian and "Armeno-Aryan" (ancestor of Armenian and Indo-Iranian ). Classical Armenian (Arm: grabar ), attested from

7160-542: The Mekhitarists . The first Armenian periodical, Azdarar , was published in grabar in 1794. The classical form borrowed numerous words from Middle Iranian languages , primarily Parthian , and contains smaller inventories of loanwords from Greek, Syriac, Aramaic, Arabic, Mongol, Persian, and indigenous languages such as Urartian . An effort to modernize the language in Bagratid Armenia and

7339-657: The Midwest and in the South , but in much smaller numbers than the Northeastern states and California. The early Armenian immigrants in Detroit were mostly laborers. In later decades, particularly since the 1960s, Middle Eastern Armenians immigrated to Michigan. The Armenian community has been described as "highly educated, professional and prospering". Today, they number about 22,000. Chicago's Armenians also first settled in

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7518-687: The New York Press Club president. Many Armenians followed him and went to the US for education. During the Civil War three Armenian doctors—Simeon Minasian, Garabed Galstian, and Baronig Matevosian—worked at military hospitals in Philadelphia . The only Armenian known to have participated in hostilities was Khachadour Paul Garabedian , who enlisted in the Union Navy . A naturalized citizen from Rodosto , Garabedian served aboard

7697-592: The Virginia to prevent its capture, while the Union built many copies of the Monitor . The Confederacy's efforts to obtain warships from Great Britain failed, as Britain had no interest in selling warships to a nation at war with a stronger enemy and feared souring relations with the U.S. By early 1861, General Winfield Scott had devised the Anaconda Plan to win the war with minimal bloodshed, calling for

7876-522: The Western theater , the Union made permanent gains—though in the Eastern theater the conflict was inconclusive. The abolition of slavery became a Union war goal on January 1, 1863, when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation , which declared all slaves in rebel states to be free, applying to more than 3.5 million of the 4 million enslaved people in the country. To the west, the Union first destroyed

8055-524: The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 due to socio-economic and political reasons. The Los Angeles area has the largest Armenian population in the United States. The 2020 United States census reported that 519,001 Americans held full or partial Armenian roots either alone or combined with another ancestral origin. Various organizations and media criticize these numbers as an underestimate, proposing 800,000 to 1,500,000 Armenian Americans instead. The highest concentration of Americans of Armenian descent

8234-526: The electrical telegraph , steamships, the ironclad warship , and mass-produced weapons were widely used. The war left an estimated 698,000 soldiers dead, along with an undetermined number of civilian casualties, making the Civil War the deadliest military conflict in American history. The technology and brutality of the Civil War foreshadowed the coming World Wars . The origins of the war were rooted in

8413-406: The 168,649 men procured for the Union through the draft, 117,986 were substitutes, leaving only 50,663 who were conscripted. In the North and South, draft laws were highly unpopular. In the North, some 120,000 men evaded conscription, many fleeing to Canada, and another 280,000 soldiers deserted during the war. At least 100,000 Southerners deserted, about 10 percent of the total. Southern desertion

8592-480: The 1980s, including 50,000 in the New York metropolitan area. Immediately before and continuing into the time of the dissolution of the Soviet Union , waves of Armenians from Armenia and other former Soviet republics arrived for political reasons and economic opportunities, settling in older established Armenian communities across the country. The 1988 Armenian earthquake and the energy crisis in Armenia during

8771-559: The 2000 Census, the states with largest Armenian populations were California (204,631), Massachusetts (28,595), New York (24,460), New Jersey (17,094), Michigan (15,746), Florida (9,226), Pennsylvania (8,220), Illinois (7,958), Rhode Island (6,677), and Texas (4,941). The first Armenian arrived in California in 1874 and settled in Fresno. Fresno and the Central Valley in general were the center of California Armenian community, but in

8950-730: The 2000 census reported 152,910 Armenians in Los Angeles County . Just eleven years later, the 2011 American Community Survey one-year estimates put the number of Armenians in Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana area 214,618, about 29% growth from 2000. The city of Los Angeles itself had an Armenian population of 64,997 in 2000. Several districts of Los Angeles have high concentrations of Armenians, particularly in San Fernando Valley : North Hollywood , Van Nuys , and Encino . On 6 October 2000,

9129-408: The 5th century to the 19th century as the literary standard (up to the 11th century also as a spoken language with different varieties), was partially superseded by Middle Armenian , attested from the 12th century to the 18th century. Specialized literature prefers "Old Armenian" for grabar as a whole, and designates as "Classical" the language used in the 5th century literature, "Post-Classical" from

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9308-607: The Armenian American community. Armenians from Lebanon, Turkey, Syria , and few other countries speak the Western dialect, which was spoken in Turkish (Western) Armenia , the eastern regions of Turkey with historical Armenian presence. Eastern Armenian is primarily spoken in Armenia and Iran, though the Iranian Armenians have their own dialect; in the United States, speakers of Eastern Armenian are primarily immigrants from

9487-715: The Armenian Apostolic Church. About 1/3 of all Turkish Armenians in America are self-employed. A group of Armenian Americans from Istanbul founded the Organization of Istanbul Armenians (OIA) in 1976, which claimed over 1,000 members in Southern California as of 2011. Iranian Armenians are known for fast integration into American society; for example, only 31% of Armenian Americans born in Iran claim not to speak English well. Armenian American criminal organizations have received widespread media attention, such as during

9666-512: The Armenian community every day. Therefore, individuals exist who are not acculturated at all to the dominant American culture, as well as those who have chosen to separate from the Armenian community and acculturate completely, and many who are in the middle of acculturation spectrum. Fresno, California, was the first major Armenian community in the Western United States. It was a major destination for early Armenian immigrants from

9845-481: The Armenian language by adding well above a thousand new words, through his other hymns and poems Gregory paved the way for his successors to include secular themes and vernacular language in their writings. The thematic shift from mainly religious texts to writings with secular outlooks further enhanced and enriched the vocabulary. "A Word of Wisdom", a poem by Hovhannes Sargavak devoted to a starling, legitimizes poetry devoted to nature, love, or female beauty. Gradually,

10024-663: The Atlantic (about 2,500 moved in 1898–1914), because Armenians were treated relatively better in Russia than in the Ottoman Empire. Once in America, some Armenians organized political parties to serve various causes in America and in the homeland. Turkish Armenian migration rose gradually in the first decade of the 20th century, partly due to the Adana Massacre of 1909, and the Balkan Wars in 1912–1913. Before

10203-490: The Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Insurance rates soared, and the American flag virtually disappeared from international waters, though reflagging ships with European flags allowed them to continue operating unmolested. After the war, the U.S. government demanded Britain compensate it for the damage caused by blockade runners and raiders outfitted in British ports. Britain paid the U.S. $ 15 million in 1871, but only for commerce raiding. Dinçaslan argues that another outcome of

10382-401: The Bahamas in exchange for high-priced cotton. Many were lightweight and designed for speed, only carrying small amounts of cotton back to England. When the Union Navy seized a blockade runner, the ship and cargo were condemned as a prize of war and sold, with proceeds given to the Navy sailors; the captured crewmen, mostly British, were released. The Southern economy nearly collapsed during

10561-400: The British response to the U.S. was toned down, helping avert war. In 1862, the British government considered mediating between the Union and Confederacy, though such an offer would have risked war with the U.S. British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston reportedly read Uncle Tom's Cabin three times when deciding what his decision would be. The Union victory at the Battle of Antietam caused

10740-438: The British to delay this decision. The Emancipation Proclamation increased the political liability of supporting the Confederacy. Realizing that Washington could not intervene in Mexico as long as the Confederacy controlled Texas, France invaded Mexico in 1861 and installed the Habsburg Austrian archduke Maximilian I as emperor. Washington repeatedly protested France's violation of the Monroe Doctrine . Despite sympathy for

10919-404: The Commonwealth, which at its greatest extent was over half the state, and it went into exile after October 1862. After Virginia's secession, a Unionist government in Wheeling asked 48 counties to vote on an ordinance to create a new state in October 1861. A voter turnout of 34% approved the statehood bill (96% approving). Twenty-four secessionist counties were included in the new state, and

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11098-423: The Confederacy bombarded Fort Sumter in South Carolina . A wave of enthusiasm for war swept over the North and South, as military recruitment soared. Four more Southern states seceded after the war began and, led by its president, Jefferson Davis , the Confederacy asserted control over a third of the U.S. population in eleven states. Four years of intense combat, mostly in the South, ensued. During 1861–1862 in

11277-400: The Confederacy refused to exchange black prisoners. After that, about 56,000 of the 409,000 POWs died in prisons, accounting for 10 percent of the conflict's fatalities. Historian Elizabeth D. Leonard writes that between 500 and 1,000 women enlisted as soldiers on both sides, disguised as men. Women also served as spies, resistance activists, nurses, and hospital personnel. Women served on

11456-472: The Confederacy's river navy by the summer of 1862, then much of its western armies, and seized New Orleans . The successful 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River , while Confederate General Robert E. Lee 's incursion north failed at the Battle of Gettysburg . Western successes led to General Ulysses S. Grant 's command of all Union armies in 1864. Inflicting an ever-tightening naval blockade of Confederate ports,

11635-410: The Confederacy, France's seizure of Mexico ultimately deterred it from war with the Union. Confederate offers late in the war to end slavery in return for diplomatic recognition were not seriously considered by London or Paris. After 1863, the Polish revolt against Russia further distracted the European powers and ensured they remained neutral. Russia supported the Union, largely because it believed

11814-454: The Confederacy. As Southerners resigned their Senate and House seats, Republicans could pass projects that had been blocked. These included the Morrill Tariff , land grant colleges, a Homestead Act , a transcontinental railroad, the National Bank Act , authorization of United States Notes by the Legal Tender Act of 1862 , and the end of slavery in the District of Columbia . The Revenue Act of 1861 introduced income tax to help finance

11993-519: The Confederate capital was moved to Richmond . Maryland , Delaware , Missouri , West Virginia and Kentucky were slave states whose people had divided loyalties to Northern and Southern businesses and family members. Some men enlisted in the Union Army and others in the Confederate Army. West Virginia separated from Virginia and was admitted to the Union on June 20, 1863, though half its counties were secessionist. Maryland's territory surrounded Washington, D.C. , and could cut it off from

12172-412: The District of Columbia by seizing prominent figures, including arresting one-third of the members of the Maryland General Assembly on the day it reconvened. All were held without trial, with Lincoln ignoring a ruling on June 1, 1861, by Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney , not speaking for the Court, that only Congress could suspend habeas corpus ( Ex parte Merryman ). Federal troops imprisoned

12351-420: The Greater Boston area. The Armenian Heritage Park , dedicated to the victims of the Armenian genocide, was opened in downtown Boston on May 22, 2012. Watertown, Massachusetts , is the center of Boston Armenians, where according to estimates about 8,000 people of Armenian origin reside, though the 2000 Census put the number only at 2,708. Worcester, Massachusetts, was also a major center for Armenian immigrants in

12530-403: The Hurro-Urartian and Northeast Caucasian origins for these words and instead suggest native Armenian etymologies, leaving the possibility that these words may have been loaned into Hurro-Urartian and Caucasian languages from Armenian, and not vice versa. A notable example is arciv , meaning "eagle", believed to have been the origin of Urartian Arṣibi and Northeast Caucasian arzu . This word

12709-420: The North, where anti-slavery sentiment had grown, and for the South, where the fear of slavery's abolition had grown. Another factor leading to secession and the formation of the Confederacy was the development of white Southern nationalism in the preceding decades. The primary reason for the North to reject secession was to preserve the Union, a cause based on American nationalism . Background factors in

12888-658: The North. It had anti-Lincoln officials who tolerated anti-army rioting in Baltimore and the burning of bridges, both aimed at hindering the passage of troops to the South. Maryland's legislature voted overwhelmingly to stay in the Union, but rejected hostilities with its southern neighbors, voting to close Maryland's rail lines to prevent their use for war. Lincoln responded by establishing martial law and unilaterally suspending habeas corpus in Maryland, along with sending in militia units. Lincoln took control of Maryland and

13067-682: The Ottoman Armenia, many of whom were engaged in agriculture. Armenians were the largest minority group in Fresno County. The city is also widely known as the birthplace of William Saroyan , many of whose stories are set there. Today, an estimated number of about 40,000 Armenian live in Fresno. According to the 2000 Census, 9,884 Armenians lived in Fresno County at the time. The area around the Holy Trinity Church

13246-486: The Ottoman Empire were registered as "Armenian" in American records. The number of Armenians who migrated to the United States from 1820 to 1898 is estimated to be around 4,000. Armenians began to arrive in the United States in unprecedented numbers in the late 19th century, most notably after the Hamidian Massacres of 1894–96, and before, during and after the Armenian genocide . Before this mass migration to

13425-669: The Russian Empire), removed almost all of their Turkish lexical influences in the 20th century, primarily following the Armenian genocide . In addition to Armenia and Turkey, where it is indigenous , Armenian is spoken among the diaspora . According to Ethnologue , globally there are 1.6 million Western Armenian speakers and 3.7 million Eastern Armenian speakers, totalling 5.3 million Armenian speakers. In Georgia, Armenian speakers are concentrated in Ninotsminda and Akhalkalaki districts where they represent over 90% of

13604-459: The Russian and Ottoman empires led to creation of two separate and different environments under which Armenians lived. Halfway through the 19th century, two important concentrations of Armenian communities were further consolidated. Because of persecutions or the search for better economic opportunities, many Armenians living under Ottoman rule gradually moved to Istanbul , whereas Tbilisi became

13783-408: The South's post-war recovery. Cotton diplomacy proved a failure as Europe had a surplus of cotton, while the 1860–62 crop failures in Europe made the North's grain exports critically important. It also helped turn European opinion against the Confederacy. It was said that "King Corn was more powerful than King Cotton," as U.S. grain went from a quarter to almost half of British imports. Meanwhile,

13962-545: The South. The Confederacy turned to foreign sources, connecting with financiers and companies like S. Isaac, Campbell & Company and the London Armoury Company in Britain, becoming the Confederacy's main source of arms. To transport arms safely to the Confederacy, British investors built small, fast, steam-driven blockade runners that traded arms and supplies from Britain, through Bermuda, Cuba, and

14141-833: The Soviet linguist Igor M. Diakonoff noted the presence in Classical Armenian of what he calls a "Caucasian substratum" identified by earlier scholars, consisting of loans from the Kartvelian and Northeast Caucasian languages . Noting that Hurro-Urartian-speaking peoples inhabited the Armenian homeland in the second millennium BC, Diakonoff identifies in Armenian a Hurro-Urartian substratum of social, cultural, and animal and plant terms such as ałaxin "slave girl" ( ← Hurr. al(l)a(e)ḫḫenne ), cov "sea" ( ← Urart. ṣûǝ "(inland) sea"), ułt "camel" ( ← Hurr. uḷtu ), and xnjor "apple (tree)" ( ← Hurr. ḫinzuri ). Some of

14320-610: The Tri-State area. Queens is home to some 50,000 Armenian Americans, Manhattan has 10,000 Armenian population centered in Gramercy Park , Kips Bay , and Murray Hill , where St. Vartan Armenian Cathedral is. Stepan Zadori, a Hungarian Armenian , is the first known Armenian to come to Boston, The Armenian community in Boston was not founded until the 1880s. Today, estimates say that Armenians number from 50,000 to 70,000 in

14499-555: The U.S. and Britain over the Trent affair , which began when U.S. Navy personnel boarded the British ship Trent and seized two Confederate diplomats. However, London and Washington smoothed this over after Lincoln released the two men. Prince Albert left his deathbed to issue diplomatic instructions to Lord Lyons during the Trent affair. His request was honored, and, as a result,

14678-471: The Union Army or pro-Union guerrilla groups. Although they came from all classes, most Southern Unionists differed socially, culturally, and economically from their region’s dominant prewar, slave-owning planter class. At the war's start, a parole system operated, under which captives agreed not to fight until exchanged. They were held in camps run by their army, paid, but not allowed to perform any military duties. The system of exchanges collapsed in 1863 when

14857-456: The Union blockade. The Confederacy purchased warships from commercial shipbuilders in Britain, with the most famous being the CSS ; Alabama , which caused considerable damage and led to serious postwar disputes . However, public opinion against slavery in Britain created a political liability for politicians, where the anti-slavery movement was powerful. War loomed in late 1861 between

15036-464: The Union hospital ship Red Rover and nursed Union and Confederate troops at field hospitals. Mary Edwards Walker , the only woman ever to receive the Medal of Honor , served in the Union Army and was given the medal for treating the wounded during the war. One woman, Jennie Hodgers, fought for the Union under the name Albert D. J. Cashier. After she returned to civilian life, she continued to live as

15215-544: The Union marshaled resources and manpower to attack the Confederacy from all directions. This led to the fall of Atlanta in 1864 to Union General William Tecumseh Sherman , followed by his March to the Sea . The last significant battles raged around the ten-month Siege of Petersburg , gateway to the Confederate capital of Richmond . The Confederates abandoned Richmond, and on April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant following

15394-492: The Union would win if it could resupply and hold the fort, and the South would be the aggressor if it opened fire on an unarmed ship supplying starving men. An April 9 Confederate cabinet meeting resulted in Davis ordering General P. G. T. Beauregard to take the fort before supplies reached it. At 4:30 am on April 12, Confederate forces fired the first of 4,000 shells at the fort; it fell the next day. The loss of Fort Sumter lit

15573-433: The Union, this was never likely, so they sought to bring them in as mediators. The Union worked to block this and threatened war if any country recognized the Confederacy. In 1861, Southerners voluntarily embargoed cotton shipments, hoping to start an economic depression in Europe that would force Britain to enter the war, but this failed. Worse, Europe turned to Egypt and India for cotton, which they found superior, hindering

15752-483: The Union-held Fort Sumter. Fort Sumter is located in the harbor of Charleston , South Carolina. Its status had been contentious for months. Outgoing President Buchanan had dithered in reinforcing its garrison, commanded by Major Robert Anderson . Anderson took matters into his own hands and on December 26, 1860, under the cover of darkness, sailed the garrison from the poorly placed Fort Moultrie to

15931-702: The Union. A February peace conference met in Washington, proposing a solution similar the Compromise; it was rejected by Congress. The Republicans proposed the Corwin Amendment , an alternative, not to interfere with slavery where it existed, but the South regarded it as insufficient. The remaining eight slave states rejected pleas to join the Confederacy, following a no-vote in Virginia's First Secessionist Convention on April 4. On March 4, Lincoln

16110-572: The United States by 1919. An unprecedented number of Armenians entered the country in 1920, when the newly established Soviet Union forcefully annexed the First Republic of Armenia , but the Immigration Act of 1924 , that restricted immigration from southern and eastern Europe as well as Asia, barred many other Armenians from emigrating to the United States. Most of the post-World War I immigrants were women and children, in contrast to

16289-663: The United States following the Hamidian massacres of the mid-1890s, the Adana massacre of 1909, and the Armenian genocide of 1915–1918 in the Ottoman Empire . Since the 1950s many Armenians from the Middle East (especially from Lebanon , Syria , Iran , Iraq , Egypt , and Turkey ) migrated to the United States as a result of political instability in the region. It accelerated in the late 1980s and has continued after

16468-448: The United States, the number of Armenians in the country was from 1,500 to 3,000. The New York Times talked of about 10,000 Armenians in the US in 1895. Over 12,000 Armenians from the Ottoman Empire went to the United States throughout the 1890s. This period witnessed cultural contact between American and Armenian through Armenian nationalist dissident organizations within the Ottoman Empire and intense activity of American missionaries in

16647-412: The United States. Early Armenian immigrants were one of the most literate ethnic groups to enter the US with 76% literacy. In comparison, 46% of southern Italians, 74% of Eastern European Jews and 99% of Finns were literate. As of 2007, 41% of US-born Armenians had at least a 4-year college degree . The rate is lower for foreign-born Armenians. The first Armenian Sunday school in the US was founded in

16826-492: The United States. Almost 90% had moved in the previous two decades (57,960) and lived in California (57,482). According to the 2011 American Community Survey , there were 85,150 Armenian-born people in the United States, about 20,000 more than in 2000. The Armenian-born population grew to 101,757 by 2019. Meanwhile, Armenian immigration from the Middle East continues, contributing to California's distinction of having, by far,

17005-628: The West, where major rivers gave access to the Confederate heartland. The U.S. Navy eventually controlled the Red, Tennessee, Cumberland, Mississippi, and Ohio rivers. In the East, the Navy shelled Confederate forts and supported coastal army operations. The Civil War occurred during the early stages of the industrial revolution, leading to naval innovations, notably the ironclad warship . The Confederacy, recognizing

17184-524: The Western territories destined to become states. Initially Congress had admitted new states into the Union in pairs, one slave and one free . This had kept a sectional balance in the Senate but not in the House of Representatives , as free states outstripped slave states in numbers of eligible voters. Thus, at mid-19th century, the free-versus-slave status of the new territories was a critical issue, both for

17363-645: The area in the 1990s and have since established a sizable community, especially in and around the Eastside . The Salt Lake City, Utah area has about 2,000 Armenians. As of 2000, 53% of the Armenians living in the United States speak the Armenian language . For comparison, about 6% of Italian Americans , 32% of Greek Americans , and 70% of Albanian Americans speak their ancestral language. The Armenian language has two distinct standardized forms: Western Armenian and Eastern Armenian , both widely spoken among

17542-567: The area with significant Armenian populations are Worcester (1,306), Belmont (1,165), Waltham (1,091), and the city of Boston (1,080). Other major northeastern cities with significant Armenian populations include Philadelphia and Providence. Like other Armenian communities in America, Armenian communities in these cities have their roots in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Currently, Philadelphia holds about 15,000 Armenian American population and over 7,000 live in Providence. There

17721-595: The blockade ships USS Geranium and USS Grand Gulf as a Third Assistant Engineer and later an officer from 1864 until his honorable discharge from the Navy in August 1865. The number of Armenians rose from 20 in 1854 to around 70 by the 1870s. According to official statistics, 14 Armenians immigrated to the United States in 1878. In the late 1870s, small Armenian communities existed in New York City , Providence, Rhode Island , and Worcester, Massachusetts . By

17900-521: The blockade was the rise of oil as a prominent commodity. The declining whale oil industry took a blow as many old whaling ships were used in blockade efforts, such as the Stone Fleet , and Confederate raiders harassed Union whalers. Oil products, especially kerosene, began replacing whale oil in lamps, increasing oil's importance long before it became fuel for combustion engines. Although the Confederacy hoped Britain and France would join them against

18079-624: The census is usually lower than actuals". Armenians came to the Northeastern United States fleeing ethnically motivated violence starting around 1890. When the Hood Rubber Company (later joined with B.F. Goodrich) opened in Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1896, Armenian, Syrian, Greek, and Italian immigrants made Hood Rubber the biggest producer of rubber soles in the United States, and thus made Watertown, MA,

18258-434: The center of Armenians living under Russian rule. These two cosmopolitan cities very soon became the primary poles of Armenian intellectual and cultural life. The introduction of new literary forms and styles, as well as many new ideas sweeping Europe, reached Armenians living in both regions. This created an ever-growing need to elevate the vernacular, Ashkharhabar, to the dignity of a modern literary language, in contrast to

18437-722: The ceremony. The conflict reached a crisis on 24 December 1933, when several members of ARF assassinated Archbishop Tourian during the Christmas Eve service in New York's Holy Cross Armenian Apostolic Church . Armenian language Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European Armenian

18616-486: The city in the late 19th century in small numbers, but it increased through the 20th century, reaching about 25,000 by today. As of 2003 more than 8,000 Armenian Americans lived in Washington, D.C. The Armenian Genocide Museum of America is also located in the capital. Since the turn of the century there been a trend towards an increase in number of Armenians living outside of traditional settlement areas. For instance,

18795-511: The colonies. The persecution of Christian minorities under the Ottoman Empire and American missionary activities resulted in a small wave of Armenian migration to the United States in the 1830s from Cilicia and Western Armenia . Hatchik (Christopher) Oscanyan , a Constantinople American missionary school student, arrived in America in 1835 to pursue higher education. He later worked for the New York Herald Tribune and became

18974-508: The convention unanimously voted to secede and adopted a secession declaration . It argued for states' rights for slave owners but complained about states' rights in the North in the form of resistance to the federal Fugitive Slave Act, claiming that Northern states were not fulfilling their obligations to assist in the return of fugitive slaves. The "cotton states" of Mississippi , Florida , Alabama , Georgia , Louisiana , and Texas followed suit, seceding in January and February 1861. Among

19153-489: The country, bring the former Confederate states back into the United States, and grant civil rights to freed slaves. The war is one of the most extensively studied and written about episodes in U.S. history . It remains the subject of cultural and historiographical debate . Of continuing interest is the fading myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy . The war was among the first to use industrial warfare . Railroads,

19332-574: The country. Armenian Americans constitute a highly educated community. Of the 339,732 Armenian Americans who are 25 or above, 26% are with a college degree , and 26.1% hold a bachelor's degree . Most Armenian Americans are adherents of the Armenian Apostolic Church, the largest Oriental Orthodox church in the United States. It possesses over 90 churches throughout the nation. It was reported that 80% of Armenian Americans are Armenian Apostolic, 10% are Protestant (mostly Armenian Evangelical ), and 3% are Armenian Catholic . The Armenian Apostolic Church

19511-477: The crisis was Secretary of State William H. Seward , who had been Lincoln's rival for the Republican nomination . Embittered by his defeat, Seward agreed to support Lincoln's candidacy only after he was guaranteed the executive office then considered the second most powerful. In the early stages of Lincoln's presidency Seward held little regard for him, due to his perceived inexperience. Seward viewed himself as

19690-657: The de facto head of government, the " prime minister " behind the throne. Seward attempted to engage in unauthorized and indirect negotiations that failed. Lincoln was determined to hold all remaining Union-occupied forts in the Confederacy: Fort Monroe in Virginia, Fort Pickens , Fort Jefferson , and Fort Taylor in Florida, and Fort Sumter in South Carolina. The American Civil War began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces opened fire on

19869-529: The desire of the Southern states to preserve the institution of slavery . Historians in the 21st century overwhelmingly agree on the centrality of slavery in the conflict. They disagree on which aspects (ideological, economic, political, or social) were most important, and on the North 's reasons for refusing to allow the Southern states to secede. The pseudo-historical Lost Cause ideology denies that slavery

20048-502: The early part of the twentieth century. The Armenian Library and Museum of America is located in Watertown. The National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) is located in Belmont, and "starting in early 2018, NAASR will undertake top-to-bottom renovations...to transform it into a welcoming hub and first-class Armenian Studies research center for scholars and myriad others, Armenians and non-Armenians alike". Other towns in

20227-493: The ensuing guerrilla war engaged about 40,000 federal troops for much of the war. Congress admitted West Virginia to the Union on June 20, 1863. West Virginians provided about 20,000 soldiers to each side in the war. A Unionist secession attempt occurred in East Tennessee , but was suppressed by the Confederacy, which arrested over 3,000 men suspected of loyalty to the Union; they were held without trial. The Civil War

20406-486: The essential role of cotton in the European economy. The European aristocracy was "absolutely gleeful in pronouncing the American debacle as proof that the entire experiment in popular government had failed. European government leaders welcomed the fragmentation of the ascendant American Republic." However, a European public with liberal sensibilities remained, which the U.S. sought to appeal to by building connections with

20585-580: The existence of the two modern versions of the same language was sanctioned even more clearly. The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic (1920–1990) used Eastern Armenian as its official language, whereas the diaspora created after the Armenian genocide preserved the Western Armenian dialect. The two modern literary dialects, Western (originally associated with writers in the Ottoman Empire) and Eastern (originally associated with writers in

20764-517: The first center of Armenian America. New York was also a destination for Armenian immigrants in the early 20th century. The area between East 20th Street, Lexington Avenue , and First Avenue, where a compact Armenian population lived and Armenian shops existed, was called "Little Armenia" until the 1960s. The area was mentioned in 1914 book Our Mr. Wren: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man by Sinclair Lewis (the 1930 Nobel Prize Winner ). Today, according to estimates, there are 150,000 Armenians in

20943-411: The former Soviet Union, who mostly arrived during the 1990s, or their children. Furthermore, Western and Eastern Armenian use two different spellings. In Armenia, the reformed orthography is used, while most Armenians in the diaspora (including Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, and Iran) use the classical orthography . Between 1910 and 1970, the language of only the foreign-born population in the United States

21122-604: The highest Armenian American population of any state. According to Dr. Anny Bakalian, "country of birth and childhood socialization, generation, and even cohort effect are important variables in understanding the behavior and attitudes of people of Armenian descent". The main subgroups of foreign-born Armenian Americans are Hayastantsis (Armenians from Armenia), Parskahays (Armenians from Iran), and Beirutsis (Armenians from Beirut, Lebanon). A 1990 University of California, Los Angeles , study showed that, by education and occupation, native-born and Iranian-born Armenians "tend to have

21301-572: The highest socioeconomic status... while those from Turkey have the lowest", although Turkish Armenians boast the highest rate of self-employment. In 1988, The New York Times article claimed that Middle Eastern Armenians prefer to settle in Glendale, California , while Armenian immigrants from the Soviet Union were attracted to Hollywood, Los Angeles. Armenians from Lebanon, where they had effectively established an active community, are more politicized, while Turkish Armenians are mostly connected with

21480-439: The homefront economy could no longer supply. Surdam contends that the blockade was a powerful weapon that eventually ruined the Southern economy, costing few lives in combat. The Confederate cotton crop became nearly useless, cutting off the Confederacy's primary income source. Critical imports were scarce, and coastal trade largely ended as well. The blockade's success was not measured by the few ships that slipped through but by

21659-425: The hypothetical Mushki language may have been a (now extinct) Armenic language. W. M. Austin (1942) concluded that there was early contact between Armenian and Anatolian languages , based on what he considered common archaisms, such as the lack of a feminine gender and the absence of inherited long vowels. Unlike shared innovations (or synapomorphies ), the common retention of archaisms (or symplesiomorphy )

21838-470: The interests of the population at large were reflected in other literary works as well. Konsdantin Yerzinkatsi and several others took the unusual step of criticizing the ecclesiastic establishment and addressing the social issues of the Armenian homeland. These changes represented the nature of the literary style and syntax, but they did not constitute immense changes to the fundamentals of the grammar or

22017-554: The international press. By 1861, Union diplomats like Carl Schurz realized emphasizing the war against slavery was the Union's most effective moral asset in swaying European public opinion. Seward was concerned an overly radical case for reunification would distress European merchants with cotton interests; even so, he supported a widespread campaign of public diplomacy. U.S. minister to Britain Charles Francis Adams proved adept and convinced Britain not to challenge

22196-432: The late 1880s in New York by Barsegh Vardukyan. Since the 1960s many Armenian bilingual schools have been established in communities throughout the country. Ferrahian Armenian School , founded in 1964, is the oldest Armenian daily school in America. Besides this, there are over 100 Armenian schools that operate on weekends only. Mashdots College in Glendale, founded in 1992, is the only Armenian higher education institution in

22375-540: The late 1880s, their number reached 1,500. Many of them were young male students of the American Evangelical Missions spread throughout the Ottoman Empire. About 40% came from the Province of Kharpert . Before 1899, immigrants were not classified by ethnicity, but rather by country of birth, obscuring the ethnic origins of many Armenians. After 1869, however, Armenians from the eastern regions of

22554-491: The late 1940s, including Soviet Armenian prisoners of war who were able to make their way westward after being freed from Nazi camps . The Displaced Persons Act of 1948 allowed people displaced during the World War II to immigrate to the US. From 1944 to 1952, 4,739 Armenians migrated to the United States, many with the help of George Mardikian 's American National Committee to Aid Homeless Armenians (ANCHA). However,

22733-719: The late 1980s, during the Perestroika era. The total number of Soviet Armenian emigrants from 1956 to 1989, over 80% of them to the United States, is estimated at 77,000. The 15-year-long Lebanese Civil War that started in 1975 and the Iranian revolution of 1979 greatly contributed to the influx of Middle Eastern Armenians to the United States. The Armenian communities in these Middle Eastern countries were well established and integrated, but not assimilated, into local populations. Armenians in Lebanon and Iran are even represented in

22912-434: The late 5th to 8th centuries, and "Late Grabar" that of the period covering the 8th to 11th centuries. Later, it was used mainly in religious and specialized literature, with the exception of a revival during the early modern period, when attempts were made to establish it as the language of a literary renaissance, with neoclassical inclinations, through the creation and dissemination of literature in varied genres, especially by

23091-564: The later decades, especially since the 1960s, when significant number of Middle Eastern Armenians arrived in the United States, Southern California attracted more and more Armenians. Los Angeles and the surrounding area is, by far, the most crowded Armenian community in the United States. It holds a little less than half of all Armenians living in the US, making it one of the most populous Armenian communities outside of Armenia . The estimated numbers of Armenians of Southern California vary greatly: 250,000, 350,000, 400,000, 450,000, 500,000, although

23270-450: The local Turkish Armenian population, which looked to the West for a safe and more prosperous life. Soviet Armenians, on the other hand, were mostly genocide survivors who never fully integrated into Soviet life after their repatriation in the 1940s. The large-scale emigration of Soviet Armenians, mainly to Western countries, began in 1956. About 30,000 Soviet Armenians entered the country from 1960 to 1984, and another 60,000 moved throughout

23449-567: The morphology of the language. Often, when writers codify a spoken dialect, other language users are then encouraged to imitate that structure through the literary device known as parallelism . In the 19th century, the traditional Armenian homeland was once again divided. This time Eastern Armenia was conquered from Qajar Iran by the Russian Empire , while Western Armenia , containing two thirds of historical Armenia, remained under Ottoman control. The antagonistic relationship between

23628-508: The most popular answers were New York (17,391), Massachusetts (14,192), Rhode Island (4,923), Illinois (3,313), California (2,564), New Jersey (2,115), Pennsylvania (2,002), and Michigan (1,371). The largest Armenian American communities at that time were located in New York City ; Fresno ; Worcester, Massachusetts ; Boston ; Philadelphia ; Chicago ; Jersey City ; Detroit ; Los Angeles ; Troy, New York ; and Cleveland . According to estimates, around 77,980 Armenians lived in

23807-607: The movement to abolish slavery and its influence over the North. Southern states believed that the Fugitive Slave Clause made slaveholding a constitutional right. These states agreed to form a new federal government, the Confederate States of America , on February 4, 1861. They took control of federal forts and other properties within their boundaries, with little resistance from outgoing President James Buchanan , whose term ended on March 4. Buchanan said

23986-476: The need to counter the Union's naval superiority, built or converted over 130 vessels, including 26 ironclads. Despite these efforts, Confederate ships were largely unsuccessful against Union ironclads. The Union Navy used timberclads, tinclads, and armored gunboats. Shipyards in Cairo, Illinois, and St. Louis built or modified steamboats . The Confederacy experimented with the submarine CSS  Hunley , which

24165-418: The new Confederacy sent delegates to Washington to negotiate a peace treaty. Lincoln rejected negotiations, because he claimed that the Confederacy was not a legitimate government and to make a treaty with it would recognize it as such. Lincoln instead attempted to negotiate directly with the governors of seceded states, whose administrations he continued to recognize. Complicating Lincoln's attempts to defuse

24344-403: The now-anachronistic Grabar. Numerous dialects existed in the traditional Armenian regions, which, different as they were, had certain morphological and phonetic features in common. On the basis of these features two major standards emerged: Both centers vigorously pursued the promotion of Ashkharhabar. The proliferation of newspapers in both versions (Eastern & Western) and the development of

24523-584: The number at 1,400,000. The Armenian National Committee of America , The Armenian Weekly , The Armenian Reporter , and Reuters offer the highest number, at around 1,500,000 Armenian Americans. Most Armenian Americans are concentrated in major urban areas, especially in California and the Northeast , and to a lesser extent in the Midwest . The highest concentrations of Americans of Armenian ancestry are in Los Angeles, New York, and Boston. According to

24702-536: The number of Armenian Americans was estimated at 200,000. Although the 1980 US Census put the number of Armenians living in Los Angeles at 52,400, of which 71.9% were foreign born: 14.7% in Iran, 14.3% in the USSR, 11.5% in Lebanon, 9.7% in Turkey, 11.7% in other Middle Eastern countries (Egypt, Iraq , Palestine , etc.), and the rest in other parts of the world. The New York Times estimated 500,000 Armenian Americans in

24881-704: The number of Armenian-speakers at 237,840. A 2007 study showed that 16% of Armenians born in Lebanon, 29% in Armenia (including Soviet Armenia), 31% in Iran, and 36% in Turkey are not proficient in English. Many foreign-born Armenians are multilingual, speaking at least one language other than Armenian and English. For instance, Armenians from Armenia or the rest of the former Soviet Union might know Russian , those from Lebanon and Syria may know Arabic and French, almost all Iranian Armenians speak Persian , and Istanbul Armenians speak Turkish . A 1999 paper delivered by Bert Vaux described Armenian as "severely endangered" in

25060-681: The number of Armenians in Nevada increased from 2,880 in 2000 to 5,845 in 2010, Florida from 9,226 to 15,856, and Texas from 4,941 to 14,459. The Pacific Northwest has a growing Armenian community as well, primarily centered around the Seattle Metropolitan area , which consists anywhere from 6,000 to 8,000 Armenian Americans, along with a church. Many of the Armenian Americans in Washington State immigrated to

25239-541: The official status of the Armenian language. Eastern Armenian is the official variant used, making it the prestige variety while other variants have been excluded from national institutions. Indeed, Western Armenian is perceived by some as a mere dialect. Armenian was also official in the Republic of Artsakh . It is recognized as an official language of the Eurasian Economic Union although Russian

25418-465: The oldest and largest Armenian Genocide memorial in the United States, is located in Montebello. Dr. Seta Kazandjian described the community in her 2006 dissertation as follows: Waves of immigration into the Los Angeles area have resulted in the formation of strong communities in neighborhoods and cities such as Hollywood, Glendale. and North Hollywood. In these neighborhoods, an Armenian can live

25597-639: The oldest surviving Armenian-language writing is etched in stone on Armenian temples and is called Mehenagir . The Armenian alphabet was created by Mesrop Mashtots in 405, at which time it had 36 letters. He is also credited by some with the creation of the Georgian alphabet and the Caucasian Albanian alphabet . While Armenian constitutes the sole member of the Armenian branch of the Indo-European family, Aram Kossian has suggested that

25776-417: The ordinances of secession, those of Texas, Alabama, and Virginia mentioned the plight of the "slaveholding states" at the hands of Northern abolitionists. The rest made no mention of slavery but were brief announcements by the legislatures of the dissolution of ties to the Union. However, at least four—South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas —provided detailed reasons for their secession, all blaming

25955-483: The parent languages of Greek and Armenian were dialects in immediate geographical proximity during the Proto-Indo-European period. Meillet's hypothesis became popular in the wake of his book Esquisse d'une histoire de la langue latine (1936). Georg Renatus Solta (1960) does not go as far as postulating a Proto-Graeco-Armenian stage, but he concludes that considering both the lexicon and morphology, Greek

26134-434: The parliaments as ethnic minorities. Many lived in luxury in their former countries, and more easily handled multilingualism, while retaining aspects of traditional Armenian culture. This wave of newcomers revitalized the Armenian American community, especially in the Los Angeles area, where most second-wave Armenian immigrants settled. In 1970 about 65,000 Armenians resided in Southern California, and two decades later, in 1989,

26313-407: The path to a new and simplified grammatical structure of the language in the two different cultural spheres. Apart from several morphological, phonetic, and grammatical differences, the largely common vocabulary and generally analogous rules of grammatical fundamentals allows users of one variant to understand the other as long as they are fluent in one of the literary standards. After World War I ,

26492-519: The population. The short-lived First Republic of Armenia declared Armenian its official language. Eastern Armenian was then dominating in institutions and among the population. When Armenia was incorporated into the USSR, the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic made Eastern Armenian the language of the courts, government institutions and schools. Armenia was also russified . The current Republic of Armenia upholds

26671-533: The prewar immigration, which was predominantly young and male. Like Italians, for whom this practice was known as campanilismo , Armenian communities were often formed by people from the same village or town in the Ottoman Empire. This practice almost entirely disappeared after World War II . In total, 81,729 Armenians entered the United States from 1899 to 1931, according to the Immigration and Naturalization Service . A new wave of Armenian immigrants moved in

26850-448: The region who were sympathetic to the Armenian cause, making the long road of migration somewhat more bearable. With the exception of Fresno, California , which had land suitable for farming, the earliest Armenian immigrants mostly settled in the northeastern industrial centers, such as New York City, Providence, Worcester, and Boston . Armenian emigrants from the Russian Empire were only a minority in emigration from Armenian lands across

27029-436: The representation of word-initial laryngeals by prothetic vowels, and other phonological and morphological peculiarities with Greek. Nevertheless, as Fortson (2004) comments, "by the time we reach our earliest Armenian records in the 5th century AD, the evidence of any such early kinship has been reduced to a few tantalizing pieces". Graeco-(Armeno)-Aryan is a hypothetical clade within the Indo-European family , ancestral to

27208-427: The run up to the Civil War were partisan politics , abolitionism , nullification versus secession , Southern and Northern nationalism, expansionism , economics , and modernization in the antebellum period . As a panel of historians emphasized in 2011, "while slavery and its various and multifaceted discontents were the primary cause of disunion, it was disunion itself that sparked the war." Abraham Lincoln won

27387-414: The similarities between the two languages meant that Armenian belonged to the Iranian language family . The distinctness of Armenian was recognized when philologist Heinrich Hübschmann (1875) used the comparative method to distinguish two layers of Iranian words from the older Armenian vocabulary . He showed that Armenian often had two morphemes for one concept, that the non-Iranian components yielded

27566-636: The southwestern corner of Missouri (see Missouri secession ). Early in the war the Confederacy controlled southern Missouri through the Confederate government of Missouri but was driven out after 1862. In the resulting vacuum, the convention on secession reconvened and took power as the Unionist provisional government of Missouri. Kentucky did not secede, it declared itself neutral. When Confederate forces entered in September 1861, neutrality ended and

27745-471: The stalwart island Fort Sumter. Anderson's actions catapulted him to hero status in the North. An attempt to resupply the fort on January 9, 1861, failed and nearly started the war then, but an informal truce held. On March 5, Lincoln was informed the fort was low on supplies. Fort Sumter proved a key challenge to Lincoln's administration. Back-channel dealing by Seward with the Confederates undermined Lincoln's decision-making; Seward wanted to pull out. But

27924-558: The start of the World War I , there were already 60,000 Armenians in the United States. As more Armenians fell victim to the genocide and more Armenians were deported, the Armenian American community grew dramatically. According to the Bureau of Immigration , 54,057 Armenians entered the United States between 1899 and 1917. The top listed countries of origin were Turkey (46,474), Russia (3,034), Canada (1,577), Great Britain (914), and Egypt (894). Immigrants were asked to indicate which state they were going to settle in; for Armenians,

28103-446: The state reaffirmed its Union status while maintaining slavery. During an invasion by Confederate forces in 1861, Confederate sympathizers and delegates from 68 Kentucky counties organized the secession Russellville Convention, formed the shadow Confederate Government of Kentucky , inaugurated a governor, and Kentucky was admitted into the Confederacy on December 10, 1861. Its jurisdiction extended only as far as Confederate battle lines in

28282-401: The substitute provision to select which man should go into the army and which should stay home. There was much evasion and resistance to the draft, especially in Catholic areas. The New York City draft riots in July 1863 involved Irish immigrants who had been signed up as citizens to swell the vote of the city's Democratic political machine , not realizing it made them liable for the draft. Of

28461-456: The terms he gives admittedly have an Akkadian or Sumerian provenance, but he suggests they were borrowed through Hurrian or Urartian. Given that these borrowings do not undergo sound changes characteristic of the development of Armenian from Proto-Indo-European , he dates their borrowing to a time before the written record but after the Proto-Armenian language stage. Contemporary linguists, such as Hrach Martirosyan , have rejected many of

28640-451: The thousands that never tried. European merchant ships could not get insurance and were too slow to evade the blockade, so they stopped calling at Confederate ports. To fight an offensive war, the Confederacy purchased arms in Britain and converted British-built ships into commerce raiders . The smuggling of 600,000 arms enabled the Confederacy to fight on for two more years, and the commerce raiders targeted U.S. Merchant Marine ships in

28819-494: The true second wave of immigration did not begin until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 abolished national origins quotas. After the passage of that act, Armenians from the Soviet Union, Turkey, Lebanon , Iran , and other Middle Eastern countries began migrating in large numbers, many fleeing political instability in their host countries. In the 1950s, most Armenian immigrants in the United States were from Soviet Armenia and Turkey. The Istanbul pogrom in 1955 frightened

28998-430: The war created jobs for arms makers, ironworkers, and ships to transport weapons. Lincoln's administration initially struggled to appeal to European public opinion. At first, diplomats explained that the U.S. was not committed to ending slavery and emphasized legal arguments about the unconstitutionality of secession. Confederate representatives, however, focused on their struggle for liberty, commitment to free trade, and

29177-478: The war due to multiple factors: severe food shortages, failing railroads, loss of control over key rivers, foraging by Northern armies, and the seizure of animals and crops by Confederate forces. Historians agree the blockade was a major factor in ruining the Confederate economy; however, Wise argues blockade runners provided enough of a lifeline to allow Lee to continue fighting for additional months, thanks to supplies like 400,000 rifles, lead, blankets, and boots that

29356-401: The war. In December 1860, the Crittenden Compromise was proposed to re-establish the Missouri Compromise line, by constitutionally banning slavery in territories to the north of it, while permitting it to the south. The Compromise would likely have prevented secession, but Lincoln and the Republicans rejected it. Lincoln stated that any compromise that would extend slavery would bring down

29535-436: The winter of 1860–1861. Nationalists in the North and "Unionists" in the South refused to accept the declarations of secession. No foreign government ever recognized the Confederacy. The U.S. government, under President James Buchanan , refused to relinquish its forts that were in territory claimed by the Confederacy. According to Lincoln, the American people had shown they had been successful in establishing and administering

29714-425: The world" within a few years. Some European observers at the time dismissed them as amateur and unprofessional, but historian John Keegan concluded that each outmatched the French, Prussian, and Russian armies, and without the Atlantic, could have threatened any of them with defeat. Unionism was strong in certain areas within the Confederacy. As many as 100,000 men living in states under Confederate control served in

29893-441: Was Martin the Armenian, from Iran . He was an Iranian Armenian tobacco grower who settled in Jamestown, Virginia , in 1618. In 1653–54, two Armenians from Constantinople were invited to Virginia to raise silk worms . A few other Armenians are recorded as having come to the United States in the 17th and 18th centuries, but most moved as individuals and did not establish communities. By the 1770s, over 70 Armenians had settled in

30072-426: Was a civil war in the United States between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union. The central conflict leading to war was a dispute over whether slavery should be permitted to expand into the western territories, leading to more slave states , or be prohibited from doing so, which many believed would place slavery on

30251-408: Was high because many soldiers were more concerned about the fate of their local area than the Southern cause. In the North, " bounty jumpers " enlisted to collect the generous bonus, deserted, then re-enlisted under a different name for a second bonus; 141 were caught and executed. From a tiny frontier force in 1860, the Union and Confederate armies grew into the "largest and most efficient armies in

30430-405: Was made of bullion lost from mints. He stated that it would be US policy "to collect the duties and imposts"; "there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere" that would justify an armed revolution. His speech closed with a plea for restoration of the bonds of union, famously calling on "the mystic chords of memory" binding the two regions. The Davis government of

30609-566: Was marked by intense and frequent battles. Over four years, 237 named battles were fought, along with many smaller actions, often characterized by their bitter intensity and high casualties. Historian John Keegan described it as "one of the most ferocious wars ever fought," where, in many cases, the only target was the enemy's soldiers. As the Confederate states organized, the U.S. Army numbered 16,000, while Northern governors began mobilizing their militias. The Confederate Congress authorized up to 100,000 troops in February. By May, Jefferson Davis

30788-449: Was not successful, and with the ironclad CSS  Virginia , rebuilt from the sunken Union ship Merrimack . On March 8, 1862, Virginia inflicted significant damage on the Union's wooden fleet, but the next day, the first Union ironclad, USS  Monitor , arrived to challenge it in the Chesapeake Bay . The resulting three-hour Battle of Hampton Roads was a draw, proving ironclads were effective warships. The Confederacy scuttled

30967-460: Was pushing for another 100,000 soldiers for one year or the duration, and the U.S. Congress responded in kind. In the first year of the war, both sides had more volunteers than they could effectively train and equip. After the initial enthusiasm faded, relying on young men who came of age each year was not enough. Both sides enacted draft laws (conscription) to encourage or force volunteering, though relatively few were drafted. The Confederacy passed

31146-405: Was situated between Proto-Greek ( centum subgroup) and Proto-Indo-Iranian ( satem subgroup). Ronald I. Kim has noted unique morphological developments connecting Armenian to Balto-Slavic languages . The Armenian language has a long literary history, with a 5th-century Bible translation as its oldest surviving text. Another text translated into Armenian early on, and also in the 5th-century,

31325-708: Was sworn in as president. In his inaugural address , he argued that the Constitution was a more perfect union than the earlier Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union , was a binding contract, and called secession "legally void". He did not intend to invade Southern states, nor to end slavery where it existed, but he said he would use force to maintain possession of federal property, including forts, arsenals, mints, and customhouses that had been seized. The government would not try to recover post offices, and if resisted, mail delivery would end at state lines. Where conditions did not allow peaceful enforcement of federal law, US marshals and judges would be withdrawn. No mention

31504-520: Was taken into account. In 1910, the number of Armenian speakers in the US was 23,938. It grew up to 37,647 in 1920, 51,741 in 1930, 40,000 in 1940, 37,270 in 1960, and 38,323 in 1970. According to the 1980 US Census , 100,634 people in the nation spoke Armenian, 69,995 of them were foreign-born. The 1990 US Census revealed 308,096 people of Armenian ancestry at the time and 149,694 people who indicated Armenian as their native language. A majority of Armenian-speakers (115,017) were foreign-born. According to

31683-549: Was the Armenian Alexander Romance . The vocabulary of the language has historically been influenced by Western Middle Iranian languages , particularly Parthian ; its derivational morphology and syntax were also affected by language contact with Parthian, but to a lesser extent. Contact with Greek, Persian , and Syriac also resulted in a number of loanwords. There are two standardized modern literary forms, Eastern Armenian (spoken mainly in Armenia) and Western Armenian (spoken originally mainly in modern-day Turkey and, since

31862-439: Was the principal cause of the secession, a view disproven by historical evidence, notably some of the seceding states' own secession documents . After leaving the Union, Mississippi issued a declaration stating, "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world." The principal political battle leading to Southern secession was over whether slavery would expand into

32041-525: Was too late. " King Cotton " was dead, as the South could export less than 10% of its cotton. The blockade shut down the ten Confederate seaports with railheads that moved almost all the cotton. By June 1861, warships were stationed off the principal Southern ports, and a year later nearly 300 ships were in service. The Confederates began the war short on military supplies, which the agrarian South could not produce. Northern arms manufacturers were restricted by an embargo, ending existing and future contracts with

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